October 18th, 2016 12:03pm
The Game’s new record is presented as a musical autobiography, and the music itself quotes iconic rap songs – “Colors,” “The Message,” and “C.R.E.A.M.,” pretty obvious stuff, to the point where I have to question how much of enjoying those particular songs is just clicking into something familiar. But “The Juice” is less about referencing and more about evoking the spirit of a particular era – the early to mid ’90s, when rap was still heavily sample-based but not so dense with them that they became economically infeasible. There’s something very interesting to me about listening to this guy reminisce about the past and the music that shaped him, and then insert himself into that music now as a veteran rapper. He sounds completely at home, but also a little like a time traveler into the recent past.
October 16th, 2016 11:56pm
I suppose we’ve come a long way if a young rapper is saying “I hate my boyfriend” in a song and getting blown by a football player in the video and people aren’t really talking about it. But then again, that might be because it’s getting swept under the rug. I hope that’s not the case, because “Empty” is a warm, thoughtful song in the vein of early Kanye and current Chance, and it’s a window into the mind of a young guy who’s torn up by nostalgia, mixed emotions, and a yearning for romance and connection. It’s a very accessible tune, but a bit strange outside of the matter-of-fact queerness – tuba is used as the primary bass instrument for a whimsical and off balance effect, and the children’s choir that comes in near the end undermines the adolescent angst in a way that feels at least somewhat pointed. The main attraction here is Kevin Abstract’s voice, which conveys a very specific type of young male vulnerability. There are points in this song where he flips from seeming petulant to wounded in a second, and it’s just so heartbreaking and sweet.
October 14th, 2016 12:47pm
In a way, “There Was A Door” is an update and revision of Fugazi’s “Suggestion,” a song about street harassment and a desire to exist in the world without worrying about the attention of potentially threatening men. The crucial difference is that while “Suggestion” was written and performed by men, and had blunt lyrics designed to get through to the dumbest, most aggro guys at a punk show, “There Was A Door” is written by a woman and gets into the nuances of the experience and the emotional toll of living with constant anxiety about it. The lyrics aren’t designed as rhetoric; it’s all about one woman’s thoughts and emotions, and so the words can be a bit scattered or oblique. The second half of the song is more direct and declarative – “all I’ve wanted for the place I live is respect for this vessel I’m in” – and pushes back on men who cannot respect boundaries. (“FAMILY” doesn’t mean you can touch and “JUST JOKING” is not a reason enough for me to not bite but be polite.”) But I like the way it all flows together, from poetic reverie to assertive response. It feels like a direct translation of complicated feelings in song.
The song itself sounds rather bright and cheerful, but has this odd structure that is constantly shifting into higher gears as if the band is too restless and excited to stay in one position for long. The music feels a bit disconnected from the sentiment of the song, and the odd way the words are stuffed into the meter suggests that maybe this is just an arbitrary home for these thoughts. But then, the sound of this is extremely mid-00s, and a ton of artists around that time were all about packing reams of extremely wordy lyrics into pop melodies.
October 12th, 2016 12:26pm
Lee is one of the most ambiguous names – gender neutral, racially vague, no notable associations with any particular era. In the context of this song, in which Dick Valentine gives voice to a jealous man whose girl has been stolen by someone named Lee, the name is deliberately enigmatic. He’s so worked up that you wonder what Lee is all about, but there’s no lyrical details to use as clues. Lee is a void. Everything in the song is either about this guy’s perception of this woman, his rampant paranoia, and his belief that she was something that belonged to him that has been taken away by someone called Lee. It’s pure ridiculous masculine insecurity set to a peppy new wave beat.
