Marina dropped her second album and debuted all the way at number one on the UK chart with it. However far she may be from the sophomore slump commercially though, Electra Heart fails to live up to standard of intelligence The Family Jewels set down. To mitigate that though, this is undoubtedly better pop than her previous album. It is not surprising that her mental swings would take her to a place like this, but it does make it hard to form a set opinion.
My first thought is that she sounds a lot happier on this album. There are still glimpses of her suicidal tendencies, but nowhere near the bleak acceptance of depression that was The Family Jewels. Good for her. I will admit to not caring how Thom Yorke feels when he gets up in the morning and that much of my appreciation for The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go is due to Richey’s killing himself, but the Family Jewels painted such an intensely personal picture of Marina that her beginning to feel better about herself is something that even I can be happy about. Once again, good for her.
This leads us though to the major problem of this album, that it barely manages to hit the same personal notes that made The Family Jewels as interesting as it still is. Teen Idle is the only piece in this that actually holds her voice. While many of her other songs, like Power and Control and Primadonna speak about her, they are so caught up in a single, slightly shallow statement that they seem as though they could have been sung by any mildly intelligent female pop singer. The fact that there are so few mildly intelligent female pop singers does not excuse her aiming lower than she is capable of. Where her first album had moments of Elvis Costello lyricism, this plays far too close to pseudo-intellectualism.
This is an album that embraces pop much more wholeheartedly than its predecessor. You can feel the touch of its all-star production team all over the album. It is still a Marina album, and her voice is always at the center, but it is certainly helped by the beats behind it. It sounds better than its predecessor for it as well. When fully three quarters of the songs on the album have catchier choruses than anything else out there, something is going very right. The more popstar songs, like Bubblegum Bitch, Sex Yeah, Homewrecker, How To Be A Heartbreaker and Radioactive all work out to great pop and even the darker songs, like Power and Control or Teen Idle all sound great.
Where The Family Jewels felt fresh, Electra Heart takes maybe half a step backward intellectually but pushes a little better pop in return. While this may not be The Family Jewels, this is still Marina, and worth picking up for all its flaws.
How fresh are these five artists? So fresh that they make ‘90s Will Smith jealous. So fresh that your organic farm lettuce wilts in defeated dismay. So fresh that they’re still in the bubble wrap. So fresh that… you get the point. On this latest offering from Top Five Records, a sensitive young lad from Nottingham competes for space with a Japanese Britpop band and a Copenhagen soul-pop star. Sound interesting? Read on.
My Kind of Woman, by Mac DeMarco
On first look, Mac DeMarco looks far too ordinary. Dressed down in an old-fashioned plaid shirt and flashing a stoned, buck-toothed grin, he looks like the sort of guy who’d rather chill, relax and have a good time rather than embark on an ambitious road to musical success. And surprisingly, this assessment is not too far off the mark. Mac DeMarco is a laid-back, down-to-earth and ordinary guy who makes laid-back, down-to-earth and extraordinary music, directly because of the way he wields his sincerity as a musical Midas Touch of sorts. On “My Kind of Woman”, Mac writes a beautiful, simple, timeless song about being in love with a woman even though she drives you crazy, sounding a bit like Wilco featuring (non-melancholic) Broken Social Scene in the process. Mac DeMarco (and his music) is old-school, charming and easy-going; a more prolix description of his talent is unbefitting.
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Day and Night, by Diamond Rings
Canadian-born artist and frequent fire-setter of the hipster blogosphere Diamond Rings (aka John O’Regan) first came to prominence with the manically catchy “All Yr Songs” way back in September 2009. In the subsequent music video, O’Regan sparkled like his moniker suggests – because of his infectious energy as well as because of, well, the glitter that might’ve been embedded in his make-up. Banter aside, “Day & Night” is a track from his upcoming sophomore album, Free Dimensional, with beats and synths so happy that you can almost see the rainbows. It’s a bit like Passion Pit with a marked Ok Go verve, but you can just call it dance-pop. “1, 2, let me love you/ 3, 4, love you more/ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9/ 10, 11, 12 all day and night,” goes the glittery, memorable chorus. You can’t not love this song.
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Dude can dance.
