#i just think it's more fun than a sonically cohesive album or whatever she used to go on about sometimes

[autumnrory]

sometimes i am so thankful when an album has emotional whiplash bc i’ll be emotional and then a bop starts playing and it’s like okay this will get me to stop crying aka just now in the car going from matilda to cinema

[onestowatch]

Your Grandparents Manifest a Cinematic, Soulful Debut Album With ‘Thru My Window’  [Q&A]

Photo: Jordan Perez

Inspired by everything from ‘90s boom bap artists like Digable Planets and the Pharcyde to modern funk legends like Outkast and D'Angelo, Your Grandparents have quickly proven themselves to be their generations' torchbearers for the psychedelic soul movement. 

Using a variety of recording techniques to get the desired effect for their genre-blending debut album Thru My Window, the group credits their uniquely cohesive sound to their years-long friendship, which began in their early teens. With their lush grooves, breezy, clear vocals, a sonic aesthetic built on unwavering authenticity, and of course, a deep love for their roots and deep musical traditions passed down from their grandparents, Your Grandparents embodies what it means to be an artist to watch.

Ones To Watch had a chance to talk with the trio, comprised of DaCosta (vocals), Jean Carter (vocals), and Cole, aka ghettoblasterman (producer), to discuss their inspirations and the long days and nights that went into creating their debut album.

When you last spoke to Ones To Watch, it was for the release of your single "So Damn Fly," and now, a year later, here we are talking about the release of your debut album, Thru My Window. How are you all feeling, and what have you learned about yourselves in this last year through the album-making process?

DaCosta: From a personal outlook, I've learned that making music is heavily dependent on my mood, or just how I'm feeling and what's going on in my personal life. When things are a little too stagnant, it's a little harder to write. On the other hand, when things are flowing, and life is being lived, it's easy fuel. It's good fuel. It doesn't burn too quickly.

GBM: I've learned that no idea is too wild. It's usually less wild than I think it is.

Jean: Yeah, it's better to start at the extreme and take away. I realized I feel like a lot of artists feel like they have to put themselves through turmoil or allow certain situations to write meaningful things. Like it's not necessarily good music, but it's something that means a lot to them. I think I realized that that's not the case and inspiration comes in many different forms. It could be a person or something completely random and inanimate that makes you feel something.

What were some of those inspirations?

Jean: Definitely films.

GBM: A lot of films!

Jean: Yeah, we're all pretty big film people. We do all our own videos pretty much, and it just comes from this love of film that we've had that got nurtured in high school. We were blessed enough to have a really dope film program that Sony funded and stuff, and so we got like an impromptu film education before we graduated. So by the time we graduated, we knew how to get our own projects done without reaching out to someone else and then taxing us because they want to hire their friends and all that stuff. So because of that, we had complete creative control. I've also been watching a lot of Korean movies lately. Not during the album—wait, actually, during the album, there were a lot of old kung fu movies and blaxploitation movies from, like, the ‘70s. Also, my friend got me this Curtis Mayfield record, and "So Damn Fly" is definitely heavily influenced by that whole record.

GBM: I feel like the ‘70s in general, the ‘60s and ‘70s, definitely had a big inspiration on the aesthetic and the kind of sound we were going after. Especially with "So Damn Fly" and "Tomorrow" and those kinds of songs.

Do you feel like this album has a linear story the same way a film does, or do you feel like it's more of an anthology of the band's personal experiences?

GBM: It's kind of a mix of both.

Jean: Yeah, it started off as an anthology, and then we pieced together the story, which was largely done by Cole by sitting there and being like, “Hmmm.”

DaCosta: Yeah, it was a lot of Cole dissecting the words and putting them on the tracks.

Jean: When we're writing the words and trying to be free-flowing and expressive and stuff, we're not fully conscious of a bigger picture situation. Instead, Cole is sitting there producing everything and putting in the music and being just more of a listener than anyone else could. So he has the context, and he could find a story that we didn't know we were doing together with our three minds and in our three different lives.

GBM: It's like a puzzle almost, because I'll be sitting there at like 2 a.m. in my bed, listening to the songs, and I'm like, "Ok, Kyle said, that in the hook, so this song has to go before that," and so on and so forth. It's like a storyboard kinda.

Right, to keep the record's "plot" cohesive and self-referential.

GBM: Another big consideration was playlists. I love making playlists, and I know Kyle loves making playlists, too, so it needed to flow. It just has to flow. We didn't want songs that juxtapose each other or have opposite vibes be back to back.

DaCosta: Yeah, I think we even switched around the playlist a couple of times before we had it set in stone.

GBM: There were like fourteen songs originally, and then we got talked down to ten.

Jean: Fourteen tracks woulda went crazy!

I'm sure fans would love a deluxe version of the album at some point! So what were some of the rough draft ideas before you set these ten tracks in stone?

Jean: There were more modern-sounding tracks. The more time we spent on a project, and this being our debut, we wanted to be true to the name. We wanted to be true to the artistry that had gotten us to this point.

DaCosta: There were a couple of heavier hip-hop tracks there too.

Jean: We had been doing that, and a lot of people haven't even heard those because they're like heavy hip-hop stuff from when we were in high school and like early college.

Were there any tracks on the record that challenged you?

Jean: "Intoxicated" challenged me. I had a whole different verse. The conception of that song—I was just venting about whatever I was going through at the time, and one of my homies was like, "It's not sexy enough!" So I was just like, "What? No! I've done sexy stuff on all the other songs. Just let me vent!" So I tried another verse, and we ended up going with that one instead.

DaCosta: I mean, it worked out great though...

Jean: I mean, yeah, it sits nicely on the song, and now I have a verse for something else one day when it's time for it.

GBM: Yeah, that song went from being all of ours and everyone on our team's favorite song to our least favorite song. I will say that recording the instruments for the album was fun, but there were definitely some long hours. We had a drummer and bassist come through, and they played for like twelve hours straight doing all the songs. So the songs that have live drums on them were all done in that one day, and they even did songs we recorded that didn't make it on the final record. I think we started at 1 p.m. and we ended at 1 a.m. It was crazy.

What song are you most excited for people to hear when the album drops?

Jean: I think people are gonna like "Comfortable" a lot. Honestly, I haven't listened to the record in a while because it's existed in our world for a minute. We had just posted the visuals for that song today, and I was feelin it.

DaCosta: I think people are gonna really like "Digest." For me, it gives me that "it" factor.

GBM: I think "Red Room." It's my personal favorite and one of the more fun ones to me. It's just a good time!

You mentioned earlier that you try to maintain creative control when making your music videos and coming up with concepts for visualizers. What is your creative process like?

DaCosta: We definitely sit down, and we go through everything from storyboard to shotlist and just take and grab inspiration from all over the place. For "So Damn Fly," there was that That 70's Show shot where they're all sitting around the table, and it's spinning. So there are all types of really cool influences, and we just try to use those and make everything unique to us.

GBM: I think we kind of go through a three-step verification. The idea has to go through all three of us before it becomes something else or moves on to actually being tested out or put into picture. So that kind of attributes to the very solid identity we aim for.

It sounds like that impromptu film education you mentioned earlier has really set you up for success in creating your videos.

Jean: Yeah. My high school film teacher, Miss Butler, I took that class for two years, and then when I couldn't take it anymore, I became a TA. So then I took the after-school class, and I just spent hella hours pretty much ruining the way I enjoyed cinema and teaching myself like—she would have us look and watch these classic movies and be like, this is what they did wrong.

Can you give me an example of a classic film you would watch and critique?

Jean: The first one that comes to mind is Rear Window. I watched it a few times, just because I had taken the class a couple of times. She talked about how the set that they made and the world that they created, they had full control over. Just seeing older films and how simple things were a lot more complicated then. Like you can't just delete a take and wipe your card. Everything had to be so planned out and so intentional. You gotta do shit on purpose. It's just a lot of thinking and planning, and sometimes, I feel like it's more challenging to have more people involved in a film production sometimes because of the growing degrees of communication. With the small groups that we usually keep, everyone's on the same page as us. All of us took this same class, so we all have a similar workflow.

DaCosta: Yeah, our organization when it comes to films, we're all pretty much on the same page. You know, with what was going to happen, who's doing what, who's in charge of what, etc.

Jean: And pre-production is the biggest thing and finding the right team because we can't shoot it and be in it. Although Cole can somehow!

GBM: I'm in one scene, and I'm like, "I'm just gonna kill this scene right now, and then I'm gonna jump back." That's why I'm only in the last scene.

Because he's doing everything else!

Jean: Yeah! Then as soon as the scene cuts, it's like, I go back to directing people, and Kyle goes back to making sure we got the next shot set up.

