084 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 03-05-2020

ALTER.NATION #84

Car Seat Headrest, Happyness, Joan as Police Woman, Man Man, Ghostpoet, Damien Jurado, Johanna Warren, Caleb Landry Jones, Houses of Heaven, Ital Tek, Field Works

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0 3 - 0 5 - 2 0 2 0

"Can't Cool Me Down"

Raw guitars meet lo-fi synths in this noisy but tuneful indie rock project from songwriter and musician Will Toledo.
Car Seat Headrest - Making a Door Less Open / Can't Cool Me Down
...and here the effectively sloppy indie rock of Teens of Denial gives way to a cleaner and more exacting soundscape dominated by keyboards and rhythm machines, with guitars still in the mix but not dominating as they once did... Making a Door Less Open lacks a narrative concept that links the songs; the tracks exist in a similar emotional space, but there's no through line to this album. If there is a theme to this set of songs, it's that success hasn't been everything Toledo was hoping for. While angst has played a big role in his songs from the start, the adolescent anxieties and confusion of Teens of Denial have been replaced by the uncomfortable emotions of adulthood and a severe wariness of his place in the larger world and the circle where he has placed himself...

London trio take inspiration from '90s indie acts Sparklehorse and Pavement, adding a wry British twist to the brooding melodies.
Happyness - Floatr / Ouch (Yup)
After releasing their second album, Write In, in 2017, London indie rockers Happyness went on a brief hiatus that involved co-leader Benji Compston parting ways with the group. With help from members of their touring band, including Yuck's Max Bloom, the remaining duo of Jonny Allan and Ash Kenazi re-emerge three years later with Floatr. Collecting songs that were largely affected by the existential dread shared by many in the wake of the 2016 elections, it's a slightly more downcast effort from a project usually always in a thoughtful headspace. While intimate and ruminative -- a mood only emphasized by Allan's Elliott Smith-reminiscent vocals -- they still deliver volatile, borderline dance-rock on tracks like "Ouch (Yup)." It mingles its yearning melodies and lush keyboard atmospheres with driving drums, crashing cymbals, and even an extended guitar solo...

Multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter who blends classic soul and experimental influences with vulnerability and sophistication.
Joan as Police Woman - Cover Two / Kiss (Prince cover)
As its title suggests, Cover Two is the second collection of covers from Joan as Police Woman's Joan Wasser (her first, 2009's Cover, was initially sold only at her shows and on her website). Considering how versatile and distinctive Wasser's own music is, it's not surprising that she's skilled at putting her own stamp on the work of widely different musicians. Even Cover Two's cover is a rendition of sorts, channeling Loverboy's Get Lucky and its iconic red leather jumpsuit. But what could be just a karaoke lark is much more in Wasser's hands: Cover Two is musically nimble and reflects a songwriter's appreciation of other songwriters. As on Cover, Wasser samples from an eclectic array of artists. She begins Cover Two with the challenge of reinterpreting Prince's "Kiss," transforming the original's sudden flirtation into sultry, slow-burning foreplay that turns the line "women, not girls, rule my world" into a mantra...

Indie quartet with an offbeat aesthetic that recalls the intelligent skronk of Tom Waits and Frank Zappa. Adventurous songwriting and atypical arrangements served as foundational elements when experimental indie band Man Man began crafting a sound that would set them apart from their peers. Centered around the boundary-pushing tendencies of bandleader and principle songwriter Honus Honus (real name Ryan Kattner,) Man Man matured from their wild and surrealistic early albums...
Man Man - Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between / Cloud Nein / Unsweet Meat
It makes sense that Ryan Kattner of Man Man would release his best album to date during a pandemic. His band persona, Honus Honus, is perpetually down on his luck — bizarre and lovelorn, lonely and insane — haunted. In short, he’s all of us right now.
Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between starts with a fake-out, a gorgeous instrumental called “Dreamers” that would fit perfectly in a Fifties Disney movie: a tune for Peter Pan to chase his shadow to. That segues into the cacophonous intro to “Cloud Nein” — reminiscent of Man Man’s early days of skronky snake charmer horns and brittle, Tom Waits piano. The intro is a fake-out, too, though — as “Cloud Nein” swaggers forth into a jazzy, theatrical pop song about the end of the world: “Nothing ever lasts/Haven’t you learned this by now?” Honus croons as if chiding us for attempting to pin him down. There’s only one thing for certain when it comes to the frontman/pianist: his ability to write a damn good pop song...

Categorization-defying artist whose recordings, highlighted by a pair of albums shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, brim with drowsy anxiety.
Ghostpoet - I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep / Breaking Cover
London singer-songwriter Ghostpoet exudes a certain weariness on his latest album, ‘I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep’. If his fatigue wasn’t evident in the album title, the weighted lyrics throughout – coupled with his listless drawl – are good indicators. Ghostpoet is his quintessential languid self here. The album is soulful, melancholic with bursts of urgent sonics – a suitable accompaniment to the sense of burden in the lyrics.
Since his 2011 debut album, ‘Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam,’ 37-year-old Obaro Ejimiwe has displayed a penchant for not only long album titles but also for creating music that deals with the inner recesses of himself. His work is generally cerebral, and ‘I Grow Tired…’ tackles a myriad of topics: the rise of the far right, passport politics, skin colour as currency and immigration to name a few. The lyrics depict Ghostpoet as fearful, panicking, encapsulating the mood of millions around the world in this current state of perpetual uncertainty.

