Beabadoobee “Switchblade”

A lot of Gen Z approximations of Gen X rock sounds rather flat to my ears – all the expected signifiers of various alt sub-genres cut and pasted in, but not much depth or dynamics. Not so for “Switchblade.” Beabadoobee’s arrangement places its emphasis sharply contrasting textures, and there’s a sickly sort of swing to the bass groove. It’s a very vivid production that makes every moment of the song feel alive and somewhat surprising despite how closely the songwriting sticks to alt-rock conventions. And unlike a lot of contemporary indie, the vocal and lyrics seem like secondary concerns: The guitars are the most emphatic and emotionally articulate aspects of the music, and by contrast singing feels more ambivalent and mutable.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Osees “Hecate’s Reflection Is A Trick”

Osees are a classic “always different, always the same” band where the pleasure of following them in the long-term depends on noticing the way they incorporate new ideas into their immediately identifiable sound. In this case, I can feel them gesturing towards making their own Fela Kuti song, even if it ends up sounding much closer to Tago Mago-era Can. At any rate, the groove has a nice jolt to it, and there’s an alluring dark undertow to its insistent beat.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Kelela “Point Blank”

“Point Blank” is a breakup song in medias res, and listening to the lyrics can feel like overhearing an argument in passing and trying to sort out the details on the fly. Some of it is a little confusing – one can only hope that the guns and bullets mentioned are purely metaphorical – but mostly it comes down to a question Kelela sings in the first verse: “Why’s your love so bleak?” She sounds wounded and frustrated but not fully angry, which maybe has something to do with the admission in the bridge that the guy she’s singing to was pretty good in bed.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Allison Russell featuring Kara Jackson, Denitia & Explore! Pop Choir “Cold April”

Allison Russell’s music largely exists in realms between genres – mostly country and R&B, but you can hear some pop and indie in the stew – but the connecting thread is an earnest, wholesome public radio vibe that can tip over into being a little off-putting. “Cold April” avoids that, which is a little surprising given that it’s an extremely optimistic song that features a children’s choir. But the melody is strong, and ultimately that can make me forgive the more syrupy aspects of the music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

CFCF featuring Touching Ice & TECHG1RLS “Let’s Kill Ourselves”

Don’t let the title freak you out. This is a song about using “I’m gonna kill myself” in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way, and poking at that turn of phrase a bit. Is it funny, is it cute? Is it annoying, is it insensitive? Is it actually hyperbole at all, or is it just making light of actual dark urges? Will getting your blowout screwed up by a sudden rain storm really push you over the edge? It’s a fun song, so don’t expect it to do much more than gesture in these directions, but do prepare for a lot of exciting dynamic shifts.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

(un)familiar. & Devi McCallion “ohmyfuckinggod”

The synths and programming in “ohmyfuckinggod” feels loose, bright, and carefree, but the lyrics seem like they’re strung together from a tour diary documenting every moment Devi McCallion felt even a little bit anxious, nervous, or bored. The contrast dials down the lyrical angst considerably, placing it all in a proper perspective. It’s as if to say, “hey, touring can suck and mess with my head, but the music part is always fun and it beats working a normal job.” In a battle between lyrics and music, the music wins.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Ratboys “Light Night Mountains All That”

There’s no proper chorus in “Light Night Mountains All That,” but there is a hooky refrain: “You didn’t care, you didn’t care, you didn’t care.” It’s sung with increasing frustration as Julie Steiner attempts to relate the details of some sort of wilderness vision quest, but the person she’s telling is visibly bored. And like, what’s the difference between this and someone describing a dream they had? Not a lot, besides the urgent momentum of the music giving you the sense that Steiner’s character may have actually experienced something quite profound and inexplicable out in the woods. And maybe it’s terrifying?

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Madonna “Danceteria”

Madonna has spent much of the past 20 years artistically lost at sea, attempting to navigate a unique set of circumstances – trying to stay vital and relevant in the pop market in her 50s and 60s, attempting to live up to her own past successes, and competing against artists whose careers wouldn’t exist in the same way without her laying the groundwork. There’s very little precedent for what Madonna has been doing, and virtually none within the lane of pop music she pioneered.

