#the last one reminds me the Cohen’s album cover

[joemuggs]

Albums of 2023 part 1

OK I started a best albums of 2023 thread as there's lots that got missed out of charts I contributed to. I got carried away and there's nearly 100, but they're all superb and I think there's something for everyone here. Start with this: a DEVASTATINGLY fresh drum'n'bass/jungle excursion from a perpetually underrated UK bass don Altered Natives.

A short but PERFECTLY formed 20 minutes of heavy, trippy R&B with surprise UKG and even drum'n'bass twists, Tinashe deserves so much more credit as an innovator...

I was late to this one but should've known the Hive Mind label always delivers. Swedish-based guitarist Vumbi Dekula delivering track after track of perfection like it's as easy as breathing.

I've always enjoyed Lana Del Rey when she's at her most benzo-haze - and this Mitski album hits that spot perfectly... not that it's all dissociated - it's very smart and sharp - but you can easily drift away into it.

Metallica, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie covers in a millennium old Inuit language? Well yes - and in Elisapie's hands it's DEVASTATING. I played the Leonard Cohen one out at 3am in a chillout room in the summer and it was real, REAL magic.

TONN3RR3 & BIKAY3 = French live electronic beats of various flavours + EXTREMELY eccentric Congolese vocalist = braincell-scrambling funtimes...

First of two major trip-outs from Optimo Music last year - with Op:l Bastards and then K-X-P, Timo Kaukolampi is best known for motorik cosmic synth rock, but here everything is stripped away except the abstract cosmic, and wow it'll give you vertigo if you let it.

The presence of Peter Zummo here leads to automatic Arthur Russell comparisons for Greek-British brothers áthos - and it's not NOT Arthur-ish.... but more, it's operating in the same boho world of freedom as he did, and finds its own delicate voice within that.

Another massively unsung talent, original Moving Shadow / - now Over/Shadow - crew, half of Mixrace with the mighty Paradox (they also had a great record out this year), Dave Trax makes THE most exquisite soulful but heavy d'n'b and this album is among his best.

Melbourne's always been musically interesting, but this new duo project from a Gorillaz / Genesis Owusu collaborator Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 with Sui Zhen is above and beyond. Sort of fourth world but more advanced (fifth world??), it's a really personal, precise and endlessly fascinating thing.

Dunno how Jamal Moss does it so prolifically but consistently: an endless flow of machine funk like a jet of magma from the centre of the earth. Add Polish saxophonist Jerzy Maczynski to the mix making Universal Harmonies & Frequencies, and the results are overwhelmingly ecstatic.

Holmer zooms into the essential something that links Mary Chain, Goldfrapp, Stereolab, Cocteaus and all their influences in turn... a kind of pure essence of motorik, psychedelic, magickal pop..... Such an instant, potent, pleasure-centres hit.

Your favourite DJ's favourite DJ's favourite DJ Jerome Hill is also no shabby producer and every one of these eight tracks is the platonic ideal of a bleeping, clonking, tweaking, hot, sweaty, bassy dancefloor banger.

Need a reminder that it hasn't all been done before in electronic music? TSVI got you covered: this is the FRESHEST gear, but never innovating for innovation's sake - always about emotions & composition first. Includes several Loraine James contributions too \(more to come from her....) ❤️

The kind of drone music that can give you superpowers if you make space to really soak it in. Kali Malone x Lucy Railton x Stephen O'Malley = AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

The Magic Numbers pretty much passed me by, but this solo album from the band's Michele Stodart is the epitome of Soft Music For Hard Times, real quiet dignity stuff, beautiful subtlety to production/arrangment and just the kind of countrified songwriting I adore.

A second one from Hive Mind, and another supermodernist feeling one - ultra sophisticated stuff from the Rio de Janeiro polymath Ricardo Dias Gomes: is it post-rock? Indietronica? Neotropicália? Yes/no/whatever... watch out there's a noisy surprise at the end!

Is it me or is R&B / neo soul wayyyyy more experimental than hip hop at the moment? Like the Tinashe and Janelle albums, this is super short but WOW does Madison McFerrin pack a lot of innovation, emotion and just v.i.b.e.s. into its 27 minutes

Very cleverly structured because it starts quite timid and slight, which it turns out is maybe expectation management? But Andre Three Stacks builds into something that demands repeat plays - and a megastar bringing Don Cherry meets Hiroshi Yoshimura vibes into the world?? It's not quite the masterpiece I'd hoped for but it is GREAT.

The perfect (paradoxical?) combination of being absolutely true to the unchanging groove of Detroit, but also pushing it forwards sonically... DJ Bone STILL sounds like the future.

A second appearance for the most fun abstract cellist out there, Lucy Railton - this record is really tricky, it feels different from different angles, keeps throwing surprises at you, the proverbial "a lot to unpack"... but it's GREAT.

hinako omori somehow emerges from a wellspring circa 1979-81 when prog synth meandering was feeding into e.g. Kate Bush, Eurythmics, Japan, and then traces through that into 00s post trance pop but it doesn't sound retro? HOW?

Another small but perfectly formed one. Amazing that Ultramarine's elegant, pastoral, ECM-ish house explorations are still so exploratory and moving after all these years - and they fit perfectly on the Blackford Hill label which had an extraordinary year too.

In a year when not a lot of hip hop floated my boat, this was a glorious exception. Kind of odd it didn't get more hype really - Kaytra absolutely on top of his game, partnership with Aminé flows together just like their names, guest spots on point, vibes upon vibes upon vibes (instrumental version is great too!)

David Harrow is the absolute epitome of real craftsmanship honed over years and years - and this album of dub and downtempo tracks with rich layering of singing modular synths is a really magical exercise in world-building.

OK that's that for now, direct link to Part 2 here....

[duchess-music]

|| Clancy - twenty one pilots ||

Genres: Alt-Pop, Indie Rock, Pop Rock

REVIEW

I bought Leonard Cohen on vinyl yesterday but I'm listening to this instead.

twenty one pilots' 7th and latest album was an album I was especially excited to listen too. I loved the cover, the singles were nice, and people were saying it was very good for a release from these two. I can't say I was disappointed by it, either. Even if it lacks a bit in areas.

The piano opening scared me a little bit, I thought this was gonna be a sappy emotional track, but damn this goes hard. An awesome song to open the album with, and extremely catchy. I thought the lyrics were a little underwhelming, and Joseph's flow was a bit stiff at times, but overall 'Overcompensate' has many more positives than negatives. 'Next Semester' is much more upbeat, a little more catchy but a little less standout. The acoustic part toward the end was pretty, I liked that. The last of the singles which kick off the album, and the worst of the three, 'Backslide' is just a little dull.

'Midwest Indigo' was quite boring, it definitely weighed down on the album's flow; It didn't offer anything interesting and just felt like any other twenty one pilots song. 'Routines In The Night' picks the album back up, being a much slicker track, one of the biggest standouts on the album. 'Vignette' drops the ball again, though. The short synth solo part in the middle woke me up, but other than that I was just quite bored during this track. Didn't help how overproduced it was either.

The fourth single, but not really, 'The Craving' is obviously going for an emotional break and - while I appreciate the pause - doesn't really hold up as a track on its own. Definitely helps the album move forward, though. 'Lavish' was definitely another standout, sounding just as the title would have you think, without sounding overproduced. It's a very cool song. I didn't like the pace picking up with 'Navigating' at first, but I enjoyed the track more as it went on. The chorus is really annoying, though; He sounds like he's saying "Lavigating", it's annoying.

Getting worse, 'Snap Back' is a song that's just quite boring and basic, it felt like reaching a dead end in the middle of the album only to then be followed by 'Oldies Station', easily one of the worst songs on this album. It is extremely irritating, but not as much as 'At The Risk Of Feeling Dumb'. These two tracks in succession was a really disappointing listen. The choruses of the two tracks are fine, but just about everything else about them is plain appauling.

Luckily, the band finishes on a high note with 'Paladin Strait', an awesome track which reminds me of the earlier highlights across the album. The final acoustic part to close off was a good choice, not to sure about the deep-voice weird dialogue though. Thoroughly enjoyed the last track, left me with a good taste in my mouth.

Ultimately, Clancy is an unreliable and inconsistent album that's lucky enough to have many more good moments than bad ones. It's lush production and overall decency makes it extremely listenable, and adds just enough above the surface level for it to be interesting. Definitely one of the better releases from the duo.

FINAL SCORE: 75/100

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[twopoppies]

If someone told me that we will get Harry singing You're Still The One, I Will Survive, Man I Feel Like A Woman, and Hopelessly Devoted To You ALL IN THE SAME YEAR I would not belive them yet here we are. Like-

Never would I have thought SEVEN YEARS since we last saw them together, that 2022 would be one of the larriest years on record.

Hopelessly devoted to Lou

Harry dresses as Danny Zuko for Harryween, just a few days after Louis reminds us, once again, that he played Danny Zuko in a high school production.

Harry flies a rainbow flag with not one, but three Louis cross-eyed smiley faces.

Harry flies a rainbow flag with a huge Louis cross-eyed smiley face

The peace ring returns and Harry is smug about it.

Harry flies a rainbow flag with Only The Brave on it (after doing a double take and noticing it)

Harry sings Still The One at Coachella (more details on why this is a big deal here)

Harry sang I Will Survive at Coachella (369 weeks after he last sang it on stage)

Harry randomly uses an origami fortune teller as a symbol for his song Love Of My Life. It shows the colors red and black (strongly associated with Louis these days) and blue and green (Larry colors). Louis’ album, Faith in The Future, is set to release November 11th. National origami day.

Harry quotes a song from Leonard Cohen’s album, Anthem, which has the larriest cover art ever.

Louis’ music plays at Harry’s venues before the show

The fish on the Pleasing merch at Coachella have blue eyes/thin upper lip or green eyes/full lips

Harry referenced the poet Richard Lax in his You Are Home promo. Lax has collections of poems with titles like "Love Had a Compass", "The Green Island," "The Blue Boat”, and "Circus of the Sun."

Harry doodles H L on his sneakers while on “vacation” with his beard.

You Are Home coordinates match up to a lot of Louis and Larry locations

Harry seen at Louis’ LA show (more here and here)

Harry has a blue and green moment

The You Are Home website tweets a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about people destined to meet, 12 years to the day after Harry and Louis’ xfactor auditions.

And just in case you think Harry is the only one obsessed with Larry (like rads do):

Louis mentions Harry being at his show

Louis acknowledges a rainbow flag with a huge picture of the Larry hug on it.

Louis wears a “blue bird” colored shirt

Louis adds I Will Survive to his post show playlist the day before H performs that song at Coachella.

Louis plays Lego House as his exit song twice. The first time the day Harry’s House was announced and Harry’s first Coachella performance (where H also performed Still The One). Then Lego House again on the day Harry’s House was released and Harry performed his ONO in NY.

Louis’ merch colors match Harry’s merch colors

Louis wears Harry’s House colors the day of Harry’s House release

Louis changes his Twitter header to a photo with the Larry hug in the background.

Louis makes a point of going out for sushi right after Harry’s House drops, despite rolling his eyes in the past about the trendiness of sushi.

Despite his theme being red/black/white, Louis changes the arena lights to blue and green and he does it again and again and again and again

Louis acknowledges a larrie in a rainbow TPWK t shirt

Louis acknowledges a fan holding a poster of Harry with a rainbow flag (more confirmation here and here)

Louis acknowledged a fan holding a Sing Walls if Larry is Real sign ( more info here and here).

Louis winks at a fan holding Larry dolls (while singing the “come so far from Princess Park line)

Louis give a thumbs up to a fan holding two photos of him and Harry and points to himself while singing Too Young

Louis’ venue plays Sunflower Vol 6, Kiwi, and Sweet Creature before the show.

