Fred Again… featuring Duoteque and Orion Sun “ItsNotREEAALLLLLLLL”

“ItsNotREEAALLLLLLLL” is built around a sample of Orion Sun’s “Mirage,” a little sketch of a song from the singer’s 2020 record. That recording is loose and tentative, like a quick demo that stuck in its abbreviated and minimal form because the woozy, elliptical nature was exactly right for the lyrical sentiment about dissociation. Fred Again takes that vocal and lyrical idea and pushes into a more nightmarish direction, resulting in the EDM equivalent of a A24 horror movie. The music feels like it’s stalking her, her voice sounds warped and inhuman. It’s a sick paranoid vibe, but it goes hard enough that it works as dynamic dance music.

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Bad Bad Hats “Your Heart My Heart”

I don’t know a lot about Bad Bad Hats’ Kerry Alexander, but the impression I get from most of her lyrics is that she’s generally working through tensions in relationships in her songs. And that’s a lot of lyricists, particularly in the pop lane, but it’s never really big dramatic moments or spiteful jabs. It’s more about navigating the day to day of stable situations, where little annoyances pile up and you end up sighing “God, it’s always something with you” at the end of a verse. “My Heart, Your Heart” has a soft spikiness to it, a little agitated but ultimately warm and affectionate. I like the way the chorus arrives at no conclusion besides acknowledging that she’s tied tightly with the person she’s addressing. I think it’s Alexander’s way of putting all the little conflicts in perspective – none of this would matter if they weren’t so committed to one another.

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Nia Archives “Cards on the Table”

Nia Archives has been a crucial figure in bringing breakbeats and drum and bass programming back into pop over the past few years, and her new record Silence Is Loud is her boldest move yet in that she’s going waaaay more pop without compromising her commitment to ultra-fast beats at all. “Cards on the Table” is simultaneously her most normal and weirdest song, a straightforward acoustic pop tune about falling in love set accompanied by zooming busy beats that probably shouldn’t work, but actually do. The lyrics are basically about making it clear to someone that you’re way into them, and the arrangement manifests the emotional state of trying to put on a chill, laid back front while your anxiety and fear of rejection kicks into overdrive. A lot of songs aim to evoke that “butterflies” feeling, but this one is like swarms of butterflies flying around chaotically while you try to play it cool.

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Sabrina Carpenter “Espresso”

The first few times I heard “Espresso” I was trying to figure out why it felt so familiar and then it hit me: this song is remarkably similar to late-period Phoenix, right on down to the melody in the chorus sounding extremely Thomas Mars to me. I’m not sure if this is something anyone involved was shooting for but it’s a great aesthetic. Sunny and fresh and clean and overtly relaxed, but tightly wound in more subtle ways. Sabrina Carpenter isn’t a very distinct vocalist but she has a big personality that comes through in her lyrics – funny and flirty and a little camp, as though she’s trying to bring a Kim Cattrall energy to pop. “Espresso” is basically a song about being impressed by one’s own skill in attracting men, with her telling us up top “I can’t relate to desperation” because so many guys get obsessed with her that it’s mostly become amusing to her. The light and breezy feel of the song is key in making this sentiment work. It’s just not that serious, so it doesn’t come off as either annoyingly arrogant or like she’s trying to prove something to the listener. It’s mostly just “ooh, isn’t this fun?,” and so it is.

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Khruangbin “Ada Jean”

Khruangbin is a trio with no weak link, but I find that I mainly connect to their music through Marko Speer’s guitar. He typically plays with a plaintive, understated tone and lets his melodies flow very casually, like an impressionistic story gradually unfolding through his notes. There’s a tendency for a lot of listeners, particularly writers, to think of lyrics as the meat of a song, but music like this is basically telling you words are inadequate, that you have to play a guitar to express certain things. In other words, there’s an elegance and eloquence to Speer’s playing that I think is beyond a lot of the most thoughtful and clever lyricists’ capacity.