And so it comes as a huge relief that Madonna is back on track, and figuring out how to be an elder pop icon on her own terms. It took some trial and error, but with Confessions II she’s found a way to balance out doling out the wisdom of age, looking back on what she’s lived through without cheap nostalgia, and finding fresh ways to be outrageous. And while she spent a lot of time in the wilderness trying to figure out new people to be in rather “hello fellow kids” ways, the answer to the problem was always obvious: She just had to be herself.

After all, who else has ever lived a life like Madonna? And when Madonna sings about her early career, her nostalgia is our history. “Danceteria” is an ode to the Manhattan club where she made her name, with all the lyrical emphasis placed on name-checking her friends (Martin Burgoyne, Haoui Montaug, Debi Mazar) and the various luminaries (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Byrne, The B-52’s) who frequented the space. It authentically situates her at the center of an exciting cultural moment, a convergence of some of the coolest and most creative people who’ve ever lived.

She’s giving us a little window into something very specific and exclusive and genuinely historically important. And from our perspective in the smart phone era, it’s something that feels exotic and alien. An organic community of artists and assorted stylish people living in the moment, feeling the music, only performing for one another? It’s an aspirational existence that doesn’t seem replicable today.

I think that last point is part of why she feels compelled to sing about it now. There are moments throughout Confessions II in which she’s subtly or overtly begging us all to get off our phones, go outside, to dance and be fully alive. She knows from experience how amazing it can be, and she’s not giving up hope on younger people who’ve never had a chance to experience it as she has. She’s trying to help us!

Buy it from Amazon.

Earthgirl “Lovesick Lobotomy”

Limerence is a relatively new word. It was coined by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979 to describe a state of intense obsessive infatuation, but it’s only come into common use over the past few years as it has entered the lexicon of mental health social media. Like any word or phrase that suddenly catches on, it’s very useful in communicating something broad yet specific. As in, anyone can have a crush – that’s sweet, that’s light, that can lead to something. But limerence is like an affliction, a destructive state of constant fantasizing that spikes stress and pushes you further from reality. Big difference!

The chorus of Earthgirl’s “Lovesick Lobotomy” goes “limerence, glimmering, lovesick lobotomy, cinnamon, how you taste on top of me…I’m sick, I’m sick!” The verses get deeper into a state of constant fixation, but I feel like that “how you taste on top of me” pushes the song away from a literal definition of limerence because this is obviously a song about an actual physical relationship. But who cares when the word sounds so good? It’s an incredibly singable word and it’s particularly satisfying in this wonderfully melodic vocal stack. The palette is very Charli XCX but without any of the aloofness. Even when this song gets robotic, the emotions sound highly combustible. Toss a match at this song and it erupts into a fireball.

Buy it from Amazon.

Squarepusher “K10 Terminus”

I’ve been thinking about how so many of the people we’ve been calling “electronic” producers and artists since the 90s really should’ve been classified as composers from the start. I understand why they weren’t: it’s kind of a lofty term, it’s not very commercial, and early on the most novel selling point was that acts like Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, μ-Ziq, and Autechre were largely working in an electronic mode and making futuristic music. But from this point in history, it’s pretty clear that electronic production was only a means to an end for most acts in this lane, and the game has always been about ambitious composition, not computers and synthesizers.

This is particularly true of Squarepusher, who was asserting himself as a jazz artist working in an “electronic” milieu by the late 90s. Jump ahead nearly 30 years to his new record Kammerkonzert and he’s fully in composer mode – the electronic elements are still there, but the emphasis is on jazz and orchestration. It mostly sounds like film music, but the compositions are so busy and detailed that it’s unlikely any of it could sit easily in the background of a movie. The songs are full of action and implied plot, a drama you can fill out with your own mental footage. The balance of genre is well-calibrated – the potential stuffiness of the chamber music aspect is loosened up by the madcap energy of the jazz elements, and the IDM of it all scrambles expectations and keeps anything from sounding too traditional.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Goose “Good2B”