Someone Told Me, by Jake Bugg
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On the YouTube page for a song by Nottingham native Jake Bugg, VEVO tried to shove us into watching the latest video by Justin Bieber. We recount to you this dubious anecdote of VEVO-based irony because that was the moment that provided us a perfect perspective on Jake’s genius. Unlike his Canadian counterpart, this eighteen-year-old JB from across the pond does not collaborate with Nicki Minaj in cocky songs meant for teenage girls. Instead, Jake Bugg writes lovelorn songs about girls in a time-honored vibe that’s older than both him and Nicki. On the delicate and poignant “Someone Told Me”, the most obvious approximation of young Jake’s music would be a youthful Bob Dylan, but Nick Cave and Elliott Smith figure in the formula, too. Listen closer, though, and through the endearing Nottingham accent and naïve, well-penned lyrics, one cannot help but think of Submarine-era Alex Turner. “Someone loved me, but not today/ Will you show me a way how to love?” he asks, a teenager who grew up a little too fast. Don’t be fooled by his Facebook-profile-picture-esque album cover: this one’s a keeper.
Pilgrim, by MØ
MØ (“virgin”) is the stage name of young Danish singer Karen Marie Ørsted. Recently, she’s released a couple of brilliant tracks, “Pilgrim” and “Maiden”, which are as clever and minimalist as her choice of stage name. “Pilgrim” is the more confident and restrained of the two, and that’s why we have decided to cover it.
Slick, sparse hand-claps provide the backbone for this off-beat soul-pop gem; a riveting, lean brass section provides the meat; and MØ’s sinuous vocals the lifeline-blood. The best thing about her is the way she sounds a little like a three-way Battle of the Artists between Santigold, the xx and, say, Brandy. Another awesome thing about her is the way she pulls off the aesthetically-troubled hipster singer shtick; it’s usually impossible to do without arousing scoffs and derision. On the chorus of “Pilgrim”, MØ wails, “All the time I just want to let go, and go/ All the time I just want to fuck it up,” and somehow, you’re intrigued. Even if her troubles are for aesthetic purposes only, she sure as hell knows how to make it work. Oh, and “Pilgrim” comes with a nice visual accompaniment: not since Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” has a music video brimmed with so much quirk, genius and synchronicity. It’s worth a watch almost as much as the song is worth a listen. Check out both below!
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Flower Chain, by Taffy
We were piqued from the moment that the hectic bass-and-drums affair on “Flower Chain” set our feet tapping. We were hooked almost immediately after the cool-as-hell guitars kicked in. And by the time vocalist Iris started wordplaying between ‘deny’ and ‘don’t I’, we were giddily in love. Taffy is a band from Tokyo that sounds a little bit like Blur, Pulp, Suede and all that, while dutifully reflecting a bit of the concurrent Seattle grunge scene that those bands themselves were influenced by.
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The funny thing, though, is that Taffy has actually gone on record saying that they’ve never really listened to Britpop at all! Peculiar. However, we certainly aren’t the only ones that see the resemblance. Taffy has been signed on to London label Club AC30, and is embarking on a UK tour this very month. As an added bonus to this brilliant song, the effortlessly- blasé video features the band rocking out both in their human and anime avatars. Taffy is delicious; please do listen to them.
Agree with our top five? Disagree? Let us know in the comments section.
You take Das Racist, a ridiculous alternative hip-hop group whose humour, all-over-the-place allusions and stream-of-consciousness style of rap would never fly were they not so good at it and put them on a stage with Le1f, Lakutis and unheard-of Oakland artist Safe and you might expect something special. I certainly hope not though, because they gave me what was by far the worst concert I’ve attended this side of Euphoria.
Expectations
It is possible that you, the reader, may not really know of Das Racist. Despite flirting with breaking through many times, they never really managed that final step that puts a band on everybody’s lips.
These are really smart guys. Their lyricism is undeniable, and their subject matter is unique. Intelligence though is worthless unless paired with some skill and not only do these guys have flow on the level of half of the rappers you see owning the charts, but they pair it with consistently sick beats. Put everything together and you get the freshest feel in rap since Eminem first started dropping records. They might not be big, but they certainly deserve to be. With concerts like this though, you can understand why the reality is rather different.
The Club
The club is probably the best place to start. I don’t need to ask, I know they got it from the hellhole store. The concert was slated to start at 10PM and yet until midnight the club was owned by Crap DJ + Friends. I wish that I could call those Friends amateur rappers. Amateur implies some desire to become skilled, some promise of quality. The only thing I could hope for from these people was that they would stop. On the plus side, they gave me time to catch up on work and meet some nice, new people. Meeting people at concerts can be hard, but when you have as good an opening topic as how terrible that DJ was, things become easy.
