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Tory Lanez sets the bar very, very high and he does not hit it. At all. | Tory Lanez sets the bar very, very high and he does not hit it. At all. | Tory Lanez: LoVE me NOw | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tory-lanez-love-me-now/ | LoVE me NOw | Tory Lanez tries so damn hard at everything he does—just take a look at his painful jump shot. His second studio album of the year, LoVE me NOw, is Tory attempting to cement his place in R&B’s upper echelon, but even before the first song is clicked, the album is drenched with head-scratching ideas: the tracklist is printed like a ransom note written with magazine letter cut outs (“IF iT Ain’T rIGHt”) and it features an album cover in the style of “The Brady Bunch” with a muppet version of Tory. There is absolutely no reason for any of this—unless Tory is secretly a Jim Henson head—it’s the Toronto-bred singer/rapper desperately trying to be different. Instead, he creates some of the most generic hip-hop and R&B music of the year.
In the intro to Tory’s “DrIP DrIp Drip” music video, a reporter walks up to him and says, “Rumor has it that after you release this LoVE me NOw album you will be the greatest artist of all time,” to which Tory responds, “I am the greatest artist of all time,” right before diving into an Auto-Tune sing-rap style that half of the guest artists on his own album do better than he does. His singing is mediocre, his use of Auto-Tune isn’t creative, and as a rapper he’s forgettable. He doesn’t know if he wants to be a rockstar like Lil Uzi Vert or make throw-your-panties-onto-the-stage R&B like Trey Songz.
The glaring issue with LoVE me NOw is how uninteresting and generic the album sounds. For a project that is supposed to be Tory Lanez’s moment, much of the best moments come from his guests, a who’s who of Hot 97 heavy hitters. On “IF iT Ain’T rIGHt,” A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie upstages Tory by spitting a soft, melodic verse about failed murders: “Hit him in the stomach and he still did not die.” On “DrIP DrIp Drip” Meek Mill channels Young Thug with newfound melody. On “KeeP IN tOUcH,” Tory’s lack of R&B chops get exposed next to Bryson Tiller, who shows him what lovestruck and horny slow jams are supposed to sound like: “Kiss right in the street, fuck if anybody sees/Just friends/I don’t think anybody believes.”
There isn’t anything new LoVE me NOw will teach you about Tory Lanez. He still craves respect and wants to be recognized by his peers and fans alike as the hip-hop and R&B savant that he thinks he is. And while at times he can crank out catchy tracks destined for the charts, most of the time, after all of the big talk, we’re left with an artist who doesn’t live up to the expectations he set for himself. | 2018-11-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-11-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap / Pop/R&B | Mad Love / Interscope | November 2, 2018 | 5 | e5fe4bdd-0651-4445-8b45-cd833f263517 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
For those of you who skipped out of zoology classes to get baked\r\n\ behind the bike sheds, bonobos ... | For those of you who skipped out of zoology classes to get baked\r\n\ behind the bike sheds, bonobos ... | Bonobo: Animal Magic | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/853-animal-magic/ | Animal Magic | For those of you who skipped out of zoology classes to get baked behind the bike sheds, bonobos are a species of chimpanzee. Whereas your regular chimp is a vicious, antagonistic bag of misogynistic rage, the bonobo is a peaceable, female-respecting soul who loves to have sex just for the fun of it. Bonobos are Pitchfork's kind of primate. So when we received Animal Magic, the debut album by downtempo Brit Simon Green, the 'Fork knew that the collection was bound to get us all super-relaxed and ready for some smooth, sweet loving. So with a several tubs of fresh whipped cream, a punnet of strawberries and a French tickler or two, I set about scoring some love action while assessing Animal Magic.
In keeping with his chosen alias, Green never screams, throws tantrums, or is stupid enough to allow primatologists to force him to learn a simple noun-predicate dialect. Green's language is already highly developed-- though he borrows slightly from previous Ninja Tune releases, he's more in sync with Memphis Industries' Blue States or Broadway Project, and as wryly humorous as Fort Lauderdale.
Animal Magic stumbles initially: Green's gaffe is to include one of those hokey master-of-ceremonies intros in which some suited-and-booted jerk-off intones for the enjoyment of ladies and gentlemen. That schtick got mildewy yonks ago and for perpetuating such a cliché, Green needs to be roundly rebuked. Once the intro is over, none of Animal Magic is impeachable. Though Green sifts through the same thrift-store record bins as Bent, he manages to combine his samples so as to produce tracks that transcend their constituents. In other words, Bonobo avoids the wretched hamfistedness of Lemon Jelly.
The bewitching vocal sample that anchors "Sleepy Seven" reminds me of Blue States' "Your Girl." Green doesn't make extensive use of the sample, instead dropping it in to subtly spice up his languid groove and melodica lines. "Dinosaurs" is appropriately more muscular: Greer selects beats that are less geared to bob heads as to snap necks. But to counter the violence, Green arranges somnolent trombone and sax snippets. The acoustic guitar appeggios and swooshing sounds that begin "Kota" remind me of the intricate yet sleepy vibes of my favorite Swiss downtempo-er, Seelenluft.
During "Terrapin," sitars and subdued strings weave the wordless story of Shiva's horizontal journey to the center of his pleasure zone. "The Plug" tells the tale of how Shiva, upon reaching the center of his pleasure zone, begged never to return to the realm of strife and woe, and how he pleaded to remain surrounded by the sounds of gentle cymbal strokes, maracas, strings, and a melody played on an oboe-ish instrument of ineffable serenity.
Though Animal Magic breaks no new ground for chill-out, I'm overjoyed that after its initial slip into cliché, Green makes his debut album much greater than the sum of its parts. Green has a real flair for dynamics which, in chill, is a remarkable achievement. Animal Magic is clearly the creation of a musician rather thar that of a zany bricoleur who has absorbed too many broadcasts of "The Goons." With his debut securely a success, it'd be nice to see Greer follow the path of J. Swinscoe's Cinematic Orchestra and apply his composer's abilities to human musicians rather than an array of sound files. Now. May I tempt you with a cream-dipped strawberry, sweet thing? | 2002-05-22T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2002-05-22T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic / Jazz | Ninja Tune | May 22, 2002 | 7.6 | e6090306-ae37-4878-aa81-55484673ac0b | Paul Cooper | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-cooper/ | null |
Despite working in an increasingly rich and crowded ambient-pop field, Grouper's Liz Harris continues to own her distinctive sound on these LPs. | Despite working in an increasingly rich and crowded ambient-pop field, Grouper's Liz Harris continues to own her distinctive sound on these LPs. | Grouper: A I A : Alien Observer / A I A : Dream Loss | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15332-a-i-a-alien-observer-a-i-a-dream-loss/ | A I A : Alien Observer / A I A : Dream Loss | The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else.
Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent.
The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason.
Alien Observer is the more accessible of the two discs, and also has a slightly better arc. The opening "Moon Is Sharp" begins one of those impossibly beautiful vocal drones that just tears out your insides, as Harris begins in shapeless ethereality and gradually finds her way to an unadorned but breathtaking melody. The title track does away with the drone and puts Harris' vocal over a quivering keyboard line. On "Vapor Trails" and "She Loves Me That Way" the record turns a few shades darker, but a twinkling music box melody that opens "Mary, on the Wall (Second Heart Tone)" feels like awakening from an uneasy sleep, groggy and halfway hallucinating as you re-enter the world. The closing "Come Softly (For Daniel D)" feels like a proper conclusion, as Harris' naked voice over a skeletal keyboard figure gradually disappear over the horizon.
Dream Loss is heavier on the distortion and EQ, and with an atmosphere that alternates between the hissy, open drift of the stratosphere with the thick, all-encompassing immersion of the ocean floor. The tracks here feel less like songs and more like moods, studies, and shapes. "I Saw a Ray" flirts with noise music, with a bit of industrial grind added to the held tones, while "Soul Eraser" seems to crumble into dust and regenerate itself simultaneously.
Harris has indicated that the two records, dating from different periods (the tracks on Dream Loss are older), have threads connecting them. They certainly feel like companions. Dream Loss is only slightly less engrossing than its counterpart, and the differences are minor. But placed on a continuum, these records highlight how 2008's luminous Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, her last full-length album, was an unusual entry in the Grouper catalog. That record was built almost exclusively with acoustic guitar and voice, and the songs had an ancient air to them, like they'd been carved into petrified wood with a hammer and chisel. These records are closer to the narcotic drift of earlier records like 2007's Cover the Windows and the Walls. But it all feels like Grouper, and whether she's working in realm of rough-hewn folk or amniotic drift, this is music that takes you places. | 2011-04-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2011-04-18T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Experimental | null | April 18, 2011 | 8.1 | e60f6ed2-a025-4793-85f9-75e49fb893c6 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
The pioneering composer and guitarist's latest album *Pythagorean Dream *is a simultaneously giddy and calm mix of the high-minded and the lizard-brained. | The pioneering composer and guitarist's latest album *Pythagorean Dream *is a simultaneously giddy and calm mix of the high-minded and the lizard-brained. | Rhys Chatham: Pythagorean Dream | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21893-pythagorean-dream/ | Pythagorean Dream | Rhys Chatham was a flute player until he heard the Ramones and switched to guitar. That's an oversimplification of the pioneering musician and composer's history, but it still says a lot about his unique methods. Throughout his 45-year career, Chatham has translated styles associated with instruments like the flute—classical, formal, studied—into the primal power of rock-based electric guitar. This mix of the high-minded and the lizard-brained holds when Chatham plays other instruments, even when he conducts 400 of them.
Chatham revisits his formative flute/guitar dichotomy on Pythagorean Dream, an album he made by himself—a rarity in his heavily collaborative discography. One side focuses on repetitive, ringing guitar, while the other offers a fluid, morphing flute drone. But the approach for both— devout minimalism seeking transcendence via preset forms—is clearly unified, to the point where the two 19-minute pieces rhyme with each other. Both sides loop and build, mimicking the hypnotic repetitions of nature.
Chatham uses tape delay to create overlapping lines, in the tradition of Terry Riley’s tape loops. This allows Chatham to accompany himself, slowly reflecting sounds back and forth in a hall of sonic mirrors. On side one, he also employs Pythagorean tuning. I’m not technically versed enough to hear what difference that makes (nor are most listeners), but I do know there’s a precision to each note and chord that gives Chatham’s guitar a patient reverence, like we’re witnessing wordless prayer.
Side two feels even more intimate. As Chatham’s flute tones progress, they get smaller and closer. At points, it sounds as if they’re being whispered in your ear. Throughout, both pieces tremble with giddy energy, but also exude a calm atmosphere in their chiming overtones. In the end, flute and guitar fully unite: The former folds into the latter in a triumphant refrain that soars so high it sounds light-headed, as if Chatham is dizzied by his own playing.
Lightness might be seen as a drawback by some of Chatham’s contemporaries, but it’s always been welcome in his multi-toned music. His sunny, humorous personality shines through in everything he does, whether he’s playing with different musicians every night or simply directing an army of players from behind a conductor’s stand. But there's something more naturally personal about Pythagorean Dream, in the way its multitude of vibrations emanate from Chatham alone. He’s using a language that he created—a language that's not hard for other musicians to learn or interpret, but one that only Chatham speaks fluently. | 2016-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Foom | May 23, 2016 | 7.6 | e61049de-6212-40c8-8fb1-febd6ba21768 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Wolfgang Voigt treats the seventh album from his beloved ambient techno moniker like a retrospective, filtering familiar tropes into a comforting pulse. But a disturbing hint of tinnitus lurks in the margins. | Wolfgang Voigt treats the seventh album from his beloved ambient techno moniker like a retrospective, filtering familiar tropes into a comforting pulse. But a disturbing hint of tinnitus lurks in the margins. | GAS: Der Lange Marsch | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gas-der-lange-marsch/ | Der Lange Marsch | A sea of strings swims into view, and the crackle of vinyl reaches out of the mix like tendrils. The tone is tense, urgent, paranoid, and minor-key, interrupted by long exhalations on a major-key chord. There’s no beat, but anyone familiar with GAS might find themselves already smiling with anticipation: It’s coming. Sure enough, the kick drum that undergirds most of Wolfgang Voigt’s revered ambient techno project slowly fades in, accompanied by a martial snare that first showed up on his last album Rausch.
It’s not the only familiar scene on Der Lange Marsch, the project’s seventh album. Voigt’s label Kompakt has hinted this might be the last GAS album, and Voigt treats Der Lange Marsch like a career retrospective, threading bits and pieces of his previous works into a constant four-on-the-floor pattern. Fans will recognize the pneumatic burbling from “Pop 1” on “Der Lange Marsch 8,” the urgent fox-hunt horn from “Konigsförst 5” on “Der Lange Marsch 9,” the glistening drone from “Zauberberg 1” on “Der Lange Marsch 11.”
The GAS project has developed so incrementally that Voigt plundering his past isn’t unwelcome or unexpected, and there are enough subtle developments for Der Lange Marsch to strike a distinct tone. The string samples are less dense than usual, clustering close to the beat rather than blossoming through the stereo field. And while it’s structured as a single piece, like Rausch, it moves more quickly, never staying on one idea too long; the rhythm runs completely uninterrupted for the central hour of the 67-minute album.
The most shocking rupture in the project’s harmonic framework is the creepy choir that drifts like a ghost through “Der Lange Marsch 10.” It’s the first time recognizable vocals of any kind have ever showed up on a GAS album, and it’s easy to wonder what an album that incorporated more voices into the usual sampled stew might sound like. I think GAS still has places to go: I can picture a GAS album with 20- or 25-minute tracks, one that switches up the drums a bit, one that leans even further into Der Lange Marsch’s more inward approach and embraces the low-end murk of William Basinski or Akira Rabelais.
There’s one development, though, that has already made Der Lange Marsch the most divisive GAS album: the high-pitched beep on every other beat. Some listeners don’t notice it, others seem able to tune it out, and for many, it’s an impassable barrier to entry. Voigt used a similar frequency on Rausch, but only in short intervals. Here, it literally never lets up except during the brief bits at the beginning and end with no drums. Once you realize you’re going to have to learn to live with that beat, the album starts to earn its title: The Long March.
It seems like an odd artistic choice to throw such a jarring and potentially alienating sound over your career-spanning retrospective, especially considering that this is otherwise the sunniest and most euphonious of the three GAS albums Voigt has released since bringing the project back from hiatus in 2017. Voigt suffers from tinnitus, and it’s possible that he’s asking the listener to empathize with his condition. But is putting a beep over an otherwise perfectly enjoyable album the right way to go about it? If there’s a new GAS album to look forward to, it’s a fan edit that cuts that frequency right out.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Kompakt | December 8, 2021 | 6.6 | e6117baa-27c3-41ca-8c4d-103715935dfa | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
The pop-rock superstars attempt a concept album about virtual reality that is almost perverse in its inability or unwillingness to develop its premise beyond the most basic and obvious elements. | The pop-rock superstars attempt a concept album about virtual reality that is almost perverse in its inability or unwillingness to develop its premise beyond the most basic and obvious elements. | Bastille: Give Me the Future | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bastille-give-me-the-future/ | Give Me the Future | The future Bastille imagine on their new album, Give Me the Future, dates at least as far back as 1951, when Ray Bradbury published his short story “The Veldt.” Among the first entrants in a rich vein of science fiction about the perils of virtual reality, it concerns a family whose children become so attached to a VR room in their house that they murder mom and dad when the parents attempt to tear them away. Seventy years—and many stories, novels, films, and television episodes—later, with Facebook investing billions in its “Reality Labs” metaverse division, the question of what happens when people start to like a simulated world better than the real thing is more urgent than ever. If an extremely popular band had anything new or interesting to say on the matter, now would be a good time to say it.
Readers of this website probably know Bastille’s slick synth-driven rock best via “Pompeii” and the Marshmello collaboration “Happier,” two songs you would almost certainly recognize, even if you couldn’t necessarily place where from, or who’s singing. To an outsider, they’re one of those hugely successful artists whose success seems to flow from machinations bigger and more mysterious than such petty concerns as, “Does anyone actually choose to listen to this stuff?” But singer and songwriter Dan Smith has more idiosyncratic ambitions than the caricature of the faceless yet hugely popular rock band suggests. Give Me the Future is a full-fledged concept album (not Bastille’s first, incidentally) with an elaborate backstory involving a fictitious company called Future Inc, whose products allow users to escape into virtual worlds limited only by their own imaginations.
Bastille clearly approached their subject matter with the right critiques in mind. In a promotional interview outlining the Future Inc concept, Smith talked about how tech companies advertise themselves with earnest appeals to humanity while making big money by harvesting personal data. And the shopworn nature of the concept isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker; as recently as 2016, the television series Black Mirror found a new angle on the simulated reality problem by drawing out the pathos of a relationship between two people living in computer-assisted bliss. There’s no reason Bastille shouldn’t be able to find their own spin on the story. But Give Me the Future is almost perverse in its inability or unwillingness to develop its premise beyond the most basic and obvious elements.
Drop the needle at any point in the album, and hear Smith’s proclamations that he is in the future, and he can do anything, and be anyone, and the simulation is like a dream, a dream that is good but perhaps so good that it’s also bad. The songs are virtually interchangeable.
Here’s the chorus to “Distorted Light Beam,” delivered over pumping drum machine and noir-disco synth: “When I’m dreaming tonight, I can do anything/When I’m dreaming tonight, I can go anywhere/When I’m dreaming tonight, I can be anyone.”
Here’s the chorus to “Back to the Future,” delivered over pumping drum machine and noir-disco guitar: “In the middle of the night, I can dream away/I can change what I like, and go back to the future again.”
Here’s the chorus of “Give Me the Future,” whose drum machine, to be fair, pumps a little more slowly than the other two: “Give me the future/It’s golden and bright/Catch a fever dream/In the flash of the lights.” If that one isn’t similar enough to the other two, don’t worry; Smith reminds us he can “be anything” in the song’s third line.
The arrangements are stuffed with ear candy: Giorgio Moroder-sequenced synths, Daft Punk vocoders, palm-muted guitars played with mechanistic precision—a sound that gestures at commonly accepted ideas of what the future might sound like, but is actually pretty old-fashioned in 2022. Everything is executed with the utmost professionalism, and there are a few undeniably big moments, like the way a cluttered mix clears out to almost nothing for the chorus of “Thelma+Louise,” or the sax solo of “Shut Off the Lights,” which wiggles like a reflection in a funhouse mirror. But on the whole, the sound is plagued with the same lack of specificity as the songs.
Smith seems to want every track to be a thesis statement, encompassing every theme and sound he has in mind for the album, and as a result, they all sound the same. His constant sloganeering and sci-fi references—there are namedrops in two separate songs for Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in addition to nods towards 1984 and Aldous Huxley—leave little room for the unpredictable texture of humanity. One conspicuous exception is “Promises,” an interlude featuring a spoken-word verse from Riz Ahmed. To my reading, he seems to rap from the perspective of a post-apocalyptic cad, professing his love for a former one-night stand now that she’s the only partner available: “Babe, you were just my best lay, and I never planned to hold hands/Until the whole of human history aligned so we could slow dance.” Kind of skeezy, but also kind of beautiful. Most importantly, it sounds like it came from the strange and flawed mind of an actual person, not a neural network trained on Twitter trending topics and Philip K. Dick titles.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Give Me the Future’s best song is “Shut Off the Lights,” the one with the most tenuous ties to the larger concept, sonically or lyrically. “Close off your hands around, hands around me/Grace-landing onto your bed, there you are,” Smith sings to a paramour in the first verse. Given the way the music sounds—jubilant, lighthearted, with perhaps a touch of South Africa in the backing vocals—it’s fairly safe to assume that the slightly awkward portmanteau is intended as a nod to Graceland, Paul Simon’s global fusion masterpiece, about as far away as possible from the neon-lit doom and gloom of the other songs. (Elsewhere, Smith also paraphrases the opening line from “The Sound of Silence,” for whatever that’s worth.) Unburdened with the need to deliver a message, and genuinely fun, “Shut Off the Lights” is everything the larger album is not. Smith, addressing his partner in a romance that might not last past the night, at one point urges “no talk about the future.” He manages to keep his promise, if only for the rest of the song.
Buy: Rough Trade | 2022-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00 | null | Republic | February 14, 2022 | 4.7 | e6184e18-297e-45d0-999f-0abf5033dbf9 | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
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 Alicia Keys’ outstanding 2001 debut, a self-produced, Chopin-inspired R&B album that blazed a unique path to mainstream superstardom. | 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 Alicia Keys’ outstanding 2001 debut, a self-produced, Chopin-inspired R&B album that blazed a unique path to mainstream superstardom. | Alicia Keys: Songs in A Minor | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/alicia-keys-songs-in-a-minor/ | Songs in A Minor | Alicia Keys had a near-complete version of her debut album, Songs in A Minor, in the summer of 1998 when her label, Columbia Records, decided she should go in a different direction. Yes, she was a classically trained pianist and the rare 17-year-old prodigy who sang, wrote, arranged, and produced her own music, but maybe she could play piano less and be more like, say, Christina Aguilera? Maybe she could lose a little weight and show some skin, too?
“They wanted me, the tomboy from Hell’s Kitchen, to become the next teen pop idol,” Keys wrote in her memoir. The label had already brought in big-name producers to strip away the retro-soul sound that separated artists like Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Maxwell, Jill Scott, and Keys from the stream of sex-driven R&B in the late-’90s. Keys found the recording process crushing and chose instead to partner with producer Kerry “Krucial” Brothers to create a dexterous blend of classical music and soul that merged young-adult melodrama with Beethoven. Columbia execs told her it sounded like one long demo.
The label was, of course, laughably wrong. Keys left Columbia in early 1999 to sign with Clive Davis at Arista Records and later his new label, J Records, where she could pilot her own vision. By November 2001, she had a No. 1 album and Rolling Stone had crowned her “The Next Queen of Soul.” By March 2002, she’d gone five-times platinum and won five Grammys, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for her No. 1 hit “Fallin’.”
Songs in A Minor arrived amid the birth of iTunes and the sensual empowerment of Destiny’s Child. Britney Spears and JC Chasez’s boy band were on their third albums, and Usher was gaining momentum for 8701, about to crush pop music off rock-hard abs alone. Then came Keys with her self-produced, Chopin-inspired compositions about self-worth, survival, and practical pursuits of happiness. She sang of profound love and desire, emotional and career stability. But this was also a dark time. Songs in A Minor spent a third week atop the Billboard charts in the same week that Aaliyah’s self-titled album bowed at No. 2—just before the singer’s death and a month before 9/11. Keys found herself at the center of a pop landscape where she and India.Arie became the new ambassadors of neo-soul.
Keys’ accolades were much-deserved, but they were also rich with subtext. She was a biracial girl from New York who performed in crop tops and blazers and wore beads in her cornrows like Stevie Wonder. She subverted expectations of what a classical musician should look like in a genre associated with stately white composers in starchy suits. Keys played up the culture clash, often seeming to materialize on stage in leather Going Out tops, headscarves, and floor-length furs—and suddenly in front of a grand piano. On the intro of Songs in A Minor, “Piano & I,” she embraces her position as a star over an instrumental that builds from the operatic hum of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” to jolting drums. “I didn’t know I was here,” she says. “Do you know my name?”
Before she legally changed it, she was Alicia Augello Cook, raised in Hell’s Kitchen by her mother, Terri Augello, a part-time actress and paralegal. Keys avoided publicly addressing her father’s absence in her life early on because she didn’t want to play into stereotypes about Black fathers—her mom is white, her dad Black. She discovered classical music when her kindergarten teacher introduced her to a piano. Keys became enchanted. At age 7, she began practicing the Suzuki Method and took up jazz at 14. Hip-hop, soul, and classical music all spoke to her. “Biggie and Marvin told me, write what you know; you don’t have to make it up, it’s right there,” she told Rolling Stone in 2001.
When Keys was 14, a vocal coach at the Harlem Police Athletic League’s community center introduced her to his brother, Jeff Robinson, who saw in her an artist who could comfortably embody Mary J. Blige and Mozart and became her manager. Keys was 16 when she dropped out of Columbia University, a few weeks into her freshman year, and moved to a studio in Rosedale, Queens, where she and Brothers built the bones of Songs in A Minor. In the interim, Keys raised her profile through compilations. In 1997, she placed the silky Badu-esque record “Dah Dee Dah (Sexy Thing)” on the Men in Black soundtrack and contributed “Little Drummer’s Girl” to Jermaine Dupri’s 12 Soulful Nights of Christmas.
Even after Clive Davis signed her, though—he’d launched J Records after being ousted from Arista—and after she completed Songs in A Minor, Keys struggled to find an audience for “Fallin’,” a Jackson 5-inspired ballad about a relationship that pivots drastically from despair to precarious bliss. Urban radio didn’t get the vibe. Keys was the type of performer you had to witness in person. Davis pulled his Ace of Spades and sent a letter, along with a demo video of Keys on the piano, to a media figure known for making cultural entities out of hidden talent and who happened to have a talk show with millions of viewers. In June 2001, Keys stood next to Oprah in a tuxedo jacket with pink satin penguin wings and made her nationally televised debut on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“Fallin’” is the type of ballad so robust it feels spiritual. Keys swings from a swelling falsetto (“How do you give me so much pleasure,” she begins) to a hoarse alto (“And cause me so much pain,” she exhales), expressing shades of fatigue in each line. She told Rolling Stone she “thought it’d be so ill for someone really young to sing a crazy deep song that you’d be like, ‘How does that person know what that feels like?’” She got the idea for the music video—which follows her on the way to visit a boyfriend in prison—from an article in F.E.D.S. magazine about a woman named Santra Rucker who received 13 consecutive life sentences. The record became so ubiquitous, it prompted Simon Cowell to later playfully ban contestants from singing and ruining it on American Idol, the sign of a song becoming an undeniable piece of the pop canon.
Her follow-up hit, “A Woman’s Worth”—a feminist anthem inspired, in earnest, by the L’Oreal slogan, “Because you’re worth it”—is Keys’ “Respect” for a budding digital generation. It’s not as bombastic as Aretha’s masterpiece, of course, but it pulls off the difficult task of turning message music into sultry pop goodness. The video opens with a shot of Keys walking down a sidewalk in full 2000s regalia—hip-huggers and a bomber jacket—pulling a young boy aside to school him on the meaning of chivalry.
At the heart of the album is a teenager exploring emotions. Keys wrote “Butterflyz” at 14 and “Troubles,” when she was 17, but her youth shows more in songwriting than in vocals or arrangements. On “Butterflyz,” she describes the sweet ascent into love with childlike brevity: “Joy is what you bring/I wanna give you everything.” Reading the lyrics on paper undersells the song’s tangible charm. In sequence, the track transitions smoothly into the wounded refrains of “Why Do I Feel So Sad,” a clear-eyed meditation on the familiarity of heartbreak. But Keys is at her most captivating lyrically on “Rock wit U,” a whirlwind of strings and flute dashes performed by Isaac Hayes and paired with a pompous bass that makes it perfect for the soundtrack of Shaft. (The song did appear on the soundtrack for the 2000 sequel.) “There’s no escape from the spell you have placed/Leaving my heart and my mind,” Keys sings in a hauntingly low tone. “Foolish am I if I was to try/To ever leave you behind.”
Over 16 tracks, Keys’ voice cracks beautifully and curls into tender, sometimes sanctified moans, her vocals neither straining nor very robust but rather incredibly persuasive. In a 2001 review, Mark Anthony Neal describes her vocal quality using a quote from singer Abbey Lincoln in Farah Jasmine Griffin’s book If You Can’t Be Free, Be A Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday. “She didn’t try to sound good or anything, she didn’t try to prove that she was a great singer,” Lincoln said of Holiday. “[But] she never made one sound that was insincere.” This profound sincerity saves Songs in A Minor from slipping into maudlin territory, yet the album’s most melancholy parts leave me wishing for more moments like “Mr. Man,” featuring the euphonious tones of Jimmy Cozier over swirling strings. The two sound as if they’re literally waltzing as they sing. Keys’ cover of the less widespread Prince record “How Come You Don’t Call Me” (née “How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore”) honors the original’s seductive funk while adding crescendoed moans and wails at the end: “Why must ya torture me,” she sings as the track fades into “Fallin’.”
The album’s most dated tracks are the ones whose concepts seem to mirror the scandalous club records of the 2000s, like Blu Cantrell’s “Hit Em Up Style (Oops!).” In this case, it’s “Jane Doe,” where Keys gets territorial with another woman, and “Girlfriend,” a throbbing, New Jack Swing number about irrational jealousy. Both times, Keys’ heartfelt enthusiasm and bravado on the piano make the records more compelling and unique than they should be. She practices more vocal restraint on this album than she does on some of her later records (“Superwoman,” “Girl on Fire”) that feel as if she pulled them from a grab bag labeled “Empowerment Anthems.”
Keys’ second and third albums, The Diary of Alicia Keys and As I Am, fine-tune the classical blueprint of Songs in A Minor into elegant throwback soul. Her best songs—“Wreckless Love,” “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart”—find subtle ways to pair her shameless idealism with real urgency. Sometimes she overdoes it, but not here.
The summer before college, I listened to “Troubles” in pensive reflection while sobbing into a book of bad poems. Alone on my basement futon, I wondered the same thing as Keys did: “Why does it feel that my mind is constantly trying to pull me down?” (No answer.) And “How long will I feel so out of place?” (Forever, it’s OK.) On the shiny gospel soul of “Lovin U,” Keys both embraces and frets over the promise of committed love, above saintly organs. “If I gave you forever/Would you take care of me?” she asks a hopeful life partner. As ever, she’s posing life’s eternally simple rhetorical questions.
Get the Sunday Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here. | 2021-03-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-03-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | J | March 28, 2021 | 8.5 | e619c56c-6e9a-47df-84dc-70f788e19858 | Clover Hope | https://pitchfork.com/staff/clover-hope/ | |
The singer and composer’s wondrous fourth album deepens the sound of her boundless folk-jazz style. Its gestures are bold, romantic, and often unforgettable. | The singer and composer’s wondrous fourth album deepens the sound of her boundless folk-jazz style. Its gestures are bold, romantic, and often unforgettable. | Arooj Aftab: Night Reign | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arooj-aftab-night-reign/ | Night Reign | It isn’t easy to say something new with “Autumn Leaves.” The 1945 torch song is surely one of the most performed standards in the jazz repertoire, not only by the likes of Miles Davis and Nat King Cole, but also by the beginners taking lessons in the back rooms of your local store music store: sitting down at a piano to play its wistful minor-key melody is a bit like the jazz version of picking up an electric guitar and going straight for “Smoke on the Water.” Putting your rendition on a new album in 2024 is either a conservative move or a bold one. For Arooj Aftab, the Brooklyn-via-Lahore singer and composer who moves freely between jazz, folk, and Hindustani and Western classical music, it is decidedly the latter.
Aftab’s “Autumn Leaves” comes early on Night Reign, her fourth solo album, and renders it as a ghostly incantation. Metallic percussion clatters in the background. Linda May Han Oh’s upright bass lines follow Aftab’s vocal like an elongated shadow follows the protagonist of a noir film. Without a chordal instrument to support it, the familiar tune becomes skeletal and spooky; Aftab’s chromatic embellishments make it spookier. Her take on “Autumn Leaves” is emblematic of the way she works: drawing from tradition while at the same time estranging it, stripping away clichés and stock devices to reveal the mysterious longing that gives the old poems and songs their lasting power.
Two of Night Reign’s songs take their words from Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, the 18th-century poet who was the first woman to publish a collection of work in Urdu. Other lyrics are Aftab originals, in both English and Urdu. Still another is based on an offhanded poem that the singer’s friend, the Pakistani actress Yasra Rizvi, posted to Instagram. Aftab unites her source material’s mix of the centuries-old and the ephemeral with her wondrous voice, sometimes soaring but just as potent in its husky lower register. And with her compositions, which patiently gather and dissolve, favoring long arcs of development over sudden dynamic shifts. Though Night Reign has plenty of distinct zones—grungy bass guitar takes the lead on “Bolo Na”; Auto-Tune drapes Aftab’s voice on “Raat Ki Rani”—as a whole it can have the feeling of a single sweeping piece of music.
Aftab, who produces her albums herself, deserves as much credit for her composing and arranging as she does for her singing. Night Reign’s palette is similar to Vulture Prince, her 2021 breakout album, and features many of the same players along with a few new ones: harpist Maeve Gilchrist, whose instrument is second only to Aftab’s singing as the signature sound of her music; Aftab’s Love in Exile bandmates, jazz piano star Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily; guitarists Kaki King and Gyan Riley; flautist Cautious Clay; percussionist Jamey Haddad; an unlikely Wurlitzer cameo from Elvis Costello. Their instruments drift like a breeze of dandelion seeds, in the same general direction but with independent and unpredictable paths between one point and another. Even Moor Mother, whose stentorian spoken-word is one of the most distinctive sounds in left-of-center music, becomes just another element of the melange when she arrives to deliver a guest verse on “Bolo Na,” the percussive edges of her delivery swept up in the song’s half-time rhythmic churn.
Though actual percussion remains sparse, Night Reign grooves harder than its predecessor, which featured almost no drums. Even when the rhythm instruments sit back, there’s almost always a sense of an insistent pulse, an effect that’s especially pronounced on opener “Aey Nehin”: an acoustic guitar carries it, then a harp, then some hand percussion—all sharing the responsibility for keeping up momentum, tossing it back and forth, and dancing a little more freely when it’s someone else’s turn to hold it down. (Whether or not he’s a direct influence on Aftab, Gyan Riley’s father Terry, the master minimalist composer, sometimes comes to mind in moments like these.) On “Last Night Reprise,” a setting of an English translation of a poem by Rumi, Petros Klampanis’ bass is the lone pace-keeper, pressing on with a simple ostinato as the rest of the players wander into clamorous free improv during the instrumental middle section. They cohere again behind Aftab when she returns to the mic for the thrilling finale. “Last night my beloved was like the moon,” she sings, alternating between heroic long tones and frantic rushes of syllables. “So beautiful like the moon.”
Vulture Prince, which Aftab recorded in the aftermath of her younger brother’s death, is an album haunted by grief. Night Reign is less tethered to a single theme: Aftab originally conceived it as a collection of settings of Mah Laqa Bai Chanda’s work, then abandoned the idea when it began to feel constrictive. But if there’s one situation or emotion that persists across its songs—even “Autumn Leaves”—it is loving someone who isn’t there. It’s in the words, whether adapted from 18th-century poetry or an Instagram post, and in the mixture of tenderness and tough resolve that characterizes Aftab’s singing. It’s also in the music itself, in the vaporous way the instruments hover around some unspoken center, drawing as much attention to the negative space as the sound, and in the pulse that seems to keep going even when you can’t actually hear it. Almost anyone can relate to the feeling Night Reign renders in sound: the object of your affection may be gone, but the memories and desire that linger on are just as real. | 2024-05-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-05-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Verve | May 31, 2024 | 8.3 | e61ced68-0b40-4893-9cc6-3c05fc174c9e | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
Fusing bookish indie jazz with emo and math rock, the Boston quartet explores the complications of identity while dismantling stale indie-rock paradigms. | Fusing bookish indie jazz with emo and math rock, the Boston quartet explores the complications of identity while dismantling stale indie-rock paradigms. | Really From: Really From | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/really-from-really-from/ | Really From | If deciphering self is the ethos driving Really From, the band’s main objective is amour-propre. The group’s name, the result of a restructuring in 2018, is derived from a question often aimed at its mixed-race members: “Where are you really from?” On the Boston emo/math-rock quartet’s exuberant third album, this invasive inquiry is ambitiously dissected at every turn. “If you ask me where I’m from/I’ll say the rage, the lights, the sea,” co-lead singer and guitarist Chris Lee-Rodriguez yowls on the anthemic chorus of “I’m From Here,” the album’s thorny crux. It’s a catharsis that carries an electric charge. Really From is self-titled, and with good reason: It’s a bursting still life of a band boasting an emboldened sense of identity.
The group took a stab at such weighty ideals in 2017 with the unpolished Verse, but their first release in four years wields a presence and confidence cultivated from time spent ruminating on more significant questions. “Mom and Dad/They told me separately/They come from different parts/So what does that make me,” Lee-Rodriguez broods on the album’s candid acoustic closer, “The House.” It’s just one instance of pensive curiosity in an album that’s consistently probing. Elsewhere, some of the more archetypal math-rock songs, like the spirited “Quirk,” bravely detail the clumsy, often ugly path to self-actualization and acceptance, particularly when pertaining to bloodlines. Its frantic, odd-metered shuffle accents such inelegance.
Declarations of cultural insecurity run throughout the album. “I smile like I understand/But my mind reminds me I can’t,” vocalist and synth bassist Michi Tassey sings on “Try Lingual,” which documents the struggle of communicating with a family member in a foreign language, before a romping salvo of palm-muted riffage ramps up the song’s frustrated message. Such moments of raw power flesh out the picture of a band raised from the mid-aughts school of post-rock mathdom.
This heterogeneity is unbound. Tassey’s cool, wry delivery on the crunchy intro of “Yellow Fever” reads more Mitski than TWIABP; the exploratory “Apartment Song,” the album’s jazzy, ethereal opener, leans more Kamasi Washington than American Football. Songs like these accent an assertive truth: Really From aren’t afraid to garnish a genre predicated on gatekeepers and semantics with more interesting flavors. On “Last Kneeplay,” the album’s sole instrumental track, classical guitar and trumpet squirm in a playful exchange. The band unfolds layers like these, sporadic as they are, honestly and without hesitation.
Behind their union of bookish indie jazz and principled punk, Really From are an alliance in which every voice counts, as highlighted on “I Live Here Now,” the album’s most Midwestern emo emulation. Its leadership isn’t beholden to the person singing each verse or chorus, whether that be Lee-Rodriguez or Tassey. Matt Hull takes a calculated, regal trumpet lead when the music veers into an oddly timed phrase, while Sander Bryce’s unbridled drumming is crammed with flourishes and freakish chops. In the kinetic turbulence of clean-toned guitar arpeggios and zippy flams, the chaos feels somehow blissful, even beautiful, as they systematically dismantle post-rock’s white-guy paradigm.
Dig into Boston’s dense underground circuits of math rock and emo revivalism over the last 20 years and you’ll find a lot of bands with bleeding hearts. But not many are so willing to untangle such complex subject matter with such earnest interest. What demarcates Really From from the rest is the ability to self-examine their unique cultural and musical idiosyncrasies with the intention of transcending diffidence. Really From emulsifies the grief and the peace of it all, the inheritance and its friction, the antipathy and its resolution; from within these blurred lines, they’re reborn.
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-03-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Topshelf | March 12, 2021 | 7.8 | e61e5489-fb27-4f36-93a8-53c5df5e9ab1 | Charley Ruddell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/charley-ruddell/ | |
The soundtrack to the Shaka King-directed film, featuring heavyweights like JAY-Z and Nas alongside newer stars like Polo G and Pooh Shiesty, exploits Hampton’s image to peddle liberation-lite Billboard hits. | The soundtrack to the Shaka King-directed film, featuring heavyweights like JAY-Z and Nas alongside newer stars like Polo G and Pooh Shiesty, exploits Hampton’s image to peddle liberation-lite Billboard hits. | Various Artists: Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-judas-and-the-black-messiah-the-inspired-album/ | Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album | Fred Hampton was a galvanizing, historic figure. Even through weathered footage, choppily pieced together on YouTube, the Black Panther Party leader’s unyielding flame is present and palpable. Take this clip, for example. In lighting that nearly renders him a shadow and muddy audio, his words sometimes come out so fast that they roll into each other like an avalanche. But by the end it’s impossible not to feel moved to act in service of the people. You may not even know who “the people” are, but after listening to the former Illinois chapter chairman, you certainly want to find out.
Though the Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982, their cultural influence has shown up consistently in the years since, particularly in hip-hop. Thanks to Beyonce’s black leather and beret at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show, the Panthers reached new levels of visibility. Her performance, while commanding, did little to transmit the actual politics of the revolutionary group. Prior to this a number of films, documentaries and YouTube clips have filled in the contextual gap that music and outfits couldn’t bridge, but major crossover appeal for the Panthers’ ideology has remained elusive.
Director Shaka King’s latest film, Judas and The Black Messiah, aims to find a balance between appealing to the mainstream and representing the party’s radical ideals. The film centers around the FBI’s plot to weaken and ultimately kill Hampton in Chicago. Told through the dueling lenses of Hampton and Bill O’Neal, the informant recruited by the federal agency to infiltrate the Chicago chapter, the film intentionally reads more as a crime drama than a portrait of Hampton. In a recent interview with the Atlantic, director King frankly stated, “If you don’t give a fuck about the Black Panthers, or any history, you could still be like, ‘I kind of want to see that, though. Because I like The Departed.’ This is an incredibly commercial movie.”
It seems the same approach was taken with the film’s “inspired by” soundtrack (none of the songs are actually in the film), which boasts a who’s-who of hip-hop and R&B’s brightest stars. With superproducer Hit-Boy and executives Dash Sherrod, Ryan Coogler, and Archie Davis at the helm, old heads like JAY-Z and Nas stand alongside current heavyweights like Lil Durk and H.E.R. and more recent breakthrough artists like, Polo G and Pooh Shiesty. As an exercise in commercial appeal, the A&R is masterful. Hampton’s hometown of Chicago is represented through its most popular figures, while bigger names and hip-hop holy grails (a verse from the late Nipsey Hussle, a whole new Rakim track) could guarantee the album’s success.
But as a tribute to Hampton, the album, like the film, misses the mark. Hampton was a staunch anti-capitalist who took inspiration from Marx, Lenin, Che and Mao. He was someone who had no qualms tearing down Black capitalists and reaching across the color lines to unite all working class people. It’s hard to believe that the bulk of the project was inspired by anything that Hampton said. Instead, it exploits his image to peddle liberation-lite Billboard hits over anything remotely revolutionary.
It’s not all terrible. The most memorable track, out of a whopping 22, comes from relative unknown Nardo Wick. The young rapper’s stark delivery—reminiscent of 21 Savage—on “I Declare War” most closely mirrors Hampton’s fearlessness. Chicago rap stars G Herbo, Bump J and Polo G rail earnestly against police brutality, racism, and the violence and poverty that plagues their hometown. On “No Profanity,” Gucci Mane signee Pooh Shiesty makes decent use of a beat that samples Hampton’s voice in a marathon verse that compellingly considers an increasing threat of betrayal. Rakim’s bonus track lovingly recounts the facts of Hampton’s life, although the cloudy quality of his vocals are distracting.
Elsewhere, would-be standout moments from Rapsody, Lil Durk, Smino, Saba, and H.E.R. languish under sleepy production and poor sequencing. Black Thought provides some capital-R raps on the wannabe protest anthem, “Welcome To America,” featuring singers C.S. Armstrong and Angela Hunte. But the song’s obvious engineering—marching drums and a churchy vocal sample—make it feel formulaic and empty. Cozy love songs courtesy of BJ the Chicago Kid and SiR play to both artists’ strengths but feel disconnected from the album’s supposed theme and the film’s minor love story.
There are quite a few moments that scan more like an ego trip for hip-hop’s biggest names, who seem happy to latch onto Hampton’s image while failing to reflect his working-class first views. Yes, it’s refreshing to hear Nas call out the suspicious surveillance tactics of big tech on “EPMD.” Similarly on “What It Feels Like,” JAY-Z’s acerbic bars on the Capitol Riot are jolting. But they soon lose credibility when backed up by tired motifs of opulence and braggadocio from the former’s “condos in different time zones” to the latter claiming himself as a “black messiah” despite his open embrace of capitalism. A newly released Nipsey verse might’ve saved “What It Feels Like” were it not eight years old and obviously unrelated to the project. With “Broad Day,” it’s unclear if Hit-Boy even watched the film. The song centers around a clumsy hook where even he confirms he should stick to producing (“I should A&R the game, pick you niggas beats”). Dom Kennedy and A$AP Rocky seemed to have also missed the pre-screening as one confusingly offers his own unrelated personal reflections over blissed out G-Funk and the other distastefully whines about the downsides of fame and feeling overlooked. With lackluster lines like “How they got 20/20 vision but don’t see a nigga vision till 2020,” Rocky is not making a strong case for himself.
Radical politics is not within the purview of Hollywood, and the film made that abundantly clear by focusing more on the story of the informant than that of Fred Hampton. But soundtracks, though not a perfect medium, are often opportunities to address the shortcomings of a film. This soundtrack could’ve featured the same exact cast but held everyone to task lyrically. It could have attempted to reflect Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition by inviting lesser-known Latinx or Indigenous artists. It could have taken greater risks with production and style—Noname and Kendrick Lamar are notably absent—to reach closer to Hampton’s revolutionary ideas. Instead it remains in a lukewarm present, with no consideration of what a revolutionary future could look like. In an undated speech printed in the New York Times in 1971 Hampton declared, “If you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not gonna work for the people.” We can only hope that whoever undertakes the next Hampton-inspired project will take those words to heart.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-02-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | null | RCA | February 18, 2021 | 5.5 | e61fb02d-7d5d-40a0-b0a9-ae60c59cab77 | Jessica Kariisa | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jessica-kariisa/ | |
Currently in exile in England, DOOM teams with producer Jneiro Jarel for a collection featuring Damon Albarn and Portishead's Beth Gibbons, among others. The rapper's nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned. | Currently in exile in England, DOOM teams with producer Jneiro Jarel for a collection featuring Damon Albarn and Portishead's Beth Gibbons, among others. The rapper's nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned. | JJ DOOM: Key to the Kuffs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16916-key-to-the-kuffs/ | Key to the Kuffs | Here's a cruel twist of fate for you: A few years after catching hell for sending doppelgangers to take his place onstage as some weird conceptual fuck-around during a 2008 North American tour, DOOM spent 2010 touring in Europe as the genuine article-- and then got stranded there, reportedly on visa issues. Eventually, he went from stranded to extradited, left to make his home back in the London birthplace he hadn't lived in since he was a kid. Whether this is what really put a potential crimp in every possible latter-day planning-stages project from Madvillainy 2 to Swift and Changeable is up in the air, it seems almost beside the point in this context: He's also been isolated from his family, most of his friends, and a significant amount of his own personal agency. It'd almost be a plot-thickening chapter in his outsized four-color supervillain persona if the real-world implications weren't so disheartening.
But DOOM is nothing if not adaptable, and his sense of humor is always present, even when there's good reason to be disillusioned. So after tuning in to the liberating potential of his new homebase-- he recently told The Guardian that he's able to live freely "incognito," ironically more likely to be recognized with the mask than without-- he put together a fractured but widescreen picture of a cult icon in exile. Key to the Kuffs hits all of DOOM's angles, from the well-documented (wise-ass shit-talker) to the underrated (political agitator) to the overlooked (sentimental romantic). And with the co-billed producer angle-- JJ being Jneiro Jarel, the Danger to his Doom and the Mad to his Villain this time around-- there's the added potential to see this as another case of a collaboration providing a new facet to an already ambiguous public face.
Key to the Kuffs has a persona that's a lot harder to pinpoint than Madvillainy's blunted Jack Kirby surrealism or the adult-cartoon goofiness of The Mouse and the Mask. Not that there's a shortage of either; here you get bloodshot pulp crime atmosphere and "Regular Show" clips rubbing elbows in the album's first five minutes. But aside from the loose DOOM-in-England motif, there's not enough of an overarching theme that Jarel's serviceable-but-indistinct production can pull together. Not that cohesion's the most important thing to preserve-- it doesn't take a lot to "get" DOOM at this point, and the blend of big-idea tracks about things like communicable diseases or Frankenfoods mixed in with rapping-for-its-own-sake is comfortably accessible without being all that bland. And there's precedent for Jarel and DOOM working well together-- Shape of Broad Minds' Craft of the Lost Art highlight "Let's Go" attests to that.
Things have changed in the ensuing years, though, and Jarel's restless style has shifted from a psychedelic proto-Brainfeeder fellow traveler of Flying Lotus to something a bit more matter-of-fact on this record. For the majority of Key to the Kuffs, or at least the majority that DOOM has a verse or two, the beats glide along in an unobtrusive way that's more easily nodded at than nodded to. Some moments bump, like the hissing new wave funk of "Rhymin' Slang" and "Wash Your Hands" or the xylophone boom-bap of "Retarded Fren". Others approach a subtly off-kilter weirdness, like the bloated, drunk-sounding tuba that serves as the bassline to "Borin' Convo". But they're usually the least attention-getting aspects of any given track and, as typified by instrumental "Viberian Sun II", not especially interesting isolated from vocals or sound clips. Even the two widely touted guest-spot moments feel low-key: Damon Albarn's presence on "Bite the Thong" is pared down to the point of almost sounding subliminal, like a dub of a tunnel-bound cell phone call to an AM radio station 50 miles away, while Beth Gibbons' appearance on "GMO" is too smothered in bass to register as much more than an unintelligible phantom melody. Khujo Goodie's 88-second Willie Isz reunion "STILL KAPS" leaves more of an impact.
It's just as well that the beats don't overstep; every time DOOM's voice appears it takes over so authoritatively that, sloppy or on-point, the flow becomes more prominent than the beat he rides over. Sometimes it's borderline detrimental, like the first few (well, OK, several) bars of his hobbled-sprint double-time turn on "Banished" that seem to scramble over the beat without entirely gaining his footing-- which almost works, since the hyperventilating analog bass grumble is one of the few productions on the album that could be properly described as "filthy." And there are some signs of apparent rust or performances that sound like first takes-- he's so mush-mouthed on "Guv'nor" that a line where he says "splurge" sounds more like "splshurghs"-- that threaten to sabotage the plainspoken-yet-crafty wordplay and abrupt turns into tight-packed internal rhymes that usually makes his voice so first-bar immediate.
And yet he's no less quotable than he was in '99-- the same track that has him slurring the word "splurge" has him seamlessly integrating the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption into a punchline, for fuck's sake ("Catch a throatful from the fire vocal/ Ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull"). He's still missile-silo deep with vocabulary, and when his voice backs him up, he's untouchable; there's a stretch in "Rhymin' Slang"-- "Rarely, scarcely, scary glaring stare/ Let's be very clear, MCs is derriere/ As well as aware, wearily, just don't be nearly near, you hear me? Yeah"-- that's tailor-made for dropped-jaw rewinds. The thematic tracks are heavy on the diabolical brainiac grifter guise that's fueled his post-KMD creativity for some 15 years, balancing knowledge and absurdity like a master. "GMO" pulls out the bioengineering terminology, wraps it in conspiracy-theory allusions, and makes it both scatologically funny and unnerving all at once. And there's rarely been a hip-hop track like "Wash Your Hands" that's gotten more creative mileage out of how germ-filled the human body can be ("You like the way she shake her back area/ It's like a sex machine that make bacteria"). But the loose theme of DOOM's UK exile really hits in the homesick, lovesick "Winter Blues", one of the most heartfelt tracks of DOOM's career in a way that's funny and affecting; his line about how "I need a handful of melanin/ Feelin' like the lamb's wool beard on your tender skin" is disarmingly touching from a man usually considered to be an outsized cartoon alter-ego. He may have found a new creative space in his birthplace, but it'll be a relief when he finally gets back to a place he can call home. | 2012-08-29T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2012-08-29T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rap | Lex | August 29, 2012 | 7.3 | e627a70c-62d0-4b61-bd1b-97b6033a85f0 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
Produced by Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, the latest from the Toronto band accompanies manic, referential lyrics with neon-tinted, futurist power-pop. | Produced by Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, the latest from the Toronto band accompanies manic, referential lyrics with neon-tinted, futurist power-pop. | Kiwi Jr.: Chopper | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kiwi-jr-chopper/ | Chopper | Kiwi Jr. like to work fast. That’s less a comment on their prodigious productivity, which has yielded three albums in four years, than their approach to songcraft. If not strict adherents of the “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” rule, the Toronto quartet are certainly believers in “be terse, get to the verse,” often doing away with any semblance of an intro to jump right into action. And in any given Kiwi Jr. song, the action is invariably happening at singer/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet’s microphone, where he dispenses an endlessly scrolling feed of pop-culture signposts, road stories, hyper-local scenery, social satire, sports reports, religious allegories, absurdist observations, drinking misadventures, and repurposed classic-rock lyrics—sometimes in the span of a single verse. On their 2019 debut Football Money, Kiwi Jr.’s jacked-up jangle-punk fit in a lineage that links 1980s fleet-fingered favorites like the Feelies with modern-day strummers like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. But over time, it’s become clear this band’s runaway-train momentum is less a studied aesthetic choice than a practical measure to keep pace with their frontman’s rapid-fire rhetoric and ping-ponging melodies.
On Chopper, Gaudet’s Malkmusian cadences and crooked hooks continue to lead the way. As ever, he piles on his witticisms like sight gags in an Airplane! flick—if not every line hits the mark, there’s still more than enough clever one-liners to keep you thoroughly amused. But after leaning into a rootsier, piano-gilded sound on last year’s Cooler Returns, Kiwi Jr. slingshot into the opposite direction with producer Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade, whose integration of indie rock and carnivalesque keyboards provides Kiwi Jr. with a template for their own maximalist pursuits. While stopping short of a full-blown synth-pop makeover, Chopper slathers on enough neon-tinted textures to reorient Kiwi Jr. away from the jangle-rock canon and toward the futurist power-pop of the Cars, New Pornographers, and the Strokes circa Room on Fire.
At times, the synth injection simply serves to amplify the mania of an already manic band: “Parasite II” is “12:51” as conceived by Bong Joon-ho, with Gaudet cheekily invoking the Korean director’s class-warfare parable to interrogate his own excessive consumption (“There’s got to be another man in the house who’s drinking all my beer”) over a circular keyboard squelch that rings out like a police siren. But the thicker sound also accommodates a greater emotional depth. “Night Vision” has all the hallmarks of a textbook Kiwi Jr. tune, instantly transporting you into its tour-themed scenes of Dodge Caravans and Petro-Canada gas stations like you’re joining a TV show already in progress. But once its tensely jabbed guitar line gets submerged in an aquatic, synth-smeared breakdown, the song transforms into something much more melancholic and dramatic than we’re used to hearing from this normally carefree band.
While Gaudet is still the sort of writer who’ll base his most wistful chorus around a Julie Andrews shout-out (“The Sound of Music”) or name the album’s casually triumphant, “Heroes”-esque closer after The Masked Singer, his referential lyrics are often imbued with a sobering subtext. Kiwi Jr.’s records have served the tertiary function of documenting the Prince Edward Island-born Gaudet’s life in his adopted home of Toronto, as he name-dropped tourist attractions like the CN Tower and notorious neighborhood hubs like the Dufferin Mall with wide-eyed zeal. But on Chopper, he taps into less glamorous, more authentic local experiences. Amid the haunted-house ambiance of “Contract Killers,” Gaudet takes a stroll down Joe Shuster Way, a west-end street named after the Toronto-born co-creator of the original Superman comic, but one that’s hardly fit for a hero: It’s a thoroughly unremarkable, suburban-style roadway flanked by train tracks and condo towers, making it the ideal setting for Gaudet to reflect on his hopelessly Clark Kent life. (“Superman probably made more money than me,” he shrugs.)