GBM: There were only seven people on set.

DaCosta: And four out of seven were crew members

GBM: Yeah, the DP was the only person that wasn't actually a casted character. Everybody else is like multitasking.

You'll be making your first-ever festival appearance at Day N Vegas in November. How are y'all feeling about it? 

GBM: It feels incredible!

DaCosta: I'm so so excited!

Jean: If I get excited, I get nervous. So I just aim to be focused, or I don't think about it at all.

After the release of Thru My Window, what are some long-term or short-term goals y'all are manifesting?

Jean: I think for the next album, I want it to get Best Rap Album. We went R&B on this one, but nobody knows the way that we—like yes, we rap on it, but nobody knows our actual rap potential. So I feel like that's something that needs to be lived out on the next project. It's been a minute since we were rapping, bro. There are cool people out here doing the rap thing right now, but not many people have impressed me.

GBM: I kind of want this album to open up the door to doing a lot of travel. When we got back from Paris in 2019, what we experienced during that summer gave us fuel to start this project. So I feel like if we just keep that kind of like tradition going, we just travel somewhere and just make stuff, I think it'll never get steered wrong.

DaCosta: I think I want the album to just open up doors in general. I know it's kind of a broad thing, but like, we're so diverse, and between the three of us, we can do literally anything I think in the world if we put our minds to it, and we kind of plan on doing everything that we want to do. So, I kind of want this album to open the door just so that we can you can start striding towards whatever, whether it's directing movies and videos and fucking scoring—

Jean: Or directing other people's videos!

DaCosta: Yeah, all types of shit.

Thru My Window is available everywhere you can stream it. 

[shadyb00ts]

A Chromatica Review

So I never really use Tumblr, but when I do go on here, it’s pretty much to review something long-form. As you can tell from my profile picture here, and from my glowing review of ARTPOP from 7 years ago, I am and have always been a Gaga stan. Just read the melodramatic first paragraph of my ARTPOP review and you’ll get the gist of how much I idolize this woman. Well, idolized. Past tense.

That’s not to say I suddenly hate Gaga–I’m still going to follow her career and listen to whatever she puts out. There have just been several factors this past year that have changed my perspective on how I view her, this album being one of those factors. But I’ll get to those later. First I just need to lay out all my issues with this album.

Yes, this is going to be that type of review, so if you’re a fellow Gaga stan that isn’t able to criticize her work, this probably isn’t for you. Otherwise please read to the end if you can, because this is honestly about more than just the album.

Issue #1: The Mismatch Between Music & Aesthetic

When the cover of the album came out, I was so gagged. Like, just look at it! It’s striking, and Gaga has rarely ever disappointed me when it came to visuals. Actually, I can’t even think of any visual choices she made in previous eras that disappointed me. Even in the Joanne era, the pink cowboy hat became iconic and all of her aesthetic choices fit with the overall vibe of that album cycle.

So naturally, when she revealed to us the new visual direction she was taking for Chromatica, I assumed it would give us some insight into how the music would sound. The aesthetic of this era always gave me grungy cyberpunk and heavy machinery tease. When I look at the album cover for example, I can hear a song produced by SOPHIE in my head, the clink-clank queen herself. (There were rumors that Gaga was going to or did work with SOPHIE but that was never confirmed, unfortunately for us.)

For those unfamiliar with SOPHIE, here’s Ponyboy, which was most recently used in the ad campaign for Beyoncé’s Ivy Park clothing line.

That was the kind of production I was more or less expecting when taking the visuals into account; dark, metallic, basically similar to ARTPOP’s production (to be honest ARTPOP sonically fits better with the Chromatica aesthetic; think about it). 

But what did we get? Light, garden variety dance pop, a stark contrast to what the album cover and the promo images teased us with.

In the album, we get these orchestral interludes that are beautiful but don't really mesh that well with the actual tracks. The songs don't have any orchestral elements by themselves, so the interludes felt a bit misplaced to me. I wish they'd incorporated more of that into the individual songs, so that there could be an orchestral through-line to give more cohesion, like what Ariana did in her album positions by using strings. However I will say, the transition from Chromatica II into 911 remains unmatched.

I get that the album is supposed to sound happy, that it was her returning to her “dance pop roots” and singing about serious topics like mental health over happy-sounding beats, because it’s supposed to reflect her current mental state. I get all that. But if that was the case, I think she should’ve gone with a different visual direction to match. Personally I wish she went a different direction musically instead, but even if it was just the other way around and she changed the aesthetic of this era, my opinion of the album would probably improve slightly, cause at least there would be cohesion between the visuals and the sonics.

I look at that album cover, and promo images like the one below, and then I listen to songs like Fun Tonight or Plastic Doll for example, and there’s a noticeable dissonance there. 

You might be thinking “why are you so hard on her for this?” and I guess it’s because I’ve always held Gaga to a high standard when it comes to how she links those two elements. Think of every era she’s had in the past, and you remember how the visuals always just worked with their respective albums.

And that’s before I’ve even talked about the videos. Oh lord, the videos.

Issue #2: The Videos Are Lackluster (Except For 911)

It started with Stupid Love, the lead single. I had mixed feelings about that song in the beginning, but because I was so thirsty for new music from Gaga at the time, I played that song like hell when it leaked and it was on rotation for a good while. But when Gaga premiered the Stupid Love video, I’m not going to lie; I really didn’t like it.

The whole “shot entirely on iPhone” schtick really did the video a disservice. I’m sorry but it had to be said. If I imagined the video with a higher budget and more of a plotline as opposed to just being a dance video, I think it could’ve worked a lot better and been a decent introduction to not only Chromatica the album, but this fictional world/planet that she’s created. Which by the way, she didn’t really deliver in that regard either. 

The concept of Chromatica being a fictional world could have been expanded on further; she could’ve showcased all of the different factions (I know they were called “tribes” at first but that’s appropriative so I’ll call them factions) and perhaps had an overarching storyline about how these factions are at war, and it’s Gaga’s job as one of the “Kindness Punks”, as she calls it, to bring everyone together for a rave.

This is why I will always say it: Chromatica needed to be a visual album. Just imagine the storyline I mentioned just now being turned into a full-length feature, and now imagine the album’s orchestral intro playing as they’re essentially opening the gates to Chromatica and Gaga discovers this world for the first time, and then it goes into the first song Alice where she’s meeting all the factions and getting acclimated to her surroundings.

Honestly I could go on and on cause I have thought about this for SO LONG now and I’ll never shut up about it. It’s just such a missed opportunity cause the concept was just begging for a visual album. Anyway sorry for my tangent: back to the Stupid Love video.

The whole “shot on iPhone” gimmick really was unfortunate. Like she really ruined the quality of a music video because she wanted that Apple check??? Come on, Gaga, there could’ve been some other way to secure that check.

And then there was the Rain On Me video, which definitely have visuals that are a massive improvement from Stupid Love because it was professionally shot and cinematic. But even that was another purely dance video with not much in the way of storyline. Not that storyline is always required for music videos, but I think specifically when it comes to Chromatica, not having storylines in the M/Vs does a disservice to the overall concept.

I guess my issue with these two music videos, but mostly Stupid Love, is that Gaga isn't fully utilizing her COIN. Like she's successful enough to the point where she has budgets for these videos and can go all out, but doesn't. She has the capacity for extremely high production value, but up until 911, the last video she did that had that level of extraness was G.U.Y. I miss the days when her music videos were an event. I still remember where I was and what I was doing the exact moment the Telephone video came out. That's impact.

Taylor Swift I think is somebody who really knows how to blow her budget on a video. Look What You Made Me Do may have been a terrible song, but I always thought the video was sickening.

Anyway, I have no notes on 911. She's a masterpiece. If there was a music video category at the Oscars, I'd be campaigning for it right now.

Issue #3: Any Other Girly Can Do This

The thing I always loved the most about Gaga's music was that nobody was doing it like her. Everything she put out always felt like it was distinctly hers and hers alone, it's unmistakable. Even in Joanne, despite that album being a major departure from what she normally did.

I know Joanne is a very polarizing album, even for Little Monsters, but personally I've always loved it. Joanne was an album that I always knew she would make and I thought was essential to her career and body of work. Despite her straying away from pop for a more earthy, grass roots sound, it still sounded very much like her music. Even from the first track, Diamond Heart, her DNA is all over that.

It's difficult to explain what exactly I mean when I say there's a certain signature "Gaga-ness" or that she has a very specific DNA injected into her songs. If you've been a fan of hers for a long time or followed her career, you probably understand what I'm referring to. It's the way she laughs maniacally in the beginning of ARTPOP on Aura, how she says "I don't speak German but I can if you like, OW!" and proceeds to recite broken German on Scheiße, how she invented the phrase "disco stick", literally the ENTIRETY of The Fame Monster.

