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The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection finds Miles Davis on a search for self, a search for a sound, a search for an aesthetic, a search for like minds.

The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection finds Miles Davis on a search for self, a search for a sound, a search for an aesthetic, a search for like minds.

Miles Davis: The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21918-the-complete-prestige-10-inch-lp-collection/

The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection

When you talk about Miles Davis, you’re really talking about something like eight musicians: a sideman to Bird during the bebop revolution; catalyst of cool jazz; hard bop and modal pioneer; enabler of John Coltrane and leader of the “first great quintet”; nurturer of the younger “second great quintet” in the mid-'60s; collaborator in large ensembles with his musical soul mate, Gil Evans; initiator of an uncompromising jazz-rock-funk fusion; and elder statesmen of a more polished, though still-distinct, fusion in the 1980s. Even within those periods there are fascinating mini-chapters, like his work from the early 1950s. Now, on the occasion of what would’ve been Miles Davis’ 90th birthday this month, comes The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection, a sometimes-disorienting, ultimately sumptuous set of eleven vinyl records from 1951–54, nine of which feature Miles as the sole leader. The bulk of Miles Davis’ canonical output is on Columbia Records, which he left in 1986 for Warner Brothers in his final years. His pre-Columbia work from 1951–56 was, for the most part, on Prestige Records, a small, fledgling indie label in Hell’s Kitchen launched by Bob Weinstock in 1949. This set is not a comprehensive examination of his stay at Prestige—that is available on the 8-CD Miles Davis Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings, 1951–1956—nor is there any new material here, but the recordings are in the exact format of their release, the forgotten 10-inch vinyl record, something new at the time that could accommodate more minutes than 78 rpm discs, which were the common format for popular recordings. “I was excited about the freedom this new technology would give me,” Miles wrote in his autobiography. “I had gotten tired of that three-minute lockstep that the 78s had put musicians in.” If you’re not familiar with the 10-inch format, you’ll have to stay on your toes, as sides rarely go beyond 12 or 13 minutes (and sometimes run for as little as 8 minutes.) The set is in chronological order, more or less, to show how his work progressed, and features the original cover art, complete with typographical errors. (A 7–by–10 replica of one of Miles Davis’ paintings is also included.) The music, too, will keep you on your toes, and enthralled. In many ways, this is one of his most rollicking periods. It’s post-Bird, post-birth-of-cool (released by Capitol Records), yet pre-great quintet with John Coltrane, which coalesced at Prestige in 1955 (not included in this set) and progressed into super-stardom at Columbia. Miles is still very much trying to find himself, musically and personally. A few of the musicians he organized for what several years later was called Birth of The Cool—white musicians, it should be said— took it to the West Coast and ran with it. Meanwhile, he was battling heroin addiction. “Heroin,” he wrote in his autobiography, “was my girlfriend.” The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection is a document then of a search, an exhilarating one: a search for self, a search for a sound, a search for an aesthetic, a search for like minds. His various band mates on these dates include: Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, John Lewis, Max Roach, Lucky Thompson, Roy Haynes, Horace Silver, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, and Zoot Sims, whom, according to Miles’ autobiography, he did heroin with right before they recorded Miles Davis Plays the Compositions of Al Cohn in January 1953, on LP 4. It is—maybe because of the drugs, maybe because it wasn’t Miles’ idea to play Cohn’s music—one of the rare uninspired records here. So is the first, Modern Jazz Trumpets, of which Miles is only one of four leaders, along with Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, and the forever under-appreciated Kenny Dorham, highlighted on the cover as “Kinny.” (Remember, typos preserved.) The rest—before H and after H—is nearly always stirring. Of that first recording, even Miles admitted he wasn’t up to par: “I didn’t play well,” Davis wrote of that January 1951 session, “but I think everyone else played well—especially Sonny [Rollins].” Indeed, Miles and Sonny had something special, and they have three dates together on this set across four of the LPs. As exceptional as some of the talent Miles assembled is, it didn’t always produce memorable partnerships. Charles Mingus, who plays piano on one tune—and he was a good piano player, just listen to Mingus Plays Piano—was never a going to be good fit with Miles. They both had huge personalities. And although he and Thelonious Monk did mesh well together, and played beautifully on four of these LPs, they clashed personally. By around 1954, Miles wrote that he’d hoped to form a steady touring band with Rollins, Horace Silver on piano, Kenny Clarke on drums, and Percy Heath on bass. It wasn’t meant to be: Rollins had to deal with his own drug issues; Silver joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers; and Clarke went to the Modern Jazz Quartet. That great-quartet-that-never-was did have one session, on the LP Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins from June 29, 1954. The results hover around perfection as they play the Rollins originals “Oleo,” “Airegin,” “Doxy,” and the Gershwin standard “But Not for Me.” Miles kicked his heroin habit by 1954 and had a great year, all of which is included in this set, and almost all of his sessions were now recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s across the river in New Jersey (though in his Hackensack living room, before he built his fabled studio in Englewood Cliffs). The following year, he did settle on a band, but with another tenor, John Coltrane, a 20-year-old bassist named Paul Chambers, Red Garland on piano, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Not so bad. That quintet would go on to have recording dates for Prestige in 1955 and '56, which became the four albums Cookin’, Steamin’, Relaxin’, and Workin’, though now on 12-inch vinyl as the industry transitioned yet again by the mid-'50s. The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection can, however, be a little puzzling. If you have a collection of Miles Davis records and want to know if you already own some of this material, it might not be immediately clear. Many fans might own a previous version of, say, Walkin’, which on the cover says “Miles Davis All Stars.” But here, “Walkin’ ” appears not as an LP but merely as a tune—a phenomenal 13-minute version with the superlative tenorist Lucky Thompson—from the April 29, 1954 LP Miles Davis All Star Sextet. Nor is it spelled out that Walkin’ (the 12-inch version, released by Prestige in 1957) is a compilation of two of the 10-inch LPs—Miles Davis Quintet in addition to Miles Davis All Star Sextet—plus one song not on this set. It all gets a little eye-crossing. You can figure most of this out, eventually, flipping back-and-forth from the 12-inch or CD you own (if you do) and the enclosed booklet. It is either maddening or a little fun, depending on your disposition—the fan as archivist. The Complete Prestige 10-Inch LP Collection even rewards when you least expect it, like in 1951’s Lee Konitz Featuring Miles Davis, one of the few times, besides with Bird, where Miles was a sideman. (Cannonball Adderley’s 1958 Blue Note album Somethin’ Else was another, a record so luminous Uniqlo made a T-shirt out of it.) They were colleagues from Birth of the Cool, and Miles liked his playing, even defended him when he was criticized by other black musicians for hiring a white saxophonist. Konitz, the proto avant-gardist who was the first musician to record for Prestige in '49, worked hard—like Miles—to never sound like anyone else, and the two are almost otherworldly here, drifting inquisitively around each other, then as one, as if it were the birth of the free-cool. The daring hints at what would come, for Konitz (still underrated and still playing challenging music at age 88), and for Miles, always prepared to risk, always willing to move beyond his comfort zone. To hear Miles Davis develop—as a person, as a musician, and as a bandleader, in the midst of technological changes—makes this series of recordings on Prestige specialized, yes, but also quite special.

2016-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-05-16T01:00:00.000-04:00

Jazz

Prestige

May 16, 2016

f8a15b13-b79b-4bc7-91a9-f1da4a5fd324

Michael J. Agovino

https://pitchfork.com/staff/michael-j. agovino/

In the wake of the tragic Ghost Ship fire, 100% Silk has released Sensate Silk, a well-curated compilation that doubles as a rallying cry for dance music's underground.

In the wake of the tragic Ghost Ship fire, 100% Silk has released Sensate Silk, a well-curated compilation that doubles as a rallying cry for dance music's underground.

Various Artists: Sensate Silk

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22833-sensate-silk/

Sensate Silk

Britt and Amanda Brown never could have imagined that their record label would one day make national news, or that it would happen under the worst possible circumstances. Founded in 2011, 100% Silk began as a home for scrappy electronic artists from various musical backgrounds. Their predominant sound, a lo-fi approach that became known as “outsider house” or “hipster house,” was decidedly niche—dance music by and for experimental, DIY music communities. But last year, on December 2, 100% Silk became widely mentioned outside of their usual circles. A fire broke out that Friday in an Oakland warehouse known as the Ghost Ship, where an event featuring some of the label's artists was underway, and it claimed 36 lives. Amanda wrote on Facebook the next day: “What happened in Oakland is an unbelievable tragedy, a nightmare scenario. Britt and I are beside ourselves, utterly devastated.” The Ghost Ship fire was more than tragic national news; it sent a resounding shockwave through underground music communities around the world. As the names, photos, and stories of the deceased began to surface, a common response from musicians and fans was that it all “hit so close to home.” Many saw themselves in the faces and lives of the lost; there were those who were meant to attend the party that night but didn't, those who would have been there if they'd been in town, and of course there were those who lost their dear friends and family. Among the numerous young, talented people killed in the fire were 100% Silk artists Johnny Igaz, aka Nackt, and Chelsea Faith Dolan, aka Cherushii. Nearly two months later, relief events continue providing a place to honor and mourn these vibrant lives that feel all too familiar. In his article about the Oakland DIY scene in the fire's aftermath, Sam Lefebvre underlined the necessity of places like the Ghost Ship with a quote invoking the words of MLK: “People need places to gather in Beloved Community.” More than just a concert or a dance party, the 100% Silk showcase was a gathering for locals and likeminded visitors, a space to explore and develop their culture. It was an event not unlike countless others that happen every night around the world, many of which have since come under scrutiny or been shut down by law enforcement. The Ghost Ship tragedy has brought about a renewed focus on safety in DIY venues, but it has also put them at greater risk. In the midst of this, 100% Silk has released Sensate Silk, a well-curated compilation that doubles as a rallying cry for dance music's underground. Sensate Silk was conceived as the label’s 100th release well before December 2, but it has come to represent more than a milestone in their catalog. For some it’s a memorial, featuring one of the last tracks written by Nackt, the patient, cheerful acid of “Rising Tide.” Or it’s an embodiment of intertwined global scenes, with beautiful deep house from Japanese artists Keita Sano and Inoue Shirabe alongside a bass-loaded banger by LA’s Sage Caswell and meditative melodies from UK producer Helios Mode. The compilation is also an important show of perseverance from a label and community still reeling from disaster. In a Facebook post at the end of 2016, Britt Brown wrote, “This has been a negative year for plenty of other reasons. But music brought us together. And music will keep us together.” The sentiment seems to pulse through every synth and drum machine on Sensate Silk. From the soulful atmosphere this kind of house music exudes, Sensate Silk fosters a sense of healing as well. “Roses” is a groovy, intricate standout by Donny, an alias of Golden Donna, who survived the Ghost Ship fire. Its energy is split between contemplative chords, distant vocal abstractions, and a lively bounce, like a dancer whose memories follow them into the club. PARC’s 11-minute “Silk Road” rises from burbling electronics into a cosmic dancefloor embrace, while the sax Cromie weaves through the plush “She Knew” resonates with quiet heartache. These songs weren’t necessarily written as balm for listeners, but their thoughtfulness and delicate natures will graciously soothe those who need it. At the end of Sensate Silk is a song by unknown Berlin artist Westcoast Goddess. “Untitled Soul ‘98” is the compilation's brightest highlight, and not just because it has an uncommon way with tension and euphoria. Its buoyant slow build sounds lovingly handmade, with hi-hats clattering slightly too loud and a central synth loop that shifts and swells like a DJ mixing on the fly. Seven bubbly minutes in, it culminates in a brilliant lead line that could coax hands into the air as soon as bring a tear to the eye. Closing a compilation that’s heavy with meaning for many people, “Untitled Soul ’98” is a welcome burst of joy after months of grief. It’s only fitting that those who are still here should remember those who are gone in celebration of the music they lived to support and create.

2017-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00

2017-01-31T01:00:00.000-05:00

100% Silk

January 31, 2017

f8a20e8f-3779-4105-97e3-08944692b419

Patric Fallon

https://pitchfork.com/staff/patric-fallon/

On her sophomore album, the London-born, Berlin-based singer lives in subdued reveries. She strikes a dynamic balance of harmony and discord, of aspirational pop and visceral experimentation.

On her sophomore album, the London-born, Berlin-based singer lives in subdued reveries. She strikes a dynamic balance of harmony and discord, of aspirational pop and visceral experimentation.

Perera Elsewhere: All of This

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23303-all-of-this/

All of This

The “Elsewhere” in Sasha Perera’s stage name should be taken literally. Her music sounds as if it exists in different locations around the globe, in different times and dimensions. But beyond its physicality, it’s also a space for refuge and meditation. On her second album, All of This, Perera Elsewhere captures uncertainty, filters out all that isn’t beautiful and casts it to the universe. The London-born, Berlin-based singer, who also self-produces her albums, builds on the foundation of her debut Everlast. She spent three years watering those seeds from Turkey to Mumbai and back to Berlin, forcing herself to develop fully-formed songs that wear their international influences boldly. Where experimental music allows room for interpretation, venturing into pop is methodical. Here, there’s definitive structure that still feels spontaneous, traditional instruments—gongs and sitars—tangling themselves in otherworldly noises. Perera’s gamble on herself pays off, as she strikes a dynamic balance of harmony and discord, of aspirational pop and visceral experimentation. It peaks on “Karam,” a reimagining of 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” as a brooding nocturne where the candy shop is in the basement of a funeral home. “Karam” maintains aspects of its original seductive overtones but feels desolate and detached without the cynical irony that genre-bending covers can be given to. Such an inclusion is a warm welcome for listeners new to Perera’s music and an Easter egg of sorts for those already familiar with her remixes. All of This is marked by a similar darkness throughout, but Perera lets in light through some cracks. “Tomorrow South,” a largely instrumental track driven by shakers and animated vocalizations, is rose-colored, while the sitar and trumpet melodies on “Runaway” conjure pictures of a sunset overlooking the Arabian Sea. They’re brief glimmers of hope despite their surroundings, moments achieved only when Perera lets her instrumentation and programming do most of the talking. Lyrics aren’t necessarily the focal point in general, but her words, though minimal, are also wrought with emotion and intent. Album opener and lead single “Something’s Up” features buoyant synth arpeggios but fails to lighten the warning of “Your plans are losing weight/The crows are circling/They know something’s up.” Later, the industrial “Shoes” is equally as dour. Accented with white noise and wilting horns, she sings, “I can’t walk in these shoes/Can’t speak, I can’t move...can’t read all the signs/So deep in this mind fuck.” But even at her most morose, the backdrops become sanctuaries for her confessionals—beauty and burden wrapped in one, as they often are. Some music requires boundaries and begs for definition, but Perera revels in her own shapeshifting. Her ability to blend sounds that feel ancient and familiar with electro-futurism embodies what it means to experience music and not just hear it. Percussion makes for a compelling bridge—as on “Happened”—but it’s what she does with very little that binds the album together. On the standout title track, she lightens her usually smoldering voice into a whisp; the vocal layers are dense but the production just hovers, swirling and swelling, barely there at all. Like a subdued reverie, *All of This *sparkles as it creeps along, careful not to disturb but arresting nonetheless.

2017-06-08T01:00:00.000-04:00

2017-06-08T01:00:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

Friends of Friends

June 8, 2017

f8b4ab90-907c-4904-aac9-937fe497fc00

Briana Younger

https://pitchfork.com/staff/briana-younger/

After years of enjoying tangential connections to fellow Canadian indie rock stars Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and the Unicorns (RIP), this Jagjaguwar group is finally ready for its close-up.

After years of enjoying tangential connections to fellow Canadian indie rock stars Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, and the Unicorns (RIP), this Jagjaguwar group is finally ready for its close-up.

The Besnard Lakes: Are the Dark Horse

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9914-are-the-dark-horse/

Are the Dark Horse

As the title of their second album makes plain, the Besnard Lakes are indeed the dark horses of a Montreal indie rock community that has consumed so many column inches in the music press over the past three years, a band that's often stood on the periphery of greatness-- they opened the Unicorns' 2004 North American tour, while singer/guitarist Jace Lasek's Break Glass Studio produced Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary and Sunset Rubdown's Shut Up I Am Dreaming-- but never tasted it themselves. Though it's not as if the Besnard Lakes were unfairly denied their due, having released a gauzy 2003 debut that was heavy on languorous shoegazer jangle/drone, but low on personality and vigor. The Dark Horse shares that album's deliberate sense of pacing, precious attention to detail and hermetic sound-world atmosphere; the difference here is that almost every song builds to a crucial moment where the Besnards bravely step out of the shadows, and in the process, transform from being a merely good band to a great one. And just as the individual tracks ascend to their own internal peaks, so too does the eight-song sequence as a whole, which means patience is certainly a virtue here: Opener "Disaster" begins as a swell of forlorn falsettos and weepy strings (courtesy of in-house arranger Nicole Lizee and moonlighting Godspeed violinist Sophie Trudeau) that yields to a slumberous chorus of Brian Wilson harmonies; "For Agent 13" is all slow-dissolving, ladies-and-gentleman-we-are-floating-in-Spiritualized tremolos and mournful coos that sound like they're coming from a castrated Sigur Rós. It's not until the third track, "And You Lied to Me", that The Dark Horse really achieves lift-off, and not without some great effort: the song seems to be deliberately working against its itself with its Floydian glide, oddly timed drum rolls at the chorus and frequent pauses filled in with strange, indecipherable murmurs. But finally, at the 4:56, we hit pay dirt: after a brief stop, the drums kick in and guitarist Steve Raegele and guest Jonathan Cummins (ex of the Doughboys, currently of Bionic) blast into a glorious two-way duel worthy of its own planetarium laser show. And then instead of coming down, the Besnards turn it up another notch thanks to bassist/Lacek's belle Olga Goreas' star turn on "Devastations", a hellacious, fuck-the-man screen delivered in 70s-smooth girly harmonies that provide an uncanny contrast to song's monstrous psych-metal groove and-- oh yes-- climactic three-way drum solo. Together, these two songs form the front half of The Dark Horse's awesome middle stretch, but their playful bombast is effectively counterbalanced by the two songs that follow: "Because Tonight" is the album's most moving performance, a swaying space-rock ballad that intensifies into a beautifully bawling chorus; "Ride the Rails" is its most foreboding, with a circular bass riff and ominous violin inflections that lend it an ominous allure. It's also the song that best exemplifies Lacek's recurring lyrical strategy of trading off between World War II-era imagery and the present tense, with verses told through the eyes of a desperate drifter ("Gotta find a better to go on") and a chorus ("my father rides the rails") that shifts the perspective to a contemporary third-person telling. So it figures that the one song with an identifiably modern setting-- Brooklyn set piece "On Bedford and Grand"-- is the one that ultimately breaks The Dark Horse's dreamlike spell, an amiable but uneventful fuzz-pop exercise on which the Besnards come off as just another band of shoegaze revivalists. But as sprightly Beach Boys pastiche "Cedric's War" gallops triumphantly to the finish line, you realize what's really remarkable about The Dark Horse: that for all its epic intimations and interstellar overdriving, the album still clocks in at a lean 45 minutes. Clearly, the Besnard Lakes are the product of a generation that remembers when their favorite albums used to fit perfectly on one side of a C90. But they've retrofitted classic-rock grandeur to indie-rock dimensions and forged their own special niche-- space-rock that's down to Earth.

2007-02-20T01:00:02.000-05:00

2007-02-20T01:00:02.000-05:00

Rock

Jagjaguwar

February 20, 2007

f8d144c9-f438-4e05-875e-88eef3b817ce

Stuart Berman

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/

On their first studio album in almost a decade, the Detroit veterans sound as calm, cool, and horny as always. With a batch of fresh ideas in tow, they avoid retreading old territory.

On their first studio album in almost a decade, the Detroit veterans sound as calm, cool, and horny as always. With a batch of fresh ideas in tow, they avoid retreading old territory.

Slum Village: F.U.N.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/slum-village-fun/

F.U.N.

From the jump, Slum Village have always been centered around three things: ill beats, boastful raps, and love songs more horny and cavalier than an army of porn bots. The tuneful intricacies of producer and founding member J Dilla’s music had such a gravitational pull at the Detroit group’s peak, they often overshadowed just how erotic the music could be. On Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1’s “The Look of Love, Pt. 1,” pattering drums and serene guitar strums cushion rappers and co-founders Baatin and T3’s thirst (“Your fragrance got me losing consciousness/Your stance got me unbuckling my fucking pants”). T3’s verse on the 2015 cut “Love Is” gets even more direct; it opens with a bluster about being inspired to write after getting some good head. Even after several lineup changes and the deaths of Dilla in 2006 and Baatin in 2009, the SV ethos never faltered. With T3 still at the helm, the group remains committed to the groove: They continue to be occasionally thoughtful, often rock-the-mic competitive, and always willing to bet on a piece of strange. F.U.N., SV’s tenth studio album and their first since 2015’s Yes!, stays true to that bold player spirit while still being something of a pivot for the group, now a duo made up of T3 and the rapper-producer Young RJ. It started out as a more “traditional” SV album with sample-based beats, but in a press release, RJ said the pair “felt like that was boring.” Instead, RJ—who has production credits on every song—leaned toward disco and funk, incorporating live instruments and presets to create a sound that pays tribute to their past, mixing the lush exuberance of the Gap Band with the dirty swing of Synth or Soul-era Black Milk. That sounds like a moonshot on paper, but SV keeps things as loose as they always have, while bringing new voices and ideas into the fold. The group transitioned from young bachelors on the prowl to frisky, sauced uncles in silk shirts and slides at the kickback some time ago, but F.U.N. slathers a funky coat of paint onto their aesthetic. Groove is an essential part of the SV sound, and while they’ve always been versatile with gritty and soulful music, F.U.N. pops with a colorful energy that didn’t exist even back in their scrappier days. “All Live” gives their patented club-hopping a new context, with vibrant horns and luscious bass and synths flashing like tri-color flood lights. T3 and RJ are energetic, even peppy, as they drop references to Mase and Rubi Rose over the satin production. “All Live Pt. 2.” brings in harder drums and piano stabs for longtime collaborator Phat Kat to warn rappers that he’ll abort them like Roe v. Wade. This two-song suite, like the rest of the album, reframes the spit-kicking and dirty-macking sides of SV without making them look like bland revivalists or clueless trend chasers. Not much has changed lyrically, but the fullness of RJ’s beats reanimates the group here. There’s an even mix of homages to disco and funk and the vintage head knockers they made their name on, but it’s so well-curated that it can be easy not to notice. Take the way that “To the Disco” and “Request,” both featuring contributions from British band Abstract Orchestra, flow directly into each other without harshing the transition into the jittery, Karriem Riggins-assisted “Yeah Yeah.” Or consider how the title track and “Keep Dreaming” maintain an early 2000s boom-bap aura without devolving into boring retreads. They’ve found a slightly different lane, and they seem grateful to be cruising in it. Part of that newfound zeal also stems from the album’s features, which venture outside of their usual suspects in ways we haven’t seen since 2004’s Detroit Deli (A Taste of Detroit). Some of the guest features make sense on first glance, like Bruiser Brigade member Fat Ray barreling through “Keep Dreaming,” or genre-hopping rap emissaries like Eric Roberson (“Factor”) and Robert Glasper (“Since 92”). But many of the album’s best moments are blindsiding. Chicago rapper Brittney Carter sets the tone for the whole LP on “Welcome,” arriving with the kind of fiery verse that only comes from being summoned by industry veterans. Sango brings his breezy sensibilities to Phat Kat’s spirited verse on “All Live Pt. 2,” while Larry June offers his chill, Bay Area elegance to the dancefloor chic of “Just Like You.” SV have done their homework, recruiting the right voices to freshen up the vibes; even a so-so verse from puppy-dog rap star Cordae on “So Superb” doesn’t drag things down. It’s been almost a decade since the last proper Slum Village album, so the fact that F.U.N. works as well as it does is a relief. Seasoned MCs take time off and often come back bitter and/or rusty, especially in rap. But while F.U.N. isn’t a genre-rocking comeback effort in the vein of A Tribe Called Quest’s We got it from Here…Thank You 4 Your service or Little Brother’s May the Lord Watch, it’s still fun to see everyone’s favorite Detroit players find their place in the present moment. Lascivious lovers like Brent Faiyaz and Cash Cobain have the hot hand in the streets and on the charts, so it’s only right that the OGs step back in the ring to remind everyone how it’s done.

2024-05-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

2024-05-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Rap

Ne’Astra Music Group / Virgin

May 6, 2024

f8d3066e-11e5-4e2e-97ff-7477799d725b

Dylan Green

https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/

On his first solo album, the Sleep and High on Fire frontman hits the garage for a comfortable blend of his signature heavy metal sounds.

On his first solo album, the Sleep and High on Fire frontman hits the garage for a comfortable blend of his signature heavy metal sounds.

Pike vs the Automaton: Pike vs the Automaton

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pike-vs-the-automaton-pike-vs-the-automaton/

Pike vs the Automaton

Matt Pike is a man stuck out of time. The 49-year-old guitarist in Sleep and High on Fire makes music that’s rooted in the elemental proto-metal of the early 1970s, but his sensibility dates back even farther than that. Pike feels most at home in the untamed forests of Oregon. He reflexively distrusts modernity and technology, and he’s outspoken in his disdain for anything with the faintest whiff of authority. (A recent interview in The Quietus revealed Pike’s eyebrow-raising takes on the pandemic and David Icke, but his brand of conspiracy theorist is more drunk uncle hunting for Bigfoot than Alex Jones-style disinformation artist.) Even his defiant, perpetually shirtless stage look suggests a return to the primeval, or the prenatal. His first-ever solo album, Pike vs the Automaton, embodies his caveman ethos with gusto. It’s an intoxicating draught of pure, unfiltered Pike. Pike vs the Automaton feels instinctive and easygoing, like the guitarist fired up his amp while he was having his morning coffee, and these were the songs that spilled out. Some of those songs, naturally, sound a lot like his other bands. “Abusive” opens the album right in Pike’s sweet spot, with a stomping, Sabbath-on-speed riff and roaring vocals that give way to a frantic yet tuneful guitar solo. Pike can write songs like “Abusive” with his eyes closed, and for much of the album, he barely seems to break a sweat. He’s too good at what he does for that to be disappointing: “Trapped in a Midcave” is halfway between the seismic doom of Sleep and High on Fire’s careening gallop. And while it’s a comforting blend of the best qualities of both bands, it’s not as satisfying as the best material by either of them. More thrilling are the moments when Pike uncovers a new way to express his musical id. Prior to Pike vs the Automaton, the closest he’d come to writing a country song was “The Cave,” a smoldering stoner metal epic from High on Fire’s Luminiferous. In comparison, the deep-in-the-pocket “Land” sounds like last call at the honkytonk. Pike trades bluesy solos with Brent Hinds of Mastodon, and Steve McPeeks anchors the song with a sturdy, stand-up bassline. “Land” is a tribute to the two-step country music Pike’s mom would dance to when he was growing up, and it highlights the influence of the women in his life. “Acid Test Zone” is an equally adventurous song at the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum, featuring throat-shredding guest vocals from Pike’s wife, Alyssa Maucere-Pike. Her pissed-off delivery is the perfect accompaniment to the first proper hardcore song in Pike’s songbook. Collaboration, somewhat ironically, is a crucial part of Pike’s maiden solo outing. The genesis of the album came early in the pandemic, when he invited his friend (and dog-sitter) Jon Reid to come jam in the garage. With Reid on drums and Pike on guitar, the rough shape of the songs started to come together. Billy Anderson, who engineered earlier landmarks like Sleep’s Holy Mountain and High on Fire’s Surrounded by Thieves, came on board to produce, and a rotating cast of guest musicians popped by to add splashes of color. It’s a friends-and-family affair, with all the looseness that implies. Sometimes that looseness crosses into shaggy self-indulgence. Pike vs the Automaton clocks in at a bloated 63 minutes, and some of its less distinctive songs sound like exactly what they are—a couple of bored, middle-aged dudes woodshedding in the garage. Still, its animating energy is admirable. Pike is biologically driven to write and play bodacious heavy metal riffs. In a rare moment when both Sleep and High on Fire were on hold, he did what he’s always done. He picked up his guitar.

2022-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

2022-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Metal

MNRK Heavy

February 17, 2022

f8d467fd-a1b0-43fd-a0a1-b48a95996383

Brad Sanders

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-sanders/

Up-and-coming Queens rapper releases a rock-solid, ridiculously fun album that recalls the past glories of New York rap without feeling derivative.

Up-and-coming Queens rapper releases a rock-solid, ridiculously fun album that recalls the past glories of New York rap without feeling derivative.

Action Bronson: Dr. Lecter

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15497-dr-lecter/

Dr. Lecter

In any discussion about the new-on-the-scene Queens rapper Action Bronson, two things inevitably come up: (1) He sounds a whole hell of a lot like Ghostface Killah, and (2) he loves rapping about food. Both of these things are entirely true. Like Ghost, he's got a pinched, high-pitched, urgent delivery, rendering his boasts in a dense, inventive New York slur that moves from one idea to the next with necksnap immediacy. He's not a rip-off artist; he's got none of Ghost's emotional streak and little of his vividly violent storytelling impulse. But the mere grain of his voice is similar enough to provoke the momentary sensation every time a new verse starts that you're actually hearing Ghostface. Similarly, the food fixation is no invention. In a recent web interview, Bronson claims he hopes his rap career can bankroll his culinary studies in Tuscany. And even "Ronnie Coleman", the song where he laments his weight and lack of impulse control, has enough impassioned food descriptions to make you seriously hungry: "An hour later, eat the burger with my drug dealer/ Then add the butter to the fudge to make the fudge realer." Bronson raps about food with the same loving linguistic dizziness that Pusha T raps with about cocaine, or that Lil Wayne raps with about blowjobs. But even though both the Ghostface and the food talking points hold true, they don't really get to the bottom of what makes Dr. Lecter, Bronson's debut album, such a breath of fresh air. Simply put, Dr. Lecter is a rock-solid, ridiculously fun New York rap album, one that recalls the city's past glories without ever feeling like an act of stylistic exhumation. All the tracks on the LP come from one producer, the heretofore unknown Tommy Mas, whose style would've fit the late-80s classics of Marley Marl and the Juice Crew but maintains a crispness and energy that we rarely hear in retro-rap. Mas chops up breakbeats and soul samples, all the while keeping his sound simple, sparse, and funkier than any recent hip-hop. And Bronson attacks every one of his tracks, delivering quick bursts of streetcorner shit-talk, having too much fun to take himself seriously. Bronson's lyrics can be ignorant as fuck ("Take a dyke on a date/ She let me pipe cuz I'm an ape"), but he doesn't have the nihilistic edge of an Odd Future affiliate. He's just kicking silly bullshit, and it's tough to imagine anyone seriously getting offended. Maybe the greatest thing about Dr. Lecter is how the album never announces itself as some triumphant return of New York rap. Bronson never claims to be the savior of anything; he just belts out his punchlines and then disappears. Songs typically don't have choruses, and the album's 15 tracks end in less than 45 minutes. Bronson names songs after relatively marginal figures: perennial WWF jobber Barry Horowitz, 90s NBA journeyman Chuck Person, 60s/70s football great Larry Csonka. A few guests show up, but none of them are big names. And though the two rappers' styles are radically different, Dr. Lecter calls up memories of Marcberg, the great and underrated 2010 album from fellow New York shit-talker Roc Marciano. Like that LP, Dr. Lecter doesn't try to break any ground; it just does a long-established style very, very well.

2011-06-20T02:00:01.000-04:00

2011-06-20T02:00:01.000-04:00

Rap

Fine Fabric Delegates

June 20, 2011

f8d65f81-4fc0-44d4-8ec3-29987c0ba690

Tom Breihan

https://pitchfork.com/staff/tom-breihan/

The incarcerated rapper, awaiting trial for murder, releases an album of second-rate material and third-rate Young Thug–isms.

The incarcerated rapper, awaiting trial for murder, releases an album of second-rate material and third-rate Young Thug–isms.

YNW Melly: Melly vs. Melvin

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ynw-melly-melly-vs-melvin/

Melly vs. Melvin

YNW Melly isn’t the first rapper to release an album while in jail awaiting trial for murder, but he may be the first accused of killing his own crewmates. Last October, Florida prosecutors allege, Melly and rapper YNW Bortlen shot and killed two fellow YNW rappers then staged the crime scene to make it appear like a drive-by. Melly, who surrendered himself to police in February and faces life in prison or the death penalty, has maintained his innocence and continues to carry on his rap career as best he can. But judging by the relative silence that’s greeted his debut album, Melly vs. Melvin, his commercial prospects may be almost dire as his legal ones. Melly vs. Melvin has a difficult public-relations needle to thread, presenting a portrait of a teenager who definitely didn’t do what the prosecutors have accused him of but also, you know, totally could have. “I’m a slimeball and I’ll admit it,” he raps on the opener “Two Face,” pinning his transgressions on an alternate personality. The record’s cover quite literally depicts those two faces, one sweetly boyish and looking no older than his 20 years, the other considerably more hardened. It’s a powerful concept, evoking the dueling images that the media often uses to depict young black men and suggesting how easily their portrayals can be spun. It’s a shame the idea is wasted on an album as superficial as Melly vs. Melvin, which pads Melly’s precious few original ideas with second-rate material and third-rate Young Thug–isms. Since Melly’s been behind bars for most of the year, it’s unclear when this material was recorded. The murder allegations are never specifically mentioned, yet several songs vaguely create the illusion that he’s addressing them. “Can you hear me, father? Can you please send me some signs?/I’ve been going through some things, there’s been a lot on my mind,” he pleads on “Waitin on You,” along with a pledge to keep praying. Melly’s contrition isn’t especially convincing, however, nor is he effective at engendering sympathy. It doesn’t help that his default persona is downright sour. He directs “Suicidal” to the “stupid bitch” who “took my heart and made it bleed.” On “Stay Up” he offers this peevish retort: “Bitch, I ain’t mentally challenged.” Twice he berates women in his life for having had, or having considered, an abortion. On his previous projects, including January’s considerably more enjoyable We All Shine, Melly distinguished himself from his many SoundCloud variants with a ’90s R&B influence that he employed on his most sumptuous songs. But aside from a few outliers like “Bang Bang,” which samples the Nelly/Akon/Ashanti track “Body on Me,” and “Nobody’s Around,” which slows things down with a bit of an R&B bump, there isn’t much of that spirit here. Melly began the year as a rising star sharing a video with Kanye West, but even morbid curiosity and the sordid details of his case haven’t done much to sustain the public’s interest in him, and assuming that Melvin is the best music he had left in the vault, that doesn’t bode well for his prospects either.

2019-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00

2019-12-10T01:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

300 Entertainment

December 10, 2019

f8e083ea-c187-45e1-9daa-702ea0005a67

Evan Rytlewski

https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/

Reissues of the L.A. band’s mid-’90s albums capture how they brought girl-group yearning, three-part harmonies, and virtuoso violin lines to the era of Sassy mag and 120 Minutes.

Reissues of the L.A. band’s mid-’90s albums capture how they brought girl-group yearning, three-part harmonies, and virtuoso violin lines to the era of Sassy mag and 120 Minutes.

that dog.: Totally Crushed Out! / Retreat From the Sun

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/that-dog-totally-crushed-out-retreat-from-the-sun/

Totally Crushed Out / Retreat From the Sun

In 1992, Los Angeles’ that dog. formed in the teen bedrooms of singer-guitarist Anna Waronker and bassist Rachel Haden, bringing all the ache and nerve and doom of girlhood to their lovesick vision of alt rock. Theirs was a musical world where astrology, crushes, lip gloss, and punk-rock garage shows all convened in an artful, off-kilter push toward possibility. Barely out of high school, Waronker played her older brother Joey’s left-handed guitar upside down. When Rachel’s sister Petra walked by, she didn’t want to be left out, and dusted off her violin to join. Together, with pitch-perfect three-part harmonies, virtuosic orchestrations, and crashing chords, the original iteration of that dog. made three albums—1994’s that dog., 1995’s Totally Crushed Out!, 1997’s Retreat From the Sun—in a baroque bubblegum pop-rock style all their own. Waronker’s songwriting was thrilling: Her lyrics captured the raw essence of how overwhelming and transforming infatuation can be, singing in the witty, conversational style of a long-lost best friend. She brought girl-group yearning and ’70s singer-songwriter chops to the era of Sassy mag and 120 Minutes. Waronker originally wanted to be a music supervisor, having briefly studied filmmaking at USC, and she had a flair for the colorful details that spike the personality of a song—dialogue, tension, a sense of place. In her endearing deadpan, that dog. songs could feel like scene-setting film treatments for hypothetical teen movies. (Waronker would go on to compose music for Josie and the Pussycats, Clueless, and last year’s Shrill.) The band’s angelic harmonies tended toward a surreal California grandeur, and Petra’s classically trained violin playing was lucid and pretty, rather than noisy like John Cale’s, which made that dog. weirder still. Often compared to contemporaries like the Breeders or Veruca Salt, that dog. sounded more like folk-rock trio the Roches gone art-punk, slyly sophisticated. But these were never the most discussed lines in that dog.’s biography. The Haden sisters were two of the triplet daughters of the legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden, an original member of the Ornette Coleman Quartet on such towering classics as The Shape of Jazz to Come. Harmonic prowess surrounded them. Waronker, meanwhile, was the daughter of the Warner Brothers record exec Lenny Waronker—which meant she grew up in the orbit of icons like Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman, and was particularly fond of the latter’s plainspoken piano-pop symphonies. Completing that dog.’s lineup was boy drummer Tony Maxwell, best friend of Waronker’s older brother, a member of Beck’s band. They all attended Santa Monica’s Crossroads High School, where they also met future Girls co-producer Jenni Konner, who helped write some early that dog. lyrics. And so that dog. embodied a strange in-between. They could not have been classified as indie; they signed to David Geffen’s DGC label within a year of forming. On the other hand, their music was too unusual for mass appeal. Future collaborators like Beck and Weezer originally opened for them in the L.A. underground, but that dog.’s rapid ascent meant the group of 19- and 20-year-olds was quickly met with skepticism—headlines in The Washington Post and L.A. Weekly read “Well Connected Dog” and “That Dad”—and sometimes written off as a gimmick. Yet it was their idiosyncratic experiences that helped make that dog.’s songwriting so audacious and their arrangements so richly textured. The Hadens spoke of favoring Bach and Arvo Pärt over anything on the radio. As Maxwell put it in 1997: “We never pretended to be anything other than what we were.” When Waronker first began writing songs, her self-imposed rule was “no love songs, no guitar solos.” But as that dog. progressed, she gave herself a new challenge: only love songs and guitar solos. “I had five broken hearts at one time,” she admitted then, “all broken in five different places.” Her own sensitivity horrified her. Totally Crushed Out! started as her attempt at “a Beatles parody love song” collection, like a teen romance novel recast as clever, grungy power pop, but as it charted the mess and magnitude of emotional ennui, the cheeky art concept became catharsis. After the irony-suffused experiments of their self-titled debut, Totally Crushed Out! was that dog.’s first cohesive record—a sugar-rushing testament to the emotional confusions of youth. The buzz-sawed Shangri-Las pop of “He’s Kissing Christian” delineates the experience of dating someone as he realizes that he would rather be kissing boys—a possible riff on the plot of that year’s Clueless—while the self-sabotage-y opener “Ms. Wrong” (a Konner co-write) is about not feeling a relationship because you don’t feel yourself. On the thrasher “Lip Gloss,” Waronker applies lip gloss in front of a guy and waits for him to kiss her, but, tragically, he never does. “Lily white/Cherry raspberry/Lip lover/Rachel Perry-eee-eee-eee!” the band chants in unison, like Devo-schooled Martians out of a truly alternative dimension of girl-punk kissability. From the Sweet Valley High-evoking album cover to the ill-fated prom dance on “One Summer Night,” the performance of femininity across Totally Crushed Out! is befitting of a gender studies thesis. The starker moments of Totally Crushed Out! are stirring, evoking the band’s acoustic bedroom beginnings while also foreshadowing the impending greatness of Waronker’s writing. The loud/quiet whispers of “Silently” describe being pissed off and enamored by someone (later confirmed to be Beck Hansen) at the same time. The dour minimalism of “Side Part” knows all too well that the only way out of heartbreak, often, is through. Other mellow Crushed Out! ballads explore breaches of confidence, the despairing haze of being alone on “Holidays,” and the erudition of the MTV-era fangirl. Waronker’s songs cut to the marrow of young womanhood, validating how longing and obsession are all tied up in the process of becoming. By the time of the sleek, polished Retreat From the Sun, Waronker was 24; she’d been in that dog. since she was 19. The songs were deeper, more finely wrought—initially, she thought they might comprise her first solo album. Retreat was recorded with Brad Wood, who’d produced Liz Phair’s seismic Exile in Guyville around the time that dog. formed, and it shared much with Phair’s intelligence, ambition, and sexuality. It was Wood who pushed that dog. to go “as new wave as possible” on Retreat’s laser-beam single, “Never Say Never”—a glossy video would find its way into MTV rotation—which not only evoked the Go-Go’s but featured their keyboardist Charlotte Caffey on synth. Beyond the single, Retreat From the Sun carefully placed Waronker’s sensitive balladeering—often as irreducible as teardrop country tunes—alongside throttling pop-punk gems containing timeless aphorisms: “By definition a crush must hurt/And they do, and they do/Just like the one I have on you.” Waronker was inspired by the pop leanings of her then-boyfriend (and future husband) Steve McDonald, of L.A. glam punks Redd Kross, who lent her a piano, near which she displayed a photo of her family friend Randy Newman. She reflected on her deepening relationship with McDonald in many of Retreat’s songs. Waronker told Much Music, “I’m entering into more of a Carole King phase…. It’s pop, but it’s more, like, frizzy-haired. I’m gonna have frizzy hair and a baby and a flowered skirt.” (There are at least two explicit mom-rock tunes on Retreat From the Sun.) Perhaps to temper all of that normative monogamy, Waronker and McDonald wrote a song together: “Gagged and Tied.” “I don’t care if you don’t treat me like a lady,” Waronker sings with delightful touches of evil. “I don’t care, just sit there, and don’t disobey me.” In this straight-faced BDSM scene—“Put on ‘Venus in Furs’/And you can go home afterwards”—Waronker’s singing is still unassuming and innocent, recalling how Liz Phair once said, “The point of some of [my] songs was to say things that shouldn’t come out of the voice that was saying it.” In the end, Waronker can’t help making even a dominatrix fantasy sound disarmingly sweet. “It’s not your style/I can see/You crack a smile,” she sings, a whole layered plot twist in less than a dozen words. You could call Waronker a master of pop-punk literary compression. The breezy “Minneapolis” alludes to how she met McDonald one night at a beloved L.A. club. “I was at the Jabberjaw/Cutest boy I ever saw,” she sings, and in four minutes, the song captures the stomach-twisting spark of a crush—a rush of uncertainty, euphoria, nerves, embarrassment, caught glances, and timid conversation: “He said, ‘I’m leaving on Wednesday/Come see me when Low plays.’” There’s a beguilingly unvarnished feel to Waronker’s singing that makes these dimensional details sound much more casual than they are. “Minneapolis” is one of three Retreat tracks named for specific places, and they’re the best songs Waronker ever wrote. Like “Minneapolis,” the dizzied “Long Island” rips through infatuation, location, and subtext: “You’re pretty dreamy for a boy from Long Island.” What could be less conventionally cool than pining for a guy from the suburbs? But Waronker’s daydream doesn’t waver: I want to set a place for you at my table We can sit forever watching reruns on cable Take you driving in my brother’s beat-up car Sharing a cigarette, we’ll wish upon a star together In its compacted abandon, “Long Island” was a reminder that that dog. toured with fellow ’90s romantics Jawbreaker. So was “Hawthorne,” the sparest and sharpest song in that dog.’s catalog, in which Waronker soberly narrates a visit to her boyfriend’s hometown. “Hawthorne” is immediately visual: “Driving/Looking for your parents’ house/Striving/To find a piece of you,” Waronker sings. It’s a small, ephemeral moment, but a telling one, seeming to gesture at what those devastating crushes were after, mixing mundanity and depth. Both songs are evidence of the particular electricity of intimacy that can exist inside of cars, the sense that you are totally aligned with another person if only for a moment. It’s that precise type of person-to-person connection that that dog.’s vulnerable records have fostered with new generations of fans, spreading by word of mouth and influencing bands like Paramore, Vivian Girls, Swearin’, and so many others. Though they imploded shortly after Retreat From the Sun, that dog. offer proof that honesty endures, that what makes something continue to resonate, usually, is simple—you could miss it, if you don’t listen close. “And I saw a punk rock show/In a car garage/And I saw you as a child,” Waronker sings on “Hawthorne,” wide-eyed and coasting; “I saw you/My dream come true.” How to make that feeling last is a mystery of life. But the songs did. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

2020-07-30T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-07-30T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

July 30, 2020

f8e8eb5a-51e4-42fd-8728-2250bd3d29c2

Jenn Pelly

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jenn-pelly/

The finale of the New York jazz ensemble’s Lower East Suite trilogy marks a shift in tone and finds the band newly focused.

The finale of the New York jazz ensemble’s Lower East Suite trilogy marks a shift in tone and finds the band newly focused.

Onyx Collective : Lower East Suite Part Three

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/onyx-collective-lower-east-suite-part-three/

Lower East Suite Part Three

Over the last couple of years, Onyx Collective have been playing a game of connect-the-dots across New York. The amorphous jazz ensemble is led primarily by the twentysomething saxophonist Isaiah Barr and drummer Austin Williamson, and in varying lineups they play DIY shows, rap concerts, jazz showcases, and funk jams. Throughout it all, they’ve become known for their itching curiosity, radical eagerness, and unconventional methods. Last year, Onyx Collective released a pair of EPs captured on an iPhone at gigs and practice spaces around Manhattan. The recordings’ immediacy was evocative, even though both the compositions and sound quality were rough around the edges. Still, the tactic captured a band excitingly on the move. On Lower East Suite Part One they jammed dense hard bop and salsa on the same tracklist. The series finale, Lower East Suite Part Three, is a determined change of pace and length, and the band sounds suddenly contained and focused. On the prequel EPs the band engaged with New York in documentary fashion, capsulizing their roaming performances with song titles like “172 Forsyth St.” and “Market St.” This time they begin fleshing out the narrative with commentary: “Battle of the Bowery,” “There Goes the Neighborhood,” “Eviction Notice.” Onyx Collective are still closely tuned to the buzz of the Lower East Side, but they’re conjuring and considering it abstractly instead of plugging directly into its hum. “The record is born out of the challenges of being in New York,” Barr has said. In many ways Lower East Suite Part Three is the sound of the musicians digging their heels in to pivot. For one thing, Part Three sounds much better. The songs are more linear and of a piece: dank bop compositions that often gnarl up in the middle and leave no room for extended solos. The pace and form of their songs no longer springs from jams, and there’s new tension and spacing to show for it. On “Rumble in Chatham Square” Barr’s tenor sax and Walter Stinson’s bass tiptoe along in cinematic staccato, Williamson tumbling behind them with flourishes and splashing accents. About halfway in, Barr staggers one way and Stinson the other, abruptly falling out of unison in a syncopated gait, as if to convey the namesake square in Chinatown, where a bunch of large streets jut into each other awkwardly and then resolve the intersection. “There Goes the Neighborhood” is a sleazy detective soundtrack. Barr’s sax swoops around in long, drunken strides, Stinson’s bass holding tight to stretch things back and together. There’s a playfulness to Barr’s horn throughout, but the album is foreboding and dense as a whole. “Magic Gallery” sounds a little cautious and precarious, but it’s one of the few places on the record where the band opens up space for Barr to swing gracefully instead of getting cornered. One of the highlights of Lower East Suite Part Three is the appearance of saxophonist Roy Nathanson, who, in his sixties, could be an Onyx Collective dad. Just a few years ago, Nathanson, an accomplished bandleader, composer, and session player himself, was Barr’s high-school teacher and an early musical mentor. On “Eviction Notice” you can hear him play the part of the tenant, trading blows with his apprentice—screaming frantic, squiggly squeals on his way out the door while Barr bellows out landlord-like groans underneath. It’s the most obvious set piece on the record, a passionate shouting match and existential crisis that ends with dramatic, raucous discord. A little over a decade ago, an interviewer asked Nathanson, a Brooklynite who in the early 1980s wrote a song called “Spirits of Flatbush,” if he could have found his artistic voice anywhere else in the United States. “No,” he said, noting how deeply the era’s East Village scene was grounded in a sense of place. “It wasn’t like I just visited New York, my roots were so Brooklyn.” On a song like “Eviction Notice” you can hear how much things have changed, as Onyx Collective grapple with how to belong to a city they’re from, but won’t get to inherit. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that this was a studio recording; the album was recorded at a gallery.

2018-06-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-06-22T01:00:00.000-04:00

Jazz

Big Dada

June 22, 2018

f8efd2cb-2846-4f0d-b482-1eccf670c0ad

Jay Balfour

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jay-balfour/

On their fifth album Nucleus, Witchcraft continue to carry the torch of '70s hard rock/proto-metal bands like Pentagram, St. Vitus, and Candlemass, while striving torward a broader sound. Witchcraft's music—however indebted to the past—skews progressive, a cumulative approach to riff-building beget by several decades' worth of influences.

On their fifth album Nucleus, Witchcraft continue to carry the torch of '70s hard rock/proto-metal bands like Pentagram, St. Vitus, and Candlemass, while striving torward a broader sound. Witchcraft's music—however indebted to the past—skews progressive, a cumulative approach to riff-building beget by several decades' worth of influences.

Witchcraft: Nucleus

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21395-nucleus/

Nucleus

Sweden's Witchcraft are key figures in the so-called hard rock revival: Originally conceived at the start of the century by singer Magnus Pelander as a tribute to the pioneering doom outfit Pentagram, the group has since expanded those paradigms to encompass Palm Desert stoner rock, Jethro Tull-style blues, and the heady psych of the '60s. Compared to the rudimentary sounds of peers like Graveyard, Kadavar, and Truckfighters, Witchcraft's music—however indebted to the past—skews progressive, a cumulative approach to riff-building beget by several decades' worth of influences. On their fifth album Nucleus, Witchcraft continue to carry the torch of '70s hard rock/proto-metal bands while striving torward a broader sound. Pelander has put down his axe to focus entirely on singing, as well as production; unsurprisingly, the mix that he and producers Philip Gabriel Saxin and Anton Sundell decided upon gives him all the space he needs to croon to heart’s content. Apart from that, the album sounds downright gargantuan. From the airtight, string-inflected boogie of "The Outcast" to the grizzled march of the title track, each cut optimizes volume over vulnerability, a torrent of liquid lead rushing into the ears. Folk, and maybe even a little bit of jazz, sveltely sneak their way into the mix in the form of of flutes and strings—but by and large, Nucleus is an album that refuses to stay quiet, roaring and clawing forth for over an hour before coming to a shuddering halt. Like so many of the groups before them, Witchcraft draw inspiration from high fantasy, an aesthetic that manifests itself with the ren-faire woodwind and string arrangements and in the epic tales of wanderlust, misplaced faith, and heroic striving in the lyrics. Thankfully, the fanciful mood never gets mired in Blind Guardian-style goofiness, gesturing more generally to the haggard adventurer in us all: "The Outcast" focuses not on some wayward brigadier, but rather on the growing alienation of a global population becoming more resigned and hopeless by the second. The universality makes the record more approachable, but the lyrics can’t rise to accommodate it, as evidenced by the aformentioned track’s head-scratching, grammatically-tenuous refrain: "Save a nation from a bad economy/ Is like sailing away on an endless sea." Pelander’s stilted cadence compounds the problem; if he’s not squeezing an extra syllable out of a word like "indecision," he’s attempting to rhyme "loving parents" with "discontent"—and botching the emphasis on both. It’s up to Rage Widerberg on drums and Tobias Anger on bass to convey what Pelander’s words can’t, and they deserve a considerable amount of credit for channeling all the rage and confusion coursing through tracks like "Malstroem" and "The Obsessed"'s percolating, crowd-pleasing doom riffs. Unfortunately, the glacial pacing of Nucleus’ slow burn frequently snuffs its own flame. Following "Maelstrom"’s opening inertia, the album sinks into a figurative tar pit: a seemingly endless progression of the smoky, wail-ridden jams Blue Cheer could write in their sleep. Even by doom’s slow standards, the record’s second half is plodding and woefully self-indulgent, relying more on Pelander’s killer pipes than on developed songcraft. Of course, it goes without saying that Nucleus rocks: its nine tracks (two of which extend past the 14-minute mark) pack in enough solemn solos, furied backbeats, and majestic stoner breakdowns to hold fans over until next time. But how good is pure volume when it's lacking a furious heart to match?

2016-01-13T01:00:03.000-05:00

2016-01-13T01:00:03.000-05:00

Metal

Nuclear Blast

January 13, 2016

f901000e-abeb-445f-b157-cb3a35c19063

Zoe Camp

https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/

The London producer’s new three-track EP adds texture and personality to her music without quite innovating on her original, already much-imitated pop formula.

The London producer’s new three-track EP adds texture and personality to her music without quite innovating on her original, already much-imitated pop formula.