The jam band format is malleable enough to contain any genre elements a group of players cares to integrate, but the classics in the field have particular inclinations that shape their work – The Grateful Dead favored country and folk, Phish like to get funky. Goose, who have emerged as the top Millennial jam band, generally aim for “alternative” aesthetics. This can make them sound like Radiohead stripped of their bad vibes and uptight discipline, or like if Coldplay got a lot more interesting and experimental. More recently they’ve pushed in a more unexpected direction, drawing on the crisp and bombastic aesthetics of a very Patrick Bateman realm of 80s pop music. It’s a peculiar sound to mix into the jam band stew, in that they need to break the tight structures of that style to open space for jammy excursions. But the cocaine-jolt energy and bright sound suits the band well, and a little bit of intentional cheesiness makes Rick Mitarotonda’s earnest but hackneyed “we’re overwhelmed by too much information!” lyrics go down a lot smoother than if the tone was more serious.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The Field “Another Day”

“Another Day” is an anomaly in The Field’s catalog: A track with a fully intelligible vocal part; the closest thing to a proper pop song in Axel Willner’s body of work. But it’s not Willner’s voice, and it’s not quite a guest either. The vocal is sourced from Tracklib, a subscription service that provides legally cleared samples. It’s more or less anonymous, and it’s just sort of lucky that he found this vocal part that suited his composition so perfectly. And it seems to be speaking for him, too. Willner’s new record is the product of working through writers block and finding a new sense of purpose in creating music, and the lyrics touch on uncertainty and a fear of not being understood. Like a lot of Field songs, the music for “Another Day” moves in soft circles with a pulsing steadiness that stands in for a beat. It’s comfortable and womb-like, but trapped in a loop. The female voice seems to call in from outside that loop, and despite the angst in her words, there’s something in her tone that conveys compassion, self-possession, and poise.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

No Joy “Big Life Big Leaf”

“Big Life Big Leaf” is a song that’s largely concerned with aging, death, and inevitable natural cycles, but it’s not a downer. It’s bright, it’s up tempo, it’s a psychedelic rush. It’s a song that rejoices in the very fact of being alive and excited for everything that’s possible when you’re still here on Earth. When Jasamine White-Gluz sings “I wish you didn’t have to leave,” it’s less about mourning and more about wanting someone to never leave the party of your life. And so it makes a lot of sense that the song would have to sound like the No Joy version of party music.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Suki Waterhouse “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)”

The past decade or so has given us a glut of sexy/sad songs by women about lusting for men who treat them terribly, largely taking cues from Lana Del Rey’s prolific work on the subject. “When I Get Drunk (I Want You Boy)” is pretty obviously downstream from Lana, right on down to starting the chorus with a resigned “fuck it…,” but I think Suki Waterhouse is aiming for something a little more earnestly sexy and openly emotional. For one thing, that slinky bass line is too solidly R&B to give the song much ironic distance from its own sexiness. And the melancholy feels more earned than notional. The piano part carries a lot of heartbreak, and there’s a few too many lines giving away the game that the singer actively wants a relationship with this distant and ambivalent man. That note of futility and tragedy makes the song feel sexier – there’s real stakes to this hookup, even if she’s trying not to admit it.

Buy it from Amazon.

Olivia Rodrigo “Expectations”

“Expectations” is the result of a songwriting dream team at the height of their powers: an A+ melody from pop topline queen Amy Allen, a typically bold structure and meticulous arrangement by Dan Nigro, and the lyrical POV and effortless charisma of Olivia Rodrigo.

Musically it’s a slight shift for Rodrigo, moving into early 80s new wave territory rather than 90s alt-rock/00s pop-punk, but it’s the same effervescent energy that brings out the best in her voice and persona. But it’s right in the sweet spot for Nigro, as he’s basically pulling in tricks he developed in his collaborations with Chappell Roan. There’s more than a little “Hot to Go” and “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” in this song, but Rodrigo’s personality is so strong that it’s not necessarily the first thing you’d notice upon hearing it.