These examples probably give you the gist of what I'm trying to convey. Gaga is fucking weird. She has always been fucking weird and I love that so much about her. And her brand of weirdness was so specific that if any of the other pop girls tried to do what she did, it would have been cringey as hell. To me, the most disappointing thing of all with this album was that this weirdness that was so uniquely hers was missing.

It's there in brief moments, in tracks like Sour Candy, 911 and Babylon, but most of the album doesn't really sound like her music. It sounds like songs that she wrote for other people, like her old unreleased stuff. OG Little Monsters probably remember songs like Second Time Around and No Way. These were leaked unreleased songs that Gaga had written for other artists, and even though they were absolute bops, they didn't sound like her. They weren't supposed to.

A similar feeling I had was when her song The Cure came out a few years ago. I genuinely thought that was something she wrote for someone else, cause even though it was a solid pop song, it absolutely had zero Gaga-ness and any current pop girl could sing it. This pretty much encapsulates how I feel about the majority of Chromatica.

I was gonna say it sounded like songs that were written for Ally, her Star is Born character, but I think even those pop songs from the soundtrack sounded more Gaga than Chromatica does. 💀 I can easily imagine Hair Body Face being on The Fame.

Final Thoughts

It's funny that the last review I had posted on here before this was my review of Kingdom Hearts III. The Kingdom Hearts game series is something that's very near and dear to my heart, and I waited a wholeass decade for the third game to come out. And then it did, and I was so disappointed.

So you know what happened after that? What helped me deal with my disappointment of that game was my anticipation for Chromatica, or at the time it was still called LG6. I had no idea I would feel the same exact way about this album the way I do about KH3. Now when I think of both of these things, I'm mostly frustrated by all of the potential and the missed opportunities, but I also look at them with a certain fondness. I had fun playing KH3, and I also had fun listening to Chromatica, despite both of them disappointing me overall.

In the beginning of this review I said that there were certain factors that have stopped me from idealizing Gaga too much. Firstly it's because I'm much older now, and secondly it's due to the sheer state of the world this past year. The pandemic really precipitated the fall of celebrity culture, and all of that made me really examine how putting someone on such a high pedestal can be damaging in the long run.

Gaga is a human being and I haven't agreed with everything she's done, particularly how she handled the whole R. Kelly situation back in 2013. And also the simple fact that she's a white woman, we know how a lot of the time they can't help but show their asses and are bound to disappoint us in some way. I'm forever grateful for her artistry and how she saved my life when I was a suicidal little eighth grader, but I'm also going to hold her accountable for any of her mistakes, and I'd be ready to stop supporting her entirely if anything she does ever goes too far.

Now I stan artists for fun. It's not healthy to idolize them to the point of revering them. I mean, I like to make jokes like that about Beyoncé, like "no way on Beyoncé's green earth", etc. But even she is just a person that we shouldn't deify for real.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Chromatica being a lackluster album and era ended up being a good thing, because it helped me grow out of idolizing celebrities too intensely. Chromatica was pretty much the best disappointment I've ever listened to.

If you've read all the way to the end, thank you! Writing this was very therapeutic but also stressful; this is a second draft cause Tumblr fucked up my first post. 😭

Anyway, SAWAYAMA & Ungodly Hour are albums of the year. Argue with the wall.

[harryseyebrows]

Fine Line - Track-by-track rating

I’m in the mood to start shit. So here it is. My comprehensive album rating list. Rating subcategories should be self-explanatory, but I’m judging based on lyrics, how listen-able the song is overall, how interesting it is in terms of JUST sound, and crafting/production/my perceived idea of how well done the entire song is in terms of all the elements combined. Think about the effort that Liam put into his album vs. the effort Harry put into SOTT. What was written and created with intent and what was created maybe more for the sake of creating. Then, I did ACTUAL MATH and came up with an overall score out of ten. Read with caution and yell at me if you feel the need.

Golden:

Lyrics - 7/10 

“I know that you’re scared because I’m so open” is fantastic and it’s great to see him literally being more open with his songwriting, but he loses some points for the general repetitive nature and more common turns of phrase.  

General listen-ability - 10/10

It’s an easy song to listen to, whether you’re putting it on for background noise, listening while driving, or listening specifically with the intent of paying attention and enjoying.

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

The slower beginning and then the slam into the guitars and drums is great. It flows nicely and has a good pace/rhythm.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 34/40 = 8.5/10

Watermelon Sugar: 

Lyrics - 6/10 

Nothing particularly thrilling. It’s a generally fun song with some lyrics that are suggestive but not overtly so. Good to know that he’s enthusiastic about oral, but again, it’s not his finest lyrical work. 

General listen-ability - 8/10

Another more easy listening track. Good for any time. A fun, sexy little bop.

Sonic intrigue - 7/10

The horns and bass line save this song from otherwise being a bit lackluster in terms of production, and make it interesting in a subtle, understated way that’s very enjoyable.

Crafting - 8/10

Overall: 29/40 = 7.3/10 

Adore You:

Lyrics - 7/10

Kinda cliche and corny; “I get so lost inside your eyes”. Otherwise, very fun and leans heavily into a more pop lens. Makes up for it with “You don’t have to say you love me / You don’t have to say nothing / You don’t have to say you’re mine” and the “Oh honey”s.

General listen-ability - 10/10

I want to listen to this song all day every day. There has to be something in the soundwaves that’s brainwashing me. Can’t stop won’t stop.

Sonic intrigue - 9/10

At first glance (listen) it’s a very basic sort of pop song. But the more you listen, you realize that it’s rooted in a more funk-style guitar lick and utilizes synths in a way that doesn’t come off as too manufactured or ‘fake’. It’s layered; you find more and more complexity with each spin.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 35/40 = 8.8/10

Lights Up:

Lyrics - 8/10

The lyrical structure, if you look at it on paper, could easily be read as some type of poetry. The song opens with a question: ‘What do you mean?’ and then proceeds to offer fragments of sentences that aren’t necessarily connected, but somehow offer a cohesive picture — a message that’s still a little unclear but offers multiple interpretations in meaning. 

General listen-ability - 9/10 

It’s fun and boppy but also surprisingly mellow. For me personally, the tempo and bass mean that it can be hit or miss in terms of how/when I want to listen to it, but for the most part, I don’t skip it. This might also have to do with it being the first song we heard from him since HS1, and I might have overkilled it a bit.

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

It’s hard to not compare this song to his work on HS1, for the reasons above. HS1 was definitely more rock-oriented; more bare bones production and an ode to the more classic methods of music making ie singer, guitar, bass, and drums. Whereas with this song, it was essentially a complete 180 in style and production, with a little flair of R&B style music while maintaining his classic air of whimsy in both the lyrics and his less-frequently-used breathy head voice. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that it’s a Harry Styles song.

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10 

Cherry: 

Lyrics - 8/10

One of Harry’s many talents is his ability to project tone with the combination of how he sings/emotes with his voice with the lyrics he’s singing. This song is no exception. It’s a sadder, more melancholic song, where he’s expressing some less-than-pleasant feelings, and you’re not only getting that from the words he’s singing, but HOW he’s singing it. It allows the listening to feel and empathize. It’s something he’s very masterful at. (See: the opposite would be something like Adore You, which under the guise of a more upbeat song, the lyrics are actually kind of sad and grovel-y)

General listen-ability - 7/10 

I respect his artistic vision and the choice to include the voice note but as part of a general playlist, it can come off a little odd and out of place. Otherwise it’s very palatable. It just makes me sad, so I don’t often intentionally put it on to listen.

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

I liken this to a FTDT style song. Very raw. More singer-songwriter than pop. Some very lovely guitar playing and it’s nice hearing him sing in a register that’s been essentially neglected up until this album. But for the most part, I don’t think it’s his most interesting work. Very typical singer-songwriter guitar type song. 

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 30/40 = 7.5/10 

Falling: 

Lyrics - 7/10 

I enjoy and appreciate his honesty, and perhaps there’s something to be said about the lack of flowery turns of phrase, but I just don’t feel like this is his most clever work. Again, great to see him being so honest, but it sounds like the extended version of If I Could Fly. 

General listen-ability - 6/10 

I can’t allow this to randomly come on shuffle without putting myself at risk of a depressive spiral. That’s where he loses points. 

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

Every album has one, and this is it. The Basic Song. So widely palatable that it’s...boring. Shoot me, I know.