For those not attuned to the poetic significance of insignificant Toronto streets, the album hits its peak on “The Extra Sees the Film,” which sounds like a Traveling Wilburys song blissfully floating in space, yet thrusts us into the most awkward of social situations. Standing around a conversation circle dominated by a pretty-boy babe magnet who’s like a “human scorpion jacket from Drive,” Gaudet spots an opportunity to ingratiate himself: “He talks about Los Angeles, that's a cue for you to jump in/‘Excuse me I couldn't help overhear you mention L.A./See, I was there for Kobe Bryant's last NBA game.’” It’s the sort of oddly morbid ice-breaker that lands with all the subtlety of a record scratch, and a dagger to the heart of anyone who’s ever tried too hard to make themselves seem more interesting in mixed company. But where Gaudet may have once regaled such awkward scenarios with tongue piercing his cheek, there’s a tenderness and grace to his delivery here that draws out the pathos of feeling like you’re always on the outside looking in. “The extra sees the film and totally collapses,” he sings on the crestfallen chorus. As Chopper reaffirms, Kiwi Jr. may never be the kind of band that deals in linear narratives or grand conceptual statements. But like the background bit actors that fill out the frames of a big-screen epic, their songs amass minor details to major effect. | 2022-08-12T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-12T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | August 12, 2022 | 7.6 | e630afce-77db-407a-bad5-d2ea7e447d60 | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
NTS’ latest compilation is a brain-frying rollercoaster of club maximalism, showcasing the Brazilian funk underworld’s endless creativity. | NTS’ latest compilation is a brain-frying rollercoaster of club maximalism, showcasing the Brazilian funk underworld’s endless creativity. | Various Artists: funk.BR - São Paulo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/various-artists-funk-br-sao-paulo/ | funk.BR - São Paulo | São Paulo’s funk scene is, in part, a product of the city’s extreme urban structure and social conditions. Often called a “concrete jungle,” the megacity holds Brazil’s largest population and one of its densest; it is heavily industrialized with imposing buildings spread over a monstrous size, all of which bleeds into a metallic, destructive take on Brazilian funk. NTS’ new compilation, funk.BR - São Paulo, crams the far-ranging styles of mandelão, bruxaria, and beyond into 22 exclusive tracks, providing a whistle-stop tour with which you can jump off and immerse yourself in this grippingly rebellious sound.
The network of genres that fall under the mandelão umbrella do not have the longer-standing history of the root Rio de Janeiro funk carioca scene, but they have evolved rapidly because of their spirit of one-upmanship. Lança-perfume, a drug that comes from ethyl chloride and produces hallucinogenic, sound-sensitive sensations, is a fixture at street parties, creating ear-ringing tones that are central to various styles of mandelão. Meanwhile, the funk automotivo culture of souped-up cars, with walls of rear-trunk speakers, have buffed the low-end. With over 1,700 registered favelas in the city, each more or less coming with their own flair, the sheer size and noise of the metropolis pushes artists to stand out and claim the loudest, the most unpredictable, the most original sound as their own. In doing so, they’re pushing far beyond the precipice of what we’ve come to expect—creating mixes that obscure and pronounce elements in experimental ways, folding the club music structure tightly for triple the amount of breakdowns, and upping the loudness to new levels of club maximalism. In addition to reflecting the genre’s continued popularity in underground electronic spaces in the Global North, funk.BR pushes these sounds further still.
Funk mandelão tunes ring out like beacons to the underworld, wedding ear-dazzling techno pulses with the familiar falling funk rhythm and putting it in a vat of dense smoke. Toplines cross dull hits of bells and metal pans with rave synths (DJ Pikeno MPC & MC BF’s “Acende o Sinalizador”), whistling (DJ P7 & MC PR’s “Automotivo Destruidor, P7 Vai Te Destruir”), and bamboo flutes (DJ Lorrany’s “Mandela Cunt”). Hoarse male antiheroes yell a Rolodex of commands—“obedece” and “galopa,” which mean to “obey” and “ride”—and female MCs like MC Bibi Drak flirt like video vixens. But both are unfazed as they are caught and squeezed in a tempest of surreal abrasion in the breakdowns.
The tracks on funk.BR speed by with a bullish impatience that is disorienting, tossing and turning between intensely physical automotivo, eye-swirling ritmado, and ear-rending bruxaria. DJ Léo da 17 & DJ BIG ORIGINAL’s “Bruxaria de Extrema Periculosidade” takes just 14 seconds before the infectious “Bi-Bi-Big Original!” producer tag commences a flipbook-fast layering of shotgun kick drums. Blink and you’ll miss how “Best of Both Worlds from Brazil” by DJ Livea & iamlope$$ flies through marching trumpets over compressed tambor drums, a drill breakdown, horn-backed samba, and beat bolha (a style literally meaning “bubble beat”) in just over two minutes.
The most raucous tracks feel colossal, as though the MC and soundsystem are giants about to swallow you whole; you can only see their teeth and tweeters through obscuring fog. Human cannonball DJ Arana, famed for his blaring wall-of-noise breakdowns, contributes “Montagem Phonk Brasileiro,” where a smothering low-end burns through a pained electronic wail like a hot iron, leaving it to cavort about with the MCs barely audible. Funk artists have been creating textures and sounds at an inconceivable scale using video editing software, mobile phones, and iPad DJ apps for some time now, and this compilation is only further proof of that inventiveness.
The freakish anatomy of the most minimal songs function with a purposeful lack of elements. No bassline enters on DJ Blakes & MC GW’s “Beat das Galáxias,” which makes it feel naked—but why have one when a ballistic, laser gun-like siren can brute-force bodies to move? Nothing is sacrosanct, not even the kick drum, the universal thrust of dance music. When it’s absent, it doesn’t feel weightless. Instead, other rhythms kick in with a secondary supply of power, such as on DJ Caio Santos’ “Você Sabe,” whose knock! ting! wipe! pattern is left so bare that you start to register its echoes as a rhythmic flourish.
In what could have been a moment where the Global North snatches control of the Brazilian funk narrative, funk.BR - São Paulo benefits from enlisting authentic voices in the scene to compile it, including Pitchfork contributor Felipe Maia and artist manager Jonathan Kim. While the sequencing can sometimes take the wind out of its sails slightly (DJ Saze’s “Uq Tenho que Fazer” feels tame after so many heavy hitters), their ingrained knowledge helps to capture the vigorously competitive ethos of the scene across many micro-styles. Just as the sprawl of buildings in São Paulo often obstruct your view of the horizon, funk paulista’s creativity seems to have no end in sight. | 2024-03-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | null | NTS | March 30, 2024 | 7.8 | e633ef9f-eec9-41d6-aa3b-50902ffef020 | Nathan Evans | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-evans/ | |
Katie Crutchfield's first EP as Waxahatchee, originally released on cassette, unfolds like a pleasant secret on the brink of being passed around. | Katie Crutchfield's first EP as Waxahatchee, originally released on cassette, unfolds like a pleasant secret on the brink of being passed around. | Waxahatchee: Early Recordings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22006-early-recordings/ | Early Recordings | There’s a box in every family home filled with dusty memories: binders of photos yellowing at the corners, VHS tapes rerecorded over as lives grow larger. Sifting through these ephemera of someone’s life can make you feel like an intruder, a stranger projecting yourself into the frame of a memory that isn't yours.
There's a similar feeling when listening to the reissue of Katie Crutchfield’s first EP as Waxahatchee. Five years ago, she recorded five songs, pressed them onto a limited-run split cassette (the B-side of the original belonged to the musician Chris Clavin), gave them mostly to friends and family, and forgot about them as her touring started to pick up speed. After some hesitation to release these tracks, nostalgia won out for Crutchfield and now she’s opened this archive to the public, retitled as Early Recordings.
Throughout the EP’s very short runtime (less than 15 minutes total), Crutchfield is able to fit microscopic narrative arcs in songs that often span less than 50 words and three minutes. The set opens with an extremely tactile moment: the sound of a body shuffling and a switch turning. Perhaps it’s Crutchfield firing up her recorder. This short pocket is almost like cinéma vérité, as the purposeful editing creates a natural feel; in less than five seconds, you’re transported into the room with her.
On the opener, “Black Candy,” she quickly displays her knack for writing lyrics that are simultaneously dramatic (“Moonlight pours in tonight and you are infinite”), wistful (“Fair weather friends forever and I just wait in line”), and realistically fatalist (“We sit back, watch it atrophy”). In “Home Games,” she paints a scene of youthful love with the pastoral imagery of a Willa Cather story: “Paris in the back of your mom’s Chevrolet/She pretends we're not there, she smells like yesterday/We live like the last two on Earth/And we’ll float on our backs 'til the whole sky goes black.”
Early Recordings’ best song, “Clumsy,” is a meditation on insecurity itself (“Lately I think about insecurity/How I’m not real sure I even know what it means”). It opens in her bedroom as she peers upon a lover’s underwear, realizing how swift this part of her life might be. She begins a series of tough self-criticisms, admits shortcomings, and extends forgiveness. Along the way, Crutchfield is alone with her thoughts in that bed, considering how pain might possibly be a pathway to self-care (“I'm learning about loneliness each night”). Here she combines all the best elements of her songwriting—sharp lyrical detail, conversational phrasing—into one place.
If there is one limitation to the EP, it’s the instrumentation. Crutchfield is only accompanied by a guitar, which can feel more like a metronome than an actual texture. What remains upfront is the twang of her voice and the strength of her writing; if her words were any weaker, her voice any less idiosyncratic, there might be nothing to glom onto and the record would be boring. But the evidence here is raw and puncturing; you hear the whisper of a pleasant secret on the brink of being passed around. | 2016-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock / Folk/Country | Merge | June 15, 2016 | 7.2 | e644d75a-d808-461c-a0d6-000ccd2ae964 | Kevin Lozano | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/ | null |
On his 17th solo album under the alias, Mike Paradinas looks fondly back upon IDM’s melodic golden age and finds sneaky ways to make familiar ideas sound fresh. | On his 17th solo album under the alias, Mike Paradinas looks fondly back upon IDM’s melodic golden age and finds sneaky ways to make familiar ideas sound fresh. | µ-Ziq: Grush | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/u-ziq-grush/ | Grush | For a style ostensibly rooted in club culture, IDM has long felt like the concerned frown on the face of electronic music: a place where gnarled experimentation trumps whimsical adventure and fun is sacrificed on the altar of technique. Enter Mike Paradinas, a producer who was making leftfield dance music when Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a new release, rather than a dusty classic. Grush, Paradinas’ 17th solo album as µ-Ziq, strives to put the “dance” back into IDM, inspired by the kind of melodic, oddball post-rave music that gave rise to the genre back in the 1990s: Aphex Twin, early Autechre, Black Dog Productions, and even Orbital.
Given that self-appointed mission, Grush could easily have been a nostalgic stroll through the glory days of the ’90s, when Paradinas was feted as one of the hottest names in electronic music. Anyone who loves Aphex Twin’s Hangable Auto Bulb EPs or Paradinas’ own 1997 album Lunatic Harness will find much to love in Grush’s vibrant melodies and intricately funky rhythms. “Fogou” is a glorious combination of driving, neo-classical synth and glitched-out drums; the pounding “Reticulum B” has the distinct air of Sabres of Paradise’s wobbly-lipped, cerebral techno classic “Smokebelch II”; and “Manscape” sounds like Orbital's “Belfast” being dissected by sharply angled breaks.
The difference here—and it can be subtle—is that the drums on Grush frequently sound like they were recorded live, which is unusual for the breaks- and drum-machine-heavy world of IDM. They weren’t, but the intention is there: The tambourine on “Fogou” and “Belvedere” consists of single hits, programmed slightly out of time to simulate real playing, while the shuffling snare and hi-hat pattern on “Hyper Daddy” bears a similarly human sense of flux. “Hyper Daddy,” which Paradinas created specifically to play live, is the song where the producer’s focus on dance is most obvious: Three different drum lines tease, fidget, and needle with the listener’s adrenal response.
Grush’s predictably excellent drums are the mark of a producer who has been cutting up breaks for decades. But perhaps the most purely enjoyable part of the record lies in its array of sumptuous melodies, which evoke the classical prog of Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, or even, gulp, Marillion. At least two of Grush’s 14 tracks, “Hyper Daddy” and “Hastings,” have artful key changes that lend a very prog-ish musicality to proceedings, and immaculately clean keyboard lines send the listener back to the hi-fi-enhanced stereoscopic sound of the ’70s.
If much of Grush feels like an ode to the golden years of IDM, a few more adventurous songs serve as a reminder of Paradinas’ enduring interest in mold-breaking sounds. (His label Planet Mu was one of the first to bring Chicago footwork to an international audience.) The dazzling “Metaphonk” smuggles a dembow beat into a stately, Orbital-esque post-rave workout, while the scuttling hi-hat patterns on “Imperial Crescent” point towards trap.
For all of Paradinas’ invention and melodic skills, Grush is unlikely to revolutionize IDM. The record’s innovations are modestly hidden in clever programming, while Paradinas himself is too level-headed to inspire Aphex Twin-style devotion. But he does make a compelling case for the genre as a living entity that’s open to new ideas, and not nearly as persnickety as its reputation suggests. | 2024-06-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-06-20T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Planet Mu | June 20, 2024 | 7.6 | e64f9752-f62e-4753-90c0-e5cbfa7f30a8 | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
The absurdly detailed new album from the Chicago rapper delves into the compulsions of its titular sneakerhead character over rich production from Kenny Segal. | The absurdly detailed new album from the Chicago rapper delves into the compulsions of its titular sneakerhead character over rich production from Kenny Segal. | Serengeti: Ajai | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/serengeti-ajai/ | Ajai | For almost 20 years now, Nike has asked young patients at the OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland to design shoes. Jordans, Foamposites, what have you. These are snatched up by sneaker collectors across the world, including at an unveiling auction where one-of-one versions yield millions of dollars for the hospital. AirMax Zeros, VaporMaxs. They’re commodities, like anything else, but they turn the kids, many of them gravely ill, into spokespeople.
About halfway through Ajai, the absurdly detailed new album from the Chicago rapper Serengeti, the titular character is making small talk at a Congressional Black Caucus dinner. He’s there with his wife, a prominent medical professional, and so he’s seated next to doctors; one explains “the reduction of drug costs making it mandatory for federally qualified health centers to accept Medicaid.” Ajai doesn’t respond directly. He unlocks his phone, scrolls over to a photo of the Doernbecher 8s, and asks a simple question: “Have you ever won a shoe lottery?”
Over the last 20 years—roughly the same span as the Doernbecher program—Serengeti has made some of the most exhilaratingly strange records in rap’s underground. He’s like a ventriloquist with a deep Rolodex and deeper depression, a web of grand declarations and muttered asides sprawled across dozens of albums and EPs. Ajai is one of his most sharply drawn figures yet: a young Indian man obsessed with exclusive drops and merch collabs, who sets multiple alarms to wade through webpages or go stand in line and cop multiples if they have them.
From the beginning, Ajai makes plain his rationale: “Clothes is just clothes, I like the way that I look/I like the people in line, I like the effort it took.” But a dark undercurrent runs underneath. When he and his wife go on vacation (“Walking down the streets in Paris/It’s autumn here, and I’m in Supreme”), Ajai leaves her at a table so he can flee the restaurant and offer a passerby cold hard Euros for his stained sneakers; he returns during dessert and asks if she’d like to go shop for enzyme cleaners. At other points, Ajai’s wife cries from the other side of a bathroom door as her husband risks missing their flight to Cleveland (“You look fine, Ajai”); she begs him not to wear a certain suit to a work function; she drives him wordlessly home from a company softball game, where he has embarrassed both of them, Ajai “deeply nodding his head” to SWV while he bares his gold teeth––surely expensive.
Ajai’s story is confined to the record’s front half. This enforced brevity is an excuse to showcase Serengeti’s masterful storytelling: The fourth song is called, simply, “Summary,” and chronicles Ajai’s short-lived stint as a tutor to four Chinese boys, who are enamored with his tales of street life (Ajai “once did an overnight stay at a jail due to a clerical error”) and whose angry father soon forbids the relationship. He challenges Ajai to a fight, only for Ajai’s neighbor, a fireman, to step in as a proxy and be “savagely and entertainingly beaten” on camera, and lose his “beautiful wife, the Estonian” to the Chinese father. In the middle of all this, Ajai goes to therapy; he asks his therapist about the first time she saw the Balenciaga Triple S trainer. “She starts talking about self-esteem,” Serengeti raps, “but he’s distracted by her boring chair.”
On the B-side of Ajai, Serengeti returns to his most famous character, a semi-retired white rapper named Kenny Dennis, who’s beefed with Shaq, vehemently defended Steve Bartman, fallen in love with the late actor Brian Dennehy’s work, pined after a wife he believes was stolen by Tom Selleck, and suffered at least one psychotic break. When we re-meet Kenny during Ajai, he’s moved to Minneapolis and is working at a breakfast truck near an I-94 overpass. The album moves inevitably toward the point where Kenny has something Ajai wants to buy, but the transactional specifics are far less important than the baggage each man brings to the bargaining emails. As Kenny Dennis, Serengeti raps in a thick Chicagoland accent; the Ajai half serves as a counterpoint, revealing just how dexterous a rapper and vocalist Geti can be.
These halves are stitched together by the veteran Los Angeles producer Kenny Segal. After a formative period working with esteemed Angeleno rappers, including members of Freestyle Fellowship, Segal has of late taken to crafting full albums for some of rap’s most distinct voices. Over the last year alone, he’s helmed growling, stuttering LPs for R.A.P. Ferreira and billy woods. His beats here skitter from playful piano loops to claustrophobic fits: see “Don’t Wear That Suit Ajai,” which feels, unnervingly, like early RZA on less dust and more coffee.
The point here is not that “consumerism is bad,” or that you might get scammed trying to buy the Virgil/IKEA collab rug (“about six and a half feet,” Geti notes, recommending it for concrete or marble floors). Ajai is done in by his compulsions, his tunnel vision––not a ruinous Supreme drop. To hear him tell it, each long line or digital waiting room is its own Everest, and that rapid, dizzying ascent is worth the thousands of dollars and crying wives left in its wake.
The world rendered on Ajai can seem silly: exclusive honey to buy in bulk, Travis Scott socks on auction blocks, “rich Kuwaiti kids” who might drop so much money on your work uniform that you can retire early, American kids running up to middle-aged men promising thousands of dollars if they’ll sell their shoes off on the spot, the Grey Poupon ads as an emotional touchstone, the word “Balenciaga” as an ancient, guttural chant, the promise that branded goods shuffled by UPS from point to point can save us all. This world, of course, is our own. | 2020-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Cohn Corporation | April 22, 2020 | 8 | e653f3b0-9ef3-4a94-85ea-3568631f90fa | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read, its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze. | While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read, its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze. | Colleen Green: I Want to Grow Up | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20235-i-want-to-grow-up/ | I Want to Grow Up | While Colleen Green's first LP for Hardly Art, Sock It to Me, was a slice of breezy, self-aware stoner bubblegum that insisted on a shallow read—perhaps to force us to turn away from deeper truths—its follow-up, I Want to Grow Up, is weed paralysis and paranoia in a sugary glaze. (In keeping with her first record, Milo Goes to Compton, Green named I Want To Grow Up after another Descendents album.) On this record, Green has managed to capture in very real and human terms the existential terror that everything is futile and that our lives will never amount to much: no small feat. She is keenly aware of her own limitations and has turned her reflection on those limitations into strengths.
Green’s got a knack for songwriting. While the Ramones taught us all that we only need a few chords to make an endless number of perfect pop songs, most bands that have followed that model to the letter don’t have the ear for hooks, structure, or wordplay that their heroes did. Green does. She is also extremely effective at manipulating the studio to get the hidden depths of her seemingly simple songs—the sharks, jellyfish and other prehistoric monsters beneath the sunny surface of the beach waves—to become evident.
"Deeper Than Love", for instance, is an existential meditation on the human capacity for connection and disconnection. Driven by heavily processed bass, a metronomic drum machine, and a twinkling, haunting guitar melody, Green’s soft voice, doubled, asks persistently: "Will I find a love that lasts as long as my life or will I die before ever becoming a wife? And I’m wondering if I’m even the marrying kind. How can I give you my life when I know you’re just gonna die?" It is intensely claustrophobic, the kind of stream of mundane self-reflective horror that we all run away from by tapping at our phones or flipping channels. Then it turns in on itself, Green’s voice nearly a whisper as she recounts the reasons she holds potential partners at arm’s length: "'Cause I’m shitty and I’m lame and I’m dumb and I’m a bore/ And once you get to know me you won’t like me anymore." The coda, repeated, a shiver in the spine, guitar and synth spiraling around it: "Further than fantasy, deeper than love ever could be." The fear of intimacy triumphs over the fear of death.
Green isn’t complacent to just identify her problems and stare them calmly in the face, though. On the title track and the twin stars that are "Things That Are Bad For Me (Part 1)" and "Things That Are Bad For Me (Part 2)", she rhetorically kicks herself in the butt to take responsibility for her actions, whether that be getting on a proper schedule or getting away from a boyfriend who brings out the worst in her, despite her acknowledgment that her anxiety drives her bad behavior. She doesn’t just want to grow up—she is growing up, and she’s doing it in elegantly wry, acerbic, hooky pop style. Her blasé delivery might seem impenetrable at first, but there is warmth and wit to her work that rewards those who are patient enough to hear its message. | 2015-02-24T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2015-02-24T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Rock | Hardly Art | February 24, 2015 | 7.4 | e654e294-d856-4270-a612-8c620368f04a | JJ Skolnik | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jj-skolnik/ | null |
On their full-length debut together, the UK techno producer and the Italian synth guru conjure a mood of pulsing electronic grandeur. | On their full-length debut together, the UK techno producer and the Italian synth guru conjure a mood of pulsing electronic grandeur. | Daniel Avery / Alessandro Cortini: Illusion of Time | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/daniel-avery-alessandro-cortini-illusion-of-time/ | Illusion of Time | Apparently Song for Alpha wasn’t a fluke. Released in 2018, Daniel Avery’s second album sharply diverged from his rave-ready debut, Drone Logic, showcasing his more pensive, ambient side. At the time, it felt like a reaction, a document of Avery’s desire to linger in what quiet moments he could find in a life of endless touring and main-room DJ gigs. But Illusion of Time suggests that perhaps a more fundamental shift has taken place.
On this album, Avery is working alongside Alessandro Cortini, an Italian synth guru who’s also a member of Nine Inch Nails. It’s not the first time the two have joined forces; in 2017, working remotely, they produced a limited-edition 7" called Sun Draw Water. That record’s two songs both appear on Illusion of Time; the rest of the album was completed in 2018, when the two artists finally linked up in person while Avery was supporting Nine Inch Nails on tour.
Avery may be the bigger name here, but the record has Cortini’s fingerprints all over it, especially when the album delves into the synth-gaze territory of his excellent Volume Massimo LP from last year. Although Illusion of Time lacks that album’s bright colors and wall-of-sound dimensions, there is a similar sense of synth-driven grandeur at work, albeit less polished and occasionally darker in tone. The menacing “Inside the Ruins” feels like something out of Ben Frost’s playbook, its glowering tones churning and crashing amid a thick soup of tape hiss and distorted ambience. Another epic is LP opener “Sun,” which unfurls towering waves of fuzz-laden drone while tapping into an almost devotional vibe; it sounds like something you’d hear at a yoga retreat scored by Stephen O’Malley.
Despite Avery’s DJ pedigree, Illusion of Time has no real relationship with the club. There are no beats on the album, and though it’s not exactly ambient, the music does tend to drift and float along. Like Song for Alpha, it’s introspective, yet not nearly as insular. There isn’t a concrete narrative to speak of, but Avery and Cortini have clearly cast their gaze skyward; it’s a beautiful record that takes wonder as its defining characteristic.
The crunchy “Enter Exit” feels like a luxuriously undulating sound bath, while “Water” offers an updated, albeit unvarnished take on shoegaze, with jagged melodies reminiscent of majestic post-rock outfits like Explosions in the Sky. More powerful still is “At First Sight,” a wide-angle track powered by the kind of guitar squall that would make the Jesus and Mary Chain proud; the song conjures the awe-struck sensation of gazing down from the edge of a high cliff.
That feeling of rapture also holds firm during the album’s quieter moments. “Space Channel” and “Interrupted by the Cloud of Light” are essentially interludes, but their dreamy atmospheres could have been crafted by the Cocteau Twins. The title track is one of the LP’s most low-key selections—and one of its obvious highlights—featuring a playful melody that sits somewhere between kosmische pioneers Neu! and Selected Ambient Works Volume II-era Aphex Twin. Illusion of Time may be doused in varying layers of crackle and distortion, but there’s no obscuring the tranquil elegance of “CC Pad” or the cinematic bloom of album closer “Stills."
Illusion of Time is a confidently relaxed listen: Created in a pressure-free situation by two artists with no road map and nothing in particular to prove, it is expansive in scope, charmingly rough around the edges, and brimming with possibility. Its hazy synth explorations may fit more naturally into Cortini’s catalog, but Avery’s role in Illusion of Time shouldn’t be overlooked; in the wake of Song for Alpha, he’s taken another step away from the confines of the dancefloor, and he’s done it without wobbling.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Experimental | Mute / Phantasy | March 27, 2020 | 7.4 | e66286ab-a1bd-4e16-b385-3a366f551536 | Shawn Reynaldo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/shawn-reynaldo/ | |
The new M83 album almost makes you wonder: How much can you mine vintage sounds without them finally falling apart? | The new M83 album almost makes you wonder: How much can you mine vintage sounds without them finally falling apart? | M83: Junk | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21769-junk/ | Junk | If the last decade in pop music has taught us anything, it’s that nostalgia can be a double-edged sword. When it goes wrong, it’s about as satisfying as swallowing a mouthful of processed spray cheese. When done right, revisiting the tropes and aesthetics of decades past can go down nicely. M83’s 2011 double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, fell into the latter camp and—bolstered by its ubiquitous single “Midnight City”—transformed Anthony Gonzalez’s curious 15-year-old project into a soundtrack for Victoria’s Secret commercials and Tom Cruise sci-fi flicks. Surely this shift explains something about the new M83 album, the fascinating and somewhat flummoxing Junk.
Based on Junk’s downright goofy first single, “Do It Try It,” there was some indication that Gonzalez might be pulling the classic move in which a musician takes a hard left in reacting against the thing that made them famous. Since Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was essentially the widescreen distillation of Gonzalez’s ’80s neon dreams, it would make sense if a defiant about-face toward all things synthed and saxophoned might be in store. But Junk is not that. Instead, it’s as if Gonzalez is doggedly determined to mine those same nostalgic influences all over again, just in much more arcane ways. As a result, Junk is arguably the weirdest record he’s ever made, but it’s far from the best.
Those familiar with M83’s back catalog will hear familiar touchstones on Junk—lush synthscapes, collaged narratives, insouciantly spoken French—but anyone looking for another “Kim and Jessie” or “Teen Angst” will be at a loss. The big pop moments here are centered around massive synth lines that could have been lifted off a Pointer Sisters record (“Laser Gun,” “Road Blaster”), or in the case of “Go!,” a gloriously wanky guitar solo courtesy of '80s axe god Steve Vai. Drafting Vai for a song that sounds like a tribute to songs that Vai actually played on gives the record a meta quality not unlike when Lady Gaga enlisted Clarence Clemons for a sax solo on her Springsteen-worshipping “The Edge of Glory.” So although it’s an undeniable fist-pump of an anthem in a similar lane as “Midnight City,” “Go!” treads so close to total irony that it becomes difficult to swallow, in the process revealing one of Junk’s most consistent flaws.
This kind of pure homage to slick ’70s and ’80s FM ephemera is so exacting in places, it almost makes you wonder: What is the point of remaking this into something new? That small voice grows louder when you hear the album’s instrumental tracks (“Moon Crystal,” “Tension,” “The Wizard”), where Gonzalez proves he can perfectly replicate the kind of incidental muzak that played in JCPenney dressing rooms circa 1983, or as the opening score of a “Too Close For Comfort” episode.
That is not to say that Junk is without its charms. “Road Blaster” is a pristine ’80s mega-single that never was—a slick hybrid of synthesized horns and Chic guitars that sounds as if it were made specifically to soundtrack a late-night joy ride around Hollywood in an old sports car. “For The Kids” is a saxophone-soaked ballad featuring Norwegian singer Susanne Sundfør, and it’s thoroughly gorgeous—until a voice-over from what sounds to be a ghost-child kicks in.
Gonzalez largely farms out vocal duties on Junk—like to Beck on “Time Wind,” a gently funky highlight from an imagined movie soundtrack—but the album’s best tracks feature his own voice. “Atlantique Sud” is a duet with Mai Lan Chapiron in which she and Gonzalez purr at each other in French, while “Solitude” features Gonzalez singing against a backdrop of strings that swell dramatically before eventually overpowering the song completely. The album closes with “Sunday Night 1987”—a song that serves as a tribute to the late Julia Brightly, a sound engineer with whom M83 had a long and devoted working relationship. Building on a somber piano melody reminiscent of Harold Budd and Cocteau Twin’s The Moon and the Melodies, “Sunday Night 1987” is Junk’s most stunning song, and the one that most resembles early M83 albums. It’s also the only track on Junk that doesn’t sound like a showy exercise in a defunct style, though ending with a Stevie Wonder-esque harmonica solo would come close if it didn’t provide an appropriately mournful final note.
It seems impossible that, seven albums in, Gonzalez doesn’t appreciate the possibly divisive nature of this album. You don’t call a record Junk and grace its cover with a couple of googly-eyed 21st-century Fry Kids without having some inkling that you are taking the piss. In the album’s press materials, Gonzalez is quoted as saying, “I wanted to make what I call an ‘organized mess’—a collection of songs that aren’t made to live with each other, yet somehow work together.” It’s a commendable idea and one that almost works—collecting these various bits of cultural detritus and refashioning them into something that is at once compelling and potentially disposable. In the end, though, it’s that feeling of disposability that makes the album’s title resonate more pointedly in the wrong way.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was released in 2014. It came out in 2011. | 2016-04-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Mute | April 11, 2016 | 6.8 | e66701d2-34a5-4e22-9008-de0f49107d8f | T. Cole Rachel | https://pitchfork.com/staff/t.-cole rachel/ | |
Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush\n\ factor? Not ... | Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush\n\ factor? Not ... | Sunny Day Real Estate: The Rising Tide | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7583-the-rising-tide/ | The Rising Tide | Are you ready to admit the Peter Gabriel factor? Or, even more frightening, the Yes and Rush factor? Not only does The Rising Tide dip its toes into sucking whirlpools of late 70s arena prog, but it stands as one of those albums that forces listeners to ponder the inevitable third act of even their most fond bands, wherein Our Hero finds his fate in a bloody climax of vocal effects, drums solos, eco-conscience, last-flash valiance, and fatal flubs. And while this specific Hamlet hasn't yet expired from the poison tip, his muse Ophelia is long gone, and the audience knows all about the venomed chalice. So what course brought Sunny Day Real Estate to this misfortune? The largest finger-pointing targets are producer Lou Giordano and the paring of the band into a trio.
Giordano, most widely known for his work with Live, dunks Sunny Day in a vat of liquid and covers them in chrome. The reflective surface serves only to magnify and spotlight the occasional songwriting errors. On past efforts, frontman Jeremy Enigk's passionate bleating benefited from indecipherability. The mystic and emotional force stemmed from his foreign throat. With greater control and pronunciation, Enigk now recalls a piping Jon Anderson-- specifically "We Have Heaven" from Fragile. Giordano floats crystalline vocal layers above a flat silver landscape of swooning, fervent arena rock. With this highlighted clarity, Enigk can derail a track with one jutting word.
On "Rain Song" (there's that pesky, generic, Rainforest Café-brand environmentalism), Enigk drops his voice to repeat, "And it's candy," which isn't completely terrible until juxtaposed to the surrounding, fluttering castrato sighs. The real rub is how Enigk enunciates the bulging word like "khaan-DEE." It sticks out like a bellybutton on a supermodel. Similarly, "Snibe" becomes the fist-pumping "Mah-KET-place!" and "Gov-UN-ment!" song (aka "that vocoder song") and "Television" is remembered at best as the "Tell-eh-vhiz-sheun-eoooo-ooo-yeoooo-ooooo-uooo" song (aka "that digital didgeridoo song"), if at all. To further frustrate, Giordano laminates the uncountable layers of strings, pianos, plucked acoustics, and synths with tacky corn syrup. The obvious signifiers scream, "Hey! Lookee! I'm pretty!" as much as do slow-motion, auburn lighting and slow dissolves in a John Woo film.
Occasionally, the drama and props pay off. "The Ocean" slowly drops rippling pearls into molten quartz with sweeping effect. It's the loveliest the band have ever sounded. The closing title track shimmers like vintage Cure sloshing around inside a glass goblet. And Sunny Day must have been lucky band #1,000,000 to name a song "One", as it tugs, dances, and punches with seductive pomp. Otherwise, The Rising Tide sits awash in new age imagery-- the ocean, rain, angels, the ocean again. How It Feels to Be Something On mesmerized intimacy, introspection, and Eastern textures. Here, that's all been discarded for Big Themes and Big Guitars-- alright for a Saturn drive through suburbia, but not the silk blanket you want to snuggle under.
After their temporary break-up, Sunny Day Real Estate regrouped with fresh spirit. The resulting album sounded like a band rediscovering itself over a batch of superb Enigk solo tracks. Yet Enigk has gone from exhaling, "If I break down all that I am," to preaching: "Snibe is a monster. He is willing to hurt others to retire rich and ugly. He kills the innocent to protect his control. Snibe is the greed of money and power. Snibe is in all of us." Somebody's been subscribing to The Nation. The best justification for the extended metaphor of "television" as "women" is, "She's in my head/ Like television," and, "She's cool and she's free/ Like television." Well, at least she's not cable, then.
The songwriting here feels wrung from "jams". Splashes and driving rhythms replace intricacy and mood. Drummer William Goldsmith devotes the album to his hi-hat. "Pish pish pish pish pish," go the little cymbals, as our British readers giggle. As Enigk wobbles his fingers over newly acquired bass strings and belts lines like, "Disappear into the sun!", it's hard to avoid Rush comparisons. The power-trio-with-socially-conscious-singer/bassist equation also recalls The Police. But time transplants Mercury Rising-era Sting into Zenyatta Mondatta. Meanwhile, "Faces in Disguise" mimics the soft, slow ooze of Peter Gabriel's rainstick ballads. So, essentially, this is the pop record 70s prog bands would make in the 80s-- Big Generator and Power Windows for a new generation. Aside from two major blunders, nothing is overtly offensive, but simply lachrymose and lactose. Sunny Day habitat needs candlelight and rugs, not spotlight riggings and Astroturf.
Is this a certain progression for rock bands of this ilk? Chalk some of the scars up to Enigk's vocals being thrown into focus. But what makes maturing singers spit political slogans and earth-friendly spiritualism? Cash and hi-hats are easy culprits. For the benefit of audiences, songwriters in emotional bands are best left in states of emotional turmoil. Sadly, Enigk seems to be pretty comfortable with himself. That's no fun. | 2000-05-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2000-05-31T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Time Bomb | May 31, 2000 | 5.9 | e674e918-baa2-42a3-8dc9-5939a10b810a | Brent DiCrescenzo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-dicrescenzo/ | null |
Huerco S.’ second album under his atmospheric alter ego is eerie and unsettling: Rhythms are frayed, harmonies are buried, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply. | Huerco S.’ second album under his atmospheric alter ego is eerie and unsettling: Rhythms are frayed, harmonies are buried, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply. | Pendant: To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pendant-to-all-sides-they-will-stretch-out-their-hands/ | To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands | Something insinuating and unsettling thrums beneath all of Brian Leeds’ work: a paranoid, minor-key mystery, as if leering pairs of eyes were emerging from the digital crackles and sub-bass swells that define his brand of ambient. His music as Huerco S. throws us enough swooning pads and symmetrical kick drums to maintain at least some connection, however abstract, to the reassuring pulse of the club. His work as Pendant gets that out of the way in order to smear black paint across the canvas. Anything rhythmic is inevitably frayed, anything harmonic is buried in layers of digital wind, and the usual reassurances of ambient music no longer apply.
To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, the Kansas producer’s second album under the Pendant name, was made mere weeks after 2018’s Make Me Know You Sweet. Sweet was full of chattering, insectoid sounds that seemed to slither up the listener’s ear, but the impression on To All Sides is of an eerie, remote stillness. The first three tracks average about 10 minutes in length, and none of them end up far from where they started, least of all opener “Dream Song of the Woman,” 11 minutes of the kind of billowing wind-tunnel noise Windy & Carl usually reserve for the depths of their own albums. This is ambient at its most horizontal, and you may wonder if Leeds hasn’t abandoned his usual curlicues to make something to sit back and float away on.
No chance. “The Story of My Ancestor the River” crashes through the middle of the album like the rotting floorboards of an attic suddenly giving way. This is a turbulent, violent track, each individual clatter and squeak jostling for space, everything clad in a thick armor of distortion. It sounds a little like Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Nil Admirari,” but Daniel Lopatin at least had the good grace to put that onslaught at the beginning of Returnal as a trial by fire before the listener could get to the ambient goodies. “The Story of My Ancestor the River”' is sequenced smack-dab in the middle of the album, so anyone who dares doze off to “Dream Song” is in for a nasty shock.
“The Story of My Ancestor the River” readies our ears for the album’s second half, where a lot more happens minute to minute. “The Poor Boy and the Mud Ponies” is the most Huerco-like track here, with the faintest ghost of a beat skittering in and out of the mix. “Sometimes I Go About Pitying Myself While I Am Carried by the Wind Across the Sky” at first gives the impression of an impenetrable blankness, but listen closely and you’ll hear revving motorcycles, perturbed baby-like cries, and all sorts of weird and wet sounds moving in and out of spasms of echo. Nothing happens again at the same pitch of intensity as “The Story of My Ancestor the River,” but once we’ve learned what this album’s capable of, we prick up our ears like prey animals looking for movement—and we can go back to those earlier tracks and feel tension rather than calm.
It seems like a frustrating way to sequence an album, letting us float downstream on the first three tracks before abruptly casting us into the rapids. But it preempts the possibility that any of this music will simply drift to the edges of consciousness, and you may find yourself paying attention even when nothing seems to be happening. When ambient music trades in suspense, we don’t necessarily expect a payoff; sustaining an ominous mood is usually more than good enough. On To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands, Leeds tempts us with the possibility that something will happen—and then when something does happen, we come to the delighted realization that on a Pendant album, just about anything can.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | West Mineral Ltd. | October 5, 2021 | 7.6 | e67652a9-23f3-4f37-8cde-80d99e1a28ad | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
The preeminent crate-digging producer teams up with his younger brother, the rapper Oh No, for a soulful, topical, but reserved project that simmers just below the surface. | The preeminent crate-digging producer teams up with his younger brother, the rapper Oh No, for a soulful, topical, but reserved project that simmers just below the surface. | Madlib / Oh No: The Professionals | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/madlib-oh-no-the-professionals/ | The Professionals | Since sauntering onto the hip-hop scene in the mid-’90s as part of the underrated Lootpack troupe, California-based producer Madlib has risen to cult status by pledging a zealous devotion to the art of crate-digging. Over the ensuing decades, Madlib’s reclusive public persona has been complemented by a hyper-prolific discography that showcases his knack for repurposing fragments of other artists’ songs into warped and off-kilter compositions. Madlib’s also become renowned for tailoring entire albums to fit a single MC’s voice—most notably his projects with Freddie Gibbs—and it’s this setup that forms the backbone of The Professionals, the first full-length team-up with his younger sibling, Oh No.
Smartly, there’s a reserved quality to Madlib’s beats across the album. Chunky, soulful loops and boxy drum patterns become a sturdy platform for Oh No’s rapping. The bulk of the album showcases the MC’s conceptual chops and ability to pen topical issue-based tracks, but a few more cliché lyrical outings nestled in the mix give the project a naggingly uneven feel—and leaves you wishing The Professionals prodded just a little deeper into the increasingly fractured modern world that Oh No proves so adept at commenting on.
The album’s most affecting moment comes courtesy of its final song, “Dishonored Valor.” Oh No hones in on the struggles military personnel experience when attempting to reintegrate into modern civilian life—including PTSD and the ensuing reliance on pharmaceuticals—along with the power dynamics that cause them to enlist in the first place. “I got a gang of brothers that was in the military that was dishonorably discharged/Really wasn’t cut like Rambo when the shit starts,” he raps over a gnarly backdrop of scuzzy guitar and rolling clusters of snares. “I don’t blame ’em, I would have been right there smoking weed, too/Fuck flying up in sky, diving out of B-2.”
This heavyweight moment is supported by the uplifting “Made Due,” which sounds like Oh No riffing on a wonky line from Nas’s “Life’s a Bitch” logic—“That buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto”—by imploring people to put faith in goals and ideas rather than scant lottery odds. “Tired Atlas” is fueled by brooding piano and musings on presidents, police brutality and identity fraud; the golden-hued loops and metronomic ticking through “Timeless Treasure” prompt commentary on a capitalist country where hospital costs cause some to simply shrug and figure, “Fuck it then/I’ll just die in the crib with this cheeseburger—McLovin’ it.”
Frustratingly, the power and pull of these songs is vitiated by moments like the title track—whose braggadocio simmers but never boils—and the lighter, more amorous outings “I Jus Wanna” and “Give N Take,” especially when the latter’s candy-funk backdrop is punctured by a humdrum booty-call tale. The Professionals winds up being akin to a high-quality, well-reported news special that keeps being interrupted by lighter-hearted segments—both have their own merits, but oftentimes close proximity only tempers potency.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-01-21T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-20T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Madlib Invazion | January 21, 2020 | 6.7 | e682a1b8-a215-4946-947c-3f47107593a0 | Phillip Mlynar | https://pitchfork.com/staff/phillip-mlynar/ | |
Singer-songwriter Ben Collins joins the Woodsist camp with a light, loose collection of songs built for placid and rudderless afternoons. | Singer-songwriter Ben Collins joins the Woodsist camp with a light, loose collection of songs built for placid and rudderless afternoons. | Hurt Valley: Glacial Pace | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hurt-valley-glacial-pace/ | Glacial Pace | Woods singer Jeremy Earl launched the Woodsist label in 2006, creating a vehicle to self-release his records and those by likeminded psychedelic-folk explorers: guitarist Cian Nugent, former Woods bassist Kevin Morby, and singer-songwriter Anna St. Louis. A friends-forward approach to a label usually brings together a similar cloth of musicians; there’s sometimes a fine line between Woodsist and Woods-ish.
Glacial Pace, the debut album by singer-songwriter Brian Collins as Hurt Valley, is the latest to emerge from Earl’s glen. The record is far less leaden than its title indicates, toeing the Woodsist line more closely than most of his peers. The many instrumental layers belie the fact that Collins self-recorded the project at his home in Los Angeles. His songs are light and loose, built for placid and rudderless afternoons.
But Collins’ self-contained efforts sometimes leave little to latch on to as one song slides into the next. The distinguishing factors between folk-adjacent, psychedelically inclined acts tend to lie in what its unique members bring to the fold—the way a bassist and drummer lock together into a groove, the way guitarists interject and weave around each other. By that measure, Collins plays it relatively straight across Glacial Pace, and absent a collaborator’s input, he ends up limiting his own potential.
Overdubbed guitar solos complement each other at the end of “No Meaning,” but Collins never reaches for a daring finale—they approach a crescendo and shy away within seconds. Even when he sings about feeling “stuck at a glacial pace” on “Geology Dreamer,” he sounds like he’s unmoved about his predicament in any sense of the word. “Del Amo” is Glacial Pace’s strongest, carried by quiet guitar interludes that make for a curling foil against a hazier backdrop of more guitars. The glimmer on “I’ve Been Everywhere” is a similarly rewarding treat for the ears.
Despite the album’s pervasive nonchalance, closing track “Immaterial Worlds” is resolutely un-chill as Collins sneaks in a few final barbs. “You don’t know what it means to speak face to face/You only castigate anonymously,” he sings. “Don’t be afraid to say/I should apologize, when it is right.” He asks to be told when he needs to apologize rather than recognizing when he needs to do it on his own. It’s these moments that feel lasting and impressionable and give his debut a boost: Glacial Pace doesn’t feel destined for cult status or dollar bins, but Collins gives himself plenty of room to explore his sound—and himself—more deeply.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-13T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Woodsist | December 13, 2019 | 6.4 | e69e0527-4b16-4edf-9702-8b8a2839e87c | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
A carefully curated set of reworks filters last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving Mike Hadreas’ grit a blast of glitter. | A carefully curated set of reworks filters last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving Mike Hadreas’ grit a blast of glitter. | Perfume Genius: IMMEDIATELY Remixes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/perfume-genius-immediately-remixes/ | Immediately Remixes | On last year’s Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, Perfume Genius assembled his most textural, captivating music to date. Contrasting the lo-fi dissonance of past records with blown-out power chords and synths, Mike Hadreas’ fifth LP addressed themes of isolation and corporeal anxiety with an agile, heart-wrenching touch. Less than a year later comes the first full-length Perfume Genius remix album, a carefully curated set that filters Set My Heart on Fire Immediately through synth pop, techno, and other electronic lenses, giving his grit a blast of glitter.
The high-speed reworks on IMMEDIATELY Remixes are the most immediately gratifying. Planningtorock dresses up “Jason” with ping-ponging synths and breakbeats, plunging Hadreas directly into a late-night dancefloor and morphing the song’s awkward one-night stand into something altogether more feverishly desperate. For the sparse “Moonbend,” Hadreas enlists Nídia, who stacks it with jittery, dynamic drum patterns and loops Hadreas’ mournful backing vocals. The Portuguese producer maintains the song’s spectral luster but then amplifies it with heart-racing energy; it’s easily one of the album’s most daring rearrangements. Danny L Harle’s “Harlecore” version of “Just a Touch,” meanwhile, refracts it through a convex mirror: Hadreas’ voice is pitched up to a whine, while a swarm of trance synths and pummeling drums fuse to form the album’s most euphoric moment.
When the remixes gesture toward more straightforward pop, things get a little shakier. Westerman adds muted, spacious details to “Nothing at All,” one of the original album’s most gutting tracks, including chirping cicadas, flutes and horns, and handclaps; the combined effect washes out the song in drab colors. Tokyo-based producer Initial Talk takes the opposite tack, setting Hadreas against swathes of bright, chintzy synths. It’s a fun pastiche (and suggests that Hadreas’ voice is malleable enough to cosplay any era’s sound), but it also veers dangerously close to hackneyed “’80s remix” YouTube territory.
The album’s stranger moments fare better. Jenny Hval’s experimental spin on “Leave” distends the original synth line and layers on Hadreas’ reverbed vocals until her own voice suddenly enters, speaking about using reverb as a way of traveling through space. It’s a meta moment that adds depth to the project, carving out a sense of genuine humanity in touch with Hadreas. Other off-kilter producers succeed by tapping into a similarly meandering vein: Katie Dey blends a metronomic beat and Hadreas’ spliced and delayed voice on “Borrowed Light,” uplifting it with airy, fine-tuned delicacy, and the twangy guitar and arcing melodies from “One More Try” become grainy textures for UK producer Actress, who ratchets up the song’s wistful romance tenfold.
That IMMEDIATELY Remixes’ varying reworks interweave so well is a testament to Hadreas’ distinctive voice and songwriting. Following the same tracklisting as the original, the album flows as through a dreamlike alternate vision. The set also nicely complements the sense of freedom Hadreas has described performing modern dance while writing Set My Heart on Fire Immediately—you can easily picture him writhing and twisting in a group performance to the album’s club-oriented moments. No matter the stage dressing, it’s hard to lose sight of Hadreas’ particularly captivating form of surrender.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-03-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-03-12T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Matador | March 12, 2021 | 7.2 | e6a1bb90-76f2-426b-b929-a9926179d283 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | |
The R&B singer JMSN is devoted to the sound of late 1990s neo soul, but on his new album, he lacks a unique approach to it. | The R&B singer JMSN is devoted to the sound of late 1990s neo soul, but on his new album, he lacks a unique approach to it. | JMSN: Whatever Makes U Happy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23195-whatever-makes-u-happy/ | Whatever Makes U Happy | The singer Christian Berishaj, who performs as JMSN, is devoted to the sound of late-1990s neo soul. On his new album Whatever Makes U Happy, the bass is poised, expressive, and brimming with energy; the drums are sharp. Most importantly, JMSN’s voice is always caught in a viscous web of groove.
A few years ago, these arrangements sounded rebellious. It seemed that an R&B singer with hopes of radio play had to live by rap’s rules, and even D’Angelo—whose Voodoo album remains neo soul’s sacred document—could not crack the Top 20 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart when he returned with “Really Love” in 2014. But the climate has changed. Earlier this month, Kevin Ross’ “Long Song Away” climbed to No. 12 on the same chart that stymied D’Angelo without making any concessions to the sounds of contemporary hip-hop. And Childish Gambino reached No. 11 with “Redbone,” showing that funk with blatant Bootsy Collins references could occupy the same space as Future and Travis Scott. These days, artists with a comprehensive understanding of R&B from the 1970s, 1980s, and ’90s are less like separatists and more like members of a thriving loyal opposition.
In this context, JMSN’s new album is a modest success; he hits his marks, if nothing more. There’s not much grip in his voice, but at a time when male R&B singers tend to overuse their falsetto, JMSN reserves his high notes, setting himself apart by focusing on a cooled-out, conversational mid-range. He also sprinkles his songs with curses to shatter their smooth veneer, and he can arrange a pretty backing vocal. Whatever Makes U Happy is best when it’s busy—as on “Slowly,” where JMSN aligns the clipped, controlled percussion with a doleful, front-porch guitar line and clumps of piano. “Slowly” summons the spirit of the under-appreciated Jon B, who scored a few R&B hits between 1995 and 2001.
But JMSN is often content to set up a traditional song structure and let it play out without adding any distinguishing touches. He loves the soul mainstay of the ballad in 6/8 time: Whatever Makes U Happy opens with “Drinkin,’” which uses this dependable form to spin a sort of booze-happy guide to self-help. “Always Somethin’” reaches to a different tradition, tracing a bluesy arc close to Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason.” JMSN builds up the despair with his declarative final phrase: “Wish someone would tell me why I waste my time working day and night.”
JMSN gets the forms right, but there’s a hollowness to his performance. He doesn’t have enough command in his voice to put his songs over with authority, or enough reticence to be seductively absent from them. If JMSN has an extensive knowledge of R&B tradition, he has yet to make it his own. | 2017-04-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | White Room | April 29, 2017 | 6.3 | e6a37c40-2788-4e96-b252-633410d9b8f6 | Elias Leight | https://pitchfork.com/staff/elias-leight/ | null |
The second album by San Francisco's the Mantles sustains an intruiguing tension between lyrics that resonate with a sense of detachment and open, outward-looking melodies that evoke R.E.M., Real Estate, and Television, without sounding like mere clones. | The second album by San Francisco's the Mantles sustains an intruiguing tension between lyrics that resonate with a sense of detachment and open, outward-looking melodies that evoke R.E.M., Real Estate, and Television, without sounding like mere clones. | The Mantles: Long Enough to Leave | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18115-the-mantles-long-enough-to-leave/ | Long Enough to Leave | “This isn't me,” sings Michael Olivares. “This is happening to someone else.” That line comes in the middle of the Mantles’ second full-length album, Long Enough to Leave, but the sense of detachment resonates throughout the record. It’s right there in the title, taken from another lyric: “You’re home/ Long enough to leave/ Always coming back to see / How far off you’ve gone.” The feeling of absence is constant-- everyone in these songs seems to disappear.
That effect gives Long Enough to Leave an intriguing tension, because musically it’s nowhere near distant or detached. It’s an open, outward-looking set of tunes, especially compared to the Mantles’ previous full-length, their 2009 self-titled debut. That record had a hermetic feel that was a big part of its charm. The blurry chords and closeted sound-- a kind of rawer, denser take on the Byrds and their Paisley Underground descendents the Dream Syndicate and the Rain Parade-- were a lot of fun to get lost in.
Here, by contrast, we get a wider variety of melodies, an airier sonic space, and a broader array of reference points. The familiar ones persist: opener “Marbled Birds” starts with a wiry hook that sounds exactly like marbled Byrds. But the acoustic-heavy title track evokes the melancholy pop of the Clean’s David Kilgour; the jangly “Don’t Cross Town” and winding “More That I Pay” approximate lo-fi R.E.M.; and the wistful chords of “Raspberry Thighs” conjure Real Estate’s sun-baked lilt. None of these tunes are clones; all are distinguished by Olivares’ deceptively-rough singing and the interplay of swirling guitars. But together all the echoes-- I’m also hearing the Kinks, Television, and the Feelies-- show the Mantles have expanded their palette.
The result is catchy, consistent material that’s welcoming sonically but mysterious thematically. Take “Hello”, a bouncy jam which is ostensibly pretty communicative; it’s about making a phone call, after all. But eventually you realize the caller-- who wants someone to “help me get out of here... help me disappear”-- never quite gets through. Even better is the enthralling “Reason’s Run”, whose coiled hooks become barbed wire when paired with distancing admonishments like, “When you saw me ahead, you should’ve crossed the street… you must be more careful about who you meet."
All this poetic exploration of distance and disconnect can also just be seen as cake-icing. The Mantles could mumble through these tunes and the infectious force of their woven melodies would remain intact. But the extra thematic layer gives the music a depth that bodes well for this band’s future (and justifies their rate of output, which is glacial compared to their super-prolific garage peers in San Francisco). Because they take their time, what exactly that future holds is, like the best parts of Long Enough to Leave, compellingly elusive. | 2013-06-20T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-06-20T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Slumberland | June 20, 2013 | 7.5 | e6a9e16f-1670-4bd4-aac6-cb5355807c93 | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On Pool, Aaron Maine has shed the murky folk of previous recordings for a homespun electronic sound that consciously pulls away from the "rock" elements. Greta Kline, who fronts Frankie Cosmos, loans backing vocals or basslines to many of the best songs. You can imagine the shy kids dance parties the album will soundtrack, but Pool is also an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights. | On Pool, Aaron Maine has shed the murky folk of previous recordings for a homespun electronic sound that consciously pulls away from the "rock" elements. Greta Kline, who fronts Frankie Cosmos, loans backing vocals or basslines to many of the best songs. You can imagine the shy kids dance parties the album will soundtrack, but Pool is also an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights. | Porches: Pool | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21514-pool/ | Pool | In the music video for Porches’ "Be Apart," Aaron Maine and his band wear black turtlenecks as they mope around an apartment decorated like a dollhouse. They bounce basketballs, play ping-pong, strip down to share a bubble bath, activities that might take place at a party thrown for the very idle rich. Near the halfway mark, they stare into the camera like the Children of the Corn, barely mouthing along to words in a way that will make you suspect they have either an awful or incredible sense of humor. The song is about whether Maine wants to be apart or a part of it all—and the sight of five hip youngs looking sad at a social event leads you to think he’s stuck in between.
