Bibio “Town & Country”

“Town & Country” is sung entirely in the second person – “you’re tired of working in the city, you fight for life…,” and so on – and it makes me wonder whether we’re meant to interpret it as Bibio singing to someone else, or to some version of himself. I tend to hear it more as the latter even if it’s not strictly autobiographical because it comes out sounding like a litany of complaints being used in a campaign to change your own mind and break bad habits.

The angst and negative vibes in the lyrics are at odds with the sound of the music, which feels extremely relaxed and lovely in this very ‘70s soft rock sort of way. Maybe it’s the fantasy of being somewhere else, and having an entirely different life. Or it could be like visiting some other place, and realizing how much better you feel, and that positive experience forcing you to reckon with problems you’ve put on the back burner for a long time because you’re too busy to take them seriously for long otherwise. I’ve never personally related to the sentiment of this song, but I know a lot of people who have struggled with this “gotta get out of the city” anxiety, and the way Bibio expresses it in this song sounds very authentic to me.

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Andrew Bird “Truth Lies Low”

I ignored Andrew Bird for over a decade, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I just thought he was another Sufjan Stevens, and I’ve always had negative vibes about that guy? Perhaps I heard the wrong random tracks along the way? I probably just associated him too closely with NPR and shrugged him off, just as I do with a lot of other artists in that cultural niche. It’s so easy to be dismissive of pleasant, introverted soft rock, even when you like pleasant, introverted soft rock.

“Truth Lies Low” reminds me a lot of Grizzly Bear in good ways – there’s a gentle grace to the melody, and even if there’s a bit of fussiness to the arrangement, it’s not so neat and tidy that all character is lost. Bird, like the Grizzly Bear guys and the full-band incarnation of Iron & Wine, puts his songs together like a hip interior decorator. A low organ riff gently rumbles through the track, and it sits in the center of it like a handsome table made from “reclaimed wood.” The bright metallic pizzicato notes plucked on Bird’s violin and all those soft snare taps are like bits of intriguing ornamentation that draw your attention without being too distracting. The song feels like a shabby place turned into something quite fancy, or perhaps vice versa. I listen to it and feel like I’m about to pay too much for a cocktail. But it’s going to be a good cocktail, and I’m going to enjoy being in the room even if I’m not certain I belong there.

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Nap Eyes “Mixer”

“Mixer” has a distinct rainy day vibe, evoking the specific feeling of the sort of dreary, chilly, dark days that seem to move verrry sloooowly and sap the energy of pretty much everyone. It’s a feeling that can be quite pleasant under the right circumstances, just the same way sadness can feel comforting and pleasing sometimes. The song lingers in that space, with Nigel Chapman’s doleful Dean Wareham-ish voice describing what it’s like to drift along without a job or any particular motivation, and feeling trapped by inertia and resentful of people who condescend to you about your situation. There’s a bit of bite to the way he sings the chorus, but not a lot. The mood is exceedingly lackadaisical, and just after he pushes back against the notion that it’d be easy to fix his problems, the song just kinda slunks back down into a relaxed, resigned state of depression.

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Sales “Ivy”

The sound of “Ivy” is fragile and tentative, conveying the feeling of attempting to communicate someone without disrupting some delicate emotional equilibrium. Lauren Morgan’s words sketch out a vague narrative – she’s concerned about Ivy’s insecurity, there’s some indication of submissive sexuality, a desire to subsume all her needs, and a breakdown in communication. She leaves you wanting more details, but immediately recognizing the feeling of wanting to repair something that was probably never actually working. The one time Morgan sounds totally certain in this song is when she sings “the distance between us, the size of a planet.” It’s a very intimate song, but that’s a bit ironic as it’s really about yearning for a deeper intimacy or lamenting an intimacy that’s gradually disappeared.