Louis acknowledges a fan’s I Can’t Change Tattoo

Louis adds Don’t Stop Believing and Halo to his preshow playlist

Louis acknowledges that Prada released a collection with Larry-inspired tattoos by joining a Prada Twitter space the day of the launch.

Louis uses green lights during OTB for the first time, the night Harry launches the You Are Home campaign. Not just for a moment, but during the whole song

I’m sure this isn’t everything they did this year, but it’s a lot. And some of it may be coincidence or a reach, but all of it? I really doubt it.

[bradie-valentine]

To Live in a House That is Haunted

By Bradie Valentine

The afternoon sun bakes me through the windshield as I drive towards Leah’s house. She hasn’t answered my texts in a couple of days. Not that unusual for her, even before this silence. And yet I’m still on my way to check on her. We’ve been basically inseparable since we bonded over our family troubles in grade three and this is the longest we haven’t seen each other since then. The quiet from her side of our friendship has gestated long enough.

When I pull up to her house, a wave of unease washes over me. The house looks almost the same as it usually does, but just slightly off. The grass is way too long and I can see a pile of mush near the mailbox, the storms of summer turning her mail into pulp. As I head towards the house, parting the long grass that tickles my legs, I notice the stack of oak she bought a few months ago. The wood is bloated and full of wet rot, another victim of the January showers.

Don’t get me wrong, Leah has always been quiet, reserved. But this is different. Besides the occasional ‘I’m still alive’ text, I’ve barely interacted with her in the past two months. I can’t exactly blame her though. I can understand why she hasn’t been feeling very social. Her husband, Brian, died two months ago; the death of Leah’s voice immediately following.

I was with her that day, the day cops turned up to deliver the news. We were in the lounge room, chatting about Leah’s upcoming carpentry projects when there was a knock at the door. Leah answered it, there was some muffled chatter and then a sorrowful screech, like an animal caught in a trap. I leapt up from the couch just in time to see Leah collapse in on herself. The strong statue of the woman I knew, reduced to a pile of discarded tissues; delicate and tear soaked.

It was a freak accident that killed her Brian. A bump on the head at work. Rushed to the hospital, and he was dead on arrival. We found out later that the knock had popped a massive aneurysm that was nesting between the folds of his brain.

I take a deep breath and rap on the door a couple times but Leah doesn’t answer. I pause for a few seconds, knock, pause again, and knock again. I pull out my phone and text her, a drop of sweat trickles down the back of my neck. The heat and worry working together to slick my skin. I try calling too, but the phone rings out. Usually I wouldn’t bother worrying over Leah, but since Brian, grief has metamorphosed her, leeching both her light and strength. I think I should go, maybe come back later, but then I notice the sound of music. Leonard Cohen’s deep voice emanates from within the house. I try the handle and it’s unlocked, as soon as I open the door I get hit with the foulest stench of my life, even worse than when I used to get paid to wash down animal cages at the local vet. The stench clogs my nostrils and makes my mouth water with pre-vomit saliva.

I call out to Leah and get no response in return. Covering my nose, I start down the hallway, passing picture frames filled with photos of the happy couple. I call out again and I still don’t get a reply. Oh god, I should have come sooner. As I approach the bedroom, I hear a buzzing. I can’t place it for a second, and then I realise, it’s flies, a swarm of flies.

It’s all making sense, her favourite album playing, their wedding anniversary is coming up. The stench of sickly sweet death crowding the hallway. Leah has killed herself and now a horde insects are busy getting comfortable in the rancid warmth of her lifeless corpse.

I brace myself, a few steps and I’ll be able to see the bedroom, the carnage Leah has made of herself. And then I hear a laugh, Leah's laugh. The fear mixes with confusion and I’m so disorientated, I stumble the last couple steps forward and then I see them.

Leah is lying on the bed, holding Brian’s hand. It takes me a second to realise that the swollen form on the bed is indeed Brian. The flies have made their home here a while ago. There is a split in Brian’s belly where the gasses of rot have burst him open. Maggots spill off Brian and wiggle across Leah, like they can’t even tell anymore where the death ends and the living begins.

I turn away and run for the kitchen. My stomach is roiling and lurching. I only make it halfway and end up vomiting on the floor. Bile and this morning's toast exploding from my mouth.

“Hi”

I look at Leah. She’s knobbly and bony where she used to be muscular. There’s a stain down the left side of her night gown. It’s yellowy thickness let’s me know it’s broken down fat that has leached out of Brian and onto her. As if he was trying to offer back some of the bulk that weeks in bed have taken from her.

I’m still gagging when she starts talking.

“I dug him up, after the funeral. I brought a shovel with me.”

“Why?” 

“I was getting ready for the funeral and all I could think about is how he would be so lonely in the ground. You know how much he hated being without me.”

“Leah, this is fucking crazy, you know that right? I love you but holy shit. You need help Leah… you need serious help.”

She just turns away and walks back to the bedroom. 

“Leah, stop! I’m serious.”

She doesn’t listen to me. I follow her down the hallway and watch her climb into bed next to the mass of degrading flesh in a burial suit. 

The liquid of his body has seeped into the mattress and the carpet beneath their bed. No one is ever going to be able to scrub him from the carpet or the floor below. An oily stain has spread up the wall above him, a halo made from his desecration. Brian now has a permanence he never had before. I wonder for a second what will happen to this house after they’re gone. Who would even want it now?

“Go away,” She says.

“Leah please”

She stays silent, just staring at Brian’s empty face.

“This is beyond fucked up, I’m getting you out of here. If… if you don’t come with me, I’ll call the police. They’ll be able to drag you out”

There is another long pause, and I almost think she has forgotten I’m here. She’s so clearly out of it.

“Please… please just let me say goodbye” She finally replies, “I need to say goodbye. I didn’t get to say it last time, please“

She leans in close to the bloat and starts whispering. I feel like I’m watching something I shouldn’t. I head for the front door, for fresh air. As I’m walking through the house, I realise all of the pictures on the wall that used to be of parents and cousins and nieces have been replaced. 

They’re all of Leah with Brian’s body. All taken in the house. In one, Brian is propped up on the couch. Leah is sitting straight, like she’s posing for a portrait. The self timer on her phone capturing a record of her depravity. The photos all vary in poses and states of decomposition. The latest one I find is of them in bed. Brian already shiny and slick, his body bloated and gnarled. Leah has an arm around him and her head on his chest.

The front door is calling to me, fresh air and a reprieve from the incessant vibration of insect life. I reach for the handle when I notice the frame right by the door. The photo is of Leah, Brian and I at their wedding. It was Leah's favourite of the night, the three of us caught in laughter together. I sigh and head for the lounge room instead, climb the couch and slide open the window, pressing my face to the fly screen, breathing deeply the outside air.

The light tap, tap, tap of Leah’s steps announce her presence in the hallway.

“It’s okay now,” she says, “I got to say goodbye. We can put him back and no one has to know. You don’t have to call the police or anything.”

“Leah, you dug up his body, I can’t just pretend like that didn't happen.”

“Please! If anyone finds out, they’ll put me away. I don’t want to be alone. I lost Brian, I can’t lose everyone else as well.”

She’s just standing there in her yellowed nightgown, hands wringing each other. Leah looks so young, so helpless, like she’s in third grade again. Actually, she reminds me more of myself when I was in third grade. Unsure, broken, needing someone to look after me. Leah was the one who took care of me then, she was my person. Now I have to be that for her.

“Alright,” I say, getting up from the couch, “you get the gloves and aprons, I’ll get the rope.”

Standing in the bedroom, decked out in aprons, gloves, and face masks, we stare at the pile of flesh on top of the mattress. Assessing the best course of action, I really stare at Brian. Once a man, a great man at that, he is now somewhere between human and object. Tender and fragile, a bag of rot. Meat, past its use by date. A spoiled egg, one sharp prod and he’ll pop like a runny yolk. We have to be gentle.

Next to the bed, we lay the blue tarp I grabbed from the shed across the floor. Leah climbs up beside Brian, the movement jostles him, shaking the fluid filling his skin, wobbling like an oversized hot water bottle. Bracing myself over the tarp we grab his arms and pull him towards the ground, our fingers sink into his raw sausage meat arms. He slips from our hands a couple inches from the floor, with a wet slap he hits the ground. We rear back, and Leah spews a startled cry. The gash in Brian’s stomach yawns wider and a rush of melted organs spill from his open body; a thick grotesque puff of odour erupting with it. Following closely behind, a swarm of flies and maggots escape his bodily cavity, startled from their reverie.

Shocked still for a moment, we spring to life and scramble out of the room and slam the door shut. Leah slides to the floor, moaning and crying.

“What do we do now?” She asks me.

Dropping to the floor, I gather her gently into my lap. Trying not to think about bits of Brian swill getting all over me, I pat her matted hair.

“We take care of you now, the way you took care of Brian, the way you’ve taken care of me. Whatever that means.”

“Okay,” she says, “okay.”

Once Leah is soundly asleep, I dial triple zero. The operator seems a bit surprised by the situation I describe.

“My friend dug up her husband’s dead body and had been living with it for two months, can you send an ambulance over?”

“Uh, yeah. Right away.”

Once again, Leah and I are startled by a knock at her front door. I’m the one who answers it this time. Leah stands at the end of the hallway, she must look frightening to these strangers. Gaunt and covered in sludge, sticky with the putrid stench of the death that was stewing in that once pristine bedroom. They’re gentle with her, she goes with them willingly. We finally get outside, the freshness of the crisp air disorientating. Leah stops and turns to me.

“I’m sorry for bringing you into this,” she says.

“Anytime,” I say.

We both laugh a little bit.

“Leah?”

“Yes?”

“You’ll be okay. Eventually, things will be better.”

“I know,” She says, “will you be okay, without me around?”

I think it’s a joke. Her, also trying to lighten the mood. I answer her seriously anyway.

“Yes, Leah. I think I will.”

[fyeahhozier]

The Irishman is deeper and darker than he's maybe been given credit for... but the geniality and swoon factor remain high.

Variety: Hozier Proves He’s a Career Artist in Gratifying Greek Show

At Hozier’s sold-out show at L.A.’s Greek Friday night, one of the first things you couldn’t help noticing on stage —because it’s still an anomaly — was that his eight-piece lineup was half-male, half-female. Knowing his penchant for socially conscious songs, his decrial of “the anthems of rape culture” in his lyrics, and a general female-friendliness to his appeal, it’s easy to figure this gender parity is a conscious one and think: That is soooo Hozier. Which it is … and so effective, too, like just about every choice he’s made so far in his short, charmed career. On the most practical level, if you can bring in that much female harmony while also getting ace players in the bargain, why wouldn’t you? But it also makes for a good visual emblem of some of the other dual energies Hozier is playing with in his music: darkness and enlightenment; romantic hero and cad; raw blues dude and slick pop hero. He’s got a lot more going on than just being an earnest do-gooder. (Although he does do good, earnestly.)

During Friday’s hour-and-three-quarters set, Hozier focused largely on material from this year’s sophomore album, “Wasteland, Baby!,” which sounded good enough on record but almost uniformly improved in the live experience. Sometimes the upgrade came from making full use of the multi-instrumentalists on hand. The first album’s “Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene” now had Hozier on guitar facing off against violinist Emily Kohavi, trading solos — and if it’s hard to hear an electric guitar/fiddle duel without automatically thinking “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” it was one of many welcome moments making use of the MVP skills of Kohavi, the newest addition to the band. Other times, the improvements on the album versions just had to do with Hozier allowing himself louder and gutsier guitar tones. He’s a bit like Prince, in that way — someone you’d happily listen to playing a very nasty-sounding six-string all night, although he has so many other stylistic fish to fry, which in this case means a still slightly greater emphasis on acoustic finger-picking.