Mopey New Yorkers are endlessly renewable in independent music, but here’s the thing: You can sort of dance to "Be Apart." On Pool, his newest record and first for Domino, Maine has shed the murky folk of previous recordings for a homespun electronic sound that consciously pulls away from the "rock" elements. (Call him another indie kid who sold his guitars and bought turntables.) Fittingly for a record titled Pool, it sounds like it was recorded with one in the room. Oceanic synths, wobbly basslines, and precise snare drums cohere into a crisp pop sound, while his high, expressive voice bobs brightly above the surface.
Also fittingly: Water is a recurring theme throughout the LP. Maine watches people slip into swimming pools ("Underwater," "Pool"), envisions black water surrounding him as he weighs depression against the need to go out ("Be Apart"), and fantasizes about washing his car ("Car," which is the closest thing here to a rock song). Getting stoned is a theme, too. Sometimes, he lights one up and hangs out by the metaphorical pool, as on "Hour," whose dark electronics evoke the dinginess of a locker room at the Y.
In an interview on Pitchfork Radio, Maine said he wanted to make something "more positive" that could be energetically performed live, and that he wants people to dance to his music. The shimmering groove on "Braid" and "Mood" will make you believe in his ambitions—people will at least be swaying—as does the boogie that breaks out at the end of the title track. The singer Greta Kline, who fronts Frankie Cosmos and is also Maine’s girlfriend, loans backing vocals or basslines to the half-dozen best songs. Her plucky strumming on "Mood" and "Glow" creates the record’s most genuinely funky moments, when you can imagine the shy kids thrusting hips in their living rooms.
Maine isn’t an involved lyricist, but his melodic instincts connect the gap between intent and outcome. He has an alien-yet-captivating way of phrasing syllables that recalls the unblinking stoicism of Majical Cloudz’ Devon Welsh, or the weirdo brooding of Arthur Russell. The melodramatic sigh in the chorus of "Be Apart"—"And I-I-I-I want to be apart"—reminds me of Morrissey, as does the lyrical preoccupation with whether or not to go out that night.
You could also observe that Morrissey had the gumption to rhyme "rusty spanner" with "play piano," and that some of that spirit might be missing here. The piercing clarity of Maine’s voice imbues his relatively simplistic lyrics with profundity, but you might wonder how much is going on in his brain at times. At least one Pitchfork co-worker gasped when I suggested Pool sounded like a chillwave record, but it does remind me of how that micro-genre enabled listeners most likely to get lost in a K-Mart to wade through shallow depths.
But a wading pool can be a perfect meditative space. Pool is an introspective record, tailormade for lonesome nights. It was made in Maine’s apartment, and while the record has a noticeably professional pop sheen, there are still vestigial hints of amateurism (such as the sound of fingers squeaking against the strings on album opener "Underwater") that convince me of its ideal setting. Anyone who lives in a city knows how easy it is to be pulled between lonely apartments and lonelier dance floors. By the end, the appeal of water becomes clear. You immerse yourself in it, disappearing from the rest of the world, but you’re still close to land. | 2016-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2016-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Domino | February 8, 2016 | 8.3 | e6aa1a1f-5c0c-41eb-b109-cbe4c4a8e625 | Jeremy Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-gordon/ | null |
The Japanese trumpeter’s dense and cosmic sixth album blends jazz with Afrobeat, hip-hop, neo-soul, and funk. | The Japanese trumpeter’s dense and cosmic sixth album blends jazz with Afrobeat, hip-hop, neo-soul, and funk. | Takuya Kuroda: Fly Moon Die Soon | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/takuya-kuroda-fly-moon-die-soon/ | Fly Moon Die Soon | Takuya Kuroda hails from Kobe, Japan, a nation that to a dedicated strand of Western jazz obsessive serves as a sacred tomb of rare riches. You can place the trumpeter next to 20th-century Japanese virtuosos such as Toshiko Akiyoshi, Masabumi Kikuchi, Ryo Fukui, and Koichi Matsukaze, and he looks extremely comfortable in the lineage: All respected the core tenets of jazz while offering their own unique interpretations. Kuroda, after all, is a guy who has name-dropped Lee Morgan as an inspiration while playing in DJ Premier’s touring outfit, the Badder band.
Having relocated to New York to study jazz and contemporary music at The New School in the mid-2000s, Kuroda has since traversed the city as a recording artist—he notably spent some time on Blue Note Records—and musician for hire. Sixth album Fly Moon Die Soon is the work of a man who has undertaken his own musical Gulliver’s Travels. The album’s nine cuts are united by Kuroda’s determination to branch out from jazz and into hip-hop, funk, Afrobeat, electronica, and neo soul. But Kuroda isn’t simply quoting corners of his own record collection; he skillfully synthesizes his influences, hitting sweet spots that feel purely of his own creation.
Most apparent is the music of 1970s West Africa (Kuroda has previously collaborated with a group of similar interest in New York’s Akoya Afrobeat). The horns, guitar stabs, and rattling percussion of “ABC” gesture heavily toward Fela Kuti, while the driving rhythms of “Moody” recalls 1970s Afro-funk bands like the Funkees and Monomono. The brass instruments throughout Fly Moon Die Soon are often used to deploy catchy riffs, Kuroda’s trumpet frequently amalgamating with Corey King’s trombone. The title track shows a more experimental side, with programmed beats and a Moog bassline that swirls like a Thundercat jam. It’s the kind of dense and cosmic jazz hybrid that would blow minds over at Brainfeeder.
Kuroda allows his collaborators significant space. King’s singing voice comes in and out of the album with mixed results—his textured tones skip satisfyingly through opener “Fade,” but “Change,” the least impressive tune on the album, features a hiccuping melody that goes nowhere in a hurry. Much better is the cover of the Ohio Players’ “Sweet Sticky Thing,” featuring Russia-born singer Alina Engibaryan. Retaining the sensual melody and cranking up the heat until it’s balmy, it’s the kind of track you can put on a playlist that might grab a non-jazz fan’s attention.
Then there’s the Herbie Hancock composition “Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” which pushes Hiroshima pianist Takeshi Ohbayashi front and center as he plays over the softly bumping backdrop. Kuroda, meanwhile, unleashes a flugelhorn solo that evokes some vintage urban-noir vision of Manhattan. Coming late on Fly Moon Die Soon, it returns the ever-journeying artist to the city that has proved his fulcrum, and asserts that Kuroda’s skill is not drawing influence from so many different forms, it’s radiating joy in doing so.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | First World | September 18, 2020 | 7.2 | e6b23137-b26e-42cc-9902-eee2ce5ec9fb | Dean Van Nguyen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/ | |
Blood Ceremony's longtime fixation on 70s rock, Sabbathian riffage, and 60s psych is well-documented and undeniable. The third album from the Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something as worth revisiting. | Blood Ceremony's longtime fixation on 70s rock, Sabbathian riffage, and 60s psych is well-documented and undeniable. The third album from the Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something as worth revisiting. | Blood Ceremony: The Eldritch Dark | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18084-blood-ceremony-the-eldritch-dark/ | The Eldritch Dark | As Aldous Huxley once wrote, "The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different." Though our dystopian visionary surely meant to slyly reference far more sinister puppet masters with his damning and oh-so-quotable bon mot, the unruly hellions pulling rock’n’roll’s nylon strings are less inclined to read between the lines. They prefer to go back to basics but slap a few fresh coats of paint on there to keep things sparkling. The song remains the same, and on The Eldritch Dark, Blood Ceremony follows that axiom with near-religious fervor.
Every chord and whisper harkens back to an earlier Aquarian age, when paisley and peyote ruled supreme and leather fringe wasn’t just for your dad’s musty old biker jacket. Their longtime fixation on 70s rock, Sabbathian riffage, and 60s psych is well-documented and undeniable, and an enduring fascination with dark legend and wild lore charts their pagan’s progress from harvest moon to Midsummer’s night eve. The third album from this Canadian collective is their strongest yet, and clear proof that while yes, everything old is new again, there are a scant few armed with the passion and power to craft something worth revisiting. Blood Ceremony just make it look easy.
“Witchwood” begins with a howling lead and hauls out the Hammond organ, vamping and swaying along beneath Alia O’Brien’s husky croon. This down-to-earth high priestess has got her hands full wielding the microphone, manipulating the vintage organ keys, and trilling away like Jethro Tull with her signature flute whilst conducting the band’s blackest of masses. The Satanic element one has come to expect from the recent glut of “occult rock” bands is absent, and in its stead lie mysteries far more titillating and obscure. The old gods hold court amongst the evils and enchantments that populate Blood Ceremony’s world. Capering fauns, weird sisters, astrological signs, and bewitched souls creep in and out of earshot, imbuing tracks like “Ballad of the Weird Sisters” with a certain otherworldly feel even as they build upon standard 70s hard rock song structures.
Guitarist Sean Kennedy weaves his riffs over and under the flue’s driving force, stealing the spotlight when it suits but generally content to serve as the stage upon which O’Brien’s finery flashes. Michael Carrillo’s drums are understated, slung low in the mix but never far from the action; his militant rat-a-tat in the titular “The Eldritch Dark” serves as a steady anchor for the song’s psychedelic meanderings, and gels perfectly with the burly basslines. “Drawing Down the Moon” is the most vintage-inspired of a host of backward-glancing tracks. Kennedy’s note-perfect Iommi riff wails away while O’Brien channels Marianne Faithfull and Jethro Tull like some heathen love child and pounds that Hammond organ for all of its considerable worth. It’s hip-shaking, head-nodding, sideways-glance-throwing nighttime music. If the Devil were really listening, he’d have booked these guys as his house band long ago.
The hymn-like “Lord Summerisle” is quiet and contemplative, recalling the quietest moments of Black Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan” and guided by a particularly haunting flute melody. It’s the only song to feature a male vocalist, as bassist Lucas Gadke (who wrote the tune in homage to the eerie atmosphere of cult film ‘The Wicker Man’) adds his plaintive voice to O’Brien’s backing harmonies, and also the strangest. Blood Ceremony hit upon their alchemical formula years ago, but it’s still refreshing to see them experiment, just a little. Too much, and their spell would break; just enough, and they prove once again why they are the most vital band of the “occult rock” renaissance. Trends come and go, but a band like Blood Ceremony, with their bewitching tunes and dark secrets, are above such petty mortal trifles. We’re coming with them, whether we like it or not. | 2013-06-12T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2013-06-12T02:00:03.000-04:00 | null | Rise Above | June 12, 2013 | 7.6 | e6b3e836-e553-4dd1-9174-408ac21fc510 | Kim Kelly | https://pitchfork.com/staff/kim-kelly/ | null |
On his new EP, Noel Gallagher breaks free—a little—from his six-string to embrace the Big Beat of his youth. | On his new EP, Noel Gallagher breaks free—a little—from his six-string to embrace the Big Beat of his youth. | Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds: Black Star Dancing EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/noel-gallaghers-high-flying-birds-black-star-dancing-ep/ | Black Star Dancing EP | For a guy whose rock’n’roll values skew so traditional his name is practically a synonym for Dad Rock, Noel Gallagher has long harbored a desire to break free from his six-string. Black Star Dancing—an EP named after a single he released in early May—arrives accompanied by a self-generated torrent of hype that climaxed with Noel claiming Nile Rodgers “literally danced in the studio” when he heard the song.
These proclamations suggest the EP offers something new, but the truth is Gallagher has always dabbled in dance culture. He came of age during the glory days of Baggy, the heady time when rock, dance, and electronica came together as one during the paisley-pulsating fever dream dubbed the second summer of love. The earliest Oasis records were smothered in loud guitars, but Gallagher’s magpie songwriting wasn’t far removed from the sampledelica of hip-hop and acid house at the dawn of the ’90s. Once he became a superstar, he happily collaborated with the Chemical Brothers for “Setting Sun,” a 1997 hit that pulverized the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” through a Big Beat filter.
From there, Gallagher tentatively threaded drum loops and extraneous electronica onto Oasis albums, a process he continued with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the group he formed in 2011 once he finally had his fill of navigating the id of his brother Liam. Until 2017’s Who Built the Moon?, Noel generally kept these diversions reserved for remixes, B-sides and bonus tracks, but that record leaned into colorful cacophony constructed in equal parts from psychedelia and memories of late club nights long gone.
Black Star Dancing doesn’t depart from the previous High Flying Birds records so much as pick up threads left dangling from Who Built the Moon? while pushing ideas Gallagher usually left in the shadows right into the spotlight. It’s a canny reframing that helps banish lingering memories of High Flying Birds’ tastefully somnolent first few records, but it's hard to call “Black Star Dancing”—either in its original incarnation or its two extended remixes or its accompanying pair of B-sides—“fresh.”
All three versions groove to retro rhythms that are throwbacks to throwbacks: the spangly ’70s filtered through the ecstasy of the early ’90s. The two variations—a succinct 12" mix and a “Reflex Revision” that sprawls amiably for 10 minutes—expand upon ideas already fully formed on the original single. Perhaps “Rattling Rose” and “Sail On”—the former a breezy bit of good vibes with a vaguely spacey undercurrent, the latter an ornate campfire sing along—don’t burst as brightly as “Black Star Dancing,” but by using the dance rhythms and electronics as accents, Gallagher winds up showcasing his melodic craft more appealingly than when he’s dolefully strumming an acoustic guitar.
Granted, every bit of Black Star Dancing telegraphs how Noel Gallagher isn’t in step with his times. It’s psychedelic music made by a rocker who straightened out ages ago, dance music made by a musician who hasn't set foot in a club in at least 20 years. But that flaw is also ingratiating: Gallagher retains his ear for sturdy melodies and his instinct for swiping ear-catching sounds and conscripting them to his humble purposes. As he always does, Gallagher stitches these elements into familiar and comfortable tapestries. | 2019-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-15T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sour Mash / Universal | June 15, 2019 | 5.2 | e6b79a7a-b79c-413d-a821-aea8b3450c0e | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
The New York City psych-rock quartet’s debut full-length beckons the listener with dreamy keyboards, twinkling guitar, and a recognizable buzz of stoic anxiety. | The New York City psych-rock quartet’s debut full-length beckons the listener with dreamy keyboards, twinkling guitar, and a recognizable buzz of stoic anxiety. | Crumb: Jinx | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/crumb-jinx/ | Jinx | Obituaries and biographies often give the illusion that lives unfold along ever-advancing, if wandering, timelines. In fact, those forward trajectories are made up of millions of tiny spirals—routines followed, patterns performed, habits fallen into. Most days are slightly deviating copies of one another, with periodic breaths of novelty. On their debut full-length, Jinx, New York City psych-rock band Crumb give shape to the ambivalence and hypnosis of those lulling spirals, bending indie rock and jazz influences to shape a clear-eyed perspective tinted amber with dirt. Beckoning the listener with dreamy keyboards, twinkling guitar, and a recognizable buzz of stoic anxiety, Jinx rewards with the promise that within the dizzying haze are moments, turns in direction, worth waking up to.
Crumb formed in 2015 while the group’s members attended university in Boston, and their first, self-titled EP realized songs that guitarist, vocalist, and lead songwriter Lila Ramani began writing as far back as high school. Crumb and 2017 follow-up Locket, both misty and meandering, cast the four-part group as the new kid on today’s jazz-influenced psych block, among bands like Tame Impala and King Krule. On Jinx, those free-jazz influences and arrangements—an affinity Ramani also flexes as a member of New York City experimental collective Standing on the Corner—remain, but there’s something decidedly murkier afoot. Embracing the analog-suffused production they dabbled in on past projects, Crumb’s debut offers a warm, hazy snapshot of banal existence from the inside out.
Concealed emotion, strained facades, and the desire to break free from the numbness underlying both are recurring themes, but Jinx is no dense, depressing slog. Languid love song “Ghostride” sets a scene of passive action as Ramani, voice wavering at a dispassionate hum, observes her subjects moving through the world on autopilot. A moment of hope emerges as guitar and drums break to a higher register and she breathily sings, “Come on now/Don’t let this go/Don’t let the light fade away/People come/And people go/But I—.” With a shade of hesitancy, she cuts off the sentiment, not finishing until the chorus repeats with the final word, almost a pronouncement: “stay.” That longing for cloud-parting connection and devotion peek out through the album’s rises and falls.
Crumb have a knack for entrancing the listener, only to then displace them with airy, twinkling release. Flashes of silence—abruptly muted guitar strums, complete rests—and Ramani’s penchant for spell-like repetition can warp time, one hallucinatory spiral suddenly interrupted by another, more promising one. The album’s hypnotic quality grows ever more romantic and tense with repeat listens, a prescient-feeling experience that matches a zeitgeist: strung-out maintaining in the face of impending doom. “This city is dense/And it makes me tense/And it makes me tense/And it never ends/And it never ends,” Ramani sings, her voice recessed by a gauzy filter, on “And It Never Ends.” How do we get off the eye-glazing treadmill of the day-to-day? In lieu of tidy answers, Jinx offers a sympathetic fellow witness to the mystery.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | self-released | June 17, 2019 | 7.8 | e6cf6c4d-0c2c-495a-a309-9dfa5685ae22 | Ann-Derrick Gaillot | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ann-derrick-gaillot/ | |
The Welsh songwriter’s fifth album flits between whimsical psych-pop levity and candid expressions of grief. At its best, it brings the two together. | The Welsh songwriter’s fifth album flits between whimsical psych-pop levity and candid expressions of grief. At its best, it brings the two together. | H. Hawkline: Milk for Flowers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/h-hawkline-milk-for-flowers/ | Milk for Flowers | In the learned vocabulary of pop music, staccato means happy and languorous, sustained notes signify sad. It’s the “Getting Better” vs. “She’s Leaving Home” binary established long ago by McCartney and co. But to wilfully defy this shorthand—to write melancholy songs at an upbeat clip? That’s where things get interesting.
It’s a challenge that’s been accepted by generations of songwriting legends, from Harry Nilsson, whose early gems, like “One” and “Daddy’s Song,” made heartbreak sound bright and effervescent, to Robyn, whose 2010 classic “Dancing on My Own” helped popularize the “sad banger.” It’s also an M.O. of sorts for the Welsh singer-songwriter H. Hawkline (born Huw Evans), who recently mused that “setting sad lyrics to something more upbeat is more jarring and impactful.” Hawkline’s latest album, Milk for Flowers, flits between whimsical psych-pop and candid grief, and is most affecting when it finds a way to bring those two poles together.
Hawkline began his career with fingerpicking folk on 2010’s A Cup of Salt, but in recent years, he’s steered towards an ornate art-pop sound that draws influence from his fellow countryman Gruff Rhys, who’s brought him on tour, as well as longtime collaborator Cate Le Bon, who produced Milk for Flowers. Even when the songs are steeped in sadness, there’s a McCartney-esque bounce to them: a pitter-patter levity to the piano arrangements in “Milk for Flowers” and “Denver,” a perpetual forward motion to the playful thump of “Plastic Man.”
That cognitive dissonance is a meaningful ingredient of an album that’s explicitly concerned with how loss is camouflaged and concealed in the theater of daily life. Hawkline’s mother died of cancer in 2018; do these songs reckon with the surreal side of grief or is grief an inherently surreal state of mind? The answer floats just out of reach. The title track flits from a chorus that highlights Hawkline’s knack for oddball imagery (“I feel like a nun picking roses”) to a bridge that cuts right to the heart of the matter: “And I miss you/So much,” he sings in a quivering croon.
“Suppression Street” brings us to an avenue that will be as familiar as Fascination Street or Respectable Street. With the poetic care and inventiveness typical of his work, Hawkline satirizes the daily ritual of suppressing one’s heartache and pretending all is fine: “I buy my makeup on Suppression Street/I paint my face for everyone I meet/With the elegance of Nero.” Later, on the record’s tenderer second half, he lets the facade slip away, addressing his mother directly on the plaintive “Like You Do”: “As the evening plays us out/And I want to let you know/All the ways I’ll need you.” Like grief itself, the song is a one-sided conversation, never silenced, never resolved.
With his peculiar sensibility, jaunty piano-and-horn style, and fondness for playfully enigmatic wordplay (a standout: “Peace comes for dinner/But I’m forever eating lunch”), Hawkline is operating on a similar plane as collaborator Aldous Harding. (The two have been musically and romantically linked; Hawkline both opened for and performed in the New Zealand songwriter’s band on her 2022 tour.) But Hawkline is not quite as expressive or eccentric a vocalist as Harding, and these songs’ arrangements sometimes feel too fussy, too polite, to summon the emotions they promise. “Denver” drags on for six relatively static minutes, while the limp synth pop of “Athens at Night” never quite matches the wooziness of its imagery.
Fortunately, Milk for Flowers’ third act is its richest. “It’s a Living” strikes that rare balance between piano-pop whimsy and melancholy. Its singalong chorus, a mantra of appreciation for “old women” and “young children,” is stirring and rendered without any hint of condescension. “Empty Room,” the closer, is drifting and elegiac, reminiscent of the heady, countryfied ballads Super Furry Animals used to put near the end of their records. Hawkline drowns his sorrows in pedal-steel Americana as he reckons with the physical absence grief leaves behind: “Take the lock off the door/All will be as before in that/Empty room.” Some fill that empty space with photos or shrines. H. Hawkline seems to be filling it with songs. | 2023-03-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2023-03-13T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Heavenly | March 13, 2023 | 7.2 | e6d74a50-ce1c-4ccf-972b-5b57590f7328 | Zach Schonfeld | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-schonfeld/ | |
On his latest project, the Brooklyn rapper realizes his vision. His forceful and focused bars are just one aspect of the highly skilled emcee’s community-focused and spiritually rewarding music. | On his latest project, the Brooklyn rapper realizes his vision. His forceful and focused bars are just one aspect of the highly skilled emcee’s community-focused and spiritually rewarding music. | Medhane: Cold Water | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/medhane-cold-water/ | Cold Water | Medhane raps a lot about where he’s going and how he’s getting there. So many of his songs are about forward momentum: taking strides, chasing truth, setting his own pace. But movement without direction is simply wasted energy, and where his previous projects occasionally resembled lyrical exercises that developed a philosophy and a worldview in real time, his new album, Cold Water, feels like putting long-held plans into motion.
Scars and trauma have been markers of Medhane’s raps, but he’s no longer bound by those wounds, he’s empowered by them. “I ain’t show it but I’ve been through the most/Took a minute just to get in my glow,” he says on “Na Fr.” While he’s no clearer about the origins of his injuries, he bears down on the lessons he can extract from them. The result: His most present and clear-eyed project. These songs aren’t just about perseverance anymore; they’re about taking action—using experience as a teacher and a guide.
On 2018’s Ba Sub, Ak Jaam, Medhane explained that his father told him “always choose your words,” guidance he internalized. As he put it, he was speaking with his chest while others stumbled over what to say. On Cold Water, there is even more force and focus behind his bars. The verses on songs like “Late” and “I’m Deadass” are painlessly tricky, never sacrificing their immediacy in their pursuit of uncluttering his mind. “No Cap” and “All Facts” feel like chapters ripped from a hidden, hand-written manifesto. The rapping on Full Circle, the mixtape he released earlier this year, was economical at the expense of impact, but here, Medhane pairs concision with power.
Medhane cites New York City stalwarts Roc Marciano and Ka as influences—you can hear them in his measured, unembellished delivery and in his bare-bones production. After producing all of Full Circle himself under the moniker AFB, he takes a step back on Cold Water. Duties are shared with Ohbliv, Alexander Spit, Chuck Strangers, Navy Blue, and frequent collaborators Bori, iblss, and Stoney. This is, without question, the best-produced project of his career so far. His production on Full Circle was intrusive, and the loops enveloped him like tidal waves crashing ashore. Cold Water, by comparison, is more understated and invigorating. The beats are gorgeously gritty, warped yet whole; he remolds jazz and soul samples as if from particles of sand, which brings the clarity of the raps into sharper relief.
There’s a lot of rapping about mazes, and Medhane usually sounds like he’s writing his way out of them. But his rhymes have never been more direct than they are on “New Drip” and “Truth & Soul.” He unlocks each song with probing flows, finds his way to its center, and then he retraces his steps outward. Relationships often serve as his compass. By now, that posse of musicians has begun to formalize: MIKE, Navy Blue, Jasper Marsalis, Maassai, Gio Escobar, Caleb Giles, and Akai Solo. All have had some impact on the way he thinks about rapping, producing, and improving. “Love my brothers but I seen ’em change/For the better,” he raps on “Live,” an affirmation of collective growth.
In addition to finding refuge in his little tribe, he’s now maneuvering on its behalf. These songs aren’t just bound by all the shared wisdom of his insulated hip-hop commune, they expand the movement and stand for those in it. “Working while they talking/Ball in my court/My little sister growing so you know who it’s for,” he raps on “No Cap.” A self-sufficient rap co-op is only as strong as its weakest link. “On a mission since the sandbox/I ain’t winning if my man lost,” he adds on “Full Hands.” There are still plenty of unanswered questions on Cold Water, but you get the sense that all the things left unsaid are stoking Medhane’s quiet resolve.
Listen to our Best New Music playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. | 2020-05-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-28T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | May 28, 2020 | 8.4 | e6dd28b7-b115-48c3-ab3f-8b6d4c78acd1 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
With playful marimbas and chintzy MIDI instruments, the Polish ambient experimentalist’s tribute to urban exploration sits somewhere between reality and reimagining. | With playful marimbas and chintzy MIDI instruments, the Polish ambient experimentalist’s tribute to urban exploration sits somewhere between reality and reimagining. | Staś Czekalski: Przygody | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/stas-czekalaski-przygody/ | Przygody | Walking around Warsaw has an uncanniness unique among European cities. Its very architecture creates a sort of illusion; after the city’s old town burned to the ground in World War II, its citizens came together to reconstruct many of its historic sites, even reusing rubble from buildings that had been lost. Paintings by the Italian landscape artist Bernardo Bellotto were used as a reference point, his use of camera obscura offering highly detailed depictions of structures that had been reduced to ash. But this same method resulted in slight inaccuracies, causing dissonance for those who remember the city as it actually stood before the war. Seeing these centuries-old buildings constructed from memory in person, one encounters a strange sensation: Is this really how it felt to stand next to, say, the city’s Royal Castle when its paint was still fresh? Or is this closer to a reimagining of that feeling?
Staś Czekalski’s debut likewise sees Warsaw through a surreally half-simulated lens. Recorded upon moving to the city from Poznań, the album documents the Polish composer’s explorations of Warsaw, uncovering new wonders around every corner. Czekalski’s music has a lullaby lilt—his marimbas playfully bob up and down like tadpoles, while dinky MIDI guitars strum as if plucked from a daydream. Czekalski colors his music with a similar restrained touch as Mondoj labelmates Piotr Kurek and G.S. Sultan, calling to mind the meditative grooves of Andras Fox crossed with Kate NV’s silly-brained exercises. Gently carving sparse shapes from silence, Czekalski lets each sound bounce off the others like floating objects in an old desktop screensaver.
Przygody translates to “Adventures” in Polish, and Czekalski imbues his music with this wide-eyed sense of searching, fixating over every small sound like a child turning over pebbles. On “Pogoda ducha,” he jams out on a simple pizzicato motif, layering one click-clocking woodblock after another over its delightfully cartoonish echo. Czekalski relishes in the smooth surfaces of his MIDI instruments, whether it’s the nylon spa guitars that waft through “Koniec lata,” or the Casio-like keys of “Dim Lounge,” which putter along over amateur drum machines straight from the GameCube era of Animal Crossing. The further the album goes along, the greater the empty space becomes: the pan pipes of “Mini Farmer” and “Muzeum Ewolucji” seem to call out into silence, their unnaturally breathy tone taking on an absurd psychedelic tinge.
Though Przygody doesn’t exactly fit in the new-age bin, Czekalski’s approach to texture doesn’t feel far off from the pitch-shifting wooziness of modern zoners like Cole Pulice and Lynn Avery. His toylike sounds play almost like an heir to the Mark Mothersbaugh school of electronic whimsy (the arpeggiating synthesizers of “Pogoda ducha” and “Zamek” wouldn’t sound out of place on the Rugrats soundtrack). At points, Przygody can become comfy to the point of sameness—its biggest shakeup comes on the distorted “zegarek,” whose looped bongo groove and warping synth samples disrupt the album’s cutesy calm. In moments like these when Czekalski journeys deeper into his own chintzy sonics, he uncovers a peculiar resonance within their artifice. | 2024-03-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2024-03-04T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Mondoj | March 4, 2024 | 7 | e6efcddf-7c98-4148-b864-5a495ca891da | Sam Goldner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/ | |
This quick follow-up to last year's False Idols bears Tricky's birth name, suggesting something confessional; it's also been talked up as a departure for the veteran singer/producer, suggesting a more club-oriented sound. However, there’s not much on Adrian Thaws that distinguishes it from the direction Tricky has been heading over the past 15 years. | This quick follow-up to last year's False Idols bears Tricky's birth name, suggesting something confessional; it's also been talked up as a departure for the veteran singer/producer, suggesting a more club-oriented sound. However, there’s not much on Adrian Thaws that distinguishes it from the direction Tricky has been heading over the past 15 years. | Tricky: Adrian Thaws | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19780-tricky-adrian-thaws/ | Adrian Thaws | Tricky albums are rarely what they seem on the surface. The decision to use his birth name as the title of this record suggests something confessional after years of cloudy rumination, hinting at a genuine departure. Tricky even refers to it as his "least introspective" work. The reality is somewhat different, with a familiar world-weariness setting in, varying genre tropes getting applied then discarded, and a handful of guests coloring songs in around the edges. Ultimately, this is another Tricky album that drags the diminished expectations of anyone who’s heard Maxinquaye behind it, making a once-great work feel ever more like a millstone. At least he doesn’t appear tortured by his past—this is a quick follow up to last year’s False Idols, implying that Tricky is in a fertile period, happy to be making music, out on his own imprint, and free of any label woes. He’s in a strange bubble now, wandering through a world where he’s lost to all but the most devoted of followers.
At least Tricky inspires loyalty in those he works with, including singer Francesca Belmonte, who returns to the fold to appear on a handful of Adrian Thaws tracks. Belmonte’s contributions, and those of promising London-based artist Tirzah (on "Sun Down" and a cover of Janet Kay’s "Silly Games") edge a little too close to work Tricky has undertaken elsewhere, occasionally replicating the half-spoken/half-sung cadence of former collaborator Martina Topley-Bird. It’s clear that Tricky's post-Maxinquaye work has largely been about about firming up his province, which consists of a tiny sphere of sound resolutely his own. This album, like many of his other works, has been talked up in terms of departure, of a more club-oriented sound, although that’s largely an untruth, constructed as a hook to prick waning interests; there’s not much doubt where you are when immersed in the baked-out beats and lugubrious atmosphere of the Nneka-featuring "Keep Me In Your Shake".
For someone who was once so forward-thinking, there’s a touch of the retro blues to Adrian Thaws. "Gangster Chronicles" is built on a beat so old it mirrors the George Semper lift Cypress Hill took for "Insane in the Brain", although Tricky at least delivers a surprise when he samples the vocal passage that Massive Attack’s "Unfinished Sympathy" is centered around (from John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Planetary Citizen"). The latter is a moment of amusement, perhaps born out of a beef with his old colleagues. Whatever the intent, it at least brightens up the turgid slog through the middle of this record, which features an aimless limp through sloshed, bluesy crooning ("I Had a Dream") and a misguided attempt at filtering the Middle Eastern conflict through the lens of a love story ("My Palestine Girl"). The latter is an unfortunate demonstration of the paucity of lyrical thought in this phase of Tricky’s career (“She’s close to God, I dribble like a dog”).
There’s not much on Adrian Thaws that distinguishes it from the direction Tricky has been heading over the past 15 years. This is a continuation of a mood he began etching out in song long ago, which he’s apparently either unwilling or unable to get away from, making it both the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him. It’s a curious place to be, trapped in an airless corner of his psyche, full of suggestive thoughts that could be pried open and interpreted in infinite ways. Sometimes it’s more direct than that; on "Why Don’t You", Tricky settles on asinine rock riffing and a lyric that completes the title with: “...go and get fucked.” It’s the sound of his world emptying out, where all nuance is nullified in favor of white-knuckle Audioslave riffing. Tricky’s played with rock before, of course, but "Why Don’t You" and the "Silly Games" cover that follows it are a nadir in terms of the inspiration he’s seeking. His process of filtering out the bad has failed him on Adrian Thaws, leaving an album that bears both his names but offers less of himself than ever before. | 2014-09-09T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2014-09-09T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | False Idols | September 9, 2014 | 4.8 | e6f0ebb1-05ce-40d9-8702-2fcd7bd0aa32 | Nick Neyland | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nick-neyland/ | null |
After branching off from Virginia folk act Pelt, banjo player Nathan Bowles has made a name for himself by tapping into mesmerizing possibilities of Appalachian-influenced drone. His new album, the sonically diverse Nansemond, is his best yet. | After branching off from Virginia folk act Pelt, banjo player Nathan Bowles has made a name for himself by tapping into mesmerizing possibilities of Appalachian-influenced drone. His new album, the sonically diverse Nansemond, is his best yet. | Nathan Bowles: Nansemond | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19919-nathan-bowles-nansemond/ | Nansemond | Beneath the simple, familiar melodies of traditional Appalachian music lies an elemental undercurrent. It’s easy—and fun—to stomp your feet to old-timey tunes, but when their circling figures are repeated at length, the catchy gradually becomes the hypnotic. Many musicians have recognized this potential and mined it brilliantly—think of John Fahey matching country-blues fingerpicking to Indian ragas, or the twangy held-tones of Henry Flynt’s "avant-garde hillbilly" style.
Early in their now 21-year career, Virginia band Pelt similarly gravitated toward the mesmerizing possibilities of Applachian-influenced drone. In 2006, they added banjo player Nathan Bowles, presumably because he shared that sensibility. That common approach subsequently shone through on his 2012 solo debut A Bottle, A Buckeye, and it’s even brighter on his follow-up, Nansemond. Its seven tracks aren’t all extended loops; a few are more succint songs with vocals, and there’s sonic variety everywhere. But the core of the album is a fascination with entrancing repetition.
In the best instances, Bowles sounds like he could play forever without boring himself or anyone listening. He attacks his strings boldly and sharply, yet he continually adds small variations and minute adjustments, viewing each iteration of a chord or phrase from a slightly different angle. This subtly-evolving consistency creates an intriguing blend of comfort and tension. You can settle your ears into Bowles’ grooves, or you can lean to the edge of your seat wondering what little shift will come next. Often, you can do both at the same time.
Bowles places his longest explorations at the beginning and end of Nansemond, and they serve as the album’s high points. "Sleepy Lake Bike Club" opens with a low, echoing tone and some deliberate chords, before launching into six minutes of energetic plucks and strums. Even though he hews to a form, Bowles intuitively feels his way around those melodic paces rather than dryly executing them. At the other end of Nansemond, "Golden Floaters/Hog Jank" is patient and halting in a way that puts you in the passenger seat next to Bowles, while the spry chords of "Sleepy Lake Tire Swing" escalate into a passage played so fast it feels maniacally possessed.
In between, Bowles offers a gruffly crooned ditty, a fiddle-heavy hoedown, and a folk piece that morphs into a rock journey with searing electric guitar from Charalambides’ Tom Carter. All of those strands are united by Bowles’ dedication to repetition, as well as his knack for making everything intensely percussive even when no drums are present. (Bowles was a drummer before he joined the more-traditional-sounding Pelt side project Black Twig Pickers, who convinced him to take up banjo.)
Bowles titled Nansemond after a near-extinct Indian tribe; he grew up next to a river in Virginia that adopted their name. The word represents lots of complex history, and one could surely make parallels between that textured legacy and the many nuances in Bowles’ music. But it’s also fitting to just think of this record as a musical river—a flowing body of work that’s dependably solid and rippling with variation. For Bowles, the rich potential of simple traditions is as crucial as the water that fills a stream. | 2014-11-19T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2014-11-19T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Paradise of Bachelors | November 19, 2014 | 7.2 | e6f3990b-e094-4f29-8e72-1204cb3806bb | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
On her second official LP, the rapper experiments with electronic textures and proves she’s nowhere close to exhausting the potential of her Southern rap roots. | On her second official LP, the rapper experiments with electronic textures and proves she’s nowhere close to exhausting the potential of her Southern rap roots. | Bbymutha: Sleep Paralysis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bbymutha-sleep-paralysis/ | Sleep Paralysis | Put bbymutha’s catalog on shuffle and get shrewd lessons on lousy lovers, tips for freaky sexcapades, and uplifting quotes for your mirror Post-its. In 2017, the video for her song “Rules” catapulted her to underground fame right from its breathless opening line: “You can’t give your pussy to a nigga who not used to getting pussy ’cause that pussy gon’ be everybody business.” Her unsparing candor resonated, earning her a cosign from Björk and a tour opening for Earl Sweatshirt. But for bbymutha, the way some of her early music was received felt at odds with what she intended. Speaking on “Rules” in a recent interview, she decried it as a “bad memory,” reflecting, as have other artists before her, on the paradox of Black pain being received as party music: “People really want you to turn up to your trauma with them.”
On her latest album, sleep paralysis, she insists on setting the terms of the turn up. Much has changed since she made “Rules.” She’s moved up from her grandma’s crumbling house in Chattanooga to her own place in Atlanta. And for the first time she’s released a record with the backing of a label, the New York-based indie outfit True Panther. sleep paralysis is a freewheeling and exuberant ride through grimy electronic music and dark, bass-heavy Southern rap—and it’s some of the most fun music she’s made to date.
She wrote the album in London, in between tour stops, and half the tracks echo sounds heard on British dancefloors, from skittering drum’n’bass to spooky dancehall. The oozing bassline and driving breakbeats of “Piss!” are busy enough to stand alone as an instrumental. But rather than get swallowed by the production (co-helmed by East London rapper and singer LYAM), bbymutha slides into the pockets of the beat, using her voice more like an instrument. It’s a weird and exciting start that gets weirder with the industrial booty bass of “head x shoulders.” Over buoyant 808s coated in the kind of instrumental debris that recalls the best of M.I.A., bbymutha, who turned a slight into her stage name, continues her mission of reappropriation by puffing up her chest to say she’s “proud to be a bastard.” The standout of her UK sojourn is “Lines,” a big-beat banger that uses a cocaine metaphor (“He wanna cut me like the lines on the dresser”) to confront a lover who’s not walking the walk.
But on the chaotic “Tony Hawk,” bbymutha’s own words get lost and her voice feels too much like an ornament in the production. So it’s refreshing to hear her get back to familiar territory in the album’s second half, where her lyrics shine and her growth as a rapper is clear. Mutant Academy’s resident producer Foisey channels Project Pat on “ghostface,” a menacing highlight that bleeds with passion as bbymutha rails against her opps, threatening to jump them with her kids. “final girl” plays with pacing and internal rhymes (“I watch bitches giggle, be tickled by my misfortune/I pull up and give abortions, might dabble in some extortion”) over a trap beat from the netherworld. On “Mutha Massacre” she taps into Tennessee horrorcore, painting a disturbingly vivid image of dragging a dead man by his genitalia. As fun as it is to hear her flex different styles, she hasn’t exhausted the potential of her Southern rap roots.
Vulnerability can be empowering but it can also be exploited; it’s tempting to believe that keeping things in is the only safe choice. On closing track “go!,” bbymutha rejects that defensive posture, choosing to open up about romantic attachment that slips into possessiveness and neediness. This music draws on a different kind of vulnerability: Where “Rules” was founded in the regret of a failed relationship, “go!” channels in the reckless abandon of a happy one. Bbymutha may not be able to control how her art is received, but she’s still willing to take the risk of disclosure. This time, she shows us that good, honest music doesn’t have to come from bad memories; there’s gold to be mined from happy ones too. | 2024-04-22T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-15T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rap | True Panther | April 22, 2024 | 7.7 | e6f4ea54-fbdb-4b6b-bc2b-b849d855b8bc | Jessica Kariisa | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jessica-kariisa/ | |
The Brooklyn group’s second album frames heavy questions in lovely, deceptively serene psych rock. | The Brooklyn group’s second album frames heavy questions in lovely, deceptively serene psych rock. | Olden Yolk: Living Theatre | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/olden-yolk-living-theatre/ | Living Theatre | Over half a century ago, the French theorist and actor Antonin Artaud wrote a book called The Theatre and Its Double. The book posited that great theater is a form of exorcism, and the stage is a space where spectators directly confront their fears and desires. This way of thinking about performance became the basis for an influential experimental-theater movement born in the streets of mid-century downtown New York called the Living Theatre, which also happens to be the title of the equally heady sophomore album from a Brooklyn-based group called Olden Yolk.
It’s hard to pull off a record with roots in an 81-year-old piece of critical theory and not leave listeners feeling like they’ve been bopped over the head with a cast-iron pan. Olden Yolk have big ideas and big dreams about what type of art they want to make, and for the most part, they execute in such a way that feels both strangely soothing and impossibly lovely. But that’s how all great psych rock should function: you get bamboozled by the apparent textural niceties and then get blindsided by the depth of the lyrics.
The opening song, “240D,” is a particularly compelling example of how this brand of trickery operates. The track lights up in sensual soft focus; resonant keys meander in and out of the frame, co-bandleaders Shane Butler and Caity Shaffer share vocal harmonies, and the percussion moves like stop-motion video of a flower wiggling its way out of the dirt at the beginning of spring. Just as you begin to get cozy within the song’s roomy atmospherics, the previously concealed lyrics become clear. “240D” is at its core a song about watching someone die and then living with the panic and trauma that follows. “You can’t deny what’s in your head/and your pleasant thoughts/can’t wake the dead,” Butler sings with the placidity of a cloudless sky.
On “Castor & Pollux,” Olden Yolk lean furthest into their psych proclivities. The sonics here narrowly dodge a very specific kind of tacky 1960s sensibility: Vintage synths speckle the song’s horizon in paisley and gold, while a combination of strings and flute delicately arpeggiate atop what feels like a pile of velvet. “Violent Days,” on the other hand, shows the band at its most aqueous. A warm bath of electronics boils over from beneath the song’s surface; meanwhile, jazz-inflected percussion and guitar pull you under by surprise.
Then there is “Cotton & Cane,” a song that sounds as if, say, a Jeff Tweedy or David Berman disciple defected to the teachings of Procol Harum. Deceptively pleasurable in early listens, the song is about the complicated death of Butler’s father. Like Artaud and the thespians of the Living Theatre years ago, Butler very publicly summons the dead in his song. His seance comes in the form of blinding white light, gas-station lighters, and unrelenting streams. It’s a vivid and terrifying series of images, which might be part of what makes this record such a mesmeric listen. Death blooms up from the bottom of a nearby abyss on Living Theatre, and it feels about as serene as you’d fear. | 2019-05-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-05-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Trouble in Mind | May 20, 2019 | 7.2 | e6f98912-4d31-4640-bc3f-b4287bf47d12 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
Tim Kasher's latest record as the Good Life is another pseudo-concept record on which the Cursive leader examines fleeting fictional moments and crafts big stories, from varying narrational perspectives. | Tim Kasher's latest record as the Good Life is another pseudo-concept record on which the Cursive leader examines fleeting fictional moments and crafts big stories, from varying narrational perspectives. | The Good Life: Help Wanted Nights | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10648-help-wanted-nights/ | Help Wanted Nights | Tim Kasher's 2004 record as the Good Life, Album of the Year, begins with a dive-bar meeting: "The first time that I met her, I was throwing up in the ladies' room stall. She asked me if I needed anything. I said, 'I think I spilled my drink.'" The year of the record's title, and its toll on one particular relationship, was AotY's narrative frame; its 12 tracks flipped by like a time-lapse calendar, from April to April. Gimmicky? Sure. But it worked, by playing to Kasher's interpretive strengths: magnifying the heartrending minutae of romantic relationships, and rendering them gracefully and with a sense of humor.
Compare AotY's opening to that of Kasher's latest Good Life excursion, Help Wanted Nights: "Things are good/ We should take a Polaroid/ A memento, before the moment's destroyed." The preservationist similarities show that Kasher's still interested in examining fleeting, fictional moments and crafting big stories from varying narrational perspectives. But this time, he's trying to capture a world of others' lives in vignette form, fostered by a screenplay he's written that gives the album its title and inspiration. Last April, Kasher told Pitchfork that the film documents "roughly a week in a bar in a small town where a stranger's car breaks down... he fraternizes with the regulars, getting too wrapped up in their sordid lives."
Two consecutive concept albums dealing with boozers and their second homes isn't anything new for Hold Steady fans, but Kasher's mode of storytelling diverges from Craig Finn's in at least one way: He's less concerned with creating character archetypes that allow listeners to fill in the gaps with their own experiences than he is in playing with language. Or, as Kasher himself said, "I tried to focus less on narrative and more on those big ideas."
In keeping with another well-established narrative, Kasher's finished screenplay took him from Omaha to Los Angeles, and Help Wanted Nights often trades in the countrypolitan indie-folk toward which Kasher's pal Conor also moved, especially on the slick, brushed-drum amble of "Picket Fence", "Your Share of Men", and "Playing Dumb". Elsewhere, the sleek, echoing guitars and spacious arrangements lend the record a shimmering lilt not too dissimilar from Rilo Kiley's sole Saddle Creek spin The Execution of All Things. "Keely Aimee", in particular, breezes past with brisk guitars and a gently funky pulse augmenting Kasher's cautious optimism: "Keely, I love your suffering/ Like gravity loves a stumbling drunk."
An authentic move toward country also means that lyrical puns and extended metaphors dealing with love gone wrong are in full bloom. Help's title is explained in "A Little Bit More", when Kasher inquires: "You flipped the sign in your window/ But baby, are you really closed?". During "Share" he offers the solicitation, "You're a fool for the wounded/ I'm a man in need of bandages/ So wrap me up and take me home," and on "You Don't Feel Like Home to Me", he indulges in melancholy: "He sees her face/ In the highway signs/ In the traffic lights/ And she's turning red."
Often referred to as Kasher's side project, and initiated as a dumping ground for his non-Cursive material, The Good Life has taken on an independent existence as an outlet for his more ambitious ideas. Help Wanted Nights finally finds him challenging himself again, imposing constraints and seeing how well he can work within them. | 2007-09-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2007-09-10T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Saddle Creek | September 10, 2007 | 7 | e7057751-b09c-47ab-be59-7a87f2a2413a | Eric Harvey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-harvey/ | null |
Eleven years after Music for Insomnia, Stevens and his stepfather reunite on a collection of warm, improvisatory synth-wave epics; intimate and unvarnished, they double as a testament to the power of found family. | Eleven years after Music for Insomnia, Stevens and his stepfather reunite on a collection of warm, improvisatory synth-wave epics; intimate and unvarnished, they double as a testament to the power of found family. | Sufjan Stevens / Lowell Brams: Aporia | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sufjan-stevens-lowell-brams-aporia/ | Aporia | Is there a class of family member more roundly despised than the stepparent? “Parents are Hallmark-sacrosanct,” wrote Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts, yet stepparents are seen as “interlopers, self-servers, poachers, pollutants, and child molesters.” Many a fairy tale hinges on the machinations of a wicked stepmother. A long-running horror franchise is called simply The Stepfather, title in red on the posters, oozing blood. To be a stepparent is a thankless task freighted with centuries of cultural baggage; it takes a special sort of person.
To hear Sufjan Stevens tell it, Lowell Brams—his stepfather, immortalized in 2015’s Carrie & Lowell—is just such a person. As a very young child, Stevens spent summers in the Oregon home his mother, Carrie, shared with Brams, who proved a steady, soothing presence in a childhood of unremitting tumult. Years later, grieving the loss of his mother, Stevens recalled those summers as a “season of hope.” Brams recognized Stevens’ nascent talent, and he fed it—gave the boy mixtapes, introduced him to Bob Dylan, bought him his first keyboard and 4-track recorder. In 1999, when Stevens recorded his first album, Brams founded a record label to put it out. Now, with Brams retiring from the label, he and Stevens release Aporia, a synth-wave epic testifying to the love they’ve shared.
Culled from jam sessions recorded over the past decade, this is a looser record than we’re used to from Stevens. These songs have an improvisatory feel that has been refined and polished, though not to a digital shine. The mood throughout is warm and familiar, like something from a half-remembered childhood Sunday morning, blocky gray video-game remote in hand. He credits Brams, with his “great ear and great instincts,” for capturing choice moments from their raw collaboration, like the warm wind that closes “The Red Desert” or the solemn strings that dart across “Determined Outcome.” Brams, for his part, has been bashful in promoting the record, saying, “It’s unusual to have someone with little or no talent collaborating with someone who’s got truckloads like Sufjan.” Stevens, though, has always cut a unique figure as a rock star, prioritizing his privacy and his personal relationships while pursuing offbeat, unshowy opportunities. He never capitalized on his moment of Oscars glory; he continues, instead, to make meaningful music with the people who’ve loved him longest.
Though Aporia’s air is one of freewheeling collaboration, with many an old friend making an appearance—check those swooping Cat Martino vocal lines on “What It Takes” and “Conciliation”—there is a careful architecture to the record, a structure not unlike that of a science fiction soundtrack. The calm yoga-retreat swell of opening track “Ousia” builds quickly to a palpable sense of quest, in the electronic pulse of “Afterworld Alliance,” and danger, rippling high and insecure beneath the foreboding bass synth of “Conciliation.” The closest analogue would be a John Carpenter score, or perhaps one of the sprawling, crowd-sourced Homestuck soundtracks. Brams and Stevens were smart to seek out a unifying thread in the instruments of Dave Smith, the pioneering synthesizer designer. Smith’s Tempest drums and Prophet synths lend a warm, analog consistency to songs with an otherwise diverse palette—fairy-tale lightness in “Glorious You,” saw-toothed grit in “Matronymic.”
Though Stevens is famously versatile—he played nearly two dozen instruments on Illinois, including four types of recorder—he once aspired to become an author, even earning an MFA in fiction from the New School, and his storytelling remains among the most compelling aspects of his work. This is to say that there is a sense of something lost when he’s not writing lyrics; hardly a fair critique, I know, of an almost entirely instrumental record. The titles, at least, serve as guides for the listener to create a story of their own making. They call on Greek philosophy (“The Lydian Ring,” “Agathon”), unsung composers (“For Raymond Scott”), and SAT vocabulary (“Ataraxia,” “Misology,” “Palinodes”), planting flickering neon signs for listeners curious enough to venture down Wikipedia rabbit holes. When Stevens does sing two verses’ worth of real, human words, nearly half an hour in, on “The Runaround,” the effect is almost shocking, a sharp tug back to the realm of language.
The past several years have been a time of great upheaval in Stevens’ life. He has weathered tremendous personal tragedy and undergone a very public recovery. He has ascended to a level of stardom both stratospheric (the Oscars, Coachella) and cultic (the young queer people who have gone out and tattooed wasps on their arms) while embracing spontaneity and close connection. There is something profoundly lovely about seeing Stevens safe in such a strange, adventurous effort, supported by Brams and the rest of his found family.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Electronic | Asthmatic Kitty | March 30, 2020 | 6.8 | e711d483-ab7d-4418-bfd6-9cb3410a22b8 | Peyton Thomas | https://pitchfork.com/staff/peyton-thomas/ | |
Behind their overt shoegaze and grunge revivalism, the Houston rock band finds careful guitar melodies, sensitive vocal deliveries, and earnest earworms. | Behind their overt shoegaze and grunge revivalism, the Houston rock band finds careful guitar melodies, sensitive vocal deliveries, and earnest earworms. | Narrow Head: 12th House Rock | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/narrow-head-12th-house-rock/ | 12th House Rock | They may only have a debut under their belt, but the sepia-toned sludge rockers in Narrow Head have perfected the disaffected pull quote. “I don’t even think I like shoegaze,” frontman Jacob Duarte told the Dallas Observer in July. “I need aggressiveness.” As any passing observer of the grunge genre wars knows, the surest way to pin a label to your band is to vehemently deny affiliation. But even without the half-hearted attempts to reject categorization, the Houston group is practically built from ’90s pastiche—it’s in the bleached hair, the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts, the passing references to Hum. At first blush, it can seem like Narrow Head are providing a paint-by-numbers guide to their references for the uninitiated; your appreciation of their music will likely correlate with your tolerance for faux film grain and song titles like “Emmadazey.” But the band’s Run for Cover debut, 12th House Rock, manages to surpass the trappings of a Chapterhouse cover record, cobbling impressive hooks and earnest earworms out of Creation Records nostalgia.
Narrow Head manifests the listless ennui of those bygone Brits in a different tenor; where Ride and Slowdive reached for glassy delay and shimmering cymbal hits, guitarist William Menjivar traffics in dense, scorched-earth reverb. The title track opens with a chord progression so heavily processed that it becomes almost indistinguishable from the wailing feedback; “Hard to Swallow” matches that pugnacity with blunt blasts from drummer Carson Wilcox. The screeching, echoing amplifier gain exudes a thick layer of grime that lingers throughout the record, forming a pointed introduction to the slow-burning rhythms of “Crankcase” and a cleanse between the circuitous hypnotism of “Yer’ Song” and the twinkling counter-melodies of “Ponderosa Sun Club.” More than anything, the sounds of plugging in and warming up are an anti-status symbol, a gesture to the band’s slouching nihilism. Despite the album’s brighter moments, like the triumphant guitar solos that open “Stuttering Stanley,” a pervasive darkness seeps through.
Then there’s Duarte’s voice, a wispy whine that bends and molds to the record’s variously downtrodden moods, revealing a surprising range. His opening words on the bridge of “Yer’ Song” are stretched and slowed to a leaden pace, as if tracked underwater. But elsewhere, as on the meandering “Nodding Off” and the comparatively sparse “Wastrel,” his voice can take on an unexpectedly romantic tenor, reaching for gentle, whispered falsettos. Despite the band’s best efforts to affect a sense of disinterested malaise, his default mode—a pitched, nasally resonance—betrays a forthright and vulnerable emotional core. Carried by Duarte’s moody, elongated vowels, tossed-off lyrical cynicism is reinvigorated. It’s one thing to shrug off the meaningless of everyday existence and adopt an outcast mentality; Narrow Head lean into that pessimism with purpose. “Wake me up when you leave,” he sings flatly on “Hard to Swallow,” a line that might otherwise come across as huffy teenage exasperation if not matched with the anxious, shredded screams of its bridge, which imply a despair deeper than passing tedium.
