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Chewing the foundations of rock into gritty sludge, the New York quartet proudly makes music that sounds loud, messy, and wrong. | Chewing the foundations of rock into gritty sludge, the New York quartet proudly makes music that sounds loud, messy, and wrong. | Shimmer: And I Revel | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/shimmer-and-i-revel/ | And I Revel | Each of the four members of New York band Shimmer have spent the better part of the past decade exploring the frayed fringes of rock music. Anina Ivry-Block and Nina Ryser make chattery, absurdist miniatures as Palberta. Paco Cathcart’s solo endeavor the Cradle is an idiosyncratic exploration of “analog natural jank.” Simon Hanes, once a member of the psycho-surrealists Guerilla Toss, makes intricately arranged instrumentals as Tredici Bacci. As exploratory and otherworldly as their music is separately, their work together is stranger and uglier than anything they’ve made on their own. Shimmer take the foundations of rock music—the flailing riffs, soaring harmonies, stuttering drum beats—and chew them into gritty sludge.
The clearest evidence of this comes midway through their 2017 debut, when they hit a segment of a song called “Not Fade Away” that draws on the oft-covered Buddy Holly standard of the same name. The guitar parts are sickly and curdled, ping-ponging in and out of rhythm and key. The drums stagger wildly. Ivry-Block sings an approximation of Holly’s first two lines in a desperate yowl, then spends the rest of the song making up the words or singing outright gibberish. The whole song is so crumbling and busted that it’s tough to even call it a cover. Maybe it’s not. It is demonstrative of their approach as a whole: proudly making music that sounds loud, messy, and wrong.
Shimmer’s second album, And I Revel, is a refinement of this overarching idea, insomuch as it concentrates the acidic bite of their music more strongly than ever. From the first moments of opening track “Bring It to Me Now,” Shimmer’s component parts congeal into an acrid ooze. Cathcart and Hanes’ guitar and bass lines swim around one another, seemingly agnostic to the martial plod of Ryser’s kick drum. Ivry-Block screams over the top in a painful-sounding squelch that’s more or less impossible to decipher.
Pieces like these feel similar to what they’ve done in the past—and, for that matter, to a lot of bands who have drawn on the lineage of no wave’s atonal rasp—but they’re better than ever at manipulating the dynamics. “All the While,” for example, follows the record’s squirmy opening into a jittery, ecstatic energy that sounds like an AmRep band too caffeinated to see their frets straight. Smartly, there are quieter moments throughout And I Revel, too. The melting ice cream truck interlude “Wet Absence,” the music-box melodies of “Enter the Rounds,” and the hymn-like ballad appended to the end of “Nightvision” only underscore the record’s terrifying disjointedness.
Unlike a lot of bands working under the broad umbrella of noise rock, Shimmer don’t rely on many obvious effects or studio tricks to carry the weight of their wonderfully ugly recordings. They’re dry, which amplifies their bludgeoning nature—it’s as if there’s nowhere to hide, no corner safe from the bulldozing energy. If it sounds upsetting, that, on some level, is the point. But consider: A host on Antiques Roadshow once took a taste from a bottle of urine, human hair, and old brass pins and, based on the rusty, oxidized taste, thought that it might be vintage port wine. There’s less distance between disgusting and beautiful things than you might think. | 2020-01-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Decoherence | January 14, 2020 | 7.3 | a0428d89-8d96-4f66-99cc-8a5c7770f73e | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
Departing from his typically electronic palette, the UK musician’s new album plunges into a maze of contradictory influences drawn from dub, post-punk, and alt rock. | Departing from his typically electronic palette, the UK musician’s new album plunges into a maze of contradictory influences drawn from dub, post-punk, and alt rock. | Gaika: Drift | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gaika-drift/ | Drift | Gaika Tavares has made a career of being difficult to pin down. With each new outing, the south Londoner seems to gain a fresh hyphen: rapper-singer-columnist-curator, producer-activist-promoter. And he has committed wholeheartedly at every turn. Over the past decade or so, he’s swung between relishing an outsider’s status and pushing established institutions to be more adventurous and inclusive. On Drift, he cuts loose. Where albums like Spaghetto and Seguridad foregrounded a largely electronic palette, this record came together in freeform jam sessions. Split between club music and alt rock, its hazy fug is sometimes enveloping and at others, fruitlessly confounding.
Drift is Gaika’s fifth album, or seventh counting mixtapes (or “second proper proper album” if you ask him), and was cobbled together over three years, originating in sprawling, secluded studio sessions in Portugal and East London. These ran as a sort of extension of the Nine Nights livestreams, parties, and exhibitions he’s curated with GLOR1A and Shannen SP since 2020, in the effort to discover and sustain new creative environments for Black artists operating outside of the music industry’s established strictures. On Drift, that exploratory spirit has led to a pronounced stylistic shift in Gaika’s music. He has softened his electronic and industrial edges and folded in guitars laden with effects pedals; steeped in post-punk and even grunge, it frequently captures the energy of a band playing together in real time.
There’s a heavy nod here to the situationist concept of “the dérive”—the drift—developed by French Marxist philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s. Debord’s drift was a means of liberation from the distracting, oppressive conditions of “the spectacle.” (For Debord, the spectacle referred to “the autocratic reign of the market economy.” Today, the infinite scroll of social media is just one horrifyingly neat expression of what he was seeking freedom from.) On “PIÑATA,” Gaika rasps about “watching bloody murder on the television news” and devotes himself to escape. On “LA VACANZA,” he’s a “travelling man, just drifting on” from New York City to London, Mexico, an empty beach. Guitars swirl and drone, and close collaborator Kidä’s vocal unfolds in a flood of reverb. This sense of stretched possibilities is the album’s driving force.
Where Debord’s drifting occurred in physical space, Gaika takes strides across his own musical geography: thrumming shoegaze guitars, raps that become post-punk sprechgesang, found sounds, and brief club forays (the midpoint turn on “PIÑATA,” when he flips echoing handclaps to the plunk of a rolling amapiano log drum, is a highlight). Some drifts—“O VAMPIRO” dresses the bones of dub reggae with spiny rap-metal guitars—are dead ends; others, like the relentless clunking bass of “GUNZ” or the distant rumble of steel drum and pirate-radio mic pass on “BONEHEAD BEHAVIOUR,” offer snatches of transcendence. The maze of possibilities is the point. But if one thing is bound to drag the listener out of their liberatory trance, it’s Gaika’s habit of defaulting to a preening, hollowed lyric. His previously pointed political observations are mostly lost here to a fog of impenetrable fragments and pat one-liners (“When the penny in the pound drops/Focus on yourself”) that too often conjure that moment at the afters when the conversation turns philosophical and you realize it’s time to leave.
Debord’s revolution ultimately crumbled under a mess of competing practical approaches. But with Gaika’s pursuit of “pleasure that’s not a product”—alongside contemporaries like Inflo’s nebulous SAULT collective, and, on their latest album, Young Fathers—the simple act of running your hands across a guitar and feeling its strings vibrate beneath your fingertips sounds more radical by the long, elongated minute. Drift is Gaika’s riskiest artistic swing to date; the ease and understated composure with which he makes the stroke suggests a sense of quiet liberation, and of a polymath discovering his purpose. | 2023-09-14T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-14T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Big Dada | September 14, 2023 | 6.9 | a04ed939-91d3-41ce-90c4-27e9bfd846b8 | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
The London jazz musician’s sprawling suite explores the vital function of breath in times of distress. The music can be tranquil, but it also formally mimics the act of calming down. | The London jazz musician’s sprawling suite explores the vital function of breath in times of distress. The music can be tranquil, but it also formally mimics the act of calming down. | Ben Marc: Breathe Suite EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ben-marc-breathe-suite/ | Breathe Suite EP | When you are engulfed in panic, you’re supposed to breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Slowly, and with purpose. Rhythmically filling and emptying your lungs is said to relieve inner turmoil. But what if the very act of focused respiration, the effort of making an involuntary task intentional, inflames that panic? What if air is simply not available? In Breathe Suite, London composer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Marc (né Neil Charles) examines this paradox. His swirling arrangements—which synthesize jazz, hip-hop, neoclassical, and electronic—explore multiple aspects of breath: its inherent meter, vital function, and what happens when it’s stifled.
Breathe Suite consists of four interconnected pieces that recycle instrumental and verbal motifs: two suites with guest vocalists, and two improvisational pieces. Not intending to create a full EP, Marc wrote opener “Breathe Suite A” during the initial months of lockdown and enlisted singer MidnightRoba to contribute lyrics and vocals. “Once Midnight heard it, she asked for a longer version. I was adamant that this was the arrangement,” Marc said in a recent interview. “Whilst the conversation was being had, George Floyd was murdered.” Shaken, Marc extended the piece, adding dramatic string layers and opalescent harp. From that point, the EP took on a life of its own. Marc recruited artists from London’s jazz community and set out to make a record that could soothe in times of trauma. Breathe Suite can be tranquil, but it also formally mimics the act of calming down, the deep inhalations and the things we tell ourselves to curb distress.
Breathe Suite’s main recurring motif is a recording of a children’s choir. Their refrain reappears throughout: “I’ll raise my voice/You raise your hand/I’ll hold the truth/Until you understand.” Their voices are loose and uninhibited. They sound like normal kids rather than trained choristers, an intentional and effective choice by Marc, who wanted their presence to represent youth and innocence. A second motif is the simple but insistent repetition of “breathe.” Its urgent rhythm mimics quickened breath, like forceful exhales into a paper bag.
These patterns adopt different tones depending on Marc’s arrangements; on “Breathe Suite A,” they are meditative and melodic. On “Breathe Improv A” and “Breathe Improv B,” they become fraught. “Breathe Improv A” is scored solely by Marc’s bowed double bass, and its ominous, sickly timbre makes the command to “breathe, breathe, breathe” sound like hyperventilation. On “Breathe Improv B,” Marc buries the choir beneath metallic pangs of synthesizer, trapping their voices between its sharp edges. The allusion to breath in this context cannot be separated from the deaths of George Floyd and Eric Garner, men whose air was literally taken from them.
If anything protrudes from Marc’s sprawling compositions, it is a pair of verses from London musician and singer Rarelyalways on “Breathe Suite B.” Structurally the song resembles its companion piece, “Breathe Suite A,” but instead of being lifted by MidnightRoba’s satin register, it feels weighed down. Rarelyalways has a blunt, round voice that works well on his own music, but punches through Marc’s sweeping arrangements with dull jabs. Phrases like “Goodfellas” and “Dave Chappelle” rupture the glittering plane of viola, cello, and harp, and their context isn’t clear from a close reading of the lyrics. Marc’s piece feels grand and cosmic, while Rarelyalways riffs on the mundane. It’s not a bad performance, but it seems bulky and thrown-on.
Despite the distraction, “Breathe Suite B” includes a stellar performance from woodwind maestro Shabaka Hutchings, of trailblazing jazz groups Sons of Kemet and the Comet Is Coming. Hutchings is an acrobatic player, and his insistent, nudging clarinet bends and flutters before launching into a feverish solo during the choir refrain. Hutchings’ skronking bristles against Marc’s loping cello, suggesting a deep-sown tension. It is a performance of crisis—the rage that bubbles in each breath and can’t be pacified.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-12-22T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-12-22T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Jazz | Innovative Leisure | December 22, 2021 | 7.1 | a0520540-ad1b-4a1d-8a71-8ebbb8337823 | Madison Bloom | https://pitchfork.com/staff/madison-bloom/ | |
The British metal legends return with their dark and patient 17th album. While their influence looms large in heavy music, no other band sounds quite like this. | The British metal legends return with their dark and patient 17th album. While their influence looms large in heavy music, no other band sounds quite like this. | Iron Maiden: Senjutsu | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/iron-maiden-senjutsu/ | Senjutsu | Iron Maiden’s late-career albums have been stubbornly anti-nostalgia. While plenty of their peers eventually returned to the sounds that made them famous—Metallica on Hardwired…to Self-Destruct, Black Sabbath on 13, Judas Priest on Firepower—the British metal titans have walked their own road, to the frustration of casual fans who just want to relive the high-octane gallop of “Run to the Hills” and “The Trooper.” When they toured 2006’s grim, downtempo A Matter of Life and Death and played the 70-plus minute album in its entirety, it was seen as provocation. But this dedication showed that Maiden take their new work—more concerned with slow-building atmosphere and progressive song structures than the live-wire energy of their biggest albums—just as seriously as the classics. The band’s 17th full-length, Senjutsu, continues this trend. It’s another thoughtful, knotty album that has no interest in rehashing the 1980s.
Like every 21st century Maiden album, Senjutsu shares DNA with the refined melodies and epic scale of their 2000 reset, Brave New World. That album saw lead singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith rejoin the band following a mid-’90s exile that coincided with some of Maiden’s weakest records. Dickinson and Smith’s return yielded a strong comeback, and each successive release has nodded to its influence while expanding into new territory. Senjutsu is thrilling both when it’s refining the Brave New World template and expanding on it. “Lost in a Lost World” typifies the former mode, bookending its anthemic middle section with a pair of extended acoustic reveries. Conversely, lead single “The Writing on the Wall” feels new for them, borrowing from country and blues in a way this progged-out version of Maiden never has before.
The laid-back choogle of “The Writing on the Wall” is a rare moment of lightness on what is otherwise the darkest, heaviest Maiden record since A Matter of Life and Death. Beginning with the martial drum pattern and thunderous riffs of the title track, Senjutsu is by turns brooding, elegiac, and bellicose. The album’s darkness echoes some of the real-life circumstances of its creation. Senjutsu is the first Maiden album to be recorded since Dickinson was diagnosed with throat cancer, and during the sessions, he tore his Achilles tendon and learned he needed a hip replacement. Through the pain, he gritted out an impressive vocal performance. Age and illness have cut his soaring tenor down to something more earthbound, but it feels appropriate for the gloomier material.
Senjutsu is also one of Maiden’s most patient albums. That quality is most palpable on the trio of marathon-length songs that end the album, all written by bassist and bandleader Steve Harris. Taken as a triptych, these songs shine a light on both the strengths and shortcomings of reunion-era Maiden: “Death of the Celts” is the album’s only real failure, a plodding, didactic historical epic that feels like a retread of 1998’s “The Clansman.” “The Parchment” gets off to a slow start before letting the three-guitar attack of Adrian Smith, Dave Murray, and Janick Gers trade solos for five minutes, cranking the song up to a frenzied pitch the rest of the album rarely reaches. “Hell on Earth” is the real showstopper, gracefully darting between singalong hooks, histrionic guitar melodies, and weepy slow parts. All three songs share a basic template, but the different outcomes prove that even a rock-solid formula is only as good as its ingredients.
It feels impossible, but the lineup of Iron Maiden on Senjutsu is now the longest-tenured version of the band—they have been intact for longer than their entire recorded history leading up to the 1999 reunion. At this stage, they sound both comfortable and ambitious, settling into their familiar chemistry while adding new chapters to a story only they can write. A new Maiden album remains the only place to hear music with this particular synthesis of heaviness, melody, grandiosity, and compositional intricacy. While it’s easy to find a heavy band who can convincingly rip off The Number of the Beast, nobody else in the world sounds quite like this.
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. | 2021-09-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-03T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal | Sanctuary | September 3, 2021 | 7.4 | a056cb81-9188-41ab-a3ef-ef9830cdf6b0 | Brad Sanders | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-sanders/ | |
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 Depeche Mode’s lush and electronic 1997 album, a bridge between the increasing ambition of their early years and the easy confidence of their later ones. | 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 Depeche Mode’s lush and electronic 1997 album, a bridge between the increasing ambition of their early years and the easy confidence of their later ones. | Depeche Mode: Ultra | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/depeche-mode-ultra/ | Ultra | With a nearly all-synth approach that balanced technological exploration and pop hooks, Depeche Mode built a canon and a fanbase across the world in the 1980s. In their music, personal, political, and emotional angst could sound both catchy and danceable. Even when regularly dealing with assumptions they somehow weren’t making “real” music, they broke through in a big way—and then it all went to hell.
Soon after the massive triumph of their 1990 opus Violator and the epochal hits “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence,” lead singer Dave Gahan moved from the UK to Los Angeles and became a louche rock star, or a visually coded version of one—long hair, beard, tattoos. It was in marked contrast to his clean-cut appearance until that point, and it became the visual signal of deeper troubles. During the recording of 1993’s Songs of Faith and Devotion and its subsequent tours, he plunged into a brutal heroin addiction, while guitarist and songwriter Martin Gore wrestled with alcoholism, all of which factored into the worsening depression and eventual nervous breakdown of keyboardist Andrew Fletcher.
In D. A. Pennebaker’s 1989 Depeche concert film 101, Fletcher memorably and self-deprecatingly called himself the member who just “bum[med] around,” but in truth he had become Depeche’s in-house manager, now trying desperately to hold everything together. The overlay of increasing internal dysfunction led Alan Wilder, the group’s key musical experimenter and arranger, to finally leave the band in 1995. Gahan first attempted suicide that same year and almost fatally overdosed in 1996 during a break in the recording sessions. The band’s dysfunction seemed worse than ever.
In this light, Ultra shouldn’t have existed. An official album documentary released as part of the group’s late 2000s reissue series details the impact of Wilder’s departure and Gahan’s crises in particular, and how what typically might have been a three-month effort took close to a year’s worth of on-and-off work. Yet in the end, the trio of Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher put their name to one of Depeche Mode’s best albums, an all-in all-great listen that would be the obvious peak of a lesser band’s catalog. It formed a crucial bridge between the increasing ambition of their early years and the easy confidence of their later ones. If a sick sense of humor was at work, talk about a last laugh.
Two things were key. First, Tim Simenon, who had made waves as dance act Bomb the Bass with “Beat Dis” alongside numerous production and remix jobs including Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” and Björk’s “Play Dead,” came on board. Gore and Gahan were fans of an album he worked on, the intriguing 1995 release Shag Tobacco, by ex-Virgin Prunes singer Gavin Friday, which touched on dance and hip-hop as much as it did late-night jazz or mood music. So Simenon, assisted by regular engineer Q Engstrom, or simply Q, handled the production while keyboardist Dave Clayton and programmer Kerry Hopwood were added as key additional studio musicians. A little further advice from Mute founder and eternal band confidant Daniel Miller didn’t hurt, according to Hopwood: “Daniel gave us a great quote at the beginning: ‘Lads, put everything through a valve.’” Miller was referring to the kind of valve-based tape recorders the Beatles had used through most of their career at EMI Studios; Ultra’s resulting sound was enveloping, almost tactile.
Equally importantly and as part of his recovery, Gahan worked seriously on something key: voice lessons. He’d long since built up his powers of projection: The sweetly peppy vocalist of “Just Can’t Get Enough” turned into a force able to fill the space of the arenas the band was now inhabiting. But by learning how to control, relax, and preserve his instrument, he was able to expand his range and deliver performances that once seemed out of reach. Gore continued to write strong songs throughout this process. His knack for intriguing, catchy melodies matched his portrayals of melodramatic emotional states, and provided the bedrock for Ultra’s development.
“Barrel of a Gun,” both the album opener and lead single, had a lot riding on it, and it turned out to be the searing mirror image of Songs of Faith and Devotion’s own double-duty effort, “I Feel You.” That song was all feedback-laden priapic raunch; in contrast, “Barrel” is a slow grinding descent. Gahan sounds defiant but still wounded, at points ragged. Gore’s tightly wound guitar part is accentuated by massive beats that could suddenly turn even bigger. It feels like the closest that Gore ever got to writing about Gahan’s depths of despair; given how harrowing the experience had been for the band, you could easily imagine a full album exploring that extreme.
But the next track, “The Love Thieves,” is a near 180-degree turn—gentle, tender, and close, like you’ve stumbled across a small combo in a mythical late-night bar, setting an atmosphere. The real shock, though, is Gahan’s voice—his new training is evident from the first syllables, hitting higher notes, sounding smoother without being overly polished. You can almost hear his pleasure, which carries through the album; he experiments just so, his more commanding moments now less glowering, his quieter moments more inviting. Depeche had consistently created music that oozed lust one way or another—Gahan had now become a relaxed loverman.
The whole collective approach had a standout moment with “It’s No Good,” Ultra’s biggest relative hit in America (in Europe, as with “Barrel of a Gun” and the album itself, it scored far higher, reaching No. 1 in numerous countries). Simenon and company created a great arrangement, starting with a pulsing chug, suddenly hitting an explosive, slow bounce, with shuddering sounds as the undercarriage and a huge, focused, and ominous hook. Call it their own collective riff on G-funk that all leads into Gahan delivering a suave-as-hell lead vocal. Gore’s lyric is almost a raunchy riff on Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” but it’s Gahan’s confident delivery that turns it into a confession of barely suppressed mutual interest—in love, sex, or some combination thereof.
Throughout Ultra, the core sense of what Depeche was meant to be in this new phase gets tested and subtly reinvented or reframed. They’re still an electronic group at base, part of a musical universe increasingly receptive to that idea, but they didn’t want to be limited by that description either. Part of that variety lies in the use of outside musicians beyond Clayton and Hopwood; while there had been a couple of extra performers and singers on Songs of Faith and Devotion, the numerous instrumentalists here take a bow, most often in the rhythm section, creating bespoke parts that were then looped into the final results.
Drumming pro Victor Indrizzo provided the beats for “Barrel of a Gun” and “It’s No Good,” while the crack Sugar Hill/Tackhead rhythm section of Doug Wimbish and Keith LeBlanc delivered a sharp, roiling groove for another standout single, the emotional confrontation of “Useless,” further helped by Simply Red drummer Gota Yashiki. Meantime, one of two Gore lead vocals on the album, “The Bottom Line,” featured an unexpected but thoroughly striking pairing of UK steel guitar legend B.J. Cole and Can’s brilliant Jaki Liebezeit, on a performance that Gore assayed with reflective but compelling calm.
Gore’s other lead vocal, “Home,” is a passionate, string-swept declaration of love that seems rooted in his then-recent marriage. Gore’s striking performances of the song, done in combination with backing singers, was a highlight of the comeback tour that eventually followed, although it wasn’t a tour for Ultra. While a slightly ad hoc version of the band performed a couple small promotional shows and TV appearances upon the album’s release, the group only returned for a world tour after Gahan was much more settled and healthy, in support of their second singles compilations, released in late 1998.
That tour answered the last remaining question as to whether Depeche would be fully back, with two new musicians, keyboardist Peter Gordeno and drummer Christian Eigner, anchoring the live lineup from that point forward. Given its by-default retrospective nature solely focusing on the newly collected singles, the tour was also the unspoken transition—one that a full Ultra tour would likely have just as immediately shown—from a fully in-the-moment act to one of comfortable veterans.
It wasn’t quite that Depeche had nothing left to prove, but at almost two decades in, Gahan’s recovery and vocal transformation—and the revamped touring lineup—built on Ultra’s mood to let them steer a new, less generally chaotic way forward. Their core fanbase never left them as they settled into new albums and tours every few years, while they had already inspired any number of younger musicians in turn—to name just two examples, a song like Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” made Depeche’s emotional and musical tension more explicit, while Shakira later described first hearing “Enjoy the Silence” in 1990 as fully sparking her interest in music—with many more to come.
The 1998 tour featured Ultra’s singles but left out everything else, including its final song, the intense grace of “Insight.” The album’s sequencing is remarkable and only “Insight” could have ended it. After starting with one of the album’s trademark arrangements—warm, though murky and slightly melancholy—Gahan’s entrancing voice delivers Gore’s sentiments of renewal: “This is the first chance/To put things right/Moving on guided by the light.” Gore’s harmonies, always one of the band’s secret weapons, intensify the mood, and his soft, repeated delivery of “Give love/You’ve got to give love” provides an elegant conclusion. But the most dramatic part is when Gahan sings “The fire still burns” as Gore matches him and stretches out “burns” as it melts into a rich descending orchestration, which he then adds further wordless harmonies to. It’s breathtaking, still.
Strictly speaking, Ultra doesn’t end there—in a very 1990s moment, there’s a brief hidden instrumental, “Junior Painkiller,” that follows after a short gap—but “Insight” is the ultimate counterbalance to “Barrel of a Gun,” an exchange of fraught desperation and on the brink feelings delivered at high volume for maximum impact, for something else entirely. It is reductive to say that it and Ultra as a whole was Depeche all grown up, but there is a feeling of hard-earned experience, of moving beyond younger behavior that courted disaster. Ultra is an album for reflective nights remembering past selves, a beautifully synthesized combination of talents making music that reflects experience without being trapped by it. | 2022-07-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-07-31T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Mute | July 31, 2022 | 8.4 | a05b3366-a35d-4d40-a986-b68ea3c7c726 | Ned Raggett | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ned-raggett/ | |
The virtuoso saxophonist’s 1969 album with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Jack DeJohnette is an essential document of a transitional moment in which everything in jazz seemed up for grabs. | The virtuoso saxophonist’s 1969 album with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Jack DeJohnette is an essential document of a transitional moment in which everything in jazz seemed up for grabs. | Joe Henderson: Power to the People | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/joe-henderson-power-to-the-people/ | Power to the People | Jazz, like the world it reflected, was in flux in 1969. That year, Miles Davis released In a Silent Way, an album whose low-key atmosphere belied its status as a herald of major upheaval, leading the music into a decade of electric instruments, studio-driven experiments, and rhythms that drew as much from funk and R&B as swing. Yet plenty of people were still playing changes in the old-fashioned way: A musician could devote their entire life to mastering the art, and just because Miles was suddenly doing tape manipulation and listening to Sly and the Family Stone didn’t mean everyone else was following suit. And free jazz, a decade or so old at that point, was still a radical force, its elaborations and deconstructions of melody providing alternate routes forward from tradition, ones that didn’t necessarily require plugging in at all.
Looking back, it’s tempting to see these various styles—fusion, straight-ahead, avant-garde—as utterly distinct and walled off, and it’s true that certain players could be dogmatic in their adherence to one idiom and rejection of the others. The case of tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson gives good reason to consider them more holistically. An old-school virtuoso who taught himself to play by transcribing and memorizing solos by bebop titans like Charlie Parker and Lester Young, he also brushed the edges of free jazz as a sideman with Andrew Hill, and encouraged his own supporting players to experiment with electronics even on records that steered clear of full-on fusion. His 1969 album Power to the People, available on vinyl for the first time in decades via a superb new reissue from Craft Recordings and Jazz Dispensary, is an essential document of this transitional moment, due in part to its creator’s disregard for rigid stylistic affiliation. If you want to hear, in a single album, how jazz—all of it—sounded just before the turn of the ’70s, you could do worse than this one.
Henderson surrounded himself with a few of the world’s best players for Power to the People. Two, keyboardist Herbie Hancock and bassist Ron Carter, were veterans of Davis’ band, and one, drummer Jack DeJohnette, was just joining up with Miles at around the same time; Henderson also recruited up-and-coming trumpeter Mike Lawrence on two of the seven tracks. Across the album, Hancock switches between acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes, and Carter between upright and electric bass, choices that mirror the album’s fluid stylistic approach. Carter’s choice of bass, in particular, is a rough indicator of where a given track will fall on the spectrum. On upright, his primary instrument, he tends toward traditional walking lines, outlining the chords with a steady pulse that the rest of the players are free to improvise around. On electric, he dances more freely around the outskirts of the pocket, jabbing in and out in search of new rhythmic possibilities, nudging the music away from the jazz’s well-worn solo-and-accompaniment format and toward more open-ended group improvisation.
Power to the People begins with “Black Narcissus,” one of Henderson’s best-known compositions. Hancock’s Rhodes cycles through two ambiguous chords, setting a misty nocturnal atmosphere through which Henderson meanders elegantly. As his melody slowly rises toward the end of each chorus, so does the intensity of the ensemble’s playing, easing toward a big climax that never quite comes: Just as they seem ready to rip, the form repeats, and they reorganize themselves quickly in the more subdued earlier mode to begin the ascent once more. Each time they execute this rise-and-fall maneuver, the highs are more powerful and the lows more delicate: By the fourth drop, in the middle of Henderson’s solo, the accompaniment dissipates almost entirely, leaving only ghostly traces of harmony and the searching gestures of his horn.
Two pieces mark the far edges of Power to the People’s range. On one side, there is “Isotope,” an original that Henderson first recorded several years earlier, which could almost pass for a lost composition by Thelonious Monk, the idiosyncratic genius of the bebop era who’d first hit the scene when Henderson was still in grade school. On the other, the album-closing “Foresight and Afterthought,” an avant-garde odyssey that Henderson, Carter, and DeJohnette apparently improvised freely on the spot, whose climaxes nearly abandon harmony altogether in favor of ecstatic pure sound. The former is tight and swinging; toward the end of the latter, DeJohnette downshifts from his usual flurry of cymbals into a pummeling half-time rhythm that sounds to modern ears like the breakdown to a hardcore punk song. Even as they demonstrate how far jazz had come in the previous two decades, these two pieces also emphasize its continuity. Monk was essentially an avant-gardist in his time, and “Isotope” highlights the spiky angularity of the great pianist’s music; though “Foresight and Afterthought” is resolutely modern, Henderson makes room in between his streams of abstraction for a few short declarative riffs that carry distinct echoes of the blues.
If “Black Narcissus” is the tune on Power to the People that fans are most likely to know, the title track is the best reason for those who haven’t heard the album in full to seek it out. Nearly nine minutes long and ferociously groovy, it is an astounding showcase for the communal intimacy of these five musicians, many of whom had long histories working together in other configurations. DeJohnette plays like a man possessed by the sound of Henderson’s sax, backing off whenever the horn needs more room to maneuver and reaching nearly superhuman force when it’s time to dig in. During Hancock’s Rhodes solo, Carter begins playing natural harmonics, a technique that can make a stringed instrument sound more like a bell, and suddenly it’s like their two instruments are one and the same.
The minor-key melody they circle, like that of the earlier “Afro-Centric,” seems informed on some level by the South African jazz that had begun hitting U.S. shores earlier in the ’60s, though it’s possible the lines of influence are not so direct. Aside from a brief passage of quick changes, the piece sticks mostly to one chord, which allows for a certain jammy looseness: When there isn’t an elaborate harmonic structure to uphold, you’re free to try just about anything. It’s an approach many later fusion bands would use to great effect, but “Power to the People” still has a foot in older idioms: It isn’t a fancy studio creation, just a faithful document of five world-class musicians playing together.
“Opus One-Point-Five,” the lone tune penned by Carter on an album otherwise filled with Henderson originals, wears its liminality right on its title: not quite one number or the other, but somewhere in between. As it proceeds slowly and pensively, it’s difficult to tell where the composition ends and the improvisation begins. It has the outlines of a tender ballad, but its inner workings are surreal and disorienting. DeJohnette’s cymbals provide slippery texture rather than strict tempo; Hancock seems determined not to allow the music to settle, always spiraling off into some new dissonance. Henderson plays long, breathy lines, as if this really is the soundtrack to a moonlit romance, and then interrupts himself with an outburst of staccato or a scribbled aside. It is deeply strange music, even more so than Power to the People’s more overtly out pieces, precisely because of its proximity to the familiar. Near the end, to punctuate things, Hancock reaches over the keyboard and strums a chromatic cluster of notes directly on the strings of the piano, an eerie and highly specific sound that seems somehow outside the boundaries of the tune as we’ve come to understand it so far. Both out of place and perfectly intuitive, it bears an important message: In this music, anything is possible. | 2024-03-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-03-16T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Craft | March 16, 2024 | 9.1 | a06b5ec4-12b3-4da4-8b37-e137f7415a0e | Andy Cush | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/ | |
The second EP from these Minneapolis punks is a well-honed collection of crude, soured rock and sardonic humor. | The second EP from these Minneapolis punks is a well-honed collection of crude, soured rock and sardonic humor. | Uranium Club: All of Them Naturals | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22659-all-of-them-naturals/ | All of Them Naturals | Minneapolis’ Uranium Club seem to revel in being aggressively obtuse. They sprung up last year with their Human Exploration EP, an eight-song tape of some of the most tightly-wound, gleefully mean, and well-constructed punk to grace the underground in a while. Human Exploration quickly became a must-have of the punk scene, receiving multiple vinyl pressings, all while the band rejected any web presence and most interviews as well.
All of Them Naturals, their second EP, is Uranium Club indulging even more in such pranksterish qualities. The first two minutes of audio are pulled from the Nation of Ulysses handbook of sarcasm and myth-making, as a man with a vaguely British accent comments fictitiously on all the band has supposedly accomplished since its last record, from selling novelty pencils to distributing pamphlets for “pseudo-intellectual literature circles and swingers’ parties.” Uranium Club must know that people have been patiently waiting to hear more from them, and the final track of All of Them Naturals winkingly plays into that: it’s a 30-second “excerpt” of another unreleased song.
In between, Uranium Club spits out some pretty damn catchy, no-frills punk rock. They have quickly garnered comparisons to Devo, particularly the twitchy neurosis of the early Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! era. It’s not unwarranted. Both bands share an affinity for guitar riffs so soaked in treble they could cut ear drums, and for attempting to shove as many starts and stops into a song as possible. “God’s Chest” is the frantic centerpiece of this release, and maybe the most directly hooky thing the band has crafted; it even incorporates some haywire synths near the end, a first for the band.
Not that Uranium Club’s reference points are strictly in the past. The sour intro of “Operation Pt.II” clearly evokes Tyvek and the lo-fi punk that the Detroit outfit has been cultivating for over a decade, as do the relentless jagged hits of “The Lottery.” Contemporaries like the Coneheads (and, to a lesser extent, the enigmatic Northwest Indiana punk scene as a whole) have been melding old school punk love to the modern trash punk aesthetic, and are also here in spirit.
The real secret of Uranium Club, though, is how casually talented they are. Besides the ridiculous precision of their playing, the interplay of the guitars clearly takes some notes from Wipers; the music is decidedly crude, but it’s still played with a well-honed intensity that flares up again and again. The buzzsaw solo in the middle of “Opus,” or gradual buildup and release of tension on “That Clown’s Got a Gun,” wouldn’t hit nearly as hard if it weren’t performed so forcefully here. Every song relishes in a ragged intensity, but never for a moment feels as if it could spiral out of control or fall apart, a rarity for bands in this genre.
Of course, Uranium Club has the perfect mask for their technical skills: lyrics marred by a sardonic sense of humor. “The Lottery” spins a relentless tale of someone turning into an absolute monster upon hitting the jackpot, throwing everyone from their son to their mom under the bus. “Who Made the Man?,” with its constant repetition of that platitude, drives ever-darker emphasis on the consequences of your actions, from success to murder. Uranium Club is a band unafraid to toss a line like “Will you please piss on my teddy bear?” into a song for the pure sake of disorientation. The band clearly wants to keep everyone on edge. If the Uranium Club is anything, it is at least very self-aware of exactly what it is doing. | 2017-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Static Shock / Fashionable Idiots | January 7, 2017 | 7.3 | a06db2b2-d61f-4207-b711-e97fe4f0ea60 | David Glickman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/david-glickman/ | null |
The Los Angeles singer and songwriter’s full-length debut is grandiose and opaque, opting for intricacy over intimacy. | The Los Angeles singer and songwriter’s full-length debut is grandiose and opaque, opting for intricacy over intimacy. | Hana Vu: Public Storage | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/hana-vu-public-storage/ | Public Storage | When Hana Vu started releasing music, she was a high schooler straining a muddle of teenage emotions into slick, sparse electropop. She wrung her angst and ache through simple, glum images: crying on the subway, staring blankly at the ocean. In 2019, she expanded her blasé bedroom pop into a conceptual dual EP about Nicole Kidman and Anne Hathaway. She used the actresses as architecture, homing in on the drama of a party or a fateful text message. Her voice sounded faraway at times, distorted through fuzz, and listening felt like eavesdropping on confessions. She wanted to be saved and she wanted to be strong; she wanted answers and she wanted absolution; she wanted and wanted.
On Public Storage, Vu’s official debut and her first release for Ghostly, that emotional core diffuses. These are opaque songs about armageddon, gesturing at morose feelings and crammed with abstract statements. Vu sings about heaven burning, about pleading with the sun, about dreaming in gold. “I live in a hole in the wall/You live in a hole in my head,” she sighs on “My House.” “They’ll blow smoke straight through your face,” she lilts on “Heaven, “And you turn to dust/And you fly away.” Where Vu’s previous releases were vivid and tactile, Public Storage numbs out. But the music is potent. Vu co-produced the album, which oscillates between bright coils of pop (“Keeper,” “Aubade”) and blasts of drums and guitar. At times, the sound is striking—the lush strings on “Maker,” the spatter of keys in “Anything Striking,” the weird wriggles of synths that creep into her choruses.
Vu named the album after the massive self-storage building she lived beside when she started writing it, a structure that reminded her of the storage units she used while moving around a lot as a kid. The record doesn’t convey that personal tie, though, and while Vu makes many pretty statements about God and good and evil, she offers little about herself. Instead she keeps a calculated distance, opting for intricacy over intimacy. “Here are my bruises, all my dents and my fuses,” she sings on the title track, before walking back any suggestion of vulnerability: “But I don’t really care now.”
Critics have compared Vu to Lana Del Rey practically since the start of her career, and there are snippets of Public Storage that recall the dark glamour and seeping melodrama of Born to Die. “Oh honey, I promise I’m the world’s worst lover,” Vu wails on “World’s Worst,” before murmuring, “I wonder if I get any younger than this.” It’s a winking, ironic articulation of the early-adult pain that she spends most of the record circling and dressing up in metaphor. The closest she comes to addressing it head-on is “Everybody’s Birthday,” a hazy song from the Lana and Lorde school of generational malaise. “Everybody’s crying in the hallway,” Vu moans. “I guess it must be everybody’s birthday all the time.” There’s a sense of fear trembling somewhere under the catchy beat, a sadness Vu could excavate. But she hums along, staying cool and coiled, teaching herself how to reset.
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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. | 2021-11-12T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2021-11-12T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Ghostly International | November 12, 2021 | 6.9 | a06ef5ac-f8de-4008-9a68-c9582afb7765 | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
For Shearwater's third Sub Pop LP, Jonathan Meiburg cuts closer to big-bombast '80s rock than anything this band has achieved yet. This time, they are assisted by one of the best arranger/composers in the business in Brian Reitzell. | For Shearwater's third Sub Pop LP, Jonathan Meiburg cuts closer to big-bombast '80s rock than anything this band has achieved yet. This time, they are assisted by one of the best arranger/composers in the business in Brian Reitzell. | Shearwater: Jet Plane and Oxbow | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21441-jet-plane-and-oxbow/ | Jet Plane and Oxbow | The last time Jonathan Meiburg wrote original music for his longtime art-rock outfit Shearwater, he embraced a stripped-down sound, presented on 2012’s Animal Joy with the telling liner-notes disclaimer that "no strings or glockenspiels were touched during the making of this album." Back then, Meiburg was nursing a broken heart, and emoted in a rawer manner than in his band's grandiose "Island Arc" trilogy comprised of 2006's Palo Santo, 2008's Rook, and 2010's The Golden Archipelago. Animal Joy hinted at an intimacy hidden behind the "Game of Thrones" magnificence of the band’s earlier work. What’s more, punching up the influences of early Pulp and Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk helped bring a sense of old-fashioned romantic sweep to the Sub Pop label for the first time since Jeremy Enigk’s Return of the Frog Queen.
Jet Plane and Oxbow marks Shearwater’s second full-length of original material for the veteran Seattle imprint, following a collection of covers in 2013 called Fellow Travelers that featured versions of songs by such contemporaries as Coldplay, St. Vincent, Xiu Xiu, Folk Implosion, and intrepid labelmates the Baptist Generals. Following up on the lead suggested by Animal Joy, Meiburg cuts closer to rock'n'roll than anything this band has ever made. The glockenspiels are back (well, it's a dulcimer this time, actually), but they are manned by former Redd Kross drummer Brian Reitzell, who has spent the last two decades as a music supervisor and film composers, scoring hit films like Lost in Translation, Friday Night Lights, and The Bling Ring in addition to being a de facto third member of Air. Reitzell's arsenal of keyboards, percussion, and various hammered string instruments gives Shearwater the epic 70mm feel Meiburg always seems to be aiming for; only this time, he’s got the man behind the music from NBC’s "Hannibal" at the controls.
Meanwhile, Meiburg—who is also one of the best culture critics in the country—continues down the more personal path he forged on Joy. The lyrics here brim with frustration over the political quagmire drowning the voice of American intelligence, especially in his adopted home state of Texas, over the last decade or so. Meiburg has said in the press leading up to Oxbow’s release that it is a protest record, and he has a very specific kind of protest record in mind: The big-sky rock of tracks like "Pale Kings" and "Glass Bones" are paired with the kind of lofty language that defined mid-'80s albums like U2’s The Unforgettable Fire and A Pagan Place by the Waterboys. These songs really soar, but none more so than "Only Child," a beautiful and lilting ballad. Nobody aims to write big-tent rock songs quite like this anymore.
The album is enlivened by a pulsing rhythmic undercurrent, informed seemingly by instrumental hip-hop and new wave. This more fluid groove replaces the brutal might of longtime Shearwater drummer Thor Harris, who is inexplicably absent from this endeavor. Songs like "Backchannels" and "Filaments" sound as though Meiburg is ghostwriting for Lorde, while "Quiet Americans"—with its big synths and bigger heart—seems to be channeling the Thompson Twins.
Since springing from the rib of Okkervil River, Shearwater has always made music bigger than the capacity of the clubs they play. Jet Plane and Oxbow feels like their moon shot out of that world. Throughout the album, Meiburg seems to be personally willing the band upward and outward, risking the kind of mainstream corniness that you only encounter when ambitions grow mountain-sized. It's impressive, and a credit to the band's pure craftmanship, that so much of this Wembley Stadium-ready collection was partly cut in a friend's home studio. Somehow, from these humble origins, they have made something spacious and expansive enough to feel conjured from the costly confines of a million-dollar studio like Abbey Road or Electric Lady. With Jet Plane and Oxbow, Shearwater achieve not only their grandest statement to date, but their most grounded as well. | 2016-01-25T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2016-01-25T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Sub Pop | January 25, 2016 | 7.5 | a0717404-7f99-43ef-ab03-0a3290a5e600 | Ron Hart | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ron-hart/ | null |
Melbourne artist Sui Zhen's world is brilliant and uncanny, and her music explores a familiar theme—the thinness of digital-media life—with a fresh eye. | Melbourne artist Sui Zhen's world is brilliant and uncanny, and her music explores a familiar theme—the thinness of digital-media life—with a fresh eye. | Sui Zhen: Secretly Susan | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22017-secretly-susan/ | Secretly Susan | A brain quivers on a plate. A pair of hands appear and mush it to bits, cramming the mess into the mouth of a young woman in a mannequin's sharp blonde wig. She reappears with longer black hair, caresses a large egg, fondles a fern, then lays on her belly while wafting herself with a slice of cheap white bread. The visual world of Melbourne artist Sui Zhen is brilliant and uncanny, as if the girls from Dazed magazine shoots had lost their minds in their inert pastel surroundings, or “The Fuccons” starred in a spread for Maurizio Cattelan’s Toilet Paper magazine. The tactile nature of Zhen’s self-directed videos invites and repulses the viewer, and conjures the internal life of Secretly Susan, the namesake of her second album, originally released last year in Zhen’s native Australia.
Susan is meant to be a simulacra of social-media personae and the one-angle thinness of what we project online, a concept that may also repulse anyone who’s feeling justifiably tired of tedious art about the digital disconnect. But Zhen’s music, like her films, radiates humor and charm. “I am a creature without a tangible home,” she sings on opener “Teenage Years,” which also works as a nod to *Secretly Susan’*s global palette. Across its 10 songs, Zhen blends bossa nova, dub, ersatz pop hooks, and Japan’s ’90s shibuya-kei sound (led by artists such as Takako Minekawa and Pizzicato 5). There are some undeniable similarities to chillwave, but Zhen approaches nostalgia from a position of perfect clarity, as if discovering those bejeweled synthesizers anew rather than on some chewed-up VHS tape. Also, the tunes are miles better.
Despite the obvious depth of thought behind Secretly Susan, it doesn’t wear the concept heavily. It’s lilting and light, but hypnotic from start to finish, shifting nimbly from pop (“Dear Teri”) to funk (“Walk Without Me”) and Drive-indebted glitter (“Take It All Back”). Zhen sprinkles her songs with neat little musical winks, like the odd burst of Phil Collins drums, and the whisper of Spandau Ballet's “True” that adds soul, rather than irony, to “Going Away.” She's also a charming performer, singing sweetly and up-close about communication breakdowns and relationships caught just out of sync. “Nonchalant/Nonchalant for you/Nonchalant is all I can do,” she sings on “Hangin’ On,” finding her groove amid the pattering hand percussion and exotic birdsong synths, and sending up yé-yé devotionals all at once.
Like all good avatars, Susan reaches her limit towards the end of the record, attempting to drive off into the sunset on “Infinity Street,” but short-circuiting against the horizon. “There are people who do this out there/Like it’s a new form of video game,” she laments, echoing Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere.” “It's killing me.” Japanese lovers’ rock jam “Safari” hits the Truman Show wall in its search for exotic climes: “Safari can’t find the internet,” she sings, making the prosaic error message sound much more forlorn than it has any right to. The closing song, “Alter Ego,” captures the breakdown of the character in refracted funk guitar and demonic squawking birds, leaving Zhen asking, “When will I see you again?”
The closest thing to Zhen's Secretly Susan going right now is probably PC Music’s QT, another female pop avatar whose presentation is all about aestheticizing shallowness and artifice. But whereas QT’s music relies on her consummate and turbo-charged visual identity, it’s the fragility of Zhen’s creation that makes it endearing. Secretly Susan stands up without any of Zhen’s (wildly enjoyable) visuals, using lounge-pop innocence to bring intimacy and playfulness to technological alienation, a subject that was already starting to feel overdone at the literal dawn of its impact on humankind. Plus, there’s clearly a future to Zhen’s music beyond this particular concept. “I’m grieving still/And I’ll be grieving all my life,” she sings on “Never Gone.” “But nothing really ever ends/It just moves on.” | 2016-06-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-06-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Twosyllable | June 23, 2016 | 7.8 | a0765084-2ccc-48d5-9281-1479ab314ddf | Laura Snapes | https://pitchfork.com/staff/laura-snapes/ | null |
Like labelmates Glass Candy, the Chromatics recently ditched their early aggro/noise-punk beginnings. Switching labels from the art-rock institution Troubleman Unlimited to the sleeker Italians Do It Better imprint, the trio's gone even darker, feeding sultry, minimal disco-punk through spidery horror flick synths and scuffed guitars. | Like labelmates Glass Candy, the Chromatics recently ditched their early aggro/noise-punk beginnings. Switching labels from the art-rock institution Troubleman Unlimited to the sleeker Italians Do It Better imprint, the trio's gone even darker, feeding sultry, minimal disco-punk through spidery horror flick synths and scuffed guitars. | Chromatics: Night Drive | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10763-night-drive/ | Night Drive | Ditching your aesthetic (hairy noise-rock troupe) in favor of its polar opposite (neatly groomed pop-dance trio) is a sure way to get some pre-release hype, but the transformation of Chromatics has been so effortless that it's still easy to be wowed by the results. Those who caught the swooning glide of the Chromatics' "Nite" single last year-- or their contributions to the After Dark compilation earlier in 2007-- won't be shocked by the similarly sleek Night Drive (aka IV). But listeners who are only familiar with the band's forays into shambling punk will certainly be surprised by Night Drive's assured songwriting (which would wow even if the band had been chasing this narcotic Eurodisco sound for years) and how it wrings ravishment out of electro moves that should be long-drained of their charms.
Credit some of this to Johnny Jewel-- Chromatics member, one half of Glass Candy, and the economical production whiz/secret weapon in the much-feted Italians Do It Better camp. I have no idea how duties on Night Drive were divvied up between Jewel, founding member Adam Miller, and vocalist Ruth Radalet. But you can certainly hear all of the IDIB trademarks: doleful disco-punk guitars (the menacing clang of "Healer"), starkly monochrome synth patches (especially gorgeous on the bumping goth club slow-jam "Let's Make This a Moment to Remember"), watery keyboard progressions (ditto), and exploitation flick arpeggios ("Tomorrow Is So Far Away"). Even as they've dumped the genre's sonic baggage, Chromatics have retained punk's taste for spare arrangements, but drawing on overripe Moroder-style dance music and early 1980s synth melancholia makes for some sumptuous spare arrangements.
Of course, sumptuous production is often not enough, especially if all you're doing is cloaking a dead heart in good taste. But while the languorous, mid-tempo Night Drive may sway like it's half-drugged, its heart is still beating, thank you very much. The record opens with a female voice (presumably Radalet) dialing her lover as the club rats scatter home from their nights out, and when she winsomely closes the call by telling him that she loves him, she proves that (however much she comes across like a cutie pie version of Nico) she's no ice queen. Even when she sounds half-tranquilized, it's Radalet that adds the very necessary soft touch to all those implacable sequencers. Throughout Night Drive, whether at a kittenish whisper or a husky, longing sigh, her cauterized range fits the band's vision of disco recast as heartsick pop. And even when wholly instrumental on "The Killing Spree"-- forget the title, the sinister descending keyboard fuzz does a perfect job evoking a murderous robot sci-fi flick on its own-- the band uses what could be sterile pastiche to pull your strings. Tastefully.
Night Drive's peak is the rightfully praised cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", where the band shifts the focus of the (already minimal) arrangement onto three sour keyboard notes and a dapple of guitar. Radalet sounds like the school wallflower trying on the queen of frou frou art-pop, her unsteady hold on Bush's delivery cracking into a yearning coo at the chorus (about as demonstrative as she gets), making for the only moment on the record where the band really lets their emotional guard down. Haters and fans alike often call this neo-disco stuff "cold" and "dark," but I think that's just code for "not kitschy" (on the plus side) or maybe "not emotionally open enough" (on the minus side). But while Night Drive might not be warm, it does feel intimate, like a 3 a.m. ride home, where you're not alone but exhaustion and intake have made talking impossible, the city is silent, and the traffic patterns are as comforting and regimented as a drum machine click track. One of those moments, to paraphrase Ms. Bush, when you should be crying, but you'll be damned if you let it show. | 2007-10-11T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2007-10-11T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Italians Do It Better | October 11, 2007 | 8.3 | a07b880a-926d-4d7d-8c58-e4a498c1dfaf | Jess Harvell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/ | null |
In the 1990s, the Georgia underdogs influenced a generation of indie rockers with their theatrical, reverb-soaked anthems. Nearly two decades later, their first reunion album is more than a throwback. | In the 1990s, the Georgia underdogs influenced a generation of indie rockers with their theatrical, reverb-soaked anthems. Nearly two decades later, their first reunion album is more than a throwback. | The Rock*A*Teens: Sixth House | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-rockateens-sixth-house/ | Sixth House | The Rock*A*Teens have always sounded somewhat zombified. Between 1994 and 2001, the Cabbagetown, Atlanta underdogs blended indie rock, doo-wop, and rockabilly to make unwholesome, reverb-soaked anthems that staggered relentlessly forward, coated in cobwebs and dust. Led by vocalist Chris Lopez, who sang in a brainless howl that cracked helplessly between words, the group often ended songs with bursts of noise or by suddenly launching into a different tune. Their music always flirted with collapse—but it also teased an ascent from the dirt.
Sixth House marks the band’s first album in 18 years, and, unsurprisingly, rebirth suits them. Following a slew of reunion shows that kicked off in 2014, these ten new songs find the quartet in charming and rejuvenated spirits. They may lack the lunacy of should-have-been classics like 1999’s Golden Time, but they make up for it in amiability. Jangling, patient first single “Go Tell Everybody” sets the pace for the record. Its ceaseless spiral of hooks feels joyous, like running into an old friend and catching up for so long that you end up late for work—the perfect reintroduction for a band that has always been both proudly old-fashioned and, in their own humble way, visionary.
This prescience explains why Sixth House is more than just a ’90s indie rock throwback. In the decade after their breakup, the Rock*A*Teens’ impact spread throughout the genre, as the Walkmen, Destroyer, Okkervil River, and the New Pornographers all rode the band’s sweeping, theatrical energy to greater success. On the new album, Lopez’s influence is apparent as early as opener “Billy Really,” a song that seems to find its legs in real time, with a seasick acoustic guitar riff and a rhythm that keeps rebooting. This same clumsy momentum gave the band’s earlier records an emotional urgency that contrasted with the nonchalance of American indie rock peers like Pavement and Yo La Tengo. Nothing seemed to come naturally in their music, and that only made it more alluring.
Lopez has also maintained his sense of humor. Like Bob Dylan singing Sinatra, he has a way of making the most innocuous lyrics feel foreboding. In the swooning “Turn and Smile,” he gets his heart broken by somebody whistling one of his old songs. “I always knew that this would end in tears,” he shouts. “I didn’t think that they’d be mine.” The breakup ballad could be about a romance or a rock band, yet Lopez’s delivery doesn’t sound mournful; it sounds more like he wants to punch a hole through the wall. As with any of his most memorable lyrics—when he begged you not to destroy this night, or when he got all weird about cats in your head—the only way to respond is to back away slowly and nod.
Abandoning their characteristic lo-fi murk in favor of a cleaner focus, Sixth House emphasizes the band’s dynamics like none of their previous records. If the joy of their songs once came from digging through the rubble to find the bones of pop music, the Rock*A*Teens are now much less shy about their technical chops. Former members Kelly Hogan (now an accomplished singer-songwriter and a consistent collaborator with Neko Case) and drummer Chris Verene (who left to pursue photography) are absent. But the current lineup—Lopez along with guitarist Justin Hughes, bassist William R. Joiner, and drummer Ballard Lesemann—brings a relaxed, refined energy. Several songs feel like new territory for the band. “Listen, Sonny Boy” is a swirling sing-along that effortlessly channels the Kinks; “Closest to Heaven” surges with a diabolical refrain, like Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen’s “Because the Night” rewritten as a threat.
Since their breakup, the Rock*A*Teens have developed a mythos as tied to their failures as it is to their successes. Despite their extraordinary catalog and lasting influence, they never quite found the audience their music deserved. Lopez once referred to their tours as “death marches,” and Destroyer’s Dan Bejar has recalled seeing them play in Montreal to just nine people. (“I’m pretty sure four of them I dragged out myself personally,” he added.) But on Sixth House, by embracing the spirit of their best records without leaning on those releases’ do-or-die, hard-luck intensity, they’ve found a way to settle comfortably into their strengths. An old Rock*A*Teens song declared, “Our future was then.” Now that they’ve given us some time to catch up, their present is right now. | 2018-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Merge | July 3, 2018 | 7.5 | a08434e4-27e3-4947-9abb-6bc858e4b388 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
While not quite a marquee work for either artist, the new team-up is reliably consistent and casts them as a natural pair, near-ideal complements to one another in writing and execution. | While not quite a marquee work for either artist, the new team-up is reliably consistent and casts them as a natural pair, near-ideal complements to one another in writing and execution. | Lil Baby / Lil Durk: The Voice of the Heroes | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-baby-lil-durk-the-voice-of-the-heroes/ | The Voice of the Heroes | At 28, Lil Durk is only two years older than Lil Baby, though he comes from another era entirely. When he was still a teenager in the early 2010s, Durk recorded many of the songs that would make drill music a phenomenon in Chicago and then nationwide; Def Jam signed him, intent on packaging the sound for a mass audience, then botched his debut. Instead of disappearing from the pop charts or from rap’s stylistic cutting edge, Durk gritted his teeth and kept working. He moved to Los Angeles, he cut a better album for Def Jam, and he doubled down on the mixtape ethos that drove his career in its early stages. In 2017, six years after his breakthrough with I’m a Hitta, he moved again—this time to Atlanta, which had become the unquestionable center of the hip-hop industry. It was around this time that Lil Baby had finally entered the picture.
