Archive | April, 2021

Top Five Charli XCX Songs

25 Apr

No matter what her future career looks like, I’m always going to have a soft spot for Charli XCX. There’s nothing more satisfying in music fandom than a called shot and Charli is mine. I was there from the bedroom indie phase, through the execrable school bad girl phase, into her hook girl phase, past stardom and into the present , where she’s established enough to just drop 37 minutes of how she’s feeling now.

It’s been nothing if not a fun ride and here are her top five tracks.

5. What I Like

I once went to the Golden Gate Park to catch a free show that Charli was putting up but I arrived a little later than I should have. I think I also wasn’t exactly sure where the show would be and so I needed to walk around a bit to find it. As I was walking and searching, Charli started singing this exact song and hearing the most ethereal of her songs while walking under startlingly green trees is still one of my favorite memories.

4. Boys

I love pop that just wants to pop. “Boys” doesn’t try for anything but pop and it’s glorious for it. The video game coin in the hook is an excellent assimilation, the music video is gold and above all, the straightforwardness of missing parties while thinking of boys is wonderful.

3. Nuclear Seasons

In May of 2013, I went to a Marina and the Diamonds concert. It was not a great decision. Marina sounded under the weather and the crowd had far too much teen angst for me. However, Charli opened for her. This was just after the launch of True Romance and I had never heard of her before, but she came on the stage, she had great energy and she absolutely killed it with this song. This one song was enough for me to track her down back then and still holds up as one of my favorites now.

2. SuperLove

The breathlessness of the hook really makes this song. A lot of Charli’s best pop is that kind of raw sincerity that comes with adolescence and this song is that supercharged. “I think your hair looks much better pushed to one side / How do you feel about me?” is young and true and just completely aflame.

1. 5 In The Morning

Even at her most commercial, Charli has always found time for some experimental pop and this is the best of it. Her auto-tune is endlessly intriguing and going for an R&B singing style over her normal bubblegum adds to it. The whole thing feels like an escapee from an alternate world where 2018’s trap came from pop instead of rap. Her beat is both dark and hard. This song is fully formed for all of its experimentation and just incredibly intelligent.

Charli’s career has been astonishingly versatile. She’s thrived in basically every corner of pop, including some that she made herself, and done it all with such aplomb. She is a titan of present day pop and somehow doesn’t even feel like she’s fully hit her prime yet. There’s nothing she can’t do.

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The Weather Station – Ignorance

18 Apr

It’s not hard for pleasant to be a pejorative. Ignorance is, like many other albums, a nice listen. The music is all fairly reasonable. The vocals are the center of the album and it tends to be quite good singing. She has the occasional promising jaggedness, but it too often ends up predictable. The lyrics are also just not that clever. “Warm” comes close to coming together when the strings swoop and her voice comes close to breaking, but the whole just ends up uninteresting.

Finally, that’s where the album lands. It has neither the jazzy cleverness of a Norah Jones album nor the fun pop of a Haim one, despite the occasional feint towards both. It’s unobjectionable, and again, it’s quite a pleasant album, but pleasant is not exciting.

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Joel Ross – Who Are You?

13 Apr

This might be a little unsophisticated to admit, but I like a good vibraphone and Joel Ross’ opening to this album sets the perfect tone to an excellent album. Right off the bat, you can see that Who Are You? is great musicians making great post-bop.

The vibraphone is obviously a highlight, especially when Joel Ross builds his soundscapes, like in “The Nurturer.” It’s a great album for just putting down a pleasant sound. “Gato’s Gift,” for instance, is very listenable, even if you’re not the deepest jazz fan and that holds for most of the album. There’s a lovely bass in “Calling” and “Home” that also has a very nice piano solo

There are some choppier parts here though. “Vartha” has a good, jagged solo from Immanuel Wilkins on the sax, although it could have used a little more pace. The vibraphone solo really picks up the song and there’s good drum work here as well. It crashes like the sea in the background. There’s a strong vein of Trane in here and their cover of “After The Rain” highlights that. Unfortunately though, this is not one of their stronger tracks. It’s a little overfull, especially when compared to Coltrane’s version. Nevertheless, the influence is very welcome.