PinkPantheress: Take Me Home EP

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pinkpantheress-take-me-home-ep/

Take Me Home EP

Even if she had packed it in at the end of 2021, PinkPantheress would have been safe in the knowledge that she had remade a good swathe of pop’s underground in her own image. With just a few viral singles and one great mixtape, to hell with it, the 21-year-old Londoner supercharged TikTok’s drum’n’bass revival, spawned a legion of imitators, and reintroduced the influence of UK dance music to the U.S. charts. Her sweet, Lily-Allen-at-the-rave vocals were inescapable throughout last year’s summer festival season, with everyone from Four Tet to Floating Points dropping PinkPantheress edits in their sets. All that buzz means that PinkPantheress, more than most viral stars, faces a treacherous path towards longevity and legitimacy. The hits on to hell with it followed a strong but easily replicable formula that other artists are already beating to death: Last year’s best PinkPantheress song wasn’t even a PinkPantheress song but “e-motions” by Mura Masa and Erika de Casier, which hit on just the right mix of 2-step beats, gentle harp plucks, familiar interpolations (in this case, Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me”), and brokenhearted lyricism. PinkPantheress’ two standalone singles in 2022, meanwhile—April’s Willow duet “Where you are” and a Sam Gellaitry collab, “Picture in my mind,” from August—felt a little too similar to to hell with it and a little too anonymous, respectively, to make much of a dent. As with so many overnight sensations before her, year two has proven to be a test of PinkPantheress’s mettle. But if things felt a little touch-and-go there for a second, Take me home—a zippy three-tracker released in the final weeks of 2022—confidently sets the record straight. If it doesn’t quite innovate on PinkPantheress’ initial formula, it still finds new angles on the artist herself. to hell with it dealt with boilerplate heartbreak; Take me home personalizes PinkPantheress’ music a little bit, adding shade and texture to what we know about the still largely anonymous producer. Much of that work happens on the EP’s title track. Although she’s been heralded as a voice of Zoomer pop, “Take me home” is the first time that PinkPantheress has brought generational anxieties to the fore in the music itself. Over a brisk double-time beat, she sings about the malaise of getting older without really feeling like an adult—learning how to pay bills, trying to avoid social faux pas, and preparing “to be so young til the end of time.” It’s a deft analysis of Gen Z’s prospects: locked out of long-term financial security and staring down climate catastrophe, but required to participate in a broken world all the same. It’s the most vulnerable that PinkPantheress has ever sounded, but, musically, it’s also one of her weakest tracks: The generic 2010s dance-pop beat bears little of the lived-in warmth of her earlier music, and a dreary 40-second trap outro reveals why so many songs on to hell with it came in under two minutes. It lands without the grace of past hits, even as it signals artistic growth. The other two songs on the EP fare better. On the sprightly dance-pop chimera “Boy’s a liar,” producer Mura Masa tacks a Jersey club beat onto Gorillaz-y chiptune. It’s one of PinkPantheress’ strongest tracks, and one of the first where she steps fully into the pop star role that she’s been trying on over the past year. It can sometimes feel as if PinkPantheress is absentmindedly singing over a song playing in the background, but on “Boy’s a liar,” she’s more active—as if she’s behind the wheel, rather than dissociating in the backseat. The same goes for “Do you miss me?,” a collaboration with Kaytranada that’s lightweight but nonetheless intriguing. Over the Canadian producer’s lush amapiano beat, PinkPantheress sings about discovering she’s the other woman and, eventually, making her peace: “I can be discreet/If you don’t want her seeing you/With me on your arm.” It’s a disarming narrative twist, and a welcome complication on an EP that sometimes feels emotionally thin. All three songs on Take me home show flashes of brilliance, but only “Boy’s a liar” really holds its own against PinkPantheress’ most indelible hits. As a whole, though, the EP serves its purpose: Even if she spent much of 2022 seemingly unmoored from her debut style and without a specific new sound to pursue, Take me home confirms that PinkPantheress is striving not to retread old material—and that she’s still a cut above your run-of-the-mill viral star.

2023-01-04T00:02:00.000-05:00

2023-01-04T00:02:00.000-05:00

Pop/R&B / Electronic

Warner

January 4, 2023

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Shaad D’Souza

https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/

On their bleak new album, the Brighton band abandons all hints of jangle-pop and dives into extraterrestrial synths, ominously bowed bass, and guitars distorted beyond recognition.

On their bleak new album, the Brighton band abandons all hints of jangle-pop and dives into extraterrestrial synths, ominously bowed bass, and guitars distorted beyond recognition.

Fear of Men: Fall Forever

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21931-fall-forever/

Fall Forever

Well, nobody will be calling Fear of Men twee anymore. On the Brighton band’s debut album Loom, Jessica Weiss voiced some seriously dark, at times even-morbid sentiments, but they were undercut by disarming jangle-pop guitars and sprightly rhythms that made it difficult to take her at her word. Thirty years of conditioning have taught us to associate these sounds with levity—after all, if Morrissey was mostly just being dramatic, surely Weiss was, too? On their follow-up Fall Forever, though, the band eliminates the disconnect between Weiss’ bleak prose and their delivery system. Any element with even the slightest whiff of Camera Obscura has been replaced by extraterrestrial synths, ominously bowed bass, and guitars distorted beyond recognition. It’s fitting the trio recorded it in a repurposed slaughterhouse, because Fall Forever is the work of a band gutting its sound and watching it bleed out. “Vesta” introduces the album with a jolt of warped, digitally manipulated noise, a throat clearing of sorts meant to announce the new direction. Like many of the album’s highlights, it’s thrillingly modern. Fear of Men could have easily pulled a lateral when making the shift from guitars to synthesizers, modeling the record after ’80s synth-pop roughly contemporaneous to the indie-pop of their debut, but instead they set their sights forward. In spirit, “Erase (Aubade)” has the clear, glassy directness of the best Sundays or Cranberries singles, but the song’s arrangement is glitchy, austere, and modern. The track runs just two minutes, leaving the sense that something crucial has been cropped; it denies the closure of a traditional pop song. The seemingly sweet “Until You” is thrown off course midway through its run by an outbreak of retching electronics, a detour from which it never returns. Even the album’s most straightforward dream-pop tunes are battered by sharp, militaristic snares. They create a sense of flagellation that’s driven home by Weiss’ relentless lyrical focus on how much pain and punishment she can withstand, and her repeated assertions that she doesn’t need the intimacy that’s withheld from her. “I’m like an island,” she sings, “I don’t need to feel your arms around me.” Nonetheless, she internalizes the rejection. It manifests itself in a resentment of her own “vile body,” which she describes variously as made of wax and stone, or feeble bones and useless flesh. “I burn my body on the fire/...Breathing deeper now I am free from the crowd/I’m as clean as the shame will allow,” she sings on “Trauma.” Perversely, it’s the album’s poppiest number. Weiss fills Fall Forever with lyrics like that, fantasies about shedding her skin, becoming one with the elements, leaving the physical world behind and transcending morality. That tight thematic focus means that the songs sometimes bleed together—many feel like minor rewrites of the one that came directly before it—yet the repetition feels deliberate, like part of a calculated do-over. “Without a body, I am free to dissolve,” she sang on Loom. She wasn’t heard the first time around, so it’s as if she’s vowed to repeat herself until the words sink in. This time they do.

2016-06-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-06-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Kanine

June 11, 2016

f90ea6cc-2c31-414d-8524-78256ac4a4c2

Evan Rytlewski

https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/

songs from wonder.land is a theatrical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland set in an MMORPG, and the score is written by Damon Albarn.

songs from wonder.land is a theatrical adaptation of Alice in Wonderland set in an MMORPG, and the score is written by Damon Albarn.

Various Artists: songs from wonder.land

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21854-songs-from-wonderland/

songs from wonder.land

wonder.land, a musical by playwright Moira Buffini and Blur’s Damon Albarn that just finished its London run, has a plot that’d make a quite serviceable Christmas panto, if perhaps not a fully-formed production. Like most teens, protagonist Aly has a heart that’s outgrown her sense of identity. Really like most teens, she spends all her time online – specifically, on the titular online MMORPG, which doesn’t have all that many discernible MMORPG elements but is at least populated by the usual wacky sorts, only a few of which are obviously inspired by Tim Burton’s versions of themselves in 2010. In the role of Boomer sneering at millennials and their screens we have Aly’s technophobic Miss Hannigan of a headmaster, though she’s not exasperated enough that she can’t steal Aly’s avatar and turn herself into the Red Queen, the resident wonder.land shitposter. There are, right from the outset, a number of ways this could go wrong. There is no genre or medium in existence in which a version, straight or tweaked, of Alice in Wonderland is not clichéd. (Last down the rabbit hole in the theater world was Jekyll and Hyde director Frank Wildhorn, whose 2011 Alice adaptation flopped mightily.) And a lightly tweaked musical take on fairy tales in general is a Broadway standby—see Sondheim’s Into the Woods, whose high-profile film adaptation would bring it first to mind even if its Broadway revival and canonical status didn’t. Making one’s fairytale world a MMORPG was dated somewhere around the heyday of Second Life, if not the Ultima Online or BBS eras; equating that digital world with Wonderland was dated when The Matrix did it; and titles like “wonder.land” became hilariously dated somewhere around 2000, the year of “www.nevergetoveryou.” And Albarn, though not new to theater scores—2012’s Dr. Dee is pleasantly complex and holds up remarkably well as a standalone work – is a curious choice for this one, being neither a fan of modern musicals (which “lack identity musically”) nor, perhaps digital culture (Everyday Robots in particular betrays some Luddite tendencies). Could the man whose last solo single lamented the rise of “everyday robots on [their] phones” really bring this digital wonderland to life? As it turns out Albarn’s wonder.land score is perfectly fine, which is the entire problem. Buffini described her vision for the score as a blend of electronic music and music hall, but the electronic elements are minimal (this is no PC Music, nor even Owl City) and the vaudeville elements are unsurprising; a better description might be “a middling Amanda Palmer side project.” The score dutifully shuffles from pop ballads to vaguely creepy variety show numbers without much consistency or identity musically. The individual songs aren’t even consistent about how good they are. “Me” would be a perfectly serviceable loopy-soprano character piece with a few just-off-enough lyrics (“like a toenail all ingrown”) were it not backed by the sort of breezy ukulele soft-rock that’s the bane of anyone's existence who has watched a commercial in the past 10 years. “I’m Right” is supposed to be the kind of villainous patter song that, with the right performer, steals shows, but both arrangement and lyric are clunky and over-practiced; it’s as if the headmaster who performs it rapped her cane to silence the cast every time she suspected things might be getting fun. (The character songs are particularly weak, which for a work like Alice in Wonderland is death; Tweedledee, Tweedledum, the Dormouse, and the Mock Turtle are shuffled through in one not-particularly-memorable song, which may be intended as a quick-cut take on the megapopulation of online spaces but comes off more as songwriting-by-checklist.) There is fun in the title track, a bit of female-fronted power-pop that’s among the more failure-proof styles out there – that is, unless it loses all its energy from stage to recording and, more damningly, punctuates every other riff with the worst-aging part of the book, namely: DOUBLE-YOU-DOUBLE-YOU-DOUBLE-YOU-DOT-WONDER-DOT-LAND! This is supposed to get silly with repetition. It just maybe wasn’t supposed to sound so silly from go. The biggest downfall of wonder.land, ultimately, isn’t anything in particular it does, but everything it doesn’t. An early draft of the musical was set in North Korea, which is a horrible idea, but at least an interesting horrible idea. Very little in wonder.land is interesting, and what is comes mostly from the book and the concept. (The theatrical production’s gotten middling reviews, but unlike, say, Hamilton, even the positive reviews rarely praise the score.) Perhaps they wrung some originality out of the material after all; Alice has been done for children, for teens, for adults, squeaky-clean to drugged-out, lighthearted to dark and darker and darkest, but seldom has it been done so bland.

2016-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-05-07T01:00:00.000-04:00

Parlophone

May 7, 2016

f9167e25-27e9-44b2-becc-94ac8749a639

Katherine St. Asaph

https://pitchfork.com/staff/katherine-st. asaph/

Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie presents a collection of drone compositions that he considered too aggressive for his parent band-- which means they range somewhere between a whisper and a shout.

Stars of the Lid's Adam Wiltzie presents a collection of drone compositions that he considered too aggressive for his parent band-- which means they range somewhere between a whisper and a shout.

The Dead Texan: The Dead Texan

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2585-the-dead-texan/

The Dead Texan

I once asked a middle-aged composer I'd come to know-- one who writes fairly "difficult" art-music-- what she'd been listening to lately. Based on the complex theories behind her work, I figured she could introduce me to some crazy stuff. But she looked at me as though the question held little interest and said, "I don't know... Bach, mostly. And a lot of folk music. Some Pink Floyd." I was pretty surprised that, given the amount of mental effort her work asked of its listeners, she herself kept to music with such direct emotional power. Still, it's an understandable inconsistency-- "cutting-edge" music isn't always synonymous with "inviting." No matter how much I dig Milton Babbitt, I'm more likely to put on Iron & Wine when I get home. The IDM/ambient sphere of artists and listeners has always had an underlying interest in marrying these extremes. (For example, Aphex Twin works at both the most abrasive and warm ends of the spectrum.) Many artists on the Kranky label are concerned with creating a synthesis of music that has "artistic" merit and that which remains inviting, and The Dead Texan is an album that achieves such a goal. It's a refined, original sound, but one that gives a listener more than it takes. The Dead Texan is Adam Wiltzie, one half of Stars of the Lid, a band that has produced some of the best guitar-based ambient/drone music of the past 10 years. Rather than take the Fennesz or Keith Fullerton Whitman approach of mutating and splicing guitar tones, SOTL create reverberant drones through the expert manipulation of attack and decay. Wiltzie recorded the material for The Dead Texan while in Belgium and deemed it too "aggressive" for SOTL. And it is, though "aggressive" is a relative term when applied to music that sits upon the brink of consciousness. Wiltzie doesn't depart dramatically from SOTL's most recent full-length, The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid; he employs similar two-chord repetitions, swells of stacked-fifths, and utilizes many of the same timbres-- swirling string-quartet drones and effects-laden piano. But as The Dead Texan, Wiltzie's music takes on a more composed quality. It cycles through complete chord progressions, allows steady rhythmic pulses, lets loose just a little bit of dissonance, and occasionally overlays vocals or an instrumental melody. His drones are accented with acoustic and slide guitars, as well as occasional samples and sine waves. While by no means traditional songs, the pieces of The Dead Texan thus feel at least like miniatures-- more manageable than SOTL's wide-open scapes, which can be devoid of reference points. It's a wildly overused trope to describe dramatic instrumental music as "the soundtrack to ________" (e.g.: a rainy day, a lonely drive, an acid trip, a bear attack)-- the phrase is used to connote a sense of detachment engendered by such music, one that allows us to view our lives as a movie. But in this case, discussing the record's cinematic leanings is justified. Wiltzie has stated the influence of several film composers, and the title of his piece "La Ballade d'Alain Georges" namedrops an old French actor. More overtly, this release includes a DVD of videos for several of Wilzie's compositions-- all made by filmmaker Christina Vantzos. Her accompaniment for "Aegina Airlines" combines beautifully simple animation with abstract hues, representing the clarity of various musical elements through a literal "clarity" of imagistic presentation. Wiltzie shows himself increasingly drawn toward the world of film compositions-- a safe haven for modern composers who don't necessarily want to engage in "modern composition." The vocal additions to "Glen's Goo" and "The Struggle" lend the songs a shoegaze tinge, recalling the hushed moments of Slowdive. In these spots, The Dead Texan's sense of cathedral-like reverence is balanced with extreme intimacy. Throughout, the attention to sound-quality and design is nearly as impressive as the music itself. Wiltzie has come quite far from his four-track recording days; The Dead Texan is an entirely enveloping album from a skilled craftsperson. Currently, he's working with Brian McBride on a new Stars of the Lid release, and with The Dead Texan as an indication, we should be very excited-- in a laid-back, barely conscious sort of way.

2004-10-24T02:00:03.000-04:00

2004-10-24T02:00:03.000-04:00

Electronic / Rock

Kranky

October 24, 2004

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Pitchfork

The final installment in a trilogy of albums by Chicago experimentalist Whitney Johnson gets its motifs from nature and its emotional immediacy from the musician’s recent medical emergency.

The final installment in a trilogy of albums by Chicago experimentalist Whitney Johnson gets its motifs from nature and its emotional immediacy from the musician’s recent medical emergency.

Matchess: Sacracorpa

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/matchess-sacracorpa/

Sacracorpa

Whitney Johnson’s music shoots straight for the subconscious. Recording as Matchess, she makes songs out of dense atmospheres, ghostly singing, and submerged beats that sound like the pulse inside your head. Her work seems designed to slip past your frontal lobes, massaging and stimulating your brain’s murkiest regions. “I try to push the abstract, the hidden aspects of the surface meaning,” she once explained, “where you are seeking one thing and another comes out—something unexpected.” If you know Matchess’ discography, her latest release won’t strike you as too unexpected. Sacracorpa’s six tracks extend the thread of deep, affecting ambience that has run through Johnson’s work from the start—a dimension of her music that she has expanded and improved with each release. And the album is the final part of a trilogy that includes 2013’s Seraphastra and 2015’s Somnaphoria. Each installment builds on sounds and ideas that came before it, and Sacracorpa ties those strands together to form Johnson’s most cohesive statement. Though it has always had a strong emotional core, Matchess’ music possesses a new immediacy on Sacracorpa. Perhaps that’s because the album grew out of Johnson’s own experiences: A recent emergency, which she has described as “a medical condition from birth [that] came back,” rekindled her appreciation for life and intensified her commitment to finishing her trilogy. Using voice, viola, organ, drum machine, and field recordings, she recorded in her home city of Chicago, but also in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania and an Earthship in northern New Mexico. The results sometimes spotlight nature—you can hear water ripple and dogs bark—making the music feel personal and unmediated, akin to a sonic diary. Johnson freely transforms feelings into music, and vice versa. Though she still favors intricate, multi-layered sonic constructions, Johnson is unafraid to lead with her emotions. Sacracorpa can be as sweeping and effusive as the most melodramatic new age compositions: On “Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes,” multi-tracked vocals and soaring strings radiate positivity, anchored by an insistent drum pulse. A clicking rhythm drives “Ossify Them,” whose organ waves evoke the chill of outer space and the warmth of pleasant dreams. This commingling of tones, beats, and voice ties together every track on the album, as though the songs were all variations on a theme. But each one goes deeper than the last, too; when Johnson knits viola and singing at the end of closer “Of Freedom,” her music seems to enter a fourth dimension. That expansion on Sacracorpa is partially a product of Johnson’s everyday environment. Ensconced in the Chicago underground, she’s played in psych band Verma and avant-folk outfit Circuit Des Yeux. Her sonic vibe feels particularly close to that of her frequent tourmate, Natalie Chami of TALSounds, whose music uses similarly expressive vocals and layered tones to evoke emotions. But even though Johnson’s cohort informs her sound, her singularly introspective approach to songwriting has always suggested that Matchess is a self-contained project more than a cog in the wheels of a scene. In completing this thoughtful trilogy, she proves it.

2018-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-07-26T01:00:00.000-04:00

Experimental

Trouble in Mind

July 26, 2018

f9190be4-508c-4d07-b244-762b9264b201

Marc Masters

https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/

The 23-year-old singer-producer’s arena-sized pop-rock opens up a world of sensory pleasure on his second EP.

The 23-year-old singer-producer’s arena-sized pop-rock opens up a world of sensory pleasure on his second EP.

James Ivy: Everything Perfect EP

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/james-ivy-everything-perfect-ep/

Everything Perfect EP

James Ivy is trying to remember the world as it once was: listening to FM radio, rocking a pair of back-of-neck headphones, falling in love with someone in real life instead of online. The 23-year-old Korean-American singer and producer longs to return to a bygone era before social media, where entertainment could be as simple as riding the train until you lost track of time. So on his latest project, Everything Perfect, Ivy transports back to the ’90s, his sunny, mid-tempo pop-rock songs urging you away from your bedroom into a world of visceral, tactile pleasure. Ivy has flirted with fuzzy guitar pop and shoegaze since his teenage years. As his style began to cohere—think the 1975 crossed with Third Eye Blind—he sometimes struggled with how to best execute his vision, leaning on the superficial pleasures of whiny rap-sung hooks and cloying doot-doot-doot refrains. Everything Perfect, his second official EP, marks Ivy’s promising and confident arrival: It surges with warm guitar riffs, turntable scratches, spaced-out keys, and sticky singalong hooks, cementing him within the next generation of left-of-center pop stars. Across the project, Ivy surveys various ’90s and early aughts rock archetypes while following his own affinity for emo-tinged cadences and breakbeats. Opener “L-Trip” is a frenzy of distorted guitar and hiccupping drums, like if Oasis collaborated with Ashlee Simpson. “What’s your biggest regret?/Is it meeting me?,” Ivy sings, begging an indecisive crush to be cruelly honest with him. On the shoegaze frolic “Involved,” a wall of electric guitar feedback and muddy breaks cascade into an understated, swooning chorus. These sorts of arena-sized songs look good on Ivy, his fusions of Britpop and R&B, new-wave and trip-hop offering a satisfying soundtrack to post-adolescent anguish. Ivy spends the bulk of the EP detailing the confusions of coming-of-age in a world frayed with uncertainty. He hasn’t washed the dishes in days and often can’t remember the last time he ate. He falls helplessly in love—but no, wait, that’s not love, only the weak simulacrum of it. “Want you dead in a weird way,” he sings on the title song, which reflects his own self-loathing more than ire toward a love interest. His lyrics can be vague and clunky—“I want to chain you to the right side of my wide eye,” he belts on “The Last Place You’d Ever Look”—and not every song fully lands, especially considering the crowded landscape of ’90s-inspired pop-rock. But it’s impossible to walk away from Everything Perfect without one of its massive hooks sloshing around your head, and there’s something charming about Ivy’s work-in-progress vulnerability: He’s fumbling for metaphors and tripping over sentences, rambling until he gets at the core of something real.

2023-04-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

2023-04-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B / Rock

Fader Label

April 28, 2023

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Brady Brickner-Wood

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-brickner-wood/

On her latest EP, the Kenyan composer explores concepts of home and memory through a series of melodic sound collages.

On her latest EP, the Kenyan composer explores concepts of home and memory through a series of melodic sound collages.

Nyokabi Kariũki: peace places: kenyan memories

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nyokabi-kariki-peace-places-kenyan-memories/

peace places: kenyan memories

When Nyokabi Kariũki couldn’t go home, she listened for it. In 2020, while studying composition abroad, the Kenyan composer and multi-instrumentalist got stuck in her secondary abodes of New York and Maryland. With Kenya’s borders locked during the pandemic, she had no way to know when she’d be able to return to her hometown of Nairobi. But in her music, she retreated to the familiar haunts of her memory, constructing a likeness of home that began to distort into something tangled and dreamlike. Closeness to the place you call home brings comfort; distance can transform those feelings, magnifying the things you miss most. On her new EP, peace places: kenyan memories, Kariũki invites us to explore a selection of visions that grew larger than life during her time away. Kariũki’s most cherished spots in and around Nairobi—which she affectionately calls her “peace places”—became the seeds from which each track on the EP would grow. She had started collecting videos of these locales on her phone years ago, and they now felt like a sanctuary when she felt the ache of homesickness. “I need to absorb everything, and sound is a way of preserving the memories,” she said in an interview with Spitfire Audio. Kariũki used the audio from these recordings as a base to build melodic sound collages, filling out each piece with relevant sketches of Kenya. On “Galu,” the sound of waves swirling along the shoreline of the titular Kenyan coastal town is the compositional nucleus. “I go down at 6 AM to swim,” Kariũki repeats in a half-spoken refrain, as a cymbal softly skitters. The lapping waves intensify, and the percussion along with it—a thumping beat and the rapid plucking of a kalimba break in, like cutting a breaststroke against the tide. Kariũki uses the chirping of birds as the central germ of “Equator Song,” singing sweet harmonies over the discordant squawking. She sings here partially in Kiswahili, the national language of Kenya, and partially in Maa, as an homage to her Maasai heritage. The decline in use of Indigenous languages due to British colonial rule is a fact of life in Kenya, and Kariũki acknowledges her lack of fluency in each as an uncomfortable element of life in her homeland. Time away from home can change the way you see things when you eventually return. When Kariũki was finally able to visit her grandparents for Christmas in 2020, she stored the occasion for safekeeping in the recordings heard on “A Walk Through My Cũcũ’s Farm.” The moment feels lighthearted as Kariũki’s grandmother shouts in her family’s native language of Kikuyu about the difficulty of plucking an onion from the ground. But an anxious electronic haze swirls underneath, slowly rising to the foreground. The contrast holds a mirror to Kariũki’s own conflicted feelings in the moment; there’s a sense of togetherness, but she knows it can’t last. “Peace maybe always does come with disconnect and dissonance,” Kariũki told Bandcamp Daily, “and maybe there’s a bit of home in that as well.” In her embrace of both the joy and the heartache, Kariũki paints a messy—and honest—picture of the places most familiar to us.

2022-03-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

2022-03-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Experimental

SA

March 11, 2022

f91e3b82-d253-4f0a-a8dc-c194beaa65ae

Shy Thompson

https://pitchfork.com/staff/shy-thompson/

Meg Remy’s most free-ranging and least narrative-minded album draws on retro funk and ’80s R&B as it infuses her biting social critique and wry humor with fresh optimism.

Meg Remy’s most free-ranging and least narrative-minded album draws on retro funk and ’80s R&B as it infuses her biting social critique and wry humor with fresh optimism.

U.S. Girls: Bless This Mess

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/us-girls-bless-this-mess/

Bless This Mess

Rare is the mess Meg Remy won’t chronicle. Abusive relationships, government surveillance, ecological disasters, capitalist exploitation—clunky when you spell it out so plainly, but these are the forces Remy’s characters are up against in her music as U.S. Girls. On past records, she rendered these narratives with solemn resignation or snarling intensity, her edicts of hard-earned hope never reaching a neat resolution. On her new album, Bless This Mess, she softens, searching for silver linings where there shouldn’t be any. Even when her optimism gets mangled through banal middle-aged and artistic angst—FaceTime is weird, but maybe serves a purpose? Music is healing, sort of like a rainbow?—Remy’s quest to find beauty amid a circus of suffering feels purposeful, like a weathered activist reflecting on how they’ve staved off cynicism after so many years. Considering Remy’s roots as an experimental musician, it’s tempting to sticker each new U.S. Girls release as the “most accessible yet,” but Bless This Mess certainly makes a case. After beginning her solo career as a fuzz-crazed, lo-fi noise rocker—a DIY approach Remy later clarified was less an aesthetic choice than a result of limited resources—she transitioned to making art-pop that felt tame by comparison. Her projects pulled from ’60s soul, ’70s funk, gauzy psychedelia, post-punk, and synth-rock, her gestalt wandering between David Bowie and Broadcast, Animal Collective and Robyn. Her work was often difficult, littered with spoken-word skits and ambiguous narrative arcs, grainy mixes that eschewed clean arrangements, songs that detailed sexual violence and castigated Barack Obama. Bless This Mess doesn’t shy away from such complexities—there’s plenty of anticapitalist critique and interpersonal distress—but it’s a decidedly forward-looking album. Glossier and more hi-fi than anything in Remy’s catalog, it draws from ’80s R&B, synth-pop, disco-house, and ’90s shoegaze to create a cascade of bright colors and gorgeous grooves, music that matches her aggressively optimistic demeanor. Opener “Only Daedalus” is a gold-streaked fusion of R&B and funk that uses the ancient Greek myth to comment on the hubris of our overbearing technocrats, Remy asking, “Where is your soul?” before chiding that “the world is not your wheel.” You don’t need to unlock the writing to have a ball, though; “Only Daedalus” begs you to lose yourself in the rhythm, to dance before wondering what it all means. Although Bless This Mess favors retro funk and honeyed R&B, Remy recruits a diverse community of collaborators to help her explore different styles. On the smoldering synth-pop cut “Futures Bet,” co-produced by her husband, Slim Twig, she suggests that we can alleviate existential anxiety by “breathing in, breathing out.” Halt your eye roll—unlike self-help books and profit-seeking CEOs, Remy’s evocation of mindfulness reads not as a flimsy bromide but as a way to attain stability through the most freely available self-care practice. She follows this up with the Ryland Blackinton (Cobra Starship) and Alex Frankel (Holy Ghost!)-produced “So Typically Now,” an electro-house screed against urban flight and combustible real estate markets. Its criticisms are biting, but Remy also seems to be winking at former city dwellers who have discovered freedom beyond fast-paced, work-obsessed lives. Written and recorded while pregnant, and then while tending to her newborn twins, Bless This Mess is Remy’s most free-ranging and least narrative-minded record. She evokes the disorientation of childbirth on “Pump,” a song that grapples with the sudden bodily and emotional demands of being a mother. But the most striking line arrives when she observes that “what I do tonight, it makes our tomorrow,” a seemingly obvious observation that illuminates how the habits of attention she advocates for throughout the album—meditation, humility, a life without screens—feel more urgent now that she’s modeling them for children. Her less direct contemplations on motherhood tend to be more insightful, like on “St. James Way,” in which a woman takes a taxi down the Camino de Santiago and thinks, “I don’t want a castle, just a door to shut.” The plea for privacy recalls Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as does Remy’s wrestling with the incongruities of maternity and art-making, socially prescribed gender roles and personal freedom. Bless This Mess isn’t the exacting political statement that 2018’s In a Poem Unlimited and 2020’s Heavy Light were, but it expounds the belief that acknowledging our inherited hardships can help us carve a path to fulfillment. On “Tux (Your Body Fills Me, Boo),” a song narrated from the perspective of a tuxedo buried in a closet, Remy sings, “I was your passport to so many rooms, your mask of pure exclusivity/Now you treat me like a long-gone novelty, a costume—is that how you see me?” It’s a cheeky conceit deployed to consider how gendered wardrobes construct and confine our identities, how these items infuse us with confidence, insecurity, vanity. It’s also a disco-funk explosion, ecstatic from every direction. Even when the satire wanes, the potency of the music remains. Like the rest of the album, Remy shakes free her sorrows and stretches loose her limbs, sanguine as she moves across the dancefloor.

2023-02-27T00:03:00.000-05:00

2023-02-27T00:03:00.000-05:00

Pop/R&B

4AD

February 27, 2023

f91fab79-c259-44ee-9a0f-ad138219d622

Brady Brickner-Wood

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-brickner-wood/

This raucous Austin band's second album dials back some of the garage rock intensity in favor of introspective songs with a more emotional tug.

This raucous Austin band's second album dials back some of the garage rock intensity in favor of introspective songs with a more emotional tug.

The Strange Boys: Be Brave

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14005-be-brave/

Be Brave

Austin's the Strange Boys debuted last year with The Strange Boys and Girls Club, a play-it-loose collection of twangy garage tunes suited for pool hall scuffles. It was an album content to play well within a defined set of parameters and found them tinkering with rockabilly, 1960s R&B, and British Invasion rock. It's easy to imagine the Strange Boys could churn out sets of these half-drunk shakers forever, and considering how well they did pull it off, that seemed like something to look forward to. But follow-up album Be Brave isn't Girls Club II. It's far less boisterous, unafraid to slow things down and let the band stretch out a little. Though still alive with rambling charm, loneliness hangs over much of album, nurturing a more introspective feel. "Life changed on you again," frontman Ryan Sambol mentions at the beginning of "A Walk on the Bleach", in his unmistakable early Dylan yowl. And indeed, something seems to have changed for the Strange Boys, as they no longer have a need to get their Ya-Yas out on every track. Be Brave is a cleaner, more mature look, peppered with feelings of unease and imparting a greater focus on country, blues, and a little balladeering. Most of Be Brave is marked by mid-tempo numbers that give the band a little space to play around with rootsier incarnations that favor bits of organ, piano, and plenty of twangy guitar. The jauntier songs tend to have a woozy, communal appeal, like opener "I See" or the saloon-piano accented "Da Da". Fans of Girls Club will find joy in the title track, a thrilling little slice of twist-inducing primal R&B (augmented by a warped sax break, courtesy of the now-disbanded Mika Miko's Jenna Thornhill). But the majority of the album takes on a different shape, taking great care to show some restraint even when it seems unnatural. The Strange Boys have proved to be great attention-grabbers but seem a little lost when things get too quiet. The three acoustic ballads that round out the album are a little dull, and the Boys' cautious pacing doesn't always hold up to close listening. A lot of these moments leave you feeling antsy, with hope that another one of their deranged sock-hop jams might be lurking somewhere around the corner. But the key to Be Brave is allowing the band to dig around, and the rewards-- while occasionally a little slow in coming-- reveal that the Strange Boys can offer more than just a quick fix. For a band formerly so brash and unhinged, it's a bold look in its own way.

2010-03-18T02:00:03.000-04:00

2010-03-18T02:00:03.000-04:00

Electronic / Rock

Rough Trade / In the Red

March 18, 2010

f92f5263-2ead-4b53-bcd6-04e4171ad4fa

Zach Kelly

https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-kelly/

Raphaelle Standell and Alexander Kerby’s third album draws upon classic house and disco in its examination of the pitfalls of love in the digital era.

Raphaelle Standell and Alexander Kerby’s third album draws upon classic house and disco in its examination of the pitfalls of love in the digital era.

Blue Hawaii: Tenderness

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blue-hawaii-tenderness/

Tenderness

Art in the 2010s is rife with stories that start in a chat box. From “Catfish” to Yo Gotti’s “Down in the DM,” the concept of love and courtship bubbling and blooming remotely, over the internet, is increasingly commonplace. Tenderness, the third album by the experimental pop duo Blue Hawaii, situates itself in this new sub-genre of romantic art. Musically and lyrically, it attempts to recreate the headspace and “challenges of handling relationships online”—the isolation, the miscommunication, and lack of physical presence. The album is the duo’s first in roughly four years, and it picks up where their last album, 2013’s Untogether, left off. A self-described breakup record, Untogether was written while Raphaelle Standell and her creative partner Alexander Kerby were separated: She was touring with her rock band Braids and he was off living in Europe, soaking in club culture. The sound that separation produced was cold and spectral and filled with echoes. After completing that album’s tour cycle, the two split yet again, putting Blue Hawaii on hiatus while Standell returned to Braids and Kerby split his time between L.A. and Berlin, learning how to DJ and produce dance music. They started working together on Tenderness last year during a period when Standell was in an “intimate relationship” that was being conducted mostly over instant messaging. The pieces on Tenderness are all love songs about the digital age, and in order to tell these stories, sonically speaking, the two set out to create a whole new sound. Where Untogether was frigid and ghostly, the Blue Hawaii of Tenderness were remade for the dancefloor in mind. Perhaps half-jokingly, they’ve taken to describing their new direction as “Björk meets the xx and DJ Koze.” While there is some credence to their description—the combination of instrumental colorfulness and diaristic intimacy on Tenderness speaks to this—they’ve pulled a lot more from the golden age of house and disco. This is especially clear on songs like “No One Like You,” which is constructed around an instrumental sampled from Kenix’s 1980 disco classic “There’s Never Been (No One Like You).” The two have added even more light and color to Kenix’s boogying bass and drum line with horns and wiggly synths. Standell, who is the group’s main vocalist, channels the house divas of yore with brassy, sweet, and bellowing delivery. The song establishes many of the album’s main instrumental themes—horns synths, flutes, and four-to-the-floor beats—which creates a breezy feeling throughout. On the opener, “Free at Last,” techno kick drums and blasts of saxophone make for a well-sculpted club beat. Elsewhere, as on “Versus Game,” they reinterpret fluttering ’80s synth pop, and Standell’s protean voice handles the shifts seamlessly. Overall, the production is excellent, and the sound design of each of the album’s songs is thoughtful and tightly constructed. Instrumentally, the two know how to set the mood just right, striking a balance between joy and ennui. Lyrically, Tenderness can be pretty shallow. If these are songs about disconnection and misunderstanding, the lyrics don’t do a great job of fleshing out the concept. Most of the songs are built on platitudes (“I wanna be dancing in the moonlight/I wanna be dancing by your side”; “Searching for you/You had me waiting”) that don’t particularly evoke text-message flirtations or digital loneliness. In between the songs, a handful of skits and field recordings attempts to create a sense of manufactured intimacy. The best of these is “Big News,” a voicemail set to sleazy nightclub beat. But for the most part, these little interludes are forgettable, and Blue Hawaii struggle to give Tenderness a narrative that would makes their concepts feel more substantial. Still the warm, well-wrought pop of Tenderness is by far the group’s most enjoyable collection of songs.

2017-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

2017-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Arbutus

October 12, 2017

f932b904-43b4-4acd-8252-b2ff8e67873b

Kevin Lozano

https://pitchfork.com/staff/kevin-lozano/

"Mwa-AAAA-aaaaa-Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Yeahhhh!" That's how Marc Bolan kicks off *The Slider*, T. Rex's follow-up to the career-making *Electric Warrior*, which brought the band out of the folk circuit and onto the rock stage. That lead track, "Metal Guru", belongs in the pantheon of great rock album openers: It's a rapturous two-and-a-half minutes, a joyous celebration of itself. Amazingly, *The Slider* doesn't let up after that, but sustains its high across 13 boogie-bound tracks, each punctuated by Bolan's enthusiastic "yeah!"'s and "woo!"'s. He even starts "Baby Strange" with what might be the silliest count-off ever. At the peak of his rock superstardom, Bolan was

T. Rex: The Slider / Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow / Dandy in the Underworld / The T. Rex Wax Co. Singles: A's and B's 1972-77

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11845-the-slider-zinc-alloy-and-the-hidden-riders-of-tomorrow-dandy-in-the-underworld-the-t-rex-wax-co-singles-as-and-bs-1972-77/

The Slider / Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow / Dandy in the Underworld / The T. Rex Wax Co. Singles: A's and B's 1972-77

"Mwa-AAAA-aaaaa-Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Yeahhhh!" That's how Marc Bolan kicks off The Slider, T. Rex's follow-up to the career-making Electric Warrior, which brought the band out of the folk circuit and onto the rock stage. That lead track, "Metal Guru", belongs in the pantheon of great rock album openers: It's a rapturous two-and-a-half minutes, a joyous celebration of itself. Amazingly, The Slider doesn't let up after that, but sustains its high across 13 boogie-bound tracks, each punctuated by Bolan's enthusiastic "yeah!"'s and "woo!"'s. He even starts "Baby Strange" with what might be the silliest count-off ever. At the peak of his rock superstardom, Bolan was also at the top of his game, and The Slider is his ecstatic ode both to himself and to music in general. The 50s rock rhythms that threatened to burst the seams of Electric Warrior here explode mightily and repeatedly. Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Elvis Presley loom large, but Bolan throws some glitter and make-up into the mix and comes up with something both familiar and new. Meanwhile, the band-- percussionist Mickey Finn, Steve Currie on bass, and Bill Legend on drums, plus producer Tony Visconti-- lock in on the grooves that propel "Buick McKane", "Baby Strange", and "Chariot Choogle". In a glam-jive code that combines Dylanesque wordplay with psychedelic imagery, Bolan writes about himself and his coterie, filling songs with shout-outs to hangers-on he nicknames Telegram Sam (allegedly his supplier during the recording sessions), Golden Nose Slim, Jo Jo, and Buick McKane, as well as to Dylan, Alan Freed, and Max's Kansas City. As such, The Slider reveals a lot about the man behind the glitter-- not through outright confessional songwriting, but via personal peccadilloes like, "And when I'm sad... I slide!" It's Bolan locating the perfect stance from which he can say nothing and everything at once. Of course, neither the celebrity nor the music lasted. For one thing, Bolan was quickly outdone by the pomp of David Bowie and other glam androgynes, and left behind when his cultural moment passed. For another, his gift for excess, while previously a boon to his songwriting, was a bane when it came to drugs. When his star began to fade, so did his music. These four reissues from Rhino, which are essentially identical to the Edsel reissues from a few years ago, track T. Rex's downward trajectory but attempt to redeem the band's later, lesser releases by packaging each album with a bonus disc that re-creates the tracklist using alternate takes, live tracks, and B-sides. On Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, the second disc actually outshines the original album, presenting looser, funkier, less worked-over versions of those clunky songs. Released after Tanx (which will be reissued later this month, alongside two other albums and a collection of unfinished songs), Zinc Alloy flails desperately as Bolan tries to incorporate his new fascination with American funk into the T. Rex sound. Unfortunately, these elements only make the songs sound as leaden as their titles suggest. On "Galaxy" and "Sound Pit" he alludes to past hits "Bang a Gong (Get It On)", "Metal Guru", and "Telegram Sam", but here his self-mythologizing sounds jaded, as if he needs to remind listeners of past glories to justify his current excesses. "Carsmile Smith and the Old One", "Painless Persuasion v. the Meathawk Immaculate", and "The Leopards Featuring Gardenia and the Mighty Slug" all sink under the weight of bulky concepts and awkward grooves, and the prominent backing vocals by Bolan's American girlfriend, soul singer Gloria Jones, ratchet up the theatrical bombast to gaudy heights. Change, as the bonus disc is retitled, strips away most of the orchestral overkill, but the songs still sound empty, their joy curdling into bitterness. Originally released three years later (with two other albums in between), Dandy in the Underworld recaptures Bolan's former spiritedness, as he imagines himself cast out from the realm of stardom. On the title track, he's Orpheus traveling through a hell of popular indifference. "When will he come up for air? Will anybody ever care?" Bolan asks on the chorus, but instead of whining, he seems genuinely hurt by the betrayal of his errant muse. Oddly enough, the album finds a reinvigorated Bolan crafting some of his best hooks and calibrating his catchiest grooves in years. The cosmic "Crimson Moon", the infectious "I'm a Fool for You Girl", and the album's centerpiece, "Jason B. Sad", alternate between carefree and cautious, conjuring a gravity that counterbalances the upbeat, stripped-down rhythms. The album trails off near the end-- especially with Bolan's hammy Elvis impersonation on "Pain and Love"-- but "Teenage Riot Structure" picks up the Orpheus thread again, with lyrics that intimate his fears, doubts, and hopes. The album's most noteworthy flaw, perhaps, is that it sounds best in context with the other albums; only to a degree does Dandy stand on its own, but it accrues additional force as the final chapter in Bolan's ongoing story of Marc Bolan. That mythology further unfolds on The T. Rex Wax Co. Singles: A's and B's 1972-1977, which collects the singles Bolan released between albums. He often released songs as singles long after they'd already appeared on albums, and as a result, there's no strict chronology to the tracklist. "Baby Boomerang", for example, appeared as an A-side nearly five years after it was originally released on The Slider. Plus, all of these songs appear either as regular or bonus tracks (some in multiple versions) on the Rhino album reissues, so this 2xCD set sounds like an abridged edition of the series rather than an career overview. Still, it's amazing that singles like "Children of the Revolution", the mighty "20th Century Boy", and the giddy "Celebrate Summer" never made it onto any of the band's original albums-- omissions that reveal the depth of T. Rex's catalog as well as its sturdiness 30 years on.

2006-01-05T01:00:01.000-05:00

2006-01-05T01:00:01.000-05:00

Rock

January 5, 2006

f9398ba4-830e-4439-8f9d-f2de1cce26f7

Stephen M. Deusner

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/

Cleveland rapper Kid Cudi's new Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon represents his catalog in miniature: A vast, serene, often-beautiful vista of sounds—and then this guy, standing right in front of them.

Cleveland rapper Kid Cudi's new Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon represents his catalog in miniature: A vast, serene, often-beautiful vista of sounds—and then this guy, standing right in front of them.

Kid Cudi: Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19133-kid-cudi-satellite-flight-the-journey-to-mother-moon/

Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon

Take a look at the album title: Kid Cudi's heading back to the moon. The timing makes sense. His first two albums took place there, both of which went gold. Now that he's drifted away permanently from the G.O.O.D. Music axis, a return voyage probably seems appealling. The first track, "Destination: Mother Moon" sets the course—it opens on a horizon-blotting synth panning overhead, and it conjures some genuine fear and awe (Cudi's always been good with synthesizers). But the instrumental bleeds quickly into the first full track, "Going to the Ceremony", and, inevitably, Cudi shows up. On the chorus, he intones "I"m going ... It's. All. Happening,", suggesting that your only companion on this lunar vessel is a hyped-up mid-level marketing associate. The moment is the Kid CuDi catalog in miniature: A vast, serene, often-beautiful vista of sounds —and then this guy, standing right in front of them. Kid Cudi has been standing in front of his own music ever since his 2009 debut, doing whatever he can to distract you from his genuine talents: a composer's ear for atmosphere, a professional producer's taste in tone colors. His lyrics, however, remain darts thrown at a barn door. "You're such an adult, pay all your bills, yet you are a zombie," he sings on "Going to the Ceremony". His singing is ruthlessly flat, and his melodies doodle noncommitally around the same three-note melody he's been humming ever since "Day N Nite". His go-to cadence as a rapper is more "Adam Sandler imitating a rapper" than "rapper." These traits were hard to ignore when he showed up, and he's done absolutely nothing to minimize them in the interim. Of all these issues, his lack of melodic imagination as a singer is the most damning and difficult to get around. He sabotages almost any track he breathes on. The synths on "Too Bad I Have To Destroy You" sparkle  like light on water, little off-beat accents coursing beneath and piano notes providing the bass line. It's a smooth, exhilarating piece of music, but Cudi defaces it, stuttering and tum-de-tum-tumming all over it, like an eighth-grader who wondered into the unattended studio and left his own vocal track just for laughs. Pick any track: on "Internal Bleeding", he assumes a mush-mouth delivery that might be a stab at dramatizing the condition in the song title. Maybe we're supposed to imagine this guy singing on the floor with a mouth full of broken teeth? At any rate, the music tumbles down around him like a drunk grabbing onto a curtain rod. To navigate successfully around a Kid Cudi album, then, is to get really good at squinting at the periphery. A lovely little piano figure here, a sonar blip traveling through the mix there. Mercifully, SATELLITE FLIGHT ups the ratio on instrumentals to Cudi tracks, and they are, to a degree that is near-comical, the best and most listenable pieces of music CuDi's ever released as a solo artist. "Return of the Moon Man" blends a chugging string quartet figure with mournful reverb'ed guitar, while Imperial March horns—notably similar to Yeezus's "Blood on the Leaves" —blare overhead. It could almost have snuck onto the last Fuck Buttons album and gone unspotted. "Copernicus Landing" is a calm, glowing maze of New Age synths, the sound of machines chattering quietly to each other. Crucially, Cudi never utter a word. Something surprising happens at the eleventh hour of SATELLITE FLIGHT, however, and it bears mentioning. The sci-fi synths drop away, as does the dead-eyed chest-puffing. Cudi sings—sweetly, modestly, and in tune—over nothing but some guitar, finger-picked with athe level of skill that suggests a deep study of Green Day's "All By Myself". The song is just two chords, but the voicing is haunting, and as Cudi hums to himself a sweet little melody, he instantly transforms into another possible version of himself: an indie-pop sad-sack troubador, recording on a bed strewn with K Records 7-inches. It's an unlikely sight, but it's a glimpse of the guy that's never quite made it onto a Kid Cudi record before. May his next record consist entirely of sci-fi instrumentals, or anti-folk ditties, or both.

2014-03-18T02:00:01.000-04:00

2014-03-18T02:00:01.000-04:00

Rap

Universal Republic

March 18, 2014

f93a8ac4-f11c-4507-92ca-3a486a248c17

Jayson Greene

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jayson-greene/

Backed by Blockhead’s spare production, the Long Island-bred rapper continues his creative evolution, writing more incisively about himself than ever before.

Backed by Blockhead’s spare production, the Long Island-bred rapper continues his creative evolution, writing more incisively about himself than ever before.

Aesop Rock / Blockhead: Garbology

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aesop-rock-blockhead-garbology/

Garbology

A little less than halfway through Aesop Rock’s new album, Garbology, he places himself in a scene: He’s imagining himself casing his own house when a neighbor catches him; the two share a mundane exchange (“You OK, dude?” “Yeah—you OK?”). It’s Beckettian: The banality, as always, is the point. Fourteen years ago, the Long Island-bred rapper famous for his labyrinthine flows put out his last LP for El-P’s landmark indie rap label Def Jux. Though he had self-released an excellent EP, Appleseed, and put out a similarly inspired album, Float, on Mush, it was with Def Jux that he became an icon to early 2000s underground fans and other rappers. (Labor Days, his treatise on work released a week after the September 11 attacks, is perhaps the defining record of its kind from that era.) But after 2007’s well-received None Shall Pass, Aesop disappeared from the public eye and did not release a solo recording for five years. In that time, Def Jux went on a hiatus that turned permanent. Aesop’s best friend, the rapper Camu Tao, died of lung cancer. The CD-sales economy that buoyed small labels mostly collapsed. When Aesop returned, he did so on Rhymesayers, the Minneapolis indie label co-founded by Slug and Ant of Atmosphere. Over the course of seven years, he released three solo albums. Where he previously split production duties with his longtime collaborator Blockhead and a smattering of outside contributors, these were entirely self-produced. While they are certainly recognizable as works by the same artist who made Bazooka Tooth, the stylistic breaks from the Def Jux era to the Rhymesayers one are notable: Even when Aesop’s current mixes are busy, they are seldom cacophonous; even when the pronouns suggest his gaze has turned to the outside world, he is now writing more incisively about himself. By last year’s Spirit World Field Guide, Aesop was making his best—most provocative, most personal, most rhythmically daring—music since 2001, much of it about casing one’s own proverbial house under a proverbial neighbor’s indifferent nose. Garbology blows up that change in the liner notes but continues that creative evolution. Though the two have been working together since 1997, this is the first LP of Aesop’s that is entirely produced by Blockhead. It is also his most musically spare. A perfect case in point is lead single “Jazz Hands,” which is lush but initially minimal, making space for bemused riffs on seldom-seen relatives and his own hypertechnique (“I step into the room, split an arrow with an arrow/The first trick shot is just to show ’em that I dabble/...I will not be aiming for the apple”). When Aesop is done rapping, Blockhead’s drums finally, forcefully kick in for a 70-second coda. The song’s structure would be audacious in a vacuum; that it’s the second track on the album suggests supreme confidence in the record’s shape. This abundance of negative space makes room for the subtle vocal variations Aesop has been deepening since 2012’s Skelethon. His flows are increasingly complex, though he leads the listener through them with changes in tone and timbre. On one of the record’s best songs, “More Cycles,” Aesop spends a lot of time a hair behind the beat, irresistibly syncopated. (It also features some of his most imagistic writing: “I could hold a wheelie for a decade/Circle any borough like a bird around a headache/Mercury in retrograde, mercenary working through the Jengascape/Body and the spirit going separate ways.”) “Wolf Piss” could be read as a song-length demonstration of how his knotty, turn-of-the-century flows were refitted for commercial rappers in the 2010s; when, on “Fizz,” he stretches out the last syllable of “I can feel my life force leaving meeeeee,” you’re left to wonder if he’s borrowing from stylistic successors like Open Mike Eagle, or whether all these tics lead back to Aes. Despite its tight construction, Garbology is at its best when it succumbs to a certain irresolution. The closer, “Abandoned Malls,” is so grim as to be genuinely upsetting—Blockhead’s beat has some B-movie gloom, but its relentless forward pulse taps into something darker. Most telling is the conclusion of “All the Smartest People,” the short sketch that begins with the scene of Aesop and his neighbor outside the house. “I don’t use shortcuts/I don’t use pace cars/Cut through a graveyard, just to cut through another graveyard,” he raps, and then the song fades out, the deaths and monuments to them blurring into one another. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2021-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

2021-11-15T00:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

Rhymesayers

November 15, 2021

f943dd98-59c4-4df6-9d4b-21074d9ca62e

Paul A. Thompson

https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/

The California producer and New York rapper collaborate on a contemplative and captivating lo-fi rap record about moving through this life and into the next.

The California producer and New York rapper collaborate on a contemplative and captivating lo-fi rap record about moving through this life and into the next.

klwn cat / Sunmundi: Lived and Born

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/klwn-cat-sunmundi-lived-and-born/

Lived and Born

California producer klwn cat and New York rapper Sunmundi each inhabit the intersection where the experimental reflection of Ka and Navy Blue collide with the minimal charm of Roc Marciano and Preservation. cat cites Navy and J Dilla as influences on his style, but the beats he’s been making since 2022’s sphynx, vol. 1 have matured beyond homage, becoming liquid and enveloping. Meanwhile, Sunmundi’s flow, which started out with a strictly metered delivery, has slowly loosened to match his melancholic prose, earning shoutouts from billy woods. After a handful of collaborations, they both emerge with energy and talent to burn on Lived and Born, their first full-length together. Here, they produce and rap like they’re digging themselves out of shallow graves with their teeth. Lived and Born flirts with ideas of reincarnation and digs through Sunmundi’s past, present, and future to grasp at the tether between them. But even when the ruminations feel inescapable, he blazes through them with the precision—and triple the urgency—of Long Island rapper-producer Lungs. When, near the end of early standout “Capitulation,” he says “Happiness nowadays just don’t hit the same,” the thought is stacked with playground memories, the healing qualities of brown butter pierogies, and a bottomless appetite for each new chapter of life. “Late-stage capitulation is a motherfuckin’ sonuvabitch!” he says in one echoing gulp of breath, channeling the time-conscious frenzy of Back to the Future’s Doc Brown. klwn cat’s flutes and soft drum rolls trill in the background, giving Sunmundi’s words the weight of biblical edicts. That’s the core of the pair’s chemistry: cat’s mournful loops split the difference between the gothic horror of Ingmar Bergman and the smoky ambience of film noir, while Sunmundi’s bars scurry through them, frantic but determined. Over the rumbling bass and violins of “New Pavement,” he’s piecing together head-busting aphorisms (“The only way to make sense of this world was to fabricate it”) while struggling to find the strength to breathe. On the sparkling “Answering the Call,” he’s swinging his feet from the spaceship and taking comfort in how much he doesn’t know. Sunmundi’s level of certainty in the world and in himself shifts from song to song—on the bittersweet “Everything Is Everything,” he switches from hopeful to despondent on a dime—but cat’s soundscapes ground him in the present. As often as Lived and Born trudges knowingly through existential crisis, the songs retain a youthful fervency that keeps them out of shadow. Depression is never too far away, but cat and Sunmundi refuse to be defeatists. Closing tracks “I Lived” and “Harbingers” explicitly make this case, their gleaming instrumentals unfurling like sunrises as Sunmundi keeps pace. “Lick the wound if you bleeding, but don’t develop a taste for your own trauma,” he says on the latter. Many in the indie rap lane are sorting through trauma in search of a more edifying tomorrow; for cat and Sunmundi, reincarnation means sculpting new lives from the ashes of their old ones.

2024-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

2024-03-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

NoGodRecords / Sun Rise

March 7, 2024

f9603c6b-2425-4e22-ab6d-4c7fde822049

Dylan Green

https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/

The long-running Baltimore folk-rock band has never sounded so at ease, or so electrifying.

The long-running Baltimore folk-rock band has never sounded so at ease, or so electrifying.

