Concert Log: Lucy Dacus at Columbus Theater RI 3/19

Few artists are better suited to working with a fire-power-heavy backing band than Lucy Dacus.  She can certainly capture on her own–the show was book-ended by two unreleased tunes played without a band–but her tunes tend to twist and wind to their conclusions leaving plenty of space for rambunctious climaxes sporting massive cymbal crashes and noisy guitar flourishes to highlight her relatively grounded vocal style.

A band also allows certain influences and sounds to come through a bit too.  Mentioning that she was from Richmond, Virginia, I wouldn’t say that she quite lives in the south or fully has any sense of twang, but there’s a bit of alt-country or blues swagger sitting in the background of tunes like “Timefighter” or “Yours & Mine.”  Of course there’s more straightforward chugging rockers–her cover of “La Vie en Rose” particularly got the crowd moving– but for an artist who sometimes sounds a bit too broad-strokes stylistically, the live show alleviates this with more pronounced details to the tunes.

In terms of thematic material, Historian was largely a break-up album, but it also took time to ponder the question of what it means to write a narrative and look at the grand scheme of things.  There’s kiss-offs to those that wronged you, but also tunes that look at individual action and try to see the viewpoint of another.  The quiet and droney title-track, which ended the show literally asked “If past you were to meet future me/Would you be holding me here and now?”

Sometimes these questions can lead to apathy or aimless anger and Dacus can channel that into something productive, or at least recognize that avoidance is part of life too.  The final, unrecorded tune of the night was a perfect send-off that found empowerment in allowing its character to get angry at a deadbeat father.  The Lucy Dacus project is remarkably mature and as its writer continues forward, it feels like she’s only honing that weapon.

-Donovan Burtan

Solange-When I Get Home: Album Review

If A Seat at the Table was a highly thesis-driven work, When I Get Home is almost entirely abstracted.  It’s a kind of classic move, at least in recent memory most akin to Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange to Blond evolution, where an artist is relatively easy to understand at their breakout and follows that with something not easy to understand at all.  It’s already spawned some jokes and relative hate, but When I Get Home absolutely holds its own with expert flow, undeniable vision, and unpredictably excellent use of sounds and features.

There’s a lot of people out there who can give you a much better run down of how this all relates to Texas, but there’s a palpable specificity to the work here, like Solange is speaking directly to the people that made her and bringing new life to their message.  The most obvious is likely DJ Screw, who would slow down records to create a gelatinous, sludgy sound.  Solange’s voice is as pure as it was in the past, but it’s more free flowing, over sparse instrumentation, that’ll occasionally get slowed down literally Screw style (see: the tale end of “Down with the Clique”) and generally doesn’t feel like pop music, rather constantly repeating and unraveling.

Still, the pillowy keys and plucky bass continue from the past, maintaining Solange’s trademark sound.  The way she incorporates literal collaborations, in particular rappers, is akin to the way these influences come through.  ASATT’s “Mad,” for example, saw Lil Wayne over a beat that sounded like nothing he’s ever rapped over before (and what hasn’t Wayne rapped over before) and here the likes of Gucci Mane and Playboi Carti creep in, but don’t alter the velvety smoothness of the work.  Sampha will show up and pick up on the melodies Solange is working with and help lift a song to its cresting climax, but never take over completely.  And just like this, Screw’s ghost hangs over the work, but doesn’t infiltrate in the way that, say, The Police bleed through Bruno Mars’s “Locked Out of Heaven.”

Similar to the flowing song forms, the lyrics that don’t lay out their messages to you in the way that songs like “F.U.B.U.” did in the past.  The opener features Solange toying with the title Mitski style, of course creating some fodder for twitter jokes, but the phrase is evocative, whether she be imagining liberation for a community or a world without the dichotomy of high and low culture, a more perfect world can seem within reach even if its unattainable.

There’s more direct imagining on Alameda, which speaks of resilience: “Black baes, black days/These are black-owned things/Black faith still can’t be washed away/Not even in that Florida water.”  However, Dreams moreso describes par for the course, with more vaguely evocative talk of hope: “I grew up a little girl with/Dreams, dreams, dreams.”

I can agree that When I Get Home is not for everybody, but a patient listener will likely get a lot out of it.  It’s a document of a different pop world, one where the listener isn’t allowed a road map, rather a collection of shapes and angles to explore and ponder.  Always fascinating to hear this from such a pillar of contemporary mainstream culture.

-Donovan Burtan

9/10

 

Aldous Harding “The Barrel” Track Review

The video for “The Barrel” is, in a word, ridiculous.  Harding stands dressed as some sort of 1600’s puritan with a tall ass hat out of the Badu playbook, and lightly dances to the pluckily produced single.  Though her last album featured many similar little production details, “Barrel” matches the video’s newfound carefree and light energy, becoming more and more dance-able when the shakers really get going.