This is an excellent album, but one held back by these minor missteps and one that I wish was a little bit more than what it delivered. It’s certainly not unintelligent, but I would have loved a couple of places with more challenge and greater surprise. This is, nonetheless, a stellar sophomore album and some excellent jazz.

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Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

10 Apr

There’s no shortage of high-powered collaboration in music and there’s such a range of them that it’s hard for anything to really take one by surprise, but you don’t come across a trio of producer, saxophonist and orchestra everyday. You don’t come across an album this good everyday either. The three meld beautifully. It feels like the intersection of three separate strains – the ambient production of something like Green by Hiroshi Yoshimura, the nature-inspired classical music of compositions like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the spiritual jazz of people like Sun Ra and John Coltrane, both of whom Pharoah Sanders played with.

The album evokes lush, verdant scenes whether through Floating Points’ productions as in “Movement 7” or the Orchestra in “Movement 6.” This is not the jungle, because the jungle lacks the intensity of this music. The colors of these soundscapes are too bright, too intense to be nature. They instead capture the feel of nature at its most immersive and leave you with nothing to distract from it. It is that first moment of experiencing a new vista made into a full album.

It’s filled with detail though. The refrain that ripples throughout the album is distinctive and beautiful. It’s wonderfully open-ended and accents the ambient music very cleverly. You can also feel the presence of many different organisms in the music. There are little flourishes of background hollering and chirping that enliven the music and add depth.

It’s the saxophone that really brings the human element to this album though. Sanders’ jazz comes in hot and adds that heat to what might otherwise be a very austere album. He even vocalizes in “Movement 4” and that integrates beautifully with the ripples of the music. He doesn’t go for the sheets of sound you might expect, but instead plays pure, drawn-out notes that express so much in their tone. When he comes in at the 7th minute of “Movement 7” with a sax scream, it’s the perfect way to agitate the existing music. Pharoah Sanders brings such a strong voice to this collaboration and his saxophone is the most noticeable thing here.

This an astonishing addition to some of the more storied careers in music history, a very individual album and music of the absolute highest tier.

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Lana Del Rey – Chemtrails Over The Country Club

5 Apr

So much of art rests on thin margins. Lana Del Rey has made a career out of evocative music, music that conjures a lot out of a few scattered pieces. This understatement was the core of her appeal. With Chemtrails Over The Country Club, the insubstantialness finally takes over and the magic just doesn’t hold and the result is hollow instead.

The biggest failure here is just the music. LDR was always languorous, but here the album is simply mired in tar. She has moved away from the hip-hop that underpinned her debut and suffers for the loss of energy that came with it and her stabs at punk rock are inexecrable. I respect that she loves Joan, so do we all, but the rest of us know to keep our imitations to the privacy of bathroom walls.

Normally, she is cinematic enough with her music that its magnitude gives it momentum. Here, the music is flimsy. The moments of pace and energy that dotted her previous work are completely missing here. Even more damningly though, the album just has far too little emotion.

It does manage some highlights. The title track is quite good and I love the drums at the end and the repeated “My Cancer is sun and my Leo is moon.” “Yosemite” is absolutely gorgeous and there’s a wonderful little Spanish string tilt in there. “White Dress” has the amazing “Men In Music Business Conference,” which I dearly wish she had expanded on more.

It’s a shame that the rest has nowhere near the same quality. Despite “Breaking Up Slowly” being her comfort zone and despite the brilliance of “Are these my good years, or do I have none?/Are there really good years for everyone?”, the song has no substance to it. It’s okay to be vague if you allude to something interesting, and the premise of this song is not. Even so, it’s substantially better than “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost” or “For Free.” These are unnecessary songs which traffic in the most uninteresting cliches and do so in the most boring manner.

Norman Fucking Rockwell was excellent and showed Lana Del Rey as so much more than just her debut album. This album adds nothing to her legacy. With any luck, we’ll remember this as nothing more than an unfortunate speedbump, but it’s more likely that we just will not remember it at all.

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Monthly Playlist: Mar. 2021

1 Apr

After a slow start to the year, we finally had a deluge of great music this month. It wasn’t easy to whittle down this month’s best tracks to just five – in fact, we actually couldn’t do it, so look for a bonus sixth track at the bottom of the article. Without further ado, here’s our top five tracks for March 2021!