Arbouretum: Let It All In

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/arbouretum-let-it-all-in/

Let It All In

Even when they were a young Baltimore band, Arbouretum felt proudly old. They emerged in the ’00s amidst a scene charged with youthful possibility —the electronic fantasias of Dan Deacon, the aptly named projections of Ecstatic Sunshine, the dream-pop diaries of Beach House. Arbouretum, meanwhile, mined Richard Thompson’s intricate British folk revivalism, Will Oldham’s stately country psychedelia, and the gnarled roots of both. The anachronism was alluring, a mysterious shade of gray lurking inside a kaleidoscopic city. In the years since, Arbouretum have methodically adjusted that formula, tweaking familiar elements like a baker adjusting the ratios of a sourdough starter. In the process, they have alternately seemed listless or impatient. Maybe they’ve finally found their perfect balance, because they have never sounded more settled—or more quietly electrifying—than they do on Let It All In, their seventh and most assured album. After nearly two decades, Arbouretum have grown into their age. Whether weaving intricate leads or exploding into Pentecostal solos, founder Dave Heumann has long been a rousing guitarist. But after 15 years, he helms a band that knows when to press him forward or let him roam. The gentle harmonies and surging chorus of “How Deep It Goes” lead to a bluesy and triumphant Heumann solo, while “Buffeted by Wind” channels the sublime warmth of the Byrds in their prime for a meditation about finding redemption in being deserted. As a songwriter, Heumann has sometimes been burdened by tradition, attempting to shoehorn his experiences into antiquated inspirations. But Let It All In feels lived-in and newly cut from his core. He finds meaning in the high peaks and deep ravines of the American West and forces himself to stay awake through the night just to remember we can be remade with the morning. His images are subtly evocative: “Shifting grids in dreamsight’s fracture-written key” he intones on “A Prism In Reverse,” while on “Headwaters II,” he howls “The river’s born high/Where the sky breaks to meet the divide.” The band, now in perfect lockstep, seems to understand him. They are as fragile as his gently crackling voice during the beautiful “Prism in Reverse,” as committed to overcoming doom as he is during “Headwaters II.” They crackle with the intensity of Television and the insistence of Endless Boogie throughout the title track, a 12-minute tirade about being overwhelmed by the world but trying to remain open to its wonder. For the second half, Heumann rabidly twists and turns through variations on a note or two, damning expectations of a guitar solo like Neil Young a half-century ago. The band cheers him on wordlessly. Arbouretum have never been concerned with being fashionable, but our times have changed to match their baseline anxiety. Heumann writes from the perspective of the perennially dispossessed, whether as the refugee of flooded coastal plains during the boogie-woogie thriller “High Water Song” or as ordinary folks seeking communion for the hypnotic “A Prism in Reverse.” Even when these songs are about fleeing some tough fix, Heumann documents the solidarity of our struggle for validation. “No Sanctuary Blues” captures the curse and hope many of us face daily—waking each morning to find a world so crowded with the noise of the news that madness seems a turn away. Heumann gets lost in his guitar, its notes like a tangle of briars, but reemerges to flee his “mounting sense of lack.” The band soon arrives to join him, repeating a simple little riff for two minutes like it’s a communal mantra. In that moment, everything else falls away. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

2020-03-26T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-03-26T01:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic / Rock

Thrill Jockey

March 26, 2020

f9606fa6-6abf-4712-867f-46c752a684fb

Grayson Haver Currin

https://pitchfork.com/staff/grayson-haver currin/

The Ohio party animals scale back the turnt-up thrash of their past in favor of nuanced black metal—without losing their feral edge—on their first full-length with vocalist Adam Clemans.

The Ohio party animals scale back the turnt-up thrash of their past in favor of nuanced black metal—without losing their feral edge—on their first full-length with vocalist Adam Clemans.

Skeletonwitch: Devouring Radiant Light

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/skeletonwitch-devouring-radiant-light/

Devouring Radiant Light

The past five years have seen major changes for the Ohio metal band Skeletonwitch. During the New England leg of their October 2014 tour, firebrand frontman Chance Garnette suddenly left the band. Several days later, Massachusetts authorities charged him with assault and battery of a family/household member. Reflecting on the situation months later, Garnette cited his drinking problem as the primary reason for his exit—a framing one of the band’s guitarists, Scott Hedrick, refuted in an interview, telling Vancouver Weekly, “A bunch of beers didn’t make this change happen.” In time, “this change” would entail not only a new frontman, but a sobering reorientation of Skeletonwitch’s entire sound. 2016’s inaugural release with vocalist Adam Clemans (also of the blackened-sludge outfit Wolvhammer, and a former member of the metalcore group Veil of Maya), an EP titled The Apothic Gloom, found the band members exercising extreme self-discipline, scaling back the turnt-up thrash of their past in favor of nuanced black metal. It was a smart pivot, for several reasons: It mitigated any tonal discrepancy between Clemans’ militant vocals and the giddy thrash of his predecessor; it provided Hedrick and his axeman-in-arms Nate Garnette with a platform for showing off top-notch fretwork that had long been overshadowed by their ex-vocalist’s Tasmanian-Devil charisma; and—most vitally—it allowed Skeletonwitch to venture outside their comfort zone while retaining the feral energy that propelled them to infamy. The band’s latest album, Devouring Radiant Light, doubles down on this stark approach, effectively recasting the Midwestern party animals as cold-hearted Vikings who deploy their instruments of war strategically as well as sadistically. Here, they strive for dynamic evolution and stylistic growth, as opposed to sinister, Dionysian excess. That the first minute of opening track “Fen of Shadows” comprises a unaccompanied, chiming guitar lead, rather than the chug-athons that kick-started past albums, is telling of the record as a whole. For the first time in their decade-plus career, nuance is just as important as nastiness, and it pays off in spades. Devouring Radiant Light doesn’t abandon Skeletonwitch’s uncouth thrash antics altogether, of course. The skittering riffs and cascading hooks that populate rippers like “When Paradise Fades” and “Carnarium Eternal” evoke the genre’s ’80s heyday, as do the haggard, Megadeth-esque verses driving “The Luminous Sky.” The distinguishing factor here is a matter of overarching construction. Whereas the band’s past full-lengths accented Big Four worship with black-metal flourishes (weeping riffs, tempestuous backbeats), Devouring Radiant Light inverts that ratio with an extended blast of subzero Nordic fury informed by, but by no means indebted to, thrash metal. Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record—and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre.

2018-07-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-07-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Metal

Prosthetic

July 20, 2018

f96473b6-0a7e-4d35-ad13-e836453f300e

Zoe Camp

https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/

Richard Melville Hall is back to doing what he does best: making soaring electronic music for billboard-sized emotions. Introspection? Not so much.

Richard Melville Hall is back to doing what he does best: making soaring electronic music for billboard-sized emotions. Introspection? Not so much.

Moby: All Visible Objects

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/moby-all-visible-objects/

All Visible Objects

All Visible Objects is the first we’ve heard from Moby since the publication of Then It Fell Apart, his second memoir, in 2019. An extension of his first, 2016’s Porcelain, which recounted his rise to fame in New York’s rave scene in the 1990s, Then It Fell Apart walks us through the debauched decade after Play, providing all the dirty details: mind-blowing amounts of vodka, ecstasy, and cocaine; threesomes, foursomes, and failed relationships; dinner with Bowie and beef with Eminem; penthouse palaces and suicidal ideation. Through flashbacks to his childhood, Moby also considers the roots of his malaise in his poverty-stricken upbringing as a compulsive masturbator and sanctimonious Christian prone to colossal panic attacks. In one chapter, Moby recounts dating a young Natalie Portman after meeting her backstage in 1999; then 33, he visited her at Harvard and stayed over in her dorm. Portman’s recollection, however, was of “a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school,” as she told Harper’s Bazaar last May. She wasn’t 20 at the time, as Moby had claimed, but had only just turned 18. At first, Moby doubled down, sharing what he called “photo evidence” of their “brief, innocent, and consensual romantic involvement.” A few days later he apologized, canceled his UK book tour, and announced, “I’m going to go away for a while.” That sentence, “I’m going to go away for a while,” should probably have finished with the words, “to think about what I’ve done.” Yet on All Visible Objects, rather than take the opportunity to reflect, Moby seems to elide his own existence, choosing instead to wrap himself in the flags of his chosen causes and habitual musical modes. Nine of the 11 tracks are variations on a theme of rave euphoria, including several anthemic techno cuts aimed squarely at the dancefloor, and the remaining two are slow-moving instrumentals. As with all his recent albums, Moby has said that the profits from All Visible Objects will go to 11 charities for animal and human rights, which is commendable. His sobriety, spirituality, and emotional stability may have wavered over the years, but he remains militant about animal rights—the phrase is now tattooed down his arms, with “VEGAN FOR LIFE” on his neck for good measure. But Moby the man is practically absent from this project. His voice, usually delivered as a barked monotone or barely-there whisper, appears on only two songs. One is “Forever,” a dreamy spin on laser-show EDM, where it’s processed beyond recognition, saying: “This is the way we’ll stay, forever.” The other is a mournful deep-house yarn called “One Last Time.” The lyrics are vague but plaintive: “This was how we have cried in the darkness/This is where you will save us all.” For a man who’s already pried open his broken spirit for public inspection, all this seems like a missed opportunity. Give us the gory details? Instead, Moby pushes his guest vocalists to the front. Dead Kennedys drummer DH Peligro takes the podium on “Power Is Taken,” a ’90s throwback modelled on the rave poetics of Faithless. “We who hate oppression must fight against the oppressors,” goes his generic command. “Power is not shared, power is taken.” In contrast, hearing Linton Kwesi Johnson on “Refuge” is a literary jolt—and, given LKJ’s stature and gravitas, quite the coup for Moby, even with his back catalogue of celebrity collaborators. The Jamaican dub poet’s single sentence, repeated over stabbing techno, isn’t a call to arms but a tight knot to unravel: “To us who were of necessary birth, for the earth’s hard and thankless toil, silence has no meaning.” L.A. singer Apollo Jane and Moby’s live collaborator Mindy Jones take the rest, including a windswept cover of Roxy Music’s “My Only Love,” which swaps the original’s fleeting grooves for a heavy drenching of pads, strings, and piano. Does he lay it on thick? Absolutely. But it’s too late to begrudge Moby for doing what he does best: soaring electronic music for billboard-sized emotions. The longest track of all is “Too Much Change,” a highly strung epic which winds between jazzy ambient and dusty tribal house for almost 10 minutes. These songs tend towards fuzzy sentiments—the words “love,” “life,” “light,” and “feel” are staples. Many of the musical ideas—tinkling pianos, plasticky strings and emotion-squeezing chord progression—have been part of Moby’s toolkit since the word “Go.” These are his trademarks, and he’s entitled to them. There are none of the misfires that tainted his mid-’10s records, like the syrupy collaborations on 2013’s Innocents. He’s on home turf. The problem is that All Visible Objects sounds like just another Moby album, as if nothing of interest has happened recently, as if his music has nothing really to do with Moby the man—the awkward, panic-stricken, validation-seeking, binge-drinking superstar DJ we now know almost everything about. He’s published 900 pages about his struggles and ostensible redemption, and the punchiest lyric on his new album is about “oppressors”? You’ve got 99 problems, Moby—but as a rich, white home-flipping L.A. restaurant owner, “the Man” ain’t one. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

2020-05-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-05-21T01:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Mute

May 21, 2020

f965ab3c-b8c2-4165-9ab0-2af50f273bc7

Chal Ravens

https://pitchfork.com/staff/chal-ravens/

The 21-year-old Harlem rapper's new mixtape is an often thrilling document of a phenomenally gifted performer in a state of flux: between rapper and singer, between dance and hip-hop, between building on last winter's raunchily transcendent single "212" and trying out new approaches.

The 21-year-old Harlem rapper's new mixtape is an often thrilling document of a phenomenally gifted performer in a state of flux: between rapper and singer, between dance and hip-hop, between building on last winter's raunchily transcendent single "212" and trying out new approaches.

Azealia Banks: Fantasea

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16950-azealia-banks-fantasea/

Fantasea

Here's a partial list of what Azealia Banks has been up to since the digital release of her debut 1991 EP less than two months ago: She said in a Tumblr post she would be quitting "the 'rap game'... or whatever the fuck that means." She split with her manager, who also represents Lady Gaga. She pushed back the release date of her mixtape, Fantasea-- previously titled Fantastic-- by a week. She performed live at what she billed as a Mermaid Ball, first in New York, and then in Los Angeles, being joined for the latter by Charli XCX, Rye Rye, and unannounced guest Robyn. A New York tabloid even published gossip about her love life. The 21-year-old Harlem native's use of mermaid imagery for this release is a revealing choice, and not just for its connection to the self-consciously ridiculous #seapunk subculture (which, hilariously, disavows mermaids anyway). Like Ariel with her thingamabobs, Banks is caught between worlds, a figure in transition. Her 19-track, 52-minute mixtape is an often thrilling document of a phenomenally gifted performer in a state of flux: between rapper and singer, between dance and hip-hop, between consolidating the gains built on last winter's raunchily transcendent single "212" and trying out new approaches. If, as she put it, Fantasea is a "test run," then Banks passes with aquamarine colors. Speaking of blue streaks, she's on one. The past several weeks also saw Banks rapping foul-mouthed circles around Missy Elliott on a remix of M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls". It's the nearest she's come to the conventional hip-hop path of showing up on a better-known rapper's track, although she has appeared on music by non-rappers Major Lazer, Scissor Sisters, and, inevitably, Lana Del Rey. And whether or not Banks wants to be known as an MC, many of Fantasea's best moments showcase her slang-wise verbal dexterity. "Jumanji", produced by TNGHT's Hudson Mohawke and fellow UK producer Nick Hook, is the closest thing to another "212", with rapidfire verses and an instantly quotable "real bitch, all day/ Uptown, Broadway" hook over what sounds like elephants escaping from an urban zoo. Diplo's marching "Fuck Up the Fun" lets Banks swerve between casual, non-rapped chatter and ratatat shit talk. In fact, Banks' sharp ear for Caribbean-inflected, rave-reminiscent electronic backing tracks is another major factor in Fantasea's considerable appeal. From the opening rework of Prodigy's jungle-crazed, Max Romeo-sampling 1992 single "Out of Space", the mood evokes nothing so much as Zomby's modernization of vintage electronic dance music on 2008's Where Were U in '92?. An early peak is the chipmunk-pitched house diva cries and disembodied Michael J. Fox anti-drug PSA of the title track, where Banks shifts between virtuosic fast rap and a flirtatiously sung refrain over Machinedrum's neon-blippy "Fantastix". Just as Banks has taken a non-traditional hip-hop path, she's avoiding lazy Calvin Harris-David Guetta club-pop trendfucking, too. Of course, vintage house also has loads of connotations when it comes to sexual politics. For all the bravery of Frank Ocean's unforgettable story of his unrequited love for a man, it's worth remembering that Banks-- like her fellow LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts alumna Nicki Minaj-- previously went on the record as bixexual. Fantasea is notably fluid in its highly explicit sexual voraciousness; guys get a taste of that, erm, cake on other TNGHT half Lunice's cloud-rap snake charmer "Runnin'", while on O/W/W/W/L/S' cash-register-accented production "Us", Banks chuckles: "I know niggas who probably dicked a nigga." Less successful is Banks' on-the-nose vogue-rap over Zebra Katz' minimal "Ima Read", previously cattily perfected by Njena Reddd Foxxx. "Fierce", the mixtape's most overt gay-culture ode, endearingly samples a former drag queen and suggests that financial success is better than acclaim. All that said, Fantasea is weakest when it comes to its aquatic theme. The mermaid references on "Aquababe" feel forced, despite riding a Machinedrum remix of Portland producer EProm's "Regis Chillbin" that brings to mind an air raid at a cantina for singing humpback whales. The guest rappers, too-- Yonkers hardass Styles P on acid-squiggling earworm "Nathan", London grime vet Shystie over an otherworldly Ikonika track on "Neptune"-- lend credibility, but can't quite enter Banks' self-contained world; her lack of non-producer collaborators more generally appears to be a wise choice. The brassily sung come-ons of "Chips" are forgettable, a rarity for Banks. And her pre-"212" no-holds-barred rhymes on "L8R" lack a bit of the artist's later fire, though they do offer a provocative reminder that her talk of bisexuality isn't just for interviews. That last song, "L8R", ends with in-studio banter about slang-term du jour "ratchet," a phrase that for many people might be destined for association with Banks-- once she decides who and what she wants to be. With her debut album, tentatively titled Broke With Expensive Taste, still slated for this fall, that moment of truth is coming soon. Maybe "Bambi", a trance-inducing track overseen by Adele producer Paul Epworth that premiered early this year at a fashion show in Paris, will finally get an official release on the LP. In the meantime, the best and penultimate cut on Fantasea, "Esta Noche", points in a promising new direction: conversational, cheater-luring pickup lines over a warmly inviting sample from Montell Jordan's 1999 R&B hit "Get It on Tonite", interjected with screeching nu-rave paroxysms courtesy of Dutch producer Munchi. The comparisons to Minaj, whose own recent singles tend to break out in strobe-lit beach-rave sections, might persist. But that wouldn't be such a bad thing. "Head of the class/ But I got principles, too," Banks purrs. The biggest surprise from the rapper who made "cunt" safe for the New York Times' Style section might be if she discovers a square, sensitive side. Still, I wouldn't bet on it. "I've been out for three years," she told the paper in February, reassuring those who fear her rise to fame has been too fast. "I've been around." Or whatever the fuck that means. This much has been officially confirmed by scientists since Banks' previous EP: Mermaids don't exist. The seapunks were right.

2012-07-23T02:00:01.000-04:00

2012-07-23T02:00:01.000-04:00

Rap

self-released

July 23, 2012

f96e5fbb-a72c-480a-80d4-6b82e38d44b3

Marc Hogan

https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-hogan/

Ben Watt's third solo album finds the Everything But the Girl co-founder continuing to explore his reignited love for live instrumentation.

Ben Watt's third solo album finds the Everything But the Girl co-founder continuing to explore his reignited love for live instrumentation.

Ben Watt: Fever Dream

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21742-fever-dream/

Fever Dream

It's easy to forget how crucial guitars were to the music of Everything But the Girl. They were not merely embellishment of production, but rather an anchor to the style that gave credence to both Tracey Thorn and her husband Ben Watt at the start of their respective careers. While she got her start in such post-punk outfits as Stern Bops and Marine Girls, it was her hushed 1982 solo debut, A Distant Shore, that helped the NME set recognize Thorn. Watt’s trajectory, meanwhile, saw him being taken under the wings of such prominent English rock icons as Kevin Coyne, who produced his first single "Cant" upon signing to Cherry Red in 1981, and Robert Wyatt, prominently featured on his 1982 debut EP Summer Into Winter, before forging his own unique fusion of British folk and bossa nova on 1983’s North Marine Drive. It was once thought that a full-on return to those organic roots was a bridge too far for Watt, who continued to travel further and further into London’s deep house and techno culture as the curator of both the influential late '90s/early '00s Sunday club Lazy Dog and the independent record label Buzzin’ Fly, which he launched in 2003 and ran until 2013. However, the Marylebone native surprised both fans and critics alike in 2014 with Hendra, a leftfield return to the intimate songcraft he explored on North Marine Drive 31 years prior as if the whole time burning up dancefloors in Miami, Berlin and Ibiza was all just something of a fever dream. And so goes the name of his third proper solo full-length, an album that continues to find Watt moving his DJ rig further into the storage unit of his creative mind in order to continue to explore his reignited love for live instrumentation. He recorded at the renowned RAK Studios in London, with the intention of melding the fineness of Pentangle to the fury of Crazy Horse. And in its way, Fever Dream picks up where Hendra left off, as songs like "Women’s Company" and "Never Goes Away" retain the delicacy of its predecessor's finest moments. But the cranked-amp grit of the record's more combustible cuts, like "Winter's Eve" and "Bricks and Wood," sets the scene. This is the very first time we are really hearing Ben Watt in full guitar rock mode. You can certainly hear the influence of solo David Gilmour, whose appearance on "The Levels" was one of the highlights of Hendra. Yet by largely keeping the electric currents of Fever Dream so well mannered, however, songs like "Gradually" and "Between Two Fires" fail to muster up much excitement. The strongest material, in fact, constitutes some of Ben Watt's finest work in years. The closest he does come to integrating his Buzzin' Fly past happens on "Running With the Front Runners", when that whistling Moog you might have heard on some of your favorite Everything But the Girl tunes turns up. Elsewhere, an appearance by MC Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger shines on the title cut. By the closing number, the pastoral "New Year of Grace", Watt lets his British folk roots show, with Marissa Nadler playing Jacqui McShee to his Bert Jansch. From his four decades in music to his valiant coping with the rare inflammatory disease Churg-Strauss Syndrome (chronicled in his excellent 1996 book Patient), Watt's career is a quietly inspiring survival story. At one point, it didn't look like Watt was going to live to see 50, considering that his illness has the potential to attack both the heart and lungs, let alone continue to release solo albums. So in that regard, Fever Dream is an absolute triumph. It would have been a lot more of an interesting listen, however, had he decided to really get his hands dirty in feedback and digital fuzz.

2016-04-14T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-04-14T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Caroline / Unmade Road

April 14, 2016

f9720f71-b491-47b7-b63a-169182f095ab

Ron Hart

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ron-hart/

On Do to the Beast, the Afghan Whigs’ first album in 16 years, Greg Dulli seems less interested in rehashing the raw rock-quartet attack the Whigs mastered in the 1990s than he is in building on it. Do to the Beast may not always sound like an Afghan Whigs album, but it operates like one, scavenging the darker corners of pop history to create something personal, vital, and urgent.

On Do to the Beast, the Afghan Whigs’ first album in 16 years, Greg Dulli seems less interested in rehashing the raw rock-quartet attack the Whigs mastered in the 1990s than he is in building on it. Do to the Beast may not always sound like an Afghan Whigs album, but it operates like one, scavenging the darker corners of pop history to create something personal, vital, and urgent.

The Afghan Whigs: Do to the Beast

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19214-the-afghan-whigs-do-to-the-beast/

Do to the Beast

The most satisfying moments on the Afghan Whigs’ first album in 16 years aren’t the soaring choruses, or the runaway guitar solos, or the thinly veiled R&B references—not even Van Hunt doing a truly killer Bobby Womack impersonation on “It Kills”. Rather, Do to the Beast is best right before all hell breaks loose. On “Royal Cream”, Greg Dulli and the band draw out the verse for an extra beat or two, ratcheting up the suspense before surging into the swaggering chorus. You brace yourself for the impact, as you would in a car crash. Occasionally, Dulli veers away from that brick wall at the last second; rather than burst into the expected minor-key chorus, “Lost in the Woods” upshifts into a major key, making the song sound like a pivotal and distinctive plot point in the album’s larger narrative of sinners redeemed, saints brought low, and Dulli just barely surviving. It's a sensation similar to watching a Hitchcock film, and perhaps Dulli picked up the trick as a film student at the University of Cincinnati in his pre-Afghan days. (When the band signed with Elektra in the early 1990s, the label agreed to fund his feature-length directorial debut, which he sadly never found the time to make.) He deployed the suspense-building technique during his tenure with that band, but didn’t really master it until well into the Twilight Singers’ catalog. That latter outfit never had a set lineup, so it could expand or contract in accordance with Dulli’s creative whims, often giving him a larger orchestral palette to work with. In that regard, it’s tempting to call Beast a Singers record rather than an Afghan joint: It’s carefully and richly arranged, less a rock album than a rock soundtrack. On Do to the Beast, Dulli seems less interested in rehashing the raw rock-quartet attack the Afghan Whigs mastered in the 90s than he is in building on it. The pummeling math-rock riff of “Matamoros” and the impossible breakneck pace of “The Lottery” recall the band in spirit if not precisely in sound, and opener “Parked Outside” may be the heaviest thing he’s ever committed to tape. These songs are orchestrated grandly to draw out the dark drama of Dulli’s lyrics, which continue to plumb the deteriorating effects of drugs, crime, and love, but overall there’s less groove than you might expect from an Afghan Whigs album. The shift in aesthetic is owed to the logistics of this reunion. In addition to Dulli, only one of the founding Whigs members, bassist John Curley, shows up. Guitarist Rick McCollum is MIA, and the Afghan Whigs never even had a semi-permanent drummer to reunite with, so there's fewer charter members playing on this album than there were on the two new songs from their 2007 retrospective, Unbreakable. Dulli and Curley filled out the roster with Joseph Arthur, Mark McGuire, and Johnny “Natural” Najera (Usher’s musical director), along with members of the Italian indie-rock group Afterhours, Queens of the Stone Age, Chavez, and others. In other words, no one involved this album seems terribly concerned with picking up where the Afghan Whigs left off more than a decade and a half ago, and nor should they be: the last thing we need from the Afghan Whigs is 90s nostalgia. Dulli has always been unapologetic about his influences, which have famously leaned toward classic R&B, soul, and funk. That made him something of an outsider in the 90s alt-rock scene—he was dismissed almost as passionately as he was embraced—but it also means that Afghan Whigs albums were motivated by personal vision rather than scene aesthetics and therefore have aged remarkably well. If 1965 drew from mid-to-late-60s soul and Black Love was about early-70s Blaxploitation soundtracks, then Beast might be set just a few years before, when the rhythm and blues industry was housed in a few independent labels on Broadway and acts like Solomon Burke, the Drifters, and the Shirelles sang out-in-the-street pop epics with ambitious arrangements and insoluble heartbreak. Dulli knows his history, so when he opens “Algiers” opens with a drumbeat practically quoted from the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”, he’s using that girl-group staple as a slight-of-hand trick: Instead of bursting into a towering wall of sound, the song settles into a bleak acoustic strum accentuated with castanets and handclaps. Rather than declaring love or promising commitment, “Algiers” evokes a bereft loneliness, his only company “the heavenly demons waiting outside my window.” Throughout the album, Dulli seems to be treating the band’s own career in the same way he treats an old R&B record: as raw material for his current obsessions. As he nears 50, he’s able not only to play up the rough grain in his voice as he grasps for high notes on “Lost in the Woods”, but also to take in the breadth of his career to date. If his catalog is a car, he’s stripping it of its parts and refashioning something newer, more streetworthy. So Do to the Beast may not always sound like an Afghan Whigs album, but it operates like one, scavenging the darker corners of pop history to create something personal, vital, and urgent.

2014-04-15T02:00:00.000-04:00

2014-04-15T02:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Sub Pop

April 15, 2014

f976f705-75e4-4d3c-8f8a-ea37519f53d9

Stephen M. Deusner

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-m. deusner/

Vermont trio builds on its blog buzz with an album of old-timey music highlighted by the group's lovely bell-toned voices.

Vermont trio builds on its blog buzz with an album of old-timey music highlighted by the group's lovely bell-toned voices.

Mountain Man: Made the Harbor

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14469-made-the-harbor/

Made the Harbor

Conversations that circulate around artists and albums and songs have always been a crucial part of the music experience. That said, the extent to which online chatter and claims-jumping have become more important than actually listening to the new album by, say, M.I.A. or Wavves, is kind of disheartening. So it's a relief to hear a record that's more fun to listen to than it could ever be to talk about. Mountain Man's got its small share of blog buzz, but Made the Harbor evokes, and even seems to encourage, private appreciation. I guess if you really wanted to incite a message board snipe-fest among authenticity hardliners, you could point out that the three women who record old-timey-souding folk as Mountain Man would never fool an actual mountain man. Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath met as students at Bennington, and there's a direct line to be drawn from their exquisitely arranged three-part harmonies to the a cappella group sounds that waft through Eastern seaboard college quads. Instead of Depression-era Americana, Fleet Foxes are Mountain Man's best RIYL, and they're sure to appeal to anyone who misses the Be Good Tanyas. The trio, however, appear to have a greater investment in mood and milieu than in crafting a traditionally structured album or even fully fleshed-out songs. Harbor is their second, but first widely available, release and it collects songs that loosely riff on Appalachian folk in ways similar to those of fellow Vermonter Sam Amidon. Nothing on Harbor is a reverent reading of an open-source song, but a track like "Sewee Sewee" sounds like it was unearthed in a Carolina Confederate graveyard. Elsewhere, Mountain Man refer to "the mighty Mississippi" and "fair young maidens" and ask a lover to "draw me still," a balmy archaism that would sound contrived in everyday conversation, but is pretty fantastic in context. Modern sensibilities aren't out of place, though. "Dog Song" is a provocative three-minute roll in the hay, and "Soft Skin" is frankly sensual both in words and come-hither inflection. But you don't love a record like this for its lyrics-- or for instrumentation that rarely gets more complicated than plucking out basic chords. It's Mountain Man's bell-toned voices volleying off the walls of an abandoned ice cream parlor where the album was recorded that sells it. If you find yourself indifferent to "Babylon", an electrifying a cappella arrangement of Psalm 137, you may want to check your pulse. Then there are the spaces and silences-- between tracks, verses, even notes-- that the trio occasionally fills with false starts, deep breaths, and laughter, but mostly let be. At its best, Harbor feels like a private performance of friends only out to please themselves. But if you promise to sit quietly and listen, you're more than welcome to stay.

2010-07-21T02:00:02.000-04:00

2010-07-21T02:00:02.000-04:00

Folk/Country

Bella Union / Partisan

July 21, 2010

f97cd95d-6495-4966-92cc-7282ff376456

Amy Granzin

https://pitchfork.com/staff/amy-granzin/

No stranger to singing other people’s songs, Chan Marshall attempts her most ambitious cover project yet: an album-length recreation of a Dylan concert that changed the course of rock history.

No stranger to singing other people’s songs, Chan Marshall attempts her most ambitious cover project yet: an album-length recreation of a Dylan concert that changed the course of rock history.

Cat Power: Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cat-power-cat-power-sings-dylan-the-1966-royal-albert-hall-concert/

Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert

On May 17, 1966, Bob Dylan gave a performance that would go down among the most significant of his career. In the four years since his debut album, he’d reached a level of reverence usually reserved for religious icons, with listeners approaching his folk songs as if they were commandments for navigating the turmoil of their era. But he was enamored with the possibilities of rock’n’roll, whose live-wire rhythms pulled his songs away from oratorical gravitas and toward a stranger sensibility—one full of surreal asides, inside jokes, and social critiques from an artist who had begun to see himself and his cohort as participants in the world’s hypocrisy, rather than innocent observers. On this night in May, the tension between Dylan’s inspiration and his audience’s expectations was particularly raw, with band and crowd egging each other toward a frenzy that culminated with the most famous heckle in rock history: “Judas!” Fans came to know the show by the name on a bootleg recording, which circulated widely and soon became another pillar of the Dylan legend: Royal Albert Hall. Except it didn’t happen at London’s Royal Albert Hall; it happened at Manchester Free Trade Hall, all the way on the other side of England, 200 miles northwest. The historical mix-up prompted by the mislabeled bootleg was only sorted out for good in 1995—the same year, incidentally, that Chan Marshall released her first album as Cat Power. Her latest, Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, is a song-by-song recreation of his set list that night. Marshall has a good bit in common with Dylan: an elliptical approach to subject matter, a sometimes fraught relationship with her audience, a willingness to follow her muse far afield from the sounds that made her famous, and tone and phrasing that can channel something deep about her sources when they’re divergent on the surface. Her decision to record her rendition not at the actual location of Dylan’s famous concert but at Royal Albert Hall itself reveals another kindred aspect between his trickster spirit and her own: the understanding that myth can be just as powerful—in its way, just as truthful—as fact. At first approach, Cat Power Sings Dylan is as straightforward as covers albums come. Marshall performed the music live, following every contour of Dylan’s set, down to his switch halfway through from solo acoustic performance to rollicking full-band rock. She didn’t tinker much with his arrangements: If a given song, in Dylan’s rendition, begins with an instrumental vamp or ends with a harmonica solo, it probably does in Marshall’s version as well. But after a while, the meticulous literalism of her interpretation comes to seem like its own conceptual gambit. When the similarities are so pronounced, the differences, when they inevitably occur, capture your attention. In the decades since 1966, Dylan’s performance has been enshrined as a pivotal moment not just in his own career but in pop music’s history, proving that rock stars were artists who could challenge their audiences, not just satisfy or entertain them—a single unruly evening standing in for a generational shift. Marshall’s treatment of the concept, from the title and location on down, comes across as both an earnest tribute to the “Royal Albert Hall” show and a probing investigation of its legend. The postmodern presentation of Sings Dylan does not interfere with the power of the music: Marshall, like her hero, understands that irony and sincerity can coexist without contradiction. The acoustic portion is often breathtaking, Marshall’s multivalent intimacy with her material restoring chestnuts like “Mr. Tambourine Man,” whose luster may have dimmed from overexposure. (That song, the last of the acoustic set, featuring ghostly keyboard accompaniment to Marshall’s lovely fingerpicking, is among the most pronounced in its difference from Dylan’s original.) In the small but significant departures of Marshall’s interpretations—differences of emphasis, timing, and occasionally melody—we hear the songs anew, through not just her voice but also her ears. In her take, a line from Dylan that always struck you as incidental may emerge as the most important part. The electric set is similarly gorgeous, though less revelatory. Historical context aside, the “Royal Albert Hall” tape is one of the most exciting live rock recordings ever made, in large part due to the ferocity of Dylan and his band in this latter portion of the show. Their locomotive energy, the story goes, was fueled by the audience’s escalating discontent, a dynamic embodied by Dylan’s audible instructions to the band to “play it fucking loud” as they roar into the show-closing “Like a Rolling Stone.” Perhaps because Marshall’s audience is receptive and reverent, her band doesn’t nearly approach the unhinged vehemence of Dylan’s, which is a shame. She knows a thing or two about bewildering a crowd; it would have been thrilling to hear her howl at those who were expecting a sober and respectable show. Rather than in volume and intensity, Sings Dylan finds subversion in its very form, as a covers album that celebrates and estranges its source material at once. Of course, someone shouts “Judas” near the end of the show, as if following the evening’s script; instead of Dylan’s famous “I don’t believe you,” Marshall retorts with “Jesus.” It’s the most uncanny moment on an uncanny album, made more so by the fact that the mock heckler pipes up a little earlier than he’s supposed to: before “Ballad of a Thin Man” instead of “Like a Rolling Stone,” which is fitting enough. The chorus of “Thin Man,” a sort of mission statement for Dylan at the time, might also describe the aptness of Marshall’s tribute, whose sly ambiguity is essential to the truths it conveys about both parties. Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.

2023-11-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

2023-11-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

Rock

Domino

November 16, 2023

f983cf94-8456-4d10-9b5c-365efac47ea6

Andy Cush

https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-cush/

Afraid of Heights is the proper full-length follow-up to Wavves' 2010 breakthrough King of the Beach*.* Working with producer John Hill, it's Nathan Williams' best-sounding album to date, with touches of strings and background vocals from Jenny Lewis.

Afraid of Heights is the proper full-length follow-up to Wavves' 2010 breakthrough King of the Beach*.* Working with producer John Hill, it's Nathan Williams' best-sounding album to date, with touches of strings and background vocals from Jenny Lewis.

Wavves: Afraid of Heights

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17786-wavves-afraid-of-heights/

Afraid of Heights

The chatter surrounding Nathan Williams' activities has occasionally overshadowed the music itself. It's been five years since Williams' self-titled debut long-player as Wavves, so it's a fine time to step back and re-direct the conversation. Wavves and 2009's triple-v'd follow-up featured monochromatic garage grinders buried under blown-out production-- not exactly the work you'd expect from someone who'd later write a Christmas song for Target with his girlfriend. It's possible that many present-day Wavves fans are unaware that those albums and his sound has changed accordingly. The beery, brawny King of the Beach from 2010 featured improved production and sharp, sticky hooks that were perfectly suited to soundtrack shows on MTV (which they eventually did.) Following some label drama that almost derailed that album's creation, Williams took the DIY approach by self-releasing 2011's guest-laden Life Sux EP; two years later, he and current musical co-conspirator Stephen Pope have returned with the proper follow-up to Beach, Afraid of Heights. The record is Williams' first for Warner Bros. and Sony-affiliated imprint Mom + Pop, but Williams self-financed the album's recording over the course of a year. It's a big-ticket record made with indie-minded ethos, and the album's tangle of contradictions befits a guy with such a history of contrarianism. King of the Beach had real-deal rock guy Dennis Herring (Elvis Costello, Modest Mouse) behind the boards; Afraid of Heights features John Hill, a producer with modern pop bonafides from Rihanna to M.I.A. You can hear his touch in the pretty-sounding keyboard-mellotron loop that's interrupted by a low, persistent inner-ear thud in the opening of the typically bratty "Sail to the Sun", and Afraid of Heights as a whole is truly a headphones album, a luxuriously produced record tempered with a few moments of noisy studio trickery (notably, the scuzzy rumble of "Mystic") for contrast. Five songs feature strings; one features slide guitar. As for the songwriting, Afraid of Heights finds Williams taking these new elements-- including guest vocalist Jenny Lewis' contributions, only barely heard on the album's melodically winding title track-- and rolling them up tightly in his familiar forward churn. K**ing of the Beach's self-loathing-as-swag anthem "Idiot"-- one of the most straightforwardly ear-catching songs on that album-- is a jumping-off point. This means that there's less of the formless, small-scale exercises that largely made up Beach's back half; some will miss the eccentricity, but Afraid of Heights' energizing consistency makes for a fair trade. Williams' lyrics are still dripping with self-loathing. Life Sux's "I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl" drew sneers based on the title alone, but the sentiment never seemed explicitly careerist; at some point, you'd have to assume that this guy would rather do anything else rather than continue to address his own personal insufficiencies. Here, "Dog" and "Beat Me Up" deal with subservience in relationships, while the sprightly "Lunge Forward" ends with a wish for the end of humanity. There's talk of graves, death, bruises, and the eventuality of being alone. The negativity is sometimes so pronounced it's almost funny: "Gimme a Knife" closes with, "I loved you, Jesus/ You raped the world/ I feel defeated/ Guess I'll go surf." The album's most enjoyably surprising moment arrives when he turns his attention outward. "Cop" is a love song, albeit a strange one: it's written from the perspective of the gay lover of protagonist John, who's just killed a policeman. "Sit back and relax, John, just go home and quickly wash your hair/ Lay back in my arms," Williams sweetly sings, backed by a distant acoustic shuffle reminiscent of Jay Reatard's cover of Chris Knox's "Turn Down the Shades". Some strings and stray whistling enter, and the song swells into a big, beatific wash of light before the hook comes in again. It is, without doubt, the most lovely and affecting piece of music Williams has written. Afraid of Heights is the first Wavves album longer than 40-minutes and sometimes it drags. Williams is an avowed Weezer disciple, and accordingly his more dirge-y creations have always reminded me of the sluggishness found on mid-period Weezer albums like Maladroit. Although he mostly does the the more low-key material right here, "Everything Is My Fault" is a real momentum-killer, especially when you realize there's still 10 minutes of album material to get through. Still, Afraid of Heights provides plenty of bummed-out pleasures and Williams' obvious talent is easy to take for granted. At "Lunge Forward"'s chaotic peak, he cries, "None of you will ever understand me" and that may be true, but his music continues to make perfect sense.

2013-03-26T02:00:00.000-04:00

2013-03-26T02:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Mom+Pop

March 26, 2013

f98b26cc-bbcf-484d-8bfe-7badf189b2d0

Larry Fitzmaurice

https://pitchfork.com/staff/larry-fitzmaurice/

CD/DVD captures Robert Forster and Grant McLennan on their recent Oceans Apart tour and features selections from throughout their nearly 30-year career.

CD/DVD captures Robert Forster and Grant McLennan on their recent Oceans Apart tour and features selections from throughout their nearly 30-year career.

The Go-Betweens: That Striped Sunlight Sound

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3480-that-striped-sunlight-sound/

That Striped Sunlight Sound

After nearly 30 years of creating intelligent pop, Go-Betweens co-leaders Robert Forster and Grant McLennan are alive and very much kicking-- obscene levels of long-cultivated cultdom still intact. "We're about the last band in the world that has not shot a DVD," Robert Forster announces between songs on DVD/CD combo That Striped Sunlight Sound, "So we're doing one tonight, right here"-- which he of course pronounces "hee-ya," in reference to the Tivoli Theatre in the band's hometown of Brisbane, Australia-- before diving appropriately into "Streets of Your Town." Reenacting here both the times they first immortalized looping entreaties to "shi-i-i-iine," and complaints that, "I still don't know what I'm here for," it's still clear what they're here for: 2005's Oceans Apart improved greatly on the Go-Betweens' previous comeback effort, and provides That Striped Sunlight Sound with its peppiest tracks: "Here Comes a City", "Boundary Rider", "Born to a Family", and "Finding You" are all extra-robust Red Bull anthems. But if pop's longtime sunshine-companionship is warranted, it makes tons of sense to call these vets the arbitrators of some striped sunlight sound. This live album comes like midday sun filtering through mini-blinds: barely-there slits, perfectly understated kind of cool (temperature-wise) sunny days alongside major chances of rain. And it comes with proof of what the Go-Betweens do best: the opposite of cloying-- perfectly aware, grown-up, and bittersweet. The low-key "Black Mule" and "Clouds" wouldn't otherwise resemble sold-out show material, but here-- spouted not from the mouths of babes but full-grown old dudes-- they're perfect, somehow. Sure we could gripe about the lack of favorites (where's "Dive for Your Memory"?), but let's be grateful for what this is: After a long dry spell, "Spring Rain" has been a long time coming: "Don't know where I'm going/ Don't know where it's blowing/ But I know it's finding you." "You" meaning us, of course. Hand-clapped, whistled interims are proof that no band is an island, and the Go-Betweens are no exception to the rule: On That Striped Sunlight Sound, fans and cheesy concert-cheers are as indispensable as the guitars themselves. While those who accuse the band of overcultishness might cite the record's idiosyncratic and nerdy overload-- the Go-Bees, after all, perform debut 1978 single "Karen", call "James Joyce" the "right choice," and namedrop great Russians in that dead-on line from Oceans Apart ("Why do people who read Dostoyevsky look like Dostoyevsky?")-- there's something bigger and farther-reaching than geek rock at work here. Here's what potential and happiness sounds like in the face of rain, and God knows what else.

2006-04-06T01:00:02.000-04:00

2006-04-06T01:00:02.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

Yep Roc

April 6, 2006

f995307a-c92e-4956-b278-a805e81baaf8

Pitchfork

What exactly was the Darkness? A 20th-anniversary reissue of their meteoric debut album reaffirms their pop-metal bona fides.

What exactly was the Darkness? A 20th-anniversary reissue of their meteoric debut album reaffirms their pop-metal bona fides.

The Darkness: Permission to Land… Again (20th Anniversary Edition)

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-darkness-permission-to-land-again-20th-anniversary-edition/

Permission to Land… Again (20th Anniversary Edition)

The Darkness pursued rock stardom in the same way that people nowadays strive to be pro running backs or music journalists: headlong, and without care for how the position is currently valued. As East Anglian teenagers in the early ’90s—with alt-rock and baggy Madchester in commercial ascendance—brothers Dan and Justin Hawkins were obsessed with the heavy acts of their childhoods. They pored over Brian May’s guitar tone, Aerosmith’s album sequencing (always close with a power ballad), and the proper design of catsuits. Dan cut his teeth playing outmoded styles like thrash metal and prog, moving from drums to bass when he joined Justin’s covers band. It was a part-time gig for Justin; in 1997 he had started a business composing soundalikes for commercials: tunes that would suggest their sources without being legally actionable. It was this work that bankrolled the recording of the Darkness’ 2003 debut, Permission to Land: a defiantly unfashionable set of glammy, cheeky hard rock that briefly made the band the toast of UK pop. At the turn of the 21st century, there was no shortage of acts mining musical comedy from the same rocks as the Darkness. In England, the band was preceded by the self-mythologizing Wildhearts, who mixed an omnivorous ‘60s pop sensibility with buzzsaw rock‘n’roll. Scandinavia boasted punked-up glam from the likes of the Hives, Backyard Babies, and Turbonegro. America had Satanicide (a scraggly-wigged, live hair-metal act for NY hipsters), Tenacious D (the absurdist pomp-rock duo of Kyle Gass and Jack Black), and Steel Panther (an international festival draw that rendered the cock-rock deathstyle with grim fidelity). But the Darkness were distinguished by their ambition. In sound and bearing, they presented as chart royalty; they were committed to the bit on a cellular level. They took rock-as-form very seriously, which freed them to be frivolous everywhere else. Roughly timed to the 20th anniversary of the album’s US release, Permission to Land… Again doesn’t complicate the legacy of the Darkness. Instead, it honors it by providing more: more twin-guitar flash, more careening falsetto, more high-concept rockers. From the beginning, The Darkness walked a tightrope between the dual skyscrapers of Queen and AC/DC. At one end, haughty yet humane grandeur; at the other, snarling, cranked-up minimalism. Difficult enough work, but the real highwire act were the faces the band pulled along the line. The Darkness never fully embraced the comedy-rock label; being wiseasses just came naturally. Like a Kerrang!-approved Sparks, they spliced surging glam rock and power ballads with lyrics about jerking off and the existential unfairness of contracting an STI. Even if the texts weren’t especially clever, their deployment often was. And when the Darkness did play it straight, the result could be incandescent. The deathless single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”—which debuted at No. 2 in the UK—pairs a crunchy AOR riff with a half-yodeled chorus straight out of “Focus.” There are two couplets masquerading as verses; everything’s a race to the giddy nonsense of the refrain. When the trash can ending hits, it’s as if the song is taking its own bow. The nostalgic late-Kinks power-pop of “Friday Night” was an academic exercise—“Lyrically, I realized people liked songs with lists in,” Justin Hawkins recalled in 2013—contrasting the titular dance night with a list of extracurriculars (“I got ping-pong on Wednesday/Needlework on Thursday”) that would exhaust Max Fischer. The final result is touching rather than rote, even when, right before the solo, Hawkins purrs like a tiger. Then as now, one’s enjoyment of the Darkness hinges on their lead singer. If Freddie Mercury’s voice was a Ferrari 250 GTO (exquisitely rare, with remarkable handling and impeccable style) then Hawkins’ was a Dodge Viper: brutishly powerful but prone to spinning right off the track. Hawkins had always fancied himself a classic-rock vocalist in the Steven Tyler mode; it was only after recording wrapped for Permission to Land that he realized he was, in fact, channeling Kate Bush. At the angrier edge of the Darkness’s sound, the seams would show. In a vacuum, Hawkins repeatedly hollering “get your hands off of my woman, motherfucker” is funny. In practice, he sounds like an exotic bird screeching at rivals. Still, that instinct toward bad taste was just one more way in which the Darkness were heirs to hard-rock tradition. That instinct crops up frequently within Permission to Land… Again’s collection of B-sides and non-album tracks. Sometimes the result is merely goofy. The backseat-sex celebration of “Makin Out” doubles as an AC/DC tribute, right down to the introductory legato. The anti-cyber screed “Physical Sex” was dated the minute they laid it down: “'Cause a fuck should be multisensory/And you just can’t smell an email.” Sometimes, as on “How Dare You Call This Love?”—a swaying Thin Lizzy-style ballad about anticipating the age of consent—it’s rancid. Other cuts find the band nudging into new territories: “Curse of the Tollund Man” is a proggish alternate history with a spaghetti-western intro and the brothers’ uncanniest imitation of Brian May’s Red Special. The synth-spangled “Planning Permission” draws on Justin’s brief career in construction to craft a sort of subcontractor’s love song: “Fittings to choose, color charts to peruse/I've got a trowel and I ain't afraid to use it.” The box also includes three live sets from 2003 and 2004, the first two of which—a slot at Knebworth Festival in support of Robbie Williams and a triumphant London homecoming at The Astoria—are included on DVD. More than anything, they reveal just how on the Darkness were. Their eagerness to entertain was only exceeded by their confidence. The banter is minimal; the showcase is the tunes. By the time of the 2004 Wembley set, the band had even more of them. They close with “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End),” their entry in the 2003 UK Christmas No. 1 sweepstakes. It was a shameless power ballad that crammed Slade, Queen and a children’s choir into the same stocking; it was kept from the top spot by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World.” The Darkness never told a funnier joke. The Wembley concert also features several cuts from the Darkness’ in-process second LP, released in 2005. The circumstances of One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back were so fraught as to border on parodic. Bassist Frankie Poullain quit the band in the early stages of recording, only to be replaced by Richie Edwards, the Darkness’ guitar tech. The sessions were overseen by the legendary producer Roy Thomas Baker (Queen, The Cars, Journey), who indulged the band’s every whim: hundreds of guitar overdubs for Dan, a pan flute custom-made (and recorded!) in Peru for Justin. The album spawned two No. 8 hits but didn’t match Permission’s sales; within a year, Justin would leave the Darkness to enter rehab, resulting in Atlantic dropping the band, which split up soon afterward. The original Darkness lineup reunited in 2011, immediately scoring a gig opening for Lady Gaga, who was going through a bit of a hard-rock phase herself. Though the endlessly quotable Poullain remains, the workmanlike (and decidedly non-glam) drummer Ed Graham left in 2014. In yet another testament to the Darkness’ successful insinuation into rock history, their current drummer is Rufus Tiger Taylor, son of Queen’s Roger Taylor. The Darkness had emulated their heroes in all ways except one: the slow build to success. Permission to Land arrived as a fully formulated antidote to nu-rock stodge, making the quartet the biggest act out of Lowestoft since Benjamin Britten. The band’s image was irresistible but neatly pegged, and though their ensuing career has been a catsuited compendium of all things heavy, pop culture only has so much room on the rack.

2023-10-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

2023-10-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

Metal / Rock

Rhino

October 10, 2023

f9967316-cec3-4d0f-943b-1bd2b0452892

Brad Shoup

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brad-shoup/

Brace the Wave, Lou Barlow's first new collection of songs since Sebadoh's comeback 2013 LP Defend Yourself, is music for late-night self-reflection, if not quite self-loathing. While the elephant in the room throughout Defend Yourself was the dissolution of Barlow's marriage, Brace the Wave is somehow even more personal, delving into the minutiae of his collapse.

Brace the Wave, Lou Barlow's first new collection of songs since Sebadoh's comeback 2013 LP Defend Yourself, is music for late-night self-reflection, if not quite self-loathing. While the elephant in the room throughout Defend Yourself was the dissolution of Barlow's marriage, Brace the Wave is somehow even more personal, delving into the minutiae of his collapse.

Lou Barlow: Brace the Wave

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20946-brace-the-wave/

Brace the Wave

Thurston Moore once told me in a magazine interview while discussing the pivotal figures of '90s indie rock that "Lou Barlow essentially invented lo-fi." His comment might not be literally true (Guided by Voices, Daniel Johnston, and countless others toyed with a similar level of fidelity), but there was something about the way Barlow made hiss and mistakes synonymous with his personality that made him special. It was part and parcel with the beautiful-loser tag he cultivated throughout his solo work. He wasn't espousing any discernible ideology, except maybe an inclination to find beauty in rough edges, and if to not self-consciously fuck up his work, at very least to accentuate its ugliness at moments. Barlow's work, in other words, has rarely been feel-good, and Brace the Wave, his first new collection of songs since Sebadoh's comeback 2013 LP Defend Yourself, is no exception. This is music for late-night self-reflection, if not quite the self-loathing of the younger Barlow. While the elephant in the room throughout Defend Yourself was the dissolution of Barlow's marriage, Brace the Wave is somehow even more personal, delving into the minutiae of his collapse. On the opener "Redeemed", Barlow reveals to a newfound love, "I need a place to hide/ Somewhere I can bring my thoughts to you/ And be redeemed." The track builds slowly, hitting its emotional peak as he laments, "Memories are made of razor blades", and the gentle acoustic strum turns brittle and forceful. Redemption is a recurring theme throughout Brace the Wave, as Barlow's loves, past and present, collide in dreamlike succession. There is almost a sense that Barlow is watching his life flash before his  eyes: The twitchy "Nerve" pines for idyllic times as Barlow mischievously recounts, "I remember we were hipsters sleeping with our cats/ Young and thin and fucking crazy/ Fine 'til something cracked." On the stomp and stammer of "Boundaries", he disarmingly concedes, "You made yourself available/ I crawled into your arms." One of the first songs Barlow ever released, on Sebadoh's Weed Forestin', was "Ride the Darker Wave". On the track, rife with wanton aggression, Barlow implores flippantly, "Hello tomorrow today/ Ride the darker wave." Contrast this with "Wave", the semi-titular track of Brace the Wave, which reads like an ambivalent breakup note, as Barlow enumerates his own defects ("When I'm not home for ages/ I look for ways to fade") while abjectly entreating "I leave you alone but don't go", before accepting the inevitable ("I don't heed the warning signs/ It's our time"). It's a devastating recognition of a relationship long past its expiration date, and like the rest of Brace the Wave, echoes the complexity of ending an adult relationship with dignified resignation. Barlow isn't the yearning aesthete any longer, and he doesn't act like one. But what's most remarkable about this album is, despite the high gravitas of the subject manner, it still manages to capture the yearning and imagination of youth, and never loses touch with the redemptive qualities of interpersonal connectedness. Life and relationships rarely offer easy answers, and Brace the Wave doesn't either.

2015-09-08T02:00:01.000-04:00

2015-09-08T02:00:01.000-04:00

Rock

Joyful Noise

September 8, 2015

f997f303-3cf8-4ea2-b5ee-9c79f8dd5e85

John Everhart

https://pitchfork.com/staff/john-everhart/

The latest from the Manchester cult favorites lacks the overwhelming chaos of their best music, but it’s their most thoughtful work yet.

The latest from the Manchester cult favorites lacks the overwhelming chaos of their best music, but it’s their most thoughtful work yet.

Everything Everything: Re-Animator

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/everything-everything-re-animator/

Re-Animator

As their peers in Foals and alt-J found international success, Manchester eccentrics Everything Everything kept refining and distilling their paranoid, hyperactive pop. Lead singer Jonathan Higgs became a British Cassandra, observing rising anti-immigrant sentiments and worldwide tension on Get to Heaven well before the Brexit referendum and the 2016 American election. The band became a cult favorite instead of a crossover success story, disguising anthems about ISIS recruitment and suicide bombers in glossy pop production. On Re-Animator, Higgs has found inspiration in the idea of the bicameral mind, an esoteric (give or take a mention on Westworld) psychological theory positning that before the emergence of consciousness, humans interpreted their own thoughts as auditory hallucinations. If this wasn’t a band who made a soaring anthem out of the line “It’s alright to feel like a fat child in a pushchair...old enough to fire a gun,” this would be too heady, and as is, it’s out-there, even for this band. As if to mitigate the dense subject matter, they knocked the record out in two weeks with John Congleton, focusing on simplicity. As a result, Re-Animator lacks the overwhelming chaos of their best music, but it’s their most thoughtful work yet. As a consequence of the quick recording, they’ve never sounded less like their name. There are fewer genres hopped than usual—there’s some dub on “Lost Powers,” some decadent No Shape vibes on “In Birdsong,” but the turn towards conventional indie rock is a canny move for a band heading into their second decade. The surprise is the lack of surprise, the focus on craft and mood over stimulating detail. There are no vocal chops like early single “Kemosabe,” no freeform tangents like those on A Fever Dream’s centerpiece “Put Me Together.” There are occasional quirks, like when Higgs amusingly alludes to Jay-Z’s infamous “Monster” verse on “It Was a Monstering,” but even that’s tacked on to an otherwise straightforward Radiohead homage. This sparseness leads to some uncharacteristically weak studio recordings: “Planets” features all the components of captivating prog-pop, but the insistence on space flattens the song, and a groove change winds up anticlimactic instead of invigorating. The motorik beat of “Violent Sun” veers too close to alternative radio stalwarts like Blue October and the Killers for comfort, and there’s something intrinsically underwhelming about the way the pre-chorus and the chorus hinge on the same chord, like magnets repelling one another. Higgs nearly makes up for the album’s deficiencies with his lyrics, which are more direct than ever. “Sun” is an urgent “last chance before the night ends”-type song, and their most romantic ever. It’s thrilling to hear Higgs apply his odd-but-visceral writing style to a love song: “You can barely make a silhouette out/And you open your ventriloquist mouth/And the words are wrong but in the right order.” The bicameral-mind concept pops up in several songs, most notably in “The Actor,” where Higgs’ narrator comes to terms with the other voice in their head (“if we look the same/then I don’t mind”). There’s the typical fascination with the grotesque—“Arch Enemy” follows a protagonist associating the other voice in their head with a sentient fatberg, the latter hilariously depicted in the song’s music video. When it stumbles, like the flimsy verses of “Black Hyena,” it’s less a matter of underwriting than a stylistic risk that doesn’t always pay off. The album hits hardest when Higgs’ lyrics collide with the band’s penchant for bombast. “Big Climb” is a furious screed against a world failing to properly deal with its crises until the inhabitants are “dancing on the ocean floor.” It features some of Higgs’ best imagery—the “curved glass in a desert full of sun,” the “gas crawling like the ghost of the sea.” All this is set to outright stadium rock, a genre so fitting to Everything Everything’s extroversion that it’s a wonder they don’t go for broke like that more often. “Big Climb” is so exciting that it’s a shame most of the album is so reserved. Re-Animator still holds its own against their other music; at their most traditional, they remain smart songwriters, and even their weaker lyrical moments are more thought-provoking than their peers. They’re likely not going back to the doomsaying of Man Alive any time soon—Higgs acknowledges he’s “too old to be crying out” on “Violent Sun.” But even at this slower pace, in this quieter register, one of the world’s most restless bands finds more uncharted territory. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-09-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-09-10T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Infinity Industries

September 11, 2020

f99d48d6-1d7b-400b-820b-6f09dbc4bb24

Hannah Jocelyn

https://pitchfork.com/staff/hannah-jocelyn/

J Spaceman’s latest opus is gloriously satisfying and self-referential, refining his orchestral space rock with alchemical power.

