On St. Vincent's terrific, slickly-produced new album, Annie Clark starts a fire--blazing through a fiery crown of intro songs (like rock candy anthems "Pills" and "Sugarboy") and then midway through comes the somber "Dear Johnny" which is the album's sad, conflicted heart (the lyrics and carefully drawn instrumentation are quietly stirring) with the remainder of the record burning slowly out.
"...once the record is done and out in the world, it doesn’t belong to me anymore and it shouldn’t. People take it and weave it into their lives however they see fit. I have exactly zero qualms about being “misunderstood” — I’m happy to be misunderstood as long as the misunderstanding isn’t something horrible. I’m happy for people to find their own meaning and their own journey with it." -St. Vincent
After the impressive, daring, and varied opus To Pimp a Butterfly (my #1 album of 2015) and the compilation record Untitled Unmastered, Kendrick Lamar returned with the bold DAMN. Unlike previous studio albums, this one recalls the streamlined tightness of Section.80. The album is immediate but also grows on repeated listens, with an interesting mix of spot guests, and lyrics on the current state of affairs meshed with the intimately personal.
"The initial goal was to make a hybrid of my first two commercial albums. That was our total focus, how to do that sonically, lyrically, through melody – and it came out exactly how I heard it in my head. … It's all pieces of me. My musicality has been driving me since I was four years old. It's just pieces of me, man, and how I execute it is the ultimate challenge. Going from To Pimp a Butterfly to DAMN., that shit could have crashed and burned if it wasn't executed right. So I had to be real careful on my subject matter and how I weave in and out of the topics, where it still organically feels like me." -Kendrick Lamar
Max Richter's score to Wayne McGregor's ballet triptych is a radiant listen. Sometimes it bears chord change similarities, likely in homage, to Philip Glass' score to The Hours. It's also full of strings and broad gestures, spoken interludes--including Virginia Woolf herself--and eerie, stuttering synthesizers. There's a lot of complexities and textures on this entrancing, enveloping album.
"When we began to discuss making the ballet, I hunted around for material of all kinds, photographs, memoirs, biographies. I never expected to find a recording of Virginia Woolf - this is the only one to survive. It’s like a tremendous time machine which allows you to hear her voice and wonderful use of language. I’ve used spoken-word elements quite often in my work, so to come across Virginia Woolf reading her own words was like a Christmas present. That lit the fuse for the musical language of the ballet’s first act, based on Mrs. Dalloway, and the piece grew from there." -Max Richter
Lorde sets the mood of her relationship-themed opus with tinges of anger and joy on pop ditty "Green Light." Her vocals are both raw and precious, crooning over delicious melodies (much is co-written by Jack Antonoff). There's nothing filler here and the production and transitions are incredibly sharp (those strings of "Writer in the Dark"--a personal fave on the album--with its towering, vintage-Tori Amos chorus moving straight into banger "Supercut"). Melodrama is a lovely, intimate set of heartbreak and determination.
"It’s really a collection of moments, thoughts, and vignettes when I said to myself, “Don’t forget this.” And it wasn’t until I went through heartbreak, and moved out of [my parents’] home into my own house and spent a lot of time totally alone, that I realized I do have very serious, vivid feelings I needed to get out." -Lorde
The album's songs, varying in length and rock-folksy style, often stir Elton John-esque sunshiny melodies and production with introspective, sardonic lyrics of the social malaise all around us. There isn't a tune much sadder, frank and realistic about the state of affairs I've heard this year than "Total Entertainment Forever." I haven't dug much into the mystique and shtick of Josh Tillman's Father John Misty pseudonym because his work is so engaging and strong on its own.
Choice lyric from the potent "Leaving L.A."
My first memory of music's from
The time at JCPenney's with my mom
The watermelon candy I was choking on
Barbara screaming, "Someone help my son!"
I relive it most times the radio's on
That "tell me lies, sweet little white lies" song
That's when I first saw the comedy won't stop for
Even little boys dying in department stores
"I think people will occasionally be turned off by my work because they think that I think I can actually answer these big questions… and that asking them is all that original in the first place. ‘Who am I? What is love? What does it all mean?’ It’s the same ol’ shit people have been asking since time began.
But what’s often misunderstood is that I know I’m creating more questions for myself. I know I’m getting further and further into this morass. The questions are recursively spawning, like the broomsticks in Fantasia. You’re never going to get rid of them. Trying harder and harder is only going to create more confusion.