Behind the overt shoegaze and grunge revivalism of 12th House Rock, Narrow Head find a balance of form and function. For every predictably dense riff over lyrics about getting high, there’s a carefully constructed guitar melody, a particularly sensitive vocal delivery, a bright and buoyant bassline. “Evangeline Dream,” the album’s gently warbling closer, exemplifies these reinventions on a classic form. Written about Duarte’s late sister, the song builds layers of guitar noodling and muted drums, its progressions resolving naturally in a minor key evocative of Chris Bell’s melancholic melodies. Duarte’s breathy croon reflects his lyrical fantasies—“Evangeline, she’s a dream/I’m always dreaming so she’s never alone,” he sings, his voice winsome and starry-eyed. It’s a heartfelt moment of earnestness that puts the preceding disillusionment in stark relief. Peeling back the surface-level nostalgia, 12th House Rock, captures a wistfulness that surpasses mere mimicry.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | September 8, 2020 | 6.7 | e7122b4b-3276-48a3-b531-85af40f75dd1 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
On their first LP following another bout of lineup changes, this Gothenburg band pushes against shoegaze confinement with songs meant to feel good. | On their first LP following another bout of lineup changes, this Gothenburg band pushes against shoegaze confinement with songs meant to feel good. | Westkust: Westkust | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/westkust-westkust/ | Westkust | Sweden’s Westkust have always existed at the brink of annihilation. Almost immediately after forming a decade ago, they endured a series of tumultuous lineup changes before solidifying in 2011 as a five-piece, including two members of fellow Gothenburg rockers Makthaverskan. Together, they released the Junk EP, a grunge-tinged surf-rock record, and their fuzzy, post-punk-laced debut LP, Last Forever. But just as that record earned international attention, Westkust faded into the background. Both Makthaverskan members departed, leaving the rest of the band to struggle to finish Westkust, the record they started in 2016.
In an almost tragic comedy of errors, Westkust’s release also coincides with the dissolution of the label that was the heartbeat of Gothenburg’s indie community, Luxury. Born of this Sisyphean struggle, Westkust is a testament to resilience built from years of restraint and frustration. It bursts with brightness, even in its haziest moments.
With their first full-length, Westkust were cast as shoegaze revivalists, due more to broad signifiers like co-ed vocalists and gauzy reverb than to the actual songs. The tunes, after all, featured propulsive basslines, sky-high chord progressions, and drumming patterns that owed more to the Ramones than Ride. On Westkust, the band aims to break out of this premature categorization. “Swebeach” opens the record with a massive guitar riff that cuts through the air like a garage-rock fire alarm before crashing headlong into the punk rhythm that anchors the song. The guitar returns to add a brief, shiny solo, but the speedy tendencies of the drum and bass win out, immediately dispatching those shoegaze notions.
These songs feel self-contained. When a particularly feedback-heavy note does take hold, it soon gives way to a neat pop structure—melodies find their resolution, and songs often end by mirroring their beginning. Even textures borrowed from shoegaze, like the twinkling guitars and tambourine hits of “Rush,” cohabitate with echoing post-punk basslines and uptempo beats. Westkust play with such palpable enthusiasm that they manage to evoke the adolescent excitement of musical discovery.
This feeling owes in large part to singer Julia Bjernelind, whose voice melts into the songs while guiding their melodies. On previous records, where Gustav Andersson shared vocal duties, their songs were split between his brash, off-kilter speak-singing and Bjernelind’s honeyed crooning. But here, she uses her voice as yet another layer, stretching out to harmonize with the instruments rather than fight them. On “Adore,” a sunny pop track, her inflection shifts to match the reverb-washed guitar: “You know that I’ve been told/You’re kissed by the sun,” she sings. Without Andersson to fight against the melody, these tracks go down easy. “We wanted to make songs that just feel good to listen to,” Bjernelind has confirmed.
At times, Westkust feels so good it threatens to dissolve into the background. “Daylight,” which starts with a strumming pattern reminiscent of Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me,” establishes a slow, swirling rhythm and, unlike the rest of the record, stays the path. Add in Bjernelind’s lilting, downtrodden vocal, and the song becomes hypnotically dull and familiar. But the warmth of a kick drum shakes off the fog on “Cotton Skies.” As soon as Westkust faded, they’ve returned in full ebullience. | 2019-03-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-03-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Run for Cover / Luxury | March 7, 2019 | 7.2 | e712fa22-834c-49cb-8593-706db77e9290 | Arielle Gordon | https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/ | |
This lost Prefab Sprout album, previously issued as a Paddy McAloon solo LP, finds the singer receding into a vivid dream world unlike anything in his catalog. | This lost Prefab Sprout album, previously issued as a Paddy McAloon solo LP, finds the singer receding into a vivid dream world unlike anything in his catalog. | Prefab Sprout: I Trawl the Megahertz | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/prefab-sprout-i-trawl-the-megahertz/ | I Trawl the Megahertz | Deterioration inspires all of Prefab Sprout’s major works. The English pop group’s breakthrough single, the shimmery 1984 ballad “When Love Breaks Down,” was about weakening ties and how “absence makes the heart lose weight.” A few years later, with “The King of Rock and Roll,” they paired whimsical fanfare from super-producer Thomas Dolby with the withering reflections of a one-hit wonder coming to terms with his obsolescence. It remains their biggest hit in their native United Kingdom.
As the band rose to minor fame throughout the ’80s, frontman Paddy McAloon receded from the spotlight. He was always ambivalent about his public image, and now his health was starting to fail him as well. In interviews, he’s spoken about struggles with Meniere's disease, tinnitus, shingles, eczema, and temporary blindness stemming from retina detachment—an affliction most commonly associated with boxers, or anybody who’s been regularly, repeatedly punched in the face.
The surgery was successful, but it forced McAloon, then in his forties, to find new ways to do his job. In recovery, he was unable to sit upright or lean forward, and so he spent much of his time supine. Unable to read or look at screens, he turned to audiobooks and radio broadcasts for inspiration. Disjointed sentences stuck in his head—“I’m 49 and divorced,” “Your daddy loves you very much; he just doesn’t want to live with us anymore”—and they started forming a loose narrative. Soon, he began hearing a sad, gorgeous melody accompanying it: flugelhorns, clarinets, cellos. When he was fully recovered, he brought the idea to life as a 22-minute spoken word and orchestral piece called “I Trawl the Megahertz” narrated by an American stockbroker named Yvonne Connors.
The way Paddy McAloon operates as an artist belies logic. Following the chronology of his career and separating the facts from mythology quickly becomes impossible. Entire albums get scrapped; old songs find their way onto new projects; stories seem too good to be true. If he had never released I Trawl the Megahertz, it might have been one of these legends: a work unlike anything else in his catalog that denies all of his strengths yet feels almost autobiographical. Newly remastered and reissued as a Prefab Sprout album—it was previously released as a McAloon solo LP in 2003 and largely ignored by both critics and the public—it now stands as one of the peaks of his strange, brilliant career.
The album consists of two movements: the title track and an eight-part, mostly instrumental accompaniment that depicts a businessman escaping to the forest. It features McAloon’s voice in just one track, and his words are important. “I am lost,” he sings softly, longing to abandon the obligations associated with his career (which McAloon soon did) and grow a long, silver beard (which he also did). From a songwriter who always aspired to be a craftsman more than a heart-on-his-sleeve confessionalist, the words sound newly vulnerable. But as personal as it may seem, the decision to release Megahertz as a solo project was less artistic than commercial, as McAloon worried how fans might respond to this sweeping collection of long-form compositions.
Megahertz doesn’t just stand apart in McAloon’s discography; it has few pop music analogs. Instead, it feels more of a piece with the dreamy, ambitious films from the era like Punch-Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As with those works, the music finds power in merging the ordinary—medical procedures, traffic, bureaucracy—with the extraordinary. Its opening words forecast a hazy origin story, followed by poetic reflections on love, trauma, and aging. “In a chamber of my heart sits an accountant,” Connors narrates, over what sounds like the closing score to some kind of cosmic Western. “He is frowning and waving red paper at me.”
As the orchestra swells, the narrative loops back and disintegrates. At one point, Connors intones, “Forgive me, I am sleepwalking,” and the music seems to dream along with her. McAloon says he chose Connors to recite his words because he wanted to make an album from which he could escape, led by a voice wholly distinct from his own. He recorded Connors’ vocals in a hotel room in London to get a feel for the material. When they attempted to replicate it in a studio, the magic had vanished. In the end, they returned to that initial tape, editing out the air conditioner buzz between words and making McAloon’s most labor-intensive project—string arrangements, horn charts, recurring motifs—also a kind of happy accident.
An album that aims to reflect the fragmented, mysterious way we process memory, Megahertz also forecasts how McAloon would evade nostalgia and evolve in the 21st century. Since its initial release, he’s only put out two albums—one, a previously shelved collection about the healing power of music, and another, a contractually obligated set of more traditional Sprout songs. His health problems have all but assured that he’ll never perform live again, and his public appearances have been rare. Along the way, Megahertz has lost none of its mystical power. At one point, McAloon reminds us of the real world that lies beyond our fantasies and pop songs. “Trains are late, doctors are breaking bad news,” Connors sighs. “But I am living in a lullaby.” I Trawl the Megahertz is its own kind of dream, where time slows down and the world ahead seems magnificent and new. | 2019-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-03-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Sony UK | March 23, 2019 | 8.5 | e717bdec-376e-4e0a-8464-85c9d28ad767 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
Channeling krautrock’s philosophical legacy along with its repetitive grooves, the Baltimore duo’s second album aims for nothing less than political and personal liberation. | Channeling krautrock’s philosophical legacy along with its repetitive grooves, the Baltimore duo’s second album aims for nothing less than political and personal liberation. | Wume: Towards the Shadow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/wume-towards-the-shadow/ | Towards the Shadow | The German groups of the early ’70s that came to be called krautrock formed in an era of political instability. They sought to transcend capitalism’s everyday oppression, and their country’s fascist past, in expansive sounds aimed at personal and political emancipation. The Baltimore duo Wume—a reference to Wümme, the hometown of the German group Faust—draw heavily on that legacy. Their blissfully mechanistic, repetitive music is an impressive amalgamation of the array of sounds pioneered by a number of trailblazing German groups.
On their new album Towards the Shadow they also explicitly embrace krautrock’s philosophical and political heritage. Though their debut, Maintain, was largely instrumental, here drummer and vocalist April Camlin sings on almost every song, alternating between dreamlike imagery and sloganeering to engage complex ideas about power and oppression.
“Welcome your shadow. Repression serves no one, and limits our freedom,” Camlin sings on “Shadow,” in one of the most dramatic examples of this opposition. Her singing anchors the band’s complex, polyrhythmic groove, and the power of her vocals is heightened by their sudden appearance halfway through the song, after a lengthy exposition that builds tension through increasingly layered synth patterns. The duo employs a similar tactic on “Pool of Light,” which centers on pointillistic player piano and manic, backbeat-heavy drums. Four minutes into the piece, after the piano cycles through variations that recall Steve Reich, Camlin recites, “I’m losing my shadow, shaking my shadow/I’m wearing my shadow.” The unexpected arrival of her voice makes it all the more potent.
Perhaps not since Fugazi or Stereolab has a band addressed the failings of capitalism and its effects on the human psyche in such direct terms: “The hierarchy of value is a construct put in place to check you,” Camlin sings on album closer “GenSeq,” her words doubled up and delayed over pulsing, low synthesizer tones. “What do you value? What do you prioritize?” The lyrics of “Functionary” are a recitation of a portion of Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, published in 1955, which seeks to connect Marxist and Freudian theory. Given the contemporary cultural crisis, these ideas are as relevant as ever—a point driven home by the bluntness of Wume’s lyrics.
Towards the Shadow is at its best when the music reflects the subject matter’s balance of heady complexity and emotional urgency. The majority of the songs are written in odd time signatures, but the effect is largely thrilling rather than obtuse. Synthesist and keyboard player Albert Schatz is a master of skewed melody, injecting each song with intricate, subtle details that seem not only natural but engrossing. On the instrumental “Ravel” he takes simple melodic fragments and twists them into different shapes, providing several layers of counterpoint for each iteration. Camlin’s drumming is ecstatic but precise, arriving at a midpoint between Can’s Jaki Liebezeit and Neu!’s Klaus Dinger.
Camlin typically delivers her lyrics in a chant-like monotone, and when the music becomes too minimal, it can sound one-dimensional. The seven-minute “Functionary,” the album’s longest track, especially falls prey to this, as Schatz’s synths fail to enliven the highly academic text. The most engaging moments on Towards the Shadow edge closest to pop, such as the gauzy synth melody on “It’s Okay” and the Eno-esque vocals of “Shadow.” It’s one thing to theorize liberation. But at their best, in their most ecstatic passages, Wume come close to bringing it to life. | 2018-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Northern Spy | November 16, 2018 | 7.5 | e71dd967-e9d6-4935-a21a-161fefd6f8cb | Jonathan Williger | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonathan-williger/ | |
The experimental musician continues their path of dematerialization on a mostly placid set characterized by warm synths, steady tremolo pulses, and an air of unease. | The experimental musician continues their path of dematerialization on a mostly placid set characterized by warm synths, steady tremolo pulses, and an air of unease. | 7038634357: Neo Seven | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7038634357-neo-seven/ | Neo Seven | Neo Gibson invented a world and proceeded to flood it. In their antediluvian phase—around 2015, when they swapped the early alias Neo Petal for 7038634357, their phone number—they infused techno and hardstyle with the breaking-glass samples and cinematic effects of the era’s experimental club music. By 2019’s stormy Swallow, the drums had vanished, but trance’s outline remained visible beneath waves of distorted arpeggios. Fast forward to 2021’s murky, sonar-pinging Permanest: Its nine turbid tracks might as well have been recorded inside a diving bell sunk deep in the seafloor. It’s as if the broad sweep of the discography was meant to play out like Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic.
Taken together, Gibson’s dozen or so releases form a continuum. Little by little, from record to record, their music’s structure has undergone a gradual process of dematerialization—beats dissolved, synths turned to liquid, edges melted into a muted ambient slurry. Across this long arc, Gibson has seemed to ask: How much pressure can you apply to a sound without rendering it unrecognizable? How much damage can you pile on without destroying the beauty of a thing?
Their latest release, and first for Blank Forms Editions, the publishing arm of the New York arts nonprofit, is a particularly placid—well, mostly placid—snapshot from deep in the octopus’ garden. Neo Seven is consistent in mood with last year’s Oval-esque Electric, which paired gently glitching sinewave etudes with sweetly robotic singing. But here, those slightly chilly computer tones have been replaced by warm synths with a steady tremolo pulse.
Like its predecessor, Neo Seven is less a collection of songs than a theme and variations. Virtually every track utilizes the same set of chords and the same synth patch—a soft and wheezy sound that might be an ’80s Casio’s idea of a flute, with varying degrees of digital abrasion applied. In the opening “Winded” and “Everytime,” the synths are topped by a faint corona of distortion—an almost crinkly sound, suggesting the muffled high end on a lossy MP3. “Acolyte” is shrill and garbled, with all the bass filtered out and the treble frequencies foaming with static. “Square Heart,” in contrast, leaves just a faint dusting of dirt, playing up the uncanny smoothness of the digitally processed voice singing dulcet cybernetic lullabies.
Beneath the seeming stasis of the music, sneaky metamorphoses are afoot, though you need to pay close attention to pick up on them: The differences between tracks, and the developments within them, are so minute as to be almost unnoticeable. “Winded” begins with an undulating gust of wind that gradually takes on tone color, like a darkened countryside soaking up the dawn. In “Overbraid,” trance gates take the place of the previous tracks’ rhythmic tremolo, perforating held chords with tiny silences. In “Square Heart,” sub-bass pulses cut against the bobbing rhythm, creating an unsettling counterpoint whose effects are more intuited than perceived. That subtle air of unease is central to this music: Like Burial, Gibson makes music that feels simple on the surface—wistfully nostalgic, with imagistic titles and childlike themes—yet harbors more ambiguous emotions in its hidden depths. (Gibson’s self-presentation, often appearing with spoons stuck to their face like some surreal form of chain mail, doesn’t reveal much.)
Sometimes the unease isn’t subtle at all. Halfway through the opening track, just as you’ve made peace with the idea that no major developments are in store, Gibson thrusts a new sound into the mix. It’s bolder, thick and resonant, like a titanium bow scraping across a ship’s hull. The chord fades to silence, and then, bam: It returns as a massively overdriven blast of digital distortion, a blackened juggernaut of Ben Frost proportions—grinding, serrated, throwing sparks. The leap in decibels is enough to send you lunging for the volume control. The same trick happens again in the closing “Perfect Night,” where a placid chord explodes into ear-splitting noise. The din continues until the very end, when Gibson’s lonely robot voice rises from the depths once more—a goodnight kiss, a benediction. These shifts don’t so much break the mood as intensify it, opening new dimensions for hard-to-define feelings to take shape. | 2023-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-08-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Blank Forms | August 2, 2023 | 7.4 | e7213b93-2f34-427c-b549-27a06f9aa124 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
On the New Zealand singer-songwriter’s fourth album, spare acoustic arrangements make deceptively simple containers for songs charged with memory and mysticism. | On the New Zealand singer-songwriter’s fourth album, spare acoustic arrangements make deceptively simple containers for songs charged with memory and mysticism. | Maxine Funke: Seance | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maxine-funke-seance/ | Seance | There are times when Maxine Funke’s songs feel so light, it seems as if a heavy sigh could blow them away. But hold that breath, and her curious, knotty guitar quickly takes hold. Bring them on a walk, and the songs take on a kaleidoscopic quality as the shifting improvisations of birds, neighbors, bugs, and traffic peek through her murmured melodies.
On Seance, Funke’s fourth album, the New Zealand singer-songwriter charges her songs with the energy of open air just before a heavy thunderstorm. She accompanies herself on the guitar and makes use of a synthetic rhythm once, laying a sparse looping beat as the foundation to the meander of “Moody Relish.” There is a constant sense that something is about to happen, and to that end, Funke’s taut songs are anticlimactic. That tension, however, translates to a rare escape to a safe outpost for reflection on a vast plane of uncertainty, where recollections are richly bittersweet.
Much of Seance feels dedicated to making quiet spaces for memory. In “Homage,” she follows a spiraling route, lobbing questions about who could replace a departed lover—then asking who would ask the same of her absence. “Anzac Day,” meanwhile, nods to a holiday commemorating war casualties in Australia and New Zealand. But Funke takes a different approach by asking to remember conscientious objectors, honoring the courage of following through on a moral conviction despite the potential for ostracization and shame.
Concrete memories can be resurrecting forces, but so, too, can the abstractions of everyday details. As Funke recalls a breakup via tea trays and slammed doors on “Quiet Shore,” her short, rippling guitar part inches along with the fuzz and single-mindedness of a caterpillar. It turns hypnotic as Funke uses her acoustic guitar to amble over stray notes and fleeting passages.
Funke renders her scenes briefly, with the thin saturation of watercolor paints. On “Fairy Baby,” she illustrates a crepuscular beach horizon in a gliding lilt. She invokes the wine-dark sea, a Homeric characterization defined not by color, but by depth: “mysterious, hypnotic, dangerous,” as Mary Norris described in her 2019 book Greek to Me. Mysticism glimmers between Funke’s strokes, as in “Lucky Penny,” or in “Fairy Baby”’s mention of haruspication: divination through the entrails of animal sacrifices.
Funke saves her best for last with “Goodbye,” where she clarifies the difference between shyness and justified reservation—in a sense, remembering herself. “I’m not shrinking,” she insists, “It’s just you’re looking down at me from such a lofty height.” Instead, she’s immersed in her world, taking in portraiture by day and history books by night. But even assured introverts yearn for the tenderness of feeling understood on their own terms: “I like to be noticed/I wish to be seen,” Funke sings, a simple admission that can sometimes feel impossible to articulate.
Seance is Funke’s shortest record by a wide margin, but its slighter stature plays to all of its strengths. It slips away all too quickly, like so many memories.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-28T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | A Colourful Storm | July 28, 2021 | 7.8 | e7283cbf-954a-42b5-9c74-e238803308e6 | Allison Hussey | https://pitchfork.com/staff/allison-hussey/ | |
The original studio version of goth’s transcendent standard finally gets reissued alongside three songs that show just how quickly the band progressed. | The original studio version of goth’s transcendent standard finally gets reissued alongside three songs that show just how quickly the band progressed. | Bauhaus: The Bela Session | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bauhaus-the-bela-session/ | The Bela Session | Everyone knows “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” For decades, it has been a staple of dorm-room posters and knockoff T-shirts and Halloween mixtapes. It has been covered by Massive Attack, Sepultura, and even Chvrches. It is a metonym for goth. But the “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” that has become canonical is not the original “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” The best-known version—the one enshrined in the 1985 singles anthology, Bauhaus 1979-1983—comes from 1982’s Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape, a compendium of early live performances. For the 1998 greatest-hits collection Crackle, Beggars Banquet stitched together the “Tomb Raider Version” from outtakes and live recordings. The band never approved it and refers to it instead as the “Frankenstein version.”
Bauhaus recorded their first version on January 26, 1979, in their first studio session, and released it that August on London’s Small Wonder records in an initial pressing of 5,000. It’s been out of print for years, though a scratchy vinyl rip did hit YouTube in 2009. Its re-release now on Los Angeles’ Leaving Records, in anticipation of the band’s 40th anniversary, marks its first official vinyl reissue. Leaving, a Stones Throw affiliate, normally puts out foggy-headed beat music, spiritual jazz, and starry-eyed new-age cassettes; it’s hardly a place you’d expect to find the dark princes of death rock. But the backstory here is remarkably simple: Leaving’s owner, Matthew McQueen, aka Matthewdavid, is a longtime Bauhaus fan married to the producer Diva Dompé, the oldest daughter of Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins.
While “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is Bauhaus’ most iconic song, it is also something of an outlier in their catalog. Nearly ten minutes long and often as wispy as cobwebs, it’s a world away from the surging, serrated post-punk of their 1980 debut, In the Flat Field. Its lean, skeletal form sounds even less like the increasingly opulent art-rock mutations of their later albums. The original version reinforces its uniqueness. The arrangement is similar to that of the Press the Eject version, but everything here feels more vivid. The drums are crisper, the dub delay more pronounced, the vacuum of empty space around everything more absolute. Freed from the murk of the live recording, the Jamaican influence behind the song’s springy drumbeat leaps to the fore. The clanging guitar suggests that Bauhaus were probably listening to the same reggae records as the Slits when they recorded their debut, Cut, the same year.
The dub influence is even more pronounced on “Harry,” a punky reggae tune later released on the B-side of the 1982 EP, Kick in the Eye. Like the other songs on this reissue, all recorded during that inaugural session, it’s largely a curio. “Bite My Hip” is a chugging, unceremonious blueprint for the 1983 single “Lagartija Nick.” “Boys,” later re-recorded for the B-side of the original “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” single, shows the band’s fondness for Brian Eno’s early solo albums in the dry room treatment and queasy vocal tone. The previously unreleased “Some Faces” might as well be the work of a pub-rock band. While it’s nice to have these songs available, they serve largely as reminders of how far Bauhaus soon traveled from their origins—and how distinct “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” still sounds.
What is it that makes “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” so enduring? There’s its dead-simple descending bassline; the too-bright guitars, flashing like mica and then rainbows; Peter Murphy's imagistic doggerel and bark-at-the-moon howl. And then there’s its subject, a B-movie actor made famous by his role in 1931’s Dracula but already dead for 22 years when Bauhaus set foot in the studio. “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” isn’t really about Lugosi, but it wouldn’t have been the same without him, either. Invoking the actor’s name as synonymous with his roles, the song inherits his B-movie legacy and even the tabloid spectacle of his death. Lugosi was famously buried in a Dracula cape against his wishes; Bauhaus assumed that moth-eaten mantle.
Yet “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” transcends its tawdry, tongue-in-cheek iconography—never mind lines like “The virginal brides file past his tomb/Strewn with time’s dead flowers/Bereft in deathly bloom.” With a climax so stormy that Edward Bulwer-Lytton himself would have approved, the song inches right up to the border of camp and gazes longingly at the other side. It’s a remarkable feat that only adds to the song’s singular qualities. After all these years, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” sounds unlike anything else. One night in January 1979, Bauhaus ventured into the bat cave and came out with a unicorn. | 2018-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-12-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Leaving | December 1, 2018 | 7.9 | e732c17a-8f3e-473d-bbf6-bd8e46626c55 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The Austin band’s druggy, wall-of-sound escapism put them on the map, but their first album in six years sounds more confident without it. | The Austin band’s druggy, wall-of-sound escapism put them on the map, but their first album in six years sounds more confident without it. | Pure X: Pure X | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pure-x-pure-x/ | Pure X | The unsubtle party drug nod, which now scans as very 10 years ago, was never the point. As Pure X guitarist/vocalist Nate Grace told Dummy in 2013, “Pleasure, ecstasy, purity—those ideas are directly related to the act of making music.” And, in the same interview, “You can’t experience pleasure without feeling pain, you cannot know ecstasy without knowing despair.” Pure X, the Austin band’s first album since 2014’s Angel, still jives with Grace’s earlier concept, in which ecstasy isn’t so much the result of listening to the music as a distant, unattainable goal or state of being. But in the six years since Angel, Grace, bassist/vocalist Jesse Jenkins V, drummer Austin Youngblood, and multi-instrumentalist Matty Tommy Davidson have further clarified their sound, creating the brightest and tightest bummer jams of their career.
Album opener “Middle America” sets the scene: “Send help, I’m stranded in Middle America,” sings Grace from a Bible Belt hell they can’t escape. “Send help, I’m losing sense of who I am.” The rest of the record wrestles with finding meaning in a turbulent world, in a country where happiness—let alone ecstasy—is hard to come by. The lyrics offer flashes of beauty between the crush of the everyday. “All the neon skies are going grey,” Jenkins sings on “Fantasy.” “My people work so hard and work so long/Break and fall and disappear.” These are tunes for our times, but also seem built for age-old pursuits: nursing sweaty beers, driving through the Texas desert, diving into a swimming hole.
Pure X arrives in a landscape at once parallel and vastly different from the climate of the band’s soporific first singles. Back in 2009, the recession had wildly altered the prospects of many young people. Careers were put on hold, replaced by Tecate-and-pot-filled warehouses and a DIY sensibility that lived as much on the internet as it did in clubs or practice spaces. “The first time we got on Pitchfork, I think they linked to my MySpace,” Grace told The Austin Chronicle. Much of Pure X is reminiscent of the working-class indie rock of the ’90s, when shit jobs and encroaching suburbia represented an existential threat to bands like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. Economic uncertainty pokes out between otherwise metaphorical lyrics about relationships and personal growth. “I can’t afford the future/I don’t know my past,” sings Grace on “Making History.” “We’ve been working for nothing for so long.”
Though these slice-of-life musings are sometimes dire, a feeling of patience and acceptance permeates Pure X’s 12 tracks. “I forgive myself for how I hurt myself,” goes one line in “Hollywood.” As with much of the band’s output, the music was recorded live—this time at Good Danny’s Studio in Lockhart, Texas—and carries with it a polished immediacy. Earlier in their career, Pure X had a tendency to muddy Grace and Jenkins’ voices, creating the impression they were singing from inside a hollow or behind a veil. But on Pure X, their deliveries ring clear, timbres unadulterated by fuzz or distortion. The album’s guitars, too, are more pristine, tinged with Americana or imbued with a psychedelic shimmer. Pure X’s druggy, wall-of-sound escapism put them on the map in their early days, but they sound more confident without it.
On previous records, the band sometimes used synths to fill gaps between instruments, lending their sound density and heaviness. They’ve been gradually cleaning up their approach since 2013’s Crawling Up the Stairs, but on Pure X, they do more than wipe away the cobwebs; they take a Dyson to them. Bass, drums, and guitar give these songs a sparer, more intentional character. Across the album, hints of ’60s folk and lustrous ’70s rock are easy to spot. “How Good Does It Get” has a surf-rock shimmer—“How deep does love go?” wonders Grace—while “Grieving Song” matches elegiac lyrics with doleful guitars, a zombie doing the Zombies.
After Angel, it was unclear if Pure X would stay together. The band members had migrated across the region, even started families. Pure X focuses less on that period of upheaval and more on the feeling of moving past it, wisened and ready for what’s next. Eleven years into their career, the smoke has cleared, leaving that age-old enemy of youth: perspective. But chasing pure ecstasy remains a lifelong pursuit of pyrrhic victory. “I can dream,” sings Davidson on the album closer. “I can dream.”
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Fire Talk | May 7, 2020 | 7.5 | e7332800-eec2-4b3f-8a7e-9e8d60b09404 | Nathan Reese | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-reese/ | |
A new “definitive” reissue series begins with the bedroom artist’s earliest Haunted Graffiti records, which now sound more prescient and ghostly than ever. | A new “definitive” reissue series begins with the bedroom artist’s earliest Haunted Graffiti records, which now sound more prescient and ghostly than ever. | Ariel Pink: Underground / Loverboy / Odditties Sodomies Vol. 2 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ariel-pink-underground-loverboy-odditties-sodomies-vol-2/ | Underground / Loverboy / Odditties Sodomies Vol. 2 | There is a case to be made that Ariel Pink’s earliest music has always been a bit haunted. The whole wad of funhouse pop—pulled from crackly master tapes and spawned into reissues of reissues of reissues—keeps floating wraith-like towards listeners, two decades later. It’s how Pink himself described it in a Tiny Mix Tapes interview in 2006:
“Once something is captured, it carries an objective power that lives outside of time and reality. It can be manipulated [...] like a person without a body that it can call its own. The world of sound has no visible territory or domain that it can claim. It offers its own spirit to the world for the sake of play and wonderment.”
Pink’s idea of what would happen to his music mirrors an idea that writers Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds were calling “hauntology” the same year. Each considered Pink’s music as the zeitgeisty sound of “time collapsing on itself”—the clearest sign that culture had crossed into an era where nothing could die. Or if by some chance it were to die, as they wrote, it would inevitably come back as a reissued collection.
This isn’t to say a new and expansive reissue effort by Mexican Summer under the name “Ariel Archives” is a cynical cultural ploy. Rather, it just feels procedural in this phase of Pink’s two-decade career, not to mention one that feels cobbled together by aggrandized marketing language. Consider also that the musician’s entire career has been a retrospective project, vis a vis his managing and administering the vast musical trove he compiled in a blur of recording between 1999 and 2004. But these are “definitive” releases, the Brooklyn-based label notes, paired with expanded tracklistings, new art by Pink, remastered, and featuring thoughtful essays by Hedi El Kholti, the co-editor of publishing imprint Semiotext(e). The whole collection spans the six albums Pink recorded with his imaginary band Haunted Graffiti, plus three volumes of rarities. It’s the closest thing to a final destination for a catalog that has spent the better part of two decades in various states of disarray, sliding across our musical consciousness, across trends, and attitudes like a discarded CD-R on a trashed car floor.
Split into four reissue cycles, the Ariel Archives begins with an odd trio: 1999’s Underground, 2002’s Loverboy, and the collection Odditties Sodomies Vol 2. The musical distance covered by just these three albums mirrors the varied locales in Los Angeles where Pink conceived them—an ashram in South Central, a ranch house in Val Verde where Graham Nash and a Grateful Dead percussionist once recorded, and his CalArts dorm room from which Underground first emerged.
Pink says he simply took the sounds in his head and directly injected them into cassette machines of dubious quality, and Underground is the most spontaneous sounding of Pink’s early albums. It’s the one Haunted Graffiti album from this time with the least sense of itself, confined to the same handful of open guitar chords, an idea of sunbleached guitar anthems, and an idea of teenage ennui. “I stole a car so we could run away/Slow down I gotta hear you stay,” Pink sings in “Underground,” a lean guitar and mouth-drums combo that wanders over a melody like a stoned night drive.
More than just fetish material for Pink completists, the reissues are most notable because Pink’s equally demonized, glorified, and debated lo-fidelity has been officially tampered with. The original master tapes were made available to credible engineers with good intentions. Unlike the flawed Paw Tracks reissues, the squashed mono mixes of both Loverboy and Underground have been cracked open into a wide stereo field. While a thin layer of tape hiss still hangs above each record like freeway smog, the depths unlocked by the remaster clear space for us to participate in Pink’s original fantasy more than ever. The tumbling AM-radio confections “My Molly” and “Doggone (Shegone)” can be imagined, faintly at least, as actual AM-radio hits, lost soft-rock artifacts recovered on a Saturday morning drive pouring out from a busted rear speaker.
Loverboy and Underground’s newfound fidelity muddies the bigger picture of Pink’s legacy. Specifically, the idea that his work as Haunted Graffiti was a mere prelude to studio budgets, the dismal sonics of these albums an arbitrary choice, a condition of some broke musician recording in a squat. Instead, the precision remastering bolsters the minority opinion of what Fisher described as “anamorphic sonic objects.” The anamorphic being the idea of sounds working on the periphery of comprehension, combining into something radically different. In this view, Pink’s aesthetic wasn’t a fuzzy approximation of some “Porcelain Heaven” as Pitchfork writer Mike Powell wrote in 2006, but a visionary style unto itself. An intentional musical vernacular existing, in the end, as a gauzy, unified whole.
In this context, given the clarity of the reissues, Loverboy is a futurist pop cycle. From the spectral, pulsing organs on “Ghosts” and “Don’t Talk to Strangers” to the shuffling mouth drums on “She’s My Girl,” Pink’s bedroom feels palatial, some hyper-baroque synth chamber hovering between this dimension and the next. It’s all very “time out of joint” as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida described his original concept of “hauntology.”
But don’t let the seriousness of that concept jam you up. Both Loverboy and Odditties sound like they exist simply for the sake of play and wonderment, the latter showcasing Pink’s ability to toggle between styles (Britpop, new wave) and impersonation (be it Kate Bush whispers of “The World is Yours” or the eyes-closed Morrissey delivery in Pink’s cover of “This Night Has Opened My Eyes”). Instead of the usual line about Pink defacing the ideal of pop music, he’s actually defacing himself, either through the puffed up embellishment, of “Didn’t it Click” (“Ladies and gentlemen/The master of ceremonies, Ariel Pink!”) or the emasculated self-deprecation in the chorus of “Loverboy” written with John Maus. (“I love you like a dog or snake or a mouse or a bird/That's why they call me loverboy.”)
All the talk of Pink’s musical “nostalgia” feels a bit propped up now—maybe it was ours all along? This haunted question was answered straightforwardly as far back as 2001 when Pink covered R. Stevie Moore’s “Hobbies Galore.” It’s the anthem of his complicated fiefdom, a tribute to the idea of himself, signs of a persona seen in the third-person, and an homage to his mentor.
“Gee it’s great to be home/Hobbies galore/Don’t you engage in a craft/Don’t you like it alone/Locked behind doors,” Pink sings, sounding a bit like he’s nodding out on the strength of his own stuff. Who would blame him? The dark ages had just counted off a deathly tune—9/11, Bush, black sites, suicidal markets—and Pink was the one who could harmonize over it, as long as he was left alone, locked behind his many doors.
Buy: Rough Trade (Underground) (Loverboy) (Odditties Sodomies Vol. 2)
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-10-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | null | October 30, 2019 | 6.8 | e734fb3e-e4b7-43a9-b952-1aa750f22191 | Nathan Taylor Pemberton | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-taylor pemberton/ | |
After an arresting opener, the singer-songwriter’s second album wanders into a fog of existential angst and you-had-to-be-there anecdotes. | After an arresting opener, the singer-songwriter’s second album wanders into a fog of existential angst and you-had-to-be-there anecdotes. | Samia : Honey | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/samia-honey/ | Honey | Growing up means realizing that sometimes you’re just a filler episode in someone else’s love story. But that doesn’t mean you have to like it: “I hope you marry the girl from your hometown/And I’ll fucking kill her, and I’ll fucking freak out,” Samia yowls on the lead single and opening song of her new album, Honey. With the insight of an omnipresent narrator and the charm of a comically disaffected protagonist, the Los Angeles-born, New York-raised singer-songwriter exorcizes her demons on her darkest and most cinematic song to date. A24 even let Lucas Hedges out of their basement to star in the music video.
Not really a murderous revenge fantasy, “Kill Her Freak Out” is the cry of a wounded animal, cornered and clawing at potential predators. The uncomfortably long 24-second organ solo at the intro signals impending doom, and if you didn’t already have a pit in your stomach, Samia emerges in a sort of dissociative daze to announce someone’s pregnancy. Whose? Oh, just the love of her life. Nothing puts a nail in the coffin of youth quite like stalking the crush or partner that defined your earlier years and finding a wedding registry. But the tragedy of “Kill Her Freak Out” is less the hypothetical manslaughter than Samia’s inability to maintain its momentum for the duration of 11 songs.
With references to 2010s pop hits and Williamsburg concert venues, Honey is Marnie from Girls’ indie-rock album. Two songs in, you’ll wonder if you slept-walked into L Train Vintage. Straddling the unhinged-cool dichotomy, Samia uses the potent pathos of confessionalism (“I’ve never felt so unworthy of loving”) to distract from shaky metaphors and imagery: “Kissing you would be kissing on the USA.” It’s reminiscent of those TikTok slideshows with quotes about girlhood, mother-daughter relationships, and unrequited love set to “Scott Street.”
You might’ve discovered Samia through the suggested-artists algorithm on a streaming app. Embracing comparisons to melancholic “sad girls,” she puts on her Phoebe Bridgers Doc Martens (the deep Californian drawl in every “time” on “Charm You”) and Adrianne Lenker cowboy hat (the lyrics on “Pink Balloon” that recall “anything”), but her gestures toward intimacy land without emotional weight. The guttural scream at the end of “Breathing Song” is one of the rare moments when Samia’s delivery matches the vague devastation of her lyrics. Opening lines like “Your mom keeps threatening suicide on holidays” and “Screaming ‘Porn kills love’/Outside your window with the Adventists” might as well be items on a grocery list.
Samia told The Forty-Five she was inspired by Waking Life and Everything Everywhere All at Once, films that “zoom all the way out on these huge concepts and then all the way back in at these tiny little personal relationships.” In real life, worrying whether your friend’s parents like you can be just as anxiety-inducing as looming climate disaster. But the record’s rapid tone shifts are whiplash-inducing and Samia’s quick-fire anecdotes are just way too specific to ascend from name-drops into narratives. It’s a never-ending case of “you had to be there”: Who are Chris and David, and what do they have to do with anything? They’re individual portraits in search of their photomosaic.
Referencing worship music, “Jesus, take the wheel,” and the big guy himself, Samia half-commits to a God-fearing country album. Nashville has been her adopted home for the past couple years and everyone knows that when you get to Tennessee, they strap you down and program a twang into your vocal cords. OK, the accent is a bit exaggerated at times, but it complements the record’s religious and patriotic themes. Residing in the hyphenated space between her Lebanese and American heritage, Samia explores this tension via love interests who fill her with self-doubt and trigger an identity crisis (“I’d be so afraid of what your daddy’d say/I could fetishize you for the whole damn day”). This element is easy to miss on a casual listen, but it does add a satirical tinge to songs like “Charm You,” where she sings about the thrill of visiting that white suburban institution, the outdoor mall.
When Honey shines, it’s in the same way as Samia’s debut, 2020’s The Baby: by highlighting her rich and versatile voice. “Mad at Me” makes a case for her pop pivot. Like Ariana Grande and Lorde, she’s able to manipulate an upbeat synth-pop palette to unsettling effect. On this pleading-eye emoji of a track, she sounds like a child performing a choreographed song and dance to get the attention of a parent who is giving her the silent treatment. That’s when her anguish is most potent. The way she modulates her voice on the chorus of “Amelia”—an electronic tribute to Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, in whose studio Honey was recorded—almost makes up for the Little Mermaid soundtrack quality of the instrumental.
When the late Toni Morrison taught a creative writing course at Princeton, she required her students to write from perspectives wholly foreign to their own, reasoning that their ability to “relate to themselves as strangers” would result in dynamic stories. Samia pitches Honey as a graduation from the egocentric stage of artistry by tackling themes of nihilism and generational legacy: “Are you scared to die?/The trick is don’t arrive/You can see it in your daughter’s eyes/That’s the purpose and the prize.” Society might make you feel old for being in your late 20s, especially as a woman, but at 26, Samia is not yet ready to write her “deathbed record.” She’s better at romanticizing the mundane, like when she compares a cobweb to a constellation and professes her desire to “be a mermaid.” The album’s more pleasing songs, like “Charm You” and “Honey,” are campfire ditties with rich, inviting harmonies. These brief moments of levity suggest that, in the face of existential dread, maybe it is more rewarding to sing with the people you love than about them. | 2023-01-30T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2023-01-30T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Grand Jury | January 30, 2023 | 6.5 | e747d36e-5186-4389-be83-dbc3dd1aac69 | Heven Haile | https://pitchfork.com/staff/heven-haile/ | |
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 Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s masterwork from 1986, a hermetic and wondrous new age album that contains worlds beyond worlds. | 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 Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s masterwork from 1986, a hermetic and wondrous new age album that contains worlds beyond worlds. | Beverly Glenn-Copeland: Keyboard Fantasies | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beverly-glenn-copeland-keyboard-fantasies/ | Keyboard Fantasies | Just off of U.S. Highway 37 in Sylvania, Ohio, lies a small, butter-colored hamlet of retirees. Its name, “Sunset Village,” suggests that you or your loved ones will enjoy a warm, bucolic, well-reckoned end, should you choose to settle there. Like all retirement centers, Sunset Village comes with a lot of practical provisions: The age for admittance is strictly greater than 55, the majority of properties are for rent, rather than purchase (for obvious reasons), and, based on your need and price point, staff can cater a menu of care options under heartbreaking titles like “memory support.” What comes free and without caveat, however, is the tacit understanding among its people that colonies like these will very likely serve as their last earthly stop before deboarding this mortal coil.
Not unlike all-inclusive resorts or monasteries, senior communities are among the most meaningful attempts we’ve got in the sustained pursuit of pinning and freezing time. These are societies interested in life existential, not life chronological. They acknowledge the end at their outset, make peace with the idea of transience, and build entire ecosystems designed to strip life of its formal trappings. Seeing them from this angle might clarify why the often-used, flourishy euphemism “active living community” can feel so bizarre and science-fictional—it throws into relief what sort of living the rest of us do in the meantime.
In a satisfying and totally arbitrary coincidence, there exists another sunset village at the end of an equally strange and otherworldly cassette released in 1986. Like the album that houses it—and very much like the Ohioan villa of the same name—“Sunset Village” (side B, final track) also happens to be an arcadian resting place that holds the question of time, and its movement, at its center. The song is fundamentally just a short poem paired alongside a simple synthesized piano melody—not very far from something you would use to hush a baby. Each time I find myself replaying it, I’m freshly amazed by how accurately it manages to recreate the wooziness so inherent to bliss, heartache, or finality, how it definitely holds some spiritual dominion with the fish of the sea and birds of the air, and, with just 11 words, how it teaches the intricate idea that wisdom is just another word for knowing what to accept. It will also bring your pulse rate down to about 40.
The artist responsible is Beverly Glenn-Copeland, a man endowed with such rare fortune that he remained more or less a non-entity to the music-curious public until the age of 72 when a particularly influential record collector from Japan sent him a life-altering email asking for any remaining physical copies of his early music. Deep into a peaceful, years-long toil in the Canadian hinterlands with his wife, Copeland was suddenly faced with the task of living his way out of a placid, relatively private existence, and into one in which documentarians tour his home like a museum and take seriously his thoughts on the intersection between science and the divine.
Newfangled global interest for Copeland, as you might imagine, is unimaginable. Under the rough and ridiculous circumstances of any life, the fate of late-bloomed fame holds unique surprises. Watching artists like these confront contemporary milestones of success, like good streaming metrics or outpourings of online support, seems to give them an expression permanently set to stupefied. The sizeable hill of praise that’s been furnished onto him across the last two years—mostly from a growing sect of left-field record collectors, a gaggle of celebrities, and those lucky enough to have been gifted URLs to his music by wise friends or lovers—carries a uniformly grateful, even devotional air of protectiveness. “Mostly, I’m eating my Wheaties and all my vitamins so I can perhaps live long enough to finish what it is I’m supposed to be doing here,” he admitted during a lecture two springtimes ago in Montréal.
Chalk Copeland’s recent boom up to the inscrutable forces of destiny that slowly pull upon a person over the course of their life. Chalk it up to the easy digestibility, maternal swaddle, and mental asylum so inherent to the sort of music that we now call new age. Chalk it in no small part up to Copeland’s own journey of self-discovery as a transgender man that now aligns neatly with the triumphant contemporary attitude toward publicly articulating one’s complicated identity. Regardless of what exactly set off the recent Copeland rumble, his is a coming-of-age story probably most due to his dreamy, boundless frontierism that sees no encroachment, no fear, and no distinction between anything resembling a beginning or an end. In some ways, it’s a story of inevitability. It may be because his life seems to be governed by, and has always been governed by, a sunset village from the outset.
Despite an especially twisty and sometimes glum biography, Copeland appears as serene and composed as a friendly monk. In lieu of robes, his daily uniform includes a button-down shirt, a pair of puffy, pleated chinos, and a scrub of chin fuzz the tint of a long-boiled egg. As seen and heard in the groundswell of videos and interviews with him across the last two years, as well as in harder-to-find footage from more than two decades ago, his voice leaves his mouth with a pleasant moisture—like he is somehow always on the end of a spoon of peanut butter—and is elastic, as prone to characters and impressions as a puppeteer’s. Age and circumstance have made his tone slightly darker, richer, and honeyed the cooler vibrato he had in his 20s, but the thermostat of his manner seems to have always been set to warm.
“Father was a brilliant European classical player,” gargles Copeland at the top of his 2019 biopic, also titled Keyboard Fantasies, throwing his head back on a chair and treating the word like mouthwash. Since “cradlehood” (his own charming term), Copeland seems to have been equipped with the twin gifts of promise and idiosyncrasy. His mother, Georgie Willis, who was a formidable pianist and an even more formidable academic, bears the honor of being the first Black woman to complete a graduate program at Penn State University. The pathetic pace of American integration in the 1940s, however, meant that though she could legally attend classes, she was denied the right to live on campus. Fate would install a generous Quaker woman in Mrs. Copeland’s path, who she would go on to live with—thereby allowing her to continue attending Penn State—but the very friendly neighbor would also go on to spiritually move Georgie with the pacific doctrines and credos of Quakerism. It’s why the Copelands joined a Quaker congregation in Philadelphia shortly thereafter, and why Glenn found himself reared in the safety of a community that gave him the clearance to exist in an alternate, sheltered dimension distinct from the more fraught realities that stained so much of Black childhood in late Jim Crow-era America.
Georgie held hope that, upon entering a large and foreign city away from the security of their Quaker eden, her child would be seen by the public as both normal and non-threatening. Copeland immediately torpedoed this idea upon entering McGill University in Montréal by becoming the ultimate disaster: He wore his hair afroed, entered into a same-sex relationship, and was introverted to a degree of hermitude. It also probably didn’t help that he was studying European classical music with a penchant for a particular German style called lieder, which sounds a little bit like opera sung by loud, sad angels. To be out, Black, bizarre, and 17 in 1961 was an open invitation to get one’s ass kicked not only literally, but legally: It would be eight more years until Canadian Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau would decriminalize consenting homosexual partnerships (34 years before every state in America would do the same).
“At one point,” Copeland says, with the comfortable, breezy tone of someone who has a high capacity for empathy and a near non-existent one for resentment, “my family ganged up on me and forced me into a car and took me to a physician who was going to have me interred in a hospital.” The plan was to give Copeland the then-fashionable electroconvulsive therapy in an attempt to zap the gay out of his head and heart. Others might have treated this episode like a hostage situation, a mortal betrayal, or both, but Copeland, in a flush of grace toward himself and his family, quietly rose from the bed, gathered his stuff, and jogged out the front door before anyone could notice.
Once Copeland returned to Montréal, he got serious about getting serious with music, and decided he had had enough of McGill. He dropped his classes and descended upon Toronto, settling luckily alongside a manager and league of total strangers who, he was delighted to figure out in studio sessions later on, made up a small league of Canadian jazz heavyweights. Alongside men like bassist Dough Bush, electric guitarist Don Thompson, drummer Terry Clark, and principal guitarist Lenny Breau, Copeland committed his first noodlings to permanence.
Though the two albums he made in the early ’70s were commercial catastrophes, his eponymous 1970 work is a piece that leaves me fundamentally confused by its exclusion from most modern canons. The folk is freaky. The riffs are seraphic. With all the leider residue in his arias and tremolos, these albums feel like songbooks of spirituals for the unspiritual. There have been obvious parallels made to Joni Mitchell in the music’s blueness and timbre—especially in how Copeland warbles like god has just asked him a difficult favor—but a more fitting comparison would be to Judee Sill, an artist who shares with him an alloy of Christian folklore, Bach-indebted chord progressions, and a sense of servitude to a quiet, inarticulable secret. “By and large, the early music was looking at death, love and the difficulty of love,” he once indifferently summed, though I would argue that a track like “Untitled (Make the Answer Yes),” is the sort of song that one could sensibly choose to be buried to.
Blindness toward negativity, unfounded optimism, and curious guilelessness are traits not often blent in the same adult in 2020, but at the center of this Venn diagram lives the broad idea of being “childlike.” Copeland is definitely childlike—strange, virtuous, glib, and peaceful—in myriad and impressive ways. The documentary devotes one longish scene to his ritual of enjoying a cup of apple juice before each performance, and it seems, per the frequency of its use in nearly every one of his interviews, that his favorite word is “magic.”
It only seems natural that Copeland would have had a career as a sort of jester with a synthesizer on a few children’s television shows while between albums. Young Canadians in 1973 might recognize him costumed in polyester alongside straw-haired, rosy-cheeked, anemic little puppets on Mr. Dressup, a show analogous to (and in fact hosted by the understudy of) the American Mister Rogers. But his work on Dressup meant that he was somewhat in the public eye—and at the time, he performed and lived as female “Beverly,” which made it doubly difficult to reconcile the unplaceable and unsolvable dissatisfaction he carried around. “How would you do that?” he asked of a journalist in 2005. “Walk in one day as Beverly Glenn-Copeland and come back two weeks later as a changed being? I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.”
It’s not that Copeland didn’t understand that his body was at odds with his brain at that point, but it wasn’t until 15 years after his initial work on Dressup that he found the language and the wherewithal necessary to give expression to an idea he knew was true since infancy. He was laying on the sand, reading a book, “and I just kind of sat up and went, ‘I am transgender.’ And I had never put those words to it.” In 2002, long departed from Dressup and armed with the fortitude to answer his private riddle, Copeland publicly transitioned to male.
The author Andrea Long Chu—a writer, who, in the past few years, has become exceedingly good at substantiating the quandaries of trans personhood for mainstream audiences—puts the amorphous feeling of dysphoria into lucidity by calling the lifelong sensation a “vague but maddening sense that something is off about the world.” In other words, gender incongruence is a slippery yearning, a “hunger without appetite,” a strange, evanescent idea of an achievable but permanently just-out-of-reach reality. It should make a lot of sense that the successful juncture between what seemed like fact, and what seemed like fantasy, would form the central thrust of Copeland’s masterwork, Keyboard Fantasies.
In 1983, he traveled to a small cabin in a sleepy village three hours north of Toronto. Ordained by his manager to go off and write something good, he bought and hauled along an Atari computer and two synthesizers—the Roland TR-707 and the Yamaha DX7—eagerly awaiting the prospect of holing up, shoveling snow, and playing with his new machines. Copeland views computers with appropriate humility (“I would walk around and go, ohhh, because I couldn’t do anything with them,” he once said) but feels tantalized, paralyzed by the alternate realities unlockable within them.
It’s difficult to overstate how aggressively synthesizers in the ’80s were marketed as portholes to the future—ad copy for incoming makes and models would spend paragraphs positioning them as “Products of the Space Age,” alongside taglines like “Science Fiction? No: Science Fact!” Deep inside the machines were near-to-life versions of the instruments Copeland had studied and honored for so long, but at a supernatural slant. “There were sounds that were acoustic, sounds that only a computer could make, and sounds that could come from a violin,” he explained, but only “if you used a lot of imagination, or squinted your ears.” To Copeland, his machines represented the impossible made perfectly possible. When he first laid eyes on an Atari, he says, “it was like, ‘Oh, so this is the beginning.’”
If we emerged from the primordial soup with keytars in hand, Keyboard Fantasies is what our tribal lullabies would sound like. After weeks of sleepless tinkering with his toys, the album was born as a sextet of chuggy, spare, somnambulant pieces built by some of the most basic preset tones from the DX7. The DX7 offers a unique, and, at the time, enthrallingly new alphabet of programmable sounds—so much so that the instrument would go on to feature in most conceivable pop in the ’80s, from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack to work by Whitney Houston—but here, the galactic, plummy, and utterly standard “electric piano” setting was put to work across Fantasies’ six tracks, each of which sound like ancient, foundational plainsongs from a dimension not far off from our own.
Keyboard Fantasies seems to pureé wisps of cultural sounds into a new Pangea. “Ever New,” the opener, has vibratos as operatic as a lovesick Persian ode, lyrics as if from a self-help pamphlet found in a Bolinas co-op, and pentatonic scales with ascending intervals as spare as Japanese Shōmyō folk. “Winter Astral”—a totally voiceless Rothko of a song—reminds me of Buddhist breathwork in the intervals between Copeland’s lingering pressure on the keyboard. “Old Melody,” a piece that carries the joke of its sheer existence as false indigenous music in its title, is as lucid dream-inducing as alien cradlesong. Like a project under the long-celebrated and well-documented “Fourth World” music umbrella described by frequent Eno collaborator Jon Hassell, Fantasies is filled with “unknown and imaginary regions,” each one helmed by its peaceful and sole inhabitant, Glenn.
It’s curious that Copeland has been referred to as an “outsider” artist in recent reviews and breathless press releases. On the one hand, it does seem like a natural, knee-jerk description: the characterization of some art as “outsider” is a term usually ladled onto work that’s seen as unknowing of its own power, either through the artist’s lack of formal training, or a by the nature of its unpretentious existence outside of hoary art-historical canons. More often, however, it’s a title given to those who work in isolation, who have no profit motive, or, in many cases, are marginalized out the gate by their own identities (poor, Black, queer, et cetera). Though Copeland has said that Fantasies carries the “innocence that was part of [his] experience at the time,” there is nothing untrained or undisciplined about it. Classically educated and formally fluent, I suspect it is more a shorthand used because we lack the language to identify something that seems like it accidentally dropped onto Earth.
“Sunset Village,” the album’s denouement, is so extraterrestrial, it might single-handedly explain the confusion. The ballad is less a song as it is a viewpoint—a lot like the vertiginous sensation you might feel when looking out of an airplane window onto a quilt of land thousands of feet below. Strangely comforting, sidereal, and on the thin tightrope between alienating and familiar, it’s the strongest unconscious paean to Copeland’s fascination with science fiction. He’s spoken about finding particular calm in the works of David Brin and Isaac Asimov, but not exactly in the mass-market editions interested in slime apocalyptos or glowing squids from Saturn. Instead, Copeland prefers a notion of sci-fi that’s treated more as a defined, earthbound school of thought—one Asimov would clarify in a preface to Octavia Butler’s short story collection, Speech Sounds, the same year Copeland created Keyboard Fantasies. “Science fiction,” Asimov wrote, “is committed neither to marvels nor to disasters. It deals with possible situations.” For as strange and faraway they sound, “Sunset Village” and Keyboard Fantasies writ large present a quiet desire not exactly for escape from this world, but to imagined likelihoods on the most alien planet of all—this one.