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Brittany Howard “I Don’t”

I had to look up and verify that Brittany Howard is indeed the sole author of this song because the atmosphere and the pitch of the vocal hook suggested that it was built around the kind of vintage R&B sample that you’d expect to be the center of a Ghostface Killah song. The whole song is in 60s soul mode but I love how the more traditional aspects of the arrangement mesh with the “chipmunk soul” aesthetic, like she’s collapsing down the eras and pushing the sound out of either nostalgia or DJ quotation. The timeline collapse also suits the lyrical conceit – she’s singing about being too overworked and exhausted to have fun, and that’s as evergreen a sentiment as you’re going to get.

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Cindy Lee “Lockstepp”

Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, a 32 track album split across two imaginary CDs and only available as a single stream on YouTube or a download from the band’s Geocities page, is kinda like getting the entire discography of a really cool lost psychedelic band in one lump sum. Even with the existence of previous Cindy Lee records, this feels like a complete body of work documenting a series of related musical phases. It also sounds like a world unto itself, with a very “live” feel and some of the most beautifully recorded guitar parts I’ve heard in a while. It’s not a hi-fi sound, but it’s not really lo-fi either – it’s more like naturalism with a flattering soft focus. I have no idea what the Cindy Lee working process was like, but the recording and mixing gives the impression of listening in on a rehearsal when the band is in the zone and every improvisational flourish is inspired.

If you go along with the “entire discography” notion, “Lockstepp” is like a mid-career shift into a darker vibe. It’s like a zonked-out glam song with a severe krautrock groove and a goth tonal palette. The lyrics are sung from the POV of someone who seems to come out of some kind of literal or metaphorical cult, a lament about needing someone to believe in and figuring out you probably chose the wrong person or institution. There’s a sick hollow feeling at the core of this song, like you’re in this person’s head and you can’t help but feel the pull of this void they’re trying to fill.

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Schoolboy Q featuring Freddie Gibbs “Ohio”

“Ohio” has three distinct sections and ten credited producers, so I have no idea who did what or which producer(s) may have been responsible for making this collection of beats flow so seamlessly. But the whole crew deserves a lot of credit for building up an incredible tension and heavy atmosphere, particularly in the moody and lightly jazzy first and third sections. I especially like the slow-mo funk of the bass line in the first part and how it flatters the warmth and grit in Schoolboy Q’s voice, and the dreary piano chords and plaintive sax in the final minute that complement the mournful quality of Freddie Gibbs’ vocal tone. There’s a heavy feeling through the whole track, and even if Q is spends a lot of the song flexing he still sounds like he’s passing through some dark cloud.

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Anysia Kym “Test Your Patience”

Anysia Kym is mainly a producer, and it shows a bit on her new record Truest in that the track composition and arrangements are very interesting and convey a lot of confidence in the studio, while she seems a little shy on the microphone. This isn’t necessarily an issue, at least not on “Test Your Patience” where some vocal timidity seems central to getting across the feeling of the song. The whole song feels smooth yet tentative, like she’s tip-toeing her way through a lot of volatile motions both within and without. The vibe is relaxed, but only in a calm-before-the-storm sort of way.

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Tyla “On and On”

“On and On” is an unusually melancholy song about partying, one in which the South African singer Tyla sings about enjoying a party so much that the thought of leaving it and going back to regular life is incredibly depressing. It’s late in the party, she can feel it winding down, and she’s at the bargaining stage of grieving the end of the night. The beat is danceable but the song is more of a ballad, and Tyla sings it with just the right degree of poignancy. She’s not overselling it, but she’s not minimizing the emotion either. You get a sense that there’s some stakes to this that she’s not getting into, something this party is giving her that’s otherwise in very short supply in her life.

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Crumb “Amama”

That bright trebly sound in “Amama” is not guitar, it’s electric sitar. It’s not played in a way that screams “you’re listening to a sitar,” which I find it usually the case with the instrument, but it’s definitely apparent once you know what it is. It sounds like Lila Ramani is transposing a regular guitar part to the sitar, so you don’t get a big drone but you do get this wobbly haze of very high pitched notes. That ultra high end is very pronounced in contrast with Jesse Brotter’s bass, which bounces off a particularly funky groove by drummer Jonathan Gilad. Like a lot of the best Crumb songs, it really moves while also feeling very stoned and zoned out. Ramani’s lyrics aren’t super legible in the mix, but they’re quite good – a little story about falling in love with someone who’s only ever too close or too far away.