Acclaimed indie singer/songwriter whose poignant folk songcraft has transcended detours into pop, roots rock, indie rock, and psychedelia.
Damien Jurado - What's New, Tomboy? / When You Were Few
A sequel of sorts to its immediate predecessors, The Horizon Just Laughed and In the Shape of the Storm, What’s New, Tomboy? is Damien Jurado's third straight self-production following 20 years of working with outside help... A legtöbb házának (több gitárral együtt) házának takarításával inspirált dal, a "Amikor kevés voltál" trippír ehelyett kiemelkedő basszusgitár, elektromos gitár, orgona és dob teljes választékát kínálja, de annyira hatékony, hogy csak úgy lesz, mint egy teljes értékű psycho-rock bejegyzés a többi dal összefüggésében...

Indie folk musician who brings a lilting voice, melancholic demeanor, and spiritual bent to her songwriting.
Johanna Warren - Chaotic Good / Part of It
...Warren decided to produce the album on her own, borrowing recording equipment from a friend to do much of the preliminary tracking alone in a garage. She enlisted a few key collaborators to fully enliven her vision, most notably former Sticklips bandmates Chris St. Hilaire and Jim Bertini. On the raucously resilient “Part of It,” Warren is joined by her musical brethren as she addresses a noncommittal narcissist and—a trademark of Warren’s work—the narrator’s complicity in her own suffering: “Don’t look at me like I’m the one holding you back/and I won’t look at you like you have something I lack.”...

Texas-born musician and actor known for his experimental psychedelic rock. After making his name as a film actor in the latter half of the 2010s, Texas native Caleb Landry Jones launched his music career in 2020 with the experimental, neo-psychedelic album The Mother Stone.
Caleb Landry Jones - The Mother Stone / You're So Wonderfull
Actor and musician Caleb Landry Jones makes his recording debut with The Mother Stone, a 15-song psychedelic rock opus of sprawling complexity, abrupt tonal shifts, and dark-hued pop arrangements. Dating back to the late 2000s, the Texas native has built up an impressive resume of film and television credits, from Breaking Bad and X-Men to Get Out and Twin Peaks. It turns out he has also been making music since a young age and boasts a deep back catalog of material, much of it inspired by the Beatles' more exploratory moments and the ramshackle psych of Syd Barrett's thrilling post-Pink Floyd burnout. While filming the zombie art-comedy The Dead Don't Die, Jones played some of his demos for director Jim Jarmusch, who recommended him to experimental enthusiasts Sacred Bones Records, the same label that has released some of Jarmusch's own recordings. Teaming up with producer Nic Jodoin (Black Lips), Jones unleashed what sounds like a lifetime's worth of ideas and pent-up weirdness, constructing a wild suite of interconnected songs, replete with lurching orchestral sections and harsh fuzzy textures and sung in a variety of different voices and timbres like a character actor gone off the rails...

Oakland-based trio Houses of Heaven play an intense, percussive blend of post-punk, darkwave, and industrial dance, filled with driving rhythms, hazy guitars, and shadowy vocals. The group's debut full-length, Silent Places, appeared in 2020.
Houses of Heaven - Silent Places / Sleep
Oakland trio Houses of Heaven is made up of former members of the Metropolis-signed band Vaniish, which included members of an earlier group called Veil Veil Vanish, who also released music on the same label. Both of those acts played dark, driving post-punk with shoegaze elements, sometimes resembling a more muscular version of the Cure. Houses of Heaven retains those influences but takes them in a much different direction. Synths and electronic beats play a much larger role here, edging the music closer to industrial and synth pop. The album was produced by Matia Simovich of Dark Entries-affiliated minimal wave group Inhalt, engineered by previous collaborator Monte Vallier and Tortoise's John McEntire, and mastered by ambient artist Rafael Anton Irisarri. All of the above help shape the sound of the album, which is densely layered and filled with hazy textures and dubby effects...

Brighton, U.K.-based electronic producer influenced by dubstep, garage, IDM, jungle, and footwork.
Ital Tek - Outland / Chamber Music
Having moved beyond the colorful hybrids of dubstep, juke, and jungle that made up his discography until 2015, Alan Myson's work as Ital Tek since 2016's Hollowed has been much darker and more isolated, filled with cinematic suspense and immaculate sound design. 2020 full-length Outland is yet more reflective than the producer's previous two albums, composed after the birth of his first child, as well as his relocation from the city of Brighton, England, to a more secluded locale. He hasn't returned to making club music, but Outland is a bit more rhythmic and bass-heavy than his previous two albums. There's a much sharper bite to the way he uses distortion here, and the tracks with beats sound monstrous...