While Durk was hopping across the country and trying to refine his commercial approach, Lil Baby, a native Atlantan, was in and out of jail on a series of drug charges. He was also poised and preternaturally cool—which might explain why his longtime friend, Young Thug, would pay Baby whatever money he might make during a day in the streets to come to the studio instead. When he did commit to music, it was an onslaught: Baby dropped five solo records in 19 months, an instant favorite of fans, and then critics. Last year, his phenomenally engrossing album My Turn and the Grammy-nominated protest single “The Bigger Picture” made him perhaps the hottest rapper alive. Lil Baby and Durk’s new joint album, The Voice of the Heroes, is not quite a marquee work for either artist, though it is reliably consistent and casts them as a natural pair—near-ideal complements to one another in writing and execution.
As a vocalist, Durk is more broadly emotive and consistently animated than Baby. While much has been made of the way Future uses Auto-Tune’s eerie technological aftertaste to accentuate human pain, Durk is due credit for being one of the effect’s most nimble users, deploying it to keep the listener at arm’s length or to lure them in, underscoring melodies or cutting atonally against them. Baby, by contrast, raps in a rolling, post-Thug legato—a flatter affect punctuated by brief moments of musicality. The fact that the rappers’ voices default to similar registers but are used in such different ways means they often weave in and out of each other’s territory; on one song, Durk will ground Baby, and on the next song, the roles will be reversed. (In this way, Heroes is the direct opposite of 2018’s Drip Harder, where Gunna nearly always acts as the foundation while Baby riffs on top.)
Beyond the clever interplay of the vocal takes, the two expand their world with specifics—like on “Lying,” the way Baby sneers about someone who commits “a little fraud” in order to buy his necklace. Durk’s verse on “How It Feels” is a masterclass in this, at times exultant (“I know how it feel to pour a four right by Obama house”), poignant (“I know how it feel to wake up cut up from them bed springs”), or downright chilling (“I know how it feel to have the killers tell you everything”). Durk has made a career processing sometimes unspeakable tragedy in real time, and this willingness to be raw in front of an audience occasionally coaxes something similar out of Baby: see “Make It Out,” where he raps—almost as an aside—“You don't know how it feel where, everywhere you live, you get evicted.”
Heroes is overly long and sequenced in a way that sometimes undercuts its effectiveness—the title track and lead single opens the album despite being its weakest song. Yet even the pockets of similarly-tempoed tracks are filled with enough charisma from the rappers—and muscle from the beats—to avoid feeling rote. Most impressively, Durk and Baby surpass the numerous team-up records that have been released since streaming was monetized by meshing their styles into a smart, integrated whole.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-06-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-06-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Quality Control / Motown / Alamo | June 8, 2021 | 7.1 | a08584b2-21ed-4d08-9465-0328b0e1b5e2 | Paul A. Thompson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/ | |
The New Jersey band’s seventh album tilts toward pop-punk, modern rock, and more, with a guest turn from Fugazi’s Brendan Canty. | The New Jersey band’s seventh album tilts toward pop-punk, modern rock, and more, with a guest turn from Fugazi’s Brendan Canty. | Screaming Females: All at Once | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/screaming-females-all-at-once/ | All at Once | For a long while, “all at once” was a neat summary of Screaming Females’ compositional approach. It was nothing for them to, say, slot a swing break after a howling punk-rock passage; the chemistry developed in countless basements and bars just made those leaps cleaner. After four good-to-great albums as a kind of power-trio Fiery Furnaces, the New Jersey band brought their genre-bending dynamic to heel, first on 2012’s Steve Albini-engineered Ugly, then on 2015’s Rose Mountain. It wasn’t a concession to accessibility so much as focus. The former boasted both a seven-minute boogie-rock workout and a string-laden ballad; the latter, produced by Minus the Bear’s Matt Bayles, homed in on the sound of Marissa Paternoster’s guitar.
Though the songs on Rose Mountain were tighter than ever, the record felt like it was gritting its teeth, waiting for a fever to break. On All at Once, it does. Bayles is back, and so is the band’s storehouse of killer riffs. And though Paternoster waits until halfway through opener “Glass House” to fully deploy it, her earth-drilling vibrato remains. But Screaming Females have new modulations here. “I’ll Make You Sorry” is (finally) their first pop-punk song. They’d feinted this way before (notably on Rose Mountain’s “Empty Head”), but the full treatment is gripping. Rhythm section Jarrett Dougherty and “King” Mike Abbate bear down on a churning passage; Paternoster’s multitracked guitars chop and chime against each other. “I once was in love before/I knew you/But I’ve given up,” shrugs the chorus.
It’s not the only pop move. “Soft Domination” carries a refrain out of Trevor Horn-era Yes, loaded with stops and Paternoster’s digs up and down the scale. Fugazi’s Brendan Canty guests as a second drummer, adding his trademark clatter to a song about others’ expectations. It’s a repeated theme on All at Once. They’ve brightened the corners, but there’s danger just past the door. In album closer “Step Outside,” that metaphor is literal. A minute and a half of magisterial soloing builds to the chorus (“I’m sick with worry just knowing/When you step outside/You won’t be safe”). Then, the arsenal: Abbate and Dougherty push forward and drop back—including pop- and ska-punk breakdowns—while Paternoster fires off palm mutes and curlicue solos.
It’s a rousing way to express concern, like comforting a friend with a fireworks show. In welding pomp to dire circumstance, it’s also a bit of an anomaly. Stained with organ and cello, “Glass House” is a social-media waking nightmare. The danger is similarly interpersonal on “Fantasy Lens.” “Touch me through the fence,” Paternoster sneers as the band whips between the gas pedal and the emergency brake. Two different chants and a false ending kick up enough dust for the Females to escape. “I’ll medicate myself,” she intones on “Dirt,” “Suspect that idols lie to me.” Intended or not, the line recalls the band’s 2013 collaboration with Garbage’s Shirley Manson, a formative influence on Paternoster (and a big fan of Screaming Females as well).
Suitably, then, if there’s a chart they’re aiming for, it seems less like the Hot 100 than like Manson’s old chart roost: Modern Rock Tracks. Screaming Females have tilted in that direction before—you can hear it in 2015’s “Criminal Image,” which had a riff Lit would clip their highlights for, and in the STP-style acoustic morphine drip of Chalk Tape’s “Bad Men.” All at Once just offers more. “Agnes Martin” works a prime Tool groove to platonic pop heights, as Paternoster’s double-tracked riffs keep turning up rich soil. Coming right after Canty’s cameo, the dubby groove of “End of My Bloodline” ought to suggest Fugazi. Instead, it’s Sublime. This isn’t just great news for anyone who wants to see how the baubles of alt-rock’s lost years gleam in modern light. It’s great for anyone who’s watched Screaming Females sift through untold guitar-based genres for over a decade. For Paternoster, whose chops are already near-legendary, it’s no big deal to chase a power-pop confection like “Chamber for Sleep (Part One)” with a solo ripped from Tom Verlaine’s playbook, then drop a twin-guitar flourish in “Part Two.” Once upon a time, it might’ve been for the thrill. Now, it’s in service to the song. | 2018-02-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2018-02-23T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Don Giovanni | February 23, 2018 | 8 | a0870a2e-9e77-4475-8c8e-b3015411d50d | Brad Shoup | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-shoup/ | |
Inspired by his love for Stephin Merritt, James Alex serves up chamber-pop covers of his own earnest punk songs on the first album from this Beach Slang spin-off band. | Inspired by his love for Stephin Merritt, James Alex serves up chamber-pop covers of his own earnest punk songs on the first album from this Beach Slang spin-off band. | Quiet Slang: Everything Matters But No One Is Listening | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/quiet-slang-everything-matters-but-no-one-is-listening/ | Everything Matters But No One Is Listening | Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly is a modern classic of therapeutic literature that identifies fear as the root of all our troubles. Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of judgment, and, most of all, fear of vulnerability—these are what keep so many of us from achieving happiness and fulfillment. James Alex is probably too much of a Bukowski guy to have read Daring Greatly, but his band Beach Slang might as well be the audiobook version, a compelling and convincing testament to the wisdom of ignoring one’s inner critic.
Fans of beery, bear-hugging guitar music are conditioned to feel embarrassed about it once they reach a certain age, sheepishly accepting their status as the old guy at the club while the latest variation of the “rock is dead” narrative plays out. Alex doesn’t just validate this crowd by expressing their feelings in the most basic language; after debuting Beach Slang at 40 years old, he embodies them as well, bypassing the literary and mythic ambitions that elevate the Hold Steady, Japandroids, and Guided by Voices to Art to go straight for wish fulfillment. Quiet Slang, a spin-off act that reduces the Beach Slang lineup to piano, cello, and vocals, leaves those earnest lyrics fully exposed. Their first full-length, Everything Matters But No One Is Listening, boldly courts what Brown called the “vulnerability hangover”—that anxious feeling you get after showing your true, vulnerable self to people who have the power to vaporize your self-esteem.
Beach Slang have always faced accusations of redundancy and cliché. Alex’s veneration of youth and its simple pleasures give his songs a twee undertone. Taken together with his pop-punk roots, that tendency made him a natural fit to open for Dashboard Confessional on their recent tour. But Beach Slang’s sound is more malleable than they get credit for. The sudsy, saturated guitars and production owe more to Loveless than to the Replacements’ Let It Be.
“If Beach Slang is my adoration for [Paul] Westerberg, Quiet Slang is me head over heels for Stephin Merritt,” Alex offered in a recent interview. The sentimental first-love, best-love spirit that fuels his attachment to the Replacements is an essential part of his songwriting, and since he hasn’t come up with any new songs that reflect his Merritt fandom, he might as well have pledged allegiance to PJ Harvey or Willie D. Unlike Westerberg, whose affably self-effacing music appeals to people for whom losing is winning because the game is rigged against us hard-luck kids anyway, Merritt is a curmudgeon whose craft is so beyond reproach that it often makes up for his cutting, cynical language and disdain for the people who consume his product. This is obviously the exact opposite of everything Beach Slang stand for, and the inclusion of A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings salvo “Mixtape for Future Art Kids” on Everything Matters makes that painfully obvious. Over dainty piano tinkles, Alex gamely sings, “Play it loud, play it fast.” No one ever asks this of Magnetic Fields songs.
There’s craft in Beach Slang, just not the kind that translates to a chamber-pop setting meant to showcase intricate arrangements, deft melodies, and arch wordplay. While he’s switched up the instruments, Alex hasn’t bothered to reimagine the songs themselves—a piano bangs out the exact same chords as the rhythm guitar on Beach Slang records, a cello plays lead, and Alex supplies slight variations on the vocal harmonies. He prepared fans for this kind of thing on “Too Late to Die Young,” which anchored the band’s 2015 debut, by copping to the desperation behind it all: “Too young to die/Too late to die young/I try and fight/But get high and give up.” But the urgency of his strumming aligned with the lyrics, and that’s what earned the song its place alongside the album’s standouts “Ride the Wild Haze” and “I Break Guitars.” Take away that rock setup, and Quiet Slang’s version of “Too Late” turns the original's sweetness into pure sap.
The most captivating thing about Everything Matters is the way it keeps reminding you of what it lacks: Cello replaces the gorgeous racket of the original “Young Hearts.” The new orchestral intro to “Spin the Dial” makes you miss the arena-rock hook from the version on Teenage Feelings. Alex has vowed to reach for his “blue-sky dream” on the next Beach Slang record. Whether that means his take on “Tonight, Tonight” or his own personal The Ugly Organ, Everything Matters makes the prospect of the band’s third proper album sound more attractive than it might have otherwise. In that respect, Quiet Slang could be the first shrewdly calculated move of James Alex’s career. | 2018-05-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-05-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Polyvinyl | May 19, 2018 | 5.4 | a087a368-85a7-4cb8-ae9f-e76bebaded2d | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
iTunes-only charity album was recorded as part of ATP's Don't Look Back Series and presumably released in part to finally match the Scottish band's best set of songs with a proper recording of their arrangements. | iTunes-only charity album was recorded as part of ATP's Don't Look Back Series and presumably released in part to finally match the Scottish band's best set of songs with a proper recording of their arrangements. | Belle and Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister: Live at the Barbican | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/638-if-youre-feeling-sinister-live-at-the-barbican/ | If You're Feeling Sinister: Live at the Barbican | In September 1997, Belle & Sebastian made their American live debut by playing a pair of CMJ shows at a synagogue in New York City's East Village. At the time, the band's U.S. debut, If You're Feeling Sinister had been out in the UK for about a year but to American audiences the Scottish group was more rumor than reality. The record was first issued in the U.S. on The Enclave, a Virgin subsidiary that, soon after releasing the record, went bankrupt. The group decided to stop speaking to press, feeling disenchanted with its initial experiences with the music weeklies. Publicity photos featured friends or band members in curious poses-- their keyboardist doing the ironing, their cellist hiding behind a surgical mask, their bassist crouched over a fallen nun.
What's more, the band were often messy live, typically the route for upstarts to connect with could-be fans. Interminable soundchecks begat shambolic performances, with only the occasional mumble or a few bars of someone else's music to fill frustratingly large gaps between songs. The band members-- selected the year before to support singer Stuart Murdoch's songs on a potentially one-off project-- weren't yet all convinced they were players in a fully functioning combo, and they often performed with what seemed to be a mix of disinterest and ineptitude. Even Murdoch often forgot his own lyrics. True to what was then their form, a performance taped that month for PBS' "Sessions at West 54th" was deemed unworthy to broadcast.
Despite the roadblocks and stumbles, Sinister-- along with a series of early EPs-- made the Scottish group one of the biggest cult bands in indiedom, and almost a decade later it's still considered to be the group's career peak. Murdoch himself-- he'll now do the occasional interview-- has often said these are his best songs, recorded poorly. What's more he's right: Two-dimensional, limp, distant, often the record's more complex, graceful arrangements are buried under C-86-quality sound. Perhaps motivated by this long-simmering dissatisfaction with Sinister, the band chose to not only perform it as part of All Tomorrow's Parties Don't Look Back series-- in which an artist performs its best-loved work live in its entirety-- but also release the results as an iTunes-only charity record. (All proceeds from the sale of the album will go to the DEC's Asia Quake Appeal.)
The irony that Belle and Sebastian would issue a live record in order to correct the fidelity of a studio record must not be lost on either the band or any of its longtime fans. Those introduced to the group on its most recent couple of tours, however, should be familiar with them as a robust, confident collective, with Murdoch and guitarist Stevie Jackson taking turns playing ringleader for an accomplished set of musicians, which on this recording include not only the band's seven members but five additional players. And, appropriately, this LP reflects the current band's confidence, buffering Murdoch's delicate songs about romantic frustration, sexual curiosity, crises of confidence and faith, and existential drift with swelling strings and lilting, airy arrangements. They offer a near-definitive reading of most of the tracks here, turning what could have been a superfluous record into a tempting first purchase for those curious about the band.
The record starts with a whimper, the opening lines of "The Stars of Track & Field" rushed and recorded somewhat quietly. The track finds its feet but still limps through the next two minutes, until its first swell reveals the full force of the 12-piece band. Mick Cooke's "They Don't Know"-quoting trumpet solo is as warm as ever but it serves as placesetter to a muscular finale where on record-- as on almost every track he's featured-- it's the sonic peak.
The tracks best served by the live recording are, perhaps unsurprisingly, those that seem the most slight on record, either because here they punch above the weight of expectations or they were in the most need of a spitshine in the first place. The generation-gap "Me and the Major", now even more rollicking and playful, features an older Murdoch sounding increasingly confident standing toe-to-toe with his fellow titular adversary and supposed social bettor. "Like Dylan in the Movies" and "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" don't leave Murdoch as stranded as they previously did, and yet neither of the simmering dread of the former or the bedsit solitude of the latter is lost without muted backdrops.
Most in need of an upgrade was the title track, which should have been Sinister's centerpiece, a song that encapsulated most of Murdoch's pet lyrical themes circa 1996-97-- religion, sex, frustration, and boredom-- while drawing lines between poor decisions and desperation, doubt and faith, a need for change and a sometimes tragic inability to invest one's energy in self-improvement. Live, the track had a haunting feel, hovering like sadness and doubt; on record, its barely-there backdrop makes it a mere apparition. The version captured at the Barbican doesn't measure up to some earlier performances (best exemplified by the band's Bowlie Weekender performance), but it takes advantage of the extra players, adding a slight barroom tinge to its second half, giving it a more hopeful reading by offering comfort and company to Murdoch's words rather than leaving them stranded.
As the band has changed and years have been placed between these track's first airings and today, they serve not only as a reminder of their durability but their malleability, with the once-quintessential "The Boy Done Wrong Again" somehow seeming the most distant and out of place track here-- the claim that "All I wanted was to sing the saddest song" is the antithesis of the happy-clappy records B&S; now make. That Jackson and Murdoch, charming and almost vaudevillian-like in recent live shows, are restricted here to trading sideways lines that include a request to "hang your head in shame and cry your life away" is almost quaint, an odd reminder that despite the band's former live struggles, it did connect directly and powerfully on late-night BBC radio sessions playing gut-wrenchingly sad songs such as this.
Odd then that the record closes with "Judy and the Dream of Horses", another in a string of tracks about private obsessions and tentative steps toward engaging with one's sexuality. And, yet, unlike most of those that preceded it, it works itself into a gallop, allowing hints of the band's present to mingle with its past-- some overly enthusiastic harmonizing and an extra coat of paint and "Judy" could have fit on the band's most recent LP.
While arrangements here are strengthened and the tracks flourish, Murdoch's wallflower lyrics don't hit as hard or close to the heart coming from a live powerhouse than hushed alongside a hastily assembled collection of friends and aquantinces. The quiet, unspoken desperation of the original songs could somehow become lost on the way from being the last-ditch work of a late-20s underachiever to a flip through the scrapbook of an international indie star, but those worries are swept aside by the pride and tenderness with which the songs are delivered, readings delivered perhaps more casually thanks to the band's success. Whether listeners would take comfort in revisiting this part of their past from the safety of a different decade depends more on the individual than the songs, I imagine, as does whether a once-galvanizing line like "Nobody writes them like they used to/ So it might as well be me" now seems accidentally and unfortunately ironic. | 2006-01-11T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2006-01-11T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | iTunes | January 11, 2006 | 9.1 | a087bf7b-bc0d-47b5-9e56-5657a8135d17 | Scott Plagenhoef | https://pitchfork.com/staff/scott-plagenhoef/ | null |
Originally released as a concert film but now reissued as a live album, this cult favorite reimagines the Pet Shop Boys’ own canon and other pop hits, curating a century of pop music history in one jukebox. | Originally released as a concert film but now reissued as a live album, this cult favorite reimagines the Pet Shop Boys’ own canon and other pop hits, curating a century of pop music history in one jukebox. | Pet Shop Boys: Discovery: Live in Rio 1994 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pet-shop-boys-discovery-live-in-rio-1994/ | Discovery: Live in Rio 1994 | Even more than their remarkably fresh and in-touch new music, which flirts with EDM and high BPMs while never being too “How do you do, fellow kids?”, the Pet Shop Boys’ most interesting activity across the last half-decade is the deep dive they’ve done into their own archives. From last year’s 4K remaster of their 1987 feature film It Couldn’t Happen Here, to a wealth of late-night television performances uploaded in high-quality to the band’s official YouTube page, their mammoth body of carefully curated multimedia is a testament to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s endless invention and creative energy across nearly four decades. Originally released as a concert film in the 1990s but now reissued as a live album, Discovery: Live in Rio - 1994 captures the Boys’ first trip to Brazil, a stop on a global tour of Singapore, Australia, and Latin America—parts of the world the Boys had never played before—on the back of 1993’s Very.
The Pet Shop Boys had first set out internationally in 1991, with an elaborate and operatic piece of theater captured by the concert film Performance. Their most recent album at that time, 1990’s Behaviour, was in part an elegant elegy to friends, comrades, and collaborators lost to AIDS, and though it’s often been critically regarded as the duo’s finest record, audiences failed to warm to its chillier sensibility. With Very, the Boys underwent a significant makeover, adapting to the more up-tempo DJ culture of the new decade—it was designed as a bid for renewed commercial success and would become their best-selling release in their home country, but also feels driven by a desire for outright expression and queer emancipation following a period of deep mourning. As their music itself pivoted to more explicit dance music, Discovery shows the high-art opera house of the Pet Shop Boys’ earlier live performances transforming into a come-as-you-are club night that radiates understanding and acceptance like only popular music can.
Performance drew a line between performer and audience, with Tennant and Lowe feeling more like actors in a drama than musicians in a band. But with Discovery, the Boys came into their own as showmen. Thriving off the energy of rave culture, the mood is jovial, but their trademark theatricality is still omnipresent: the Discovery concert film is stuffed with dancers, local soccer players, chiseled models strutting the stage in loincloths and boxer briefs, Tennant decked out in full papal garb, and literal nipple play. The Pet Shop Boys’ sense of humor might be dry, but their shows are downright wet. The group’s first performances were directed by queer cinema pioneer Derek Jarman, whose Renaissance decadence was a perfect match for the Boys’ frequently baroque sensibilities. Discovery was one of their last collaborations, featuring background video projections directed by Jarman, along with Bruce Weber and Howard Greenlagh.
Opening with a brief, wistful rendition of “Tonight Is Forever” before launching into the exuberance of “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing,” the Discovery setlist is mostly a blend of staples—“Domino Dancing,” “Kings Cross”—with tracks from Very like the bombastic break-up anthem “Can You Forgive Her?” and the more subdued “To Speak Is a Sin.” Halfway through the show, Neil sits down in a solo spotlight and cracks that they’ve never been invited to do an MTV Unplugged, before leading intimate acoustic singalongs of “Rent” and “Suburbia.” The eternal pop kids have long been anti-rock, but are not always anti-guitar—the ease with which their songs lend themselves to stylistic reinterpretation speaks to their strength as pieces of songwriting, regardless of recorded interpretation. The party gets delightfully silly with “Absolutely Fabulous,” a charity single produced from chopped-up samples of the BBC comedy, and “Girls & Boys,” a queerer take on the Blur song which Pet Shop Boys had also remixed into a minor club hit.
Discovery has long been a cult favorite among Pet Shop fans because of how it reimagines the Pet Shop Boys’ own canon and other well-known pop hits. The duo’s original songs are among the most indelible in history, but they’re also somewhat unique as a major music act who have made covers a constant and crucial part of their repertoire. Almost as well-known as “West End Girls” or “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” are their takes on Elvis Presley, the Village People, and U2: not just famous songs, but songs that have almost become a kind of prefabricated folk culture, tunes we hear in the grocery store and all seem to know through pure exposure and osmosis. “One in a Million” and “Left to My Own Devices” are seamlessly mashed up with contemporary club cuts like Culture Beat’s “Mr. Vain” and Corona’s “Rhythm of the Night”—Lowe’s synthesizers already flirt with Eurodance, but these remixes elevate one-hit wonders to high-art pieces while transforming the Boys’ own songs into unabashed dance tracks. Pet Shop Boys’ almost prolific propensity for covers of songs by other artists feels as much like critical reconsideration as it does a creative act.
Just as their music reflected upon the fall of the Soviet Union in songs like “My October Symphony,” it also mirrored the increasingly globalized dance party of the ’90s. The enthusiastic reception of the Discovery tour in Latin America influenced the style and structure of 1996’s Bilingual, an album with lyrics in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Through Discovery, it’s as if the band realized that their desired audience was not necessarily in the imperial core represented by American pop charts, but in the Global South, where anthems of liberation had more resonance.
Maybe the Boys’ sense of humor was too intellectual or refined or just plain British for American audiences; maybe it was their sincere engagement with club culture that was often considered novelty or kitsch by critics and consumers; maybe it was the open embrace of queerness, especially during an era of AIDS and legal oppression. Probably some cocktail of all three—Pet Shop Boys present a challenge to heteronormativity and masculine hegemony, to established industry views about what it means to be a band that makes pop music, and to a culture always moving on to the next idea, as they establish critical links between new trends in music with older, once-populist forms like vaudeville and opera.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have spent decades not just defending pop music from its detractors, but celebrating it—before there was poptimism, there was Pet Shop Boys. In their covers of other artists and reinterpretations of their own work, the Boys suggest pop’s potential as a living medium beyond recorded product, a songbook of standards that express universal sentiments but are open to individual reinterpretation. Though they have often been accused of a certain stiffness or ironic detachment—criticisms encouraged by Tennant’s wordy wit and Lowe’s Kraftwerk-like stoneface—the Pet Shop Boys’ live work from the 1990s on is where they thrive. In their hands, the setlist becomes a collage, curating a century of pop music history in one jukebox.
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. | 2021-05-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Parlophone | May 17, 2021 | 8.1 | a08de2cb-fc7c-4286-bee9-3dbb3b3ed7ae | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
The debut from the downtempo trip-hop duo is how it’s done. Its nuanced production and smoky mood deliver a completely stylish result. | The debut from the downtempo trip-hop duo is how it’s done. Its nuanced production and smoky mood deliver a completely stylish result. | a.s.o.: a.s.o. | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aso-aso/ | a.s.o. | Given the tossed-off origins of the term “trip-hop”—“hip-hop in a flotation tank,” Mixmag’s Andy Pemberton called it in the 1994 article where he coined the term; “mood muzak for the blunted ’n’ paranoid,” Melody Maker’s Simon Reynolds offered a few months later—the animating idea has proven remarkably resilient. Take a boom-bap beat, paint on a dusky bassline or pitched-down sample, drape it all in echo, turn down the dimmer switch. Usually—not always, but much of the time—there’ll be a singer involved, typically a woman. Sometimes it’s a voice that sounds like lust incarnate; sometimes like your own thoughts tossing beneath a weighted blanket of the heaviest doubt.
In the past three decades, trip-hop has soundtracked innumerable make-out sessions, melted into the wallpaper of countless fast-fashion dressing rooms, produced some indisputable classics, even minted a superstar or two. The fact that it’s never really gone away also means that it’s never had a proper revival. But there have been stirrings of late, as ’90s electronic styles like trance and drum’n’bass have re-entered the lexicon. The debut album from a.s.o. feels like trip-hop’s purest expression in years.
The duo’s members—singer Alia Seror-O’Neill, aka Alias Error, and producer Lewie Day, aka Tornado Wallace, both Australians based in Berlin—initially connected over a mutual love of Kylie Minogue and Madonna, yet their music skews much darker than those influences. It’s darker even than, say, Avalon Emerson’s debut album or CFCF’s Memoryland, two recent forays into electronic pop inspired by a similar assemblage of ’90s touchstones. As Tornado Wallace, Day is typically known for a tropical, laid-back sound; in a.s.o., he’s kept the tempos slow but burned off all the Balearic influence, leaving just skeletal drums wreathed in smoke. Spy-movie guitars add noir shading; Middle Eastern scales snake around the edges; acid synths take tentative swipes in the shadows.
In keeping with its influences—Portishead’s Dummy, Massive Attack’s Protection, Tricky’s Maxinquaye—the mood is sullen and brooding. In “My Baby’s Got It Out for Me,” the bassline scuffs against the root note while flashes of dub siren and doppler-effected synths suggest teeming city streets. But a.s.o. aren’t averse to the occasional glint of brightness. The keys of the opening “Go On” are supple and satiny, swollen with tone, and despite the downcast vibe, the occasional major-key harmony occasionally reveals itself like a half-hidden grin.
Day’s uncommonly subtle productions elevate a.s.o.’s music over most other trip-hop revivalists, but Seror-O’Neill is the group’s true life force. She’s not a showy singer; she often favors a soft, breathy tone, and she sees no need to sing three notes when two will do. But she’s sneakily versatile. She can do dreamy, desiring, and wounded; she’s got the ease of Martina Topley-Bird, the sweetness of Elizabeth Fraser, and the airiness of Julee Cruise. Occasionally, she even offers a hint of Lana Del Rey’s sullen poise. In “Rain Down,” she sticks to the midrange, infusing a taut melodic line with bitterness before leaping up a register and drifting blissfully over a curiously curlicued chorus.
Seror-O’Neill’s voice often functions as pure texture, as in the gossamer ribbons of “Falling Under,” a modish breakbeat track that brings to mind cameras panning across gleaming architectural surfaces at night. (Michael Mann would love a.s.o.’s music.) But she’s a canny songwriter, too. In “Love in the Darkness,” she sketches out a doomed affair—perhaps one that lasted no longer than the song itself—in three koan-like verses arranged around a hidden chorus. For all the knowingness of the duo’s references, there’s nothing ironic about it—it’s just a song for dancing slow and feeling the heat of another person’s skin against yours.
Very occasionally, a.s.o.’s fondness for their influences leads them toward pastiche: The Rhodes keys of “Thinking” and “Cold Feeling” are straight out of Air’s Moon Safari; the bluesy soloing on the latter might as well be a MIDI file from “La Femme d’argent.” But there’s a birdwatcher’s pleasure to be found in spotting many of their sounds, like the twangy guitar and snare rolls inspired by Dummy, or the Fleetwood Mac guitar and drums of “Love in the Darkness,” the album’s most unexpectedly melodic song, and one of its highlights.
For the most part, the self-awareness of their choices helps make a.s.o. so stylish, like a well-curated fashion editorial. Stylishness sometimes gets a bad name; it’s assumed to emphasize surface over depth. But surfaces can be wonderful things—smooth, tactile, inviting. a.s.o. have turned their homage into something like a three-dimensional sculpture of alluring contours and vivid textures, magnetic to the touch. For the retro-sympathetic, it’s an irresistible place to linger. | 2023-12-18T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-12-15T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B / Electronic | Low Lying | December 18, 2023 | 7.8 | a09b4e06-9739-4787-9ce4-a4d9a7cea485 | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | |
Alessia Cara's debut album improbably features her debut EP in its entirety. It also does not feature a lot of great songs, despite her truly arresting voice. But the seeds are there for the future if she (or her label) let her rawer instincts breathe. | Alessia Cara's debut album improbably features her debut EP in its entirety. It also does not feature a lot of great songs, despite her truly arresting voice. But the seeds are there for the future if she (or her label) let her rawer instincts breathe. | Alessia Cara: Know It All | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21247-know-it-all/ | Know It All | Alessia Cara has become a star very quickly. Her coming out party, which came in the form of the loner anthem “Here,” exposed a receptive world to a soulful R&B sound. Cara’s lament about a less-than-enjoyable party made her a poster child for Introvert Nation at a time when shyness—thanks to writers like Susan Cain and various digital media outlets — has been recast as an identity unto itself.
Def Jam, Cara’s label, soon released more of her songs, several of them country-tinged pop that recall artists like Taylor Swift and Haim. In Cara’s case, that sound tends to go hand in hand with bland, vaguely “rebellious” lyrics. In the pop songs on her Four Pink Walls EP—including the potential megahits “Seventeen” and “I’m Yours”—Cara’s appealing personality is sometimes hard to unearth from under the layers of pop gloss that have been poured on top of her.
But the EP seems to have been what the label was looking for, at least as evidenced by the fact that its five songs have been transposed onto the front of Cara’s debut album, Know-It-All, in the same order, with very few changes made. The speed at which Cara is being groomed and prompted to put out new releases feels distasteful if sadly not unfamiliar, something like an AAU prospect being coaxed to go pro before he’s entirely ready.
In many ways, though, Cara is ready. Her winning personality shines in recent public appearances (watch her slay “Here” on “Late Night on Seth Meyers”), and her voice, with its warmth and character, can transform a so-so song into something far more compelling. She’s able to mine an otherwise simple ballad like “Stone,” from the second half of Know-It-All, as if it were a rich emotional deposit, bringing pathos even to a bland line like, “I think I think too much.”
Though “Stone” is the only song that explicitly features Sebastian Kole, he contributed plenty as one of the album’s producers and a co-writer. Kole, who has been in the factory songwriting system for a little while now also makes his own music. Two things jump out at a first-time listener: his gorgeous voice and painful earnestness. That helps explain why he’s helped construct such compelling vocal showcases for Cara, but also why her punchiness has been overtaken by something more cuddly. (“Wild Things,” which transforms Cara’s grousing into a lame children’s book reference is the most obvious example.)
A Times profile of Cara from May reveals something of Kole’s approach. As a songwriting exercise, he compelled Cara to write confessionals as if they were meant for no one but her — and then email them to him. The sound of those emails may well be reflected in the soppy ballad “Stars.” “I need you, baby I need to, let down my guard, and give you my scars/ Open up my heart and we could be stars,” she sings. It’s easy to see how this form of diaristic writing could be confused with the honesty that made “Here” such a winner. But writing from the heart does not automatically imbue lyrics with depth.
Never is it more apparent that the factory approach is not allowing Cara to fulfill her potential than on “Scars To Your Beautiful.” The first verse is so arresting that I’m tempted to just quote it in full. It’s about a woman who deeply wishes to be beautiful and feels that she isn’t. The verse ends on a showstopping, deeply upsetting line: “She tries to cover up her pain, and cut her woes away/ Cause covergirls don’t cry after their face is made." It is frustrating, though sadly inevitable given Know-It-All’s tendencies, that the chorus then reverts to uplifting pablum. The hook forces itself not only to redeem the devastation of the verse, but to do so cloyingly, without any kind of subtlety or empathy for the subject it rendered so well.
The industry has always wanted its pop stars to be all things to all people, and it’s easier to be kind and inspiring than it is to write songs that can be difficult to hear. But generality is the enemy of good songwriting, which, on some level, Cara clearly knows. She urged her label to release “Here” as a debut single and thankfully they listened. As she gets older, her voice should get stronger, on her own songs, and in fighting to get the right ones made. | 2015-11-16T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2015-11-16T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Def Jam | November 16, 2015 | 5.5 | a0a92867-7f49-4f7f-af60-22a160849b48 | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | null |
Jack and Meg White's first two raucous platters are given the reissue treatment. | Jack and Meg White's first two raucous platters are given the reissue treatment. | The White Stripes: The White Stripes/De Stijl | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8650-the-white-stripesde-stijl/ | The White Stripes/De Stijl | Hell yeah, hot freaks. Jack and Meg White's first two raucous platters are coming back at you in the biggest redistribution by a major label of still-available albums by fake-sibling bands beginning with the letter W since Elektra fancified Gene and Dean Ween's early catalog! For you efficient readers resistant to some patented Pitchfork scaffolding because you spent the night deciding which Gargamel quote to use in your chat profile, here's the quick review: once upon a time, the White Stripes were the half-mortal, half-Godzilla missionaries sent to lead rock to its promised land, and their rekkerds measured up to the hype. These albums contained thunderous, honky-soulful, lacerating pop at various stages of evolution. De Stijl is better, but only by noses. The end! Anyone still Stripe-hungry, read on:
You probably weren't given the choice of not admiring this fine pair. Their charm is so bullying that their fans have become like hog-tied soldiers in the days of impressment, and their sudden crossover ubiquity threatens to vault them into a saturation-backlash a la the Spice Girls. This week's highlights:
BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA: An undergrad Design major turns in her final project-- a giant, circular red-and-white UPC symbol, inspired by the White Stripes' peppermint motif.
SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA: Two nervy fellas with hopes of being Jerry Bruckheimer's production assistants become the it-boys of their apartment building's pool when they pump White Blood Cells; their Aiwa boombox's shuffle feature begins fortuitously with "Fell In Love with a Girl."
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA: A group of conscientious dropouts walking home from a coffeehouse drumming circle are hooted at by some ballcapping Thads in a Pathfinder. One of the dropouts yells a retort. The Thads park, exit, and dry-gulch one of the group's males, who will require stitches. Blasting from the Pathfinder the whole time: the Stripes' "Expecting."
ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO: Taking his cue from a canny jukebox selection of the treacly "We're Going to Be Friends," a well-meaning mouth-breather out on the town seduces a tat-dappled Zippo-grrl with his knowledge of the White Stripes. When he goes to pee and service his coifed mane, he hears the kitchen staff jamming on "I Think I Smell a Rat."
MTV: Yep.
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA: After the forced closure of her aquarium store, a girl gets high and goes to a 24-hour Wal-Mart with a permanent marker. Her plans to vandalize the pet department are thwarted by a potty-mouthed fifteen-year-old who runs a shopping cart over her left foot, dismantling her flip-flop and her pinky toe. The cart's sole contents: a copy of Is This It and a notepad listing the Strokes and the White Stripes, with the Strokes crossed out.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: Packed venue Black Cat becomes a hub of debate when a guy, sporting a stocking cap despite the broil, claims that every incarnation of the garage-blues revival is better than the Stripes. A straight-edge female eventually punctures his facade by tricking him into praising a nonexistent Detroit Cobras album.
SOY-BASED AIRWAVES: National Public Radio does a feature bit on the White Stripes. The band's shtick gets more airtime than their music. Fans are reportedly color-coordinating their outfits at Stripes shows, further shearing the curtain between indie rockers and Delta Chi Omegas at homecoming. 'Brother' Jack righteously plugs the blues, and 'sister' Meg joins him in a shout-out to Mom.
EAU CLAIRE, WISCONSIN: General Mills test-markets White Stripes cereal. Participants report a rise in general sexiness; the swagger index quadruples. People greet each other with cool, quick nods, slightly puckering their lips. Mail carriers make devil-horn hand-gestures to suggest that tailgaters pass.
See, Ryan Pitchfork makes us wear these teal beepers 24-7, even if we're going to a waterslide park. I was working at Cinnabon at the mall last week, and he beeped me, and I called him back and he said he wanted to hear me eating a Cinnabun while I talked to him. I reminded him I'm hypoglycemic; he reminded me that he was the boss. He promised me free Barfsurfer and Hymenella promos. I ate for him, and then he said, "Let's review the old Stripes records that Sympathy never sent us." And I said, "What's the point? Nothing new can be said about the Stripes." And he said, "Just compare and contrast, like in high school. Reinforce their greatness. And leave yourself out of the review this time; you're like an aborted fetus trying to win your parents' love. Richard-San doesn't pull that needy shit." Then he asked if there was a Gingiss Formalwear at my mall, because he wanted to hear sequins crumpling next time we talked. "Get gussied up," he said, and I said, "Ai'ight," and he said, "Audi 5000." Cinnabon fired me, but I was tight with this skeezer at Successories, so we just switched aprons.
I'm delaying actually confronting these records because they don't conjure a hunched-before-a-besotted-Compaq vibe. This band's rock is so imposing that you want to be in some kind of motion to describe it. You shouldn't wuss around it, or intellectualize to it. You'll headbang involuntarily. You've got to hear the Stripes' albums; if I explain them to you, you'll picture a novelty band that peaks on a public access talent show. But Jack White's in that league with Isaac Brock; some weird, earnest quantity about their best work (realness, maybe?) deflates irony-dependent artholes, pointing out how lodestone-free our hands and pockets remain. You don't want to be the lame-ass clicking a Microsoft mouse in the presence of this adrenal crunch.
Witnessing White Blood Cells and then De Stijl and then the self-titled debut is similar to watching the undeveloping photograph that begins the film Memento's retrograde arc. The listener can hear how the band leapfrogged to greatness with each release.
The first adjustment that De Stijl requires is that you get used to the guitar not taking up as much awesome space as it does on White Blood Cells. And in places, the first-day-with-the-new-rhythm drums are "Hotel Yorba" sloppy, infinitesimally behind. And Jack sounds nasal every now and then. That said, these strong songs hold their own against Cells, as Jack scrapes the strings here and lets them shriek there-- and when she's on, Meg's channeling of Little Red Riding Bonham leaves potholes. People pounce on the Stripes' Zep-a-billy, but damn, you've got to respect a band that, while covering Son House's "Death Letter," compresses all the atmosphere of stadium dinosaurs into a streetcorner act. No mere duo's made this much noise since Eric B and Rakim.
The acoustic sweep of "I'm Bound to Pack It Up" manages to homage the Who, Floyd, the Kinks and Zep, not to mention its lofty adherence to the rambler-wanderer tradition. The crisp "Apple Blossom" could be a Revolver outtake. The Stripes' blues obsession is more evident here than on Cells; in addition to the dedication to Blind Willie McTell, songs 7-9 feature some mellow, mellow slide leads, and "Hello Operator" rips into a harp solo. These gestures are performed with the same heedful regard as the Stones' similar nods-- a hymnic tone prevents them from oozing into blues-aping caricatures, or the diluted Caucasian appropriations that clog rock history. The wailing vox of "Let's Build a Home" suggest AC/DC's Bon Scott, another blues-influenced metal god whose act was great when it stuck to making brassy rock about the hollowing universals of fumbled desire and spiritual homelessness. You can barely buy the heartbreak because it's delivered so cockily.
I've alluded to a lot of old-school bands (whoops-- left out Sabbath), but I contend that De Stijl is progressively derivative, as opposed to, say, the Mooney Suzuki, who should be paying royalties to a handful of bands, some as recent as Mudhoney. The Stripes' oddly conventional subjects (domesticity, marriage, optimism) distinguish them, and they have heartiness of style to spare. The disc's packaging juxtaposes the band's Willy Wonka fetish with museum pomp; the liner notes contain a manifesto on simplicity, and God comes first on a list of "those who helped in the making of this record." Opener "You're Pretty Good Looking" best combines the band's skills, and hints at Cells' heavy gleam. This song flexes serious pop muscle, and contains the non-sequitur and surrealist touches that give Cells its mystic, mythic penumbra (backs are broken, thoughts are stolen, the year 2525 looms). Only Cells' guitar ballast keeps the legitimately exciting De Stijl in check; the skeleton of the Stripes' breakthrough was clearly already intact.
The debut is, predictably, an altogether more raw affair, with not enough variations on the theme. Meg's balancing presence is the only thing saving the album from induction in the saloon-door-violating big-dick guitarchives. The album's Detroitness is transparent, and its blues aren't nearly as reconciled with its punk. Some of the staccato riffs seem to have speech impediments. No Beatles ghost triggers the Ouija board. A slightly distorted Jack yelps and squeals and sounds tinny by about the twelfth cut, a far cry from the visceral prophecy and pronunciamento of Cells "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground."
The record is saucy, but ultimately not as arresting as the others, even though the arrangements are just as winningly unadorned. Well, except for the tunes where Meg's approaching army tank-tread drums are reverbed, as if the band is masking their spare sound the way straight-to-video horror movies attempt to camouflage their low production values. "Sucker Drips" is uncharacteristically thin, and the sassy plod of "Astro" dates back to the, uh, (cough) Cramps. The cover of Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee" displays excellent taste and replaces the original's violins (and Emmylou Harris) with some dope organ, but the tempo-- and Jack's half-tribute sinus inflection-- bring the party down.
Colossal offerings abound, though: the three chords that constitute "Little People" embody the sound of rock insisting on its own supremacy. The ode to alienation "When I Hear My Name" is rife with blistering "mmmms" and "whoah-ohh-ohh-ohhs." A different Blind Willie, this one a Johnson, gets an uncredited updating on "Cannon," a rousing rendition of the apocalyptic "John the Revelator." Robert Plant's quivering androgyny gets a thorough reworking on the bratty, double-timing "Screwdriver." Every Brit band who's ever blown an amp before you were born gets amalgamized on "Jimmy the Exploder." And ass is simply kicked by the falsetto twists and Pepsi-bottle percussion breakdowns of "Broken Bricks."
The debut rocks in turbo-increments, but its statement is fussy and loping. A standoffish, reclusive element (manifesting itself in Jack's scream of "don't wanna be social") is more disagreeable and difficult than the entirety of the other, more accommodating records to follow. The puerile veneer that has driven some to judge the Stripes as stunted in their tweens is yet to emerge, although many fans in their thirties have voiced gratitude for a band that can be counted on to help them forget that they have kids to beat and dishes to break.
This scrappy band's not dumb and it ain't a fluke-- the Stripes could do their rock 'n' roll homework in their sleep. They linked underground noise to American roots, validating it at long last! Thank fate that the Stripes are finally making the indie rock lobby less effing stuffy, after all those tweedy, post-Tortoise Ph.D'd doops cramped everybody's style! I want somebody to play their guitar like the four horsemen just unplugged all the teleprompters! Who else could pull off the two-person thing? (Not Swearing At Motorists.) The uniform thing? (Not The Make-Up.) The candy? (Not Sammy.)
Feel no shame in climbing aboard the Stripes' double-decker fanwagon. Just act like you're getting one of these albums for a less-hip friend, or purchase something really obscure along with it, like a Vocokesh or When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water album. Hooray for civilization, I didn't talk covetously about Meg's bod! We don't need another hero! Uncross your eyes! There's gravel in the bubblegum! This ain't juvenilia, bitch, it's rawk! | 2002-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2002-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | null | June 17, 2002 | 8.3 | a0b1b3e6-7d2a-4ed1-a64d-68208b553b01 | William Bowers | https://pitchfork.com/staff/william-bowers/ | null |
On singer-songwriter Caroline Sallee’s latest EP, everything is transitory—especially life itself. | On singer-songwriter Caroline Sallee’s latest EP, everything is transitory—especially life itself. | Caroline Says: Ohio River EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caroline-says-ohio-river-ep/ | Ohio River EP | Since she began recording as Caroline Says, a sense of displacement has persisted in Caroline Sallee’s music—a looming apprehension that nowhere will feel like home. Her debut 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong recounted getting lost on the West Coast, while last year’s lovely No Fool Like an Old Fool mourned her dwindling relationship with her hometown. The namesake waterway of Sallee’s new Ohio River EP touches neither her native Alabama nor her current home base in Texas, but geographic location isn’t important here. Everything is transitory, Sallee seems to say, especially life itself.
On Ohio River, Sallee’s top concerns are mortality and time’s tendency to slip away. “I was so young when I left town/But then again, I never felt that young anyhow,” she muses on dreamy opener “Falling Knife.” Death is coming, she reminds us, and it’s coming soon. When she sighs, “One day your body’s in the ground and your soul is in the sky and it don’t take long,” her words sound more like an affirmation than a warning. The narrator of “Ohio River” revisits the small town where they grew up and realizes that they’ve become an entirely different person—a common theme for Sallee. The memories are fond yet pained as the song’s characters turn their gaze to the lapping river. How does one cope when everything changes?
Expanding the electronic and ambient influences introduced on No Fool, Ohio River’s hazy, unassuming dream-pop sounds ever so slightly out of reach. Sallee continues to namecheck classic influences: Swinging breakup tune “Smoke and Mirrors” crosses Pixies with Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” while the hypnotic “Year of the Cicada” is indebted to composer John Barry’s vintage James Bond scores. “Falling Knife,” the EP’s strongest point, soars with an electric guitar line and swelling synths inspired by David Bowie’s “Heroes” (co-written by Brian Eno). Sallee’s sound is foggier and more reserved, but “Falling Knife” offers a similar sense of reverie.
“Everything I knew is gone now/But somehow nothing feels brand new,” Sallee murmurs on “Ohio River.” It’s a fitting thesis for the EP, which feels more like a postscript to No Fool than a separate venture. If that album was a starting point, then Ohio River lies somewhere along the journey to Sallee’s next destination. | 2019-12-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-12-05T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Western Vinyl | December 5, 2019 | 7 | a0bbf9ee-789d-4759-a71d-6ecbed691549 | Abby Jones | https://pitchfork.com/staff/abby-jones/ | |
Refusing to be hemmed in by quarantine, the veteran improvisers took the unusual path of recording separately: drums first, then overdubbed guitars. The results are genuinely life-affirming. | Refusing to be hemmed in by quarantine, the veteran improvisers took the unusual path of recording separately: drums first, then overdubbed guitars. The results are genuinely life-affirming. | Chris Corsano / Bill Orcutt: Made Out of Sound | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chris-corsano-bill-orcutt-made-out-of-sound/ | Made Out of Sound | Bill Orcutt spent the 1990s as a member of the experimental hardcore trio Harry Pussy, but since returning to music in 2009, he has mostly performed solo. His playing is a fountain of ideas; whether he’s on acoustic or electric, he generates enough notes to sound like an entire band. But something special happens when he partners with veteran improvising drummer Chris Corsano. Their last LP, 2018’s Brace Up!, featured 12 tracks that zipped by in 33 minutes, and each abrasive jam had its own character. Sometimes it came over as a noise-music spin on primal rock’n’roll—James “Blood” Ulmer covering the Ventures, say—and sometimes it veered into soundcape territory. You could hear Orcutt singing and moaning along as they bashed out the tunes in the room, capturing moments when his mouth realized where the music was going next before his fingers did. Its energy and playfulness had you wishing for another collaboration, and soon.
With Made Out of Sound, Orcutt and Corsano return with a slightly different kind of record. They recorded the album in 2020 during the pandemic, so instead of raising a holy racket together in one space, they played separately. Corsano cut his drum parts on his own and then sent them to Orcutt, who improvised while listening to what Corsano had laid down. In notes with the release, Ocrutt says, “I was watching the waveforms as I was recording, so I could see when a crescendo was coming or when to bring it down.” Orcutt overdubbed an additional guitar, relegating one to some notion of “rhythm” and another “lead,” though what you hear doesn’t match any conventional idea of that distinction.
So Made Out of Sound is a hybrid piece—improvised, but with advance warning of where the music is going, which brings an element of composition. And it turns out that this combination of approaches makes for some gorgeously life-affirming music. These pieces are certainly prettier and less aggressive than those on Brace Up!, and that’s mostly up to Orcutt. During more relaxed moments, they bring to mind the spindly probing of the Tren Brothers, the Dirty Three side project comprising guitarist Mick Turner and drummer Jim White. Corsano’s free playing seems at all times to hover in the space between a steady beat, an explosive roll, an exploratory warm-up, and an ecstatic solo; he hits his kit with the same pace and force as their last outing, but here it’s a touch less pugnacious, perhaps owing to the room he recorded in. And Orcutt’s guitars are less cutting and sharp, with a warmer tone that rings and clangs while notes hang in the air, as if we are hearing a recording of a giant wind chime left outside during a hurricane.
Together, they make a rare kind of racket—music where the precise form is hard to apprehend while the obvious beauty comes pouring through. On “Some Tennessee Jar,” Corsano pays particular attention to cymbals, his hands falling on the metal in dense waves, as Orcutt plays a sustained repeating figure on one guitar while the other climbs up and down the neck to outline a melody that is exuberant yet shaded with a darker atonality. On “Thirteen Ways of Looking,” Orcutt creates a withering mass of bent notes, sometimes lurching higher for a single piercing tone, while his partner moves from dense pounding to light caresses on cymbals. And on “Man Carrying Thing,” Orcutt’s dual guitars solo furiously, either fusing into a single line or clashing dissonantly, while Corsano makes his snare and toms sound like a brick of fireworks exploding.
It’s a joyful noise. This is one of the more uplifting records of experimental music in recent memory. There’s something about how Orcutt and Corsano push each other that leads to work that pulses with the life force—these pieces bring to mind sunlight hitting a maple leaf, cells dividing under a microscope, a deep thirst quenched. Along with his 2019 solo album Odds Against Tomorrow, Made Out of Sound makes an excellent introduction to the gorgeous and challenging work of Orcutt’s second act.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz / Experimental | Palilalia | April 1, 2021 | 8.1 | a0c1b778-904b-4057-b941-0e91064e42c8 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | |
Music for yoga may be an ambient cliche, but the Los Angeles synthesizer musician largely avoids new-age pitfalls on this album of unabashedly functional background music. | Music for yoga may be an ambient cliche, but the Los Angeles synthesizer musician largely avoids new-age pitfalls on this album of unabashedly functional background music. | Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-tides-music-for-meditation-and-yoga/ | Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga | To make beautiful music to chill out to is a simple concept. But those simple things can prove the most beguiling. A quick scan of ambient music in the 2010s reveals a cornucopia of immersive headtrips, icy expanses, sorrowful collages, high-concept inversions, and no small amount of kosmische synths, yet an album of light-as-a-feather music for yoga still scans as a bit gauche. One imagines digital djembes, sappy flutes, and seashore cover art staring you down from the CD rack at a local health-food co-op. New age’s earnestness was both its greatest asset and its Achilles’ heel, spurring artists to radical spiritual goals while often blinding them to their own corniness. But on Tides: Music for Meditation and Yoga, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith keeps things in check. Commissioned in 2013 by her mother as background music for her yoga practice, the album elegantly sketches nine pieces with a minimum of means—just Smith’s Buchla synthesizer and a few field recordings. This is functional music, and as with the best functional music it finds freedom in getting out of its own way.
Tides is lean. It’s a testament to its economy that the ascending melodic noodle central to the opening track feels grandiose after a few spins of the LP. True to its name, Tides slowly ebbs and flows, moving with a gradual deliberateness that has nothing to do with tension and release. Instead you wade into it, floating on its bobbing waves until you’re ready to come out. The tracks are just distinct enough to keep monotony at bay, but cohesive enough that you might not catch when one ends and the next begins. Put it on loop and go about your day and you’d be hard pressed to notice when you were in the fourth, fifth, or eighth rotation.
That said, Smith really hits her stride as the album develops. “Tides I” may serve a mood-setting purpose, but it hews a little too close to children’s music. Its buoyancy grates every so slightly, telegraphing serenity with perhaps too much eagerness. But soon enough, the music stretches out, melting into something more sublime. “Tides IV” gently slows time with a warbly melody and warm whooshes of static, while “Tides V” bathes in lush, consonant drones.
This wind-down, from the bustle of the day into the still center of a deep stretch, casts a spell regardless of context, but true to its nature it works best when played in the background. When listened to without distraction, the album felt somehow lacking—I kept searching for a foreground that never appears. But when you put it on and forget about it, it can transform a room. In this sense, Tides succeeds as ambient music in its purest form.
I’m often struck by a suffocating optimism that keeps cropping up in modern pop. In cafes, advertisements, and seemingly anywhere millennials congregate, I hear choruses of wordless whoa whoa whoa-ing—a plague of ambitions and superlatives. At moments, Tides edges in this blandly pastel direction, nudging its round synth tones into treacly affirmations. But at its best, it truly does soothe. Often, the purely pleasurable gets a bad rap in music. As critical listeners, we may feel uneasy with the inviting, the humorous, or the purely fun. Darkness, ambiguity, and innovation are wonderful, but do we need them while doing yoga? Tides requires no justification for its existence beyond its own warmth. Take it or leave it, but as its final track dissolves into three minutes of bird calls and chimes, I doubt you won’t feel better than when you put it on. | 2019-01-14T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-08T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | touchtheplants | January 14, 2019 | 7 | a0c26737-d2a4-43e6-adda-cb1d6b079fd0 | Daniel Martin-McCormick | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-martin-mccormick/ | |
Loud, playful, and full of smoldering angst, the hyperpop rapper’s new album feels emblematic of the moods and textures that this scene aspires to capture. | Loud, playful, and full of smoldering angst, the hyperpop rapper’s new album feels emblematic of the moods and textures that this scene aspires to capture. | ericdoa: COA | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ericdoa-coa/ | COA | At the core of “likewise,” a standout off ericdoa’s thrilling new album COA, is a massive, messy breakup made messier by stray heart eyes and the tease of celebrity. Singing with a scummy scowl, ericdoa channels all the hubris churning inside him, careening between late-night drives and money dances, bloodshot eyes and wads of cash on the nightstand. It’s what I imagine having your world shattered as an almost-famous teenager feels like.
That’s the energy throughout COA, which vaults ericdoa into an unmissable presence in the glitchy, amorphous wave of online rap that Spotify curators want to call hyperpop. Loud, playful, and full of smoldering angst, it feels emblematic of the moods and textures that this scene aspires to capture.
Then again, ericdoa himself is representative of what a hefty chunk of this crowd looks and sounds like: He’s 18 years old, deeply online, a disciple of Lil Uzi Vert, Bladee, and Lil Peep, and he lives in Georgia by way of Connecticut. His snarl sounds transplanted from a Hot Topic in 2005. In “movinlikeazombie,” one of his most popular songs to date, his bit-crushed alter ego Dante Red is drunkenly stumbling down store aisles, holding $3,000.
That sort of absurd, imagistic writing isn’t entirely lost on COA—Dante makes a return on the delirious “do or die (interlude)”—but it takes a backseat. The record is instead caked with thick slices of melodrama, like the cavernous “self sabotage,” where ericdoa sings of screaming from rooftops about an ex he’s not over yet. Nearly every song on COA is about an ex that he’s not over yet: an ex pulling him in too close (“deep end”), an ex who tried calling him eight times (“2008”), an ex that texted him at 2 p.m. asking if he’s up yet (“thingsudo2me”). This surprisingly works in service of the record, rendering it a brisk, 23-minute gulp of teenage angst.