To add to the pain, the place was a true hipster dive. Hipsters are like hippos, you see them on television and every now and again you will see one in captivity, but until you meet a whole herd of them in their natural habitat, you can never realise how truly irritating they are. I don’t even want to make the standard jokes as that would only trivialize the incredible hate I now feel for them. I am never going down that area of San Francisco again.
Safe
We gained a bit of a respite from the sonic sludge of that DJ with Safe, an Oakland R&B artist. He was okay and anything was better than what was playing before, but I would not track him down. I honestly wouldn’t even listen to him again. I might even change the channel if he was playing on the radio. However, he was as the music of the spheres compared to what came before, and sadly what came right after.
Lakutis
After a little more quality time with DJ I-don’t-need-to-be-good-if-I-look-hipster-enough, we finally got to see someone known. Admittedly it was Lakutis, the Cappadonna to DR’s Wu-Tang Clan, but he’s something, isn’t he? If stoned out of his mind counts as something, then he most certainly was something. He just wasn’t very good. At one point, he jumped into the crowd and refused to return, leaving his poor friend on the beats stranded. That was probably the only memorable part of his thankfully brief time alone on stage. His friend did manage some decent jokes though. All told though, not really best of the best of the best of the best ahh.
Le1f
Le1f is a full-on internet celebrity. Not content with merely producing such things as Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, he plunged into the public eye with Wut. He also makes for a pretty impressive stage presence.
He ended with Wut and while the rest of his set is nowhere near that level, it still made for quite an enjoyable piece. He may not have the portfolio to follow Kanye and Drake from behind the beats to in front of the mic, but he was there and he was good. Also, whatever else one says about him, his performance certainly gets interesting.
Das Racist
Finally, we had DR themselves take the stage. They threw down a pretty strong set list. Starting with Who’s That? Brooown! they also went through some of their strongest stuff, like Rainbow in the Dark, Rapping 2 U, Amazing, Brand New Dance and Michael Jackson. These are all great stuff for a club and great songs to sing along with. Singing along though requires the rappers to actually be singing though.
To be fair, Dap did an incredible amount and sang pretty much every word of every song into his distorter. Heems and Kool A.D. though seemed happy to let the crowd do all the work though. In hindsight, Das Racist is not really a band that is at its best live. They need the beats to balance with the vocals and they need you to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate their lyrical wit. However, they could have tried. They were clearly stoned, but they seemed far from incapacitated. They just came off as callous.
There’s not really much more to say. They would have been disappointing all by themselves. They certainly weren’t worth all the wasted time waiting for them. When the crowd knew every lyric and DR let us sing the whole thing, it felt in parts like a celebration of what they have become. It felt more like a statement of why they will never be anything more.
Dinosaur Jr. are gods of their own little corner of alternative rock. It is a slightly dark corner, somewhere a little older and a little dirtier than the Las Vegas strip club that was Nirvana breaking into the mainstream, but an important corner nonetheless. In that little room with no floor, only pavement and with pixies playing in the dust of old cocaine, alternative rock learned much of what it was going to become. Cults still visit to sacrifice guitar strings and torture amplifiers to the ghosts of Neil Young and Sonic Youth albums. People sensible enough to live in San Francisco just hit The Fillmore instead.
Before I get into the concert, I apologize for the poor quality of the photos.
Shearwater
Before Dinosaur Jr. came to the stage though, we were treated to Shearwater, a band which I will admit to never having heard of before this concert. They were actually pretty good. A little inconsistent, but pretty good. I saw a hipster-looking girl quite literally fall in love with the lead singer. I may never see them again, but she has enough photos to keep her company until the end of time. As should you. Check them out.
As would mark the night though, they had a few sound problems themselves. One guitar pretty much failed to respond at some key moments. On the flip side though, it seemed to mostly have been intended for noise and I did get to see a guitar rage-trashed, which was almost worth the price of admission itself.
Anyway, they are quite good alternative rock. They have that shimmering, washing over you sort of sound that works so well when heard live. The crowd loved them from their first song onwards. Them telling a few stoned idiots to shut the fuck up didn’t hurt either. Pick up Animal Joy, they seemed to play most of their songs from it, and they were awesome. It is undoubtedly a band better heard live though. You need the drum to kick through you and the vocals and guitars to subsume you. However you do it though, listen to them. They are worth hearing.