Collaborative project helmed by interdisciplinary artist Stuart Hyatt, producing ambient and experimental music using field recordings.
Field Works Ultrasonic / Silver Secrets feat. Mary Lattimore
...Ultrasonic is the project's eighth album, and the focus is on the federally endangered species of bats in Indiana. All of the compositions are based on the echolocations of bats, incorporating the winged mammals' chirping, fluttering, and clicking sounds into abstract textures and pretty, plaintive melodies. The source material ends up being a gold mine for the producers and musicians, who twist the sounds of wings flapping into crunchy rhythms and make extensive usage out of the natural cave echo... On "Silver Secrets," Mary Lattimore builds a rhythm out of a sequence of sampled bat calls, then adds her graceful harp playing, and as the rhythm comes close to dissolving, the bats fly all around her. Even though bats are commonly associate with vampires, witchcraft, Halloween, and all things macabre, very few of the pieces seem overtly dark or haunting...

Car Seat Headrest, Happyness, Joan as Police Woman, Man Man, Ghostpoet, Damien Jurado, Johanna Warren, Caleb Landry Jones, Houses of Heaven, Ital Tek, Field Works, Mary Lattimore

015 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX / 06-01-2019 from PASTE The 50 Best Songs of 2018 (2)

ALTER.NATiON

                                                        Selection from PASTE The 50 Best Songs of 2018

Camp Cope, Neko Case feat. Mark Lanegan, Ought, Mitski, Sunflower Bean, Parquet Courts, Car Seat Headrest, MGMT, Noname, Lizzo, Wye Oak

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06-01-2019 (2)

Camp Cope - The Opener
Melbourne-based trio Camp Cope’s biting punk track “The Opener,” from their 2018 album How to Socialise & Make Friends, starts like a typical breakup song: “Tell me you never wanna see me again / And then keep showing up at my house.” But as the track progresses, it morphs into an intense, overt call for gender equality in the music industry. Lead vocalist Georgia “Maq” McDonald has a guttural reaction to the sexism her band has faced as she yells, as loud as she can, “Yeah, tell me again how there just aren’t that many girls in the music scene.”

Neko Case feat. Mark Lanegan - Curse of the I-5 Corridor
Neko Case’s seven-minute song winds like the long interstate it references: I-5 runs along the West Coast of the U.S., from the Mexican to Canadian border. A duet with Mark Lanegan, who is known for his solo work in addition to collaborations and his work with Queens of the Stone Age, “Curse Of The I-5 Corridor” is a haunting combination of lyrics and sound. The song reflects on the past, and uncovers an unsureness of the future and what it could have brought. Lines like “in the current of your life I was an eyelash in the shipping lanes” and “I fear I smell extinction in the folds of this novocaine age coming on” reveal these aspects. Lanegan’s voice at times becomes an eerie echo to Case’s, lurking in the background, and adds to the tension the song’s instrumental breaks carry.

Ought - Disgraced in America
“Disgraced in America,” from Montreal post-punk band Ought’s album Room Inside the World, is a song led by Tim Darcy’s melodramatic, at times Bowie-esque and other times Ian Curtis-esque, lead vocals, which are so painstaking, impactful and heart-wrenching, they would make an enthralling a cappella track. The track also includes robotic keyboards, jangly, melodic guitars, crying horns and chaotic, dense percussion worth getting lost in.

Mitski - Nobody
Disco beats had a moment this year—and so did cowboys. The slick disco blips appeared first on Kacey Musgraves’s “High Horse,” a dance song fueled by cowboy metaphors, then again, a few months later, on arguably the best song from Mitski’s Be The Cowboy, “Nobody,” in which the indie-rock monarch employs tight basslines and movie-score drums to make a thumping, sweaty dance track. Mitski shouts into the void to anyone who can hear her: “I’m just asking for a kiss / Give me one good movie kiss.” As her despair worsens, the song just gets louder, faster and groovier. Who knew the sound of loneliness could be so irresistible?

Sunflower Bean - Twentytwo
Are you 22? Or, were you at one time 22? Then you know. You know what it feels like when the protective bubble of youth begins to wrinkle and then pop, when adulthood arrives before you were done being a kid. You remember that all-consuming confusion—and stress—born out of questions like “Who am I?” and “What the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?” Sunflower Bean are all-too familiar with those qualms. Each member of the New York City trio, one of the most consistent groups working in indie-rock today, was 22 when they recorded Twentytwo in Blue, and, on a single track, they flawlessly capture the anxiety, beauty, fear, sadness and excitement that permeate a human being’s 22nd year of earth-dwelling. Not to mention, “Twentytwo” is one of the most smartly and creatively composed songs to come out of this year, complete with an achingly melodic chorus and unforgettable riffs...

Parquet Courts - Wide Awake
While it might not have made the cut as our pick for the best song of the year, Parquet Courts’ absolute banger “Wide Awake” deserves the award for the funkiest. This song is everything you need to get your body, well, “movin’ and groovin’, “ain’t ever losin’ the pace,” as the song itself says. The percussion, lead flawlessly by drummer Max Savage, drives the track with a Latin-inspired rhythm that somehow fits just fine in a New York City rock band’s repertoire. Thrown on top of that is arguably the grooviest bass line of the year by Sean Yeaton, layered unexpectedly with A. Savage and Austin Brown’s raucous signature guitar stylings...