For somebody who made his name on as forlorn but powerful an anthem as his 2014 breakout smash “Take Me to Church,” and who can milk that melodrama for all it’s worth, Hozier has a lot of other modes he can default to. He treads very lightly into the area of soul with songs like “Almost (Sweet Music),” the lyrics of which consist of either name-checking or alluding to some of the great jazz vocal classics of the 20th century, in an idiom that’s not so much jazzy itself as folk-R&B. You could almost cite it as the subtle kind of Memphis-swing thing Justin Timberlake should aspire to, if the tricky polyrhythm and oddly chopped up meters Hozier adds as wrinkles weren’t so un-replicable. Bringing up Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” as the night’s sole cover also established that early ‘70s era and sound as an influences he’d like to make perfectly clear. At the other extreme, this son of a blues musician can hard back to those roots so well, in noisy numbers like “Moment’s Silence (Common Tongue)” and the brand new “Jack Boot Jump,” that he could give the Black Keys a run for their money.

“Jack Boot Jump,” which is scheduled to go on an EP of completely fresh material that Hozier said he plans to put out before Christmas, was possibly the highlight of the night, even though — or because — it stripped his excellent band down to just him and longtime drummer Rory Doyle. Having earlier played the current album’s “Nina Cried Power,” which is maybe more of a tribute to other historic protest songs than one of its own, Hozier gave a lengthy introduction to “Jack Boot” indicating that he’s aware of the traps that come with the territory. “I do have some reservations about the words ‘protest song’ and ‘protest music,’” he admitted. “But if you’re familiar with an artist called Woody Guthrie, he wrote the evergreen anthem ‘Tear the Fascists’ down. I was kind of looking into songs in that sort of tradition, that singing out, and I was worried that this is 2019; it’s a very unsubtle way to approach songwriting.” But, he added, “it was a funny few weeks, with 70 people shot in Hong Kong and arrests obviously in Moscow; Chile now at the moment also. And I was thinking, forget about subtle art — what is not subtle is this murder of protesters, and what is not subtle is the jack boot coming down in Orwell’s picture of the future: ‘If you want to imagine the future, imagine a jack boot stomping on a human face forever,’ that chilling quote from ‘1984.’ Anyway, I was just thinking, yeah, f— it, it’s not subtle, but let’s do it.” His electric guitar proceeded to be a machine that kills fascists, and also just slayed as maybe the most rock ‘n’ roll thing he’s written. (Evidence of the new song on the web is scant, or should be, anyway, since he begged the audience “in good faith” not to film it.)

If there’s a knock people have on Hozier, it tends to be the sincerity thing. He’s a nice guy who’s finishing first, which doesn’t necessarily help him become an indie-rock darling or Pitchfork favorite. (Predictably, “Wasteland, Baby!” got a 4.8 rating there — that’s out of 10, not 5.) At the Greek, there was an almost wholesome feeling that would’ve been an immediate turnoff to anyone who insists on having their rock rough, starting with his graciousness in repeatedly naming the band members and repeatedly thanking his opening act (Madison Ryann Ward, a fetchingly husky-voiced Oklahoman filling in on this part of the tour for a laryngitis-stricken Freya Ridings). That extended to a sense of uplift in many of the songs that doesn’t always match the themes of the material. But then, there was the impossible good cheer and attractiveness of the young players, to match Hozier’s own; this is a group where everyone looks as if they could be in Taylor Swift’s band or actually looks like Taylor Swift. The swoon factor in Hozier’s appeal is undeniably high, and it’s safe to say no one left Griffith Park less smitten.

But ladies (and gentlemen), do be aware that Hozier has some dark-side moments that can almost make Leonard Cohen look like Stephen Bishop. The only time he really overtly accentuated that in concert was in introducing and playing the new album’s “No Plan,” a love song that is also an amiable statement of atheism in which Hozier reminds his beloved that the universe is going to collapse upon itself someday. This may be rather like the gambit in which the ‘50s boy gets the girl to make out with him in a fallout shelter, but in any case, Hozier didn’t stint on the end-of-all-things aspect of it, even putting up on screen behind the band a statement from astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack pointing out humankind’s and the galaxy’s ultimate fate. (“Honestly I never really imagined I’d end up being name-checked in a song for talking about how the universe is eventually going to fade out and die so this is all very exciting for me,” Mack tweeted in replay earlier in the year.) Suffice it to say that with that soulful a vintage ‘70s groove and that fuzz-tastic a guitar line, many babies will be conceived to the tune of “No Plan,” whether it foresees generational lines ending in a godless black hole or not.

Other Hozier songs reveal darker gets more estimable the more you dig into it. With its bird talk, “Shrike” sounds sweet enough, till you realize that a shrike is a kind of bird that impales its prey on thorns, which does add a rather bloody metaphoric undertone to what sounds like a reasonably pacifist breakup song. “Dinner & Diatribes,” meanwhile, is just deeply horny, not thorny. The most brooding song of the set, “Talk,” has verses where Hozier sings in lofty, literary terms about the romantic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, only to reveal in the chorus that he’s talking to this woman in such high-minded terms because he just wants to charm her into the sack. As a piece of writing, it’s hilarious, establishing a devilish side of Hozier it’s good to hear. As a piece of performance, it’s just sexy.

But as enriching as it is to realize Hozier has a healthy sense of humor in his writing, bad-boy wit is never going to be what you’re going to come away from a Hozier album or show with. The main part of Friday’s concert ended, as expected, with “Take Me to Church,” his outraged take on abuse and homophobia in the scandalized Catholic church — which just happens to be easily taken as a lusty hymn to sexuality. Following that, the large band returned to a stage that had now been decked out in some kind of ivy, as Hozier talked about his love for the late Irish poet Seamus Heaney (whose last words he has tattooed on his arm) and, “since I’ve come this far,” went ahead and recited his poem “Mint,” sharing his hero’s affection for the plant and its “tenacity for life.”

Tenacity is likely to be a buzzword, too, for Hozier, given his leaps and gains as a writer-performer and seeming level head atop his tree-top shoulders. Taller still of voice, musical dexterity and good will — and still just 29 —  he’s somebody the swooners and even some cynics should feel good about settling in with for a very long Irish ride.

[not-a-perfect-metaphor]

Alright, everyone *cracks knuckles*, let’s get into....something more comfortable?

Wait, no. Force of habit, sorry about that!

Let’s get into....Jaxcon 2019! 😏

As usual, there is much to cover.

Starting with Jared being back! *happy dance* Back and wearing-

-this amazing, too-small (women’s medium) mugshot shirt! Don’t worry. I’m already writing up the petition for Jared to wear only women’s medium shirts from now on.

I’ll tell you that I’ve been majorly feeling for him, for Jared, and I’m sure that outward confidence aside, it’s been an incredibly nerve wracking stretch of time for him from his arrest to his public reappearance at Jax. Despite all the support that’s been pouring in, there’s also been some ignorant negativity, and we know he internalizes that kind of thing. But I’m sure his time at Jax surrounded by love and appreciation helped him immensely.

Plus I’ll use that thought as a segway into this beautiful Jaxcon embrace while the Js were talking about Jensen being an important source of emotional support for Jared ❤️-

Reminds me a lot of this Vancon embrace!

And we can’t forget-

Jensen: “I know him better than pretty much anyone.”

*cries* we know you do. We know.

And of course....of course, the boys were being dirty as well, because an eternal J2 constant we can always count on is the fact that they just can’t seem to resist comments like this one:

Jared: “He just informed me that it was a pity rim shot.”

Jensen: “Better than a pity rim job...”

Jared (smirkety-smirk): “Is it, though?”

Jensen: “Is it? Maybe not.” 😏

Reminds me of-

Jensen (about the bar Roosters): “That’s better than Cocks!”

Jared: “But...is it?”

*cue dirty dirty J2 giggles*

Ahhh, you two. Loving your cocks and rim jobs. So wonderful to have you publicly together again.

We got the ‘putting Jared in handcuffs’ statement last time from Jensen, and this time we got the marvelous tale of Jared getting lost at Disney and finding that there was a harness for him the next day, which Jensen apparently still uses on him!

Mmhm! Well then! I am definitely okay with that visual.

We also got to briefly glimpse one of our favorite things; jealous-Jensen! And in the same breath, we learned that the Js had spent the previous day together (yes, we do know that they spend a great deal of their time together, but hearing them say it is always nice), AND there was even a bit more dirtiness sprinkled into the interaction too-

Jared (talking about how Matt Cohen had been shirtless on Saturday while promoting Jensen’s album): “I hear Johnny Handsome was running around shirtless?”

But wait! Johnny Handsome is what Jared calls Jensen-

Jared: “Johnny Handsome walks in...”

So Jensen had to respond with a reminder that HE’S Johnny Handsome-

Jensen: “What are you talking about? I was with you!”

To which Jared jumps right on board with-

Jared: “Yeah, and you were shirtless!”

Jensen: “I mean, I was, but they don’t know that.”

Tehe. Don’t worry. We assumed it.

Okay, and did you catch this second little bit of jealousy from Jensen? Watch his expression, especially toward the end-

Jared (discussion had shifted back to Cohen): “If I had a 45-pack, I wouldn’t even own shirts, let alone wear them.”

I’m convinced Jared says little things like that knowing that jealous-Jensen will make an appearance, because we all know how much it turns him on when Jensen gets possessive, and what we see of that is obviously nothing compared to what goes on afterwards when it’s just the two of them. 😏

Darn. I wanted to post some ‘that reminds me of...’ things, but I am far too low on space. So, moving on...to one of my favorite, FAVORITE little tidbits!

Question: what do Sam and Dean do to escape each other’s musk/sweat?

Jared (smirkety-smirk): “Why would we want to?”

Mmhm! *breaks out my proud Wincest-shipper hoodie* (no one ships it harder than the Js).

I’m sure you’ve already guessed (or seen for yourself) that there was much touchy touchy and many stares of love. And also a whole lot more general husbands-husbanding. Really...you guys...I am just so pleased with the year 2019. I truly am. And you can bet I’ll be posting each and every stare and touch and lovey word and moment in a part two and possibly even a part three (because image space...booo).

Until then, though, hopefully this gave you at least a satisfying enough taste of the Js at Jax!

More soon, friends!

[alexandrasavior]

Alexandra Savior’s Kind of Feminism

Knowing what establishes art as feminist is a feeling more than anything. The line is very fine between exposing a trope and being that trope, just as it is between acknowledging gender and falling victim to it. With that in mind, there’s an honest feminism in Alexandra Savior’s music that is very refreshing. She does not sing as a woman who is marketing her gender or sexuality, though she does not pretend she is not a woman, either. She sings with a human vulnerability, addressing her longing and desires as a woman, as well as her insecurities as one. She does not fall in line with problematic gendered music because she acknowledges the trappings head-on.

While what I mean by “problematic” may be obvious, I would like to avoid sounding vague: Women should not sell sex for the pleasure of men. There has been a perversion in modern feminism that has allowed for this to take place, for female celebrities to sexualize themselves and call it empowering, even though it is both feeding a patriarchal society and hurting women who are not in that position of influence. It has once again become normal for a female singer to degrade herself using her sexuality through lyrics, clothing and actions, and it still remains profitable.

Savior’s music reminds me of Věra Chytilová’s film Daisies (1966), a film one can only describe as a nightmare for the patriarchy – a feminist apocalypse by way of pure female empowerment and a total structural breakdown of society. The film’s characters appear so feminine that they defy their gender by pushing it to the extreme; in a way, this is what Alexandra Savior’s music is doing too. Aesthetically speaking, her music videos also seem reminiscent of the film.