The production, too, feeds into that feeling. COA is constantly twitching, lurching, finding new ways to shape and interact with ericdoa’s voice, which is tuned in different ways, layered, even chopped into tiny pieces. These producers—chief among them glasear and kimj, who contribute to eight of the 11 tracks—share the frantic mindset that no element of the beat is safe after ten seconds. The drums switch up a half dozen times on “mistake,” touching on EDM, drum-and-bass and arena-sized rock. “loose ties” fully unravels from ericdoa’s towering chorus into a soft, synthetic bed for Grandma’s verse.
It’s an unhinged, indulgent record that can teeter on being overwhelming. ericdoa gets lost in the noise on “ivy,” where his verse is drowned out by the blaring drums. The opposite isn’t exactly appealing, either. The closing track, “plea,” is a sappy, cheap-sounding acoustic ballad clearly meant to function as some sort of grand turn or unveiling. But the bulk of this album operates in a sharp, controlled chaos that ericdoa thrives within. For a hyperpop scene still finding its footing (and itself) COA may prove to be a foundational work.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | DOA | November 16, 2020 | 6.8 | a0c39699-7b33-4c9e-8427-92dc6a85700c | Mano Sundaresan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mano-sundaresan/ | |
Reviving Untold’s Hemlock label from a four-year slumber, the UK producer returns with an EP of stripped-down basement tracks bridging dubstep’s early years with club music’s future. | Reviving Untold’s Hemlock label from a four-year slumber, the UK producer returns with an EP of stripped-down basement tracks bridging dubstep’s early years with club music’s future. | Beneath: On Tilt EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beneath-on-tilt-ep/ | On Tilt EP | When poker players are on tilt it’s generally not a good thing. Their decisions are clouded by emotion; they make reckless plays, misjudge their luck, and tend, eventually, to spiral out. But it can be thrilling, in the most visceral, addictive way imaginable. There aren’t many analogues between casinos and nightclubs (not the good ones, anyway), but that sense of effervescent tension would be one. It’s also a decent frame through which to appreciate Beneath’s brand of dance music: Typified by the kind of moody, tense energy that’s best broken by either tears or laughter.
Beneath, real name Ben Walker, has quietly wielded pretty enormous influence on UK club music over the past 10 years or so. In the early 2010s he offered a darker, denser take on something resembling UK funky, cutting a singular groove with his own No Symbols white-label imprint. The label later morphed into a series of DIY nights in South London. (Walker moved to the capital from his hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, via Sheffield, both former industrial towns in the north of England.) These were gatherings infused with the energy and creative optimism of the city’s early dubstep parties, and later birthed a run of cassette releases, sharing set recordings from the nights. But amid all this, the previously steady clip of Beneath’s own musical output became sparser. On Tilt is his first solo release since a two-track 12" for Blackest Ever Black offshoot A14 back in 2018. Its arrival is timely, not only rousing Hemlock Recordings—the post-dubstep label that unleashed the likes of James Blake and Joy Orbison in the late noughties—from a four-year slumber, but landing after a year in which the UK’s shuttered clubs have been sanitized by nostalgic rose-tints and the language of parliamentary petitions. On Tilt’s dense array of basement club tracks provides a reminder that, sometimes, joy is found in the grit of things, and in the nervy, clammy-handed moments that jostle with unblemished euphoric bursts.
“Bone Hum,” with its side-winding flute-synth melody over staccato drums, shows off Beneath’s knack for the sort of melody that can just as easily soundtrack the early hours of the club as the scenes six hours later when sweat is pouring down the walls. He dips a toe into acid waters on “Lesser Circulation” to enchanting effect, drawing a direct line between the bright-eyed days of UK hardcore and his own inkier iterations on drum-heavy dance music. On “Shambling,” he pitches down a double reed clarinet (a zamr or mijwiz, most commonly found in the countries of North Africa and the Middle East) and weaves it between bouncy kick drums and reverberating rim shots. It’s a sound that slots neatly into the emergent strains being pushed by the London-based but globally-facing Nervous Horizon label and its founders Wallwork and TSVI—but longtime dubstep fans will undoubtedly hear shades of old Cyrus and Digital Mystikz records in there too.
Beneath manages to toe the delicate line between an obsessive reverence for what’s been and a concerted dedication to what might come next. But there’s never the risk of a chinstroke. Case in point: “Dark Waters” pays homage to the meditative expanses of early dubstep music, revelling in all the reverb-laden detail—but never so much that, in the right circumstances, ravers wouldn’t happily lose their shit to it. Because where’s the fun if you’re not slipping out of control from time to time?
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2021-05-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-17T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Hemlock | May 17, 2021 | 7.1 | a0c53daa-bfd2-4997-9e50-3905e901c148 | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
Holy Ghost!'s first new music in years is a bright, tight, tense mini-epic, solidifying the band as one of the pillars of the mid-'00s disco resurgence. | Holy Ghost!'s first new music in years is a bright, tight, tense mini-epic, solidifying the band as one of the pillars of the mid-'00s disco resurgence. | Holy Ghost!: Crime Cutz | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21813-crime-cutz/ | Crime Cutz | While James Murphy and his cohorts in LCD Soundsystem are busy touring the globe while positioning themselves as voices of a generation that may have partied a little too hard for a little too long, their DFA labelmates Holy Ghost! are engineering a notable return to form with Crime Cutz, their first EP of new material since their 2013 sophomore record, Dynamics. Up until now, Holy Ghost!'s arguable greatest achievement was their debut single, "Hold On," a track brilliant enough to carry the band from its release in 2007 to their debut album four years later. The four sprawling, joyous dance tracks on Crime Cutz finally follow up "Hold On" with something equally substantial. It's a bright, tight, tense mini-epic, solidifying the band as one of the pillars of the mid-'00s disco resurgence.
The EP's titular opener begins with a drudged-out minute of spacey synths before bursting into full-fledged disco: arpeggiated synthesizers, falsettos, super-dry guitar riffs, an angelic choir of diva vocals, and a hands-to-the-heavens chorus of "You lift me up and up! Up and off the floor!" Many of these elements could be regarded as pure retro revivalism, but Holy Ghost!'s touch is light enough to make the song transcend its obvious crib notes.
Crime Cutz doesn't draw only from disco, however. There's a distinct '80s-pop aura permeating the record, courtesy of over-the-top pop arrangements and frontman Alex Frankel's earnest blue-eyed R&B vocal style. "Stereotype" recalls old-school dancefloor staples from the likes of Colonel Abrams, Rockwell, and even Jermaine Stewart, gems from the post-Thriller R&B boom that produced countless hits. Frankel sings with the uninhibited glee of someone karaoke-ing "P.Y.T." at a high school house party circa 1984. "I know I'm a stereotype," he croons, "don't be so critical […] Let go." You'd expect nothing but seriousness from a band that is this on top of their history, but they understand that half of what makes this type of music fun is its abandon.
Another highlight, "Compass Point," adds another instrumental layer with a welcome and unexpected surge of horns near the end. If anything, Crime Cutz's weakness lies in its lack of diversity—you spend a lot of the record hoping for something to take them even further over the edge, but they continue to pull back until the very end. "Footsteps," the record's closer, is the only track that slightly misses the mark, leaning a little too heavily on all the touchstones mentioned above. It barely touches the overall effect of Crime Cutz, though, and if this EP is indeed a precursor to a new full length,we have reason to be excited. | 2016-05-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | DFA | May 3, 2016 | 7 | a0c6e9ea-19ca-436b-80f6-45ad765d5f34 | Cameron Cook | https://pitchfork.com/staff/cameron-cook/ | null |
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 pure and quiet record from 2002, when the Dixie Chicks were the most righteous band in country music. | 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 pure and quiet record from 2002, when the Dixie Chicks were the most righteous band in country music. | Dixie Chicks: Home | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dixie-chicks-home/ | Home | As the summer of 2001 drew to a close, Natalie Maines invited her bandmates—the sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Strayer—to play some bluegrass in her living room in Austin, Texas. They’d been off the road for a few years, and their plan was to hang out, catch up, and remember how good it feels to hear their voices blend in harmony, for no audience but each other. Earlier that year, they’d sued their label for withholding royalties from their first two blockbuster albums. In the years after, they’d find themselves in a righteous battle against the industry, leaving their future as a band uncertain. But for now, they were enjoying the most relaxed, unburdened creative experience of their lives.
It was Maguire on fiddle, Strayer on banjo and dobro, and Maines with a voice like a gut-punch. No amplifiers. No drums. One song Maines suggested they try was Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” a classic rock staple that Stevie Nicks wrote at the age of 27. Maines, who had just turned 27 herself, found new resonance in its words after the birth of her first child and she thought she could hear her bandmates’ voices in its bittersweet sunshower of a melody. Also on the setlist were two songs written by the folk artist Patty Griffin. One was about speaking your mind in the face of public dissent; the other was about winding up on your deathbed with a long list of regrets.
They weren’t planning on making an album. And even if they were, because of the lawsuit, they figured they couldn’t release it anyway. As the music started coming together and Maines enlisted her father, behind-the-scenes steel guitar legend Lloyd Maines, to produce the sessions, they brainstormed a couple of strategies. After the surprise success of the bluegrass soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, they thought maybe these songs would be served best in a film. They contemplated going indie. They considered breaking the mold and sharing the music directly on their website for free, a way to thank the loyal audience they’d amassed as a major breakthrough act in the late ’90s.
At the time, their lawsuit with Sony was the biggest controversy the Dixie Chicks had ever faced. But it was far from their first battle. By now, they were used to fighting for everything they wanted. There were problems with their Little Feat-inspired band name: the label didn’t like “Chicks,” other corners were uncomfortable with “Dixie.” At least one sound guy refused to plug in their instruments at a show, assuming them to be mere props. In the studio, there was the man who thought the iconic title track of their 1998 major label debut Wide Open Spaces wasn’t country enough for them to track; and then there were the industry people who thought it was too country and asked for a remix without banjo and fiddle. Their answer, of course, was hell no. They learned quickly their instincts were right.
When their follow-up, Fly, arrived a year later, the Dixie Chicks’ merging of country and pop had been accepted by the mainstream. But their subject matter hadn’t. There was the sex talk in “Sin Wagon.” (“That’s right, I said mattress dancing,” Maines sang, using her southern twang to tug the vowels of each word, like she was making sure the conservatives at country radio heard her correctly.) There was also “Goodbye Earl,” a singalong anthem about murdering an abusive husband without a tinge of regret. It’s their signature song, their unsubtle twist on the genre’s legacy of male-narrated murder ballads about cheating wives and no-good women. To make their stance clearer, they paired the single with an ironic B-side cover of Tammy Wynett’s “Stand by Your Man.” Men with powerful positions at radio stations weren’t crazy about that one either. Maines laughed it off: “We always figured whoever was complaining must be beating their wife.”
As the whirlwind cycle behind Fly calmed down, things got more personal. The band claimed the label was withholding over four million in royalties and tried to terminate their contract. The label countersued. The band sued back. In the end, they re-signed to Sony with a few conditions. They would get their own imprint (Open Wide Records), an increased royalty rate, and, most symbolically, they would effectively banish the men who had signed them and produced their first two records. “We felt like we were fighting a battle for our industry,” Maines explained.
This was all happening in the background as they worked on the pared-down story-songs that would comprise their third album together, Home. But they didn’t let it affect the process; Home became a state of mind, the place where no one could reach them. Recreating the living-room feeling of those early demos, they worked at a studio in Austin, within an hour of all their houses. They decorated it with candles and kept the mood light. “They’d be looking at catalogs of baby clothes and home furnishings,” Lloyd Maines recalled of the sessions. There were no deadlines, no demands. Family members stopped by regularly. “It just seemed like the next phase,” Natalie Maines said. “Just be laid back.”
They recorded tributes and inside jokes, love songs and lullabies. “Little Jack Slade” is an instrumental dedicated to Maines’ newborn son. It’s not just a sign of who the Dixie Chicks were becoming—proudly virtuosic, uninterested in trends, a family operation—but also a nod to where they began. In the late ’80s, the group formed as a quartet featuring Maguire and Strayer, costumed in cowboy hats and fringed jackets, playing bluegrass on street corners for passersby: a markedly old-fashioned vision of country at a time when people like Garth Brooks were starting to take the genre to commercial and theatrical extremes. After the original vocalist and guitarist quit in the mid-’90s, the sisters enlisted Maines, a younger singer who grew up surrounded by country music but gravitated more toward Madonna. She had a similar influence on the group, pushing them toward brighter, wider terrain.
The only song on Home that all three members wrote together is “White Trash Wedding,” an upbeat breather that was inspired by an episode of Jerry Springer. “I shouldn’t be wearing white and you can’t afford no ring,” goes the chorus, which is funny but also telling of the characters they were now interested in. These are songs that pit romantic idealism against blue-collar heartache, that establish American archetypes as settings for hard lessons and disappointment. “It was a broken dream right from the start/Bless their tortured, tangled hearts,” Maines sings at one point about a doomed couple miles from the sweeping romance of hits like “Cowboy Take Me Away.” The story in the opening track, “Long Time Gone,” takes the optimism of “Wide Open Spaces” to its logical conclusion; the narrator winds up embittered but at peace back in his hometown, where big dreams go to die and the country music on the radio sucks.
In the last verse of that song, Maines aligns herself with outlaw heroes like Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash as opposed to the genre’s more modern torchbearers. It’s a stance she would echo when she found herself in a feud with the country jock Toby Keith, of all people, and his awful, xenophobic “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” Maines hated the song: “It’s ignorant,” she said, “And it makes country music sound ignorant.” Keith, who had somehow positioned it as a tribute to his late father, took her criticism personally, calling her a “commie heathen” and projecting a photoshopped image of her with Saddam Hussein at his concerts. He was not alone in this sentiment. At the 2003 CMAs, where Maines performed in a shirt that read “F.U.T.K.,” the audience booed when the Dixie Chicks’ name was spoken.
“This is our version of a good patriotic song,” she would say in concert while introducing “More Love,” a ballad on Home’s meditative second half. With a rocking-chair tempo and an insistence on empathy above all else, it’s a song about the tension between two people, only zooming out in its closing verse to address a country spiraling toward extremism. It’s sequenced on the record right before “I Believe in Love,” which the group first presented at a televised benefit concert in the weeks after 9/11. Their performance was one of the quietest of the night, as they sang about silence, solitude, and truth, huddled together, surrounded by candles. You can watch their performance and see the roots of the record they would make.
The sound is wistful and hushed, with a deeper focus on harmony. But the words remain pivotal, and the vision is strangely prescient. The two songs written by Patty Griffin, one of the band’s formative influences, serve as the heart of the album. In “Truth No. 2,” Maines belts in her powerful soprano how “you don’t like the sound of the truth coming from my mouth.” Without the direct narrative of their previous anthems, they mediate instead on the moral of these stories. Maines would become well-known for making enemies by speaking her mind; “Truth No. 2” would become the centerpiece of their songbook,
The other Griffin composition, “Top of the World,” finds Maines narrating from a haze between life and death, lamenting “a whole lot of singing that’s never gonna be heard.” The arrangement is the album’s most elaborate. Its orchestral swell is punctuated with dramatic pauses that stretch it out past the six-minute mark, as if the song itself is fading in and out of consciousness. It threatens a long, eerie quiet, an afterlife to be avoided at all costs.
The Dixie Chicks named their tour after that song. The original plan was to bring the album’s rootsy sound to small theaters, joined by a rotating cast of like-minded artists: “We’re thinking Lilith Fair with men and without politics,” Maines joked. They tested out a few shows in this style after the album’s release and eventually decided to take it to arenas. Full-band, big crowds. They kicked things off in London in March 2003. Before playing their latest single “Traveling Soldier,” Maines addressed the Iraq War that would officially begin in just nine days. She told the audience calmly that the band did not agree with the war and that they were embarrassed to be from the same state as George W. Bush. The crowd applauded; the band counted off and started the song.
In an alternate universe, the show goes on and everyone agrees with Maines that the war is a disaster. But because this is country music in the 21st century, because they are women, because of Bush’s approval rating post-9/11, because of Toby Keith and the angry American, they find themselves facing a violent backlash. There are death threats. Radio stations stop playing their music and urge fans to destroy their CDs. Sales decline. Sponsors drop. “I mean, the Dixie Chicks… They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out. Freedom is a two-way street,” Bush comments. “What a dumb fuck,” Maines responds, staring directly at the camera in a documentary called Shut Up and Sing.
The film, which documents the response to that night in London, also explores the making of Taking the Long Way, their follow-up to Home. A complicated, often autobiographical rock album produced by Rick Rubin, it plays like a new start—their first record on which every song featured a writing credit from a band member—but also a farewell. “Do you really think we’re going to make an album for you and trust the future of our career to people who turned on us in a day?" is how Maines explained their abandonment of country music. The first single, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” remains one of their best songs, an explosive ballad about standing by your beliefs. When the song was first presented by songwriter Dan Wilson, it was an apologetic, crowd-pleasing track called “Undivided.” Maines had some edits.
By the time they performed the song at the 2007 Grammys, where they won every category in which they were nominated, the public perception of Bush and the war had changed. But the band still suffered the consequences. Album and ticket sales had fallen short of the label’s expectations, with little support from the radio stations they had previously relied on. The performance that night marked their last for years, as the members embarked on quiet side projects. It wasn’t until they heard a cover of one of their songs by Taylor Swift—and the massive response it got from her audience—that they decided to embark on a full comeback tour in 2013.
In their absence, the Dixie Chicks’ story was amplified and widespread. There’s Swift, of course, who found her own voice in their sugar-sweet melodies and arena ambition. (She also turned to their aesthetic decisions when it came time to face the world and reclaim a public controversy). Miranda Lambert dreamed of being her generation’s equivalent, and Kacey Musgraves, who waged her own battles against a sexist industry, cited them as an evergreen inspiration. Equally inspiring is how their influence traveled outside the genre: Indie songwriters like Katie Alice Greer and boygenius have covered them, while everyone from Beyoncé to Soccer Mommy heard their own stories in their songs. It’s a legacy tied both to their music and their message of integrity.
Despite what it came to represent, Home is not a political record. At the same time, it doesn’t sound like the gesture of domestic contentment the band initially presented it as. Instead, it plays like a refined but deeply unsettled record, one that envisions the years to come as contentious and dark, full of silence and loss, a drought of morality we’d all have to face together. “I don’t think I’m afraid anymore,” goes a lyric in “Truth No. 2.” The way Maines sings it, you could hear it as a kind of manifesto, something to roar along with and celebrate. And it is. But she also wants you to hear the hesitance, the questioning, the heavy dissonance in following your intuition to its loneliest corners. It might also be what struck her about “Landslide,” another song written in a moment of transition, where the word “afraid” is given as much weight as “love.” The Dixie Chicks figured the truth could always be found somewhere between the two. | 2020-01-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-26T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Folk/Country | Open Wide / Monument / Columbia | January 26, 2020 | 8.1 | a0cc714b-f829-4305-82ee-ca999d0c5655 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
Calvin Harris didn't create disco, duh. He didn't create electro-house, either, but in a year full of cranked synths, proud hedonism, and Daft Punk shows, the UK music-buying public has decided to befriend the Scottish producer and singer-songwriter. | Calvin Harris didn't create disco, duh. He didn't create electro-house, either, but in a year full of cranked synths, proud hedonism, and Daft Punk shows, the UK music-buying public has decided to befriend the Scottish producer and singer-songwriter. | Calvin Harris: I Created Disco | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/10798-i-created-disco/ | I Created Disco | The creation of disco was one of its most exciting phases. In New York in the early 1970s, you could go to the Loft and hear David Mancuso play anything from the funky Spanish rock of Barrabas to the soon-to-be B-boy breaks of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican". Over at the Gallery, Nicky Siano might've been spinning the Bahaman rhythms of "Exuma, The Obeah Man" or the soulful storytelling of Bill Withers' "Harlem", alongside such Philadelphia Sound standards as MSFB's "Love Is the Message". Other innovators-- Larry Levan, Tom Moulton, Walter Gibbons, Arthur Russell, and more-- also helped define disco without limiting it to the most common definition.
All that's not to point out that Calvin Harris didn't create disco, because, duh. He didn't create electro-house, either, but in a year full of cranked synths, proud hedonism, and Daft Punk, the UK music-buying public has decided to befriend the Scottish producer and singer-songwriter. At only 23, Harris enjoys the kind of Cinderella success story that recently drew British reality TV audiences to singing cell-phone salesman Paul Potts: After a move to London failed to provide a job, Harris went back to stacking supermarket shelves in his hometown of Dumfries until a MySpace page brought major-label executives a-calling. Harris has since scored two top 10 UK singles and recorded with Kylie Minogue.
James Murphy shouldn't worry about losing his edge just yet. DFA's dance-punk figures prominently in Harris' cheeky full-length debut, I Created Disco, which peaked at #8 in the UK this summer and recently arrived in America. So do the Daft-punk'd electro-house of fellow Scottish producer Mylo and the same "borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s" that inspires Montreal/New York electrofunk duo Chromeo. Trouble is, Harris has only one move, and it's not even convincing. But it's all in good fun, supporters protest-- sorry, not enough fun, and stop bogarting that stash.
Oh, sure, plenty of great music can be superficial. I Created Disco mistakes superficiality for greatness. There's very little variation between (or even within) tracks: a vapid vocal hook usually repeats over a simple bass groove and drum programming, with kitschy falsetto and synths, either zapping or distorted. Boringly often, there are boilerplate references to drugs: "Drug-taking at my place," Harris boasts matter-of-factly on latest single "Merrymaking at My Place", which repeats "my house" enough times for LCD Soundsystem's Murphy. Nearly as often, there are equally perfunctory references to the opposite sex. On previous single "The Girls", Harris follows the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" template about as regrettably as Louis XIV did on 2005's "Finding Out True Love Is Blind", except with Scottish attempts to sing like Murphy singing-uh like Mark E. Smith-uh, instead of American attempts to sing like Marc Bolan. "I like them Asian girls/ I like them mixed-race girls," Harris explains.
I'm usually just outside of Barstow in the album's neon desert when the first single, "Vegas", kicks in. It's got both drugs and girls. I know this because Harris sings, "I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills (when I go to Vegas)/ I've got my girls and my boys and my girls". In a blind taste test with follow-up UK hit "Acceptable in the 80s", four out of five of coke heads would make the choice of a new generation-- though there isn't much difference between the two tracks other than the words in Harris' apathetic vocals.
Between the singles, I Created Disco is padded with repetitive, frequently instrumental tracks. Reassuringly, the guy at least seems to have a sense of humor; the spoken-word title track makes it clear he's only goofing about disco-creating and possibly everything else. The problem is, he's not particularly witty, or, even with knowledge of his overnight success story, remarkable. Witness "Colours", which over-extends Harris' tired 80s obsession by suggesting you wear neon instead of black-and-white.
When Harris ventures into a wah-wah slow jam on "Love Souvenir", the slight reprieve is appreciated, even though it ultimately turns into another four minutes of aimless looping. Finale "Electro Man" suggests the young artist might one day reimagine himself as an urbane, Hot Chip-style romantic. Still, it's not sophistication Harris requires, necessarily. The fatal flaw of I Created Disco isn't that Harris works with a style he didn't create, it's that-- after a 2007 in which LCD Soundsystem matched Murphy's head for hips with heart, when Justice rendered synths metallic and Simian Mobile Disco made them child's play-- Harris reduces pop's limitless possibilities to one-joke self-parody, his youth his most distinguishing characteristic, an unremembered yesterday always more vibrant than today. You know "Crank That (Soulja Boy)", lately the biggest American single? That dude was born in the 90s. The kids really are coming up from behind. | 2007-11-01T01:00:04.000-04:00 | 2007-11-01T01:00:04.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Electronic | Columbia / Almost Gold | November 1, 2007 | 3.7 | a0d1f392-f456-465d-b739-06bb1ee4f34f | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | null |
The legendary band reissues and remasters its debut, and still arguably best, album, adding a bonus disc that marks the first time a full R.E.M. show has been released on CD | The legendary band reissues and remasters its debut, and still arguably best, album, adding a bonus disc that marks the first time a full R.E.M. show has been released on CD | R.E.M.: Murmur [Deluxe Edition] | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12464-murmur-deluxe-edition/ | Murmur [Deluxe Edition] | One of the talking points about R.E.M.-- one of the traits listed to distinguish them from many other bands of the 1980s, mainstream or otherwise-- was their stringent democracy. Each member received equal songwriting credit on each track on each album, and reportedly each member not only had equal voice in decisions, but the band would do nothing unless everyone agreed unanimously. Theirs was a "unique four-person democracy that in practice maximalized the talents and insights of four people rather than just one leader calling the shots," writes I.R.S. Records co-founder Jay Boberg in the liners for this new 2xCD reissue of Murmur, the band's first and best full-length. When the band triumphed, all of its members shared the acclaim; when it failed, everyone shouldered the blame. This was an atypical business model, but R.E.M. displayed a seemingly contradictory mix of egolessness and ambition. The group pointedly didn't appear on its album covers or inner sleeves; instead, R.E.M. remained confident that a kudzu-covered ravine or a folk-art painting could speak more strongly about their music than their own presence ever could.
Coupled with that air of mystery, R.E.M.'s practical democracy simultaneously stemmed from and extended to their music. They treated each instrument as essentially equal: Bill Berry's no-fills drums, Peter Buck's spiky guitar, Mike Mills' melodic bass, and Michael Stipe's grainy voice. Because these elements were characters in an equally weighted exchange, the remastering on this version of Murmur (overseen by Greg Calbi) makes it more than simply an anniversary repackaging, but a careful reconsideration that not only changes the lines of dialogue, but alters the entire conversation. Every unique strike of Berry's high-hat and snare becomes discernible, giving his rhythms greater urgency and force. Likewise, Mills' bass gets lower and richer, and his keyboard adds intricate textures to these songs: "Pilgrimage" is layered with reverberating low-end piano and vibraphone, and his honkytonk piano gives "Shaking Through" its country transcendence. Mills' backing vocals are emphasized to reinforce their point-counterpoint interplay with Stipe on "Radio Free Europe" and "West of the Fields". This new remaster doesn't throw off the band's equilibrium: The instruments are somehow now sound even more equal.
It does, however, shift the discussion slightly away from some of the typical influences ascribed to the band-- namely, the Byrds-- and toward the more strident sounds of British postpunk acts like PiL and Gang of Four, whom the band has cited as part of their inspiration but are often overlooked. This dimension of their sound is most apparent in Buck's fretwork; sure, it jangles, but that term has lost some of its evocative sheen through overuse. His guitar also chimes and shuffles and burrs and bellows its way through Murmur, giving "9-9" and "West of the Fields" their jitteriness.
Stipe sing-speaks aggressively through the former but, fortunately, the remaster does nothing to elucidate his vocals. No longer the mumbler heard on the Chronic Town EP, he enunciates more clearly on Murmur, yet there remains an unpracticed quality to his performance. Stipe switches between a wordless careen and a precise croon, reaching into his upper register on "Radio Free Europe" and into his lower on "Catapult". He indulges a slight yodel on "Moral Kiosk" and ends "We Walk" with a strange hiccup. Over the course of the album, his slur is more pronounced but still inscrutable, and he covers his lyrics in layers of ambiguity.
There's a historical component to Murmur that often gets lost: In 1983, R.E.M. sounded unique. No bands were combining these particular influences in this particular way, which made this debut sound not only new but even subversive: a sharp reimagining of rock tropes. Twenty-five years and 14 albums later, our familiarity with R.E.M. means that Murmur has lost some of what made it revolutionary upon release. Fortunately, rather than collecting obligatory bonus tracks and outtakes-- most of which would have overlapped with Dead Letter Office-- the set includes a second disc documenting a show in Toronto from July 1983, just after the album's release. It marks the first time a full R.E.M. show has been released on CD (LIVE, from 2007, was culled from two nights in Dublin), and judging by the intensity with which the band run through old and then-new songs, it could have held its own as a separate release.
It's startling to hear some of these songs stripped down to their four basic elements, with no keyboard or guitar overdubs. Likewise, it's a bit odd to hear only polite applause after "7 Chinese Brothers", which would appear on Reckoning a year later, and surprising to hear people scream for "Boxcars" and a cover of the Velvet Underground's "There She Goes Again" (which they play) and especially "Shaking Through" (which they don't). Live, Stipe deploys an even wider arsenal of vocal tics: vamping on "Just a Touch", growling the chorus of "Talk About the Passion", and sing-speaking through a jaw-dropping "9-9", all while Mills' backing vocals soar overheard and Buck's guitar chimes reliably on every song. Because they were known primarily as a live band, and because they built their identity as such when the industry avenues of promotion failed them, this live disc, much like the remaster, goes a long way toward re-creating for listeners the context in which R.E.M. introduced themselves and making these familiar songs once again excitingly unfamiliar. | 2008-11-24T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2008-11-24T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | IRS | November 24, 2008 | 10 | a0d2bff4-e729-4a20-93d6-ac33e6e09300 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The indie-pop band’s first album in 13 years summons the same mix of erudition, introspection, and intense emotion that has inspired cult-like devotion since the late 1990s. | The indie-pop band’s first album in 13 years summons the same mix of erudition, introspection, and intense emotion that has inspired cult-like devotion since the late 1990s. | Rocketship: Thanks to You | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rocketship-thanks-to-you/ | Thanks to You | Rocketship have long been the type of slightly below-the-radar act that fans connect with in a fiercely personal way. In part this sense of intimacy probably stems from the Sacramento band’s connection with indie pop, which prizes community and handmade sweetness. Like fellow pop kids from Belle and Sebastian to the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Rocketship were inspired by Felt, the ’80s project of reclusive UK indie auteur Lawrence. But Rocketship’s 1996 debut album, A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness, was ambitious and well-crafted to a degree that belied their scene’s reputation for insularity and amateurishness.
Afterward, Rocketship disbanded, and then all but vanished. The sole constant member, singer and guitarist Dustin Reske, followed with a couple of Rocketship albums—1999’s ambient-leaning Garden of Delights, 2006’s more eclectic Here Comes… Rocketship—so low-key that they were off most radars entirely. Now based in Portland, Reske has convened a new lineup for Rocketship’s first album in 13 years, Thanks to You. Arriving again with little traditional publicity push, it’s also Rocketship’s first album with widespread distribution since last century. And it’s shockingly good. Rocketship’s triumphant return still feels intensely personal, only now it’s a bit like reuniting with an old friend and finding they’ve grown into an erudite and beguiling stranger. Whatever else has changed, Reske has shown, once again, that bold aims and modest scale need not be opposed.
The hypnotic organ and crashing guitar on Thanks to You will be familiar to admirers of Rocketship’s early work, but Reske isn’t simply relying on nostalgia. Instead, Rocketship sound more ambitious than ever, the youthful exuberance of the debut giving way to a louche and alluring sophistication. The most obvious difference is the addition of Ellen Osborn, whose past work includes singing in an all-female Bee-Gees cover band, as the lead vocalist on a sizable majority of the album’s 10 songs. She’s both versatile and formidable, her voice crystalline here and feathery there, as the occasion warrants. But most of all, she sounds gamely in control of whatever the compositions throw at her. That’s important, because what’s especially fun about Thanks to You is how packed with ideas these songs are.
A Certain Smile had droning interludes that pointed the way toward the atmospheric instrumentals of its follow-up, Garden of Delights, but Thanks to You goes further. Each of these songs feels as ornately appointed as miniature rooms, with trap doors and spiderwebs that show up as you spend some time living within them. The spacey keys, pinprick bass, and layered harmonies of “Nothing Deep Inside” open up to a French-language spoken-word passage and one of the year’s more poetic guitar solos this side of Big Thief’s “Not.” On “What’s the Use of Books,” a lascivious lunar-lounge cruise suddenly lunges into a stomping, screeching frenzy. There’s yearning dream pop (“A Terrible Fix”), an orchestral-tinged synth workout bringing to mind recent Rest-era Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Outer Otherness”), and whatever you call a song with the jangling riffs of Johnny Marr, the shoegaze whorls of Kevin Shields, and the organ-soaked detachment of Laetitia Sadier (“Broken Musicbox”).
This expanded scope also applies to the songs’ lyrics. “Drunk, I’m always drunk/When I’m with you,” Osborn sings as the autumnal opening track, “Under Streetlights Shadows,” rushes to a start that feels in medias res. “When I asked for rent, you sold my amp,” she chides on “Nothing Deep Inside.” Amid the shrill drum-machine thump of “Milk-Aisle Smiles,” Reske pleads with a lover by way of a reference to Joanna Newsom’s Milk-Eyed Mender, rhyming “laissez faire” with “touch you there.” On “City, Fair,” which veers from Pentangle-style folk to Fleetwood Mac-worthy sing-along, Osborn leaps just just as adroitly from Ren Faire “o’er” to all-too-contemporary “black ops on the street.” It’s a lot, and delving into it all is a treat.
“Thanks to You is for all the fucked up children of the world,” Reske has said. “In my lyrics now I use a broader lexicon, yet the subjects reflect much of the same longing for love and connection through dysfunction and alienation as always.” That constancy is easiest to grasp on the songs where the lexicon, lyrical and musical, is most direct. “I Just Can’t Get Enough of You” lacks the innocence of Rocketship’s classic “I Love You Like the Way That I Used to Do,” but it’s still a giddy rush of noise, melody, and emotion. Or take finale “I Don’t Know Why I Still Love You,” a back-and-forth duet that conjures up the Cure and Saint Etienne meeting at a rave. “Love a lie, you auto-replay ‘One Man Guy’ now,” complains Reske, citing Loudon Wainwright. ”I wave my fuck-it flag, you wear your love like heaven now,” Osborn spits back, quoting Donovan. It’s all as confused and emotionally extreme as a teenager, but as complex and fraught with references as an adult.
Thanks to You is a long way from Rocketship’s irresistible debut single, 1994’s “Hey, Hey Girl,” and yet it’s not so far at all. Reske, who has a business bicycling around Portland and doing yard work with only hand tools, still knows how to make something with lofty artistic goals seem as human and sustainable as cultivating a garden. The fucked-up children of the world might turn out surprisingly well. | 2019-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | nonstop co-op | November 1, 2019 | 7.9 | a0d2fcf7-349d-4065-9885-d4821fa558d3 | Marc Hogan | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/ | |
Liz Harris' newest collection of charred ambiance is a companion to 2008's Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill recorded during the same period. The gorgeous and haunting The Man Who Died in His Boat shares many of that earlier record's characteristics and essential appeal. | Liz Harris' newest collection of charred ambiance is a companion to 2008's Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill recorded during the same period. The gorgeous and haunting The Man Who Died in His Boat shares many of that earlier record's characteristics and essential appeal. | Grouper: The Man Who Died in His Boat | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17571-the-man-who-died-in-his-boat-dragging-a-dead-deer-up-a-hill/ | The Man Who Died in His Boat | Always different, always the same. This phrase was used by the late John Peel to describe his favorite band, the Fall. His observation about the Fall captures a broader idea about music fandom, describing what it's like to follow along with a gifted artist who has created her own style but is no hurry to move outside of it. Always different, always the same. It's a phrase that comes to mind for me when I listen to the charred ambient music of Liz Harris' Grouper. Her body of work is of a piece. She layers ethereal vocals that feel less like floating in the clouds and more like sinking into the dark earth, possibly while inside of a coffin; her music is a downcast mix of strummed acoustic guitar and defiantly analog sounding drone and noise-makers. With this small clutch of elements, she's made more than a half-dozen full-lengths and a number of singles and EPs, all of which sound like they could come from no one else. Indeed, the distinctiveness of Grouper is easy to take for granted. There are so many people making music that could fall under the broad heading of "dream pop," but nobody sounds like Grouper.
There is one record in the Grouper catalog that, while certainly cut from the same frayed cloth, stands just slightly outside of the rest. Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, first released in 2008, mostly forgoes the drones and minimalist experiments of her other work and focuses on Harris' voice and strummed guitar. It's her "folk" record, in a way, even though it slots in easily next to her more drawn-out and noisy releases. It is also her best album, a classic of subtly devastating songwriting (it's also an album Pitchfork initially underrated). Around the same time she was recording Deer, Harris cut a handful of songs in a similar vein for a planned album that was never released. Five years on comes The Man Who Died in the Boat, a companion record to Deer (which Kranky is also reissuing on vinyl) that shares many of its characteristics and essential appeal.
Grouper's most obvious contemporary is Julianna Barwick, but while the latter's music has a certain formality and sense of communal ritual, Grouper is disconcertingly interior, as if you're listening in on something private. That feeling is reinforced by the more abstract moments here, which often feel like something tinkered with over many hours in a dark room. The opening "6" finds Harris' voice on a damaged tape, bubbling up from the depths and mixing with swirls of feedback. The haunted "Vanishing Point" consists only of warbly metallic pings over a deep bed of tape hiss. The instrumental interludes aren't necessarily much to listen to on their own (and Harris' personal stamp on them is not as strong), but they do serve a purpose on the album, mixing up the flow of acoustic songs that might otherwise start to bleed together. But placed in relief by the abstracted bits, the individual character of the acoustic songs becomes apparent.
Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill had one of the more striking album covers in recent memory. It's a photo of Harris as a small child, wearing heavy makeup and a black dress that could look like a witch's costume. Though she doesn't generally seem interested in conveying the exact meaning of her songs and leaves a certain amount of that to the listener, the unsettling side of childhood innocence is a pervasive theme in her music. On the best of the songs here, like "Clouds in Places", the title track, "Cover the Long Way", Harris sounds very much like she's taking sing-song rhymes from childhood and running them through a cracked and ashen filter. They radiate a beauty that is simultaneously light and dark, with bright melodies draped with the inevitability of death.
The title of this release extends that idea, alluding to a scene from Harris' childhood where she and her father came upon an empty boat that drifted to shore after the person in it disappeared. It's one of those flashes from long ago that stays with you, an early brush with the idea of mortality at a time when you're not capable of understanding exactly what it means. That sense of confusion, the difficulty of processing and articulation, seems built into Grouper's art. Talking to people about her music, people who are typically ready to share half-formed opinions about music of any kind, I find they often have trouble coming up with words; when it really hits, as it often does here, the music of Grouper creates a feeling that can only be defined as awe, an uncanny mixture of wonder and dread that nobody does better. | 2013-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2013-02-01T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Kranky | February 1, 2013 | 8.3 | a0d30f7e-8041-495b-b0dc-d37f7933faf4 | Mark Richardson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/ | null |
To adjust for the departure of lead singer Daniel Blumberg, indie rock outfit Yuck get further and deeper into their referential personal canon on their new LP Glow & Behold with mixed results. | To adjust for the departure of lead singer Daniel Blumberg, indie rock outfit Yuck get further and deeper into their referential personal canon on their new LP Glow & Behold with mixed results. | Yuck: Glow & Behold | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18582-yuck-glow-behold/ | Glow & Behold | There isn’t a lot of precedent for what Yuck’s doing on their sophomore LP Glow & Behold.While it’s not unusual for groups in more moneyed genres to survive the departure of their lead singer, they tend to bring on a hired gun—Brian Johnson, Sammy Hagar, Peter Cetera, whoever’s singing in Journey right now. But typically in indie rock, when the frontperson’s done, the band is too. So here’s Yuck, not only carrying on without Daniel Blumberg, but also making the rare internal promotion in guitarist Max Bloom, who sang on one track last time out (“Operation”). And yet, Yuck seems like a good candidate to pull this off, because their inexhaustibly replayable self-titled debut from 2011 was nothing but precedent—they were the best Yo La Tengo, Superchunk, Built to Spill and Dinosaur Jr. songs you may have heard in years, but done with enough spirit, melody and grace to serve as tough competition for the originals. This isn’t to denigrate the contribution of Blumberg, after all, he co-wrote and sang the vast majority of Yuck. But as long as they didn’t ditch their CD collection, they’re still Yuck, right? Well, on Glow & Behold, Yuck do indeed get further and deeper into their personal canon. The problem that while Yuck was an excellent facsimile of excellent bands, Glow & Behold is a pretty good facsimile of pretty good bands, a multiplication of fractions.
Or, to put it another way, they’ve exhausted the A-list of 90s indie rock and are now modeling themselves after the next tier: we’re talking Lush, Buffalo Tom, the Lemonheads, maybe Teenage Fanclub if we’re being generous. As a result, Glow & Behold just sounds like Yuck on muscle relaxants much of the time —“Lose My Breath” and “Middle Sea” boast the same kind of fuzzed-up leads that made the guitars of “Georgia” or “Get Away” as easy to sing along with as the vocals, but little of their frazzled energy. Meanwhile, “Memorial Fields” avoids getting too close to Yuck’s hangdog ballad “Suck” simply by insulating itself with synthesized strings.
This shift was inevitable from a physiological standpoint, as Yuck traded Blumberg’s nasal sneer for the more soft-palate lilt of Bloom. The ostensible maturation of their sound was also abetted by the production of Chris Coady, who helped guide Smith Westerns from a raw and tuneful debut into a more lush, distinctly British aesthetic (though on their first album, Yuck was a British band that sounded extremely American). For all intents and purposes, this sounds like their major-label debut: whereas a trumpet solo bisected “Suicide Policeman”, there are horns on Glow & Behold and keyboards often take the place of pedal-altered guitars for a means to add ambience. As a result, there are a few keepers that indulge in sounds that weren’t available to Yuck on their self-produced debut; “Rebirth” is palpably lush shoegaze, while the honeyed college rock of “Lose My Breath” a convincing candidate for primetime 1995 MTV play rather than "120 Minutes." But for the most part, Coady and Bloom combine to smooth out songs that lacked edge to begin with and Glow & Behold sounds far more homogenous than its predecessor even if boasts a near equal array of acoustic strummers, wandering instrumentals and indie rock classicism.
The bigger issue is that in losing Blumberg, Yuck aren’t just missing their lead singer, they’re missing a true frontman, someone who can actually speak for them. Yuck wasn’t much for idiosyncrasy, but it did have a personality—it just so happened that the alternately bummed and bristling indie rock of the 90s served as a perfect conveyance for Blumberg’s lyrics, which found him dumped or just kinda in the dumps. While being every bit as plainspoken, Bloom is harder to read*—Glow & Behold*’s song titles (“Out of Time”, “Lose My Breath”, “Somewhere”, “Nothing New”, “How Does it Feel”) suggest a topical generality and without much elaboration, it’s difficult to figure out what inspired the members of Yuck to create Glow & Behold besides the urge or necessity to make a second album.
Since the split between Yuck and their erstwhile frontman doesn’t seem all that amicable, it’s tempting to view Blumberg’s debut as Hebronix in competition with Glow & Behold. They’re about even, but the comparison is deflating because it confirms exactly what you’d expect: Unreal had shambling charm for days (or at least 35 minutes), but lacked structure and melodic guidance, whereas with Glow & Behold, it’s vice versa. Or, while Yuck made listeners nostalgic for the first Clinton term, Glow & Behold will just make you wish it was 2011 again. | 2013-10-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2013-10-01T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rock | Fat Possum / Pharmacy | October 1, 2013 | 6.1 | a0d8f8a6-3e81-4352-9148-6bdf56dadac2 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | null |
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 Oakland rapper’s imperial ’90s peak with the Dangerous Crew, a slick and funky landmark of pimp rap. | 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 Oakland rapper’s imperial ’90s peak with the Dangerous Crew, a slick and funky landmark of pimp rap. | Too $hort: Gettin’ It (Album Number Ten) | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/too-short-gettin-it-album-number-ten/ | Gettin’ It (Album Number Ten) | By 1991, Too $hort was the foul-mouthed face of Oakland rap. He was fresh off a massive three-album run—1987’s Born to Mack, 1988’s Life is…Too Short, 1990’s Short Dog’s in the House—that went a long way toward solidifying the Bay Area as a regional mecca for rap. His infamous pimp persona—originally inspired after he watched the 1973 movie The Mack—leaned and sprawled over seismic 808s, and laid the foundation for the future of mainstream rap on both coasts. And yet, his engineer and producer Al Eaton had bigger dreams. After a meeting with Felton Pilate—one of the producers behind the otherworldly rise of MC Hammer, whose third album, Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em, went diamond that April—Eaton picked up the pop-rap blueprint that had bankrolled Hammer’s enormous staff, private jet, and 19 racehorses. That money was different.
In 1992, still months before Dr. Dre would release his blockbuster debut The Chronic down in Los Angeles, Too $hort pulled up to Eaton’s studio to get to work on his next album, Shorty the Pimp. The engineer had a crossover plan. “Al gave me a speech about how he didn’t want anyone to say the n-word in his house,” claimed Too $hort in a 2012 interview. “And he didn’t want to make any ‘ghetto’ music.” Too $hort flat-out rejected Eaton’s “corny wack-ass pop” pivot: That wasn’t him. But Eaton wouldn’t budge, stalling studio sessions for days hoping $hort would give in.
Eaton had forgotten that hip-hop’s roots remained regional, even as the commercialization of the genre had already begun. From moving cassettes out of the trunk of his car in the early ’80s to swapping stories with E-40 in a particularly feel-good 2020 Verzuz showdown, $hort has almost always prioritized putting Bay Area culture on wax, uncut, and that is partially why he’s experienced the sort of longevity that’s uncommon in a genre where aging isn’t celebrated. “I make more now than I did in 1989,” said Too $hort in 2021. “When I go do a show they pay way more than ever.” Blatant pop-rap songs have turned into relics; Too $hort held onto his locality and his music became timeless.
Too $hort, born Todd Shaw, was raised primarily on three things: the violent, profanity-fueled thrills of Blaxploitation cinema, the outsider funk of George Clinton, and talking his shit at all costs. He came of age in East Oakland, where pimp culture was unavoidable and crack was beginning to decimate the blocks as the Reagan administration left Black communities out to dry. Schooled on New York imports like the long-winded narratives of “Rapper’s Delight” and Spoonie Gee’s dirty player anthems of the 1980s, $hort was a slick and nasty rhymer from the jump. He laid down anecdotes about local pimps and small-time drug dealers with vivid detail and outrageously dark humor in an unhurried flow, the way a teacher might read a story to their class. (Don’t forget his catchphrase “bitch,” said in a one-of-a-kind squeal.) His commercial breakout albums Born to Mack and Life is…Too Short are packed with X-rated tales and his own brand of social commentary, like when he imagines getting blown by Nancy Reagan on 1988’s “CussWords.” His music got more textured at the tail end of the ’80s, with deeper bass and brooding synths forming the early sketches of mobb music, the funk-influenced sound that took over Northern California in the 1990s.
Giving in to Eaton by cleaning up the harsh realities, crude chronicles, and low-down funk of his music would have meant not only selling out but, worse, turning his back on Oakland. He did exactly the opposite. In the next five years, Too $hort cut four of the filthiest and most psyched-out albums in all of 1990s West Coast hip-hop. He started his hot streak as a mid-20s trendsetter on 1992’s rebirth Shorty the Pimp and ended as a 30-year-old elder statesman who’d given more than half of his life to hip-hop on 1996’s mid-career triumph Gettin’ It (Album Number Ten). And to get to Gettin’ It, he had to drop Eaton and surround himself with like-minded musicians operating on the same wavelength, just like his hero George Clinton would have done.
In the early ’90s, $hort officially debuted the Dangerous Crew, a clique of rappers and, most crucially, producers and nomadic instrumentalists who provided the engine for $hort’s imperial era. They came together like a group of mercenaries in a men-on-a-mission movie. First up was the indispensable Ant Banks, the Funkadelic-minded East Oakland producer with a knack for trunk-rattling drums. The man behind the electro grooves of MC Ant’s The Great and the blunt mobb music force of Pooh-Man’s Life of a Criminal, he became an in-demand Bay Area beatmaker in the late ’80s. $hort ran into Banks at the cable company while they were paying their bills, and after exchanging numbers, Banks was brought on to take over the reins of Shorty the Pimp.
Next was Shorty B, a Washington, D.C.-bred multi-instrumentalist who cut his teeth in go-go bands before trouble made him relocate to Oakland. He jammed on the bass with Funkadelic and fell in with Shock G and the revolving door of the supergroup of hip-hop outlaws Digital Underground. And Shorty B wasn’t just a musical outlaw: When he met $hort he had a bookbag full of guns and heroin. Later, at the Acorn projects in Oakland, Shorty B ripped some P-funk for $hort and was invited to join the Shorty the Pimp sessions. Rounding out the main players was Pee-Wee, a Richmond, California keyboard wizard who grew up playing in church and also eventually linked up with Digital Underground. He was recruited into the mix by Shorty B. With a production and engineering whiz and two groove merchants as a rhythm section, the Dangerous Crew band was set. Too $hort became their conductor, keeping them in check: “All of them had one fault, they all liked to hear themselves and what they did, a lot,” he said.
The band’s fusion of Ant Banks’ sampling techniques and knob-turning sorcery with live instrumentation that put improvisatory spins on spiritual funk odysseys of the past—from George Clinton and Bootsy Collins to Kool and the Gang and the Ohio Players—fueled Too $hort’s five-year bender. It sparked his sharpest and most granular storytelling, and it was fun as hell, too, this deep pocket of style and sound that never bent over backward for a crossover hit. It all led up to Gettin’ It, a grand, reflective finale where $hort grapples with his rap game mortality and legacy—sometimes thoughtfully, other times recklessly—while keeping the raunchiness and sub-bass sound of mobb music intact.
To reinforce the grizzled, weathered aura, Too $hort loosely billed Gettin’ It as a “retirement” album, one of the first of its kind in hip-hop. Of course, like Master P’s MP Da Last Don, or Jay-Z’s The Black Album, it turned out to be more of a dramatic hiatus. He doesn’t even make it through the whole album before definitive statements on the intro like “We gonna’ kick it like this on the last album” turn to hedges by the penultimate track: “This might be the last album I make y’all.”
It does feel like the end of an era, though. By 1993, $hort had settled into his new home in Atlanta—on the album he says it’s because of violence, today he claims it was because Freaknik was so lit—and you sense him second-guessing whether he’s lost that connection with Oakland. On “That’s Why,” over a groovy bass lick and hypnotic synths, Too $hort reminds the younger generation of his Bay Area bona fides, which includes having “sixteen hos/Suckin’ ten toes” and a warning to newer rappers trying to replace him, specifically the duo Luniz: “When you was in the fourth grade I had a record deal/You got one hit record now you ballin’/You make one fake album and you’ll be fallin’.” He flashes one of the coolest parts about getting older in rap: more room to self-mythologize.
That’s true of “Survivin’ the Game,” too, where, in between a few political statements, $hort sounds like the seasoned cowboy in a Western reflecting on the fruitful days before the railroads were built. His nostalgia makes him sound like he just turned 60, not 30, which I guess makes sense in hip-hop, but he owns it: “I’m 30 years old, and far from done,” he spits, silky as ever, once again forgetting that he’s contemplating retirement.
Even his verses about getting ass have that one-last-job feel to them. He treats one more dirty mack on “Bad Ways” as if it’s Derek Jeter’s final at-bat. He admits to wanting to get his ass licked on “Nasty Rhymes,” the type of confession that a hypermasculine rapper would only make if he thought he was peacing out. And also “Nasty Rhymes” finally reckons with Too $hort’s rampant and long-running misogyny. Sort of.
He addressed it in the most half-assed way on “Thangs Change,” a cut from 1995’s Cocktails. There, he drops the pimp character as if he’s ready to own his words but instead cops out, ranting about how society has lost all morality and he’s just giving the masses what they want. “Nasty Rhymes” is almost like a re-do, except he still fails to say anything truly worthwhile. The gist is that an anonymous woman lobs him a couple of questions in a smoothly sung R&B hook: “Too $hort why you say those nasty rhymes?/How come you be dissin’ all us girls?” To which Too $hort, in character, goes on for three verses that could be shaved down to: He doesn’t give a shit.
Of all the vile, unsanitized archetypes in rap, the pimp persona might be the most complicated. Artists like $hort—and Snoop, Suga Free, Dru Down, etc.—weren’t simply reciting old Iceberg Slim novels, or Blaxploitation excerpts, or neighborhood legends, but performing as the pimp. So you get the full scope of pimp culture, including the cars and the fashion, and also the predatory ruthlessness, in an act that intentionally blurs reality and fiction. At its worst the persona is used as a scapegoat to excuse wildly demeaning and offensive attitudes about women, and at its best it can enable extremely theatrical storytelling, such as “Blowjob Betty,” from $hort’s ’93 album Get In Where You Fit In. The few straight-up pimp-rap tracks on Gettin’ It like “Fuck My Car” or “Take My Bitch” (a failed “I Used to Love H.E.R.”-style metaphor) have nothing going for them.
The player’s ball feels compulsory this time around anyway; he’s still plenty funny and pornographic without it. But this is a victory lap after all, a ticker-tape parade in celebration of all Too $hort’s conquests. He’s kicking some stress-free tough talk with Erick Sermon and MC Breed at his side on “Buy You Some.” He’s ceding the floor to Baby D, a rapper who is “not even 10 years old” and it’s way better than it has any right to be. Even the monologue $hort pulls out on “So Watcha’ Sayin’” is inexplicably replayable, as he brags about how he changed the way the next generation enunciates “bitch” over a bounce that could make a glass of brown liquor magically appear in your hand. He’s in one of those zones rappers get into every now and then where they turn bullshit into gold. What better way to pretend to bow out of the game?
As for the Dangerous Crew, they were on their last leg; money, jealousies, and distance tore them apart. They’re still ripping it up and down Gettin’ It, but their instrumentals have a melancholic tinge. If the nostalgic piano riff of “Survivin’ the Game” or Shorty B’s hearty bass flicks on “I Must Confess” played while you were flipping through a childhood photo album, you would tear up. The exception is “Gettin’ It,” which feels like everything Too $hort and the guys had been building to over the previous five years. Joined by George Clinton and his P-funk comrades, the whole gang jams out with their idols for almost six minutes as $hort heads down memory lane. “Gettin’ It” went on to become a Billboard-charting hit and West Coast anthem—and Too $hort didn’t have to intentionally tone down anything to get there.
In 2005, nearly ten years after Gettin’ It, Too $hort was still living in Atlanta and officially out of “retirement” since his comeback album in ’99. Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area, mobb music had bloomed into the upbeat, funk-infused musical style and subculture known as hyphy, pushed forward by artists like Mac Dre and Keak Da Sneak. In that moment, Too $hort teamed up with Atlanta producer Lil Jon and they paid homage to his region’s next wave with “Blow the Whistle,” a hyperactive 2006 joint that gets just about any party jumping to this day. “I come from East Oakland where the youngstas get hyphy,” $hort raps at the end, repping his city from thousands of miles away. At 40, he was doing what he’d always done, making a local anthem that’s so hot it could travel anywhere. His age wasn’t a hindrance, either—if anything it was a celebratory full-circle moment for Bay Area rap and the strength of a connection time could not dilute. | 2023-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-10-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Jive | October 8, 2023 | 8.3 | a0dbc8c6-3d05-4a72-a21b-29cb24afa207 | Alphonse Pierre | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alphonse-pierre/ | |
The twin-brother jazz duo are experts at channeling the sounds of light and ease, and there’s something almost alchemical about their mutual precision. | The twin-brother jazz duo are experts at channeling the sounds of light and ease, and there’s something almost alchemical about their mutual precision. | The Mattson 2: Paradise | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-mattson-2-paradise/ | Paradise | Humble ambitions are easier to realize. Opening a blank document and aiming for one perfect sentence is less daunting than aspiring to a Pulitzer; so too for the component parts of a song, where one lyrical nugget or breezy lick can become an accessible entry to a denser, polished whole. It’s easy to imagine the Mattson 2, Californian twins Jared and Jonathan Mattson, espousing this ideology as they shaped the songs on Paradise. Theirs is a variety of jazz more liquid than jagged, more 10cc than Charlie Parker, and their latest, the brothers’ second venture with Chaz Bear’s Company Records, doesn’t feign loftiness.