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 28/40 = 7/10

To Be So Lonely: 

Lyrics - 9/10 

Currently, with just HS1 and Fine Line under his belt, THIS song is his lyrical Magnum Opus. It’s honest. It showcases an intriguing narrative. It’s clever. It’s fun. It’s a little sad. This is Harry and his amalgamation of musical influences mixed up in a bowl, poured into a pan, and baked into a perfect cake with frosting flowers. 

General listen-ability - 8/10 

This is another one of those songs that you can have on in the background and it fits into whatever you’re doing, or you put it on specifically to scream ‘arrogant son of a bitch’ back at him. It’s versatile.

Sonic intrigue - 10/10 

The production on this song is clean but also a little rough around the edges, and I think it was done intentionally. You can hear the buzz of guitar and bass strings. There are peaks and troughs of volume. It has a sneaky little swinging beat that makes it impossible to not bop your head along with it. Again, it’s INTERESTING.

Crafting - 10/10 

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

She: 

Lyrics - 8/10 

I’m afraid to say anything negative about this song because I don’t want to be executed, but here goes. I think it offers a fun, interesting narrative on the first few listens. It’s a story; a little fantastical and sultry. But for me, it feels a bit like Woman 2.0

General listen-ability - 7/10

I have to be in the right mood to put it on specifically, so otherwise, it’s one that I won’t necessarily skip, but I prefer to have it on when I want to listen to slower music. Also kudos to Mitchell but the guitar wank at the end is just a little on the long side. 

Sonic intrigue - 8/10 

This is definitely a stylistic callback to the overall sound of HS1, and for that reason, I think it offers a nice bit of continuity. 

Crafting - 8/10 

Overall: 31/40 = 7.8/10 

Sunflower Vol. 6:

Lyrics - 9/10 

The story! The atmosphere! The pure, unbridled joy it offers! KISS IN THE KITCHEN LIKE IT’S A DANCEFLOOR!!!! I’m offended at how cute this song is. More men need to write songs like this.

General listen-ability - 9/10

This song instantly puts me in a happier mood. I don’t feel like a car ride is complete without listening to it at least once. It’s textural. I love it.

Sonic intrigue - 9/10 

The backwards audio in the beginning. The weird bass. The vocal layering. The nonsense ad libs at the end!!!! FUN!!!!

Crafting - 10/10

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

Canyon Moon: 

Lyrics - 8/10 

This song is deceptive — underneath the cheery, more jovial sound, it actually has some more echo-y melancholy notes — the ‘So hard to leave it / that’s what I always do’ and ‘I’m going home’s. It’s about reminiscing but still moving forward. Reflecting!! 

General listen-ability - 9/10 

Could easily fit in on a romcom soundtrack, and I mean that in the best way. 

Sonic intrigue - 7/10 

If I didn’t know that he specifically sought out Joni Mitchell’s dulcimers for this, it would feel just like any other upbeat guitar song, but I DO know his process behind it, so his score gets bumped a bit.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10

Treat People With Kindness: 

Lyrics - 7/10 

Ohhh Harry Styles. He just wants people to be nice to each other! And maybe be a utopian society cult leader. It’s okay. We love him anyway. This song is full of idealisms; perhaps it’s a toe-dip into social commentary. Perhaps it’s a reflection of his own life, on dealing with friendships and loss and the overall nature of being a person. Who knows! It’s a batshit extravaganza in the best way.

General listen-ability - 8/10 

If you can listen to this song without wanting to dance...you have a problem. 

Sonic intrigue - 9/10 

This song is all over the place but in a very thoughtful, cohesive way. It would not be the same if he sang the chorus; half of what makes it so charming is that he doesn’t, and instead, he sounds like some sort of unhinged ring-leader at the end, demanding ‘one more time’ and screaming. UNHINGED BUT MAKE IT JOYFUL.

Crafting - 9/10

Overall: 33/40 = 8.3/10

Fine Line: 

Lyrics - 9/10 

This song doesn’t have many lines, but the ones that do exist, are all purposeful and pack an incredible punch. It would be a disservice to him to try and pick a ‘best’ one, but ‘Put a price on emotion / I’m looking for something to buy’ and ‘my hand’s at risk / I’ll fold’ are up there as two of my favorite things he’s ever written. The repetitiveness of ‘we’ll be a fine line’ can be a little grating, but I find that to be entirely dependent on my mood, and not any fault of his own. 

General listen-ability - 8/10 

I put this on when I want to disassociate. Not ideal for when I’m driving down the highway, but what can you do.

Sonic intrigue - 10/10

One of the most, if not THE most, beautiful pieces of music he’s ever put out. Nothing more or less can be said. 

Crafting - 10/10 

Overall: 37/40 = 9.3/10 

[topweeklyupdate]

TØP Weekly Update #62: They’re *Really* Back (9/14/18)

We knew going into this week that there was a real storm coming, and that was an understatement. Though the complete Trench album is still waiting to be released, it really feels like the band is back more than ever. 

This update is a novel-sized doozy. Grab your new merch, and let’s dive into it.

This Week’s TØPics:

A Complete Diversion in London Brings Trench (and a Flaming Car) to the Stage

The Boys Speak to the Press: Rock Sound and Alt Press Announce Special TØP Issues, and the Boys Hop Back Onto Radio

First Details Emerge About “Neon Gravestones”, “Pet Cheetah”, Clancy, Nico, and More As the Press Hear the Album for the First Time

Major News and Announcements:

The big one finally hit: after over a year, Twenty One Pilots returned to their home on the stage. They started making flex moves before the show even started. They arrived in London two days in advance, rehearsing and playing soundchecks into the night that die-hard campers could hear from outside the venue. They arranged for folks in Bandito uniforms to dispense 150 tickets to those that showed up at the box office.  The venue delivered food to the queue, and the Clique in turn donated their blankets and duvets to a local soup kitchen. Pretty darn sweet.

The real event was even sweeter. 

Twenty One Pilots did not quite pull out all of the stops for their first performance in over a year. The set was just over an hour, did not debut any never-before-heard songs, did not include any special guests, and mainly stuck to the skeleton of the Blurryface Era setlist. And you know what? There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. If anything, Tyler and Josh keeping things focused on dusting off the old gears and introducing a few new elements for the Trench era resulted in a tight and emotional return for today’s greatest band. (Shout out to Ohio Clique for editing fifteen different Periscope and Instagram Live streams together to make a cohesive concert movie.)

Highlights of the show include:

There were no screens present in the smaller venue, but the production crew did make sure to bust out a ton of other great production elements, including tons of lights and, most notably, the car from the  “Heavydirtysoul” video that bursts into flames at key points during certain songs- including, at one point, when Tyler was standing on it.

The Clique brought the production value in the crowd, too: beyond all the folks dressed up as Banditos and Bishops, you also had plenty of people bring in yellow screens for their flashlights and yellow flowers and petals to offer Tyler.

The setlist was pretty sensible, with the four new Trench singles plus all of the songs that you would have expected them to play at an old festival show (minus “Guns for Hands” and “Tear In My Heart”, no I’m not sweating, why?). It is interesting that “WDBWOTV” and “The Judge” were played, but I suspect that it was mainly to justify bringing out the ukulele for “Nico”; if there are more uke tracks on Trench, I would not be surprised to see one or both of these songs dip out of the regular rotation.

Tyler had to stop the show twice to help people out of the pit- it was that kind of show.

The show opened with Josh coming out on stage in full Bandito regalia, torch in hand, looking like a badass. After sitting down at the drums and playing a few simple sequences, a masked man with a bass guitar walked out on the stage, started playing “Jumpsuit”’s gnarly riff, and yelled for the crowd to “GET UP!” Awesome. Twenty One Pilots is back, mate.

Tyler stumbled over a few lyrics in “Jumpsuit” and “Levitate”, but he successfully played it off- only the most diehard fans would have caught that he wasn’t just pausing for breath or to hear the crowd.

Tyler actually yelled “Why’d you come, you know you should have stayed?” at the end of “Heathens”, and it sounded damn good. Hope it sticks for future shows.

Tyler’s “WDBWOTV” pre-speech was a pretty good inaugural address for the Trench Era. He let the rabid audience know that he had been watching them since before the concert (both literally and metaphorically), joked about needing to get back in “show shape”, and thanked London for being a home away from home for them. In gratitude for hosting them, Tyler even announced that they were adding a third arena show at Wembley and joked that Mark should tweet it or something (he did).

Prior to playing “Nico”, Tyler adorned a bright yellow jacket over his usual uke kimono; Josh helpfully banged the drums dramatically for every successful button.

Tyler and Josh did the handshake during “Nico”, because of course they did.