She only has two albums to date – 2017’s Belladonna of Sadness and 2020’s The Archer – which makes following the 24-year-old artist’s career all the more exciting. Her first album was done in collaboration with Alex Turner, and his musical influence is felt – this is even how I found out about her in the first place, through Turner. It may sound counter-productive to have to speak about Savior in relation to a man, though their collaboration is important to note because I would say they are male and female musical counterparts. Turner’s style, especially since The Last Shadow Puppets’ 2016 Everything You’ve Come to Expect, has matured to a level of extreme confidence, in both his music and performance, and this style seems directly linked to a self-conscious masculinity. Turner’s performance in the music video for his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Is This What You Wanted?” is flamboyantly masculine, wearing a vest atop bare skin, paired with an ascot, sunglasses and tight, embroidered trousers; he embraces his gender nearly to the point of parody, which takes it to a level beyond simply being a joke. Savior does this with her femininity: she is so feminine that she becomes something beyond any expectations of gender (like the women from Daisies). The music video for “Howl” (off her latest album) is a great example of taking gender expectations to the extreme. If a woman is meant to be submissive to men – awaiting them with a languid disposition – then this video has flipped that notion on its head. Savior lays lifelessly on the floor, on a bed, on a couch (I am reminded of Ramón Casas' painting A Decadent Girl), on a table, on the stairs, on the dirt. She has stripped sex from these poses by making them uncomfortable to look at; it’s as if her message is a dare: I’m here for the taking, if you still want to take me like this.

“Mirage” is one of my favorite songs of hers. It features the singer deciding upon a stage name or alter-ego that will best suit her:

Violet was tickling my fancy Gives out just the right amount of soul I wonder if it makes me sound too old Decided that a Stella or a Candy Seems as if I’m spinning down a pole Swept them over to the stack of no’s

“Anna-Marie Mirage” becomes her new persona, and the change the singer experiences as a result can be seen in the change of the chorus throughout its repetitions: “I sing songs about/Whatever the fuck they want;” “We sing songs about/Whatever the fuck they want;” “We sing songs about/Whatever the fuck she wants.” By the end of the song, her persona has more freedom than she does, much like the freedom one feels behind a mask, though, since the two never merge into one, our singer does not feel that empowerment on her own.

I’ve also become a fan of her more recent song “The Archer.” It’s a reflective love song that exposes her awareness of her own emotional weakness and insecurity, though it addresses this with the distance one has when examining the past:

You ate me right up You spit me back out You bit my head right off with your tiny little mouth I licked the blood from your lips

Is her songwriting cliché? I’d argue that it dances right up to the line of becoming so, which is not at all a criticism – quite to the contrary; her music is rooted in clichés of femininity which is why she is able to critique and subvert it so well. Take “Crying All the Time,” for example. She sings: “He doesn't like it when I cry/And now he's gone, so I'm crying all the time.” The lyrics, and the title, are a joke with a subtle poignancy to them; she is acknowledging a female stereotype of sensitivity (“crying all the time”) and playing that role, while making an ironic protest by saying it is to spite her ex-lover – but at the end of the day, she is still crying. How does one reconcile feminist ideals with involuntary emotion? Savior seems to find that balance here playfully.

We need women like Alexandra Savior to become popular because women who pretend sexual self-exploitation is empowering harm the rest of us. You don’t need to be sexually conservative to be a feminist, just as feeling emotions that have been associated with femininity does not compromise your stance as a feminist. As 2020 has just begun, let’s hope that Savior offers us a pathway to a new type of sonic female empowerment. Her music, and the message carried within it, is definitely worth our attention.

[playthatthing]

favourite albums of 2019

These are the new records I spent the most time listening to and that defined last year.

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell! 

fka twigs - MAGDALENE 

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow  

these four are all my albums of the year, thanks to these amazing women for making such stunning art

Andrew Bird - My Finest Work Yet (album cover of the year. i had a really intense experience listening to “Bloodless” one night when we were sleeping in a cabin in Yellowstone.)

Deerhunter - Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?

DIIV - Deceiver (great song for lining billionaires up against a wall)

Solange - When I Get Home (i read all the annotations on Genius. i still don’t understand anything about Houston Texas but this is good)

Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising (the 70s are over and we’re living in a nightmare)

Tegan and Sara - Hey, I’m Just Like You (they always make me happy)

Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls  (Natasha + 80s synthpop is a match made in heaven ahh)

The Twilight Sad - IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME (robert smith gave this like a 9/10 i mean literally he sent them ratings out of 10 for every song)

Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs

Mayberian Sanskülotts - Neverending Sorry (Hungarian excellence)

Desperate Journalist - In Search of the Miraculous (look, there are shittons of gothy bands about these days but i really like them, Jo Bevan’s voice is wonderful and their sound is also more organic and less formulaic than, say, The Soft Moon or Drab Majesty et al)

The Divine Comedy - Office Politics (Neil Hannon continues to be a cheeky genius, and this time he’s nursing an 80s synthpop infatuation like nobody else, to the point where there is literally a track where a robot questions him about his listening habits and he starts listing every important band from the era. Also, special shoutout to “The Synthesiser Service Centre Super Summer Sale” and mother. fucking. “Philip And Steve’s Furniture Removal Company”)

Kælan Mikla - Nótt eftir nótt (they are living the goth dream)

LCD Soundsystem - Electric Lady Sessions (got to appreciate a good live album)

Aldous Harding - Designer (thanks for being the right sort of weird while joanna newsom is away)

MARINA - Love + Fear (i even like the Clean Bandit collab here and I hate Clean Bandit, thanks for making good pop Marina)

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fishing For Fishies

Big Thief - U.F.O.F. / Two Hands (i’m a late convert to Big Thief and solo Andrianne Lenker but this is a great time)

Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride (i was sceptical about this Rostam-less existence but shit it’s great)

The National - I Am Easy To Find (The National will always be the “oh no i hate being so sad” kind of sad to me but what can i do)

Foals - Part 1 Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (this song in particular)

TOY - Happy In the Hollow 

Meteo - Hayline (more Hungarian excellence)

Ride - This Is Not A Safe Place

The Highwomen - The Highwomen (a giant FUCK YOU to sexist mainstream country music culture and a great album)

M83 - DSVII (i was unexpectedly enchanted by this video game soundtracky goodness)

various - De jó elhagyni magamat

Leonard Cohen - Thanks For the Dance

all the songs linked here in one playlist

under the cut further albums i liked, and albums i just haven’t listened to enough to form impressions, aka my to-do list

also good:

Calexico, Iron & Wine - Years to Burn

Rose Elinor Dougall - A New Illusion

Hozier - Wasteland, Baby!

Steve Gunn - The Unseen In Between

Crocodiles - Loves Is Here

Priests - The Seduction of Kansas

Ex Hex - It’s Real

Cherry Glazerr - Stuffed & Ready

Hand Habits - placeholder

Whitney - Forever Turned Around

Wilco - Ode to Joy

Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold

Belle & Sebastian - Days of the Bagnold Summer

Vivian Girls - Memory

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Vagabon - Vagabon

Courtney Barnett - MTV Unplugged

Vanishing Twin - The Age of Immunology

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

albums i just haven’t listened to at all yet, or not enough:

Rhye - Spirit

Holly Herndon - PROTO

Jenny Hval - The Practice of Love

Cate le Bon - Reward

Sleaford Mods - Eton Alive

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen

TOY - Songs of Consumption

Alcest - Spiritual Instinct

Shamir - Be the Yee, Here Comes the Haw

Foals - Part 2 Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost

Mikal Cronin - Seeker

Bon Iver - i,i

Yeasayer - Erotic Reruns

James Blake - Assume Form

HEALTH - VOL.4:: SLAVES OF FEAR

Thom Yorke - Anima

Beirut - Gallipoli

Foxygen - Seeing Other People

Fat White Family - Serfs Up!

Jens Lekman, Annika Norlin - Correspondence

Blood Orange - Angel’s Pulse

the other King Gizzard record but like... theres probably five of them and i can’t keep up

[aurora-daily]

Nine Songs: AURORA

Interview by Thomas Harvey for The Line of Best Fit (May 30th, 2019).

Ahead of the release of her third album, Norway’s greatest pop export talks Thomas Harvey through the songs that have shaped her life and sound.

From a bustling city to the stillness of the forest; one of the first things that AURORA says to me is that as much as she loves music, she rarely listens to it. Instead it’s the sounds, sights and smells of the world that truly influence the Norwegian singer/songwriter.

Aurora Aksnes grew up without a television or radio. It’s not been the study of listening that’s carried her craft as a songwriter, rather the experiences and feelings she’s discovered and observed. Consequently, when we meet in London to talk about the songs that have made an impact on her, she references the memories attached to each of them, rather than musical influences.

AURORA feels it’s important to take solace in the finer details of a piece of music, as well as the core of good song-writing. Many of her selections are from timeless, legendary artists, unsurprisingly for a writer whose productions can often be modernised on songs like ‘Queendom’, from 2018’s Infections Of A Different Kind - Step 1, the follow up to her debut All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend.

With the next chapter of the songwriters musical story arriving with A Different Kind Of Human - Step 2, AURORA explains how these nine songs have helped to shape her during the different periods of her life, from the feeling of kinship she felt with the audience at a Mastodon show at the age of eleven, to her honour in playing in the name of Leonard Cohen, to whom she paid tribute in a museum exhibition to his memory in Montreal

“Perfection is impossible” AURORA explains, an idea that’s an important reminder to herself when creating her music. Nonetheless, her relationship with music always stays with her as a friend.

“Rez” by Underworld

“I discovered this song and this band a year ago, quite randomly. I love going to rave parties alone and of course I don’t drink, because I don’t want to be vulnerable to an attack and get into any trouble. I don’t drink, but I stay safe and I just dance.

“I just really love to dance. It’s kind of like a workout for me, because I’m very energetic on stage. I was at a rave party in France on a boat and I heard this song and I had to ask someone ‘What song is this?’ and I found it later.

“Now I listen to it sometimes when I cook - everything techno is my cooking song. The last meal I was cooking and listening to it with was waffles I think. I have a new waffle maker and it can cook two waffles at a time.”

“Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen

“May he rest in peace, the lovely little angel. I love this song. Musically we only heard Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Enya when I was a child, there was nothing else as we didn’t have a radio. I love Enya as well, especially the way she just stays the same and doesn’t change her sound. She knows what she’s here to do and she does it.

"This was one of the songs that I really loved when I was unable to understand what he was saying, because I didn’t know English then, or at least I didn’t know these lyrics yet, because they were so complicated. I ended up learning my English mainly from online gaming or computer games like World Of Warcraft.

“A Seated Night” by Moby

“This song was on my computer, by a mistake I think, and on our family computer. We had a computer much later on - before computers were normal to have in every house - and we didn’t have a radio or MTV when I was growing up.

“I didn’t discover music when I was a kid and I still don’t really, because I don’t have many music platforms on my phone, but ‘A Seated Night’ was randomly downloaded through LimeWire onto our computer and it was the first song that I discovered through technology.

“I really love Moby, although I haven’t dived deep into him yet. I love the choir and I think that’s why I fell in love with this song, it’s just so nice. I love arranging myself into a choir and I’ve used a real choir for my music, a gay choir from Norway called Faggots. They’re really good, they just sing like real people and are really talented, more than I ever knew before I was working with them.

“They’re on “It Happened Quiet” and “Churchyard” and they’re also on my new record, where you can hear them quite promptly. They’re gorgeous. Ever since I heard this song, it had always been my dream to have a choir on my record.”

“Tomorrow Never Knows” by The Beatles

“This was the first song where I really enjoyed some of the production stuff in it. I really love different cultures and I’m really into this kind of vibe. I really liked it when I was a kid, I heard it when I was a sixteen-year-old kid, not like four, I was a bit older.

“I found all my music through CD’s, even though there were other platforms, I was just really slow. We didn’t have stuff at home like a TV or radio, so I discovered this through a CD because I really liked the cover and that’s why I bought it, an LP actually, so old-fashioned! It was the second LP I ever bought for myself.