Dinosaur Jr.
Dinosaur Jr. was, as Shearwater did promise us, mind-blowing. They came out, looking older and rather impossibly grumpier than they should and launched directly into the music. The song list was mostly from I Bet On Sky, as expected, but Little Fury Things came out somewhere around the second song, which was much sooner than I expected. There were also a couple more songs from their early days, including Just Like Heaven, and even a song from back before Dinosaur Jr. was formed. I’ll admit that they didn’t break into a Billie Holiday cover in the middle of the set, but it was certainly as varied as anyone could want.
I have only heard two Dinosaur Jr albums; I Bet On Sky and their classic You’re Living All Over Me, and that was most of their set, but they jammed hard on every song they played. So much was improvised that despite having heard something like four fifths of the songs they played before, two thirds of the music was brand new and the entire thing was excellent. Live music never feels like a recording, but this was a whole new beast that just happened to be wearing familiar clothes. J Mascis’ skill with the guitar has never been questioned, but nothing highlights as clearly as being able to completely tear apart old songs in a live performance.
However, much of the music’s novelty is due to the failure of the sounds crew. The vocals were incredibly soft at the beginning for both Mascis and Barlow, and while Barlow’s improved, J Mascis would not deign to do something as menial as fixing his vocals. In fact, were it not for the fact that I saw him sing, I would not have thought him capable of speaking. Lou Barlow had some fun chatting with the crowd, which included a mention of a certain band from San Francisco that forced them to change their name, but J Mascis never approached the mic for anything but singing. He even cut Lou Barlow off a couple of times, playing right through the chatter. One got the feeling that Dinosaur Jr. is happy enough with what it is, and feels no need to beg you to make it bigger.
Appearances aside, the sound was poor and the vocals non-existent. Dinosaur Jr. to start with is a noisy band, but the vocals do something to soften the sound. Take that away, and the performance becomes pretty loud. Add to that the facts that their improvisations were even noisier and that I stood about 20 feet closer to the stage than I should have and it took me three days before my left ear stopped ringing. Mere noise is easy though. The fact that this was good music through and through is what makes that feat impressive.
This may have been a different sound from the recorded one that drew me there and I may have had to fill in the words myself, but this was one of the best concerts that I have ever been to.
Greetings. We realize that it’s been a disastrously long time since this site has directed the questing listener towards any good music. We also realize that there is no better way to redeem ourselves than by presenting you, reader, with five new songs that are sure to, well, strike a chord, whatever your genre-preference.
In the time of our lengthy absence, quite a few things have happened in the world of good music. Animal Collective, venerable mainstream-tiptoeing giants of the indie world, released a new album, as did equally beloved rock band Grizzly Bear. Flying Lotus put forward another experimental banquet, while recently-divorced Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth teamed up with the world’s most famous widow Yoko Ono for an intriguing project entitled, simply, YOKOKIMTHURSTON. Space-rock pioneers Muse also released a new album, and fellow country-men Coldplay thought it would be clever to have a Barbadian superstar play a Japanese woman in a song entitled “Princess of China”. Meanwhile, England also gave us the latest Adele-inspired offering in the form of Jewish class-act Jessie Ware.
So what should you listen to amongst all this exciting new music? Read on!
Dark Doo Wop, by MS MR
Sparsely-titled NYC duo MS MR Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow (MS for her, MR for him) really like Tumblr: so much that they released their debut EP, Candy Bar Creep Show, on the platform for all and sundry to hear. The EP itself is full of operatic, lush drama that’s just a beguiling sneer short of Lana del Rey and a crisp shade of vulnerability more than a household radio-hit. However, it can be argued that MS MR are still to find their true sound to go with their well-formed Tumblr identity.
But all is forgiven because of ‘Dark Doo Wop’, which evokes the same haunting, ethereal beauty of witnessing graphic violence set to a score of 50s Stepford-pop. “This world is gonna burn, burn, burn, burn/ As long as we’re going down, baby you should stick around,” sings Plapinger, and in her supreme gift she makes you feel both the helplessness of her world collapsing around her, and the sickly romance of wanting him to stick around despite it all. If you’re going to listen to only one song from this set of five, it’s this one.