There’s a clear continuity from Guts tracks like “Bad Idea, Right?” and “Get Him Back!” to “Expectations” both lyrically and musically, though there’s an obvious uptick in maturity. But that’s kinda the entire point of the song – Rodrigo is growing up, learning, and wanting more for herself and asking more from the men who want to be with her. She’s not necessarily holding herself up as a wholesome role model, but there’s a lot of positive lessons embedded in this god tier ultra-bop.

Buy it from Amazon.

Tomora “Ring the Alarm”

Tomora is a collaboration between the Norwegian indie pop singer Aurora and Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. It’s an interesting combination that pushes both artists to unexpected extremes, mostly resulting in harsher and more abrasive music than either typically creates. “Ring the Alarm” is particularly bold, a clanging ultra-urgent banger that dials up the intensity on Rowlands’ usual Chemical Brothers tricks and nudges Aurora fully out of her ethereal comfort zone and into wilder Slits/Siouxsie-ish post-punk territory.

Buy it from Tomora.

Jeane “Emotional Baby”

This song is self-deprecating, but only up to a point. Jazz Johnston sings about being emotional and irrational and being a feeler with real big feelings, but it’s all delivered in a cool, calm, and collected tone. As the song glides along on a lightly bouncing alt-rock groove it becomes increasingly clear that she’s lightly taunting the listener and questioning their assumptions about how she lives. And by the end, she’s openly confronting and judging anyone who feels threatened by her feelings: “ain’t it so sad that you can’t contain someone so emotional?” She flips the supposed weakness into a strength, or even a sort of superpower.

Buy it from Amazon.

Interpol “This Mirror Weighs A Ton”

Interpol is a band that works within very narrow aesthetic constraints, so the most exciting thing they can do 25 years into their career is move to the outer boundaries of their style. “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” is as far out as they’ve ever ventured from their agitated, tightly-wound default sound, but even when they lean this much on soothing atmosphere and gentle rhythm, the music is still immediately identifiable as Interpol. The vibe may be different but the palette remains dark and high contrast, and shift towards more open space in the music places greater emphasis on Paul Banks’ distinctive nasal vocal tone. But even that is softer here, and the peevish quality that comes up in a lot of Interpol songs is swapped out for something that sounds like compassion without warmth.

If anything about Interpol is immutable, it’s apparently the peculiar syntax of Banks’ lyrics: “This mirror weighs a ton but at least we act sudden / all the words are gone / but the radios in your head still speak the arcane to the out there.” I’ve spent enough time with Interpol to find this very charming. Banks’ imagery and turns of phrase are evocative, and I feel like I get what he’s laying out even if the lines get sketchy. And frankly, I’ll take strange words that flow with a melody over grammatically sound and over-written phrases stuffed awkwardly into a meter any day of the week.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Boards of Canada “Father and Son”

This is my best attempt to summarize the themes of Boards of Canada’s fifth full-length album Inferno after less than a week of obsessive listening: It’s broadly about how most people can sense the existence of some sort of God, but trying to understand what God is takes them in very different directions – scientific rationalization, all manner of religious devotion, fascistic cult behavior, occult philosophy, apocalyptic dread, psychedelic exploration, overt rejection of God. There’s no thesis or argument, there’s no plot or moralization. I think of it as an abstracted audio documentary, a collage of vignettes and references to moments and ideas that fit together intuitively but deliberately avoids a statement. What statement could there possibly be? The point is not knowing.

“Father and Son” is the track that pulled me in first, and I heard it without any context for its sample sources or the broader concepts of the record. I was inititally responding to it in purely musical ways, fixating on the drum programming and eerie keyboard tone, the odd musicality of how Mike Sandison had edited the vocal samples, and the fascinating intonations of the people speaking in the samples. Sandison has long had a great ear for surreal vocal clips – go back to “Aquarius” for a mind-bending utterance of the word “orange” – and there’s some peculiar magic to these voices, one very stern but warm, and the other so sheepish, but both imbued with a very American strain of wholesomeness.

