Category: Singer-Songwriter

TRACK | Lower Dens – Truss Me

5/5 golden merles

“Truss me” is an striking track from the recently disbanded Lower Dens; Contemplative and conspiring, a couple minimalistic elements combine to be nonetheless eruptive and properly expansive in their crushing scope.

With an optimal blend of inevitability, desire and consternation, there remains a quiet confidence to the work, blurring the line between promise and threat; or maybe it is made of either in equal measure.

This is another in the series of elevated lyrical nuance within a more traditional pop-structure, raising the stakes of the genre and embracing contradiction. There is much doubt and deference paid to a richness of experience that often seems absent from more absolutist testaments within the medium. There is within it the hope that we can attempt to properly incorporate uncertainty into our model, acknowledge both its potential and liability, but continue to engage with the world.

I also have a kinship with Lower Dens as they are one of the few artists/media figures explicitly paying homage to the wonderful/relevant works of Ernest Becker (“Escape from Evil“).

TRACK | Pile – No Hands

5/5 golden merles

Pile makes a kind of post-punk rock that feels to me like pure commiseration. The work fruitfully balances the lyrically introspective with a to-life-scale ominous and sweeping dread, often riding a wave of mounting instrumentation. And, importantly, there always remains an untouchable, defiant core.

The chorus of “No Hands” is a melody applied to a somewhat recontextualized quote from Voltaire and a tremendous line in its own right:

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

The line is critical and humorous in both its origin and repurposing. The song is picking up a dialogue that has been largely dormant or at best quietly admired for three hundred years. And it is done in a type of refined media that feels worthy of contributing to the earlier discussion, expounding on it, and, even in agreement, allowing “the musician” (even one immensely aware of the limitations of their medium) to reply in some format.

It places a sort of self-loathing in a broader historical context, contrasting it with nevertheless undeterred artistic ambition, and revels in these contradictions of self-expression. And in this work you get a piece that celebrates all the doubt and glory of ever doing anything. All that adds up to feeling quite a lot bigger than most songs of any given genre.

In my ignorance, I didn’t know how well beloved these folks were, as this track was my first exposure. But seeing the support on Bandcamp is comforting and reassuring. It’s an incredible closer.

TRACK | Alex G – Southern Sky

5/5 golden merles

One gentleman that doesn’t necessarily need any further press is Alex G. But if I’m posting daily and I want to keep the quality high every now and again there’ll be a more celebrated/known entity served up. Giannascoli is a great songwriter on their 9th album.

But for those unfamiliar with the sweep and swell of these tracks, or merely revisiting from 2019, what a delicate but elaborate concert of textures and intention it is.

The density is what I find most admirable. There is such a fine synthesis of simple components that successfully conspire into this ornate folk rock tune.

It remains instantly recognizable/catchy while introducing several small experimentations alongside the blunt trauma of tradition. And it builds naturally into this commendable, gilded thing.

TRACK | Andy Shauf – The Magician

5/5 golden merles

I first heard about The Party as a Katie Von Schleicher recommendation. And may really prefer this live version from a tiny desk concert. So maybe check that version out as well if you feel the studio lacks a little bit of warmth.

But in either incarnation, the melody is a supreme and graceful thing. Full of delicate and elaborate instrumentation, it is a devastating and compelling opener to a great album.

TRACK | Aoife Nessa Frances – Here in the Dark

5/5 golden merles

As a rule I don’t trust any song over 3 minutes. There are exceptions, many of them, but generally songwriters just don’t have that much to say on any given subject. Or at least not nearly as much as they think that they do… If I wanted to hear the chorus four times I’d loop the track.

But in this case, with Aoife Nessa France’s “Here in the Dark” running to 5:14, every second feels earned.

It works in concert with the void it fills, not so much against it. Minimal instrumentation is set to the task of accompanying the singer-songwriter substratum. Glacial and understated, spirals of synth and strings fittingly accent the core elements of voice and guitar.