Car Seat Headrest - Bodys
Though this magnificent fragment of Will Toledo’s brain technically debuted on the nether-regions of Bandcamp back in 2011, the Twin Fantasy rework is nothing short of exquisite. If every rock song was this immaculate, we’d call it “gold” instead of “rock.” One reason it’s so fantastic is the song’s percussive underbelly: A swarm of pedal effects, drum loops and good ol’ fashioned kit noise carry the song through its near-seven minutes, as Toledo talks us through the song like a math problem, asking, “Is it the chorus yet?.” For all its magnificent sonic arrangements, though, the lyrics are even heftier, a testament to love, life and the fragility of the vessels that hold it all together: “Don’t you realize our bodies could fall apart any second?”

MGMT - Me and Michael
MGMT’s “Me and Michael” from their latest album Little Dark Age is musically about as ’80s as they come with its gleaming synths, booming electronic percussion and VanWyngarden’s soaring yet poignant Pet Shop Boys-esque vocal lead. The chorus is catchy to the point where it’s actually infuriating that someone hasn’t come up with this perfect, ebullient sing-along melody before. This ode to male friendship sounds like the mega-hit that they haven’t quite mustered since 2007’s “Kids” or “Electric Feel.”

Tune-Yards - Colonizer
2018 was the year of the “white voice.” Moviegoers will recognize the phrase from Boots Riley’s afro-surrealist hit Sorry to Bother You, in which a black telemarketer finds success employing a cartoonishly caucasian-sounding voice when calling customers. Tune-Yards (who scored that film) explored a similar concept six months earlier on “Colonizer,” a surprising and raucously arranged anthem of self-interrogation. Like much of its surrounding album, the song is an examination of white privilege, with Merrill Garbus grappling with the “white woman’s voice” she uses while telling “stories of travels with African men.” It’s not satire, or at least not the outward-facing kind. “A lot of people assume I’m commenting on another white woman or that it’s ironic or sarcastic, but it’s actually just true,”

Noname - Blaxpoitation
There was the old Noname, the one who ducked and dodged around the fluttery rhythms and subdued melodies of her debut EP Telefone like a shy hummingbird, beautiful but weightless. But with “Blaxploitation,” from her new album Room 25, Noname is finally ready for all the limelight. She spits out lines like “Penny proud, penny petty, pissing off Betty the Boop / Only date n****s that hoop, traded my life for cartoon,” with a previously unheard vigor over a bass-line that pops. No one is safe from Noname’s polemic—not the artists that blow up and move to the yuppie Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago, not those mammy-stereotype “Power of Pine-Sol” commercials, not even Noname herself for indulging in noted anti-LGBT restaurant Chick-Fil-A.

Lizzo - Boys
Why pick one summer crush when you can marvel at them all? That’s the question at stake on the wonderfully raunchy “Boys,” which finds Lizzo grasping and declaring her sexuality via a series of delicious male typecasts. She’s not picky, either, singing, “I like big boys, itty bitty boys / Mississippi boys, inner city boys.” An overtly groovy bass line flavored with high-pitched electric guitar carries the song through. A dance-y boasting of sexuality, “Boys” is a flirty summer jam.

Wye Oak - The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs
The phrase “dream pop banger” would be a contradiction in terms if not for this glorious song, the centerpiece of Wye Oak’s album of the same name. Jenn Wasner, who has spent a decade honing one of the greatest voices in indie-rock, sings about the inexorable urge to seek patterns in chaos, repeating the title with mantra-like fervor: “The louder I call, the faster it runs / The louder I call, the faster it runs.” And then the song seems to do precisely that, growing faster, louder, more joyously overwhelmed, as it spins around and around its central refrain.

Camp Cope, Neko Case feat. Mark Lanegan, Ought, Mitski, Sunflower Bean, Parquet Courts, Car Seat Headrest, MGMT, Noname, Lizzo, Wye Oak