Paradise is chill and accessible by design, and it voyages to fewer far-out places than its predecessor, 2017’s ambitious and collaborative Star Stuff. This is “a record to throw a frisbee to,” the Mattsons write, and it’s practically suffused with the San Diego sunshine seeping into their recording studio. Jared’s guitar works sinuous loops around Jonathan’s tight cymbals and staccato snares, and like so many famed sibling outfits (think the Carter Family, the Montgomery Brothers, or the Knowles sisters), there’s something almost alchemical about their mutual precision, the way these songs feel as structurally intertwined as DNA. This sense of sequence and intuitive flow pervades the entire record, one song merging seamlessly into the next; it’s made for holistic listening over its full 32-minute runtime, rather than as plucked-out singles.
The most conventionally structured and accessible songs are, counterintuitively, the album’s least memorable moments. Tracks like “Essence” and “Shell Beach” mark the duo’s first recorded foray into vocals, and while the abstracted lyrics and affectless delivery cohere with the stoned, West Coast aesthetic, the traditional pop framework fences in some of the band’s weirder, jazzier capabilities. These tracks are by no means bad—as its title would indicate, Paradise is the equivalent of a sunny stretch of coastline, and even when the tempo ratchets down, there’s nothing to complain about. Still, it’s hard not to think of Star Stuff’s excellent “JBS” and wish for a little more intensity, for the edible to wear off so you can swim out deep again.
Lyrically, the brothers’ sentiments are standard relationship fodder. “Your energy just seems so impersonal,” they sing on standout track “Wavelength,” before plunging further into an embellished riff. “Let’s take a walk into the dark and find the light.” The song succeeds because it manages to wiggle between both poles, the dark and the light, riffing in a place that feels more like the powerful sweep of an ocean current than an unbothered amble through the park. These moments, scattered throughout Paradise, are its best and most textured. The Mattsons are experts at channeling the sounds of light and ease, but it’s when they orient them within melancholy, distress, or oddity that the contrast is most striking. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in,” sang Leonard Cohen, and when Paradise transcends chill, its fissures offer a glimpse at what the Mattson 2 are capable of. | 2019-06-10T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-06-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Company Records | June 10, 2019 | 6.8 | a0ea8ed7-a25f-4aaf-bcfc-e7583ae150fa | Linnie Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/linnie-greene/ | |
Dissolving three decades of music into a 17-song noise opera, this pivotal live album captures a peerless set from a band who knew its days were numbered. | Dissolving three decades of music into a 17-song noise opera, this pivotal live album captures a peerless set from a band who knew its days were numbered. | Sonic Youth: Live in Brooklyn 2011 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sonic-youth-live-in-brooklyn-2011/ | Live in Brooklyn 2011 | The cover of Sonic Youth’s 1985 album Bad Moon Rising is one of indie rock’s most striking pieces of iconography, with its silhouette of a scarecrow in a crucifixion pose, topped with an evil-grinning Jack o’Lantern set ablaze against the backdrop of the New York City skyline at dusk. It’s a picture that both vividly reflects the album’s thematic autopsy of the dark heart burning inside the American dream, and the ’80s NYC underground itself, a visualization of the feral noise erupting at night in the shadow of the skyscrapers. And coming from a band that’s hardly lacking for T-shirt-worthy album covers, Bad Moon Rising has remained the perfect avatar for Sonic Youth’s violent collision of primitivism and futurism, and their tendency to invest live performance with all the horror and transcendence of a ritual sacrifice.
A quarter century later, Sonic Youth would recreate that incendiary scene on the shores of the East River—though instead of lighting up a wicker man, they offered up themselves. The band’s August 2011 appearance at the Williamsburg waterfront wasn’t technically their last concert, but it was the final appearance of the Sonic Youth that we had come to know and love: the familial, telepathic, eternally spry entity who could translate avant-garde guitarchitecture into punk-rock abandon and vice versa, led by the world’s coolest mom and dad. Behind the scenes, however, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon were on the verge of ending their 27-year marriage, and once the breakup was made public two months later, Sonic Youth’s seemingly eternal flame was suddenly extinguished with a bucket of cold water. The band would fulfill a handful of South American dates already on the books for that November, a lame-duck campaign Gordon would later describe in her memoir as a “raw, weird pornography of strain and distance.” But if someone were to make a factually sloppy Bohemian Rhapsody-style biopic about Sonic Youth, then the Williamsburg show would be its glorious Live Aid-sized climax—the revisionist Hollywood ending for a doomed New York institution.
Live in Brooklyn 2011 was originally made available in 2020 as part of the deluge of official bootlegs that’s flooded Sonic Youth’s Bandcamp page, but it’s the first live recording from that batch to be mixed, mastered, and packaged for physical release (via Silver Current, the boutique outsider-psych label run by Comets on Fire/Howlin’ Rain honcho Ethan Miller). The special treatment is a testament to the show’s significance in Sonic Youth lore and to the peerless performance captured on the recording. Those who experienced this show first-hand, blissfully unaware of the drama stewing offstage, were treated to the rare spectacle of a band hitting explosive new peaks as a live act some 30 years into the game. But with the benefit of hindsight, Live in Brooklyn 2011 sounds more like the adrenalized fight-or-flight response from a band that knew its days were numbered. As Gordon would later write of the band’s final shows: “What got me through was being onstage, the visceral thrill of performing. Extreme noise and dissonance can be an incredibly cleansing thing.”
Where career-spanning setlists from most veteran bands will inevitably succumb to wild variances in tone if not quality, Live in Brooklyn 2011 dissolves three decades into a holistic 17-track noise opera that enshrines Sonic Youth’s greatest attributes and contradictions: a band that dipped its toes into the alt-rock mainstream without ever planting their feet in it, who rose to amphitheater-headliner status while routinely disavowing the old showbiz maxim of giving the people what they want. The Brooklyn set forsakes the band’s most popular songs to illuminate the darker corners of their discography and build bridges between them. The show came at the tail end of the promotional campaign for what would be Sonic Youth’s final official full-length, 2009’s The Eternal, but the album that dominates the setlist is, fittingly, Bad Moon Rising—the record that first pushed them out of New York and onto the American indie frontlines, and which, here, symbolizes both a homecoming and full-circle farewell. And if that significance wasn’t known to the Williamsburg crowd that night, a rare, complementary airing of 1983’s caterwauling “Kill Yr Idols” feels like a coded, foreshadowing communique.
Thanks to the undiminished intensity of drummer Steve Shelley and the steely rhythmic pulse of latter-day bassist Mark Ibold, the back-to-back Bad Moon Rising bookends “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and “Death Valley ’69” absolutely clobber where they used to clang, making them natural companions to Lee Ranaldo’s signature psych-out “Eric’s Trip,” the rocket-launching glam noise of 1994’s “Starfield Road,” and the untamed thrust of The Eternal’s “Calming the Snake.” But the connections being drawn here are as much lyrical as they are musical, with Gordon’s ’85-era mantra “Flower,” Dirty’s sardonic Heart homage “Drunken Butterfly,” and The Eternal’s eye-rolling “Sacred Trickster” foregrounding the feminist fury that courses through the entire Sonic Youth canon, and which acquires an even more acerbic edge when you consider the dysfunctional dynamics Gordon was grappling with at the time. (The latter song’s sarcastic quip—“What’s it like being a girl in a band?”—takes on a whole new discomfiting dimension when you know she’s singing it alongside her soon-to-be ex as the ship’s going down.)
At the end of the show’s first encore, Sonic Youth make an uncharacteristic concession to popular taste by trotting out the beloved Dirty warhorse “Sugar Kane,” whose Marc Jacobs/Chloë Sevigny-festooned video proved to be the high-water mark of the band’s early-’90s crossover. The song’s atypical appearance amid a setlist filled with the deepest of deep cuts underscores the sheer improbability of these avant-rock radicals becoming momentary MTV stars. The group’s contrarian essence is further epitomized by the second encore, where Sonic Youth deliver their first-ever performance of the locomotive, Velvets-esque title track to Moore’s 1995 solo album Psychic Hearts—a move that, in retrospect, points the way to the sort of taut and tuneful jams he would later pursue with the Thurston Moore Group.
Then, for their last song at their last-ever New York City show, Sonic Youth revisit one of the first pieces of music they made there, back when the prospect of playing to more than 50 people outside of lower Manhattan was a pipe dream. Appearing on their 1983 debut, Confusion Is Sex, “Inhuman” sports the sort of needling guitars and galloping, disco-not-disco backbeat that reminds you of this band’s roots in the British post-punk of the day. But here, that four-minute track is distended and disemboweled past the nine-minute mark into a free-form noisepocalypse, providing an instant pocket history of a band that quickly outgrew their obvious influences to pursue an invigorating and unsettling squall that was entirely their own. As the embers of feedback start to dim, Moore declares, “With the power of love, anything is possible,” and he wasn’t bullshitting. Love is what made it possible for a commercially unviable 30-year-old band to attract thousands of people to North Williamsburg on that hot August night in 2011, subject them to a setlist of abrasive obscurities, and still be greeted with a rapturous hero’s salute. And once the love between its two lead singers was lost, the very idea of Sonic Youth became impossible. | 2023-08-12T17:32:31.410-04:00 | 2023-08-12T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Silver Current / Goofin’ | August 12, 2023 | 8.3 | a0ec94b2-1093-472a-be7c-a556000a2b8e | Stuart Berman | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/ | |
On their latest album, the Boston trio explores an eerie, percussion-heavy sound that maintains the adventurous spirit of their best work. | On their latest album, the Boston trio explores an eerie, percussion-heavy sound that maintains the adventurous spirit of their best work. | Pile: All Fiction | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pile-all-fiction/ | All Fiction | With their 2012 breakout Dripping, Pile cemented their status as one the loudest, most quietly influential DIY rock bands with riotous live shows and a discography that brawls with post-hardcore. In recent years, however, the Boston group has been plotting a reinvention. Following 2019’s Green and Gray, they released an experimental cassette tape forbidden from being uploaded online, a completely improvised record, and an LP’s worth of reimagined solo versions of their songs. By the time they regrouped as a trio to record All Fiction, Pile were happy to let their identity crisis take the wheel. Forget about the manic guitars or the thrashing momentum of their old songs. Now, Pile are all about minimalist experimentalism and John Carpenter-style synths—a haunting yet jarring twist that ends up exuding the same adventurous spirit of their best work.
Pile cut to the chase with “It Comes Closer.” It’s less than a bang than it is the smoke rising from the barrel of a gun. Piano chords plod quietly while vocalist Rick Maguire sings along to swells of violin and cello. The production has a degraded quality to it, like a demo tape recorded onto another, older tape. This uncharacteristic mood piece sets the scene for an album designed to keep listeners at arms’ length. Big choruses are jettisoned for ambling, uncertain passages. Strings and synths are at the forefront, where they hum with a delicate warmth. Guitar and bass are sparse, and they often sound as if they’re being played on the far side of an abandoned warehouse. The most obvious departure is Maguire’s vocals, which are pushed to the background. His forlorn singing and occasional yells are submerged beneath the music, creating the illusion that he’s buried beneath rubble; whether he’s fighting to crawl out from under it or lays there suffocating in acceptance is up to interpretation.
Pile have long conjured imagery straight out of a horror anthology: spiders crawling up someone’s ass, a ghost trapped inside a human stomach, the unshakeable urge to get dressed and light yourself on fire. For once, Pile lure goosebumps through the music alone. “Link Arms” segues from a three-note piano part straight out of a paranormal film to spiraling violins fit for Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s dystopian panic. On “Nude With a Suitcase,” Alex Molini uses a Rhodes piano and Omnichord to cast an ambient haze that turns downright eerie by the outro. Even when Pile return to traditional rock song structures, like the thundering “Loops” or “Poisons,” the crackling distortion and alarm-like synths build a type of musical claustrophobia. Despite the absence of a clear narrative, All Fiction creates a cinematic portrait of a narrator slowly accepting their sanity is brittle, which makes sense considering Pile drew influence from the tense yet uncluttered scores of There Will Be Blood and Watchmen.
If Pile’s previous albums trained your eyes to follow Maguire, then this one forces you to focus on his surroundings. Drummer Kris Kuss has long been the driving force behind the band’s tenacity. He’s unforgiving behind the drum kit, hitting with aggression but giving off the aura of a gentle giant. On “Gardening Hours,” he turns sporadic drum grooves into a cool, jazzy rhythm that later slows down. The way his anthemic fills turn into a towering beast on “Forgetting” without overpowering the strings brings to mind the astute style of Unwound’s Sara Lund. Even during the album’s interludes, his airy percussion earns the spotlight without trying.
In 2009, Pile released a stripped-back guitar blues album called Jerk Routine; it’s felt like an outlier in their catalog until now. All Fiction proposes that the trajectory of Pile’s discography is not a line, but a horseshoe. The new album is a similar collection of sparse, atmospheric songs, but it centers around drums and percussion. With Kuss taking the lead, the band settles into a new identity that functions better than expected considering they’ve spent the past 16 years refining what a modern-day rock band could be. Avoiding the clichés of a band ditching their guitars for synthesizers, Pile find a happy medium, approaching the album through inquisitive means and experimental methods to create a similarly intense, albeit quieter, record. You have to bristle and tug at it to get past the barbed wire around these recordings, but once you do, you’re immersed in a surprisingly detailed and evocative world, just beyond the limits of rock. | 2023-02-17T00:03:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-17T00:03:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Exploding in Sound | February 17, 2023 | 7.2 | a0f1655c-138f-4f0a-85e4-83bd47d7c7ce | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
The first major release in three years from British DJ and producer Maya Jane Coles—once sampled by Nicki Minaj—is a moody two-hour collection that highlights her weaknesses. | The first major release in three years from British DJ and producer Maya Jane Coles—once sampled by Nicki Minaj—is a moody two-hour collection that highlights her weaknesses. | Maya Jane Coles: Take Flight | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/maya-jane-coles-take-flight/ | Take Flight | Maya Jane Coles’ breakthrough came down to a single sound: a bright, bouncy organ bassline that gave her 2010 hit “What They Say” its luminous energy. It was hardly an original sound—in fact, it dominated overground house music in the 1990s via hits like Robin S’ “Show Me Love” and Jaydee’s “Plastic Dreams”—but the British producer’s tune made good use of its shivering, octave-spanning frequencies. (So good, in fact, that Nicki Minaj sampled the tune on 2014’s “Truffle Butter.”) Coles’ 2012 DJ-Kicks mix, with its blend of deep house, post-dubstep, and pop melodies, also positioned her as a DJ right at the crux of the zeitgeist. But none of her subsequent output has had quite the same sense of immediacy. Her debut album, 2013’s Comfort, lacked a strong identity, and her 2014 Fabric mix was pleasant but hardly visionary. Coles remains an in-demand DJ—she played Coachella this past spring, and her calendar is peppered with summer dates in Ibiza—but she hasn’t put out a major release since 2014. Three years is a long time in dance music; perhaps to make up for her extended absence, she marks her return to the studio with a 24-track album that runs nearly two hours. Unfortunately, the wider canvas only serves to highlight her weaknesses as a producer.
Coles has always had a predilection for dusky hues and soft-to-the-touch textures, and she sticks with the same palette here. For basslines, she takes the glowering low end of drum ‘n’ bass and smears it like charcoal. Her drums are a mix of skipping house grooves and chopped-up breakbeats. For tone color, she favors swirly synth pads and clean-toned guitar lines reminiscent of the xx, and she fills in the rest with either her own breathy vocals or those of guest singers who sound remarkably like her. Listeners who can’t get enough of these sorts of sounds are in luck, because Take Flight never departs from Coles’ formula. But what at first might seem agreeably moody becomes stultifying after a few tracks. The limitations of her approach are apparent in the fact that she uses the same breathy tone and vaguely downcast melodies whether she’s singing about sexual desire (“Weak”) or depression (“Blackout”)—a risk-averse strategy that sells short her music’s emotional potential.
There are some interesting sounds bubbling under the surface. The filtered bass of “Weak” casts a glance back at Depeche Mode; “Old Jam” pairs a sanded-down sax bleat with a bass tone that quivers like a beam of light in deep water. Just as often, though, her sounds feel arbitrary and generic, as though she’d started out with presets and forgotten to replace them with something better. And her tendency to keep piling on synths and reverb means that the most distinctive sounds still get lost in an undifferentiated beige mush.
Even at a comparatively short four or five minutes long, individual tracks are a slog. In song after song, Coles opts for the same kinds of four-bar chord progressions, which chug gamely away from start to finish. This kind of linear progression makes sense for DJs, but in an album geared at home listening, the mind craves some kind of variety: the flip from verse to chorus and back again, the unexpected detour of a well-placed bridge. Here, once you’ve heard the first 16 bars of a given track, you know exactly what it’s going to do.
The only thing that varies much is tempo. In this, Coles covers an admirable range. There are a half-dozen tracks of slow-burning trip-hop, and another handful of cuts are slow-motion house, somewhere between 100 and 110 beats per minute. Nine or 10 songs follow the textbook stomp and skip of classic deep house, and “Let You Go,” the fastest thing here, reprises the ambient dubstep of Coles’ Nocturnal Sunshine project. Instead of dividing the album into a house-tempo disc and a downtempo disc, Coles alternates between the two modes. But after five or six tracks, the strategy becomes as predictable as her by-the-book chord progressions; the fast/slow/fast/slow sequencing kills any kind of momentum the album might otherwise have achieved.
Take Flight isn’t without its pleasures. “Werk” is a lovely deep-house tune propelled by a skipping hint of UK garage. Its lilting vocal strip faintly echoes Blaze’s classic “Lovelee Dae,” and its pointillist arrangement—a daub of sax here, a pinprick of synth there—benefits from the everything-in-its-right-place sense of cohesion that her songs too often lack. It goes without saying that Coles needs to learn to edit, but more than that, she needs to rediscover the sense of focus that distinguished her best work in the first place. As “What They Say” proved, sometimes going back to basics is the best way forward. | 2017-08-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-08-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | I/AM/ME | August 23, 2017 | 6 | a0f18e12-3255-43ed-a32a-805f7a44d4ff | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
The fantastic album from the Portland-based artist Graham Jonson turns beat music and bedroom pop into a complex psychedelic world with vast emotional horizons. His songs are lush and boundless. | The fantastic album from the Portland-based artist Graham Jonson turns beat music and bedroom pop into a complex psychedelic world with vast emotional horizons. His songs are lush and boundless. | quickly, quickly: The Long and Short of It | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/quickly-quickly-the-long-and-short-of-it/ | The Long and Short of It | Three years ago, a teenager named Graham Jonson released a standout beat tape under the pseudonym quickly, quickly. Though it superficially resembled the loop-by-numbers tunes that had become de rigueur background music for hard-working high schoolers, the music on the tape was ever-changing, new instruments and melodies appearing spontaneously like the colors in a changing sky. Indebted to Dilla, the Pharcyde, and the phantom loops of Burial, Jonson’s work had all the hallmarks of sample-based music, with two exceptions. He didn’t content himself with a novel break or a pretty melody, but stacked ideas and details until each of the tracks included felt like a world unto itself. And there were no instrumental samples; he made it all himself.
It’s cause for optimism that the tape, which could have easily been lost online, not only won the young dude an audience, but also inspired him to work harder, extending the boundaries of his sound. On his debut album, The Long and Short of It, Jonson, now 21, reconciles his approach to beat music with a form of bedroom pop, using two genres known for their modular simplicity to create complex psychedelic music with vast emotional horizons.
The comfort produced by even the most rudimentary beat music is a feature of the genre: a steady rhythm and a pleasant loop make for a safe and cozy listening experience. The best producers tend not let any particular pattern breathe for too long, but the crush of tracks broadcast on lo-fi channels can feel as if they’re running in place. Bedroom pop, at its least imaginative, can be similarly static, guitar chords and banal lyrics taking the place of beats’n’loops. Jonson has little tolerance for any of this.
It would be wrong to refer to his music, which is steady and self-possessed, as restless. Rather, listening to The Long and Short of It is like getting to see firsthand the electrification of billions of neurons in the mind of your quietest friend, an astonishing intensity of motion and ideas swirling under a uniform surface. “Shee” is a good introduction to the album, and reintroduction for Jonson’s singing voice. (In his early teens, when he came up with the name quickly, quickly, Jonson was in a pop-punk band, and you can hear the ghosts of frontmen past in his flat, unselfconscious baritone.) The song opens with an evocative lyric—“She takes the bus at night to ease her worries”—then brings vocal harmonies to the fore, breathes deeply at the two-minute mark, and with a little more than a minute to go, launches into an ecstatic solo that takes a right turn into a final verse and disappears like a tendril of cloudstuff.
Though Jonson affects something resembling a positive attitude on the album’s early tracks—all but begging a partner to “Come Visit Me” on the second track, he commits to personal growth while she’s away—the mood darkens in the latter half, informed by his vocal tone and spare lyricism. Another standout, “Wy,” is an anthem for hypochondriacs, on which Jonson takes stock of his various ailments: heavy neck, aching back, spots in his eyes. He wishes them all away on a stormy and ambiguous chorus, and as the song’s insistent thwacking beat subsides in its final minute, there’s a sense of the dubious relief that Jonson may have in mind.
The album ends quietly, with the Felbm-like instrumental, “Otto’s Dance.” But a quick resequencing of the album offers a firmer resolution: Try closing with the opener, “Phases,” which features an impromptu backing band, giving us a sense of Jonson’s ability to lead an ensemble. The poet Sharrif Simmons utters the words, “It comes in circles” and a lovely storm of an instrumental that prominently features a saxophone solo by Hailey Niswanger, which may be the reason this album scans to some as jazz or jazzy.
That, or the fact that we simply don’t expect the genres in which Jonson is rooted to yield sound so rich, so filled with astonishing detail. He admitted to Flaunt Magazine a couple of weeks back that he had been trying to shed “my previous ‘Lo-Fi Beats To Study To’ reputation, as I think I have a lot more to offer as a musician.” But on The Long and Short of It, Jonson doesn’t abandon the sound that made him stand out back in 2018. Instead, he shows that the same workmanship and care can elevate a song about a relationship, and that a song about a relationship can feel as cosmic, as infinite, as an instrumental. Jonson doesn’t use this album to shed his reputation or reinvent himself. To use a favorite expression of the thousands of SoundCloud producers who should be taking furious notes: He builds.
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. | 2021-08-25T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-25T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Ghostly International | August 25, 2021 | 8.1 | a0f25a24-97db-4f5e-b8c0-76f2d3b7ab63 | Jonah Bromwich | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jonah-bromwich/ | |
The latest entry in a vital reissue series from Numero Group lives at the nexus of the Boston jazz-rock band’s strange evolution. Their daring interplay sounds as if the songs are still being constructed as you listen. | The latest entry in a vital reissue series from Numero Group lives at the nexus of the Boston jazz-rock band’s strange evolution. Their daring interplay sounds as if the songs are still being constructed as you listen. | Karate: The Bed Is in the Ocean | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/karate-the-bed-is-in-the-ocean/ | The Bed Is in the Ocean | From the opening lines, Karate set the scene. “So quiet,” Geoff Farina sings in a determined voice, “I can hear that the refrigerator is on.” Just like that, less than 10 seconds into The Bed Is in the Ocean, you’re right there with him. The room hushes; your attention heightens; things you normally overlook rush into screaming focus. Over the span of the Boston trio’s six studio albums, they transformed from a typical 1990s post-hardcore outfit into something harder to pin down, a rock band guided entirely by emotion and atmosphere. To cap off their brief career, their final recording before disbanding in 2005 was a cover of “A New Jerusalem” by Talk Talk frontman Mark Hollis: a patron saint for this type of career-long journey toward silence.
The latest entry in a vital reissue series from Numero Group, 1998’s The Bed Is in the Ocean lives at the nexus of Karate’s strange evolution. Its nine songs are bold and memorable, with lyrics designed for tightly packed crowds to scream along with. It’s the kind of album whose choruses can only be transcribed in all caps: “GOD DON’T MAKE THINGS THAT YOU CAN REARRANGE.” “THERE IS HARD RAIN WHERE I’M WALKING.” “WHO CALLED? WHAT THE HELL DID THEY SAY?” Three records in, Karate had learned to pace these moments so they arrived like knockout punches, each landing harder than the one preceding it.
And yet, once Farina reaches these climaxes—with an excitable, precise delivery that sounds a little like Jason Molina if he’d raised himself on D.C. punk instead of classic country—you’ve only heard part of the story. There is a feeling in these recordings that the compositions are just outlines, and once Farina runs out of words, the band starts kicking into overdrive. You can practically hear his bandmates—drummer Gavin McCarthy and bassist Jeffrey Goddard—contemplate where to go next, how to steer the songs in unfamiliar directions: say, in the heart-tugging post-rock crescendo of “Outside Is the Drama” or the proggy interludes in “There Are Ghosts.”
Part of Karate’s shapeshifting was due to Farina’s voracious habits as a listener and his expanding repertoire as a guitarist. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I just have an ongoing identity crisis” is how he put it last year. “I just bounce around, and I will never settle down.” Around the time of The Bed Is in the Ocean, Karate began distinguishing themselves from their punk-influenced peers by drawing attention to their jazz bonafides. Farina, a Berklee graduate who currently teaches at DePaul, was proudly defiant about his wide-ranging taste. At a time when Steely Dan’s smooth, sophisticated epics were the antithesis of DIY cool, he wrote music that not only seemed to be influenced by them but also, on a 1999 solo single, openly pledged his love.
Where indie bands like the Sea and Cake built on the muted, springtime breeze of jazz-rock, on The Bed Is in the Ocean, Karate scraped up the grit. Aside from being an excellently recorded album—one that benefits from this type of bare-bones vinyl reissue—the performances feel live and electric, carrying the spark of improvised takes. The roll of McCarthy’s snares throughout “Fatal Strategies” seems to mimic the conspiratorial trill of Farina’s lyrics during the first part, making its wordless back half feel like a work in progress, still being constructed as you listen. This interplay highlights the growing confidence of a band that often used their live shows to workshop new material. They learned from their jazz training to embrace a sense of danger, knowing each risk could lead to their next destination.
While Karate would test the boundaries of this experimental style on 2000’s spacey, masterful Unsolved, the songs on The Bed Is in the Ocean maintain a foot in the world of their early, more traditional sound. The closing “Not to Call the Police,” in that context, feels like a pivot point. For much of the song, the trio explores its quiet-loud dynamics with a noirish mood. The slow groove of Goddard’s bass against Farina’s bending notes and McCarthy’s snaking rhythm conjures a sense of quiet motion, like snow blowing through empty streets on a freezing night, after a blizzard stops.
Then, at the end of the second chorus, the band slows down, quieting their instruments for an instrumental break and pausing every few bars for dramatic effect. Eventually, they head down the runway for a gradual slow build that never quite takes off. It begins with Farina strumming his guitar and listing a few stray, disassociated images. Soon his bandmates join him, offering flurries of emphasis at the end of each line. “And I can see my breath,” Farina notices in the final lyric, just before the band kicks in for one last attack. And as they thrash and sway, you might exhale with him, noticing how it floats and lingers and dissolves in the air around you. | 2022-03-12T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2022-03-12T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Numero Group | March 12, 2022 | 8.6 | a0ff882a-ac4f-4d6e-8640-5effe885b8cc | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | |
The East Atlanta rapper’s latest project is full of whimsical beats and DatPiff-era nostalgia. It proves you don’t need shiny pop hooks to make a thrilling rap record in 2023. | The East Atlanta rapper’s latest project is full of whimsical beats and DatPiff-era nostalgia. It proves you don’t need shiny pop hooks to make a thrilling rap record in 2023. | Young Nudy: Gumbo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/young-nudy-gumbo/ | Gumbo | Young Nudy is known for his appetite: He is a consummate foodie and perpetual victim of the munchies who has become something like the MF DOOM of East Atlanta. To satiate the appetite of his devoted followers—who hungrily await the release of culinary-themed joints like “Loaded Baked Potato,” “Sunflower Seeds,” and “Blue Cheese Salad”—Nudy has served up a 13-course meal, also known as his new project Gumbo. Every track hits a different vector of the food pyramid: “Brussel Sprout” and “Okra” for your daily serving of greens, “McChicken” or “Fish & Chips” for lunch, and a slice of “Passion Fruit” to cleanse the palate.
The loose concept shows how Nudy’s projects have tightened over time. Though his mixtapes have rarely ever ventured over an hour, each release brings increased cohesion and focus, with more care given to the sequencing of the tracklist. Gumbo plays like a fraternal twin to last year’s EA Monster, down to the similar slime-green and red color schemes of their cover art. Nudy offers a funhouse distortion of the late 2000s DatPiff era, manifesting himself as the flesh-and-blood version of the mixtape covers where Gucci Mane was photoshopped onto Buzz Lightyear, or depicted devouring pancakes.
In a 2019 interview, Nudy self-effacingly remarked that he picks “all the beats motherfuckers hate.” But he’s not giving himself enough credit, because it’s his unpredictable taste that has inspired his cult following, and it’s what keeps his work from ever sliding into a formula. Regular collaborator Coupe handles most of the production on Gumbo, and his evocative style enhances but never overwhelms Nudy’s singular cartoonishness. It’s not too trippy, not too trappy, but always just right.
Opener “Brussel Sprout” is disarmingly gentle, built around a twinkling keyboard line. But before there’s even a chance to breathe, the beat deftly swerves into the more aggressive “Pancake,” which sounds like a ’90s No Limit cut beamed into outer space. That quick, unexpected beat switch is a standout moment on Gumbo—it’s hardly even a moment, just the gap between songs. Still, that careful attention to detail is a quality that sets Nudy apart from other rappers of his generation. His work feels like a full album experience, but it also functions as a playlist on shuffle.
So many of Nudy’s selections feel influenced by video game soundtracks, but never in a way that’s self-consciously retro or referential. The Mario Paint-like sheen always pulls back before going full chiptune, offset by thick bass and tight drums, with a tactility that keeps the samples and synthesizers from getting lost in a faraway galaxy. There’s a sense of whimsy here, one that doesn’t ever tilt into novelty or preciousness. “Portabella,” Nudy’s affectionate ode to dosing, is as genuinely psychedelic as anything on Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here: Wavy, new-age synthesizers gently ebb and flow, as bells reverberate and Nudy’s voice melts into a dubby haze. More than any single reference point, Nudy’s production shares a core principle with video game scoring, which often realizes the possibilities of music as a fully electronic medium. He and his producers have no interest in specific instrument sounds, or in beats that feel analog; he’s drawn to the open-ended potential of sound itself.
The guests that Nudy pulls into his orbit on Gumbo make for grounded foils to his ever-mutating voice. Pi’erre Bourne shows up for a shift on “Pot Roast,” along with Key Glock; the track’s MIDI horns might be more cutesy than anything you’d hear on one of the Memphis rapper’s solo projects, but his driving flow is a perfect partner for the tough 808 foundation. The 21 Savage-featuring “Peaches & Eggplants” sounds like it could have been ghost-produced by BeatKing––it’s a beguiling piece of strip-club minimalism propelled by little more than a pounding drum and a noodling synth line. Both Glock and Savage play comic straight men, underlining his goofball sensibility with their more resonant and rooted voices.
The astral sound popularized by producers like Pi’erre Bourne and Working on Dying has usually been favored by rappers working at the edges of genre, flirting with the vernaculars of rock and pop. While Nudy may be in the same universe as artists like Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert, and often plays with a similar sound library, his work remains firmly rooted in rap tradition, refreshingly free of gimmickry or strained hybridity. There are no shiny pop hooks and no guitar riffs here, but Nudy’s still looking to the future. In today’s industry, when a rapper is labeled “experimental,” it usually means they’ve moved beyond the genre. But Nudy’s core remains solid: Gumbo, along with his entire body of work, is evidence that there’s still new ground to be tread and fresh sounds to explore within rap itself. The blend of spices might be Nudy’s own, but the flavor of Gumbo is unmistakably hip-hop. | 2023-03-09T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2023-03-09T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rap | PDE / RCA | March 9, 2023 | 7.7 | a101e4f5-9f76-40cc-9664-54656cbb39ab | Nadine Smith | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nadine-smith/ | |
Composer John Luther Adams and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche collaborate on a recording of Luther Adams' roiling percussion work Ilimaq. Luther Adams won a Pulitzer last year for Become Ocean, while Kotche has made some serious inroads into modern classical, and the two outsiders find a lot in common here. | Composer John Luther Adams and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche collaborate on a recording of Luther Adams' roiling percussion work Ilimaq. Luther Adams won a Pulitzer last year for Become Ocean, while Kotche has made some serious inroads into modern classical, and the two outsiders find a lot in common here. | Glenn Kotche / John Luther Adams: Ilimaq | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21205-ilimaq/ | Ilimaq | Until recently, composer John Luther Adams and Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche would both have been regarded as unlikely draws in the world of classical music programming. During his years in Alaska—far away from the postgraduate-composition academy—Adams specialized in minimalist-influenced works that tended to avoid the driving pulse that made minimalism popular with a wide audience. For his part, Kotche spent a lot of time touring with Jeff Tweedy.
But things can change quickly (especially for a genre with such a long tradition). For Adams, the reversal of fortune came with the mania surrounding his 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Become Ocean: a symphony-length orchestral approximation of maritime ebb and flow. Though Ocean didn’t represent an overhaul of Adams’s aesthetic, it brought his environmentalist’s appreciation for the natural world to a new conceptual height. (The title also gave uninitiated listeners a hint regarding what to expect from his serene-then-raging compositions.) Meantime, Kotche's 2014 classical album Adventureland felt distinguished—even in an active time for indie artists looking to prove their conservatory chops. (The drummer also performed brilliantly on composer Missy Mazzoli's album Vespers for a New Dark Age.)
In the aftermath of his Pulitzer win, Adams has been easier to spot. He’s since moved to New York, where his pieces are programmed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Next year, Adams will be the "composer in residence" at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival—the all-genres-welcome avant-bash that also presents Wolf Eyes and Yo La Tengo. Given this, it’s hardly surprising to find Kotche participating in a recording of Adams’s percussion-driven work, Ilimaq.
That title, which is Inuit for "spirit journey," isn’t kidding around. Scored for three different "stations" of percussion instruments that the drummer moves between, during a performance, this recorded version also tosses in field recordings of nature, ambient accompaniment, and some live-electronic processing of Kotche’s playing. If that sounds like a busy experience, it can be—but only when experienced as a whole. There’s a superficial stasis that masks much of the development here; if you dive into the 48-minute work expecting an instant hit of obvious Pulitzer-genius, you might find yourself initially underwhelmed.
The twelve-minute opening movement "Descent" sounds at first like one long bass drum roll—hurtling forward for a bit, decelerating, then pushing ahead once more. But its closing section presents odd groupings of notes for Kotche to navigate as Adams’s electronic environment undergoes subtle variations. The following movement, "Under the Ice", delights in a teasing ambiguity created by the blend of field recordings, electronics, and Kotche’s gentle cymbal work. The cumulative effect is so hypnotic and meditative that when clear, descending pairs of notes appear in "The Sunken Gamelan", they hit with the force of power chords.
"Untune the Sky" brings everything from the composition’s first half hour together for a rite that finds Kotche wailing on an expanded kit, and it’s here where the drummer’s technique is the most impressive. After that apex of clamor, "Ascension" provides a calming coda of high-pitch drones. As a suggestive mirror-image of the piece’s opening "Descent," it’s satisfying and logical—though the chief virtue of this piece is Adams’s slow-motion way of arriving at grander, less predictable change. | 2015-11-12T01:00:04.000-05:00 | 2015-11-12T01:00:04.000-05:00 | Experimental | Cantaloupe | November 12, 2015 | 7.7 | a107c16d-2e68-4cb3-a178-eb93b9150f76 | Seth Colter Walls | https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/ | null |
On his third solo album, the former Bloc Party frontman unexpectedly trades electronic trappings for a folksy, fingerpicked inner-soul audit. | On his third solo album, the former Bloc Party frontman unexpectedly trades electronic trappings for a folksy, fingerpicked inner-soul audit. | Kele Okereke: Fatherland | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kele-okereke-fatherland/ | Fatherland | So much for an awkward phase. When we met Kele Okereke in 2005, on Bloc Party’s debut album, Silent Alarm, he seemed to have skipped that itchy, pupal phase of most indie-rock frontmen, those years spent in someone else’s idea of cool: the hair too effortfully shaggy, the swoon slightly too melodramatic, 30% too much leather on the body. Just 23 and a university student in London, he was arch and stylish yet never detached; he could seem downright frantic, really, in how much he wanted the world to spin in tow with his own idealism. He was the ideal avatar for this band with a formidable rhythm section, intuitive post-rock guitars, and three other members also spoiled for photogenic angles. Even when Bloc Party’s original lineup strained in their experiments (slide guitar, Auto-Tune), and sounded exhausted in the half-life of their original ferocity (Four), they never failed to be fantastic live, when all the studio clutter melted away and there remained four men of pared-down resolve. That’s when the real magic of Bloc Party happened—when the lads who wrote “Octopus” remembered they only had two hands each.
In his first two solo albums, as the mononymous Kele, Okereke brought a different sort of focus. The Boxer and Trick slotted into Bloc Party’s persistent breakup rumors with their profound apathy for rock music, doling out spiky, uneven house and lo-fi electro primed with xylophones, upstart female dance vocalists (Jodie Scantlebury, Yasmin Shahmir), and Okereke’s durable pathos. Now, on his third record, this time under his full name, the erstwhile frontman treads the turf of most rockers’ first solo forays: the folksy, fingerpicked inner-soul audit. Fatherland is a significantly simplified effort, a work of gentle, singer-songwriter consideration largely haunted by lost loves rendered as exactingly as still lifes. It’s a retrospective of undoings with a cold eye turned inward; it feels cumulative when, in that marbled English accent, he murmurs, “Maybe this is payback for a youth on the run/For all the hearts I did break” (“You Keep on Whispering His Name”), guitar plucks spare and unforgiving beneath him.
In this conspicuous lateral step, in its avoidance of studio sheen and flurried moving parts, Fatherland can feel like a particularly long discourse, one still working out the threads worth repeating. Okereke is acutely aware of the clock, weary of what may not scan as appropriate in his advancing age (all of 35, but he’s a scene veteran, after all). He’s not as amiable at last call anymore: “From the palace of Versailles to the streets of Peckham Rye/You crave the dizziest of heights, but we’re caught out at the lights,” he chides a lover who, honestly, sounds a bit long-suffering themselves (elsewhere in this song, “Streets Been Talking,” Okereke takes a potshot at their tattoo). He spends the holidays apart from his mate, ignoring the sloppy festivities around him to worry that their love is already wobbling, flamenco guitar purring lightly beneath him (“The New Year Party”). Consistently, he seems more content with quiet scrutiny than outer flash; at one point, he sings in falsetto reverence to “Yemaya,” a maternal Santería water goddess, over a brooding, vaguely Celtic string arrangement. Somewhat inexplicably, there is also a ragtime piano ditty (“Capers”).
Okereke, one of indie rock’s few openly gay singers, has a facility with using the male pronouns of his partners in a way seldom heard in the genre. In “Grounds for Resentment,” his deceptively chipper, organ-tinged duet with Olly Alexander of Years & Years, both singers’ lissome jazz-pop trills underscore the rarity here: two men singing their heartbreak to each other, on a relatively mainstream album. Their interplay is charming, the sort of drolly performative two-step of people who know their reconciliation is inevitable: “I kept your T-shirt and your cap/All this evidence is surely looking bad,” admits Alexander softly. It’s Fatherland’s second-most tender track.
The first is “Savannah,” Okereke’s rootsy ode to his newborn daughter. That song, in its Jeff Buckley-esque guitar, dusty handclaps, and seraphic male harmonies, is a lovely moment of paternal wonder. “Oh Savannah you look like your mother/But I did not know her so well,” he serenades her, a beguiling line that stirs many possibilities as he urges her onward to be kind and “let love flow through your soul, always.” It’s the most helpless in awe Okereke has sounded since “This Modern Love,” Silent Alarm’s timeless tearjerker on the complexity of recognizing love and fearing it in tandem. He’s come miles since then, and shed a lot of that noise—and he sounds anything but lost now. | 2017-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | BMG | October 9, 2017 | 6.5 | a10aeea9-8a3f-4cd3-8426-d73b2ed89020 | Stacey Anderson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stacey-anderson/ | |
FitzGerald is an expert synthesist who merges the pop-friendly house and garage of his native London and the patient, muted techno of his adopted home, Berlin. Fading Love is his most writerly album to date, largely eschewing software and completely avoiding sampled vocals in favor of more rounded, organic sounds and live guest vocalists. | FitzGerald is an expert synthesist who merges the pop-friendly house and garage of his native London and the patient, muted techno of his adopted home, Berlin. Fading Love is his most writerly album to date, largely eschewing software and completely avoiding sampled vocals in favor of more rounded, organic sounds and live guest vocalists. | George FitzGerald: Fading Love | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20444-fading-love/ | Fading Love | A quiet figure on the periphery of this generation of British electronic music, George FitzGerald has spent the last half-decade carving out a space for himself with a series of increasingly refined EPs, singles, and remixes. If you want to think of that space in purely geographic terms, it's somewhere between the pop-friendly house and garage of his native London and the patient, muted techno of his adopted home, Berlin. You can also think of it as music with one foot in the club and another in the aisles of your local fast fashion emporium, living in that liminal realm between body music and headphones-oriented composition. FitzGerald isn't an innovative force by any means, but he's an expert synthesist, able to fold a wide array of influences into radiant, splashy cuts like 2013's high water mark "I Can Tell (By the Way You Move)". Fading Love is his first full-length release, and it's marked by a maturity that FitzGerald's earned through his time in the trenches, writing and mixing and performing dozens of live sets.
As part of the larger arc of FitzGerald's career, Fading Love is a natural step forward: it's his most writerly album to date, largely eschewing software and completely avoiding sampled vocals in favor of more rounded, organic sounds and live guest vocalists. Its best qualities are ones that typically lurk in the background of electronic music: restraint, consistency, and an eye on achieving larger thematic goals. The album is built around a relationship that fell apart, and it's appropriately overcast given that fact. There are moments where you can hear FitzGerald toying with a melody that could easily fill a club or send a festival crowd into a frenzy, only to pull back and focus on melancholy once again; "Knife to the Heart" is the best example, with a titanic synth line worthy of EDM's bro princes relegated to spot duty.
Its other highlights find a middle ground between the genteel, bookish techno of label-mate Jon Hopkins and the ruthless pop-house of Disclosure, electronic music's reigning boy kings. Single "Full Circle" and "Crystallise" manage an impressive balancing act: you can imagine them slotting in on the radio somewhere, but they also don't sound quite like anything else in that sphere. Delicately constructed and heavy with emotion, they're the best examples of what FitzGerald can accomplish working in this transitional vein.
Fading Love is set up to reward the same focus it demonstrates: if you dig into each new muted meditation and immerse yourself in FitzGerald's bubbling little temples of thought, you'll find yourself entranced. It doesn't have the same impact when it's flipped on in the background, soundtracking chores or a morning commute: then, it verges on soporific. The guest appearances by singers Oli Bayston (a.k.a. Boxed In) and Lawrence Hart don't help: they're meant to complement FitzGerald's arrangements rather than create any sort of spark. FitzGerald has talked about playing these songs live and reaching the live proficiency of artists like Caribou, an exciting prospect—it's easy to imagine the bulk of Fading Love blooming into something more cathartic and immediately engaging. But even in this basic state, the album is a complete statement that's comfortable in its own skin. | 2015-05-04T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2015-05-04T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Electronic | Double Six | May 4, 2015 | 7.3 | a111b695-ae54-471e-8715-7b576f8c2196 | Jamieson Cox | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamieson-cox/ | null |
The American photographer reflects on the past with a collection of warm, intimate piano compositions influenced by traditional folk and gospel. | The American photographer reflects on the past with a collection of warm, intimate piano compositions influenced by traditional folk and gospel. | William Eggleston: 512 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/william-eggleston-512/ | 512 | William Eggleston’s music, like his photography, lives in vivid color. The 84-year-old artist helped establish color photography as a medium worthy of institutional attention, elevating what was once considered purely commercial to the level of serious art. His photos are shot quickly, yet retain an honest, lived-in quality—in part thanks to his longstanding preoccupation with domestic interiors, aloof inlaws, personal trinkets, and other eccentricities of the American South. Roving and somewhat stiff, his 2017 album Musik unearthed a side of the photographer’s life once relegated to footnote status, compiling decades-old recordings captured on a Korg OW/1 FD Pro synthesizer. 512, Eggleston’s newly recorded follow-up, features warmer and more spacious improvisational piano compositions with an intimate, wide-eyed charm.
The album takes its name from the unit number for Eggleston’s Memphis apartment, where it was recorded, and the music itself has a loose, domestic feel. A gentle brush of incidental noise in the opening moments of “Improvisation” places Eggleston at the piano bench, muttering under his breath before he’s joined by Brian Eno on bells. Eno’s touches are light and restrained, distinctly secondary to the tense stabs from Eggleston. The recordings have some continuity with the modernist lineage of jazz, or perhaps minimalism by way of Eno, but are more strongly influenced by the traditional folk and gospel music played on upright pianos across the U.S. for so much of the nation’s early history. The result is delightfully anachronistic and full of life.
The record’s liveliness is partly thanks to choices made by producer Tom Lunt, who joined Eggleston in Memphis for the recording sessions. As both co-founder of the Numero Group and the archivist responsible for breathing new life into Eggleston’s earlier material, Lunt has a deep understanding of tradition. He invited session musicians like Sam Amidon, Matana Roberts, and Leo Abrahams to perform on the record, each adding subtle flourishes. “Ol’ Man River” is stoic and melancholy, with rolling fiddle and banjo lines from Amidon. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” achieves a similar depth of feeling by way of Roberts’ rich saxophone, which peek through in the piece’s softest moments.
While “Improvisation” and “That’s Some Robert Burns” are both original compositions, the album’s other four tracks are all American songbook standards. “Ol’ Man River,” “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and “Over the Rainbow” all began life as sentimental show tunes, while “Onward Christian Soldiers” is an Anglican hymn that dates back to the mid-19th century. This distinction is, however, ultimately of little consequence for Eggleston, who strays away from anything resembling convention with his improvisations. “Onward Christian Soldiers” moves from pulsing minimalism to discordant jazz and back again, while “Over the Rainbow” leans into the delicate “soft pedal” technique so closely associated with Harold Budd. But where Budd uses the technique to achieve an icy distance on Eno-assisted albums like The Pearl, Eggleston’s playing is strikingly present, with a pastoral glow.
So much about the world has changed since Eggleston first took up the piano, his “first calling” before the camera, in the early 1940s. Where his earlier archival recordings can feel rote and mechanical, like a bit of idle rehearsal time, 512 shows Eggleston reinterpreting his own past and the Southern musical traditions he grew up with. Much like his photographs, which once felt outrageously ordinary, his music provides a snapshot of the changing conditions of his life. 512 looks back with a full-hearted delight. | 2023-11-16T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-11-16T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | Secretly Canadian | November 16, 2023 | 7.3 | a11515cb-53b2-44fe-9ee3-4e62f592a34d | Rob Arcand | https://pitchfork.com/staff/rob-arcand/ | |
Texas duo's debut album blends doo-wop, British folk, and garage rock with the group's arch sense of humor. | Texas duo's debut album blends doo-wop, British folk, and garage rock with the group's arch sense of humor. | Fergus & Geronimo: Unlearn | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14968-unlearn/ | Unlearn | Fergus & Geronimo take their name from the rival youth factions in the 1994 Irish film War of the Buttons. It's a choice of nomenclature that fits indie's recent obsession with childhood and nostalgia, as does the album cover art. Yet when you open the CD edition of Unlearn, you're greeted with the following message printed on the disc: "You still buy CDs?"
That arch, slightly confrontational humor extended to their performance at the 2010 CMJ showcase hosted by fellow Texan, blogger Gorilla vs. Bear. F&G were in full snark mode, sarcastically toasting the event's sponsors (and the blog conglomerates that love them), jibing at trust-fund Brooklyn man-babies, and (in the case of one member) wearing a "Free O.J. Simpson" t-shirt. This sense of dismissal carries over to Unlearn, where the band fires shots at neo-crunch yuppies ("Where the Walls Are Made of Grass"), baby boomers (the appropriately titled "Baby Boomer/Could You Deliver"), and music critics ("Wanna Know What I Would Do?").
All in all, they're pretty fucking funny when they want to be, but this isn't so much "joke music" as "music with jokes." Kelly and Savage claim inspiration from Sparks, another duo with arch humor and serious chops. While there are precious few glam-rock moves involved with F&G, the connection to the brothers Mael holds some spiritual water. Whereas Sparks tended to shift melodic motifs within songs like a Rube Goldberg contraption, Kelly and Savage refuse to stay stylistically still throughout Unlearn, drawing from doo-wop, British folk, garage rock, and the easy jangle of the Who's less incendiary moments.
If it all sounds like a little much, that's because it kind of is-- don't come to this record expecting cohesion or form; you're not going to find much of it here. It's worth charging through Unlearn's varied territory, though, for the smoldering strummer "Forced Aloha", as well as the closing track, in which vocalist Elyse Shrock testifies in spoken word over a warm, 1950s pop song structure about rebelling against authority and refusing to "[bow] to their cross." It's a clever move to couch such countercultural statements within a musical template known for buttoned-up formalism. But its deeper appeal is that it's earwormy enough to take a casual listener multiple go-rounds to pick up on that. | 2011-01-24T01:00:03.000-05:00 | 2011-01-24T01:00:03.000-05:00 | Electronic / Experimental / Rock | Hardly Art | January 24, 2011 | 7.2 | a118d6f9-7435-4cc7-9998-fbbb4e2dcda9 | Larry Fitzmaurice | https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/ | null |
Del tha Funkee Homosapien has, for years, been widely regarded as King of the Oddball Rappers. On Deltron 3030, he unravels an album-length narrative about the titular year, in which he's a superhero named Deltron Zero. | Del tha Funkee Homosapien has, for years, been widely regarded as King of the Oddball Rappers. On Deltron 3030, he unravels an album-length narrative about the titular year, in which he's a superhero named Deltron Zero. | Deltron 3030: Deltron 3030 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2272-deltron-3030/ | Deltron 3030 | Del tha Funkee Homosapien has, for years, been widely regarded as King of the Oddball Rappers. Lugging the backpack long before there was a codified arty hip-hop scene, Del sneaked onto the radio, clinging by his fingernails to cousin Ice Cube's Chuck Taylor strings. Of course, even his hard-rock relative was befuddled by the Sapien's giddy spirals of abstract, meaningless verbiage. "Del," queried Cube on his oddball cuz's debut, "What the fuck is a Funkee Homosapien?"
What the fuck, indeed. Del was never shy when it came to flaunting his restless MC intellect, favoring elaborate puns and encyclopedic vocabulary over, like, meaning. The classic example of this, naturally, is Del's first single, 1991's "Mistadobalina." The track served as a lengthy put-down on some guy named Mr. Bob Dobalina, about whom very little was clear except that Del found him a little silly.
Del has always seemed irritated at having to address the real world, and as such, his best verses are completely divorced from it. For the most part, his last few albums have kept things defiantly surreal, which is great fun, but also chafes the listener. Surely, a lyricist with Del's heavy-duty intelligence has interesting thoughts to share about something other than how cool he and his friends are. It seemed we'd never know... until now.
Paired with the Automator, the Kool Keith-embraced-and-scorned poet laureate of creepy, oppressive beats, Del has finally sent himself where he belonged to begin with: outer space. On Deltron 3030, he unravels an album-length narrative about the titular year, in which he's a superhero named Deltron Zero (a plot not entirely dissimilar from that of RZA's Bobby Digital). Armed with his two sidekicks, the Automator (here saddled with the unfortunate sobriquet "The Cantankerous Captain Aptos") and scratch mastermind Kid Koala (aka "Skiznod the Boy Wonder"), Deltron-Z combs the galaxy, supporting his secretive Earthling existence by participating in weird rap battles where one's rhymes summon psychic powers that physically damage the opponent.
At least, that's what may be going on. Like most hip-hoperas, there's not much stock placed in narrative coherence here. Fortunately, the plot setup-- delivered by a deliciously, almost impossibly bored-sounding Damon Albarn-- gives way to a loose set of ruminations on a myriad of subjects. Of course, the rap-battle set pieces afford Del plenty of time to lavish attention to his favorite subject: how cool he is in relation to you and any poor soul who would dare challenge his verbal supremacy.
But, allowed room to imagine a whole world, many of Deltron 3030's most impressive tracks show our hero exploring a wide-ranging variety of surprisingly weighty topics. The future is imagined from the bottom up: Del lives in a secret lair in the Bay Area, unbothered by exorbitant rents while the world around him falls to pieces. The Earth is run by a select, superwealthy oligarchy who have consigned the underclasses to rot away. (Yes, this is the future.) The environment's in ruins, there's fighting in the streets, and Paul Barman gets a speaking role. In short, things are in bad shape.
Such dire straits reveal Del as a surprisingly acute social critic. He even lacks a New York protest MC's frustrating tendency towards self-righteousness, instead favoring targets that actually deserve his wrath: he wants to destroy corporate control and "convert them to papyrus," mostly, and his oppressed underclass is racially diverse. Like the man says, "It's not about separation/ It's about the population." He resents the appropriation of hip-hop, but not necessarily by palefaces. He just doesn't like biters because they're messing with the genre's chances of being taken seriously.
In the end, that's the most exciting thing about Deltron 3030. Though never self-satisfied or deliberately obscure, the record is an infinite improvement over the wanky verbal gymnastics that currently crowd smug, jerk-off rappers' 12-inches. Though Del may have helped start that trend, here he aches to say something significant. In places-- like the sad, almost Gothic "Madness," the album's masterful centerpiece-- he even succeeds. Now liberated from the obnoxious demands of everyday reality, he's finally found a way to say something meaningful about it. | 2008-07-01T01:00:05.000-04:00 | 2008-07-01T01:00:05.000-04:00 | null | 75 Arkz | July 1, 2008 | 8.8 | a124e707-29b1-4b24-b473-89c9926e1cfc | Pitchfork | null |
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Cory Branan’s latest set of countrified rock tunes may be his best to date. Branan sounds like he’s finally found the right balance between audacity and subtlety, between humor and heartbreak. | Cory Branan’s latest set of countrified rock tunes may be his best to date. Branan sounds like he’s finally found the right balance between audacity and subtlety, between humor and heartbreak. | Cory Branan: Adios | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23091-adios/ | Adios | About two and a half minutes into “Blacksburg,” off his fifth solo record, Cory Branan pauses his countrified classic rock tune for a solo from what sounds like bagpipes, a saxophone, and/or fuzzed-out Flying V power chords. Constantly shape-shifting, it sounds like a parody of white guys making fist-pumping music about feelings: a big moment undercut by its own purposeful self-awareness yet somehow made even bigger by its own self-deprecation. The song itself is about a woman with big dreams stuck in a small town; Branan rhymes “emptying rounds in dark bars” with “getting around in a parked car.” He sounds impressed with her decisiveness and daring, the way she risks becoming the subject of local gossip to inject her life with something like a thrill. If that summons forth too many bad memories of bros singing about fantasy women (the alpha monkey in this dubious genre is Train’s “Meet Virginia”), that strangely hilarious solo allows the song to avoid condescension and let the character breathe.
Branan is smarter and wilier than the singer-songwriter genre typically allows and more intellectual than he’d probably admit. He started barking out his songs in Memphis around the turn of the century, and after two albums on local indie Madjack Records, he moved to Nashville and took forever to write his third and fourth albums, which revealed an easily distracted musical mind and a weakness for confusing cleverness for substance. At times his self-awareness sounded suspiciously similar to self-absorption: Does anyone really want to hear a song about your floundering career called “The No Hit Wonder”?
Adios is possibly his best album to date—it’s certainly his most musically imaginative and arguably his wisest. “Don’t ask me how I even got here,” he sings on the rollicking opener “I Only Know,” before Laura Jane Grace joins him on the chorus: “I only know I ain’t gonna go back.” Rather than aim for the punk assertion of Against Me!, the song recalls the candy-sweet catchiness of Buddy Holly and serves as a short (not two minutes long) overture for the album, establishing its themes if not its sound. Branan is all over the map, veering from the swamp rock of “Walls, MS” to the synth-driven pop of “Visiting Hours” to the country crooning of “Cold Blue Moonlight.”