“The cover was really nice, and I just really liked it. And of course I knew about The Beatles, I knew that they were a big name, and I should listen to them and see if I like them or not. I just really realised that you can play along with things, and that’s when I became a producer.”

“Born Slippy” by Underworld

“I was driving through Iceland listening to this song and it’s just really gorgeous. I think this is how people feel when they take drugs - they begin on this floating cloud and then it becomes a bit chaotic at the end.

“It sounds like they were on drugs when they made it, but it doesn’t make me sad when I think about it, there’s something with it, it’s positive without making me vomit, which I really enjoy. Sometimes happier music is hard to listen to, because you can question as to why you aren’t as happy as the people in the song, but I like this song.

“I discovered this song much later, after ‘Rez’. When I hear one song I don’t automatically go and find the whole album, I kind of stop and just have fun with that song for months - I get really patient with songs and I can listen to them for months. I saw that ‘Born Slippy’ was on the same album as ‘Rez’ and now of course I have the whole album and I have rave parties for myself, just me.

“I also love to listen to this song whilst I paint, when I paint something without meaning. I’m full of opposites or coherent contrasts, one day I like to be at rave parties and then I like to be in forests. I like to see what the world has to offer me.”

“American Beauty: Original Motion Picture Score” by Thomas Newman

“This is my alarm clock; I wake up to it every morning. It’s so brilliant because it begins with this... and then I listen to it when I read books on a loop and it’s enough for me. It’s all I need. I have like one song for every mood.

“I heard this way before I watched the movie American Beauty. It was many, many years ago and it was one of the first songs I had. I had an orange iPod which I got for Christmas and I only had this song on it for years. I still think if I went into that iPod now, this is the only song I would have on it. I haven’t had it for years though, and they were such nice colours.

“It’s good for walks in the forest, it’s like everything is still. Another is the Finding Nemo soundtrack which is also good for timeouts or when you go for walks. It’s really lovely.”

“The Hunter” by Mastodon

“I really love heavy metal. I’m very open, so I don’t really care about genres and often with heavy metal I just like it. I was a huge fan of many heavy metal bands when I was a kid, the first concert I went to was Gojira and then Mastodon and then Slayer. I was eleven and I really loved it.

“None of my friends liked the music and so I remember feeling at home at the shows, because I met people who understood it. It’s so angry without being hostile if you really listen to it, but it can sound hostile to people who don’t understand it.

“This is quite a calm song by Mastodon. It’s a childhood memory, but a song that allowed me to discover Mastodon with a more melodic song than most heavy metal bands I knew. I saw them play two times actually.

“I try and turn what I love about heavy metal into something that more people can understand, like in songs like “Under The Water” and “The Seed”, the single I just released, is more heavy. I like the weight.”

“The Partisan” by Leonard Cohen

“I did this song for an installation at a museum in Montreal, I covered it in one of the rooms in his memory and it was really an honour. It was all of his life and achievements as pieces of art in the museum, and they asked artists to showcase his art so that people could see those that he influenced.

“I really love this song. I know that he speaks of the Second World War and I think that’s not often spoken about, considering how much pain it brought the world. Also, in art and music we don’t really paint or sing much about it but it’s important that people talk about it, because it’s something we carry on our shoulders and we did it to each other as a species.

“I think about it a lot, but it’s good to distance ourselves from the memory too. I have a few songs about the matter, though some are more obvious than others.”

“Hide and Seek” by Imogen Heap

“This is a really sad song for me. I listened to it in a sad stage of my life, I could have gotten through without it, but it encouraged self-pity and staying in the sorrow, and I think that’s not always a bad thing. Sometimes you can stay for a while on things and cry and move on a bit later. I never listen to this song anymore because it reminds me of a sad time, but it’s still an important song to me.

“I like Imogen Heap as a producer. I like the vocoder on this, even though I think she’s using a different machine than the standard vocoder; I don’t really like the way a vocoder makes double voices sound so thin. If it sounds like I’m using a vocoder then I have always made it myself, but it’s a good balance here with this song. It works. I think vocoders are an ugly thing, but the way it’s executing its mission in this song is good.

“A Different Kind Of Human” is out now via Decca.

[makistar2018]

Why ‘Lover’ Is the Ultimate Taylor Swift Album

Taylor Swift just made her career-capping masterpiece and it’s not OK at all

By ROB SHEFFIELD August 23, 2019

Why is Lover so much more than just another great Taylor Swift album? Because it’s the one where she’s trying to make all the great Taylor Swift albums, at the same time. She’s closing down her twenties, which she spent making five of the decade’s best albums — Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation and now this one — all released before she reached the age when Leonard Cohen made his debut. (Here’s betting Taylor keeps writing great songs into her 80s, just as L.C. did.) So overdramatic. So true. It’s her career-capping masterpiece: She touches every place she’s ever visited along her musical journey, and makes them all sound new. So overdramatic. So true. She’s had you for 13 summers, honey, but now she wants them all, and she wants to make you fall in love with this magnetic force of an album. It’s a ridiculously excessive demand, but what other kind would she ever make?

It’s the first time since Red she’s attempted to gather together all the Taylors and sit them down for a summit. But Red was seven years ago, and there are a lot more new Taylors in the mix. All over Lover, she’s in touch with her younger self — “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” revisits the high-school girl she was on Fearless, just as “Daylight” updates the six-months-sober young-adult romantic of 1989. The girl who sang about making her mom drop her off a block away from the party is now driving her mom to the hospital. The teenager with teardrops on her guitar is now a woman with guitar-string scars. Yet on Lover she wants to show why all these girls are authentically her. 

In Prince terms, if Speak Now was her 1999 and Red was her Purple Rain and Reputation was her Parade, this is her Sign o’ the Times, the one where she shows she can do all her best tricks on one album. Her goopy guitar ballads, her new wave electro-pop, her Southern accent, her English accent, her brilliant ideas, her terrible ones, every corner of her borrowed and blue heart — it’s all here. Practically every song is saturated in her personal mythology, packed with tiny musical and lyrical details for only hardcore fans to notice — love the way she adds a lost glove to go with the lost scarf from “All Too Well.”

For a songwriter who tends to fall in and out of love on a roller-coaster rhythm, Lover is an album about being in love, which is both scarier and harder to write songs about. “The Archer,” “Lover,” “Cornelia Street,” “Cruel Summer” — these are the kind of disruptively, devouringly hyper-emotional ballads Taylor used to write about her fleeting crushes, but it’s a totally different song when it’s about trying to hold on to a real human being (and trying to stay one).

You could call Lover her “Saturn’s return” album, as people are fond of saying these days. But “Saturn’s return” is too good a word, babe, so I’ll just say, “getting old.” Great songwriters always tend to get introspective when they’re facing 30, whether it’s David Bowie on Low, Joni Mitchell on Hejira, or Al Green on The Belle Album. When I was a little boy, I’d look at Carole King’s wise eyes on the cover of Tapestry and ponder all the adult pain she sang about — but Carole was only 29, the age Taylor is now.

My favorite Lover song as of right now — it will keep changing for weeks to come — is “Cornelia Street.” It’s basically the same plot as “Holy Ground” — a girl in New York City, surrounded by a city that reminds her of a boy she misses before he’s even gone. But it’s from a totally different emotional perspective. “Holy Ground” has always been a fave because it sums up Taylor’s zero-to-60 heart — she goes off the deep end about her latest crush, all the private jokes they share, the poems she writes about him, their deep soul connection. Then she delivers the punch line: “And that was the first day!” (Never accuse Tay of lacking a sense of humor about herself.) What a surprise: the “Holy Ground” romance falls apart in the usual way. Probably on the second day.

But in “Cornelia Street,” it’s not the first day anymore. She’s trying to hold on and make it real before it burns out. How do you keep your holy ground when you actually have to walk on it and live there? That’s the question she’s asking all over these new songs.

“Lover” begins with her trademark Sad Taylor guitar in the Mazzy Star mode, then turns out to be not sad at all, but a ballad of a long-running ever-evolving adult relationship, without any compromise of her extra extra-ness. When Taylor sings, “I swear to be overdramatic and true,” her vow is extremely believable. “Lover” has sent me back to all her Mazzy Swift ballads over the years, which means “Last Kiss” has been currently re-ruining my life on an hourly basis. (Seriously: how the hell did a 20-year-old write the hook “I feel you forget me like I used to feel you breathe”?) It’s the perfect autobiographical title song, for this most nakedly autobiographical of Swift albums.

She goes back to country with the Dixie Chicks in “Soon You’ll Be Better,” a poignant sequel to “The Best Day” about her mom’s battle with cancer. (She sings about Jesus for the first time since her long-forgotten juvenilia ditty, “Christmas Must Mean Something More.”) On the other side of the spectrum, she enlists Idris Elba for “London Boy,” a roll call of Brit stereotypes that achieves the ultimate in blimey-sploitation. (“Brixton” is the new “therein”? Discuss!)

The lead single “ME!” turned out to have basically nothing to do with any of the music on the album, which — in case you’re late to this game — is the way she always does it. Her lead singles tend to be camp one-offs. But “You Need to Calm Down” holds up well after months of airplay, from the New Romantic synths (play it next to Elvis Costello’s “Green Shirt” for the full effect) to the grand joke of Taylor calming anyone down, which is like the Human Torch advising you to chill. “The Man” is the righteous feminist bombshell Reputation could have used, and Taylor picked the absolute perfect moment to compare her self-image to Leo DiCaprio. As the little girl in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would say, poor Eazy Breezy.

And for old times’ sake, there’s the obligatory dud, just because it wouldn’t be a real Taylor album without one moment that goes off the rails. So step right up and shake hands with “I Forgot You Existed,” which sounds like it was left off Reputation for wise reasons. I don’t plan to listen to it again, yet I’m glad it’s there because the album needs it to be emotionally authentic — just as the Beatles knew Abbey Road wouldn’t be complete without “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

She still zooms into emotional extremes, like in the hilarious way she begins “Lover” by boasting about how she’s wild and carefree enough to leave her Christmas lights up until January, which is (if my math is correct) a week. It’s just like she ended her last album singing about cleaning up the morning after her New Year’s Eve party, which means she didn’t spend New Year’s Day nursing her hangover with an eight-hour Love After Lockupbinge like a normal person. Like Reputation, Lover has plenty of acerbic “therein lies the issue” moments, but she dials down the Therein Factor a couple notches to make room for a whole avalanche of emotion. When she takes that vow of eternal devotion in “Lover” — with every guitar-string scar on her hand — the soulmate she’s really embracing is her chaotic self, and it’s an overpowering moment from an overpowering album. All the Taylors, all the time.

Rolling Stone

[kuciradio]

As 2018 is coming to an end it’s time to reflect on this amazing year for new music and artistry. KUCI is a diverse group of DJs and we are proud to represent all genres of music. I have finally put together our Top 10 albums of 2018 along with some honorable mentions towards the end accompanied by some lovely words written by our fellow DJs. We can’t wait for what 2019 brings for us and continue tuning in on kuci.org or 88.9 FM if you’re in the Orange County area. Have a safe and happy new year!