Goooo, by TNGHT
TNGHT really like colors. The cover art of their eponymous EP is a promising, confident riot of colors and (to take forward the obvious metaphor we’re building towards), so is their music. Think Timbaland on MDMA, or for the hipsters, karaoke-track Sleigh Bells (but harder, better, faster, stronger). TNGHT consists of Glasgow-based Hudson Mohawke and Montreal-based Lunice, but their sound is of a frantic, hedonistic NYC party: the sort of the unadulterated ecstasy from which the Weeknd’s soul-crushing post-high R&B could have possibly derived from.
‘Goooo’ is a prime example of TNGHT’s brilliance, with a tinny hair-raising whine leading into some of the boldest, slickest beats you’ve ever heard in your life. The whole ‘song’ blips and bleeps along with the assertive ferocity that can’t be bought or mimed: TNGHT is just that cool. When you hear the biggest names in rap and hip-hop dropping a verse or two over TNGHT’s beats (it’s going to happen soon; this seems almost built for that), remember: you heard it here first.
Rosie Oh, by Animal Collective
When we last saw Animal Collective, their drugged-out campfire-electronica was, much to fans’ surprise, slathered in a wholly accessible pop sheen. Consequently, yet unexpectedly, they were on the precipice of mainstream success, but managed to keep enough of their inimitable quirk to satisfy fans who have been there from Feels and earlier. The question with Centipede Hz, the new offering from the Baltimore group, was whether it would lean more towards their pop album Merriweather Post Pavilion, or hearken back to the ‘Fireworks’-era Golden Age. The answer, of course, is what we should have expected from Animal Collective: it is neither. In fact, it’s something else altogether.
Our favorite track off of the album has to be the swirly, beautiful ‘Rosie Oh’, a track that’s so upbeat that it could be the music for the forest-friends sequence of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Especially since Merriweather, Animal Collective (Panda Bear in particular) have gotten very good at writing metaphorical lyrics that double as pop songs. “You had opened up the door and made a place where I could sit inside and fortify/ But I said no I’d rather not; said no I’d rather not step in,” sings Panda, but soon sees the error of his cold-shouldering ways. “I’d like to embrace it all; have I made this or is it that I’ve been made?” he wonders later. Try to catch the words, if you’re not too busy grinning from how happy ‘Rosie Oh’ makes you.
Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control, by Tame Impala
Close your eyes for a minute, and think of every single 60s psych-rock cliché you can possibly think of. A crash of cymbal, followed by a deep drum flourish; slightly off-tune piano; distorted, lingering vocals tweaked into cryptic depths; the slightest peppering of Eastern inflections; and a good old-fashioned dreamy, ebb-and-swell three-minute wordless segment bang in the middle. Until we heard Lonerism, Perth band Tame Impala’s second album, we didn’t think it was possible to recreate all those elements into a song without sounding like you’re just ripping off from a bunch of immortal bands. You could put “Nothing That Has Happened So Far…” right in between “Whole Lotta Love” and “A Day In The Life” on a 60s playlist you’ve heard tens of times before: and you’d be hard-pinned to cop out this song from October 2012. It doesn’t hurt at all that singer Kevin Parker sounds almost exactly like John Lennon.
Listen to this song if you’ve ever wondered why they don’t make music anymore quite like Zep or Floyd or the Beatles.
Yet Again, by Grizzly Bear
Grizzly Bear makes pretty music. It’s not pretty in a sugar-rush twee way. It’s not pretty in a vulnerable solo/acoustic way. And it’s not pretty in any way that uses modern-day sound-engineering tricks. Grizzly Bear makes full-bodied, organic music which is pretty because it’s technically flawless, musically upright and just plain real. You can picture these guys playing guitars and drums and singing choruses into a microphone each: in fact, you can almost see them performing right in front of you. In the era of dubstep and EDM, when you really don’t know what the music ends and where the smoke-and-mirrors begin (or, really, sometimes what ‘music’ is), Grizzly Bear are a comfortable, honest reminder that real music – the kind even your grandparents could recognize as music – still exists.
“Yet Again” is the lead single off of their remarkable latest album Shields. (Watch the music video for the same above: it is a suitably pretty video about the troubled life of a teen-aged ice-skater.) While it doesn’t equal Grizzly Bear’s career-wide shining jewel, it does remind one nicely that they’re as brilliant as ever. The wistful vocalization in the middle is a little Suzanne Vega, we thought, and just as well: they possess her brilliance at writing an honest-to-God good song. Listen to “Yet Again” if you just want to listen to music that sounds like music, goddamnit.
Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the Comments section.