The lyrics are a bit vague at first glance, but Harding paints pictures of seeing through tricks, which she talks about in an interview with NPR: “I know you have the dove/I’m not getting wet.” There’s a sense of world-weariness, but Harding is also critical of this position, mentioning that as a kid we’re gradually cultivated into certain lanes: “When you have a child, so begins the braiding/And in that braid you stay.”  There’s both a desire to be something more mature and childlike or carefree, which even seeps into the video as Harding first performs a ‘proper’ role and eventually dances around more unabashedly like a child.  Though her past work wasn’t the kind of self-seriousness of say current Mount Eerie, this dive into a looser world is welcome and hopefully signals a larger change of pace for the record.

-Donovan Burtan

Spielbergs-This is Not the End: Album Review

Similar to Foxing‘s magnum opus from this summer, This is Not The End is sweeping and giant, highlighting the bands chugging guitars and anthemic vocals with a lush, expansive instrumental pallet.  If a song like “Bad Friend,” with its straightforward lyrics, is the bands DNA at its most distilled state, the following track “McDonald’s (Please Don’t F*ck Up My Order)” is the band stretching it out with shimmering meditation and an extended metaphor about suiting someones needs in the form of a fast food order.  The album may be occasionally on the nose and by no means earth shattering, but its restlessness gives it a wide emotional pallet, the new band sounding like seasoned vets.

-Donovan Burtan

7/10

Kehlani “Nights Like This” Track Review

Another day, another perf sci-fi video you have to see.

Kehlani’s got the right voice for today’s sounds.  Call it the Cardi b effect!  Like Cardi’s ability to sound right alongside classic hip-hop and trap dudes, Kehlani can bring runs, and she’s got power a la the classic R&B singers like Brandy or Ginuwine, but she also can fit in with the electronic sounds today and bring us the bops that were all madly craving in the latter half of this decade. Nights Like This packs a hell of a chorus, Kehlani effortlessly speaking over the cresting melody.  Ty Dolla $ign brings a palpable chemistry to give that last chorus the extra push, both tossing in some welcome backing vocals to lift the energy a bit higher.  It’s perhaps a bit down the middle, sung to a lover who didn’t show up the way they wanted, but it sounds light on this feet, sure to sneak up on you after a couple plays.

-Donovan Burtan

PUP “Kids” Track Review

New initiative! Track Reviews! Wrote four this weekend! My vision is to have a track review Monday-Thursday, and then my usual album reviews/looking ahead post on Fridays!

Also, you! NEed to see this video because it is rad.

I think pop-punk is less written about than like post-punk or other critic favorites because its a genre where something is either “rad” or “not rad” and to a degree it feels pointless to say more.  “Kids” is rad. Why? Listen to it, it is…rad.  Radness seeps from its pores.  Regardless, Toronto’s PUP always bring it.  Here, they find triumph in dead end jobs, unfulfilled youth, a life going nowhere.  The chorus is huge, intentionally lacking subtlety as lead singer Stefan Babcock screams out “I guess it doesn’t matter anyways/I don’t care about nothing but you.”  The end is communal, a sea of kids joining in for the shouty “oh-ohs.”  It’ll hit you right away, and you’ll want to hear it 100 times.

RADNESS ACHIEVED.

-Donovan Burtan

Jessica Pratt-Quiet Signs: Album Review

It’s no coincidence that William Basinski shared props for “Quiet Signs” on his facebook page. Dedicated to the art of selecting perfect sounds, Jessica Pratt crafts a flowing beauty throughout that makes the 25 minute-ish experience fall away effortlessly like one of Basinski’s perfect ambient pieces.  These are the sounds of an unpopulated home, morning breeze, cooking yourself breakfast. “It makes my want to cry” peaks out of the fog of wordlessness on “This Time Around,” not completely making its own meaning, but allowing whatever meaning you like to get attached to it.  It’ll start your day slowly, call you to sleep quickly. Quiet Signs sounds of the earth; new but forever.

Another potential touchstone, oddly enough, is the latest from Earl Sweatshirt.  Some Rap Songs was nearly entirely comprised of instrumental loops, which Earl mentioned in an interview were inspired by the work of Tirzah and other producers who work with the format.  Like both of these artists, Pratt works with a simplistic instrumental foundation, oftentimes repetitive, more about the delivery and production than the musical complexity.

After the intro featuring the lick on piano, “As The World Turns” features a three chord lick that repeats beneath her vague melodic structures.  I’m not going to sit here and lecture you about the exact chords, however, each chord expands further into jazz-like harmonic extensions, giving it a cool, growing motion.  Throughout the album, Pratt lets expertly-crafted guitar motions like this sit there as her voice wanders above, or a flute appears, achieving a certain stillness even when new details arrive.