J Spaceman’s latest opus is gloriously satisfying and self-referential, refining his orchestral space rock with alchemical power.

Spiritualized: Everything Was Beautiful

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/spiritualized-everything-was-beautiful/

Everything Was Beautiful

Through sheer force of habit, sailing un-buffeted and serene through the winds of musical fashion, Spiritualized have reached their fourth decade as a paragon of musical constancy. Everything Was Beautiful, their ninth studio album, calls back to many of the band’s habitual influences: The Stooges, gospel, blues, free jazz, the Rolling Stones, et al., which the band finesses into a hypnotic mixture, capable of both savage intensity and benzodiazepine drift. More than anything, though, Everything Was Beautiful refers back to the band’s own gilded history—which would be a problem if they didn’t do it so shamelessly well. While recording Everything Was Beautiful, Jason Pierce, once again operating under the J Spaceman moniker he has used periodically since his Spacemen 3 days, called on lessons learned when mixing Spiritualized’s classic third album, 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, notably the power of carefully constructed layers. The two albums share a spellbinding mixture of astral ambience, artfully tailored musical density, and occasionally sharpened live fury, as well as an emotional depth not always evident in the band’s more glazed-out moments. The similarities only creep onward: Like Ladies and Gentlemen, Everything Was Beautiful comes packaged as a medical accessory, the deluxe vinyl edition including gold foil inner sleeve and pop-out medicine boxes. There are plenty of musical and lyrical allusions as well, from the Quindar tones on “Always Together With You” to the choir on “I’m Coming Home Again.” Even the former track, the album’s lead single, speaks to Pierce’s retrospective bent: It was originally released in lo-fi quality on The Space Project, a 2014 compilation based around recordings from Voyagers I and II. And yet, Spiritualized have refined their orchestral space rock into an alchemical power that goes beyond concerns about novelty. Relatively minor tracks like “The A Song (Laid in Your Arms)” or “Crazy” become heroically satisfying when bathed in the band’s familiar soup. Fuzzed-up guitars crash into towering string sections with the power of vengeful meteorites; rolling drum beats and tumbling bass move with the irresistible momentum of freight trains; thick brass arrangements coat the music in fat bluesy lines; choirs gild the vocal melodies with cosmic sheen; and you’re never far from a vertiginous climax. Stronger songs become transcendent. “Let It Bleed (For Iggy)” has the kind of chorus that seems to have arrived carved in stone and handed down from the ages, its devotional howl the perfect cathartic payoff to the verse’s creeping melancholy. “The Mainline Song” captures the narcotic rush of adventure in a handful of well-chosen vocal lines that call back to the propulsive, Krautrock-in-space roll of classic Spacemen 3 songs like “Big City.” Elsewhere, “Best Thing You Never Had (The D Song)” glides with the yearning inevitability of the best blues melodies, its chugging guitar more akin to the Rolling Stones’ 1964 cover of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” than anything released in the last 30 years. At their best, there is a power and immediacy to these songs that lifts them beyond 2018’s compact and casual And Nothing Hurt, the simple melodies connecting like the call of a beating human heart. It helps that the sound is big but not bloated: Pierce plays 16 different instruments and employs more than 30 musicians and singers (including his daughter Poppy and longtime collaborator John Coxon), but individual sounds are well balanced in a mix where detail is not sacrificed to depth, the ligneous clatter of castanets still audible among the heavyweight sounds of brass and guitars. Audiophiles and headphone listeners will find much to enjoy; but there is an energy that belies the album’s long mixing process, suggesting these songs will be huge when taken live. You could take issue with Spiritualized for sticking so closely to the blueprint they inaugurated more than 30 years ago. But the band always felt built for repetition and refinement, a cosmic home for Jason Pierce to grow comfortably old, away from an ever-changing musical world. And if Everything Was Beautiful calls back to Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, it does so in a way that suggests that the fires are still burning, only slightly dimmed by the passing of time. Everything Was Beautiful is like meeting an old friend and finding new shared memories, the nostalgia not yet worn thin. It’s another glorious argument in favor of getting high on your own supply.

2022-04-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

2022-04-22T00:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Fat Possum

April 22, 2022

f9a9a5de-c41a-4f86-a423-71b21ef669a9

Ben Cardew

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/

Why The Mountains Are Black is Third Man’s two-disc collection compiling over 50 years of "primeval Greek village music." Remastered from Grammy-award-winning producer Christopher King's expansive archive of 78rpm recordings, every square inch of these songs brims with primal indignance, a sense that when times are tough, you break out the booze, sing louder, and dance more fervently.

Why The Mountains Are Black is Third Man’s two-disc collection compiling over 50 years of "primeval Greek village music." Remastered from Grammy-award-winning producer Christopher King's expansive archive of 78rpm recordings, every square inch of these songs brims with primal indignance, a sense that when times are tough, you break out the booze, sing louder, and dance more fervently.

Various Artists: Why the Mountains Are Black: Primeval Greek Village Music

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21413-why-the-mountains-are-black-primeval-greek-village-music/

Why the Mountains Are Black: Primeval Greek Village Music

When most Westerners think of Greek music, they probably picture the rickety, bouzouki-driven dance music showcased in films like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (arguably the most enduring portrayal of today's Greeks in mainstream media), or perhaps, the cheesy balladry of singers like Demis Roussos, the one-time progressive musician-turned-superstar who went on to sell over 60 million albums in the '70s and '80s. The predominant sound is cheerful, celebratory, welcoming, sincere, just like the Greek people: Throughout the nation’s history, woe—the invasions of Persians, Turks, and Nazis, starvation and famine, sickness or death—results in revelry. When times are tough, Greeks break out the booze, sing louder, and dance more fervently. And it shows in the music. Unlike the rest of contiguous Eurasia, Greece’s unique geography has enabled it to remain impervious to Western influences: the northern border is shaped by treacherous mountain ranges, while the south and east is dominated by hundreds of rocky, isolated islands. These barriers have also enabled each individual village to retain its unique cultural identity in relation to the broader canon of demotika, or Greek folk music. Such is the focus of Why the Mountains Are Black, Third Man’s two-disc collection compiling over 50 years of "primeval Greek village music": Remastered from Grammy-award-winning producer Christopher King's expansive archive of 78rpm recordings, this compilation traces the lineage of demotika through the mountains and across the sea. The 28 tracks King’s assembled for Why the Mountains Are Black sound nothing like the chirpy, cheery music of those Athenos feta commercials—in fact, it sounds downright inhospitable at times, closer to free jazz or even drone music. The instantly-recognizable bouzouki is largely absent, as is any distinguishable melodic patterns, with fiddles, lutes, and thunderous drums kicking up a maelstrom in its stead. The pipiza (a blaring, needle-sharp wind instrument) takes on a role akin to a jazz saxophone, screeching stream-of-consciousness phrases above the din like a furious harpy. And yet—these are celebratory songs with clear form and purpose, defined dances that continue to be performed to this day, if not on a national scale then a local one. The steady 4/4 beat of contemporary dance music, after all, is a Western creation. Greek musical tradition is instead rooted in time signatures (7/8, 5/8, and so forth) that date back to the Byzantine era—so, while songs like "Enas Aetos - Tsamiko (An Eagle ? Dance)" and "Syrtos Haniotikos (Syrtos Dance from Hania)" are likely to make a non-Greek throw up their hands in confusion, anyone who’s ever attended a Greek dance will recognize the constancy latent in these eccentric tempos. Speaking with the LA Times, King argued that suffering—rather than celebration, or simple expressions of hometown pride—provides the spark in these maddened, frantic songs. "The function of music among the countryside-dwelling Greeks was both to ameliorate an often short, hard and somewhat isolated life," he noted, "but also to protect against….'Dangerous Hour': the times of crisis, danger, uncertainty, pain, longing and death that faced rural Greeks for millennia." From the shoddy recording quality of this collections’ tunes (made all the more abrasive by King’s remastering) to the aforementioned howls of fiddles and pipizas gasping into the din, every square inch of these songs brims with primal indignance, no matter how formally sequestered they may seem. Every "Opa"—a globally-recognized expression of joy and excitement—doesn’t just feel like an order to pick up the pace, but an affirmation of life in spite of all that these musicians had to endure. It is this spirit—and King’s awareness of it—that enables this initially baffling collection to transcend its esotericism and connect with a global audience, perhaps even with those who’ve never had a sip of ouzo in their life. After all, from the mountains of Greece to the hills of Appalachia, to dance in spite of certain doom is to be human.

2016-02-10T01:00:04.000-05:00

2016-02-10T01:00:04.000-05:00

Third Man

February 10, 2016

f9ab0705-38c5-47e8-8839-0135d112293a

Zoe Camp

https://pitchfork.com/staff/zoe-camp/

I hate talking about press kits, but I'm gonna drop the rule this time\n\ around. Press kits, for ...

I hate talking about press kits, but I'm gonna drop the rule this time\n\ around. Press kits, for ...

Built to Spill: Keep it Like a Secret

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1014-keep-it-like-a-secret/

Keep it Like a Secret

I hate talking about press kits, but I'm gonna drop the rule this time around. Press kits, for the uninitiated, are like a sales pitch. You get a letter from some yahoo behind a desk who has this neat band they want you to check out. To get you to do that, they also include various write-ups and reviews for a previous work or, in the case of a new band, loads of "Next Big Thing" accolades. Usually, a press kit is a dozen pages or less. The Built to Spill press kit, on the other hand, may be the next great American novel. First, a three page letter from the publicist. Secondly, an 8x10 publicity shot featuring Doug Martsch flanked by bandmates and sitting on a radiator playing a guitar. (I'm sure he plays on the radiator all the time, or so the world of publicity shots would have me believe.) Then, twenty-eight pages consisting mostly of unanimous rave reviews for their last album, the fucking awesome Perfect From Now On. Finally, a four page article from the new issue of Spin regarding the new release... which is somewhere in the envelope. I had to turn the kit upside down and start shaking until a white cardboard promotional CD case came a-tumbling out. I put the disc in the player and began to leaf through the kit. Sure, I was just looking for my name somewhere in the clippings, and I suppose it would have helped to have previously written about them before. But that's fine because I can sit there and mock my fellow writers by playing the "Sounds Like..." drinking game or trying to find the biggest cliché of them all. The winner was a tie between Mr. Showbiz's Grant Alden, who referred to Perfect as "...less ebullient than its predecessor, and has a wry durability about itself, yielding polished gems..." and the usual hands- down winner, Will Hermes of the Village Voice, who actually managed to string together the words, "As far as rock goes, the stay- at- home types seem peculiarly American these days, a gesture from a post- grunge culture weary and dubious of being the biggest, loudest, and most important, just as current Britpop might be read, in part, as postcolonialist white British weary of apologizing for its history and looking to feel good about itself again" and call it a coherent sentence. The one thread that held every single review and article together was how different Perfect was from the band's previous release, 1993's There's Nothing Wrong With Love. Love was built on short, sharp, and snappy pop songs, but Perfect was-- as everybody went on to note-- "epic." Indeed, the 1996 release had few tunes under six minutes and wove dense guitars, emotional debris, and schizophrenic song structures into something gorgeous and fascinating. As avid readers of music publications will note as the reviews trickle in, Keep It Like a Secret will be heralded for retreating back to the pop songs of Love while keeping a foot inside Perfect's scrimmage line of dexterity and guitar heroism. (My friends, I think when the next album's press kit arrives, I'm going to win my own petty game with that last sentence.) It also recalls last year's fine Halo Benders release, The Rebels Not In, the album Martsch recorded with Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and former Spinanes and current Built to Spill drummer Scott Plouf. And that's not a bad thing at all. Seriously, Keep It Like a Secret has already been spun at Club Jason five times within the past 24 hours. That's not a frequent occurrence-- not unless it really, and truly is, love. Doug Martsch just knows how to tickle me in all of the happy places, and he accomplishes that on the merits of the opening number alone. "The Plan" is a brisk, weaving anthem complete with a solo that would make Thurston Moore green with envy. "Center of the Universe," the second cut and first single, conjures up some XTC and a little bit of Barnacle Pete's finer sea shanties. And what have we here? It's the downright pretty "Carry the Zero," which merges Cocteau Twins- esque guitars and melody with equal sigh and much more articulate lyrics, none of which I'm going to quote to you. "Sidewalk" is classic indie rock in sound, classic rock in execution-- something I've been waiting a long time to hear. Speaking of classic rock, "You Were Right" is a tongue- in- check number about spitting back classic rock lyrics ("You were right when you said all we are is dust in the wind/ You were right when you said that we're all just bricks in the wall"), although why he's doing it is a mystery. But it's a fun mystery. You know, like "Mystery" on PBS, only without that meddling Alistair Cooke. Believe me, if there's one man who can spoil a rock and roll party, it's that evil tool of the Mobil Corporation. Luckily, he's passed on, leaving Diana Rigg to run the show, and she's no match for Martsch. Keep It Like a Secret? No, at the risk of hopping on a cliché wagon, I think I'm gonna tell all my friends about Built to Spill. Try and stop me, Diana.

1999-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00

1999-02-23T01:00:02.000-05:00

Rock

Warner Bros.

February 23, 1999

f9b42026-e984-4e44-b0a8-afe9e595ffb9

Jason Josephes

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jason-josephes/

The post-punk band’s new seven-song collection owes a conspicuous debt to New Order, and while the presentation begs to be called “spooky,” they’re having fun with it.

The post-punk band’s new seven-song collection owes a conspicuous debt to New Order, and while the presentation begs to be called “spooky,” they’re having fun with it.

Cold Cave: Fate in Seven Lessons

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cold-cave-fate-in-seven-lessons/

Fate in Seven Lessons

In 2013, Cold Cave’s Wes Eisold had just released a single called “People Are Poison.” He was detoxing from the bad vibes that surrounded 2011’s Cherish the Light Years, the band’s final release for Matador, and recovering from professional backlash after booking controversial noise artist Boyd Rice as a tour opener. But his own vision of his band’s frosty darkwave sound was more positive, and in the years since, Eisold has tried to bring the two into alignment. Cold Cave downsized, releasing singles at a slow, steady drip on their own Heartworm Press. After years of chaotic personnel shifts, Eisold shares songwriting duties with his wife, Amy Lee; their son Rainer adds childish vocal color and harmonica. Guitarist Anthony Anzaldo is a founding member of Ceremony, a band that traced a similar path from hardcore to gloomy post-punk. At seven songs and 32 minutes, Cold Cave’s new compilation Fate in Seven Lessons is not quite an album, yet too substantial to qualify as an EP. Each of its seven tracks present an easily identifiable theme (“the New Order one,” “the Depeche Mode one”) to lure the casual observer, promising thrills for all ages and minimal risk. On 2014’s Full Cold Moon compilation, Cold Cave erred towards minimalist and morose, an understandable reaction to Cherish the Light Years’ brickwalled bluster. Fate in Seven Lessons walks a middle path, genuflecting towards goth-pop royalty, establishing a liaison between Cruel World headliners and newer bands who now consider Cold Cave elder statesmen. Resolutely mid-fi production continues to subdue Eisold’s vocals, blunting the rock-star charisma that separated Cold Cave from their peers, but it no longer feels like penance for having aspired to actual rock stardom. Fate in Seven Lessons recalls Cold Cave’s penchant for wearing all black leather at scorching summer festival dates: the presentation begs to be called “spooky,” but they’re having fun with it. Their idea of post-punk is more New Order than Joy Division, and the gnarly, sawtooth basslines of “Prayer From Nowhere” signal trashy fun rather than menace. The most memorable lyrics play on Eisold’s vampiric image; “I thought substance abuse could be cute/But now I dream of silence and gardens” is wordplay more fitting for a guy wearing an argyle sweater. Though Fate in Seven Lessons earns its claim to “return to form,” it awkwardly finds itself competing with the very record that broke that form. Later this year, Cold Cave will play tenth anniversary shows for Cherish the Light Years, a collection of roaring, jet-black jock jams that did not make Eisold famous but put him through all of the Behind the Music drama anyway. No other band from this realm has aspired to make an album with its maniacal, moonshot ambition. The aim of Fate in Seven Lessons is more obvious: Modern English’s lawyers might be interested in the chorus of “Love Is All,” while “Happy Birthday Dark Star” takes significant liberties with the Cure’s “How Beautiful You Are.” “Psalm 23” unlocks memories of “The Hearts Filthy Lesson,” or just the general sound of David Bowie and Depeche Mode adjusting to industrial and big-tent electronica. “Night Light” begins in a fog of sustained synths before the sequenced beat drops. There’s probably a half-dozen New Order songs that pulled the same trick, but why deny the most euphoric song Cold Cave have ever written? Their diehard fans know all these references and the band is done trying to court anyone else. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2021-06-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

2021-06-29T00:00:00.000-04:00

Rock / Electronic

Heartworm Press

June 29, 2021

f9bfaf58-ae46-4e66-99ed-c40994628962

Ian Cohen

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/

An in-studio set featuring nine songs plucked from LCD's entire career, London Sessions captures one of the greatest live bands out there in top form.

An in-studio set featuring nine songs plucked from LCD's entire career, London Sessions captures one of the greatest live bands out there in top form.

LCD Soundsystem: London Sessions

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14864-london-sessions/

London Sessions

For a group whose albums often seem like work of one studio-perfectionist mastermind, LCD Soundsystem have turned out to be one of the greatest live bands of the last decade. In fact, they do just about everything a great live band-- especially a great live dance band-- should do. Known to stretch their songs out to "special disco version" lengths, they're able to bring audiences from simmering anticipation to hands-up screaming release in the span of a song, and then do it again. And then again. Like Remain in Light-era Talking Heads, the closest comparison to LCD at their current "locked-in but loose" onstage peak, they could release a live album that might offer equal thrills to their studio discs. But London Sessions is not LCD's The Name of This Band is Talking Heads, and at least one reason why not is because live in-studio sessions like this one tend to capture artists in a slightly different mode than during a full-on concert, where a band can feed off the energy of thousands of sweat-soaked fans. The band mentions iconic BBC radio host John Peel's legendary program when talking about the album for a reason: Like those old Peel sessions, this set finds the band offering tighter, cleaner, more focused versions of their live staples, running through all nine songs with an electrifying, stripped-down effortlessness. Here, James Murphy proves that even without the thick, enveloping sound his production chops lent This Is Happening, he can match his heroes' delivery: His rare ability to snap from mordant humor to affecting pathos comes through loud and clear with back-to-back takes on "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" and "All My Friends". But as great of a frontman as he is, LCD's shit-hot rhythm section, anchored by drummer Pat Mahoney and ex-!!! member Tyler Pope, nearly steals the spotlight. Their interplay is as mesmerizing to listen to here (especially those perfectly timed keyboard jolts that spike the intensity of "Get Innocuous" just a little higher each time) as it is to watch in person. And for a kinda-sorta disco band, they tear the roof off in a live-and-loud way. The sense of possible frenzy that lurks behind the slightly-too-hot "metronomic" groove of "Us V Them" builds to an edge-of-control climax that's even more thrilling than if the band had actually spun into a freakout. Of course, since these tracks aren't exactly radical live reconstructions, there aren't a ton of surprises on London Sessions. But it's still a wonder to hear a band this committed, this on its game, without the studio tweaks. Plus, you've got to consider what a debased format LCD is working with here. The number of actually transcendent live records-- whether recorded at a radio station or in an arena-- is almost laughably small considering how many exist. This one's a gift, the second LCD's given us this year.

2010-11-15T01:00:00.000-05:00

2010-11-15T01:00:00.000-05:00

Electronic / Rock

EMI / DFA

November 15, 2010

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Jess Harvell

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jess-harvell/

The Queens legend tests out an unwieldy rap-rock hybrid with a few promising moments that will test even his most devoted followers.

The Queens legend tests out an unwieldy rap-rock hybrid with a few promising moments that will test even his most devoted followers.

Pharoahe Monch / Th1rt3eN: A Magnificent Day for an Exorcism

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pharoahe-monch-th1rt3en-a-magnificent-day-for-an-exorcism/

A Magnificent Day for an Exorcism

Since emerging from South Jamaica, Queens as one-half of Organized Konfusion in the late 1980s, Troy Jamerson has hewed closely to a recipe of complex rhyme patterns, intelligent social observation, and near-total lack of commercial compromise. For his tenacity, he’s been rewarded with a dedicated fanbase and the tag “underrated,” which sticks to him like spray paint to a wall. His audience will always be extremely loyal, so Monch’s first album in seven years—and first real crack at rebuking recent American nightmares—is a tantalizing prospect. What he delivers is a strange and in many ways confusing project that will test the limits of even his most devoted followers. On paper, a Pharoahe Monch rap-rock hybrid album isn’t a totally outlandish prospect—his music has sometimes bared a hardcore edge. Previous project P.T.S.D. (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) was a concept record about mental health that deployed heavy guitar lines to help depict the disintegration of the cerebrum. A Magnificent Day For an Exorcism eschews beats for a live band set up, as Monch teams up with drummer and Jack White collaborator Daru Jones and guitarist Marcus Machado to form the band Th1rt3en. The musicians thrash out blood-raw rock instrumentals for Monch—taking up the role of frontman—to rap, sing, and croon over. Promotional material connected to the record even shows the 48-year-old with an overgrown beard, kitted out in leather jacket and bandana. It’s all a bit “Kids, your father is in the basement, jamming with his friends.” The Th1rt3en sound lands somewhere between Sabbath-esque metal, Onyx’s hard-moshing hardcore hip-hop, and Kid Rock. Machado’s guitar is turned way up in the mix and Jones’ drum thwacks land forcibly. But the predictable riffs and cheesy solos make for stodgy rap instrumentals. When Monch tries a rapid-fire flow over Machado’s fret-wrangling and Jones’ drum solos on “The Magician,” the whole thing collapses into a mess. Then Monch starts shouting “voodoo” and “magic,” as if to invite the spirit of Jimi Hendrix to come through and help out. Take “Fight,” featuring Cypress Hill, a takedown of police brutality on Black Americans, with B-Real describing a cop removing his body cam before aiming a gun at the rapper’s head. The righteous anger is sapped away by the repetitive and clichéd guitar riff lurching underneath. On top of unfurnished instrumentals there is unfocused songwriting. Opener and single “Cult 45” promises an admonishment of Donald Trump’s presidency that strangely dropped just days before the inauguration of Joe Biden. The cult of MAGA remains, of course, and ripe for probing, yet Monch’s shots are disappointingly shallow. “Nauseating, I'm angry, Bill Bixby/Exorcist, make the president's head 360,” is a fun piece of wordplay but hardly thought-provoking. “Racist” does feature one of the album’s most interesting loose bars as Monch takes a rare stance for a rapper and criticizes US drone warfare, something that predates Trump: “Send the drone strike to a school, call it political/Use Obamacare to get my brain operated on.” Sections of the song see Monch inhabit the persona of an American racist by parroting offensive language without taking the opportunity to go any deeper, and referencing Trump’s Muslim ban, revoked by Biden two days before the album’s release. The saving grace is Monch’s performance. His flow, naturally funky and with a light lisp reminiscent of Kool G Rap, still embodies classic New York street-rap cool. The brain-bending flows of “Triskaidekaphobia” spark thoughts of Aesop Rock and confirm that even at this stage of his career, Monch absolutely loves rapping. At times he proves an adept rock vocalist too, and there are some interesting experiments on the record’s final third—the made-in-the-garage soul of “Amnesia”; the Japanese arcade sounds of closer “Kill Kill Kill”—hinting at promising future directions for Th1rt3en. The most impressive song, though, is “Oxygen.” Monch croons an ode to perhaps god or maybe the air we breathe (or both), sounding like a holy man as he yells, “I need you in my life like oxygen/Holy water come and wash away the sins.” There is no direct reference to the death of George Floyd, but with the words “I can’t breathe” rippling through the social consciousness, Monch’s inclusion of these words in the chorus feels timely and pointed. Here, the band sounds tight and well-drilled, helping Monch navigate the corridors of his brain. Magnificent Day may be rough going at times, but he has chemistry with this group, and in the best moments, you can hear why Monch wants us to follow him down this particular path. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter [here](https://pitchfork.com/newsletter/10-to-hear).

2021-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00

2021-01-28T01:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

Fat Beats

January 28, 2021

f9c05098-c573-4beb-b85e-e4b94552e155

Dean Van Nguyen

https://pitchfork.com/staff/dean-van nguyen/

On the sequel to 2017’s FEELS, the Iranian Swedish singer’s dramatic take on soul finally bears fruit.

On the sequel to 2017’s FEELS, the Iranian Swedish singer’s dramatic take on soul finally bears fruit.

Snoh Aalegra: -Ugh, those feels again

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/snoh-aalegra-ugh-those-feels-again/

-Ugh, Those Feels Again

For LA-based singer Snoh Aalegra, feelings hit like tear gas, seeping into the skin and scrambling the senses. Whether in the throes of love or heartbreak, the romance she sings of is forever smoldering, a breath away from flaring into full-blown passion or asphyxiating into ash. Snoh has been workshopping this dramatic take on soul for half a decade, and on her second album, the process finally bears fruit. Signed to No I.D.’s ARTium Recordings alongside Vince Staples and Jhené Aiko, Snoh is a bit of a polyglot, straddling R&B, soul, and rap. She has described her music as “cinematic soul,” and the label is florid but not inaccurate. -Ugh, those feels again is a sequel to her 2017 album, FEELS, and shares that record’s emphasis on mood. In the vein of her idols Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, Snoh prefers lush, grandiose arrangements. That grandeur often served as a crutch on FEELS and the EPs that preceded it, puffing up vanilla writing and competent but anonymous singing, but on Ugh, indulgence becomes integral to the storytelling, swelling and subsiding in cadence with Snoh’s impassioned vocals. Snoh wrote Ugh after returning to dating following the end of a long-term relationship she’s characterized as “depressing” and “exhausting,” and that freshness of perspective resonates throughout. She sounds excited to be back in the mix, complications and all. “I Want You Around” pairs the zero-gravity nausea of a fast-evolving fling with the thrill of defining its pace. “I don’t wanna kiss you, yet/I just wanna feel you,” Snoh sings, dousing the flames without extinguishing them. “Situationship” swings between frustration and insouciance, questioning an undefined relationship with a whimsical, almost anthropological curiosity. “So many times you and I made love in my mind,” Snoh sings, thinking out loud yet going with the flow. There’s a clear sense of wonder beneath the “ugh”; for Snoh, a vexing romance is at least a new experience. The record’s sequence allows the highs of life on the rebound (side A) to give way to loneliness and reflection on past love (side B). The pivot makes sense thematically, but stylistically it’s regressive. The front half is full of strobing midtempo compositions that push Snoh to perform intuitively, switching between compact rap-inflected flows, glossy melodies, and sultry ad-libs. As she trades moans with the electric guitar on “Toronto,” leads a choir on “Find Someone Like You,” and bounces with the bass line on “Whoa,” she feels loose and personable. The tracks on side B often push her into a corner, forcing old habits. The Portishead-indebted flip of “Danube Incident” on “Peace” is lazy and dry. No I.D. and Steve Wyreman’s psyched-out swirls of synths on “Charleville 9200, Pt. II” are beautiful, but Snoh’s writing can’t match the lavishness. Though her smoky, melancholic voice has plenty of heft, when she sings, “Paris doesn’t feel the same,” and “LA doesn’t feel the same,” it feels like she’s drafting humblebrags for Insta rather than mourning lost love. Wintry, ethereal production by Toronto’s Maneesh on “Be Careful” fits better, but Snoh’s pen again falls short. “These are bad times,” she reads from a church marquee. The album’s nucleus is a three-song run in which Snoh addresses her recent ex directly, moving from abandonment (“You”) to bitterness (“Njoy”) to intolerance (“Nothing to Me”). The strength of the sequence is Snoh’s candor, which she applies to herself as well as her ex as their love definitively becomes past tense. “He wants to hold me/I’m alone,” she sings bittersweetly on “Nothing to Me.” That sense of quiet resolution is what makes Ugh such a leap for her. The feels remain noxious and suffocating, but as she embraces the delirium, the “ughs” slowly turn into insights.

2019-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

2019-09-06T01:00:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

Artium / AWAL

September 6, 2019

f9c3b5dc-9097-4e87-9524-a7b307297c67

Stephen Kearse

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/

Inspired by rom-coms and Kimya Dawson, Gen Z songwriter Bea Kristi uses the slanted melodies and flannel-loving aesthetics of ’90s alternative rock in service of massive pop hooks.

Inspired by rom-coms and Kimya Dawson, Gen Z songwriter Bea Kristi uses the slanted melodies and flannel-loving aesthetics of ’90s alternative rock in service of massive pop hooks.

Beabadoobee: Fake It Flowers

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/beabadoobee-fake-it-flowers/

Fake It Flowers

Bea Kristi writes songs for the movies of her dreams. Though her music gained traction on the comparatively small screens of TikTok and YouTube, the 20-year-old guitarist and singer fantasizes through a cinematic lens: Tom Hanks is her hero; the Juno soundtrack introduced her to the folksy side of indie rock. The Hollywood sensibility carries through to her music, which she releases as beabadoobee, a moniker invented as an Instagram handle. And rather than discuss musical or lyrical themes, she describes her work in visual terms: The songs on her full-length debut, Fake It Flowers, have self-described “end of ’90s movie vibes” and remind her of a “2000s chick flick.” In case her floral motifs and rose-hued music videos don’t state it plainly enough, Kristi steps in to shade the finer details of her Nora Ephron-esque vision: “The girl finally gets with the boy at the end.” As a troublemaking teenager in London, Kristi found solace in a guitar her father gave her, teaching herself to play from YouTube videos and channeling rom-com inspirations and her parents’ love for ’90s alt-rock into grainy recordings. The first song she wrote, “Coffee,” was loosely based off the first song she learned on guitar, Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me.” In a fittingly cinematic escalation, “Coffee” found minor success on YouTube before the Canadian rapper Powfu interpolated it into a lo-fi hip-hop track. His remix exploded on TikTok, eventually landing Kristi’s gentle strumming in a Dunkin’ commercial. With just two chords and a shoddy amateur recording, Beabadoobee had begun soundtracking the lives of her peers. Her viral success attracted the attention of Dirty Hit, the British power-pop label behind the 1975 and Wolf Alice. With their backing, Kristi released 2018’s Patched Up and 2019’s Loveworm and Space Cadet EPs, each straying further from the sheepish melancholy of bedroom pop. By the latter, she had perfected a combination of grunge’s quiet-loud dynamics and the faux disaffection of pop-punk. Like a well-curated For You page or the soundtrack to a Fox Searchlight film, Kristi’s music is adorned in pop culture references: “I wish I was Stephen Malkmus,” she cried out on her eponymous 2019 single. Fake It Flowers builds on the ambitions of those releases, pairing her knack for knock-out choruses with violins, handclaps, and Slumberland-worthy reverb. But rather than attempting mimicry, Kristi cherry-picks the most potent elements of her broader ’90s palette for maximum impact. For young millennials and Gen X spawn who, like her, grew up on an eclectic diet of Avril Lavigne and the Cranberries, the melodies are immediately comforting. With the aid of producer Pete Robertson (formerly of British punk revivalists the Vaccines), the album is relentless in its pursuit of a massive hook. “Worth It” refashions the lush strings of Britpop into a climactic motif that builds with each arena-sized refrain; “Charlie Brown” pairs subdued verses with simple, shout-along chorus, practically built for Kristi’s imaginary big screen getaway-car syncs. And where “Coffee” and other early singles relied on predictable chord progressions, Kristi reaches for open tunings and sly tempo changes on “Dye It Red” and “Care,” achieving an intuitive approach to pop that still scans as left-of-center. But like a good soundtrack in a CW drama, her music still operates best in the background. Despite her love for ’90s alt-rock poets, a closer listen reveals her writing to be disappointingly prosaic. Her lyrics seem designed for shape, rather than color, rising to the level of math class margin notes and locker graffiti: “Kiss my ass/You don’t know jack,” she sings on “Dye It Red,” with almost comically sentimental delivery. The album is broadly about the trials and tribulations of young love, specifically with boyfriend Soren Harrison, but it rarely escapes the most straightforward expression of those thoughts—“It’s hard cause it sucks,” she moans on “Further Away”; “I think I want to marry him,” she sings blissfully on “Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene.” “Horen Sarrison” (get it?) leans more heavily on figures of speech, offering a glimpse of poetic potential in the doe-eyed metaphors of its verses: “You are the smell of pavement after the rain/You are the last empty seat on a train,” Kristi sings, a welcome moment of intimacy in a record made up of tossed-off generalizations. In the editing room, it would be easy to cut to her outsized choruses, but in real time, her greenness is harder to ignore. Fake It Flowers is an album of vibes: It uses the slanted melodies and flannel-loving aesthetics of alternative rock in service of pop hooks that are almost impressively simplistic and repetitive. The hope, as Kristi tells it, is that you sing these songs into your mirror, blast them in your car, and scribble them into a diary post-breakup. Too often, she jumps to John Hughes-ian climaxes without laying the foundation that would grant them the proper emotional heft. But Kristi shines as a guitarist and a composer; even the sternest skeptics might be forced to headbang once the power chords crash in on a particularly distorted chorus. Beabadoobee needs to punch up her script, but the set is perfectly lit. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

Dirty Hit

October 20, 2020

f9ccd67d-55c8-4474-a53c-85d6b20e9109

Arielle Gordon

https://pitchfork.com/staff/arielle-gordon/

The Norwegian vocalist’s new covers album offers spare, chilly takes on songs from post-punk Manchester, 1970s New York, and Elizabethan England.

The Norwegian vocalist’s new covers album offers spare, chilly takes on songs from post-punk Manchester, 1970s New York, and Elizabethan England.

Susanna: Go Dig My Grave

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/susanna-go-dig-my-grave/

Go Dig My Grave

If one were to put together a list of songs that most discerning music lovers would never want to hear covered again, Leonard Cohen’s endlessly battered “Hallelujah” and Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” would surely contend for the top spots. It is almost impressive, then, that in 2006 Norwegian vocalist Susanna Wallumrød had a crack at both on Melody Mountain, her second album with keyboard player Morten Qvenild as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. Unfortunately, her versions of both songs slowed down the originals to a pained crawl, leaving them devoid of any spark. Wallumrød’s moves since then have resembled an act of penance for that questionable early-career choice. Her 2013 album The Forester was an elegant collection of original songs recorded with strings, woodwind, and theorbo (a lute-like Baroque instrument), while 2016’s Triangle was an extended meditation on mortality, perhaps more impressive than enjoyable. Go Dig My Grave, Wallumrød’s sixth solo album as Susanna, sits somewhere in between those two poles. Over the album’s 10 tracks, Wallumrød covers both traditional folk songs and more contemporary numbers from Lou Reed and Joy Division, along with one original based on a Baudelaire poem, with accompaniment from the hushed tones of harp player Giovanna Pessi, Ida Løvli Hidle on accordion, and fiddle player Tuva Livsdatter Syvertsen. It’s an eclectic lineup, although Wallumrød’s unwavering approach to her source material means that the differences between post-punk Manchester, 1970s New York, and Elizabethan England are rendered largely moot. Taken individually, her bare renditions of “Cold Song,” “The Willow Song,” and “Lilac Wine” are beguiling. But the sparse instrumentation puts too much responsibility on Wallumrød’s vocals, whose crystal-clear tone, evoking icy rivers and Nico’s doomed romanticism, feels one-dimensional over the course of an album. It is telling that the one song where she sings with a smidgen more warmth and energy, a gently rolling cover of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train,” proves to be one of the most engaging. Dig deeper, and flashes of brilliance emerge from the album’s hushed instrumental bed. “Rye Whiskey” introduces a menacing accordion drone that briefly overwhelms the song midway through, sending it into a darker and more interesting place. During Joy Division’s “Wilderness,” Hidle adds a piercing accordion note that sounds almost like guitar feedback, the song ending in a crunching acoustic mess that resembles the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin.” “Wilderness” then segues into “The Three Ravens,” an English folk ballad first published in 1611, with that discordant coda still echoing in the mix, drawing an intriguing parallel between two songs separated by more than three centuries of history. Inspired moments like these, when Wallumrød emerges from the long shadows of her source material, elevate Go Dig My Grave beyond the beautifully rendered, if rather pointless, collection of covers it sometimes threatens to be. The only shame is that the album ends with her lugubrious take on Lou Reed’s well-trod “Perfect Day”—a truly unnecessary rendition whose forced sense of grace feels like a return to the bad old days.

2018-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00

2018-02-10T01:00:00.000-05:00

Electronic

SusannaSonata

February 10, 2018

f9ce4cd7-6b48-4c2f-9178-5d154a09e4b2

Ben Cardew

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/

The audible friction between Davis and Coltrane on almost every number of this four-disc set makes for a fascinating listen, a live document of two players undergoing tectonic shifts in their style.

The audible friction between Davis and Coltrane on almost every number of this four-disc set makes for a fascinating listen, a live document of two players undergoing tectonic shifts in their style.

Miles Davis / John Coltrane: The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/miles-davis-john-coltrane-the-final-tour-the-bootleg-series-vol-6/

The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6

By 1960, modern jazz was in upheaval. This shift was thanks in no small part to the seismic, artistic advances that Miles Davis and his quintet had made the year prior when he released Kind of Blue, a still-astonishing document of restraint and free melodic expression that would go on to become one of the best-selling jazz albums of all-time. That same year, John Coltrane also pivoted to the cascading changes and torrential outpouring (deemed “sheets of sound”) of his breakout solo album, Giant Steps. Distinct from the restrained and cool sound of his boss, Coltrane was well on his own skyward trajectory when Davis brought him back to the fold for a European tour booked by jazz impresario Norman Granz, which also featured Stan Getz on tenor sax and Oscar Peterson on piano. It marked the first time Davis would tour with his own band, and they were met with packed houses and rapturous applause each night. But as Davis wrote in his 1989 autobiography: “[Coltrane] decided to go with us, but he grumbled and complained and sat by himself all the time we were over there.” These three weeks of grumbling and complaining comprise Miles Davis and John Coltrane: The Final Tour, the sixth edition of Columbia’s Miles Davis Bootleg Series. Across the five previous installments lies a latent theme of tension and change, each volume revealing a transitory aspect of Davis’ sound. But none bear the audible friction between Davis and Coltrane on almost every number of this four-disc set, which draws from two concerts in Paris, two from Stockholm, and one from Copenhagen. You can hear the sideman straining to push past Davis—the man primarily responsible for realizing that Coltrane could be Coltrane. In turn, Coltrane’s stratospheric rise would soon lead Davis to raze his sound to its foundation and build it up anew in the years to come. From the song selection on this volume, it’s clear Davis is already approaching a crossroads in his own repertoire. He wants to explore both the Kind of Blue material still fresh on his mind while also satisfying the crowd with the type of exquisite balladry that had helped make him one of the most famous jazz artists of the era. So the fake book standards from his 1957 album ’Round About Midnight are juxtaposed with the emotive modal jazz monoliths “So What” and “All Blues” from Kind of Blue, all featuring the blowing of Coltrane, who sometimes sounds like he’s trying to explode the songs from within. For instance, Davis and band move at a dizzying double-time tempo on the four sprawling takes of “So What.” Rather than the iconic smoldering slink that opens Kind of Blue, Paul Chambers’ slow vamp speeds up to a roiling bassline. At this speed, it’s a treat to hear the nimble pianist Wynton Kelly tackle the number, adding a bluesy and rollicking feel to the chart. On the first performance at the Olympia in Paris, Davis soars to the upper register in his solo before drifting back down. Coltrane enters with a bluesy phrase that briefly aligns with Davis before his vibrato opens wide. Coltrane starts pushing at the boundaries of the song, the flurry of notes coming faster and faster. Coltrane sounds a little confined in the changes, like he’s straining to break free not just from the song but the earth’s gravitational pull. Nearing the nine-minute mark, his overblowing and dissonance elicits a few hoots and whistles. While the “new thing” in jazz was already stirring and gaining steam thanks to the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra’s reedsman John Gilmore, few in the European audience would have experienced such new sounds live. The raspy dissonance Coltrane flashes on “Bye Bye Blackbird” earns plenty of whistles and shouts, and only on “Round Midnight” is he compact and concise within the song. Whether it was from the promoters, the press, or Davis himself, who never had a good word to say about the free jazz stylings of Coleman or Taylor, Coltrane feels a little bit more reigned in after this particular night. Not that there isn’t plenty to admire outside of the outré. Kelly’s take on Bill Evans’ original, more ascetic piano lines adds a new wrinkle to “All Blues,” swinging between two chords and giving the horns plenty of space to move. Meanwhile, Coltrane’s solo fidgets like a hummingbird around a blossom, attacking the song from as many angles as manageable while Kelly’s own turn features playful cascades and big shimmering chords. The solo order remains the same throughout the set (Davis, then Coltrane, then Kelly, and sometimes Chambers), so a sense of predictability does settle in across the four discs. Which is not to say that there’s still not plenty of play to be had here, as sly allusions abound throughout: Davis quotes a line of “Dixie” on one version of “Walkin’,” Kelly plinks in a phrase of Monk’s “In Walked Bud” during “So What,” Coltrane quotes “Willow Weep for Me” one night in Stockholm. And amid Coltrane’s nightly quests through “So What,” he starts to sow the seeds for what would in a few years become one of his signature songs, “Impressions,” itself built on the same harmonic structure as the Kind of Blue song. That’s not the only advance Coltrane made on his last tour with Davis. “Before he quit, I gave him that soprano saxophone,” Davis recalled in his autobiography, the instrument that would come to signify Coltrane’s ascension to spiritual jazz. “I always joked with him that if he had stayed home and not come with us on this trip, he wouldn’t have gotten that soprano saxophone, so he was in debt to me for as long as he lived.” It’s a patented Miles blend of joke and hyperbole. But his relationship with Coltrane proved to be the kind of impetus that would push Davis to reinvent himself, as well. Soon after, neither star would sound quite like this again.

2018-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-03-27T01:00:00.000-04:00

Jazz

Columbia Legacy

March 27, 2018

f9dd6a9e-47b1-4138-9b74-ded8cb77da48

Andy Beta

https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/

The Archers of Loaf frontman's first new album in five years finds Bachmann getting a tighter grip on who he is as a human and as an artist, and more deeply appreciating his past and the influences that got him to this point.

The Archers of Loaf frontman's first new album in five years finds Bachmann getting a tighter grip on who he is as a human and as an artist, and more deeply appreciating his past and the influences that got him to this point.

Eric Bachmann: Eric Bachmann

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21779-eric-bachmann/

Eric Bachmann

Eric Bachmann and his longtime label Merge Records would have us believe that the Archers of Loaf frontman's first new album in five years is a radical reinvention. The truth is far less dramatic. The forty-something singer-songwriter can't really escape himself or the raw, unaffected sound, gruffly melodic vocals, and pointed lyrical approach that he adopted in the early ’00s when he started recording as Crooked Fingers. Instead, this short, engaging collection of tunes feels more like Bachmann getting a tighter grip on who is as an human and as an artist, and more deeply appreciating his past and the influences that got him to this point. That idea is laid bare in the album's eponymous title and the cover art, which features a picture of Bachmann as a gangly, bright eyed Little Leaguer. And within the music itself, he introduces a broader array of sonic inspiration: the fizzy highs of ’60s pop, the glossy production style of ’70s country, and a hint of British post-punk fervor for good measure. Some songwriters who drink from those wells let their creations become busy and dense, but Bachmann leaves plenty of empty space, using small signifiers—the “Be My Baby” drum hits that kick off “Mercy,” the piano line of “Dreaming” that feels drawn from slow dance mainstay “Color My World”—to do big work. The only indulgence he allows himself here is the inclusion of gospel-esque backing vocalists, but even they only come when a certain lyrical phase needs to be driven home. The decision to release the album under his own name is also connected with the more personal nature of these songs. It's a move he has made once before, in 2006, with To The Races, a plaintive collection that centered on his voice and acoustic guitar and lyrics that spoke to his wanderlust and his fraught romantic life. Both of those concerns have been, for the most part, quelled: Bachmann is married to his frequent collaborator and touring partner Liz Durrett, and the long-time North Carolinian seems to be comfortably settled in Athens, Georgia. That opens him up to take on some broader issues. Primary among them is Bachmann's political frustrations. He uses the true stories of murder and ill-fated justice to opine, over a ska-like drum beat and a bouncing piano melody, that “what should be an old relic by now should never have been/the South is a ghost, a ghost is a lie.” Elsewhere, in the stormy “Mercy,” he relishes the irony of using a church-like choir to back him as he sings about his disbelief in a higher power and marveling that “I've got friends and I've got family/from Alaska to Miami/you won't believe the crazy shit they sometimes say.” These songs were likely recorded months ago, but they reflect current fractious political conditions, ones that have allowed his home state's legislature to pass a bill that overturns LGBT protections. As frustrated as those songs are, there's also a ruminative quality to their lyrics that carries throughout the album. It feels like the product of a man finally settling down after years of travel and activity, and not liking what he sees. That goes for himself as well. For as much appreciation as Bachmann exudes with regards to life and love, the emphasis is really on regret. He reopens former emotional wounds on the noir-ish album closer “The Old Temptation,” and sounds surprised at his own panic in “Separation Anxiety.” And the album is peppered with references to the dead and dying. Bachmann, who knows more than ever that his time on earth is finite, is going to say his piece before he goes. Again, none of this signals a huge shift for Bachmann. But after spending a long stretch of time playing with his former band and as a member of Neko Case's backing band, it's good to see that he can return to the mold of singer-songwriter with a little extra fire in his belly. Correction: The original version of this review stated that Georgia passed a "religious liberty" bill into law. It's been corrected to reflect that the governor vetoed it before it became a law.

2016-04-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-04-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Merge

April 1, 2016

f9e5b6d4-2585-4b54-8ac6-6f4ded87352a

Robert Ham

https://pitchfork.com/staff/robert-ham/

The pop singer’s full-length debut is a bold and uproarious introduction, buoyed by sturdy songcraft and steely indifference to good taste.

The pop singer’s full-length debut is a bold and uproarious introduction, buoyed by sturdy songcraft and steely indifference to good taste.

Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/chappell-roan-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-midwest-princess/

The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

You grow up in the Midwest; your dreams sprawl wider than the freeways; the big city starts to beckon. Chappell Roan, daughter of Willard, Missouri, secured her ticket out through YouTube, where as a teenager she uploaded the cover songs that got her a major label deal before she finished high school. She started spending time in L.A. and recorded a series of dour, downtempo pop tunes. But Willard still had her in its grasp: In a promotional video from 2017, released around the same time as her first EP, Roan gazes mistily out a plane window and admits, “When I go back to L.A., I just don’t feel as grounded as I do when I’m home.” When her music lacked place and purpose, Roan found both at the Abbey. The storied West Hollywood gay bar inspired “Pink Pony Club,” a disco ball-dappled ode to escaping the suburbs for the California nightclubs. The song, released in 2020, effectively ended one chapter of Roan’s career: Her label, Atlantic, dropped her after its release. But it also pointed in a new direction. The “Pink Pony Club” is back open for business on The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, Roan’s full-length debut, a bold and uproarious pop project stitched with stories about discovering love, sex, and oneself in a new place. Marking her debut for Island Records, it’s buoyed by youthful vim and steely indifference to the bounds of good taste. Midwest Princess was written and produced with Dan Nigro, the onetime indie frontman who has recently gained prominence via his creative partnership with Olivia Rodrigo. As songwriters and performers, Rodrigo and Roan agree on a lot: Both are committedly theatrical and wickedly funny, even in the face of emotional indignity. “Casual,” Midwest Princess’s high point, lobs a cocktail of sorrow and scorn at a romantic partner who refuses to acknowledge the significance of their situationship. “Knee deep in the passenger seat and you’re eating me out/Is it casual now?” Roan deadpans in the chorus, cramming one of the record’s most vivid images into a single breath. The outro turns up the heat and raises the stakes: “I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner/Your parents at the table, you wonder why I’m bitter?” Roan is blessed with a powerful and versatile voice, heard in full force on the blowout final line of “Casual.” On the otherwise unremarkable “After Midnight,” she floats some lovely whistle tones; on “Picture You,” she channels Patsy Cline, her voice warm and full-bodied, her phrasing immaculate. But, also like Rodrigo, she can be persuasive with less precise or tuneful deliveries. In the half-spoken, half-yelped bridge of the yeehaw booty call “Red Wine Supernova,” her comedic potential is maximized (“I heard you like magic?/I’ve got a wand and a rabbit!”). She zips through the verses of “Hot To Go!” with all the urgency of a spark burning through a fuse, then calls in the pep squad to spell-sing the title. Across the album, gang vocals have big cheerleader energy, tapping into an aesthetic that has been co-opted and queered in a cultural lineage running, within Roan’s lifetime, from the 1999 cult classic But I’m a Cheerleader all the way through Mia Berrin’s indie rock project Pom Pom Squad and this summer’s teen sex romp Bottoms. It’s not the only high school touchstone on Midwest Princess: In the wide-eyed, disco-pop awakening of “Naked in Manhattan,” Roan plays the eager ingenue, her fantasies pasted on a glittery moodboard that includes queer-coded slumber parties, hair pins, lip gloss, and Regina George, the teen antagonist of Mean Girls. In her visuals, Roan plays putt-putt and references the 2006 mermaid romcom Aquamarine; onstage, she has worn a blonde wig in tribute to Hannah Montana, the fictional pop star that Miley Cyrus portrayed on the Disney Channel between the ages of 13 and 18. Roan is 25, but this suite of references maps to a cultural moment that is, even more so than usual, fixated on youthful femininity. It also speaks to the experience of coming into your sexuality in your 20s—something akin to a second adolescence. In its subject matter, but also in its target audience, Roan’s music is explicitly queer; she has attributed her artistic breakthrough to her decision to “stop trying to impress the music industry and start trying to impress gay people.” Roan—who touts her outsider credentials, calling herself “the pop star of Goodwill,” despite being signed to a major label—seems happy to skip a bid for the center and plant herself in the margins, where she leans into drag aesthetics and camp. “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” opens with a main-character monologue, condemns “hyper-mega-bummer boys” for the high crime of wearing “fugly jeans,” and glibly references planetary collapse. It understands house music through the lens of Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and RuPaul’s “Supermodel.” It’s dumb, and electrifying. Zanier still is “Femininomenon,” a Frankenstein’s monster that splices stacked vocals à la Lorde, ad libs à la Kesha, a synth that sounds like a groan tube, and the inane lyric “Get it hot like Papa John!”—perhaps the pizza franchise’s biggest pop crossover moment since they plastered Taylor Swift’s face on their boxes. As the album opener, “Femininomenon” feels like a test of listeners’ tolerance, designed to drive away those that can’t hang with the excess of it all. At the same time, such gags function as decoys, distracting from how sturdy and studied Roan’s songcraft actually can be. One of her oft-cited references is Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, an album lab-engineered for catchiness and mass-market saturation, and for all her outré qualities, Roan has a clear connection to this pop lineage. She generally favors conventional song structures and builds to seismic choruses. Her writing is focused and concept-driven, often scaffolded around a single word or image. “Coffee” and “Kaleidescope” are lesser examples—not coincidentally, both are rather somber piano ballads—but “Picture You” is perfectly executed, conjuring drawn curtains and flickering candles in the bedroom where Roan fantasizes alone, “counting lipstick stains where you should be.” If listening to “Picture You” feels voyeuristic, it’s not because of its intimacy or innuendo, but because of its implication of shame: “I’m too scared to say/Half of the things I do when I picture you,” Roan quivers. Slivers of doubt hang around the edges of Midwest Princess, adding dimension to its narrator and enhancing its sense of defiance: When Roan’s friends call her a loser, or she imagines her mom pearl-clutching over her behavior, their disapproval and doubt threatens to puncture her hard-earned exuberance. In closer “Guilty Pleasure,” Roan attempts to blunt their weapons, positing her guilt and pleasure as two sides of the same coin. “I want this like a cigarette/Can we drag it out and never quit?” she sings, relishing the freedom of making an unhealthy choice. Sneakily, she’s also suggesting a framework for interpreting her more over-the-top gambits: so bad they’re good, so dumb they’re smart.

2023-09-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

2023-09-27T00:01:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

Amusement / Island

September 27, 2023

f9eff381-42c9-4926-bce2-ba59ce2d49f6

Olivia Horn

https://pitchfork.com/staff/olivia-horn /

The Brooklyn indie rock band’s fourth album is an anxious and sour record that copes with capitalism and its knock-on emotional effects.

The Brooklyn indie rock band’s fourth album is an anxious and sour record that copes with capitalism and its knock-on emotional effects.