Today being that rarity of a sunny day in San Francisco, I decided to brave the great outdoors and go to a park. Naturally, if one is going to a park, then one should choose one where a reasonably well known indie rock band happens to be playing. Admittedly, I am not the greatest fan of OK Go. The one song of theirs that penetrated my consciousness was not quite enough to get me to try another. There is no shortage of indie rock bands, and this one had nothing special to offer for me. Still, the price was right, and as I said before, any excuse to wear my sweater and get out into the sunshine was good enough for me.
The concert was slated for 2:00, but I could only make it to Stern Grove by 2:30, and so I missed most of the day’s opening act, The Family Crest. They seemed decent. They certainly showed a lot of enthusiasm and some small degree of spark. Keep an eye out for them.
The concert began with a cringingly bad hype piece. Being asked by a robotic voice to shout the band’s name before they come on stage is admittedly pretty harmless ego stoking and considering the band’s name I found it a funny thing to chant before they even appeared on stage, but no one asked me and the whole thing was over quickly.
The band began their set with no preamble. The music began almost as soon as they found their instruments, which was refreshing and certainly gave them a professional appearance. The only issue was the music itself. It was not bad, but it was not really any good either. There was nothing in there that one could sink into. There was quite a lot of confetti however.
For roughly the first third of the concert, the story was pretty much the same. Their music was almost decent. There would be brief moments where you could fall into it, but on the whole just slightly sub-par. Then, it improved. I can’t be sure precisely which song it was that changed things, probably Invincible.
From that moment, sure there were still a lot of what were at best mediocre songs, but at least there were enough moments with substance in them to give the concert meaning. There was a moving performance of Return with only hand bells.
There was Skyscrapers. There was “The Treadmill Song”, which featured Damian Kulash asking if anyone in the crowd could play the guitar and then handing his to just such a person to play for half the song. I certainly wasn’t the only one in the crowd to have only heard that song by OK Go and no other (actually I had also heard A Million Ways, but had forgotten completely about it until they were halfway through the song). And there was still lots and lots of confetti.
Also, there was Damian Kulash coming down into the crowd and performing Last Leaf by himself.
Finally, they may never be anywhere near someone like The Flaming Lips. They may have only had four songs of note in their entire two hour concert. A full third of their concert may have had me considering walking out. Still, at the end of the day, they put up a really good performance. I can’t think of any way that I could have better spent this Sunday afternoon, and I think most of the crowd would have agreed with me.
Coltrane’s final album under Atlantic, the studio where My Favorite Things and Giant Steps were recorded, Olé Coltrane is an often-overlooked album, which while not as impossibly good as, say A Love Supreme, is still an undeniable masterpiece.
The entire album stretches for four tracks; Olé, Dahomey Dance, Aisha and the bonus track To Her Ladyship. “Olé” is excellent, holding an energetic performance from the rhythm section over the entire eighteen minutes. There are plenty of Spanish sounds from the horn, rather reminiscent of the seminal Sketches of Spain, which was recorded a year before by Coltrane’s old bandleader Miles Davis. Eric Dolphy shines on this track with good playing throughout and a standout solo midway through. Coltrane’s playing in this album is everything that is signature about him. His frantic yet meticulously placed notes seem as though they are the saxophonist himself telling you what he feels you should know, and although it cannot flow fast enough, every word falls perfectly into place. Then, just as you are reaching your peak, he slides you back into the chorus. This crosses music, this crosses conversation, this is magic.
From here, we go to the much less challenging “Dahomey Dance”, which nevertheless starts excellently. The rhythm here keeps you moving, holding up to the dance music it derives from. An interesting base line sneaks around the quite good, if not quite inspired horn playing that holds the foreground.
“Aisha” though is just beautiful. There is no other word for music like this or Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat“. Every single note is exactly where it should be. Nothing is out of place. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is perfect.
The bonus track of “To Her Ladyship” is a strong inclusion, featuring an excellent performance from Dolphy on the flute again and a very solid conclusion. However, the rhythm often feels dissonant, and the track as a whole is certainly the weakest of the album.
Verdict: Should you get this album? The answer is always yes, but if you are new to Jazz, then Davis’s Sketches of Spain would make a much easier starting point and if you are new to Coltrane, then A Love Supreme, My Favorite Things and Giant Steps are all better albums, of which My Favorite Things is the most approachable. However, even if it takes you some time to get to this album, once you do, it will reward you immensely.