For “My Blood”, Tyler drew from the old playbook and attempted to direct the two halves of the audience to sing harmonies. It worked even better than it used to with “Doubt”, much to Tyler’s evident glee- his smile and little dance to everyone singing his new song back at him was probably the best moment of the whole show.

The Trees Speech was short and sweet, with Tyler promising that he’s written “pages and pages” of things he wants to say, but for now all he can say is that they’ll be coming back on the new tour with “things we’ve never seen before” and that the fans look so good.

#YellowConfettiConfirmed

In the last bit of major news: new merch (that Josh stitched himself, be nice) and a new yellow Trench vinyl that I’m sure won’t immediately sell out. Have fun spending your life savings, kids!

Other Shenanigans:

The band was active in other spaces this week, of course. After Zane Lowe broke open the floodgates last week, both Rock Sound and Alternative Press announced that they would release some exclusive Trench Era Content (tm). Rock Sound’s came in the form of a thirty-page mag featuring a lengthy 22-page feature comprised of the first interview the two bands gave together since before the hiatus, Tyler and Josh’s first full photoshoot in over a year, and tons of awesome posters and Clique art. It definitely is not available in any form on the Internet that I’m afraid to link to lest I get pegged for copyright and sent to jail. Highlights of this interview that I certainly haven’t read include:

Lots of typical Rock Sound purple prose, in which the writer goes off on more tangential metaphors than even Tyler Robert Joseph.

The reporter describes Tyler’s house as “quite stunning” (yeah, with that Blurryface money combined with Columbus real estate values, I should hope so).

Josh laughs at the memory of some of their old costumes. “Those suits were so hot,” he says, as if those heavy coats aren’t a billion degrees inside.

Tyler: “There’s something healthy about realizing that the world keeps turning. Sometimes it can feel like the whole world is revolving around you- I think we all selfishly get to that point. When you have those moments, when you stop and realize that even if you weren’t there those other people would be, it lifts a weight that can feel very heavy. It motivates you to want to come up with a reason why you’re here.”

Tyler says they cut out social media during the hiatus in part because “removing the ability to run straight to it was important. For me, writing music is the thing I want to run to when I feel compelled or inspired. Whether it’s frustration or anger or compassion, whatever it is that I wanted to express, I wanted it to live somewhere new. I didn’t want one drop of meaningful expression to live anywhere else.” Additionally, they did want to test whether the Clique would stick around, and even kinda hint that they wanted to shrink how crowded some of the rooms they entered were becoming.

We are assured, however, that the next “hiatus” will not be the exact same as this. Tyler: “Going away broke my heart. It hurt that we weren’t able to tell people why we had gone, but I’m an advocate of showing people what I’ve been working on rather than telling them how hard I’m working. [...] That said, though we don’t know what the timeframe will be or if we’ll take another break, the manner in which we left... we’ll never do that again.”

I’m just gonna leave this here: “He tells us also of the beautiful relationship he has with his wife, Jenna, and the role that she played in helping him unlock the words and the sounds that would form the basis of this new chapter; of the times he would hand her the phone while behind the wheel of his car to allow her to record anything from melodies to simple poems.” Yeah, will someone sweep up all the pieces of my heart that are just lying on the floor, that’d be great.

Tyler has long had the idea to tell a geographic story, much longer than since the end of the last cycle, and he didn’t always intend to tell it through music. “I feel like in our mind there are places we learn we shouldn’t go.”

Tyler says that there are lots of songs that he writes that never see the light of day because he has moved past the season he wrote them in by the time it comes to record them.

Rock Sound is positively glowing in its brief advance review of the album, saying it is undoubtedly the best project of 2018, “a labor of love”, “a varied, often spectacular collection” with some of the band’s all-time greatest moments. It will be even more sonically diverse than we’ve come to expect: “Morph” is described as “old-school R&B”, “The Hype” “anthemic indie-rock”, “Pet Cheetah” has “stomping beats and a fiery rap verse.” The highlight, though, is apparently “Neon Gravestones”, “a piano-laden spoken word masterpiece” with lyrical content that “will save at least one person’s life”. Damn.

Alt Press will also be releasing a 24-page cover feature on the band and were even nice enough to include a fun video ad from the boys. They’re so cute, and I’ve missed them so much. (Also, Tyler’s checkered pants are a quality meme.)

After the Complete Diversion, Tyler and Josh performed a mini-press tour. First, they gave five-minute interview with Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1 and an Instagram Stories AMA on the station’s account. Highlights of this quickie include:

Josh and Tyler joke that specifying the exact number of months they’ve been away sounds like a mother saying their kid is “14 months” instead of a year old.

Tyler notes that this was the first performance in a long time that they’ve felt truly nervous, as they could no longer rely on muscle memory to carry them through after the long break, particularly with the new songs.

Annie references her last interview with Josh, where he confessed to be nervous about whether the fans would return. When asked if the first show helped them overcome those nerves, Tyler replied honestly, “To an extent, yes.” They chuckle about it, but the implication remains thick: the dedicated fanbase certainly turned up, but there is no assurance that they’ll have long-term mainstream success in the future. They seem cool with that.

Tyler states that they chose London specifically to make their return because, besides Columbus, it’s the only city where they have played in every size of venue, from the Barfly club to the Ally Pally and everything in-between over the course of fifteen shows. That type of home atmosphere made it feel right to start the new era there.

Josh says they played a bowling alley in London once. He did not wear bowling shoes in the set nor when he bowled afterward, which, as Tyler points out, is very punk rock.

Tyler reflects on how this show represents years of preparation and practice teaching them how to “trim the fat” and master the tempo and flow of the concert to appear as confident as possible and bring the audience along for a well-planned journey.

“My Blood” is one of the most challenging songs for both artists to play, particularly Tyler, as he has to balance the difficult falsetto with keeping that bassline groovy and consistent.

The IG answers were mostly just the dudes trying and failing to answer basic questions like “Are you happy to be back?” and “What’s it like to be famous?” in as few words as possible without giggling, hugging, and tickling each other. Best Q/A: Why did they watch the Grammys in their underwear? “We didn’t have air-conditioning.”

South African DJ Rob Forbes from Radio 5FM also conducted a truly fascinating interview with the band, the first that dives into the lore and one that gives us even more of a glimpse into some of the future songs. Additionally, Mr. Forbes briefly posted the tracklist w/ time-codes, revealing that both “Chlorine” and “Bandito” go over five minutes- get hyped, kids. Highlights from this interview include:

When asked about Clancy, Tyler responds with a pregnant silence before asking how the the interviewer knew about him. DJ Forbes stutters an answer about having listened to the record, but Tyler replies that Clancy’s not on the record. All he does say about Clancy is “I’ve heard about him, and I know we’re from the same place.” What is up with your cryptic nonsense, Tyler Robert Joseph?

The band intentionally left the Trench Trilogy open-ended to be able to continue it in the future. Tyler did not mean to make the timeline confusing, but did note that its cyclical nature left it open for the Clique to pursue that interpretation.

Tyler is careful with choosing his words to describe Nico. He admits the whole thing is pretty confusing (his grandma asked him once, “What’s a Nico?”), but that was his intention: he wanted to give the Clique a lot to think about and discuss as a reward for waiting so long. He does seem to confirm that Nico is Blurryface, or at least an aspect of him that represents how much more familiar Tyler has become with the nature of his own insecurities as he writes about it.

Tyler denies that the final verse of “Neon Gravestones” has a specifically political bend and actually sounds a little offended that something so important to him could be cast in that light. No idea what that means, I need to hear this song.

The interviewer says that Tyler calls his “Pet Cheetah” “Jason Statham” within the song itself in a fun rap verse. Tyler laughs and says that came from an inside joke between him and Josh that he was excited to bring to life. I am SO confused, you have no idea.

Tyler says that they had plans at one point to come to South Africa for a show that fell through at the last second, but that they’re still interested in going at some point in the future.

Additionally, the music production interest site Mix did a small spotlight on the producers behind Trench. We already knew that Paul Meany was handling main production duty; Darrell Thorpe, whose credits include Radiohead, OutKast, Paul McCartney, and Foster the People, joined him as an engineer while the band captured the album’s drum tracks at United Recording Studios in LA, the only studio they used outside of the one in Tyler’s home. It’s always cool to see the dudes who bring the band’s music to life, but, to be honest, the best part of this short little article is Tyler’s dad socks in the photo.

Oh, and music video director Andrew Donoho told Billboard that he can’t spoil the album or Tyler will burn down his house. So... yeah, okay, moving on.