October 11th, 2016 2:37am
Kate Tempest adapted her last album, Everybody Down, into a novel. It’s a rare album that could logically make that transition between art forms – Tempest’s lyrics are dense and vivid, and she’s extremely good at detailing the inner lives and complexities of her characters. If anything, the adaptation seems redundant. Her new album, Let Them Eat Chaos, is written and performed in the same style, but if she were to adapt this one into another medium, I’d hope it’d be film. The premise of the record is that it’s all taking place at the same time in the wee hours on a block in South London, and the songs are like a camera panning around and zooming in and rewinding on all the people there. “Ketamine for Breakfast” focuses on Gemma, a woman who may or may not be recovering from addiction, but is at least telling herself that she’s not as bad as she used to be. Tempest drills down into her psyche in just a couple minutes, but a lot of the detail is carried by images and flashes of memory. People describe records as “cinematic” all the time, but this is a rare piece of music that seems directly influenced by the narrative and editing logic of film.
October 10th, 2016 3:00am
Max Wonders is still a teenager, but the grit and grain of his voice, not to mention his verbal dexterity, makes him seem a bit older. He definitely comes off as a guy shaped by experience, and while “Utopia” is basically just him trying to get some girl to get involved with him, the context of growing up in Chicago colors every line. I’m particularly interested in the suggestion of class conflict here when he tells her “you don’t know your neighborhood” because her parents moved her out of the city as a baby. “I can show you how we live,” he says, and while he doesn’t hammer the point, it’s a bit like a Chicago version of Pulp’s “Common People.” But instead of harshly judging this girl and condemning her luck and privilege, he’s just trying to share his world.
October 7th, 2016 11:42am
“Day Breaks” sounds like the lull after a storm, in which two people survey the wreckage of their relationship and quietly wonder what to do next. Walk away? Attempt to rebuild? Pretend nothing happened? Crumble and weep? The arrangement is both delicate and melodramatic, respecting the small scale of this domestic unrest while fully respecting the high emotional stakes for the people involved. Norah Jones has achieved a level of success that makes it difficult to describe her as “underrated,” but her vocal performance here is a great example of the kind of presence, nuance, and control that tends to be undervalued in singers, and written off as sort of dull and “mature” in the derogatory sense. But fuck that, this is sophisticated work, and hits its emotional marks with grace and a high level of empathy.
October 6th, 2016 2:27am
The Frightnrs’ Nothing More to Say is a meticulously constructed simulacrum of Studio One rocksteady and dancehall, and honestly, it’d seem a bit unnecessary if not for 1) the fact that they are actually quite good at writing and performing in this style and 2) few people who love this sort of music would be mad to have just a bit more of it in the world. I do question whether the production had to mimic the original Studio One aesthetic this much – it can sometimes feel a bit too studied, or like a wax museum replica of a Sugar Minott record – but again, I love this specific sound and it is incredibly comforting. I literally flipped a coin to decide which of two songs I’d feature here and narrowed that down from a few others, which should give you some idea of the strength of the material. It’s just stupid to resist something that feels so good.
October 5th, 2016 5:02pm
Dr. Something is one of the most unusual things I’ve come across while bouncing around Bandcamp feeds – an indie bedroom/garage recording project that has the bombast and sentimentality of musical theater, but also the deliberate lyrical strangeness and unsettling vibe of art rock. Some of the songs on the Rustic Machinery EP tilt more in one of those directions, and “Companion” is the most overtly theatrical ballad of the set, to the point that it sounds like something that could be from a 1980s Barbra Streisand record. Alison Dennis’ voice may be a bit too much for some people to handle, but the unexpected shifts in arrangement and evocative lyrics about existential misery do a good job of subverting the stuffy, stagey prettiness of her vocal performance.
October 4th, 2016 2:19pm
“Cranes in the Sky” is about all the things you do to distract yourself from pain or anxiety. A lot of it is just living your life, or doing normal activities with a bit more intensity and purpose because you’re pointedly trying to “put yourself out there.” There’s a good balance of specificity and ambiguity in this song – the things she does are vivid, but the depression is very vague, and it’s unclear whether or not she’s actually escaped any of it. But as much as the lyrics express some frustration and a sense of futility, the music conveys a feeling of grace and serenity. It’s not about erasing this dark emotional undertow, it’s about learning how to live with it, and not give in to it.