For those who appreciated our earlier such venture, and for those of you just joining us, we present to you a list of five songs that were on perpetual repeat this week. Here we go.
Constant Conversations, by Passion Pit
In one of the first articles on this site, we talked about Passion Pit’s “I’ll Be Alright”, a frantic pop song that slyly talked about self-loathing. This time, we shall hope to introduce you to “Constant Conversations”, which is quite removed from being a pop song: in fact, it’s an R&B jam.
“Constant Conversations” has measured R&B beats as the foundation (“constant”), layered with lead singer Michael Angelakos’ pained confessions of failure (“conversations”). While this is a pretty common theme on Passion Pit songs, one usually sees Angelakos restraining himself on the gloominess. Here, though, he goes all out.
These are the kind of confessions that come out when you’re inebriated, and Angelakos confirms this: “I never wanna hurt you baby, I’m just a mess with a name and the price/ And now I’m drunker then before they told me drinking doesn’t make me nice,” he says, and you know there’s no inhibitions here. While the vintage R&B layering is spectacular – Boyz II Men and Usher have got nothing on Passion Pit – what really steals the show is the heartbreaking chorus. Brilliant way to start your way into Gossamer.
Fineshrine, by Purity Ring
Purity Ring is an electronic band from Canada, composed of singer Megan James and instrumentalist Corin Roddick. Since April, when their astonishing debut Shrines released, they’ve become famous for dreamy, elegant, clean electro-pop with strange song titles– for example, “Ungirthed”, “Obedear” and “Amenamy”. The song we like best is “Fineshrine”, a graceful synth-pop song with slick beats and a voice like Elizabeth Fraser’s on “Teardrop”.
To describe any further would be to do no justice for the song: James’ peculiar phrasings and porcelain vocals need to be heard to be appreciated. Imagine if MGMT released a song featuring Norah Jones, and you’ll only be halfway to imagining “Fineshrine”.
Jumanji, by Azealia Banks
Azealia Banks is a 21-year-old rapper from Harlem, New York. She has a fascination with mermaids, and sounds like the biggest riot since MIA hit the scene. “Jumanji” is a single from her mixtape Fantasea, and featured on the single cover is a children’s-book-like image of Ms. Banks dancing with a very dapper elephant. Frankly, that image says all you need to know about “Jumanji”. The beats on this song sound half like a ferocious jungle and half like an children’s birthday party, but they anyway take a back seat to the mind-boggling flow of Azealia’s rhymes.
Ms. Banks has more swag than Nicki Minaj, better flow than Kanye, and enough braggadocio to rival Jay Z. Her beats include dramatic drums, plinky calypso, and gratuitous amounts of energy. She frequently chant-raps lines like “Real bitch, all day/ Uptown, Broadway” and “I do it ‘cause it’s my duty / Crazy and kinda spooky/ Yo boobie, step up ya coochie,” in a way that very few female rappers can pull off. If you think Nicki Minaj would do well to learn real swag like Lil’ Kim’s, then you’re going to like Azealia Banks.
It’s easy to judge Tame Impala wrongly: to be fairly honest, their name sounds like hipster nonsense. But if ever a reason to not judge a book by its cover (or a band by its name), it is here: because Tame Impala is, in fact, a very good classic rock tribute band.
“Elephant”, the first single from the upcoming Lonerism album of the Perth, Australia band, starts off with heavy, stomping bass-and-drums and a voice that sounds like Mr. Mojo Risin’ himself. Seriously, we DARE you to listen to the first ten seconds of the song without being reminded of the Doors. And like any good stoner/psychedelic rock band, the lyrics are deliciously mystical and obtuse. “I bet he feels like an elephant, shaking his big grey trunk for the hell of it,” goes the opening line, over a beat that feels like, well, an entire line of elephants shaking their big grey trunks for the hell of it. Spiffy.
Looking at the YouTube comments section for the video, there seems to be legions of fans trying to classify the song’s sound using the trusted “This is like that one classic rock band, but with a front man from a different band” formula. So far, good ones we’ve read include “Josh Homme fronting the Beatles”, “Syd Barrett fronting Black Sabbath” and “Wolfmother lead singer fronting Deep Purple”, but our contribution would have to be “Jim Morrison fronting Cream”. What do you think?
Wut, by Le1f
We’ll cut right to the chase. Here are three reasons to listen to this song immediately:
1. It has the slickest beats you’ll hear all year: a mixture of alarm bells, vuvuzelas and handclaps that will (and I guarantee this) get stuck in your head.