2nd_100 / NO PLAN: my favorite tracks from 2017 PnM.MiX

2nd  / NO PLAN: my favorite tracks from 2017



David Bowie - No Plan
Duke Garwood - Coldblooded The Return
Moon Duo - Occult Architecture, Vol. 1Will of the Devil
Ron Gallo - Young Lady, You're Scaring Me
Jesca Hoop - Cut Connection
Tinariwen feat. Kurt Vile, Mark Lanegan - Nánnufláy
Chuck Prophet - Coming Out in Code
The Sadies - The Noise Museum
Meatbodies - Haunted History
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears - Sexual Tension
Strand of Oaks - Hard Love
Rhiannon Giddens - Come Love Come
Thundercat feat. Kendrick Lamar - Walk On By
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Sleep Drifter
Crystal Fairy - Drugs on the Bus
Sun Kil Moon - Vague Rock Song
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Better Off
Ani Cordero - Corrupcion
Sundays & Cybele - Paradise Com
Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Got Soul
Hanni El Khatib - Peep Show
Wolf Parade - Baby Blue
Oxbow - Cold & Well-Lit Place
Sannhet - Way Out
Gary Clark, Jr. - You Saved Me
JD McPherson - Bloodhound Rock
Laura Marling - Wild Fire
Valerie June - Long Lonely Road
Oh Sees - Keys to Castle
(Sandy) Alex G - Proud
Algiers - The Underside of Power
Björk - Tabula Rasa
Chelsea Wolfe - Spun
Fleet Foxes - Fool's Errand
Fred Thomas - Mallwalkers
Girl Ray - Earl Grey (Stuck in a Groove)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Fam/Famine
Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
Jay Som - Everybody Works
LCD Soundsystem - Emotional Haircut
Lost Horizons - Bones
Mac DeMarco - One More Love Song
Modern Studies - Supercool
Protomartyr - Here is the Thing
Robyn Hitchcock - Autumn Sunglasses
The Clientele - Music for the Age of Miracles
The Moonlandingz - Glory Hole
Wire - Playin Harp for the Fishes
Eliza Carthy / The Wayward Band - Devil in the Woman
Kasey Chambers - The Devil's Wheel
Lilly Hiatt - The Night David Bowie Died
Los Straitjackets - Shake and Pop
Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real - Find Yourself
Mark Lanegan - Drunk on Destruction
Ray Wylie Hubbard - Lucifer and the Falllen Angels
Rodney Crowell - East Houston Blues
Shannon McNally - Low Rider
Bruce Cockburn  - Bone on Bone
Cindy Lee Berryhill - I Like Cats/You Like Dogs
Feist - I'm Not Running Away
Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band - Whithin Everything
Colin Stetson - All This I Do for Glory
Courtney Pine - Darker Than the Blue
Dee Dee Bridgewater - The Thrill Is Gone
Jerry Douglas - Hey Joe
Keyon Harrold - Wayfaring Traveler
Kneebody - Uprising
Led Bib - Insect Invasion
Matt Wilson - Soup
Mike Stern - Trip
Preservation Hall Jazz Band - So It Is
Regina Carter - I'll Chase The Blues Away
Ross McHenry - Us and Them
Vijay Iyer - Good on the Ground
Charles Ponder - Black Magic Woman
Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo' - Don't Leave Me Here
Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Nothing But the Night
Robert Cray, Hi Rhythm - Honey Bad
Walter Trout feat. John Mayall - Blues for Jimmy T.
John Mayall feat. Joe Walsh - The Devil Must Be Laughing
Elvin Bishop - 100 Years of Blues
Otis Taylor - Twelve String Mile
Chuck Berry - Lady B. Goode
Chain and the Gang - Devitalize
The Yawpers - Face to Face to Face
George Thorogood - I'm a Steady Rollin' Man
King Khan - Born to Die
Roger Waters - Smell the Roses
Alt-J - House of the Rising Sun
Cloud Nothings - Darkend Rings
Surfer Blood - Six Flags in F or G
Jens Lekman - What's That Perfume That You Wear?
Spoon - Shotgun
Brand New - 137
Temples - Mystery of Pop
Car Seat Headrest - Beach Life-In-Death
Pinegrove - Intrepid
Cornelius - If You're Here
Girlpool - It Gets More Blue
Kevin Morby - Beautiful Strangers

30 trax / Pitchfork: The 100 Best Songs of 2016 PnM.MiX

Selection from Pitchfork's The 100 Best Songs of 2016

In 2016, everything felt more intense. The most visible pop music was also some of the most political. The saddest songs came from people who passed away days after releasing them. Debut singles from some of the most anticipated releases sounded broken. One of the best songs of the year received its studio debut 15 years after a live version was released. Insanely catchy, meme-driven hits reached new levels of ubiquity. This is our attempt to make some sense of it all. As voted by our staff and contributors, here’s our list of the 100 Best Songs of 2016.

Leonard Cohen - You Want It Darker 4:44
But from the opening seconds of “You Want It Darker,” the title track of his forthcoming album, the synagogue choir that animates Cohen’s new single seems to know that this tune won’t be turned into a heavenly petition quite so easily. The bass groove that accompanies the world-weary chanting is too brisk to be mistaken for a profound elegy. Cohen’s wizened voice and sharp lyrics aren’t in the business of uplift, either. The narrator’s gaze at mortality here is a welcoming one: “I’m ready, my Lord.”

Radiohead - Daydreaming 6:24
...It should not be surprising then, in “Daydreaming,” a gorgeous ballad released to coincide with their long-awaited album announcement, how little actually happens. There’s a simple, sad piano motif; some spooky backmasked vocals; and, of course, Thom Yorke’s devastated wheeze floating above it all like an omniscient narrator...

Bon Iver - 33 ‘GOD’ 3:33
...Among the songs that have been released from Bon Iver’s upcoming 22, A Million so far, the surfaces have been cool to the touch, alien, yet phantasmagoric with lush electronic sound. In “33 ‘GOD’,” Vernon has crafted a piece that lives within contradictory states of privacy and open-hearted bombast...

David Bowie - Lazarus 6:22
...There is no resurrection in “Lazarus.” The song arrives as a moment of tension: a lumbering melody tugged along by mournful saxophones and guitars that sound like heavy doors slamming shut. In it, our narrator finds himself in danger. He drops his cellphone and heads to New York City, desperation never too far behind. He has a fleeting vision of himself in the not-so-distant future: “I’ll be free, just like that bluebird.” After a chaotic squall—the kind of wild, jutting rhythm that Bowie used to ride toward the heavens—things abruptly fade, giving the song an eerie, elliptical end...