DIIV: Frog in Boiling Water

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/diiv-frog-in-boiling-water/

Frog in Boiling Water

It’s been five years since DIIV’s last album—clearly, there has been some lingering tension. To set the table: After lead singer Zachary Cole Smith was arrested in 2013 for heroin possession preempting his first trip to rehab and DIIV’s former bassist Devin Ruben Perez was kicked out of the band for making racist comments on 4chan, DIIV “essentially broke up” in 2016. Then, after another stint in rehab, Smith and the band pulled it together for their last album, 2019’s Deceiver, but by this point, frustration was embedded in their dynamic. Press materials are pointedly vague about how the band worked through “suspicions and resentments” before completing Frog in Boiling Water, their sour new album coping with capitalism. Its chiffon layers of reverb wrap around the guitars like a burial cloth, and Smith accepts the boat ride down to purgatory in distant vocals. “Will you please leave me alone,” he implores on “Reflected,” floating through lost souls with self-possession. He’s gotten used to the dark. Other DIIV albums are more concerned with inward darkness, the addiction and depression that dot the band’s history. But Frog acknowledges that these illnesses feed off of and into an already miserable society. “Systems fail and empires fall,” Smith shrugs under raindrops of guitar on “Fender on the Freeway,” sounding jaded and overstimulated. While Frog's vocal melodies are often simple, with nursery-rhyme lightness, tuning into their lyrics make them seem more like sugar-coated pills. They establish Smith as both an objector of the failing system and another one of its many idle subjects, free-floating in the rush of disappointment. The weightless “Frog In Boiling Water” blames technology for this half-hearted complacency, smothering disappointment in reverb the way some people replace unpleasant sensations with posting online. Leading up to Frog’s release, DIIV published an unhinged, endless scroll, Web 1.0 site called soul-net.co. Its content informs visitors that “we are all greasing [the capitalist machine] with our blood and sweat.” Under this text, a naked fairy GIF waggles blue wings, a list combines “the smokestacks, the camps, the landfills, the DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES,” and there’s a PNG of John Hancock’s signature. It goes on and on like this, like the ramblings of a computer-savvy serial killer in the ’90s. The site also has a song on autoplay, “Soul-net,” which appears on Frog as the mirage of a star, a glimmer of irony: “I’m not afraid,” Smith affirms, “I love my pain.” You could glean some of the band’s anxious hysteria out of this. They revel in images and ideas usually associated with suspicious Facebook grandmas worried about “seed oils.” Like an anonymous account might say alongside an image of lizard Joe Biden, Smith is disturbed by how “the rotating villains profit off suffering.” He sneers at a good citizen’s purpose, to be “fodder for the army op.” But he also sings with soft insistence, and his restraint is convincing. Everyone has a good reason to feel as fractured as Frog sounds. Its guitar-led production makes sense of the stress by dumping it into pressure-cooker whining. Though, more often, the guitars would rather loaf in the mud. The band takes pleasure in simple melodies with muscle, like on the melancholy “In Amber.” There, the rhythm guitar bounces like a nervous leg until the lead guitar wrests the song open. DIIV repeatedly employ this tactic throughout the album, presenting each song like a cold tomb to be set on fire, typically, by a one-note guitar solo you can feel drilling into your stomach. It’s thrilling. “Little Birds” is like a dry lightning field, empty aside from the occasional crackle of distortion. But its lead guitar always returns to the same note, filling the space with an insistent echo. These repetitive moments come on like a ticking clock, and Frog in Boiling Water operates with a prophetic understanding that time has already run out.

2024-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

2024-05-24T00:01:00.000-04:00

Rock

Fantasy

May 24, 2024

f9f0be75-8a58-4840-9941-f39f06b7288a

Ashley Bardhan

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ashley-bardhan/

Originally sold as MP3s, then a collection of three-song EPs, then as a CD in Japan last year, this collection of Thom Yorke remixes-- from such electronic all-stars as Burial, Four Tet, the Field, the Bug, and Various-- finally gets a U.S. full-length release.

Originally sold as MP3s, then a collection of three-song EPs, then as a CD in Japan last year, this collection of Thom Yorke remixes-- from such electronic all-stars as Burial, Four Tet, the Field, the Bug, and Various-- finally gets a U.S. full-length release.

Thom Yorke: The Eraser Rmxs

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12612-the-eraser-rmxs/

The Eraser Rmxs

When the nine remixes that make up this CD officially hit the web in December 2007, surprisingly few paid them much attention. It wasn't a quality issue as much as timing-- an incredible marketing plan/album called In Rainbows had been set upon starving web consumers just two months before, and Radiohead fans were still in the glassy-eyed-wonder stage. At that point, Thom Yorke's The Eraser seemed like a harmless but necessary detour. While only a few would name The Eraser as their favorite Radiohead-related LP, the 2006 record gave Yorke the chance to air out his electrohead side before heading back to the band for In Rainbows-- the most naturalistic Radiohead album since OK Computer. The assumed logic seems sound: no Eraser, no In Rainbows. A little over a year ago, The Eraser was a tiny lily pad, so why fret about these redos courtesy of dudes from Yorkie's dubstep-heavy iPod? Though there's no discernible reason for The Eraser Rmxs finally getting a U.S. release right now (the songs were originally sold as MP3s, then a collection of three-song EPs, then as a CD in Japan last year), it sort of makes sense. Though the original album may have caused Radiohead to not make a record that sounds like it, the LP has caused some guy named Kanye West to do his best impression of it. Of the influences West cites in his recent Grammy ad, The Eraser lies directly in his head space. And there's no denying the spare sonic similarities between the record and West's current 808s and Heartbreak, which currently sits at No. 5 on the Billboard charts. Its current single, "Heartless", is No. 3. So it turns out The Eraser played a large part in both Radiohead's consensus return-to-form LP as well as one of the most galvanizing pop albums in recent memory. Maybe this record's more important that we originally thought. And so: The Rmxs. Always looking out for the next weird, bassy, scatterbrained electronic thing, Yorke collects a coterie of producers that would make Aphex Twin-philes split their pants. (Alas, Afx himself could not be reached for comment.) Three of dubsteb's most notable names-- Burial, the Bug, and Various-- chip in, along with laptop gurus Four Tet, the Field, and Modeselektor. Considering the amounts of hands turning knobs both tangible and virtual, there's an impressive consistency about The Rmxs. While The Eraser saw Yorke sulking about end-times and hopeless love against a pristine backdrop of ambient loops and tiny, click-clack percussion, The Rmxs dirties things up considerably. This is rebel music. No longer is Yorke wailing in his bedroom; he's whispering in a basement, plotting an overthrow. Burial starts it off and, in essence, ends it with the disc's best track. All the standard tics from dubstep's most enigmatic figure are apparent on his "And It Rained All Night" redo: sub-bass adorned with nothing but atmosphere-- Zippos flicker out and the clink of bullet shells hit the floor. Who's been shot? Nobody's saying. If this song soundtracked that awful Bacchanalia scene in The Matrix Reloaded, that movie would automatically be 10% more enjoyable. Unsurprisingly, Yorke's voice suits Burial's soupy concoctions just as nicely as those mysterious R&B divas he's usually fond of-- if this team ever decided to meet on an LP level, few would oppose. Cristian Vogel contributes two remixes, one of them the token overlong vamp that largely deletes Yorke's voice entirely, which is just silly. The Bug's "Harrowdown Hill" takes the singer's seething political indictment and turns it downright deranged-- it's almost Tricky-esque. The Field and Four Tet offer the only moments of relative hope with tracks that lift more than pummel. Four Tet even makes that "artichoke heart" line go down easy, with xylophones and pillowed drums sliding into a future with fewer head-scratching surprises, fewer reasons to throw things at the television. And, of course, In Rainbows' secret weapon was the H word our current president is so fond of. The Eraser is relevant now, but-- specifically at this moment, days away from that crowded Mall-- it also sounds like a relic. Even Kanye made sure to graft the record's sonics onto something-- searing, thoughtless emotion-- more evergreen than dystopian riddles. Economic crash withstanding, Radiohead turned out to be quite prescient, coupling their most openhearted LP with a new era of genuine compassion (maybe?). The Eraser Rmxs is an insulated, paranoid, technically proficient reminder of a time when it seemed like there was no way out. "This is fucked up," repeats a pitch-shifted Yorke on Vogel's Bonus Beat "Black Swan" mix. And it is. But not as much as before.

2009-01-23T01:00:01.000-05:00

2009-01-23T01:00:01.000-05:00

Electronic / Rock

XL

January 23, 2009

f9f1c265-b7e7-4340-b711-a9c1717c14b5

Ryan Dombal

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ryan-dombal/

Michelle Zauner (a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast) and Ryan Galloway of Crying form a socially distanced, easy-going pop duo whose music offers a brief respite from the times.

Michelle Zauner (a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast) and Ryan Galloway of Crying form a socially distanced, easy-going pop duo whose music offers a brief respite from the times.

BUMPER: pop songs 2020 EP

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bumper-pop-songs-2020-ep/

pop songs 2020 EP

Recently, a few critics have classified the year 2013 as a pivotal moment for mainstream music. Remember those days of yore, back when Vampire Weekend reigned supreme, Chance the Rapper felt groundbreaking, and Sky Ferreira actually released music? But 2013 was also a big time for the little guys. That summer, Michelle Zauner, then a member of the rock band Little Big League, shared her first project as Japanese Breakfast, an experimental song-a-day collection titled june. A few months later, Crying, an indie rock by way of chiptune trio out of SUNY Purchase, released their bubbly debut, Get Olde. Now, Zauner and Crying guitarist Ryan Galloway have collaborated under the name BUMPER. Though Galloway and Zauner live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, due to COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, BUMPER’s debut EP, pop songs 2020, was constructed over email. These four songs benefit from the ease of its creation; the stakes feel low, just two friends passing drafts back and forth like pen pals. pop songs 2020 fully indulges the grandiose flourishes that wind through Zauner and Galloway’s respective projects. Opening track “You Can Get It!” is a jolt of pop effervescence that begins with whimsical Lullatone-like electronica and blooms into wistful ’80s sparkle; the impromptu guitar solo that rips through the ending is just icing on the cake. “Red Brick” is similarly pleasant: “Day by day, you give and take/On and on until there’s something,” Zauner sings as the boom of a timpani crashes through her veil of uncertainty. The track is full of other eccentric embellishments—swelling strings, corkscrewing synths—but never becomes bogged down by its jam-packed arrangement. Lyrically, pop songs 2020 leans towards the gauzy. There’s a general sentiment of chasing something just out of reach, but the verses are hardly specific. “Black Light” approaches an emotional arc as the song’s narrator gazes at a night-owl neighbor devoted to his beats. “First light flits shy in the distance/Your techno jam is through,” a double-tracked Zauner breathily murmurs. “I close my eyes but my heart’s still thumping/And in my dreams your loops.” As a whole, the EP offers a much-needed dopamine rush, but it ends on a melancholic moment. The aptly-titled closer “Ballad O” is a gentle piano and synth reverie that soundtracks the recollection of various mistakes and regrets. “I never knew I’d wind up here, to take up arms/At men at bars,” Zauner concludes forlornly. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, some have fretted about whether or not upbeat pop music has a place during an international time of mourning and upheaval. But pop songs 2020 is a reminder that euphoric music will always be a balm, a temporary escape from reality. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-09-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-09-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

self-released

September 11, 2020

f9fc304a-57bb-4abd-ae33-ab6167428b55

Quinn Moreland

https://pitchfork.com/staff/quinn-moreland/

Two ambient-leaning auteurs unite for a charming exercise in bright guitar tones and wistful moods, rooted in their mutual admiration for Manchester legend Vini Reilly.

Two ambient-leaning auteurs unite for a charming exercise in bright guitar tones and wistful moods, rooted in their mutual admiration for Manchester legend Vini Reilly.

Alexis Georgopoulos / Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: Fragments of a Season

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/alexis-georgopoulos-jefre-cantu-ledesm-fragments-of-a-season/

Fragments of a Season

It’s funny how much a clean electric-guitar signal can signify. What should be the instrument’s default setting has itself become, more than a half-century after the discovery of distortion, an aesthetic choice. For any listener raised on punk, metal, indie rock, or any other hegemonic strain of guitar music, an undistorted guitar today is far more noticeable than a distorted one. In a world where feedback rules everything, to forsake the fuzz pedal is to stand naked and vulnerable, abandoning the crutch of solid-state circuitry to rely on one’s own frail fingers. That’s what the Durutti Column’s Vini Reilly did, back in the early 1980s: Countering punk rock’s cacophonous orthodoxy, he went not just post-punk but anti-punk, abandoning overdrive in favor of a pure, intimate sound. Recently, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has followed in his footsteps. For years, the Brooklyn musician’s recordings struck a rumbling balance between ambient and shoegaze. But echoes of Reilly’s crystalline tone and spindly melodies have gradually come to play an ever greater role in Cantu-Ledesma’s records, and Fragments of a Season, a collaboration with New York’s Alexis Georgopoulos, is his clearest homage yet to the Manchester icon’s playing. It came together, the musicians have said, after sharing their mutual fondness for the Durutti Column and Belgium’s Les Disques du Crépuscule, a Factory-related label known for its chilly tranquility; having discovered that both were independently working on solo material of a similar stripe, they joined up for the year-long sessions that resulted in Fragments. Georgopoulos, who also records as Arp, is no stranger to homage. His early records under that name are intensive studies in Germany’s kosmische electronic tradition, while 2013’s More and 2014’s Pulsars e Quasars draw on the sound and style of Brian Eno circa Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) and Another Green World. But Fragments of a Season has little of the complexity of Georgopoulos’ solo work, just as it strips away the sandpapery signature for which Cantu-Ledesma is best known. The 36-minute album is first and foremost a mood piece. Its 11 instrumentals revolve around soft, jazzy chords, with clean guitars run through a faint halo of reverb and arrangements painted on in uncomplicated strokes: simple bass melodies, blocky piano, percolating drum grooves from the Roland CR-78 and Roland TR-77, rhythm boxes from the 1970s with an unmistakably vintage air. The prevailing feel is both wistful and a little whimsical, suggesting the Durutti Column’s overcast atmospheres tempered by some balmy Balearic calm. Raindrops drying on a sunlit window come to mind, at once clear and slightly blurry. A short story by Leigh Gallagher, included on the album’s inner sleeve, fleshes out the scene with a pensive tale that leads from a crowded city to an unnamed Mediterranean island where olive trees dot the landscape, goats roam wild, and sex and melancholy go hand in hand. For the story’s soul-seeking protagonist, time blurs—it’s unclear whether days pass, or weeks. A similar thing happens in the music, which mulls over such a limited patch of ground that the songs soon become almost indistinguishable over the course of the album. At first, each stakes out its own terrain: “The Letter” opens the record with pensive chords and clockwork pulse; “Marine” pairs a kind of sublimated funk with rueful guitar counterpoints; “Madagascar” lets bold piano and crisp drums take the lead. But it all quickly turns into a hazy fever dream of feathery strumming and measured tempos. This may well be intentional. A few songs that follow nearly identical chord changes feel like variations on a theme, and “Vanishing Point” is a slowed-down and pitched-down version of “Marine”; it closes out the album like the memory of a memory, fading to silence like ice cubes pooling in the bottom of a glass. Despite its bittersweet air, though, Fragments of a Season is never less than pleasant. It’s a fine Sunday-morning listen, as quietly transporting as a daydream committed to tape.

2017-11-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

2017-11-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

Experimental

Emotional Rescue

November 4, 2017

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Philip Sherburne

https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/

The Australian post-punk band takes aim at the crooks and scammers on its most political album yet.

The Australian post-punk band takes aim at the crooks and scammers on its most political album yet.

Terry: Call Me Terry

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/terry-call-me-terry/

Call Me Terry

Call Me Terry, the fourth album by Australian post-punk four-piece Terry, seems disarmingly chipper at first glance. Its title is back-slapping and genial, and its songs have the swaying, hummable feel of nursery rhymes. The arrangements are locked into metronomic grooves but alive with whimsical detail, like the faint woodblock on “Gold Duck” or the skronking, overblown saxophones that crop up from song-to-song. “Jane Roe” even features a garbled number chant—“4-5-6-9-1-1”—like a Wiggles sing-a-long gone wrong. Except those numbers have a stinging significance: $456,911 is the amount of money that the right-wing anti-abortion lobby paid to Jane Roe, aka Norma McCorvey, to reverse her stance on abortion and pretend to be an evangelical pro-life advocate. Beneath its jaunty veneer, “Jane Roe” is hardened and cynical, a fairground ditty sung through gritted teeth: “Paid a sum/Took the sum to play a role/Change of mind/Baby, baby, baby, it’s your choice, you choose,” Amy Hill and Xanthe Waite sing in unison. As with nearly every song on Call Me Terry, it’s a bait-and-switch: jangly, absurdist post-punk hiding lyrics that are needling and pessimistic, drawing lines between historically significant vignettes and modern brutality. Call Me Terry is the most political album yet from a band that was already nearly monomaniacal in its study of Australia’s rotted colonial legacy. Where you may have once been able to ignore their staunch but sometimes cryptic ideology, that’s impossible here: It’s spread across the album’s sleeve, each song paired with a photo of a politically toxic site—like the headquarters of mining giant BHP or a building belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp—and a polemical blurb. (The wryly comic writeup attached to “Balconies,” the News Corp song, reads: “Family violence is preventable. Those with a mouthpiece refuse to do anything. What does power look like? Gramsci is buried in Rome.”) Opener “Miracles” sets the tone: Drawing from the tropes that Scott Morrison, Australia’s smug, devoutly Pentecostal former prime minister, would use in his most boneheaded speeches, it’s a bouncy, increasingly frantic dance into hell. The band, in a unified deadpan, references Morrison’s bizarre promise that he would “burn” for the Australian people if elected, before turning his assertion that his wife taught him to empathize with victims of sexual assault into a perverse hook: “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny says.” Sung in the band’s affectless tone, over synths and horns that seem to be stuck in a death spiral, the words seem even more like crookery—a jingle designed to absolve guilt and keep images clean. Appropriately, “Miracles” introduces an album that directs seething hatred toward the political elite’s crooks and scammers. “Centuries,” a crunchy, chugging barnstormer, plays a surreal game of connect-the-dots, identifying ways that those in exalted professions stay in power (“Let me take the stand/Take the taser/Take the land”) while the pummeling “Excuses” draws a line from unaccountable CEOs to their private school-educated sons: “Blazer boys take after father/No excuses, knowing loopholes/Excuses for the entrenched.” The second half of the song devolves into a squall of layered saxophones and guitars, and it plays like a pure expression of frustration: the noisy, embittered sound of letting off steam. At times, Terry take a sideways entry toward a greater point. The Raincoats-indebted “Golden Head” seems vague and imagistic (“Replacing the golden head/Shiny yellow/Shiny confident”) unless you’re familiar with the niche politics of the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, where a golden bust was placed illegally in the center of a public park. It was rumored that the statue was supposed to be Tyler Cassidy, a 15-year-old boy shot to death by police in the same park; the statue was tipped over and removed, only to be replaced by the guerilla artists. The song’s steely lyrics, from the point of view of one of the artists replacing the head, offer rare respite, and even hope on an album whose outlook can be depressingly bleak. In this story, Terry find kinship with everyone using absurd, avant-garde methods to fuck up the system—if only a tiny bit.

2023-04-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

2023-04-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

Rock

Upset the Rhythm

April 17, 2023

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Shaad D’Souza

https://pitchfork.com/staff/shaad-d’souza/

Cold Beat is a San Francisco quartet fronted by Grass Widow bassist Hannah Lew. The sequencing of the band's second album plots a journey between endearingly scrappy garage rock and mechanistic, melancholic electro-pop, lending the compact album an epic sense of scale.

Cold Beat is a San Francisco quartet fronted by Grass Widow bassist Hannah Lew. The sequencing of the band's second album plots a journey between endearingly scrappy garage rock and mechanistic, melancholic electro-pop, lending the compact album an epic sense of scale.

Cold Beat: Into the Air

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20974-into-the-air/

Into the Air

Google’s new logo apparently requires just 305 bytes of data to load compared to 14,000 for the old one—and you won’t find a person who gives less of a fuck about that than Hannah Lew. Last year, her label Crime on the Moon released San Francisco Is Doomed, a compilation of local acts—including Thee Oh Sees, Mikal Cronin, and Erase Errata—railing against the Google-led tech boom that’s pushed rents into the stratosphere and made America’s historic counter-cultural capital increasingly unaffordable for starving artists. Meanwhile, Lew used Cold Beat’s 2014 debut length, Over Me, to address the situation in more oblique terms, mining the feelings of dislocation and depression that result when your city no longer feels like home, and everything that once made it special has given way to consumerism and conformity. A glance at the imposing, sterile glass skyscraper on the cover of Cold Beat’s sophomore release, Into the Air, would indicate Lew is still waging war on search-engine ostracization. But, at the same time, the parting clouds above it suggest she’s starting to appreciate the silver linings of her situation. Like Over Me, Into the Air thrives on the oppositional tension between frigidity and motion inherent to the Cold Beat name, through a yin-yang balance of winsome '60s girl-group melodies and icy '80s post-punk. But the synth and drum-machine experiments sprinkled among Over Me’s guitar-battered rave-ups have been given much more room to flourish here. It’s to the point where Cold Beat effectively resemble two discrete bands: an endearingly scrappy garage-rock act and a mechanistic, melancholic electro-pop outfit. However, Into the Air’s savvy sequencing plots a gradual journey between these two poles, lending this seemingly compact 10-song, 31-minute album a more epic sense of scale. Into the Air is frontloaded with the most exuberant pop songs Lew has written to date—in particular, the gleaming jangle-punk jewel "Broken Lines", which barrels forth like a joyous, C86-ed take on Blondie’s "Dreaming". But by letting in more sun, Cold Beat also produce deeper shadows—after whipping through two breezy verses on "Bruno", the song’s propulsive bassline leads us into an exhilarating, stomach-turning descent that makes you feel like you’re rolling down Powell Street on a cable car with broken brake lines. Tellingly, the flow of Into the Air mirrors the very process of gentrification that’s weighed so heavily on Lew’s mind, transforming the opening tracks’ raw and restless energy into a more orderly and austere second act. "Cracks" is the album’s key transitional track, pitting Lew’s beautifully sighed chorus and circular-saw guitar noise against synth oscillations and a motorik rhythm track to usher us into the album’s electro-oriented back half. But as her sonic environs turn more chilly, Lew cranks up the heat: she delivers Into the Air’s most captivating performance on the Chromatics-tinted nocturnalia of "Spirals", while on "Ashes"—which evokes a classic David Bowie song in both name and ping-ponged synth squiggle—she renders post-apocalyptic scenes of fiery, floating detritus with an elated, operatic coo, as if gazing wondrously into a snow globe filled with black flakes. The San Francisco she once knew may indeed be doomed, but Lew will be ready to rebuild it from the rubble when the bubble inevitably bursts.

2015-09-09T02:00:04.000-04:00

2015-09-09T02:00:04.000-04:00

Rock

Crime on the Moon

September 9, 2015

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Stuart Berman

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/

SBTRKT's self-titled debut showed a lot of promise, but the producer's sophomore effort messes with the formula and piles on the guest appearances. Jessie Ware, Sampha, Raury, Ezra Koenig, and others contribute.

SBTRKT's self-titled debut showed a lot of promise, but the producer's sophomore effort messes with the formula and piles on the guest appearances. Jessie Ware, Sampha, Raury, Ezra Koenig, and others contribute.

SBTRKT: Wonder Where We Land

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19813-sbtrkt-wonder-where-we-land/

Wonder Where We Land

It may not have maintained the low-key genre-fusing mystique that it had back in 2011, but SBTRKT's highly enjoyable nexus of R&B, bass music, house, and dubstep on his self-titled debut still sounds as sleekly well-balanced as it did four years back. The music's appeal hasn't changed, but what it means has, at least where career-arc-plotting curiosity is concerned. Its release saw Aaron Jerome move from across-the-board multigenre remixer (Basement Jaxx's "Scars"; M.I.A.'s "XXXO"; Mark Ronson's "Bang Bang Bang") to someone wielding a consolidated, self-contained signature sound, which gave his future endeavors a lot of promise. What SBTRKT means now, however -- especially in the wake of a you-had-to-be-there live album and three underdone instrumental EPs tellingly named Transitions—is weighted down by the old expectation-dashing "what could have been" question. It's not always a given, but the sophomore slump for rising artists pushing into pop crossover potential is frequent enough that even looking at the guest list for Wonder Where We Land looks like a warning that he's tried to mess with the formula Too Much Too Soon. And the music bears it out: if you think the idea of an album that tries to incorporate scene-stealing hip-hop and indie rock figures into a once emotionally nuanced style is ominous enough, the execution is somehow even more chaotic. Let's dig to the core first: three years would be a long time to wait for a slight re-envisioning of what worked the first time, but the finer points on this record nearly approach the better midpoints of the debut. Sampha's coolly ambivalent yet reservedly powerful vocals have always been one of the stronger elements in SBTRKT's arsenal, and he's all over this record: Fighting against a subwoofer earthquake with multitracked, reverb-blurred warmth that even makes the phrase "what the fuck is that?" sound cosmic on the title track, trembling his way towards a punch-back chorus on "Temporary View", alternately reining in and showing off his rangy melisma as he slides through the stripped-back disco-house of "Gon Stay". For an album that features one of Jessie Ware's best icily delivered leads since Devotion ("Problem (Solved)"), it's saying a lot that Sampha is the best thing going on this record. It's not saying too much, though. The two best singers on the debut are, perhaps not coincidentally, the two best singers here, while the bigger-name guests—the ones that stretch SBTRKT's sonic reach the furthest—just don't work. Ezra Koenig isn't exactly the most egregious feature here, but the enigmatic jokiness of "New Dorp. New York." isn't done any favors by the free-associative lyricism. Are Black Israelites supposed to be wacky NYC cultural flavor? And is the line about "baseball bats that never hit home runs" a reference to threatening weaponry or just another joke at the Mets' expense? The two hip-hop crossovers trip up the album even more, not so much because they're not that good but because they just don't click with the rest of the album: singer/rapper Raury's run-on restrained intensity brings a personal edge that isn't done justice by its ambiguous coffeehouse surroundings. As for A$AP Ferg's soul-baring, shakily-singing turn on unlikely closer "Voices in My Head"—detailing his self-medicating efforts to deal with his father's death—it feels so much like an ambush of untethered feeling that it pretty much washes away the more subdued pleasures of the Sampha, Jessie Ware, and Denai Moore cuts that precede it. With all the work to try and incorporate these far-afield guest vocalists aside, it's worth noting that the production itself is more reliant on them than ever. Underneath them, the music is often flat and unadventurous, tasteful where it could stand to be raucous and rigid where it needs to be limber. A two-minute arpeggio-riddled uptempo cut called "Lantern" is the most energizing moment here, as the rest of the backing tracks lean so heavily on darkly hovering minor-key bass murmurs, gloomy piano chords, and soppily distorted digital strings that it's easy to forget how intriguingly off-kilter some of his drums can be. From here on out, expecting SBTRKT to promise anything in particular is going to feel like a gamble, and probably a pointless one. But at least it's clearer than ever that there's a side to him which he's stronger at expressing.

2014-10-09T02:00:01.000-04:00

2014-10-09T02:00:01.000-04:00

Electronic / Rock

Young Turks

October 9, 2014

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Nate Patrin

https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/

The Australian band’s reverence for reference is part of their allure and their fifth album sticks to the tried-and-true pop formulas of the past.

The Australian band’s reverence for reference is part of their allure and their fifth album sticks to the tried-and-true pop formulas of the past.

Cut Copy: Haiku From Zero

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/cut-copy-haiku-from-zero/

Haiku From Zero

Cut Copy have always been a band of fans, dedicated students of composition and production whose ideas feel reverential rather than revolutionary. Looking back over the Australian quartet’s lengthy career—their ’80s mish-mashing debut, Bright Like Neon Love, came out thirteen years ago—you can trace the zeitgeist of a decade of what we once called “dance-rock” but now identify as the electrofied, groove-led sound of contemporary indie rock, from Tame Impala to Glass Animals. After riding the DFA-adjacent wave of ’00s indie disco towards festival-slaying status alongside bands like Soulwax and Metronomy, Cut Copy got bigger and slicker; 2011’s Zonoscope embraced the MOR of ’80s Fleetwood Mac and the after-dark euphoria of Chicago house, while their foray into baggy rave on 2013’s Free Your Mind coincided with a mainstream wave of ’90s dance nostalgia that included Disclosure and Jamie xx. Even the left turn of last year’s January Tape, an instrumental homage to ’80s new age, felt on-trend alongside the recent swell of new age reissues and musical quotations. But Cut Copy have never denied their magpie-eyed approach; they’re all about “reinterpreting the music we like within our own records,” as frontman Dan Whitford previously told Pitchfork. Last year’s cassette of heady, downtempo instrumentals could have heralded a shift away from their unceasingly upbeat, festival-friendly attitude, but the band’s fifth album, Haiku From Zero, mostly sticks to tried-and-true pop formulas. Despite the tropical breeze blowing through these nine tracks, it’s obviously not all poolside piña coladas for Whitford; he’s no longer the carefree embracer of life and love we encountered on the saucer-eyed peaks of Free Your Mind. Where that album pushed its positive mantras to the brink of silliness (“You gotta reach the sky if you want your life to shine,” and so on), Haiku From Zero hides a nugget of anxiety and sadness under every cheerful melody. Gone are the piano vamps and pulsing kick drums in favour of a febrile, itchy funk inspired by early ’80s new wave (most obviously, Talking Heads circa Remain In Light—a sensible inspiration for anyone looking to bury unsettling lyrics in endless grooves) and the polished synth-pop that emerged in its wake. The album opens on a wistful note with “Standing in the Middle of the Field,” a title that seems to transport us to the moment right after the closing notes of Free Your Mind, as Whitford realizes that the party’s over and everyone’s gone home. “Oh, oh, oh, watch me slowly fall apart,” he sings over percussion that’s a little bit “I Zimbra” and a little bit Mickey Moonlight. “You gotta give up the things you love to make it better.” On “Stars Last Me a Lifetime,” the chugging chorus revisits ‘80s pop-rock through a smeary chillwave filter, as Whitford loses himself in the memory of a lost love: “Every time the stars reappear, I wonder where you are/Baby, is it right that I can only hold you there?” Song by song, the album gathers more and more emotion, from personal anxieties on the wiry dance party of “Living Upside Down” to global-scale fears the ‘80s radio-rock nod “No Fixed Destination,” until it spills over on the closing track, “Tied to the Weather.” The bare-bones torch song plays like the emotional crux of the album just as it’s ending. Sounding older, wiser, and possibly still enduring a hideous comedown, Whitford warns us: “Don’t mistake familiar love for loneliness/The things you take for granted, they might fade away/And then you wake, and find your bed is cold and vacant.” It’s poised and graceful, yet deliciously bitter—a refreshing antidote to the slickness of the previous eight songs, even the previous few albums. Aside from these updated lyrical concerns, the band’s archive-mining M.O. often feels too literal, too easy. On the album’s first single, “Airborne,” the scratchy guitar licks and elastic bassline immediately bring to mind Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” There’s a futility to this kind of homage, where formal innovations get flattened into superficial signifiers. In 1983, “Rip It Up” broke molds as a fusion of contemporary styles and technology, famously the first UK chart hit to feature the Roland TB-303 before the bass synth became the squelchy linchpin of acid house. Now, this reverential recreation of other band’s ideas has come to define Cut Copy.That’s a shame, because as the closing track of Haiku From Zero shows, when Cut Copy take a step back from the small details, forget about their perfect record collections for a few minutes and actually expose themselves as human beings, they hit on a sound that really rings true.

2017-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

2017-09-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Astralwerks

September 20, 2017

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Chal Ravens

https://pitchfork.com/staff/chal-ravens/

Responding to harsh realities, Jamison Isaak uses softsynths, guitar amps, and his sensitive way with melody to craft an idyllic space.

Responding to harsh realities, Jamison Isaak uses softsynths, guitar amps, and his sensitive way with melody to craft an idyllic space.

Teen Daze: Themes for Dying Earth

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22864-themes-for-dying-earth/

Themes for Dying Earth

Stardew Valley is a fictitious rural region in a 2016 video game of the same name. Described as an “open-ended country-life RPG,” it is essentially a game about unplugging from the modern world and embracing the beauty of simple living. You, the customized character, quit your soul-sucking office job, move to an inherited farm, live off the land, and become a part of the small community in Pelican Town. You can get married and start a family, or just live alone with your farm animals. You can go on adventures. It’s a story about escapism in a medium rooted in escapism, at a time when most everyone could use an escape once in awhile. Among Stardew Valley’s many fans is Jamison Isaak. The Canadian artist recently tweeted that playing the game has helped take his mind off the woes of the world, a small but important act of self-care. And it’s not unlike the creation of his newest album as Teen Daze. When Isaak moved from the city of Abbotsford, British Columbia, to a more secluded part of the Fraser Valley, he began work on Themes for Dying Earth as a way of processing recent bouts of anxiety. The warm lullaby “First Rain” and its calming lilt operate like the soft-beating heart around which the record was built. In that way, Themes deals with harsh realities—personal, environmental, social—by seeking solace in nature. “Deep inside the woods is where I go to understand,” Nadia Hulett sings on the downcast “Lost,” as if inviting us to follow. The appeal is irresistible, and once wrapped up in Themes, it’s hard to imagine leaving its embrace. Isaak’s music has come a long way from his earliest material, the pop-friendly electronic stuff known as chillwave, but these songs also take a step back from the live band setup explored on 2015’s Morning World. Like any well-adjusted adult, Isaak has found a happy compromise here, creating a lush paradise with guitar amps and softsynths alike. It’s not that he hasn't used his pop sensibilities and sensitive way with melody to conjure the idyllic before—Themes is just a more fully formed, comprehensive utopia. From “Cycle”’s gentle glide to the weightless “Breath,” an unbroken feeling of tenderness flows gracefully. Such continuity comes down to the album’s careful pacing, as winsome singalongs give way to fluttering ambience or uplifting instrumentals. Despite such a consistent, good-natured tone, Themes never grows stale or turns saccharine. A song like “Water in Heaven” has the solemn majesty of a hymn, while “Cherry Blossoms” evokes the miniature splendor of M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. Isaak treats these lofty moments with the same care and attention as the more subdued ones, allowing the meditative “Dream City” nearly five minutes to flutter and loop like a kite in the wind. When a pedal steel guitar shows up in “Anew,” its presence is strange, but it reveals an artist looking to color even the album’s smallest corners. Themes was recorded entirely within the Fraser Valley region. It was released on his own label, and each physical copy comes with a unique photo shot by the artist, which are said to showcase the local landscapes that inspired the music. It all makes for an exceptionally personal album from someone known for his intimate songwriting. And yet Themes’ subtle power is rooted in the dichotomy of someone running far from the madding crowd, only to open themselves to the world’s problems and offer the comfort of a brief reprieve. For every smack in the face, Themes pauses, grins, and returns a kiss on the cheek.

2017-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

2017-02-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

Rock

Flora

February 8, 2017

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Patric Fallon

https://pitchfork.com/staff/patric-fallon/

Opening with crisp, acoustic-instrument performances and ending with rock-tinged, experimental funk, this 4xCD "Bootleg" collection strides through different decades of the Miles Davis story. The powerhouse performance here is a 45-minute stretch that puts the spotlight on a 1973 Davis band that would later go on to form the core of the ensemble on the live album Dark Magus.

Opening with crisp, acoustic-instrument performances and ending with rock-tinged, experimental funk, this 4xCD "Bootleg" collection strides through different decades of the Miles Davis story. The powerhouse performance here is a 45-minute stretch that puts the spotlight on a 1973 Davis band that would later go on to form the core of the ensemble on the live album Dark Magus.

Miles Davis: Miles Davis at Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20816-miles-davis-at-newport-1955-1975-the-bootleg-series-vol-4/

Miles Davis at Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4

Even the most optimistic fan might not have been able to foresee the long-term vitality of Miles Davis' posthumous catalog. Thanks to multi-disc box sets that have unearthed all the (thrilling) studio sessions that went into iconic fusion albums such as In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner—as well as Columbia's more recent focus on unissued live performances in its Miles Davis Bootleg Series—the trumpeter-composer has remained an ever-renewable resource in the catalog. (If the branding reminds you of the label's back-pages approach to Bob Dylan, you're not wrong.) On the whole, this feels appropriate, especially when the artist under consideration created and then ditched exciting new stylistic languages with Picasso-like abandon. But a nagging question also hovers around each new deluxe set to come off the 21st Century assembly line: How long can the party last, before we get into the realm of record-company rehash? Unlike "Bootleg Series" sets that are more easily understood as essential, this four-disc volume strides through different decades of the Davis story. So at the outset, we get crisp, acoustic-instrument performances of tunes like "'Round Midnight", while at the far end of the box, we're delivered to the high-humidity atmospheres of the rock-tinged, experimental funk of Davis' 1970s lineups. The set's connecting thread is the Newport Jazz Festival—the legendary, still-running summer concert stage that Davis first stepped onto in 1955 (as a member of a brief "All-Star Jam" that included Thelonious Monk). Later in that decade, Davis took a hard-bop sextet (including John Coltrane and Bill Evans) to Newport, not long before it went into the studio to cut Kind of Blue. Are these early Davis appearances at Newport classic? Of course. But in the main, the music on the first disc of this box has been available for a while. As has a nearly half-hour portion of this volume's third disc (recently included on the album Bitches Brew Live). Moreover, while Davis certainly made a point of getting his various groups to the Newport festival—both its U.S. and foreign-touring iterations—there's little sense that the destination much influenced his fast-moving aesthetic development. (Unlike, say, the post-Summer of Love concerts at the Fillmore collected in the third Davis Bootleg Series release.) So instead of being wall-to-wall necessary, this Bootleg Series edition is simply three-quarters-revelatory. But what is legitimately new here is as good as anything else in the Davis-rarity series. The second disc gives us multiple, intense sets by the trumpeter's "second great quintet," which traveled to Newport in both 1966 and 1967. The back-to-back sequencing of these performances shows how fast Davis' music was developing, even from within a particular lineup. (Compare the thrashing, second version of "Gingerbread Boy", from the 1967 date, to the more restrained 1966 iteration.) And the final disc's rarely-heard 1971 band—including Keith Jarrett on electric piano—puts its own spin on some of Davis' most familiar fusion-era tunes (including a cool-strutting "Bitches Brew" that leads into a majestic, slow-burning "Funky Tonk"). The powerhouse performance in the box, however—a true drop-everything-and-call-your-friends-over-to-listen concert—is a 47-minute stretch on disc three, which puts the spotlight on a 1973 Davis band that would later go on to form the core of the ensemble on the live album Dark Magus. For some connoisseurs, Dark Magus represents Davis' point of peak-fusion—propulsive, densely textured, and grooving. But one thing that recording also has is longueurs. (It was a double-album, after all.) The 1973 gig included in this box isn't just more compact, it's nervier, too. While Pete Cosey's wild electric guitar pyrotechnics sound great on Dark Magus, his playbook of liquid licks also feels fully figured out—it's a command performance by a Davis group member who has had years to drill this particular music. By contrast, his playing on "Turnaroundphrase", the opening tune from this newly issued 1973 set, is more darting in nature, and alive with the sound of the guitarist figuring out a way through Davis' ferocious composition. Likewise, soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman—the only acoustic axe in this lineup—sounds as though he's fighting his way toward a state of audibility. When his keening playing joins up with Davis's own wah-wah-enhanced trumpet moans, the sound reaches flourishes of intensity that rival (and perhaps eclipse) those on Dark Magus. (The 1973 set is such a different-sounding beast, it hardly matters that its setlist is largely similar to that of the latter album.) The liner notes included with this Bootleg Series release refer to Davis' "heath challenges" during this period, and his reduced range on the trumpet. And yet the 1973 gig still shows Davis' bandleading and arranging skills to be working at a high level, hard living be damned. Despite the fact that those talents weren't intimately connected to the Newport Festival, particularly, they lend this box set a stable, running theme—whether Davis is leading his sextet with Coltrane, his second quintet, or else the various fusion lineups represented here. You can quibble with the inclusion of familiar material in a Bootleg Series package, but you can't argue—not yet, at least—with the unreleased depths of the Davis vault.

2015-07-24T02:00:00.000-04:00

2015-07-24T02:00:00.000-04:00

Jazz

Columbia / Legacy

July 24, 2015

fa1dbdb3-3473-4aaa-8abf-80e01bfc0a1a

Seth Colter Walls

https://pitchfork.com/staff/seth-colter walls/

On his full-length Backwoodz debut, SKECH185’s hoarsely confrontational rapping finds a perfect match in producer Jeff Markey’s jumpy, abrasive beats.

On his full-length Backwoodz debut, SKECH185’s hoarsely confrontational rapping finds a perfect match in producer Jeff Markey’s jumpy, abrasive beats.

SKECH185: He Left Nothing for the Swim Back

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/skech185-he-left-nothing-for-the-swim-back/

He Left Nothing for the Swim Back

SKECH185 is ready to smack you in the face with reality. Every verse crackles with the urgency of Savion Glover’s speech at the end of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, the weight of racism and capitalism bending him to the breaking point. SKECH cut his teeth in the 2010s Chicago underground rap scene as a member of the Tomorrow Kings collective before decamping to New York and sharing billing with acts like the Karma Kids and early artists in the Backwoodz Studioz cohort. No matter where he shows up, his voice booms, slicing through a maelstrom of indifference. He has the only guest verse on Armand Hammer’s 2018 breakout album, Paraffin, and he earns it with vignettes packed with gut-wrenching detail: “My mother lost a close friend/She sat with her and watched her fade/Funny the same man who failed with a screwdriver succeeded with AIDS.” Five years later (and six since his last album, Gunship Diplomacy, as one half of the duo War Church, with Texas producer Analog(ue) Tape Dispenser), SKECH has formally linked with Backwoodz for He Left Nothing for the Swim Back, a full-length entirely produced by Brooklyn-based composer Jeff Markey, an on-and-off collaborator in the New York underground. Last year, Markey dropped his debut solo project, Sports & Leisure, pairing laid-back sample chops and loops with a handful of guests. While Swim may be similar in form, it’s entirely different in sound, laying out waves of abrasive, jumpy beats and samples as thick as smog. It’s the perfect backdrop for SKECH’s hoarse brand of confrontation, and a mirror of the desperate exertion suggested by its title. SKECH has a knack for blending the tragic and the iconic in dizzying ways, often with jokes that disguise a sharp kernel of truth. On “Badly Drawn Hero,” he sardonically flips Gil-Scott Heron’s famous maxim to reflect surface-level, Target-brand activism: “The revolution won’t have a laugh track or a verse from Black Thought.” He is even more direct in “Up to Speed,” bleakly referencing the way that Chicago’s death toll supplies grist for the news and subreddit content mills: “The headlines had birthdays before they became your entertainment.” SKECH isn’t here to offer clear-cut answers to a world on fire, but he isn’t above holding your head to the stovetop in an effort to shock you awake. He Left Nothing for the Swim Back is a world of blown-out buildings and bars that descend into “sword fight[s] for dollars.” Memories are shot through with pained melancholy, like the backyard argument turned shootout that powers the opening verse to “East Side Summer.” SKECH cuts the tension by turning directly to the camera as the march of Markey’s beat fades to vapor: “Nothing cool about living through this, fuck how them songs sound/That don’t make you real, we would’ve/Traded that ground for a tire swing.” His stories are as focused and detail-rich as his observational tracks, swerving past comfort in favor of spoonfuls of battery acid. Markey matches the charged funk of SKECH’s perspective with beats that creak and thump like a steampunk engine in need of oil. A handful of moments—namely the title track and “The River”—verge on industrial and post-punk sounds similar to Algiers or the latest Injury Reserve record, but the rest plays closer to kooky, unnerving boom-bap. “East Side Summer” and “Jay Street” are hollowed-out drum marches retrofitted with tinny organs and wailing saxophone. SKECH keeps pace with every switch-up, but he and Markey are most in sync on the two-part closer “Western Automatic Music,” where the muted drums and warbling synths of the first part are turned inside out on the second. SKECH’s gruff declarations (“The meek will inherit it all because the brave always go first”) fly between metered rhyme and freeform, pounding on the walls of the beats and creating haunting echoes. For all the rage, sarcasm, and sorrow coursing through He Left Nothing for the Swim Back, one moment tests SKECH’s resolve more than a thousand Kendall Jenner Pepsi protest commercials. Near the end of “The River,” he ponders if young people are even interested in inheriting the fight that older generations pass down: “What do I lose if I leave them? What do I do if they leave this?” The work may be Sisyphean, he decides, but he’ll trudge forward and fight for them anyway. SKECH and Markey have been warping traditional hip-hop into jagged, colorful forms for over a decade, but they fit well into the Backwoodz universe, and Swim has clearly sparked a new resolve in them. After some time away, they sound as prepared for the apocalypse as ever.

2023-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

2023-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

Backwoodz Studioz

February 13, 2023

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Dylan Green

https://pitchfork.com/staff/dylan-green/

Rufus Wainwright’s first original album in eight years isn’t so much a reinvention as an opulently crafted highlight reel, a career-spanning sampler of the singer’s many styles and guises.

Rufus Wainwright’s first original album in eight years isn’t so much a reinvention as an opulently crafted highlight reel, a career-spanning sampler of the singer’s many styles and guises.

Rufus Wainwright: Unfollow the Rules

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rufus-wainwright-unfollow-the-rules/

Unfollow the Rules

At 46, Rufus Wainwright is around the same age Leonard Cohen was when he wrote “Hallelujah,” the song Wainwright transmitted into a million tween bedrooms by way of a powerful device known as the Shrek soundtrack. And he’s the same age his father, Loudon Wainwright III, was when he released History, the 1992 album sometimes regarded as a late-career masterpiece. That’s not to say the younger Wainwright has crafted a masterpiece of his own (or an American Idol standby), but he knows lengthy careers can ebb and flow⁠—it’s literally in his blood⁠—and isn’t shy about comparing his own arc to big-name forebears: When he first announced his new album, Unfollow the Rules, back in February, he described it as an attempt to “emulate the greats of yore whose second acts produced their finest work,” citing Cohen’s The Future and Paul Simon’s Graceland. Unfollow the Rules, we were to understand, is a long-awaited new beginning. But unlike The Future, which absorbed icy synthesizers into Cohen’s apocalyptic soothsaying, or Graceland, which drew from South African styles like township jive, Unfollow the Rules isn’t the sort of album that’s interested in reckoning with the contemporary pop landscape. Maybe that will come as a relief to Wainwright’s fans, who’ve waited nearly a decade since his last proper pop album, 2012’s Mark Ronson-assisted Out of the Game, and who have always been drawn to the singer’s old-soul aesthetic. Swapping Ronson for veteran producer Mitchell Froom, Unfollow the Rules isn’t so much a reinvention as an opulently crafted highlight reel, a career-spanning sampler of Wainwright’s styles and guises. Nearly every corner of Wainwright’s discography⁠, save for the operas⁠, is here and accounted for: the swooning piano -pop of 2001’s career-best Poses (“Romantical Man”), the outlandishly lush orchestration of Want Two and Release the Stars (“Unfollow the Rules,” “Early Morning Madness”), the solo meandering of All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (“My Little You”). He even finds time to revisit the ’70s AOR sparkle of Out of the Game on “Damsel in Distress,” a Joni Mitchell tribute ornamented with Hunky Dory handclaps. If these reference points seem a little retro, consider that they’re several hundred years more current than the Shakespeare sonnets that occupied Wainwright’s last release. Besides, the singer has spent the last eight years settling into married life, raising a young daughter, and writing an opera about an embattled Roman emperor—not jockeying for relevance or mugging with Kendrick Lamar at the Grammys. That sense of domestic, middle-age contentedness fills the album, from the striding English folk of “Peaceful Afternoon,” in which Wainwright toasts to a happy marriage and hopes his husband’s face is the last he sees before he dies, to the lullaby-esque “My Little You,” in which he regales his daughter with embarrassing dad stories. When Wainwright does veer from his comfort zone, flirting with sci-fi synths and celestial flourishes, the results range from jumbled (“This One’s for the Ladies [That Lunge]”) to downright grating (“Hatred”). Mostly, though, his songwriting is as sharp and cheeky as ever. “You Ain’t Big” satirizes provincial fame (and packs a decent punchline), while “Alone Time” subverts its plea for solitude (“I need a little alone time / A little dream time”) with harmonies so luxuriant that Wainwright sounds like he’s accompanied by a choir of himself. (Had it been written in 2020, it could be a song about the trials of quarantining with a toddler.) The album’s sound is sleek and full of grand, sweeping climaxes that occasionally oversell the songwriting. But if Unfollow the Rules is sometimes in want of a unifying idea or theme, Wainwright’s dreamy voice provides a throughline. With its immaculate harmonies and wry humor, “Trouble in Paradise”—a sardonic take on the fashion industry—sounds so much like Queen that the Bohemian Rhapsody producers probably could have slotted it in the film without Bryan Singer noticing. Numerous other songs erupt in layered, multipart harmonies. Wainwright’s tenor voice has matured and deepened—listen to the nasal-voiced 24-year-old heard on 1998’s “Foolish Love,” and then hear present-day Wainwright deliver the wonderful, operatic climax of “Unfollow the Rules.” Suffice it to say, those are not notes an aging Leonard Cohen could have reached. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-07-10T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-07-10T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

UMG

July 10, 2020

fa3c7271-f49f-497c-b557-3a496e573528

Zach Schonfeld

https://pitchfork.com/staff/zach-schonfeld/

On his first album in three years, the Bangkok-based Drain Gang rapper taps into the group’s customary sentimentalism, but the rote lyrics and beats fail to convey much genuine emotion.

On his first album in three years, the Bangkok-based Drain Gang rapper taps into the group’s customary sentimentalism, but the rote lyrics and beats fail to convey much genuine emotion.

Thaiboy Digital: Back 2 Life

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/thaiboy-digital-back-2-life/

Back 2 Life

Thaiboy Digital is an underdog’s underdog. The Bangkok-based rapper (aka Thanapat Bunleang) made his mark as a member of Sweden’s Drain Gang, dropping digitally dissociated anthems alongside his comrades Bladee and Ecco2k, but his deportation from Stockholm to Bangkok in 2015 left him sidelined during the group’s steady rise. Even from a distance, though, Thaiboy has claimed his place in the Drain Gang holy trinity. He may be less overtly experimental than his peers—his more straightforward hip-hop sound sits somewhere between Ecco2k’s dreamy cloud crooning and Bladee’s sadboy swagger—but he’s made up for it with his smooth, silvery flow, a keen ear for infectious ad-libs, and the open-hearted sincerity he brings to his songs. His debut album, 2019’s Legendary Member, is one of the collective’s tightest releases; its pillow-soft beats and heavenly bangers cut to the core of what makes Drain Gang’s universe so mesmerizing. This has been a big year for Drain Gang, who have dropped a string of acclaimed albums and toured the world. After a fallow couple of years, Thaiboy finally reappeared and threw his hat into the ring as well: Released earlier this year, his single “I’m Fresh” is an ecstatic, 99-second lo-fi sugar high whose drill-inspired rhythm and hypnotically repeated titular phrase make for a blissed-out—and hilarious—hypebeast self-affirmation. But on Back 2 Life, his first album in three years, that same energy is nowhere to be found. Where singles like “I’m Fresh” and even 2020’s “Yin & Yang” dissolved Thaiboy’s feel-good flexing into an ethereal haze, Back 2 Life takes zero creative chances, settling into a monotonous procession of uninspired verses and floaty trap instrumentals that sound like the result of plugging “Yung Lean” into an AI beat generator. It’s a huge missed opportunity to show just what Thaiboy brings to the Drainer empire, and as much as you want to root for him, there’s little reason to reach for Back 2 Life over any other Drain Gang release. The guiding arc of Back 2 Life follows Thaiboy’s return to the music world after a quiet few years, and even after all this time, it’s clear that being separated from his crew has taken an immense psychic toll. “I had my heart turn cold for likе seven years,” he declares on the opening “Dreamworld,” over a piano bed straight out of Kingdom Hearts. The phrase “seven years” repeats like a mournful mantra throughout the album, suggesting his determination to make up for lost time. Unfortunately, the music doesn’t show that same conviction. Most of the trance-inspired beats on the album come from Loesoe of “Miss The Rage” fame, and while he delivers on Thaiboy’s proclaimed goal of evoking “Future on a legendary DJ Tiësto song,” the sluggish, repetitive tempos and spacey samples are more tedious than transcendental. “Angel” opens on a dystopian synth tone that feels as if it might lead somewhere epic but ends up in cloying lines about “tears flowing downstream” and generic paeans to his wife (including a particularly goofy chorus: “Only your lips I want to kiss/I never miss/Only one kiss, I enter the bliss”). While this fearless embrace of cheesy sentimentality is a huge element of what makes Drain Gang special, it only works when wrapped up in forward-thinking production and imaginative lyrics. Without either, it’s hard to buy into these songs as any kind of genuine emotional release. Even in the moments where Back 2 Life seems like it’s beginning to gain some steam, ploddingly slow songs invariably nuke the energy. After the title track revs up with an accelerating synth arpeggio, the beat drop goes limp as Thaiboy listlessly intones platitudes over an empty field of reverberating bass. The similarly lethargic “Fate” has the tired sway of a botched karaoke song, as Thaiboy saccharinely sings, “You and me, you and me, forever.” After a dramatic pause, he concludes the thought with the groan-worthy, “...and ever, and ever.” This kind of sleepwalking makes it all the more frustrating when brief flashes of Thaiboy’s originality do peek through, such as in the twinkling beat that powers the Mechatok-assisted “Alive,” or on the Bladee-featuring “The Kingdom,” where Thaiboy raps, “We only got like one life, then we disappear,” letting that offhanded “like” do some major metaphysical heavy lifting. Where the other members of Drain Gang have used recent releases to interrogate and expand on the collective’s sound, Back 2 Life does the opposite, settling into a shopworn vibe that’s become overly familiar. Most songs show you everything they have up their sleeve within the first 15 seconds, leaving Thaiboy to drift aimlessly, his would-be hero’s journey robbed of its wings. There is a twist at the end of the story, though, when the closer “Never Change” reunites Thaiboy with Drain Gang OG Whitearmor, whose spectral production lifts the song aloft. As his barely there beat stops and starts, Thaiboy’s voice hangs in a still, snowy silence, his calls to “Let it flow, let it flow/Like a river, let it go” echoing peacefully into the dark. The song is a reminder of what Thaiboy is capable of at his peak: rather than simply rinsing over the same clubby rhythms, he glides over the hushed beat with wistful resolve, initiating us into an intimate, celestial world all his own. It’s a shame Back 2 Life doesn’t spend more time there.

2022-11-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

2022-11-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

Rap

Year0001

November 28, 2022

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Sam Goldner

https://pitchfork.com/staff/sam-goldner/

Rappers JT and Yung Miami give the menstrual cycle top billing on a debut that showcases their synergy but doesn’t deliver the transgressive goods its title promises.

Rappers JT and Yung Miami give the menstrual cycle top billing on a debut that showcases their synergy but doesn’t deliver the transgressive goods its title promises.