The irony is that the answers do not appeal to our intellectual vanity. The whole reason this album is called Pure Comedy is because there is a childlike simplicity to it all. That’s the cosmic joke." -Father John Misty
Somehow, through her genius styling and jazz vocal virtuosity, Cécile McLorin Salvant makes these old standards modern and intimately personal. The double-disc album zips by, much of it backed by a tremendous rhythm section. Each track is a bright standout in its own way--like the forceful "Never Will I Marry." In portions of the album from a live performance at Village Vanguard, you often hear and feel the crowd's enthusiasm (a woman saying "careful!" out loud during "You've Got to Give Me Some"). And other portions of the album are stirring, string-soaked studio recordings. It's all beautifully cohesive as she takes on these lithe little birds fashioning them as urgent and close.
"... some of the songs are dreams and some of the songs are daggers. So I guess it's up to the listener to decide which is which and some of the songs have elements of both. Dreams can also be expressed forcefully. If you have a dream or hope for the future it can be accompanied with some kind of force. I don't mean violence but any resistance or progress needs to be accompanied by some kind of force. So those are the ideas that I'm playing with. Part of the reason it's called Dreams And Daggers is that to me it's a very evocative idea... and it should be what people want it to be." -Cécile McLorin Salvant
Tennessee-born Valerie June's swell sophomore record was a comforting solace when it landed in mid-March. New Yorker's Hua Hsu called her music "a reminder that life goes on." Her Dylan-esque nasal singing style pinches her bluesy, occasionally optimistic lyrics, and recalls the twangy country singers of yesteryear. Central piece "Shakedown" is a giddy-up wax poetic on Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and the slow shuffle tilt of "If And" is lovely. I should also shout out the great instrumentalists' efforts on this record too including Dan Rieser's percussion.
"The songs were written over the course of 10 to 12 years; some of them I wrote when I was on the road, others I wrote when I was working in Memphis or just after I moved to New York. So, they take place in different times of my life. The songs have their own lives, their own dreams, and their own visions, so I have to respect them. It’s not always time for them to be recorded; as a service to the songs, I just needed to wait on some of them.
It takes time when you’re going toward a dream. It’s a journey more than it is immediate gratification, especially when the songs create worlds for me... each one has a world that I go to when I write it, and I hope that when I share it with people that they can get a taste of what the world that I visited was like, you know? And all of that is part of the time and the process of waiting and getting it right." -Valerie June
After his strong, wide-ranging record Viewsdropped last year and carried the summer airwaves, Drake returned again, this time with not really an album but a "playlist" of dancehall, R&B, rap, and pop. His seemingly flat, unaffected vocals belie lyrics of yearning. "Get It Together," "Passionfruit," British rapper Giggs' solo on "KMT," and moody, J-Lo sampled "Teenage Fever" are few of the highlights on this epic. Featuring a bevy of guest stars (including his mom on voicemail) and a manifold sound, More Life is exceptionally produced with smooth-as-silk transitions.
"This project is just a celebration of the fact that we're still here, still going." -Drake
After a much ado disbanding, James Murphy and co. returned with another disco-punk album that didn't stray the course and bucked notions of irrelevancy in a tumultuous year that feels like the start of another decade. The album wears much on its sleeve, including its sleeve itself--a sunburst set in blue sky (the painting is by Rob Reynolds--a cover that happened to spark divisiveness among consumers).
When you get down to the music, it crackles with those slap-down synths and Murphy's slippery vocals. Politics and the social times drive much of the lyrics and mood of record like the big-sky, anthemic "call the police"--which teasingly (?) hints at U2 through warbly electro. There's also nods to the late David Bowie in lyrics (the winsome "black screen") and sound. Songs like "tonite" vibe on attempting to unite pessimistic ("the future is a nightmare), fragmented pop audiences ("what's left of the airwaves") to the dance-floor.
"I was like, 'I don’t know if people are gonna like this, it’s a much darker record.” And Michael, who’s been the art director at DFA forever, was like, “With the bands I like, I’ve always waited for the dark record…' But I don’t know if we’re the best target market, late forties music nerds… I was a goth band in the ’80s, and it’s a big part of my youth. In some ways, it was just letting myself have the questionable taste of my ’80s, not just the quite obviously approved tastes of my childhood, but the dubious stuff too, which still means a lot to me. Letting that out a bit, without reserve, was a big part of it. It’s also kind of a weird time... It’s a weird time to be a human. It’s always a weird time to be a human, but particularly, for me, now." -James Murphy
Peter Peter's delicate vocals thread through exquisite lo-fi electro gems. Like many of the songs on the record, opener "Bien réel" begins with a plaintive acapella over little beats and builds gradually. Tracks like "Nosferatu" and the title track feature moody, enveloping synths. The French pop bop "Little Shangri-La" features a compelling melody and ambiance. Pleasant and appealing with some gentle guitar work--this seems like an album almost anyone would like.
"It's an album about asking yourself questions and doubting yourself. The last song is about embracing those moments of passion and being alive. Accept you won't answer all the questions and take that pure feeling of being there." -Peter Peter