Esperanza Spalding - Earth to Heaven 3:49
This latter quality manifests beautifully into sounds reminiscent of mid-‘70s Joni Mitchell and Steely Dan, particularly in the rhythm section, on “Earth to Heaven.” But it’s Spalding’s view of faith's uncertainty and morality's virtue that makes the song her own. There’s a playful push and pull vocally that mimics her philosophical back and forth on matters of heaven and hell, bright flourishes underscoring weighty questions over man’s quest for salvation. In her most poetic verse, she sings of kings who “die ringed in gold” while “slaves die consoled,” surmising, “On the other side/ A meek’s reward/ Is better/ Like a pearly resort/ Except without a report from hell/ How on earth can you tell…”

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - I Need You 5:58
“I Need You” is the stirring core of the Bad Seeds’ devastating new album, Skeleton Tree. Here, Cave is at a loss for words. “Nothing really matters,” he repeats, leaning on the hard R of “matters,” as if to further pronounce the distinct lack of poetry in the phrase. The words bend and break the more he uses them; Cave continues saying more with less, the tenderness in his voice filling all the negative space. “Nothing really matters when the one you love is gone,” he sings at one point, honing in on the song’s gravitational pull: the void left when our love is no longer directed at a living thing but rather at a memory. Though just a moment later, Cave subverts that notion as well: “We love the ones we can/Because nothing really matters.”

Radiohead - True Love Waits 4:43
...Gone are Yorke’s vehemently strummed chords, replaced by a duo of pianos that reinterpret the melody in a meandering, nearly polyrhythmic fashion. Whether purposeful or not, this new slowed-down, swirling direction speaks to our sense that an older, wiser man is singing “True Love Waits.” Perhaps he’s lost a little of his fight, or he knows now that the youthful plea that typically accompanies an earnest acoustic guitar line is not how one wins a battle of the heart with this much history. This doesn’t suggest that the song’s narrator means it any less; I almost believe him more now that he seems resigned to haunting the afterlife, eternally longing for the one who didn’t care to weather the storm together...

David Bowie - I Can't Give Everything Away 5:47
It was the shortest Bowie or his followers ever reveled in one of his mysteries; two days after Blackstar’s release, he passed away. And so we learned that this beguiling, openhearted performer had created a gracious farewell with his final album, and particularly this song—the last this shepherd of the fringes would ever sing to his flock. It’s a gentle confirmation of what we knew: that he still had worlds within him, and that he would never have time to express them all. Because every time the song ends, Bowie is gone again.

Cass McCombs - Bum Bum Bum 5:00
...But “Bum Bum Bum,” from his just-out album Mangy Love—another opening track, another point of surpassing language—could be a new McCombs go-to. His current band helps epitomize the low-key, lived-in luxuriousness of his sound, with neatly polished electric guitars and burbling organ streaked here by an occasional zap of synth, while the cryptic singer who once proclaimed that “pain and love are the same thing” manages to sound simultaneously laid-back and seized with logorrhea. Syllables collide as McComb somehow ever so calmly issues prophecies about topics gleaming with grim sociopolitical intent: rivers of blood congealing, “whitebread artists,” letters to Congress, the Ku Klux Klan...

Savages - Adore 5:03
..."Adore" creaks like a colossal ship, and spends most of its first three minutes pooling in dark circles; it's closer to post-rock than any of Savages' prior frenzied assaults. The spartan sound offers a chance to see the four-piece's stirring dynamic as if through a microscope, as Gemma Thompson's guitar, veering between tremulous and stormy, creeps around Ayşe Hassan's funereal bass like algae on an anchor. Thompson's instrument rises to a dirge in the choruses, where Beth's tone turns triumphant and operatic—bringing an unexpected Queen influence to Adore Life, and underscoring the raised fist on its cover—only for it to all fall away again....

PJ Harvey - The Wheel 5:38
...The first song to emerge from her long-awaited ninth LP might illuminate the intention. In "The Wheel," some 28,000 children have disappeared, and all we do is watch. We see them play and die violent deaths, witness their public memorial, and "watch them fade out," as Harvey sings over 20 times at the end. The figure has no attribution: a crass search of "28,000 children disappear" brings up figures pertaining to gun crime, child street labor in Kabul, or the number of NATO troops initially sent to Kosovo in the late 1990s. The wheel turns and one tragedy swiftly replaces another, seizing air-time and attention...

Car Seat Headrest - Fill in the Blank 4:04
...Toledo’s first lines cut straight to the heart of the matter: his frustration with himself and the world around him. You can practically hear an apathetic eye roll in his voice as he dryly explains, “If I were split in two I would just take my own fists/ So I could beat up the rest of me.” Others tell him he has “no right to be depressed,” that he manifests his own unhappiness with unjustified world-weariness. After yelping his way through a full cycle of resistance, realization, and rejection, Toledo howls out “I’ve got a right to be depressed!” amid a rush of driving guitars and banging percussion. You might not believe in yourself by the end of “Fill in the Blank,” but you will certainly believe in Car Seat Headrest...