City Girls: Period

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/city-girls-period/

Period

Periods keep nearly having a moment in music. In 2014, Tacocat took Aunt Flo to the beach on “Crimson Wave.” The next year, Kiran Gandhi, who played drums on M.I.A.’s Matangi tour and performs electronic music as Madame Gandhi, made headlines for running the London Marathon while free-bleeding to promote the truth that menstruating is a normal part of life. Jenny Hval’s most recent solo album, 2016’s Blood Bitch, was inspired by “the white and red toilet roll chain which ties together the virgins, the whores, the mothers, the witches, the dreamers, and the lovers.” Miami duo City Girls’ debut full-length, Period, gives the monthly cycle marquee billing in hip-hop. On opener “Tighten Up,” the Girls in question—JT and Yung Miami—rap about period sex: “On my period, PMSing/And my nigga fucking on me, and I’m stressing.” Unfortunately, though, the title overstates the album’s menstrual content. There’s certainly no song called “Fuck the Pink Tax.” Period is an album of high-price pussy platitudes delivered without much pleasure. From “Where the Bag At” and “No Time (Broke N** ga)”—which has nothing to do with the Lil’ Kim hit but does have the same percussion as the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)”—to “How to Pimp a N**ga” and “Millionaire Dick,” the duo’s wants are conventional: cash and cunnilingus, bags and baubles. Aside from the handful of times they drop the line “cum in his mouth” (a cliché too skeevy to reclaim), their lyrics rarely convey any carnal satisfaction beyond an exchange of services for goods. “Millionaire Dick” features lines like, “I’m one gold digger, shiesty motherfucker/All these bitches mad, I made these niggas spend a bag/Got him working overtime just to fuck my pretty ass.” It’s a gag that could fuel one or two songs, but the album’s titular promise of transgressive lyrics about women’s bodies is never fulfilled. Period is mostly just another collection of party tracks. It’s through their collective energy, not their subject matter, that City Girls really shine. A track like “One of Them Nights” may be littered with bottle service tropes, but there are no moments of dissonance when JT and Yung Miami each tell the story of the same night from their own points of view. It’s a synthesis of perspective reminiscent of Run-DMC and Salt-N-Pepa, one that suggests City Girls have a lot more to give—not to mention yet another reminder that women rarely get tapped for the same key_and_peele_liam_neesons.gif-level collabs as the dudes. Even last year, two of hip-hop’s most powerful players, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, were only given discrete verses on Migos’ “MotorSport.” Imagine how much more of a gut punch that track would have been if each of these rappers had been involved in the other’s creative process. Recent evidence of how insanely good it can be when women rap together is limited: Rico Nasty tapped CupcakKe for “Smack a Bitch (Remix).” Cam & China, twin-sister vets of jerkin’ crew Pink Dollaz, released an eponymous full-length in 2016 that featured some of the gnarliest tongue-lashings of the current decade—but the album’s cultural influence probably peaked when single “Run Up” played on an episode of “Insecure.” In fact, hip-hop’s best recent example of the awesome power of women collaborating may be Lil Bri, Ricci Bitti, and Rap-Unzel’s step-inspired “Over There.” Unfortunately, most people never heard that track because it was part of a challenge on the latest season of Lifetime teen reality competition “The Rap Game.” Had Period spent more time on menstruation—or any other topic unique to City Girls—perhaps it could have been a game-changer. But despite the lyrical filler, it is a document of unity between women in hip-hop, and that alone makes it something rare and precious.

2018-05-17T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-05-17T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rap

Quality Control

May 17, 2018

fa4719f1-b8d3-41b8-80f6-77c34b5b588a

Claire Lobenfeld

https://pitchfork.com/staff/claire-lobenfeld/

On his debut EP for Hessle Audio, the Jordanian producer brings regional rhythms and Arabic maqam scales to cutting-edge club music.

On his debut EP for Hessle Audio, the Jordanian producer brings regional rhythms and Arabic maqam scales to cutting-edge club music.

Toumba: Petals EP

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/toumba-petals-ep/

Petals EP

Far from the strained dichotomy espoused by the “fuck art, let’s dance” brigade, much of the greatest dance music is shot through with a wildly experimental instinct, from jungle to footwork to singeli’s galloping club deconstructions. Toumba, a producer and DJ from Amman, Jordan, knows this well. Petals, his debut EP for forward-thinking UK label Hessle Audio, is a record of dextrous rhythms, advanced sound design, and microtonal melody that is shot through with the joy of communal celebration. Toumba has released a handful of records since his 2020 debut EP, and those familiar with his 2022 EP Rosefinch, for London’s Hypnic Jerks label, or his mix for Untitled #909 may recognize some of the traits on Petals. Both Rosefinch’s “Multipack of Limes” and Petals’ “Istibtan” reference the writhing keyboard melodies of traditional Jordanian wedding music, while Petals’ “Identity Crisis” and Rosefinch’s “Sa7rawi” share the two-stepping dembow rhythm of dancehall and reggaeton. What is particularly impressive on Petals is how Toumba finds new ways to unite the sounds of Jordan with the percussive puzzles of modern club music. “Petals” moves with a lurching swing characteristic of southern Jordanian styles, while the drum-machine palette nods to trap. “Hazzeh” incorporates elements of dabke, a Levantine Arab folk music, over a vicious electronic bassline. And “Identity Crisis” uses the Arabic maqam modal system and a refined collection of electronic whirrs and clicks to suggest a Jordanian Kraftwerk, with all the German act’s classically graceful glide. This track demonstrates Toumba’s skill as a sound designer particularly well: The drums punch with clinical efficiency, and the synths are warm and perfectly rounded, with just enough space in the mix for each element to relax and resonate. “Petals” is the EP’s standout. The rhythm is deliciously—perilously—entertaining. The drums sound perpetually on the verge of collapsing out of time, with each new element threatening to be the last straw. The odd melodic touch suggests the slightest hint of an underlying tune, but the rhythm alone is enough to carry the show. “Hazzeh” is similarly tangled and drum-heavy, combining rock-hard thump, screwface bassline, and the kind of whooshing, perma-climax electronic effect used to stoke tensions in  darkened rooms. Toumba framed “Sabah Fakhri” / “Tidallal” as an attempt to channel “the modern UK club sound” that he absorbed while living in the country, and similar influences commingle with Petals’ Levantine vibes. The title track may have a South Jordan swing, but it feels not unlike the teasing lurch of a classic J Dilla MPC beat; “Hazzeh” has the air of classic dubstep to its bass strut; and the eerie synth sweep of “Istibtan” brings to mind the hard-faced industrial emotion of Sheffield bleep. Toumba is by no means the first producer to combine sounds from the Arab world with dance production from the U.S. and Europe; Natacha Atlas was doing it way back in the 1990s. But he may be the first artist to do it with such party-starting precision in the no-friction, free-for-all continuum of modern dance music, where reggaeton lives happily alongside UK funky, bassline, jungle, ballroom, and more in the blends of adventurous DJs. You could spend hours pondering the cultural fusions on Petals; you could also lift a dancefloor with its kinetic, vivacious spirit. This makes Petals a seamless addition to the Hessle Audio catalogue alongside records like Anz’s “Loos in Twos” and Shanti Celeste’s “Cutie,” and a reminder of the artfulness of the most vital dance music.

2023-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

2023-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Electronic

Hessle Audio

February 8, 2023

fa4bc0d5-6e68-4ad6-ae27-204dba6e0bd6

Ben Cardew

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ben-cardew/

This collaboration between experimental guitarist Richard Pinhas and Oren Ambarchi, Merzbow, and others sounds like rock music echoed out into the stratosphere.

This collaboration between experimental guitarist Richard Pinhas and Oren Ambarchi, Merzbow, and others sounds like rock music echoed out into the stratosphere.

Richard Pinhas: Reverse

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22756-reverse/

Reverse

Save for a brief hiatus in the ’80s when he became disillusioned with music, guitarist Richard Pinhas has spent the last five decades making records, both solo and with many groups including ’70s French space-rock innovators Heldon. Lately he’s been more productive, and collaborative, than ever: Reverse is his 14th release this decade, and like most of the others it features a fine supporting cast of accomplished players. That cast began with Oren Ambarchi, a partner with Pinhas on their excellent 2014 album Tikkun. The pair recorded guitar drones in an initial session, stripped away the parts that they felt didn’t work, and then added contributions from five collaborators including noise legend Merzbow, percussion master William Winant, and Pinhas’s own son Duncan on synths. That’s a lot of large personalities to fit into one space, but Reverse never feels crowded or dominated. Its expansive mix of sounds comes off as democratic. In fact, if there is such a thing as a star of Reverse, it’s one of its lesser-known participants, drummer Arthur Narcy. On three of the four tracks in an album-length suite called “Dronz,” Narcy’s playing creates a sturdy spine for his colleagues to wrap tones around, while also being agile enough to respond to their amorphous improvisations. In some spots, as during the gradual climb of “Dronz 2 - End,” he starts with a steady beat and tweaks it into abnormal shapes to match the guitars’ thickening clouds. He takes the opposite tack on opener “Dronz 1 - Ketter,” coagulating jazzy sounds until they become metronomic. The textures that Pinhas and company surround Narcy with are in constant motion, and are dense enough that something new is revealed with each listen. The sound the group conjures is too spacey to be called noise and too busy to be called drone. Its base is rock’n’roll, though there’s little in the way of riffs or single, discrete notes. Reverse sounds more like rock music echoed out into the stratosphere, extracting the essence of guitar chords the way the shining light of a star distills the core of something long gone. Pinhas has called making Reverse a healing process, coming as it did during a stressful period in his personal life, including the passing of both of his parents. There is a therapeutic aspect to the way the music continually opens up the world, suggesting that looking forward can help alleviate the past. That’s true even in the album’s only drum-less track, “Dronz 4 - V2,” whose whirring treble feels more like a cathartic scream than a medicinal potion. In the sure hands of Pinhas and his comrades, Reverse is big enough to contain emotional multitudes.

2017-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00

2017-01-24T01:00:00.000-05:00

Experimental

Tapete / Bureau B

January 24, 2017

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Marc Masters

https://pitchfork.com/staff/marc-masters/

The soul veteran puts her own spin on songs by the Who, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and more.

The soul veteran puts her own spin on songs by the Who, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and more.

Bettye LaVette: Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14394-interpretations-the-british-rock-songbook/

Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

The 1960s being what they were, the crossover game tended to work two ways: The rock groups that covered soul songs made the pop charts; the R&B artists that went the other way didn't. It wasn't for lack of trying, of course, and if you gather up every notable soul cover from Otis Redding's powerhouse 1965 rendition of the Stones' "Satisfaction" to the sweltering revamp of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" that Tina Turner recorded 10 years later, you'll have an alternate version of the classic rock canon that stands up to the original articles and then some. And among the better tracks will be Bettye LaVette's fantastic Muscle Shoals-tinged 1972 cover of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold", which was recorded during sessions where Patterson Hood's father David played bass and subsequently led to her Drive-By Truckers collaboration, The Scene of the Crime, three years ago. A good portion of LaVette's career revival these last several years has hinged on her transformative skills as an interpreter, especially in the way she can take her ragged yet lush voice and wring out new emotions from songs you thought might not have any tears left. Her first release on Anti-, 2005's I've Got My Own Hell to Raise, set that comeback-era standard with covers of songs from the likes of Sinéad O'Connor and Aimee Mann, selections that people called "unlikely" until they actually heard them. Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook pulls off a similar gambit-- only this time, that vintage tradition of the rock-done-soul cover is applied to a baker's dozen of well-known selections from the annals of 60s and 70s post-British Invasion bands. No obscurities here, either-- you've got your Elton John, your Rolling Stones, your Moody Blues, your Pink Floyd and four selections from all four members of the Beatles (group and solo), plus the show-stopping cover of the Who's "Love, Reign O'er Me", from the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors that inspired the project in the first place, as a bonus track. (Check it on YouTube; the awed, choked-up looks on Townsend and Daltrey's faces are priceless.) Interpretations winds up following that Who cover's powerfully sorrowful lead. If you're looking for upbeat moments, the closest you'll get is the dynamite gospel-accented version of the Beatles' "The Word" that opens the album and a deep funk take on Derek & the Dominos' "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad" 10 tracks later. Between them, it's all elegiac ballads, whether the songs were that way from the get-go ("Nights in White Satin") or not ("It Don't Come Easy"). But if you don't mind the mostly downbeat backings-- which run the gamut from lush orchestral soul to spare, semi-acoustic country blues-- the material here gives you as fine a showcase as any for how well she can convey pain, heartache, rapture, and love as a singer. Maybe the easiest track to point to is the most left-field one: Led Zeppelin's synth-drenched soft-rock flirtation "All My Love" is stripped down and rebuilt as a smoky number reminiscent of the Dixie Flyers' early-70s work with Aretha Franklin, and in place of Robert Plant's weightless murmur is a deeply hurt-sounding yet tough performance from LaVette. While the album's other great moments take a similar approach-- a stirring update of the Stones' "Salt of the Earth", her swooning glide through Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here," and a version of McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" where her raspy take on Sir Paul's wordless post-chorus vocalizations is worth the price of admission alone-- it's a template that fits across the board. And while it wouldn't fit such a dignified record to call it payback, it's hard not to appreciate the karma of some of the most well-worn rock standards of LaVette's hard-fought early years rendered new again through a voice time almost forgot.

2010-07-21T02:00:03.000-04:00

2010-07-21T02:00:03.000-04:00

Folk/Country / Jazz / Pop/R&B

Anti-

July 21, 2010

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Nate Patrin

https://pitchfork.com/staff/nate-patrin/

On his unabashedly personal new LP, indie rocker Gary McClure takes stock of his life, in distortion-heavy songs often filled with regret and loss, ugliness and shame.

On his unabashedly personal new LP, indie rocker Gary McClure takes stock of his life, in distortion-heavy songs often filled with regret and loss, ugliness and shame.

American Wrestlers: Goodbye Terrible Youth

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22562-goodbye-terrible-youth/

Goodbye Terrible Youth

From 1999 to 2013, the American Wrestlers front man Gary McClure played guitar in the English shoegaze group Working for a Nuclear Free City. Despite being signed to the relatively small label Melodic Records (which just celebrated its 100th release in 2015), the band had big ideas and an even bigger sound—big enough, in fact, to land them a video game contract with Sony: they wrote “Silent Melody” for Infamous. Their dexterous, almost chameleon-like style stemmed from influences as disparate as Bill Evans and the Grateful Dead, and it managed to be psychedelic without sounding dated or hokey. Eventually, as band members began to focus more and more on solo projects, McClure took his omnivorous songwriting spirit elsewhere. He moved to St. Louis to marry Bridgette Imperial, and together they formed the core of American Wrestlers, whose self-titled 2015 debut was a similar grab-bag of musical influence. With Goodbye Terrible Youth, however, McClure seems to be turning his searchlight inward. The six-minute bedroom-rock epics from the 2015 album are absent here, as are the eight-track Tascam recorders they used to record it. The obvious shadow of other artists has faded, and what’s left here is an aging musician looking through himself to create something new out of the old. After all, the album’s main subject is described in its title: terrible youth. McClure isn’t shy about his memory. He doesn’t wince when he looks back. These are unabashedly personal and reflective songs, often filled with regret and loss, ugliness and shame. But, as McClure boldly sings on “Hello, Dear,” “Where goes youth, I go.” The album begins with “Vote Thatcher,” a death-obsessed track that speaks to a familiar theme for McClure: brutal policing. “I can always look to my son,” he sings, “to be stoned by policemen.” “Kelly,” the sixth track on 2015’s American Wrestlers, is also about police brutality, particularly the death of Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man who was beaten into a coma by six police officers in 2011. It seems like a strange thing to begin an album about youth and memory with a song about modern policing, but there’s more to it. “My life for your throne,” McClure mourns on “Thatcher,” “I still can’t believe you died.” The words echo over a haunting synth melody. What is he bargaining for? Who is he bargaining with? We don’t get an answer. And as much as the album is about McClure’s own experience growing up, it’s also about the people who don’t live beyond youth. In this way, the music reflects both promise and tragedy in equal parts. Heavy guitar distortion—a staple in McClure’s work—colors over many of the songs on Terrible Youth. In “Give Up,” the album’s lead single, the constant buzz of rhythm guitar wins out over a catchy riff. “Amazing Grace,” a beautiful track about surrendering to happiness when the sun comes “bright across the rooftops,” bathes in a gentle hum, almost like sunshine itself. McClure’s use of distortion doesn’t evince ecstasy like it does for the Japandroids, nor does it mimic playfulness like it does for Youth Lagoon.  The distortion here is something else, something distressing. “Metal moans will multiply,” McClure sings on “Terrible Youth,” “we’re death in motion.” If the “metal moans” behind the distortion represent anything, it’s the discomfort of remembering where we’ve been, and as McClure suggests, where we’re going. What holds Terrible Youth back from becoming a really coherent, powerful statement is a kind of haphazardness in its arrangement. McClure doesn’t write choruses, he writes contrition, and sometimes this makes it difficult to take hold of any single resounding emotion in the music. Songs like “So Long” and “Blind Kids” rely on chord changes, but it’s rare for those changes, those shifts of feeling, to build toward anything greater.  And beyond casting an ‘80s sheen over the album, synth rhythms and melodies aren’t given any other direction or purpose—they rev the engine without propelling the car. Although the scattered nature of some of the songs keeps any single narrative from taking shape, the album is a significant improvement for a band that’s still coming into its own, still, in other words, in its youth. When the heartache of memory gets to be too much, American Wrestlers are there to show us, as McClure puts it best, that “All that weight/It could be but it’s make believe/And when it stops it’s nothing.”

2016-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-11-01T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Fat Possum

November 1, 2016

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Brian Burlage

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brian-burlage/

Mike Gordon’s debut album warps ’80s pop, rock, and R&B with idiosyncratic production, yielding strange, murky songs full of anxiety and longing.

Mike Gordon’s debut album warps ’80s pop, rock, and R&B with idiosyncratic production, yielding strange, murky songs full of anxiety and longing.

Mk.gee: Two Star & the Dream Police

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mk-gee-two-star-and-the-dream-police/

Two Star & the Dream Police

Mike Gordon’s mangled mix of pop, rock, and soul sounds like it’s made of scrap metal and polished with sandpaper. Across Two Star & the Dream Police, his magnificent debut album as Mk.gee, the 26-year-old from New Jersey subverts recognizable forms—’80s R&B ballads, Phil Collins-inspired downtempo anthems, Michael Jackson-meets-Arthur Russell pop-rock grooves—with unusual tones, tempos, and textures. His distinctive, distended guitar playing and Prince-indebted singing are pinholed through murky, twitchy mixes that refuse to stay still. Despite the elusive and exploratory nature of his music, Gordon is a master of melody, chiseling gorgeous, richly detailed pop songs from seemingly cluttered compositions. Two Star is as singular as it is familiar, an original and expansive record that feels at once timeless and uncannily contemporary. Although Gordon’s been releasing EPs and mixtapes since 2017, even landing a track on Frank Ocean’s Blonded Radio, many people first encountered him in 2021 as Dijon’s wiry, wild-haired guitarist. In a live performance of Dijon’s debut album, Absolutely, the pair play off one another in conspiratorial glee, Dijon in his olive fishing vest and Gordon with his ’60s-issue Fender Jaguar, both bounding about a gear-strewn dining room with childlike awe, howling and harmonizing and clapping until they can hardly stand up straight. Before Dijon met Gordon, the Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter’s brand of guitar-backed R&B was charming but safe, a collection of Blonde-lite songs that didn’t always extend past emulation. Gordon, however, offered Dijon a new rhythmic architecture, and freedom, to channel his gifts. “The real spirit of the record came when I formally met Mike,” Dijon recalled in a 2022 interview. Absolutely marked a significant leap for Dijon’s music, and he credited Gordon as an invaluable catalyst. “I think he might be creating or transmitting from an alien planet,” Dijon said in another interview. “It feels like this is the first music I’ve ever made.” Dijon appears to have helped Gordon make a similar leap of his own. Before Two Star, Mk.gee’s solo releases sounded like an offshoot of Toro y Moi or Unknown Mortal Orchestra, a pleasant array of sunny side-chained guitars, syncopated drums, and funky basslines. Two Star, though, signals a sea change for Gordon, who abandons easily deciphered mixes and clean song structures for strange, defiant choices that blister with anxiety and longing. Warbly electric guitar, spiraling saxophones, distorted synths, and two-bit toms splinter and scatter; Gordon’s raspy voice sounds as if he were in the next room, singing from a seated position on the floor. This is perhaps Dijon’s most obvious influence; before Two Star, Mk.gee was a tepid vocalist, but here he belts, coos, and moans with soulful, skin-tingling skill. And though the album has no obvious narrative, the oblique songwriting doesn’t detract from Gordon’s raging emotions. He’s desperate to be seen and to see, to stop hiding from the hard stuff and give himself to someone or something else, to embody a sense of self that feels safe and sustainable, at least for a little while. Aside from its obvious influences—Prince, D’Angelo, the Police—Two Star’s closest contemporary analogues are Jai Paul’s Bait Ones and Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. Like both, Two Star rejects crispness and clarity in favor of manipulation and obfuscation. If “Are You Looking Up?” had been recorded more conventionally, it could well be a hit. Instead, nylon strings scrape against the mix’s ceiling, the drums a two-dimensional pock beneath the clipped bass, the sound of crunching metal curdling in the background. Yet Gordon’s feral, pitch-shifted singing practically dares you not to join in. “If you want to go then baby go wide,” he cries, sounding as if he’s performing from the side of a highway. The lyrics, though opaque, balloon with feeling, the ingenuity of the form capturing something indelible about its content: Gordon aspires to arrive at an amorphous truth, to lay himself bare without sparkle or shine, seeking “a miracle to cut me slack.” Even “Candy,” a jam remnant of Scritti Politti and Chaka Khan, roils with weirdness. The wormy, highly processed guitar twiddles about in a manic staccato, tangling with a slippery synth pad and gated snare. It appears to be about entertaining your darkest urges—“I’ve done some bad, I won’t fake it/I got patterns, don’t think I’ll shake it”—but the music is all glitz and funk, a contrast that gives Gordon’s mischievousness a satisfying edge. The slow jams are delightfully disjointed, too, like “Rylee & I,” whose lead riff sounds like a guitar being chewed up and swallowed, or “You got it,” where droning hiss and synth shrieks flesh out an otherwise plaintive ballad. These potentially jarring choices don’t scan as off-putting, because Gordon’s a meticulous craftsman; what might be alienating or clunky in another artist’s hands here feels revelatory and just right, every decision an intuitive effort to get to the core of a feeling. If anything, Gordon’s experimentation only makes him sound more human, the messy elements in his music communicating something truer than cleanness ever could. No song better illustrates Mk.gee’s gifts than “How many miles.” On its face, it’s a slow-footed R&B track about self-realization, with a downtrodden Gordon muttering, “I thought that I lost me/After all this time, I couldn’t remember me.” But look closer, and the complexity of its construction reveals itself—a fizzy guitar lick melting into a filtered vocal chop, a rising string synth blossoming into a swell of twinkling lights. Gordon’s lissome guitar playing and mesmeric singing are so plainly moving that it’s hard not to wish the song had been around sooner so that it could’ve been a companion during different life phases, offering a suffusion of hope and warmth when you needed it most. That’s the magic of Two Star & the Dream Police: Nothing in contemporary music sounds quite like it, yet it seems to have always been with us, hovering just outside the realm of possibility.

2024-02-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

2024-02-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Pop/R&B / Rock

R&R

February 16, 2024

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Brady Brickner-Wood

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brady-brickner-wood/

Toronto’s foremost experimental soundscaper also turns out to be a surprisingly tender country-soul crooner on an album divided between psych-soul workouts and solitary acoustic ruminations.

Toronto’s foremost experimental soundscaper also turns out to be a surprisingly tender country-soul crooner on an album divided between psych-soul workouts and solitary acoustic ruminations.

Matthew “Doc” Dunn: Lightbourn

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/matthew-doc-dunn-lightbourn/

Lightbourn

For over a decade now, Matthew “Doc” Dunn has served as the Canadian ambassador to the New Weird America, acting as a conduit between the DIY avant/improv enclaves in his native Toronto and the broader international freak scene. He’s helped organize local weekend festivals featuring the likes of Oneida, collaborated with psych-folk figureheads like MV & EE and Woods, and amassed a discography stacked with more CD-Rs than the clearance rack at your local Staples. He’s an artist who thrives in both communal free-for-alls and extreme seclusion, whether leading his 20-person “hillbilly raga” collective the Transcendental Rodeo or overseeing all the instrumentation on the meditative drone-jazz pieces that comprise his solo releases. Two albums released this year exemplify Dunn’s penchant for both collaboration and isolation—yet rather than serve as a study in contrasts, the two records prove to be natural companion pieces. Earlier this year, we heard Dunn corral his current free-psych ensemble, the Cosmic Range, to become Meg Remy’s backing band on U.S. Girls’ In a Poem Unlimited, where their improvised sprawl got vacuum-sealed into taut disco-funk like a splatter of toothpaste getting sucked back into a shiny silver tube. But on his first solo effort in five years, Dunn proves he’s got some velvet for sale of his own. Like previous releases under his own name, Lightbourn finds Dunn in multi-tasking mode, handling everything from guitars to drums to vibraphone. But unlike his previous releases, it reveals Toronto’s foremost experimental soundscaper also to be the city’s most tender country-soul crooner. Even if you weren’t aware of Dunn’s experimental-noise roots, Lightbourn counts as a late-summer stunner on its terms, thanks to its churchly warmth, beguiling nocturnal atmosphere, and disarming vulnerability. Like In a Poem Unlimited, the album revels in the sultry, soothing qualities of mid-’70s pop, but unlike Remy, Dunn is concerned less with the political than the spiritual: the precariousness of love, the humbling grandeur of nature, the fear of an uncertain future. Dunn sings in the honeyed, high-register voice of a Laurel Canyon folkie, but Lightbourn’s soft-focus patina (courtesy of Jennifer Castle producer Jeff McMurrich) tends to blur the edges of his words, lending the album’s familiar, golden-oldies forms an enigmatic aura. Lightbourn is divided evenly between plush, psych-soul workouts and solitary acoustic ruminations, and the tracks that fall into the former camp are the most immediately alluring. On “Lovebeams (for T.B.),” Dunn hitches a plaintive, sepia-toned serenade to a frisky drum beat like the Band bound for the boudoir, while Remy and (occasional U.S. Girls backing vocalist) Isla Craig’s harmonies cast the song’s gritty groove in a heavenly glow. Dunn’s also fond of stretching out his rhythmic foundations until the carnal turns cosmic: With the fever-dream funk of “Mind of My Lover,” he initiates a holy communion of Astral Weeks and Maggot Brain, as he and Remy repeat the titular chorus line in a mantric trance while floating inside a lava lamp of Eddie Hazel guitar globules. But Lightbourn’s acoustic reprieves are ultimately no less transfixing than its extended excursions, with Dunn’s exploratory ethos coming to the fore even in his more typical singer/songwriter turns. On the spectral lullaby “The Catching Wave,” each of Dunn’s existential lyrics is punctuated by a cluster of kosmische organ tones, like an early-’70s soft-rock station bleeding into a contemporaneous European pirate-radio broadcast. And on folk reveries like “Roads” and “Simple One,” he effectively unspools a single extended verse over his glistening fingerpicking, with the songs’ repeated melodic cadences transmogrifying into hypnotic textures unto themselves. But Lightbourn’s opposing affinities for the intimate and the epic converge to beautifully woozy effect on “Love Is Everywhere,” a hit of hazy-headed gospel-soul guided by an omnipresent organ hum that functions as a lighthouse beacon in Dunn’s dark night of the soul. “Love is everywhere,” Dunn sings in the chorus, a familiar sentiment he embellishes into “My love is everywhere you are,” transforming a universal hippy-dippy platitude into an intensely personal, wounded expression of romance in the face of absence. It’s Dunn’s entire career distilled into a single lyric—an all-encompassing, free-ranging musical vision quest that, with Lightbourn, gets fine-tuned into a pure, direct statement of emotional clarity.

2018-08-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-08-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock / Folk/Country

Cosmic Range

August 28, 2018

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Stuart Berman

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stuart-berman/

As one might expect that with a title like 'The Absent Universe," the reissue of style-sampling Italian composer Luciano Cilio's Dell'Universo Assente is a spare album, its pleasures revealed through careful listening rather than quick snippets. Not a single note or gesture feels out of place.

As one might expect that with a title like 'The Absent Universe," the reissue of style-sampling Italian composer Luciano Cilio's Dell'Universo Assente is a spare album, its pleasures revealed through careful listening rather than quick snippets. Not a single note or gesture feels out of place.

Luciano Cilio: Dell'Universo Assente

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18845-luciano-cilio-delluniverso-assente/

Dell'Universo Assente

“Luciano Cillio (sic) seems to have released an album almost by accident, spirited away from him as he slept.” So wrote Jim O’Rourke in the liner notes for a limited edition reissue of an album made in 1977 by an obscure Italian musician composer named Luciano Cilio back in 2004. It was the lone album that Cilio ever released, and he took his own life in 1983, at the age of 33. It’s not a casual assessment by O’Rourke, as it actually suggests the deep level of intimacy of Cilio’s sound. That reissue reinforced that closeness. Originally entitled Dialoghi Del Presente (translation “Dialogues of the Present”) but retitled Dell’Universo Assente (“The Absent Universe”), it looked like a blank white cover. Only when held in your hands and inspected closely did the near-invisible cover image appear, a hand-drawn spiral in light silver ink. That CD reissue quickly disappeared, but thankfully it now receives a wider reissue some ten years on, both on CD and vinyl from the meticulous Italian label, Die Schachtel. It’s hard to draw an exact parallel to Cilio’s music. O’Rourke triangulates it somewhere between Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Bill Fay’s Time of the Last Persecution and the debut album from This Heat. But in its punctilious attention to acoustic instrumentation in space, Dell’Universo Assente comes closest to approximating what the next Mark Hollis album might have sounded like, had Hollis continued along Laughing Stock’s and his 1998 self-titled album’s trajectory, moving away from words and song, ever closer to a distilled sound couched in silence. The effect of Cilio’s music reminds me of Jess Harvell’s line in the above review, stating “how startling, isolated moments of sound, or a formless wash of sound, can wring emotions out of listeners as powerfully as any conventional melody.” Born in Naples, Cilio studied architecture and music, learned sitar, guitar, and piano yet was essentially a self-taught composer that interacted with progressive rock and experimental theater in early 70s Italy before realizing this, his lone album. Arranged in four movements with an interlude, scored for acoustic guitar, mandolin, strings, piano, woodwinds and percussion, the album is wordless, yet features a lone instance of voice to devastating effect. The “prima quadro” clocks in near eight minutes, opening with a bittersweet finger-picked guitar figure that—as it slips into a minor key—finds itself shadowed, first by piano, then soon after by cello and string quartet. Fans of Rachel’s or the first Jóhann Jóhannsson album might immediately swoon. But as the strings explore the minor key, near the 2:30 mark, Cilio cagily swaps out the timbre of the bowed cello with Patrizia Lopez’s voice, multi-tracking her until she creates a spine-chilling chorus. At 3:50, Cilio performs yet another aural hallucination, as the female vocal then transmogrifies into a soprano saxophone line. Two minutes after her entrance, Lopez's voice disappears completely; without a single word uttered, body-leveling emotions are nevertheless conveyed. The second movement puts the woodwinds in a subterranean setting, prepared percussion flitting around the flute, oboe and soprano sax, the string section entering to push everything deeper into the gloom. A lightness appears courtesy of an elegant and lyrical two-minute piano solo that comprises the third movement, while the fourth movement opens with tuned percussion before saxophone enters, reminiscent of a restrained free jazz section, building up speed with the introduction of guitar and other woodwinds. Cilio’s crystalline finger-picked guitar returns for the “Interludio,” as gorgeous a melody as Robbie Basho or John Fahey plucked, if taken at a slower pace. Cello and woodwinds also arise, but the album soon distills back to Cilio’s lone guitar for the end. As one might expect that with a title like “The Absent Universe,” it’s a spare album, its pleasures revealed through careful listening rather than quick snippets, but not a single note or gesture feels out of place. And in recapping the juxtapose of instrumentation, it feels like something is still lacking, that the deep, solemn unnameable emotions conjure by Cilio –which in hindsight feels sorrowful, knowing that this would be his lone statement into such a universe– are scarcely touched upon. Perhaps that is what O’Rourke’s above quote signifies: a sound so intimate as to have not been recorded and pressed to disc, but instead pulled from the subconscious, transmitted instead to each listener individually. Later in the notes, Jim O’Rourke writes of the music as feeling like “this enormous weight that is bearing on its creators, the absolute need to exorcize it from their lives.” Cilio is a heavy listen, but one that can ultimately feel redemptive.

2014-01-09T01:00:03.000-05:00

2014-01-09T01:00:03.000-05:00

Die Schachtel

January 9, 2014

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Andy Beta

https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/

A new 55-song compilation from the UK art-pop duo is as definitive as it gets, pearl after pearl of fabulous singles from one of the best to ever do it.

A new 55-song compilation from the UK art-pop duo is as definitive as it gets, pearl after pearl of fabulous singles from one of the best to ever do it.

Pet Shop Boys: Smash – The Singles 1985 – 2020

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/pet-shop-boys-smash-the-singles-1985-2020-2023-remaster/

Smash – The Singles 1985 – 2020 (2023 Remaster)

Even before he perfected them, Neil Tennant respected pop singles enough to hate them. As a journalist at the beloved, now-shuttered British music magazine Smash Hits in the early ’80s, his reviews of the 7-inches were exacting. “We all make mistakes,” he wrote of Culture Club. Laurie Anderson? “I dozed off.” Amusingly, he suggested that the monster hook of Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round” was not catchy enough. Even if he wasn’t always spot on, Tennant was a fan who refused, in SH parlance, to be fobbed off with pap. Tennant and his Pet Shop Boys bandmate Chris Lowe have made at least six great albums, but their music never met a more elegant repository than the single format. It suits the medium and the medium suits them. The duo is one of the few acts that still record B-sides—very good ones—despite these being an endangered species in modern Western pop. Go looking for a pop B-side now and you often won’t find much more than sped-up or slowed versions of the main event, but a single release in the pre-streaming era was, Tennant noted in 2020, “More like a manifesto: This is where we are now.” Hence SMASH, a towering 55-song remastered singles collection from the pop art fabulists. As the Pet Shop Boys’ fourth greatest hits release, it expands on previous compilations—1991’s Discography, 2003’s PopArt, and 2010’s Ultimate—which are now truncated, dated, or both. SMASH’s rules of admission here are strict: only officially released singles are included here, and all versions are the 7" or CD versions serviced to British radio, with a couple of asterisks. “New York City Boy” is switched out for its more economical US radio edit, and “How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?” a 1991 double A-side in the UK with “Where the Streets Have No Name,” is not included. When asked about the omission recently, Lowe replied, “It doesn’t sound like a single.” Sometimes the single versions here are superior to the album edits, 12-inch mixes, and other edits, but not always. It is also possible to imagine a more nuanced and inventively sequenced gloss of Pet Shop Boys’ career than this chronological survey. But there is particular value to this nerdy historicism given the poor cataloging of single edits by streaming services and that the pop single was Pet Shop Boys’ primary way of reaching the great record-buying public. This is what we heard: a murderer’s row of fabulous singles from one of the best pop duos to ever do it. By the mid-’80s, Britain’s Satanic Mills had festered into a waste land of Thatcherite individualism. Underneath an urbane veneer was a vipers’ nest of greed and vice where the only thing that mattered was the cash in your pocket and who you’d got in your bed. All of which is to say that SMASH opens with “West End Girls.” The single, a US and UK No. 1 hit, is an irresistible stroke of pop genius enrobed in sophisti-jazz and flared synths, crowned by Tennant’s deadpan hook and a post-“Rapture” pseudo-rap, and it is still the most concise example of Tennant’s ability to see past facades while also admiring their gleam. Tennant never wrote a song when it could be a one-act play; Lowe never settled for a synth when an orchestral hit could do. The singles of their imperial phase, which Tennant defines as spanning 1986-88, are among the cleverest to ever top the British charts: as packed as Heaven on a Friday, with any white space filled with cosmic whirrs, plainsong chorales, and heraldic horns. “It’s a Sin” mixes sacred chants with hair metal camp in a satire of anti-gay Catholic doctrine; “What Have I Done To Deserve This,” a gorgeously grown-up Dusty Springfield collaboration, teeters between resolve and despair in one of her best performances committed to record. Author Luke Turner was right when, writing about this period, he said that the Boys “smuggled queer kink into the living rooms of millions.” In “Rent,” Tennant relishes the flip-flopping power dynamic of a sugar relationship. “You dress me up, I’m your puppet,” he purrs. “You buy me things, I love it.” His kept narrator is no Baby Doll with daddy issues: They may even hold all the cards. And Tennant finds the tenderness within the arrangement. “I love you/You pay my rent” might be the greatest love story the Pet Shop Boys ever told. Only a former altar boy could write this well about pride, envy, and lust—how others can awaken the worst of us—and do it without adjectives (Tennant abhors them). 1990’s operatic “Jealousy” features a paranoid narrator who unravels while waiting to hear their AWOL lover’s keys in the door. “Where did you go, who did you see, you didn’t call when you said you would,” Tennant sings bitterly, among sweeps of orchestration that are so pristine that they almost seem to mock his worry. Nine years later, after Tennant came out, Nightlife’s “I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Any More” says the quiet part loud: “Is he better than me? Was it your place or his?” And while their great B-side “The Truck Driver and His Mate” (not included here, of course) sexily imagines “man to man” diversions in a rest stop, 1999’s cosmic country ballad “You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk,” details the knottier side of life with what Quentin Crisp called the “great dark man” and we would call trade. The title alone packs a kitchen sink drama’s worth of conflict into a sentence. They never considered their music political. “I don’t really like the idea of people projecting themselves as important humanitarian figures, which is the tendency for rock personalities these days,” Tennant said in 1989, recounted in Chris Heath’s essential book on the Boys, Literally. Even so, you suspect that Tennant took more issue with virtue-signaling egos than artists who genuinely wanted to help. On the sublime “Being Boring,” a deeply personal elegy to Tennant’s friend who died from AIDS, the singer is both reflective and quietly furious that the plague kneecapped so many young queers’ ability to dream. SMASH’s segue from the introspection of 1990 Behaviour to the post-ecstasy rave of 1993’s Very tells a story about an LGBTQ+ community that needed to mourn as well as release. The thunderous gay dance anthem “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing” captures it well, as Tennant sings “I feel like taking all my clothes off/Dancing to the Rite of Spring.” It’s about “falling in love and going bonkers,” says Tennant in the liner notes, but doing all that to Stravinsky’s barbaric ballet says something about queer joy as resistance, and finding courage to celebrate despite a backdrop of cruelty. Two decades after Tennant seethed at dunderheaded critics on “Yesterday, When I Was Mad” (essentially Pet Shop Boys Versus America in a song), Super’s “The Pop Kids” cast their earlier life in a rosier light. Over time, infatuations and reveries take a back seat to finely drawn portraits of domesticity—not really the stuff of most pop songs, much less queer pop. 2002’s “Home and Dry,” with its wistful Johnny Marr guitar and synths that somehow evoke a sea shanty, lovingly details a hard-earned harbor at the end of a transatlantic schlep. The Xenomania-produced banger “Did You See Me Coming?” would be an inspired second dance song at a wedding, when the mushy stuff is done with and you just want to bop with your baby. The album weakens a little in the last of its three discs, but there are remarkably few true duds. Tennant and Lowe’s recent singles can rival their famous hits, even if they don’t quite match them, particularly the brilliantly dotty Purcell flip “Love Is a Bourgeois Construct,” and the Casiotone reggaeton of “Twenty-Something” which, I promise, is a grower. Best of all is “Memory of the Future,” here in its majestic Stuart Price single mix, a dance between minor-key melancholy and a major-key plea for connection that also finds time to reference Proust. “It’s in the music,” Tennant sings in “Vocal,” a sledgehammering rave track from 2013. “It’s in the song.” Wasn’t it always? On SMASH, Tennant and Lowe’s everyman haikus and walloping anthems assemble in mile-markers of an unparalleled career. Pop music will always be sacred, but finding connection in a dead-end world is also holy enough to be hymned. The 1997 Eurodance knockout “A Red Letter Day” showcases Tennant in the unlikely mode of a moony lovefool. “Like Christmas morning when you’re a kid / Admit you love me and you always did,” he sings, amid godly incantations and trance 808s. You can hear him beaming. It’s enough to touch your heart to hear Tennant, sin far enough in the rearview to wink at, so full of faith.

2023-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

2023-06-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Parlophone

June 17, 2023

fa990322-0c47-4c53-832c-9ba2efc3c0a0

Owen Myers

https://pitchfork.com/staff/owen-myers/

Just like any diamond unearthed after many years, J Dilla's long-lost solo album The Diary is flawed, but still precious.

Just like any diamond unearthed after many years, J Dilla's long-lost solo album The Diary is flawed, but still precious.

J Dilla: The Diary

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21709-the-diary/

The Diary

By now, it's difficult to talk about James Dewitt Yancey—the accomplished producer and aspiring rapper known as Jay Dee, and more commonly J Dilla, or just Dilla, who passed away in 2006—without dipping into hagiography. His legacy means many different things to hip-hop fans; he brought Pharcyde (and much of hip-hop) into adulthood on Pharcyde's 1995 album *LabCabinCalifornia, *placing warm and sunny beats under the L.A. quartet's disillusioned musings on identity, purpose, and struggles against commerce. He supported De La Soul as they directly campaigned against rap's material excess on Stakes Is High. He collaborated with Q-Tip on A Tribe Called Quest's Beats, Rhymes & Life at the exact moment that the group's personal expansion and internal tension began to forecast their end. These are the formative years, a pivotal part of  the origin story that places him in the pantheon. But the tale behind The Diary twists the narrative. It goes back to at least 2002, years after Dilla had contributed to the then-flowering neo-soul movement by bringing a softened low end and melodic, hazy middles to Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun and D'Angelo's Voodoo. Along with his continued work with Tribe, his efforts on Q-Tip's Amplified*,* as well Common's Like Water for Chocolate* and Electric Circus, *Dilla provided a safe space for forward thinking hip-hop and smart R&B to meet on their own terms and grow beyond the sum of their parts.  At a time when hip-hop and and R&B pairings were still being done as mash-ups that simply dropped a dollop of peanut butter into a chocolate cup, Dilla was experimenting with new flavors and cutting-edge swirls of tastes. It was all prescient and revolutionary and it's exactly why MCA, his then-record label shelved his solo debut Pay Jay, the album that has been dusted off and presented to us almost a decade and a half later as The Diary. Dilla's most noted collaborators had been progressive, socially conscious writers who waxed about the big ideas about their immediate society in grand terms. But precious little of that sentiment was to be found in his own raps. As a producer, he was thoughtful and intimate; as a rapper he was brash, confrontational, and unrepentantly materialistic and misogynist. Nary a song on this project goes by without either a mention of wealth, an intimation of violence, or a dismissal of women. And sometimes he manages all three with neck-breaking economy. "The Shining, Pt. 2 (Ice)" is barely over one minute long but still manages to house uncomfortable lyrics like, "Jay been nice with his since Dre said he was a n-gga for life/ And bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks—that's what I'm thinking when I'm dickin' your wife/ Yup/ Big truck jewels in the truck with tools/ You don't want to pop shit tonight." On "The Creep (The O)" Dilla paints himself as a serial womanizer and incorrigible cuckolder. "You could stay out with Craig and them," he raps to the listener, personified as a man whose woman he's cheating with. "Mo' time for me to bang out/ Shit, I love when you hang out/ It's nothing else to do but send her home to you/ I'm through, 'til the next time we screw." The latter couplets are repurposed from the Notorious B.I.G., but the sentiment is all Dilla. As far as hip-hop trespasses go, it's quotidian by early-'00s standards, and tame by current ones. But it's obviously not what label execs expected or wanted from the guy who produced songs like Common's "Between Me, You & Liberation" and Erykah's "Kiss Me on My Neck (Hesi)." Despite being intended as Dilla's first true solo album, *The Diary *is not what people who are seeking an entry point should gravitate to. For that, listeners are better directed towards the upcoming collection, *The Fantastic Box: A Jay Dee Production *in order to get a concise overview of his themes and sounds; or directly to his magnum opus Donuts, the last album released in his lifetime, which shows him at the height of his production mastery. In many senses, it's hard to understand who this record is directed towards. The Diary was released in conjunction with Record Store Day, an obvious move at collectors and archivists. But a quarter of these songs have already been released in some form; and Pay Jay has already widely circulated in bootleg form. The Diary comes off as a play for completists that was prefaced with a listening party at a trendy hotel and a gastronomic orgy in New York—events for the committed and connected, not the everyman. It’s an over-reaching approach that attempts to make a blockbuster out of what should be an arthouse film. The bookends of the album—the cinematic intro, the proclamations, the heavy-handed ad-libs on the closing track—are conceits that try hard to position The Diary as an important record, but they're unnecessary. The tracks—namely Supa Dave West's "So Far," Hi-Tek's "The Creep (The O)," and Karriem Riggins' "Drive Me Wild"—are playfully bouncy enough to get  heads bopping, shoulders bouncing, and hips grooving while still smart enough to be cerebrally rewarding to beat nerds. They're all incredibly short, as well. Like most numbers here, they clock in at under three minutes, all but begging for expanded editions masterminded by Dilla collaborators and devotees like, Madlib, Kanye West, and Flying Lotus. (Seriously and please.) There are still moments, like the touchingly personal title track, where we are reminded Dilla was a beast of an MC when he wanted to be. On "The Shining, Pt. 1 (Diamonds)," Dilla lights up like a late-90's Jay Z. An obvious take on Jay's "Girl's Best Friend," it's a song-long metaphor as love song to bling and plays like Dilla's radio concession. But Dilla may as well have been prophesying his legacy:  "You so special, you multifaceted/ You can cut glass with it/ It's so brilliant /Go spend a little dough, look like you sold millions/ Plus you everlastin'/ And drastically important when sportin' your ghetto fashion." That was Dilla—multifaceted and brilliant—and The Diary is notable for presenting an official release to his intended debut. And, just like any diamond unearthed after many years, The Diary is flawed, but still precious.

2016-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-04-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rap

Mass Appeal / PayJay

April 20, 2016

fa9dbb2e-c296-49ff-a138-2cfd336ade52

kris ex

https://pitchfork.com/staff/kris-ex/

Released on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint, this is another texture-heavy, blunted take on West Coast instrumental hip-hop.

Released on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint, this is another texture-heavy, blunted take on West Coast instrumental hip-hop.

Matthewdavid: Outmind

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15334-outmind/

Outmind

Of all the artists working in Los Angeles' experimental beat scene, Matthewdavid might be the strangest. The producer, whose real name is Matthew McQueen, runs the sound-collage cassette imprint Leaving Records, and as a musician, makes tracks with little regard for traditional structure and composition. His texture-heavy style takes the already blunted traits of West Coast instrumental hip-hop (blown-out beats, woozy atmospherics) and jumbles them up even further to build something uniquely psychedelic. McQueen's debut full-length, released on pal Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint, throws a bunch of ideas on the table at once-- you've often got tape hiss, field recordings, warped bass, and scratchy ambience all rubbing elbows in the same song. It's a heady, no-holds-barred approach to production that's sometimes very appealing. On a track such as "Like You Mean It", which is grimy and dubstep-leaning but fleshed out with strings and vocal samples, there's this cool kaleidoscopic quality, like spinning the radio dial between three or four vaguely similar stations at the same time. The flipside is that with so much swirling around, Outmind can feel disjointed and even kind of exhausting. I don't think it's an error in execution-- it seems McQueen wants to keep edges frayed to reinforce the record's hallucinatory vibe. Take "Cucumber-Lime", all gurgling and ambient-- there's an undercurrent of melody that wants to match up with the rolling beat but is always about a half step behind. It doesn't congeal into something more substantial-- and maybe that's McQueen's point, to keep things loose and process-driven-- but to these ears, the song sounds half-formed. It can be hard to shake this unfinished quality, especially on quieter interstitial pieces like the weirdly minor Flying Lotus collaboration "Group Tea". What ultimately makes up for these shortcomings, though, is that when these songs are working, they really don't sound like much else. The warbling psych-pop-meets-crunching post-dub of "Being Without You"? That thing could warrant its own subgenre. His ambition and willingness to try just about anything in the quest for new, weird sound combinations here is commendable. So even when McQueen stumbles, it's exciting to hear him lay it all out there.

2011-04-19T02:00:02.000-04:00

2011-04-19T02:00:02.000-04:00

Electronic

Brainfeeder

April 19, 2011

faab7ebd-f1f7-4635-9c88-57e214cb9336

Joe Colly

https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-colly/

Last month I visited Venice. Along one of the main canals of the Dorsoduro, the southern peninsula of the city ...

Last month I visited Venice. Along one of the main canals of the Dorsoduro, the southern peninsula of the city ...

Underworld: Beaucoup Fish

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8349-beaucoup-fish/

Beaucoup Fish

Last month I visited Venice. Along one of the main canals of the Dorsoduro, the southern peninsula of the city, I discovered a building defaced in green graffiti. It read, "DON'T BELIEVE THE HIPE." Something in the combination of the innocence of an Italian's misspelled English and the cosmopolitanism of punk cliches made me chuckle. But after listening to the over- anticipated third album from Underworld, I want to hunt down the mysterious Venician riff-raff author of this scribble (I picture him in a beret, scarf, and JNCO pants) and kiss him. For he is brilliant. You see, you shouldn't believe the hype (and furthermore, don't believe the hip.) As far back as 1997, the hyperactive music press had been awaiting Underworld's followup to the brilliant Second Toughest in the Infants, or more specifically the Trainspotting epic, "Born Slippy," released like a boogie board on the crest of the electronica wave. Finally, after settling on the ridiculous title Beaucoup Fish, Underworld have finally answered. And it shouldn't surprise anyone in today's age of shattered expectations that Beaucoup Fish is not as great as we'd hoped. But, of course, what we had hoped for was the OK Computer of electronic music. Lofty. The final product lies more like The Bends of house music. My legs and ass must admit that Underworld that can make me dance. Anyone who knows me, realizes the grand scale of this accomplishment. I have the rhythm of a poodle on his hind legs, begging for a milkbone. Jungle junkies looking for seizure beats and caffeinated tempos look elsewhere. Go pick up some Autechre or Squarepusher. Beaucoup Fish's thump comes direct and in repetition, a 50/50 mix of ambient synthphonies and thudding digital funk with a splash of rock and roll. Actually, Beaucoup Fish succeeds most when miming rock. "Push Upstairs," built on a pounding piano loop, could be a Girls Against Boys number, if GVSB completely got rid of stringed instruments. A pal o' mine complains that "Bruce Lee" sounds like the opening to a Thriller-era Michael Jackson tune. Well, yeah. That's why it's cool. Unlike other techno groups, Underworld relies heavily on vocals. And a vocoder effect. Lots of vocoder effect. Although, the vocoder might just be covering up some downright silly lyrics. Underworld loves to chant a pastiche of commercial slogans, colors, consumer vocabulary, and whatever words they just think sound cool. Sometimes this works. And when it doesn't, you're stuck with lines like "King of snake/ King of snake/ King of snake/ King of snake." I'm not positive, but the lyrics for "Bruce Lee" might be built on the repetition of "Life is/ Juice from a box/ Bruce Lee." Underworld, being artists and designers, might try to label this "a postmodern commentary on the accursed share of capitalist dogma." Don't believe the hype. Beaucoup Fish has no meaning in daylight and sobriety. Underworld have crafted a deeply agoraphobic record that demands the ambience of neon-lit city streets, the backseat of a boxy Japanese import, or the flesh-pressed dancefloor of a clubs with names like Fuse, Fix, Flux, Fax and Flick. Beaucoup Fish is a record for quantum body activity-- either let your body completely relax or completely move. As shallow as it sounds, Underworld are just sound cool and sexy. They're as inexplicably addictive as fashion, and just as inexplicably disposable. But isn't that what makes us like them?

1999-04-13T01:00:01.000-04:00

1999-04-13T01:00:01.000-04:00

Electronic

V2 / JBO

April 13, 1999

fab3bbc9-a89e-42bc-93b9-020b8e62b145

Brent DiCrescenzo

https://pitchfork.com/staff/brent-dicrescenzo/

Scott Mescudi’s latest tome, the 87-minute Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’, is the most focused he’s sounded since 2010’s Man on the Moon II, with the same drawbacks that have always plagued him.

Scott Mescudi’s latest tome, the 87-minute Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’, is the most focused he’s sounded since 2010’s Man on the Moon II, with the same drawbacks that have always plagued him.

Kid Cudi: Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22469-passion-pain-demon-slayin/

Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’

Scott Mescudi does not make small projects. His shortest album, Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon, runs 41 minutes, and last year, he somehow wrung over 91 minutes out of the psychedelic acoustic Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven. Grandiosity is part of Kid Cudi’s charm: His world is melodramatic and vast while remaining entrenched in his most personal memories. While his issues are his own (and typically petty), he conveys them as important, as if they fit into a larger universal scheme where things have meaning and happen for a reason. In 2009, he slowly opened the doors to that world, hum-singing “Welcome/You’re in my dreams” on Man on the Moon’s intro. His latest tome, the 87-minute Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’, continues that tradition. It’s expansive, and Cudi is as focused as he’s been since 2010’s Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. But it also comes with the same drawbacks that have plagued the Cleveland artist throughout his career: His albums require full immersion and acceptance of his worldview to function, but it’s still not clear that he has found something new (or anything at all) to say that makes him a unique voice worth hearing. To start his career, Cudi flaunted his vulnerabilities, endearing him to fans who went through similar troubles. By MOTM II, he took on a more advisory role, calmly offering, “I am your big brother” on “Revofev.” When martyrdom proved fruitless and thankless, he got lost in those troubles, and preferred to steer negative: “You doubt him, don’t know a damn thing about him/What is hip-hop without him,” from Indicud’s “King Wizard.” On Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin’, Cudi has returned to the Man on the Moon attitudes, where he is the pained and wizened sad sack—at once able to offer comfort and vulnerable to his own destructive tendencies. “Swim in the Light,” for instance, is truly affecting, a sort of meditative moment of ambient hip-hop. The minimalist offering conjures deeper images and feeling buried deep within the track; “you could try and numb the pain, but it’ll never go away,” he advises. But when he tries to expound, as on “Wounds,” he finds himself mired in cliché, suggesting you “dig deeper” to find yourself. It’s a constant theme in Cudi’s work; his songs might feel important, but since he only operates in tired symbolism, does he have anything worth saying? Little on Passion convinces that Cudi is a greater authority on the ways of the world than he’s been before, but growth is not as much a part of his repertoire as the frequent suggestions of ascension would lead you to believe. Like he states on “Swim in the Light,” the problems don’t disappear, so a Cudi experience is simply finding new warm atmospheres to bask in the darkness. Lyrics have been Cudi’s most frequent struggle. The closing “Surfin’” is a very catchy song that excels on its hook alone, but Cudi finds great difficulty in biding his time between choruses. Forced to say something in the interim, he comes up with “The industry is so full of shit/Welcome, y’all, to the enema.” He’s barely ever been a rapper, which made him more unique and interesting when end rhymes and pacing were of little concern to him. As usual with his music, Passion’s best moments come from its production. Cudi brought back his career-launching accomplice Plain Pat, and recruited Kanye soothsayer Mike Dean, which lends cohesion and focus to the record. Regardless of its dull content, “Frequency” sounds vibrant, thanks to an instrumental that marries the ambition of Man on the Moon with the spacey calmness of Satellite Flight. The Pat-produced “Dance 4 Eternity” feature beautiful synths that hum around the background with skittering hi-hats that drive the song. And “The Guide” is a menacing whirl, enlivened by an André 3000 verse. At its worst, however, too much of the album blends together—“Kitchen” and “Cosmic Warrior” may as well be the same song. The same goes for “Distant Fantasies,” “Wounds,” and “Mature Nature.” At this point in his firmly established career, Kid Cudi does not wish to be a savior, and he is less interested in being a brat, as Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven allowed him an outlet to lash out against himself and others. The meaning of his music has gone entirely internal, with the listener left to search for the “Frequency” on Cudi’s terms and in his realm. The 87-minute runtime is both ridiculous and somehow necessary; if the redundancies were cut, some of the self-importance would be lost. The extended monotony allows you to get lost in Cudi’s ego and your own head, clearing room amid the nothingness to discover and create meaning.