The idea of elderhood is of enormous significance to Copeland. He mentions it frequently in the documentary, and it crops up reliably across interviews. On several occasions, he salutes “the elders” of the community in Huntsville, Ontario—where his snowy studio was housed—that "took care of [him]” in the hours of his most vigorous synthesizer mania. The second-most affecting scene of his documentary comes during what looks like a casual Q&A, when a young devotee takes a microphone and thanks Copeland for the honor to share the floor with—gesturing toward Glenn—“our trans elder.” “Ahhh,” intones Copeland, nodding softly, visibly experiencing some sort of apotheosis. “Mmmm.” He takes a beat that feels like a decade. “You think in ways that it’s taken years for me to come to,” he says. “It’s about knowing things I don’t know.”
At the far end of several generational gaps to his fanbase, Copeland is aware that there is much more he is unaware about, but there are at least a few things that come with surety. In the documentary’s most unforgettable sequence, Copeland sits peacefully in a metal chair and sobs. It’s moving for a number of reasons, but largely because it seems cruel to have Copeland cry on camera. “I’ve figured out what I’m supposed to do,” he says. “I’m supposed to support these young people.” It firms an idea he once directed to a room full of wide-eyed, hungover fans in an interview released earlier the same year. “Do not fail to give your hearts. Do not fail,” he intoned, nodding toward the crowd. “I’m going to be watching you all from another dimension.”
That exact image happens to live on the album art for Keyboard Fantasies. On it, there’s a photo of a stained glass window in wedges of lemon, blue, and plum, framing a silhouette that looks a lot like the back of Copeland’s head facing out onto a shore. It’s too perfect—if nothing else, sight and solace have always been Copeland’s anima. In a life steered by the trying-on of new and strange vantage points, the cover works like a skylight to the clarity of his vision: one unburdened by any system, any path, any idea beyond inhabiting himself most accurately.
Stare at that window long enough and you can start to imagine everything—the sea, the sky, the sand, even Copeland—in a state of total suspension, deepened by the light of a sun that seems like it takes forever to set. He has never really needed much to grant him fullness. We’re so obviously the ones that do.
Get the Sunday Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here. | 2020-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | self-released | September 20, 2020 | 8.4 | e74eb433-94ff-40f7-a5cf-0bcf2b767a41 | Mina Tavakoli | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mina-tavakoli/ | |
The singer-songwriter’s third album is her strongest yet, the sound of a wise, clear-eyed, melodious prodigy coming into her own voice. | The singer-songwriter’s third album is her strongest yet, the sound of a wise, clear-eyed, melodious prodigy coming into her own voice. | Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maggie-rogers-dont-forget-me/ | Don’t Forget Me | Eight years ago when a viral video thrust Maggie Rogers into the spotlight, she quickly went from NYU music student to public figure, garnering the type of cult following where the lines between artist and therapist start to blur. Since then, she has made efforts to slow things down. “I started to realize that there was this functional misalignment with the work that I had trained to do and the work that I was being asked to perform,” she told The New Yorker, explaining her decision to enroll in Harvard Divinity School in 2022. “I was put in this unconventional ministerial position without having undergone any of the training.” If strangers were going to look to her for guidance, her thinking went, then the best she could do would be to rise to the occasion.
Her new album, Don’t Forget Me, released on the cusp of her earning her postgraduate degree, captures a self-assured songwriter and producer reflecting on her past experiences with clear eyes. Like Sheryl Crow and the Laurel Canyon scene before her, she’s not so much a prophet on the mount as she is a traveler sharing the lessons she’s learned in nearly 30 years of life. “Time moves slow/Until one day you wake up and you realize/That what you see is what you know,” she remarks on “All the Same,” deftly employing the second person. It’s comforting in the same way some of Joni Mitchell’s writing on Hejira is comforting: By acknowledging that she doesn’t have all the answers, Rogers ends up sounding wise beyond her years.
Rogers wrote and recorded Don’t Forget Me over a whirlwind five days with producer Ian Fitchuk, whose cosmic country style blends commercial Nashville songwriting with elements of disco, psychedelic rock, and Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac. Some of Don’t Forget Me is reminiscent of Fitchuk’s past work—lead single “So Sick of Dreaming” especially sounds like a cut off Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour—but Rogers carries her own smattering of influences that add nuance to his now-familiar sound. Several elements, like the expansive, effects-laden backdrop on “It Was Coming All Along” and looping drums on “If Now Was Then,” are an uncanny throwback to the Y2K pop-rock that Rogers likely grew up on: your Michelle Branches, your Natalie Imbruglias, your Sixpence None the Richers. Just like those artists’ anthemic singles, Don’t Forget Me keeps Rogers’ voice front and center, swelling to complement her on each chorus. It’s a welcome change from past albums, where the songwriting could sometimes feel like window dressing to Rogers’ more ornate compositions.
Reflective of its recording process, Don’t Forget Me sets a zippy, dare I say groovy, pace. Rogers often sounds like she’s outrunning the ghost of an old flame, whether she’s breathlessly describing a moment of lust on “Drunk” or trying to dance away her demons on “Never Going Home.” Still, there’s a playfulness in how she handles these stories of heartbreak. “The Kill” is a churning spin on the push-pull dynamic of a doomed pairing where Rogers employs the classic songwriter trick of flipping the pronouns in the second chorus. And over the delightfully wobbly bassline of “On & On & On,” she delivers a forceful hook that’s guaranteed to be heard at the beach this summer.
Rogers is an accomplished singer, though not a belter in the traditional sense; while other singers might inflect the climax of a song with raw power, Rogers strains with emotion. The piano ballad “I Still Do” benefits from that delicacy, as does the acoustic track “All the Same,” which sounds like her take on the intimate, red-blooded folk of Zach Bryan. On the title track, she imitates the soaring vocals of country singers like Martina McBride and Carrie Underwood. If that honeyed, inspirational mode might be most readily associated with first dances at weddings, Rogers employs it as an act of desperation, laying out the absolute floor of what she wants in a relationship: “Take my money, wreck my Sundays/Love me till your next somebody/Oh, but promise me that when it’s time to leave/Don’t forget me.”
Even as her voice breaks towards the end, there’s a warmth to her newfound confidence. It’s a far cry from “Alaska,” the undergraduate demo track that took the words out of Pharrell’s mouth, where she recalled her first exposure to the Berlin club scene as a banjo-playing folk singer. That song juxtaposed her wide-eyed narration with electronic blips and bloops, like a baby deer stumbling into its first rave. Don’t Forget Me is, in many ways, its inverse: It inhabits parties and frantic nights out, yet the tracks carry the steady, guitar-backed propulsion of a road movie. Rogers, at last, sounds sure of her destination. | 2024-04-12T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2024-04-12T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Capitol | April 12, 2024 | 7.8 | e7525072-6da3-4260-be0f-037e4d048fbc | Claire Shaffer | https://pitchfork.com/staff/claire-shaffer/ | |
When attempting to encapsulate the essence of Paris in a word, Evelyn Waugh endearingly deemed the city "bogus." In his ... | When attempting to encapsulate the essence of Paris in a word, Evelyn Waugh endearingly deemed the city "bogus." In his ... | Air: Talkie Walkie | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/81-talkie-walkie/ | Talkie Walkie | When attempting to encapsulate the essence of Paris in a word, Evelyn Waugh endearingly deemed the city "bogus." In his travelogue, Labels, he wrote, "It seems to me this scrap of jargon, in every gradation of meaning... gives a very adequate expression of the essence of modern Paris." Thanks mostly to San Dimas High School, in the seventy sum years since Waugh's trip, the term-- and bogus journeys, in general-- has evolved into a firm negative. Waugh, however, enjoyed Parisians' ability to dismiss nostalgia in art and revel in the present without regard to the future, past, or public reception. In so few words, the French don't give a fuck.
Because of this, American audiences continually underestimate French music, assuming our rigid filters of "authentic" or "ironic" apply. Admittedly, the cultural barrier is difficult to overcome: Daft Punk's masked robot disco, Gainsbourg's reggae, and Phoenix's flying-V Steely Dan tribute seem cute and studied when compared to the supposed bleeding-on-wax of our idolized Kurts and Jimis. As such, investing emotionally in "Sexy Boy" was akin to a Cubs fan buying playoff tickets. Air's revered debut hit cosmetic commercials within weeks of its release and goes great with a dry Chardonnay. 10,000 Hz Legend opened with synthetic voices proclaiming, "We are electronic performers," before 10cc choruses toyingly queried, "How does it make you feel?"
Which makes the overwhelming beauty and longing of Talkie Walkie that much more stunning. No longer are Air's sincerities lost in translation. The album title (no, they're not being cute, that's just how they say it in French) knowingly acknowledges this fact. Like the communication devices, Talkie Walkie sounds intimate, yet distant and distorted. Hope Sandoval nailed "Cherry Blossom Girl" on a demo, yet in forgoing guest vocalists for the first time, Air unerringly personalize their songwriting. Stomping piano and opiated gospel handclaps march "Venus" in a brutal funereal pace through keyboards that break like dead, pale winter sunlight and falling ice. Tolling bells and crickets take the song into twilight. Somehow it's numbingly romantic. Atonal music boxes, Plutonian pings, and digital fugues create a Side One that evokes purgatorial drifting, running out of oxygen, and passing into the light after a Space Walk disaster.
The second half with the propulsive "Surfin' on a Rocket", whistling "Alpha Beta Gaga", banjo-laced "Biological", and the Japanese imperial garden suite, "Alone in Kyoto", reconstitute Brian Wilson's surfing symphonies through Bowie and Eno's Berlin flipsides. Nigel Godrich, rather than supplying his default clean, shimmering production that can homogenize artists such as Beck, Travis, and The Divine Comedy, betters some of his Radiohead A-game here. The album's chilling resonance is due in part to Godrich's anagogical recording of minimal instrumentation and digitally etiolated detail.
Being the good Parisians of Waugh's estimation, Air load Talkie Walkie with images of moonbase love and alien encounters that neither mocks the comically misjudged visions of yellowed science fiction, nor longs for some utopian future. Air creates the alternate now, an environment that begs escapism without denying humanity. Talkie Walkie may mollify Air's overt Frenchness, but should in no way be deemed a sudden opening of the soul. In their insular way, Air have always been soul. They've simply grown more cosmopolitan, and not just in their solubility with vodka, Cointreau and cranberry. | 2004-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2004-01-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Electronic | Astralwerks | January 25, 2004 | 8.3 | e755c682-83b6-4a74-9285-3d5c2561065d | Brent DiCrescenzo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-dicrescenzo/ | null |
With her latest album, the singer cements herself as one of R&B’s most relatable storytellers, with an ear for melodrama that becomes monotonous. The best moments capture her soulfulness alongside her fury. | With her latest album, the singer cements herself as one of R&B’s most relatable storytellers, with an ear for melodrama that becomes monotonous. The best moments capture her soulfulness alongside her fury. | Summer Walker: Still Over It | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/summer-walker-still-over-it/ | Still Over It | Summer Walker’s music has the emotional intensity of a Real Housewives reunion. Her songs are as shady as they are chaotic—and irresistibly entertaining. Yet beneath the drama are layers of vulnerability. Walker’s 2019 debut Over It positioned the 25-year-old singer as a star in the moody landscape of contemporary trap R&B. With her follow-up, Still Over It, she cements herself as one of the genre’s most relatable storytellers, with a keen ear for melodrama that eventually starts to become monotonous.
Still Over It charts a journey through a messy and complicated breakup. Walker wants you to know she’s singing about her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, noted Atlanta producer London on da Track. London not only contributes production to half of the album; he’s also the subject of Walker’s lyrical anguish. Her sadness and insecurities aren’t theoretical, and her songwriting is most powerful when she’s descriptive about the depths of that agony: “How could you make me spend my whole fucking pregnancy alone?”
Walker and London aren’t the album’s only contributors, nor the only characters in its story. Opening track “Bitter” is a hazy stream of consciousness where Walker presumably addresses her social-media spats with the mothers of London’s other children (“So why you puttin’ on for The Shade Room and Insta?” she questions). The track ends with a voicemail from Cardi B, who advises Walker to “put that drama in your music.” Lead single “Ex for a Reason”—featuring City Girls’ JT and co-produced by Sean Garrett—shines with a sleek hook and bubbly production reminiscent of Garrett’s early-2000s hits. On the pop-infused “No Love,” Walker and SZA regret defending a man who isn’t worth it: “Tried to act like I wasn’t good enough in your eyes/Funny now that you callin’, that you ringin’ my line,” Walker sings.
The turbulent narrative feels true-to-life, but as the album stretches toward 20 tracks, Walker struggles to find new angles that are equally as compelling. On the Neptunes-produced “Dat Right There,” she re-emphasizes her sexual prowess and brags about stealing other women’s boyfriends, a boast that feels a little sour coming after so much heartbreak. And on the closing “Ciara’s Prayer,” the titular singer leads us in an earnest appeal to Jesus to send her a deserving partner: “I pray the next man in my life will be my husband/I pray he loves me, leads me, guides me,” she recites. It’s an appropriate closer for a breakup album but an awfully old-fashioned plea.
The best moments on Still Over It capture Walker’s soulfulness alongside her fury. Hers and Ari Lennox’s bluesy vocals pair with an alluring sax solo on “Unloyal,” one of the strongest R&B singles of the year. Another standout, “Screwin,” is a slow groove about toxic intimacy featuring Omarion, and “4th Baby Mama” shows just how searing Walker’s songwriting can get: “I wanna start with your mama, she should’ve whooped your ass,” she sneers, modulating her voice to deliver an unsparing critique. Walker understands her strengths as a storyteller, and on Still Over It, she’s at her most commanding when she sings for herself while evoking the pain of other women who’ve been hurt.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-11-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-11-10T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | LVRN / Interscope | November 10, 2021 | 6.8 | e7573d09-ee09-4f97-bed6-41392fff1a35 | DeAsia Paige | https://pitchfork.com/staff/deasia-paige/ | |
On her solo debut following the death of her Them Are Us Too partner, Kennedy Ashlyn navigates grief by sorting through echoes of 4AD’s essential early days and haunted goth textures. | On her solo debut following the death of her Them Are Us Too partner, Kennedy Ashlyn navigates grief by sorting through echoes of 4AD’s essential early days and haunted goth textures. | SRSQ: Unreality | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/srsq-unreality/ | Unreality | Cash Askew was one of the 36 people killed in the catastrophic 2016 fire at Oakland’s Ghost Ship. The 22-year-old guitarist was half of the duo Them Are Us Too, alongside singer Kennedy Ashlyn. A year earlier, Them Are Us Too released their debut, Remain, showcasing an impressive sense of the moody, shimmering texture of 1980s goth and dream pop. Earlier this year, Dais issued Amends, a collection of Them Are Us Too’s final recordings that Kennedy described as “a collaborative effort between TAUT and some of Cash’s dearest friends and family, culminating in a final ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye.’” Listening to those six songs was bittersweet: They were more robust and rhythmic than their predecessors, though the promising new direction only made their sense of finality more tragic.
But two years after what Ashlyn called “the worst thing to happen in my life,” she has moved ahead alone with SRSQ (pronounced “seer-skew”). For her, the title of the project’s debut, Unreality, “speaks to trying to process what a surreal world feels like in the wake of such a reality.” During “The Martyr,” she sings of dream worlds and hell’s depths in a fluttering, high register over uneasy synths and a beat reminiscent of early Beach House. Grief creeps into the frame: “I’m sickened by the terrible reminder.”
If Them Are Us Too were headed toward more forceful, straightforward songs at the end, Ashlyn takes SRSQ in the opposite direction. This is anti-gravity music, emptiness surrounding synth beds and brittle drum machines; save for the perpetual build of “Permission,” Unreality conjures a foggy ambience through which Ashlyn’s high-wire exhortations weave. It all evokes the essential early days of 4AD—specifically, Cocteau Twins and goth-minded kin of their time—and the long-running Pacific Northwest label Projekt, which still specializes in this type of ethereal darkwave.
The way Unreality plunders the past is, at times, remarkable. The galloping chorus of “Cherish,” in particular, possesses an uncanny resemblance to the vocal cadence of Cocteau’s Elizabeth Fraser. But Ashlyn imbues such influences with a personal touch. As she slides into the wordless chorus of “The Martyr,” her voice wavers, creating a texture so intricate you want to reach out and feel it; on “No Reason,” she layers incantatory spoken-word over synth detritus and her own high-register vocal acrobatics. Music like this is often described as “otherworldly,” but there’s a lovely human imperfection to the way Ashlyn sings.
Despite the move forward, an undercurrent of grief and longing runs through Unreality. “Are you hearing my songs?” she asks over the pounding rhythm of “Mixed Tide.” During the perpetually shifting “Only One,” Ashlyn admits, “It crushes me every day/I’m just barely holding on.” But even as Ashlyn processes the trauma on tape, the new beginnings represented by Unreality offer a measure of hope in the honoring of memory. Near the end of the skyscraping “Procession,” Ashlyn looks for peace amid the dulling pain and offers up a veritable mission statement for this document of loss and struggle: “It’s an impossible hurt/But you’ll never, ever leave my heart.” | 2018-10-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-29T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Dais | October 29, 2018 | 6.9 | e7584055-2813-462c-91a2-05da724b3e41 | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | |
The Brooklyn quartet Primitive Weapons blend the all-out assault of hardcore with dexterity and melody, striking a balance of brains, brawn, and heart. | The Brooklyn quartet Primitive Weapons blend the all-out assault of hardcore with dexterity and melody, striking a balance of brains, brawn, and heart. | Primitive Weapons: The Future of Death | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21832-the-future-of-death/ | The Future of Death | Primitive Weapons wouldn't sound out of place sharing a stage with just about any heavy band you can think of from the last 25 years. It takes a great deal of dexterity to blend the all-out, histrionic abrasion of Converge and straight-ahead melodics of Warrior Soul, but The Future of Death, Primitive Weapons' sophomore album, takes listeners to the equator between those two poles. This is not entirely surprising given that the Brooklyn quartet's members spent their formative years—as both listeners and musicians—knocking around a New York/New Jersey/Long Island scene that ran the gamut from melodic hardcore like Quicksand, Glassjaw, and Vision of Disorder on one end and heavy-as-shit extremity like Human Remains and The Dillinger Escape Plan on the other. The band's collective resume, in fact, includes not one but two Quicksand spinoff acts (World's Fastest Car and Instruction) as well as groups like Mind Over Matter, Gay for Johnny Depp, and a slew of others. Today, all four members have ownership stakes in Brooklyn bars and restaurants, most notably the renowned metal venue Saint Vitus, a hot destination for touring acts.
Perhaps it's this ear to both the local and global pulse that gives The Future of Death a fluidity that's bound to speak to disparate breeds of fans. Dean Baltulonis' recording doesn't hurt either. Where producer Alex Newport emphasized Primitive Weapons' raw brutality on their self-titled EP, Baltulonis (Sick of It All, The Hold Steady) follows guitarist Arty Shepherd's lead in carving out more space for atmosphere and dynamics after the departure of second guitarist Justin Scurti. Together, Shepherd, bassist Eric Odness and drummer Chris Enriquez alternate between doomish menace (the descending, cobra-like riff that drives album opener "Ashes or Paradise"), straight-ahead pummeling ("Night Eyes"), pressure-cooked brooding ("Whistle Past the Graveyard"), and herky-jerky odd-metered grooves (the verses of "Old Miami," where it feels like the ground is shifting under your feet and you can't quite locate the downbeat to steady your footing).
On "Panopticon Blues," a critique on the loss of privacy in the digital age and perhaps the album's most varied tune, a hi hat/rolling tom tom pattern veers towards a hulking strain of new wave or even disco. About a third of the way through, however, the song launches into a standard mosh breakdown only to then, in another twist, vaporize, leaving room for Shepherd's repeating chant of "We're watched / We're trapped / We're never alone" as his spooky background vocals haunt the empty shell that's left of the song by its conclusion. Vocalist David Castillo favors a more traditional death metal bark in the other band he fronts, White Widows Pact. But in Primitive Weapons, he channels his lyrical focus into a broader human scope and, as a result, comes across as less irate, a person who prefers to express what bothers him in the form of abstract poetry. "What I'm asking for is so much more / than another pound of flesh for a song," Castillo sings on "Whistle Past the Graveyard." The Future of Death's balance between brain, brawn, and heart is so perfectly calibrated that the audience gets more than the usual pound of flesh as well.
Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the producer of 2012's The Shadow Gallery. It is Dean Baltulonis. | 2016-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Party Smasher Inc. | April 22, 2016 | 8 | e75b8da6-7e3f-4937-b396-1f9a49e60f1d | Saby Reyes-Kulkarni | https://pitchfork.com/staff/saby-reyes-kulkarni/ | null |
With a title invoking alarm bells, this ambitious collection of the New York composer’s work is turbulent and disorienting, suggesting cycles of crisis and change. | With a title invoking alarm bells, this ambitious collection of the New York composer’s work is turbulent and disorienting, suggesting cycles of crisis and change. | Patrick Higgins: TOCSIN | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/patrick-higgins-tocsin/ | TOCSIN | Patrick Higgins composes with a scholar’s historical perspective and a punk’s sense of abandon. While many avant-garde musicians strive for originality by incorporating elements from outside Western tradition—or scrapping tradition altogether—Higgins melds the elegance of baroque chamber music, the colorful dissonance of Krystof Penderecki and Edgard Varèse, and the unrestrained discord of contemporary noise music, bending stylistic tropes from each era towards a central aesthetic meeting point. One of his most fascinating releases, Early Music, is a collaboration with violinist Josh Modney in which the duo fuses Renaissance forms with digital processing and the serrated edge of electric guitar. There are moments on Bachanalia, his album of radical reinterpretations for guitar from across Bach’s oeuvre, where the addition of delay and other electronic effects contorts the well-worn compositions into something resembling 20th century minimalism. Higgins’ influences are canonical, but he approaches them with as much skepticism as reverence.
Bach again provides the jumping-off point for TOCSIN, Higgins’ most ambitious and wide-reaching collection of original compositions. The album contains three distinct multi-movement pieces, but it begins with an arrangement of Contrapunctus XIV, an unfinished fugue written at the end of Bach’s life, performed by Mivos Quartet. The piece ends abruptly in the middle of a phrase, alluding to the alternate meaning of “fugue”: a sudden dissociation or break in the normative perception of reality. In the album’s liner notes Higgins asserts that his own compositions take that bruised silence and use it as a mandate to explore “the question of death, the task of ritual, and the crisis of representation in our contemporary world.” The album’s title, meanwhile, invokes the act of ringing an alarm bell, although the urgency it suggests is dampened slightly by the quartet’s somewhat leaden performance of this fragmentary opening piece. As a conceptual hinge, however, Higgins’ framing of the piece is inspired.
Higgins’ own compositions are turbulent and insistent. “SQ3,” performed again (and more persuasively) by Mivos Quartet, is filled with uncomfortable stillnesses and bursts of agitated frenzy emerging from that initial crack of silence galvanized by Bach’s death. The suite is divided into four movements, each retaining the same eerie atmosphere but varying in structure and tumult. Higgins pushes the players to cacophonic extremes only to pull them back into a shadowy quiet, the strings groaning to life like a ferocious animal struggling to overcome the effects of a sedative. In the second movement, dissonant, droning crescendos dissolve into fits of pizzicato that then crumple back into silence. It is only with the piece’s final movement, allusively titled “Fugue (Burial),” that Higgins turns to more structured notions of harmonic and melodic development; even then the framework dissolves in the piece’s final minutes, returning to powerful thuds of clustered tones and screeching wails.
“Tocsin,” the album’s double-movement centerpiece for two cellos and piano, benefits from the spotlight on prodigious pianist Vicky Chow, whose exactitude and expressive instincts transform what might otherwise be obtuse into a riveting thrill ride. Her instrument is prepared with objects that transform specific keys into gamelan-like plinks, which come into play in the quietest and most chaotic moments, adding a surrealist bent. Higgins is a technically virtuosic guitarist, and his propensity for disorienting complexity shines in moments when the instruments coalesce into pulsing patterns of indeterminate beats that dance about wildly before collapsing in on themselves. Compared to “SQ3,” the chaos in “Tocsin” feels controlled. Rather than diminish its impact, that precision offers a more approachable entry into the clamorous world that Higgins has built.
Higgins composed and premiered these pieces in 2015 and 2016—a period when, in the U.S., an old way of being was snapped in half, and a new period of turmoil was intensifying. The music on TOCSIN, charged with brutality and unease, feels like an acknowledgement of the cycles of crisis and change confronting us in the new decade. Alarm bells ring and ring and ring, over and over, but there is force in Higgins’ portrayal of both moments of rupture and the determination to continue on.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Telegraph Harp | October 19, 2020 | 7.3 | e7613bd3-2f7d-496d-9e36-a5139fadcfed | Jonathan Williger | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonathan-williger/ | |
Sasami Ashworth’s second solo album cleaves together two distinctively 1990s sound worlds as it asks: Can a song ever make it all the way to another person? | Sasami Ashworth’s second solo album cleaves together two distinctively 1990s sound worlds as it asks: Can a song ever make it all the way to another person? | SASAMI: Squeeze | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sasami-squeeze/ | Squeeze | SASAMI’s second album ends with a song that plays almost like a fable. A singer hears an astonishing melody in her head. She writes it down so that, later, she can sing it to her love. When she does, what comes out is “not a love song—just a beautiful, beautiful sound.” What rang rich and full in her imagination falls limply in the air between her and the object of her devotion. Meaning peels away, leaving only pleasure that evaporates on the wind.
Can a song ever make it all the way to another person? This question concludes Squeeze, and in doing so winds back through the album as a whole. SASAMI—the mononymic project of Sasami Ashworth, a former member of Cherry Glazerr and now a Los Angeles-based solo artist whose debut album came out in 2019—agitates her work toward the belief that music can get there, that it has to. “Do you like me? Do you notice me?” she speaks against a snaking, fuzzed bassline on “Need It to Work.” “Meet me in the dark,” she murmurs, her voice muffled and menacingly downpitched, against “Say It”’s industrial seethe. All across Squeeze, characters grasp at each other while questioning if their hands will reach far enough to meet. Their doubt adrenalizes their belief, serrates its edges, makes it tender.
In staging these scenes of clasping and dispersal, Ashworth melds two distinctively ’90s sound worlds. Squeeze holds Korn, Disturbed, and System of a Down in one hand; Sheryl Crow, Faith Hill, and Shania Twain in the other. Opener “Skin a Rat” bares blood-ringed teeth with its gnashing percussion, howled group vocals, and acidic guitar lines. Country-pop standout “Tried to Understand” frames those same teeth in a magazine-perfect smile. Like the recently reunited experimental metal group Faith No More, Ashworth delights in using genre as material rather than protocol. When I use the terms “nu-metal” or “country-pop” to describe what she does, I don’t use them to point to scripts that she’s followed. I mean that she’s hurled each loose grouping against the wall and watched their respective innards drip down until their colors start to blend.
When they blend, it’s awfully fun. The sunny-but-severe “Make It Right” pairs a delectably beachy guitar tone with a drumbeat that constantly spins off from the main pattern, progressively expanding the scope of the sound field. “The Greatest” works as both a delicate breakup ballad, a safe haven for nursing wounds, and an altar on which to swear bloody revenge against whoever broke your heart—a duality reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s most charged moments. The Daniel Johnston cover “Sorry Entertainer” electrifies and fleshes out an originally spare recording, surfacing the bitterness and exhaustion of a song about digging demons out of your head with the point of your lyric-writing pencil.
Squeeze toggles between a wide-open open sky and a cramped basement ceiling, threading the same desire through both scenes. Below ground, the body mingles with other bodies, rendered indistinct in the crush of a mosh pit. Above, in a daze, the body bleeds into its environment, similarly losing its specificity. Music is a way you can lose yourself. And once that’s lost, the distance between the source of a song and its receiver isn’t so stark. They were never really different to begin with. | 2022-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Domino | March 8, 2022 | 7.2 | e761b058-dde3-41e2-a1cf-e34db63e4c8f | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
The prolific New York rapper-producer’s latest album is self-assured and clear-eyed, ushering in an ambitious new era for the hometown hero. | The prolific New York rapper-producer’s latest album is self-assured and clear-eyed, ushering in an ambitious new era for the hometown hero. | MIKE: Burning Desire | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mike-burning-desire/ | Burning Desire | A little over halfway through MIKE’s new album, Burning Desire, a recent moment of joy in the New York rapper’s life takes center stage. During an interlude that begins on the title track, TAKA, MIKE’s friend and IFE Radio partner, recalls a fond memory from this summer’s Young World festival. The event, curated by MIKE, strived to connect disparate parts of rap’s underground. That day in July, a storm threatened to cut the show short, forcing organizers to pause the celebration as they waited out gray clouds. Eventually, the music resumed, and the first song played was the title track of the then-unannounced album. The moment, small and inconsequential, could’ve passed without second thought. But as TAKA’s words bleed into “They Don’t Stop in the Rain,” it instead feels like a testament to the serendipitous connections MIKE has forged. The New York rapper’s music can make small blessings feel transformative and cathartic—incidental details turned into canon events.
Three months later, Burning Desire arrives, a clear-eyed record that builds on those musings about fate and happenstance. MIKE isn’t a volume shooter, but with his Wiki and the Alchemist collab Faith Is a Rock released just three weeks ago, Burning Desire makes the case that he could be. For most of the album, MIKE raps with the same hot-blooded urgency of December’s Beware of the Monkey. This time, however, he gives himself room to just bar out. When 10k labelmate Niontay and D.C. rapper El Cousteau join him on “Mussel Beach,” MIKE eases into a slippery flow to match their energy. Outside of rare side quests like Popstar Benny’s delirious “ATL Freestyle,” MIKE has seldom sounded this loose.
Burning Desire moves between chest-puffing bombast and MIKE’s characteristic rumination, sometimes within the same breath. While angst and grief remain recurring subjects, here he chooses to honor loved ones instead of framing past hardships as insurmountable. MIKE’s tone has moved in this dynamic and self-assured direction since 2021’s Disco!. The confidence in his voice is palpable across Burning Desire, especially on “Sixteens,” where he sounds like he climbed to the top of the Rocky steps moments before hitting record.
Under his producer alias dj blackpower, MIKE handles all but two of the album’s 24 tracks. (GAWD produced “African Sex Freak Fantasy,” while Laron is behind “Snake Charm.”) The beats range from misty loops that evoke the sentimentality of Count Bass D’s Dwight Spitz (“What U Say U Are,” “Let’s Have a Ball”) to cataclysmic landscapes (“plz don’t cut my wings,” “should be!”). Burning Desire illustrates MIKE’s evolution as a beatmaker, each song a tweezer-perfected terrarium of manipulated vocal samples, chunky loops, and rattling drums; the pockets of air MIKE finds within them make room for some of his most dexterous rapping yet. Take “Zap!”, where he bobs and weaves between brass stabs, or “African Sex Freak Fantasy,” where his words ricochet off walls of distorted bass like a rubber handball. The Liv.e and Venna-assisted “U think Maybe?” marks the first time that MIKE has incorporated live instrumentation in his production discography. After two minutes of wistful call-and-response, the London saxophonist’s somber performance and Liv.e’s aching voice melt into tranquil harmony.
As a prolific artist whose albums pull from a pool of familiar collaborators, MIKE’s music can sometimes feel insular, culled from an isolationist universe with little external influence. Burning Desire doesn’t quite crack his world open with shocking surprise twists—Earl Sweatshirt returns, while Crumb’s Lila Ramani and the mysterious London singer mark william lewis make for refreshing guests. But it does point toward potential expansion.
Earlier this year, MIKE told me that he and his manager planned to operate his career like a “mom-and-pop store,” aiming to stretch opportunities as far as possible while staying small. Even with sponsorships from Supreme, events like Young World demonstrate at least one form of commitment to that plan by prioritizing accessibility, intimacy, and community over self-gain. According to an Okayplayer interview, MIKE passed on a headline show and instead used the fees from SummerStage, the organization that funded Young World, to pay artists on his own self-curated lineup. Burning Desire feels similar: an adventure that preserves the homegrown spirit of MIKE’s music while taking a half-step toward something even more ambitious. “Thebe showed me Alc money/Still be hella proud ’bout all the shit I did without money,” he asserts on “Ho-Rizin.” On Burning Desire, MIKE proves he’s still discovering ways to sustain that pride.
Correction: A previous version of this review implied that Pepsi was also a sponsor of Young World. It is not. | 2023-10-18T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-18T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rap | 10k | October 18, 2023 | 8.1 | e7809018-b6b8-4a56-b639-a0cda768e92b | Brandon Callender | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brandon-callender/ | |
Working under the auspices of another vague, dystopian narrative, the UK band slaps a shiny new label on the grafted remains of better songs and calls it the ninth Muse album. | Working under the auspices of another vague, dystopian narrative, the UK band slaps a shiny new label on the grafted remains of better songs and calls it the ninth Muse album. | Muse: Will of the People | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/muse-will-of-the-people/ | Will of the People | Generally speaking, Muse operate in three modes: “The government is trying to control me, but I won’t let them, because I love freedom”; “I am so horny that my gonads have leapt into my throat and started knocking against my larynx like a fleshy Newton’s cradle”; and “Alas!!!!!” They tend to do their best work in the libidinal register—think of the adrenal floods of “Hysteria” and “Bliss,” Chris Wolstenholme’s frenzied fingerwork, the twinned squeals of Matt Bellamy’s guitar and throat—but there are gems in all three. The UK band’s ninth album, Will of the People, samples unevenly from these readymade buckets. Bellamy has billed the LP as another concept album about a man sick of the dystopia in which he finds himself mired, so you might expect Will of the People to tilt heavily toward “the government.” Not so. In its bulk and at its core, this is an “alas” album: an assembly of songs that look out at the world, throw up their hands, and go sulking back to their room.
Will of the People starts out strongly in narrative mode. The title track calls for a populist revolution: Crowd vocals ring out against AC/DC guitar chords and a Gary Glitter stomp-whap, both compressed within an inch of their life, as Bellamy snarls at the big bad that he and his army are about to take down. On lead single “Compliance,” Bellamy switches roles from oppressed to oppressor, sounding out the words that might be uttered by a narcotic omnipotence, a cult of power that promises to blunt all suffering for the price of mindless obedience. Here, Muse lapse back into the neon hues of 2018’s retrofuturist outing Simulation Theory, setting palm-muted chords against snaking funk bass lines, shearing synth leads, and vocoder huffs copied and pasted from the Weeknd’s “Starboy.” So far, so good: Protagonist and antagonist square off atop a few mismatched, Xeroxed set pieces. By the time we arrive at the Queen homage “Liberation,” another song written from the perspective of the People and their Will, we almost have a story.
And then the concept deflates. From the lachrymose piano ballad “Ghosts (How Can I Move On)” (which at least gives us a glimpse into a parallel universe where Coldplay has a technically proficient singer) to the flimsy, pseudo-thrash embarrassments “Kill or Be Killed” and “Won’t Stand Down,” Muse drift into songs that sound, vaguely, about a relationship in tatters. In theory, it’s meaty enough subject matter, but a rock opera it does not make. Through the grief and anger of a fresh split, the band doubles down on the album’s arbitrary collage of musical styles; each song is a mosaic of references so far-flung and so thinly considered that Will of the People starts to feel like that scene in the new Space Jam where every character from every property is somehow there on the screen, cheering for basketball—a pop cultural slurry whipped up into a dizzying whirlpool.
Muse pilfer from themselves and everyone else, cramming their horde into a tightly produced display case. “You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween” hits its seasonal nail squarely on the head with a mockery of Vincent Price’s “Thriller” epilogue. “Won’t Stand Down” spits up the subwoofer wubs of Imagine Dragons’ cultural pollutant “Radioactive” and AWOLNATION’s actually pretty decent single “Sail” and Muse’s own “Supermassive Black Hole,” too. On “Verona,” where Bellamy at least remembers that songs sound better when they have a vocal melody, a trebly loop from the Edge’s discard pile jangles at half speed. “Euphoria” (there are only so many synonyms for “bliss”) inexplicably defiles Giorgio Moroder’s gorgeous loop from Donna Summer’s eternal disco hit “I Feel Love” right before it reiterates the pre-chorus to “Time Is Running Out” and then, inexplicably, launches into an early 2000s California pop-punk refrain that’s comically at odds with Bellamy’s unflappable vocal gravitas. At the end of this mess, closer “We Are Fucking Fucked” almost directly repurposes the climactic rev-up of “Knights of Cydonia,” only without any of the delightful melodramatic heights to pitch us into freefall.
All of these moments lurch through time without any thought of build or denouement—no tension, no release, no narrative. Muse parade their influences while giving us all comical winks: Remember this? And this? And how about this? When Bellamy rattles off a list of apocalyptic buzzwords on “We Are Fucking Fucked” (“STOCKPILE!” he shrieks in Roger Taylor falsetto), the rot in the pit burbles to the fore. If musicians with all the means in the world are happy to slap a shiny new label on the grafted remains of better songs and call it the ninth Muse album, what investment could they have in anything? Why dig deep for the hard questions of the world, its politics, its future when you could look around and declare the whole thing game over? Why trouble yourself with the distinctions between genuine collectivism and despotic mind control—between what you really want and what you’re conditioned to want—if this shallow flailing guarantees streams all the same? I felt compelled to call this album a Frankenstein’s Monster, stitched together as it is from so many dead appendages. Then I remembered: The monster wanted to live. | 2022-08-31T00:03:00.000-04:00 | 2022-08-31T00:03:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Warner | August 31, 2022 | 3.7 | e7974885-8073-4f14-9aba-383e2a09c997 | Sasha Geffen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sasha-geffen/ | |
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 a bucolic cult classic from 1983, one that taps into a centuries-old tradition of pastoralism in British culture. | 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 a bucolic cult classic from 1983, one that taps into a centuries-old tradition of pastoralism in British culture. | Virginia Astley: From Gardens Where We Feel Secure | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/virginia-astley-from-gardens-where-we-feel-secure/ | From Gardens Where We Feel Secure | The mid-’80s were a peculiar time for alternative music in the UK. Around 1983, the surging momentum of the post-punk era dissipated into a confused clutter of trends and revivals. People who’d begun their musical journey in roughly the same spot—the Sex Pistols, the Clash—were now making sounds unrelated to each other and a long distance from their starting point.
Even though it came out on the archetypal post-punk independent label Rough Trade, few records could have been further from the filth and fury of 1977 than the pastoral ambient music of Virginia Astley’s 1983 album From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. She had been a punk fellow traveler as a teenager in the late ’70s, going to rowdy gigs and playing in pubs herself as keyboardist in the new wave group Victims of Pleasure. By training and temperament, though, Astley did not fit the standard profile of a post-punk musician. That movement teemed with art-school students who approached music-making conceptually. Astley attended music college and arrived on the scene armed with craft and technique. She drew inspiration not from political theory but poetry and literature.
Still, as her post-punk contemporaries expanded their sound, Astley found her services in demand. She did the string arrangements on Siouxsie and the Banshees’ tempestuous single “Fireworks.” After working on an album track by the Scottish new wave band Skids, she collaborated with singer Richard Jobson on The Ballad of Etiquette, an album of poetry and spoken word set to music. Astley also formed a romantic and creative partnership with Skids bassist Russell Webb, with whom she would co-produce From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.
Before starting her solo career, Astley briefly belonged to Ravishing Beauties, an all-female trio of classically trained musicians whose tiny clutch of recordings includes a poignant setting of “Futility” by First World War poet Wilfred Owen. The allusion to early 20th-century English literature, along with the genteel quaintness of the expression “ravishing beauties”—imagine it uttered in debonair Downton Abbey tones—set the stage for Astley’s first recordings: not so much a case of “like punk never happened” as “like rock never happened”.
Judging by her speaking voice, which can be heard on a 1983 interview for Greenwich Sound Radio, Astley was not particularly posh. But her singing tones are as demure and pure as the choir soloist at an all-girls boarding school. Even her name seemed to hail from another time, evoking (via Virginia Woolf) the Bloomsbury Group, or perhaps a character in an Evelyn Waugh novel (his Brideshead Revisited, adapted for TV in 1981, had plunged half the nation into nostalgia for a lost aristocratic England). There’s even a phonetic echo of Laura Ashley, the popular clothing designer whose floral patterns and natural fabrics harked back to the country-house world of the 19th century. Astley herself favored Fair Isle sweaters and flowing, loose-fit garments. Appearing on the cover of NME in autumn 1983, clasping a bunch of wildflowers and with a scarf masking her face, Astley looked like a cross between a botanist and a bandit.
Although no one else on the UK indie scene at that time made a record as beguilingly bucolic as Gardens, Astley had company in other ways. She fit into a mini-phenomenon I call “wide-brimmed hat music.” Astley sported one herself on the cover of her 1986 album Hope in a Darkened Heart. In the mid-’80s, the independent charts and music papers were full of hat-wearing groups like the Woodentops and Martin Stephenson and the Daintees. The headgear had nothing to with dashingly masculine hats like those worn by the Clash. These were more like the hat a pale English girl would wear to ward off freckles while being punted along the lazy rivers of Oxford or Cambridge.
Seven years on from punk, the British rock scene’s obsession with street credibility suddenly evaporated. For the first time since Kevin Ayers in the early ’70s, a spate of UK performers no longer hid their well-spoken accents by adopting a downwardly mobile drone. Sonically, too, there was a kind of rebellion against rebellion, with artists like Everything But the Girl, Vic Godard, Weekend, and the Style Council embracing light music and middle-of-the-road sounds: Cole Porter, Astrud Gilberto, French chansonniers. In an echo of the proggy early ’70s, another moment when rock grew comfortable with being middle-class, non-rock instruments like strings and woodwinds became chic accoutrements. Kate St. John, formerly one of Ravishing Beauties, played oboe and cor anglais in the Dream Academy, whose trans-Atlantic smash “Life in a Northern Town” became the wide-brimmed moment’s mainstream breakthrough.
Astley’s 1982 debut EP Love’s a Lonely Place to Be includes songs with lyrics, but there is a foretaste of Gardens’ almost completely instrumental direction in the form of “It’s Too Hot to Sleep” and “A Summer Long Since Passed,” both of which would reappear on the album. The EP’s title track’s chirruping vocal riff uncannily anticipates Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”; the inspiration probably came from Laurie Anderson’s voice-pulse on “O Superman” or the fluttery “systems music” of composer Michael Nyman. Both were among the artists that Astley played on the 1983 radio show, which took place while Gardens was still a work-in-progress. She also mentioned Brian Eno as an admired ancestor. Astley’s account of what she’s trying to do with the album is very close to Eno’s definition of ambient as music that must be as ignorable as it is interesting: “Whoever’s listening could lie down and put it on, and not really listen to it that much,” Astley suggested during the radio chat. “Just have it on in the background.”
Featuring nature sounds recorded in and around the village of Moulsford-on-Thames, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure taps into a centuries-old tradition of rhapsodic pastoralism in British culture. Both the countryside and the household garden figure as places where Nature’s wild beauty is domesticated and made into a safe space for dream and play, reverie and revelry. Increasingly it was the ever-expanding city that came to seem like dangerous wilderness, a place whose depravity and deprivation bred both vice and radicalism. Illness and unrest alike could be inoculated, urban planners hoped, by the creation of public parks. Inspired by similar social anxieties, the garden city movement of the early 20th century created new towns that incorporated large areas of greenery, while another social initiative provided allotments of land for nominal rental fees so that ordinary townsfolk could grow their own produce and recover their inner peasant.
Gardens recreates a single summer day from dawn to dusk: The first side of the original vinyl covers the morning, while the second is dedicated to the afternoon. “I was just trying to capture that feeling you get on one of the first really hot days of summer,” Astley told NME later in 1983. “The timeless feel of the beginning of summer.” “With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming” starts with the bright dawn chatter of birdsong, gradually interlacing piano, flute, and acoustic guitar. Although there are no drums, the track is more melodically sprightly than what we tend to consider “ambient” these days. But the repetitiousness of the patterns and the absence of gaps between tracks create a feeling of suspension from time.
Like a cinematic dissolve, the elegiac title “A Summer Long Since Past” establishes the idyll faraway in time, associating it with childhood or even the pre-industrial past. Astley’s wordless “la-la-la” vocal is mixed further back than on the EP version: It seems to reach your ear across distance, like a girl singing happily to herself while walking down the road on the other side of your garden wall. A descending piano figure gently cascades in a haze of sustain-pedal. On the title track, church bells peal in a continuous loop, suggesting that these are not chimes marking the hours of an ordinary day but an exceptional cause for communal rejoicing: a Royal Wedding, the coming of peace at the close of World War II.
The back cover of the 2003 CD reissue of Gardens features a photograph of a thatched cottage and a small, fair-haired girl who looks like Astley and which most likely stems from a brief period in her otherwise suburban childhood when she lived in the countryside. Like the hauntology of Boards of Canada and the Ghost Box label, Astley’s music taps into that zone where idyllic personal memory bleeds into collective nostalgia: mythic notions of England as Arcadia.
The atmosphere of a halcyon long-lost summer intensifies on the “Afternoon” side of the album. The rusty squeak of a gate between fields forms an irritable loop through “Out on the Lawn I Lie in Bed,” contrasting tartly with pretty xylophone chimes and piano trills in the higher octaves like rippling water rushing over rocks. “Too Bright for Peacocks” is an intriguing title, leaving you to wonder whether it’s the birds’ plumage that’s so radiant in the mid-afternoon sun it makes you squint, or if it’s the peacocks themselves who need shades. Staccato piano thrumming like rays pounding on your back, the track captures that heat-baked peak of the day when a wide-brimmed hat would really come in handy.
Despite the largely acoustic palette, subtle touches of studio trickery surface every so often, most notably on “When the Fields Were on Fire,” where a high-pitched drone on loan from Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy for Lilith wavers throughout the track. Living up to the title, the piece conjures that golden hour when a certain slant of dying sunshine sets the wheatfields eerily aglow. Nominally identified as “afternoon,” “It’s Too Hot to Sleep” really belongs to the night, as the tu-whit tu-whoo of a tawny owl signals. The title flashes me back to the English ’80s—when air conditioning was virtually unknown in the UK—but the piece itself doesn’t evoke restless limbs tangled in a single sweat-soaked sheet but rather blissful drowsiness.
In June 1983, as Astley finished work on Gardens, Margaret Thatcher won reelection: a historic landslide buoyed by the jingoistic swagger that followed the nation’s victory in the Falklands War, and an electoral triumph achieved despite the mass unemployment and social discord caused by her conservative economic policies. Nine months later, Thatcher went to war again, not with foes overseas but with the “enemy within”—striking miners, the toughest and most defiant organization within what remained of Britain’s industrial proletariat. During Thatcher’s rule, the country’s alternative musicians hurled out protest songs: Crass’ “How Does It Feel? (to Be the Mother of a Thousand Dead)?,” Robert Wyatt’s oblique and melancholy “Shipbuilding,” Test Dept’s collaboration with a Welsh miners’ choir.
It would be a stretch to describe Astley’s album as a response to or even a commentary on its times. But the summertime idyll so lovingly recreated is shadowed by the political crises of the early ’80s, not least because the notion of England as a green and pleasant land is entangled with the nostalgic conservatism of the Thatcher era. Both the album title and “Out on the Lawn I Lie in Bed” come from W.H. Auden’s 1933 poem “A Summer Night,” a mystical vision of companionship and erotic tenderness set in a country garden in the Malvern Hills. But shadows of the coming conflict in Europe pass across Auden’s poem, as well as a sense of the privilege that supports such comfortable seclusion: “Nor ask what doubtful act allows/Our freedom in this English house/Our picnics in the sun.” It’s not a huge leap to connect that guilty awareness with the imperial flashback of summer 1982, when Great Britain flexed its naval might in the South Atlantic. Could it be that the album’s overt subject, pastoral peace, carries a pacifist subtext?
Support for such a reading comes from the EP that preceded Gardens, 1982’s A Bao A Qu, run through with themes of untimely mortality and anti-war sentiment. There are borrowings from the German poet Friedrich Rückert’s Kindertotenlieder (poems inspired by the death of children), W. B. Yeats’ “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” and Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Consider also the Ravishing Beauties’ interpretation of Wilfred Owen’s bitter poem about slain young soldiers, with its references to “the kind old sun” and “fatuous sunbeams.” While the British people basked in an unexpected burst of hot weather in early June 1982, their young men were slaughtering and being slaughtered at Bluff Cove on East Falkland.
From Gardens Where We Feel Secure came out just over a year later, via an imprint through Rough Trade especially established for its release. The sub-label’s name, Happy Valley, is probably a reference to Samuel Johnson’s novel Rasselas, which contains an ambivalent portrait of a rustic idyll. It’s music that lends a fragrant tint to the home atmosphere, defusing stress as it infuses the living space. Particularly in these restricted times, Gardens works as a surrogate for a day trip to the country. But just like in Astley’s ’80s, the haven it recreates remains surrounded on all sides by turmoil and trouble.
Get the Sunday Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here. | 2021-01-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-01-10T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Rough Trade / Happy Valley | January 10, 2021 | 8.4 | e7a1b9cd-02ba-4496-b3ca-ee5e941d0afa | Simon Reynolds | https://pitchfork.com/staff/simon-reynolds/ | |
On their shaggy, wild-eyed seventh album, the Austin rockers sound like a band rejuvenated—or, at least, a band that remembers what people liked about its music in the first place. | On their shaggy, wild-eyed seventh album, the Austin rockers sound like a band rejuvenated—or, at least, a band that remembers what people liked about its music in the first place. | White Denim: Performance | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/white-denim-performance/ | Performance | If you haven’t checked in with Austin rockers White Denim in the past five or so years, here’s a refresher: After gaining blog buzz for their gnarly, unpredictable tunes in the late 2000s, they joined artists like Santigold and Mos Def on Downtown Records for their fifth album, 2011’s D. Under estimable producers including Ethan Johns and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, their sound mellowed, taking on a more sanded-down, straightforward feel. As the buzz (and the broader influence of blogs over the music industry) faded, band members Josh Block and Austin Jenkins peeled off to write for, record with, and back up Fort Worth rock-soul throwback Leon Bridges.
It wasn’t such a dramatic transition for Block and Jenkins, considering that White Denim had spent most of the current decade leaning into the soulful aspects of their sound, growing smoother and, in turn, less distinctive than they had been during their noisy early years. So it’s a bit of a surprise that Performance, the band’s seventh album overall and first for new label City Slang, is so shaggy and wild eyed.
Recorded in White Denim’s new Radio Milk space in downtown Austin, with founding members James Petralli and Steve Terebecki manning the production booth, Performance sounds like a band rejuvenated—or at least a band that remembers what people liked about its music in the first place. The album kicks open the door with a run of cuts that play fast and loose with rhythm and melody, featuring miniature breakdowns and guitar-riff emissions so thick they might violate EPA standards. There’s a sense that White Denim are having fun here, from the proggy synth arpeggios that shiver through the center of “Moves On” to the drum patter and tricky bass licks of “Backseat Driver.” And such playfulness allows the band to flex its capable musicianship. (It’s practically a given that these songs will sound very good live.)
The colorful abundance of Performance is reminiscent of another guys-rocking-in-a-room album from earlier this year: Chicago psych bros Post Animal’s When I Think of You in a Castle, which fused skill and melody to similarly potent effect. But while Post Animal aren’t shy about venturing into heady territory, Performance finds White Denim sticking comfortably within the confines of more familiar classic rock sounds. The closest they get to entering a trippier realm is in the closing minutes of the sprawling “Fine Slime,” when a jammy, grimy groove starts to fade out, replaced by some errant noise. But then the grit returns at full blast. You can hear hints of the Beatles (don’t laugh) on the album, as well as blues-pop titans and fellow classic rock disciples the Black Keys, who leave an indelible imprint on opener “Magazin.”
It’s unlikely that fans of either band would be too bothered by the imitation, which says something about the kind of listener who typically seeks out music like White Denim’s. Their grinning, good-natured rock doesn’t place much value on originality, but that doesn’t matter much to fans who can’t get enough of good old-fashioned rock’n’roll. Compared with what’s considered cool in both indie and mainstream music circa 2018, White Denim possess all the cultural capital of an ironing board—and I don’t really mean that as an insult. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they’re offering an intermittently thrilling ride in the ancient jalopy it’s attached to. Whether you end up jumping on board with Performance will depend on the extent of your own predilection for “real music” nostalgia, but those who do find themselves in the passenger seat are likely to have a pretty fun time. | 2018-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-08-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | City Slang | August 30, 2018 | 6.5 | e7a8b44e-047e-402a-a6fb-cd8d0eef6aa2 | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | |
Mica Levi’s band, formerly known as Micachu and the Shapes, embraces imperfection, evoking late-’80s indie pop in whimsical ideas, unsteady rhythms, and meticulous detailing. | Mica Levi’s band, formerly known as Micachu and the Shapes, embraces imperfection, evoking late-’80s indie pop in whimsical ideas, unsteady rhythms, and meticulous detailing. | Good Sad Happy Bad: Shades | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/good-sad-happy-bad-shades/ | Shades | Some artists make being in a band sound like absolutely the worst thing in the world, but not Good Sad Happy Bad (the new name for a rejiggered Micachu and the Shapes), who make you want to dive, headfirst and blinking, into their grottily inviting world of avant-retro pop. Shades may be the fifth album for Mica Levi and co., but it has the enticing naivety of a debut—a result, perhaps, of structural changes within the band, as keyboardist Raisa Khan moves to lead vocals and CJ Calderwood comes in on saxophone, recorder, and electronics.
The key to this youthful buoyancy is a certain embrace of imperfection. Micachu and the Shapes were never exactly the slickest of acts, but Shades is a particularly unselfconscious record, wobbly and wonderful, home to the kind of eccentric ideas, unsteady rhythms, and touches of discordance that more anxious musicians lop off in Pro Tools. “Believe It,” all misshapen ideas and sprightly urgency, could be the first demo of a promising young band before they become embarrassed by their weird edges. It starts with loose cymbal hits, sloppy guitar riffs, and disjointed saxophone skronk before cutting into a melody that sounds—in the very best way—like it was knocked up in 10 minutes on a battered acoustic guitar. The band stumbles through the song like four debutants furtively eyeing each other for chord changes.
This scruffy musical charm, mixed with Khan’s rather prim vocals, lends Shades the air of late-’80s/early-’90s guitar music, sitting somewhere between the jangling indie pop of the C86 bands, early shoegaze, and grunge, as seen through the winsome eyes of Graham Coxon’s noisier solo albums. It’s yet another new look for a band that has explored everything from chopped and screwed symphonics to lo-fi hip-hop beats since debuting in 2009, and they wear it extremely well. The continental guitar shelves of “Reaching” are kissing cousins to the somnambulant psychedelia that Kevin Shields and his sleep-crazed crew dreamed up on Isn’t Anything, while “Honey” has the same deliciously polite suggestion of the Velvet Underground that pre-internet favorites like the Darling Buds and the Shop Assistants used to press up on flexi-disc.