1. Mitski - Be The Cowboy

“Mitski Miyawaki’s powerhouse voice resonates with a haunting clarity on her stunning masterpiece Be the Cowboy. She creates entire worlds and characters out of pieces of herself, from paranoid, awkward women who yearn for traditionalism and some idealist version of what life or love should be (hello “Lonesome Love”), to cowgirls who can do it all on their own. From sorrowful to triumphant, Mitski colors the spaces in between from soul-bearing ballad “Geyser” to unforgettable dancing-alone-in-your-bedroom anthem “Nobody.” (Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp)

“This album was so personal and raw and I also liked how the songs flowed well on this album.” (Heidi Barragan)

2. The Internet - Hive Mind

“I can't talk about this album without mentioning how mad I am at myself for missing the tour. Syd, Pat, Steve, Matt, and Chris, The Internet, are prominent figures of musical evolution; this speaks volumes and not just because they got their start with Odd Future, a hub of avid freeform artists. If you’re inclined to believe what I believe, Ego Death is a heartbreak album and Hive Mind is loaded with recovery anthems and passionate songs to share with your new partner who is not a rebound. Across the timeline, the sounds change from R&B and Hip-Hop to Funk and Soul; but what captures my attention the most, from Ego Death to Hive Mind, is the way a facade is casted aside. Hive Mind is just so sincere and therefore, perfectly fitting for being a part of my top three.” (Thorson Munoz)

“[This album] is a very funky album with heavy tones of R&B. The Internet does not disappoint with their funky sounds, which can be heard on “La Di Da”. Overall the album has powerful baselines, thanks to the amazing Steve Lacy, and groovy beats backed by Syd’s smooth vocals. It is hard to listen to this album and not dance along to it.” (Melissa Palma)

3. Kali Uchis - Isolation

“Colombian singer Kali Uchis’ long-awaited debut album is a high-production value journey into her uniquely sultry, dreamy world of R&B. The songstress’s silky voice pushes boundaries of various genres, from bossa-inspired intro “Body Language” to the Amy Winehouse-esque “Killer,” each track better and more of a banger than the last. Isolation features artists like The Internet guitarist Steve Lacy, British soul success Jorja Smith, and reggaeton icon Reykon. Uchis also recruited her friends Tyler, the Creator and legendary bassist Bootsy Collins for the hit single “After the Storm,” a follow-up to her and Tyler’s song “See You Again” from his 2017 album Flower Boy (supported by a stunningly whimsical music video by director Nadia Lee Cohen). The producer credits are just as stacked, including the likes of Thundercat, BROCKHAMPTON’s Romil Hemnani, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn. Uchis proves herself as the new sound of pop, never veering from her originality that made her a Soundcloud sweetheart.” (Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp)

4. Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer

“She’s such an intelligent creative weirdo and I LOVE HER. Not to mention her oozing femme POWER.” (Naseem Eskandari)

“About the moxie I mentioned earlier, this emotional rollercoaster has an abudnace of it and I cannot get enough! Cover to cover this album packs a punch, and as the visual companion--which brought me to tears--would suggest, this entire album is a celebration of deviant bodies and identities. This album contains the perfect ratio of soft and tender tracks and upbeat exciting ones so its no wonder why NPR named Dirty Computer their number one of 2018.” (Thorson Munoz)

5. Anderson .paak - Oxnard

“Sometimes artists, after huge successes, feel that they need to make music that sounds just like their previous work to gain the same traction, but really the true artists are the ones that stay honest and true to their creative ability - their sound moves through life with them.” (Naseem Eskandari)

“Anderson .Paak, to me, is responsible for every playlist I've ever built that revolves around driving in Los Angeles with the windows down, no matter the time of day. However, I don't drive a convertible, so instead I honored Venice and Malibu using my radio program, Detours. Not only am I excited to honor Oxnard as well, but Oxnard was built for driving; this is evident after listening to "Tints", the first release, and "Headlow". This album, just like Malibu, is masterful; the only difference is that Dr. Dre stepped out of the shadows and was a feature. Oxnard is beyond incredible and worthy of it's legendary features, Snoop Dog, Q-Tip, and Kadhja Bonet, to name a few. I'm really excited for what will likely be Anderson .Paak's next Grammy nomination.” (Thorson Munoz)

6. Blood Orange - Negro Swan

“AMAZING production, amazing narrative!!!!!!!” (Angel Cortez)

“Dev Hynes never fails to make master pieces of albums that narrate the experience of marginalized people in an oppressive and toxic environment. Hynes brings together artists as big as ASAP Rocky to smaller artists of equal talent such as Steve Lacey creating a beautiful medley of indie hip hop to soul and funk.  Coupled with interviews, Hynes is able to make this album a personal experience for the listener. For me it always feels as though he is singing to me personally, something that not many artists are able to do.” (Kelsey Villacorte)

7. Kevin Krauter - Toss Up

“Toss Up has to be my personal #1 favorite album of 2018 by Kevin Krauter who began making music apart from lo-fi dream pop band Hoops in 2015. Toss Up was released this past summer and was the perfect album to listen to during warm summer nights and has carried through to the end of the year as a comforting reminder of those warm times during these cold nights. It has that dreamy, nostalgic feeling, something that you would listen to as you’re reflecting on the tender moments of your life. Krauter mixes vaporwave-esque sounds with sweet ballads with no one song sounding like the other.” (Kelsey Villacorte)

8. MGMT - Little Dark Age

“MGMT's come-back album is focused, synthy, and fresh. Without abandoning the dark undertones present in their older albums, this album reflects the band's personal growth and resonates with fans, old and new. Tracks like TSLAMP and Little dark Age are some of my favorites!” (Angelica Sheen)

“MGMT has maintained their status as an alternative staple and has since transformed their sound into something more experimental since their debut album Oracular Spectacular. MGMT did not disappoint and gave us an album that went from the weird wii-fit/dystopian vibes of She Works Out To Much to 80s dance of Me and Michael to another sweet ballad titled Hand It Over which is super reminiscent of the ending/title song of their second album Congratulations. MGMT never fails to write well thought out lyrics that all almost feel like their own story. All in all, they did not disappoint and this is exactly the kind of MGMT album I was hoping for after a 5 year hiatus.” (Kelsey Villacorte)

9. Ian Sweet - Crush Crusher

“Jilian Medford refines IAN SWEET’s sound and practices self-care on sophomore album Crush Crusher, her most intimate release yet. Medford rediscovers her identity as she considers how much of herself she has forgotten while preoccupying herself with being a guardian to others (she warbles “The sun built me to shade everybody” on “Holographic Jesus”). Ever poetic while satisfyingly straightforward, she notes that “It’s been too long since I let myself cry about something that wasn’t even sad” on the pummeling single “Spit.” She coos, squeaks, and screams in perfect, dissonant harmony over her guitar’s cathartically melancholic reverb. IAN SWEET remains a perfect contradiction that only grows sweeter.” (Sophie Prettyman-Beauchamp)

10. Parquet Courts - Wide Awake!

“This band's genius shows through with every new release. Wide Awake throws all of their influences together and expels energetic funk beats with poignant, dark, and brutal lyrics that are especially political. The juxtaposition of these themes with upbeat and optimistic instrumentals speaks to their compositional talent, making it a fan favorite. AND THEY USE COWBELLS.” (Angelica Sheen)

Honorable Mentions:

Glenn Crytzer Orchestra, "Ain't it Grand?"

This album couldn't have been better aimed at me if the band had come and asked me what I wanted to hear.  A modern swing-style orchestra performing both classic tunes from the 1930s and modern pieces written in the big band style.  The ensemble playing is tight, the solos just exactly right, and the production quality a lot sharper than any of the original Duke Ellington recordings.  Top notch stuff. (Michael Payne)

The Vaccines - Combat Sports

"The Vaccines brought back the spirit and energy of their debut album but with a new twist when they released their 4th album early in 2018. Get pumped up with the "I Can't Quit" and "Nightclub" or settle down with  "Maybe (The Luck of the Draw)" or "Young American". The Vaccines perfectly embody the sound and snark of the '70s and '80s artists of which their influenced while still creating a modern feel of the 2010's. My personal favorite off the album "Out on the Street" definitely a treat live! Over all Combat Sports is an excellent album and what we needed in 2018." (Stacey Brizuela)

Cobra Man - Toxic Planet

“Los Angeles local duo Cobra Man blows it out of the water with their sophomore album that carries the heart and groove of something you'd hear out of '84. It is indeed one of the best albums of the year because it utilizes one of the most underrated instruments in the game, the saxophone.” (Spartacus Avina)

Nu Guinea "Nu Guinea"

Heaven & Earth by Kamasi Washington is an album that’s loud and bold in both sound and vocals. A lot of the album often creates an ethereal effect with the heavy instrumentals ascending into a grand peak, most notably heard on “Street Fighter Mas”. The vocals on the album accompany the instrumentals in their same form, loud and climaxing. Listening to this album is like a rollercoaster with its thrilling jazz sounds. (Melissa Palma)

Drug Church - Cheer

Mac Miller - Swimming

“The tragic beauty of this album speaks for itself. Mac was such a raw and very real individual and it reflects in his music the way that many others cannot replicate. May he rest in peace - I hope the next life will be better for him.” (Naseem Eskandari)

Thank you to all the amazing DJs who submitted their Top 10 list of 2018! I am super glad to have been part of an amazing and diverse radio station for this past year and this is only a small piece of what our DJs music tastes are like here. I hope everyone has an incredible and safe New Years Eve and a happy 2019 :)

-Kelsey Villacorte (Music Director)

[ioftenthinkoftragedies]

I got tagged by my beloved @kingink2 (thank you so much dear! sorry for the delay) 

1: A song you like with a color in the title

Lavender Fields by Lebanon Hanover.

Great band, I really like them. This song is so great in so many ways. 

2: A song you like with a number in the title

Sweet Sixteen by Billy Idol 

It’s always been a favourite song of mine, it brings back good memories of my teenage years. Quite dear to me as a matter of fact. 

3: A song that reminds you of summertime

Nancy From Now On by Father John Misty. 

I love this one, it has such a sweet melodie. Somehow it has always given me summer vibes, I don’t know if I’m correct but at least that’s what I feel. 

4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

There are quite a few but I got over him. Forgave him. He was a music lover like myself, so you can figure there are a few songs but even though they still remind me of him, I think of him now with fondness and tranquility. 

5: A song that needs to be played LOUD

Beyondless by Iceage. One of my favourite songs by my favourite band, I get endless goosebumps with this song. I love it so so much. 

6: A song that makes you want to dance

Better Looking Brother by Lust For Youth

I loooove dancing so I could probably list a lot of songs here, however, this is one of my favourite songs to dance to lately. It’s amazing. 

7: A song that makes you happy

Let The Night Come Seeping In by Josiah Konder

If you haven’t listened to this band, I highly reccomend it to you, it’s one of the finest new stuff, their debut album Songs For The Stunned is so good and beautiful. This song always makes me feel happy no matter how bad my day gets to be sometimes. It just makes my heart warm up, so-to-speak.  

8: A song that you never get tired of

Talk To Me by Stevie Nicks 

It never gets old 

9: A song that you would 😍 played at your wedding

I don’t know if I’ll get married, but if I ever do, I would like to slow dance to If You Were The Woman And I Was The Man By Cowboy Junkies. When I fall in love, I act a lot like the lyrics in this one, like, being quite romantic and just wearing my heart in my sleeve I suppose. 

10: A song that is a cover by another artist

Chelse Hotel No. 2 by Lana Del Rey 

I know this is from the great and all around amazing Leonard Cohen, and I also know a lot of people don’t like Lana, but as many of you know, I’m a huge fan of hers, and I love both versions, but I think Lana did a great job when she covered this. 

11: A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

Interlude by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux. 

I love this song, as I likely remember it is also a cover. It has a very special place in my heart, sometimes I listen to it when I’m about to sleep. 

12: A song that makes you think about life

Autobahn 66 by Primal Scream 

I always feel like life is such a mysterious thing whenever I listen to this. Plus, I’m such a daydreamer it’s hard not to relate. Sometimes I listen to a song and I’ll think to myself “this is life”. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it happens to me a lot. Another example is when I listen to a song and I’ll go “this sound like (insert here name of a person), it just sounds like their essence”. Anyway, got to deep in this answer hahaha.  

13: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

Believe Me Natalie by The Killers. 