The source of this dialogue was revealed rather quickly, as Boards of Canada listeners are apparently very talented audio detectives. It’s an exerpt from a 1971 Man Alive documentary called The Jesus Trip, which investigates the Children of God cult in its early days. It’s from a sequence in which a man visits his son at the cult’s compound and attempts to reason with him, with some hope of bringing him back home. It’s a heartbreaking scene in which a very stoic mid-20th century father tactfully speaks to a hippy son who has been programmed to turn against him.

The line that jumped out at me when I was approaching this purely as audio – “I really don’t think so” – is gutting in context. The father asks his son if, based on how he’s lived and raised his family, he has acted as a man who’s accepted Christ in his heart. The younger man responds “I really don’t think so” with a sort of wormy tone. You can hear uncertainty in his voice, but it’s nothing to do with his judgment, which seems entirely sincere. There’s an obvious weakness in this man, a deference to outside forces. He’s eager to have the answers provided to him, particularly in this confrontation. He doesn’t have to think, and he doesn’t really need to stand up to his father. He can just defer to the text and shrug.

The audio doesn’t play this scene straight. It’s chopped up, phrases are slightly bent to melody, and it’s cut with more mysterious and garbled vocal samples. These parts, which often sound demonic, are crucial to the musicality and the unsettling tone. Even with a throughline of conversation, that narrative is tipped off-kilter and contrasted with seemingly unrelated commentary and phrases that are difficult to make out through the filtering. You’re mostly hearing two men who feel sure about what they’re saying, but it’s presented in a context where nothing seems solid or certain.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Car Seat Headrest “1937 State Park” (Joe’s Story Version)

Car Seat Headrest have re-recorded “1937 State Park” along with the rest of Teens of Denial (give or take a few songs), so I should follow suit and write a new post about that song, right? Not exactly a tall order given that it’s one of my top favorite songs from the 2010s.

I’m a little surprised by my emotional response in my original post from May 2016. I was identifying a lot more with the character in the song, and being a little hard on a past version of myself I don’t remember so clearly today.

It also captures the feeling of being a particularly cynical and depressive sort of teenage boy, right on down to the line about avoiding graveyards because they’re a cliché of his “death-obsessed generation,” which is funny to me because I was exactly the sort of teen to extrapolate way too much from random people I knew just to find new ways to be snobby as an excuse to opt out of social situations. “Ah, I hate my generation, so obsessed with death!” Sure, dude! Whatever. Meanwhile you’re the guy singing about feeling a pressure to commit minor crimes so you can act out a “live fast, die young” narrative.

Now the song strikes me as more obviously comedic, a portrait of a depressed teenager who’s fantasizing about how he’ll be remembered after he dies young. He’s dreaming of being a Kurt Cobain type figure, but doesn’t seem particularly interested in the part where you write songs and play in a band. It’s just a daydream about wanting to be thought of as cool in retrospect, and awkwardly willing his life to match the narrative beats of a young punk tragedy. (“I can’t commit to a crime to commit, I need to get one done for the biography.”)

The kid in this song – presumably the Joe character who’s positioned as the protagonist in other songs on the record – is so recognizable and poignant. He’s at a stage of youth where emotions run hot, and ideas are big but not fully formed. Being perceived matters more at this time than being understood, and being understood feels impossible. But of course anyone with any sort of perspective understands what’s going on in their head.

I think this recording of “1937 State Park” is superior to the original version, and that’s true of the other more rocking songs that have been remade for this revised album. The band have played these songs many times over and have found subtle ways to improve the dynamics without many substantial differences to the music. It’s the same thing, but with maybe 20% more punch to it.

Will Toledo’s vocal is very close to the original take but a little more confident in his phrase, a tiny bit bolder when he sings out. I imagine this song feels different to him in his early 30s, with a lot more distance from being a teen. He sounds dialed into the extremes in this recording – the wry parts slightly more dry in tone, but he sounds more wounded and discouraged as he sings the chorus. The first time around the emotions seemed to fall on an even plane, but there’s more of a sharp contrast between the parts that are cringe for humorous effect and the parts that are connecting with genuine shame.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Meghan Dowlen “New Shoes”

Imagine a version of St. Vincent that retains Annie Clark’s gift for melody, tightly controlled theatrical vocals, and taste for sleek aesthetics, but instead of a guitar virtuoso, it’s an extremely gifted bassist. A bassist who is clearly well acquainted with the intersections of new wave and funk in the early 80s, and has probably spent a lot of time thinking about “Funkytown” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and ESG and anything Tina Weymouth ever played on.