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Xenia Rubinos “Lonely Lover”

There’s barely anything in this track aside from Xenia Rubino’s voice, her bass, and Marco Buccelli’s percussion, but the song feels so robust that I barely noticed that at first. Rubino’s bass playing is dynamic and nimble, elegantly gliding from groove to groove without overwhelming the negative space or getting in the way of her own voice. I love the way her bass part will suddenly climb up or double back around Buccelli’s incredibly crisp snare hits, and how just a few perfect piano chords enter the arrangement for the chorus. Rubino and Buccelli make everything feel loose and improvised even when it’s clear that they’ve carefully thought out every bit of the song, and that carries over to her vocal, which is highly expressive and soulful, but also sorta low-key and conversational. It’s a gorgeous piece of music, and it pulls off the rare trick of seeming warm and familiar yet very distinctive and unusual.

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Zayn “Truth”

It’s funny that although I’m pretty familiar with One Direction, I don’t think I had any sense of Zayn Malik as a singer until he released his first solo singles. One Direction songs are built so the five guys all sorta blur together, to the point that most of them sound like there’s only one lead singer, and the backup vocals have more or less the same timbre. Left to his own devices, Malik strays from the high-gloss rock of 1D and gravitates towards a very Frank Ocean-ish brand of R&B. It suits him well, particularly when he moves towards the extremes of his voice – the deliberately sexy early morning rasp he slips into on “Truth;” the stunning falsetto he uses on the chorus of “It’s You.” Those two songs are not coincidentally the best on his debut record, which suggests that he should probably lean into those strengths later on. “Truth” is particularly well-written, and though it has some of the best hooks on the album, it’s decidedly mellow and low-key. A lot of Zayn’s brand is projecting a very potent yet chill hyper-masculinity, and “Truth” conveys that better than anything else he’s recorded. It’s a sound he can grow into, for sure.

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Hundred Waters featuring Chance the Rapper, Moses Sumney and Robin Hannibal “Show Me Love (Skrillex remix)”

Even just a year ago you’d see “Skrillex remix” attached to a song title and reasonably expect it’d be really fast and aggro. He’s a bit more subtle these days, and so this track is allowed to retain its gentle warmth even as he layers in dynamic beats and very sparkly synth notes. Instead of amping up the energy, he amps of the sentiment, and so the song feels like a big, teary hug. Chance the Rapper and the stylistically similar Moses Sumney are perfectly suited to this sound – it flatters their melodic rhymes, and nicely frames the kind-hearted humanity at the core of their aesthetic. Chance’s verse is brief, but it’s a super-concentrated dose of his seemingly effortless charisma and relentless Chicago boosterism that makes me even hungrier for a full album from him than even his SNL appearance or album-stealing verse on Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam.” That record can’t come quickly enough.

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This is the sixth in my series of 1980s survey mixes, which are moving backwards in time from 1989 to the start of the decade. These compilations are designed to give more context to the music of the ‘80s, and give a sense of how various niches and trends overlapped in this cultural moment.

1984 is a pretty huge year for music, with a lot of major releases that changed the course of pop, rock, and rap history. It’s also a transitional year that bridges the gap between the more artsy new wave of the early ’80s and the sort of schlock pop that ends up dominating the next few years. As with 1985 and 1986, there’s a major aesthetic divide between mainstream and underground aesthetics, to the point that it’s surprising to realize that, say, Minor Threat was happening at the same time as Foreigner and REO Speedwagon. But that’s kinda the point of these surveys, right?

Thanks to Paul Cox and Chris Conroy for their help in compiling this survey. All of the previous 1980s surveys are still available: 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1985. The 1983 survey should be ready at the end of April.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

Prince and the Revolution “When Doves Cry” / Madonna “Material Girl” / Pointer Sisters “Jump (For My Love)” / Van Halen “Jump” / Wham! “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” / Huey Lewis and the News “If This Is It” / Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band “Dancing in the Dark” / Kenny Loggins “Footloose” / Billy Ocean “Carribean Queen” / Chaka Khan “I Feel For You” / Tina Turner “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” / Bananarama “Cruel Summer” / Deniece Williams “Let’s Hear It For The Boy” / New Edition “Cool It Now” / Cristina “What’s A Girl To Do?” / Sheena Easton “Strut” / ZZ Top “Legs” / Don Henley “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” / Dan Hartman “I Can Dream About You” / Cyndi Lauper “Time After Time” / Pat Benetar “We Belong”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