Chart Performance:

After its first full week of sales and streaming, “My Blood” secured a debut at #16 on the Billboard Bubbling Under chart ranking the songs that have yet to reach the Hot 100. The song gains at all metrics, and according to some industry sources like Headline Planet, it is receiving a concentrated marketing push to pop and adult contemporary markets that its predecessors have not. “Jumpsuit” continues to fade, but its run was respectable, and I remain optimistic about Trench’s commercial prospects going forward, especially in the midst of this hype wave.

Whew. That was a long run. Congrats to everyone who made it all the way to the end. We’re so close to Trench, you guys. Keep powering through. Stay alive. And power to the local dreamer.

|-/

[newsnomadblog]

07 August 2019 | c depasquale | Aquarium Drunkard

“It’s hard to find pure forms. Forms of music and culture, these little hidden pockets are disappearing. I guess that’s just the way it goes with evolution.”

Producer and musician Daniel Lanois is speaking to us from his home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, discussing his work with Bob Dylan on 1989’s Oh Mercy, a document that shows what purity and evolution sound like when they’re occurring simultaneously. This September marks 30 years since its release, but its swampy mood and wide-open lonesomeness feels outside the measurement of decades. “Time is beginning to crawl,” Dylan sings on “Where Teardrops Fall.” Time crawls within the world the album creates, too.

Oh Mercy exists on its own plane, and the same is true of New Orleans, where it was fashioned. Lanois goes on to describe the Zydeco roots of Louisiana’s Lafayette area, its intangible dance hall ambiance. “Zydeco is the music that really touched me, and I wanted to make sure that I felt part of that. And Bob felt that down there. It was something that hadn’t been molested yet.”

The slow-burn noir of Oh Mercy exudes the untouched gothic mystery of its New Orleans environs—the humid timbre of the recordings shaped heavily by their setting. The region’s enigmatic spirit affected Dylan’s writing, which drifts between the worldly and introspective, setting a decidedly postmodern tone. Uncertainty is a mossy through-line, connecting anxieties both political and romantic, as if there was no dividing line between global unrest and personal disorder. On “What Was It You Wanted,” he asks in forlorn detachment: “Has the record been breaking? Did the needle just skip?”

The years leading up to Dylan’s sojourn to the Crescent City had found the record skipping quite a bit. The late ‘80s found him plagued by a gnarly hand injury, one Dylan has always been vague about, but even more so than that, a feeling of creative resignation.

“Had long ceased running towards it,” he writes in his 2004 memoir Chronicles. “When and if an idea would come, I would no longer try to get in touch with the base of its power.” Touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in ‘87, Dylan describes himself feeling adrift. The feeling persisted as he began work with the Grateful Dead. But a simple moment shifted his focus. During a rehearsal session with the Dead at the band’s Club Front in San Rafael, he stepped outside and stumbled upon a jazz combo playing through a doorway.

“Something was calling me to come in and I entered,” Dylan writes. “The singer reminded me of Billy Eckstine. He wasn’t very forceful, but he didn’t have to be; he was relaxed, but he sang with natural power. Suddenly and without warning, it was like the guy had an open window to my soul.”

“Bob is very inspired by those little turning points in the day,” Lanois says. “He sees these little observations as beacons of a sort. They not only stir the imagination, but they’re a reminder of why we’re here and what we’re doing.”

The two shared an ability to locate the uncanny in small moments, which quickly established a bond. Coming off of work on U2’s The Joshua Tree and Peter Gabriel’s So, Lanois had decamped to New Orleans, taking over an abandoned apartment building as his studio and workspace. When Dylan was introduced to Lanois by their mutual friend Bono, he was laying down the spectral Yellow Moon with the Neville Brothers. The feel of the room moved Dylan, who was drawn in by the aesthetic and mood.

“We had a bit of fun, just decorating and setting up the whole studio,” Lanois says. “Art Neville brought his stuffed bobcat, and yeah, we did have a couple alligator heads and moss and we just wanted to situate what would be perceived as a recording studio. And Dylan stopped in and I’m sure he thought ‘these people are doing something different.’ I think he appreciated that we were on the pulse of something, we were enthusiastic about our work. We were committed, we were lifers, and we were there to make masterpieces.”

Part of Oh Mercy’s great power is its vessel-like existence; a work completely informed by the immediate senses from which it emanates. “Branches of trees hung overheard near a wooden trellis that climbed a garden wall,” Dylan writes in Chronicles.

“Waterlilies floated in the dark-squared fountain and the stone floor was inlaid with swirling marble squares … I strolled into the dusk. And, much like the record itself, he writes “the air was murky and intoxicating.” Dylan’s descriptions of the character and feel of New Orleans echo the sounds and tenors of the record. “There’s a thousand different angles at any moment,” he writes. “In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There’s one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees.”

Asked what he thought Dylan meant when he wrote that in New Orleans “the past doesn’t pass away so quickly here,” Lanois responds: “In New Orleans, we had access to the most wonderful music all the time, there was a little bar called the Maple Leaf, uptown, and it was just a little storefront place and the drummer played in the window with his back to his street, and you could walk by and check out the band just by looking in the window and they were just rockin’.”

Joined by the Neville Brothers band – guitarist Brian Stoltz, bassist Tony Hall, drummer Willie Green, and percussionist Cyril Neville – Dylan, Lanois, and co. aimed to inhabit the scene he might have glimpsed looking through the window at the Maple Leaf Bar. The record absorbed members of the New Orleans community as recording went on: Rockin’ Dopsie and John Hart from the Maple Leaf Bar band came by to lay down some accordion and tenor sax. Not everyone involved was as seasoned. Engineer and keyboardist Malcolm Burns “had never engineered anything before,” says Lanois. “He was just a guy from Canada that I liked.”

But there was a unity in their spirit. Lanois’ experimental curiosity introduced a completely novel recording approach to Dylan. In addition to the exotic palette the dobro, omnichord, and scrub board added to the production, Dylan chose to forego his usual big band approach and follow his producer on instinct into a largely intimate, one-on-one setting, working alone with Lanois and a Roland 808.

“I wanted to get to the heart of the matter,” Lanois says. “I wanted the center to be absolutely captured…The power of his stance and position is represented.”

The creative drought was over. Oh Mercy finds Dylan sounding inspired, impassioned, and indignant. Alternately, the record sounds at once like a sermon, a diary, and a faded old photograph. Housing swamp boogies and expansive gospel chimes, it’s musically eccentric, but direct and cohesive. Dylan glides seamlessly from the dark cloud thump of “Political World” where “wisdom is thrown in jail,” into the romantic dreamlike waltz of “Where Teardrops Fall,” its heartfelt saxophone dreaming aloud. The album finds him embracing rock & roll as a vital force; on “Everything Is Broken,” he catalogs the ills of societal decay, finding humor in the mundane, personifying the collapse of the damned. “Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking,” he murmurs, sounding like a croak itself.

Though Dylan’s “Christian Era” had ended, his new songs continued to make room for his spiritual longings, just as they had on Infidels earlier in the decade. The spacious gospel of “Ring Them Bells” recalls the pastoral calm of “Every Grain of Sand,” but finds the narrator in a more precarious state. “Time is running backwards and so is the bride,” he laments. In a sense, it’s the calm before the storm that is the apocalyptic “Man in the Long Black Coat.” Minimalist and foreboding, the stark and brooding ballad describes a misty, obscured netherworld. A graveyard séance, Dylan’s elegiac and graceful wordplay simmers with rich, poignant watercolors. “There’s smoke on the water/It’s been there since June/Tree trunks uprooted/Beneath the high crescent moon,” he sings, a dark and dusty trio of Lanois, Burns, and the man himself casting high spirits in a fog of dobro, 12-string, and keys.

“A peculiar change crept over the appearance of things,” Dylan reminisces about that recording in Chronicles. “…the production sounds deserted, like the intervals of the city have disappeared…The lyrics try to tell you about someone whose body doesn’t belong to him.”

Lanois’ interpretation is perhaps purer, more romantic. “When you’re coming up as a kid, maybe you want to be a fireman,” he says. “Maybe you want to run away from certain things and start a new life. Discover the wonders and wanders that are available to you as an imaginative human. Whether it’s the circus or otherwise, it’s just a human inclination to want to reinvent, to discover, to take in a magic place. It pushes that button, I appreciate that Bob wrote about it, because we’ve all felt that somehow or another.”

The gentler second side begins with “Most of the Time,” a majestic and somber masterwork. The arrangement gives his words space to document the transience of love. “I can handle whatever/I stumble upon/I don’t even notice/She’s gone/Most of the time.” That last turn, that contradiction, sells it all. “Melancholia hanging from the trees” indeed.