The album’s greatest detriment, consequently, is its length: At 14 tracks, it meanders, occasionally lags, and indulges far too many tangents and jarring transitions. But Heartbreaker is just as long, so that’s only a minor complaint. Ryan Adams may be the obvious point of comparison for a singer-songwriter in his early forties who loves classic rock as much as classic country and probably has a soft spot for classic metal, too. Branan is funnier and more disciplined as a songwriter, which may be why he’s not as popular. Adios is a good place to start because it’s an album animated by a compelling personal backstory: the death of Branan’s father, the birth of his son, and his relocation from Nashville to Memphis.
With its gently finger-picked guitar theme and two-step drumbeat, “The Vow” could have been just another country song about fathers and sons, but the details are so carefully sketched out and so specific that it feels fresh and affecting. That second verse in particular—in which he considers the implications of the phrase “That’s what you get for thinking”—is Branan at his best, taking something familiar and finding new dimensions in it. All the while, he sounds like he’s just thinking out loud. “I remember thinking, ‘That’s probably not the best lesson for a kid,’” Branan sings. “And although that was just something he said… I get to thinking there may have been some kind of genius in the effortless way he just did.”
“Don’t Go” traces a pair of lover from World War II through the end of their lives, but avoids Greatest Generation sanctimony by indulging his storytelling chops. He tosses off a line like, “Shame about your curfew, I would have liked to have the chance just to kiss you into 1941,” before following the couple right up to their recent deaths. When the horns come in on the bridge, there’s no irony in the music—just a funeral march for two people you feel like you’ve known your whole life. It’s a crushing thematic finale. At the risk of sounding clever myself, Adios sounds more like Hola. Nearly 15 years into his career, Branan sounds like he’s finally found the right balance between audacity and subtlety, between humor and heartbreak. | 2017-04-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-08T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Bloodshot | April 8, 2017 | 7.5 | a1255a18-867e-4ab0-8446-81413865d59d | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The Canadian DJ’s most polished solo release yet is an album of catchy, globe-trotting pop that showcases his talents as a songwriter, producer and curator. | The Canadian DJ’s most polished solo release yet is an album of catchy, globe-trotting pop that showcases his talents as a songwriter, producer and curator. | Ryan Hemsworth: Elsewhere | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ryan-hemsworth-elsewhere/ | Elsewhere | The music video for Ryan Hemsworth’s “Special Girl” features a couple dancing their way through a militaristic beauty school on the outskirts of Shanghai—you might compare it to the video for Britney Spears’ “...Baby One More Time” but with Chinese military uniforms. Perhaps even stranger than the video’s premise is the story of how it came about. Documentary filmmaker Noah Sheldon and his 7-year-old daughter happened upon the Canadian producer in a cafe in Tokyo last December and decided to strike up a conversation. Neither man was familiar with the other’s work but Hemsworth expressed an interest in Sheldon’s latest project, a documentary about the beauty school and its disciplinarian founder. When Sheldon approached Hemsworth with the idea to shoot a choreographed video at the school, he jumped at the opportunity.
This story says a lot about Hemsworth’s attitude towards his craft: open-minded, approachable, and highly collaborative. Long before he achieved jet-setting DJ status, he was using social media to unearth micro-scenes and work with emerging artists on the other side of the globe. But while this curiosity has provided ample grist for Hemsworth’s DJ sets and the Secret Songs label, something has always felt missing from his solo albums. His original material has often felt hemmed in by Hemsworth’s songwriting, which tends toward singer-songwriter introspection that lacks range and depth. With his third solo album, Elsewhere, Hemsworth abandons this sadboy stance almost entirely. Alongside an international cast of collaborators who draw from genres like UK Afrobeats, dancehall, and R&B, Hemsworth infuses these songs with warmth, energy, and a sense of ecstatic joy. Much like with Drake’s recent foray into world music, these sunny hues fit Hemsworth surprisingly well.
Take opener, “This Feeling,” which layers whimsical touches of percussion atop the sort of deep funk groove characteristic of a Kaytranada record. The end result is unapologetic in its ambition to move bodies; it’s music built for dancefloors, not headphones. Both the nocturnal R&B number “Sade” and the wooly pop of “Lagoons” soften the edges of Hemsworth’s typically crisp sound. “Special Girl” and “Beep Beep” draw from a bright palette of marimbas, dancehall melodies, and layers of interlocking percussion. The former is a sublime tropical pop song while on the latter, Atlanta rapper B La B and rapper/singer K4mo stack bubbly rhymes atop drums that clink like glasses. “Beep beep, I’m like ‘Whoa now’/Feet up at your ho house,” B La B playfully jabs; it sounds like he and all parties involved are having a blast.
Hemsworth has a tendency to rethink his sound from album to album, moving from the gameboy symphonies of Guilt Trips to the wintry laptop music of Alone for the First Time to the colorful dance-pop of Elsewhere. Hemsworth does look back here on the closing track “Animal,” revisiting the cold, atmospheric sound of Alone, but it actually feels ambitious now. Hemsworth's chiming, airy instrumental glimmers in the afternoon sun while Robin Dann of jazz-pop band Bernice delivers vocals, which culminate in a cascade of gorgeous three-part harmonies. After a false ending, the song’s elements are reconfigured in a second movement that would feel right at home on a Sigur Rós song, string crescendo and all. Where similar tracks on Alone for the First Time scratched the surface of feelings like loneliness and longing, “Animal” feels rich and nuanced—it’s one of the most refined songs to bear Hemsworth’s name yet.
Elsewhere may suggest a new direction, but its ethos is still wholly Hemsworthian. Though he has collaborated with high-profile artists like E-40, Tinashe, Tory Lanez, and Mitski, all of Elsewhere’s features are from relative unknowns: an experimental producer from Tokyo, a British-Nigerian Afrobeats singer, a playfully melodic rapper from Atlanta via Queens. Where Hemsworth’s previous solo albums were anchored—or, occasionally, weighed down—by his own approach to songwriting, here, he places more trust in his curatorial instincts, following his guests in a number of fruitful directions. Hemsworth has found his way back to where he thrives. | 2018-09-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-09-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Secret Songs / Last Gang | September 27, 2018 | 7.4 | a12ae333-6e80-42ea-8550-5b5a26c0bf31 | Mehan Jayasuriya | https://pitchfork.com/staff/mehan-jayasuriya/ | |
There's a crash and a scream, and the groaning sound of a warship come to rape the harbor: That ... | There's a crash and a scream, and the groaning sound of a warship come to rape the harbor: That ... | The Decemberists: Her Majesty The Decemberists | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2239-her-majesty-the-decemberists/ | Her Majesty The Decemberists | There's a crash and a scream, and the groaning sound of a warship come to rape the harbor: That's right, The Decemberists have another song about pirates. "Tell your daughters do not walk the streets alone tonight!" cries Colin Meloy with nasal urgency, and the band gives it more drama than ever before, lunging into an aesthetic that's half Dickens, half 1950s adventure comic book. You can almost smell the mothballs on their costumes. They don't care that some listeners won't even make it past this song, or that some people don't want to hear a pirate story no matter how well it's told.
The Decemberists may never escape the label "quirky," which is a crime: Whatever the style, Colin Meloy's songwriting makes this band one of the strongest working today. His melodies are so perfect and his words so substantial that it reminds you how much slack you cut most other bands. Too many singers mumble or screech as if they didn't trust or care about their words: Meloy declares his lyrics, lets his work live or die by them, and sets them deep in masterful pop surroundings.
The band's confidence actually makes Her Majesty The Decemberists less accessible than their other releases. Their earliest material, on the 5 Songs EP, didn't stray far from acoustic alt-country, but their first full-length, Castaways and Cutouts-- which many people discovered only a few months ago, thanks to its reissue on Kill Rock Stars-- was a revelation, sometimes brilliant and sometimes a beautiful accident. Its dreamy tone erred on the side of melancholy; by contrast, Her Majesty veers toward the theatrical as Meloy steps up the role-playing and tells more intricate stories.
On "Shanty for the Arethusa" and "The Chimbley Sweep", the band marches aggressively past the just-skilled-enough playing of their other albums, sounding like a version of The Coral that's twice as smart (and half as loud). The horns, strings and keys they've brought in this time sweeten the production, and they nail the upbeat Britpop arrangement on "Billy Liar", a song about a dull summer break that has what sounds like a lovestruck chorus. There's also romance in "A Soldiering Life", a homoerotic ode to the military. It's winningly clever, and even if it's not the deepest song in their repertoire, you have to credit Meloy's enthusiasm when he practically drools the word "stevedore." It's just one display of the surgical precision of Meloy's lyrics, along with the taut ballad "Red Right Ankle", or the rich imagery of "Bachelor and the Bride".
But what's most intriguing about Meloy's style isn't his erudition or kitsch; it's the strange tension he creates by mashing both qualities together. "Los Angeles I'm Yours" sounds odd not just because he matches the disgusted lyrics with a breezy tune, but because he throws old-fashioned, florid language-- references to "orphans and oligarchs" and taunts like "I can see your undies"-- against post-modern Los Angeles. And in "Red Right Ankle", he alternates between a metaphorical and anatomical use of the word "heart." Describing a girl's suitors, he sings, "Some had crawled their way into your heart/ To rend your ventricles apart." We know Meloy can slop through pirate gore in one song and write poetry in the next, but it's more interesting to hear how easily he can do both-- and how willfully he'll do either.
As they've become bolder, The Decemberists have lost some of the uncertain dreaminess of the best songs on Castaways-- say, "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" or "Grace Cathedral Hill". But Castaways' near-transcendent finale, "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade", is matched here by "I Was Meant for the Stage", where Meloy doesn't just state his ambitions, but stands at the front of the crowd and waits for the tomatoes to fly. Maybe from here they'll become an esoteric cult band, or maybe they'll just keep getting better: Either way, The Decemberists have already established themselves so thoroughly that I was able to make it through an entire review without comparing them to Neutral Milk Hotel or namechecking Edward Gorey. They're an unclassifiable American original, and they could turn out to be one of our best. | 2003-09-07T01:00:03.000-04:00 | 2003-09-07T01:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Kill Rock Stars | September 7, 2003 | 8.2 | a12bf648-b104-4143-ac4a-da12271fd57c | Chris Dahlen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/chris-dahlen/ | null |
The two students of J Dilla consolidate their skills to create a free-spirited project around joy and fellowship, with a few meandering moments. | The two students of J Dilla consolidate their skills to create a free-spirited project around joy and fellowship, with a few meandering moments. | Pink Siifu / Fly Anakin: FlySiifu’s | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pink-siifu-fly-anakin-flysiifus/ | FlySiifu’s | Fly Anakin and Pink Siifu share a commitment to community. Fly Anakin, a member of Richmond, Virginia rap collective Mutant Academy, moves with an official unit. Pink Siifu, a wanderer with roots in Cincinnati, Birmingham, and Los Angeles, lacks a formal affiliation, but he’s a fixture of multiple scenes. On FlySiifu’s, the two toast to their support networks and merge them into a village of music enthusiasts and free spirits. The record has the feel of a summer cookout in the park, joy and fellowship flowing freely, friends coming and going.
Set in a record shop that’s named after the rappers but not owned by them, FlySiifu’s follows a day in the life of two languid store clerks. Part Next Friday, part Clerks, the album is stuffed with goofy interludes and skits where customers call the shop and leave angry and yearning voicemails. MadLib, who provides the dusty, hollowed-out beat on “Time Up,” and J Dilla are clear influences. (One customer requests a copy of Welcome 2 Detroit.) There are few choruses, and the pair rarely trade lines or thread their verses together, but their styles have subtle chemistry. Fly Anakin is a showman, streaking through beats with slick, nimble flows, while Pink Siifu is the shaman, his rapping hushed and anxious like prayer. Together they make songs that are heavy yet light, bleak yet resilient.
The production style ranges from dreamy chopped loops with crisp drums to soupy mixes with dollops of texture. Jay Versace’s ghostly piano sample on “Mind Right” leads to verses laced with defiance and dread. Twinkly tracks “Clean” and “Runthafade,” both produced by Lastnamedavid, are breezy and leisurely, yielding full-throated boasts and punchlines. “I’m gold like C-3/Mother fuck a P.O.,” Pink Siifu says, on the former. Fly Anakin follows his lead, repping Richmond: “Divide the James River when I start to practice on the weekend/I hopped the fence and peeked in/My opulence precedes ’em.”
The highlights are the moments when they lean into the contrasts between their styles and voices. “Spades’” is split down the middle between flash and shadow, Fly Anakin swishing around internal rhymes and colorful threats with the precision of Cam’ron: “You know you owe us, nigga/Cold fish pushing boulders, nigga/Focus got you open/Now you loc’in/Bitch you bogus,” he raps. When Pink Siifu takes the reins, the song turns existential: “What more can I say?/How much can I say?/Who can I pray for?/So much to pay for/We find a way.” Both verses address betrayal but come to different conclusions, Pink Siifu offering redemption to Fly Anakin’s retribution. It almost feels like a debate.
Between the skits, the freeform song structures, and the length, FlySiifu’s is a bit too meandering, rarely tapping into the fusionism the title implies or playing up Pink Siifu and Fly Anakin’s differences. But the bond between the artists is clear, as is the resonance between their communities of rappers, producers, and singers. Though they don’t bridge new worlds or sounds here, they confirm the implicit connections between their formative muses, threading the outré time signatures of J Dilla and Madlib, the spiritualism of Dungeon Family, and the flair of Dipset into a cozy tapestry. It’s not groundbreaking, but it is home.
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. | 2020-11-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-11-18T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Lex | November 18, 2020 | 6.8 | a12eb247-6ed9-4457-90b8-b90073d3f16e | Stephen Kearse | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/ | |
Prelapsarian is the most compact of the New York-based metal band's albums. On these dense thirty-five minutes, they have both feet planted on terra firma and are racing against the doomsday clock. | Prelapsarian is the most compact of the New York-based metal band's albums. On these dense thirty-five minutes, they have both feet planted on terra firma and are racing against the doomsday clock. | Krallice: Prelapsarian | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22721-prelapsarian/ | Prelapsarian | Eight years, five albums, and two EPs in, the New York-based outfit Krallice have long since shut up purists about their “hipster black metal.” Their four-man, post-structural assembly line runs at a breakneck pace, taking great care to balance the intricate (Colin Marston and Mick Barr’s interlocking riffs, Lev Weinstein’s head-spinning polyrhythms) with the incendiary (best exemplified by Barr and Nick McMaster’s shared, animalistic vocal duties; the former’s a screaming eagle, the latter a growling hellhound). The quartet frequently capitalize on the element of surprise; Krallice’s last two releases—2015’s Ygg Huur and last winter’s Hyperion EP—dropped spontaneously, a pair of inter-dimensional rifts masquerading as albums, far from the hum of the hype machine. Early last month, the band opened the portal once more to announce their sixth album Prelapsarian, subsequently released sans fanfare on the Winter Solstice.
Upon first glance, Prelapsarian, which the band recorded last summer, may not seem like much. Comprising four tracks and thirty-five minutes, the LP stands just a smidge taller than its predecessor, and sports a similarly dense stylistic template. Fans familiar with the stop-go surges and antiphonal touches of old will undoubtedly appreciate “Transformation Chronicles,” “Conflagration”, and “Lotus Throne,” the album’s staggered, epic triad.
Hyperion’s copious lyrical references to mythology, astrophysics, and nihilistic philosophy belied an obsession with the cosmic. Prelapsarian, by contrast, is the product of a band firmly planted on terra firma, racing against the doomsday clock. Post-election anxiety runs rampant, manifested in everything from the title (derived from the age of humanity’s primordial, Edenic innocence, the original “good old days” before Adam and Eve shared a snack and sealed humanity’s grim fate), to the razed-earth panoramas framing the doomy, eight-minute-long dirge “Conflagration.”
“Hate Power,” is the the album’s highlight: an odd apex, considering it’s only the second track on the album, and clocking in at less than four minutes, the shortest. Krallice songs usually sprawl out across nine, eleven minutes; in these cramped confines, Barr and McMaster stage an epic battle for control as the band totters between d-beat and death metal. Without their usual song length as a cushion, the song feels like a fight to the death in a windowless room. As the song thrashes itself nearly apart, the doomsday-clock ticking desperation is palpable. In their growing catalog, this is a relatively crisp release, a speedy little roller coaster situated alongside the Towers of Terror. But the moment is dense and terrifying enough to make Krallice fans wonder: What could they accomplish with an album of compositions this compact? | 2017-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-01-07T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal | Hathenter | January 7, 2017 | 7.9 | a12fef68-78f9-491d-81c4-cb183f94995c | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
The Ramallah producer-rapper’s debut is a border-agnostic collection of beats that participates in a global dialogue while retaining a distinctly Palestinian identity. | The Ramallah producer-rapper’s debut is a border-agnostic collection of beats that participates in a global dialogue while retaining a distinctly Palestinian identity. | Julmud: Tuqoos | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/julmud-tuqoos/ | Tuqoos | In 2018, Boiler Room threw its first-ever party in Ramallah, Palestine. On top of broadcasting the West Bank city’s small but fiercely creative electronic music scene to a worldwide audience, the party gave local DJs an opportunity to play for a local crowd—something Palestinians can’t always take for granted. A lack of venues and a midnight music curfew means the Palestinian scene is largely concentrated on parties at houses or restaurants, and the complex system of permits required by the Israeli occupation to travel in and out of the West Bank makes performing across the wall in Jaffa or Haifa near impossible for many artists. Palestine Underground, a documentary released by Boiler Room in tandem with the event, opens with Ramallah DJ ODDZ climbing over a 26-foot-wall to reach a gig in Jaffa. “I hurt my leg,” he says, limping, “but yeah, worth it.”
Among those booked to play the Ramallah party was Julmud, who—along with his mentor Muqata’a (the “godfather” of Palestinian hip-hop) and the Saleb Wahad crew he rolls with—is making some of the most fascinating and outré instrumental hip-hop since Brainfeeder first blew stoners’ minds in the late ’00s. Tuqoos, his debut for Muqata’a’s Bilna’es label, is a wildly imaginative, border-agnostic collection of beats that carries on a global dialogue while retaining a distinctly Palestinian identity. It is the product of a relentless curiosity, and of musical ideas vaulting easily over the physical and legal barriers separating the people of the West Bank from the rest of the world.
In many ways, Tuqoos evokes Donuts, the early Brainfeeder catalog, and other cornerstones of instrumental hip-hop. The tracks are short, the beats lurch, and sumptuous strings sweep across the stereo field; the overall impression is of a flowing tapestry rather than a sequence of songs. Yet Julmud’s rhythmic sensibility reaches far beyond hip-hop, drawing from jungle (“Juwway”), Afro-Portuguese club music (“Kassara”), juke (“Basmala”), and vaporwave (“Saree’ el thawaban” and “Kalma’”). The album unburdens itself at its very end into “Ur,” a short, finger-picked folk sketch that seems beamed in from the distant past. Listen to “Ur” and start the album over at “Basmala” to get a sense of how far Julmud takes us in just 37 minutes.
Though you could imagine Julmud and crew bobbing their heads to this stuff in the smoke-filled Saleb Wahad studio, Tuqoos does a fine job of balancing its dragging headshop atmosphere with the “aggressive” quality Muqata’a considers inherent to the sound of Palestinian hip-hop. Julmud loves distortion, and “Falnukmel” balances his barbed, hoarse-throated bars (Saleb Wahad makes a point of using Ramallah slang in its verses) with what sounds like scaffolding falling apart in slow motion behind him. “Kassara” is even more abrasive, treating its frantic polyrhythms with a pall of distortion. Yet Tuqoos never slips in balancing its more vibe-friendly stretches with its moments of urgency. They weave in and out of each other inseparably, reminding us how hard-earned this album’s sense of joy, freedom, and discovery really is. | 2022-04-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2022-04-06T00:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Bilna’es | April 6, 2022 | 7.6 | a13259cc-a5ab-4099-b60a-ef2e3d74e4ed | Daniel Bromfield | https://pitchfork.com/staff/daniel-bromfield/ | |
The 22-year-old Queens rapper offers a tape of thoughtful and weighty heartbreak hymns that slowly reveal more of his layered personality. | The 22-year-old Queens rapper offers a tape of thoughtful and weighty heartbreak hymns that slowly reveal more of his layered personality. | Deem Spencer: Pretty Face | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/deem-spencer-pretty-face/ | Pretty Face | Back in high school, in an attempt to one-up a friend who was hitting on a girl they both liked, Deem Spencer recited an Asher Roth song to draw her attention. When it worked, he started writing his own raps to avoid being found out. He’s still rapping to girls—sort of. His first full-length project, Pretty Face, is full of (and about) similar performative gestures for a lover and about how such gestures have proven futile. The tracklist, when pieced together as a sentence, is a lyric played in the tape’s opening seconds: “Really, I been tryna tell shorty how beautiful shorty is to me but shorty not tryna hear it from me.” For 34 minutes he tries—and ultimately fails—to salvage an unraveled relationship, but in the process, he gives more shape to his beautiful, muted music.
Spencer, a mousy 22-year-old rapper from Jamaica Queens who coos his lyrics, makes music for the overthinkers. There aren’t any traces of the historic Queens of hip-hop yore in the verses he intones. He’s blissfully unconcerned with NYC rap lore and restoring the feeling. Picking out his raps can be like catching conversation fragments from someone just barely within earshot, beneath the buzzing murmur in a restaurant. His songs exist in the cracks between the mundane and profound, ruminating on—sometimes through—the everyday struggles of being young and moving forward. He is in search of both the perfectly articulated thought and feeling. “You gotta be more expressive than you are impressive,” he said last year. Oddly enough, expressiveness has been a problem for the hopeless romantic. His small voice, often obscured to the point of being indistinct in song, has a tendency to be swallowed up in his big ideas. Pretty Face is a rectification, not so much in volume as in the sheer impact of sonic material. Even when his voice is nearly imperceptible here his presence is still palpable.
Recorded in his bedroom “on some depressed shit” in 2018 and personally categorized as the music he made when he didn’t want to make music, Pretty Face plays like Deem Spencer’s meandering revelations amid an undirected recording process. It’s heartbreak hymns for pensive extroverts. The tape builds on the electro-soul blended minimalism of his previous work toward fuller songs. It hits differently. Ironically, these incidental cuts develop with more purpose. Before, when he would disappear into the mix, it felt like he was hiding; now, it feels like an invitation to listen more carefully, to come in closer.
His last project, the 2017 EP we think we alone, waded through the fog of grief after the death of his grandfather. Those eight songs were at turns introspective and droll, with the capacity to be even more, but they were also usually withdrawn or shrinking. All his songs paint with a glass-half-empty perspective, but where his last project felt incomplete in almost a fatalistic way these are a bit more configured. Spencer recently revealed that both sunflower and we think we alone were originally meant to be called Pretty Face, but that he kept saving the title for greener pastures. This Pretty Face, though still not released under light circumstances, doesn’t feel as undone.
When a beat breaks off to reveal another, as on the bubbly “shorty pt. 3,” it feels like a decision made with resolution in mind. Several thoughts peek from underneath the overcast conditions to reveal the restorative light of atonement, taking responsibility for the self-sabotaging role he’s played in his own misfortune: “I still feel like coulda, shoulda, wouldn’t/Had burned bridges so I couldn’t be followed,” he sighs on “is.” The bending flows on “been” are among his most potent, the impetus for a conversation with the “girl’s God” on why “we all can’t love her.” What unfolds next is illuminating: “And as a watched, he grew with anger/He said, ‘I’d expect such hate from a scorned ex-lover, but not from you, a stranger’/I said, ‘Nah, it ain’t even hate, my brother, not for you, it’s thanks/And I’ma make sure I collect all these cold hard gems that I got from you in banks.’” Not only is Spencer finding relief on the tape, he is treasuring the experience.
From the jazz lounge vibes of “but” to the slick spitting on “not tryna hear it,” Deem Spencer turns a tumultuous romance into kindling for a bonfire of self-realization. The songs on Pretty Face aren’t so much about what happens inside a broken relationship as they are what happens after. Through the heartache, Spencer stumbled into a truer sense of identity in his music. When the hurt subsides, all you can do is go on. | 2019-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-03-02T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | self-released | March 2, 2019 | 6.9 | a14b552a-d11f-43da-a41a-0ff51cadb6f3 | Sheldon Pearce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sheldon-pearce/ | |
Grim, grey, and dour, the Canadian band’s fourth album offers a bleak look at the world and delivers some new textures but lacks some of the musical tension to really create sparks. | Grim, grey, and dour, the Canadian band’s fourth album offers a bleak look at the world and delivers some new textures but lacks some of the musical tension to really create sparks. | Preoccupations: Arrangements | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/preoccupations-arrangements/ | Arrangements | Preoccupations possess the kind of cynicism indulged by a self-serious and self-selecting crowd, the ones who notice society’s inexorable march toward the apocalypse and put on some wiry post-punk to watch it burn. The quartet hasn’t changed the message much on Arrangements, their least severely-named Preoccupations album after two self-titleds and 2018’s New Material. And Matthew Flegel is no more specific than his past doomsaying when he sneers, “Everything tastes like the bitter end” on “Ricochet.” Only now, he’s gesturing to an endless amount of recent natural and manmade horrors that can be called upon to fill in the blanks. Preoccupations’ bunker mentality now seems pretty reasonable.
In explaining the thematic thrust of Arrangements, Flegel joked, “It’s basically about the world blowing up and no one giving a shit.” There are two possible interpretations of this statement—if we’re to take Preoccupations at their word—or at least the militant marching orders they’ve maintained since they went by Viet Cong—the world is blowing up and people should give a shit. But it’s increasingly likely that Preoccupations see our inevitable extinction as the natural order of things, so why fight it? “It’s alright, we can celebrate/The evaporating homo sapien race/That’s racing to erase its brief/And glorious existence,” Flegel huffs in a breathless cadence on the opening “Fix Bayonets!” Note the exclamation point in the title—when was it ever in this band’s nature to be emphatic? But “Fix Bayonets!” convincingly recasts Preoccupations as the house band for a party at ground zero.
This renewed vigor carries over to “Ricochet,” which attempts to unite the streamlined melodies of their most recent work and the grim world-weariness of their best work. There’s always been an element of jangle serving as the sole wisp of color in Preoccupations’ otherwise slab-gray palette, and “Ricochet” unkinks those wire-cleaner guitar figures to imagine Joy Division sticking around long enough to absorb R.E.M.’s take on post-punk. Even at their most accessible, Preoccupations could once only suggest the scope of their reach as a gothic pop band. But on “Ricochet,” Flegel allows himself to get caught up in this bold, brighter presentation, delivering the chorus with a chesty brio, sounding more like a Cruel World headliner than a scrappy indie rock band self-releasing their fourth album. Yet the chorus itself turns anticlimactic, its words feeling like placeholders, misaligned with the ensuing cascade of Mad Max imagery.
Preoccupations thrive in a state of resistance—Flegel’s vocals pushing against juddering, atypical rhythms, Mike Wallace’s drums slathered in icy reverb like he’s trying to punch his way out of a meat locker. The sound of struggle is the sound of engagement for Preoccupations, and so when the band sounds like interlocking, grinding cogs in a rusted war machine on “Death of Melody,” it conveys a greater sense of urgency than any of Flegel’s sincere scaremongering about climate change. Similarly, the synth swells during the first half of “Provider” seem like they’re second-guessing their unorthodox, intriguing tonal clusters, requiring an entirely new set of adjectives for Preoccupations: psychedelic, sultry even. But halfway through, the band shifts to a more standard-issue beat, ultimately denying Flegel’s most impassioned vocal performance the dramatic backing it demands. “Recalibrate” and “Tearing Up the Grass” also toy around with kernels of interesting textures and imagery without creating dynamics that justify the two taking up about a third of Arrangement’s run time. What might be considered a groove more often sounds like a rut.
But perhaps the greater issue lies less with the lack of tension between the four instrumentalists of Preoccupations—once again, there’s the post-2020 caveat that much of Arrangements was created remotely. Rather, while Preoccupations’ message remains honest and earnest, it doesn’t create enough friction to cause a spark. “They’re selling T-shirts at this crucifixion” is a vivid, albeit somewhat trite image, appealing in a sort of Anti-Flag way. Otherwise, we’re in a race to the bottom, the “mediocracy” is ruling the world and there’s little to suggest that anyone predisposed to this sort of music wouldn’t already agree. In fact, Arrangements is so in tune with the current moment that verges on ambient—“I don’t believe that we’ll disappear/If we can’t consistently prove we’re here,” Flegel sings with unintended irony on “Ricochet.” People in persistently foul moods need “mood music” too. | 2022-09-14T00:02:00.000-04:00 | 2022-09-14T00:02:00.000-04:00 | Rock | self-released | September 14, 2022 | 6.4 | a14c076b-7ced-49b0-8515-77e92f3e5516 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Anna Calvi's new One Breath is a shade darker and angrier than its precursor, alternately haunting and just a bit more disarming than you’d expect. However, the quickly recorded release is too disparate in spots. | Anna Calvi's new One Breath is a shade darker and angrier than its precursor, alternately haunting and just a bit more disarming than you’d expect. However, the quickly recorded release is too disparate in spots. | Anna Calvi: One Breath | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18601-anna-calvi-one-breath/ | One Breath | Anna Calvi is a bit difficult to place among her peers. The art-rock experiment that was Anna Calvi was much-feted by the British awards press, adopted by the Paris fashion scene and surprisingly robust in sales but had neither the broad appeal of Adele nor the tasteful artiness of James Blake or pre-established icon status of PJ Harvey, the Mercury Prize co-nominees closest to her league. Calvi has much more in common with debuts like Jesca Hoop’s Kismet, Bat for Lashes’ Fur and Gold or Society of Imaginary Friends’ Sadness is a Bridge to Love: a classically trained artist (Calvi studied guitar and violin at university for years before her solo career) with big-name fans (Calvi's include Nick Cave and Brian Eno), Calvi is an artist whose sound and influences are theatrical in the sweeping, near-operatic sense and whose arrangements are dense and knotty and take time to unfurl.
One Breath, Calvi’s follow-up recorded in six weeks in France, is far from a departure. Calvi switches producers from Harvey associate Rob Ellis to John Congleton, a prolific producer among alt-folk types like Shearwater, Sarah Jaffe and especially St. Vincent, who worked with him on Actor and Strange Mercy, but the sound is still Calvi: alternately haunting, like a lost noir theme, or just a bit more disarming than you’d expect. The album’s heavier on the latter, being a shade darker and angrier than its precursor, the product of a tumultuous year. (Calvi is far more vulnerable in music than in interviews; she’s cited the death of a loved one as an inspiration for One Breath, but either sidesteps or dismisses any other further explanations journalists have offered up.) “It’s… very thrilling to feel you're out of control and don't know what's going to happen, but it’s also scary,” Calvi told The Observer recently. Hence the title track, which sprawls like a minute in slow motion. Calvi sings barely above a breath: “I’ve got one, one second to live/ before I say what I’ve got to say,” then gives the track first to distortion, then to an orchestral finale that materializes out of it. It’s the sort of subtle structure, plotted like a film—Calvi has mentioned writing her songs in such a manner—that’s easy to miss but rewarding if you don’t.
This isn’t to say One Breath is a subtle album; in fact, it’s best when it’s not. The meticulous “Piece By Piece” is impressive in a methodical way, as it runs through indignant guitar solos, then muted synth lines, then bursting, romantic strings, like unraveling a relationship in reverse. It’s easier still to admire the late-album sequence of the grungy “Love of My Life", where Calvi works herself up then catches her breath, then “Carry Me Over", a five-and-a-half-minute, largely instrumental composition that’s a showcase for all Calvi’s training: anxious marimba, guitar both sedate and squealing and string atmospherics; these two tracks together would constitute a career high. But throughout the album are simpler concepts: the poised cod-Wagnerian attack of “Tristan", after which the titular hero might as well either drop his armor or drop dead; the lilting bass, sweep of strings and ghostly backing vocals of “Sing To Me", which could have arisen from the mists of a Goldfrapp pastoral; or the choral haze of “The Bridge” that seems to exist in a separate, more austere universe from anything Calvi or her peers have recorded.
Sadly, of all One Breath’s disparate ideas, not all are so iconoclastic. “Eliza” starts out as an MOR folk song, as if someone heard last album’s single “Desire” and thought it’d make a great Mumford stomper if it weren’t so damn arty. Eventually, a tense “Surgeon” guitar solo and operatic coda half-redeem the arrangement, but they’re too late and too short-lived. The sludgy “Bleed Into Me” slips from drama into melodrama without much fuss either way, and a brief guitar freakout is all that keeps “Cry” from slipping farther still, into the territory of Leona Lewis. Paradoxically, One Breath being such a musically omnivorous album only worsens matters—on an album with a more consistent sound, any of these tracks might be excused as natural lowlights to its highlights, but One Breath has such a surfeit of ideas that they just come off as the weaker ones that weren’t cut.
As problems go, though, this isn’t so bad. Calvi’s said the recording process for One Breath was quite fast for her, requiring her to rely on quick decisions more than revision, and perhaps that bears part of the blame. Calvi’s synthesized enough musical styles for at least three artists, and she’s clearly got ample chops to pull any of them off. She’s born to make a grand concept album one day. What she needs now is that grand concept. | 2013-11-20T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2013-11-20T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Pop/R&B | Domino | November 20, 2013 | 6.6 | a1599099-490f-4d03-ba9e-57ac8bee662d | Katherine St. Asaph | https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/ | null |
On the follow-up to 2011’s Deep Politics, the Portland post-rock trio have subtly expanded their approach, building moods of somber reflection, energized optimism, and cathartic release. | On the follow-up to 2011’s Deep Politics, the Portland post-rock trio have subtly expanded their approach, building moods of somber reflection, energized optimism, and cathartic release. | Grails: Chalice Hymnal | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22906-chalice-hymnal/ | Chalice Hymnal | If “rock” can be a verb, then so can “post-rock,” and Grails know how to post-rock. The Portland group began after the genre’s first wave, but they’re so well-versed in dramatic, soundtrack-ready instrumentalism that they could pass for originators in a blindfold test. Through seven albums over 15 years, they’ve made a convincing case for the potential and durability of post-rock, covering diverse terrain—metal, psych, krautrock, ambience, soft rock—while maintaining a consistent musical language.
In fact, Grails’ language is so strong that the six year gap between their last album, 2011’s Deep Politics, and their new effort Chalice Hymnal feels like a mere blip. The group—sometimes a sextet, for now a trio—continues their wordless conversation so smoothly that one song, “Deep Snow II,” actually picks up almost exactly where Deep Politics’ “Deep Snow” left off. In line with their career trajectory, this album differs from its predecessor only because Grails have subtly deepened their sonic scope, committing even more to each of the many styles they’ve explored in the past.
Yet there’s no gratuitous novelty in Chalice Hymnal’s 11 tracks. Expansion is a goal, but it’s never the main point. As compositionally complex and technically adept as their songs are, Grails are always most interested in building moods and evoking emotions: somber reflection, energized optimism, wistful nostalgia, and most often, cathartic release. At times they prioritize mood-building to a fault, like when the misty “Rebecca” veers toward easy listening. But if they’re going to err, better that they lean toward the overly sentimental than the wankily proficient.
There’s not many errors on Chalice Hymnal, though, since Grails are too experienced and familiar with their own strengths to let anything egregious slip past. Each track establishes a tone firmly and executes it confidently. Hence the chugging groove of “Pelham,” the sludgy riffery of “New Prague,” and the theatrical swells of “The Moth & the Flame” feel like tonal siblings even though they’re stylistically disparate. Some tracks even contrast themselves: “Tough Guy”’s majestic march gives way to clouds of ambience before returning to forward motion.
None of that variety would matter if Chalice Hymnal wasn’t so emotionally resonant. Grails understand that post-rock is largely about structure—the way sounds gather and escalate, the way each part reflects what came before and points toward what’s next—and their mastery comes from treating music as sonic architecture. On Chalice Hymnal, they’ve added another solid story to their growing skyscraper. | 2017-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2017-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Metal / Rock | Temporary Residence Ltd. | February 25, 2017 | 7.7 | a15cc4d2-f29c-48b2-a456-6eb70da17f0c | Marc Masters | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/ | null |
Their career was just beginning, but the Jam were already the hardest-working band in U.K. punk. A new box set revisits their breakthrough year. | Their career was just beginning, but the Jam were already the hardest-working band in U.K. punk. A new box set revisits their breakthrough year. | The Jam: In the City / This Is the Modern World / The Polydor Demos: February 1977 / Live 1977 + John Peel Sessions | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/in-the-city-this-is-the-modern-world-the-polydor-demos-february-1977-live-1977-john-peel-sessions/ | In the City / The Polydor Demos: February 1977 / This Is the Modern World / Live 1977 + John Peel Sessions | The Jam began 1977 without a record contract. By December, they had recorded two albums—In the City and This Is the Modern World, released a mere six months apart—and catapulted from the bottom of the bill to headlining halls throughout England. Much of the trio’s remarkable rise, as chronicled in the four-CD/single-DVD box 1977, can be attributed to the fact that they were an unusually disciplined band. Paul Weller, the group’s lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist, took rock & roll very seriously, especially in those early days, when he treated even trifles like “Non-Stop Dancing” as calls to arms. Good times were a matter of life or death, a sensibility that led Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton and drummer Rick Buckler to sound urgent even when the stakes were relatively low.
That signature urgency came through in the quickened trajectory of their career. 1977 was the year punk swept through the United Kingdom, with record labels eager to snap up the latest sensation. But that didn’t mean that everyone was moving as fast as the Jam: The Sex Pistols, for instance, took a full year to deliver the full-length sequel to their 1976 debut single, “Anarchy in the U.K.” During that gap, the Jam cut two albums, made a muddled attempt to break into America, and—once Weller decided he’d had it with punk rock—promptly chose to embrace the mantle of new wave instead.
“Punk rock is a big flashy neon sign which sells commodities, whereas new wave is an attitude,” he told the American late-night talk show host Tom Snyder during a probing October 1977 roundtable on punk that also featured the Runaways’ Joan Jett and Kim Fowley, the L.A. rock & roll huckster whose depravity would be revealed decades later. Asked by Snyder to elaborate, Weller added that new wave is “an attitude of the youth,” echoing a lyric from the Jam’s debut single, “In the City.” On that lacerating song—a two-minute, 17-second blast that makes all the possibilities in this world seem endless—Weller vowed, “I wanna tell you about the young ideas,” explicitly positioning the Jam as ambassadors of adolescent culture. Compared to their punk peers, it was a fair claim. British punk was filled with pub-rock refugees—guys on the other side of 25 who decided to don leather and rush the tempo upon hearing the Sex Pistols. And while Foxton and Buckler were the same age as most of the Pistols, the Clash and the Damned—all hovering somewhere in their early 20s—Weller was 18 when his group signed to Polydor. He sounds keenly aware of his age on the band's early catalog, composing rallying cries of teenage rebellion and romance, and happily conflating the two emotions in his songwriting and performances.
Even now, some 40 years after its recording, the music collected on 1977 feels charged and vital, particularly on the whiplash live show recorded at London’s Nashville club on September 10 of that year. Speedier on stage than on record, the Jam don’t flail; they slash with precision, drawing fuel from their own racket. Early punk rarely retains its power in concert recordings—it’s often sloppy and diffuse—but the Jam are so furious here that they seem to exist entirely within the moment.
The visceral kick in the Jam’s music can obscure the fact that they were considerably more musically conservative than the rest of the class of 1977. The thick book included with this box set is full of reminders that the British press viewed the Jam primarily as a latter-day version of the Who: A March 1977 story from Sounds is titled “Maximum New Wave,” with an even less subtle subheadline of “People try to put us down just because we sound like the Who.” Then again, the trio themselves never hid their hero worship. Quite the contrary: the Jam flaunted their influences, savoring the idea that they belonged to a storied rock & roll lineage. Their haircuts were styled after the Small Faces, their suits borrowed from the nattily tailored Yardbirds. They loaded their setlists with oldies, mixing Motown (Martha & the Vandellas’ “Heat Wave”) up with Stax (Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”), and they loved the Beatles so much, they excavated “Slow Down,” an old ’50s R&B hit by Larry Williams that the Fabs had covered on a 1964 EP.
Prior to the Jam’s arrival in 1977, rock bands generally didn't dwell on the past in such an explicit fashion. The Beatles covered girl groups and the Rolling Stones played blues, but that was part of their complicated attempt to interpret American culture for English audiences. The Jam, on the other hand, helped establish the revolutionary idea that there was a British rock & roll tradition to be upheld—a notion that became rock sacrament, with a legion of bands mimicking the Jam’s ’60s mod revivalism by the close of the ’70s. (Later, in the ’90s, the same aesthetic helped propel the rise of Britpop, turning rock & roll into a retro hall of mirrors.) Yet despite the Jam’s evident love of yesterday, they managed to dodge the usual pitfalls of nostalgia. Weller listened to new music alongside his old favorites, getting turned on not just by the Sex Pistols, but by the hard, clean attack of Dr. Feelgood, the Canvey Island renegades who made traditional values seem lethal. The Jam followed suit, pushing so hard that even the rare ballad on their first two albums—such as the aching “Away From the Numbers”—twitches like a live wire.
The Jam would soon expand their range, with Weller sharpening his observational eye on 1978’s All Mod Cons and the group leaving punk definitively behind on 1979’s Setting Sons, but the fevered concentration they had in their first year is intoxicating. The music on In the City and This Is the Modern World may not be multidimensional, but it is potent, with Foxton following Buckler’s manic rhythms and Weller bashing his guitar above their clamor. As fresh as those albums still sound—particularly compared to the razor-thin Polydor demos collected on disc two, six of which are previously unreleased—the most revelatory part of this box set is the final CD and accompanying DVD, both of which gather live performances from throughout 1977. On their two Peel Sessions, recorded on April 26 and July 19, the Jam are coiled and precise, a focus that can also be seen in clips from “Top of the Pops” and “Marc,” the short-lived variety show hosted by T. Rex’s Marc Bolan. Watching this footage, it’s startling to see just how young the Jam are—particularly Weller, who has the fresh face of a teenager and the steely determination of a righteous adolescent. It’s a fitting look for the eternally youthful music his band was making. | 2017-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | null | October 20, 2017 | 8.5 | a161568a-9496-4b88-89f1-b80c99a3f634 | Stephen Thomas Erlewine | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-thomas erlewine/ | |
The pop star’s debut is decadent and deeply silly, with songs delivered by the kind of person who uses even the slightest bit of emotional turmoil as an excuse to immerse herself in sex, drugs, and money. | The pop star’s debut is decadent and deeply silly, with songs delivered by the kind of person who uses even the slightest bit of emotional turmoil as an excuse to immerse herself in sex, drugs, and money. | Kim Petras: Clarity | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kim-petras-clarity/ | Clarity | Kim Petras isn’t a revolutionary. Unlike her collaborators Charli XCX and SOPHIE, she doesn’t want to push pop into the future or dismantle it and play with the parts; instead, she takes the genre as it’s being expressed this very moment and renders it brighter, bolder, and more aggressive. If heavy hitters like Ariana Grande and Halsey are making fruit juice, she’s a tier below, churning out frozen concentrate: similar taste, but in an undiluted, hyper-dense package.
Despite her extremely online aesthetic and streaming-era approach to releasing new music, she’s ultimately a traditionalist. I listen to her music and hear someone who fell in love with the idea of pop from a distance—she grew up in Cologne, Germany, half a world away from the American music industry—long before she had the chance to make it herself. She’s a scholar of the hit, and she’s honoring her passion by iterating on the form.
Clarity, her debut full-length project, feels less like a major statement than the culmination of a lengthy, controlled burn. After breaking out in 2017 with “I Don’t Want It at All,” a strobe-lit sugar-baby anthem that made “Material Girl” seem demure, Petras slowly assembled a portfolio of strong singles that demonstrated her impressive stylistic range. She glided from gleaming, Robyn-esque anthems (“Heart to Break”) and wistful trap-pop ballads (“Homework”) to faithful bloghouse revivals like “Close Your Eyes,” a highlight from last year’s goofy Halloween-themed EP Turn Off the Light, Vol. 1.
It’d make for a heartwarming underdog story—an aspiring star moves to Los Angeles to make it in the music business, writing songs and crashing on couches until the dream comes true—if her chief creative partner wasn’t Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald, the superproducer-turned-pariah whose career entered a precipitous decline after Kesha accused him of sexual assault and physical abuse. When Petras has been asked about or criticized for working with Gottwald, her responses are equivocal but unapologetic: “While I’ve been open and honest about my positive experience with Dr. Luke, that does not negate or dismiss the experiences of others or suggest that multiple perspectives cannot exist at once,” she tweeted last July. “I do want to express my sympathy for any and all abuse victims.”
Yet there exists a stark contrast between the complexity surrounding Petras’ career and the flagrant, almost pointed frivolity of her music. Clarity is a collection of decadent, deeply silly songs, all of them delivered by the kind of person who uses even the slightest bit of emotional turmoil as an excuse to immerse herself in sex, drugs, and money. (Consider this representative couplet from the bratty “Blow It All”: “Shorty in the bathroom and she’s asking ‘where the coke at?’/I spent 20 thousand just to leave it on a coat rack.”) Feeling sad, feeling horny, feeling sad and horny, living like you’re dying—these may not be novel themes, but they’re delivered with palpable enthusiasm and good humor. Petras loves pop enough to celebrate its tropes. When she takes a second in the middle of the raunchy “Do Me” to sing about hitting “high notes” in bed, you’d better believe she’s going to cut the backing track and jump up an octave just for that phrase. It’s hard not to giggle.
Petras’ keen scholarship of pop is also readily apparent in the purity of Clarity’s craft. Along with Gottwald—who co-wrote and produced every song on Clarity alongside a series of other close collaborators—Petras understands how songwriting can seem like alchemy when a single beat, modulation, or syllable can transform an average song into something magical. Those moments are everywhere: the crisp, snapping rhythm and rich chords of would-be booty call anthem “Got My Number,” the Daft Punk-lite breakdown in the middle of “Do Me,” the touch of grain on the disco loop at the core of the magnificent “Sweet Spot.”
Grouping these songs together in an album-length context sheds light on both Petras’ strengths and weaknesses. She’s so versatile that it’s difficult to identify her musical ground zero: Is it the updated French touch of “Sweet Spot” and “Do Me?” The bouncy, dewy R&B of “Got My Number” and “Another One?” She turns in convincing impressions of Drake, the Weeknd, and Juice WRLD on “Meet the Parents,” “Icy,” and “All I Do Is Cry,” respectively, singing and rapping with surprising speed and fluidity. This kind of diversity might feel incoherent or unfocused from another artist; from Petras, it feels like a natural expression of her interests and talents. She’s the glue holding everything together—think a female Travis Scott, one who grew up worshipping Madonna and the Spice Girls instead of Drake and Kanye West.
At the same time, the sheer intensity of every song on Clarity makes it tough to digest in one sitting. (You wouldn’t pull a can of Minute Maid out of the freezer and eat the entire thing with a spoon, right?) Releasing singles weekly gave each new song room to breathe, and when they’re jammed together into a single 40-minute block, they amount to less than the sum of their parts. This effect might explain Petras’ reticence to call Clarity an “album”: If she takes pop as seriously as I think she does, she might be waiting to apply that title to a project with more coherence and narrative thrust. Clarity is still worth your time and attention, even if it ends up being little more than a stopgap measure. For listeners who decide to charge ahead despite the lack of moral clarity around Petras’ career, it’s the best introduction yet to one of pop music’s brightest talents. | 2019-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-03T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | BunHead | July 3, 2019 | 7.2 | a16180a5-88c1-4974-a5c0-d65e50071acc | Jamieson Cox | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jamieson-cox/ | |
The self-described “mutant” reps the New York underground at its freakiest on a fast-past, collage-heavy album of club rhythms, noise blasts, and unsettling humor. | The self-described “mutant” reps the New York underground at its freakiest on a fast-past, collage-heavy album of club rhythms, noise blasts, and unsettling humor. | Bonnie Baxter: AXIS | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bonnie-baxter-axis/ | AXIS | For the last couple of years, Bonnie Baxter has been calling herself a mutant. That’s the term that she and her bandmates in the noise trio Kill Alters have come to prefer for their small community of weirdos in the New York underground. The scene—per one of its most fervent supporters—is “historically psycho,” vibrating with heavy, hyperactive music from artists like Deli Girls, Dreamcrusher, Machine Girl, and Channel 63, among a host of other like-minded freaks. Most of the artists exist on the borders between punk, noise, techno, and rap, but few, if any, belong squarely to any one tradition.
Baxter’s music, both under her name and with Kill Alters, is close to the spiritual center of this scene. Over the last half decade, she’s masterminded a handful of hard-to-categorize tapes and dozens of Bandcamp releases, and her prolific output runs the gamut of contemporary DIY experimental sounds. Generally, the Kill Alters material is oozy and psychedelic, while her solo tracks largely hew closer to the dancefloor, offering bruising beats that might sound like techno if she wasn’t consistently destroying them with static and noise.
Even in that context, AXIS, Baxter’s second solo album for Hausu Mountain, is wonderfully bizarre. More than half of its 12 tracks are less than two minutes long, but it’s packed with more experiments and in-jokes than most records twice its length. Even in the shortest songs, like the minute-long “GLOWNG TROLLS,” she layers tons of overlapping synth lines and rhythmic interchanges. For a second, it sort of sounds like Hausu Mountain co-founder Mukqs’ underwater electro experiments before collapsing into horror-score ambience and unsettling vocals that suggest a possessed Speak & Spell—and that’s all in just over a minute.
Most of the tracks are constructed in this fast-paced, collagist way. It can feel a bit like some of the more surreal electronic music from the late 1990s, like Kid606’s unsettling glitch work or Aphex Twin and µ-Ziq’s Mike & Rich record, but Baxter doesn’t ever let things get too frantic or overwhelming. “SPIRIT ENEMA”—the record’s longest track, at nearly six minutes—transitions from Rephlex-ian acid to stuttery sample torture before settling into a breakdown in which Baxter sings, barely holding in a laugh, “I need some fucking help with my asshole/So please take me to the fucking doctor, thank you very very very much.” Another track, “NO DICC” consists almost entirely of ping-ponging drums and the lyric “I don’t want your dick!” That’s how things largely go: She builds otherworldly, unpredictable tracks, then undercuts off the wildest passages with prankish experiments and goofy jokes.
AXIS is a demanding record. Not only do listeners have to have a taste for Baxter’s delirious instrumentals, they also have to swallow her confrontational sense of humor, the combined effect of which can feel, at moments, like Wolf Eyes playing behind a Tim and Eric sketch. But even the most seemingly off-putting moments—like when she starts believably retching at the end of “NO DICC”—feel weirdly infectious. She has a giddy enthusiasm for always making the strangest possible decision for where a song can go next. Each mutation is more exciting than the last. | 2019-10-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-10-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental | Hausu Mountain | October 22, 2019 | 7.2 | a16f77d3-a753-4041-814a-3ceec7bb9285 | Colin Joyce | https://pitchfork.com/staff/colin-joyce/ | |
Scottish indie-pop musician Patrick Doyle died in 2018, just 32; this posthumous recording with bassist and tourmate Helen Skinner offers a poignant snapshot of his “bent music for bent people.” | Scottish indie-pop musician Patrick Doyle died in 2018, just 32; this posthumous recording with bassist and tourmate Helen Skinner offers a poignant snapshot of his “bent music for bent people.” | Basic Plumbing: Keeping Up Appearances | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/basic-plumbing-keeping-up-appearances/ | Keeping Up Appearances | There aren’t enough queer people in this world and we don’t listen enough to the ones who are here. So when one of them leaves us—as did Patrick Doyle, who passed away in March 2018, just 32—the loss is huge, with its own special echoes.
Doyle had spent at least half his quick life in bands with casual indie characters that inspired fast devotion. In the post-Pastels, Belle and Sebastian-besotted Scotland where he grew up, Doyle jangled his guitar in cult bands Dot to Dot, the Royal We, and the Sexy Kids, and strummed the bass along with Franz Ferdinand’s Paul Thomson in Correcto; in 2006, B&S immortalized his charisma, not to mention his handsome face, across the back of their The Life Pursuit album. Doyle taught himself drums and then went on to pursue fame with bandmate Roxanne Clifford in London as Veronica Falls, whose two rather accomplished albums of lush, lovely indie rock, released by bookish noise-pop heroes Slumberland, sounded like a platonic 21st century Mamas & the Papas where the dreams never end. They were one of those bands that if you heard them, you loved them, but too few ever did.
Ever on the move, Doyle spent time in New York, Los Angeles, and London, releasing his first real solo record in 2016, as Boys Forever. If you were ever in a gay bar with a decent jukebox in any of those cities back then, you likely met him and wanted to get to know him better. Insouciant and stylish as its creator, Boys Forever repositioned classic indie verse/chorus/verse into queer forms. “Bent music for bent people,” Doyle called it; at its best, it seemed to identify musical corners the heroic gay men who’d come before him had painted themselves into—the endless genre drag of the Magnetic Fields, the so-ironic-it’s-earnest (or is the other way around?) productions of the Hidden Cameras—and just sort of breeze past them. Harder than it sounds.
Just after the album’s release, Doyle relocated full-time to L.A., living with his husband, the journalist Max Padilla; developing a body of work as a photographer; and writing songs via email with Helen Skinner, a bassist and member of Boys Forever’s touring lineup. A year later, Padilla died. Doyle released a single, “As You Disappear,” in which his boyish voice is weathered and worn, a cold wind bothering the trees. “And now everyone I know, I used to know,” he sings. And then Doyle was dead, too.
Keeping Up Appearances, released under the moniker Basic Plumbing, collects the tracks Doyle and Skinner finished. Their beauty is immediate, accessible, and, at least for the moment, almost inextricable from all the loss surrounding them. “As You Disappear” starts things off, a gut punch; then “Lilac” tries to start the party, but its organ lick just wells up “96 Tears” while Doyle sings “I hear the voices in my head/No, I don’t want to hear them in my dreams” in an uncanny evocation of Kurt Cobain’s clenched snarl.
The enraged ennui of Nirvana is all over this record: in the way the guitars rattle beneath the beams of his dread-filled voice in “Sunday,” or wrap around his voice like a sweater that will never be warm enough in closer “Strangers,” the bleakest song in Doyle’s catalog. Doyle saves his keen ear for harmonies for lines like “He’s bad news, baby,” in the achingly sweet “Fantasy.” But the sour “Bad Mood” weaponizes melody, as two vocal lines intertwine, circling each other like snakes. One sings “I won’t be in a bad mood anymore.” The other? “I just didn’t think it would happen.” Neither wins.
The mobilizing swish Doyle lent Veronica Falls fuels the title track, but Doyle seems to feel like he’s faking the verve. “It’s all in your head/When you say/The things that you said,” he sings, barely mustering up polysyllables, “And it’s all over/Keeping up appearances.” It’s rock’n’roll as rumination, jittery and damaged, the sound of self-recrimination and self-possession doubling and collapsing in on itself. It’s an earworm and a heartbreak.
