Tag: pop

TRACK | Total Revenge – Jeep Cherokee

5/5 golden merles

There’s a few great tracks on Total Revenge’s S/T, but Jeep Cherokee is my favorite of the set.

Drums that register somewhere between trashcan and streetlight corral a blown out but triumphant melody, bleeding out graciously into the verse. All of this builds pretty quickly to some kind of boil before dissipating in feedback to close out the record.

“I do all the things that I should / For once in my life I feel good”

Check out also The Fair for similar sludgery that reaches comparable heights of wonder.

TRACK | Girl Racers – Rubber

5/5 golden merles

In Rubber, Girl Racers have created a single worthy of your great fondness.

Direct but also bound up in much playful production and a glut of buoyant layers, the fine vocal irreverence is attenuated by a steady, unflinching instrumentation.

Hearing it makes me miss being in a proper band, whiling away in the basement preparing heaps of markedly hopeless material. But it was fun. And this captures that sense of joy.

You, there, boy, what day is this?

This is good. This is inventive and more than a bit volatile. Check out the other offerings from Three Door Records as well.

TRACK | Noah Renaissance – Beauty Sleep

5/5 golden merles

Beauty Sleep is utterly great dreamy, spectral synth pop. A small triumph of pacing, texture and enveloping synthesizers.

“fell asleep in the garden / the flowers are starting to take root in my brain”

The immensely carefully constructed unfolding is something we can all learn a lesson or two from.

There is a lot to admire in the crafting, the phasing of layers, and the levels and positioning at which field recording elements are place peripherally, never pulling too much focus from the ear-worm chorus and verses.

It is good. Check out other sounds he’s made at the soundcloud.

ALBUM | Katie Von Schleicher – Shitty Hits

5/5 golden merles

Shitty Hits is one of the best albums of the last decade. It is endlessly impressive and inspiring material, awash in fervent commiseration, fearsome eulogizing, and in this way it is difficult to choose one track to feature.

Knowing how good the subsequent offerings are, starting with track one makes sense.

There are no fewer than several dozen instances in which effortlessness combines seamlessly with the elaborate. Like in Going Down when it almost sounds like it’s all about to fall apart, stalling just after the field recording, then careening back into the chorus, outdoing the previous effort’s loop. Or essentially all of The Image, or Life’s a lie... or Isolator, or Hold…

There is a great quote that is applicable here from an article reviewing Denis Johnson’s Lament of the Sea Maiden by Geoff Dyer, “Control is achieved through willing proximity to its loss.”

And that is anything with content and form, style and substance, design and function. But rarely is it metered so consistently with such exactitude and genius.

With great rarity does the lo-fi indie bedroom-rock world produce things that are both believably personal and properly anthemic. Generally speaking, for most working within this subset, the ambition doesn’t stretch much farther than the size of the room it was crafted in.

Exceptions include the occasional track by Joanna, Spencer and that immensely talented okie who wrote Funeral. But they are everywhere here. If you play it you too will become pleasantly impaled on one of the very many hooks.

Katie Von Schleicher has written two remarkable albums in the last few years and I doubt either of you vulgarians own them yet. You can still buy Shitty Hits on vinyl at the bandcamp.

Also follow on Instagram for quality bird-centric social media content second only to Marianne Williamson.

TRACK | Daga Voladora – La Tormenta

5/5 golden merles

La Tormenta is the final track on Daga Voladora’s wonderful album Chiu-Chium (“an onomatopoeic representation of the sound made by a flying dagger,” referenced in track 5).

The album cover approximates well the texture, color palette and detailing within: varied warm and fractured synthesizers revolve around the vocal heart of each track.

The track selected, La Tormenta, is an account or rumination on being at sea in the midst of a storms throes. A cover of Lorena Álvarez, the poise of this rendition is held in perpetual balance by the 4-5 electronic murmurs.

There is among them what appears to be a synth estimation of a harpsichord involved, that calmed but febrile plucking. The style is of the highest order, pacing, structure, production and melody.

The calming and all consuming dread is felt, whether in defiance or resignation. And the beauty of this lamentation contorts to good whatever cruelty of fate initiated the storms summoning. There is an account. They have come out the other side.

TRACK | Unity – Big Dreams #2

5/5 golden merles

“Big Dreams, don’t know where to put them / up on the shelf”

Big Dreams is a sandcastle made of sugar.

It is 25ft tall and even when the water comes in as a tide that afternoon it takes 8 days to dissolve, fully one day more than it took some lord to create the world and it’s peripheral, irrelevant universe (as it is alleged).

Albert Einstein was quoted as saying about science, probably, “It should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.” And that is also a pretty good way to think about pop music.

A distillation and honing of hooks into their purest form. Unity have made here a good example of that phenomenon.

I prefer the demo version posted here to the one that later appears on the subsequent S/T LP. Fortunately the world is big enough for both.

TRACK | Naomi Punk – Gentle Movement Toward Sensual Liberation

5/5 golden merles

In somewhat keeping with the aside, this is an instrumental track on an album that otherwise features exceptional vocal production and performances.

And within that context, after the also superb track Burned Body, Gentle Movement toward Sensual Liberation lands with the most wobbled grace and poise.

An enclave of singing synths deliver a kind of orchestral chamber pop, built around two well textured, extra-strength melodies.

TRACK | Getatchew Mekurya – Akale Wube

5/5 golden merles

Here is a slight departure from the guitar-driven lo-fi, but the hiss of the tape remains, the synth-organ still chirps it’s guttural encouragements, and the hooks are everywhere present.

Akale Wube is an all time great track, for me, not only of Ethiopia, and not only of the saxophone, both of which I am not very familiar. But of the thing called music, generally. It wails.

Generally in art I am wary of outright abstraction, and view it with suspicion, as a salve to established, unjust hierarchies, and through it’s broad interpretation offering undue comfort to the enemy.

But not in this instance. At least for four minutes and eleven seconds I take Getatchew’s (lack of) word for it.

TRACK | Cindy Lee – Heavy Metal

5/5 golden merles

Cindy Lee’s Heavy Metal is an exemplary track for conveying that lo-fi does not have to mean anti-lush or lacking in vibrancy.

There is great richness and subtle hooks everywhere here, built into the vocal melody and the winding bass. The drum fills and phasing between segments are pristine and luxurious set pieces.

It’s all pretty captivating and contorts the space of any room into which it is freed.

Find further spectral ache and alchemy at the bandcamp.