“The song is deep, man,” Lanois says. “It’s heavy. Most great art has contradiction in it and that song certainly has that in its spine. I wanted to create a sonic representation of the contradiction. I wanted to have this little tormented orchestra, this little ensemble. Playing cellos, violas, and violins, but without cellos, violas, and violins. So, I used a Les Paul Junior cranked all the way up to 10, and I overdubbed four parts of this heavy, single-note sound. So, the intertwining of these parts makes up that little exchange, that invisible string quartet that’s immense from a distance. I wanted to make sure that that the music was trying to destroy the singer at the same time as support him.”

The back half of Oh Mercy finds Dylan turning largely inward. The global unrest of the Cold War era may have been dissipating, but what was to come next? “What good am I,” he wonders. “If I know and don’t do/If I see and don’t say/If I look right through you?” But he points his finger too, wryly remarking on “Disease of Conceit” that “The doctors got no cure/They’ve done a lot of research on it/But what it is they’re still not sure.” Riffing on the defrocking of disgraced evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, Dylan focuses in on exactly how broken everything is. Searching for answers that might not exist, Dylan’s journey circles right back around to the elliptical on “What Was It You Wanted,” asking: “Is the scenery changing/am I getting it wrong?” The album’s closer, “Shooting Star,” feels like a letter written but never to be sent. “It’s the last temptation/the last account,” Dylan sings, knowing just enough to know he doesn’t know anything at all, only that “tomorrow will be another day.”

There’s a tactile somberness as the record winds down, leaning into a similar blurriness heard on Lanois’ own Acadie (also released in ’89). Even as they left serious gems like “Born In Times,” “Dignity,” and “Series of Dreams” on the cutting room floor, it’s clear that Dylan and Lanois were working off an atmosphere, loose but focused. Like 1969’s Nashville Skyline and 1970’s New Morning, which reflected the artist’s newfound domestic bliss, Oh Mercy is bracingly intimate. And like the inferno boogie gospel of 1979’s Slow Train Coming, it reflects a new look on reality, a specific time and place. A pure form.

Dylan writes in Chronicles, “We did it as we damn well pleased and there was nothing more to say. When the record was all added up, I hoped it would meet head-on with the realities of life … I can’t say if it’s the record either of us wanted. Human dynamics plays too big a part, and getting what you want isn’t always the most important thing in life anyway.”

This sense of humility is also shared in no small way by Lanois, who teamed with Dylan once more on 1997’s Time Out of Mind. Oh Mercy was a journey into the night, assembled in humble conditions. “Even though I had all the rooms padded up and ready for blast off, we just made the whole record in the kitchen. Pretty much did the whole record right next to the coffee machine.” The work is serious and complex, funky and ambient in different breaths. “I reassured Bob I was not about to rest until we had a masterpiece.” He thinks that for all its ambiguity, they got where they were going. “I believe we made a masterpiece of sorts.” words/c depasquale

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Original Link: Did the Needle Just Skip :: 30 Years of Oh Mercy

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Dylan and Lanois: Oh Mercy turns 30 07 August 2019 | c depasquale | Aquarium Drunkard “It’s hard to find pure forms. Forms of music and culture, these little hidden pockets are disappearing.

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Yamantaka // Sonic Titan Interview: Celebrating What’s Gone

BY JORDAN MAINZER

From a narrative perspective, it can be hard to separate any of Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s albums from one another. The three records from the Canadian “Noh-wave” collective all take place in the world of Pureland, derived from a strand of Chinese Buddhism by name but resembling the Iroquois story of North America by theme. Their latest album Dirt (out now via Paper Bag Records) is the one that expands on the narrative the most; it has more words on it than on their first two, the amazing Y // ST and UZU. But as founding member/leader/drummer Alaska B inferred in our Skype conversation last month, the albums--especially Dirt--can stand on their own. Musically, it’s the most expansive and hardest album yet for the band. That all band members--including new members--now live in Toronto must have led to an instrumental kinship. With singer/theatre artist Ange Loft, keyboardist Brendan Swanson, singer Joanna Delos Reyes, guitarist Hiroki Tanaka, and bassist Brandon Lim, the band is able to create straight-up noise (“Hungry Ghost”) and power pop (“Out Of Time”) alike, while continuing their embrace of indigenous culture and instruments on songs like “Beast”. Dirt is the band’s most varied and perhaps cohesive effort yet.

In our conversation about the album, the band’s future, and the world today, Alaksa B touched on fan interpretations of the band, how the live show celebrates something that’s already over, and why “nihilism to an extent,” as she says, is the best way to make a better future for longer. Read the conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: Are all of your albums going to be continuing the narrative inside Pureland?

Alaska B: I would say yes.

SILY: How do you know when that ends?

AB: When it ends, that’s when the band would end.

SILY: Really?

AB: I don’t know. I don’t see us working in any other way. We’ve done projects like Severed [a video game the band scored], where we scored another world. But as far as us, we’ll always be kind of exploring the same universe.

SILY: To what extent are your fans entrenched in the narrative ideas of the albums, and to what extent do you think they just like the instrumentation or the music? Are the two able to be separated?

AB: I think that every decision we make musically keeps those concerns in mind. Once it’s been created, it’s not my position to worry about how other people take it afterwards. If you like the song, that works for me. If you want to get more into the narrative, then by all means, get more into the lyrics. But there’s not a right way to consume it. I’m never thinking, “Oh, I’m so misunderstood. They don’t see the deeper meaning.” The truth is that’s how people experience all things. People are always looking for themselves. It doesn’t always reflect the creator. People will tell me, “This thing you wrote helped me through a hard time.” Yeah, maybe it helped me through a hard time too, but they’re not the same experience. The way they identify with the songs are not how I intended. So I’m always interested to hear what songs people like. They usually end up being the ones I don’t like.

SILY: Is that true of the new record?

AB: I don’t know yet. It hasn’t been out that long.

SILY: Do you have any favorite or least favorite songs on it?

AB: I don’t know, I feel like it changes all the time. It comes down to what I’m prioritizing at the time. The eclectic nature of our album creation--trying to be as broad as possible--there are going to be parts that work better for me narratively but maybe not as well musically, and vice versa.

SILY: Has your approach to playing these songs live changed with the new record?

AB: We’ve been playing some of these songs for a while. We’re a slightly different lineup with two guitars. This album is much more focused on songwriting. We’re engaged and busy at all times. There are less drawn out, open areas. The biggest thing performing these songs live, something Ange said to me, is it’s the most brash, fun version of us. We’re not doing as many stage theatrics. In a weird way, we’re throwing a party for something that’s already lost. The album is supposed to relate to not necessarily loss--UZU was about loss--but kind of about life in its reflection of death. The more upbeat elements of the record are about celebrating something that’s already done.

When we talk about the current sociopolitical climate and climate change, these are the questions we grapple with. How do we stop or mitigate or accept--the part we have a bigger problem with--the extinction of many of our species, the destabilization of biospheres, etc.? These are things that are too late to stop. The same way we talk about sociopolitical issues facing the black community or aboriginal communities, right now, it’s this moment that’s happening. But things have been messed up for so long, these are the way things are now. Until you address that something is broken, you can’t even begin to fix it. With climate change, things like pollution and plastics you don’t want to think about and deal with. But that’s a barrier to acceptance.

So, live, in a concert setting, when you’re trying to pull people into this communal interaction, our intent is less about live narrative spookiness or wackiness but this much more human, last-ditch party before the end of everything. We know everything is kind of screwy. So playing music together is the way we come to terms with it. When we play heavy metal music live, there’s this element of evil people are trying to get at. But right now, the real evils of the world are so much darker than anything that metal addresses in general. I’m not so worried about death and gloom as I am real practical fears of the future.

SILY: How confident are you that, overall, the best is behind us?

AB: I don’t think it was ever “best.” Things are in decline--there’s a better and a worse. What we idealize as the best is probably done. And maybe something better will come along. But that’s only through shifting our way of thinking. I don’t like to romanticize another time period. Whatever damage we’re doing to the environment has been going on for hundreds of years now. We’ve always kind of been like this. We have to come to terms with things we’re trying to screw up.

SILY: What gives you optimism?

AB: Optimism for me doesn’t come from the hope things are gonna work out. Death is the norm. All of the things we enjoy about life are this fleeting moment. Optimism for me is coming to terms with the inevitability of the end of all things. That sounds like an isolating and scary thing to most people--which it is, to me, as well--but dealing with your eventual death and the pointlessness of it all, there’s a peace you can come to. It’s not necessarily happy, but it’s better than any other emotion.

SILY: What was the inspiration behind the album title?