I think this is an underrated song, when Hot Fuss came out, everyone just stuck with Mr. Brightside and trust me, The Killers are waaay more than just Mr Brightside. The last 44 seconds of the song are everything.

14: A song that you think everybody should listen to

Lion’s Den by Marching Church

I know I am saying this a lot, but fuck man I love this song sooo much. So fucking much. It just puts me in a trance I swear. 

15: A song by a band you wish were still together

Oh Baby by Siouxsie & The Banshees 

16: A song by an artist no longer living

Waiting For That Day by George Michael. 

17: A song that makes you want to fall 😍

I am terribly in love at the moment, and the song that has seen me lose my shit to this current boy is Some Days by Mrch. 

18: A song that breaks your ❤️

Another No One by Suede. I have a playlist I made full of songs that make me cry, you know, for the sad days. This one gets me everytime. 

19: A song that you remember from your childhood

Fly, Robin, Fly by Silver Convention

My parents used to play this a lot when I was like 4 or 5, I remember running around our apartment, playing with my toys, as my mum was doing household chores. 

20: A song that reminds you of yourself

Duchess by Suede 

Not to sound cocky at all, if you listen to the lyrics you’ll see why. I’ve always thought I sort of come from the same world Brett Anderson has written about, I relate to his words so much. So, ever since I became a Suedehead xD I noticed I was like this character Brett describes a lot, the lonely, sensitive girl who dreams a lot. 

I now tag @blue-disorder @iariotact @new-brat-in-town @psycho-rats if you want to do it, if not it’s totally ok. Love you all, thank you for reading 

[popentertainmentmusic]

K.D. LANG: INGÉNUE REDUX – LIVE FROM THE MAJESTIC THEATER (2019)

Featuring k.d. lang, Daniel Clarke, David Piltch, Grecco Buratto, Rich Hinman, Andrew Borger, Moorea Masa and Tahirah Memory.

Directed by Daniel E. Catullo III.

Distributed by MVD Visual. 106 minutes. Not Rated.

k.d. lang’s career was in kind of a weird place twenty-five years ago when she released the album which would become her biggest hit ever. She had released four well-respected rootsy country albums, specializing in a style which she referred to as “torch and twang.” However, despite cult fame and wonderful reviews, lang never quite fit in with the traditional Nashville scene – where her out-and-proud openly butch looks, flawless vocals and ironic songcraft didn’t have any place on radio with the current country sound. At the time country radio tended to embrace more pop-based stuff like Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, the old-school church cowboy strains of Alabama or Ronnie Milsap, or the outlaw country of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.

Therefore, lang decided to throw a complete change-up with Ingénue. She did hold on to the torch, but she pretty much jettisoned the twang. Instead, she wrote a sweet and sexy cabaret album, a smart and pointed adult contemporary platter full of striking hooks, walls of strings, and lush orchestration. The album spawned lang’s first (and only, really) hit single, the gorgeously longing “Constant Craving,” which finally earned lang the radio play and the headlining status that she had long yearned for.

In 2017, for the 25th anniversary of Ingénue, lang did a series of shows in which she performed the album in full, as well as several other songs. This video shares one of these shows, from the Majestic Theater in San Antonio, Texas.

The first thing you are reminded of in this revisit of Ingénue is how wonderful the rest of the album was beyond just “Constant Craving,” though that is pretty much the only song on this collection that still gets any regular airplay. (“Constant Craving” has been so ubiquitous over the years that the Rolling Stones even inadvertently nicked its chorus for their song “Anybody Seen My Baby.”)

However, from the first notes, the immediacy of the torch ballad “Mind of Love (Where Is Your Head, Kathryn?)” is so quietly devastating and yet so gorgeous you just want to cry listening to it. Lang’s vocals are still as gorgeously wounded as they had been years before and time stands still. It’s 1992 all over again.

Time also stands still for the swaying, lilting “Miss Chatelaine,” the second single from the original album, which should have been HUGE in a more just world. However, the ageless samba beats and pitch-perfect vocals still stun.

Other classics are the devastatingly morose and beautiful “Still Thrives This Love” and the swooning, honied alt-pop of “Save Me.”

After finishing up with Ingénue, lang finishes up with the gorgeous, swaying “Honey and Smoke,” from her then-recent supergroup album with Neko Case and Laura Veirs called… unsurprisingly… case/lang/viers. She also shares the luscious original “I Dream of Spring” from her 2008 album Watershed.

Then lang performed several covers from her album Hymns of the 49th Parallel, lang’s tribute to fellow Canadian singer/songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. lang wraps her supple vocals over such classics as Mitchell’s “Help Me,” Young’s “Helpless” and Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and comes as close to making them her own as is possible with those legendary, well-known songs. Particularly impressive was her take of “Hallelujah,” which ranks up with Cohen and Jeff Buckley’s iconic performances of that oft-performed chestnut. In fact, vocally, lang’s performance is even better.

Despite her songwriting chops and awesome vocal skills, k.d. lang’s career never took off to the extent that Ingénue promised 25 years ago. However, it was the change of musical direction that resulted in a long-respected and impressive career that lasts to this day. (I can’t quite see people lining up for her Absolute Torch and Twang sound all these years later.) Ingénue Redux is a nice reminder of why k.d. lang still matters. Still thrives her music.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2019 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 6, 2019.

[hatingwithfears]

Rufus Wainwright’s All These Poses Tour

I saw Rufus Wainwright in concert last night, on his All These Poses Anniversary Tour where he played songs off his first two albums. His debut album is now 20 years old (I discovered his music ten years ago, after seeing him perform in the Leonard Cohen tribute concert film, I’m Your Man. I found a used copy of his debut, and since then I’ve bought almost all his albums, and heard them all many times) and many of these songs still held up in concert. His follow up to his debut, Poses, was released in 2001, and it’s a darker album that hasn’t dated as well (drum machines, and other questionable moments were still there at the concert, but it’s a minor issue).

Besides his first two albums, there were some other tracks thrown in, like his new political single, “Sword of Damocles”, or older songs like “Going To A Town”.

Wainwright’s voice has always been astounding, his vocal range can reach far when needed. And while his songwriting has been very important to me (the three albums that followed Poses (Want One, Want Two and Release The Stars) reach for grand heights, with backing vocals, strings, and dramatic song shifts that I still can still dig through and enjoy after all these years), Wainwright uses his vocals to cover other people’s songs plenty of times over his career, he did cover Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” at the show and I was reminded of the season six finale of Mad Men where Don Draper takes his children to the house he grew up in, showing Draper display honesty about his double life through a song written back in 1969. The song is a classic. Joni Mitchell herself re-recorded the song with lavish strings in 2000, and it’s been covered by plenty of other artists (Neil Diamond, Judy Collins). Rufus’s version is a respectful cover that works thanks to his voice.

At the show, I purchased two signed CD’s. One was the recording of his first opera, Prima Donna, the other is Northern Stars, a live album filled with covers from Canadian songwriters. Leonard Cohen’s work gets covered (“Suzanne”, “Sisters of Mercy” and “So Long Marianne”), it’s great to finally hear some of these songs done by Wainwright.

Northern Stars has the same concept as KD Lang’s Hymns of The 49th Parallel (thankfully, there’s no Ron Sexsmith on Wainwright’s project). Neil Young’s work appears on both projects, and Rufus’ version of “Harvest Moon” is a touching version one of Neil Young’s greatest songs.

The Wainwright family is featured here, with his sister Martha stepping up to sing Rufus’s “Going to a Town” and providing backing vocals. His mother’s songs make an appearance as well, including “Heart Like a Wheel” that was a hit for Linda Tonstadt. There’s a proper-ness to these songs that’s always been evident in Wainwright’s work, but one song does break the mold: Men Without Hats “Safety Dance”. It’s funny and catchy and Rufus makes it work (while it’s normal to associate Wainwright’s work (at the concert he tells the story of how his mother turned down most of Rufus’s songs when he was seventeen and wrote “Beauty Mark” in response to his mother’s criticism (there were plenty of jokes told between songs too)) there’s moments of humor throughout Wainwright’s work, “Between My Legs” and “April Fools” are quite funny).

I’ve been listening to Rufus Wainwright’s music for ten years, and seeing him perform his early works with twenty years of artistic experience added depth to the work, while also coming across as a stronger vocalist, despite the added years. While the album shows that vocal depth as well by applying it to other artist’s work. Wainwright’s mix of serious/melodramatic, comedic, and camp was on full display at the show last night (and the Northern Stars album as well), and the focus on his earlier work was a mix of nostalgia and and artistic wisdom.

[storiesbehindthesongs]

I Got a Name - Jim Croce

Quick! Name some of the best American singer-songwriters, especially from the 70′s. Chances are you listed Dylan, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman. Maybe some said Springsteen or Harry Nilsson. Very few probably said Jim Croce. And the reason for that: longevity. Croce died in 1973 with only five albums to his name, the last one released posthumously, and the first self-published, the second folk duets with his wife Ingrid. But the tracks he left us with on the last three albums were enough for us to realize what a loss his death was.  Croce was a hard-working singer-songwriter, having worked as a truck driver, construction worker, and guitar teacher while playing at as many bars as he could to pay their bills. But he was tireless and earnest, writing songs about hard-working, well-meaning people like he was, his lyrics bereft of bitterness and anger. In 1970 he met Maury Muehleisen, a classically trained guitar player, through one of his producers and friends. The two bonded, and Maury’s ornate folk stylings, combined with Jim’s distinctive accessible vocals created the Croce sound.

Despite the string of hits Croce later became known for--”Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”, “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim”, “Operator”--two of his biggest hits were posthumous releases. “Time in a Bottle,” which became Croce’s second and last number one single (and also included on my wedding playlist), and the song we’re covering: “I Got a Name.” Interestingly, “I Got a Name” is the only Croce hit he didn’t write.

The song was written by the songwriting team Normal Gimbel and Charles Fox, who had written “Killing Me Softly (with his Song).” Gimbel’s credits without Fox included “Girl from Ipanema” and the English lyrics for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’s “I Will Wait for You” among many other songs for film and television. “I Got a Name” was recorded as the theme song to the new movie The Last American Hero with Jeff Bridges about stock car racer Junior Johnson. The story assets that Croce was so anxious about singing the song in the studio because the producers told him to not use his acoustic guitar; they wanted his tracks to be just vocals. This unnerved him; he was left without his crutch, naked, vulnerable. He recorded the song in two takes.  The reason why Croce agreed to sing the song was the experience of singing something for a film, especially one with a character that appealed to his blue-collar ethic and upbringing. The song’s lyrics also convey a strong sense of asserting one’s independence, being confident in one’s own abilities and in one’s sense of self, despite the outward pressures of a conformist culture and society. His own father also had a plan for him, wanting to see his son successful, but Jim’s father passed away before he was able to revel and take pride in his son’s accomplishments:

“And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I'm living the dream that he kept hid”

The song has a simple beginning arrangement, Croce’s and Muehleisen’s acoustic strumming. Just before the beginning of the first verse’s bridge, a faint piano accompaniment joins them. Followed by a string orchestra for the chorus: “Moving me down the highway, Rolling me down the highway, Rolling along so life won’t pass me by.”

The song begins with the narrator’s asserting his presence and self-respect: 

Like the pine trees lining the winding road I got a name, I got a name

Croce is saying, “Hey, life, trials, tribulations, you can’t defeat me because I have a name. I am something, somebody. And everything else along the way, the trees, the birds, the croaking toads, they deserve respect, too. They have names and presences.