Pinegrove - Old Friends 3:27
...Pinegrove’s lineup shifts depending on time and place, but frontman Evan Stephens Hall remains at its core. "Old Friends" finds him dipping in and out of his head, his footsteps breaking up "solipsistic moods." Led by a lumbering bass offset by the faint twang of a banjo, "Old Friends" evokes early Wilco, post-Uncle Tupelo, with an emotional directness. Over sprawling electric guitar, Hall reflects, "I knew it when I saw it/ So I did just what I wanted… I knew happiness when I saw it." Pinegrove straddle a fine line between country revival and sunshine pop, between melancholy and optimism, but their focus is strong: a sweeping heart...

Frankie Cosmos - On the Lips 1:49
...“On the Lips” finds Kline believing in something as illogical as a David Blaine stunt: love. “Why would I kiss ya?/ If I could kiss ya?” she wonders, questioning the existential purpose of touching lips. As usual, the songwriter instinctually deflates her big ideas, sounding both over it and into it all at once. A grand lyric like “sometimes I cry cause I know I’ll never have all the answers” is not played to dramatic effect with strings and swells. It is stated plainly, accompanied by simple strums and the faintest hint of heavenly synth, and followed by a line about the modest woe of New York City subway transfers. For Kline, the prospect of an underground kiss and the mysteries of the universe belong in the same breath. As they should...

Cate Le Bon - Wonderful 2:36
...It's an anxious caper, all twangy guitar and skittish marimba, where Le Bon grasps at memories and tropes that remind her of a failing romance—red letterboxes, bad television, 10 pin bowling—only for the pace to lurch and stall when she confronts the extent of her scrambled senses. "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful…" she muses, sounding distracted and adrift as a saxophone unleashes an ominous squall. Perhaps Le Bon's knack for precision isn't so far in the past: It's easy to make music that sounds chaotic, but rare to capture the sense of disintegrating stability as acutely as she has here...

Anderson .Paak - Am I Wrong 4:13
Dancing and self-consciousness make for one of the uneasiest combinations in music. But Anderson .Paak makes it work on “Am I Wrong” by sneaking it in under the cover of a supremely self-assured performance, shooting off about free time being precious and social effort not going to waste. As far as deflections go, Schoolboy Q playing retro-disco “Love Boat” guest star is a major one; you'd be excused for thinking it's the heart of the track, all no-worries party liberation. And that electric-piano glow sparks daydreams of unheard circa-In Our Lifetime Marvin Gaye/Donald Byrd collaborations, but still pulses like it’s too wavy for ’80. ..

Kendrick Lamar - untitled 02 | 06.23.2014. 4:18
..."Untitled 2" feels of a piece with To Pimp a Butterfly: It exists in the same interior world, where the lights are low and we can’t always tell up from down. Success, fast money, lost time, God, drank, women, self-love—the images chase themselves through "Untitled 2" with dream logic. The music, meanwhile, pushes determinedly further into jazz and away from commercial rap...

A Tribe Called Quest - We the People... 2:52
...Tribe are political rappers the way New Yorkers are political—matter-of-factly, and between and among the business of living. They love to talk, but they don’t love to hear themselves talk, a minor but massive distinction. “All you Black folks, you must go/All you Mexicans, you must go/And all you poor folks, you must go/Muslims and gays, boy we hate your ways,” chants Q-Tip sadly in the chorus, not sounding like a protester as much as someone on the neighborhood corner, repeating what they can’t believe they’re hearing...

Solange - Don’t Touch My Hair [ft. Sampha] 4:17
...Having your hair touched may seem like a microaggression to some, especially in proximity with the other mentioned gestures. But for black people, and black women in particular, it is rooted in the same ideology that treats black as ‘other’ or worse—as lesser. It is an attack often launched subconsciously, an act that alienates and also devalues black space. Plus, it’s just plain rude. Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair” can be read as an explicit rejection of this behavior, as a simple establishment of boundaries, or as a powerful pledge of personal identity...

Blood Orange - E.V.P. 5:43
...Dev Hynes might as well be a poster child for the city as far this goes. The precision with which he renders his adopted home is one of the many things that makes Freetown Sound so remarkable. If the rest of Freetown Sound explores New York’s alleyways, clubs, and parks, album centerpiece “E.V.P” looks out from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. On it, he flashes his uncanny ability to make disparate elements gel. “E.V.P”’s hook is among his catchiest—and yet, were it to formally break out, it would be one of the most melancholic choruses on pop radio...

Moses Sumney - Lonely World 4:47
...At first, “Lonely World” seems to fit this pattern. There are the strums, the echo, the hesitant ache. “And the sound of the void flows through your body undestroyed,” he muses, as if he’s the last astronaut looking back at an imploding earth. But suddenly, he’s no longer alone. A bass drum starts to thump on time. Hi-hats flare and flutter. Pointillistic synths and guitars whirl. Thundercat’s bass pushes ahead. Then Sumney’s voice refracts into an endless mirror and starts to chant the word “lonely,” making it sound anything but. Everything crests...

