Charli XCX Camera The aesthetic premise of Music, Fashion, Film is basically pop-punk, but aesthetically interesting. Charli XCX has been toying with rock sounds through her entire career, so it s not surprising she d tip in this direction. If anything, she s always been a punk making pop and dance music, and not the other way around. [ ]
Sam and Louise Sullivan Love Devotion Love and Devotion is a lovely, laid back, and agreeable song about being in love, but it s written from a somewhat contrarian point of view. Here s what Sam Sullivan has to say about it: These days, it seems like people are always saying, ‘ooh, love is so hard; [ ]
Beabadoobee Switchblade A lot of Gen Z approximations of Gen X rock sounds rather flat to my ears – all the expected signifiers of various alt sub-genres cut and pasted in, but not much depth or dynamics. Not so for Switchblade. Beabadoobee s arrangement places its emphasis sharply contrasting textures, and there s a sickly sort of [ ]
Kelela Point Blank Point Blank is a breakup song in medias res, and listening to the lyrics can feel like overhearing an argument in passing and trying to sort out the details on the fly. Some of it is a little confusing – one can only hope that the guns and bullets mentioned are purely [ ]
CFCF featuring Touching Ice TECHG1RLS Let s Kill Ourselves Don t let the title freak you out. This is a song about using I m gonna kill myself in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way, and poking at that turn of phrase a bit. Is it funny, is it cute? Is it annoying, is it insensitive? Is it [ ]
Ratboys Light Night Mountains All That There s no proper chorus in Light Night Mountains All That, but there is a hooky refrain: You didn t care, you didn t care, you didn t care. It s sung with increasing frustration as Julie Steiner attempts to relate the details of some sort of wilderness vision quest, but the person she s [ ]
Madonna Danceteria Madonna has spent much of the past 20 years artistically lost at sea, attempting to navigate a unique set of circumstances – trying to stay vital and relevant in the pop market in her 50s and 60s, attempting to live up to her own past successes, and competing against artists whose careers wouldn t [ ]
Earthgirl Lovesick Lobotomy Limerence is a relatively new word. It was coined by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979 to describe a state of intense obsessive infatuation, but it s only come into common use over the past few years as it has entered the lexicon of mental health social media. Like any word or phrase [ ]
Squarepusher K10 Terminus I’ve been thinking about how so many of the people we’ve been calling “electronic” producers and artists since the 90s really should’ve been classified as composers from the start. I understand why they weren’t: it’s kind of a lofty term, it’s not very commercial, and early on the most novel selling point [ ]
The Field Another Day Another Day is an anomaly in The Field s catalog: A track with a fully intelligible vocal part; the closest thing to a proper pop song in Axel Willner s body of work. But it s not Willner s voice, and it s not quite a guest either. The vocal is sourced from Tracklib, a subscription [ ]
No Joy Big Life Big Leaf Big Life Big Leaf is a song that s largely concerned with aging, death, and inevitable natural cycles, but it s not a downer. It s bright, it s up tempo, it s a psychedelic rush. It s a song that rejoices in the very fact of being alive and excited for everything that s possible [ ]
Olivia Rodrigo Expectations Expectations is the result of a songwriting dream team at the height of their powers: an A+ melody from pop topline queen Amy Allen, a typically bold structure and meticulous arrangement by Dan Nigro, and the lyrical POV and effortless charisma of Olivia Rodrigo. Musically it s a slight shift for Rodrigo, moving [ ]
Tomora Ring the Alarm Tomora is a collaboration between the Norwegian indie pop singer Aurora and Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. It’s an interesting combination that pushes both artists to unexpected extremes, mostly resulting in harsher and more abrasive music than either typically creates. “Ring the Alarm” is particularly bold, a clanging ultra-urgent banger [ ]
Interpol This Mirror Weighs A Ton Interpol is a band that works within very narrow aesthetic constraints, so the most exciting thing they can do 25 years into their career is move to the outer boundaries of their style. “This Mirror Weighs A Ton” is as far out as they’ve ever ventured from their agitated, [ ]
Boards of Canada Father and Son This is my best attempt to summarize the themes of Boards of Canada’s fifth full-length album Inferno after less than a week of obsessive listening: It’s broadly about how most people can sense the existence of some sort of God, but trying to understand what God is takes them [ ]
Car Seat Headrest 1937 State Park (Joe s Story Version) Car Seat Headrest have re-recorded “1937 State Park” along with the rest of Teens of Denial (give or take a few songs), so I should follow suit and write a new post about that song, right? Not exactly a tall order given that it’s one of [ ]
Meghan Dowlen New Shoes Imagine a version of St. Vincent that retains Annie Clark s gift for melody, tightly controlled theatrical vocals, and taste for sleek aesthetics, but instead of a guitar virtuoso, it s an extremely gifted bassist. A bassist who is clearly well acquainted with the intersections of new wave and funk in the early [ ]
Fundido featuring Emma Dufaux Get A Grip This is a new single out on DFA, which is a good thing, as it would be extremely weird if any other label released it. Like, in genre terms, this is a DFA song. Everything about this song is dialed in precisely to “DFA.” You like the particular [ ]
Olof Dreijer featuring Toya Delazy Makwande I think that even if you heard this not knowing Olof Dreijer was one half of The Knife, you’d still intuit that he had something to do with it, even if just in an “obvious influence” sort of way. It’s mostly in the tonal palette, which is very much [ ]
ISTA Crusher In the Dune mythos, “fear is the mind-killer.” But what kills fear? ISTA have an answer: “love is the fear crusher.” “Crusher” is sunny and unapologetically corny in its messaging, so much so that I think it loops around to non-corny. The sound is buzzy and super saturated, applying a very mid -90s [ ]