The song/record has a different scope and pacing to most material in the genre, but without sacrificing some underlying mechanics or the appropriate measure of attention to detail. I don’t just mean BPM, there’s a kind of assurance to it. It doesn’t take the audience for granted but also does without pandering or indulging. There’s a recurring and really well realized construction.

TRACK | thanks for coming – a character you can relate to

5/5 golden merles

Making music allows for a dialogue with culture instead of simply being dictated to. I think that Rachel/thanks for coming is maybe working within some form of this intention. They create adroitly constructed narratives with cunning delineations. They seem to relish the precision of fully conveying a convincing lowdown.

That’s not nothin.

They can make you out to be some kind of evil / They will convince you when they show you your own demons

There’s a fundamentally gripping and illuminating character to these expressions. It is material full of musing and philosophical brooding which provide an imaginative advising on the more or less ineffable. It’s a highly recommended catalog if you like lo-fi pop music with a narrator’s palatial scope, inventive phrasing, and a lack of patronizing oversimplification.

TRACK | Happy Jawbone Family Band – fireflies make out of dust (take one)

5/5 golden merles

Sister project to Csehak’s The Lentils, Happy Jawbone Family Band is somehow differentiated, possibly meaningfully, possibly arbitrarily. There are some things man was not meant to know.

What is known is that it is good. What I like about this song is that it is immense, worrisomely so, and floating, but may have also been recorded anywhere that is partially submerged underwater.

It has various properties of shock and shiver in the guitar tones bounding off the snare. The dual vocals overlay and waver, and make a serrated cut for ease of accessing the heart of the track. That all comes together in a great and wondrous haze of waxy and metallic tones. Bigger than it has any right to be.

TRACK | Goon – Fruiting Body

5/5 golden merles

With Goon’s Fruiting Body, I haven’t heard such a fine widening gyre of a track in a fortnight or forty.

There is something to the incantations, the “blood red” mantra metering our absorption into the grand stream, a kind of cozy induction, in league with the frothing pool.

Gentle and elegant under the melted mix of lo-fi fixtures, it’s in the vein of Andy Shauf and Hovvdy. But also ends up stretching a bit more with the undercurrents into the psychedelic/experimental sort.

found some pink glass / buried under the deep end /
…say something untrue and kind

It is difficult to imagine fans of the genre not getting hooked on that guitar-lead harmony accompanied with this level of smoggy and vibrant utterance. Looking forward to the remainder of the release from the EP appearing February 25.

TRACK | Hovvdy – Easy

5/5 golden merles

The melody sprouts from the structure in Easy like a seedling through the roof of an abandoned weigh station. There is an ease and levity to the vocals amidst the weight of concrete piano and drum instrumentation. The collaboration of these elements across the soundscape provides us with an admirable expanse.

The spiraled knots in the melodic structure keep it familiar even as it extends to otherwise untenable lengths.

There is some very interesting techniques of pacing that might otherwise go unnoticed. That it is the work of two drummers seems to make a lot of sense. There are many kinds of ways to build a melody and embed it in memory and this one is both unique and lovely.

TRACK | Wednesday – Cody’s Only

5/5 golden merles

Twin Plagues is an album I need to spend some more time with but it has already found a way onto the year-end 2021 list. Cody’s Only is a track that has easily & immediately caught me on it’s hooks.

Cody’s Only is indie rock/post-fi at it’s best: emotive in a manner that erupts without unremitting destruction, storytelling that allows for lessons to be learned.

One of the greatest qualities of the creative act is that it has the capacity to redeem all preceding experience and eventualities through the fabrication of something deemed good. I love the Tom Waits quote, “Everything you absorb, you secrete,” and believe it to be true.

I cannot figure out what I meant / by living all those ways I did

For me, when it is done well, in song or whatever medium, all preceding acts or events become an aggregated catalyst, good and bad, but contorted now to good. It is now reimagined into an artifact, or a testament, in an elaborate repurposing of existence.

Maybe we don’t deserve these kindnesses, but they are patiently scripted by Wednesday here. Forged of fragments, lyrically rich in both the processing and recollecting. And it is a very compelling grafting.