Whitney - No Woman 3:57
Max Kakacek and Julian Ehrlich, both formerly of Smith Westerns, left Chicago last year and decamped in L.A. to record their debut as Whitney, a sly retro outfit they started after their old band dissolved. Their lead single, “No Woman,” is a gooey and aching country ballad that meditates on one of dad rock’s most hallowed themes: the melancholy of crossing city limits to escape everything about your old life and old loves. Ehrlich, who's also done time in Unknown Mortal Orchestra, sings in an unvarnished falsetto that carries this drifting song. The reticent piano, trumpet, and strummed guitar begs you to close your eyes and let Ehrlich sadly whisk you away: "I left drinkin' on the city train to spend some time on the road/ Then one morning I woke up in L.A."...

Noname - Yesterday 3:09
Noname is here to remind us of Chicago’s most lasting hip-hop tradition, one that provides a throughline from Chance to Kanye to Common to No I.D., leading all the way back to the city’s history as an incubator for jazz and soul. Her debut mixtape, Telephone, hearkens back to these roots; its sound is warm and sepia-toned. Fittingly, the album’s opening number, “Yesterday,” is all about remembrance. Noname memorializes a departed grandmother and brother, longs for her own childhood, and wonders who will remember her when she’s gone...

Parquet Courts - Human Performance 4:15
Most of Parquet Courts' songs are about some kind of disconnect: between expectation and reality, social pressures and priorities. But seldom have we heard them shoot so directly at heartbreak, every other songwriter's favorite rupture. The title track of their forthcoming album finds Andrew Savage in the wake of a break-up, wracked with self-doubt. He's singing as we've never heard him before, reeling in his usual jut-jawed bark and coming out with a surprising, blunted croon that recalls Orange Juice's Edwyn Collins. Its art brut quality makes the unusually childlike, simple rhymes of "Human Performance" feel all the more canny and affecting...

Porches - Be Apart 3:05
...As Porches, New York's Aaron Maine typically writes from the perspective of a sordid loner. Right on cue, the hook from "Be Apart," off his upcoming LP Pool, goes, "I want to be apart of it all." It's very much in character, and it subdues any speculation that his Domino debut might be a starmaking endeavor. Thematically, "Be Apart" seems to contradict its form—a synth pop song mixed by Chris Coady (Tobias Jesso Jr., Beach House, Future Islands) in L.A.—but it's still 2-D, nearly monophonic. This is a mockup of dance music made on Mario Paint for people whose dance moves have as much rhythm and range of motion as those of Toad...

Maxwell - 1990x 4:44
...As “1990x” quietly peaks, the music's slow-burn aligns with the pointed lyrics. “We will climax with reason cause we’re grown and we own it,” Maxwell croons.  On “1990x,” he yearns not for the spark of initial romance so much as the day-to-day familiarity of something that, with patience and commitment, lasts. And in the final minutes of the song, it becomes apparent that Maxwell is singing not of a steady love he has, but rather, about a steady love that he wants. Ultimately, “1990x” is less about a single moment than a series of repeated ones—which make for the most perfect moment of all...

Olga Bell - Randomness 3:26
...But one of the things that makes "Randomness" so charming is the way it deviates from its inspirations. Where '90s dance-pop was sleek and efficient, "Randomness" is a little bit clunky: Its piano-house chords sound dissonant and a little drunk here, and the sawtooth bass melody is just a hair more boisterous than is called for—particularly when matched with Bell's own quiet, conspiratorial coo, and the silvery trance arpeggios that bring to mind the Knife's Silent Shout. The song sounds a little like a tribute to early '90s dance-pop written by someone who hasn't actually heard those songs in a long time—like a copy based on the memory of a memory. It's a strange, fanciful kind of mutant pop, with the most fortuitous kind of randomness built right into the equation...

Deakin - Golden Chords 6:29
...It’s a record not without controversy, creative blocks, and self-imposed hardships. Like most artists finding both themselves and their footing, one suspects that Dibb was getting in his own way. “Golden Chords,” though, is disarming in its honesty and beauty, his voice finally heard away from his more famous band. While the backdrop sounds like field recordings from his travels in Africa from many years back, there’s an intimacy here that’s immediate. Dibb seems to be looking at his own reflection: “You’re scattered ever lonely buddy but so full love/ Please stop repeating your terror you choose what you see/ It’s always 'what if?' and 'why not?'/ Man you gotta just be.”

Aphex Twin - CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum] 5:53
...The title of his latest, Cheetah, turned out to be a wonky pun, one that “CHEETAHT2 [Ld spectrum]” masterfully delivers from the start. This lumbering creature won’t chase down any antelopes; the Cheetah in question instead is a retro synth with a reputation for difficulty, and the synthesizers here have an appropriately queasy, mutant feel. The result, though, works seriously well, strutting along in a vaguely unwholesome way that surprisingly evokes not only ’80s goth-pop but also a genre that itself began as a joke: chillwave, y’all? Even when Aphex Twin is at his most restrained, he can’t seem to restrain himself...

Huerco S. - Promises of Fertility 6:55
...It's easy to imagine “Promises of Fertility” playing during the fashion exhibit instead of Eno, or in those films and commercials. The pieces share a similar quality of beautiful sadness, the type of music that is appropriate to play at a wedding or a funeral. Does that say more about the music, or about those emotions themselves? How can simply feeling deeply be represented by one type of sound? What power do long tones contain? In the hands of most musicians, these ideas are about as boring as they sound, which is why so many people keep reusing Eno's music. Hopefully they'll find Huerco S soon...