Keeping Up Appearances arrives with a reprint of Max, a book of Doyle’s photos published just after his death, all fuzzy sunlight and boners in boxer shorts. The photos look like these new songs sound: assuredly retro, gazing back to both the ’90s and the ’60s; charming, if a bit too charmed by their own self-deprecation—sexy but somehow disembodied. Distant, detached. It’s a testament that, in his awful absence, others keep pushing his work forward. Veronica Falls’ Marion Herbain helped bring Max into the world, and into the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of Art. Skinner and Doyle’s family have made a place for Basic Plumbing, and have pledged proceeds to L.A.’s LGBT Centre and CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserable, a UK organization working to prevent suicide. Queer people keep disappearing. But to the great fortune and comfort of those who remain—and the great benefit of everyone else—Doyle left records of his life. They live on. | 2020-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2020-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Basic Plumbing | January 31, 2020 | 7 | a1707821-1dee-4e48-bbe7-8ed4d6e4647d | Jesse Dorris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-dorris/ | |
Tera Melos guitarist Nick Reinhart turns to grunge and power-pop, embracing the limitations of verse-chorus structure with some of his best songwriting to date. | Tera Melos guitarist Nick Reinhart turns to grunge and power-pop, embracing the limitations of verse-chorus structure with some of his best songwriting to date. | Disheveled Cuss: Disheveled Cuss | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/disheveled-cuss-disheveled-cuss/ | Disheveled Cuss | Nick Reinhart does not write simple songs. The Los Angeles-based guitarist makes oblique math rock in his primary band Tera Melos, whittles experimental noise pop alongside Death Grips drummer Zach Hill in bygones, and dreams up bizarre prog parts in supergroups like Big Walnuts Yonder. After a 15-year career guided by a “Why not?” attitude, Reinhart has finally decided to give self-described “‘normal’ songs” a try with Disheveled Cuss, his new solo project for all things grunge and power pop. On his self-titled debut album, Reinhart uses the limitations of verse-chorus structure to condense his ambitions and rein in his trains of thought, establishing boundaries that help him scratch a pop itch with some of his best songwriting to date.
With drummer JR Kurtz and engineer Patrick Hills contributing bass, Reinhart wastes no time defining what “‘normal’ songs” means to him. It’s the unabashed hooks of Weezer’s Blue Album, the fuzzy texture of ’90s alt-rock, the satisfying payoff of a great bridge and an even greater chorus. He modifies those influences with vocal registers and guitar trills, like on “Nu Complication” and “Generic Song About You,” always grounding the tracks with lush guitar tones. Throughout, he sings about letdowns and lonely days, lyrics that later helped him to recognize his depression. Perhaps that subconscious mental state is what gives Disheveled Cuss its restive energy, as if a sudden breakdown is looming in the background.
The best pop songs leave you wanting more. That’s where Reinhart, who built his career on going over the top all of the time, momentarily stumbles. “Oh My God” focuses its five-minute runtime on a repetitive guitar loop, dulling its own edge by waiting too long to introduce a delightfully unpredictable riff just before the end. Reinhart knows how to save an unconventional earworm for a surprise ending, but this time, the tension fizzles long before the buildup finishes.
Despite his commitment to conventional structures, Reinhart also sprinkles weird sounds throughout: jazzy, high-register string plucks, bittersweet voicemails from his grandfather, warped whammy bar effects that sound like a strip of film dissolving. Even a straightforward track like “Shut Up” packs enough pep to masquerade as a TV show theme. No matter which moniker Reinhart works under, his playing style and ear for production can make a technical trick sound uncomplicated. “She Don’t Want,” easily the best song on the album, rides an elastic melody into blasts of neo-grunge production and a radiant solo-turned-riff recall, a combination that’s an instant mood-booster. In a way, it’s the reason Reinhart started this project to begin with: to forgo the intricate compositions of his other bands for the welcome familiarity of 4/4 time signatures and pleasing refrains. It’s a sharp left turn in his career, but as his ideas roam freely and joyfully on Disheveled Cuss, it pays off.
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Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2020-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Sargent House | July 17, 2020 | 7.3 | a172e76c-9e9c-4a45-8926-69599636f2ae | Nina Corcoran | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/ | |
Steeped in Acadian musical heritage, the Louisiana songwriter’s sketchy four-track recordings and odd, dreamy storytelling evoke the likes of Jessica Pratt or Elliott Smith. | Steeped in Acadian musical heritage, the Louisiana songwriter’s sketchy four-track recordings and odd, dreamy storytelling evoke the likes of Jessica Pratt or Elliott Smith. | Renée Reed: Renée Reed | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/renee-reed-renee-reed/ | Renée Reed | Renée Reed grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, the daughter of Cajun one-stop shop owners who hosted regular jam sessions. Music and folklore surrounded her: Her great-uncle, Revon J. Reed, was a sort of Cajun Alan Lomax, a folklorist who recorded the traditional songs that make up the region’s cultural history. Her grandfather was Harry Trahan, a local accordion legend who wheezed out zydeco at neighborhood events for nearly his entire life. Her family has ties to Mamou, a small rice farming town about three hours west of New Orleans, where residents celebrate an annual ritual called Courir de Mardi Gras, in which the men of the town dress up in colorful rags and pointed caps and ride horses from house to house, chasing chickens and collecting ingredients for gumbo.
A lot of this history swirls through Reed’s self-titled debut, but not in obvious ways. She’s described her music as “dream-fi folk from Cajun prairies,” citing Kate Bush and the Beatles as “my gods that I worship.” Her songs—recorded simply on four-track, performed mostly on acoustic guitar, with some light organ as occasional embellishment—recall Jessica Pratt’s first album, or Either/Or-era Elliott Smith, more than traditional Cajun music. And yet her heritage peeks through, sometimes in sneaky ways: Queue up the single release of opener “Out Loud,” for instance, and you’ll find a photo of someone, likely Reed, sporting the traditional garb for Courir de Mardi Gras, looking like some kind of Midsommar Muppet.
Reed’s music is full of dreamy, odd notes, and a sense of unreality shimmers around her songs. On “Où est la fée,” she sings, in French, a dark fable in which she wanders into the woods and finds a letter addressed to her. She plays straightforward, rough-hewn fingerpicking melodies with the skill and sensitivity of someone capable of playing anything, and she sings with abstracted intensity, like she’s staring out a car window. Her words extend until they dissolve into pure sound, and everything she sings has a riddling, Cheshire-Cat quality: “Who am I?/You’re about to find out,” she offers on “Out Loud,” but the moment of discovery never arrives.
The closest Reed comes to revealing herself is on the final track, “Drunken Widow’s Waltz.” It’s in French again, but this time, it’s the Cajun variety, the language of her grandparents and of kitchen jam sessions and front-porch family concerts. The drum track ticks out an unsteady waltz time, the guitar oom-pahs, a fiddle scratches, and Reed opens up her throat. She sounds joyful and uninhibited, lost in the pure pleasure of her singing, now that she’s certain no outsider can understand.
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. | 2021-04-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-04-02T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Keeled Scales | April 2, 2021 | 7.7 | a17ac353-afa5-4cd4-b943-54c83d933317 | Jayson Greene | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/ | |
The debut album from the Colombian-American singer is a world of her own. Her wide range pulls in sounds from reggaetón, funk, and R&B and positions her to become a new gravitational force in pop. | The debut album from the Colombian-American singer is a world of her own. Her wide range pulls in sounds from reggaetón, funk, and R&B and positions her to become a new gravitational force in pop. | Kali Uchis: Isolation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kali-uchis-isolation/ | Isolation | Kali Uchis opens Isolation with a breezy Brazilian-jazz intro, psychedelic and motoring, as she coos birdlike about physical intimacy. Rio singer/goddess Flora Purim immediately springs to mind, and its ambitious vocal runs invoke cocktails and caftan weather, like Uchis recorded it by the beach. It’s an empathetic way to welcome a listener into an album, but more than that, it’s a statement piece: pointed evidence of the way she’s deepened her range en route to her debut album. “Just come closer, closer, closer,” she intones. Kali Uchis did not come to play.
The 23-year-old Colombian-American singer has spent the last six years in the flourishing landscape of West Coast soul. She was often compared to Billie Holiday for her resonant alto and ability to imbue a dreamy love track with a wistful melancholy without giving up any of her power. That quality naturally invited comparisons to Amy Winehouse, too, but Uchis is slightly more plain-sad than self-destructive. Her ability to shimmy between genres has been exemplified by her omnivorous taste in collaborators—Snoop Dogg, who helped put her on in 2014, Colombian superstar Juanes, and Miguel, with whom she sang one of the best tracks on his 2017 album, War & Leisure. She has a baseline in R&B and often veers into the territory we used to call neo-soul. But Isolation projects how far out there she’s willing to go, exploring doo-wop, funk, bedroom pop, and reggaetón with equal enthusiasm and reverence while painting a fuller picture of herself as a dreamer, the femme fatale with around-the-way swagger who takes no shorts.
The track most congruous with her past work—most specifically, her 2015 EP Por Vida—is the lo-fi surprise “In My Dreams,” which finds the Gorillaz calling upon the ghost of 2003 for its Casiotone-adjacent, ice-cream-twee production. She makes her voice uncharacteristically chirpy on the sardonically escapist lyrics: “Everything is just wonderful here in my dreams,” the subtext being that life is not so rosy. To emphasize that, Damon Albarn pops in to inject the affair with a slightly more pointed missive that “The moments we are happiest/Are the moments that we don’t exist.” It makes for a solid mission statement on an album where good news always comes with caveats. That notion is underlined in “Your Teeth on My Neck,” a deceptively perky indictment of industry vampires, labor exploitation, and general inequity, with a live-jazz backing by Los Angeles’ Wldrness. “What do you do it for, rich man keeps getting richer taking from the poor,” she sings, her voice a soaring scold. “You gotta get right.”
Uchis has always been interested in speaking truth to power, and she mines her personal narrative—binational upbringing, immigrant parents, living out of her car—for a slyly political backdrop that feels neither too obvious nor preachy. That wisdom and storytelling acumen in her music feels strongest here on “Miami,” in which she and boricua rapper BIA narrate an immigrant perspective against a gossamer backdrop of the city that basically invented bisexual lighting. With languorous swing, Uchis parallels immigrant hustle with the rudely empty promise of the American dream, as in the line, “Why would I be Kim, I could be Kanye/In the land of opportunity and palm trees.” It’s a type of cinematic storytelling that feels almost vintage in this era of diaristic confessionals. Plus, it’s always nice to hear this kind of devotion to the concept of making a song about Miami that would sound great driving around Miami.
“Miami” features production from TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek, Frank Ocean collaborator Om’Mas Keith, Drake hitmaker DJ Dahi, and it’s a gleaming example of the veritable brain trust of musical talent assembled here, all serving the same purpose of showcasing Uchis’ fascinating confidence as a singer. Even as the album traverses genres, it’s united by a slinky desert vibe, a document of the way young Angelenos have opened up the way for sounds and genre to gloop in on each other like a lava lamp. In the early 2000s, this often manifested in navel-gazing and weeded beat experiments whose prime objective was headiness. But this generation—here, including Isolation guests like Tyler, the Creator, the Internet’s Steve Lacy, and BROCKHAMPTON’s Romil Hemnani—has found a way to make that style of experimentation inviting and friendly through an openness that is intellectual, but doesn’t depend on intellectualism as its prime objective. As a uniting force, Kali Uchis could not be stronger, nor as nimble with her ability to match lush beats with an even lusher voice. Isolation is a star turn from an artist who has proven she’s ready for it. | 2018-04-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2018-04-11T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Interscope | April 11, 2018 | 8.6 | a17d6ec5-d2df-403b-8e57-d44d6e4aa837 | Julianne Escobedo Shepherd | https://pitchfork.com/staff/julianne-escobedo shepherd/ | |
On her breakout debut, the promising Melbourne rapper wrestles with big ideas about peace, family, and home. | On her breakout debut, the promising Melbourne rapper wrestles with big ideas about peace, family, and home. | Sampa the Great: The Return | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sampa-the-great-the-return/ | The Return | Near the beginning of Sampa The Great’s debut album The Return, we hear a voicemail from a concerned friend. She implores the rapper to realize what she’s up against as a black woman in the music industry: “I don’t think you have time for all this ‘finding yourself’ spiritual shit.” But that’s just what The Return is about. Sampa—who was born in Zambia, raised in Botswana, and now lives in Melbourne—is trying to find a sense of place in a world where she’ll always be ticked as “other.” Accordingly, The Return is a dense and sometimes-challenging record, with beats that pull in bits of jazz alongside ’90s R&B and hip-hop. When taken together with her darting, head-cold flow, the album can be intimidating, but the arduous journey it traces is one toward peace.
Running 78 minutes, The Return is a dynamic suite of a record, touching on multiple genres without losing focus. The sprawling sounds mirror her thoughts—racing, fully formed, everywhere at once. It requires a patient ear, and as it backflips from brassy dance tracks to languid soul, The Return occasionally feels like it’s beating you over the head. But that’s also part of its charm: this is a record about the uncertainty lurking behind every major decision, the doubts that persist even as you tell yourself you're making the right choices. On “OMG,” Sampa interrogates the idea of "home" through the lens of her African upbringing; in her view, African natives should return to re-teach local language, culture and spirituality. With each interlude, the record shifts to a different mood—from uncertainty, to romantic love, to eventual reassurance.
As the album plays, Sampa comes to understand that her contentment isn’t tied to geography. “I guess I found my fortune,” Sampa declares on “Mwana,” The Return’s opening track. “I don’t need home to feel important.” Then on “Dare to Fly,” the rapper doubles down on this epiphany: “Home is my home is my self … I will reside in myself.” The moment is as triumphant as it is poignant.
Sampa’s 2017 mixtape, Birds and the BEE9, won the Australian Music Prize for Best Album, but it barely made a ripple in the U.S. It dropped in November, two weeks before Thanksgiving, right when music publications start thinking about end-of-year album lists, which might have accounted for the apathy. But she has the slow-burn intensity of someone who takes the long view. On “Final Form,” the album’s most pointed cut, Sampa quips, “only four years, fantastic,” reminding us that she’s only been rapping professionally for a short time and still has a ways to go. If her thousand-yard-stare determination on The Return is any indication, her journey is only beginning.
Buy: Rough Trip
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-09-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-09-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rap | Ninja Tune | September 21, 2019 | 7.3 | a1819780-edac-4e97-94e4-5ec0aee02a59 | Marcus J. Moore | https://pitchfork.com/staff/marcus-j. moore/ | |
The Liverpool four-piece’s debut experiments liberally with pop’s conventions, taking a collage-like approach to chopped samples, ghostly harmonies, and pedal-driven guitars and keyboards. | The Liverpool four-piece’s debut experiments liberally with pop’s conventions, taking a collage-like approach to chopped samples, ghostly harmonies, and pedal-driven guitars and keyboards. | Chinatown Slalom: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chinatown-slalom-who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire/ | Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? | The house that Chinatown Slalom live in, on Little St. Bride Street in Liverpool, has the words “Everyone’s Invited” sprayed across its walls. It’s become something of a motto for the band, borne out in their home’s open-door policy and the trippy house parties that inspired this, their debut album, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? But the motto is most keenly felt in the group’s pick ’n’ mix approach to songwriting: One that dips exuberantly into musical and cultural history to absorb the best and oddest bits before resurfacing to piece the collage together from a palette of chopped samples, ghostly harmonies, and guitars and synths driven through a squall of analog pedal effects.
The band’s Liverpool home, four-piece lineup, and psychedelic leanings—their name comes from a stoned expedition to the city’s Chinatown neighborhood—may invoke comparisons to the Beatles. But what they really have in common with the Fab Four is their playful experimentation within pop’s otherwise stringent confines, and their buckets of artistic chemistry. Listening to the album feels like sitting in on a jam session and, despite their intricate, precise construction, there’s an appealing, thrown-together feel to the album’s 10 tracks.
The hand-clapped a cappella intro to “People Always Say What They Want” builds with snippets of laughter, studio chatter, and a new instrument joining the fray every few bars, but never loses its shape. “08:30” opens on drifting choral harmonies before descending into a scuzz of square waves and thrashed-out guitar riffs; “Dreams” is just as unpredictable, with its sparse, wiry vocals disintegrating gorgeously into metallic percussion and crunchy synths. “Bullets on a Screen” and the album’s title track follow more obvious, chorus-led song structures, but don’t necessarily suffer for it. Both sail on beguiling three-part harmonies and effortless riffs and serve as fixed posts for the album’s remaining tracks to drift in and out of. Occasionally—on the aimlessly repetitive “Just Love,” or in the meandering bombast of “Every Minute of the Day”—their agreeably thrown-together approach verges on slapdash, but these minor missteps don’t dampen the mood too much.
Landing somewhere between a beat tape and an alt-pop record, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? finds inspiration in unexpected places: early Battles, maybe, or Forest Swords if he wasn’t quite so serious, or the xx if they weren’t so caught up in their feelings. As such, it’s a welcome addition to the UK’s musical landscape which, beyond London’s fizzing homegrown jazz community and a few other exceptions, finds itself amid a dearth of exciting new bands. Like the party scene in your favorite teen movie, this is neatly constructed chaos. And infectiously fun too. It’s a bold debut, frothing with ambition and a desire to push at the bounds of what a pop band should sound like in 2019. The challenge now will be to hone that ambition and tighten up the songcraft that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? has given fans a glimpse of.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-07-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-13T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | September | July 13, 2019 | 6.9 | a1833065-e585-4e08-80c1-fac25a6c8bca | Will Pritchard | https://pitchfork.com/staff/will-pritchard/ | |
Once a famously fractious noise band, the trio continues its slow transformation into an unpredictable and surprisingly tender rock group. | Once a famously fractious noise band, the trio continues its slow transformation into an unpredictable and surprisingly tender rock group. | Magik Markers: 2020 | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/magik-markers-2020/ | 2020 | Just after the start of this century, Magik Markers felt like a spectacular explosion that would soon burn through all available fuel. A noise-rock trio that earned the back half of that hyphenate chiefly by virtue of playing drums, guitars, and bass, the Markers were famously belligerent, ripping into audiences that appeared apathetic while ripping riffs and rhythms into shards. It was exhilarating and exhausting, the kind of spectacle that never seemed to account for sustainability. But for the last dozen years, the Markers—once maniacally prolific—have slowed their schedule and softened their attack, seesawing between the pastoral wallop of Crazy Horse and the fragmented beauty of Kim Gordon. Though most people continue to associate Magik Markers with that early racket, they’ve now been getting weird on the other side of the hyphenate for most of their career.
If the nine-song 2020, the Markers’ first album in seven years, doesn’t finally recast their primordial reputation, it’s hard to imagine anything will. They mostly tuck the dissonance and bedlam beneath the surface of these tunes, like a weapon hidden between hem and skin. That restraint highlights the band’s surprising breadth on their most diverse set of songs yet. “That Dream (Shitty Beach)” is the kind of blast from the garage Ty Segall might howl; its chaser, “Born Dead,” is a tender Mellotron-and-guitar waltz detailing cosmic loneliness and salvation. The opener is a guitar anti-hero epic, its elliptical solo gathering direction and distortion across the song’s exhilarating second half. The finale, however, is a woozy pop lullaby for the dispossessed, like Julee Cruise coming back to earth.
None of this is to say that Magik Markers now sound “normal.” In July, they released a four-track preamble to 2020, stretching Elisa Ambrogio’s spectral voice across smeared guitars and refracted meters. Those pieces felt wonderfully surreal, like hymns spirited from a distant galaxy. The centerpiece of 2020 is “Hymn for 2020,” an eerie collage of long phosphorescent tones, sporadic drum thuds, and vocals that conjure ghouls and angels. It’s like huddling inside a tornado shelter as a twister races by outside—a momentarily safe space, burdened by knowledge of what’s on the other side of the door. Ambrogio intones the brittle “CDROM,” a seven-minute tone poem about astrology, psychedelics, and extreme existential angst, with a coolness that suggests she’s succumbed to these worries. Her dazed voice and acidic guitar, along with Pete Nolan’s roiling drums, recall the dread that precedes a panic attack.
But by and large, Magik Markers’ longtime touchstones, abrasion and arrhythmia, add depth to these songs without dominating them. “Born Dead” never gets too pretty or plain, since the country licks sometimes sour and Ambrogio occasionally loops her voice like she’s her own shadow. “That Dream (Shitty Beach)” might be the Markers’ most thundering rock song ever. It’s an open-road, windows-down jam in a very unexpected and literal sense—whipped by static and a sense of vertigo, the song sounds as if it were recorded in a convertible careening down the highway, wind lashing the microphones. “You Can Find Me” is a perfect power-pop song about adolescent frustration; you may wonder, though, if it were bashed out inside a crinkled aluminum can and captured with dying recording gear.
Amid the lurid excess of their beginnings, Magik Markers bucked against any expectations they encountered, from songform to the understanding of where the stage ended and the crowd began. They punished their instruments as often as they played them and avoided any semblance of a straightforward catalogue by releasing whatever whenever. The thrills were sudden and pure. But it’s been even more satisfying to watch the Markers—partners, parents, adults with solo or side-projects and day-jobs—mature into a singular rock trio, funneling all their ire and wonder and doubt and humor into enduring songs.
At its best, 2020 is as probing as those early paroxysms, asking similar questions with similar instruments in more developed ways. These songs plunder modern unease and desire, whether pining for deeper connections or wanting to escape an increasingly hostile planet. Against most odds, Magik Markers have become long-term reminders that settling down doesn’t mean settling, shutting, or stiffening up, even when you’re making less racket.
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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. | 2020-10-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-23T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Rock | Drag City | October 23, 2020 | 7.3 | a190afee-d341-4ca3-8ce4-4b2fd4f0b017 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | |
Driven by civil war from his native Sierra Leone to New York, Janka Nabay joined with members of Skeletons, Chairlift, Highlife, and Saadi to make En Yay Sah, a powerfully modern, cosmopolitan introduction to bubu's complex and vibrant rhythms. | Driven by civil war from his native Sierra Leone to New York, Janka Nabay joined with members of Skeletons, Chairlift, Highlife, and Saadi to make En Yay Sah, a powerfully modern, cosmopolitan introduction to bubu's complex and vibrant rhythms. | Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang: En Yay Sah | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16911-en-yay-sah/ | En Yay Sah | When war drove him from Sierra Leone to New York, Janka Nabay was one of the most popular musicians in his homeland. He'd been one of the primary performers in the revival and fusioning of bubu music, an ancient folk form that had survived the 18th-century introduction of Islam to the country. At a time when the Sierra Leonean music scene was dominated by imported forms, and especially reggae, the old bubu rhythms injected an energizing shot of local flavor into pop music. For a time, Nabay used to his music to speak out against the country's spiraling civil war, but when rebels co-opted his music during their destructive drives into rural villages, he found himself with few options but to leave.
In the United States, he searched for collaborators while working as a fry cook, and found them not in the Sierra Leonean ex-pat community, but in Brooklyn's indie rock scene. The Bubu Gang, Nabay's backing band on En Yay Sah, comprises members of Skeletons, Chairlift, Highlife, and Saadi, and their method of collaboration was simple: Nabay showed them the rhythms he was working with and the songs he'd written, and he turned them loose. Jon Leland's drums hold down the heavily syncopated bubu beats, the music's strongest tie to tradition, and the rest of the band cooks up a backing for Nabay that sounds so intensely modern it's practically futuristic. Guitarist Doug Shaw plays no rhythm, instead adding color to the music with mildly psychedelic leads that focus on melody when Nabay isn't singing and recede to tonal washes during the verses.
Nabay's weathered but agile voice is the kind of instrument that would likely sound at home on a sparse field recording, so it's curious how well it integrates with Jason McMahon's sleek-toned bass and Michael Gallope's bright, tropical keyboard sounds. The integration is helped by the backing vocals of Syrian-born Boshra AlSaadi, who sings answering phrases to Nabay's leads and functions essentially as part of the rhythm section. Her repeated vocal line on "Ro Lungi" becomes the song's primary hook, complementing and reinforcing the keyboard phrase that serves as the other hook and gives shape to Nabay's rapid-fire lead vocals.
Nabay sings in four languages on the record: his native Temne, a syncretic combination of English and African languages that originated in Western Hemisphere slave communities called Krio, and small amounts of English and Arabic. It reflects his country's complicated history, as well as his own emergence into a wider world from his homeland's small music scene. Bubu music is ancient; En Yay Sah offers a powerfully modern, cosmopolitan introduction to its complex and vibrant rhythms. | 2012-08-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | 2012-08-13T02:00:04.000-04:00 | Global | Luaka Bop | August 13, 2012 | 7.3 | a193ecb6-9122-4924-9924-ac14cf9bbaf1 | Joe Tangari | https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/ | null |
During the recording process of Little Dragon's fourth LP, singer Yukimi Nagano wandered around the band’s longtime hometown of Gothenberg in winter while listening to Janet Jackson. When Nagano and the band don’t stick too closely to dance music or downtempo on the album, the results are adventurous. | During the recording process of Little Dragon's fourth LP, singer Yukimi Nagano wandered around the band’s longtime hometown of Gothenberg in winter while listening to Janet Jackson. When Nagano and the band don’t stick too closely to dance music or downtempo on the album, the results are adventurous. | Little Dragon: Nabuma Rubberband | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19327-little-dragon-nabuma-rubberband/ | Nabuma Rubberband | Yukimi Nagano sums up her approach to Little Dragon’s fourth LP, Nabuma Rubberband, in a R&B-flavored sound bite at the end of the record. “Let go of everything I know,” she sings over a booming, slow-rolling bounce on “Let Go”. Speaking to Rolling Stone late last year, the Swedish-Japanese vocalist explained that, for this record, the Gothenburg-based band started with nothing—no ideas, no vision, no plan. “We dove into different worlds,” she said. “New spaces we haven't been to before.” Some of that uncharted territory turned out to be more familiar than suggested: the interactive website that factored in the album's unveiling was set in Nagano’s pleasantly kitschy home studio, and during the recording process she wandered around the band’s longtime hometown of Gothenberg in winter while listening to Janet Jackson.
This wintry mix of fresh and familiar suffuses Nabuma Rubberband, which opens as if Nagano stepped inside from one of these walks with “Twenty Foreplay” stuck in her head and started writing before her fingers uncramped from the cold. The intermittent thuds throughout “Mirror” depart noticeably from the magnetic rhythms of 2011's Ritual Union, hinting at the album's changing focus. Though their very first release, 2006’s Twice, showcased Nagano’s voice with spacious, somber piano chords, she said in another interview that Little Dragon felt self-conscious about writing “slow jams”. It took them another three years to arrive at the Prince-indebted funky freakouts of 2009's Machine Dreams, as well as the beat-focused collaborations with SBTRKT, Gorillaz, and Dave Sitek’s Maximum Balloon project that followed.
Little Dragon's continued to explore the dichotomy between dance music and downtempo since, and when Nagano doesn’t stick too closely to one or the other on Nabuma Rubberband, the results are more adventurous than on the catchy but slightly underwhelming Ritual Union. There's a Japanese game show-styled interlude (“Lurad”), string accents by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (“Nabuma Rubberbands”, “Pink Cloud”), and “Killing Me”, which coats Machine Dreams’ synthesizer freestyles in grimy noise. It’s nice to know Little Dragon can still pull off the same rhythmic variations and textural contrasts that made their earlier output such a rewarding listen, even if it doesn’t always go smoothly: just when they settle into a groove on the ominous, glittering “Only One”, the song whiplashes to a close with an industrial beat that sounds tacked on.
Nabuma Rubberband's slow jams are perfectly sexy, but they lack originality. Even after repeated listens, the album's velvety sequence of “Pretty Girls”, “Underbart”, and “Cat Rider” fail to leave a lasting impression. Nagano’s beguilingly smoky voice has also lost a little bit of its allure, and when Little Dragon foray into already well-trod territory—there’s even a song called “Paris”, complete with breathy French lyrics—they invariably disappoint. It’s great the band was able to find a throughline between the comfortable and the experimental this time around, but on Nabuma Rubberband they let go of a little too much of themselves in the process. | 2014-05-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2014-05-12T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Because Music / Loma Vista | May 12, 2014 | 6.8 | a197f418-cfdc-4ba1-a01d-e337bc7c38e5 | Harley Brown | https://pitchfork.com/staff/harley-brown/ | null |
More than any other MSTRKRFT release, *Operator *sounds like the work of a band — one with punk DNA coursing through its army of analog synths. | More than any other MSTRKRFT release, *Operator *sounds like the work of a band — one with punk DNA coursing through its army of analog synths. | MSTRKRFT: Operator | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22117-operator/ | Operator | Even before Death from Above 1979 went nuclear in 2006, leaving behind a miasma of ringing ears and beer-stained v-necks, MSTRKRFT had already formed with hopes of producing even sexier results. Bassist/keyboardist Jesse F. Keeler and producer Alex Puodziukas (a.k.a. Al-P, who also manned the boards for You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine) chose a glossy, vocoder-heavy approach to electro-house years before bloghouse would go mainstream. MSTRKRFT was an immediate fixture on the festival circuit, meshing well with arena-ready acts like Steve Aoki and the Ed Banger crew. A decade later, however, the landscape has changed: EDM is now the music of the masses and DFA1979 have reunited, releasing a new record. MSTRKRFT, for their part, seem destined to return to their status as a side project.
Operator, the duo’s first album since 2009’s Fist of God, fits right alongside Death from Above 1979’s The Physical World as a return to the sounds of the mid and early ’00s, embracing distorted electro-punk and eschewing the poppier sensibilities of their second LP. Rather than include another laundry list of guests like those on Fist of God, *Operator *sounds like the work of two guys united by a singular vision. (That there are no John Legend or E-40 features on the record is ultimately for the best.)
When MSTRKRFT first arose—*dude from Death From Above doing an electronic record—*many assumed the project would sound something like Romance Bloody Romance, the DFA1979 remix album, which featured Justice and MSTRKRFT themselves. *Operator *plays like a mea culpa to fans who were disappointed that MSTRKRFT didn't go in that direction to begin with: more than any other MSTRKRFT release, *Operator *sounds like the work of a band—one with punk DNA coursing through its army of analog synths. The new record’s stripped-down take is clear from the first single, “Little Red Hen,” whose glitched-out tones evoke Contra if it were fed Adderall instead of quarters. More aggressive is album closer “Go on Without Me,” which thunders and throbs like it belongs inside the S&M club from The Matrix.
Operator also looks to ’90s acts like the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy for inspiration on tracks like “Party Line” and “Wrong Glass Sir.” Like those groups, whose driving, purposefully unsubtle production was equally suited to dancing or moshing, *Operator *trades pop accessibility for pure momentum. If you managed to catch Death From Above 1979 circa 2014, you likely saw a band more polished and just as ferocious as they were at the their heyday, and some of the energy seems to have crept into MSTRKRFT as well.
Listening to Operator today, however, one has to wonder if returning to such well-trod territory is really worth the time. The ten tracks here are all honest executions of a sound that was essentially perfected ten years ago; nostalgia alone can’t justify how little legitimately new material MSTRKRFT bring to the table. It’s a shame that *Operator *wasn’t MSTRKRFT's first album—had it been, the conversation around the band would probably be different than it is today. As it is, we have a decent album—probably MSTRKRFT’s best—but few compelling reasons to really get excited. That said, the distorted funk wizardry on “Runaway” is so damn fun you’re almost forced to take its groove at face value, which is probably all MSTRKRFT want from listeners anyhow. | 2016-07-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-19T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Last Gang | July 19, 2016 | 6.5 | a1a00eff-4672-4221-99d7-50a7aac5d7dc | Nathan Reese | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-reese/ | null |
The UK producer casually throws house, UK garage, R&B, pop, and breakbeats into varied songs that are as emotionally relatable as they are instinctively danceable. | The UK producer casually throws house, UK garage, R&B, pop, and breakbeats into varied songs that are as emotionally relatable as they are instinctively danceable. | TSHA: Capricorn Sun | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/tsha-capricorn-sun/ | Capricorn Sun | British dance producer Teisha Matthews, aka TSHA, exited 2021 with a much higher profile than the one she entered 2020 with. This might seem a curious state of affairs for a producer and DJ who specializes in dance-friendly jams—and who, like everyone else, saw her touring schedule canceled for the better part of a year. But TSHA’s music, unlike that of her clubbier kin, feels approachable, honest, and laden with pop hooks, going far beyond the ravenous demands of the dancefloor. Perhaps it’s not surprising that it prospered in a time of widespread emotional trauma, when so many people were looking for a friend.
Hard-won feelings abound on Capricorn Sun, TSHA’s debut album—from “Sister,” a song about Matthews discovering a half sister she never previously knew, to “OnlyL,” an ode, she says, to “changing the pace of life and focusing on the things that bring love and joy.” Matthews says that she tries to appeal to as many people as possible with her music, which she sees as “emotive and eclectic,” and this range is very much in evidence on Capricorn Sun. You can dance to TSHA’s excellently crafted house tracks, but you can also relate to them.
Capricorn Sun is stylistically diverse. TSHA casually throws house, UK garage, R&B, pop, and breakbeats into the mix, in keeping with the relaxed dilettantism currently heard across much modern dance music. Matthews grew up in a household of clubbers—DJ brother, ex-raver mother—and you can hear this familiarity in her work. This is a warm glow of a record, an album that reaches out to the listener without patronizing their tastes.
Extending the family feel, Capricorn Sun features a number of guest vocalists, including London duo NIMMO, Malian legend Oumou Sangaré, friend/producer Ell Murphy, and Mafro, who recently got engaged to Matthews—an interweaving of the personal and the professional that sits well on such a comfortably intimate record. The strongest song, “Sister,” is also the one that feels the most personal. Over a moody guitar lick, Bollywood-esque strings, and a sturdy house beat, Murphy sings, “Feels like I’ve just woken up/And I was always waiting for us,” with the unchecked joy of a dream fulfilled. It might not be TSHA’s voice, but the emotion is all hers—and, indeed, ours, if we have a heart to share in this perfectly constructed moment of dancefloor pop. “Power” pulls off a similarly emotional move, combining a judicious sample from “I’m the One” (an obscure tune by Paul Hardcastle’s 1980s funk band Direct Drive) with the suggestion of a breakbeat, French touch filters, and what might be steel drums, creating a perfect summer soundtrack with just a hint of autumnal melancholy.
Both songs largely confirm what we already knew: TSHA is capable of broad emotional strokes that can connect with an audience beyond dancers and club kids. “Dancing in the Shadows,” with well-traveled singer songwriter Clementine Douglas, suggests TSHA could go even further. Over a titanic breakbeat garage rhythm and Bicep-style stadium-house production, Douglas unleashes a brilliantly catchy pop vocal, both vulnerable and powerful; the combination suggests that TSHA could step up to festival headliner status with a few more such anthems under her belt. The song isn’t exactly subtle—a common trait on an album where song two, the galvanic “The Light,” already feels like a set closer—but you imagine future festival audiences will care not a jot.
TSHA says she envisaged Capricorn Sun as a way to get into playing live. The mix-friendly extended intros and lengthy instrumental passages that dominate many dance albums are replaced here by songs that make their mark in four glorious minutes, then leave triumphantly. This relentless buoyancy ends up a little overwhelming, occasionally spilling into blandness over the album’s 12 songs. But this is easily overlooked among the spell of familiarity that TSHA has spun. Capricorn Sun proves that in a world full of villains and blowhards, a little likability can go a long way. | 2022-10-11T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2022-10-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B / Electronic | Ninja Tune | October 11, 2022 | 7.2 | a1a144f6-20aa-4e4c-ab31-604da120cea5 | Ben Cardew | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/ | |
On Dope Body’s follow-up to 2012’s Natural History, the Baltimore noise rock band refresh a subversive approach to racket-making. Drive Like Jehu, Girls Against Boys, Brainiac, Chavez, U.S. Maple: This is Dope Body’s deliciously warped version of '90s pop history. | On Dope Body’s follow-up to 2012’s Natural History, the Baltimore noise rock band refresh a subversive approach to racket-making. Drive Like Jehu, Girls Against Boys, Brainiac, Chavez, U.S. Maple: This is Dope Body’s deliciously warped version of '90s pop history. | Dope Body: Lifer | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19959-dope-body-lifer/ | Lifer | Did Dope Body really need to boldface its '90s fetish by naming a song "AOL" on their new album? The answer is no. They did it anyway. On Lifer, the Baltimore band’s follow-up to 2012’s Natural History, "AOL" is the most blatant reference to that bygone decade of dialup Internet and weirdo alt-rock that made In Utero sound safe. Drive Like Jehu, Girls Against Boys, Brainiac, Chavez, U.S. Maple: This is Dope Body’s deliciously warped version of '90s pop history, and accordingly, they’ve been able to pull that into a tight knot of noise that doesn’t actually sound too retro at all; there are sonic nods here and there, some obvious and others of the Easter egg variety, but mostly they’ve managed to refresh a subversive, aggressively squirrelly approach to racket-making that never had the chance to become played out in the first place. "AOL" is as good an example as any on Lifer. It slinks, thrashes, boils over, shrinks down, gets jazzy, and is stabbed with jagged hooks by singer Andrew Laumann, who babbles and slurs while guitarist Zachary Utz surgically cripples his own riffs like a true '90s guitar antihero.
Despite all that, "AOL" is not the most thrilling demonstration of Dope Body’s prowess. A foaming-at-the-mouth intro lapses into a leaden breakdown; rather than dynamic, it feels slapdash. Most of Lifer is better, but there’s a marked drop in energy to the album as compared the band’s prior work. Yet somehow, the record sprints along at a brisk pace; that velocity, though, doesn’t seem to go anywhere. "Repo Man" splits a simmering, Fugazi-esque buildup with Laumann’s mush-mouthed, vaguely angry poetics, but none of it coagulates into a single focused hook or mood. On "Nu Sensation", tar-pit guitar stews in its own mock-stoner-rock filth while the vocals meander, ramble, babble, and attach to nothing.
When Lifer clicks, though, it’s unkillable. "Hired Gun" slices open its own means of entry with Utz’s needling, staccato harmonics; Laumann’s lax snarl hits peak slacker charisma, and the swaggering riffage mixed with wah-pedal leads imagines J. Mascis jamming with Rocket from the Crypt. Things get downright punk on "Toy", although the album’s angriest track, "Day by Day", scratches and swarms without fully blowing the hatch off. "Rare Air" is the album’s best song, a snakelike sashay through pinging effects and a dub-worthy bassline from John Jones, formerly of fellow Baltimore band Roomrunner. But even then, Utz’s thick, surfy riff could have come straight off a Pixies outtake. "Wanna be original/ Don’t wanna be a wannabe," Laumann sings, and it’s not clear at all if the irony is lost on him.
Laumann, at his worst, can lapse into a frat-scat leer that comes across unsettlingly like Anthony Kiedis; he goes there on the slinky, smoky "Echo", and it doesn’t help that in the lyrics of "Toy", the three words "under the bridge" actually appear in that order. If Lifer were either catchier or crazier, it would be far better. As it stands, it feels like a placeholder, something to pass the time until a more rounded, less pastiche-leaning version of Dope Body gets dialed up. As soon as they figure out that they don't have to lift wholesale chunks of inspiration from any of their heroes in order to make their point, they may find a way to more creatively harness their '90s worship. Until then, Lifer has just enough life of its own. | 2014-10-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | 2014-10-29T02:00:03.000-04:00 | Rock | Drag City | October 29, 2014 | 6.9 | a1a48c8c-fbc1-452a-a175-03664620fa7a | Jason Heller | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-heller/ | null |
The Ethiopian 11-piece band's sophomore effort is a big, brave roar of an album, reaching and surpassing the heights of their excellent 2012 self-titled debut. | The Ethiopian 11-piece band's sophomore effort is a big, brave roar of an album, reaching and surpassing the heights of their excellent 2012 self-titled debut. | Debo Band: Ere Gobez | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21949-ere-gobez/ | Ere Gobez | The struggle to pronounce some of the more difficult Amharic consonants and constructions—difficult for English speakers—will often meet with an encouraging exclamation of “gobez”! Translations for the word range from smart to brave to courageous to talented to witty. Debo Band’s saxophonist, leader and ethnomusicologist Danny Mekonnen translates the phrase “Ere gobez” as a “call of the lionhearted—it's a term used to inspire.” It’s certainly an apt label and message for the Ethiopian 11-piece band’s second album, a record the reaches and then surpasses the heights of their excellent 2012 self-titled debut.
Because not only do the varying definitions of *gobez *fit the range of music on this record, but the music of Debo Band is that of a big, brave roar, song after song. This is a powerful, and, perhaps, inspirational record: it certainly inspires dancing__,__ filling spaces and capturing a dynamic live sensibility. It’s no surprise that this is a band that takes up a great deal of room. With so many members, some in Boston, some as far away as Addis Ababa (violinist Kaethe Hostetter established a String Center in the Ethiopian capital), Debo is true to its name, which means “communal labor.” The community of Debo Band includes a bold, shimmery horn section, complete with sousaphone, but also slick guitar, a tight rhythm section, orchestral strings, an accordion and, on occasion, a masinquo—a one-stringed Ethiopian fiddle. There’s a quaver in lead vocalist Bruck Tesfaye’s voice that is in keeping with Amharic-language singing style, but it is a powerfully pure energy that sits on top of each song, rising along with all the other instruments.
If you know anything about Ethiopian music and musical traditions, it’s most likely that you have a good relationship with the over two-dozen edition strong Éthiopiques series, lovingly curated by France’s Francis Falceto. The series focuses on the 1960s and ‘70s, and Debo Band certainly draws from this era, but they also pull from more recent times as well as from funk, rock and pop. Debo’s material is reinterpreted and reconsidered, pushed through a creative process that remains true to source as well as their own specific sound (7 of the 11 tracks on the album draw from previously existing works, which are well cited in the liner notes).
There is an adaptation of Somali Dur-Dur band song “Rafaad iyo Raaxo” (originally performed in the mid-'80s) on “Kehulum Abliche” and Debo Band dips into Okinawa, Japan in “Hiyamikachi Bushi” (a song composed almost 60 years ago). Ere Gobez provides numerous examples how Debo Band seems to taking part in conversations that are happening in multiple spaces and places at different times. Heck, “Yalanchi” sounds almost like a smooth groove that might, just might, be in good company with some Yacht Rock luminaries.
For those unfamiliar, it’s valuable to note that the specific rhythms of songs such as “Oromo” and “Ele” draw upon the musical cultures of the Oromo and Gurage. The infectious spring of these two tracks is undeniable. It’s near impossible not to dance to, even if you aren’t familiar with the exact dance styles necessary, though it’s certainly fun to take a little YouTube trip to find out the level of skill and control involved in Oromo as well as Gurage dancing. By doing so, one can understand just how important the big sound and speed of the songs function for dancing. And it’s hard to imagine any of the band members standing still during the recording of this record. Or anyone who will listen to *Ere Gobez *or see Debo Band live either. Each track seems to bounce around the room, pulling the listener along with it. | 2016-05-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-05-27T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Global | FPE | May 27, 2016 | 8.1 | a1a8f9b2-7e0e-4d91-93e6-7133c8f8f5db | Erin MacLeod | https://pitchfork.com/staff/erin-macleod/ | null |
The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album addresses the strangeness of nascent love, channeling feelings of derealization and disconnect in intricately detailed electronic pop miniatures. | The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album addresses the strangeness of nascent love, channeling feelings of derealization and disconnect in intricately detailed electronic pop miniatures. | Helena Deland: Someone New | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/helena-deland-someone-new/ | Someone New | Helena Deland writes songs about love from the vantage point of a dream state. The Montreal-based songwriter’s music channels feelings of derealization and disconnect: those moments when your body no longer feels like your own, or your words seem to hang like language suspended, illuminated in midair. Deland writes in fragments: On her last release, a strange series of EPs later packaged as an album titled From the Series of Songs “Altogether Unaccompanied”, she told cryptic and poetic stories tinged by psychedelic drugs and loneliness and longing. She spoke in hushed couplets paired with swollen bass and guitars that felt sympatico with early Elliott Smith albums. Deland’s stunning, intricate debut album, Someone New, a record about the complexities of new relationships, is a more cohesive, full-color version of those early sketches, with the sharp angles and harsh lighting of a Dutch vanitas painting.
Despite its frequent darkness and sullen mood, Someone New shudders with a digital glow. Deland often takes the structure to what might otherwise be a simple indie-rock song and imbues it with guitar processing, looping, and stormy, low-end frequencies. The textures she favors come from the ’90s, landing somewhere between the breathy, honey-coated vocals of Hope Sandoval and the heady, fermented eroticism of Portishead. Opener “Someone New” is cut from the same cloth as Portishead’s “The Rip,” with its glassy kick drums, looped vocals, and unexpected key changes at the song’s midpoint. Deland evokes the torrent of complicated emotions that come from kissing someone new for the first time: “I’ll be covered head to toe/In the faded flower patterns of/Memories/Of nights like these,” she sings as the song softens and warms, like a body lowered into a steaming bath. Then, there’s a deep exhale, and the music’s prettiness gets bruised a bit. Deland sighs a promise to give herself a “fucking break,” in the way that one might in a moment of uncertainty, when a new person’s face is hovering in front of your own and the noise inside your head drowns out everything else.
Someone New replicates the push and pull of a complicated relationship, one that Deland often seems to feel ambivalent about. “Dog” is decadent like roses resting on a velvet blanket: Muffled loops of lo-fi guitars and distorted drums seem to emit from a jewelry box while Deland’s voice is coolly removed, as if dissociated from the situation at hand. She sings about a potentially unhealthy relationship, wryly likening herself to a dog on a leash. “Truth Nugget” zeroes in on the feeling of being unknowable in the eyes of another. “I am another solid mystery when it comes to you/Michael, I’m the puzzle in the other room,” she sings, her eye contact unwavering. Meanwhile, “Smoking at the Gas Station,” underscores the volatility of Deland’s situation. She sings placidly about the risk of losing oneself in another person: “Trace the outline of my hand/So I’m reminded where I end.” Disembodiment and derealization, as conditions inextricable from the nascent stages of love, reach their apotheosis on the bloodshot “Pale,” where the bass gets so noisy it gives the sensation of having your ears duct-taped to a subwoofer. “Spending this time/In my naked body’s/Not making it familiar to me,” Deland sings in a tone that is unnervingly calm and chill, as if the feeling of corporeal alienation that accompanies standing naked in front of a new lover were as anodyne as buying orange juice.
“Mid-Practice” is the record’s most understated song, so subtle you wouldn’t be faulted for missing its brilliance on first listen. Percussion clicks like beads on an abacus, and guitar swims in a reverberant haze. Deland sings of waiting and loneliness, of “rehearsing love ’til it’s real.” “What I find worse/Than a love that hurts when it’s captive/Is a love that thrives/On being the hunter,” she sings in a daze, in conversation with herself. “Off I go again,” she continues—yet for a hunter, she sounds remarkably placid. You can almost imagine her smiling as she sings the line. It’s jarring. As a songwriter, Deland has a gift for creating extreme juxtapositions as bewildering as palm trees on Mount Everest, always managing to sound extraordinarily at ease while tackling complex thoughts about human existence. Her songs are like islands: self-contained, gorgeous little worlds where nothing is obvious—especially the genesis of love and its unsteady first steps.
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. | 2020-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-10-21T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Experimental / Folk/Country | Luminelle | October 21, 2020 | 7.9 | a1a9a7a7-852d-4611-8db6-bac81ea931c8 | Sophie Kemp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sophie-kemp/ | |
The latest on the adventurous West Mineral Ltd. label finds the mysterious duo crafting something with classic ambient earmarks as well as off-kilter addenda. | The latest on the adventurous West Mineral Ltd. label finds the mysterious duo crafting something with classic ambient earmarks as well as off-kilter addenda. | Pontiac Streator / Ulla Straus: 11 Items | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pontiac-streator-ulla-straus-11-items/ | 11 Items | Ambient labels are generally contemplative, serious endeavors, from Brian Eno’s Obscure and Haruomi Hosono’s Monad to early chill-out imprints like em:t, each intently mapping out soundworlds and then fully immersing themselves in them. So when Brian Leeds set up the West Mineral Ltd. imprint last year, it seemed on the surface to further the ambient tracks he makes as Huerco S. and Pendant. But each new entry on the label seems to question the very nature of ambient music. Can it only be calming and relaxing? Is it only chill? Can’t it also be a little funny? And might ambient also embrace those decidedly non-chill feelings of anxiousness, alienation, and nausea? Leeds and friends plumb that dread zone with every new release.
The music crafted by the mysterious duo of Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus has mostly been relegated to limited cassettes, until last year’s tantalizing yet too brief Chat EP, which showcased their penchant for goopy, 4th-world excursions. Now, given a full-length album, they craft something with classic ambient earmarks as well as off-kilter addenda—vocals clipped so as to render everyday language strikingly alien and hand drums that melt like spilled mercury with every hit—so that 11 Items sounds disquietly immersive and uneasy.
That sort of intangible quality gives 11 Items an unsettling feel, a world wholly inside a funhouse mirror. The fraught, reedy male voice bubbling up on “Item 7” could get mistaken for a Thom Yorke track, especially with the metallic thrums and fidgety circuitry churning in the background. But what to make of the applauding studio audience that keeps surfacing? The heavy bass, digital squelches, and ritualistic drums of “Item 3” bring to mind something like Miles Davis’ “Black Satin,” but Streator and Straus neither let the track gather velocity nor density, letting its elements instead slither away. “Item 3” strikes a perfect balance between hand percussion, stretched out electronics, and the distant sound of birds in the trees.
The latter part of the album most closely adheres to the template of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, full of foggy lullaby melodies, submerged voices, and unsourced noises that border on the nightmarish, as on “Item 10.” And “Item 1” features shimmering, floating keyboard chords that on their own would be relaxing, only to have the duo ladle atop it slippery drums and a slurred mechanical voice. Add to it some bird chirps and a mechanical whirring not unlike a rotating sprinkler head working overtime, it imparts a leaden feel like getting drunk too fast on a hot summer day.
In the interplay of voices on “Item 8,” it brings to mind the push-pull of ‘90s R&B tracks like this one: chirpy female coos and bassy masculine tones (think Timbaland’s uh-huh elongated into a lecherous groan), all cooked down to a viscous substance. But there’s another sample saying “No fucking way!” that continually knocks the mood off balance. Elsewhere, a hiccuping voice—after three minutes of just spitting out “OK”—finally spits out “OK, I just downloaded it.” Which is funny in its own peculiar way, even if you don’t choose to download it. Rather than simply use their loops and effects to cast a mesmerizing spell, Streator and Straus are just as happy to rupture it.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-08-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Experimental | West Mineral Ltd. | August 12, 2019 | 7.3 | a1adfc0f-a0f2-45e4-85a1-ef8b5605741c | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | |
Blending slowcore, ambient, and folk with lo-fi musings on memory and entropy, Portland, Oregon musician Kyle Bates joins a grand tradition of Pacific Northwestern gloom. | Blending slowcore, ambient, and folk with lo-fi musings on memory and entropy, Portland, Oregon musician Kyle Bates joins a grand tradition of Pacific Northwestern gloom. | Drowse: Wane Into It | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/drowse-wane-into-it/ | Wane Into It | On foggy days, the sea stacks of the Oregon coast appear and vanish without warning: hulking rocky outcrops transformed into floating islands in the sky. The most famous of those sea stacks, Cannon Beach’s 235-foot Haystack Rock, appears on the cover of Drowse’s new album, Wane Into It. Kyle Bates, Drowse’s sole member, visited the coast as a child. This photo, though, reflects the way time has distorted the picture in his mind’s eye, rendering a carefree summertime snapshot as a ghostly, looming mass of gray. On Wane Into It, he deconstructs music and memory into a nonlinear yet meticulously organized canvas of sounds and images.
Since 2013, Drowse has carved out a niche blend of slowcore, ambient, and folk, all wrapped in a largely self-recorded lo-fi gauze. When the cut-and-paste noise collage of Wane Into It opener “Untrue in Headphones” drifts into the undoctored acoustic strums of “Mystery, Pt. 2,” Bates ensures that the transition is unexpected but not jarring. In the bleary, somnambulant territory of Drowse songs, sounds float by like hallucinations, vivid yet too fleeting to grasp.
Early Drowse recordings were inspired by the psychiatric prescriptions Bates received following a mental breakdown in 2011. “I was trying to represent different drug effects that I felt,” he said of his 2015 debut, describing its sound as “woozy” and “washed out.” With references to recreational MDMA and the anticonvulsant gabapentin, Wane Into It still carries the specter of pharmacology. Bates has now spent over a decade “stumbl[ing] around therapy and self-destructive tendencies,” as he puts it on “Mystery, Pt. 2,” and recent years were marked by more personal upheaval, including the death of a family member. This exhausting cycle defines the album more than any particular substance. “I hope this is good for me,” he sighs at the song’s frigid close.
In its chilly atmosphere and eclectic-but-complementary instruments and effects, Wane Into It achieves what feels like an effortless sense of musical identity. In reality it’s the most labored-over Drowse release to date. In the first six years of the project’s existence, Bates produced nine releases, including three full-lengths, but aside from one ambient contribution to a four-way split in 2021, Wane Into It is the first new Drowse music in over three years. Recorded primarily in bedrooms in Oakland, Portland, and Los Angeles, the album also features contributions from a number of friends, including Midwife’s Madeline Johnston on “Untrue in Headphones.” The liner notes’ lengthy breakdown of recording details gives lie to the homespun sound.
While it would be inaccurate to call Wane Into It a drone album, Bates is almost constantly manipulating noise, whether it appears in the forefront (as on “Telepresence” and the back half of “Ten Year Hangover / Deconstructed Mystery”) or churning in the background of acoustic guitar-led passages. His carefully constructed atmospheres drive the album. “Untrue in Headphones” gets its name from Burial’s Untrue, and “Ten Year Hangover” recalls an obsession with Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica, reference points that help to explain Bates’ interest in texture. In this, he has a clear forebear in the Microphones/Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum, whose visionary studio experimentation expands lyric-driven folk songs into immersive worlds. Ever the dedicated student, Bates quotes No Flashlight’s “I Know No One” on “Three Faces (Cyanoacrylate)” and had Wane Into It mastered at the Unknown, a studio in Elverum’s hometown of Anacortes, Washington.
These hat-tips connect the dots of Drowse’s sound, and their appearances also add to the album’s time-out-of-joint befuddlement, like favorite songs passing through Bates’ subconscious. Untrue appears “in the abstraction of a memory,” Elverum’s lyrics (“I know no one/And no one knows me”) as an affirmation of confusion. Wane Into It, the title track confirms, is a “lean in” pun about embracing the inevitable decline of our mental capacity and remaining lifespan. Depressing but oddly comforting, seamless but constantly churning, it’s an album tailor-made for ponderous gray winter days. | 2022-12-01T00:01:00.000-05:00 | 2022-12-01T00:01:00.000-05:00 | Rock | The Flenser | December 1, 2022 | 7.5 | a1b8e5f9-c8d7-4a8f-8b48-417f7a210c9b | Patrick Lyons | https://pitchfork.com/staff/patrick-lyons/ | |
Led by guitar virtuoso Yvette Young, the California band looks beyond math rock with an album full of musical twists and emotional thrills. | Led by guitar virtuoso Yvette Young, the California band looks beyond math rock with an album full of musical twists and emotional thrills. | Covet: catharsis | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/covet-catharsis/ | catharsis | The highs and lows of Yvette Young’s chaotic 2022 all revolved around a new set of wheels. In November, the tour van that the California guitarist and songwriter had just bought for her rock trio Covet was hotwired and stolen from the parking lot of an Oakland studio while she was inside recording. This was the cherry on top of a rough summer that included an evidently acrimonious separation from Covet’s longtime bassist David Adamiak, followed by the departure of her longtime drummer Forrest Rice. It might have been enough to throw in the towel, but Young already had big plans. “This is my shot at trying one more time,” she said in a statement announcing Covet’s new rhythm section and their Rebirth tour, which kicked off one week after the van theft. The lineup was armed with several new songs, including the rubber-burning highlight “firebird,” an ode to possibilities named for the first car that Young’s mother bought as an American resident.
New possibilities abound in catharsis, Covet’s inspired third album, and not only in its hopeful sound. In these complex, cross-disciplinary compositions, Young reaches further out for textures and sheens on guitar as ex-drummer Rice and studio bassist Jon Button hold down heavy beats with occasional against-the-grain inflections. They land on an intriguing cocktail with notes of Battles’ cyborg-rock, strained through the guitar-rig obsession of Steve Vai, and—particularly in the wistful opener “coronal,” the lone track featuring new drummer Jessica Burdeaux, as well the only one with lyrics—a little My Bloody Valentine.