If Shades was just an indie knockoff it would be fun, untaxing, and ultimately unnecessary—a well-written, retro-fitted guilty pleasure for dreaming of better times. Dig into Shades’ apparent spontaneity, however, and a world of detail emerges. “Blessed” dresses its sweetly insouciant melody in a patchwork quilt of disjointed vocal clips, aquatic effects, and ghostly electronic whoosh, while “Taking” sets a grunge guitar line against a twinkling starscape. Best of all is opener “Do It,” whose detuned chords sparkle against tiny, half-submerged melodies played out on what sounds like synth, flute, and recorder. It helps that Levi is an excellent guitarist, capable of wringing transcendent riffs, dinosaur drones, and detuned sludge out of the instrument; Calderwood’s Fun House saxophone rasp brilliantly offsets Levi’s unpredictable playing.
The result is a kind of precise imprecision, as if the band had captured the abandon of their early recordings and then pored over the detail with manic industriousness—tweaking rather than polishing, the better to accentuate the unevenness. Shades is lightning captured in a meticulously painted bottle, and a hell of a good time, to boot.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-10-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-16T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Pop/R&B | Textile | October 16, 2020 | 7.6 | e7aa2a8e-d399-415c-8a34-9b534355ab8d | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
Ron Morelli is chiefly known as boss of the techno imprint L.I.E.S., but A Gathering Together is his fourth release for Hospital Productions, the label run by Prurient/Vatican Shadow man Dominick Fernow. In Fernow, you sense Morelli has found a true bedfellow, one who shares his aesthetic of misanthropy, gutter eroticism, and sonic abrasion. | Ron Morelli is chiefly known as boss of the techno imprint L.I.E.S., but A Gathering Together is his fourth release for Hospital Productions, the label run by Prurient/Vatican Shadow man Dominick Fernow. In Fernow, you sense Morelli has found a true bedfellow, one who shares his aesthetic of misanthropy, gutter eroticism, and sonic abrasion. | Ron Morelli: A Gathering Together | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21068-a-gathering-together/ | A Gathering Together | The phenomenon of noise dudes turning their hands to techno has become a familiar one, but to date there hasn’t been so much in the way of return traffic, and probably little wonder: club music presents access to a world of international travel, plentiful drugs, and beautiful strangers; while the noise life offers lightly attended shows in cold basements and all the Xeroxed fanzines about serial killers you can eat. In short, you have to want it, or more accurately, feel it—and Ron Morelli both wants it, and feels it. Morelli is chiefly known as boss of the New York-born, Paris-based techno imprint L.I.E.S., but A Gathering Together is his fourth release for Hospital Productions, the label run by Prurient/Vatican Shadow man Dominick Fernow. In Fernow, you sense Morelli has found a true bedfellow, one who shares his aesthetic of misanthropy, gutter eroticism, and sonic abrasion.
L.I.E.S.’ take on techno is brackish and lo-fi, and Morelli’s 2013 debut for Hospital, Spit, conformed to type: in broad terms, this was a club record, albeit one with torn clothing and dried blood under its fingernails. A Gathering Together is something more uncategorizable and disassembled. There are occasional hallmarks of dance music—a whoosh of sub-bass here, a vandalized vocal line there—but there will be, as Bill Callahan might have it, no dancing. Rhythms recall mechanical or industrial processes, pitched too fast or too slow for physical interaction. "Desert Ocean" is a hobbled march of throbbing generator tones and bold horn-like blasts that sound like a tanker lost in thick fog. The sounds of "New Dialect" bring to mind a needle puncturing metal, underwater scrapes, and the hiss of compressed gas. "Voices Rise" takes a brief vocal sample and suspends it in limbo with a variety of tics, scratches, and twists, while the miasmic drone of "Cross Waters" sounds like A Guy Called Gerald’s "Voodoo Ray", on fire, being lowered into tar.
This oppositional quality leads you to reflect on Morelli’s personal philosophy. "People are terrible and always have been," he told FACT in an interview two years ago, while the accompanying text for A Gathering Together describes the title track as being born from "rapid-paced dead-end urban environments that force people together." Perhaps the record’s most vivid, evocative cut, it begins with a disorienting field recording, before we hear what sounds like massed ranks of hands taking up percussion instruments and proceeding to beat out increasingly furious polyrhythms. The message seems plain enough—humanity can be horrifying—but there’s a paradoxical quality to its sense of barely corralled frenzy. If there is fear and disgust here, there is also elation and fascination, too—a recognition of life, even if it feels not so much empathetic as anthropological.
Is A Gathering Together a noise record, or not? The mechanistic looping and layering of "The Story of Those Gone" suggests Morelli might be familiar with the output of demented industrial recluses such as Maurizio Bianchi or Atrax Morgue. Equally, however, he might not, these being the sort of sounds you might discover given solitude and the right—that is, wrong—mental state. To Morelli’s credit, Gathering feels detailed and textured where it needs to, its shifting layers crisp and detached rather than blitzed into mulch. But Morelli’s negative energy, when robbed of an unrelenting bass drum, can drift toward monotony.
The idea that techno is more developed, or evolved, than noise is, of course, a false dichotomy. But take Dominick Fernow: his path from Prurient to Vatican Shadow has felt like a progression, opening up his compositional practice in a way that’s informed his many other projects to date. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Morelli, as he drifts from the dance floor, is taking a reverse path, somehow. Consequently, A Gathering Together is a bold move that falls short of being a landmark. But as an illustration of where Morelli might angle his music and label next—not to mention his readiness to confuse, confound, or destroy in order to explore more personal themes or private fancies—it still illuminates. | 2015-09-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-09-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hospital Productions | September 29, 2015 | 6.5 | e7b0702d-e346-47bd-a55d-71145a0b1ba3 | Louis Pattison | https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/ | null |
On his meditative collaboration with the ambient guitarist Noveller and jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas, Iggy Pop turns inward. | On his meditative collaboration with the ambient guitarist Noveller and jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas, Iggy Pop turns inward. | Iggy Pop: Free | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/iggy-pop-free/ | Free | Years ago, the world tacitly accepted there was a line separating Jim Osterberg and his feral creation Iggy Pop. Osterberg devised the street-walking cheetah persona of Iggy Pop as a way to tap into his primal urges, but the idea that he was playing a role only came into focus when he managed to survive to tell tales about his hedonism. At this point, decades after his image softened enough so he could score a Top 40 hit and sell travel tickets on TV, the split personality is so accepted it nearly seems like a cliché: Whether he’s on or off stage, he plays the part that’s expected.
Free finds Iggy Pop embracing the notion that he’s playing Iggy Pop. In its liner notes, Iggy admits “this is an album in which other artists speak for me, but I lend my voice,” and that he consented to this peculiar situation because he felt “drained” at the conclusion of the cycle for Post Pop Depression, his 2016 collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. A clever fusion of the gnarled fuzz of the Stooges and the arch artiness of Pop’s ’70s Berlin collaborations with David Bowie, Post Pop Depression sounded like an Iggy Pop album was supposed to sound like. It was, to use a phrase Pop coined himself, “a rock album with popular punks,” the snide explanation he gave for his record company rejecting his Francophile 2012 album Après.
Free belongs to the same lineage as Après and Préliminaires, the 2009 album where Iggy returned to his jazzy arthouse inspirations. It’s such a departure from Post Pop Depression that it nearly feels like a repudiation, yet that isn’t quite true. It’s merely another iteration of the divide between Iggy Pop and Jim Osterberg: Homme brought out the rocker, while Free allows Osterberg to turn inward and meditate.
It’s a guided meditation, directed by Leron Thomas, a jazz trumpeter from Houston, and Noveller, the stage name of the Brooklyn-based musician Sarah Lipstate, who specializes in “guitarscapes.” Neither Thomas nor Noveller are particularly well-known. Pop happened upon them both as he was searching for music to play on his regular BBC Radio show and within their music, he recognized a moody elasticity that suits his flights of introspection. Hiring the pair to tap into this dusky, brooding vibe, Pop gave them a pair of poems to act as a lodestar for their compositions—Lou Reed’s “We Are the People,” Dylan Thomas’ middle-school prerequisite “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”—and then sat back, collaborating on occasion but otherwise performing songs handed to him.
Thomas and Noveller both make a conscious decision to appeal to the parts of Pop that lie above the waist, writing songs that address matters of the head, heart, and soul. The closest Free gets to the carnal is “Dirty Sanchez,” a Thomas-written screed against online sexuality that Pop had to be persuaded to record. It’s odd to think that the author of “Cock in My Pocket” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog” balked at the line “Just because I like big tits/Doesn’t mean I like big dicks,” but the song isn’t meant to be kinky or titillating; it’s tired, enervated by the onslaught of cheap online sex and, in that sense, it fits the rest of Free, which is filled with songs where the narrator yearns to be anywhere other than where he is at the moment.
That yearning isn’t especially urgent, however. Free runs a mere 34 minutes but it meanders, lingering in shimmering twilight vistas, luxuriating in reverb and gaining a bit of momentum when the bass line of “James Bond” nods at spy movies. Every element, whether electronic rhythms or swells of keyboard or stabs of a trumpet, is used as texture, letting Iggy savor the words he recites and croons. Often, the lyrics are as skeletal and suggestive as the music, lending Free a certain spectral quality; the album threatens to come into focus but resolutely resists to offer anything more concrete than whispers and suggestions.
The haziness of Free has its share of frustrations—as alluring as the pensive soundscapes are, it’s hard not to wish they were occasionally more sculpted—but there’s something curiously human and appealing about its ungainly nature. Once again, Iggy Pop is standing outside of the zeitgeist, separating himself from the digital clamor and processed noise that constitutes popular culture at the twilight of the 2010s. Age certainly plays a factor in Pop’s current cultural isolation. Now in his early 70s, Iggy can’t be bothered with the clatter that constitutes hipness, yet he’s not ready to settle down. He’s restless but in a subdued fashion, happy to play the part of Iggy Pop not because he lacks energy or imagination, but because this subjugation allows him the freedom he craves.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Loma Vista / Caroline | September 12, 2019 | 6.7 | e7b0cb3f-6306-44f3-a23f-90ad3219fb22 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
On Forest Swords’ 2010 EP Dagger Paths, the web of dub, psych, dance, and drone spun by UK producer Matthew Barnes felt instantly singular. Engravings is the perfect sequel, cementing his knack for creating complex effects with elementary methods. Every song here is boldly sensual, and each note has a distinct emotional hue. | On Forest Swords’ 2010 EP Dagger Paths, the web of dub, psych, dance, and drone spun by UK producer Matthew Barnes felt instantly singular. Engravings is the perfect sequel, cementing his knack for creating complex effects with elementary methods. Every song here is boldly sensual, and each note has a distinct emotional hue. | Forest Swords: Engravings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18401-forest-swords-engravings/ | Engravings | On Forest Swords’ 2010 EP Dagger Paths, the web of dub, psych, dance, and drone spun by UK producer Matthew Barnes felt instantly singular. So singular, in fact, that the task of creating a worthy follow-up must have seemed daunting, which I assumed was why it took him a while. It turns out there were other reasons-- for one, he suffered from hearing problems that made his new work sound different with each listen, and forced him to consider ending Forest Swords. But also, in keeping with his music’s slow-growing vibe, he was wary of rushing things. As he admitted in a February interview, “I’m glad I took a step back…I’ve seen so many bands who strike while the iron’s hot and then burn out.”
Barnes’ judgment proved sound, as did his ears, at least in their ability to assess his work. Created at his own pace in his own home in North West England, Engravings is the perfect sequel to Dagger Paths. Barnes steadfastly retains his sturdy loops, simple beats, and evocative guitar lines, refusing to overhaul his potent formula just to dodge accusations that he’s repeating himself. But he also gradually inserts new sounds into that equation, fitting them snugly into his songs’ accumulating layers. The result is both familiar and fresh, cementing Barnes’ knack for creating complex effects with elementary methods.
Engravings also confirms his ability to conjure more than just a chilly, faded-memory vibe. Dagger Paths did that too, but it was easy to get lost in its burned-out echo and miss other ideas and moods that Barnes explored along the way. Here, those diverse facets of his music are unavoidable. Every song is boldly sensual, and each note has a distinct emotional hue. Mixing that intensity with dream-like atmospheres lands Engravings in a unique emotional space, one Barnes accurately describes as a “balance between really intense euphoria and this almost bleakness.”
Trying to balance those opposites could produce disjointed, even jarring art. But one of the biggest strengths of Forest Swords’ music is its fluidity. Although Barnes adds and subtracts loops and beats without hiding the seams, he persistently maintains a DJ-like flow. As a result, following the curving path of his melodies feels more like riding a wave than cutting through choppy waters. So even a track as spliced together as “Onward”-- which opens with a stuttering clang, grafts on glittering guitar, then drifts into strings and a pounding beat-- feels completely logical, as if this is the only way time could march on.
Barnes’ strong sense of flow lets him add new twists to his sound without forcing them in. Often they emerge sneakily, like the radio-static transmissions in “Ljoss”, the New Age piano on “Gathering”, the horn-section accents in “An Hour”, or the near-militaristic beat of ecstatic closer “Friend, You Will Never Learn”. In other places, these additions are clearer, but they’re always well-suited to their environment, as if Barnes had no other choice but to include them in his mix.
That’s especially true of the increased amount of singing on Engravings. The majority of it comes from Barnes’ own voice, which he sampled and then edited down to a nearly molecular level. This digital abstraction of the music’s most human element gives Engravings subliminal warmth, as if the ghosts of long-dead lyrics are watching over the songs. At times, vocals even become the focus: “Gathering” is nothing but overlapped singing for its first half, and the inclusion of Brighton-based vocalist Anneka on “Anneka’s Battle” adds vivid soul to Barnes’ brand of negative-space R&B.
Barnes inviting a guest onto a Forest Swords song is a bit surprising. His one-man music is usually a personal affair: you can practically hear him thinking through the songs as they unfold, and all the reverb and atmosphere make them feel like internal monologues. But compared to Dagger Paths, there’s more acknowledgement of the external world on Engravings. Barnes incorporates field recordings and refers to his locale in song titles; he also mixed the entire album on his laptop while sitting outside. Opening his process up a bit to include his environment perhaps explains how music this skeletal can sound like it has so much blood coursing through it.
It also explains how the one-man world of Forest Swords can feel so universal. Unrestricted by words or verse-chorus structures, Barnes’ songs reflect the way life can feel like an endless loop, growing and building without ever losing its cyclical nature. Maybe that’s why, even though Forest Swords’ sound skirts an array of genres, it doesn’t belong to any single one. Barnes’ work is less concerned with trends or scenes than experiences and memories that everyone has had, regardless of what music they’ve listened to before. On that count, Engravings is a broad success. | 2013-08-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2013-08-27T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Tri Angle | August 27, 2013 | 8.5 | e7bcf183-b819-4d32-8f7a-2ae6e4fc8dbb | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
The follow-up to 2019’s This Is How You Smile is mellower and breezier than its predecessor; it feels less like a tour of Roberto Carlos Lange’s psyche than an afternoon barbecue in his backyard. | The follow-up to 2019’s This Is How You Smile is mellower and breezier than its predecessor; it feels less like a tour of Roberto Carlos Lange’s psyche than an afternoon barbecue in his backyard. | Helado Negro: Far In | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/helado-negro-far-in/ | Far In | For Roberto Carlos Lange, 2019 seemed to be the type of year that any songwriter hopes one day to see. After over 10 years of crafting introspective and alluringly amorphous songs as Helado Negro, among other projects, Lange pulled it all together, tied it up, and delivered a masterpiece. This Is How You Smile assembled notes of just about every sound Lange had dabbled in before, but not in the lazy way; every texture was carefully, tightly bound to a Teflon core statement of identity, self-affirmation, and the right to be many things. Nostalgic gazes into childhood portraits, Latin folk turned inside out, sparkly tinsel monsters, suboceanic synth wubs: It was all there, it was all him, and it was all that a listener roots for an artist to achieve. “Brown just glows,” he memorably sang in the first minute, a lyric that landed with way more weight than should be possible from a voice so light, and Lange only radiated more from there.
But then there are the years where self-actualization is secondary to simply remaining alive and well, and these times found Lange shortly after releasing This Is How You Smile. A long tour behind the album broke him down—just in time for a pandemic, his 40th birthday, and a move to North Carolina after a decade and a half in Brooklyn. On his new double album, Far In, he doesn’t sound quite so concerned with the artistic “step forward” as with healthier steps. His priority today seems to be, to quote his first words on Far In, “Wake up tomorrow.”
If This Is How You Smile was the complete house tour of Lange’s psyche, Far In is more like an afternoon barbeque in the backyard. It doesn’t tell as complex of a story, but you’re more than happy to hang out in the sun for a while and enjoy his company. The aesthetics are much more even: steady, mellow, comforting. Lange may not have felt as carefree as he sounds on these 15 chilled-out tracks, but they seem like signposts, like a target state of mind more than a revealing self-portrait.
Lange has always had a delicate touch, but the general breeziness here is different. The prominent drumming of Jason Trammell has a lot to do with that: He’s a consistent presence, always drawing attention but never loud, manipulating his hi-hat and muted snare to keep it interesting. With the help of Trammell and a clutch of guest drummers, Lange shows that even his disco-inflected songs can still be tactile and rewarding in headphones—albeit some more than others. “Outside the Outside” is the best example, a silent-rave shuffle that quietly pulls you in; it sounds like it’s coming up through the floorboards, a song that you’ll only hear if you crouch low. “Gemini and Leo,” meanwhile, dials it up to near-anthem size and loses some of that magnetic intimacy that Lange does so well, like a stick of watermelon gum that blasts flavor for a few minutes then goes bland.
Far In still has its fair share of range, but there are fewer songs that feel like he's flipping parts around, or opening up a hidden door. The moments with a lighter pulse (like the fingerpicked “Wind Conversations,” which perfectly evokes lying in shady grass) or almost none at all (“Aguas Frías,” a beautifully accentuated drone on thornier themes of fragile memory and lost love) are more ripe to crack open and explore than the dance tracks, which offer little in the way of mystery, and even stick out at times. Ultimately, that makes Far In feel a little less ambitious than the past few Helado Negro albums (despite its beefy 68-minute runtime and stacked roster of collaborators, including Kacy Hill and William Tyler) if still the right move for Lange at this moment. From Solar Power to Sky Blue Sky, there’s plenty of precedent for the lower-key, sun-worshipping album that immediately follows an artist’s most personal effort, the one that nearly crushed them and was widely hailed as a masterpiece.
Last year, Lange and his partner, visual artist Kristi Sword, released Kite Symphony, Four Variations: a rhythm-less, instrumental album—a companion to a site-specific series of Mylar sculptures—about the skies over Marfa, Texas. The influence of that project is palpable on Far In. To me, this album has a closer resemblance to a kite in the air. It dances, it’s colorful and detailed, and it feels light enough to be swept up off the ground by a gentle gust of wind. It can also be an oddly satisfying and centering thing: On days when your stresses and anxieties consume you, block out the world and just fixate on a kite for a little while, and you might find your footing again. This is Lange’s reminder to himself, and anyone listening, on Far In. If you’re lucky enough to have the power to do so, lighten up—it won’t kill you. It’s far more likely to save you.
Correction: This article originally credited Jason Trammell with drumming on “Hometown Dream,” “Agosto,” and “Telescope.” Drums on those tracks were performed by Marco Buccelli, John Herndon, and Savannah Harris, respectively.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-10-29T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-10-29T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | 4AD | October 29, 2021 | 8 | e7c8d70d-fb7d-4580-9c24-e7b15761fcff | Steven Arroyo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-arroyo/ | |
Arizona’s Gatecreeper stand out not by aping one particular style of death metal, but by acting as a polyglot of various classic bands. Sonoran Depravation is their unwavering debut LP. | Arizona’s Gatecreeper stand out not by aping one particular style of death metal, but by acting as a polyglot of various classic bands. Sonoran Depravation is their unwavering debut LP. | Gatecreeper: Sonoran Depravation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22460-sonoran-depravation/ | Sonoran Depravation | Other states may bear more significance for metal, but Arizona is not without its history. Soulfly’s Max Cavalera, best known for his time in Brazilian thrash pioneers Sepultura, calls Phoenix his home. Jason Newsted got his start in the neighboring Flotsam and Jetsam before Metallica called upon him to replace Cliff Burton. And the Metal God himself, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, was even the publisher of a Phoenix entertainment paper, Where It’s Hot Weekly. As far as current bands go, there aren’t many, which makes Arizona death metal group Gatecreeper all the more special. After an affirming debut demo tape in 2014 and a series of splits, they’ve finally extended their reach on their first full-length, Sonoran Depravation.
Gatecreeper stand out not by aping one particular style of death metal, but by acting as a polyglot of various classic bands. Their demo was prime Swedish worship, and considering the slew of hardcore bands that were drawing from Entombed’s buzzsaw sound—Nails and Trap Them chief among them—an American version of the pure thing was long overdue. Depravation still carries that influence; most records that Kurt Ballou has a hand in do. (Ballou, metal producer and guitarist of Converge, mixed Depravation.)
They also show a devotion to Florida legends Obituary’s ethos of keeping things as uncomplicated as possible. In the late ’80s, Obituary stripped the gothic trappings of Celtic Frost’s mid-paced stomp and brought it to its barest essence, and in Depravation’s groovier sections, that tradition lives on. Sometimes, Obituary is directly referenced, like in the main riff of “Lost Forever,” or the turn to death-doom in “Patriarchal Grip.” In the latter, Gatecreeper slow the tempos to put as much weight on the riffs as possible. It sounds like they could give out at any moment in the Arizona heat; when the pressure’s on, that’s when they’re at their heaviest. “Grip” is an experiment in applying Asphyx’s thick riffing to their interpretation of Entombed’s guitar tone, and what a fusion it is.
When Gatecreeper crank up the speed on “Desperation,” the Obituary ethos becomes more spiritual than direct. This is a track that cannot be bogged down by excessive soloing or a sudden drone dirge. It’s an aerodynamic boulder—bulky riffs blessed with a nimble lightness. Even in the album’s rare flourishes, like “Flamethrower,” bearing their most Swedish lead work, Gatecreeper always bring it back to the direct, crushing riff. “Slave,” from their demo, ended with a doomy riff that could have gone on forever, and the album is rife with similarly hypnotic moments. That’s another layer of “Lost”’s appeal, and “Sterilized” ends with a chunky, palm-muted, NYHC-esque breakdown that Suffocation would be proud of. Just when Gatecreeper are on the verge on riding a riff too long, their inner John Tardy kicks in. Nothing goes to waste. Depravation eschews technicality not to cover up for a lack of adventurousness or ability, but to affirm the band’s real talent: getting the most out of every riff.
Depravation arrives not long after another of Gatecreeper’s key influences, Bolt Thrower, announced their breakup. These retirements will become more common over time; even touring machines like Cannibal Corpse and Deicide won’t go on forever. Younger bands, like Gatecreeper, must keep death metal alive with their own stamps. Sure, the classics will (hopefully) always be in print and on services somehow, but Depravation is necessary because it shows that there is still life even in the most rudimentary of the genre’s characteristics. Simplicity works when it’s durable, and Depravation is unwavering. | 2016-10-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-10-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Relapse | October 10, 2016 | 7.5 | e7cce386-8238-4abf-8ca2-cb5e7a49d0b6 | Andy O'Connor | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-o'connor/ | null |
Following the tour for 2011's White Wilderness, John Vanderslice quit his former label, Dead Oceans, to take full control with his next releases, funded via Kickstarter: the original Dagger Beach, an experimental, confessional set, and a quasi-covers record of Bowie's Diamond Dogs. | Following the tour for 2011's White Wilderness, John Vanderslice quit his former label, Dead Oceans, to take full control with his next releases, funded via Kickstarter: the original Dagger Beach, an experimental, confessional set, and a quasi-covers record of Bowie's Diamond Dogs. | John Vanderslice: Dagger Beach / Plays Diamond Dogs | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18201-john-vanderslice-dagger-beach-diamond-dogs/ | Dagger Beach / Plays Diamond Dogs | As the story goes, John Vanderslice returned home to San Francisco after a lengthy tour supporting 2011’s White Wilderness only for his wife of six years to swiftly announce that she’d be leaving him. He went out into the woods of Northern California and hiked around by himself, all the while pretty much losing his mind. He decided he needed to Do Weird Stuff again musically, which-- with all due respect to his last few albums-- involved getting back to what made him great in the first place, besides the enduring, secretly genius storyteller thing. So he quit his former label, Dead Oceans, because he wanted full control in his endeavor to put himself back together with Dagger Beach, and to write a love letter to his idol with a reinterpretation of David Bowie’s 1974 Orwellian concept album, Diamond Dogs. (Vanderslice funded the project with a Kickstarter campaign that made three times his total funding goal.)
Many of Vanderslice’s most effective songs are clearly fictional, but he commits to them fully. On Dagger Beach, the songs are more clearly personal-- detailing the dissolution of his marriage-- and he executes them with the same specific eye: “In the last known photograph/ Of you and me sprawled on the grass/ You looked off frame/ You were through with this stupid play” (“North Coast Rep”). Unsurprisingly, these songs taste pretty bitter going down, even when they're pretty acoustic numbers like “Song for Dana Lok” and “How the West Was Won”, whose opening riff treads in Fogerty lawsuit territory. “Harlequin Press” is the big exception to this personal vibe, and its clever punchline about a writer who sacrifices personal truth for what the audience wants is a classic of Vanderslice’s fictional storytelling method.
Vanderslice has abandoned the polish of White Wilderness here, though that album’s crucial backing band, Magik*Magik Orchestra, provide woodwind, string, and brass arrangements. Highlight “Song for David Berman”-- an ode to the Silver Jews leader-- leans on strings, inciting a sense of growing eeriness set against a sparse acoustic guitar. It’s one of the only instances on the record where Vanderslice convincingly conveys his pain musically rather than lyrically. It's not a problem of polish vs. lo-fi, but a series of songs rendered so angular that the overall effect feels aimless, an effect that gets old on Dagger Beach. The lack of structure makes these songs feel experimental, but not sufficiently to commit to being out there in a remarkable way.
As far as experimentation goes, Diamond Dogs is a stronger bet. Rather than merely covering the album (which he performed live in full last year), Vanderslice takes the hits and turns them on their heads, changing lyrics, even titles. “Juvenile Success” (that's “Rebel Rebel”) is a twinkly, soft-spoken affair that feels more like a Belle and Sebastian single than anything Bowie did in his most shamelessly glam moment; the line, “Hot tramp, I love you so” has never sounded so polite. “Would You Possibly Rock and Roll With Me?” (a.k.a. “Rock‘N’Roll With Me”) sounds like a church organist messing around following Sunday services, long after the congregation has filed out. While songs like “We Are the Dead” amplify their original greatness by ramping up the noise, by and large, it’s all sonic effect without much of the attitude and soul that actually drew people to these songs, and the curiosity factor wanes quickly.
For a longtime professional musician who woke up one morning and called off his record deal, Dagger Beach is not as experimental as you'd expect. The Bowie redux, however, is a different story. It seems as though the mere act of bringing new life to one of Bowie’s lesser-canonized albums brought joy to Vanderslice in his difficult days. Even if it's not required listening, if that new lease reflects back on him, it will have been worth it. | 2013-06-19T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2013-06-19T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | null | June 19, 2013 | 6.2 | e7d3e18e-55fb-49bb-abc2-79066443d23c | Jill Mapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jill-mapes/ | null |
It's been a long time since I've wanted to hear an album every day, let alone more than ... | It's been a long time since I've wanted to hear an album every day, let alone more than ... | The White Stripes: White Blood Cells | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8651-white-blood-cells/ | White Blood Cells | It's been a long time since I've wanted to hear an album every day, let alone more than once a day. Sure, to make these review deadlines, I often have to listen to a record daily, but in so many cases, it's a chore. That's not a problem with White Blood Cells. In fact, the problem now is finding time for the next album to review; all I want to do is listen to the White Stripes. I've got it taped for my walkman in the classic cassette format-- it fits easily onto Side A of my 90-minute Maxell. I keep wasting precious battery power fast-forwarding through Side B so I can get back to White Blood Cells.
I love the rock and roll. There's always someone new coming along, taking that heavily rooted sound-- the music of the Gods-- and making the old beast sing anew. It's Christ and Prometheus, eternally dying and rising again. Jack and Meg White summon the Holy Spirit and channel it through 16 perfectly concise songs of longing, with dirty, distorted electric guitar cranked to maximum amplification, crashing, bruised drums, and little else. They don't innovate rock; they embody it. And whatever past form of the genre White Blood Cells invokes has been given a makeover and set loose to strut the lower east side's back alleys in its new clothes. Red and white clothes. (The Stripes could stand to vary the color schemes of their album covers.)
There's no denying that the White Stripes fall within the confines of the garage rock band. Their music is simple, stripped down and it howls the blues. But despite its simplicity, there's something here that goes so much deeper. Jack White's mangled guitar screams like a rabid catfight, its strings massacred to the point of snapping. Meg White's kit is bashed with such force you'd imagine her as some kind of incredible hulk, though in photos, she appears the prototypical indie girl-- waifish, with pigtails and a nasty smirk. Yet she whips all of her 98 pounds into a tornadic fury like E. Honda's hundred-hand slap.
Occasionally, Jack tosses an organ into the mix, or bangs on a piano like the Stones' Ian Stewart. But for the most part, White Blood Cells is instrumentally sparse, with only a guitar and drums. The last time I recall such a dense sound being wrung from rock's bare essentials was on Liz Phair's similarly Stones-inspired Exile in Guyville, though this record explores much raunchier sonic textures; rather than Phair's restrained but biting wit, Jack White opts to lay it all on the line, the unfiltered cynicism of an intelligent mind sent blaring through 1000 Hz of raw aggression.
White Blood Cells surges with classic rock's grittier moments, stomping around like the MC5 and, on the instrumental "Aluminum," Sabbath. The guitar echoes the second half of Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps. But Jack's vocals are pure indie rock-- bratty and unashamedly so-- and in his upper register, his voice yowls and cracks with pissed adolescence.
Virtually all of these songs address a distanced lover. Sometimes he's coming home to see her; other times she's done him some permanent wrong. The lyrics are succinct and direct, and poetic like an aged bluesman. On "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," he sings: "If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall/ If I could just hear your pretty voice, I don't think I'd need to see at all." He concludes the song with, "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most/ And you know why you love at all if you're thinking of the Holy Ghost."
On the country hootenanny "Hotel Yorba," the Stripes reflect the grit of early Railroad Jerk-- a glee-filled boogie with Jack's voice breaking and whooping, almost on the verge of a yodel. "Fell in Love with a Girl" is frenzied and rollicking (the album's best), complete with Yardbirds-type "ahhaa's" and a joi de vivre tempered by the admission that trouble is sure to follow: "My left brain knows that all love is fleeting."
Indeed, many of the songs admit that the love is lost. On "The Union Forever," Jack White mourns, "It can't be love/ Because there is no love." The song is a riff on Citizen Kane, including a strange breakdown with sampled dialogue from the film. Here, the White Stripes are the most experimental they get, which is to say "not very," though the song reminds me of the ragged power of Royal Trux without the pointless artiness. Certainly, it would be nice to hear the White Stripes take this music in a new direction, but this band is all about the songs, and the songs are good enough to stand alone, sans-flashy effects and tape editing.
"The Same Boy You've Always Known" is another high point. For a ballad, it rocks harder than most bands' hard-rockers, yet it wrenches in its emotional impact. Jack White repeats certain key lines, straining his voice to impart meaning and feeling. Again, the state of the relationship in question is uncertain. The song ends uncommitted and terribly sad with, "If there's anything good about me/ I'm the only one who knows." How many bands have failed with entire albums of moroseness to only express the alienation of those two lines?
The closest thing to a dud on this record is "We're Going to Be Friends," a gentle, nostalgic ditty of innocent love and childhood. It's a little too pleasant, lacking any of the fear and confusion of those pre-double-digit years, but its softness gives the record's midpoint some time to inhale before another six exhalations of fire.
Finally, at the close of the album, Jack sits alone at the piano for "This Protector." Though its message is vague, there are implications of religion and loss: "You thought you heard a sound/ There's no one else around/ 300 people out in West Virginia/ Have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within you/ But now... now... now, now, now, NOW!" Now what? It's the floating resonance of the moment, the intensity of the feeling, that gives these words meaning.
White Blood Cells doesn't veer far from the formula of past White Stripes records; all are tense, sparse and jagged. But it's here that they've finally come into their own, where Jack and Meg White finally seem not only comfortable with the path they've chosen, but practiced, precise and able to convey the deepest sentiment in a single bound. It's hard to know at this point in the game where they'll head from here, but what matters is right now. And right now, I want to listen to this album again. | 2001-08-23T02:01:40.000-04:00 | 2001-08-23T02:01:40.000-04:00 | Rock | Sympathy for the Record Industry | August 23, 2001 | 9 | e7d4bddf-f414-46ec-a679-a7667db5fbd8 | Dan Kilian | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dan-kilian/ | null |
The debut album from the Pulp frontman’s new band uses a novel approach to recording that aims for the wild abandon of live music but only occasionally reaches it. | The debut album from the Pulp frontman’s new band uses a novel approach to recording that aims for the wild abandon of live music but only occasionally reaches it. | JARV IS…: Beyond the Pale | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jarv-is-beyond-the-pale/ | Beyond the Pale | Beyond the Pale was never meant to exist. In 2017, Jarvis Cocker assembled a six-piece band that would only perform live, without releasing albums, and gave them a slightly confusing name: JARV IS… It took the intervention of Geoff Barrow to nudge the former Pulp frontman into making this record, which the band assembled by adding studio overdubs to live tapes they’d been recording for personal use. They call it an “alive album,” rather than a live one.
It’s a contrived and aspirational description for an album that aims for the wild abandon of live music but only occasionally reaches it. Beyond The Pale isn’t dead, certainly. But it’s moribund at times, like a post-festival straggler in need of three square meals and a vitamin shot rather than a rampaging rock god. It’s a shame because the idea of JARV IS… as a living transgression of the line between recorded and live music is interesting, and there are enough moments of lively inspiration to suggest what Beyond The Pale could have been, if it weren't weighted down with overlong songs and flat production.
Beyond the Pale’s songs tackle brilliantly un-rock’n’roll subjects, from evolution to the cabin fever of an aging raver, and lines like “God damn this claustrophobia/‘Cause I should be disrobing ya” show Cocker has not lost the wit that made him an unlikely Britpop icon. "Children of the Echo” has a rousing and unusual chorus that stands up to Cocker’s strongest melodies, and the verse of “House Music All Night Long” nails the classically British art of polite desperation.
Cocker’s excellent band combines atypical influences in intriguing new shapes, led by Emma Smith’s supple violin attack. Album highlight “Sometimes I Am Pharaoh”, whose basic track was recorded live in a cavern in middle England, is a sublimely freaky mixture of taut Roxy Music sophistication and frazzled tribal grunge, while “Swanky Modes” offers a rueful combination of dubwise bass and jazzy piano. Their approach is a bit like Pulp’s in their later years, albeit a version of that Pulp had lost something of their musical discipline and sharp edges.
The flab that buries Beyond the Pale’s highlights may be a result of the album’s half-live conceit. Several of the songs feature long spoken-word breakdowns, which are effective on stage, where Cocker can work his magnetic presence, but feel empty on record, undoing the bite of the better songs and exposing the faults of the weaker ones. “Children of the Echo” is a six-and-a-half-minute epic that has said it all in four, and “Am I Missing Something?” drags like a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Beyond the Pale contains plenty of sharp songwriting, but despite the intrigue of its premise, it may have benefitted from a more thorough commitment to making a proper album. The hybrid stage/studio setup captures the sprawl of a live gig without the excitement and possibility, and the sheen of a studio recording without the cohesion and refinement.
Buy: Rough Trade
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Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Rough Trade | July 17, 2020 | 6.7 | e7e9cdd3-5541-49c0-8a22-41fa4b48a20f | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
On the third album in his series based on loops of early 20th-century, mostly Yiddish records, the guitarist and archivist incorporates more instrumentation and more space. | On the third album in his series based on loops of early 20th-century, mostly Yiddish records, the guitarist and archivist incorporates more instrumentation and more space. | Nathan Salsburg: Landwerk No. 3 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nathan-salsburg-landwerk-no-3/ | Landwerk No. 3 | In the early 20th century, labels like Columbia and Victor courted the millions of European immigrants who had recently arrived on American shores, including many Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews. Seeking new markets for both records and record players, these labels made hundreds of recordings of cantors, klezmer bands, and denizens of New York’s Yiddish Theater District. A century later, many of these records can be found in legendary musicologist Alan Lomax’s archive, curated by the Kentucky-based guitarist Nathan Salsburg. Landwerk No. 3 is the third in Salsburg’s series of haunting, dirgelike, glacially paced albums on which he plays along with loops of Yiddish records. It’s a hauntological project with a specifically Jewish-American angle, allowing Salsburg to open a dialogue with a bygone fountain of Yiddishkeit.
All of the samples on Landwerk No. 3 are sourced from Jewish artists who performed and recorded in New York City in the first half of the 20th century. Yet listeners coming in without any context would be forgiven for placing the action a few thousand miles west in Monument Valley or the Mojave Desert. Salsburg’s guitar, which he used to explore American folk and blues forms on earlier albums, is weighted with the same reverb and sadness that country musicians, Spaghetti Western soundtrack maestros, and latter-day Americana abstractionists like North Americans and SUSS have used to suggest the sun-baked sprawl of the American West. Salsburg made a point not to use blues records for the project, but the sounds he makes and the scales he plays on his guitar nonetheless nudge Landwerk No. 3 toward the genre.
Landwerk No. 3 incorporates more instrumentation than previous installments while also letting the samples breathe more. Salsburg achieves this balance with runtimes that flirt with or surpass the 10-minute mark. With six tracks in over an hour, Landwerk No. 3 is nearly as long as both of its predecessors combined, and much of the extra time is spent simply letting the vinyl crackle and the samples loop. On “IX,” a sample of cantor Meyer Kanewsky amounts to little more than a faint, ghostly swell, and at first it sounds almost like Salsburg simply duetting with static. 18-minute closer “XIV” keeps his guitar on the bench for much of its runtime, opening with a faint percussive sample from Yiddish theater pioneer Abe Ellstein’s “Mazel Tov” and a doleful chord progression played on an organ. “XII” is based on a spooky piano sample from Jacob Silbert, another star of New York’s Yiddish theater, and Salsburg correctly trusts that the sample is interesting enough to benefit only from the occasional guitar filigree.
In addition to Jewish music and Salsburg’s mainline in American roots music, Landwerk No. 3 is also inspired by Leyland Kirby’s The Caretaker project, in which the decay of vinyl records stands in for the decline of human cognitive functions. In order to make music that sounded beamed in from the distant past, Kirby and contemporaries such as Christian Marclay, Janek Schaefer, and the late Philip Jeck obscured the borders between what was being sampled and what was being overdubbed. On Landwerk No. 3, those distinctions are much more explicit, with the pristine polish of the guitars and pianos emphasizing the temporal distance from the muddy vinyl loops. Because of this contrast, the process is inextricable from the music, and Landwerk No. 3 never quite transcends the image of a man playing along to his records. The best experimental turntablism can make the listener feel as if a ghost has entered the room. Listening to Landwerk is like eavesdropping on somebody else’s séance, but luckily, these spirits have a lot to tell us. | 2023-01-10T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2023-01-10T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | No Quarter | January 10, 2023 | 7.6 | e7eeb2f6-3490-4462-8db3-75dfeff0a5f9 | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
On his new mixtape, the South Florida rapper hones the blade of his technical precision while his peers take direct stabs at crossover success. | On his new mixtape, the South Florida rapper hones the blade of his technical precision while his peers take direct stabs at crossover success. | Ski Mask the Slump God: Sin City the Mixtape | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ski-mask-the-slump-god-sin-city-the-mixtape/ | Sin City | Since the release of his major-label debut STOKELY in 2018, Fort Lauderdale’s Ski Mask the Slump God has been surprisingly quiet for an artist known for his full-throated vocal aggression. His hiatus has been especially noticeable in a rap industry that devours trends as fast as it can produce them. But given the details of his personal life and career, it’s understandable that the artist born Stokeley Goulbourne took an extended sabbatical. After the sudden deaths of two of his closest friends and associates, XXXTentacion and Juice WRLD, Ski Mask felt like he needed to slow down, lest he risk becoming a similar kind of cautionary tale. He re-emerges with Sin City the Mixtape, which isn’t so much a comeback or reinvention as it is predominantly a showcase for his unfiltered, unaccompanied flow.
Like the film that shares the mixtape’s title, Ski Mask’s music is self-aware, playfully experimenting with rap tropes while still embodying its genre. Nothing on Sin City the Mixtape is as self-consciously hybrid or cross-genre as XXX’s hardcore-tinted ballads, but Ski Mask doesn’t seem to have the same rockstar ambitions. He’s rather content honing the blade of his technical precision while his peers take direct stabs at crossover success.
Ski Mask reissued his debut this year as two separate EPs, The Lawless Cuts and The Party Cuts, which sums up his catalog. One half skews more pop, the other more punk, both overflowing with energy and aggression; once in a blue moon, a softer side emerges, like on Sin City’s opening, “Intro,” where he flexes a Kid Cudi-like warble before the beat switches and his flow goes up to 11. Peel back the main vocal track and you’ll find layers of ad-libs, a torrent of guttural exclamations—if you took a shot every time Ski Mask yells “Yaw!” you’d black out by the second track. The beats are hyperactive, fast-paced, and prone to quick switches—“ADMIT IT” is built around a loop of frenetic bells, while “The Matrix” is almost exclusively dominated by fat bass tones and the familiar rattling drums of regular associate Ronny J.
The SoundCloud rap movement isn’t usually praised or even considered for technical delivery, but Ski Mask is something of a rapper’s rapper, with a dense chopper flow. The words themselves aren’t complicated, but there’s a lot of them in a little bit of time. Ski Mask specializes in tracks that are tightly wrapped and sawed-off—half the songs on Sin City don’t even make it past the two-minute mark. He cites Busta Rhymes as a formative influence and recently freestyled over “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See” for LA Leakers, but at its weakest moments his fast rapping is less Flipmode and more like Eminem’s unlistenable opus “Rap God.”
The Slump God’s flow is in-your-face not only in sound but in the deliberate grotesquery of certain lyrics: “My flow infectious/Can almost hear the pus,” he raps on “Dr. Seuss.” But his affinity for confrontation isn’t just aesthetic; it’s political. His first single post-hiatus was last summer’s uprising-informed “Burn the Hoods,” which redirects his typical boastful rage in a more constructive manner. The political statements sprinkled into his lyrics are more trolling shit-posts than thoughtful theses, but the bluntness of his views can be refreshing, especially when compared to the relative political disengagement of so much SoundCloud rap beyond a general sense of doomer nihilism.
Ski Mask’s aesthetic universe is transparent in the mixtape’s song titles, evoking the childish psychedelia of Dr. Seuss, and alluding to the mythic icons of comic books and Arthurian legend (“Merlin’s Staff” and “Metal Magneto”). The references are on hyper-drive to the point of exhaustion, the lyrical equivalent of a muted video playlist of YouTube poop and trippy pop culture ephemera ripped from VHS tapes projected on the wall of a rave: it’s all about the image and the aesthetic, sans context. Ski Mask name-drops American Dad on “Fire Hazard,” and the overly media literate works of Seth McFarlane seem like a useful point of comparison—like the constant spoofs and parodies of Family Guy, Ski Mask’s references are more non-sequitur than purposeful allusion; they’re a frenetic collage of horror movies, children’s cartoons, commercial brand names, and video games.
The moshpit parts like the Red Sea for a moment of solace amid the storm on “Lost in Time,” a rare unguarded performance from an artist who is constantly in a fighting stance. It’s a fragile and sensitive look behind the ski mask, and one of the few honest indications of where he’s been at mentally over the past few years: “All in life that glitters, it could turn bitter/It could turn to mold.” Over a sparse guitar line on closing track “Mental Magneto,” Ski Mask brings together his more introspective side with the fast and furious style he’s known for, as intricate bars about PTSD and paranoia race out of his mouth alongside sitcom references.
Though the black-and-white style of the project’s cover and accompanying videos are obviously channeling Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s edgelord classic, there’s also a more personal connection to the title: Sin City is the rap name Ski Mask’s father performed under. That kind of subtle tribute that’s bound to go unnoticed by most listeners speaks to how Ski Mask generally expresses himself. Most of the time he’s playing a rowdy comic book character, but if you look hard enough, you can hear his sincerity, struggle, and pain.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-07-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-07-13T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Victor Victor Worldwide / Republic | July 13, 2021 | 6.7 | e7f312b3-4ae1-4438-8e0a-4e89324202bb | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
The alt-country singer-songwriter’s new album moves steadily and carefully, lingering on the conflicted emotions of his finely-etched tales and the band’s textured, elegant understatement. | The alt-country singer-songwriter’s new album moves steadily and carefully, lingering on the conflicted emotions of his finely-etched tales and the band’s textured, elegant understatement. | Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit: Reunions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jason-isbell-and-the-400-unit-reunions/ | Reunions | The “rigorous honesty” required in recovery programs is a tenet that Jason Isbell has taken to heart. Candor has been at the core of Isbell ever since 2013’s Southeastern, the record he released in the wake of his newfound sobriety and his marriage to Amanda Shires. Seven years and three albums later, sobriety remains central to Isbell’s public image, as does his union with Shires, with whom he had a daughter. Isbell doesn’t shy away from probing personal questions when he sits for an interview, a habit that may be a fruitful part of his recovery but nevertheless can give his songs the appearance of being straight reflections of his personal life.
Reunions, the fourth album he’s written and recorded since getting sober, is indeed filled with images that seem to mirror the personal life he’s talked about in public. Romances are stable but not without their struggles; characters will themselves to accept their fears; whenever a child appears it’s a girl, not a boy. Leading up to the album’s release, Isbell upped the ante by admitting to the New York Times that its creation was fraught with tension, stemming from the pressure to deliver another strong album after making, in his own words to GQ, “three good records in a row.” Buckling under his self-imposed standards, he closed himself off from Shires, who in addition to her solo career and her role in Americana supergroup the Highwomen plays fiddle in the 400 Unit, the backing band Isbell founded in 2009 who have shared album credits with the singer-songwriter since 2017’s The Nashville Sound.
None of this agitation can be heard on Reunions. The album moves steadily and carefully, lingering on the conflicted emotions conjured by Isbell’s finely-etched tales and the band’s elegant understatement. Working once again with Dave Cobb, who has produced every one of his records since Southeastern, Isbell made a conscious effort to push the 400 Unit outside their comfort zone. What they wound up with is not with an album that blares—nothing rocks with the abandon of “Cumberland Gap,” a galvanizing number from The Nashville Sound—but one that’s so full of texture it nearly feels painted on a canvas. Waves of cool synthesizers pulsate underneath “Only Children,” whose mournful verses are accented by economical single-string runs. “Dreamsicle” unfurls with unhurried attention to detail, its bittersweet childhood memories gaining poignance as each chorus seems to be delivered with a sadder sigh. The 400 Unit can still roar—Isbell seems to steel his spine on “Be Afraid” because his group sounds tougher than their singer—but Reunions gains strength through the band’s collective interplay.
That communal spirit is felt throughout, adding a counterpoint to a collection of songs where Isbell ponders the kinds of minor, numbing regrets that can metastasize into self-inflicted wounds. “What Have I Done to Help” provides a keynote of sorts, its narrator gaining no comfort in his successes because he can’t shake the notion they’re selfish achievements. Nearly every successive song proves this doubt untrue, as Isbell focuses on humans striving to connect and largely succeed in spite of their fumbling. Not every one of Isbell’s characters gives into their better nature. The narrator of “River” is tormented by his misdeeds, but the song plays like a guidepost for the rest of the record, illustrating how Isbell favors forgiveness over darkness. The closing triptych of “St. Peter’s Autograph,” “It Gets Easier,” and “Letting You Go” emphasizes his inclination toward empathy, finding grace in love for others.
“St. Peter’s Autograph” is the simplest, sparest song on Reunions, an elegy for the departed friend of a loved one; it’s about giving another person the space to grieve on their own terms. Where “St. Peter’s Autograph” is haunted by loss, “Letting You Go” tells the tale of a father finally able to “see through the great fog of loneliness” by placing his daughter’s needs over his own. Between these two songs is “It Gets Easier,” which is where the heart of Reunions lies. It could be seen as an act of fellowship for fellow recovering alcoholics or Isbell could be singing directly to himself: “Last night I dreamed I’d been drinking,” he sings, “I had one glass of wine/I woke up feeling fine/That’s how I knew it was a dream.” It’s a lyric that anticipates a confession Isbell made to the New York Times, where he cops to drinking Listerine as if it was a shot of whiskey. He told Shires he held himself accountable in public, actions that jibe the song’s bemused, self-aware inventory of longings for substances that are now forbidden but never forgotten.
Reunions is not pure autobiography or a series of confessions to be admired for their bloodletting. Attempts to parse the details in any particular song will uncover how Isbell departs from his own history. Like all great songwriters, he uses his life as a springboard toward a hyper-reality that reveals truths a mere diary entry could not. His candor can sometimes obscure this essential fact, but his forthrightness underscores the emotional clarity of Reunions: The music wouldn’t resonate so richly if he wasn’t able to access his truth as vividly in song as he does in the press.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-14T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Southeastern | May 14, 2020 | 7.8 | e7f54982-79c4-4626-b933-4c591a07ec1c | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
The songs on the debut EP from the viral rap and country star do not even come close to the pure magic of “Old Town Road.” | The songs on the debut EP from the viral rap and country star do not even come close to the pure magic of “Old Town Road.” | Lil Nas X: 7 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-nas-x-7-ep/ | 7 EP | Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” has burrowed itself into the consciousness of an entire nation, managing to stay at No. 1 on the Billboard charts for 11 weeks and elbowing out Elmo on the elementary-school popularity index. It’s part luck, part genius, part of the YeeHaw agenda, a song so unstoppable, it has actually shifted the status quo of country music and is currently one of the biggest singles—and memes—of all time. Even if you pass on bootcut jeans, the meme has the same contagious effect.
Before he became the newly crowned prince of country, Lil Nas X was just another guy looking for fame by quietly throwing his music onto SoundCloud. When it happened, it happened fast: A $30 YouTube beat, a hypnotic Nine Inch Nails sample, a faux-twangy accent, and “Old Town Road” went from a viral moment on TikTok to the center of a controversy about whether or not the song could be classified as country music. (It was initially removed from the Billboard country chart because it did not “embrace enough elements of today’s country music.”) One irresistible, if slightly harrowing Billy Ray Cyrus remix later, and Lil Nas X was back—not just on the country charts, but on the Hot 100 with the biggest song in the U.S.
To Lil Nas X’s benefit, it never mattered whether “Old Town Road” was good or bad. It’s so good it’s bad; it’s so bad it’s good. It’s a critical hall of mirrors from which there is no escape. Criticizing “Old Town Road” is like trying to fight the sun. From the start, the song was completely aware that it was essentially a meme. Everyone was in on the joke, and if you tried to criticize the joke, you were now the joke who was trying to ruin everyone’s fun. The fact that Lil Nas X’s vocals were easily imitable or that the lyrics were packed with country buzzwords gleaned from “Red Dead Redemption 2” or that the drums could be programmed by your little cousin who heard Astroworld one time was irrelevant. “Old Town Road” was a spectacle and everyone loved being a part of the ride.
On Lil Nas X’s debut 7—a 19-minute EP bookended with the Billy Ray Cyrus remix and the original version of “Old Town Road”—he opens himself up to the criticism that “Old Town Road” bypassed. Each new song on 7 is an attempt at stumbling into another lighthearted hit. We don’t learn a single thing about Lil Nas X on 7 other than he might have actually been born in a Reddit test tube in 2018. His collaborations with the production duo Take A Daytrip are soulless. On “Panini,” Lil Nas X has the droll personality of a Kawhi Leonard interview when stripped of all the gimmicks. So it makes sense that “Rodeo,” his second track with Take A Daytrip, is a desperate return to the bulletproof cowboy persona. “Rodeo” hits all the beats of 2018’s “Mo Bamba”—also produced by Take A Daytrip—and feels like Lil Nas X just praying that the “Old Town Road” goodwill has enough legs to latch onto this single. It probably does.
That hit-seeking dart game continues on with “F9mily (You and Me),” a cheap rock song made to be performed at summer camp talent shows. In an Instagram snippet for the song, Lil Nas X gets out in front of the potential criticism of this track, calling it “Disney soundtrack confirmed” and “Travis Barker on the beat.” Both are perfect descriptions, neither is positive. While listening to his attempt at SoundCloud alt-rock on “Bring U Down,” I can picture Lil Nas X thinking up this song while sitting at a big corner-office desk at Columbia Records.
For the entirety of 7, it’s unclear if Lil Nas X actually likes music. He uses a lazy, out-of-tune melody on the reflective “Kick It,” a song that looks back on the past six months, which is apparently the only thing he has anything to say about. Then, there’s the sloppy finale “C7osure (You Like),” which sounds like B.o.B. got hired to make a J.C. Penney commercial in 2010. The EP ends up being a set of nothingness, like watching a Kylie Jenner vlog, content made for the sake of justifying its existence.
Eventually, one of these songs on 7 will draft behind the still-overwhelming charm of “Old Town Road” and find some success of its own, and Lil Nas X will be there online, with his savvy internet wit, ready to saddle up and burn another meme to the ground. What he lacks in musicality he makes up for in Instagram followers, boots he can strap on whenever he needs to remind people that he’s the great unifier, the one who tore down the walls of a genre. When that’s all over, which it will be, what’s left will be “Old Town Road,” an all-time hall-of-fame pop hit that will one day be explained with an “I guess you had to be there.” | 2019-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Columbia | June 21, 2019 | 4.3 | e7fe7574-ad3b-4a52-a748-bd9a98ebb9bd | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
After retiring the Lingua Ignota moniker, the transgressive diva takes a scholarly deep dive into the ecstatic and strangely melodious world of traditional Christian hymns and original devotionals. | After retiring the Lingua Ignota moniker, the transgressive diva takes a scholarly deep dive into the ecstatic and strangely melodious world of traditional Christian hymns and original devotionals. | Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: SAVED! | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/reverend-kristin-michael-hayter-saved/ | SAVED! | The voice of Kristin Hayter is a conduit for extreme pain. Her music as Lingua Ignota channeled the violence and abuse that men inflicted on her, which she righteously directed back at them with incantatory singing, transcendent screams, and immaculate sound design. This mixture of performance art and composition recalls Diamanda Galás, whose grief-stricken music is similarly earnest, operatic, and immersed in electronics. Late last year, when Hayter announced that she was retiring the Lingua Ignota moniker because it was “excruciating to perform,” the decision echoed how Galás finds relief from her elegies under the guise of a bluesy cabaret act. Hayter takes a spiritually similar tact on her new album, Saved!, which courses with both religious awe and discomfort. It somehow only pulls us deeper into Hayter’s disturbing vision.