2. Le1f is signed to Greedhead, the record label run by Himanshu Suri, who is one-half of Das Racist, who as we all know are the coolest people on the Internet.
3. Le1f is a ludicrously flamboyant gay black rapper who raps – or rather, brags – about being a ludicrously flamboyant gay black rapper.
“Wut” is the first song from his mixtape Dark York for which Le1f has released a music video, and good God, what a spectacular music video it is. At one point, Le1f grinds on the thigh of a male mannequin who just happens to be wearing a Pikachu mask. Shockingly, you hardly notice all of that, because your jaw is too busy dropping at Le1f’s flow: he spits out seventy (!) words of spectacular swagger in ten seconds (we counted).
Of course, like any self-respecting rap music video, “Wut” has a couple of busty women who are strutting their stuff for you, but it’s pretty ironic here, because Le1f struts his stuff along with them – plus he’s got way better moves than them anyway. Yes, he’s gay (understatement) but it’s amazing how he brags about it, brazenly, the same way 50 Cent brags about his cars and women or Snoop about his weed and women or Kanye about Louis Vuitton and women. “I’m the kind of jawn closet dudes wanna go steady on,” he boasts, before going on to explain, “I make a neo-Nazi kamikaze want to firebomb.” He’s right.
Agree with our list? Disagree? Let us know in the comments section!
This is the perfect pop song. It is not the first perfect pop song that I have come across, it won’t be the perfect pop song in about a week from now, but for now it is and you must know about it.
Start at the beginning and watch the video. Firstly, it is a great music video and secondly it lets us discuss the surface of the song. This is unapologetic pop. The singer is a very pretty girl in her young twenties, which is a good thing, in case you suspect me of more hipster-ness than good sense. You can hear the Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani influences and there is more upbeat energy in three seconds of this song than I have managed in my entire life. Good, solid, unapologetic pop all the way though.
Now though, go a level deeper and listen to the lyrics. You don’t have to. This is a pretty good pop song even without them and you are free to enjoy the song however you like. However, take a moment and hear what she is actually saying. There are plenty of rip currents of depression running through this pink sea of happy pop. She may be singing that she’s going to fail and she’s going to die with the same smile that she has when singing she’s going to live and she’s going to fly, but you know that she is as earnest about the one as the other.
This is also a pretty intelligent record. The chorus of “I know exactly what I want and who I want to be” speaks layers about who she is and “The nod and a wink of TV told me how to feel, now real life has no appeal” followed by the repeated “No appeal” is easy to empathize with. More than that though, every time you watch the video (and I have watched the video many times indeed, did I mention how pretty she is?) you can validate a completely new interpretation of the song when you pair it with who the singer is. That for me is the borderline that separates intelligent art from the rest, when you can argue the nuances of its meaning.
Verdict:This is the perfect pop song. For now, everything should be this song. One week from now, I may be listening to something else, but as of now, this is what all pop should be.
Recently, we were pleasantly surprised to hear some happy news about a good friend of ours, which pertains to the topic at hand. Naturally, as soon as we heard the news, we realized the golden opportunity to create this very Top Five List. The songs we’ve chosen here are both insanely catchy and supremely well-known: in short, classics. For each song, we provide you with the excerpts of lyrics that, when put together, make up every good classic love story. We’d like to point out that the order of the songs traverses the whole length of a happy relationship: from the initial fiery courtship to the lasting bliss of marriage. So, right to it then!
Song 1: Light My Fire, by the Doors [1967]
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre
Come on baby, light my fire
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on fire, yeah
Song 2: You Really Got Me, by the Kinks [1964]
See, don’t ever set me free
I always wanna be by your side
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’, now
Oh yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
You really got me
Song 3: I’m a Believer, by the Monkees [1966]
I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me
Love was out to get to me
That’s the way it seems
Disappointment haunted all my dreams
And then I saw her face
Now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I’m in love, I’m a believer
I couldn’t leave her if I tried
Song 4: Some Kind of Wonderful, by the Grand Funk Railroad [1974]
I don’t need a whole lot of money
I don’t need a big fine car.
I got everything that a man could want
I got more than I could ask for.
I don’t have to run around
I don’t have to stay out all night.
‘Cause I got me a sweet … a sweet, lovin’ woman,
And she knows just how to treat me right
Song 5: All You Need is Love, by the Beatles [1967]
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Top Five Records 