U2 “Pride (In the Name of Love)” / The Smiths “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” / The Replacements “I Will Dare” / Game Theory “Shark Pretty” / R.E.M. “So. Central Rain” / Echo and the Bunnymen “The Killing Moon” / Billy Idol “Eyes Without A Face” / Thompson Twins “Hold Me Now” / Wang Chung “Dance Hall Days” / The Go-Go’s “Head Over Heels” / The Cars “You Might Think” / Michael Jackson “Thriller” / Metallica “Creeping Death” / Killing Joke “Eighties” / Paul Oakley and Giorgio Moroder “Together in Electric Dreams” / Nena “99 Luftballons” / Aztec Camera “Still On Fire” / Shannon “Let the Music Play” / Queen “Radio Ga Ga” / Steve Perry “Oh Sherrie” / Phil Collins “Against All Odds”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Frankie Goes to Hollywood “Relax” / INXS “Original Sin” / Run-D.M.C. “It’s Like That” / Six Sed Red “Beat ‘em Right” / Eurythmics “Sex Crime (1984)” / Art of Noise “Close (To the Edit)” / Bronski Beat “Smalltown Boy” / T-La Rock featuring Jazzy Jay “It’s Yours” / Whodini “Freaks Come Out At Night” / Egyptian Lover “I Cry (Night After Night)” / Depeche Mode “People Are People” / The Human League “The Lebanon” / Sonic Youth “Brother James” / The Minutemen “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing” / Minor Threat “Straight Edge” / G.G. Allin “Drink, Fight, and Fuck” / Frightwig “My Crotch Does Not Say Go” / Yellowman “Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt” / Stevie Wonder “I Just Called to Say I Love You” / King Crimson “Three of a Perfect Pair” / The Pretenders “Thin Line Between Love and Hate” / Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Duran Duran “The Reflex” / Phillip Bailey & Phil Collins “Easy Lover” / Rod Stewart “Some Guys Have All the Luck” / The Fall “C.R.E.E.P.” / New Order “Thieves Like Us” / Man Parrish “Boogie Down Bronx” / Doug E Fresh “The Original Human Beat Box” / Davy DMX “One for the Treble” / Jah Screechy “Walk and Skank” / Special AKA “Free Nelson Mandela” / Konk “Your Life” / Grandmaster Flash, The Furious Five & Grandmaster Melle Mel “Step Off” / Herbie Hancock “Mega-Mix” / Missing Brazillians “Gentle Killers” / Skinny Puppy “Glass Houses” / Laurie Anderson “Sharkey’s Day” / Talking Heads “Burning Down the House (Stop Making Sense live version)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

Glenn Frey “The Heat Is On” / Hank Williams Jr. “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” / Dolly Parton “Tennessee Homesick Blues” / Los Lobos “A Matter of Time” / Miracle Legion “The Backyard” / The Dream Syndicate “The Medicine Show” / The Del Fuegos “Longest Day” / The Nails “88 Lines About 44 Women” / Talk Talk “It’s My Life” / The Psychedelic Furs “The Ghost in You” / Elton John “Sad Songs (Say So Much)” / Spandeau Ballet “Only When You Leave” / Chicago “Hard Habit to Break” / Paul McCartney “No More Lonely Nights” / Night Ranger “Sister Christian” / The Jacksons featuring Mick Jagger “State of Shock” / The Jesus and Mary Chain “Upside Down” / Malcolm McLaren “Madam Butterfly” / Madness “Michael Caine” / Lee Greenwood “God Bless the U.S.A.”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