Ordained online as an actual minister, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter blends traditional Christian songs and original devotionals, incorporating gospel, blues, and bluegrass into a washed-out image of American folk custom. She makes her versions sound like aged field recordings without detracting from their genuine emotion—a feat of shapeshifting and supple technological manipulation. With producer Seth Manchester, she recorded these songs on a 4-track and warped the tapes by feeding them through broken cassette players, mangling them further by hand. The damaged finished product evokes found-footage horror films, enveloping us in a world that seems incidental but is actually aestheticized: artifice disfigured to resemble reality.
Hayter grew up Catholic, and she’s made music about a variety of Christian denominations. Her excellent 2021 record, Sinner Get Ready, used a delicate palette to explore faiths native to Pennsylvania’s backcountry, including the Mennonites and Amish. Saved! centers on the Pentecostal-Holiness Movement, a Protestant sect that encourages charismatic activities—among them glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. Hayter’s settings journey into spare, tuneful terrain. She strips her toolkit down to an acoustic guitar, minimal percussion, and a piano hung with chains and bells, a treatment that draws attention to buzzing wire more than struck keys. The altered instrument plunks out a harsh, ominous sense of rhythmic consistency during an otherwise consonant 46 minutes.
Hayter seems to play characters—or, as she might describe it, people manifest in her performances. She indeed speaks in tongues, utterances that produce both discordant interludes and a roiling underlay to otherwise tuneful music. And Christianity’s musical heritage allows the past to speak through her. The credits neglect to acknowledge the specific songwriters and standards she imitates, such as 1920s blues legend Blind Willie Johnson on “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” and preacher Robert Lowry on “Nothing But the Blood.” It’s a curious decision, but also a provocative one that feels couched in a lineage of 20th century appropriative writers such as Kathy Acker—Hayter studied to be an experimental writer before she began Lingua Ignota. Her murky source material furthers the illusion that we’ve stumbled upon a cobwebbed and haunted talisman, some cursed keepsake of the penitent American soul.
Saved! has jarring moments and a general atmosphere of unease, but it nonetheless shows a more mellifluous side of Hayter. In place of dynamic shifts, drones, or distortion, the album is full of melody, harmony, and ecclesiastical warmth. Yet no matter how intensely Hayter praises Jesus, she sounds more earnest about the power of the hymnal tradition than her faith. She summoned Satan on 2019’s breakout Caligula, while on Sinner Get Ready, she treated God as though the deity itself was her abuser. Here, her perspective on religion is ambiguous, though the songs themselves are more inviting than ever.
Hayter has an uncommon sense of emotional control and precision: her words swoon, crack, whisper, and plead, but always with just the right amount of embellishment. The poetic original “I Will Be With You Always” builds from a coo into a terrified revelation: “On the night I was beset by demons/I know their names but cannot speak them.” She flexes her muscles as a different singer entirely on the shorter tracks. Hayter serves as her own, rousing accompanist on “I’m Getting Out While I Can,” while on the call-and-response acapella of “There Is Power in the Blood,” she dons a warbly head voice. Her shifts in tone feel like tiny character sketches. When she places a selection of Blind Willie Johnson’s lyrics to her own music on the haunting “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole,” her solemn phrasing imparts a damaged sense of need, a formidable echo of the narratives of abuse in her previous work.
Hayter closes out the LP with the 19th-century hymn, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” Her unadorned piano is a moving, lucid counterweight to the anguished texture of the preceding tracks, until the babble of glossolalia outlasts her dulcet melody. Hayter continues to traverse a biblical, deeply American landscape, surveying both its fire and brimstone and its transformative music. Saved! understands both of these qualities—consequently, rage, wonder, and beauty all churn just under its surface. | 2023-11-29T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-29T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Perpetual Flame Ministries | November 29, 2023 | 7.5 | e800d889-42a8-411a-9753-625fe653bbc8 | Daniel Felsenthal | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-felsenthal/ | |
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the 1992 debut from Seo Taiji and Boys, a canny synthesis of rap, techno, and rock that would soon be seen as the dawn of K-pop. | Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit the 1992 debut from Seo Taiji and Boys, a canny synthesis of rap, techno, and rock that would soon be seen as the dawn of K-pop. | Seo Taiji and Boys: Seo Taiji and Boys | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/seo-taiji-and-boys-seo-taiji-and-boys/ | Seo Taiji and Boys | On April 11, 1992, Seo Taiji, 20, Yang Hyun-seok, 22, and Lee Juno, 25, made their national television debut on a South Korean music show under the name Seo Taiji and Boys. They were the first of several groups to perform that night, all of which were angling for high scores from the presiding judges. Seo, their leader, wore a grey vest and billowing black pants, while the Boys were decked in overalls and matching green button-ups. The trio delivered an energetic, lip-synced performance of “Nan Arayo (I Know):” a new jack swing single that wove together rap verses, distorted guitars, and lovelorn harmonizing: “I really only liked you/You, who thrust me into sadness’ embrace,” Seo wailed in the chorus. Their dance routine ended in a dramatic pose and cheers and applause came from the audience. But the panel of established industry professionals standing off-stage were less impressed.
“The melody is a bit weak. It doesn’t feel like you put a lot of effort into it,” said one. “It would have been nice to hear something fresh in your lyrics,” opined another. The judges awarded Seo Taiji and Boys the lowest score of any of the acts performing that night. What happened next can only be described as a mass rebuke by the public: “Nan Arayo” quickly shot to the top of the Korean charts and stayed there for 18 weeks, while the corresponding album Seo Taiji and Boys went on to sell 1.7 million copies, not counting an incalculable number of bootleg cassettes. They didn’t know it at the time, but Seo Taiji and Boys would become the prototype for all of the K-pop groups to come. Seo’s fusion of hip-hop, techno, and rock—colloquially termed “rap dance”—had become South Korea’s first homegrown youth music.
Born Jeong Hyun-cheol in 1972, Seo was a problem student, a self-described rebel who dropped out of high school to pour his energy into music. He immersed himself in the Seoul rock scene as he worked odd jobs and learned how to play the guitar and bass. At 17, he was recruited into Sinawe, the heavy metal institution led by Korean rock royalty Shin Dae-chul. But after recording just one album with them, Seo left the band and started to dabble with samplers and MIDI instruments to try and recreate the sounds he was hearing in American pop music.
The early ’90s marked the first time in modern Korean history that teenagers gained access to disposable income, a phenomenon spurred on by the country’s increasingly globalized economy. At the time, Korean music was dominated by acoustic guitar-driven folk music and “trot,” a slow-moving style that predates the Korean War, but the youth—including Seo—had become increasingly obsessed with the music that was popular in America: high-tempo, dance-oriented tracks, heavily influenced by prevalent Black music genres like hip-hop and new jack swing.
Black music was introduced to the South Korean masses in the ’80s, around the time the country began transitioning from decades of various authoritarian regimes to a direct democracy in 1987. Long exclusive to American soldiers, the G.I. clubs of Itaewon—a district in Seoul adjacent to the U.S. military’s South Korea headquarters in Yongsan—began to open up to Korean patrons. New communities developed; in 1990, Hyun Jin-young, a gifted dancer who’d grown up with American friends while living in a village near the Army base, made his debut as the first signee of a budding record exec named Lee Soo-Man (who would later found SM Entertainment). With years of studio experience under his belt, Seo was poised to tap into the burgeoning cultural moment. The only problem was, compared to other hotshots in the scene, he couldn’t dance for shit.
Driven to improve, Seo called upon a rising star named Yang Hyun-seok to ask him for coaching. (As the story goes, Yang took Seo’s money and vanished into thin air. He later returned with the sheepish claim that he had disappeared because he was serving his mandatory military service.) Yang was impressed with Seo’s music and offered his services directly, recommending they form a group with another dancer, Lee Juno. It was an arrangement that was amenable to Seo, who had little interest in the intense spotlight that came with being a solo artist. He liked being able to hide behind the two older Boys on stage, though he understood as well as they did that the success of their partnership was largely contingent upon his own songwriting and studio prowess. Even to fans, it was always clear who was running the ship. The trio agreed to relatively even financial splits for any touring and performance income—but when it came to album royalties, the split went Seo’s direction, 6:2:2.
With Seo’s leading role cemented, and soon after that fated TV performance, Seo Taiji and Boys’ career became a runaway train. Conservative critics and traditional gatekeepers like broadcasters and radio stations initially blasted the group for their overt “foreign” musical influences, but nobody could argue with the sales. More music shows started catering to the teen demographic, and soon enough, Seo Taiji and Boys became a regular fixture on television. The release of their first album, and the months of live appearances that followed, established several of the recurrent themes of K-pop and its industry: An undiscriminating approach to genre tropes, emphasis on elaborate choreography, and practices like the pre-“comeback” hiatus period that follows every album cycle, now considered customary.
In the same way that production styles tend to linger on Korean charts a few years past their U.S. expiration date, much of Seo Taiji and Boys owes a debt to musical trends that had become passé in the West by the end of the ’80s. By the time “Nan Arayo” was released in Korea, new jack swing was a well-established sound in the U.S. mainstream, but the song is also clearly indebted to Milli Vanilli’s hit “Girl You Know It’s True,” which was already itself a French-German approximation of American pop. The euphoric, New Order-biting synth-pop of “My Everything” would have sounded dated to American audiences, and a disproportionate number of album tracks are peppered with saxophone runs that would give Kenny G pause. At moments, Seo reaches even further back in time: The end of the original album had a song called “Rock’n Roll Dance (‘92 Heavy Mix),” built around a sped-up sample of the guitar from AC/DC’s 1980 classic “Back in Black.” It’s a throwaway club track, but its inclusion reveals Seo’s core musical ethos: Taking the music that inspired him most and refashioning it to be relatable to Korean youth. He even recruited his old mentor Shin Dae-chul to rip a guitar solo, an olive branch to any rock fans who felt betrayed by his musical pivot.
There were detractors, even among the music community, who were doubtful of Seo Taiji and Boys’ viability. Seo pursued his mission nonetheless—not only because he thought it would work, but because he loved the music. “When I said that I was going to write Black music, someone responded by saying that I’d turned to making charcoal, because charcoal is black,” Seo said in 2014. “That’s how some people demeaned Black music back then. But it was all I cared about.” The frontman’s earnest nature shines on slow-burners like “In the Time Spent With You,” where he delivers breathy, sing-song rap verses and long, drawn-out notes about savoring a moment with his lover, reminiscing on the wonderful, fuzzy feeling he gets when he’s with them. Seo isn’t always the most confident vocalist, but when he bathes his voice in cold, digital reverb, he comes alive.
The huge success of “Nan Arayo” was quickly followed by another single, “You, In the Fantasy,” a raucous dance track about questioning your preconceived reality. It foreshadows the lyrics of more controversial anthems from later in Seo’s career, like “Come Back Home” or “Classroom Idea,” where he reached out to runaway teens and took aim at Korea’s pressurized academic expectations. As the years went on, Seo would only grow increasingly passionate about bringing attention to societal ills and interrogating a national culture that he felt like an outcast in. On the street, though, he was no outcast; he was a cultural prophet.
Like the K-pop groups of today, Seo Taiji and Boys developed an obsessive fanbase, one that clung to his every word. For the rest of 1992, “Nan Arayo” blasted out of speakers everywhere in Seoul, aided by the vendors across the city hawking tapes of the album. Half of the Korean recorded music market consisted of foreign imports before Seo Taiji and Boys, but in the years that followed, listeners became much more willing to take a chance on Korean artists working in Western music styles, and the industry followed suit. By 1997, the market share of Korean-made pop music was double that of international acts. With his success, Seo terraformed the market for Korean artists and became the country’s first teen idol, the primary conduit by which a subculture from half a world away would inform the identities of an entire generation of Koreans.
As Seo Taiji and Boys’ popularity skyrocketed, Korean-made pop acts inspired by rap, R&B, and other Black music replaced singer-songwriter types as the new dominant force in the Korean music industry. In 1994, Seo languished in controversy after radio stations banned the singles from Seo Taiji and Boys III and Korea’s Christian right accused him of hiding demonic messages that would only reveal themselves if a song was played backwards. Suffering from the intense public scrutiny and a lack of inspiration, Seo confessed to Yang and Lee that he wanted to end the group once they released their fourth record.
1995’s Seo Taiji and Boys IV was a commercial hit, driven by the Cypress Hill-esque “Come Back Home,” but Seo once again found himself butting heads with censors, who reviewed the album before release and forbade him from including lyrics that were critical of the government on the song “Sidae Yugam (Shame of the Times).” He refused to change the lyrics, instead opting to delete his vocals and keep the song as an instrumental. Fans were enraged and went so far as to protest the censorship with a letter-writing campaign—but Seo had had enough. At the beginning of 1996, he called a press conference: Seo Taiji and Boys were retiring, effective immediately. In a cinematic exit, Seo took a helicopter from the conference hall and went directly to the airport, hopping on a flight to Guam, and eventually, America. Millions of fans were devastated. Mobs of his most faithful trekked to his Seoul house to protest the decision. One student, speaking to The Kyunghang Shinmun at the time, compared it to the assassination of a politician: “The death of Seo Taiji is the death of us all.”
The music industry scrambled to fill the void that Seo Taiji and Boys left behind. Long beholden to the whims of TV broadcasters, Korean record labels had consolidated more independent power for themselves in the years since Seo’s debut. Now, it was up to them to figure out how to rebottle his magic and build upon the playbook that was established during the band’s brief but substantial run. Thus, the Korean idol business was born. The Boys parlayed their fame and experience into positions of power in this nascent ecosystem: Yang started his own company YG Entertainment, the powerhouse behind iconic acts like Big Bang, while Lee became a notable producer. (In 2019, Yang resigned from YG following allegations of drug abuse, corruption, sexual assault, and other crimes. Lee was found guilty on charges of sexual assault and fraud in 2017.) By the end of the ’90s, SM Entertainment’s boy band H.O.T. had made serious inroads in China, kicking off the global Korean Wave (hallyu) of exported cultural soft power that continues to the present day. At some point between Seo Taiji’s debut and H.O.T.’s rise, overseas listeners began to popularize the umbrella term used to this day: K-pop.
With their debut, Seo Taiji and Boys upended the pre-existing power dynamic in South Korea, where broadcasters were the ultimate gatekeepers and songwriters rarely veered away from making music that would fit the norms of the day. For a brief period, the power shifted to the artists, who were incentivized to experiment with different Western genres and build new communities. But as the newly established Big Three companies—SM, YG, and Park Jin-young’s JYP Entertainment—began to dominate the market, new standards emerged. Instead of government censors or disdainful television moguls, the industry became beholden to music conglomerates, powered by trainee pipelines so stringent, they make Berry Gordy look tame by comparison.
The entirety of K-pop owes its existence to Seo Taiji, but the long tail of his influence can be felt most directly in the global force that is BTS. In 2017, during a massive 25th-anniversary concert in Korea, Seo—the de facto “president of culture”—named the group his unofficial successors. Their music draws from myriad influences, with songs that critique Korean society, while individual members like the multifaceted songwriter/producer SUGA take after the DIY auteur archetype established by Seo. His super-fans, the “Seo Taiji Generation,” fought government censorship on behalf of their idol; today, the BTS ARMY and other K-pop fandoms have proven themselves a force to be reckoned with. At his peak, Seo’s influence was largely limited to Korea. BTS are on the world stage, reaching previously unthinkable heights. They are his legacy.
After Seo decamped to America at 23, he became just another face in the crowd. It was a needed change of pace for the notoriously private superstar, and it allowed him to write songs for what would become his first solo LP: a true rock album, a return to his roots. When Seo finally went back to Korea in 2000 to resurrect his career in earnest, his people were there waiting for him—literally. Over a thousand fans mobbed the terminal at Gimpo International Airport, eager to welcome their hero home. They sang his songs and held up signs; one of them read, “We Grew Up a Lot, Didn’t We?” The origin of K-pop is a tale of global capitalism and cultural cross-pollination through American imperialism, but it’s also the story of a flunkie metalhead who was told for years he’d amount to nothing, and then reshaped the course of music history.
Get the Sunday Review in your inbox every weekend. Sign up for the Sunday Review newsletter here. | 2020-07-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Bando | July 5, 2020 | 8.3 | e80bc432-5f35-4c05-aa24-7d259a478326 | Noah Yoo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/noah-yoo/ | |
As one of the last sets in the long-running DJ series, FABRICLIVE 100 seems almost willfully perverse, a pointed attempt to upset notions of what Burial is really about. | As one of the last sets in the long-running DJ series, FABRICLIVE 100 seems almost willfully perverse, a pointed attempt to upset notions of what Burial is really about. | Kode9 / Burial: FABRICLIVE 100 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kode9-burial-fabriclive-100/ | FABRICLIVE 100 | A few years ago at the Unsound festival, deep in a salt mine outside Krakow, a hooded figure stooped over a DJ mixer and played a set of rumbling, echo-soaked bass music that sure sounded like the work of Burial. The theme of the festival that year was “Surprise,” and many headliners remained unannounced until the moment they took the stage. But in this case, the reveal never came.
It’s still not known who was actually behind the decks. It seems unlikely that it was actually Burial, aka William Bevan, a reclusive Englishman who, since 2005, has cobbled together his inimitable style out of rave-nostalgic breakbeats, mournful R&B a cappellas, and the white noise of rainstorms and vinyl hiss. As far as anyone knows, Burial has never performed anywhere. The smart money, many believe, is on Kode9, aka Steve Goodman, the founder of Hyperdub, the label responsible for the vast majority of Burial’s music, who just happened to be performing at the festival that very weekend. Equipped with a USB full of unreleased Burial tunes, the theory goes, Goodman stood in as Bevan’s proxy.
Whatever the truth of that enigmatic set, the two definitively step up to the decks together on FABRICLIVE 100, which makes for an intriguing combination. Kode9 DJs often; between his club sets and his label curation, his tastes are well known. He favors jagged syncopations and cutting percussion, but even at their toughest, his selections are generally playful. Burial, on the other hand, is more of a blank slate. Since he doesn’t DJ professionally, and since his morose music sounds so uniquely like itself, it’s hard to anticipate what he might bring to the table that doesn’t sound like, well, more Burial. And despite the two men’s close relationship, their styles differ in important ways: Kode9 is all muscle; Burial is all atmosphere. Going into the set, it’s hard to imagine how the two might not end up mixing like oil and water.
In some ways, they do. FABRICLIVE 100 is nothing like a conventional club set or a typical back-to-back, where two selectors trade off behind the mixer every song or two. Long stretches representative of Kode9’s tastes—a block of South African gqom toward the beginning, a home stretch of Chicago footwork toward the end—alternate with detours into early-’90s rave music and electro-pop that we can probably assume came from Burial’s crates. In places, FABRICLIVE 100 seems almost willfully perverse, a pointed attempt to upset listeners’ notions of what Burial is really about: Fans who connect primarily with his sad-sack sentimentalism may run for the exits when confronted with the explosion of acid trance that tears through the mix about one-third of the way in. (That’s right: acid trance.) But it’s precisely those curve balls that make FABRICLIVE 100 so entertaining.
It begins straightforwardly enough. First, there’s a gloomy and entirely Burialesque ambient opener of synth drones and vinyl crackle; that’s followed by abstracted vocal processing from Klein, a Hyperdub signee, and a scene-setting bass pulse from Cooly G, another member of Kode9’s squad. In a standard back-to-back set, this is the point where Burial would take over again. But Goodman’s fingerprints are all over the first eight tracks of the set, which blows through a 12-minute, rapid-fire succession of gqom and craggy club music from Uruguay and Shanghai.
Then comes the set’s first major curveball: a garish synth-pop flashback from the techno veteran Luke Slater’s 2002 album Alright on Top. It’s not a record that’s remembered warmly, if at all; the song is a little bit gothic and a whole lot melodramatic. “I can complete you,” sings a robot voice over New Order-inspired bass arpeggios and choral pads, sounding like the epitome of throwback futurism. Yet there’s something to be said for the way they just plop it down here, like someone pulling a semi-embarrassing snapshot from under the bed; there’s a nostalgic sentiment on display that’s in keeping with Burial’s own earnest M.O., and we learn more about him here than a dozen cooler, more underground cuts might ever tell us.
It’s not a conventionally sequenced DJ mix, either: Segments of seamlessly beat-matched tracks (almost certainly Kode9’s handiwork, given the style of them) abruptly give way to left turns and trapdoors. Storming techno cuts simply fade out and make way for slippery, thrashing early-’90s jungle; the beatless parts of drum ‘n’ bass tunes make for escape hatches into the sort of ’90s trance that Burial has hinted at songs like “Indoors.” Whereas Kode9’s considerable DJ skills get him from track to track, the portions of the mix that seem likely to be Burial’s are put together more like collages, with ambient synths and vinyl crackle daubed on like caulk and spackling. You get the sense that they’re not playing records so much as painting with them, often using just enough of a given beat to color the mood before moving on. That goes not just for understated cuts like Cooly G’s “Magnetic” but also for something like Rashad’s “Let It Go,” probably the biggest anthem here—it’s as though they realize that dropping the refrain is all it takes to trigger an emotional response before moving briskly on.
FABRICLIVE 100 is a world away from the smoky intrigue of that subterranean Burial-not-Burial set, but in its own way, it’s every bit as obscured in shadow. We might be able to guess at which selector is responsible for choosing not one but two tunes from Live Adult Entertainment, an industrial-techno label so mysterious that some of its releases have never been sold at all, but how they actually made this thing, and what went through their heads when they were doing it, can only be guessed at. In an era when so much of DJ culture is meant to be consumed under a spotlight, whether on festival main stages or in the center of Boiler Room’s frame, that wiliness counts for something.
The set’s anti-climatic finale, with RP Boo’s “Wicked’Bu,” feels telling. “There is no you/Without a turntable like me,” chants the Chicago producer, as flute runs collide with chopped-up soul vocals and horn blasts in a way that reimagines footwork as free jazz. Eventually, the beat dies away, leaving only a miasmatic churn and a looped declaration, “There is no you…There is no you…” As the two selectors pull the curtain closed, it feels like a refusal to let their process be teased apart. | 2018-10-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-10-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Fabric | October 2, 2018 | 7.4 | e811377e-cd59-4df9-861e-4bda3dc9ee3f | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins’ new mixtape strikes the balance between hard-nosed spitting and the breezy consciousness of daisy-age-influenced acid rap. | Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins’ new mixtape strikes the balance between hard-nosed spitting and the breezy consciousness of daisy-age-influenced acid rap. | Mick Jenkins: Or More; the Anxious | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mick-jenkins-or-more-the-anxious/ | Or More; the Anxious | The rapper Mick Jenkins, who calls Chicago’s South Side his home, released his debut studio album The Healing Component in September of 2016. It was somewhat heavy-handed in its explorations of love, in contrast to Jenkins’ seminal 2014 mixtape The Water[s], which more artfully examined the redemptive powers of water. The Healing Component resonated with core fans but failed to make significant waves beyond a solid critical reception—a perceived slight Jenkins makes clear he has not forgotten on “Happy Gilmore,” the driving opener of his surprise 2017 mixtape, Or More; the Anxious.
Billed as something of a preview ahead of Jenkins’ sophomore album, Or More; the Anxious is a snapshot of his gargantuan talent. Its seven tracks are punctuated by his ongoing struggle to balance the allure of hard-nosed spitting with the breezy consciousness of daisy-age-influenced acid rap. Taking a more measured approach to composition on this mixtape, Jenkins comes closer to achieving the artistic equilibrium that has eluded him in the past, and he spits as if to settle a score.
“Happy Gilmore” opens with a sped-up clip of Vic Mensa on the Complex-hosted morning show “Everyday Struggle.” In it, Mensa succinctly tells off one of its hosts, DJ Akademiks, for speaking on the climate and culture of Chicago rap with no first-person understanding of it. “Happy Gilmore” then blossoms into a heavy dose of skullcap-and-hoodie rap; produced by Origami Beats, it marries a plodding industrial cadence with ad-libs from The Notorious B.I.G. It’s a reminder to the rap world at large of just how little the Chicago delegation cares for its feelings.
The following “C Is for CashMoney” is a collaboration with ENG Creation and THEMPeople, which features a sample of Gil Scott-Heron describing “the virtues of the letter c”: “It is the first letter in cash money, it is the first letter in Constitution, and it is the last letter in music.” Even more telling is that, for most musicians, half the battle is simply being seen. Jenkins doubles down on the titular investment in “c” with a barrage of alliteration: “Name a campaign more cohesive than truth/A culmination of lies, a compilation of proof/A combination of both is what creates all this confusion.” But his sincerity and social commentary are muddied at points by the acrobatic parlor tricks that rappers use to impress other rappers, or to distract from a lack of substantive thought.
“FreeNation Rebels” is Jenkins’ latest nod to the FreeNation crews—a throwback to the classic A Tribe Called Quest aesthetic and Jenkins’ own 2013 Trees & Truths single “Free Nation Rebel Soldier.” Jenkins gives in to angst, as he inventories the releases that he feels have been slept on: “I brought the coupe out/I brought the tree, I brought the truth out/I brought the waters, I brought the love and niggas had me tuned out.” Jenkins also addresses white audiences who use a perceived camaraderie as permission to chant the n-word freely at shows—one of many micro-aggressions awaiting black artists amid the shinier indicators of success. But Or More ends on an underwhelming note and sounds depleted by the Saba-featuring “Energies.”
Perhaps the most telling part of Jenkins’ mixtape title is the latter half: the Anxious. In two words, it speaks directly to the trauma and scrutiny endemic to life as a public figure and a man of color. With that, Jenkins’ decision to mine his own feelings and fears seems no accident. The psychological trauma underpinning the black male experience thrives in his hometown of Chicago, where violent crime has plagued communities of color in recent years. If Or More; the Anxious is just the tip of the iceberg of Jenkins’ next album, it’s promising. What is clear, if nothing else, is that anxiety is just the beginning. | 2017-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | December 7, 2017 | 6.7 | e8130a1b-8e22-4827-a79b-902b72a1c3e7 | Karas Lamb | https://pitchfork.com/staff/karas-lamb/ | |
Singer/songwriter and producer Anders Rhedin is a former member of Choir of Young Believers, has written pop songs for Kid Cudi and Josh Groban, and has toured with Mac DeMarco under the Dinner alias. On his Captured Tracks debut, he offers a darkly deadpan take on ’80s synth-pop like the Simple Minds or Psychedelic Furs. | Singer/songwriter and producer Anders Rhedin is a former member of Choir of Young Believers, has written pop songs for Kid Cudi and Josh Groban, and has toured with Mac DeMarco under the Dinner alias. On his Captured Tracks debut, he offers a darkly deadpan take on ’80s synth-pop like the Simple Minds or Psychedelic Furs. | Dinner: Psychic Lovers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21752-psychic-lovers/ | Psychic Lovers | A former member of Danish chamber-pop group Choir of Young Believers, singer/songwriter and producer Anders Rhedin splits his time between Copenhagen, Berlin, and Los Angeles—in the last of these locales, he found work as a professional songwriter for the likes of Kid Cudi and Josh Groban, though he has compared his commercial pop songwriting effort to "black magic." From 2012 to 2014, Rhedin released a handful of cassette- and vinyl-only EPs under the Dinner moniker, leading the generally fantastic indie-rock label Captured Tracks to sign him in 2014 and issue a compilation, Three EPs: 2012-2014. A tour with labelmate Mac DeMarco followed.
It's less clear from this debut outing if Dinner has the tracks to match Rhedin's impressive trajectory. Three EPs was a relatively varied outing, as suits its cobbled-together origins, but it introduced Rhedin's darkly deadpan take on ’80s synth-pop like the Simple Minds or Psychedelic Furs, complete with an alternate-universe novelty hit: the queasily catchy "Going Out," which sneaks a tale of a druggy night on the town into what could be mistaken for an awkward invitation to go on a date ("Do you feel like going out tonight?"). Three EPs also presented Rhedin's unique vocal style, primarily a goofy baritone that must be how Stephin Merritt sounds to people who don't like the Magnetic Fields.
On Psychic Lovers, Rhedin still sings like a failed Muppet auditioner, and layers more studio gloss on the new-wave noir template of "Going Out," but without any song as modestly pleasant. Rhedin has billed the album as "like sexual Christian rock ... but without all the Christianity," and, frankly, being asked to go out with him worked better when it wasn't really a come-on. Here, he's a "normal guy" longing for something to "Turn Me On." He wants "What You Got." He'd love to spend one night with you, because "in your smile's a nuclear bomb," and you, person whose hips have "oscillations" as you walk down the street, own "The World" ("Every world belongs to you," to be more precise). The neon-glowing production is all just so, but the enjoyment we're supposed to get out of this lyrical mix of the portentous and the trite, and that gawky vocal delivery, in a world where The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink soundtracks have already existed for decades, with proper singing and catchy hooks and everything, isn't clear.
Psychic Lovers does try out a few different hues within its fairly limited palette, but they mainly just add to the confusion. Sentimental slow-dance candidate "Kali, Take Me Home" showcases a children's choir and has a title that evokes the powerful Hindu goddess of creation and destruction. "A.F.Y." explores dubwise vocal effects and clanging distortion. "Holy Fuck!" languidly addresses not the sex, but the "sexless fighting spells," imploring, "Leave behind the lies." Closer to the ’60s art-pop mode that occasionally surfaced on Three EPs is "Lie," with its Nico-like guitar strums and orchestral touches; there's a choral backing vocal here, too. "Wake Up" has a tropical-house flavor and describes, guess what, waking up in various locales "with you."
Rhedin's approach here theoretically could work. As the Nico comparison suggests, unconventional voices can turn out to be the most enduring, and even within the niche that critic Liz Colville once described on Pitchfork as "boys with perpetual colds who can kinda-sorta sing" you can find overlooked nuggets from bands like Seattle's BOAT or Sweden's Suburban Kids With Biblical Names. As for the realm of so-fake-it's-real '80s sendup, Ariel Pink stands out for his eccentricity, while John Maus delivers chest-beating live performances and cerebral songcraft, which brings us to the stage-devouring neo-New Romanticism of justly revered band Future Islands. The subtle but crucial difference, as with anything else—including Christian sex without the Christianity—is in how you do it. | 2016-04-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-04-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Captured Tracks | April 12, 2016 | 5 | e82659e7-6618-4fce-a361-ae2459d732f7 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
Erik Wiegand produced his wildly fun new record with the digital synth he invented. Fueled by dancehall, its manic pleasure offers a way out of techno’s self-serious cul-de-sac. | Erik Wiegand produced his wildly fun new record with the digital synth he invented. Fueled by dancehall, its manic pleasure offers a way out of techno’s self-serious cul-de-sac. | Errorsmith : Superlative Fatigue | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/errorsmith-superlative-fatigue/ | Superlative Fatigue | Erik Wiegand, aka Errorsmith, might be one of the most technically adept people working in dance music right now. Case in point: the synthesizer that gives his latest album, Superlative Fatigue, its bazillion-megawatt buzz—part ice-cream headache and part fork in socket. It’s called Razor. It’s a digital synth, a plug-in, marketed by Berlin’s Native Instruments. He built that thing. Invented it, specced it out, programmed it, perfected it. It’s his, and you can buy it—320 sine waves’ worth of additive synthesis, all for $99. That’s some brainiac shit right there. Modeselektor’s Gernot Bronsert called it “the most innovative software synthesizer I’ve seen in ages.”
Yet Superlative Fatigue, as much as the title might sound like the quintessential cri de cœur of the sleep-deprived coder, is not a nerdy record. No chin-scratching IDM here, no dryly academic number-crunching. No, quite the opposite. It’s fun. Wildly, zanily fun. Some of the most fun you will hear on a techno record this year, certainly on one coming from Berlin. And at a time when underground techno is gloomier than ever before—smeared in charcoal dust, suffused in a post-industrial haze, bled dry of every last iota of color or joy—Errorsmith’s album, in its manic pleasure, is more than just a vivid demonstration of its creator’s technical abilities: It’s a way out of techno’s self-serious cul-de-sac, a shot of energy just when the genre needs it most.
I’m using the term “techno” loosely; there are few four-to-the-floor kick drums on Superlative Fatigue, fewer still oontz-oontz pulses. The eight-track, 41-minute album is fueled largely by dancehall: On tracks both fast and slow, it’s a loping dembow cadence that drives the rhythm. But Wiegand has deep roots in Berlin’s techno scene. Back in the mid 1990s, his duo MMM was turning out some of the most unrelenting and inventive rave bangers ever to shake the rafters of an abandoned warehouse. By the early 2000s, in the duo Smith N Hack, he was flipping Bohannon edits into overdriven floor-fillers. And his third solo album, 2004’s Near Disco Dawn – Live Recordings 2001-2003, pushed techno’s brute-force fantasies to almost comic extremes: In its furnace-blast white noise and pogo-stick bounce, it imagined techno as the midway point between noise music and “Looney Tunes.”
His tools have changed—Superlative Fatigue, his first solo album in 13 years, and his first solo project since bringing Razor to market, was completed almost entirely using Razor, except for two songs that also feature Roland’s TR-808 drum machine—but the hallmarks of his earlier productions are still there. His signature boils down to a single idea: slippage. On fast tracks, syncopated drums bounce like rocks on an incline, racing the beat and catching air with every rebound; on slow ones, they stumble, fidgety and confused. “Internet of Screws,” a woozy take on trap, replaces the genre’s digital precision with stumbling offbeats, and it turns trap’s typically diamond-tipped snares flaccid and loosey-goosey.
It’s not just the rhythms that seem to have come untethered from the grid: His melodies swoop and dive, unsteady as the prow of a small boat on the high seas. If it turned out that Wiegand had also built a slide-whistle MIDI interface to control Razor, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. In “Who-is,” pipsqueak synth leads and elephantine bass drum rise and fall in dizzily synchronized movements, like flea-circus performers with a serious drug problem. In “I’m Interesting, Cheerful & Sociable,” a wobbly melody splits into multi-part harmonies that stack up in halogen-bright arrays, while the laser zaps of “Centroid” take SOPHIE’s rubbery sound design to even more elastic extremes.
It can be pretty full-on stuff, but his keen sense of control counts for a lot; as antic as it gets, it never entirely goes off the rails. It helps that the album’s back half is largely devoted to slower interpretations of the same ideas. “Retired Low-Level Internal Server” is a blippy dancehall tune reminiscent of the brittle style, showcased on Mo Wax’s Now Thing compilation, that producers like Lenky and Ward 21 were developing around the turn of the millennium; the aforementioned “Internet of Screws” stretches Errorsmith’s tactics almost to the breaking point with a rhythm so scattershot that it can sound deliberately errant. These tracks make the most of their negative space, cushioning all that garish, gloriously artificial sound-sculpting in a welcome layer of emptiness.
The closing track, “My Party,” offers an even more refreshing breath of air. Picking up on the eerie vocal processing of the opening “Lightspeed”—essentially a series of monosyllabic hiccups that sounds like a baritone singer running through his vowels—“My Party” strips everything back to just vocoder and handclaps. Scat-like vocal runs bob up and down the scale like a drunken bumblebee, relishing the buzzy nuance the synth lends to the voice; a sing-song refrain (either “Party my party” or “Body my body,” though it’s hard to say for sure) threatens to dissolve into pure gibberish. It sounds a little like Bobby McFerrin if he had swallowed a kazoo and gotten a case of the giggles, which is to say that it sounds totally ridiculous and totally wonderful. The techno scene can keep its dour, atonal merchants of doom; this interesting, cheerful, sociable, and downright giddy album is the real life of the party. | 2017-11-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-11-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Pan | November 3, 2017 | 7.9 | e82e7f40-1ae6-416b-8a23-7a2066549ecd | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
The Virginia rapper-singer is known for her boisterous rap concoctions, but her new album is a sparse showcase of moody, Auto-Tuned vocals that feel more like demos. | The Virginia rapper-singer is known for her boisterous rap concoctions, but her new album is a sparse showcase of moody, Auto-Tuned vocals that feel more like demos. | Babyxsosa: Babyxsosa EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/babyxsosa-babyxsosa-ep/ | Babyxsosa EP | When Babyxsosa first emerged in 2018 with “Beat My Ass,” there was a chirpy, nursery-rhyme quality to the Virginia rapper-singer’s voice. She sings sweetly, her feathery vocals floating through the din like a snowflake in a gust of wind. As her profile grew, she began dabbling in ’80s-style synth-pop, plugg, and harsh industrial techno, the latter of which sounded like Yeezus compressed to 8-bit. Her voice is the one constant, cutting through the digital fog even as the music shuffles around. It feels like a sliding block puzzle operated by someone amped up on two cans of Logan Paul’s Prime energy drink.
Even for an artist prone to unexpected pivots, Babyxsosa’s new self-titled project feels like a left turn. Outside of its explosive centerpiece “Baby G,” the production is somber and stripped-back, consisting almost entirely of moody synthlines fit for a minimalist sci-fi film. That aesthetic choice puts more emphasis on Sosa’s vocals than ever, and she uses the extra space to lather her melodies in a cold, Auto-Tuned foam. It’s hard to make out the freestyled lyrics on “Introduction,” but her coos morph into ghostly wails over a yearning organ sample, her wistfulness overflowing with every breath. Babyxsosa is a radical departure from the boisterous sound she’s been tinkering with; “Beat My Ass,” this is not. She relies on these sparse vibes for the rest of the release with mixed results.
Simple vocal refrains melt into the backgrounds of songs, every element weightless and floating towards the ceiling. “Never Know/Viral” lingers on unfiltered confessions that eventually give way to Kid Cudi-style crooning. At just a little under a minute and a half, the track evaporates and leaves little time for respite before the bludgeoning, Playboi Carti-indebted “Baby G” gallops in. Then the drums and horns fade into the ether, and she’s back to singing sweet nothings on “That’s Just What They Say When They Don’t Know You Like I Know You.” The tonal whiplash is bizarre but intriguing, the bones of a romantic theme peeking through these pared-down flights of fancy. Still, the mechanics aren’t foolproof. Outside of that dizzying three-song structure, these tracks feel so raw they sometimes resemble demos more than finished statements.
The project’s boldest experiments are left for the end. On “I Found It,” Sosa goes full a cappella. It feels like a prelude to closer “I’m Over This Level of Life, My Love,” which takes up nearly half the project’s runtime; the song plays out like a slow ascent to the stars, accented by distorted screams and the throes of a crumbling relationship. “I Found It” is underwhelming because it takes its simple presentation a step too far; Sosa’s presence is diminished when she doesn’t have any other elements to play off of. The similarly brief “Never Know/Viral” wrings a lot of feeling out of a small package, and “My Love” capitalizes on the open space in its construction by letting the words and chords get tangled in a mass of angst and acceptance. You can’t knock her for experimenting, but sometimes she does leave more to be desired.
Babyxsosa carries the weight of a self-titled release—an EP significant enough to get its own website with a handwritten song-by-song breakdown. Sosa’s strongest work usually has an anchor—a catchy melody, vocal fry, or standout line that functions as the foundation. It’s daring to follow this summer’s raucous and techno-drenched BLING BLING EP with 20 minutes of electro-chamber pop. But when the shock wears off, Sosa’s ideas feel static where they should be free. These days, rappers stretch the limits of their voices, indulge weighty concepts, and abandon rapping entirely. Sosa’s ambitions aren’t that grand here, but it’s unclear what exactly she’s aiming for. Her presence is still strong, but it’s hard to tell whether she wants to draw the listener in or keep them at arm’s length. | 2023-11-17T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-17T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | November 17, 2023 | 6.6 | e83b35b6-cd48-4ad4-9583-2d39e0a60fd7 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
A remix album of Lady Gaga’s 2020 dancefloor epic is less a wall-to-wall collection of club bangers than an expansion of the Chromatica cinematic universe, featuring Charli XCX, Arca, Rina Sawayama, Doss, and more. | A remix album of Lady Gaga’s 2020 dancefloor epic is less a wall-to-wall collection of club bangers than an expansion of the Chromatica cinematic universe, featuring Charli XCX, Arca, Rina Sawayama, Doss, and more. | Lady Gaga: Dawn of Chromatica | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lady-gaga-dawn-of-chromatica/ | Dawn of Chromatica | It was a tragedy that Lady Gaga’s Chromatica—an album made not just for dancing in the middle of a sweaty, crowded room, but for engaging in communal healing—was released at a moment when it could only be enjoyed in isolation. The timing of Dawn of Chromatica, then, feels less like a tragedy than a cruel joke: a full-throttle remix album with contributions from an all-star roster of pop freaks, unleashed in the world just as a brief and blissful reprieve from pandemic anxiety is replaced by a renewed sense of uncertainty.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Dawn of Chromatica is less a wall-to-wall collection of club bangers than an expansion of the Chromatica cinematic universe: new characters, new sounds, new memes approved and distributed by the Supreme Leader. It’s a welcome excuse to revisit an album that’s galvanized and brought together so many queer people in the year since its release. And thanks to its unusual degree of coherence and flow, it’s a project you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home without feeling a crippling sense of FOMO.
Part of what made the original Chromatica so satisfying was its excavation of ’90s house music. It was consistent and relentless in a way that other Gaga albums—even Joanne, with its pink cowboy hat and committed country drag—never quite managed. The most memorable revisions on Dawn of Chromatica create new links to other standout moments in the Gaga discography. The wailing riffs and drum fills plugged into Rina Sawayama and Clarence Clarity’s take on “Free Woman” place it squarely in the Born This Way ecosystem, and Dorian Electra’s trashy remix of “Replay” pushes the leather-and-metal energy even further into the red.
Pabllo Vittar’s breezy rendition of “Fun Tonight” summons Gaga’s early flirtations with Latin music along with a sax line worthy of Clarence Clemons; it also makes one of the saddest songs in recent memory sound like a sun-kissed Brazilian street fair, an appealing dissonance. And while the Dawn of Chromatica version of “Sine From Above” isn’t a song I can see myself revisiting on a regular basis, there’s a bit of ARTPOP in its flatulent digital provocation.
A few other highlights tilt in the other direction, teleporting Gaga into established worlds of sound with satisfying results. Doss transforms “Enigma” from a chaotic anthem into an expression of her signature featherlight dance music, equal parts gauze and rubber. The Planningtorock remix of “1000 Doves” completely changes the tone of the original, turning a bruised hidden gem—perhaps Chromatica’s closest thing to a ballad, barely skirting their illegal status—into strobe-lit New Wave. (It’s the kind of pop song that would’ve crept onto music critics’ best-of lists in the mid-’00s alongside Annie and the Knife.) It’s no surprise that Dawn of Chromatica’s most radical cut is Arca’s subversion of “Rain on Me,” on which Alejandra Ghersi samples her own “Time” and “Mequetrefe” to situate Gaga and Ariana Grande within KiCk i’s gossamer avant-pop.
The two guests closest to pop stardom in their own right bring their A-game on Dawn of Chromatica, elaborating on the original album’s themes of trauma and recovery with contributions that feel more like full-fledged duets than reworks. Sawayama brings a sense of comradery—I love the way she starts the song with a tossed-off “Let’s go, Gaga!”—and an ecstatic defiance to “Free Woman,” capping it off with a glorious celebration of independence. She’s one-upped just a few songs later when Charli XCX and A.G. Cook blow the doors off “911,” Gaga’s harrowing tribute to antipsychotic medication. Its ultimate form is a crystalline hyperpop epic, one that climaxes with a stunning final verse and outro. It’s some of Charli’s finest work since Pop 2.
Dawn of Chromatica’s provisions feel secondary to its function as a document of influence and stamp of approval for a generation of left-field pop misfits. Maybe it’s an odd thing to say about an album that debuted at No. 1 and yielded multiple Top-10 singles, but Chromatica feels distant from the center of the genre; its position within a pop landscape defined by rap’s continued dominance, pop-punk and alt-rock’s twinned resurgence, and the increasing global popularity of urbano and Afrobeats is unclear. Becoming a true multi-hyphenate force—note the album of Cole Porter standards alongside Tony Bennett, the makeup empire, and the impending House of Gucci Oscar campaign—has also meant Gaga entering the “playing the hits” phase of her career. It’s noteworthy that her biggest non-“Shallow” musical moments of the last half-decade are career-spanning sequences at the Super Bowl and the VMAs.
It’s this context that makes Dawn of Chromatica feel less like a celebration of a world-beating record and more like passing the torch. Bringing together this widely varied group of artists from around the world and calling attention to the qualities they share—their playfulness, their courage, their willingness to push the boundaries of taste—is an elegant way for Gaga to reinforce those same qualities as fundamental parts of a legacy that’s still taking shape.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Interscope | September 8, 2021 | 6.7 | e8421897-c90b-4363-81a2-dc754f7d340b | Jamieson Cox | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamieson-cox/ | |
In 2010, no band seemed to be having more fun with scrappy garage rock than this one. On their first album in nine years, they forget to replace that spark with anything else. | In 2010, no band seemed to be having more fun with scrappy garage rock than this one. On their first album in nine years, they forget to replace that spark with anything else. | Harlem: Oh Boy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/harlem-oh-boy/ | Oh Boy | For long-AWOL Austin garage rockers Harlem, the excitement of releasing their first album in nine years must surely be tempered by knowing they’re bound to disappoint old fans. In an interview, co-leader Michael Coomers recalled previewing Oh Boy for a friend who was bummed it was nothing like the group’s younger, wilder music. “I’d like them to like what we do next,” Coomers said of similar listeners, “but if they’re looking for that sort of stuff, I think there’s a wealth of material, music made by others, that they can go to that will satisfy that urge.”
If only: While there will never be a shortage of irreverent garage pop records, few scratched the itch as completely as Harlem’s sole Matador outing, 2010’s Hippies. It was a jubilant bear hug of a listen, its infectiousness surpassed only by its puppyish zeal. Of all the bands of that era making scrappy party jams on busted equipment, they sounded like they were having the best time. Buoyed by the fluke resurgence of beach-friendly rock’n’roll, Harlem spent a year on the road playing to eager crowds before breaking Kanye’s Mase rule: They left when they were hot. Curtis O’Mara started the Harlem-esque band Grape St., while Coomers led the more subdued Lace Curtains. Neither group rebottled the lovable mischief of Harlem’s cult classic.
The reunited songwriters return older, wiser, and completely uninterested in recreating the past on Oh Boy. They’ve slowed the tempos, upped the production, and bled nearly every trace of boyish pep from their sound. These sorts of reinventions are always hard to pull off, but not impossible. Six years after their 1980 debut, for instance, the Feelies reemerged a very different band—mellower and more pastoral than their excitable first incarnation, but no less rewarding. They didn’t just mature. They adapted.
Harlem 2.0, on the other hand, illustrate just how difficult it can be to reignite a spark that’s been snuffed out. Oh Boy is so distracted from denying the creature comforts of the band’s early work that it forgets to offer anything in their place. On “Lana,” the guys kick back with some red wine and listen to two of pop’s reigning queens; for all their Lana Del Rey and Beyoncé worship, they share neither of those artists’ drive to chart new sounds. About as cutting-edge as this record gets is “Blonde on Blonde” and “Queen of Mosquitos,” a pair of wallowing, late-night tunes with the energy of the Band’s most laid-back sessions.
Beyond the small pleasures of O’Mara and Coomers’ relaxed chemistry, there are only the faintest echoes of what used to be. With some concentration, you could imagine a raucous jam trying to break free from blue-eyed soul songs like “Smoke in Mirrors” and “Dreams Is Destiny,” but the album’s mopey grip is too tight, its dejected spirit too all-consuming. Oh Boy never gives these songs a chance to lift off. Any band returning from a long hiatus needs to be judged on a curve, but no amount of expectation mitigation can completely shield somebody with an affection for Harlem’s old records from the disappoint here. They waited nine years just to learn the party ended long ago. | 2019-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Female Fantasy | February 8, 2019 | 5.1 | e8426e99-4c5c-49ad-a676-7a5644f68406 | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | |
On Telefone, Noname pours the joy and devastation we glimpsed in her various guest spots with artists like Chance the Rapper, Mick Jenkins, and Saba into a rich, somber, and incredibly intimate album. | On Telefone, Noname pours the joy and devastation we glimpsed in her various guest spots with artists like Chance the Rapper, Mick Jenkins, and Saba into a rich, somber, and incredibly intimate album. | Noname: Telefone | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22218-telefone/ | Telefone | When Noname (fka Noname Gypsy) raps, she swims in the bleakness of a life that’s seen a lot of death and change. “I used to have a name that look like butterflies and Hennessy/ I’ll trade it up for happiness but joyful don’t remember me,” she remembers matter-of-factly on “Sunny Duet,” from her new project Telefone. But even while reliving heartbreak her voice is soothing—resigned but optimistic, weary but hopeful. Perhaps it is a credit to all of her years spent writing and performing poetry as part of the YOUmedia Program for Young Creatives at Chicago’s Harold Washington Library: Her skipping cadence and ability to dance around words while establishing that each one is equally important are poet's skills, making you listen to every word without ever seeming overdetermined or obvious. You’re just gripped, trying to catch everything coming at you—and Noname (real name Fatimah Warner) gives you a lot.
On Telefone, she pours all the joy and devastation we glimpsed in her various guest spots with artists like Chance, Mick Jenkins, and Saba into a rich, somber, and incredibly intimate album. Originally meant to be released last summer, *Telefone *has been a long time coming for those who first heard her crushing, heartache-filled verse on Chance the Rapper’s “Lost” from Acid Rap, but the wait was worth it. Centered around transformative telephone conversations she’s had as she’s grown up, Telefone presents an introvert’s path to adulthood in careful detail and emotional intelligence.
If the Charlie Brown Christmas special—with its poignancy, melancholy and childlike, funereal score—were turned into a rap album, it might sound like Telefone. Much of its sound rests on delicate pianos, xylophones, and gentle wind instruments, matching the gorgeousness and dreary tenor of the lyrics. In much the same way as Jamila Woods’ HEAVN, it is a gospel-informed album, suffused with the same hope borne out of grief.
Also like HEAVN, Telefone is very much an album about black pain, particularly black women’s pain. When she raps about her lack of confidence and belief in her dreams on “Reality Check” she speaks of her granny’s spirit telling her, “You know they whipped us niggas?” as a counter. On “Bye Bye Baby” she raps about abortion with gentleness and understanding, referring to a “play date up to heaven soon.” Throughout Telefone, she reflects on the trials of the mothers and grandmothers who’ve given so much to the same world that destroyed them. These black women’s stories, so often obscured or silenced, are presented on center stage here. The joys, the hope and the determination are all there as well as the pain and burdens; they’re not separate but instead move together, forming a balance. Along with its black femininity, Telefone is very much a Chicago rap album in this same sense, telling different sides of the same story Chance or Chief Keef tell; they’re all different patterns in the same quilt covering the violence, plight, and pain that a failed system and poverty has created.
Noname is not drowning in misery but instead staying afloat and assuring you that you can, too: “What a pretty lady in the valley of the shadows/I’m thinking she lost a battle/I’m thinking she found the bottle,” she raps on “Freedom Interlude,” before adding “I know this is a song for overcoming.” It’s inspiring and gripping, so much so that when she brings in others to rap—Raury on “Diddy Bop,” theMIND on “Sunny Duet”—you miss her. “Freedom Interlude” is bookended with a Nina Simone sample in which she talks about the meaning of freedom. Simone’s troubles are well-known, but one thing that was always obvious to those who saw her live is that no matter what was happening in her life, when she got on stage she felt truly free and alive. Telefone feels like that same freedom; dancing and floating righteously amid unrest. | 2016-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | self-released | August 8, 2016 | 8 | e8450b12-90fc-421f-94a0-edd1a9bb3cc2 | Israel Daramola | https://pitchfork.com/staff/israel-daramola/ | null |
The delicate songs of the nomadic singer-songwriter have the ability to turn the wildest emotions into something calm and centered. | The delicate songs of the nomadic singer-songwriter have the ability to turn the wildest emotions into something calm and centered. | Yohuna: Patientness | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22286-patientness/ | Patientness | Since Johanne Swanson started recording wandering indie pop songs as Yohuna in 2010, she’s picked up her whole life and moved over 500 miles more than a handful of times. She's had stints in Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Boston; Berlin; Los Angeles; and has now spent the last year and change living in New York City. In interviews, she blames this pattern of movement and the general restlessness that’s accompanied the long wait between her releases. For whatever reason, until now, she’s been unable to slow down, to center herself—and to finish the songs that she’d been working out in her head all the while.
But at the tail end of last year she went to another new city, Montreal, to work with some longtime friends—including guitarist Adelyn Strei, Told Slant’s Felix Walworth, Florist’s Emily Sprague, Foxes in Fiction’s Warren Hildebrand, and string-arranger-to-the-stars and multi-instrumentalist Owen Pallett—on an album called Patientness that was meant as a summation of this period of drifting and waiting. The circumstances of its creation during a cold Canadian winter after years wandering in the wilderness may suggest that the record might be a collection of frayed ends or muddled feelings. But what’s always been most comforting about Swanson’s songwriting is the way she can make even the wildest emotions feel centered.
From the album’s first moments, on the chilly, synthesizer-led “Lake,” she sings of turmoil on a global level. A multitracked vocal take swims through a few drifting guitar lines, and when she whispers “this world’s just not kind” during the song’s wispy chorus, she does it not as a moment of catharsis or pained mourning, but as a simple statement of fact. Like all the best slowcore songs, the pieces on Patientness are lumbering and weighty, but there’s a peace about them—as if Swanson’s chosen to accept the bad in the world and press onwards rather than sit and sulk. It’s a trick she repeats throughout. The dizzy “Creep Date” proceeds similarly, the brittle crack of a synthetic snare punctuation on all of her dead-eyed, reverb-laden proclamations: “Not confused/Still feel used.”
Those lines curdle on the page, but when caught in the gentle wheeze of a synthesizer line that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Angelo Badalementi piece, Swanson’s able to soften the emotions. Everything comes out flattened, but not in a way that lessens their impact. Her delivery throughout Patientness has the effect that can only come from time and perspective, like the fragile-yet-self-assured quality of a catch-up conversation about everything that’s gone wrong in your life with friend who’s been away for a while.