Young is a guitar virtuoso with a deep love for post-rock quilts with common colors but clashing patterns, and Covet’s prior albums lived and died by this craft. A twinkling 4/4 groove colliding into one single bar in 11/16, immediately doubling down with seven bars in 5/16, then jumping on a wave of grungy 7/4 and riding it out for two minutes to end an album? Hell yes. But rock music that overvalues complexity can sometimes undervalue the songwriting itself, and this is the issue Covet set out to solve on catharsis, evoking feelings that extend beyond that dizzying rush of math rock.
One of their biggest successes is “bronco,” which flaunts an odd, stutter-stepping guitar effect. When it fires, the song suspends in mid-air for a few ticks before popping right back into the pocket, and there’s a clear moment of relief when the beat picks back up, like rediscovering a lost train of thought. But it’s that stutter that carries the feeling, so instead of plugging it into a time signature that might seem picked out of a hat, “bronco”’s motion answers the sound: Rice and Button manipulate a crunching pace that surrounds Young’s satisfyingly crunchy guitar noise.
At 28 minutes, catharsis is Covet’s shortest LP, and brevity serves it well. With a smaller window, every sudden shift feels that much more exciting. The way the distorted and heavy-footed “coronal” transitions into the sleek and nimble “firebird” feels like it’s been blasted with a power washer. The spare and pretty piano intermission “interlude” offers a respite from the frenzy, while closing track “lovespell” sends the album out sweetly with saxophone played by Alex Rose of Minus the Bear. Most importantly, the sense of intention behind each decision helps Covet dodge the risk of over-noodling. Young is constantly changing gears, but she stitches her routes together with a deft touch that makes the arc feel surprisingly fluid. She navigates these eight songs like an expert traveler in a new city. | 2023-05-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2023-05-01T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Triple Crown | May 1, 2023 | 7.5 | a1ba3aba-e874-466e-a9ea-cfd58f5600d8 | Steven Arroyo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-arroyo/ | |
On the heels of a disappointing Bobby Digital record, another longtime Wu-Tang member proves he still has a deft command of language, metaphor, and narrative. | On the heels of a disappointing Bobby Digital record, another longtime Wu-Tang member proves he still has a deft command of language, metaphor, and narrative. | GZA: Pro Tools | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12126-pro-tools/ | Pro Tools | In a crew filled with acrobatic swordsmen, drunken boxers, and masters of the flying guillotine, GZA always struck me as the type of dude who kills opponents with carefully placed acupuncture needles: not quite as flashy, but just as impressive considering the pinpoint precision it requires. GZA possesses a well-worn, refined delivery that packs a lot of calculating wordplay behind a relaxed, almost deadpan façade. It's a smooth presence that makes workmanlike beats sound like taut head-nodders and meticulously crafted production like pure cinema. His new album, Pro Tools, is another in a line of notoriously delayed Wu-Tang-affiliated records; as a result, instead of being greeted with excitement it's being considered the work of a guy with something to prove.
What Pro Tools does prove is that the Genius is still lyrically sharp. The conceptual rhymes he's known for work well without getting too overbearing, and GZA still has a knack for building metaphors without stretching them thin. Sometimes it's simple, like the chorus to "Alphabets", which fuses Five Percenter linguistic mysticism and show-off vocab in a divine trip through the ABCs ("Universe, Victory, Wisdom, unknown/(why/Y), zig zag zig, and now back home"). Other times he runs through every possible twist of phraseology, as in "0% Finance", which runs with the girl-as-car metaphor and throws in enough make and model name references to fill an issue of Road & Track. And the title of "Columbian Ties" looks like a typo until it becomes clear that he's switched the rise-and-fall-of-a-hustler references from victims of Bogota cartels to people killed from D.C.'s foreign policy, and it's a cutting joke that he didn't have to change the scenario too much ("A place where the majority is goin' for self/ With the agenda not far beyond personal wealth").
Like most upper-tier MCs, GZA can still sound compelling big-upping his own skills ("Pencil") or taunting his foes, as he does in G-Unit dis track "Paper Plates"-- which is actually pretty damn funny. But aside from his lyrics, his biggest asset is the pull of his voice and how it bolsters even the most perfunctory, cheap-ass-sounding production-- which is fortunate, because there's not much here that you'll remember for the beats. Most of them are passable enough, even if they consist largely of textbook digital-era RZA mannerisms and the occasional derivative knockoff (particularly Jose "Choco" Reynoso's beat for "0% Financing", which sounds like a Xerox of Arabian Knight's beat for Legend of the Liquid Sword cut "Stay in Line"). And they compare semi-favorably to the two tracks that the RZA himself contributes-- the tinny but sinister "Paper Plate" and "Life Is a Movie", which liberally incorporates Gary Numan's "Films" to compellingly weird effect. But it's hard to overlook how ordinary they sound when the voice connected to them is the same one that spit over some of the most immaculate beats ever put together by the RZA (Liquid Swords) or DJ Muggs (Grandmasters), and even production-by-committee records like Beneath the Surface and Legend of the Liquid Sword had more stylistic cohesion to them.
As a pure lyrical record goes, Pro Tools doesn't disappoint, but fans who want everything to be a banger will be let down to find that there's not a lot of headknock here. The buzz around Pro Tools is that GZA just sounds too tired to get people amped, and while that's a more negative assessment than he deserves, this still doesn't really sound like the kind of album you'd call on to fill anyone's late-summer barbeque party soundtracking duties. But high-energy anthems aren't what made GZA great in the first place, and if you're into his most characteristic attributes-- high-concept extended-metaphor lyrics, hard-boiled storytelling, that calmly authoritative voice-- Pro Tools is still sharp enough to draw blood. | 2008-08-25T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2008-08-25T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Rap | Babygrande | August 25, 2008 | 6.8 | a1c07e0d-2842-42cf-8cae-017cc5efce14 | Nate Patrin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/ | null |
The free jazz collective takes a more patient and self-reflective approach to politics on their new album. | The free jazz collective takes a more patient and self-reflective approach to politics on their new album. | Irreversible Entanglements: Protect Your Light | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/irreversible-entanglements-protect-your-light/ | Protect Your Light | Irreversible Entanglements is a band built on improvisation, five jazz virtuosos—poet/vocalist Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), bassist Luke Stewart, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and drummer Tcheser Holmes—coalescing around an idea and discovering where it takes them. Their live shows are typically presented as a single piece of music, one movement seamlessly evolving into the next as they explore their anti-colonial and anti-fascist politics through sound. Their albums so far have mirrored this approach. After bonding during a Musicians Against Police Brutality event, they recorded their self-titled 2017 debut in a single day in Brooklyn, their first time performing as a collective.
Their fourth album, Protect Your Light, represents a departure from this free-flowing process. Recording across several days, the ensemble leaned into the tools of the studio, reexamining material and layering overdubs with help from multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. The list of production credits dwarfs the lyrics sheet; each member wields multiple instruments, producing an album that sounds bigger than the five-piece group that created it. Cymbals crash, saxophones scream, horns swirl, and basslines walk confidently before tumbling down the stairs. But the chaos is controlled. The songs are relatively concise for Irreversible Entanglements, with the longest one clocking in at seven and a half minutes.
Their early work was often confrontational, demanding engagement with uncomfortable topics such as systemic racism, gentrification, and the struggle to preserve community in spite of these forces. On “Land Back,” they continue to evoke anti-colonial struggles around the world and challenge the West’s self-appointed role at the center of geopolitics: “In Ethiopia, in Nigeria, in the so-called Middle East/Who knows what happened?” But for the most part, Protect Your Light takes a more patient and self-reflective approach, vibrating on a different frequency. It’s the act of refilling one’s vessel in song form.
That process begins, of course, with love: love for one’s self, neighbors, and family. “Free love/That lives in you,” Ayewa begins on the album’s opener, the start of a poem that ruminates on the bi-directional nature of love. Her voice is airy and drenched in reverb, radiating into the atmosphere as the drums roll along with her. Then the cymbals fade, the bass struts in, and the drum kit pulls you back down to earth. “root<=>branch” pays tribute to the late trumpeter jaimie branch, former labelmate and friend. “We can get free/Free from the pain/Free from the struggle/Let’s get free,” Ayewa pleads, as a layer of synthesized static crescendos to a high-pitched squeal. In the song’s second half, the horns and sax dance and scat joyfully, but by the sixth minute they seem to cry out in pain.
This is Irreversible Entanglements’ first album for storied jazz label Impulse!, home to greats like John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders. To record it, the band set up shop at Rudy Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, a historic space inhabited by the ghosts of jazz giants. And though the studio is not referenced specifically, its spiritual energy seems to carry through the album. On “Soundness,” Ayewa beckons us inside (“You are safe here/In the room”) and lets fluttering horns and reeds wash over us, connecting the practice of prayer to the safety of the spaces in which it is conducted. These are the places where the energy of the universe is concentrated, cultivated, and protected: the places where music is made. | 2023-09-19T00:01:00.000-04:00 | 2023-09-19T00:01:00.000-04:00 | Jazz | Impulse! | September 19, 2023 | 7.7 | a1c425bc-3149-4b28-a6f4-740d9404c944 | Matthew Ismael Ruiz | https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-ismael ruiz/ | |
Live at Third Man Records* *is the first live album by comedy duo Scharpling & Wurster. It's a concise set that seems focused on celebrating their act, rather than expanding on it. | Live at Third Man Records* *is the first live album by comedy duo Scharpling & Wurster. It's a concise set that seems focused on celebrating their act, rather than expanding on it. | Scharpling & Wurster: Live at Third Man Records | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22092-live-at-third-man-records/ | Live at Third Man Records | Live at Third Man Records, the first live album by comedy duo Scharpling & Wurster, opens with the titular performers’ disembodied voices nervously chatting behind a curtain. Stricken with stage fright, the two privately brainstorm ways to perform the show without having to actually step onto the stage. A supposed false start to the performance, it also serves as a subtle means of introducing a few of the pair’s favorite themes. Wurster—who also plays drums for Superchunk, Bob Mould, and the Mountain Goats—touches upon the pathetic banalities of rock stardom, admitting that most of the music at his concerts is prerecorded (“I’m back there reading a Kindle half the time”). Scharpling, meanwhile, lashes out with non-sequitur braggadocio to take down his fans (“You think I wanna go up there in front of these hay seeds?”). But it all culminates in both the set’s greatest in-joke and its largest understatement: “Let’s just do what we do normally,” suggests Scharpling, who has, since 2000, hosted the cultishly beloved “Best Show” (formerly on WFMU, and now hosted independently): “They’re used to hearing our voices—they don’t need to see us.”
For nearly two decades, free-form radio has served as the perfect format for Scharpling & Wurster’s wordy, outrageous world-building. Occurring unannounced in between fan callers and guest appearances, Wurster calls in, always in character, and carries out ludicrous, pre-scripted conversations with Scharpling, the disgruntled straight man. On the radio, Wurster can be anyone—say, a two-inch-tall white supremacist or Marky Ramone—and he uses that freedom to shapeshift almost every week, resulting in the rare show that seems to get more complex and untethered the longer it goes on. Wurster’s calls have been compiled on S&W’s numerous comedy albums and were collected in bulk on last year’s 16-CD Best of the Best Show* *box set: The Numero Group release that resulted in the duo’s first tour. The Nashville performance from that tour has now been issued as a vinyl-only release by Jack White’s Third Man Records.
Lasting only 40 minutes, *Live at Third Man *is neither the most definitive nor the most essential Scharpling & Wurster release, but it’s still a great one: a concise set that seems focused on celebrating their act, rather than expanding on it. But *Live at Third Man *is a strange kind of album. What you hear when you put the needle down is a recording of a live set written specifically to be seen, as opposed to heard (remember: “They’re used to hearing our voices, they don’t need to see us.”). Despite the potential awkwardness of the concept, Scharpling & Wurster are too well-versed in their art to avoid the pitfalls of many comedy albums (and live albums, for that matter). They keep things moving swiftly, switching between comedic monologues, mock interviews, and even a few musical numbers, thereby distilling the anything-goes nature of the “Best Show” into a digestible album-length event.
Like any good episode of the “Best Show,” the set includes plenty of obscure music references, insane song lyrics (“Mama, let me into those khakis/And I’ll take you down to orgasm street”), and even a guest appearances by guitarist William Tyler, who serves as the night’s musical accompanist and rips several scorching solos in the closing-and-opening renditions of the “Best Show”’s theme song. Wurster brings out two of his most beloved characters—the spiteful, hoagie-toting Philly Boy Roy and the perennially-congested, wannabe rocker Barry Dworkin—and plays them with the same hoarse-voiced theatrics that makes them come alive on the air. Scharpling, meanwhile, is deft as always at countering Wurster’s surrealism: his purposefully dead-end monologue about a hotel breakfast buffet will be the album’s highlight for fans of the show’s more understated moments.
Like most things Scharpling & Wurster do, it’s a lovable, infectious listen that warrants multiple plays. If you’re already initiated, you probably don’t need me to sell it to you: you’ve already attended (at least) one of these shows and know exactly what to expect. But if this is your first brush with Scharpling & Wurster, then it’s hard to imagine a better introduction to their strange, beautiful, and constantly expanding universe. | 2016-07-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | Third Man | July 9, 2016 | 7.8 | a1cb259f-1035-43ad-8507-a6a5f1f08497 | Sam Sodomsky | https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-sodomsky/ | null |
The UK rapper celebrates her wins and flexes her Portuguese on an EP that pulses and jumps with a funky digital spark. | The UK rapper celebrates her wins and flexes her Portuguese on an EP that pulses and jumps with a funky digital spark. | Little Simz: Drop 7 EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/little-simz-drop-7-ep/ | Drop 7 EP | After half a decade staking her claim as one of the UK’s sharpest rappers, Little Simz is the most relaxed she’s sounded in years on Drop 7, the latest in a long-running EP series. While full-lengths like 2021’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and 2022’s No Thank You engaged big discussions of celebrity worship and exploitive music-biz politics with conceptual flair, the Drop series operates on lean efficiency. Take 2020’s Drop 6, which funneled pandemic isolation into tense soul-searching over moody, frenetic beats. Simz is still hungry on Drop 7, but it’s her first time in a while not fighting her way out of a corner. We rarely get to witness her working outside of statement-piece urgency.
“Nothing left to prove ’cause I done enough,” she says bluntly on the glitching “Torch.” After winning the Mercury Prize and touring the world to the point of exhaustion, she’s standing in her accomplishments. There’s talk of seaside vacations, “building mansions up on Venus,” and sipping tea in her fortress of solitude. On “Fever,” she gets caught up in a fling while on vacation in São Paulo and flexes her skills in Portuguese. When she does come with venom, she delivers with cold sarcasm. “Talk behind my back and then they go into a shell,” she says in a breathy, TiaCorine-like tone, using her role on the Netflix crime drama Top Boy to remind folks just how much she’s holding back: “Shelley’s nail bar only exist on the TV.”
After three stately albums produced by longtime collaborator (and SAULT bandleader) Inflo, this time Simz recruits British producer Jakwob to create sounds that pulse and jump with a funky digital spark. On opener “Mood Swings,” one of the more aggro songs, Simz darts between Jakwob’s synth plucks and drum hits while interpolating Solange’s “Binz.” But just as quickly, they dip into dance-friendly rhythms that Simz rides with the steadiness of an EKG machine. “Fever” and the booming centerpiece “SOS” both dabble in Brazilian funk; the stone-cold “I Ain’t Feelin It” cruises a metallic groove that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Surf Gang album; closer “Far Away” mixes rattling Jersey club beats with Social Experiment-esque horns that play up the melancholy in its story of lost love. The variety makes for a dark and sensuous mix worthy of a late night.
Drop 7 is slight in the way all Simz’s Drop projects are slight—they’re musical side quests. Her music is rarely this loose, this willing to smell the roses, even while she’s got eyes in the back of her head. “Head hot, say the wrong thing, might lose it/But I’ma always channel through the music,” she says over the dubby drum slaps of “Power.” Where does Simz see herself right now? Far enough away from life’s stresses to tinker and ponder while at the top of her game. | 2024-02-20T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2024-02-20T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Rap | Forever Living Originals / AWAL | February 20, 2024 | 7.5 | a1ce6e24-e721-4863-8209-b6d7ac1db164 | Dylan Green | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/ | |
On her first solo album in over a decade, the avant-pop artist weaves introspective thoughts through shapeshifting, operatic arrangements. | On her first solo album in over a decade, the avant-pop artist weaves introspective thoughts through shapeshifting, operatic arrangements. | Seaming To: Dust Gatherers | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/seaming-to-dust-gatherers/ | Dust Gatherers | Seaming To’s musical heritage doesn’t immediately scream rebellion. The London-born singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist comes from a family of concert pianists, and she followed their path at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music, where she trained as an opera singer. From there, she embarked on a prestigious set of collaborations, appearing on multiple albums with the band Homelife, and later featuring on Robert Wyatt’s 2007 album Comicopera. But subversion is front and center on Dust Gatherers, an album of eccentric compositions and significant emotional depth. It’s To’s most successful marrying of avant-garde iconoclasm and classical tradition to date.
On her 2006 EP, Sodaslow (For Us), Seaming To introduced the defining characteristics of her impressionistic music: adventurous vocal lines, dramatic genres shifts, and warm melodies built from supple strings and washed-out piano. Her first full-length album, 2012’s Seaming, added elements from mystical horror to the mix. In the decade since that release, she shifted her focus toward film and theater compositions, but Dust Gatherers picks up where its predecessor left off: an avant-pop opus that threads abstract, cerebral themes with subtle wit and a sense of the supernatural.
Dust Gatherers veers smoothly and swiftly within its ambitious narrative framework. “Blessing” is a haunting meditation on God’s all-reaching power, like a psalm and incantation in equal parts, and To underscores its words with an operatic chorus of multi-tracked vocals full of shimmering drama. In “Tousles,” she addresses a lover with eerie invitations (“Pluck at my heart, put hinges on it, so you can open me easily”) as trickling oscillators drive an ever-expanding backdrop. “Brave” leans into a sense of mischief, with whispery overdubs and plinky analog synths adding a whimsical touch.
Whether the mood is playful, intense, or downright unsettling, To consistently makes space for introspection. On “Pleasures Are Meaningless,” she spins a stretched, shapeless lament for voice and piano that flips into autobiography, signed with the phrase, “Seaming, seemingly.” In the verses, To reflects on a lifetime of aspirations, only to find that everything was “meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing gained under the sun.” The intrepid vocals at the foreground—growls, gasps and spinning lines reminiscent of Meredith Monk—and the gothic horror of the arrangements obscure these fraught, personal explorations.
To’s compositions are rooted in the French impressionism of Claude Debussy. On “Water Flows,” she stacks clarinets atop her fluid, wordless vocal melody. Accompanied by clarinet and piano, To paints in thin strokes with accented curves on “Traveler,” while “Pleasures are Meaningless,” with its delicate color palette and sense of yearning, evokes the intimate ballads of Bill Evans. With those compositional foundations in place, piles of effects—overdubs, delays, reverbs, oscillators—can clear in an instant to reveal new depth. After the humid atmosphere of the album’s first half, “xenamax” is three clear-sighted minutes of tuned percussion, analog synths, and a juddering machine that sounds like a taut rope on a suspension bridge. With each album, To takes increasing control of each aspect of her art, but she is also an exacting excavator. As she drills into the overlapping layers of Dust Gatherers, what she finds at the core is vulnerable and unexpectedly moving. | 2023-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00 | Experimental | O SingAtMe | February 17, 2023 | 7.3 | a1cea019-0874-4923-ab57-44f4dc5c1687 | Hugh Morris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/hugh-morris/ | |
The Nashville star blends genres with charm and style on his first new album in five years, a marker of what modern commercial country can do at its heights. | The Nashville star blends genres with charm and style on his first new album in five years, a marker of what modern commercial country can do at its heights. | Sam Hunt: Southside | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/sam-hunt-southside/ | Southside | For a clean-cut white guy who plays acoustic guitar and sings commercial country, Sam Hunt has recently become one of the most polarizing artists to emerge from the Nashville machine. His coup began six years ago when he staged the velvetiest of revolutions, wresting country radio away from the bro-country tailgaters and hidebound schlock-slingers with his triple-platinum debut Montevallo. Brushed with hints of hip-hop, R&B, and Top-40 smooth country melodies, Montevallo was successful to the point of nearly paralyzing its star: It’s taken more than a half-decade for him to concoct a follow-up. The album also incited a backlash among country purists, which Hunt fueled with unthinkable provocations like wearing a flat-brimmed hat and singing Drake’s “Marvin’s Room” at his shows. Those alarmists had little to fear besides the onset of what some have called “boyfriend country”—mostly populated by saccharine artists who attempt to channel Hunt’s earnest charm without his flair for experimentation.
But Hunt is, finally, back, seemingly aiming to both prove his country cred and guard his status as one of the genre’s innovators. Southside is a
variation on Montevallo’s theme, not a reinvention—but if anything, it shows a clarity of purpose that his debut lacked. Hunt pulls in both directions at once, building seemingly endless layers of traditional country cues (fiddle, banjo, dobro) over a syncopated pulse that permeates almost the entire album. The way he threads the country/hip-hop needle is enviably organic, a sly but effective repudiation of his critics.
Southside’s first two songs establish the tension that makes the album so compelling. The mournful ballad “2016” is as traditional as they come, with its finger-picked guitar and talk of whiskey-laced sorrow. It’s the first of a few gutting tracks on the album about his now-wife Hannah Lee Fowler, whom he left to pursue music and then had to woo back—a situation that, unmediated, sounds like a country song in itself. He’s seen the error of his ways: “It turns out going out and chasing dreams and lonely women ain’t freedom after all,” he sings over a wailing pedal steel. But his self-serious balladry is immediately tempered by the lilting “Hard To Forget,” where samples of a classic country song (Webb Pierce’s 1953 hit “There Stands The Glass”) weave into a bouncy beat complete with stuttering hi-hats.
It’s on “Hard To Forget” that Hunt lays out the album’s overall style. Instead of using the massive resources available to him as a marquee act on a major label to ramp up the accessibility and polish, he layers songs with pleasantly casual licks, countermelodies, and even muffled conversation. Additional vocal tracks occasionally make it sound like bystanders are singing along—maybe “Downtown’s Dead,” as he sings on one of the project’s early singles, but Southside still channels the ease and conviviality of a Broadway honky-tonk.
Those experiments tie together moody R&B ballad “Nothing Lasts Forever” which features both Vocoder-like effects and a synthy guitar riff, and the raucous “Let It Down,” whose trap-bluegrass core was inspired in part, Hunt says, by Ken Burns’ Country Music docuseries. On “Breaking Up Was Easy In The 90’s,” one of the album’s highlights, that same hip-hop-dusted backbeat supports a fittingly retro country lament about a very 21st-century problem: trying to get over someone whose Instagram Stories you can’t stop watching (the “dying on my phone” flip is particularly smart). That it feels uncontrived is refreshing in a sea of ready-made Music City soundalikes.
Hunt takes more risks when indulging his Drakiest tendencies. On “That Ain’t Beautiful,” he laments the decisions of some wayward but disarmingly familiar, woman (one would never imagine “You can split an Adderall with a stranger in a bathroom stall” crooned so sweetly) to a point that’s patronizing, if seemingly well-intentioned; on “Drinkin’ Too Much,” he apologizes to Fowler in an occasionally slurry monologue—she’s responsible for its conclusion, a simple piano rendition of the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” They’re odd songs, anomalies on an album that for all of its subtle risks remains mostly approachable enough for a country radio playlist.
But a little off-center is exactly what commercial country, with its endless aesthetic complacency, so desperately needs. And Southside’s experiments are made with enviable effortlessness: It’s a little rough around the edges, not self-consciously provocative. Hunt doubled down on his initial mission—making hip-hop and R&B in country sound hip instead of hokey—and it paid off with this collection of songs that are, more than anything else, fun. He proved, once again, that those genres are only as disparate as music marketers would have you believe, and that there’s still plenty more fruit to be borne of their inevitable cross-pollination. | 2020-04-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2020-04-09T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Folk/Country | MCA Nashville | April 9, 2020 | 7.5 | a1dd6dfd-d359-4153-8a2b-fd4a9af8e4f1 | Natalie Weiner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/natalie-weiner/ | |
New York punk trio Show Me the Body’s latest release is a scattered 17-track “collaborative mixtape” featuring guests such as Moor Mother, Mal Devisa, Cities Aviv, Dreamcrusher, and Princess Nokia. | New York punk trio Show Me the Body’s latest release is a scattered 17-track “collaborative mixtape” featuring guests such as Moor Mother, Mal Devisa, Cities Aviv, Dreamcrusher, and Princess Nokia. | Show Me the Body: Corpus I | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23107-show-me-the-body-corpus-i/ | Corpus I | Show Me the Body’s new release, Corpus I, opens with a terse, comically vague directive, sneered by an anonymous New Yorker—or, perhaps, by the city itself. “I don’t give a fuck what you do with this—just do whatever,” the man barks, “Don’t fucking make excuses: Just do what you know how to do.” This intro provides a facsimile for the born-and-bred Queens trio’s broader creative essence: crass, off-the-cuff proceedings, shaped by five years of sweat, spit, and especially subway steam. New York bands like this are getting harder to find as the gears of gentrification rumble on. But Show Me the Body are DIY stalwarts, and they rise to the city’s challenges. Their music subverts hardcore’s sonic cornerstones—swapping guitars for banjos, substituting gang vocals with gruff half-raps—while holding its core values sacrosanct: directness, aggression, anti-authoritarianism, community, and most importantly, inclusivity. If a venue isn’t all-ages, Show Me the Body will likely take their business elsewhere.
If you pitch a big tent, people will come; if you throw a stylistically-amorphous rager under it, that audience may well grow. Considering how Show Me the Body’s debut album, last June’s Body War, managed to render chaos so catchy, the trio’s recent crossover—illustrated by their unlikely confirmation for this year’s Coachella, the proceeds from which the band plans to donate to charity—should come as little surprise. But Show Me the Body aren’t ones to bask in the spotlight. They’re passing it off to their peers with Corpus I, a 17-track “collaborative mixtape” created alongside their extended creative family in New York and beyond.
Corpus I is a fiery, hopscotching roll-call spanning nearly every subdivision of the experimental vanguard: showstopping vocalists Eartheater and Mal Devisa; a bevy of left-of-center MCs, including Cities Aviv, Blunt Fang, Denzel Curry, and Princess Nokia; a host of meme-steeped rappers and producers (Yo Chill, Babyglock, Tony Seltzer). Best of all are appearances from noise auteurs Dreamcrusher and Moor Mother, whose glitched palettes draw out Show Me the Body’s subterranean din better than a mosh pit ever could. The band are gracious hosts, constantly propping up podiums for their guests–a stomping backbeat here, some freewheeling axework there–and backing away, letting them do the heavy lifting.
The all-star oddball cast hold up their end of the bargain, for the most part. A punk posse cut of sorts, Corpus I highlight “In a Grave” finds Show Me the Body conducting a thrilling cipher in a hazardous basement. After some hooted braggadocio from frontman Julian Cashwan Pratt—whose vocals once again resemble Anthony Kiedis rapping with peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth, for better or worse—Curry and Eartheater swoop in to breathe some life into the skittering, chrome-laden beat, before spoken-word titan Moor Mother enters the frame. “I keep telling you, I keep saying, B/But you don’t hear me because you’re here to kill me,” she sulks with teeth bared, before striking a bargain: “Well, let me finish my verse.”
The other group efforts don’t fare so well. “Why you lying” and “Cyba Slam fif world dance party (Uppa echelon dance remix)” resemble insufferable post-internet Jock Jams. Meanwhile, “My Whole Family” fails to derive any frisson from an otherwise sturdy pit machine comprising four punk singers (Pratt, Skunk Rott, Chris Wilson, and Pierre Botardo). Show Me the Body’s aims here are admirable and ballsy—namely, their attempts to find common ground between disparate styles, scenes, and perspectives and introduce their expanding fanbase to a formidable roster of lesser-known peers. But the execution of Corpus I is too scattershot to ensure a knockout. | 2017-04-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-04-05T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Corpus | April 5, 2017 | 6 | a1df1e9c-a60d-4280-bc60-6b03d2a68a92 | Zoe Camp | https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/ | null |
Vancouver singer/songwriter Stephen McBean (Pink Mountaintops, Jerk With a Bomb) unveils his best project to date: Black Mountain, a rollicking, wildly adventurous reconfiguring of 1960s and 70s nostalgia that's as duty-bound to the present as it is sympathetic to the past. | Vancouver singer/songwriter Stephen McBean (Pink Mountaintops, Jerk With a Bomb) unveils his best project to date: Black Mountain, a rollicking, wildly adventurous reconfiguring of 1960s and 70s nostalgia that's as duty-bound to the present as it is sympathetic to the past. | Black Mountain: Black Mountain | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1146-black-mountain/ | Black Mountain | Prolificacy can be a death knell for a less-than epochal rock band, so Stephen McBean decided to diversify. The fruitful Vancouver singer/songwriter has, over the past few years, spread his yield among no less than three bands-- Pink Mountaintops, Black Mountain, and Jerk With a Bomb-- each exploring slight but intriguing variations on reference-happy rock'n'roll. His latest undertaking is Black Mountain, whose self-titled debut full-length is a rollicking, wildly adventurous reconfiguring of 1960s and 70s nostalgia that's as duty-bound to the present as it is sympathetic to the past.
Black Mountain hits somewhere between Jerk With a Bomb's stellar but more straightforward Pyrokinesis and Pink Mountaintops' smarmy, sex-laden brand of vespertine blues-- only jacked up a good 20 decibels. McBean's voice is pleasant and instantly recognizable; having such an established songwriter behind a freshman outing is a tremendous advantage, and Black Mountain seem to know it. When the band aren't venturing on plush, static jams, his coy bluesy vocals tether the songs in familiar melodic space.
Svelte and upbeat, opener "Modern Music" stands apart from the rest of the album. Over jellybone saxophone and scattershot drumming, McBean and sidekick Amber Webber take jabs at "another pop explosion" and claim they "can't stand all your modern music." It's a trite argument, but nevertheless one for which Black Mountain makes a compelling case. Ironically, "Modern Music" is the album's least anachronistic and, almost as if to spite itself, catchiest number. "Druganaut" fits better into the retro regalia the band revere, weaving a loose-limbed vamp that, besides a few simple chord changes, seldom varies but is gradually added to. The vocals don't drop until nearly two minutes in, but the gap is barely noticeable. After the vocals arrive, it's into a series of haymaker guitar stabs and beefy drum fills, followed by a beautiful guitar feature-- spotted with ran-backward licks-- that exemplifies Black Mountain's penchant for texture and sameness within traditionally peripatetic verse-chorus-verse structures.
When Black Mountain evoke glue-sniffing shredders of yesteryear such Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin, their technique falls nearer to Galaxie 500 and the Velvet Underground, who forsook showmanship and dug deep in search of music's fundamental soul. "No Satisfaction"-- with its chunky strumming, honky-tonk piano, radiant plucked guitar and cheap-o sax-- most directly channels those aloof, technically slovenly forebears and, not surprisingly, is this album's best song. But there's nothing overtly sloppy about Black Mountain: Although it often wades in droning, repetitive passages, the album is impressively tight.
Some may hear these shopworn melodies and clamor "bar band." But if Black Mountain ever tried to make a night-to-night living in blues cover haunts, they'd do it by torching the stage and leaving patrons agog in WTF stares. The Vancouver quintet aren't some cabal of slack beer-bellied crooners; they can play their instruments, they have multi-chord vocabularies and, perhaps most importantly, they know how to give their songs proper recorded treatment. Black Mountain has that golden must-be-analog sound, with the perfect amount of tarnish to make the songs feel lived-in without burying them in fry grease.
Interestingly, Black Mountain are least effective at their most unpredictable. "Heart of Snow" resists structure, feeling out a plaintive acoustic strum before meeting up with a frail guitar and piano line, which meanders to a tense climax before erupting into a simplistic but captivating odd-time stomp. Unfortunately, the tension is drawn out as the band acquiesces back into a lugubrious Webber vocal passage, quashing the swelling momentum and rendering the eventual resolution less cathartic. "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" is the antithesis: the track is mercurial but calculated; its stilted operatic grandeur is a welcome bit of certainty. Orbiting the album's most generic and derivative riff, "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" starts with a clarion call-- a booming full-band hit or five-- then settles into a lurching unison guitar figure. The song seesaws for a bit, then has a mood swing and dives into a forlorn interlude, before picking up right where it left off and riding its central riff raw.
Black Mountain are about as referential as they come. But despite the obvious touchstones-- which, incidentally, fucking rule-- the band are affable and idiosyncratic enough to win over those who passed on recent retrofits like Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral or My Morning Jacket's It Still Moves, and make those records' admirers practically cream themselves. Stephen McBean may be playing it safe by partitioning his rep, but the consistency and breadth of his work is staggering amid so many once-and-dones. | 2005-01-16T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2005-01-16T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Rock | Jagjaguwar | January 16, 2005 | 8.3 | a1dfb53b-8114-4e37-ad7d-29e623e22d14 | Pitchfork | null |
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The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album uses heartbreak as the springboard for an innovative brand of indie rock that’s both fiery and introspective. | The Montreal singer-songwriter’s debut album uses heartbreak as the springboard for an innovative brand of indie rock that’s both fiery and introspective. | Ada Lea: what we say in private | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ada-lea-what-we-say-in-private/ | what we say in private | Sometimes loss calls for a personal rediscovery. When Alexandra Levy endured a recent breakup she used various creative outlets—painting, journaling, making music—in order to recall who she was before and redefine herself in the aftermath. As a result, the Montreal singer-songwriter came up with 10 songs that embody the tumultuous cycle of pain, anxiety, patience, and acceptance that accompanies major heartache. Her debut album as Ada Lea, what we say in private, is a peculiar vortex of intense emotion and experimental pop music.
Ada Lea’s music is a fusion of solemn acoustic-guitar melodies, belligerent distortion, warped saxophone cries, spectral synthesizers, field recordings of birds and snowmobiles and airplanes, and volatile tempo fluctuations. At times her tendencies lead her toward the tempered earnestness of Wilco, while at others she taps into a raw fury evocative of PJ Harvey or Angel Olsen. Ada Lea creates a space for a vision of indie rock that’s both bright and moody, fiery and introspective.
Ada Lea begins her chaotic ride with the unpredictable “mercury.” A thumping buzz fades in and out as a resolute electric guitar takes the reins. Then the tempo shifts, the buzz falls away, and we’re left with a solemn bass line that wobbles against Lea’s wispy vocals. Both the arrangement and her voice seesaw between aggression and sorrow. She begins to break down her relationship’s demise: “There is always one person who does love/Just a little more than the other.”
Sometimes it feels like Ada Lea might be an untrustworthy narrator. Her lyrics are vivid and visceral yet sometimes unsure of themselves. In “the party,” she questions whether she recalls the moon’s color correctly and if she read the night’s tone accurately. “You have always followed the sun/And I the moon, or have I misremembered?” she asks meekly on the Big Thief-like “yanking the pearls off around my neck...” She displays unusual candor for someone whose self-understanding has been thrown off its axis: “I can’t help wondering if I tricked you into loving me.”
Levy journaled furiously for 180 days after her relationship ended, and she uses those journal entries for inspiration throughout the album. “I want the days to hurry by without losing my mind,” she sings on “180 days.” An electric guitar pitter-patters restlessly as she awaits a time when things won’t hurt so much. Across its four minutes, a harp occasionally radiates from behind her, while a static-laced drum machine sounds like a hard drive rupturing. Like her emotions, the song comes in ripples of light and dark. Just as she laments on the edgy closer “easy,” healing isn’t automatic—it’s messy and inconsistent.
Ada Lea’s unsettling moments are just as affecting as her quiet, intimate ones. “the party” is one of the album’s most muted songs; the sound of traffic imbues a warm fuzz. Then whirling, high-pitched synths descend upon the chorus, like a halo. Throughout what we say in private, Lea’s heartbreak, recovery, and struggle for self-awareness feel like a walk on a bumpy gravel path branching into numerous shadowy detours.
Take “for real now (not pretend),” where Lea trades singing for spoken word. One moment she is telling herself it’s going to be a good day, and then she’s thirsting just to feel anything. These tonal and emotional shifts, as Ada Lea vacillates between timidity and aggression, are what make what we say in private so exciting. But it’s Levy’s willingness to wrestle with her own vulnerability that leads the album to its highest peaks.
Buy: Rough Trade
(Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) | 2019-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2019-07-17T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Saddle Creek | July 17, 2019 | 7.3 | a1e0b713-de69-48f0-a93c-14d2c0f71615 | Margaret Farrell | https://pitchfork.com/staff/margaret-farrell/ | |
On their 10th studio album, the UK electro-pop heroes look back on the end of the 20th century, when hooks and choruses dissolved into blissed-out loops and vibe became paramount. | On their 10th studio album, the UK electro-pop heroes look back on the end of the 20th century, when hooks and choruses dissolved into blissed-out loops and vibe became paramount. | Saint Etienne: I’ve Been Trying to Tell You | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/saint-etienne-ive-been-trying-to-tell-you/ | I’ve Been Trying to Tell You | In his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks samples the following quote from biologist Gerald Edelman: “Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.” For 30 years now, British pop heroes Saint Etienne have made songs out of their recollections and record collections. Saint Etienne’s songs anticipate big nights out, practice self-care the morning after, call for more, more, more—all with equal panache. Their music collapses the timeline. “I feel nostalgia for an age yet to come,” the actor Michael Jayston says at the end of a lovely meditation on ’60s psyche and ’90s ambient from 2002’s Finisterre.
I’ve Been Trying to Tell You, the band’s 10th album, takes as its subject a moment from the end of the 20th century when pop music discovered it could loop almost any sound into a hook, and multinational corporations sold the idea that music was less about the instant the needle hits the record and more a never-ending, ever-present stream of cool. Lead single “Pond House” is soundtrack-y in the way of fin de siecle pop, ebbing and flowing in a pool of rootless cosmopolitanism that is in fact grounded in a specific time and place. Gone is the urban-planning sophistipop of Saint Etienne’s previous album, 2017’s Home Counties; in its place, here comes… Natalie Imbruglia, courtesy of her 2001 single “Beauty on the Fire.” “Here it comes again,” Imbruglia sings, sampled, her phrasing bobbing among white-capped breaks, algal blooms of acid, and a bassline oceanic enough to return thoughts of the late genius Lee “Scratch” Perry, who famously evangelized that dub could change the past, as well as the future.
Whatever you think of Natalie Imbruglia, “Pond House” might not change your mind. You might even think it’s Saint Etienne’s recherché chanteuse Sarah Cracknell on the mic. The point is the vibe, an act of imagination in remembering downtempo radio pop as a mix of capitalist blissout and PTSD numbness. A track like “Fonteyn” rolls a piano vamp into a crisp little beat, then suddenly ignites into plumes of mood that could either fill the floors of an after-hours joint or score a Sephora. It’s a familiar sound, evocative of that time when clubbing became a consumable global lifestyle, expensive and escapist and extractive of local cultures. Saint Etienne are that most thoughtful of bands; a track like “Fonteyn” could use a bibliography. But it’s also a bit of a blur.
“Little K” swarms with birdsongs, which are too much with us on records today. In the moment Saint Etienne is remembering, though, they promised the coming of new dawns on ambient-house records and, like canaries in coal mines, warned of bass-driven destruction on jungle mixes. Saint Etienne uses them as field recordings, not metaphors. “No need to pretend,” Cracknell says in a cool, clear voice. Back then, climate change hovered on a distant horizon; today, birds face mass extinction. Saint Etienne captures them on record like they’re already gone.
Most of the album is similarly mournful: Opener “Music Again” tosses and turns in a haze of harpsichord before Cracknell (or someone) decides she “never had a way to go” and the track gives up. “Blue Kite” is a gloaming of fiddle and its echoes, lovely but falling short of the kind of full-on invocation of the spirits Coil achieved after dark at the century’s end. But “I Remember It Well” should be enshrined among the band’s loveliest of songs. Like Space Afrika’s recent stunner Honest Labour, “I Remember It Well” ascends Massive Attack’s Mezzanine in order to see Spiritualized floating in space. Guitars break hearts, beats heal them, a choir commiserates. If Saint Etienne ever give up on disco for good, they can always turn to post-rock.
Hopefully they won’t. Highlights like “I Remember” prove that acts of memory can be consolations. As a whole, though, I’ve Been Trying to Tell You could try a little harder. The album is accompanied by a film by Alasdair McLellan, a bit of which serves as a video for “Penlop.” It’s beautiful, all fuzzy lights and pretty boys on scooters, but a little bloodless. If only the stakes felt higher: that the songs were either catchier or deeper into dub, that in this moment Saint Etienne embodied a little of the brains and brawn of Oliver Sacks on a motorcycle. Or that, as in their eternal masterpiece “Like a Motorway,” music was a matter of life and death. The act of memory is an act, both deed and pose. I’ve Been Trying to Tell You feels passive, lost in nostalgia for an age it hasn’t fully reckoned with. Bet it sounds gorgeous on the radio.
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. | 2021-09-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-09-11T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | Heavenly | September 11, 2021 | 6.9 | a1eb6f45-db05-4e31-8ebc-787b7fd3c846 | Jesse Dorris | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jesse-dorris/ | |
Magik Markers' first album in four years was recorded in J Mascis’ attic, in vocalist/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio's dad’s basement, and at a number of East Coast practice spaces. For all the different environments, Surrender to the Fantasy takes the focused quality of the noise trio's recent output and adds warmth and melody. | Magik Markers' first album in four years was recorded in J Mascis’ attic, in vocalist/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio's dad’s basement, and at a number of East Coast practice spaces. For all the different environments, Surrender to the Fantasy takes the focused quality of the noise trio's recent output and adds warmth and melody. | Magik Markers: Surrender to the Fantasy | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18700-magik-markers-surrender-to-the-fantasy/ | Surrender to the Fantasy | If you were up front during a Magik Markers show in 2004, singer Elisa Ambrogio might have handed you her guitar. And there you'd be, effectively on stage improvising in the eye of a violent noise jam with Pete Nolan going ape on his drums and former bassist Leah Quimby punching her bass beside you. You would’ve been apart of Magik Markers’ unformatted anti-songs, whose structure and shape could hardly be charted in the moment. They'd maybe make more sense later on one of the over 50 releases they put out on LP, cassette, and CD-R and hawked at the merch table after the show. There was a time when Magik Markers didn’t put much stock into the idea of “songs,” whether as a dialectical comment on performer vs. audience, as an act of political dissidence, or because they simply loved making noise music.
Truth is, they were just being honest. Read any interview with Ambrogio over the years, and one of the recurring themes is an all-eclipsing necessity to tell the truth with her music. Earlier this year, she said, “…telling the truth has the potential when done right to communicate a massive experience: the smaller and more precisely an honest human thing is rendered, is the more common it becomes.” This is somewhat tautological (few artists ride hard for “lying”), and it’s hardly a revelation in the big scheme of creating art, but the decade-long journey from the early days of Magik Markers to Surrender to the Fantasy is largely about mapping how they express themselves as performers and songwriters. And while intentions can be dubious, what emerges in Magik Markers' first album in almost four years is their formerly hidden songcraft, at once small and precise.
Surrender has been fermenting on two-inch in the years following 2009’s Balf Quarry. Recorded partially in J Mascis’ Attic in Amherst, MA, partially at Ambrogio's dad’s basement in the band’s hometown of Hartford, CT, and at many East Coast practice spaces in between, the band takes the focused quality of their recent output and at long last adds warmth. For all the different environments that Ambrogio, Nolan, and new bassist John Shaw recorded in, they managed to sedate chaos into 45 minutes of form and shape. These are more “songs” like the band has been making since 2007's BOSS, but for semantic’s sake, the band hasn’t been writing “songs” since BOSS so much as they’ve been better at whittling down what they’ve always done, being sure to leave all the knots and lathe marks in the final product.
They've finally and cautiously surrendered themselves fully to melody. Ambrogio opens the album on “Crebs” singing sweetly, “Everything about me feels so free” and the following songs stick pretty close to that sentiment. It's a natural step-though, and if you factor in Ambrogio’s bare songs as 200 Years (her collaboration with Six Organs of Admittance's Ben Chasny) and the band's recent friendship with labelmates/tourmates/split-EP-mates Sic Alps, the math checks out. “Mirrorless” has a cool desert look, riding on red-eyed fuzz and reverb, while the beautiful "Young" features little more than an acoustic guitar and a cello. The tenor of these songs are a far cry away from when Ambrogio sang, “This gun was made to pull the trigger” in 2007.
All the violence and spit of early Magik Markers now manifests itself in subtler ways than broken amplifiers and feedback squalls. They dip into amphetamine-surf rock with "Bonfire", fully booted Neil Young explorations in "Acts of Desperation", and shredded Shaggs via closer "WT". The heart of the album, however, beats in the near-seven-minute treatise "American Sphinx Face". Like Patti Smith and Kathleen Hanna before her, Ambrogio's fearless stream of conscious delivery is a coil of surrealism, politics, and intense love. Whereas much of Surrender takes a more conventional lyrical approach (the pointed platitude of "Youth" goes, "The worst part about being young/ Is thinking nothing ever comes”), Ambrogio's words on "American Sphinx Face" are delivered unsung, unadorned behind some proto-Markers psych-improvisation. "I intend to be loved and see how it goes," she says dryly. As the noise of the song grows wider and wider, Ambrogio sharpens her tongue: "In America every man is a king/ No good king but a dead king." The towering song gives shape and meaning to the tender pieces that surround it.
The risk to explore more "pedestrian" forms—to lay bare songs into the common world of structure, hushed melodies, and harmonies—gives Surrender a varied topography. The tiny moments of vulnerability in Ambrogio's voice or Nolan's barely-there drumming are buoyed by their noisy nature and their surreal sketches. More than any Markers record before it, the trio seem to be communicating deep within the subconscious, tapping into soul that's been hiding behind the noise for years. Surrender could be viewed as a kind of acquiescence to plots and narratives, the kind Ambrogio was so opposed to when she started the band, back when chaos ruled. But to me this is leaning closer toward a more universal expression told in the Markers' own way—a set of honed truths that communicate on grand scales. | 2013-11-18T01:00:02.000-05:00 | 2013-11-18T01:00:02.000-05:00 | Experimental / Rock | Drag City | November 18, 2013 | 7.9 | a1ebe9e5-8931-49db-a581-d2adc7a7961a | Jeremy D. Larson | https://pitchfork.com/staff/jeremy-d. larson/ | null |
Once a crucial 2-for-1 reissue, this new version of Big Star's classic, disparate records adds nothing to their legacy or discography. | Once a crucial 2-for-1 reissue, this new version of Big Star's classic, disparate records adds nothing to their legacy or discography. | Big Star: # 1 Record / Radio City | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13101-1-record-radio-city/ | # 1 Record / Radio City | This is not a reissue of an album, but of a product. In 1992, Ardent/Fantasy released the first two Big Star records-- #1 Record (1972) and Radio City (1974)-- on one CD, which at the time seemed like a generous rescue project for two influential cult albums that were out of print in every format. Included were liner notes by pop historian Brian Hogg and journalist Rick Clark, along with a couple of fuzzy black-and-white photos of the band and a tear-off mail-in survey. For a Big Star newcomer with limited cash but a voracious musical appetite, it was a dream-- not simply more bang for your buck, but an instantly immersive introduction to the band.
However, the decision to re-release this "2 Complete Original Albums on 1 CD" set is questionable, not least because it is a slavish reprinting of the original. There's no mail-in survey this time around, but the reissue preserves the crowded layout of the original, except the digital printing is just above Xerox quality and the images even fuzzier than before. Just how little effort went into this re-release? The running time for both albums is still listed in the little red box as 73:00, despite the addition of two bonus single mixes that push running time closer to 80:00.
If this double release once benefited the first-time buyer, it ill serves the music itself, compacting two very different albums into one long, awkward retrospective. #1 Record showcases the collaborative songwriting of Chris Bell and Alex Chilton, who fashioned themselves as Memphis' own Lennon-McCartney. They alternate vocals between Bell's sandpapery rasp and Chilton's smooth falsetto (which doesn't even sound like it emanates from the same throat as those Box Tops vocals), and the result is one of power-pop's defining records. "The Ballad of El Goodo" takes as its refrain a line from an old spiritual-- "There ain't no one going to turn me 'round"-- which had become locally prominent as a civil rights slogan. The Big Star song is both tough and tender, communal and individual-- and genuinely moving without knowledge of its origins. #1 Record is shot through with an adolescent romanticism that kicks off in the restless energy of "In the Street", with its infectious guitar lick and rebel poetry lyrics and culminates on the Chilton-sung "Thirteen", an aching acoustic evocation of teenage angst.
Despite the reported hostility between them, Bell and Chilton are both strong presences on #1 Record, but their partnership was short-lived. Bell left the band shortly after the album's release and commercial failure, which made Big Star essentially a solo project for Chilton. So Radio City is a very different record. The transition between #1 Record closer "ST 100/6" and Radio City opener "O My Soul" was always jarring, but it's made worse by the addition of the single mix of "In the Street", which was originally the B-side to "When My Baby's Beside Me". Like the shortened mix of "O My Soul" that ends the new set, it's more interesting historically than musically.
On Radio City, Chilton, bass player Andy Hummel, and drummer Jody Stephens emphasize rhythm as much as melody, especially with the snaky guitars of opener "O My Soul", which hint at the singer's later fascination with old R&B sounds. It's still a pop record, and "She's a Mover" and "Mod Lang" might be their most Anglophilic moments ever. And then there's "Back of a Car", "You Get What You Deserve", and "September Gurls"-- one perfect pop gem after another that blur the line between album and singles band. In fact, Radio City is simultaneously a grab for airplay and sales and the beginning of Chilton's musical entrenchment that would continue through Third/Sisters Lovers (a Big Star album in name only) and into his solo career. More than that, it is the adult counterpart to its adolescent predecessor, forgoing the debut's single-minded intensity for a more nuanced mix of emotions ranging from jaded ("You Get What You Deserve") to resigned ("Back of a Car") to sentimental ("I'm in Love with a Girl").
For many listeners-- including, for a few years, me-- Big Star were more legend than band. They were the beloved patron saints for struggling musicians: These albums were inspired and inspiring but never found a wide audience, yet the fact that they eventually became so revered offered encouragement to young songwriters with their own dream of big stardom and No. 1 records. Even if you never found an audience in your prime, you could always hope for later cult success. And to some extent, of course, the myth overtook the music, which means these two albums tend to be slightly overrated. #1 Record begins to lag on side two, and Hummel's "The India Song" remains imminently skippable (I once tried to convince myself that it was a parody of Beatles mysticism, but that's wishful thinking). Similarly, the complexity of Radio City often masks an elusiveness that dogs Chilton even today. Even so, I would argue that such flaws make these albums all the more fascinating and endearing: "ST 100/6" is surely someone's favorite Big Star song, and Chilton's evasiveness made him a cult figure apart from Big Star.
That only makes the redundancy of this set all the more egregious: there's no sense of engaging with these records anew, no attempt to determine what they might mean now as opposed to what they meant 16 years ago. It may still be a useful introduction to Big Star, but it still stings as a major mishandling of a cult-canonical catalog, especially when Stax/Concord is releasing such handsome and informative reissues of Isaac Hayes' contemporaneous albums. On the other hand, the label is also issuing both Big Star albums individually on vinyl, which seems intended for those one-time newcomers who've grown to cherish both #1 Record and Radio City as totems of lost youth but who will view this shabby set as merely a relic of the CD Age. | 2009-06-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | 2009-06-16T02:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Stax / Ardent | June 16, 2009 | 4.5 | a200db65-4b64-450e-bec5-ab2db753aa01 | Stephen M. Deusner | https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/ | null |
The Bristol-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s second album isn’t defined by genre as much as it is by Yola’s indomitable spirit. | The Bristol-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s second album isn’t defined by genre as much as it is by Yola’s indomitable spirit. | Yola: Stand for Myself | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yola-stand-for-myself/ | Stand for Myself | The singer-songwriter Yola—born Yolanda Quartey in Bristol—was riding high in early 2020; she’d been nominated for four Grammy awards earlier that year and she’d been cast as rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Elvis, Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming biopic on the 20th-century American idol. An opening slot on fellow country-rock alchemist Chris Stapleton’s tour loomed.
Then the pandemic hit, forcing the Nashville-based singer-songwriter to delay all those plans and lock down, which helped her focus on crafting the follow-up to her 2019 debut, Walk Through Fire. Renlisting the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach as producer, she emerged from the last year with Stand for Myself, in which she revels in possibility, using her curiosity to nourish her inner resolve and vice versa. Yola sings her truth as she immerses herself in different genres and styles, her formidable instrument guiding the way.
“When will you start living,” she wails on the slow-burning opening track “Barely Alive,” “now that you’ve survived?” The answer, Stand for Myself asserts over and over, is right now—although it’s important to note that Yola’s hope isn’t borne of wide-eyed optimism. She’s seen enough of the world to realize that life can be nasty, brutish, and short. Or, as she muses on “Like a Photograph,” a shimmering country-pop lament that recalls the era when Nashville helped guide the course of the adult-contemporary charts, “Whoever said life was like a river/That was gonna roll on forever/Had to have been out of their mind.”
But on the flip side, any chance to enjoy things is a gift, and Yola’s life experience doesn’t dim the joy of Stand for Myself; if anything, her keen knowledge of life’s indignities is a weapon that can be wielded in the name of living well being the best revenge. Take “Diamond Studded Shoes,” which blossoms from a barroom rave-up into a fiery dance-at-the-revolution anthem, gains steam each time Yola reaches its chorus, which rhymes “gonna turn out right” with “we gots to fight.”
Stand for Myself isn’t a record defined by genre as much as it is by Yola’s spirit, which transforms her matter-of-fact assertions of personhood into amphitheater-ready anthems. “Be My Friend” is a gripping testament to the transcendence offered by friendship, with folk-rock hero Brandi Carlile adding soaring counterpoint vocals to the track. “Dancing Away in Tears” is a sumptuous, horn-assisted slice of breakup soul that turns sobbing underneath the disco ball into a reason for living more passionately, a confident showcase for Yola’s belt that should at the very least get her a look-see for a slot on Silk Sonic’s tour.
Yola also shows off the many sides of her voice, which plants itself in the ground and scales octaves with aplomb. “If I Had to Do It All Again” pairs a knotty instrumental bed—quickly picked guitars, a tense organ line—with Yola singing in her upper register, tentatively wondering about the emptiness of life without a special someone. It spins up into a storm on the bridge, with strings rising and Yola’s voice expanding into a full-on bellow—and the mood shifts back and forth once more, with the song fading out as she digs further into the idea of letting go. It packs multiple stages of post-relationship grief in close to four minutes, with Yola’s vocal stylings and Auerbach’s savvy arranging highlighting the pointed lyrics.
Before the pandemic altered lives around the world, Yola was on the verge of a commercial breakthrough—awards-show exposure, a looming tour, a meaty movie role. But Stand for Myself, with its themes of inner fortitude only brightening the white-hot star at its center, vaults Yola to another place in the pop world, with her boundless curiosity and vocal brawn establishing her as a knowing, honest voice for those who need help summoning their own strength from within.
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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. | 2021-08-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-08-05T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Easy Eye Sound | August 5, 2021 | 7.4 | a205afe8-8510-44e5-9dd0-d47c56d68d5d | Maura Johnston | https://pitchfork.com/staff/maura-johnston/ | |
The latest issue from the always idiosyncratic Tompkins Square series features songs from guitarists who released their warm and surreal folk ragas and finger-picked fantasias to private press. | The latest issue from the always idiosyncratic Tompkins Square series features songs from guitarists who released their warm and surreal folk ragas and finger-picked fantasias to private press. | Various Artists: Imaginational Anthem Vol. 8 : The Private Press | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22382-imaginational-anthem-vol-8-the-private-press/ | Imaginational Anthem Vol. 8 : The Private Press | While I was talking to Portland solo guitarist Marisa Anderson a few months ago, she lamented that at almost any point of an interview, she would be asked about the influence of John Fahey. Her pat reply went along the lines of sharing similar influences as Fahey (old blues, bluegrass, and country), but not being influenced by Fahey himself. No matter the guitarist or era, Fahey casts a long shadow from the early ’60s well into the 21st century, either from his direct influence or by association with his Takoma label (see also Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho). John Fahey’s renown follows the likes of American Primitive artists, be they Jack Rose, Cian Nugent, William Tyler, or Chuck Johnson, and it no doubt turns up whenever a new edition of Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series arrives.