AB: There was always a plan for our third record to be really ugly and heavy. We were always addressing issues of sovereignty and colonization and what exactly it means to live in a politicized state--not a nation-state, but the North American continent. We decided we wanted to develop the narrative more on this one. So we imagined a sci-fi anime on an Iroquois myth. It’s the story of the creation of Turtle Island. There’s a sky woman who comes down from a sky world who has to retrieve dirt from the bottom of the ocean and spread it on a turtle’s back to create a continent. A group of marine animals swims to the bottom, and in the process, one of them dies, but they retrieve the soil. It was kind of supposed to be about the sacrifice we make to create better outcomes, but also how that drive can lead to worse outcomes. It’s kind of like how inaction is the only safe form of action.

The theme behind the dirt itself is about humanity’s obsession with soil--the control, extraction, and use of it--and in this story, where hydroponics is the only source of food in these dome cities and there are no continents, what does that mean when they redevelop the technology to explore their own ruins? They open up to the possibility of retaining humanity’s glory. But it’s meant to be critical that there’s an easy solution that will go and fix things for us.

Dirt by Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

[onestowatch]

Existentialism, Creative Independence, & Her Debut Full-Length: A Q&A With VÉRITÉ

An existential crisis is defined as, “a moment at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life: whether this life has any meaning, purpose, or value”--it is also the basis by which rising New York City-based songstress VÉRITÉ constructed her already highly-acclaimed debut album, Somewhere In Between. 

Released on June 23 via Kobalt Music Recordings, the 13-song collection is a raw examination of the universal uncertainties associated with identity, love, and finding purpose in life--what she describes as “somewhere in between living and dying.” Yet, don’t let that fool you into thinking that the album is not meant to be enjoyed--sonically, VÉRITÉ single-handedly radiates melodic left-field pop and rhythmic undertones that keep us singing along from start to finish. It’s no wonder that the young artist has accumulated over 100 million Spotify streams to date and is set to embark on a headline tour this fall. 

Listen to the Somewhere In Between album in full, and then get to know the prolific writer behind it in our Q&A below.  

OTW: So tell us about how you originally got into music.

VÉRITÉ: I’ve been playing music for for a very long time. I started playing classical piano when I was six or seven, and then I started playing in bands when I was like 13, and I was in an all-girl punk cover band. We were not good [laughs]. I started writing when I was 16 so I had an overly-ambitious indie folk rock band, and then I started this project when I was around 21, 22.

OTW: Got it, and would you say you’ve reached the truest form of yourself?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, it just felt right, and it hasn’t stopped since. 

OTW: And I understand you were independent for like the longest time, if not still?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, I still technically am. Kobalt is an amazing strategic partner-- they are handling all of the distribution in the U.S. and internationally, and so I’m really lucky to have them come on.

OTW: Why did you chose to remain independent otherwise?

VÉRITÉ: Because I want to be in control of when I release music and what that music is. I think I just saw a trend around me of people signing away their ownership at a really early stage and then losing momentum at a point when something didn’t go as planned and the label pulls the plug or takes a step back. I just always wanted to have this forward momentum, and this has kind of allowed for me to keep that going.

OTW: So do you plan to remain independent moving forward?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, I believe so. I mean I don’t wanna limit myself, but I like where I am at right now; it’s a good place to be.

OTW: Any tips for artists who are on a similar path?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, get a job.

As depressing as that sounds, get a job and fund it yourself--you can do it. It’s not going to be fun, you won’t sleep, but ultimately it’ll take a very small investment from yourself to get something started. 

OTW: Makes sense. So you’ve released a few EP’s out before the Somewhere in Between album. How would you say your music has evolved from The Echo to Sentiment to Living, to now?

VÉRITÉ: I feel like the themes of the EPs are all very similar--they’re all this hyper-analyzation of my surroundings and me having an existential crisis, but I think there’s a definite progression sonically. The first EP was definitely this toe-in-the-water experimentation of, “What do I want to sound like?” and then I think Sentiment was like, “Okay, I can do this,” and branching out, and with the last EP, there was more of a honing in and confident approach to finishing the songs. It was me taking control of how I wanted things to be placed, and now having all those under my belt, I’ve just learned a lot about myself and about production and composition. 

So this album I is most straightforward representation of like how I want to be seen and how I want to sound like.

OTW: And what is that?

VÉRITÉ: I just wanted it to be a statement piece--I didn’t want to be shy, I didn’t want it to be drenched in reverb or hazy in any way. I wanted my vocal to be upfront, the lyrics to be upfront; it’s a lot of heavy percussion, it’s a lot of in-your-face sub-bass. I’ll probably give it a month, and then he next album will be hopefully better because I just want to keep learning for myself.

OTW: Cool, and what’s the story behind the title, Somewhere in Between?

VÉRITÉ: Well, it comes from the title track “Somewhere In Between,” and the first lyric is, “Somewhere between living and dying.” So it’s very broad in a way, but everything is about existence and the human condition and analyzing “why we are here?” and “what do relationships mean?” and “how do I interact?” and “how do I exist?” So yeah, the album exists in that broad space.

OTW: And I understand you worked with a bunch of awesome producers on this one?

VÉRITÉ: I’ve definitely worked with a lot of producers, but then narrowed it to three producers who I definitely trust and worked with on the last EP. So the writing process was really scattered, delegating responsibilities and timelines and getting everyone in line with the vision.

OTW: So you essentially A&R’d your entire album?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, which was much more of an undertaking than I realized it would be when I started, but I’m really happy that I did. I think that is another area that I’m much more confident in my ability to manage people and get them to see what the greater vision is and then give them precise instructions on how to get there. So I think everybody that worked on the album feels good about what they contributed, but it’s still cohesive.

OTW: Do you have a favorite lyric from the album?

VÉRITÉ: It might be, “somewhere between living and dying.” I also like the first lyrics of a song called “Better.” I just like the first two verses--start like “fixed and false” and then “tried and true.” I just like the alliteration.

OTW: I love “Phase Me Out” too. What would be your top relationship advice for someone in that situation?

VÉRITÉ: I think for me,  all the relationship-sounding songs on the album are me basically taking a step back, being like, “I don’t need anyone.” I think my relationship advice to anybody would be to get to a place where you don’t need anyone, and then figure out how to coexist with people, which I’m currently trying to do. So maybe the second album is like, “How do I, I don’t know, talk to people?” [laughs] 

I think this album is very much figuring out how to not need people, in a positive way, for my self-worth.

OTW: What would you say makes you different from other singers in this alt-pop space?

VÉRITÉ: I feel like the alt-pop space is so oversaturated--I’m surprised that I found a little lane for myself. I don’t consciously find the differences--I just made a decision to be super upfront and involved and candid. I try and translate that to the music as well, and so I feel lucky that it has resonated with people in the way that it has, and so I’m going to continue doing that. Also, I play live, you know, I play instruments, I am involved in the writing, I’m involved in the production, and so I feel like being that creative force within the project helps.

OTW: What is your live step up like? Do you have a band?

VÉRITÉ: Yeah, I have a band--we have like drums, bass, and I have a little synth keyboard with little vocal processing. I like to be busy because I don’t dance, so I have to fill my time somehow onstage.

OTW: What were your favorite moments with the Betty Who tour?

VÉRITÉ: The Betty Who tour was great--her and her crew were so good to work with. I think my favorite moments are always the moments that no one sees...we all went a little crazy in a gas station right outside of Seattle and definitely started dancing. The store clerk just looked at us like we were on meth. 

OTW: [Laughs] So what are your plans now that the album’s out?

VÉRITÉ: Touring and more touring. My goal with the album is to push it out as far out as possible and so whatever needs to get done, I will do.

OTW: Last question: who are your top Ones To Watch artists right now?

VÉRITÉ: Oh goodness. I feel like I just want to say Anderson .Paak, but he’s just so established. You guys just actually posted about Brika--II think she’s dope. And the girl SUMif who opened for me in San Francisco is also dope.

VÉRITÉ North American Headline Tour Dates:

August 23        Philadelphia, PA @ Boot & Saddle

August 24        Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall

August 25        Montreal, QC @ Petit Campus

August 26        Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall

August 28        Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

August 29        Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry

September 1   Seattle, WA @ Barboza

September 2   Vancouver, BC @ The Cobalt

September 3   Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge

September 5   San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall

September 7   Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour

September 9   San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar

September 10  Dana Point, CA @ Ohana Music and Arts Festival

September 12  Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar

September 15  Austin, TX @ Stubb's Jr.

September 16  Dallas, TX @ Three Links

September 17  Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)

September 19  Atlanta, GA @ Vinyl

September 20  Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506

September 21  Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel

September 22  Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

FOLLOW VÉRITÉ:

http://veriteofficial.com/

https://www.facebook.com/veritemusic/

https://twitter.com/verite