This theme and asserting of his presence, indefatigable repeats itself in later verses. Now that he’s affirmed his right to existence and to dignity, he further asserts his right to pursue his own path, that he’s an individual with unique abilities. He just wants the opportunity to thrive or fail on his own accord: 

Like the whippoorwill and the baby's cry I got a song, I got a song And I carry it with me and I sing it loud If it gets me nowhere, I'll go there proud

The final verse shows the final variation of this theme: his dream. Now that he’s hopefully convinced you of his independence, and even if he hasn’t, this is what he wants to do. Here’s his dream:

They can change their minds but the can't change me I got a dream, I got a dream Oh, I know I could share it if you'd want me to If you're goin' my way, I'll go with you

No matter what obstacles life throws in his path, he’s going to keep working towards his dream, what he believes is his purpose for being here. You’re only here for a short period. Why spend that time not pursuing what you want? While researching this entry, one commenter on a lyrics page posited that they weren’t sure why in the third verse Croce refers to the Fool: “Like a fool I am and will always be.” This line reminded him (or her) of The Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill.” Whether Gimbel thought this when he wrote it, or Croce though it when he sang it and made the song his own is hard to know. To me, the Fool is a major archetype of life. We’re born fools, wide-eyed, full of risk, courage, lacking fear, ready to test life. As we get older, it’s our experiences weigh on us and sometimes life throws obstacles difficult to overcome, losing the wide-eyed innocence of The Fool. In tarot, The Fool is the first card of the Major Arcana, and the rest of the major arcana tell a story of sorts leading to The Hermit, the old wise man on top of the mountain.

“I Got a Name” has been used repeatedly in films including The Muppet Show, Invincible, and most recently and effectively in Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Here the song is used after Django has been granted his freedom: he is now his own man. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Katy Kirby Live Preview + Interview: 3/11, YouTube

Photo by Jackie Lee Young

BY JORDAN MAINZER

From growing up singing in church in Texas to dissecting everyday life with the precision of a travel writer, Katy Kirby’s journey has brought her to what should be a breakout year. Her debut album Cool Dry Place, released last month via Austin-based indie rock label Keeled Scales, is a concise collection of minimal songs that still manage to punch you in the gut. With an unassuming coo and wiry guitar playing, Kirby certainly covers a range of topics, from privilege to motherhood to toxic masculinity, but her songs about relationships hit the hardest. “Tap Twice”, released almost a year ago before Cool Dry Place was even announced, is a standout, detailing a person’s increasingly desperate attempts to reach out to someone else, as the low-key venerable band’s instrumentation also builds up to unhinged clatter. The title track uses similarly autobiographical imagery--that of an orange--as a metaphor for a dissolving relationship. “Ten segments in an orange--only so many ways that you can pull apart someone,” Kirby sings on the penultimate track, the emotional climax before the stunning closer “Fireman”. That one’s about an always distant relationship, Kirby’s sophisticated writing again playing with the album’s established iconography while introducing new metaphors: “We’re a slow burn kind of love / but now the whole house smells like smoke,” she sings. Intentional or happy accident, for a first record, it’s connections like this that have already positioned Kirby as one of the best new songwriters in recent memory.

Recently, Kirby was in Alabama helping a friend produce his first record, as she and some other musicians, after quarantining and getting tested for COVID-19, moved for a month to a friend’s family ranch and farm. It was there that they chugged out a live version of Cool Dry Place, front to back, that they’re debuting tomorrow night on YouTube at 7 PM CST. (I’ve embedded the YouTube video link at the bottom of this interview.) I spoke to her last Friday over the phone about the inspiration behind many of the songs on the record. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: Where do you live these days?

Katy Kirby: That’s a great question. Technically, I’m living in Texas at home with my parents. I was in Nashville before that, and I’m trying to figure out where to go next.

SILY: In various iterations, whether via this record’s singles or the Juniper EP you put out, about half of the songs on the record were released before the album came out. In context, all together, what are you trying to communicate with the record?

KK: Honestly, I’m trying to communicate that I’m a good artist. [laughs] I don’t know if I can honestly say that I had a unifying concept in mind. Someone pointed out to me recently that a lot of the songs on the record seem like they’re identifying a minor disfunction in a relationship that hasn’t quite made something go wrong yet. I don’t know if that’s true exactly, but maybe minor disfunctions in close relationships is the unifying theme.

SILY: That reminds me of the song “Portals”, which is about the end of a relationship, but it’s ambiguous whether it’s about you. How do you balance singing and writing autobiographically versus more generically or fictionally?

KK: A very smart songwriter told me to not worry about the divide between biography and fiction because it doesn’t really matter in the context of the song or clarity of the narrative, so long as you’re able to get people from one line to the next. I allow myself to fictionalize autobiographical events to make the situation clearer, if that makes sense.

SILY: To clarify it to you as much as to the listener.

KK: Exactly. Clarifying fiction or hysterical realism. It makes things a lot clearer when I’m looking back on the events I’m sort of writing about. I feel like a lot of very smart writers or people I’ve listened to have said you’re always writing about yourself no matter what you’re writing about. In that way, fiction doesn’t super feel like fiction.

SILY: On “Juniper”, a song about motherhood, you sing about not learning the difference between “lightning, rain, and thunder” and between “herbs, weeds, and flowers.” The difference in the former group is more obvious, whereas the difference in the latter group is more ambiguous. Were you trying to approach different levels of ambiguity? Are these differences metaphors for something else?

KK: Kind of...I never noticed how different those are. I think that those lines in “Juniper” are sort of about the gaps in, I want to say relational skill, but that sounds a bit too clinical. Ways of loving people you happen to be bad at or you don’t feel were ever clarified for you in a sort of missing piece way. Sometimes, those skills or differences can be really subtle, like identifying toxic and non-toxic plants, where it’s tricky and even experts fail at it. Sometimes, the skills and knowledge that’s lacking is horribly obvious and debilitating in how basic it is.

There used two be two other refrains in the song that got dropped. One was “waves, surf, and water,” in a verse that’s no longer in the song, which feels like “weeds, herbs, and flowers,” and there was one I would always end on, which felt too intense, which was, “bruises, burns, and fractures,” obviously all very different. The pattern you mentioned happens in parts of the songs no longer there...four verses seem like too many.

SILY: There are a couple moments on the record where the relationship between how you treat your voice and what you’re saying stands out: the auto-tune on “Traffic!” and on “Tap Twice” when you sing, “I almost broke my wrists trying to bring you back,” when the effects come in. Can you talk about those moments and the interplay between vocal effects and what you’re singing?

KK: In “Traffic!” that was sort of a happy accident. We had the auto-tune on there when demoing because my voice was really tired and I had a cold. The way that the auto-tune sounded felt like it brought more than a wink at some sort artificiality that I wanted “Traffic!” to have simmer throughout it. We kept it there and then decided to have the auto-tune weave in and out throughout the lyrics; it shows up and goes away and comes back again at varying levels. I can’t remember exactly where we placed that, but we were just trying to underline some of the more direct or earnest lines in the song by letting the vocal be a little bit dryer.

The part in “Tap Twice”, it’s distorted, right? 

SILY: Yeah, and the instrumentation climaxes.

KK: It felt right to feel the most unstable at that line in the song. The narrator of that song feels like they’ve restrained themselves pretty well up to that point, where they’ve only been interacting with the other person through Instagram, or taps on the window, or oranges as an offering. At that moment in the song, I wanted it to sound like they were losing their grip the tiniest bit. It maybe makes the line “thrashing around like goldfish in a garbage bag” make a bit more sense.

SILY: I love how the drums in the song initially sound like window taps.

KK: That never occurred to me.

SILY: Also, your use of orange the fruit and orange the color, of goldfish, and you use oranges as a metaphor in the title track.

KK: Someone else pointed out that there are two mentions of grapes. A lot of fruit on the record. I didn’t notice that until we were done with that. I feel a little weird about it since I feel like fruit as iconography is a little bit trendy right now. Is that Petra Collins’ fault? Who’s in charge of this? 

Quite honestly, the mention of oranges in both of those songs is not symbolic at all. I really did leave oranges for my friend Tom when he was sick and in a college kid broke place where he hadn’t eaten a piece of fruit in a week. I brought him some oranges and jotted that down. The “ten segments of an orange” line in “Cool Dry Place” is also autobiographical. The person who I wrote that song about and I were on tour, and I had a big bag of Cuties that I brought along, and I’d peel them and pass the pieces around the car to everyone. Ten is an awkward number to split between four people, and I noticed it was always ten segments.

SILY: The name of the title track and of the album came from a storage warning on a Tylenol package. Was there a moment you can point to where you decided it would be a good title?

KK: I probably jotted that down at some point. I wrote that chorus exactly as it is now. I lived with another songwriter and walked into her room not knowing whether it was good. She and another friend of mine convinced me that it was good and I wrote other verses around it. I think I had a list of 10 things I thought we could call the album, and I sent it out to a bunch of people, and they voted for Cool Dry Place.

SILY: Was “thrashing goldfish” one of them?

KK: There might have been one about goldfish in a garbage bag.

SILY: Is the title track the album’s emotional centerpiece or peak?

KK: Yeah. It is one of the most autobiographical and is one of the songs I wrote most quickly. It feels like it’s pointing directly to the proverbial camera and saying something all the other songs are hinting to or are adjacent to but not saying. Definitely an emotional center, at least whenever I listen to the record.

SILY: “Secret Language” interpolates “Hallelujah”. When was the first time you heard that song, and was it Leonard Cohen’s version?

KK: Ooh, definitely not Leonard Cohen’s version.

SILY: Me neither.

KK: I had no idea Leonard Cohen wrote that song at the time. I don’t know when I found it out. It was much later. Isn’t a version of the song in Shrek?

SILY: Yeah. Rufus Wainwright’s version.

KK: It has to be that, since I definitely watched Shrek as a child. Then, in a high school talent show, a girl in my grade sang a rather American Idol version of “Hallelujah”. Like, kind of the Jeff Buckley version, but instead of the words Leonard Cohen wrote, it was more about Jesus. It was a worship song. That is a thing I will never forget. I don’t think I heard the Leonard Cohen version until 2018.

SILY: It’s weird, because you’re used to it being a vocal showcase, and then you hear this old guy grumbling it, and it’s so schmaltzy and 80′s. 

KK: It’s got to be a testament to Jeff Buckley’s ear, or whoever was first like, “This song is actually somber and beautiful and heartbreaking” had a crazy brain.

SILY: What was it like working with Carl Saff to master the record?

KK: I have never talked to him or met him in person, but he’s unbelievably pleasant and insanely good at his job. Hire Carl Saff if you’re thinking of doing so. 10/10 would recommend.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art?

KK: Not much. We tried a few different ideas for album art and were talking to an illustrator that fell through. There were a few iconography-based ideas that I was thinking about. I didn’t want to have my face on a debut record. It felt corny to me. But that picture came out sort of weird and interesting, and I was gently encouraged by wiser and more experienced parties to, maybe, get over it and feel okay about introducing myself as an image or a person on the debut record. 

SILY: You collaborated with another Keeled Scales artist, Karima Walker, on an EP. What was that like?

KK: We wound up doing this EP together for this tiny record label in Spain. The nature of the project is that we didn’t know each other and they put us together in a horse farm in the west of Spain somewhere and had us write and record an EP. She’s incredibly smart and lovely and I’m super glad Keeled Scales is putting her stuff out. Waking the Dreaming Body is super good. 

SILY: What does it mean to you to be working with a label like Keeled Scales?

KK: I’m so freaking grateful. I had a relationship with them for a couple years before I signed with them, and they’ve proven themselves to be good people for a while. They did a really good job putting this record out, and I can’t believe it went this well. Also, I fucking love Buck Meek. I think he’s the best, and I’m freaking out he’s on the same label.

SILY: Have you been working on anything lately?

KK: Not as much as I would like, but I’ve been writing enough to still call myself a songwriter, and that’s all I can ask for.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

KK: I just finished a collection of short stories by Emma Cline called Daddy. It’s so fucking good. I’ve been listening to the Lomelda record [Hannah] nonstop since it came out. It’s a very special album. That’s the thing that’s been saving my sanity the most.