The full-band arrangements, in contrast to the spare keyboard exercises on Revery, serve to underscore that calm confidence at the record’s heart. On “Badges,” a version of which initially appeared a couple of years ago on a compilation for Orchid Tapes (the small New York label that’s releasing Patientness), Swanson interweaves a few synthesizer lines with plinks of a piano and some percussion reverberating in the distance. It’s delicate and deceptively complex, but in the midst of it all, there’s a gentle propulsion—cautious steps forward in spite of the haze that surrounds it. She mirrors it in the lyrics, bouncing back from self-doubt with a chorus that’s absorbed all of the peace, hope, and love she’s found on the long, turbulent journey to Patientness. In spite of it all, she sings, “I am radiating light.” | 2016-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Orchid Tapes | September 6, 2016 | 7.2 | e845c5b6-6b31-4be1-8c4c-acdd0ce1f7f9 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | null |
Working alongside his longtime bandmates Moreno Veloso and Alexandre Kassin, plus the string arranger Sean O’Hagan, the Rio multi-instrumentalist ponders Brazilian music’s rootedness. | Working alongside his longtime bandmates Moreno Veloso and Alexandre Kassin, plus the string arranger Sean O’Hagan, the Rio multi-instrumentalist ponders Brazilian music’s rootedness. | Domenico Lancellotti: The Good Is a Big God | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/domenico-lancellotti-the-good-is-a-big-god/ | The Good Is a Big God | The notion of place has always played an outsized role in Brazilian music. To read its history is to be confronted with a long and complicated answer to the question of what music originating from a particular place at a particular time should sound like, rather than a log of aesthetic revolutions—notwithstanding its genuinely revolutionary nature. Put differently, Brazilian music offers a resounding rebuke to the notion that engagement with the rest of the world means capitulating to its norms.
It’s an argument that Rio-based multi-instrumentalist Domenico Lancellotti has absorbed for most of his life, and one that informs his new album, The Good Is a Big God. The son of bossa nova singer Ivor Lancellotti, Domenico has over the course of his career collaborated with a who’s who of legendary Brazilian musicians—Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil—and in the early 2000s was a member of +2, a democratic trio with rotating leadership that also included Veloso’s son Moreno and Alexandre Kassin. It was with the latter group that he released his first record as a bandleader, 2004’s Sincerely Hot.
With The Good Is a Big God, Lancellotti rarely wanders beyond his national borders, and in the process he quietly makes a case for giving in to the soft magnetism of home. It finds him hooking up once more with his +2 bandmates, along with frequent Stereolab and Cornelius collaborator Sean O’Hagan, for a thoughtfully arranged and powerfully executed set of songs that, for all of their breeziness, suggest a deep grounding in Rio’s sandy shores and the countryside’s humid crags.
Throughout the record, Lancellotti draws clean melodic lines with his acoustic guitar, then complicates them with clattering percussion, deploying samples and electronics the way the tropicalistas used baroque and chamber-pop instrumentation. You can hear echoes of the elder Lancellotti’s melancholic songwriting updated with drifts of electronic fizzling and distant programming in opener “Voltar-Se,” while “Tudo ao Redor” recalls the sashaying existentialism of João Gilberto; O’Hagan’s string arrangement in the latter deftly shifts along with Lancellotti’s graceful phrasing, here resembling Rogério Duprat’s tropical filigree, there suggesting the well-pressed pluck of Mexican ranchera.
As with Gil and Caetano Veloso before him, Lancellotti’s view of Brazil has only been enhanced by the time he’s spent outside of it. Nine of the album’s 14 tracks were composed for Rio Occupation, a 2012 London art exhibition meant to link the two Olympic cities. Lancellotti answers the flash of the moment with shushed reverence, painting still lifes of brief encounters that seem to take place just beyond earshot of the traffic outside. “The weight of light on your hand vibrates in the morning chill,” he sings in “Tudo ao Redor,” while in “Asas,” he embraces a lover and feels the electric pulse between them: “The left hand on the right hand/Your soul flush to mine/Both perfect/Sweet fusion/Beatitude that burns.”
And where the view encompasses more than he can hold, he simply lets it go: The brief “Serra dos Órgãos,” named for the national park an hour north of Rio, is a showcase for O’Hagan’s strings, which fold in on themselves over and over, forming jagged crevasses and rounded peaks in a way that recalls Maurice Ravel, while the mostly instrumental “Shanti Luz” stutter-steps like the disco thump of a carioca William Onyeabor. Even as “Voltar-Se” threatens to drift irrevocably into interiority, Lancellotti gathers the cloudy programming and spins it into a whirlwind of drums, pounding his way out of his head and back into the rhythms of the real world.
All of which makes The Good Is a Big God a political record powered more by context than content. The protest isn’t against regimes—though that occasion may soon arise again—but against the conditions of the globalized city and the Olympic-sized spectacle that, in its size and scale, blots out the importance of ordinary life and reduces the natural world to little more than an occasionally compelling background. Still, like the tropicalistas, Lancellotti is too engaged with what’s happening around him to turn to a reactionary regionalism. Instead, he places us at the top of the Serras, where the view is lofty enough to see for miles and miles. | 2018-05-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Global / Jazz | Luaka Bop | May 5, 2018 | 7.5 | e84ac7ee-bfdb-43b2-bc98-0ff0511af6c3 | Sadie Sartini Garner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sadie-sartini garner/ | |
On a new mini-album, the Boston slowcore project pares back its sound to uncover new strengths and summon old ghosts. | On a new mini-album, the Boston slowcore project pares back its sound to uncover new strengths and summon old ghosts. | Horse Jumper of Love: Heartbreak Rules | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/horse-jumper-of-love-heartbreak-rules/ | Heartbreak Rules | Since 2013, Horse Jumper of Love have been a comforting outlet for the heart-on-sleeve compositions of singer-guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos. On their self-titled debut and follow-up So Divine, drummer Jamie Vadala-Doran and bassist John Margaris worked like an ocean tide, pulling you in with a tranquilizing steadiness before abruptly turning aggressive. The band’s latest release strips back its sound to meet a slack current. Recorded in the Catskills over five days in 2021, Heartbreak Rules is a mini-album that, save for a brief piano part in “Chariots” played by Margaris, separates Giannopoulos from his bandmates for the first time in a decade. Backed solely by co-producer Bradford Krieger, he returns with a muted collection that taps into the strengths of the band’s earliest material.
Giannopoulos and Krieger team up for eight new songs, plus two reimagined tracks from 2022’s Natural Part and one cover from the vault. Though not as loud or bold as their previous album, the new material on Heartbreak Rules still charms. Country guitar and cheery melodies expand the band’s slowcore palette, straying from their established brand of gloom. On the title track, Giannopoulos breaks out a looping fingerpicked riff that shimmers next to slide guitar; the combination suits his raspy, confessional voice, especially when he reaches for higher notes. It’s a glum take on alt-country that’s earned the admiration of Wednesday’s MJ Lenderman.
At the band’s live shows, audience members sway side-to-side, caught in a state of hypnosis; Horse Jumper of Love cast a similar ambiance here. On “Sugar in Your Shoes (Last Night Version),” an acoustic rendition of Natural Part’s “I Poured Sugar in Your Shoes,” Giannopoulos sounds like he’s perched at an open window, voice floating into the evening air. The light and unassuming presence of Krieger’s percussion suits the softer material, though there are moments when Vadala-Doran and Margaris’ absence is obvious, like the underpowered build-up in “Queenie’s Necklace” and the meandering tempo of “Act of No Substance.” The familiar tension of Horse Jumper of Love’s more characteristic material is not the goal here.
As a songwriter, Giannopoulos has always been drawn to mundane details, and the quieter scenes on Heartbreak Rules are especially intimate: a person talking to herself while looking through the fridge, a conversation in a closet muffled by clothes. In this setting, the Microphones comparisons that Horse Jumper of Love earned in their hushed early years come back into view. A lyric like “Pendulums swinging in the watch store all in discord/She tracks dirt in and leaves a mess wherever she stomps around” is sing-spoken like an old folk artist, with a slight strain on high notes, all of it delivered with an unhurried confidence. Here and on the bright, simple “Singing by the Sink,” he finds a sense of levity that’s rare in his music. This laid-back approach allows Giannopoulos’ cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Luna,” a home recording from almost 10 years ago, to work as the closer. His reverb-soaked take on the Siamese Dream classic goes for a lonely, uneasy interpretation. Giannopoulos’ voice is audibly younger in this cover, recasting Billy Corgan’s serenade to a lover as a letter to his own future self. Holed away in the Catskills to revisit his roots years later, he sounds just as content with the pleasure of making quiet music in a quiet place. | 2023-05-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-22T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Run for Cover | May 22, 2023 | 7.1 | e84f5719-1b6e-44f6-abc2-c13b74a6e82c | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
Self-produced by My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden with support from keyboardist Zac Rae, This Is My Hand is an often successful exercise in percussive, jagged art-pop that explores themes of self-acceptance, sensuality, and community. | Self-produced by My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden with support from keyboardist Zac Rae, This Is My Hand is an often successful exercise in percussive, jagged art-pop that explores themes of self-acceptance, sensuality, and community. | My Brightest Diamond: This Is My Hand | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19797-my-brightest-diamond-this-is-my-hand/ | This Is My Hand | When interviewed about the process behind This Is My Hand, Shara Worden’s fourth LP under the My Brightest Diamond moniker, the operatically-trained singer mentioned writing with a vivid image in mind: an “imaginary tribe of people, gathering around a fire, making music together, telling stories, hearing from the shaman.” The energy of community has fed some of Worden’s best work in the past decade. Beginning with the supporting musicians that helped foster her experimental cabaret pop as AwRY in the early aughts and expanding outward to yMusic’s effervescent chamber music orchestrations on MBD’s last full-length, 2011’s All Things Will Unwind, a sense of collaboration has become as essential to the My Brightest Diamond project as Worden's inimitably acrobatic voice. It’s fitting, then, that Worden has turned that mentality into methodology for follow-up This Is My Hand. Self-produced by Worden with support from keyboardist Zac Rae, This Is My Hand is an often successful exercise in percussive, jagged art-pop that explores themes of self-acceptance, sensuality, and community.
In a frustrating bit of organization, This Is My Hand’s most memorable moments are front loaded in its opening five songs. Lead single "Pressure", which begins with a galvanizing drumline from the Detroit Party Marching Band before stacking Worden's soaring vocals against a rhythmic horn section, is unique and oddly beautiful. "Lover Killer" employs handclaps and howls for a deceptively joyous meditation on our capacity for both affection and violence, while "I Am Not the Bad Guy" evokes an industrial version of St. Vincent with its lurching swagger and pointed, imagistic lyrics (“I’m hungry, I won’t lie/ The cage, the bird, the open sky”). The bracing title track, however, is the true standout, as well as one of Worden’s finest moments. Through powerful repetition of the title’s opening phrase (“This is my…”) with distinct variations on body parts, ideas, and emotions (“fist,” “voice,” “heart,” “hate”, “sex,” etc.), the song elegantly unifies into an impassioned and inclusive rally call.
Where the beginning of This Is My Hand presents an invigorating progression of Worden’s sonic palette, the album winds down with a string of slower, ethereal oddities that blunt the concentrated pandemonium of its earlier tracks. "So Easy" and "Resonance" suffer a similar fate that much of All Things Will Unwind did in that they come and go with little to distinguish themselves, especially heard following the flourishing, self-assured bluster of the opening section. Still, despite uneven pacing, This Is My Hand works on a visceral level, conjuring Worden’s intended image of tribal, fireside collaboration through a rich diversity of texture, detail, and tone. | 2014-09-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2014-09-15T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Paper Bag / Asthmatic Kitty | September 15, 2014 | 7 | e85935aa-c3c4-492a-b654-0acf057d4d90 | Eric Torres | https://pitchfork.com/staff/eric-torres/ | null |
In recent years, the nonsensical notion of the non-sequential album follow-up has gained a thoughtless acceptance seldom found outside totalitarianism ... | In recent years, the nonsensical notion of the non-sequential album follow-up has gained a thoughtless acceptance seldom found outside totalitarianism ... | Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Master and Everyone | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/698-master-and-everyone/ | Master and Everyone | In recent years, the nonsensical notion of the non-sequential album follow-up has gained a thoughtless acceptance seldom found outside totalitarianism. Most memorably, Beck's crystalline Mutations was relegated to busywork status while the distinction of follow-up to Odelay was reserved for the vastly inferior Midnite Vultures. Record industry muckety-mucks had miraculously succeeded where scientists had failed: in splitting the Beck, yielding one salaciously marketable flavor-hijacker, one dour, lovelorn folkie, and one 10-kiloton explosion of inconceivable destructive power (though the latter has yet to see the inside of a Sam Goody).
But if the music industry is not bound by the ordinary laws of time and logic, then certainly neither is Pitchfork. And thus, I can state without fear of contradiction or absurdity that I have been waiting for the track that follows "Raining in Darling"-- the final tune on Bonnie "Prince" Billy's I See a Darkness-- since 1999.
Now, even by a conservative estimate, I can count some fifty Will Oldham tracks between the conclusion of I See a Darkness and the release of Master and Everyone, without even including his collaborations with the Boxhead Ensemble, Rian Murphy, Johnny Cash or Dave Pajo. But nothing on the rare gems compilation Guarapero: Lost Blues 2; nor his experimental collaboration with Mick Turner and a book of old Rabindranath Tagore poems, Get on Jolly; nor the minimalist Ode Music soundtrack; nor his amped-up covers EP, More Revery; nor the disturbingly smooth adult-contempo album, Ease Down the Road have even come close to the sonorous danse macabre of I See a Darkness. Oldham's relentless prolificity aside, the skullfaced Darkness still awaits its true successor.
Master and Everyone is probably not it. Not that Master and Everyone isn't a fine record-- it is. But like much of Oldham's recent output, it never achieves the black solemnity of I See a Darkness, or even the ramshackle eroticism of Viva Last Blues-- arguably, Oldham's best works. It's sparse without being immediate, ruminative without being particularly profound, and somewhat sadly, confessional without sounding at all redemptive. In a world where chronology serves marketing and music criticism, Master and Everyone is Oldham's follow-up to Arise, Therefore.
Master and Everyone has a stark whiteness about it: bare branches and gathering dark. "Winter comes and snow/ I can't marry you, you know," opens the first track, "The Way"; even the gently swelling strings under the chorus, "Love me the way I love you," hardly warm the song at all. Though seemingly intimate, Oldham still sounds like he's singing in a cavern. The song is so bleakly quiet you can hear the icicles dripping.
The deadening duet, "Ain't You Wealthy, Ain't You Wise?", is even more withdrawn; the refrain, "There's no pain to lament/ And no dream undreamt," seems to mock optimism as cruelly as the presence of female accompanist Marty Slayton mocks companionship. The sparse title track lies little more than a plaintive guitar strum beneath what amounts to a post-breakup resolution: "I am now free/ A master and everyone/ Servant of all and servant to none." Oddly enough, this struck me as something straight out of Martin Luther; his 1520 tract, The Freedom of Christian, reads: "A Christian is a perfectly free master of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all." Weird.
This would be (and may indeed be) a stretch were the album not utterly suffused with a deeply confessional Christianity. To be sure, the language and imagery of religion has always been an integral part of Oldham's songwriting, but always rather ambivalently-- as repressive and hypocritical, as well as authentic and redemptive. The boy in the Palace Brothers' stunning early tune, "Riding", summed it up best when he retorted, "God is what I make of him." On Master and Everyone, however, Oldham seems to flirt with downright evangelism. In "Maundering", Oldham proclaims that he is "going to find something true," singing, "Evil is as evil do/ God is always showing this to you/ I'm going to glorify everything good/ And put right what is wrong as I should." Later, over the ringing acoustic pluck of "Lessons from What's Poor", Oldham lapses almost into psalm:
And if I hunger see that I do
Bring me water; bring me food
Fill me up with things that are true
And very good...
I take my lessons from what's poor
That's what God has put me for
Wealth is death; of that I'm sure
Farewell.
But this rather grating homiletics seems to come and go (with the presence of the chirpy and no less grating Slayton).
The supremely stripped down "Even If Love" recalls the post-Slint, Pajo-inflected angularity of Joya, opening with the wonderful lyric, "Once again in the world of 1200 feelings/ All in electric lights/ We see what we can," amidst a low, snaky guitar line. Above all, the fiercely elegant "Wolf Among Wolves" remains Master and Everyone's incomparable highlight, fusing skeletal acoustics with deep and subtle electronic noise underfoot, and punctuated with sharp falsetto howls. "Why can't I be loved as what I am?" Oldham sings, "A wolf among wolves/ And not as a man among men." "Wolves" is really the only track on Master and Everyone that eschews two-dimensional desolation or ham-fisted sanctification to accomplish something truly and believably introspective.
Time passes, but it's a fiction to clock the years by great albums. Master and Everyone is a solid collection of rather thin songs that never quite sound intimate; songs that meant something profound to someone-- but always, it seems, someone else. It is not a great album by any means, but it is a timely one. Unnaturally cold, and weak like January sun. Perhaps we can do what we want with chronology, but the seasons run of their own accord. And right now, like the rest of America, it is winter in Louisville. | 2003-01-16T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2003-01-16T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Palace / Drag City | January 16, 2003 | 6 | e85a60d5-f36f-405a-89b9-3df780cfe109 | Brent S. Sirota | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-s. sirota/ | null |
After a few years as an indie-rock hired gun, the former Sky Larkin singer assumes center stage on her solo debut, chronicling the push-and-pull between blurry days and electric evenings. | After a few years as an indie-rock hired gun, the former Sky Larkin singer assumes center stage on her solo debut, chronicling the push-and-pull between blurry days and electric evenings. | Harkin: Harkin | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/harkin-harkin/ | Harkin | For the past few years, Katie Harkin has been busy greasing other people’s wheels. When her old band Sky Larkin called time in 2014 after three albums of charming, lo-fi fuzz, she carved out a new career as a gun for hire, joining Sleater-Kinney, Courtney Barnett, and Kurt Vile on tour and playing on Waxahatchee’s 2017 LP Out in the Storm. That’s half a decade working in the shadows—unlike rowdy children, background players are supposed to be heard but not really seen—which makes the way Harkin finally steps forward on her self-titled debut feel like an extra striding into center stage and bursting into a lengthy soliloquy.
That’s not to say that Harkin’s jagged, whirring indie rock represents some soul-baring confessional years in the making; listening to its vivid yet impressionistic vignettes is more akin to trying to get to know someone by sifting through a jumble of their candid Polaroid snaps. But it does capture a unique tension. Harkin slowly stitched the album together during a period of time split between touring, staying in New York, and hunkering down in the UK’s picturesque Peak District, and she often sounds as if she’s being dragged in different directions across its 10 songs. The geographical references span from her native North of England to Chicago and Missouri, chronicling the push-and-pull between wanderlust and fatigue, restlessness and sluggishness, blurry days and electric evenings. “No coordinates!” she yelps on “Up to Speed,” undercutting the song’s sweet melody with a scuzzy riff that exudes the fuggy confusion of too many late nights, as her nomad’s life spirals into a rut of scuppered plans and crash pads.
Thankfully that second-guessing doesn’t slacken her songwriting, which coats Sky Larkin’s bright, fidgety din with a sleeker, after-dark sheen. Like most people who came of age in sleepy country suburbs, Harkin grew up enraptured by the way quiet days gave way to transformative nights out, and the best cuts here are charged with a similar witching-hour magic. “I know what love is/Love is a nighttime fight,” she croons over the shimmering rush of “Decade,” a gracious reflection on old memories and mistakes made after the sun went down. On “Nothing the Night Can’t Change,” she fizzes with the nervy, stomach-flipping thrill of seeing your crush at the end of a boring day. “Your eyes, they widen at night just like mine,” she sings, high enough on fumes of lust and adventure to shrug off the naysayers insisting it won’t last.
Harkin is most alive when it sprints with that sense of speed and purpose, surging with adrenaline and sparking with twilit excitement. The one or two songs that stumble into a medium-paced chug, such as the choppy, stop-start “Bristling,” lack that same jolt of energy and come off pedestrian in comparison—yet it’s actually only when things really slow down that some of the record’s most beguiling textures emerge. Stella Mozgawa’s splashy drumming underpins whirlpooling guitars and synths on the woozy, Warpaint-ish “Dial It In,” while the fragile strum of “New France” takes on a strangely wispy beauty thanks to its cloudy electronics. “Red Virginia Creeper” shares its name with both an American plant and an Edvard Munch painting, but Harkin twists its shrill whistles and sticky keys into something that instead hums with the eerie, stultifying haze of the English countryside, until it sounds like she’s scoring a pastoral fever dream.
Having an address book as fat as Harkin’s could never be called a hindrance, but it does inevitably magnify any lingering traces of those she’s worked with before, most notably the thrumming urgency of Sleater-Kinney and the playful wordiness of Wild Beasts, who she moonlighted with while still in Sky Larkin. But for the most part, those elements are shaped into something her own. On the twisting, tuneful post-punk of “Mist on Glass,” its guitars racing on a never-ending loop like souped-up slot cars, an awkward spat blows up into a full-blown culture clash. “Does my Calderdale sentiment/Ring out in American ambient?” she asks, worried that her no-nonsense Yorkshire dialect has been lost in translation or, worse still, corrupted by a new environment. On Harkin, at least, there’s no danger of her voice not cutting through. | 2020-05-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-05-04T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Hand Mirror | May 4, 2020 | 7.1 | e8643b57-758c-468a-8539-b06276f74d4b | Ben Hewitt | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-hewitt/ | |
Two years after the South African trumpeter’s death, this 2010 studio session with the legendary Nigerian drummer documents their unique fusion of Afrobeat and jazz. | Two years after the South African trumpeter’s death, this 2010 studio session with the legendary Nigerian drummer documents their unique fusion of Afrobeat and jazz. | Tony Allen / Hugh Masekela: Rejoice | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tony-allen-hugh-masekela-rejoice/ | Rejoice | Tony Allen has lived many lives as a drummer in the decades since he first got behind a trap kit. His various collaborations and genre shifts are numerous and well documented, evidence of a lifetime of curiosity. But Allen will forever be known as the virtuosic drummer in Fela Kuti’s Africa 70 band—the man whose genre-defining rhythms drove the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer’s renowned sound. He quite literally put the beat in Afrobeat.
The legacy of the late Hugh Masekela, who died in 2018, is no less majestic. As a trumpeter he made his mark on every band he played with. Exiled from South Africa during apartheid, he spent much of the 1960s in London and New York, scoring a No.1 hit with “Grazing in the Grass” and making a name for himself on the Manhattan jazz scene. By 1984 he was in West Africa, where, through Fela, his friend and contemporary, he met Allen.
Almost as soon as they connected, the two decided they should try to make music together, but it would be more than 25 years before they finally met up in London’s Livingston Studios. Those 2010 sessions flowed like a conversation, with Allen laying down a drum track, Tom Herbert or Mutale Chashi adding bass, and Masekela answering with melodies on his flugelhorn. The result is Rejoice, a collaborative record that Allen calls “a kind of South African-Nigerian swing-jazz stew,” a skeletal Afrobeat infused with the spirit of bebop, with lyrics in English, Yoruba, and Zulu reflective of the transatlantic exchange that has defined the African diaspora for centuries.
Allen has been cooking up variations of this recipe for the past few years: It’s evident in the jazz stylings of his last solo LP, The Source, and in his tribute to bebop legend Art Blakey, who he credits as a major influence to his own style. His recordings with Masekela feel like old friends catching up after years apart. Masekela’s flugelhorn is the most expressive voice on the record, bright and nimble, piercing in tone but gentle in force, bearing passport stamps from Johannesburg, London, and New York. Allen’s touch is light, but he strikes with the confidence of a player who knows he doesn’t need to attack the drum to be heard. His snare drives the grooves, occasionally sputtering into micro-rolls, and the full-kit fills occupy the negative space in Masekela’s melodies. They’re effortlessly in sync, belying their limited experience collaborating with each other.
The record’s session players are plucked from London’s contemporary jazz scene: the Ezra Collective’s Joe Armon-Jones on keys, Chashi (Kokoroko) and Herbert (Acoustic Ladyland) on bass, and Steve Williamson on tenor saxophone, among others. Each instrument is rendered in stunning detail; from a technical standpoint, Rejoice is a remarkable feat of production from World Circuit’s Nick Gold. The record’s stereo imaging places you in Allen’s shoes, directly behind the kit. On “Coconut Jam,” as the hi-hat and snare keep time in one ear, the ride cymbal punctuates the beat in the other, and fills across the toms ripple across the soundstage from right to left, the echo of each strike as clear as if you were in the room. You’d be hard-pressed to find a cleaner, more elegantly mixed recording of Allen’s stick work.
As much as Rejoice, Masekela’s first posthumous release, is about two musicians finding common musical ground, the specter of Fela also looms large. “Never” is their tribute to the late legend, a mournful celebration of the indelible mark he left on the city in which the pair met: “Lagos never gonna be the same/Without Fela/Never!” As danceable as any Fela song, it’s one of the few tracks on the album where Masekela sings, and his voice is filled with pride and joy and sorrow. It’s the voice of a man singing for his friend, a reflection of his memory.
Similarly, Rejoice is a tribute to Allen’s friendship with Masekela, a record of their respect and admiration for one another. One can imagine Allen’s experience of combing through the sessions in the summer of 2019, not long after Masekela’s death, reliving their brief time together creating the record they had always imagined making. It’s all there in the groove: a love letter that could only be written by two masters at the peak of their powers, a fitting send-off to a friend.
It’s also a record defined by wisdom and experience. As it celebrates the end of one journey, it looks hopefully upon the start of many new ones. When Masekela sings the refrain in Yoruba on “We’ve Landed”—“Ise lori lo fii nsere,” a sentiment that loosely translates as “your work begins”—he’s speaking to the youth of today, in both an acknowledgement of their newfound maturity and an encouragement of their self-awakening. It’s a subtle message from two elder statesmen closely intertwined with the political struggles of the African continent: Our time is passing, and it’s your turn to stand up.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-24T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | World Circuit | March 24, 2020 | 8 | e8686f02-356f-4287-8fc9-52aab083b2ff | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
With warped lyrics and a thing for repetition, Lungfish embodied the D.C. area’s post-hardcore innovations. No one else has gotten as weird since. | With warped lyrics and a thing for repetition, Lungfish embodied the D.C. area’s post-hardcore innovations. No one else has gotten as weird since. | Lungfish: Sound in Time | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22021-sound-in-time/ | Sound in Time | “A ball of string/The embroidered flower/The resting place of the zero hour.” When Daniel Higgs chants these words in “X-Ray the Pharoah”—one of the standout tracks of Lungfish’s fifth album Sound in Time, newly reissued—it’s not hard to imagine he’s grasping at a metaphor for Lungfish itself. Formed in 1987 in Baltimore, the group quickly left its initial, rock-oriented, almost proto-grunge sound and settled into a cosmic groove that redefined what “cosmic groove” could mean. Sure, they dealt in the cyclical structures of krautrock and the hallucinatory poetics of psychedelia. But like their late-’80s/early-’90s brethren on Dischord Records such as Jawbox, Nation of Ulysses, and Fugazi, they also dealt in tightly coiled, post-hardcore animus. That is, until 1996, when Sound in Time saw Lungfish—like a ball of string—starting to to uncoil.
As with every album in Lungfish’s discography, Sound in Time sticks to a basic, guitar-voice-bass-drums configuration. Higgs is the gravelly, shamanic mouthpiece; Asa Osborne is the austere guitarist; Sean Meadows, making his recording debut with Lungfish on this album, is the anchoring bassist; and Mitchell Feldstein is the steadfast drummer. But unlike their excellent work elsewhere (Osbourne with Zomes, Meadows with June of 44, Higgs both solo and with the Skull Defekts), Sound in Time is part of a long, meditative conversation that Lungfish could only have with Lungfish.
Not that listening in on that conversation isn’t worth it. “I beseech your long locust leg/Lust against a cloak of organs,” sings Higgs on “Jonah,” a fiery stomp through Biblical tropes and thwarted desire. “The speech of the half-extinct/The involuntary grin/The foundation of the dimension/That we live in,” he lists on “Panic and Hysteria,” ironically the most placid and measured song on the album. Lungfish is a thing of drones, and nowhere is the band’s cascading circularity more pronounced than on “Sphere of Influence,” whose lurching, trance-inducing pulse starts out before growing eerily erratic. Osborne’s ragged guitar threatens to fly away before being yanked back into orbit. Higgs hurls his bestial howl against the spiral he’s found himself caught in, even as part of him gratefully succumbs to destiny: “You can’t change your mind/About anything anymore.”
Sound in Time is bookended by two brief instrumentals, “Constellations” and “Constellations (Part 2).” Aside from the absence of Higgs’ vocals, they don’t depart significantly from the rest of the album’s churning, self-replicating cadence. They are not, however, throwaway tracks. What seems incidental at first listen sifts a new sonic hierarchy out of rock —a reordering of fields of perspective that heightens Lungfish’s already profound emphasis on rhythm as code. Whittled down to even fewer notes and changes than Lungfish utilized before, the album completes a circuit that marks the apotheosis of the band’s post-hardcore phase, a way of phrasing distortion and aggression as incantatory loops with all the angles worn smooth.
“People will say the songs are repetitious, that there’s a pattern, a melodic pattern. That’s probably all you could say accurately,” Higgs remarks in Radio Waves for Viewing, a short documentary about Lungfish made in 2013, eight years after Lungfish went on seemingly permanent hiatus. He then adds, without clarifying anything, “The general thing or essence or whatever that people are responding to or wanting to experience is probably unnamable.” That goes not only for Lungfish’s listeners, but Lungfish themselves. Sound in Time, as its title more than implies, graphs the band’s transition from post-hardcore tension toward something more elemental, spiritual, and sublime. Tethers are being loosened. Ties are being cut. Riffs and images are set adrift, even as they snap into a fugue state. Neither the greatest nor the most momentous Lungfish album, Sound in Time remains an intriguing, mystifying stage of the group’s evolution toward Higgs’ “zero hour”—a mythic space where rest and restlessness coexist without paradox. | 2016-06-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-30T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Dischord | June 30, 2016 | 7.4 | e869cc44-6e84-4ef7-8e44-3ff98cf52093 | Jason Heller | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-heller/ | null |
A New York minimalist reaches into his archives, turning up solo pieces for piano and saxophone along with shape-shifting ensemble performances featuring Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman. | A New York minimalist reaches into his archives, turning up solo pieces for piano and saxophone along with shape-shifting ensemble performances featuring Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman. | Jon Gibson: Songs & Melodies, 1973-1977 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jon-gibson-songs-and-melodies-1973-1977/ | Songs & Melodies, 1973-1977 | Jon Gibson’s saxophone, flute, and clarinet are the connective tissue of the 20th century American minimalist canon. He appeared on a number of Philip Glass’ key recordings, including Music With Changing Parts, Einstein on the Beach, and Koyaanisqatsi, as well as Steve Reich’s Drumming and Phase Patterns; he also spent time as a member in La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music and worked with Terry Riley. Yet Gibson’s own music has been relegated to the footnotes of the period.
But, like Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman—unslottable artists whose output resisted the easy categorization of minimalism, and suffered accordingly—Gibson has belatedly begun to receive his due, although he is still alive, and able to reap the benefits of his rising profile. You can hear the influence of his distilled and detailed pattern music—like his 1977 album Two Solo Pieces—filtering down to a new generation of composers like Kali Malone, Ellen Arkbro, and Sarah Davachi.
After reissuing his 1970s albums, Superior Viaduct now goes into the archives for Songs & Melodies, filling in the gaps between 1973’s Visitations and Two Solo Pieces. What they’ve gathered ranges from Gibson’s solo recordings to minimalistic pattern music rendered with an 11-piece ensemble. The former suggest multitudes; the latter moves as a single entity. Some of the selections gathered here falter, struggling to break out of the strictures of minimalism, while other moments approach the transcendence of his better known material. Both Russell and Eastman appear, on cello and piano, respectively, and just as Gibson disappears completely in the work of others, so do his friends here. If only the release included notes of some sort to help illuminate Gibson’s thought process during this era and better situate him in the New York scene, like the excellent 1992 set In Good Company did.
“Song I” pits Gibson’s soprano saxophone against a backdrop of violin and cellos; its opening section is deeply hypnotic and evocative, firmly aligned with early New York minimalism. But when it suddenly breaks into “song”—something strangely like an Irish jig—it has the jarring effect of a car veering off into the ditch. Deliberately following repetition with moments of rupture could make for a bracing and effective strategy, if only the melody were strong enough to pull it off. By contrast, “Song II” is smoother in its transitions, adding marimba and contrabass to the strings to create a piece at once fidgety yet as enveloping as early Philip Glass. In “Melody,” a tape experiment from 1973, Gibson nudges a steady pattern of piano figures toward a more expansive view of minimalism. But unlike Gibson’s dense, percussive, gamelan-like “Visitations,” also from that year, the 15-minute “Melody” meanders rather than immerses. The live “Solo for Saxophone” sits in a similar purgatory: Gibson moves through numerous lines and figures in its concise four minutes, but it never coalesces, instead coming across more like a player warming up.
But it’s worth it all to arrive at the banks of the gorgeous “Melody IV,” scored for 11-piece ensemble. Performed in Buffalo in 1977, it’s one of Gibson’s most moving compositions, hushed and slow blooming, anticipating by a few decades the sort of assured pacing you hear in composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson or bands like Stars of the Lid and Natural Information Society. The strings—with quivering accents courtesy of the vibraphone—are drawn out, invinting listeners to luxuriate in their suspended tones, and imparting an air of wistfulness. It’s not memorable in the same way that a pop song is, yet that emotional resonance lingers in your heart long after the composition draws to a close.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-03-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-03-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Superior Viaduct | March 9, 2020 | 6.9 | e86b94ca-65aa-4219-b184-cc37cec30dbd | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
On Sunken, the newly re-released mini-LP by Chicago garage rock quartet Twin Peaks, the group has perfected the kind of songwriting that puts you in a practiced, happy headlock, drawing from acts like the Replacements and the Flamin' Groovies. | On Sunken, the newly re-released mini-LP by Chicago garage rock quartet Twin Peaks, the group has perfected the kind of songwriting that puts you in a practiced, happy headlock, drawing from acts like the Replacements and the Flamin' Groovies. | Twin Peaks: Sunken | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18285-twin-peaks-sunken/ | Sunken | The Chicago quartet Twin Peaks deserve a better, more imaginative name, because they have made a very good album in a style-- sloppy, Replacements-inspired rock-- where "pretty good" is an easy bar to clear and anything above that formidably harder. Power pop and bar rock bands work from a sort of creative commons of riffs and bass lines: There's the "Shake Some Action", the "Lust for Life", the "American Girl". You can hear a few of these old chestnuts echoing around in Sunken, Twin Peaks' newly re-released mini-LP. When there is so much agreeable stuff lying around, all of it worn shiny with generations' worth of love, to make someone actually pay attention to you requires real talent, and Twin Peaks have perfected the kind of songwriting that puts you in a practiced, happy headlock.
Sunken is less than twenty minutes long, but it packs a lot of color and verve into that blink of an eye. "Out of Commission" occupies a minute and 25 seconds of precious running time but it still finds a moment to burn a joyfully squalled miniature Thin Lizzy guitar solo onto the song's surface. The four of them-- lead singer and guitarist Cadien Lake James, Connor Brodnor, Clay Frankel, and Jack Dolan-- have been playing together since high school, and they've developed a sharp melodic ear, a knack that pops up in their arrangements as often as in their vocal melodies. Almost every guitar note on this album is hummable: "Baby Blue" cycles between a chiming, wintergreen riff and another squiggled lead, this one reminiscent of the Strokes' Nick Valensi. "Ocean Blue" wraps a tight little cluster of shimmery notes around the chord progression, flickering around Cadien Lake James' slow-moving vocal line.
As a singer, Cadien displays a few vaguely Julian Casablancas-like vocal affectations-- the gulp, a drunken slur. He sings some endearingly dumb things: "I never used to dig the sunshine much until I smoked some marijuana, yeah", from "Boomers". But his voice crawls up higher, and breaks more joyfully, than Casablancas's, and he has a surprising range: On the airy "Irene", he sings in a tender, fey, high register, ooh-ing wordlessly over watery guitars. It's an album highlight, and the kind of song you write when you intend to become something other than a sloppy garage-pop band someday.
An obvious touchstone for Twin Peaks, all of whom are nineteen years old, is the Smith Westerns, who hit a similar melodic guitar-rock sweet spot with 2011's Dye it Blonde and then spent the next couple of years reeling slightly, probably never having imagined themselves as elder statesmen of anything. (Cadien James' older brother dropped out of high school to be Smith Westerns' touring drummer.) And like that band's recent Soft Will, Sunken vigorously applies lo-fi sandpaper to laminate-gloss songwriting, gumming up songs that otherwise click along smoothly on multiple levels. Sunken presents itself initially as an over-enthusiastic tumble, an overgrown lab puppy licking your face. They are kid-bro Smith Westerns, figuratively and literally. But Sunken hints at more than that. | 2013-07-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-07-26T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Autumn Tone | July 26, 2013 | 7.1 | e8759ec8-a86e-4d4d-aa00-1d648c54aeb7 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | null |
Even with help from Ty Segall and Steve Albini, the Los Angeles garage-rock trio’s second album reaches for a grand analogy its cookie-cutter post-punk can’t support. | Even with help from Ty Segall and Steve Albini, the Los Angeles garage-rock trio’s second album reaches for a grand analogy its cookie-cutter post-punk can’t support. | Flat Worms: Antarctica | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/flat-worms-antarctica/ | Antarctica | Flat Worms don’t lack talent. Frontman Will Ivy is flanked by drummer Justin Sullivan (Kevin Morby, The Babies) and bassist Tim Hellman, who’s played with Ty Segall and Oh Sees. In late 2017, the Los Angeles garage rockers’ kinetic and scrappy self-titled debut delivered a fuzzed-out blitz with no real agenda. Three years on, they’ve upgraded their sound: Steve Albini and Segall co-man the desk at Electrical Audio, where the trio recorded their second album. The setup may be a rock nerd’s dream, but the cleaned-up sound doesn’t do them any favors; Antarctica is a dour proposal for a societal reset that winds up feeling distracted by hero worship.
Opener and lead single “The Aughts” makes for a promising start, melding the sneering spectre of latter-day Fall with Ivy’s pointed decrees. It’s a promise the album struggles to keep. Though Albini’s style suits the pummeling “Plastic Casts,” the shift from scorched earworms to taut, cookie-cutter post-punk becomes distracting. It’s one thing to ape a classic Albini recording like Shellac’s “Steady as She Goes” with an obvious homage like “Wet Concrete,” but on Albini’s own watch? He’d be within his rights to seek a secondary credit.
Thematically, Antarctica suggests a through-line between the chaos of modern society and the titular desolate continent. But many of these songs fumble the intent quite badly. “Market Forces” takes questionable aim at the state and mass media: “Personality cult chambers/Showcase the peacock feathers.” “Stick to the formula, turn out another/Four on the floor, the greatest night ever,” goes “Ripper One,” an admission of mediocrity as much as anything else. While Flat Worms’ punk heroes—like Mark E. Smith, or Nikki Sudden of Swell Maps—could wield ambiguity like a scythe, here empty words take center stage.
Warbly, woozed-out guitar forays help to blunt the lack of conviction. The seasick lead phrases on mid-album peak “Via” and the forcefield of feedback at the tail end of “The Aughts” ease the absence of the full-blown fuzz that made Flat Worms such a heady trip. The hand of Segall—who recorded the band’s The Apparition/Melt The Arms 7" and last year’s Into the Iris EP, and releases Antarctica via his Drag City imprint GOD? Records—surely plays a part in bringing these silver linings to light.
But to stand out in a supersaturated garage scene, Ivy and co. must command focus. The pencil-drawn analogy between Antarctica and the here-and-now isn’t exactly a reach, but the album’s perspective is blurry at best. Though Antarctica positions itself as an assessment of worldly chaos and isolation, it’s never clear whether the stance is earnest or apathetic. Even Albini-tier fidelity can’t make this formula sound fresh.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-04-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-25T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | God? | April 25, 2020 | 5.8 | e8864ddf-acf8-4788-a21a-de0cbfdddf74 | Brian Coney | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-coney/ | |
The veteran British composer, improviser, author, and scholar assembles a dreamlike, mercurial album of sonic collage that doubles as a philosophical treatise on sound and memory. | The veteran British composer, improviser, author, and scholar assembles a dreamlike, mercurial album of sonic collage that doubles as a philosophical treatise on sound and memory. | David Toop: Apparition Paintings | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/david-toop-apparition-paintings/ | Apparition Paintings | “Music is a memory machine,” David Toop wrote in The Quietus in May. The British composer, improviser, author, and scholar was talking about the COVID-19-related deaths of fellow experimental-music elders, but that declaration has the ring of a time-honored maxim, and it’s about as close as one could come to summarizing a 50-year career that ranges from the esoteric pages of The Wire to a pioneering book on rap, from Brian Eno’s Obscure Records to Top of the Pops.
The line echoes Roger Ebert’s famous aphorism about movies and empathy, and it shows why Toop is as distinguished in his recondite sphere as Ebert was in his popular one: They both believe their chosen art form has a specific, morally weighted, urgently human function. A veteran global field recorder, Toop is as much a conservationist as an ethnomusicologist, and the thousands of baroque intellectual inquiries he has raised might be said to rest on one burningly clear, almost instinctive question: How much of this world can be perceived and saved?
Apparition Paintings, a new album that’s great both for newcomers to Toop and to sound collage in general, is more than just canning audio preserves for the long winter. For that, turn to Field Recording and Fox Spirits, also new, from the same label. The illustrated book features dozens of pages of dizzying Toop talk with Room40 label head Lawrence English; an accompanying CD amounts to a sonic biography comprising unvarnished recordings (a Beijing street in 2005, a certain wasp in 1971), improvisations on the kinds of sculptural instruments people are always inviting Toop to play, and other raw materials that form his compositions. There are also conversations with subjects as diverse as Ornette Coleman and Toop’s grandfather, who said, as the cassette tape rolled in 1979, “My memory is not what it used to be, David,” succinctly stating the impetus behind Toop’s prodigious recording life.
If the phrase “sound collage” makes you despair of listening to someone untangling a mess of wire hangers while a kettle whistles in the next room, that’s fair. There is a lot of sound collage like that, which counts on the listener’s imaginative labor, the idea of boredom as a kind of medal, or the fear of not getting something other people claim to get. But while layer upon layer of arcane knowledge encrusts these songs—“‘Apparition painting’ is the term used to describe a certain type of ancient Chinese painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,” a typical Toop sentence might begin—the album is strangely accessible and well rounded, full of rich, tactile environments that evoke vivid spaces and nothing unfinished or haphazard.
Throughout Apparition Paintings, which features contributions from Elaine Mitchener, Keiko Yamamoto, Rie Nakajima, and others, Toop gathers live instrumentation, field recordings, percussive sounds, and non-English vocalizations, then pries them from their frames of reference and fuses them into mercurial, dreamlike unities. Their surfaces are scored with the eclectic elements of Toop’s background, which includes recording shamans in rainforests, cracking the U.S. and UK charts in the Flying Lizards with a skronky no-wave cover of Barrett Strong’s “Money,” releasing pioneering ambient albums on Brian Eno’s label, and writing books that trace the genre all the way back to Debussy.
The genuinely poetic titles Toop plucks from classic books and films speak of relatable emotional contents, though it’s easy to read too much or too little into them: “Maybe these titles, torn as they are from cinema screens and the pages of literature and philosophy, give a feeling of romantic or sexual love or some dark pool of nostalgia but that’s not it,” Toop ponders, unwinding the sentence for almost 300 words before coming to the heart of the matter: “All I desire is what already exists or once existed, now falling asleep outside the world.”
As for those teeming contents, where to begin? There are lustrous waves of bass and high-desert guitars in “You could touch him but he wasn’t there,” dubby warps and wobbles in “Tiny human figurines made from sand. If you held these to your ear, you heard soft sweet music,” and tuned filter snaps pelting bells on “A ghost traveling half a mile from its own shape.” There are stereo pops on eerie clouds, glimmering jazz chords, and sprays of vocal fricatives. There are bamboo flutes and snail-shell whistles, all manner of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and moments of clarifying force: Huge power chords divulge drones in “She fell asleep somewhere outside the world,” and “All I desire” is a big, glossy chillwave number that would do Toro y Moi proud.
It figures that the record’s starkest pop moment would evoke a genre chiefly concerned with memory—its sweetness, its pain, its lies, its decay. Like human minds, Toop’s music is profoundly antilinear, and the academic façade conceals a decidedly visceral impulse: “Time moving brings us closer to death and a lot of music is time moving,” Toop tells English in the book. “I love that feeling but I also love to work with temporalities of suspension and scattering, circularity and stillness.” Apparition Paintings is evidence of a journey in sound beyond the technical, theoretical, or even spiritual realm, where many a seeker fetches up, onto a rarified but primal perch where everything that falls asleep outside the world awakes. It would take too many lifetimes to figure out what it all means, but listening and remembering is meaning enough.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-09-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Room40 | September 18, 2020 | 7.9 | e8996e41-2d09-4bcd-bd06-e260264a21a1 | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | |
Wherein Owen Ashworth fixates on doomed outlaws and comes to terms with what happens when you're not alone anymore. | Wherein Owen Ashworth fixates on doomed outlaws and comes to terms with what happens when you're not alone anymore. | Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Vs. Children | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13012-vs-children/ | Vs. Children | To breed or not to breed? That is the question Owen Ashworth appears to be asking with his fifth full-length outing as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the wryly titled Vs. Children. But this is a Casiotone record, which means Ashworth won't provide direct access to his thoughts, relying instead on proxies, personae, and other distancing mechanisms. That is, until the record's third act, when a new Casiotone seems to emerge. Before that, however, Ashworth takes us on a joyride with a succession of mostly doomed outlaws and derelicts, with a couple of side excursions into familiar disaffected-slacker-ballad territory. It all adds up to easily the most mature and thematically ambitious Casiotone release to date, a further testament to the talents of a man more in tune with the lives of his generation than many of the folks actually living them.
A pair of tracks with unwieldy titles set the scene, the former an account of real-life bicycle-bound bank robber Tom Justice (an apparent one-time acquaintance of Ashworth's), and the latter a similar yarn about life on the lam, this time written in first person. The legend of Bonnie and Clyde looms large over the proceedings-- their names figure into "Tom Justice" and a stylized illustration of Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker (heavy with the child she'd never have) graces the record's cover. "What if we'd had the kid?/ I guess it'd be 15," Ashworth muses on "Natural Light", though it could just as well be a line shared between Barrow's and Parker's ghosts during a midnight graveyard tryst. (Foreshadowing ideas that preoccupy Vs. Children's second half.) That Ashworth can shift so readily between storytelling modes speaks to his considerable skill as a songwriter, one for whom allegory and autobiography are but two routes to the same shared truth.
But how, exactly, do we get from bank robbers to baby-making? For Ashworth, it seems that outlaws and unsettled couples are, in a sense, one and the same. Both lead lives that are fundamentally unsustainable, and both, ultimately, are on the run from reality. Yet their carefree exploits are made all the more exhilarating by the tragic inevitability of their surcease. Metaphor and reality at last come into sharp relief on Vs. Children as "Northfield, MN"-- one last outlaw saga that culminates in a car crash-- is masterfully juxtaposed with "Killers". "Oh my God/ What if we had an accident?/ Oh my God," Ashworth begins the latter song in his characteristic mumble. It would seem he's reacting to the previous song's tragedy, until you realize the "accident" in question here isn't a vehicular one. "Till you're dead/ That's how long you're a parent/ Till you're dead," he continues, a sentiment that goes straight for the gut and leaves a baby-sized hollow feeling there.
Along with subsequent tracks "Harsh the Herald Angels Sing" and "White Jetta" (and excepting the backward-looking "You Were Alone"), "Killers" suggests the emergence of a new Casiotone. Plenty of "I"s and "me"s have found their way into past Ashworth compositions-- indeed, the early Casiotone records were full of self-caricaturizing ones-- but none sound so direct and unfettered as those heard on these songs. "Harsh" adopts the perspective of an unwed young woman with child, while "Jetta" climaxes with the dying wish of Ashworth's ill mother: for him to start a family. Both should leave even the most hardened listener a bit choked up. "To stay the same, to never change," Ashworth repeatedly incants on "Jetta". Whether this is the futile plea of all would-be parents or meta-commentary on the Casiotone project's trajectory (like 2003's Etiquette, Vs. Children utilizes live instruments, though it's still unmistakably a "Casiotone record" in every formal way) doesn't matter; like truth and fiction or the personal and the public, changing and staying the same are far from mutually exclusive notions for Owen Ashworth. | 2009-05-11T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2009-05-11T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Rock | Tomlab | May 11, 2009 | 7.9 | e8a614f3-d0f3-4fc7-8018-f06172876ec0 | Matthew Solarski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-solarski/ | null |
Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is a jam session—an improvisational democracy where everyone has equal footing—between Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Bitchin Bajas. | Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is a jam session—an improvisational democracy where everyone has equal footing—between Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Bitchin Bajas. | Bonnie “Prince” Billy / Bitchin Bajas: Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21591-epic-jammers-and-fortunate-little-ditties/ | Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties | Regardless of who he's working with, Will Oldham's voice is the dominant ingredient of his collaborations. If he's singing a quiet Everly Brothers duet with Dawn McCarthy or crooning on a record with the Cairo Gang, he's the piece of the puzzle that grabs your attention most readily. Even in fleeting cameo appearances, like the moments where he sings on Sun Kil Moon's "Carissa," his presence lingers long after he's done singing. For better or worse, he's got this quality about him where other artists, regardless of their stature, are destined to become his supporting players.
That's what happened the first time Bitchin Bajas worked with Oldham. On a Record Store Day one-off, the Chicago-based avant garde trio functioned as a Bonnie "Prince" Billy backing band. While Oldham sang the traditional English folk ballad "Pretty Saro" in tribute to Shirley Collins, the Bajas provided a soft ambiance that lingered behind his voice. It's a lovely rendition of the song, but given the Bajas' discography of repetitive, spaced-out, and freeflowing improvisations, the collaboration felt conservative and brief. Oldham, a professed fan of his labelmates' records, likely realized this, too. He invited them to his house, and in a single day, they recorded an album that sounds a lot more Bajas than Billy.
Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is absolutely a jam session—an improvisational democracy where everyone has equal footing. Oldham takes a step back here, letting himself become part of the greater stew of Gamelan instruments, organ, synthesizer, and acoustic guitars. Nobody takes a full-on solo; they meander, coming in with a prominent contribution before drifting back to the sidelines. Everything repeats multiple times for swirling, serene eight-minute stretches. Repetition is key to Bitchin Bajas' sound—they thrive when they're given maximum space, taking time to experiment and explore different pockets of a song. In photos from the recording sessions, you can see Oldham sitting cross-legged on the floor with the band, all four of them playing assorted keyboards. Dan Quinlivan and Cooper Crain twist knobs; Rob Frye's flute lies close at hand in case the right moment presents itself. (On several occasions, it does.) This is Bitchin Bajas' ideal, off-the-cuff zone. They revel in the freedom to chase a sound "based on the energy" of a given moment.
Crain has talked about the importance of making music that's "relaxing and comforting," and Oldham is also clearly right there with them. Whenever they appear, his acoustic guitar and voice land softly and peacefully. At the beginning of the album, he sings, "may life throw you a pleasant curve," which is a pretty solid indication of his presence here. He's not a storyteller because there's no narrative to work with. He's much closer to being a spirit guide, quietly singing fragmented mantras and bits of advice that he found in fortune cookies. (Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties, as it turns out, is a very literal title.) Repetition, again, is key. By singing each phrase multiple times, he teases out meaning in easily disposable phrases. There's something genuinely comforting about having Oldham directing you to "find release from your cares, have a good time" or ensuring you that "your whole family are well."
If there's emotional utility to be found in Epic Jammers, it's in how meditative, trancelike, and overwhelmingly positive this hour of music is. It's unlikely that any of Oldham's post-buffet bits of wisdom will blow minds (because, well, actual fortune cookies are never all that prescient in the first place), but his spliced-together positive affirmations are perfect for Bitchin Bajas' aesthetic. His presence adds even more authority and heft to Cooper Crain & co.'s spiritual spaciness. "When your heart is pure, your mind is clear," repeats Oldham at one point, and you're inclined to believe him. | 2016-03-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-03-18T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country / Experimental | Drag City | March 18, 2016 | 7.9 | e8a81db5-9b60-4b54-a4dd-4e413fe451c5 | Evan Minsker | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-minsker/ | null |
Darkstar's full-length debut for Hyperdub finds them working more heavily with vocals and taking a turn toward synth-pop. | Darkstar's full-length debut for Hyperdub finds them working more heavily with vocals and taking a turn toward synth-pop. | Darkstar: North | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14693-north/ | North | North is a synth-pop album, and not synth-pop like general concept but synth-pop like historical formality. It's faithful to OMD, Kraftwerk, and a lot of other technocratic future-music made mostly in England and Western Europe during the 1970s and 80s. Here, Darkstar's beauty is the cold kind. They walk the empty streets in military rhythms and luxuriate in solitude. They cover the Human League.
This development will surprise anyone who followed the singles Darkstar released between 2007 and 2009, when they were another dubstep production group trying hard to develop a signature sound in the context of a genre that changes every month. By last October's "Aidy's Girl's a Computer" (included here), they'd arrived at something refined, melancholy, and lighter than most of the other singles on Hyperdub, a label responsible for some of dubstep's most rigorous and forward-thinking downers (Burial, King Midas Sound, Kode9, etc.). "Aidy's" has a simple backdrop: A skipping drum loop borrowed from British two-step, a synthesized glockenspiel or xylophone repeating a subtle, shifting pattern, and some minimal, surface-level synth-bass. The innovation was in the song's narrators: A series of buzzing synth lines that flicker in and out like their connection to the rest of the song doesn't quite work, and a heavily processed vocal that cuts itself off halfway into each word it tries to say. The track's conceptual elegance was that it invoked the same kind of existential anxieties synth-pop was basically built to-- like how to exist as a human being in a computer world-- in ways that sounded contemporary and eerie, which is part of what makes North a little disappointing: In a way, Darkstar were already on their way to making a record that would've made North feel obsolete.
For most of North, James Young and Aiden Whalley, Darkstar's principals, worked with a more traditionally human-sounding vocalist, James Buttery. There's a little vocal surgery, a little rearranging, but Buttery would never pass for a computer, and that's obviously by design-- in this setting, he's the stunted soul just trying to salvage a little humanity in the post-industrial darkness. His environment-- tapestries of two-dimensional synthesizers humming in minor keys, drum machines chirping and clicking away in mid tempos-- is more familiar than "Aidy's". It's beautiful, too, and barely budges.
Obviously there's no fault in returning to synth-pop templates or ideas in the 00s-- the Junior Boys have done it well, and the Knife have done it even better. But the problem with this music is that the longer it's left out to blend into the general culture, the harder bands have to work to keep it sounding inventive. I've been this kind of sad before, so when I hear it now-- on an album like North-- it's almost as nostalgia for a certain familiar feeling than the feeling itself.
North is definitely Hyperdub's most pop-friendly release, but it's also one of its most conservative-- not a bad thing, just an interesting one given the importance label integrity plays in the electronic dance music world. And while North doesn't compromise that integrity, it's the first time that a label so concerned with the future ended up with a record so committed to the past. | 2010-10-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2010-10-18T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hyperdub | October 18, 2010 | 6.6 | e8bc1268-f84a-435e-b371-ac4989344245 | Mike Powell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mike-powell/ | null |
Subsets and Splits