2016-12-20T01:00:00.000-05:00

2016-12-20T01:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

Republic / Wicked Awesome

December 20, 2016

fab8c914-4a22-44f7-a6c9-46ffda52b246

Matthew Strauss

https://pitchfork.com/staff/matthew-strauss/

Straying from the niche where he made his name, the fingerstyle guitarist layers his playing with field recordings and electroacoustic techniques, to cryptic but compelling ends.

Straying from the niche where he made his name, the fingerstyle guitarist layers his playing with field recordings and electroacoustic techniques, to cryptic but compelling ends.

Daniel Bachman: Axacan

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/daniel-bachman-axacan/

Axacan

Daniel Bachman made his name as a guitar prodigy when he was still in his twenties, and his early run of releases—first under the name Sacred Harp, and then under his birth name—anointed him as a worthy scion to the greats of fingerstyle guitar. Records like 2012’s Seven Pines showcased a reflective, sophisticated style with an ear for tradition. But perhaps Bachman realized that time would turn this comfortable niche into a trap. More recently, the Charlottesville musician has quietly broken off from the pack of earnest guitar players paying homage to the music of Fahey, Basho, et al. and wandered off down his own path. A sprawling double LP, Axacan features Bachman’s virtuoso playing, but plenty of other things besides. Across its 73 minutes, we hear thunderstorms, insects, ocean waves, snatches of radio broadcasts, and towards the end of a track called “Blues in the Anthropocene,” the sound of rusty metal tools being hurled into a dumpster. The record takes its name from a 16th-century colony founded by Spaniards around the Chesapeake Bay, an area that today is Bachman’s home state, Virginia. But the colony would be short-lived; the settlers were abandoned by their guides and left to perish. The album’s cover depicts an untouched area of forest, wreathed in cloud. It suits the music. In places, Axacan feels less like a conventional musical recording than an ungoverned wilderness into which the world creeps unbidden. Bachman took a turn into experimental territory on 2019’s The Morning Star, an album that interspersed his guitar work with drones, field recordings, and ambient techniques. Axacan marks a step further into this terrain. An accompanying essay written by Bachman’s friend James Toth, the guitarist and writer, notes that the record draws influence from electroacoustic music—a mid-century style espoused by composers such as Pierre Schaeffer and Edgard Varèse, who used magnetic tape and rudimentary electronics to explore new ideas in texture and tone. Often this manifests in a way that feels fresh and surprising. “Big Summer” is a short guitar piece that sounds as if it was captured on a damaged tape machine. As Bachman’s fingers slide up and down the frets, you wonder if you’re listening to the bend of strings or the wobble of an analog recording—a neat audio illusion that fades while your ears are still trying to catch up. Bachman’s guitar playing has become increasingly distinctive over the years. Lonesome and elemental in tone, it has a prickly beauty, gritty like dirt and sharp like pine needles. There is a spaciousness to his style that demands your attention. “Coronach” demonstrates an almost magical command of pacing; over nine minutes, it moves between passages of thrashing motion, eddying calm, and near silence, as if carried along on the breeze. “Year of the Rat” starts with a sparklingly pretty steel-string motif that recedes into silence; then it pauses, you hear Bachman clear his nose, and it begins again. This vérité approach brings to mind the distant roots of American folk music—the songs collected in situ by figures like Alan Lomax, which captured not just the players, but something of the spirit of the rugged places they called home. What might be most surprising about Axacan is the proportion of its running time in which Bachman’s guitar is altogether absent. Segments of the record appear to be straight field recordings. “Deep Adaptation” is a mysterious soundscape of watery lumps and bumps; “WBRP 47.5” mixes up environmental sounds with a leisurely spin of an analog radio dial. And then there is “Blue Ocean 0.” A drone piece filling a full side of vinyl, it melds lapping waves and birdsong with harmonium and fiddle. It’s neatly done, building gradually to blazing intensity before sinking slowly beneath the water. But strung out to 17 minutes, its sheer scale leaves the album feeling a little lopsided. There is a sense of weight to Axacan that makes it feel like a spiritual, private endeavor. The field recordings have almost diaristic overtones, as if articulating matters of deep personal significance. Track titles like “Blues in the Anthropocene” and “Deep Adaptation” indicate an environmental consciousness, even as they suggest a sort of cynical realism about the state we are in. Folk music is in its bones a referential music, but there isn’t a single hokey melody or clichéd turn here; Bachman has ruthlessly whittled any sense of sentimentality from his music, and it’s an approach that undoubtedly distinguishes him from his peers. But this record does not reveal its secrets easily, and sometimes feels as if it wants to hold you at arm’s length. It’s easy to admire Axacan’s musicianship, easier still to admire its ambition—even as the spirit of enigma laced throughout this record leaves it dangling just a little out of reach. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.) Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2021-05-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

2021-05-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

Folk/Country

Three Lobed

May 10, 2021

facde759-9a3e-4500-ada6-a468fb52230b

Louis Pattison

https://pitchfork.com/staff/louis-pattison/

Band of Horses’ sixth album unexpectedly delivers on all the qualities that defined their initial success: soaring emotions, crunchy guitars, and Ben Bridwell’s cotton-candy whine.

Band of Horses’ sixth album unexpectedly delivers on all the qualities that defined their initial success: soaring emotions, crunchy guitars, and Ben Bridwell’s cotton-candy whine.

Band of Horses: Things Are Great

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/band-of-horses-things-are-great/

Things Are Great

There are bands that naturally decline over time, and then there are bands that fall off with such speed and determination you wonder if they ever even had a grasp on their own appeal. In the wake of Band of Horses’ breakout 2006 debut Everything All the Time, Ben Bridwell did all he could to make sure its magic couldn’t be replicated, first by stripping the group of all other original members, and then by shifting away from spikey, Pacific Northwest indie rock in favor of mellow, Southern-hued country rock. That reinvention might have been more tolerable if they’d had another showstopper like “The Funeral” in them, but as 2010’s major label debut Infinite Arms and 2012’s Mirage Rock made stubbornly clear, this band no longer did anthems. No other marquee indie act of their era seemed as eager to abandon what made them so beloved in the first place. Yet recently Bridwell has been more open about admitting that, yeah, he probably lost the plot for a while. Produced by Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, 2016’s Why Are You OK was the band’s most overtly “indie” record since their time on Sub Pop, although it was too fussy and self-consciously experimental to recreate the uncomplicated pleasures of their early records. Things Are Great avoids that high-minded trap. Recorded after yet another lineup change, it’s evidence of how intrinsically likable this band can still be, a back-to-basics record without the sense of retreat that term usually implies. Alongside assists from Lytle, Dave Fridmann, Wolfgang Zimmerman, and Dave Sardy, who give these songs the expected heft, Bridwell co-produced Things Are Great with intentions of honoring the band’s rough edges. As Bridwell now explains it, he had previously tried to disguise his own untrained playing by employing seasoned musicians and expensive studios. In the process, he sanded over some of the impulsivity and odd tunings that made their early output so alluring. “Looking back I realize the way I played guitar was the main identity of the band,” he says. There’s something unsatisfying about that explanation, especially the idea that, all this time, another good Band of Horses album was just one a-ha moment and flip of the switch away. Yet Things Are Great supports his claims, delivering on all the qualities that carried the band’s first couple of records: soaring emotions, crunchy guitars, the unabashed stickiness of Bridwell’s cotton-candy whine. The album’s title is sarcastic, as Things Are Great makes clear right off the bat on “Warning Signs,” which opens the album with Bridwell in the midst of a medical and mental crisis. “Small talk with a registered nurse/Not to cry in front of people at work/Well that’s hard, hard, hard,” he sings, his unsteady yowl never sounding more like Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch. The music, too, has re-embraced Built to Spill’s sense of dishevelment, that belief that disorderly feelings call for similarly untidy songs. Bridwell’s lyrics can be plainspoken to a fault, but here he casts some memorable images. On “Aftermath,” he taps into parental anxiety with an account of falling down the stairs while holding a child. In the tender “In Need of Repair,” he is “sitting in my usual chair feeling the walls around me,” but he still musters the energy to console an old pal who’s going through more shit than he is. He’s less interested in the specifics of traumas than the way people cope with them. That all may sound heavy, but Things Are Great’s melodies are so breezy, its guitars so giddy with uplift, that these songs sound carefree in spite of their subject matter. It helps, too, that Bridwell often disarms his lyrics with gentle whimsy. Even when he takes that spill with a kid in his arms, he sees the humor in it (“Say what’s that over there?/It’s the baby and me tumbling down the stairs”). The result is a record that’s personable to a degree even defenders of Band of Horses’ last few releases might be surprised by, an album that restores not only the pulse of their first album but also the indelible sense of safety and coziness. Even when Bridwell’s woords read like a Facebook post from a friend who is not OK, his music comforts like a second slice of pie in front of the fireplace.

2022-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

2022-03-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

Rock

BMG

March 8, 2022

fad3d04b-0b15-44da-b53b-e841230daeee

Evan Rytlewski

https://pitchfork.com/staff/evan-rytlewski/

Temporary Residence's resident ambient artist patiently works with narcotic drones and slowly unfolding chord changes.

Temporary Residence's resident ambient artist patiently works with narcotic drones and slowly unfolding chord changes.

Eluvium: Talk Amongst the Trees

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2765-talk-amongst-the-trees/

Talk Amongst the Trees

Drone music directs a listener's attention to texture. Once you know you're getting long tones and gradual changes, you focus on the sort of details. The timbre is what provides the mood, and is what separates the Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid from the very, very awake sounds of Aube. The best stuff finds that crucial edge between "too pretty" and "too noisy" and rides it like a water-skier pushed along by the lip of the boat's wake. Matthew Cooper's Eluvium project has on occasion found this edge. I'm thinking in particular of the 15-minute "Zerthis Was a Shivering Human Image"-- the closing track on his debut LP, Lambent Material-- which throbs with damaged energy even as a layer of drone buried deep in the center hints at a ultimate serenity. Perhaps thinking that he'd said his piece with the held tones, the next Eluvium album, An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death was a collection of short piano pieces. Heard by some as kin to the impressionistic minimalism of Harold Budd, An Accidental Memory strikes me as a riff on some of the dramatic cues from the soundtrack to On Golden Pond. Nice enough, I suppose, but insubstantial. With Talk Amongst the Trees, Eluvium returns to drone with a renewed sense of purpose. While there's nothing here anywhere near the intensity of "Zerthis", the album provides enough tension and variety to keep things interesting. The exquisite 10-minute opener "New Animals from the Air"-- with its billowy mass of backward guitar seeded with overdriven guitar patterns-- is the sort of thick sonic blanket which Windy & Carl used to tuck us under. In a similar vein, "Calm of the Light Cloud" delivers on the promise of its title, filling available space with layers glowing harmonics. Throughout Talk Amongst the Trees, Cooper has it down when he aims for immersive warmth. Slightly darker tracks such as the quiet "Show Us Our Homes", which has two separate metallic seesaw patterns swaying lazily and falling out of sync, and "Everything to Come", with its anxious, distorted whine, retain a sense of relaxed contemplation. As with Eluvium's debut, this album's peak comes on an extended centerpiece. This time the boost isn't provided by a threat of noise, but by a sense of cinematic grandeur. The 17-minute "Taken" is built from a series of strummed guitar chords that seem to be continually climbing upward on an Escher staircase. As it marches along "Taken" becomes almost heroic, even after you realize that it actually changes little with each passing minute. It's a big effect on an album consisting mostly of smaller, quieter ones. But still, it holds together. That prickliness that pushes my favorite drone tracks over the top is lacking, but it's clear that Cooper had other ideas that happened to turn out quite well.

2005-02-25T01:00:02.000-05:00

2005-02-25T01:00:02.000-05:00

Electronic

Temporary Residence Ltd.

February 25, 2005

fae5466c-b956-4fb2-8dce-ec3cd2289eb7

Mark Richardson

https://pitchfork.com/staff/mark-richardson/

The duo’s joint project is wistful and occasionally danceable, juxtaposing steely electronica with a stadium-ready take on Yachty’s sing-rap sensibilities. But too often, they play it safe.

The duo’s joint project is wistful and occasionally danceable, juxtaposing steely electronica with a stadium-ready take on Yachty’s sing-rap sensibilities. But too often, they play it safe.

Lil Yachty / James Blake: Bad Cameo

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lil-yachty-james-blake-bad-cameo/

Bad Cameo

When James Blake and Lil Yachty debuted as divisive wunderkinds, they earned feverish acclaim—and controversy—for the way they blurred the lines etched by their predecessors. Blake stormed dubstep’s dancefloor and rendered it a dusty confessional booth; Yachty looked at the hip-hop landscape he inherited, cursed its gods, and spent the beginning of his career at war with a generation. Not everything has changed: They’re still divisive, and they’re still doggedly trying new things. But they aren’t upstarts anymore; nor are their disruptive ideas breaking boundaries so much as reinforcing them. (So long, saxophones, and so long, rap.) A pair that once embodied youthful iconoclasm now often seem to see only as far as their next grievance. More and more, they sound like the gatekeepers who didn’t believe in them years ago. Thus the defensive crossover spectacle of Bad Cameo, their new joint album. Few things announce themselves louder than a tag-team LP by a polarizing producer and an equally polarizing rapper-turned-rocker. But instead of provoking, this record largely takes the low-key road, like a terse postscript to a more transgressive past. It’s dreamy and occasionally danceable, steely electronica rubbing shoulders with a sharp, stadium-ready take on Yachty’s sing-rap sensibilities. The shoulder-rubbing is promising, but at a certain point, when the friction hasn’t progressed any further, the party starts to feel like a corporate lunch: Hey Post-Dubstep, have you met Post-Trap? I’ll leave you two alone to hit it off! Sometimes, they do. More often, Blake and Yachty are cozy in their respective corners, taking turns in the spotlight rather than sharing it. You get the sense that they’re trying to rekindle old magic—the wonders Blake worked with his glitchy soul-searching, the weightlessness Yachty proffered with his pitch-shifted lilts. These elements sound nice next to one another. They’d sound even better if they did more than just coexist. When Yachty released “Poland,” his unlikely 2022 hit single, part of the draw was his quivering, liquid delivery: “It is a really fucking weird song,” Blake told him in a recent sit-down, revealing that it brought him to tears. He’s right to identify the weirdness as jolting—at least enough to channel raw emotion, or inspire it in others. But when they try to accomplish this on Bad Cameo, they sound maddeningly riskless. The title track registers like an attempt to run “Poland” through Blake’s chilly alt-pop processing and produce something equally apt for dorm rooms and sound baths. There’s a repeatable mantra, minimal frills that foreground the vocals, and an air of confession—only now, instead of spiking one another’s worlds, the crossover dilutes their respective strengths. “Did you ever love me?” Yachty begs, in full “Poland” voice, with Blake echoing his prayer in the background. You might recall a similar plea on the 2022 song (“Hope you love me, baby, I hope you mean it”). Where “Poland” producer F1lthy supplied Yachty with a jumpy, trap-infused hotbed, Blake’s canvas is restrictive, limiting the singer to a cramped crying closet both have outgrown. Solemn as it sounds, it’s hard to take very seriously. Part of Bad Cameo’s appeal is the promise of a novel palette: lean meeting lemon tea, hip-hop meeting post-dubstep, confessionalism meeting vanity. Sometimes, as on “Twice,” this works beautifully—a staggered four-on-the-floor beat might morph into something airier, a haggard Yachty and wistful Blake taking turns reveling in their respective terrains. Other times, in moments where you’d expect the contrast to unearth rich new flavors, there’s a dulling effect. “Save the Savior,” a crunchy ballad that sounds a bit like a screen-adapted Future therapy session, would absolutely crush in a ritzy, white-walled gallery. Play it a second time, this time with the pair’s capabilities in mind, and it starts feeling like it should go beyond those insular limits. Blake is coming off his most energetic and danceable record to date; Yachty is freshly removed from a risky, compelling—if controversial—psych-rock dispatch. Considering the boundary-breaking instincts each contributor brings to the table, Bad Cameo feels too safe, too familiar, to tell us anything we don’t already know. The bulk of Bad Cameo’s novelty arrives, instead, in songcraft. To Blake’s credit, he’s a master of seeing tracks as living things, subject to as much growth and meandering as the masterminds who make them. Familiar as they may feel, the most striking songs on this project keep some powder dry, sprawling into realms far beyond their starting places. Midway through “Midnight,” when Yachty and Blake’s harmonized refrain gives way to a beat switch and the drums fall out from beneath their voices, it sounds like they’re prostrate before something powerful. “Woo” begins with an echoey grand piano over a trap beat, no new addition to the annals of introspective hip-hop. But by the chorus, it seems like it’s all falling apart: The drum pattern sputters, and a sly ghost chord gradually infiltrates Blake’s somber progression, culminating in a single jolt of dissonance. You wish there were more room for such uncompromising mischief.

2024-07-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

2024-07-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

Rap / Pop/R&B

Quality Control / Motown / Republic

July 1, 2024

fae89151-b0ee-4657-9e81-8ae55627d4b6

Samuel Hyland

https://pitchfork.com/staff/samuel-hyland/

Mark E. Smith's unlikely music institution tries to keep its 00s Narnack-signed winning streak intact on this album, recorded in L.A. at the end of the group's ill-fated 2006 U.S. tour.

Mark E. Smith's unlikely music institution tries to keep its 00s Narnack-signed winning streak intact on this album, recorded in L.A. at the end of the group's ill-fated 2006 U.S. tour.

The Fall: Reformation Post TLC

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9987-reformation-post-tlc/

Reformation Post TLC

Mark E. Smith has helmed the Fall for a full 30 years. It's pretty mind-blowing to think of them as the institution they've become-- this band has always been so strange, prolific, and unpredictable, and Smith has built his oddball ranting into a sort of brand by sheer force of will. Because of the group's constantly shifting lineups, they've just as capable of releasing several masterpieces in a row as they'd be following them up with two puzzling disasters. Since signing to Narnack in 2003, the Fall had been on one of their good runs: 2004's Real New Fall LP was their best album in ages, Smith had assembled players with nearly as much punch and muscle as the Burns/Hanley/Rogers/Scanlon/Brix crew that made the band's greatest stretch of classic in the early to mid-80s, and 2005's Fall Heads Roll was a solid second act in Smith's mini-renaissance. The Fall were storming across America with all cylinders firing in 2006 when something strange happened: Smith and his keyboardist/wife Eleni Poulou woke up in Phoenix to find the rest of the band gone, back to the UK unannounced. Only the band members know what happened to make them leave-- and Smith does have a history of cantankerous relations with his musicians-- but at any rate, Smith and Poulou were stuck in the U.S. in the middle of a tour with no rhythm section. So they kept touring, naturally. The first thing to realize is that the Fall aren't really a band in the usual sense. It's MES & Musicians Currently in His Favour, so he and Poulou simply scraped together some guitarists and a drummer and kept going. They wound up going right into a long-scheduled studio session in L.A. as well, where they cut Reformation Post TLC. Remember a few sentences ago when I said the Fall isn't really a band in the usual sense? Well, on this record they don't sound like one, either. With only a few exceptions, the album is a mess, and not a very memorable one at that. I think Smith is referencing the United States of America's "Coming Down" on opener "Over! Over!" when he sings "I think it's over now I think it's...ending," but you'd be hard-pressed to call it a tribute, at least in the same way his covers of "Victoria", "Mr. Pharmacist", and "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" have been in the past. Much more troubling, though, is Smith's tendency to fall back on using slurred speech and growls whenever he runs out of things to say. He does the wookie thing on "Over! Over!" and a few other songs, and it's just annoying, the kind of thing he may wind up getting away with because, you know, he's Mark E. Smith. But I'm not buying it in part because even when he is saying something, he's not saying much. He sounds tired and unfocused on most of the record, and when he cedes the vocals to Poulou on "The Wright Stuff", she basically imitates him, rambling over the backing track. More damaging than Smith's unusually incoherent performance, though, is the production. The only thing that's uniform about it is that it's lousy. The sound on the album is all over the place, and ranges from muffled to unevenly mixed-- the mastering level on certain tracks even sounds different from the level on others. There are things about the new band, even in the inchoate state it was captured in here, that sound promising, so it's a shame the texture is so scattered. The aptly named "Fall Sound" features a vintage Fall groove, with the whole band locked in tightly, guitars nagging at the edges of a thick bass line, but Smith doesn't do much with it, gargling on the intro and wandering in and out of his usual sneering deadpan. You almost wonder if he's just telling the truth when he shouts, "It's a scream for help that's desperate." "White Line Fever"'s country aesthetic is somewhat interesting but it needed more time in the oven-- if they develop this angle, it could be a good new direction. Going into much more detail than that doesn't serve the record well, but suffice to say that "Das Bootuboat" is the worst Fall track this decade; it trudges through a sludge bath of bass, wobbly sound effects, jokey chanting, and other sonic muck. It sounds like an incidental track when it stops around two minutes in, but then it comes back for another eight minutes to go nowhere slowly all over again. More than anything, it seems as though this version of Fall is ill-served by the first album it made. There are moments of clarity when the band sounds fantastic, but they're not enough to save the record from landing in the band's forget pile. The rhythm section can play its guts out, but if Mark E. Smith isn't leading the charge and dripping acid, it won't come to much good. Reformation Post TLC is ultimately a record that was made out of stubbornness, and one that almost certainly could have been better if they'd taken more time to write and rehearse it before recording it.

2007-03-12T02:00:02.000-04:00

2007-03-12T02:00:02.000-04:00

Rock

Narnack

March 12, 2007

faec0eb5-5ebb-4a73-b8de-36eee7366505

Joe Tangari

https://pitchfork.com/staff/joe-tangari/

In the first installment of the London nightclub’s relaunched mix series, an artist best known for soulful, worldly downtempo tries his hand at upbeat house.

In the first installment of the London nightclub’s relaunched mix series, an artist best known for soulful, worldly downtempo tries his hand at upbeat house.

Bonobo: Fabric Presents Bonobo

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bonobo-fabric-presents-bonobo/

Fabric Presents Bonobo

When London’s Fabric nightclub announced they were ending both their Fabric and Fabriclive mix series, they went out with a bang. Fabric 100 was a massive three-disc set from longtime residents Craig Richards and Terry Francis along with club cofounder Keith Reilly; Fabriclive100 was a tag-team effort from Kode9 and the ever-elusive Burial. The two sets signaled the end of an era. Perhaps, some ventured, they were tombstones for the mix CD itself. Yet, six months later, here we are with a new iteration of Fabric’s series, kicking off with Fabric Presents Bonobo. In tapping Bonobo (aka Simon Green, a British-born, L.A.-based producer), Fabric the brand seeks to escape the fetters of Fabric the club. While Green has been a known quantity in electronic music circles since the turn of the 21st century, moving from trip-hop into world-music-flavored productions and the UK charts, he had only DJed at the club once, in October of last year. Popular on the festival circuit, he’s known more for his live sets than his skill behind the decks. Bonobo’s most evocative work tugs at the heartstrings rather than the feet; his melodies and live instrumentation hint at a fondness for jazz, soul, folk, and minimalism. All of those were featured to sterling effect on Bonobo’s Late Night Tales mix a few years back. Fabric Presents doesn’t exactly play to those strengths; instead, he’s in upbeat house mode. He’s on sure footing with the mix’s opening, which consists of two of his own tracks. Flecks of strings, saxophone, and woodwinds weave through the kick drums, evoking Bonobo’s warmest productions. That sensibility runs deep in these selections, be it the dramatic strings of Poté’s “Jacquot” or the bamboo flute tones of Alex Kassian’s “Hidden Tropics.” Those two funnel into a curious and rather abrupt early peak with Âme’s 2004 house track “Nia,” which throws the mix into a lurch, losing momentum as Green breaks it all down and figures out another direction. Most of the set draws from recent, unreleased tracks, but it’s when he mixes in older material (the glitchy jazz of Nepa Allstar’s “The Way,” the dreamy ambient techno of John Beltran’s “Collage of Dreams”) that he strikes the right balance. It’s telling that both of those selections use just a handful of elements to make their point. “Often I end up adding a bunch more elements to the track after I originally thought it was done,” Green confessed to Interview in 2013, and that lack of self-editing also tends to color his choices here. Too many overstuffed, heavy-handed picks—like Dark Sky & Afriquoi’s “Cold Harbour,” with its vocoder, thumb piano, acid bass, polyrhythmic percussion, and twanging strings—start to bog things down. The middle of the set is particularly wince-inducing, from the sappy sentiment of Will Saul’s echoing vocal (“I build my whole world around you”) to Dan Kye’s falsetto R&B and Titeknots’ heaving strings. The cumulative effect is as sappy as a maple tree. In choosing an outside-the-box artist like Bonobo to launch Fabric Presents, there’s an implication that this next iteration of the series will look beyond the club’s walls for inspiration. In this case, though, Bonobo has ended up slotting right back into Fabric’s dancefloor-centric mold. Going forward, the series might be more interesting if artists take the opportunity to step outside the strictures of the club.

2019-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00

2019-02-26T01:00:00.000-05:00

Electronic / Jazz

Fabric

February 26, 2019

faf69656-48b0-4b69-82d2-935790bc2329

Andy Beta

https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/

The K-pop quartet’s highly anticipated second album leans into an image of authority that’s undercut by familiar ideas and stale musical concepts.

The K-pop quartet’s highly anticipated second album leans into an image of authority that’s undercut by familiar ideas and stale musical concepts.

BLACKPINK: Born Pink

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/blackpink-born-pink/

Born Pink

When BLACKPINK debuted in 2016, K-pop had entered the international pop cultural lexicon, but it had yet to scratch the surface of the global music market. By 2020, the four-piece had become the first girl group to perform at Coachella, established partnerships with luxury brands like Celine and Chanel, and snagged the No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 with The Album, its first full-length. For 26 consecutive weeks, BLACKPINK charted alongside Ariana Grande, Halsey, and their “Kiss and Make Up” collaborator Dua Lipa. With the help of loyal fans known as Blinks, who mobilized to influence streaming statistics, they ascended to K-pop royalty. Born Pink, their highly anticipated follow-up, is a compact collection that leans into the image of authority BLACKPINK have fostered in the six years since their debut. Its eight songs juxtapose hard-hitting hip-hop—a staple of agency YG Entertainment’s sound—with a smattering of pop, disco, and balladry. Through sound and imagery, the group’s hard and soft sides mingle, but it’s unclear which element of BLACKPINK’s name Born Pink wants to focus on. What is apparent is an unfortunate disinterest in the growth and advancement K-pop has made in the last few years. The album’s first single, “Pink Venom,” impresses with its braggadocio and influences, weaving in lyrical references to the Notorious B.I.G. (“Kick in the door, waving that Coco”) and Rihanna (“One by one, then two by two”). In the song’s rap break, a G-funk synth zips behind members Lisa and Jennie as they indulge in a lavish yet rebellious lifestyle of “designer crimes.” Sampling is less popular in K-pop than in Western hip-hop, but its use in “Pink Venom” aligns BLACKPINK with contemporary pop culture’s aesthetic obsession with the 1990s and ’00s. The updated approach to the “girl crush” concept holds some artistic merit, unlike their gimmicky 2019 single “Kill This Love,” an EDM march steered by buzzing horns that sounded dated on release. Rather than following in the steps of “Pink Venom” by experimenting, the rest of Born Pink serves up more of the same. Side A, which supposedly explores BLACKPINK’s edgier side, is clouded with tried-and-true K-pop techniques like the classical sample (Niccolò Paganini’s “La Campanella”) on “Shut Down” and unsteady attempts at bass-heavy ringtone rap on “Typa Girl,” which calls to mind Billie Eilish’s whisper-sung “Bad Guy” or Ashnikko’s horror-tinged “Daisy.” Tiptoeing around already familiar ideas, the album’s first half never finds new footing. The giddy love song “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” which credits members Jisoo and Rosé as co-writers, is no exception. Arriving in the middle of the record, its minimalist guitar loop and new wave synths represent the album’s first splash of soft and vulnerable “pink.” But the song culminates in the titular affirmation—“Just say yeah, yeah, yeah”—a line so cliché that it should have been a red flag. Even with member contributions, “Yeah Yeah Yeah” doesn’t have anything new to say. Though it’s performed by Rosé alone, Born Pink’s centerpiece is the alluring and thorny “Hard to Love.” Encasing BLACKPINK’s ethos of hard and soft into one song, it’s a fitting successor to The Album’s anthem of yearning, “Lovesick Girls,” a similarly upbeat dance track that depicted the four women as desiring love, even if it hurts them in the end. “Hard to Love” is a muted expression of the same desire, using glowing neo-soul keys, rhythmic guitar, and a grounding bass groove to carry its storytelling. “Never meant to cause you a problem/Here I am, yet once again/With the same old story,” Rosé sings. The production’s clarity allows her vocal to take up space, bending and vibrating organically. These days, you can pick up physical copies of K-pop albums at Target, and a slew of idols are forming what’s known as K-pop’s fourth generation. Across Aespa’s genre-blending metaverse, NewJeans’ au naturel approach, and Dreamcatcher’s metal-tinged sound, the industry is growing more varied as it becomes more saturated. BLACKPINK’s potential audience has never been larger, but the refurbished sound and half-baked ideas on Born Pink fail to inspire. There’s a sliver of direction in cuts like “Pink Venom” and “Hard to Love,” which translate the group’s core concept of duality into viable contemporary pop. But BLACKPINK are already a record-breaking K-pop act; if they want another shot at breaking new ground, they’ll have to raise their own standards.

2022-09-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

2022-09-21T00:02:00.000-04:00

Pop/R&B

YG Entertainment / Interscope

September 21, 2022

faf8dd35-3c20-419d-a22c-c5bee1f9cc6d

Alex Ramos

https://pitchfork.com/staff/alex-ramos/

Like its predecessors, the anonymous electronic musician’s third album for Los Angeles’ Peak Oil label consists of little more than dubby swirls of static; the record’s power is in its restraint.

Like its predecessors, the anonymous electronic musician’s third album for Los Angeles’ Peak Oil label consists of little more than dubby swirls of static; the record’s power is in its restraint.

Topdown Dialectic: Vol. 3

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/topdown-dialectic-vol-3/

Vol. 3

Topdown Dialectic’s Vol. 3 begins with five minutes of primordial soup: undulating rhythms that feel like bubbling swamp water, dubby textures that make everything gauzy, and fizzy synths constantly on the verge of forming something concrete. Compared to the previous album’s opening tracks, “A1” is notably low-key. While all three volumes of the anonymous artist’s Peak Oil releases were sent to the Los Angeles label in a single batch, there’s a certain aura that defines each LP. The first is effortlessly cool; Vol. 2 is more understated, even during moments of party-ready euphoria; and Vol. 3—the most distinct of the bunch—is quiet, introspective, and impressively even-keeled. One can imagine the previous two albums as blasts of perfume that transform space and self into something exuberant. Vol. 3 is more like when the juice has dried up and all that’s left is the sediment making up the fougère: sparse, less flashy, but potent if you put in the work. As with many tracks on Vol. 3, “A2” doesn’t immediately lead you into some heady or celebratory space. Instead, its casual demeanor simply communicates its elements: aquatic swirls and percussive accents. They coalesce into an alluring fog, but Topdown Dialectic lets it exist as is. Immersion occurs on the listener’s terms, and when one takes the plunge, the deep bass swells prove more tactile than they appear on the surface. More than past releases, Vol. 3 tends to foreground perceptibly sluggish tempos, limited dynamic range, and negligible development. Its very unobtrusiveness reminds me that these tracks are the result of generative processes and that this project thrives on mystique—the person behind Topdown Dialectic is unknown, the tracks are untitled and all exactly five minutes long, and the physical copies feature minimal if not zero information. “B3” is all synth gyrations and meandering clacks, but it’s less anonymous than self-effacing. The smeared vocal sample is hardly identifiable as such for much of the track, but when its humanness emerges from the murk, it’s like catching a glimpse of a specter for a brief, electrifying moment. I’m reminded of an interview with dub-techno forebear Moritz von Oswald where he corrected an interviewer who called minimal techno cold. “It’s very warm, emotional and deep,” he said. “The more you listen to it, the more it affects you.” Vol. 3 reminds you of that truth, and it challenges any notion that this sort of music may be either too amorphous or straightforward. “A3” is one of the more kinetic pieces here, but it also feels aimless, like it doesn’t commit to its verve. Listen with a different mindset and there’s subtler drama on display: the periodic thwacks suggest an incessant urge to dance, despite being stationary. Vol. 3 is at its most exhilarating when Topdown Dialectic nails this balance between static and dynamic sensibilities. “A4” has an instant warmth that recalls Stephen Hitchell’s softer tracks, or the blissful deep cuts found on Silent Season, but it’s sparser and less inclined to let ambience be the primary arbiter of mood. The synth pad isn’t overwhelming, the grainy textures don’t take hold like they do in Pole’s work, and the voices that appear are little more than vapor—mere suggestion of presence is always enough on these tracks. Even the twirling closer, “B4,” aims for antiseptic sci-fi gloss, but it never lets that idea take complete hold. With Vol. 3, Topdown Dialectic proposes a tantalizing methodology: keeping everything in moderation leads to feeling everything at full impact. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2021-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

2021-10-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Peak Oil

October 8, 2021

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Joshua Minsoo Kim

https://pitchfork.com/staff/joshua-minsoo kim/

On the first full-length Mr. Fingers album in almost 25 years, Larry Heard attempts to sum up the full range of his interests and talents.

On the first full-length Mr. Fingers album in almost 25 years, Larry Heard attempts to sum up the full range of his interests and talents.

Mr. Fingers: Cerebral Hemispheres

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mr-fingers-cerebral-hemispheres/

Cerebral Hemispheres

Despite the visceral punch of the Chicago house innovator Larry Heard’s earliest hits—“Washing Machine,” from 1986, churned with grueling acid squelch; the following year’s cymbal-battering “Slam Dance” came down like a hailstorm—it’s his conflicting impulses that made him an icon. His two biggest tunes, “Can You Feel It” and “Mystery of Love,” both released under his Mr. Fingers alias, balanced percussive force with a newfound softness, drawing up the blueprint for deep house in the process. But that same reluctance to settle into a single lane probably kept him sidelined in a genre that can be notoriously risk-averse. Boasting a glistening finish and bearing titles like “Dolphin Dream,” 1994’s freeform Sceneries Not Songs, Volume 1 came closer to new age, while 1995’s Sceneries Not Songs, Volume Tu suffused hip-hop and house beats in crystals and incense. The following year, Alien grafted jazzy R&B onto cosmic synths, suggesting a lab-grown hybrid hatched way out in interstellar space. Heard has periodically returned to remind clubbers that he is a force to be reckoned with; his 2006 single “The Sun Can’t Compare” has attained latter-day classic status. Now, with Cerebral Hemispheres, the first Mr. Fingers album in almost 25 years, he attempts to sum up the full range of his interests and talents. His last Mr. Fingers release, 2016’s Outer Acid EP, picked up Alien’s interstellar signals and translated them back into the language of the dancefloor, and part of the new album continues that project. In fact, all four of the EP’s tracks are reprised here, scattered across the album: The gurgling standout “Outer Acid” finds its mate in the steely minimal techno of “Inner Acid”; the ruminative drum circle “Nodyahed” has a new percussive counterpart in the title track, a similarly hypnotic array of drums, synths, and breathy accents. But the operating metaphor this time is not space but the brain, whose opposing halves preside over Cerebral Hemispheres’ dual nature. Counterbalancing his techno leanings, a good portion of the album is given over to R&B’s silkiest trappings: jazz brushes, saxophone solos, dimmer-switch synths. In a recent Billboard interview, Heard recalled a proposed Sade collaboration that never came to pass, and there are hints of what that might have sounded like in the quiet-storm detailing that shades the album’s first half. A slow-burning blues guitar solo colors “City Streets,” a mid-tempo house instrumental; “A Day in Portugal” drizzles honeyed pads over a bossa-nova beat; the horn leading “Sands of Aruba” wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place on Diamond Life. Given that the last Mr. Fingers full-length, Back to Love, came out in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, it’s understandable if Heard wants to make up for lost time, but the album probably doesn’t need to be 100 minutes long. Its length might have worked better if he had more neatly divided its 18 tracks into a right-brain and left-brain side, rather than breaking up its flow by zigzagging between satin-finish soul and misted minimal house. But the few surprises scattered along the way that make its unpredictable course feel worthwhile. In “Tiger Lounge,” jazz guitar, sitar, and dub swirl together over indistinct background noise; whether a live recording or a simulacrum of one, it suggests a space that’s not quite of this world. Then, just past the album’s midpoint, “Electron” fires up the fattest-sounding synth in Heard’s arsenal and sets its course for the heart of the Arpeggio Nebula, following in the path of cosmonauts like Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese. Set to a skeletal beat, it’s the simplest song on the album, and the perfect distillation of his expressive sensibilities.

2018-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-04-16T01:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Alleviated

April 16, 2018

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Philip Sherburne

https://pitchfork.com/staff/philip-sherburne/

The experimental Chicago musician expands his already broad instrumental palette for a lonesome album that fuses folk and electronic music without succumbing to the tropes of either.

The experimental Chicago musician expands his already broad instrumental palette for a lonesome album that fuses folk and electronic music without succumbing to the tropes of either.

Jordan Reyes: Sand Like Stardust

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/jordan-reyes-sand-like-stardust/

Sand Like Stardust

Since 2017, Jordan Reyes has been an important cog in the large Chicago ensemble ONO, whose 2020 album Red Summer is a radical outlier in American music: an industrial-funk opus that excoriates racial, sexual, political, and military oppression from the 1600s to the present with poetry and a maximalist, disorienting sonic attack. By contrast, Reyes’ solo work has skewed more austere and synth-based. On last year’s Close, he quested for post-human feelings in alien synth emissions. Closer, from earlier this year, offered exploratory synthesizer music that resembled some of the more agitated, sinister specimens that dotted the IDM field in the late ’90s and early ’00s. With Sand Like Stardust, Reyes adds acoustic, electric, and lap-steel guitars, trombone, keyboards, and an electronic drum to his palette in order to, he says, “channel the warmth, immediacy, and vulnerability of hand-played instruments and voice.” However, this more organic foray is far from an overfamiliar back-to-roots exercise. Rather, it’s a bold attempt to fuse folk and electronic music without succumbing to the tropes of either. Inspired by the Tejano side of Reyes’s family and a childhood blanket covered in cowboy imagery, Sand Like Stardust chronicles the media-manipulated myth of that American archetype along with the more reality-rooted concept of the nature-oriented cowboy, according to the artist’s notes on Bandcamp. Further, Reyes told online zine Slug, “I felt inclined to imagine the cowboy as an ecosensual outsider, someone scrappy and magical with an amorous love of the land but who is reckoning with their identity’s legacy and ancestry.” As interesting as those points may be, the music stands on its own merits. The album aptly begins with “The Pre-Dawn Light,” which layers polyphonic chants, both guttural and ethereal, as if to herald the launch of a grave and mysterious ritual. It’s a bold, unconventional way to start an album, but it’s riveting. From there, Reyes proceeds through stages of the day with subtle gradations of mood. As their titles suggest, “Drifter,” “High Noon,” and “Dusted” conjure the profound lonesomeness of the peripatetic cowboy. “High Noon” particularly stands out, as Reyes pits blurred guitar twangs that evoke the work of New Zealand’s Roy Montgomery against a trombone drone ominously humming like a distant generator and more sonorous chants that vibrate your skull. Extremely moving in inexplicable ways, these songs send a primal thrum to your pineal gland. At times, Sand Like Stardust takes on the quality of a Goblin horror soundtrack transferred to the dusty American West. For example, “A Grain of Sand” inspires a suspenseful chill with a doomsday riff that suggests a man’s final trudge to the electric chair, as guitar ostinati form cascades of radiance over insistent drum-machine beats. Reyes achieves the extraordinary feat of making hopelessness seem transcendent. Stardust reaches a disturbing peak with “An Unkindness,” featuring dire chants and startling trombone blurts, all counteracted with twinkling guitar mandalas. This strange combination of elements triggers rich yet contradictory feelings. “Centaurus” hymns us to slumber with forlorn, foggy ambience that hints of side two of David Bowie’s Low. Reyes sings the lyrics to the traditional lullaby “Hush, Little Baby” as a keyboard drone swells in elegiac splendor. What could’ve come off as saccharine instead ascends to a state of grace and gravitas. Enveloped in the murk, you suspect Sand Like Stardust may have been yet another mythical American dream after all. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

2020-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

Experimental

American Dreams

December 7, 2020

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Dave Segal

https://pitchfork.com/staff/dave-segal/

The brief, playful project from the Alabama rapper is one of the breeziest records of the year, a clinic on nimble shit-talking that’s as effortless as it is brash.

The brief, playful project from the Alabama rapper is one of the breeziest records of the year, a clinic on nimble shit-talking that’s as effortless as it is brash.

Flo Milli: Ho, why is you here ?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/flo-milli-ho-why-is-you-here/

Ho, why is you here ?

Flo Milli raps like she was born and raised in a no-flex zone. When she claims, “None of you bitches is fuckin’ with me,” it feels less like a boast and more like a law that governs the universe. There’s no moment on her debut mixtape Ho, why is you here ? where she doesn’t sound untouchable and self-possessed. The brief, playful project from the Alabama rapper is one of the breeziest records of the year, a clinic on nimble shit-talking that’s as effortless as it is brash. Ho, why is you here ? hews closely to the formula that made Flo Milli a viral star. She likes snappy, bass-heavy beats that give her ample space to fire off reams of insults and flexes. “Beef FloMix,” which began as a freestyle snippet on Instagram and was later boosted into a TikTok hit through a dance challenge, is her standard mode. She tends to frame disses as me/you comparisons (“I do what I please and you do what I ask/He love my confidence and that’s what you lack”) that snowball into larger-than-life boasts. In the song’s single verse she shouts out tween group OMG Girlz, likens her cash-filled pockets to K. Michele’s ass, and claims she’s guarded like an Obama. It’s not surprising that her music lends itself to dances and videos; she’s a visual speaker. Over and over, Flo Milli turns heads when she enters the room and mows down an inexhaustible horde of haters. She opens “In the Party” with a perfect line: “Dicks up when I step up in the party.” On “19,” her entrance lowers the self-esteem of those around her; elsewhere her shine leaves necks near-broken. All this attention breeds contempt, but Flo Milli will gladly be the villain. “Slap a bitch in her face if she askin’ for it,” she says on “Send the Addy.” “Like That Bitch” features a moment where she discovers and ends a tiff in the same breath. “Actin like we got beef/I didn’t know that you exist!” she yelps, elongating the vowel in “know.” The conflicts are all so definitively petty, which is what makes this record so fun. Her constant barbs are bolstered by her subtly spry cadences. Her flows are conversational and loose despite being strictly metered. The record is largely devoid of melody, but Flo Milli doesn’t need to sing to emote. She has an intuitive sense of when to throttle flows for emphasis, as on “Pussycat Doll,” which is full of tiny pauses that set up her punchlines. “Make a nigga blow a check on me/Save his number under ‘We gon see,’” she jokes. Her performance on “Weak,” a J White Did It production, is fleet and buoyant, flipping SWV’s “Weak” on its head yet preserving the song’s warmth. “These niggas weak/They been texting me all week/Just let me be,” Flo Milli huffs with exasperation. The production isn’t always as spirited as Flo Milli’s performances. “Scuse Me” is an outright dud; it sounds like a parody of a JetsonMade beat and Flo Milli’s hook is uncharacteristically strained. Otherwise, a current of self-discovery runs through the beats. “Like That Bitch” and “Not Friendly” embrace the minimalism of snap music, which has long been a testing ground for experimenting with flows without sacrificing bounce. (Incidentally, “Not Friendly” interpolates Soulja Boy’s “Gucci Bandana.”) And the bouncy bass and bright keys on “In The Party” and “Send the Addy” evoke the charm of bubblegum trap, which tapped into the joy of a subgenre often characterized by stress and struggle. There’s certainly a disparity between Flo Mill the cocksure persona and Flo Milli the budding artist, but even when Flo Milli is spitballing ideas trying to see what sticks, she’s a force of nature. She once described her catchphrase “Flo Milli shit” as the mantra for “My alter ego, which is what I am most of the time,” and Ho, why is you here ? sells that odd dynamic. She’s still figuring out her music, but she knows exactly what she wants it to be. Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.

2020-08-19T01:00:00.000-04:00

2020-08-19T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rap

’94 Sounds / RCA

August 19, 2020

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Stephen Kearse

https://pitchfork.com/staff/stephen-kearse/

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/5f3aa032eb982d18c453e0b0/1:1/w_3000,h_3000,c_limit/Ho,%20Why%20Is%20You%20Here?_flo%20milli.jpg

After spending fifteen years as a member of Sigur Rós, composer Kjartan Sveinsson makes the leap into classical with a sweeping, elegiac orchestral and choral score.

After spending fifteen years as a member of Sigur Rós, composer Kjartan Sveinsson makes the leap into classical with a sweeping, elegiac orchestral and choral score.

Kjartan Sveinsson: Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22635-der-klang-der-offenbarung-des-gottlichen/

Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen

After spending fifteen years—nearly half of his life—writing, recording and touring with the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, composer Kjartan Sveinsson finally decided in 2013 that he was ready for something else. In his time with the band, Sveinsson was responsible for bringing classical elements to Sigur Rós’ music, but since branching out on his own he has leapt completely into the composing world. Beginning with an orchestral and choral piece performed (but never released) in 2010 called “Credo,” Sveinsson began to establish that he not only had an ear for beautiful melodies but also possessed the trickier skill of understanding of how to properly conjure grandeur. He followed that work with scores to two films by fellow Icelander Rúnar Rúnarsson, the austere Volcano (2011) and Sparrows (2015), as well as two collaborations with artist Ragnar Kjartansson, each of which showcased his ability to write for context and to match sight with sound. Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen, with a title loosely translated from German to mean “The Explosive Sonics of Divinity,” is Sveinsson’s third collaboration with Kjartansson, and by far his most substantive work yet. Unlike “SS Hangover” and “Take Me Here By the Dishwasher,” each of which were conceptual art pieces for which Sveinsson composed a durational accompaniment, Der Klang is a complete work, one that stands majestically on its own. Although structured as an opera, it diverges significantly from the form, featuring neither stage actors nor any kind of evident storytelling. Broken into four “acts” titled “Teil” I-IV, each piece was performed as an aural backdrop to a series of minimalistic, static sets designed by Kjartansson, with only subtle environmental changes to the set (flashing lights, burning fires, background colors changing) over the course of each’s running time. The sets’ visuals are elegantly designed but their simplicity belies the more complex beauty of the music itself. While there are no actors onstage, there are vocals across the latter three compositions, which in performances were delivered by a chorus located in the orchestra pit. And there is, if not a libretto a connection to a story, apparently inspired by Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness’ novel World Light, but it is entirely impressionistic. World Light is about the life of a young poet seeking greatness whose expectations for success aren’t ever met, causing him to seek solace and and beauty in his own failure. “Teil I” stands out from the following three pieces, for being both the lone track without vocals as well as for its brooding and ominous mood. Kjartansson’s set for “Teil I” was a backdrop of a rocky sea bay on a dark gray night, with only waves moving across the screen, but the music adds its own suggested image to this tableau—a ghost ship approaching or departing slowly, perhaps. The seesawing string melodies slowly evolve into piercing glissandi so cacophonous it nearly shuts down the senses; its extreme simplicity only serves to enhance its power. The following two compositions illuminate the grey skies with rays of sunlight, however faint. “Teil II” begins with a funereal choral piece reminiscent of “Orphic Hymn,” from Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Orphée earlier this year. The vocal intonations continue unaccompanied for three minutes before being joined by a sea of violins and cellos, which gently provide counterpoint by infusing a delicate sense of hope into the proceedings. Though not exactly sunny, on “Teil III,” another orchestral-choral work, Sveinsson turns tentatively towards more optimistic stirrings. It’s curious that Kjartansson’s set piece is just a frame of a house burning down in the darkness of night, because it’s easy to imagine an entirely different visual—a film scene of hard-earned epiphany, maybe, a broken character realizing their lot and resolving to improve it. On the opera’s final evocative act, “Teil IV,” Sveinsson returns to this sense of human resolve of as our salvation. Beginning with a droning cello and wistful female alto, Der Klang’s closing piece speaks to the power of personal commitment in the face of struggles big or small. The chorus vocals soar as high as the strings themselves, surging like a tidal wave that mirrors the first piece, a wall of sound that is both crushing and somehow comforting. Der Klang boasts all the qualities we tend to associate with sweeping modern neo-classical—it's beautiful, reflective, sad. But to slap the commonly used “ethereal”  tag on it does it a disservice. Sveinsson has a light touch, but his work hits a deeper and more visceral level, permeating and lingering long after it’s subsided. Sveinsson has a preternatural sense of scale and pacing, and seeing how powerfully he can provide canvases for ephemeral pieces of art raises the question of how he would do trying his hand at something bigger: A traditional libretto-and-song opera, or to re-infuse his talents in the more open but anchored spaces of rock music. Whatever he does, he has already quietly announced himself as a major talent.

2016-12-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

2016-12-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

Experimental

Bel-Air Glamour Records

December 8, 2016

fb10c46f-c0bb-4711-a861-740e0a25f0ce

Benjamin Scheim

https://pitchfork.com/staff/benjamin-scheim/

Metal giants team with Steve Albini on their latest Relapse album.

Metal giants team with Steve Albini on their latest Relapse album.

High on Fire: Blessed Black Wings

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3864-blessed-black-wings/

Blessed Black Wings

On paper, Steve Albini's production style is the exact antithesis of what you'd want for your metal opus: big dank drumz and shrill, almost choked guitars, all gussied up in superfluous reverb and an air-tight low end. I've never listened to an Albini-produced band and not thought my ears were clogged. Sure, the man's 'nuff-said production credits go on and on, but I often wonder if a band like Mclusky would sound even more punishing if they were left out in the open, free of the silo 'verb and guitar strangulation. Still, Albini remains the preferred penis pump of underground rock acts of all stripes. He's on the speed dials of bands looking to get huge in that other sense. High on Fire already own one of the burliest sounds in metal, so what they were hoping to gain by phoning Albini isn't clear. The two seem an unlikely marriage anyway: High of Fire unleash a competent fury that thrives on warm-ish, tube amp'd guitars, and mainlined adrenal essence-- a far cry from Albini's balled-fist, hyper-compressed sludge treatments. 2002's Surrounded By Thieves was a tight-wound stoned-dead masterpiece; if the band were aching for change, they sure didn't play like it. High on Fire fans rejoice: Blessed Black Wings is the band you know and fear. Albini's influence is discreet, serving only to calcify the band's laser-cut attack. My only complaint with the sound is that Matt Pike's vocals-- more tuneful and comprehensible than the genre protocol-- are mixed down, so only the most glottal elements seep through. But perched atop Albini's distended low end, High on Fire are as toothy as they are flesh-searing. Previously, the band's raw energy was trapped in a self-imposed oubliette of standard gloom-n-doom; on Blessed Black Wings, they've busted out, terrorizing the masses with a sharper, more agile sound that will appeal to fans of Mastodon's Leviathan. But unlike Mastodon or prog-metal clairvoyants Converge, High on Fire don't seem the slightest bit preoccupied with the future; they're content to do what they do best as long as there are subtle unexplored pockets of terrain to be squatted on. Blessed Black Wings catapults full-throttle from the gate and scorches at 11 for nearly an hour, halting only for the occasional full-band kick. Avoiding polyrhythmic arabesques, High on Fire are almost antigravity: Their energy seems like it could last forever. Opener "Devilution" (now there's a subtle pun) splits the earth and stitches it back together, sending tom-bashing tremors through a landscape of bilious chugging and Voice of God vocals. "The Face of Oblivion" is less incendiary but no smaller, steering through a slow sooty opening before turning around in a smooth, economical breakdown that's grandiose sans bravado. Other highlights include "To Cross the Bridge"-- a seven-minute epic that does the acoustic/electric guitar duel better than Converge or erstwhile Metallica by combining traits of both-- and "Anointing of Seer", whose gelatinous plunder gives way to a resplendent, fleeting riff around the 2:30 mark. Up in the elevated mercury of these six- and seven-minute sculptures, things can get muggy, but in terms of shear bombast, Albini has seldom worked with a more independently powerful group of musicians.

2005-02-07T01:00:03.000-05:00

2005-02-07T01:00:03.000-05:00

Metal

Relapse

February 7, 2005

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Pitchfork

Stately, luxurious sounding, professional-- one of the decade's quietly underrated bands has its best album given a 2xCD/DVD reissue.

Stately, luxurious sounding, professional-- one of the decade's quietly underrated bands has its best album given a 2xCD/DVD reissue.