For its eighth iteration though, Imaginational Anthem escapes easy allusion to the man. Subtitled “The Private Press,” this compilation features a clutch of nearly un-Googleable guitarists like Tom Armstrong, Herb Moore, and Nancy Tucker, who don’t once bring to mind Fahey’s six-string explorations. Compiled by former Other Music buyer Michael Klausmann and collector Brooks Rice, this edition of IA emphasizes the outsider musician, the ones who took matters into their own hands. Instead of waiting for someone else to ink them to a record deal, they simply pressed their own albums. What didn’t get sold at coffeehouse gigs wound up at Salvation Army or stuffed into used bins. In the case of Rick Deitrick’s 1978 album Gentle Wilderness (represented by the lovely rumination “Missy Christa”), he left them on hiking trails “so people would find them.”
The private press album is a fetish object among certain vinyl collectors, that rare musical treasure never to be scored in the Urban Outfitters record racks. It’s the subject of hardbound art books, prime material for reissues, and a veritable goldmine of untapped and hard-to-source samples. Endless Boogie guitarist Paul Major once compared finding and listening to such an album as akin to being in the Twilight Zone, the incredibly private sound of these unknown musicians casting “an underlying warm but surreal eerie feeling.” Fittingly, John Fahey pressed up his own records and stashed them in record bins at the start of his career as well.
Warm and surreal are good descriptors for this fetching and restful set that spans from 1968 to 1995. It’s home to 14 unique voices and their paths not taken. Perry Lederman’s brief “One Kind Favor” ranks as the “best-known” artist of the set, though the notes point out that’s only because he kept company with the likes of Jerry Garcia and Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen. It might last less than two minutes, but shows his influence from Indian raga (he even studied sarod with Ali Akbar Khan) and bottleneck blues. Joe Bethancourt’s “Raga” swathes his guitar strings in copious amounts of tremolo and reverb like fellow American Primitive icon Sandy Bull but with just enough wrinkles to sound only like himself.
Raga is a definite reference throughout the set, as is Greenwich Village folk, the music of the Scot-Irish hinterlands, and old-timey string bands. But no matter the source, it’s remarkable how these players weave something idiosyncratic out of their influences. Gary Salzman’s seven-minute fantasia “The Secret Forces of Nature” segues from clean finger-picking to sitar buzz to dobro before dissolving into some strange musique concrète. Herb Moore’s sparkling “Wen Also Found” from 1983 is an acoustic guitar piece that slyly multi-tracks other melodic figures and his own resonant sculpture (called the “scrapophone”) to beautiful effect. Moore might never be considered a figurehead of American Primitive guitar, but perhaps he’ll inspire a new strand: The liner notes tell us Moore was an early pioneer of computer music during Silicon Valley days, co-authored a book about Atari gaming consoles, and set human genome DNA sequences to sound. Let’s see Fahey top that. | 2016-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00 | null | Tompkins Square | September 20, 2016 | 7.5 | a20d2ecd-4cad-4a18-bc0d-703aeb841d80 | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
The Darkness have never sounded more dated, or more like unsuccessful comedy rock, than on their depressing new album. | The Darkness have never sounded more dated, or more like unsuccessful comedy rock, than on their depressing new album. | The Darkness: Pinewood Smile | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-darkness-pinewood-smile/ | Pinewood Smile | It's a paradox: In order to take the Darkness seriously, you have to be willing to take a joke. Justin Hawkins is an award-winning songwriter who can layer guitars like Boston’s Tom Scholz and shatter glass like Ronnie James Dio. And yet, he has come off like both a rock god and a regular schlub putting on his unitard one leg at a time—making campy, funny hard rock that never tipped over into parody during their inevitably brief commercial peak in 2000. As a result, they’ve parlayed a kickass debut and one major hit in America into a Super Bowl commercial and opening gigs for Lady Gaga and Guns N’ Roses. As 2015’s Last of Our Kind made clear, the anachronism of the Darkness justifies their existence. All they have to do is show up.
But with Pinewood Smile, the joke is taken more seriously than ever. And all that’s left is the cynic’s view of the Darkness as some comedy-rocker combination of Russell Brand joining Tenacious D to front Steel Panther. Hell, there’s a simpering power ballad called “Happiness” that invokes D’s own “Friendship Test,” whereas “Solid Gold” (as in, “shitting out…”) takes its clueless A&R clichés from the flim Get Him to the Greek. While that era of absurdist, winking slapstick was often viewed as clever or even subversive in its time, it’s depressing to see, in retrospect, how many of the jokes were just outward projections of hetero male paranoia. The Darkness follow suit, a subtle and sad shift from their prior skewering of trouser-stuffing machismo.
Given that he sings from the perspective of a pirate earlier on Pinewood Smile, one can't doubt Hawkins' willingness to be out of his depth. But “Japanese Prisoner of Love” reduces “sensual deprivations/human rights violations” to group showers and the indignity of being “taken by force from behind by a stabby white supremacist named Klaus.” At best, it’s failed role-playing, but Pinewood Smile’s unexpected mean streak becomes indefensible on “Stampede of Love.” It’s not inexplicable—as two of the Darkness’ spiritual forefathers were responsible for “Fat Bottomed Girls” and “Big Bottom”—but “Stampede” is more in the spirit of Shallow Hal as a full-length “no fat chicks” joke that doesn’t even try to half-ass a moral lesson about body acceptance. And it’s the closer, so Pinewood Smile ends with, “across the sand on a donkey ride/great fun till the donkey died” followed by 30 seconds of silence.
Hawkins has been singing about himself as a has-been almost from the start. And if he was to totally break kayfabe, there’s a compelling story to be told about how a band like the Darkness keeps on keepin’ on when they actually decline—when the advances shrivel up and the tour rider isn’t picking out the green M&M’s. “A moment in the sun/A lifetime in the shade/A year full of glory and an empty decade,” Hawkins shrieks on “I Wish I Was in Heaven”—fatalistic, gallows humor that could’ve fit on an Elliott Smith record and still be the most depressing track. But, as ever, the Darkness will not take the risk of full transparency, and Pinewood Smile does what all Darkness songs do. With their love of magnifico harmonies, hair metal iconography, fluency in dork culture, and pop proficiency, the Darkness still have more in common with Weezer than Queen.
But as with Weezer, the Darkness now operate in a vacuum that suffocates anyone who’s checked out over the past decade. They nearly function as live-action fan-fic. And most often, songs live or die based not on their hooks, arrangements, and certainly not on their emotional impact, but on premise alone. There are four additional tracks on the Deluxe edition, each more self-explanatory than the one before it: “Seagulls (Losing My Virginity)”, “Rack of Glam,” “Rock in Space,” and “Uniball.” Meanwhile, “Buccaneers of Hispaniola” exists for the sole purpose of Hawkins’ shrieking the title. The Darkness once proved fully capable of writing songs that transcended the gimmick and spoke the universal language of pop. Whether or not these songs merit repeat listens depends on how much mileage the listener gets from acknowledging the dissonance of Hawkins making operatic metal songs about the shittiness of Britain’s railway system.
It’s tempting to give Pinewood Smile a pass in light of the Darkness’ marginal place in the pop culture discussion. Compared to infinitely more problematic and popular acts, Pinewood Smile feels more like of an off-color Facebook post or a cringey group text from an uncle who generally means well but has mostly opted out of evolving with broader cultural norms. No one expects woke-ness from the Darkness, but their reliance on making jokes at someone else’s expense complicates, if not completely negates, their appeal of evoking a bygone era of tighter pants and looser morals. Pinewood Smile has got more jokes than ever, and it’s the first time the Darkness don’t evoke 1974 or 1984 so much as 2003—and they’ve never sounded more dated. | 2017-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Metal / Rock | Cooking Vinyl | October 12, 2017 | 4.8 | a20ea861-2494-457c-8495-3271d313508f | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Boards of Canada's first significant release, 1996's Hi Scores EP, has been remastered from the original tapes and reissued. The duo's tonal tendencies were already well developed: all six tracks feature their trademark four-bar chord progressions and cycling contrapuntal melodies. But Hi Scores might be most exciting for the way it breaks from their later work. | Boards of Canada's first significant release, 1996's Hi Scores EP, has been remastered from the original tapes and reissued. The duo's tonal tendencies were already well developed: all six tracks feature their trademark four-bar chord progressions and cycling contrapuntal melodies. But Hi Scores might be most exciting for the way it breaks from their later work. | Boards of Canada: Hi Scores EP | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19832-boards-of-canada-hi-scores-ep/ | Hi Scores EP | Hi Scores wasn't Boards of Canada's first proper record. By the time it appeared in 1996, the Scottish duo had released a minor armload of cassettes and 12-inches, all of it in extraordinarily limited editions. But, for all the general public knew, it may as well have been their debut, given the way it arrived like a bolt from the aquamarine.
Even if you lived it, it's getting hard to remember what it was like to discover music back then. But when Hi Scores began turning up in record bins, not only were listeners unlikely to know much about who they were or where the record came from, there were precious few ways of finding out. The snail-mail address listed on the insert sheet was just a P.O. box. A strip of Braille adorned the cover, heightening the record's cryptic aspect. And the name of the label, Skam, lent a vaguely unsavory air to it all. On Hyperreal's IDM listserv, it was ventured that Boards of Canada might be a synonym of Aphex Twin or Autechre or Mike Paradinas, or some combination of them.
It's useful to try to return to that state of ignorance, if only because so many layers of myth have been woven around the duo since then, a dense cocoon of fantasy and obfuscation. Some of that has been their own doing, like the coded 12-inches they distributed on Record Store Day last year as a pre-announcement of Tomorrow's Harvest—Willy Wonka's golden tickets as re-imagined by William Gibson. And some of it seems to have been the result of an obsessive fanbase hopped up on rabbit holes and Easter eggs. (From the fan site bocpages.org: "It has been suggested that the 'hi' of 'hi scores' could refer to the initials of BoC's alias Hell Interface." Well, yes, quite; and so might we connect the duo's reclusive tendencies to the fact that one anagram of the group's name is "A Bad Raccoons Fad").
But Hi Scores preceded all of that. There are ample clues of the kind of artists they'd become with Music Has the Right to Children, released just two years later, and not just because "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" is included here in an identical version. Five of the six tracks occupy the head-nodding, mid-tempo range that remains the duo's narcotic wheelhouse. Sampled breakbeats drive most of the songs here, but they sound different from the scratchy, dust-encrusted breaks that instrumental hip-hop producers like DJ Shadow and DJ Krush were using around the same time; Boards of Canada's breaks snap and thud with a weirdly rigid motion, and they're fleshed out with metallic drum-machine sounds, like the boxy snares of "Nlogax" and the dry, deflated hi-hats of "Seeya Later", that glint dully against the murk.
The duo's tonal tendencies were already well developed: all six tracks feature their trademark four-bar chord progressions and cycling contrapuntal melodies. The air is uniformly wistful, full of chimes and shimmering arpeggios and buzzing, tubular tones, like singing ghosts heard through a drainpipe. And while they don't wade as far into the lysergic depths that would distinguish Music Has the Right to Children—all those hazy, soft-focus tones meant to evoke the nostalgia of old nature films and washed-out Super 8—their synthesizers, subtly detuned, have a woozy, watery feel, slippery as something half-remembered. And on "Turquoise Hexagon Sun", the sound of distant voices anticipates the playground concrète vibes of Music and Geogaddi.
But Hi Scores might be most exciting for the way it breaks from their later work. The title track, soaked in faraway buzz, as though it had been recorded beneath high-voltage power lines, offers up an overdriven growl that's reminiscent of Aphex Twin's "Ventolin". It's unusually muscular for them, and the same could be said of "June 9th", whose laser zaps and faintly industrial crunch recall Autechre and Disjecta. And the best track on the whole release might be "Nlogax", a snapping electro cut with a break reportedly sampled from Indeep's "Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life"; with the exception of the Hell Interface remix of "Midas Touch", it's probably the funkiest thing Boards of Canada have ever done. And played back at 45 RPM, it turns into shuddering, head-spinning techno—a tantalizing example of a path the duo could have taken, but never did.
It's not quite clear why, exactly, Hi Scores is getting re-released now. (A publicist notes that this is Skam's 20th anniversary, but that's debatable; 1994 was the year of the Autechre offshoot Gescom's self-titled EP, but that record bore the catalog number of SKA002. SKA001, the eponymous debut from Autechre in their Lego Feet guise, dates to 1991, and while almost nobody actually had the thing, its existence was known, or at least rumored, by the mid-'90s.) Apparently, Hi Scores has been remastered from the original DATs, and while the digital promo doesn't sound much (if at all) improved from the previous digital version, it's possible that the new edition of the vinyl will sound better than the original wax. But even that hardly matters much, given that this will be the first chance for many of the duo's fans to get their hands on the 12-inch at all. And while it might have been nice to be treated to some previously unreleased material—supposedly, there's still a trove of unreleased Boards music moldering on old cassette tapes—perhaps it's enough to have the original Hi Scores in all its crisp, concise glory. While it wasn't their first record, it's basically the spark that would ignite their reputation—the ember that would go on to fuel the whole glorious campfire headphase. Long may it smolder. | 2014-10-14T02:00:01.000-04:00 | 2014-10-14T02:00:01.000-04:00 | Electronic | Skam | October 14, 2014 | 8.7 | a211a334-2703-4ce5-a075-eb4695abcd7f | Philip Sherburne | https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/ | null |
The post-punk project Nice As Fuck is the most low-stakes album Jenny Lewis has ever been a part of, but it hits its mark. | The post-punk project Nice As Fuck is the most low-stakes album Jenny Lewis has ever been a part of, but it hits its mark. | Nice as Fuck: Nice As Fuck | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22081-nice-as-fuck/ | Nice As Fuck | For being one of indie-rock’s most clearly defined personalities, Jenny Lewis does her best not to be pinned down. In the decade or so since she lost interest in Rilo Kiley, Lewis has bounded from one project to the next, chasing whims, collecting collaborators, and generally trying on new hats with no fucks given about whether they fit or not. And although she’s always given the impression of being an open book, writing with apparent candor about her desires, convictions, and complete and utter inability to escape her own head, she’s made it increasingly clear that no single album offers a complete self-portrait. As she puts it on the self-titled debut from her latest side project Nice As Fuck, “If you want to know who I am, ask any one of my friends.”
Her new band teams her with Au Revoir Simone’s Erika Forster and the Like’s Tennessee Thomas (whose father Pete Thomas drums for Lewis’s pal Elvis Costello and played on Acid Tongue), and their debut is the most low-stakes album she has ever been a part of—which is saying something, considering she made a Jenny & Johnny record. Everything about the album seems designed to lower expectations, from its surprise release to its no-frills cover art. The group doesn’t have a publicist, which is virtually unheard of for a working band with a new album to promote in 2016, and the closest they’ve come to doing press is sharing a facetious band bio from Father John Misty that was more about satirizing the form than talking up the group. Really, the only way the band could have set expectations any lower for the record is if they offered $5 Subway gift cards in exchange for downloading it.
They were wise not to oversell it. This is a decidedly minor work, just nine songs in 26 minutes, and they all stick to the same skeletal template: Lewis sings over some vaguely dubby post-punk rhythms in the Pylon/Delta 5 mold. And that’s it. There’s not a lick of guitar on the whole thing, and keyboards are rationed nearly as strictly. A few notes of warbly synthesizer are smuggled into “Cookie Lips,” and although they’re not much, they sound like a Brian Eno production compared to the rest of the record. Warpaint played with some overlapping influences on their last album, which demonstrated the many ways that dub can be morphed and modernized, but Nice As Fuck have little interest in filling the considerable empty space they create. They play their post-punk homages completely straight.
It works in part because of the surprise factor (who knew Lewis had this kind of record in her?) but mostly because Lewis does what she always does: She sells the material. It’s a kick hearing her go full riot grrl on tracks like “Runaway” and “Door,” and lead Le Tigre-esque chants on “Homerun” and the album’s closing band theme (“We’re nice/as fuck.”) She’s also adjusted her songwriting to match her economical accompaniments, paring her usual wordy couplets down to concise slogans. Every line on the protest song “Guns” feels like a first draft it must have taken great restraint not to refine. “Crisis is not ISIS,” she sings. “Spilling our own blood/I don’t wanna be afraid/put your guns away.”
It’s hard not to see the album as a reaction to Lewis’s previous effort, the highly polished, achingly personal The Voyager. By most accounts that record took years to complete, while Nice As Fuck—at the risk of going out on a limb—probably didn’t. If history is any indication, the project will likely be just a pit stop for a Lewis, a way for her to stretch out a bit before throwing herself into something a little more demanding, and that’s fine—not every effort needs to represent five years of toiling and soul searching. Nice As Fuck may set its sights low, but it hits its mark. | 2016-07-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2016-07-02T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Rock | Love’s Way | July 2, 2016 | 6.6 | a21216b0-6b68-4d09-9f39-62fd95025fcc | Evan Rytlewski | https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/ | null |
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 apex of the infamous UK band, a hedonistic and sampledelic Madchester masterpiece that reinvented post-punk for the rave era. | 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 apex of the infamous UK band, a hedonistic and sampledelic Madchester masterpiece that reinvented post-punk for the rave era. | Happy Mondays: Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/happy-mondays-pills-n-thrills-and-bellyaches/ | Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches | The models are dressed for a 1990 music video shoot, but no one seems to have told them it’d be a Happy Mondays video shoot. To be fair, Happy Mondays appear to have no idea that they’re at a Happy Mondays video shoot either. At least a dozen women in tasteful cocktail dresses gyrate in an empty sound studio as Happy Mondays pantomime a song called “Kinky Afro,” wearing what looks like the clothes they slept in the night before.
That is, if they slept at all. The first look Shaun Ryder gives to the camera is so far beyond “hungover” that it’s uncanny, like a still from an I Think You Should Leave sketch 30 years ahead of its time. His fly also appears to be halfway down. The only guy in the band that’s playing in sync is Mark “Bez” Berry, the mascot/dancer/occasional percussionist whose main instrument is himself, except when he starts patting Ryder’s back like a bongo after a model steals his maracas. “Kinky Afro” is all quotables, but the most important line is, “What you get is just what you see.” And what you saw in this video is exactly what you got on Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches—a Madchester masterpiece that could only come from the scene’s most functionally booted band.
“Kinky Afro” isn’t Happy Mondays’ biggest hit or defining song—that would be Pills’ rhymin’ and stealin’ lead single “Step On,” or the epochal Paul Oakenfold remix of “Wrote for Luck,” or “24 Hour Party People,” their sex, drugs, and on-the-dole anthem, and the namesake of an indispensable 2002 Factory Records magical realism biopic. After the tragic death of Ian Curtis at 23 ends the revolutionary post-punk phase of Factory, Happy Mondays appear in the film’s second act as unwitting insurgents, a signing that propels Factory founder Tony Wilson’s nightclub, the Haçienda, from a struggling warehouse venue to the locus of the ecstasy-fueled rave revolution that’s sweeping the UK. By the end of the movie, the Mondays are comic relief; with Factory in dire financial straits, they take a meeting with EMI, announce that they’re “going for a Kentucky [Fried Chicken]” when presented with a vegetable platter, and never come back. When we see them eating from an actual bucket of chicken, it’s a gag based on the open secret that “KFC” was the band’s code word for heroin.
However, “Kinky Afro” remains Happy Mondays’ biggest hit in America. It’s central to the legacy of their third album, which was released on Elektra and recorded in Los Angeles because that was where these guys were less likely to get in trouble in 1990. Then again, maybe the famed Capitol Studios was just a proper compromise; if relative sobriety was truly a priority, the Mondays wouldn’t have also floated Amsterdam and Jamaica as options.
By the time Pills was properly released in November, Happy Mondays had headlined Glastonbury, the Oakenfold-led “United States of the Hacienda” tour was a smashing success, and Madchester-lite singles from Jesus Jones and EMF had topped Billboard. American publications attempted to sum up the band’s raison d’être in a few sentences. “The new music is buoyant, almost goofy,” Newsweek proclaimed. “Scrubbed and mellow and often stoned out of their gourds, their Monkees haircuts bobbing...the fashion grafts British football gear onto American hippie glad rags—with a soupcon of the Jetsons’ futurism.” The upstart UK publication Vox singled out that passage from “Stark Raving Madchester” as proof of how poorly prepared America was to meet the Mondays on their own terms. At a 1990 music industry seminar titled “Stars of Tomorrow,” Wilson took an even more antagonistic tack towards the New York audience: “You used to know how to dance here. God knows how you fucking forgot.”
It’s hard to tell whether even the most enthusiastic UK rags shared Wilson’s beliefs, or whether or not Happy Mondays were great as opposed to merely infamous. The almost universal critical acclaim that awaited Pills didn’t change the perception that the music was happening in spite of the people who made it (“stupidly excellent,” “against all odds, this is a stunningly good record”). Details about their creative process from the time are scarce, but their drug-seeking habits are well-documented and often played for laughs, whether it’s arranging international opium deals near Marlon Brando’s house or hitting up crack dens in Harlem almost immediately after arriving in New York for their tour with the Pixies.
And so, if there was a lot riding on Pills, none of that seemed to get through to Ryder. “It’s hard to tell if the Mondays idolize anyone,” NME wondered, even as the Mondays surrounded themselves with avant-garde idols. Looking at the credits from their initial run, they could be mistaken for cred-conscious bohos trying to transcend their hardscrabble, Mancunian roots. 1987’s Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) was produced by John Cale, not because it was a particularly inspired stylistic match but because, in Wilson’s cynical view, the halo effect of the Velvet Underground served as a hedge against poor initial sales of their debut. 1988’s Bummed, meanwhile, was an epic grudge match of substance issues—in one corner, the Mondays, newly enamored with ecstasy, in the other, Factory producer Martin Hannett, deep in financial turmoil and various addictions that would end his life at age 42.
Ironically, the producer most responsible for Happy Mondays’ enduring critical cachet had nothing to do with Loaded or Unknown Pleasures. Long before he became a Vegas EDM punchline, Paul Oakenfold and partner Steve Osborne were up-and-coming acid house producers who were tapped to do a remix of Bummed’s massive centerpiece “Wrote for Luck,” which they pushed out to seven minutes with the help of an N.W.A. sample (a trick that would be repeated on Oasis’ Be Here Now, one of the few ’90s UK blockbusters even more notorious for rampant drug use). The partnership continued to flower on “Step On,” a quasi-cover of John Kongos’ “He’s Gonna Step on You Again” intended for a 40th-anniversary Elektra compilation that soon became proof of concept for Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches.
“Step On” only vaguely resembles its source material: The opening piano strokes are swiped from any number of Italo disco songs, the drum loops could pass for New Jack Swing, Ryder’s verse cadence is nicked from “Come Together,” and the most famous lyric is on loan from Steve McQueen. Still, this recombinant approach honors the spirit (if not the politics) of Kongos’ original, which is credited as the first song to use sampling.
This approach—stripping down a cover of everything but vibe—also worked for “Bob’s Yer Uncle.” Originally conceived as a take on Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’,” Oakenfold insisted the Mondays keep their sinister groove, as they layered the Daktari theme song, snippets from The Exorcist, and assorted porno films. And, once it became clear that Bez was in no shape to contribute proper percussion, Ryder boasted, “We got somebody who I think was called something like Fidel Castro in. Mega.” (His name was actually Tony Castro.) And since this is a band whose previous album, Bummed, was a joke about anal sex, Ryder took some liberties with the lyric, “I won’t let you leave my love behind.” “It’s our version of a Balearic love song,” Ryder told NME, “where we’re talking about fucking chicks up the arse.” This was a statement Ryder gave after 17 years of sobriety; it took him a moment to remember that Wilson had requested “Bob’s Yer Uncle” be played at his own funeral.
On past records, Happy Mondays were an inspired post-punk or punk-funk band limited by their technical proficiency. In linking up with Oakenfold and Osborne, the Mondays just had to nail a couple of bars at a time and let the producers piece it together in the studio. Pills begins with a glimmering acoustic strum reflecting their new milieu of casinos, Jacuzzis, luxury sports cars, and private jets. And, in the case of Bez, getting hit on by the star of Pretty Woman and being so loaded he didn’t recognize her. But immediately thereafter, guitarist Mark Day’s snarling, loopy riff mirrors how Happy Mondays actually appeared: misfits who’d swagger into the room, steal your wallet during a bender, and help you look for it the next day.
Day runs his signal through an ultra-premium Leslie amp on “Grandbag’s Funeral,” creating an impossible funk rhythm that sounds like Led Zeppelin’s “The Wanton Song” if its title was more truthful. The slide riff from “God’s Cop” sounds like it’s being played with the edge of a switchblade, whereas “Dennis and Lois” just sounds like U2 guitarist the Edge, a soaring tribute to a couple of NYC scene lifers that predates Achtung Baby by a year. While his brother served as the band’s mouthpiece, Paul Ryder’s basslines serve as the body and soul, the mirror image of fellow Factory bassist Peter Hook by putting groove and murk at the front rather than melody. And if drummer Gary Whelan or Bez couldn’t nail their parts (and the latter rarely could), they had no qualms about being replaced by drum machines or loops of their better takes.
In other words, Happy Mondays were the only Madchester act that truly envisioned their music as post-punk, or even post-rock, with Pills perhaps the first example of a rock band reinventing themselves as a sampledelic hip-hop act. It’s a link made all too clear as “God’s Cop” lifts the same drum loop featured on De La Soul’s “Me Myself and I.” With a presumably dim grasp of copyright and licensing law, Happy Mondays took full advantage of early hip-hop’s openness towards collage, interpolation, repurposing, and when necessary, outright theft. The hook on “Kinky Afro” was assumed to be a rip from “Lady Marmalade,” but Ryder had an ingenious alibi—he claimed he couldn’t have been stealing from Patti LaBelle because he was actually stealing from John McClane in Die Hard.
In some ways, they were ahead of the curve; Ryder bragged about never writing down his lyrics and using music as a loss leader for a lucrative drug racket when Jay-Z was still making money from ’88. “We were giving [ecstasy] away at first, like good drug dealers do. That was good marketing,” Ryder explained, less enamored with the potentially utopian impact of the drug on UK’s music scene than the fact that local police were more concerned about crack and heroin than all-night raves. “We were selling them at £50 a tab, which was a fucking fantastic earner. Bass strings are expensive, aren’t they?”
Happy Mondays’ viewpoint may have been more cynical than their peers, but hardly out of step. “The philosophy is simplistic, the politics nil,” Newsweek said of the Madchester scene, which itself was an oversimplification, if not outright wrong. The Mondays were libertines and libertarians, an approach that Ryder might describe as laissez faire, or, in less fancy terms, “Loose Fit.” Pills’ most seductive groove might have been interpreted as a cultural anthem two years prior, but by the time they could afford the top gear they used to shoplift, the Mondays didn’t seem to have much allegiance to “baggy.” “Loose Fit” is Ryder’s philosophical credo rather than a fashion statement, a call to wear life like a loose garment and not to step on anyone’s toes.
The most heartfelt moments on Pills are, understandably, protest songs about the reigning political issue of the day, namely: letting Shaun Ryder take drugs in peace. Inspired by a rare instance of Ryder facing consequences at customs, “Holiday” stumbles upon a trenchant take on classist policing: “You don’t look first class/Let me look up your ass.” “God’s Cop” is a sendup of quasi-celebrity bobby James Anderton, who claimed a supernatural mandate to bust up raves. “God’s Cop” is, in some ways, a protest song, but more effective as a parody. Rattling off crude jokes about feminine hygiene and stolen credit cards, the most damning blow Ryder can land makes Anderton sound like a member of the Mondays’ entourage: “Me and the chief got soul to soul!/Me and the chief got slowly stoned!”
In America, Madchester remained a curiosity at best, but that’s no fault of Pills. In the same condescending way that innovations in hip-hop or electronic music are described as “the new punk,” the American mags were particularly guilty of comparing Happy Mondays to other guitar bands—claiming that Madchester was the “second Summer of Love,” or the second coming of the Beatles or the Sex Pistols. Perhaps that speaks to the limited imagination of rock scribes, but in the ensuing years, most of the biggest Madchester acts revealed themselves as boomer rock in baggy drag.
As for the Mondays, their reputation as a drug band with a music problem became a lot more literal. 1992’s Yes Please! is the sort of album most people encounter through “Worst Flops of All Time” lists before they ever hear it, if they hear it at all. The lore is far more fascinating: an overmatched Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz trying to wrangle a band of active drug addicts in Barbados, the unrealized desire to collab with Bushwick Bill, Ryder selling the furniture at Eddy Grant’s studio to buy crack cocaine and developing a throat infection that left him incapable of recording vocals. While Yes Please! is certainly uninspired and dated, it’s nowhere near the disaster its reputation suggests—a reputation that all but ensures its eligibility to be reappraised as a cult classic, unlike 2007’s truly inessential comeback Uncle Dysfunktional.
Ryder and Bez briefly got back into the UK press’ good graces with Black Grape’s It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah, a deeply mid-’90s melange of alt-rap and spiritual mumbo jumbo whose title winks at sobriety (not sexuality), even though the collective’s drug regimen was only slightly less intense than the Mondays’. Over the past 30 years, it’s become clear that fame is their greatest addiction. Whether popping up on Shameless or Shaun Ryder on UFOs or I’m a Celebrity…South Africa, it’s been difficult to keep Ryder off television; I’d say his finest role came in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where he voiced masturbation enthusiast Maccer, a washed-up, bucket-hatted leader of an “extremely baggy” band called the Gurning Chimps. Bez likewise never stopped moving, touring the reality show circuit to pay off tax debts and winning Celebrity Big Brother in 2005. In the time since, he’s been an anti-fracking advocate and an online fitness instructor; it’s unclear whether he actually learned to play the bongos for real.
Yet all of these non-musical ventures have likely done more to burnish Happy Mondays’ brand over the past 30 years as a spectacular rave’n’roll swindle. It’s why Pills manages to resonate not just with the laddish electro-rock bands that stuffed FIFA soundtracks in the 2000s, but the Tough Alliance and the Armed, subversive, high-concept projects that toy with perceptions of cultism and violence as much as they act upon them. Or basically any hardcore band that cares a lot about merch drops.
The band knew to end on a possibility—that the ’90s could have turned out much differently than they did. After years of trying to establish plausible deniability for Madchester as a scene and a sound, Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches closes on a note of peace, happiness, and love with the fittingly titled “Harmony.” “What we need is a big, big cooking pot/Big enough to cook every wonderful, beautiful, trustworthy, lovely idea we’ve got,” Ryder sings over the “Sweet Jane” chord progression, reimagining the Mad Men finale if Don Draper found self-actualization in Ibiza. In 2023’s If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, author Vincent Bevins surveyed the mass movements of the 2010s and found a common terminus point—the moment when the ultras arrive on the scene, either leftist punks or football fans who determine the ultimate course towards anarchy or tyranny. Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches imagined a third way for Madchester, one that remains eternally alluring for any musical movement trying to balance drugs, thugs, and hugs, all raving under one roof.
Additional research by Deirdre McCabe Nolan | 2024-06-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2024-06-30T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | Factory | June 30, 2024 | 9.5 | a2132cbb-77cf-4fab-87c4-5769c1711335 | Ian Cohen | https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/ | |
Hydra Head's final (for now) release is a split between Godflesh/Jesu leader Justin K. Broadrick under his new solo moniker, JK Flesh, and prolific electronic noise insurgent Prurient. It serves as a cross-generational cycle between two aggressive sonic explorers. | Hydra Head's final (for now) release is a split between Godflesh/Jesu leader Justin K. Broadrick under his new solo moniker, JK Flesh, and prolific electronic noise insurgent Prurient. It serves as a cross-generational cycle between two aggressive sonic explorers. | JK Flesh / Prurient: Worship Is the Cleansing of the Imagination | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17406-worship-is-the-cleansing-of-the-imagination/ | Worship is the Cleansing of the Imagination | How and when will you die? That question, of course, has fascinated centuries of thinkers, from philosophers plundering mortality's meaning to laypeople simply hoping to have their affairs in order when life comes to a close. In most cases, the end is unpredictable-- a car crash, a heart attack, a disease that comes on swiftly and decisively. But businesses often sense that doom is inevitable, that accounts receivable are no longer balancing accounts payable in a way that's sustainable. They have the rare choice of how to handle their own demise: They can choose to hide this from their customers and one day simply shutter the doors, or they can choose to throw themselves on the great public pyre, making a show of their mortality and allowing the faithful to plunder their wares another time or two.
In September, Hydra Head Records joined the latter caste: For nearly two decades, Hydra Head has been a fearless syndicate of loud, a label at the vanguard of risky releases paired with adventurous packaging. In 1999, for instance, they released Isis' excellent Sawblade EP-- notably, featuring a cover of Godflesh's "Streetcleaner"-- on a CD-R affixed to a full-size metallic sawblade, painted red or black. Consistent with Hydra Head founder Aaron Turner's ecumenical vision of heavy, they embraced the grindcore of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, the wretched malevolence of Khanate, the noise purges of Merzbow, the arithmetic bludgeon of the Austerity Program, and the astral wonder of Pyramids, to name a few.
The list of accomplishments is exhausting. It exhausted Hydra Head's funds, too, leading the label to announce the first of two going-out-of-business fire sales in September: Enthusiasts could buy bundles of backstock at incredibly deep discounts, with the hope of paying the bills and finishing the final releases. Two months later, Hydra Head put test pressings, original artwork, and even Turner's Les Paul on sale with the hope of raising enough money to keep the label’s sizable back catalogue in permanent circulation. The willingness of customers to spend $800 on a Torche and Boris 10" or $180 on an Isis box set became a functional tribute to the label, a way to push it into some future while kowtowing to its expiring glory.
Hydra Head's final (for now) release has much the same effect: A split between Godflesh/Jesu leader Justin K. Broadrick under his new solo moniker, JK Flesh, and prolific electronic noise insurgent Dominick Fernow as Prurient, the six-track Worship is the Cleansing of Imagination serves as a cross-generational cycle between two aggressive sonic explorers. Broadrick's three tracks here are the more concussive, comprising electronic drums massive enough to suggest EBM on steroids and damaged textures occasionally abrasive enough to be classified as power electronics. His opener, "Fear of Fear", is a savage and short trip, a cyclone of a beat rumbling through fields of bass and blown-out guitars. Fernow focuses less on a pulse, instead using loops and layers to build a cyclone of sound that he either subsequently pulls apart or simply lets collapse. He leads with "Chosen Books", which matches Broadrick's gambit by dogpiling roars and whirs and hums until the frame of the sound system begins to quiver. These are similar but separate paths to the same plane of aggression, an idea that could serve as the retroactive Hydra Head mantra.
The best cuts on either side bear out that idea, too: "Deceiver" is Broadrick's most provocative and ambitious cut here. It opens as an industrial dirge, the toll of a church bell stretched into a subterranean groan. That sound cycles throughout the piece, while Broadrick adds and removes layers like a marionette. The hyperkinetic beat occasionally bursts open to douse the track in noisy shrapnel and low-end torture. "Deceiver" casts Broadrick as the controller of his past, able to funnel his experiences into these intense five minutes. Worship closes with "I Understand You", one of the most strangely beautiful pieces of music in the catalogues of Prurient or Hydra Head. Fernow wrestles simultaneously with disparate sets of impulses, attempting to thread a punishing squelch sustain around a keyboard line that hovers just on the horizon. The din overtakes the melody for a bit, but Fernow eventually pulls both themes back together before letting the keyboard disappear entirely. The noise spreads like ivy on a wall of disappearing ruins.
Both Broadrick and Fernow share the broad musical view implicitly espoused by Hydra Head for the last two decades. Broadrick's oeuvre stretches from the atavistic blast of Napalm Death's debut and the militant stomp of Godflesh to the diaphanous loom of Jesu and the exploratory throb of Techno Animal. In Prurient, Fernow has wrestled with noise and poetry, corrupted beats and rhythm-less roars. He's made black metal in Ash Pool, muted and mutated pop melodies in Vatican Shadow, and gone for full-on dance bombast in Cold Cave. If Hydra Head is indeed done, this is an excellent and appropriate ending for a big-eared label never confined by expectations of its output or intentions. These six tracks provide heaviness in a half-dozen different ways, a functional and fitting elegy for an imprint that achieved that mission with enviable consistency. | 2012-12-12T01:00:01.000-05:00 | 2012-12-12T01:00:01.000-05:00 | Experimental | Hydra Head | December 12, 2012 | 8 | a213a96c-d398-41e1-87e4-9941da59c847 | Grayson Haver Currin | https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/ | null |
The pop singer architects her legacy with a new documentary and live album from her 2019 tour. As a performer, she’s fun and loose, even as her newest music feels more like a means to an end. | The pop singer architects her legacy with a new documentary and live album from her 2019 tour. As a performer, she’s fun and loose, even as her newest music feels more like a means to an end. | P!nk: All I Know So Far: Setlist | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pnk-all-i-know-so-far-setlist/ | All I Know So Far: Setlist | Somewhere, on some radio, a P!nk song is playing—that’s been true for the past 20 years. She opened for NSYNC, then outlasted them; she wrote a surprisingly delicate anti-Bush ballad with the Indigo Girls, and her career outlasted that presidency; she collaborated with the lead singer of the now obsolete band fun. at the height of its popularity, in a song that still gets radio play; she wore giant sunglasses and mimed jabbing a toothbrush down her throat to mock the Paris Hilton archetype of female celebrity, and stayed relevant longer than both Hilton and anti-Hilton backlash. P!nk’s music oscillates between self-destruction and self-compassion, a balance she’s struck since her breakout album M!ssndazstood in 2001. After a litany of brash statements and cries for help, optimized for shock value (“Teachers dated me/My parents hated me”), she builds to a plea: “I’m a hazard to myself/Don’t let me get me.” On an album that strained to prove how dangerous or damaged or derailed the 22-year-old singer was—all dirty socks and diamond rings, extended metaphors describing her childhood as “my Vietnam”—“Don’t Let Me Get Me” was the song that stunned. There’s always a sudden softness in her party tracks, or a raw, brazen aside in her ballads.
P!nk is architecting her legacy now, and the industry is celebrating her for sticking around. On Sunday, Billboard gave her its “Icon” award, days after Amazon released a documentary, P!nk: All I Know So Far, following the massive 2019 European tour behind her 2017 album Beautiful Trauma. In recent years, P!nk has become known as a live entertainer, performing stunts and singing through elaborate acrobatic routines. The film focuses on her decision to bring her two young kids with her as she practiced and performed; they flail in the background of her rehearsals, diaper-clad and puffing on a trumpet backstage. “I want tour to be perfect for every single person that walks through those doors with a ticket in their hand,” P!nk says at one point, “but I also want it to be perfect in my kids’ minds. And I kill myself to do both.”
That strain hovers over the film’s accompanying live album, which leaves out some of P!nk’s more potent songs and instead asserts her place in a punk-adjacent musical canon, arguing that motherhood is fundamentally compatible with her watered-down brand of rebellion. All I Know So Far: Setlist is crammed with rock covers, some more successful than others. She braids a stomping version of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” into a performance of her 2008 track “Funhouse,” which both tamps down the absurdity of P!nk’s metaphors (“This used to be a funhouse/But now it’s filled with evil clowns”) and highlights Gwen Stefani’s clear influence. Less thrilling is her take on “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which sags under the weight of ceremony without adding much to the original.
As a performer, P!nk is fun and brash and loose. “I forget the words,” she murmurs on the recording of her Nate Ruess collaboration, the sappy mallcore duet “Just Give Me a Reason.” “Screw that,” she says, and asks for a do-over. “I like that song.” She bounces on and off the beat on “Who Knew,” spilling over the song’s boundaries, and in the disarray the lyrics become disarming—“I’ll keep you locked in my head,” she whimpers, “until we meet again.” When she belts, her usually raspy voice scrapes at the notes, sometimes quivering with emotion. “I’m alright,” she cries on “So What,” convincing herself in real time, “I’m just fiiine.” On “Just Like a Pill,” one of the best songs she’s written, the audience rushes in to fill the gaps when she pauses; the recording becomes a document of this joint need, artist and audience working in tandem to cement a narrative of endurance.
The narrative P!nk wants to tell is that she’s a “renegade,” as she cooes on the title track—a new addition for the album, rooted in female empowerment—and that she’s stayed ahead of the times. But in reality P!nk is less revolutionary; she’s updated her music and her message in ways that seem both heartfelt and primed for mass appeal. The album includes her viral 2017 acceptance speech for the MTV Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award, somewhat jarringly slotted after a series of live songs, and in it she recalls talking to her then-six-year-old daughter about the toxicity of beauty standards and the freedom in androgyny. The applause fades into the next track, a blaring EDM beat from Cash Cash thumping under snippets from P!nk’s past interviews—“I need to know my pain is helping your pain,” she says, as the beat wheezes and drops. The messaging shows up on the album’s new songs, which seem less like anthems for the downtrodden and more like vessels for the statements P!nk wants to make now. At the Billboard award show, she and her nine-year-old daughter hung suspended in the air as they performed “Cover Me in Sunshine.” Guitar played somewhere offscreen, a low, forgettable strum. They twirled above the stage and chirped about “good times.” P!nk swung toward her daughter and their foreheads pressed together. It’s one of the weakest songs of her career; it may also mean the most.
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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. | 2021-05-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | 2021-05-26T00:00:00.000-04:00 | Pop/R&B | RCA | May 26, 2021 | 6 | a21f508d-6575-4046-a513-e87700845df1 | Dani Blum | https://pitchfork.com/staff/dani-blum/ | |
This promising self-released record from a young singer-songwriter mixes grim and emotional songwriting with expansive electronic production. | This promising self-released record from a young singer-songwriter mixes grim and emotional songwriting with expansive electronic production. | Arrange: Plantation | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15534-plantation/ | Plantation | "Still can't feel much of anything," Malcom Lacey sings on "Tearing Up Old Asphalt", a slow-burner from the South Floridian's first LP as Arrange, Plantation. With his soft voice awash in electronic hums and next to a tranquil piano line, you can almost believe him. But the claim seems mostly aspirational. His unassuming vocals quiver and crack with emotion, giving the impression not of a person who can't feel, but of one who must be cautious of feeling too much. That's a common symptom of being a teenager, which Lacey is. So it's extra-impressive that Plantation never goes over the top. Instead, this highly personalized fusion of dark indie-pop and laptop ambient taps into volatile wellsprings of longing, resentment, and fear with controlled intensity.
Plantation is very much a bedroom production. Often using either a cloud of tone or a simple piano figure as a base, Lacey fashions understated, compact hooks from guitar, vocal loops, and software synthesizers, and then rolls them out for just long enough to lodge them in memory before they vanish. As mentioned in a Playlist review of "When'd You Find Me?", Bright Eyes might wind up with something like Plantation if he judiciously added vocals to a Kompakt Pop Ambient sampler. But Lacey's vision is unique, and makes the album cohesive despite its piecemeal diversity.
Many different touchstones flow into one retiring mood. Opening instrumental "In Old Theaters" has the stately drive of M83. The standout "Tiny Little Boy" nods to R&B with splashy mechanical drums and a soulfully lilting vocal performance. A techno influence becomes more pronounced in the back half: On "Blinds with You", a droning synth line soars and slumps with weary majesty over crisply staggered drums, and "Veins" owes an unabashed debt to the Field's slithering pulses. The blurry melodies of chillwave, the drafty space of dubstep, and the hypnotic repetitions of classical minimalism are all contextual influences. But everything blends into a unified voice thanks to Lacey's knack for thoughtful connective tissue and striking lyrical point of view.
This is thoroughly a break-up record, but Lacey deals in implication and austerity. His perspective has a mature balance: He makes accusations that cut both ways, and then he questions them. We get not just the wounded heart and its grudges but the filter of the skeptical mind, watching from a critical distance. *Plantation'*s recording quality is a little uneven, but that seems a small price to pay for the genuine intimacy that can occur when a young person holes up in a bedroom with a computer, a guitar, and his complex sorrow, figuring out on his own what can be made of it all. | 2011-06-17T02:00:02.000-04:00 | 2011-06-17T02:00:02.000-04:00 | Electronic / Rock | self-released | June 17, 2011 | 7.7 | a2274c36-cb03-49f3-a970-914e09531a9e | Brian Howe | https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-howe/ | null |
Accompanied by family members and former bandmates, the Go-Betweens songwriter crafts a sparse but deeply felt album. | Accompanied by family members and former bandmates, the Go-Betweens songwriter crafts a sparse but deeply felt album. | Robert Forster: The Candle and the Flame | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/robert-forster-the-candle-and-the-flame/ | The Candle and the Flame | Forty years after the hunt began, Robert Forster has found what he coveted, right in his front parlor. “That striped sunlight sound” he’s called it—as thin, keen, bright, and warm as the Brisbane summers he and his band the Go-Betweens pined for when touring the world, often for terrible paydays and negligible sales incommensurate with their euphoric reviews. For his eighth solo release, The Candle and the Flame, Forster has recorded a hangout album—with the people he actually hangs out with. The songs sound as fresh as morning air through open kitchen windows.
COVID-era exigencies and health emergencies shaped the material. Shaken by wife Karin Bãumler’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer in July 2021, Forster wrote “She’s a Fighter” as she endured chemo: a two-line ditty with vigorous strumming, an acerbic five-note electric fill, and light marimba accents. Rarely has he allowed rhythmic vigor to signify by itself. Intimates back him: Former Go-Between Adele Pickvance; his son Louis of the gawky indie rock band the Goon Sax, on bass and guitar; daughter Loretta on second guitar. Bãumler even joined on xylophone and ba-da-da backup vocals. To make claims for The Candle and the Flame as a Major Statement belittles what the Forster family endured—as if he had Major Statements in mind. They play as if willing Bãumler to fight.
This Robert Forster sounds less complacent than confident. Devotees know their man; he can afford to apotheosize himself with his nasal, abashed, slightly mournful vocal timbre. “I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time” confirms his knack for marrying an eyebrow-raising title and a conceit so obvious that of course no one thought of it before he did. Time fascinates him, and time will not relent. “Feel changes in my mind/I’m walkin’ to school in ‘69/The next day I’m 35,” he sings over a couple chords. A nod toward George Jones, “Tender Years” registers how an inward eye turns outward, with Bãumler as the subject: “Walking through salt and water, I see how far we’ve come.” Louis’ bass grounds the sentiment with a riff as inevitable as a hug. The Forster who as a Go-Between commemorated the early days of married seclusion and flipped through a notebook of familiar-names-now-memories has long understood how love can be a byproduct of curiosity.
If The Candle and the Flame follows the Forsterian pattern of skeletal albums preceding a fuller, thicker-bodied one, it stands out because simpatico players have kicked around and toughened up the fuller, thicker-bodied ruminations. Forster finds resonances in the everyday. He knows, per “The Roads,” that the colors of the country are green and brown and red. Think before you speak, he offers in “It’s Only Poison,” and speak before you’re forgotten. Far from stifling the imagination, these descendants of what he praised in an earlier song as a family of “honest workers” have kindled it. The Candle and the Flame is an entrancing flicker. | 2023-02-08T00:02:00.000-05:00 | 2023-02-08T00:02:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Tapete | February 8, 2023 | 7.5 | a2366a3d-8a88-465b-acac-7ed888e1bba5 | Alfred Soto | https://pitchfork.com/staff/alfred-soto/ | |
The Scandinavian disco luminaries join for an album that draws on space rock, dub, leftfield disco, and post-punk, made more for the mind than the dancefloor. | The Scandinavian disco luminaries join for an album that draws on space rock, dub, leftfield disco, and post-punk, made more for the mind than the dancefloor. | Bjørn Torske / Prins Thomas: Square One | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bjorn-torske-prins-thomas-square-one/ | Square One | It’s been eight years since Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas released their last collaborative effort, 2009’s proggy and unfocused II. And while there was never a “conscious uncoupling,” the two beardo disco luminaries have since taken to working with others. Lindstrøm has paired with Todds Rundgren and Terje, while Prins Thomas has mostly explored the single life with sprawling solo albums, capped by last year’s ambitious almost-100-minute ambient exploration Principe del Norte.
Square One finds Prins Thomas working with fellow Norwegian and scene legend Bjørn Torske. While Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas garnered the most notice in the West for exporting spacey disco in the mid-’00s, Torske had already been doing dubby disco since the late ’90s and worked closely with the late producer Erot (known for producing Annie’s breakout “The Greatest Hit”). But Prins Thomas and Torske apparently have recordings that stretch back to 1997. That Prins Thomas is influenced by Torske’s work is a given—his tracks have been habitually woven into Prins Thomas’ official mix albums, be it Cosmo Galactic Prism, Live at Robert Johnson, Rainbow Disco Club Vol. 1, or Paradise Goulash—so the two connecting in the studio is sympathetic. Rather than revisit their mischievous nu-disco days, the results of this session are laidback, intuitive, and ideal for drifting deep into space.
“On U” may namecheck Adrian Sherwood’s lacerating punk/dub imprint, but the track itself is built up from a mellow and deceptively simple motorik beat. Almost imperceptibly, the gooey bassline has a conga drum stick to it, soon joined by a ghostly electric organ chord, some guitar glissando, and a sizzling ride cymbal. So loose is the track that the duo appear to perform a nifty trick, making it at once build towards a peak while at the same time seeming to unspool, its groove in ever-widening circles like clay wobbling off of a potter’s wheel.
While all seven tracks feature drums, rarely does a single beat on the album ever rev above 100 bpm. (The lone exception comes on the classical space-disco squiggles of “Kappe tre.”) Rather than offer rhythmic propulsion, the drums primarily serve more as underlying pulse for the layers of analog keys and echo effects. “Arthur” begins as slo-mo disco, but the addition of a hand drum dilates the space between the beats; unidentifiable analog noises flutter in and out of the mix. And while the track only clocks in at seven minutes, its leisurely pacing gives it the feel of one of L&PT’s double digit-length head-trips.
The album’s longest excursion is the nine-minute “12 Volt,” which at times promises to have its rumbling dark bassline coagulate into something more sinister. But Torske and Prins Thomas keep tweaking the track until it starts to resemble the waning minutes of Steve Miller Band’s “Macho City,” all simmering hi-hat, tocking percussion, foreboding bass, and ambience like steam off of hot asphalt. The speed notches up on “K16 Del 1,” as cowbell, thumb piano, and toms give the track a tribal feel; shimmering noises soon swell up and dissipate the rhythmic tension. Bits of space rock, dub, leftfield disco, and post-punk all feed into Square One, but despite the Scandinavian disco pedigree of its two participants, it’s less a dancefloor weapon than a soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing. | 2017-07-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | 2017-07-22T01:00:00.000-04:00 | Electronic | Smalltown Supersound | July 22, 2017 | 7.3 | a23c404b-2b22-40d1-adf0-79ff32bca38d | Andy Beta | https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/ | null |
On his first album sung entirely in Spanish, the Uruguayan-American singer-songwriter finds poetry in small moments, with low-key craftsmanship that matches his songs’ quotidian subject matter. | On his first album sung entirely in Spanish, the Uruguayan-American singer-songwriter finds poetry in small moments, with low-key craftsmanship that matches his songs’ quotidian subject matter. | Juan Wauters: La Onda de Juan Pablo | https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/juan-wauters-la-onda-de-juan-pablo/ | La Onda de Juan Pablo | Juan Wauters doesn’t need big drama to stir up big feelings. The following are a few images that precede some of the biggest musical moments on La Onda de Juan Pablo: A boy dreaming about being his soccer-superstar hero; an older couple sitting in their garden and missing their son who left home; and Wauters buying himself some pants. Anyone who has ever looked around a crowded subway car and been momentarily captivated by the volume of thoughts floating through all the brains within a short radius should recognize a similar wonder in the sounds and stories of La Onda de Juan Pablo, the singer-songwriter’s first album sung entirely in his native Spanish.
The context of how the Uruguay-born, Queens-raised Wauters made this album reinforces that wonder. La Onda was recorded across several Latin American countries where he traveled or lived over the past two years, mainly using recording equipment that he carried with him. Wauters wrote these songs in different genres endemic to those countries, including Afro-Uruguayan candombe, Latin American bolero, and Mexican bolero ranchero. The styles inform his songs about neighborhoods, families, work lives, and his own relationship to all of the above—assisted by the very musicians he met playing on streets and in plazas. It’s his voice, but it’s also theirs, one man’s travelogue autographed by the people he befriended along the way.
Like its images, La Onda’s smallest sounds often hit the hardest. On “El Señor,” a Buenos Aires folk guitar player named Alejandro Dominguez feathers delicate fret-board wizardry through a clock-ticking rhythm for a pirouetting instrumental coda that gently expands and intensifies like dilating eyes. Wauters, meanwhile, narrates a story about nothing more than a man who decides to be the only one in his family to move away from home. Wauters’ ode to public transit, “Blues Chilango,” is pure, centering zen, opening on tingle-inducing bongo taps from Mexico’s Izakúm Vazquez and gliding to a stop with a perfect sax solo by Puerto Rico’s Juan Botta, which practically shouts for the joy of people-watching after Wauters just lists them off as they pass: “Un carnicero, un electricista, un carpintero, un relojero” (“A butcher, an electrician, a carpenter, a watchmaker”).
It all pulls even tighter when Wauters sings about his own place in the world on the contemplative centerpiece “Mi Vida.” Inspired and accompanied by a 25-string guitarrón chileno player named Luciano Fuentes Borquez, whom Wauters saw performing payada music in Santiago, Chile, he sings about riding his bike and making peace with the hand he was dealt. “Qué vida triste me tocó a mí vivir/Pensaba hoy” (“What a sad life I ended up with/I thought today”), he sings, before immediately contradicting himself: It’s also pretty good—he has a girlfriend, a son, and a nearby neighborhood park. Wauters doesn’t lust for life, nor lament it; it’s a satisfied ambivalence that pairs well with a sense of humor.
That’s something he’s always had. Wauters occasionally adds a dash of deadpan to his straight-faced delivery, as when he sang, “Like a movie that is good/You require my attention” on Who Me? He pulls a similar punch here to open “Blues Chilango,” cutting down the pretension of elaborate similes: “Soy como un hombre que trabaja con su barco/Como un hombre que trabaja con su tierra/Pero vivo en la ciudad.” (“I am like a man that works with his boat/Like a man that works with his soil/But I live in the city”). Time and again, Wauters sides with extreme straightforwardness over metaphor, preferring the power of moments uncontaminated by interpretation. Street-vendor jingle “Disfruta la Fruta” lingers on just one chord as he lists different fruits that he likes to eat—and if that sounds unlistenable to you, maybe don’t go see him perform, where recently he’s sung the song in changing iterations for 30 minutes.
Wauters neither tries to innovate nor panders to tradition. He just plugs in his own voice: He’ll cram a wordy phrase into a split-second gap and place inflections awkwardly, banging up songs with a slightly amateur wobbliness. He doesn’t have the chops of late Uruguayan guitar icon Alfredo Zitarrosa, or the golden pipes of Mexican-American pop treasure Julieta Venegas, or the wordsmithy depth of eternal Queens guy Paul Simon (in spite of a certain uncanny resemblance when he performs alongside his longtime friend and collaborator Tall Juan, who adds guitar and bass to the album’s energetic peak, “Candombe”). But Wauters doesn’t aspire to this type of stardom; he prefers looking at all this great music that came before him as personal inspiration as opposed to an ideal. Wauters’ greatest strength, after all, is what he sees in everyone else. | 2019-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | 2019-01-29T01:00:00.000-05:00 | Rock | Captured Tracks | January 29, 2019 | 8 | a24290d4-29e9-4c6c-8b72-5fa71553cf99 | Steven Arroyo | https://pitchfork.com/staff/steven-arroyo/ |
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