Hüsker Dü “Something I Learned Today” / The Gun Club “Moonlight Model” / The Bangles “Going Down to Liverpool” / Barrington Levy “Under Me Sensi” / Sade “Your Love Is King” / George Michael “Careless Whisper” / Lindsey Buckingham “Go Insane” / Let’s Active “Blue Line” / Cocteau Twins “Lorelei” / The Cure “The Caterpillar” / Linton Kwesi Johnson “Making History” / LL Cool J “I Need A Beat” / The Fat Boys “Can You Feel It?” / Ray Parker Jr. “Ghostbusters” / Daryl Hall & John Oates “Out of Touch” / Rush “Distant Early Warning” / Black Flag “Can’t Decide” / Comsat Angels “Day One” / Meat Puppets “Plateau” / Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “From Her to Eternity”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Corey Hart “Sunglasses At Night” / Twisted Sister “We’re Not Gonna Take It” / David Bowie “Blue Jean” / Billy Joel “The Longest Time” / Siouxsie and the Banshees “Swimming Horses” / Laura Branigan “Self-Control” / Sheila E. “The Glamorous Life” / Krootchey “Qu’Est-Ce Qu’Il A (D’Plus Que Moi Ce Négro Là?)” / JYL “Positions” / Billy Squire “Rock Me Tonight” / Rockwell “Somebody’s Watching Me” / Janet Jackson “Don’t Stand Another Chance” / Captain Rock “Cosmic Blast” / Dhuo “Walkin’” / Marillion “Assassing” / XTC “All You Pretty Girls” / Midnight Oil “When the Generals Talk” / Ultravox “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes” / The Honeydrippers “Sea of Love”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” / John Waite “Missing You” / Howard Jones “New Song” / REO Speedwagon “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore” / The Go-Betweens “Bachelor Kisses” / Cabaret Voltaire “Blue Heat” / Alphaville “Big In Japan” / Anne Murray “Just Another Woman In Love” / Alabama “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)” / Bryan Adams “Heaven” / Spinal Tap “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” / Split Enz “I Walk Away” / Lloyd Cole and the Comotions “Rattlesnakes” / Newcleus “Jam On It” / Broken Glass “Style of the Street” / Blancmange “Don’t Tell Me” / The Stranglers “No Mercy” / UB40 “Cherry Oh Baby” / The Pogues “Dark Streets of London” / The Alarm “Sixty Eight Guns” / X “Wild Thing” / Foreigner “I Want To Know What Love Is”

The Range “Superimpose”

James Hinton pulled all the vocals on The Range’s new album Potential from videos of amateur performers on YouTube. It’s a great conceptual hook, and certainly gives a writer plenty of room to riff on, like, technology maaaan and we’re all connected all the time now and social mediiiiiiaaaa and what it’s DOING TO US ALLLLLLLLL. But I do not care about any of that. The most interesting thing about Potential is Hinton’s craft in building these scraps of audio into fully realized pop songs. “Superimpose” is particularly beautiful, with this earnest R&B vocal echoing in the space between clicking beats and looping piano notes. It doesn’t feel like the result of a high concept art project. The vocal is all raw emotion and Hinton just frames it.

In a way, this is like the reverse of Disclosure’s second album, in which all the collaborations seem mandated by corporate synergy. It’s also a record that feels very sociable, like two young guys eager to interact with all these singers. On the other hand, Potential sounds very much like something made in solitude, and the vocal parts always retain a lo-fi quality that reminds us that it’s all just pulled from a video. He’s using these strangers as emotional proxies in the songs, but that’s what we’re always doing as listeners, right?

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Jessy Lanza “It Means I Love You”

There’s only three major elements to this arrangement – drum machine, keyboard, vocal – and while they’re all in sync, they vary quite a bit in urgency. Jessy Lanza’s vocal part is the most relaxed thing in the mix, with her sounding light and conversational, and only partly tethered to the tempo. The beat is considerably more busy and intense, and it’s the main structural element of the song in the way the guitar would provide the primary structure in a standard rock song. The keyboard parts bridge the gap between the two, roughly keeping with the tempo while complementing the loose, slightly detached vibe of the vocal. I like the way this all comes together in the context of Lanza’s lyrics – she’s singing about the earliest stages falling in love and while her tone is casual and playful, the percussion implies a nervous energy that’s driving the feeling but is tactfully being kept under the surface.

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