Perhaps a product of the harmonic openness is the aversion to sounding like a specific time period.  The classy piano opening sounds like an ode to classic 60’s and 70’s recording techniques, but then suddenly Pratt will sound contemporary or Medieval.  The album’s darkest offering, “Crossing,” is the latter, the plucked guitar sounding like some sort of ancient love song from an opera’s troubadour.  “Silent Song” then takes us back to some old art film and “Aeroplane” follows with tomorrow’s sunrise, a rhythmic guitar strum that could’ve been made anywhere at anytime driving the album to close.

Lyrically, of course much of its hard to decipher, but with the likes of Julia Holter, it seems like when you are paying attention and Pratt pronounces with clarity, there’s something to behold. “Reflection of your memory in the window” matches the imagery of the sonic environment and “its so long before my future’s come” pores over the ideas of time and aging that seep from the album’s atmosphere.

Pratt truly hits all the markers of subtle music here.  It’s expertly crafted, yet effortless to listen to, familiar and new, an immediate entry to one’s library of classics.

-Donovan Burtan

8.5/10

NKISI-7 Directions: Album Review

Melika Kolongo’s current project NON seeks to connect a wide variety of sound art made by members of the African diaspora (you can read their full manifesto here).  This, along with Kolongo’s own psychoacoustic research, perhaps describes the heavy dose of research and process behind her work, but a better first thing to note is her releases with Doomcore records out of Belgium.  Alongside gaudy album covers and dark tones from Belgium’s finest, Nkisi’s work for the label took sinister moods and pushed them to their breaking point with slow builds and apocalyptic vocal clips.

Though considerably more lush than her earlier work, 7 Directions’ first listen showcases its smoldering pummel. The beats aren’t necessarily unrelenting violence á la Blanck Mass, but there’s little sugar as electricity and acoustic-adjacent textures craft an impossibly late-night vibe that evokes the cosmos for a boundless depth.

If first listen will be marked by darkness, more exposure will showcase the work’s dynamic life.  7 Directions may be trance-like repetition at the macro, yet it’s remarkably dynamic at the micro.  Each track is comprised of a darkly electric melodic motion that’ll stick there throughout, but the drum layering beneath provides a stochastic, enveloping feeling, abstracting lines between pattern and random making 10 minute swaths of activity pass by effortlessly.

“II,” for instance, has a gradually moving ghost of a melody deep in the background that contrasts the looped cell of percussion up front, bending time by never completely embodying the same meter.  As time passes another layer of melody is added in the same place to continue this liquid approach to time.  “IV” sports the most sinister, addicting melody, the simple up and down motion phasing left and right as the drum sticks roar dead center and the closing track again phases melodies and rhythms, the bouncing drums accompanied by a seemingly unpredictable shooting stars of electricity.

In an interview with tinymixtapes, NKISI discusses how her research involves a lot of testing out sounds on her own body: “A big part of my music-making process involves listening to it and testing it on my body. I’m really interested in how the body can be affected by music and sound.”  Perhaps this is an element in the increased depth of her work.  Where previously skeletal electronic sounds once stood, now stands a huge block of all encompassing sound that, coupled with these songwriting strategies, never quite sits still for you.

-Donovan Burtan

8/10

Cherry Glazerr-Stuffed and Ready: Album Review

Though perhaps not the most lyrically nuanced band, Cherry Glazerr tends to bring piercing intensity throughout their work.  Here, the opening trio is the most essential as the somber, drawn out choruses of “Ohio” mold into biting sarcasm on “Daddi” and finally land on blood curdling anger for “Wasted Nun.” From then on out the band somewhat kicks into cruise control with tunes like “That’s Not My Real Life,” which sounds like an anxious Alvvays knock off, or “Juicy Socks” and “Pieces,” which sport drab melodies.  “Stupid Fish” is the band at their most heavy-handed, lead singer Clementine Creevy screaming out the words “I see myself in you and that’s why I fucking hate you” to end it off.

Stuffed and Ready is fun with highlights (check out “Isolation” too btw) but probably wont stick around forever, maybe catch ’em live sometime eh?

-Donovan Burtan

6.5/10

Looking Ahead: 2/8.

Ariana Grande-Thank You, Next

Ariana Grande’s next career step could get dicey, or it might not judging from how well sweetener went over and how she Chaneled herself by releasing her biggest smash, the title track of today’s released, after the fact.  Whether it’s the dark cousin to sweetener’s bliss, or something completely of its own, I think we should maintain hope that today’s pop diva will come up with something endearing for us to enjoy.

Deer Tick-Mayonnaise

Though not really a band that’s become nationwide heroes, Deer Tick are Rhode Island legends, who’re right in line with Foxygen and Cage the Elephant in terms of respectful, fun throwback rock sounds.