That’s pretty much what I’m hearing in Meghan Dowlen’s record Dizzy Spell, though there’s other distinctive things going on with it. For one thing, it sounds remarkably clean and precise. There’s nothing padding out or thickening the sounds, nothing to take your ear off the primary elements: bass, vocals, percussion, and dryly recorded bursts of guitar and saxophone for color. I had to acclimate to it a bit – you get so used to songs being filled out with subtle sounds that something this trim and tight can feel slightly alien.

But I think that’s part of the point – to be funky and fun and somewhat relaxed, but also a little uncanny and raw. “New Shoes” often sounds like what I imagine a lot of disco era Michael Jackson music would be like if you got Quincy Jones to silence half the tracks on the mixing board. Which is to say, I think this might strike some people as “unfinished,” but only if you’re not meeting Dowlen on her own terms.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Fundido featuring Emma Dufaux “Get A Grip”

This is a new single out on DFA, which is a good thing, as it would be extremely weird if any other label released it. Like, in genre terms, this is a DFA song. Everything about this song is dialed in precisely to “DFA.” You like the particular snap of a DFA records beat? You like a tasteful yet caustic DFA synth tone? You like a cool, disaffected DFA type singer? You’ll like “Get A Grip.” Simple as that.

As much as this conforms to expectations, it’s not all rote and cookie cutter. I like vocalist Emma Dufaux’s tossed-off attitude as she semi-raps lyrics about setting a guy up to succeed and then knocking him down and out of her way. It’s not really bitter or mean-spirited – she just sounds competitive and a little conniving, in a fun way.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Meg Stalter “Prettiest Girl In America”

It’s not unusual for a comedian to make a novelty pop song, but it’s not common for those songs to succeed as both comedy and music. If anything, Meg Stalter’s debut single “The Prettiest Girl In America” works better as a song than as a joke. The premise is definitely funny, but it hits hard enough as a genuine dance pop banger that the irony and punchlines are besides the point. I mean, Charli XCX is funny too, you know? A lot of pop music is funny, and Meg fits right in.

Buy it from Amazon.

Olof Dreijer featuring Toya Delazy “Makwande”

I think that even if you heard this not knowing Olof Dreijer was one half of The Knife, you’d still intuit that he had something to do with it, even if just in an “obvious influence” sort of way. It’s mostly in the tonal palette, which is very much a return to Dreijer’s ultra-bright keyboards in the Deep Cuts era. But it’s also in the perverse approach to pop – the hooks are warped, the shape feels slightly off, the rap feels like it’s laid diagonally against the beat. The best part is in how Dreijer stutters a snyth riff so it sounds like it’s getting bent by digital interference. I’ve heard a lot of variations on that general notion, but rarely has it sounded so naturally funky.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Smerz “Spring Summer”

I think there’s a tendency to approach brief, minimal, open-ended songs like this as though they’re unfinished sketches, which I think misses the point. It’s supposed to feel off-kilter and unresolved, because that’s the central feeling to convey. And people feel this way all the time in life! The lyrics to “Spring Summer” are very ambiguous in tone, and it’s hard to tell exactly how annoyed or aggrieved the singer is about an apparent situationship. I’m sure someone else could snap right into this feeling, but from my point of view, it’s an intriguing bit of voyeurism.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

ISTA “Crusher”

In the Dune mythos, “fear is the mind-killer.” But what kills fear? ISTA have an answer: “love is the fear crusher.” “Crusher” is sunny and unapologetically corny in its messaging, so much so that I think it loops around to non-corny. The sound is buzzy and super saturated, applying a very mid -90s alt-rock palette to a specifically mid-00s style of cheery alt-rock energy. There’s no way to express something like this without being earnest, but being earnest doesn’t mean you’re being naive and dopey, especially not in an era as fearful and loveless as the one we’re in at the moment.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Spacemoth “Do We Exist”