5. “Get Sun” by Hiatus Kaiyote feat. Arthur Verocai

Hiatus Kaiyote is a four-piece Aussie band that melds genres like R&B, soul, jazz and funk into an irresistible mix. The band’s soul lies in the dynamic vocal presence of singer-guitarist Naomi Saalfield (a.k.a. Nai Palm), bolstered by the almost cinematic instrumentation provided by Perrin Moss (drums), Paul Bender (bass) and Simon Mavin (keyboards). The latest track, “Get Sun”, features 76-year-old Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, whose arrangements provide even more flair to the band’s already flamboyant style. Saalfield’s layered, staccato vocals evoke 90s soul / R&B stars such as Brandy, balancing well against the big-band horns-and-string section on the chorus. In all, the sprightly song is a good sign of things to come – Hiatus Kaiyote release their next album Mood Valiant in June 2021.

4. “The Kiss of Venus” by Paul McCartney feat. Dominic Fike

The original version of “The Kiss of Venus” from Sir Paul was released in December 2020 as part of his 18th (!) studio album, McCartney III. The song is, of course, vintage McCartney – gentle guitar strums that are alternatingly melancholic (a la “Norwegian Wood”) and quirky (a la “When I’m 64”) – but like most of his solo career, it’s perfectly pleasant but doesn’t quite stick beyond a few listens. Now, McCartney has put out a re-take of the song with young, talented singer-songwriter Dominic Fike – and suddenly, “The Kiss of Venus” has transformed into a different song. Fike’s distorted vocals add a catchy rock edge which honestly that works better for the track. Kudos to McCartney for working with new artists – apparently there’s much more of the same to come.

3. “Wants and Needs” by Drake feat. Lil Baby

“Wants and Needs” represents the synthesis of two of rap’s biggest names today, and currently has upwards of 50 million plays on Spotify and 10 million views on YouTube – so chances are, you don’t need us to recommend this track to you. Part of a three-song March 2021 release from Drizzy entitled Scary Hours 2, this track contrasts Drake’s chill, sing-song rap flow with Lil Baby’s fast-paced trap style. Special props for the line on arch-nemesis Kanye West, whose convenient new religion grift deserves Drake’s (and all of our) contempt (“Yeah, I probably should go link with Yeezy, I need me some Jesus / But soon as I started confessin’ my sins, he wouldn’t believe us”).

2. “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” by Lil Nas X

“MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” was released less than a week ago, and like most Lil Nas X songs, it’s already a global hit with a talk-of-the-town music video to boot. Like it or not, Lil Nas X (born Montero Lamar Hill) is nearly unrivaled in today’s music world as a tastemaker and cause celebre, and it’s not by accident. The strangely reggae-sounding “MONTERO” sees Lil Nas X on the chase (“Call me when you want, call me when you need / Call me in the morning, I’ll be on the way”) with sexually-explicit lines that make clear exactly what he wants from his lover. Move over, “WAP” – a new right-wing trigger track now holds the crown. Lil Nas X expertly promoted the song with (what else?) a Bitcoin giveaway and a limited-run sneaker drop, so don’t be surprised if you hear about this track everywhere in the coming weeks.

1. “THE DRAKE” by cleopatrick

For us, the biggest surprise on this list has been “THE DRAKE” by Canadian rock band cleopatrick. Hard-hitting riffs, hard-hitting drums, hard-hitting everything, clearing once in a while for the lead singer’s pronounced vocals – there’s nothing new here if you listen to the likes of Queens of the Stone Age and fellow two-member band Royal Blood. However, cleopatrick make it sound fresh on “THE DRAKE”, where monster riffs and Luke Gruntz’s vocals keep you glued for the entirety of the 3.5 minute run. We’ll certainly be going back into this band’s discography – this is one to keep an eye on.

Bonus: “Boyfriend” by Leah Kate

Leah Kate is an up-and-coming LA-based singer-songwriter with a fairly large hit (“Fuck Up the Friendship”) in 2020. Now she’s back with “Boyfriend”, a catchy 90s-00s meld in the vein of Rina Sawayama and Dua Lipa. Plus, Leah Kate is seemingly backed by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s data-driven music start-up indify which brings the venture capitalist world into music, so you know she’s super savvy. Expect to see her around a lot more.

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