I can make it good, I can make it hood, I can make you come, I can make you go! I can make it high, I can make it fly, make you touch the sky, hey maybe so!
14/BILLIE EILISH//WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
From a home and studio in Highland Park, Los Angeles, an album was born. Two siblings, a brother and a sister, and their chaotic, and often times tender musings and reflections on the world and folks around them, sung aloud and made whole by the fully formed, ready for the world confidence and performance of the sister, 17 year old Billie. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is a teenage dream anchored by the astute teen narrating the euphoria and melodrama of this present day American Teenage life. Her pop is gothic. Her pop is industrial. Her pop is HEAVY, and then tenderly sung, often when you least expect it. It's ramshackle, then steady, and delightfully now. Billie & When We All Fall Asleep, Where Did We Go? arrived ready, willing, and able to conquer, and does exactly that. KEY TRACKS: YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN
Midway through Remind Me Tomorrow, on the rollicking Springsteen like number that starts like it was waiting for you, Seventeen, Sharon checks in on the teenage she. “I wish I could show you how much you've grown”. I wish she could see the present day Sharon, too. This Comeback Kid with this expansive alt rock set and barn burner. “I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GONNA BE!” she sings to her younger self, and across these ten songs shows us exactly that with razor sharp finesse. She’s a fiery torch singer, a magnetic front woman and rock goddess, and a tantalizing alt rock queen, telling and showing us everything she is, and everything she can be.
That bare, emotional warmth hits you instantly on Two Hands. “I am unable. Cry with me. Cry with me...” Adrianne sings at the outset, vocal hovering just above a quiver.
“I am unstable.”
“Rock and sing.” “Rock and sing...”
Arriving just five months after their third LP, Big Thief’s Two Hands is a stunning collection of moments of clarity (and the never ending search for it) set to song. Two Hands is a crisp, slow burning folk rock record where intimacy permeates every song. She may note that she is unstable on Rock and Sing, but the music is anything but. Grounded and fully formed, Big Thief’s Two Hands is the sound of a band coming together to soothe wounds and heal by adhering to those two words repeated til it sticks from the first song: “Rock and sing. Rock and sing...”
17/JAIMIE BRANCH/FLY OR DIE II: BIRD DOGS OF PARADISE
Jaimie Branch is a 36 year old jazz trumpeter and composer from Long Island, and these are her protest songs. Her “love songs for assholes and clowns” and Prayers for America. Songs for “the good, the bad, and the rest of us.” Fly or Die II : Bird Dogs of Paradise is a raucous yet wonderfully joyous affair where Jaimie’s trumpet and compositions take flight and cruise, track after track. It’s thought provoking (See track two, Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 1 & 2), often times funny (that love song for assholes and clowns), and also takes the time to stop here and there to make sure you get your groove on (album highlights Simple Silver Surfer & Twenty-Three N Me, Jupiter Redux -the whole album pretty much). Taken as a whole Fly or Die II : Bird Dogs of Paradise is a funky, expressionistic set that flies high and never comes down. KEY TRACKS:
all of me, she proposes. why not take all of me. hold me, thrill me, touch me, kiss me. why not take all of me. this woman’s work. this woman’s prerogative. she heard you needed her, so she’s here to open you. this fallen alien and her operatic, chopped & screwed experimental pop & electronic R&B. the ultimate seductress, ready to embrace. putting herself first, but also here to raise you up, and move you; help you fly. all you gotta do is come closer. collide and connect with the throbs of these otherworldly melodies, as anxious and twisted as the beats of her yearning heart. her fruits are yours to take. done all for you, and all for the game. all for the lovers, trying to chase the rush again. this woman’s work. true as mary magdalene.
I remember watching Brittany perform Stay High on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, completely spellbound. Moved throughout and brought to tears by the song’s end.
I remember getting caught up on Daily Show episodes and watching Brittany as a guest again, this time performing Short and Sweet. I was moved throughout it and brought to tears by the song’s end.
And I remember returning to the album from which those songs came the other day, this soulful 35 minute set right here, and saying to myself midway through the listening session, “Woo boy, this album is damn near timeless”.
It’s that good.
She’s that good.
Everytime.
On her debut solo album, Mrs. Howard baptizes us in the funk, takes us to church, and stands alongside soul music’s elders, showing love while advancing the genre and being down for the cause. She’s got the blues. She’s a funk queen. A soul sister. 13TH CENTURY METAL. Young, Gifted, and Black, moving and rocking you by simply being she. On Jaime, Brittany Howard gives you something short and sweet for right now, for tomorrow, or for whenever you need it, from here on out.
She stands atop a mattress on the cover with that stance. With a look that announces a monologue and those things that need to be said. She stands atop the mattress in that empty space, higher up, above it all and present. Here, sincerely. In a space where her husky simmering coo, residing slightly above a whisper, can echo, and let her command the room. With her quiet songs and melodies, playing like a homemade live recording made especially for you, on cassette. Album number three from the Los Angeles based singer songwriter atop the mattress, commanding your attention. Jessica Pratt and this stunning quiet storm consisting largely of her voice and a few strums of a guitar, here, sincerely. Surrounding you in warmth like a well lit fire on a chilly day. These here things that need to be said, presented here gorgeously. These quiet signs.
On Lost Girls, Natasha Khan dreams big and loves hard. On her fifth album as Bat for Lashes, the love songs pulsate along to the rhythm of her heart, and pulsate along to the rhythm that is her hunger for desire and to “close the distance between you and I”. On Lost Girls, Bat for Lashes pines and seduces, dreaming of a love that lasts forever more, never letting the groove take leave from her heart. Cinematic in scope with its heart and propulsive rhythms set firmly in the sounds and grooves that helped define the 80s, Lost Girls is a synth pop paradise where hearts and bodies cut loose and roam free.
On today’s Deerhunter album, the band pauses to take a look around them and take it all in. And when they do, they see ghosts of things now faded; Deaths in midsummer; VIOLENCE! VIOLENCE!; People fading out of view. They take stock of it all and wonder, if this is all there is, “why hasn’t everything already disappeared?...” So they go elemental and do what they do best: try to figure things out while settling into a groove. Consistently. Repeatedly. Highlighting why they are still one of best bands around. From No One’s Sleeping’s cosmic swing into the horror bounce that is Greenpoint Gothic, to What Happens to People?’s mid song freak out. Or the somber lo-fi bounce of Tarnung. And the serene art rock stomp that is Nocturne’s album closing fade out. Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? grooves within the great unknown to find a little a joy and to hold on for life.
On album number four Angel Olsen floats like a butterfly over rapturous
arrangements that reach for the heavens. All Mirrors is a grandiose
affair full of dizzying synths, plaintive piano, and cathartic strings that roam like clouds, triumphantly. It is yet another
ornate display of Angel’s honky tonk melancholia that smolders and
tugs at the heart, keeping you warm within its gorgeous wall of
sound.