“Do We Exist?” moves along on a boppy bass line that’s a center of gravity for all the psychedelic keyboard and guitar parts that swirl around it. It’s a tether for Maryam Qudus’ voice as well as she sings lyrics that loop around to answer one phrase and then contradict another. It’s a clever approach, signaling both confusing and a humble willingness to be wrong. There’s no definitive answers about the nature of reality to be found here, but I do get the sense that she’s rejecting the notion that we’re actually all alone in this world.

Buy if from Bandcamp.

RIP Magic “Screwdark”

There are moments in “Screwdark” that sound like three DJ Shadows DJing at each other like the Spider-Man meme, or someone trying to Zaireeka the entire Mo Wax catalog. It’s a loud and cluttered sound, but the style is bold and the groove is definitely there. The half muttered, half rapped vocals are mixed so low that you could miss them entirely, but I like the Shy Ronnie vibe in the context of this stylish cacophony.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

April + Vista “Very Bad News”

April + Vista are basically an R&B band filtered through the aesthetics of the second half of Radiohead’s discography. This may seem odd in the abstract, but in practice it highlights how much oddball R&B was already in that music, and how cool it’d be if Erykah Badu actually worked with Jonny Greenwood. “Very Bad News” is groovy yet grim, and particularly indebted to the ominous orchestration of Greenwood after he’d spent some time writing film scores.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Chenayder “Wonder”

Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life” and the DNA remix of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” were formative pop experiences for me as a kid, so of course I’m a mark for this song, which has a very similar beat to the former and melodically interpolates the latter. Vega gets a songwriting credit here, which strikes me as overcautious – it’s not quite the same tune, and I suspect Chenayder landed on this melodic flow coincidentally. She’s certainly going for a different feeling as she sings about a torturous unrequited love. Her words are a little more bleak than her delivery, but how upsetting can you be when you stack harmonies this beautifully?

Buy it from Amazon.

Isaiah Rashad “M.O.M.”

Have you ever eaten something familiar – a sandwich, a pasta dish, a salad – but there was some ingredient that popped more than usual? Like you’ve tasted a lot of basil in your life, but you’ve suddenly encountered the best basil? Something ordinary becomes something unexpected and magical. The full culinary potential of basil is revealed to you, but it’s not clear why that is. Is it a superior, fresher variety of basil? Did the chef do something to the basil? And if so, why doesn’t everyone do that?

This is how I feel about the snare in “M.O.M.,” which my body and mind immediately clocked as a better, crisper, more kinetic snare hit. I’ve heard so much snare in my life, but Isaiah Rashad along with producers Hollywood Cole, KTC, and Julian Sinfonia found a way to make one of the foundational elements of popular music more beautiful and effective.

I have very limited technical knowledge of how beats in modern pop music are created and engineered, but I happen to know someone with a lot of expertise on this topic: Nick Sylvester, veteran music critic, drummer, label owner, and full-time record producer. I asked him to demystify this snare sound for me.

“The drum sample sounds like it leans on the bottom snare mic a little more to pick up the sizzle of the snares on the bottom head a little more,” he told me. “It has a little more top end, which is how it cuts through so nicely, which is the crispness you’re hearing. A lot of snare samples sound like this but what’s so special here is that the top end of the music is uncluttered, which lets the snare ring out a little more, so there’s no masking.”

I suspected the minimalism of the mix was part of it. There’s not a lot of sounds in the mix, and everything is compelling – a perfect pocket of rhythm, Rashad’s vocal popping off the beat, and a keyboard riff with a distinctive understated tone that’s just as beautiful to my ear as that snare. The percussion sounds urgent enough to insist on physical movement, but there’s also a relaxed feel to the track that sets muscles at ease. It’s built for fluid, natural, steady movement.

Buy it from Amazon.