Elbow: Asleep in the Back [Deluxe Edition]

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13728-asleep-in-the-back-deluxe-edition/

Asleep in the Back [Deluxe Edition]

Elbow emerged fully formed at a time when it may have helped their cause to be more malleable. Around the turn of the century, hailing from the British Isles and playing mid-tempo rock served as qualification to be "the next Radiohead," and even if Elbow got caught in that dragnet, they weren't quite as fresh-faced or brash as those now-laughably incompatible peers. Once that whole thing morphed into the search for the next Coldplay, Elbow weren't quite singles-minded enough to fit that bill either, and unlike Starsailor or JJ72, they weren't destined to be used solely as comic fodder for music reviews in 2009. True, they've carved out a pretty enviable career, but stateside I imagine someone right this very minute is confusing them with Doves. If Elbow did seem too mature for a new band, you can chalk it up to Asleep in the Back gestating for almost a decade. As such, it can be described in a lot of unsexy ways-- patient, stately, considered, professional. There's only one song that really qualifies as "rock" (though the menacing "Bitten By the Tailfly" is defined by its tension as much as its volume), half of the tracks top out at over five minutes, moving with cruise-ship luxury and tempo, and there aren't really hooks so much as "moments" where the restraint and attention to sonic detail build into an undeniable payoff. Now, talking about production is usually viewed as a backhanded compliment-- we should be talking about the songs, man... right? But as languorous as the tempos can be, Asleep in the Back is studious and hardworking, proof that modern albums can still sound luxurious. Despite minimal soloing and nothing in the way of tricksy time signatures, it strangely got tagged as "prog." It sort of is in the way Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On was "prog"-- constantly shifting textures and always sounding like it's headed somewhere. The dank bass and processed, dub-influenced drum sound that begins "Any Day Now" come off like a hungover transmission from Massive Attack's Mezzanine until the band opens the shades and lets the sun inside (to cop a quote from Cast of Thousands' "Ribcage"). Two bright and major-key chords repeat throughout the track's six minutes with unease, breaking down for an a cappella mission statement: "How's about getting out of this place... got a lot of spare time, some of my youth and all my senses on overdrive." Most tracks are buffeted with horns and strings, but in retrospect it's all the more impressive how they're culled for shading than the kind of levels-in-the-red overkill that often resulted in post-Arcade Fire orchestration. So much about the gorgeous title track sneaks up you-- a whistling organ drone breezes easily through the mix, woodwinds seep into the guitar waltz like ink into water, and when the trumpets herald its hopeful finale, it feels earned. The violin shredding at the end of "Red" combines with the controlled chaos of Jupp's cymbal hits to mirror its subject's descent into substance addiction. "Saxophone coda" is the sort of thing that gets brought up when savaging an overblown cod-epic, but such a device is all the more effective on "Powder Blue" for how it contrasts with the powerless of its narrator ("I'm proud to be the one you hold when the shakes begin"). Which is not to suggest Elbow are merely a studio band. A couple of Steve Lamacq radio sessions and an early EP are included in the Deluxe packaging, and the band sounds great in a stripped down setting, particularly singer Guy Garvey. The Peter Gabriel comparisons were certainly fair, as the strongest melodic moments of Asleep tend to find Garvey in that register. But for the most part, Garvey turned out to have more in common with barstool-bound indie bards of America-- wryly romantic like the National's Matt Berninger without the class-consciousness, drunk like the Walkmen's Hamilton Leithauser but not as unhinged. Although the guitar hook of "Bitten By the Tailfly" rivals the earwax-blast of "The Rat", it's in large part due to how quiet its surroundings are-- it's a rare treat to hear a major-label album where the soft parts are quiet and the loud parts are loud. The dynamic volume of Asleep in the Back set the standard for what would turn out to be one of the most consistently well-produced bands out there. And then there's "Newborn", the centerpiece of Asleep. If you've heard only the radio version, you've literally got only half the story. Though clocking in at a mighty seven minutes, the first three were used as a compact single, while the the triplet guitar figure that bridges the verse and chorus become the intro for the stunning second half, a constantly building that sits somewhere between Catherine Wheel's most heroic moments and the strange, pastoral spirituality of latter-day Talk Talk (it's possible the abrupt ending is a direct nod to "Ascension Day"). It's such a stunning, career-defining performance that the second half of Asleep in the Back can't help but take something of breather: The downtempo "Don't Mix Your Drinks" establishes the languid mood that isn't lifted until the lovely, fingerpicked nostalgia of "Scattered Black and Whites". I guess we're dancing around the obvious question of who knows why Asleep in the Back is getting the bonus treatment right in between rounder anniversaries-- about eight years old, and can be easily obtained in its original edition. Maybe it's contractual, maybe it's just a Hail Mary attempt to give critics a quick reminder while putting together Best of 00s lists (NME has it at #30), or maybe, as Jason Crock pointed out in his review of the recent Jesus Lizard reissues, it wouldn't be a surprise if it merely was done to cut through a poky December release slate to remind listeners of its existence. Either way is satisfactory as long as Elbow have a chance to be heard anew instead of taken for granted: Asleep in the Back shows one of this decade's most underrated bands in its finest hour.

2009-12-07T01:00:01.000-05:00

2009-12-07T01:00:01.000-05:00

Rock

Polydor

December 7, 2009

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Ian Cohen

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/

I'm With You, the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album without John Frusciante since the turgid, Dave Navarro-helmed One Hot Minute, is the work of a band with all kinds of capital to blow but no incentive to do anything differently.

I'm With You, the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album without John Frusciante since the turgid, Dave Navarro-helmed One Hot Minute, is the work of a band with all kinds of capital to blow but no incentive to do anything differently.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: I'm With You

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15761-im-with-you/

I'm With You

I'm With You is a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. No shit, right? It's a point worth repeating because not only is it the most important thing about I'm With You, it's the only important thing about I'm With You. None of the actively recording Peppers-level elite-- not Metallica, not Coldplay, not U2, not Green Day-- have been more consistently and richly rewarded for simply showing up and being themselves. Since Californication kickstarted a second sustained run of monster popularity, the Peppers have not bitterly divided their fanbase over the way their drums were recorded, nor have they gone outside their inner circle for a bold sonic reconstruction. None of their albums were considered kinda hitless duds, and even their samey double-LP wasn't scoffed at as ambitious but more of the same. They've released nearly identical, bittersweet songs about California, sex, and, increasingly, nothing. These songs chart the same and appear on albums that perform nearly identically. All the while, the band continues to sell a ton of copies as the rest of us openly mock Anthony Kiedis (simply by quoting Anthony Kiedis) and find some nice things to say about John Frusciante. But I'm With You is their first record without Frusciante since 1995's turgid, Dave Navarro-helmed One Hot Minute. A former tour understudy for Frusciante, new axeman Josh Klinghoffer blends in with a slightly more textural and less chopsy style, and he thankfully doesn't impose his will on the Peppers like the glam-metal narcissist Navarro did. But in the grand scheme of things, it means nothing. Tremendously dumb lead single "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie" picks up where prior tremendously dumb lead single "Dani California" left off-- which is to say, totally within PeppersWorld, a place where an incorporeal female is a prop for Kiedis to drop happy-go-lucky jewels about cockblocking, rockin' like the 1980s, and god knows what else. Over the past decade, the band's had incredible instincts about their choice of singles, the deep cuts rightfully forgotten by all but the dieheards. But while "Maggie" is by a large measure the worst thing here, it foreshadows I'm With You's paucity of overtly choice options, "good Chili Peppers" and "bad Chili Peppers" coming ever closer to a horizon point. More than ever, three extremely talented musicians are all in servitude to Kiedis, the single most irreplaceable frontman in rock history: Seriously, there are plenty of singers who can do a passable Bono or Ozzy or Robert Plant in a pinch, but who's fuckin' with Kiedis' sixteens? Granted, they've never been a source of much food for thought, but at least it worked when the band appeared to be riffing from the reptile brain that craved women, drugs, and party plans, "uplift mofo" or otherwise. Here, unless Kiedis is being totally explicit about his subject matter ("Annie Wants a Baby", "Police Station"), I'm With You is simply a continuously futile pursuit to figure out what the fuck he's actually talking about. On "Factory of Faith", spiritual intransigence is described as such: "All my life, I was swingin' for the fence/ Always lookin' for the triple/ Never playing good defense." Then, before you know it, he's quoting Dirk Diggler ("feast on this"). He falls in love with a stripper on "Look Around", explaining "Hustle here/ Hustle there/ Hustle me bitch and you best beware/ It's emotional/ And I told you so." (This is before Fayetteville-- North Carolina? Arkansas?-- gets a shout out… because it rhymes with "say it will.") The tricky funk rhythm of "Ethiopia" stoically withstands Kiedis singing a scat version of "Old McDonald Had a Farm", while on "Even You Brutus?" he yawps like David Byrne and courts a young lady by namedropping Steve Miller and Stevie Wonder in the span of fifteen seconds. Thing is, he can shut off that Funky Monk mode in time for the choruses, and if I'm With You proves anything for the Peppers, it's that a one-step solution to making this a better, even enjoyable record is to cut out the verses entirely. Sounds like a good enough idea, but it'd only make it more obvious that they've been writing minor variations of the same exact (admittedly effective) chorus for the past decade: four repeating chords boxing in Kiedis' maxed-out soul croon as Flea and Chad Smith dutifully swing, wondering when they'll finally have a chance to let loose. (When they do during the frenetic coda of "Brendan's Death Song", it's a damn revelation.) Some of us will be making “Sir Psycho Sexy” jokes to our grave, but many still have a soft spot for the wild abandon of Blood Sugar Sex Magik because it found space for rock songs that rocked, funk songs that were funky, and ballads that were truly affecting. But they've become so stuck in their Peppers-Mk-II ways that 2006's Stadium Arcadium turned out to be possibly the least adventurous double album ever, and I'm With You does even less to pursue sonic diversity*.* Much of the blame lies with Rick Rubin: As with Stadium and 2002's By the Way, he produces I'm With You entirely without nuance or dynamics. Whether it's the midtempo acoustic ballads ("Brendan's Death Song"), the midtempo piano masher ("Happiness Loves Company"), or the midtempo rockers (nearly everything else), they're all equally loud and flat. As a result, the sequencing of the 14 tracks feels arbitrary, the hour-long runtime intentionally superfluous: It feels as if even they don't think anyone will play this in its intended order after the first listen. As far as arena-dominating radio rock goes, you could do worse: Even as they soften in old age, the Peppers can still remind you that a lot of people discovered Gang of Four, the Minutemen, and George Clinton through them. And occasionally, the punk-funk still rings true: I'd love to see an intrepid mashup junkie lay Luke Jenner's vocals from In the Grace of Your Love over these instrumentals and vice versa. After all, Flea sounded great in Thom Yorke's Atoms For Peace project while actually playing more slap-bass than he does here, and we learned from John Frusciante's troubled but occasionally fascinating solo albums that these guys would probably be far more interesting outside the scope of their main gig. Until then, I'm With You's hip thrusts and gyrations simply go through the motions, the work of a band with all kinds of capital to blow but no incentive to do anything differently. After all, it's a Red Hot Chili Peppers album.

2011-09-01T02:00:01.000-04:00

2011-09-01T02:00:01.000-04:00

Rock

Warner Bros.

September 1, 2011

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Ian Cohen

https://pitchfork.com/staff/ian-cohen/

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past. Today we revisit Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings’ third album, an Americana masterpiece whose prophecies reverberate through modern folk and indie rock.

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past. Today we revisit Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings’ third album, an Americana masterpiece whose prophecies reverberate through modern folk and indie rock.

Gillian Welch: Time (The Revelator)

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gillian-welch-time-the-revelator/

Time (The Revelator)

The only time most people have heard the word “revelator” is in reference to the Bible. John the Revelator was the prophet who wrote the Book of Revelation, the final part of the New Testament. As the story goes, John was exiled to a Greek island as persecution for his Christian faith and wrote down his visions of the apocalypse as communicated by Jesus. Filtered through John, who was writing around 95 AD, these visions resemble a dystopian nightmare: the rise of the beast, masquerading as a charismatic ruler, whose mark must be resisted should you desire entry into heaven; the mysterious disappearance of believers during the rapture; and ultimately, after God goes full scorched-earth, a second coming. My father, a follower of John, said that taking in the predictions of Revelation was so intense, it caused him bouts of overwhelming existential dread. Inspired by Son House’s gospel-blues classic “John the Revelator,” Gillian Welch “picked up the word ‘revelator’ and reapplied” it as the title of her third album. But as the alt-country musician told Billboard upon Time (The Revelator)’s release in July 2001, she was hesitant to over-explain the usage. She did not include the album’s lyrics in the original liner notes, an unconventional move in the CD era but one that held intentional meaning for Welch. “There are a lot of words on this album, but they shouldn’t be read—just heard,” she said. “The meaning has to do with the way they sound.” You could say Welch was working in an oratory tradition, pulling from folk music and Biblical storytelling by tying up the message with its divine expression. But there was also the rare nature of her collaboration with longtime musical and romantic partner David Rawlings. Welch’s father once likened the couple’s locked-in concentration to “breathing together,” and Welch herself, in the same New Yorker profile, said that she loses track of which voice is hers and which is Rawlings’. On the chorus of Time’s opener, “Revelator,” his voice lags behind hers at such a close interval that it creates an eerie echo, the first but not the last time this occurs on the album. The interplay between their acoustic guitars is so lively and seamless on the “Revelator” solo that it actually makes me angry to remember that record-industry execs once tried to get Welch to perform with other guitarists. Billed under just Welch’s name but very much a duo, Welch and Rawlings have worked almost exclusively with one another since meeting at Berklee School of Music in the early ’90s. (She was the Cali-raised adopted daughter of professional entertainers; he was a Rhode Island boy favoring cheap, gross, extremely old guitars; they were stuck at a jazz school.) On their first two albums, 1996’s Revival and 1998’s Hell Among the Yearlings, both produced by Americana kingmaker T Bone Burnett, Welch sang lead on country story-songs about miners and orphans, determined little mountain flowers, and the ghost of a rapist who haunts his poor wife (who killed him, of course). Shortly before making Time, Welch covered a duo of traditional songs alongside alt-country heroines like Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris for the wildly successful soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a roots-music anointment sealed with Welch’s cameo in the Coen brothers’ film. Around the same time, her record deal with Almo Sounds dissolved, which led to the founding of the duo’s own Acony Records, their label to this day. When Welch and Rawlings went into Nashville’s RCA Studio B to record Time (The Revelator) at the dawn of the new millennium, they were unwittingly working in a studio that had been the site of more than 200 Elvis Presley recordings. The lore fits the music: Here, they present intertwined tales of Elvis and Black folk hero John Henry, the Titanic’s sinking and Lincoln’s assassination, farm girls and surfer chicks, and how hard it was getting to make a living as a musician. Sometimes the two are foils, but largely Rawlings serves as the punctuation to Welch’s slightly crooked cataloging of country life. The duo would explore a full-band sound on their next LP, 2003’s Soul Journey, but within the sparse Revelator lives an entire band. Welch has likened it to a rock album without the amplification, which is apparent in all sorts of ways—namely, structures that work like rock songs, with big choruses and melodic dissonance, tension and release, lengths that run ragged like Neil Young and reference God, history, and culture like Dylan. You can hear where there should be more instruments, a place where you might stomp or slap your thigh to a rhythm that’s played instead by Rawlings’ strumming, and that’s part of the fun of these skeletal epics. “My First Lover” makes a compelling case for such stripped-down arrangements for such evocative songs. A good story helps too, but it’s the stunning ambivalence with which Welch lingers on the details that make it an unforgettable tune about the loss of virginity. He was a tall, long-haired surfer boy who negged her, but she “was not waiting for a white wedding gown.” She can’t even remember why they broke up, just that a Steve Miller song was playing when it happened. Sometimes these supposedly important figures in a person’s life are completely incidental. But the tale has an ominous side, echoed in the haze of booze-soaked memories and a creeping tension between Welch’s voice and Rawlings’ banjo. The repeated phrase “quicksilver girl” hits like a warning, the way she prolongs the dissonant note on “girl” and eventually finishes her thought: “and she’s free.” Quicksilver is liquid mercury, capable of abrupt change; it’s a surfing thing, too, a word for someone who moves fast. Welch borrowed the lines from the 1968 Steve Miller Band song “Quicksilver Girl,” which, sung from the perspective of a man, takes on either an air of wonder or a hint of judgment about the woman in question. I prefer Welch’s usage. In rock, women lyricists have cataloged the cornflake girls and rebel girls, the sisters of the moon, those made of doll parts and other viscera. (Welch herself had already contributed “Whiskey Girl” and “Barroom Girls” to the pile, and “Red Clay Halo” here is one for the girls with mud under their fingernails.) But there’s something so coolly aspirational about the quicksilver girl who slips off with no trace, ready to make her way in the world without any constraints, not even a lover (forget a boyfriend). Arriving second on an album where the central theme is the pursuit of freedom, “My First Lover” hits like the start of that awakening. The flip side of that independence is a yearning for something that only time can reveal. “Dear Someone” feels like it picks up on that same quicksilver girl once again. “I want to go all over the world and start living free,” Welch sings, knowing that this doesn’t preclude her from wanting one true love. The song is slow-moving in pace but impatient in sentiment, beautiful and bittersweet in its melody. It sounds how searching for your person can feel. At the heart of Time is a four-song suite that speaks to American history and rock’n’roll in a lucid, novelistic way that’s more comparable to Greil Marcus than contemporary guitar music. “April the 14th Part 1” uses the date of three tragedies—the murder of Lincoln, the Titanic hitting the iceberg, and the Black Sunday dust storm of 1935—as the occasion for a portrait of the struggling punks who once played the late show after Welch and Rawlings in a Eugene, Oregon club. It’s a semi-tragic slice of life set in whichever small rock club holds a place in your heart, wherein Welch observes the group’s squalor and still thinks, “I wish I played in a rock and roll band.” If you understand the appeal of this lifestyle as well as the inherent griminess, there’s a mix of desperation and dark romance summed up in the writing: “And the girl passed out/In the backseat trash/And there was no way they’d make/Even a half a tank of gas.” A country-gospel original equating electric guitars with holy salvation, “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll” is the fantasy of “I wish I played in a rock’n’roll band” come joyfully to life. The live performance is pulled from a set at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium as part of Down From the Mountain, the concert film commemorating the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Repurposing a live track vaguely associated with one of the biggest films of the previous year is a challenge, but thematically and musically, it serves the album. After Rawlings plays a plucky solo, the crowd cheers like it’s the Opry equivalent of a touchdown. After these dreams of deliverance, Welch and Rawlings offer up a cautionary tale in “Elvis Presley Blues.” As with the down-and-out band from Idaho in “April the 14th Part 1,” Welch humanizes Elvis through simple observations—“Just a country boy that combed his hair/And put on a shirt his mother made and went on the air/And he shook it like a chorus girl,” goes the first verse—contrasted against the icon’s later decline and the life of John Henry. Elvis lived in glory and died in tragedy, but Henry arguably suffered the opposite fate: He was freed from slavery in the late 19th century and took on mythic status as a strong-man steel-driver working on railroad tunnels, until his heart gave out after he bested a steam hammer—real man vs. machine shit. His story inspired two different styles of folk and blues songs—“The Ballad of John Henry” story-songs and “hammer” work songs. (Johnny Cash has an extensive song, “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer,” that combines elements of both forms.) The melody here borrows from the traditional song “John Henry,” but Rawlings’ fingerpicking is light and nimble, and their subtle harmonizing on the chorus gives a sad song a hopeful tinge. Welch picks up the Lincoln/Titanic/Black Sunday thread on “Ruination Day Part 2,” an incantation wrapped in a blues groove. She croons about Old Abe taking a bullet to the back of the head, but perhaps more curiously she sings of Casey Jones, the train engineer who died in a high-speed collision in 1900. Like John Henry, Jones was immortalized in many blues, folk, and country songs, often in ballad form, but Welch merely gestures to his story in describing the iceberg coming at the Titanic: “God moves on the water, Casey Jones.” When she repeats his last name, Welch once again draws out the dissonant notes slowly, building an intoxicating melody around a single syllable. While the duo lingers plenty in the history books, the song that became a standard in and of itself, “Everything Is Free,” is a premonition of streaming culture and the internet’s devaluation of art writ large. Phoebe Bridgers, in her deadpan way, once called it her “favorite song ever written about Napster,” before performing the tune alongside Julien Baker; Courtney Barnett also has a wonderful version often played live; Father John Misty took the piss by covering the song for the Spotify Singles series. By 2001, Metallica had already taken Napster to court, and file-sharing was spurring tremendous change within the music industry. But no one had humanized the situation for middle-class musicians quite like Welch on “Everything Is Free.” What happens when your art suddenly has negligible commercial value, and your only way of making a living off it involves the indignities of touring? Welch embodies a Gen-X idea about the whole thing—“I can get a straight job, I done it before”—before clarifying, “Never minded working hard/It’s who I’m working for.” Few suspected then that something like Spotify would arrive less than a decade later and take advantage of the situation created by Napster, offering artists fractions of cents per stream and further entrenching touring as the industry’s primary moneymaker. “Everything Is Free” never tries to be a manual of how to operate as a creative person in this corrupt world, but there is power in Welch leading the way by quietly refusing: By recognizing that the music in her head doesn’t need an audience to be real. By staying home and singing the songs anyway. And by making the tune so pleasing to the ear, like an afternoon dream described through Rawlings’ fingertips, with just a hint of melancholy around the edges. The expanse of something lies ahead. At nearly 15 minutes long, the final song, “I Dream a Highway,” encompasses what came before it and points toward a direction home. “It just happened that all these lyrics I was writing belonged in that song,” Welch once said. “I tried to edit things out but it didn’t make it better. In fact, it was the opposite; I realized that everything this record was about was in that song.” She doubles back to John Henry’s hammer and the stragglers and the jags at the Eugene rock club. She references Johnny Cash kicking out the footlights at the Grand Ole Opry in 1965 and flirts with trading Nashville for Memphis in search of the real thing. She mentions the resurrection of Lazarus by Jesus in the Gospel of John, whose author, John the Apostle, was once mistakenly believed to be the same John who wrote the Book of Revelation. Time collapses while Gillian and Dave play on. The most striking characters mentioned in “I Dream a Highway” are Emmylou Harris and Grams Parsons. Critical readings of the song often position Harris as the narrator, and the ghost she’s singing to as Parsons, her partner in forging country music’s cosmic path, before his tragic death in 1973 at just 26. Whether you hear it that way or as I do—with the imagined figure from “Dear Someone” also appearing at the end of this highway—the loaded phrases and scene sketches amount to something like commentary on breaking tradition, one of Revelator’s biggest themes. Welch and Rawlings had never played the song when they recorded it, and Rawlings spliced together the first two performances with a beginning and end in mind. Some of his most gorgeously ambling guitar work appears between the verses, like the way detours hit us in between the stanzas of life. Just last week, someone sent me a tweet from the band Low. They were answering a fan question about a line in their 2002 song “Candy Girl,” “We wasted all our days/With Gillian and Dave,” confirming that it couldn’t be any other Gillian and Dave. “We are big fans. Many hours passed in the kitchen, listening to Time the Revelator [sic].” And while the album received no shortage of critical praise upon release, particularly within the Americana community, there is an under-explored connection between Revelator and the kind of slowcore played by Low, or the hushed folk-rock of Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps, Adrianne Lenker’s finger-picked fantasias, or Lana Del Rey’s darkly romantic poetry on American myths. Even just a certain attitude in indie rock. “...Everything on that record has this crazy, fierce core of independence and being threatened and feeling alone,” Welch reflected five years ago. “I think it’s what gives it its reverberence today. It seems to resound with adults who are just dealing with their own true independence, certainly young musicians who are trying.” Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings saw the future in the past, and made an album for all time. Editor’s Note: The Sunday Review series is intended to cover albums not included in our archives. This album was previously reviewed on Pitchfork in 2001. Due to an oversight, it’s been revisited here with a new essay.

2023-09-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

2023-09-17T00:00:00.000-04:00

Folk/Country

Acony

September 17, 2023

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Jill Mapes

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jill-mapes/

The St. Paul rapper’s latest album is a study in faith and focus. His acrobatic rapping, rich hooks, and warm textures create a soulful record full of high stakes and interior depth.

The St. Paul rapper’s latest album is a study in faith and focus. His acrobatic rapping, rich hooks, and warm textures create a soulful record full of high stakes and interior depth.

Why Khaliq: The Mustard Seed

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/why-khaliq-the-mustard-seed/

The Mustard Seed

At many different points in the New Testament, a mustard seed is used to illustrate the Kingdom of God: impossibly small beginnings that yield an impossibly grand result. From Matthew: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed [...] although it is the smallest of all seeds, yet it grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” All of which is very nice, but parables don’t keep creditors at bay or take care of utility bills, especially in the middle of brutal St. Paul winters. The Mustard Seed is Why Khaliq’s exceptional new album, a study in faith and focus that’s dedicated to the rapper’s young daughter. Having established his bona fides on the razor-edged The OtherSide: The Six5 and on the gentler, more contemplative Under the Perspective Tree, Khaliq reconciles those approaches on an album full of acrobatic rapping, rich hooks, and warm textures. He frets about being a new parent and trying to make a creative career work when there real stakes, mouths to feed—these are soulful songs culled from soul-crushing restaurant jobs. The faith Khaliq struggles to maintain isn’t grand or ontological. He’s determined, in the long term, to become an artist of consequence, but finds himself mired in the daily struggle to avoid coming undone. “Smile” is about putting up enough of a front that your friends don’t worry too much; “Follow the Leaves” is about the state you need to lull yourself into to believe the endless hours at your day job will eventually pay off. In fact, the first line on the record is “I’ve just been doubting myself,” and he doesn’t move from that thought into a pew—he simply goes to the studio. In obviously related ways, The Mustard Seed is about the economics of creativity. On “Trees,” Khaliq’s girl calls him a “wannabe-ass rapper” and asks him, “Where the fuck all that money at?” to which he replies: “I need space, then I need breaks, and I need silence.” Carving out the time to make his art becomes a constant struggle. The album’s strongest songs, the back-to-back suite of “Anita” and “My Jam,” are, on one level, joyous, but on another, about forcefully shutting out the outside world and avoiding the white noise that keeps us from tapping into that joy. A song called “Collection Day” sounds like a mortal reckoning—which, of course, it is. The album’s emotional center is “First Love,” where Khaliq details his single mother’s determination in raising him, then gives his newborn daughter the highest compliment he can muster: by drawing parallels to his own mom. That song delays the emotional reward—you can practically see his knuckles turning white as he paces hospital corridors—but on the album’s closing track, “The Mustard Seed That Grew,” that release comes, and the gratitude starts flowing in. The Mustard Seed recalls contemporary works like Isaiah Rashad’s calm, sprawling The Sun’s Tirade, but might be more accurately compared to Devin the Dude’s 2002 classic Just Tryin’ ta Live. On the latter album, the Houstonian crafted instantly digestible songs that, on closer inspection, creaked under the weight of a creative and professional life marred by money and distraction and self-doubt. Here, Khaliq fills familiar frameworks—“My Jam,” the late-night sex on “Trees”—with the sort of behind-the-curtain worries and interior life that give them depth. A distracted listen would make The Mustard Seed sound effortless, but the payoff comes when you realize that this the result of grit and sweat, not magic or epiphany.

2017-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00

2017-11-16T01:00:00.000-05:00

Rap

Six5

November 16, 2017

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Paul A. Thompson

https://pitchfork.com/staff/paul-a. thompson/

Channelling Southern rap, house music, and lush orchestral pop, the third release from Yusuke Kawai as tofubeats is one of the best J-Pop releases of the year.

Channelling Southern rap, house music, and lush orchestral pop, the third release from Yusuke Kawai as tofubeats is one of the best J-Pop releases of the year.

tofubeats: Fantasy Club

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23287-fantasy-club/

Fantasy Club

Yusuke Kawai could have settled into the J-Pop background. The Kobe producer became a breakout name in the country’s netlabel scene in the late 2000s, creating high-energy breakcore often centered around anime samples under the name DJ Newtown, before adopting the name tofubeats for wholly original compositions. His nervy, genre-skipping dance-pop songs featuring radio-friendly choruses made him an apt choice to bring the internet-centric sound to a major label. Since, tofubeats’ albums have mostly highlighted his songwriting and production, handing vocal duties off to pop heavyweights, comedians, models and more. It’s a common path for artists plucked from the underground who focus on building a sound for other voices. Fantasy Club, tofubeat’s third major-label album, breaks from that path. The guests are mostly absent, and instead Kawai’s Auto-Tune voice sits in the spotlight. It’s one of the stranger releases to get prominent space in the J-Pop section in recent memory—across its 13 songs, *Fantasy Club *channels Southern rap, house music, and lush orchestral pop. Compared to the generally upbeat tone of his compatriots, Kawai often sounds angry or tired here, his tracks full of unnerving sputters. Yet all these intricacies make it one of the best from Japan so far in 2017, a style-blurring affair showing what happens when a strong personality gets the chance to broadcast themselves fully through their music, regardless of how left-field they can get. Kawai has discussed being introduced to the concept of post-truth, and feeling shaken by seeing the web he came up on turn sour. Early number “Shoppingmall” sets the album’s tone. Musically it’s simplistic, seasick synthesizer melodies and hi-hat skitters. But that emphasizes the vocals, which find Kawai gnashing outward (“What's real and what's not/Is just that exciting enough?”). It soon becomes clear he’s not angry at what’s around him, but grappling with his own confusion and anxiety. The songs that follow are rarely stable, reflecting the unease that shapes the theme of Fantasy Club. “Lonely Nights” calls on rising rapper Young Juju to cooly rap through a digital mist before Kawai delivers a distorted hook full of stuttering syllables. “Callin” is melancholy electro R&B, underlined by Kawai’s mutated vocals, run through layers of effects to the point it sounds like a depressed burst of static. Dance numbers designed for the club feature warped details—the title track shuffles forward on house whistles and a galloping beat, but the edges of every sound quiver with echo, like they are wilting. *Fantasy Club’s *most outright floor-focused moment, “What You Got,” is crashed by a disorienting passage featuring a flurry of menacing Kawais tripping over each other. Yet all these disruptions make the moments of release well-earned. Whereas older tofubeat’s albums played out as singles collections that could be played in basically any order, complete with tracklistings reading like J-Pop all-star squads, *Fantasy Club *is best listened to from start to finish. At its center is “This City,” which starts off like it’s malfunctioning—synthesizer notes going wobbly and electronic sounds chirping off over it like it’s on the verge of going haywire. But from this chaos tofubeats builds an ecstatic dance number, growing ever more upbeat as its seven minutes play on. As tofubeats, Kawai has always been able to hopscotch across styles, but *Fantasy Club *marks the first time he’s been able to really explore the sounds he loves: minimalist wooze-pop (late comedown “Yuuki,” featuring singer/songwriter sugar me) or Houston rap (the outro to opener “Chant #1” serving as direct homage to DJ Screw, something you don’t usually see in J-Pop) without having to worry about accommodating big names or scoring a hit. Given how much before it is shaped by anxiety about the world at large, it’s a bit funny that *Fantasy Club’s *climax is a simple love song called “Baby.” It’s anchored by a string sample sourced from a song by celebrated Japanese pop star Yumi Matsutoya. In the wrong hands, it could be treated like a building block, an obscure find waiting to be sped up in Garageband and be called an aesthetic. But tofubeats celebrates the sound and creates an original song showing its warmth. It makes one glad he stepped to the forefront for Fantasy Club.

2017-06-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

2017-06-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

Electronic

Warner Music Japan

June 5, 2017

fb4c9d8d-f634-4736-9707-04c8b627b7bf

Patrick St. Michel

https://pitchfork.com/staff/patrick-st. michel/

On their second album, the Australian outfit go bigger and broader, unapologetically mining Primal Scream and the Madchester scene for inspiration.

On their second album, the Australian outfit go bigger and broader, unapologetically mining Primal Scream and the Madchester scene for inspiration.

Jagwar Ma: Every Now & Then

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22508-every-now-then/

Every Now & Then

Andrew Weatherall may not have produced Jagwar Ma’s second album, Every Now & Then, but his paw prints are all over it. Following tours supporting their debut LP—and a close call with a shark in their native Australia—Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield headed to Europe, first to the derelict French sunflower farm where Howlin’ was recorded, then to Le Bunker, the London recording studio of the famed acid house DJ and home to his enormous record collection. “Andrew was in close proximity towards the end,” Ma told Stereogum in a recent interview. “But I think most of the themes and the music had been written by that point, so I don’t think he’s had a direct influence per se.” The adjacency to Weatherall may have been a happy accident, but for Jagwar Ma—whose music is hugely indebted to Madchester and Primal Scream—the overlap is too perfect to ignore. Weatherall, who co-produced Primal Scream’s Screamadelica and helped forge the “baggy” sound of the 1980s, has served as a sort of musical north star for Jagwar Ma. (Screamadelica, the band has said, is a favorite album and he remixed their song “Come Save Me” in 2013.) In Pitchfork’s review of Howlin’, writer Ian Cohen lauded the carefree aspects of the album, but feared the band's sophomore record might wind up a “‘darker,’ ‘introspective’ and duller sequel.” As it turns out, Every Now & Then is the opposite; rather than turn inward, Jagwar Ma build on their first record’s foundation, going bigger and broader, while continuing to look unapologetically in the rearview mirror. As with Howlin’, the neo-psychedelic music of Manchester’s club scene remains an inseparable part of the band's sound. Lead single “O B 1” could be compared to the Stone Roses, New Order, and Primal Scream, depending on which YouTube commenter you ask. (It also has more than a little bit of Giorgio Moroder’s driving synths.) As with many songs on the album, the sugary lyrics serve mostly as a conduit for the melody. “You warm me up, you wore me down, I get the feeling now,” sings Winterfield. The song succeeds precisely because Jagwar Ma refuse to take themselves too seriously. Synths shimmer, Whitefield’s voice is studiously mixed, and the drums, courtesy of Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, have a hypnotic circularity, but it's all in the service of a good time. Ma has said the track is about “moving through the motions of life under the influence of lost love, the fear of letting go of the past when not having anything set in place in the future to hold on to,” but, in truth, larger themes are secondary to the band’s primary goal of flooding the listener's serotonin centers. Much of Every Now & Then is anchored by the sound of the Oberheim Two Voice synthesizer, a vintage machine with a compressed, funky zap that Ma bought on eBay. The Oberheim occasionally pushes their sound further into the 1970s, a decade that fellow Aussies Tame Impala know well, and which suits Jagwar Ma’s stadium-sized aspirations. Unlike friend-of-the-band Kevin Parker, however, Jagwar Ma don't have a particular interest in avant-garde experimentalism or pop economy, instead preferring mid-tempo tracks that check the necessary boxes: big hooks, ravey breakdowns, the occasional inspired left turn (see: the Egyptian Lover-recalling electro track “Don’t Be So Hard”). The album's highest highs are, not surprisingly, their most anthemic musically. “Ordinary”—a track that isn't— sees Whitefield’s voice arc like chemtrails across a neon sky. The song combines Britpop excess, the Ibiza dancefloor, and a vintage hip-hop breakbeat all without sounding forced. Jagwar Ma are also comfortable when settling deeper into dancefloor groove. Album closer “Colours of Paradise” embraces a headier form of bliss for nearly six minutes of Balearic house. Jagwar Ma join a lineage of Madchester acolytes that range from Brooklyn’s Dinowalrus to the Swedish popsters on Sincerely Yours. But part of the allure of Madchester was the constant search for new forms of perception—through sonic experimentation as well as mind-altering chemicals—something that Jagwar Ma’s crate-digging fails to invoke. Every Now & Then is often vivid and enjoyable, but after a few listens, you may find yourself switching back to one of the band’s predecessors. The former is a fun ride, but Screamadelica could still blow your mind.

2016-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

2016-10-20T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rock

Mom+Pop

October 20, 2016

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Nathan Reese

https://pitchfork.com/staff/nathan-reese/

Seeking inspiration from John Fahey's Takoma Records, Rose attempts to drag ragtime into the 21st century.

Seeking inspiration from John Fahey's Takoma Records, Rose attempts to drag ragtime into the 21st century.

Jack Rose: Kensington Blues

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6952-kensington-blues/

Kensington Blues

The (apocryphal) outline of Jack Rose's game runs something like this: Ragtime and "jass" were bequeathed to him by the last words of Dr. Chattanooga Red, a mysterious mentor who allegedly told Rose to "not let the ragtime die, and to bring it into the 21st century"-- twin missions that produced Rose's 2003 homage to his teacher, Opium Musick. True or not (not), it's a nice story, and the myth does seem operative-- Rose often plays as if the health of ragtime rests on his shoulders alone. Maybe it does. John Fahey and Takoma Records are gone, and Rose's modern compatriots (Ben Chasney, Kevin Barker, Sir Richard Bishop, etc.) are increasingly seduced by the East, by psychedelics, and by a "freak-folk" that owes less to American Primitive than it might claim. Although Rose is no stranger to the raga form-- or to the near 20-minute composition (2004's Raag Manifestoes had both of these in spades)-- his tools are firmly those of the past. While the new century's novel folk has already seen significant definition, Rose is largely alone in talking new century ideas with the old language. Thus, Kensington Blues is derivative and at the same time nearly brilliant. The styles Rose employs are diverse: twelve-string virtuoso shows, a slide guitar that alludes as much to the sitar as to the blues, solid traditional Takoma ragtime and folk. Out from latter comes a Fahey cover, "Sunflower River Blues", which (not surprisingly) works as the soil from which the rest of the record grows. The original was predicated on Fahey's impeccable timing; Rose's take amplifies the feeling and melody, and then runs with it. Hence the stunning "Kensington Blues", a song full of clarity and syncopation, elegant and well composed. Two others, "Rappahanock River Rag" and "Flirtin' with the Undertaker", are less weighty, more jaunty deliveries of Rose's signature modern ragtime. But Rose is more than a traditionalist, and the other tracks on Kensington Blues veer sharply into newer territory. "Cathedral et Chartres" uses twelve strings to abstract the melodic clarity so abundant elsewhere on the record, speeding it up and then sending it into a droning, buzzing finale. This idea is fully worked out in his closer, "Calais to Dover", in which Rose transfigures the raga into a kind of Dream Music, deep listening project, vibrating his way past individual notes and sequences and arriving at something more akin to pure tone and texture. The minimalist affinity is no coincidence: Rose's folk is not the least bit free, even as he explores freak sonic terrain, and control is his technique, no matter how many notes he stacks.

2005-11-01T01:00:04.000-05:00

2005-11-01T01:00:04.000-05:00

Folk/Country

VHF

November 1, 2005

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Pitchfork

On a gothic and stormy new album, the experimental producer and vocalist constructs alien landscapes whose unpredictable structures seek to tune us more deeply into ourselves.

On a gothic and stormy new album, the experimental producer and vocalist constructs alien landscapes whose unpredictable structures seek to tune us more deeply into ourselves.

Aïsha Devi: Death Is Home

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aisha-devi-death-is-home/

Death Is Home

On Death Is Home, Aïsha Devi arrives with the clearest and most distinct version of her sound yet. Defined by a sense of gothic scale and darkness, it’s rave music with a brain and a heart—for lone adventurers rather than big rooms. To understand it, one must take Devi’s entire discography into consideration: As Kate Wax, she made cloudy dance-pop—music that could have been dismissed as airy and transitory yet carried a strange and sometimes clunky heft. In 2014, the Swiss-Nepalese/Tibetan artist began releasing music under her own name, ditching the alter ego for a more avant-garde vision. She also began interweaving her meditation and spiritual practices into her production and performance. (Much ink has been spilled on the dancefloor as a space for potential healing; Devi appears to take this approach genuinely.) DNA Feelings (2018) was a disorienting, minimalist affair that placed Devi’s heavily processed vocals against pristine, icy sound design. Hard to grasp and even harder to dance to, it’s a challenging but rewarding listen that demands patience and careful attention—Pauline Oliveros for the clubland set. Death Is Home is her first LP since then, and first new music since 2019’s S.L.F. EP, which married Devi’s earlier predilection for pop with DNA Feelings’ abstract map. Opener “Not Defined by the Visible” turns the rave build into a dizzying spiral staircase, the kind everyone expects to resolve into a reliable drop and attendant emotional payoff. In Devi’s version, it becomes delicate architecture, refusing obvious catharsis for a sense of vertigo. Devi is an expert at building tension; a sense of foreboding lurked even in DNA Feelings’ relatively weightless palette. On Death Is Home she pushes that tendency as far as it will go, creating cavernous environments with such a restrained hand that when stabbed with squeaky synths and ruptured with dry, piercing kicks, as on “Lick Your Wounds,” they suggest the score for a sci-fi/body horror flick. “Immortelle” is just gorgeous, scribbly trance synths and ominous ambience anchoring Devi’s alien-frequency vocals. Visionary Kenyan club experimentalist Slikback helps the thrilling “Dimensional Spleen,” with its twinkling synth line and straight-to-the-hips bass, become the most accessible work of Devi’s recent career, though the track is no less thoughtfully constructed than anything on DNA Feelings. At times Devi sounds as if she’s playing with the new age tropes of a particular kind of ’90s mainstream electronica, digging through the cheese to find something true. The celestial bells of “Mind Era” and fluted synths of “The 7th Element” wouldn’t be out of place on Pure Moods. The references feel loving—new age was music for seekers and meditators, just as Devi’s is—but she can’t resist messing with the program, processing her vocals beyond recognition and screwing up the song structures. “Prophet Club” is a lovely slice of futuristic R&B. Closer “Azoth Eyes” is a true stunner, showing that Devi is as adept with percussion-heavy work as she is with airier fare. She sets gauzy layers of fluttering vocals against thick, ominous ambience and crushing, distorted beats, creating an atmosphere that works on and within the physical body. As Devi’s work has become inextricable from her spiritual practices, it’s clear that embodiment is key to her work. We are all aware that stress and trauma live in our bodies in unconscious ways. Grief and pain do communicate through Death Is Home’s textures, as does the undergirding sense of hope necessary to heal. But perhaps most notably, Devi’s own artistic voice sounds more developed than ever. In the process of healing, we become more ourselves, steadier on our feet and with an arsenal of practices and tools available to weather coming storms. Hearing Devi hone her vocabulary to this degree is proof enough of work.

2023-11-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

2023-11-13T00:01:00.000-05:00

Electronic

Houndstooth

November 13, 2023

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JJ Skolnik

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jj-skolnik/

The New York-based composer’s third album spotlights piano and vibraphone, as attuned to the notes struck as to the overtones produced and their natural decay.

The New York-based composer’s third album spotlights piano and vibraphone, as attuned to the notes struck as to the overtones produced and their natural decay.

Michael Vincent Waller: Moments

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/michael-vincent-waller-moments/

Moments

Since its founding in Tommy McCutchon’s Austin apartment in 2006, the Unseen Worlds imprint has become a refined voice in late 20th- and early 21st-century explorations, whether exalting a historically neglected female composer like Laurie Spiegel or reissuing albums that plumb the divide between pop and avant-garde. Alongside reissues, Unseen Worlds has also offered up an adventurous exploration of contemporary piano music. Releases run the gamut from stately solo piano pieces by Ethiopian classical composer Girma Yifrashewa to achingly slow takes on Erik Satie by founding Fluxus member Philip Corner to a stunning modern ambient album from jungle/breakcore pioneer Robert Haigh. This year the label adds two new entries to that list, first Hague-based Leo Svirsky’s River Without Banks and now Michael Vincent Waller’s third album, Moments. Waller’s 2015 double-disc debut The South Shore found the New York-based composer presenting a diverse array of works written over a five-year period, with some 20 total players performing pieces for solo cello, string quartet, flute, and a saxophone and electric guitar ensemble. On 2017’s Trajectories, Waller narrowed his focus to the interplay between cello and piano. Moments zooms in even further; five of the 18 compositions presented here are for vibraphone, the remainder for solo piano. R. Andrew Lee, pianist on Trajectories and a noted interpreter for minimal composers like Dennis Johnson and Jürg Frey, is again seated at the bench. Waller enlists William Winant—percussionist to the likes of John Zorn, Frank Zappa, and Roscoe Mitchell—on vibraphone. Both men are renowned for their restraint, and they are a perfect fit for Waller’s sensibilities. Every note and gesture on Moments seems to be deeply felt and philosophically weighed before a hand touches a piano key or lifts a mallet. Waller is uninterested in hiding behind any sort of artifice in his compositions, conveying sentiment as directly through the notation as possible. There’s little reverb to the recording, no electronic processing or layering; the sustaining pedal isn’t depressed for the duration of the album. He’s uninterested in a larger canvas when a postcard will suffice. None of the compositions last longer than six minutes, and many speak their piece well before the three-minute mark. Waller seems as attuned to the notes struck as to the overtones produced and their natural decay, which perhaps comes from his studies with minimalist composers like La Monte Young and Bunita Marcus, the latter perhaps best known for the piece that composer Morton Feldman named for her. Erik Satie’s name comes up in almost every writing about Waller, and it’s hard not recall Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” during a passage on Waller’s own melancholic “Nocturnes - No. 4.” But Feldman is the more telling reference, especially in Waller’s balance and exploration of the instruments’ attack and decay. “Vibrafono Studio” wraps itself in warm, lingering tones, pausing every few lines to let the overtones fade away. The gorgeous “Jennifer”—dedicated to his cousin—moves swiftly from its opening chords to a flurry of high notes before drawing to half-speed, carefully exploring a descending bass melody that offers each note ample space in which to sound. His dedication to the late Pauline Oliveros, “For Pauline,” exemplifies her tenets of “deep listening” not with a durational, large-scale composition akin to her own work, but with three gentle minutes wherein each of Lee’s chords moves like steps across slippery river stones. As understated as Waller’s writing is, and as self-contained and seamless as each piece is, it’s almost startling when the album arrives at the stunning finale of “Bounding.” Lee’s playing starts off measured, but soon gathers velocity, each run quickening the pace until it reaches an evocative peak. The final third of the piece gushes forth in a cascade, the emotional restraint of the album finally giving way to release. As sterling and subtle as Moments can be, the finale feels nothing less than cathartic. Buy: Rough Trade (Pitchfork may earn a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)

2019-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

2019-10-05T01:00:00.000-04:00

Experimental

Unseen Worlds

October 5, 2019

fb778988-28f1-453a-b635-97acc4d40445

Andy Beta

https://pitchfork.com/staff/andy-beta/

On the band's 10th album, Dave Matthews taps into his gentler side with the wisdom and grace afforded by age.

On the band's 10th album, Dave Matthews taps into his gentler side with the wisdom and grace afforded by age.

Dave Matthews Band: Walk Around the Moon

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dave-matthews-band-walk-around-the-moon/

Walk Around the Moon

The most famous lyric in “Crash Into Me,” Dave Matthews Band’s breakout love song from 1996, was a mistake. After recording several takes, Matthews added a throwaway line as a joke: “Hike up your skirt a little more and show your world to me.” It made the final cut, of course, and the song would forever be read as a tale of lust rather than desire. “It’s the song of a 26-year-old or 25-year-old,” he recently told GQ. “Now I’m a 56-year-old, and that changes what you want to sing about.” These days, Matthews is more concerned with impermanence as liberation and themes that distill the long-running mindfulness of his music. On Walk Around the Moon, the band’s 10th studio album, he turns those subjects into surprisingly pretty odes, tapping into his gentler side with the wisdom and grace afforded by age. If you’re expecting the classic attributes of Dave Matthews Band—crunchy grooves, dueling horns and violin, Matthews’ imitable, guttural singing—then Walk Around the Moon will come as a surprise. In the five years since they released the dull but optimistic Come Tomorrow, Dave Matthews Band have seen their children pack their bags for college, the George Floyd protesters strive for justice, and the world confront the precarity of health. With big change comes thankfulness for anything that’s stayed reliable; that might explain the comparatively restrained approach on Walk Around the Moon. The band forgoes its most flamboyant instrumentation and scales back to a grounded, almost meditative, core. With the bulk of the album aligning with triple-A soft-rock, the quietness that permeates these songs gives their themes of reflection a chilling air: the sobering reality of the pandemic on “Singing From the Windows,” learning to forfeit control on the trumpet-dotted “The Ocean and the Butterfly.” Seven members round out the lineup, the most at any time in their history, but the group has never sounded so reserved. Past and present iterations of Dave Matthews Band freely intermingle on Walk Around the Moon. As always, Matthews confronts death and loss, but there’s a sense he’s learned something new about it this time around. A handful of tracks have been massaged for years on the road or pulled from the vault: “Monsters,” a wistful, bass-forward dose of nostalgia, is nearly a decade old. They’ve been playing “Break Free” live for 17 years, the late LeRoi Moore living on through his work as a composer and lyricist on the soulful track. Bootleggers’ enthusiasm aside, these two songs are highlights for the band as storytellers; revisiting your former self with acceptance, and potentially forgiveness, is hard, especially if you’re prone to embarrassing one-liners. At 40 minutes, Walk Around the Moon is a brisk reverie—and their shortest album ever. That cutoff means their zesty solos are shorter and moments of all-in instrumentation are subtler. When they do go for it, Dave Matthews Band might be having too much fun. Sandwiched between two heart-on-sleeve acoustic numbers, “After Everything” goes from alt-rock ham to neo-soul pastiche as abruptly as a jumpscare. You could hold it up beside enjoyable parodies like “The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room” or Beck’s “Debra,” if only it was actually obvious that Matthews and Arthur “Buddy” Strong’s back-and-forth groans are caricatures. After all, this is the same band that picked “I Did It” as a single and ended “Pig” with 30 seconds of scatting. Call it brainwashing or a coping method, but by the third listen, my hate subsided and I started singing along. There comes a point in every Dave Mathews Band album where you have to embrace the cheese. On Walk Around the Moon, the band works on picturesque choruses and tight-knit, tender songs that stand on their own. Tumpets, saxophones, and Hammond organ sway like wheat stalks in the title track. “It Could Happen” is a deceptively rich pop ballad for parents about the miracle of watching your kids grow into tiny, functioning people, with sweeping violins that go straight for the tear ducts. Even the chunky, Cake-like riffs that open “The Only Thing” are concise, the driving force that opens the chorus wide for Matthews’ falsettos. Swapping the cold, clean production of their 2010s albums for a warmer, more intimate filter, Walk Around the Moon sounds closer to his solo music than it does the band’s old hijinks, but a closer look shows Dave Matthews Band trying on a new, sleeker look. To the delight of those with faded fire dancer decals on the back of their Jeeps, Matthews embraces uncoolness the way any experienced parent would. Every song whispers mature, late-era album giving a sly, all-knowing tone to his words. “Madman’s Eyes,” a spin on Arabic pop-metal with Matthews taking up sitar and Jeff Coffin playing a nasally melody on tárogató, offers an apolitical denunciation of mass shootings and our glossy-eyed acceptance of them. “I’m afraid, can’t lie,” yells Matthews, like he needs confirmation that he’s not the only one feeling helpless. During “The Only Thing,” he breaks down the factors that cause us to idealize anonymity: your first experience of public humiliation, the regret of paralyzing indecision, the realization that time is slipping away. It helps that Matthews sings like the grim reaper’s hourglass is permanently in view, each falling grain of sand creating space for forgiveness. “If I wasn’t there, I wouldn’t believe it,” he later sings in “It Could Happen,” his voice tinged with disbelief and gratitude. Like the rest of Walk Around the Moon, it sounds like Matthews is reflecting on how he got to this point in life, amazed that 30 years later he still gets to do this with his friends.

2023-06-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

2023-06-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

Rock

RCA

June 1, 2023

fb83f166-5e11-457b-a96c-f7f85a0854b7

Nina Corcoran

https://pitchfork.com/staff/nina-corcoran/

Newly signed to Mike WiLL’s label, the Atlanta rapper offers an unsparing chronicle of his come-up on this smoky, sinister major-label debut.

Newly signed to Mike WiLL’s label, the Atlanta rapper offers an unsparing chronicle of his come-up on this smoky, sinister major-label debut.

Trouble: Edgewood

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/trouble-edgewood/

Edgewood

Trouble was 23 when he broke out in 2011 with “Bussin,’” a gun anthem intense enough to spark nightmares. The video, with its close-ups of back tattoos, war-grade weaponry, and stone-faced gangsters, feels like an A&E drama condensed into a compact three-minute song. It’s the type of clip you watch once and never forget. Since then, Trouble has been popping up on tracks with Young Thug and Gucci Mane, releasing occasional mixtapes, and generally buzzing around the edges of his city’s explosive rap scene. At times, it’s felt like his music career has been secondary to the broader project of his larger-than-life persona. Edgewood, Trouble’s long-coming debut, is a reminder of what a compelling narrator he remains. Named for the Atlanta projects where he grew up, and executive produced by Mike WiLL Made-It, this album is an unsparing chronicle of Trouble’s come-up. Cohesive and gothic, and flaunting some of the most effective, layered production of Mike WiLL’s career, Edgewood takes the over-excited hyper-realism of “Bussin’” and ages it like whiskey, giving life to a smoky, sinister, and polished image of Trouble as a seen-it-all Atlanta godfather. Signing to Mike WiLL’s label, as Trouble did this year, brings a few obvious benefits. Edgewood flaunts guest spots from Fetty Wap, Quavo, the Weeknd, and Drake; polished artwork and promo materials; and flawless mixing that provides pockets for Trouble’s swirling southern drawl to move around in. Throughout, his perspective remains sharp. He is jaded and cautious, snarling and dismissive. “Try to tell my young’n stiffen up, he trust niggas/Been burned by that bullet, I know not to trust niggas,” he spits on the standout opening track, “Real is Rare (Edgewood) / The Woods,” and you can almost see him shaking his head. He doles out advice in every verse, and he recounts past capers with chilling composure. On “Bussin,’” he was barking in self-defense in the face of imminent war. On Edgewood, the battle is over, and he’s assessing the damage. Edgewood is as much Mike WiLL’s album as it is Trouble’s. The beats here are part haunted house, part trap opera, and part Atlanta rap history lesson, going back to the melodic bounce of D4L on “Selfish” and the moaning menace of pre-prison Gucci Mane on “Knock it Down.” Mike WiLL is an exceptional crafter of pop-rap, as evidenced by Rae Sremmurd’s success, but on Edgewood, he gleefully returns to the gloomy, menacing sound that broke him into the industry. “Pull Dat Cash Out” blends the sound of a woman’s distorted voice with ATLiens-era OutKast synth work, while on the surprisingly engrossing Weeknd collaboration “Come Thru,” Mike WiLL breaks out jack-in-the-box keys and infuses them with a bass-heavy bounce—letting Trouble spit-off one liners (“I was duckin’ bullets, shootouts, me and my guys design your porch”) and giving room for the Weeknd to land some House of Balloons-era vocal runs. Mike WiLL’s value as an executive producer lies in the fact that he pushes Trouble only to the edges of his comfort zone. Throughout, he prioritizes the album’s cohesiveness and sound over breaking Trouble into the mainstream. Even the big name collaborations—the somewhat limp Quavo and Fetty Wap feature “Rider” and the mostly-successful, abrasive Drake cut “Bring it Back”—work in service of the whole project. Edgewood documents its Atlanta underworld with immersive, almost suffocating realism: the various skits throughout the album detail the minutiae of trap life, capturing iPhone clicks, voicemails, stray gunshots, and music playing next door. Trouble’s tales of trap life are nothing new to the Atlanta rap canon, but while classics like Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation: 101 toasted the act of hustling one’s way out of the trap (“I used to hit the kitchen lights, cockroaches everywhere/Hit the kitchen lights, now it’s marble floors, everywhere!”), Edgewood finds Trouble stubbornly staying put. “How could you blame it?/It’s all I done seen runnin’ around wit my crew,” he muses on “Krew / Time Afta Time, “ but he needs no one else’s approval. This is a judgment-free account of life in an overlooked, liminal space, and its tone is neither celebratory nor mournful. Rather, it’s a cryptic affirmation of an old adage: Sometimes, everything you need is already in front of you.

2018-03-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

2018-03-28T01:00:00.000-04:00

Rap

Ear Drummer / Interscope

March 28, 2018

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Jackson Howard

https://pitchfork.com/staff/jackson-howard/