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Bolis Pupul “Kowloon”

“Kowloon” is in banger mode for most of its run time but as much as I enjoy the parts that go hard in a very Justice sort of way, the parts that really pull me in are the more mellow sections with ambient vocal chatter in the background. There’s a wonderful sense of atmosphere and space in those moments, like you’re immediately zapped to some unfamiliar street corner in, presumably, Kowloon City.
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Yaya Bey “Crying Through My Teeth”

The equivalent of the indistinct chatter in “Kowloon” in “Crying Through My Teeth” is the droning organ part, which feels like frigid air gradually chilling everything else in the mix. The arrangement is very strong in general, mostly a lot of understated parts that sketch out a very specific mood and sense of physical space. Yaya Bey’s vocal tends towards the understated too, though there’s some excellent phrasing here, particularly in the second verse with the extended metaphor about telling jokes.

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Mount Kimbie featuring King Krule “Empty and Silent”

Mount Kimbie’s new album is their third in a row with at least one song featuring King Krule, which is a pretty cool tradition for them. It’s kinda sorta like if Crosby, Stills, and Nash had figured out a way to make sure they could always get a Neil Young song on every record. I like the way Mount Kimbie push King Krule into arrangements that are more dynamic than what he often makes on his own – I think of the beats tumbling and thumping around his voice on “Meter, Pale, Tone,” or the way “Blue Train Lines” accelerates in its second half. “Empty and Silent” starts off ambient but shifts into an intriguing combination of 80s indie rock and motorik groove. The music is fairly busy but the atmosphere feels very light, as though there’s a wide open space at the center of the song and everything is moving on the periphery. King Krule’s voice sounds vaguely serene in this one, as though he’s reaching some zen state by meditating on a city that turns into a ghost town once the working day is through, or finding some peace as he lets go of painful memories of being sick and depressed.

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Real Estate “Freeze Brain”

Real Estate don’t get groovy too often but on the occasions when they lean into a funkier bass line it suits them rather well. This isn’t to say you’d confuse “Freeze Brain” for funk music – the slinky bass part and tight pocket beat have more of a late 90s down-beat lounge aesthetic along the lines of Air’s first record. It’s a song with a pensive walking vibe that actually starts with lyrics about going on pensive walks, but then expands its emotional scope to be more about trying to find small moments of peace and joy while otherwise sinking into despair. The lyrics settle on at least pretending to be optimistic but I hear a little more faith in Martin Courtney’s voice than that, particularly when his vocal melody bounces off the beat a little.

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Yas Reven “WHoO-Oo!”

I like when dance music feels like a producer is playing a little game with you, one where they’re always a few steps ahead of you. “WHoO-Oo!” is one of those, a song that starts out feeling like you’re being led through some kind of funky maze and before you know it the maze feels more like a rollercoaster. Yas Reven keeps the whole thing feeling light and bouncy while carefully managing the big dopamine blast moments, and amps up the playfulness by cutting in vocal parts that sound like the utterances of a happy digital baby.

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Ariana Grande “Ordinary Things”

I can’t tell whether the new Ariana Grande record Eternal Sunshine is her pushing a fading Max Martin out of his comfort zone as a musician, or if it’s more like Martin trying to get her type of floaty R&B music into his comfort zone and mostly not getting there. For the most part the songs don’t give me what I like about her music, and they don’t really provide any of his core competencies as the master of Too Big To Fail chart pop either. So it’s no big surprise that the only song on the record I love without reservation is “Ordinary Things,” one of two tracks without a Martin writing credit. This is the kind of Ariana song I like the most – an airy feel, a busy yet nimble melody, low-key sensuality, and the general sensation of getting a contact high off of someone else’s intense infatuation. This is never the sort of song she releases as a single but it’s the thing she’s best at doing, and it’s something that’s simply outside of Martin’s skill set. They aim for this lightness on some other songs on the record but his pop guy mindset resists grace in favor of sledgehammer hooks that distrust an audience’s patience and sensitivity. It just ends up sounding clumsy to me. I’m just glad he didn’t stomp all over this song’s sweet and delicate charms.

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Iron & Wine featuring Fiona Apple “All In Good Time”

“All In Good Time” is a new song that’s so warm, familiar, and lived-in that it feels like it has existed for decades. Some of that is stylistic – you could send this back to the 70s and I doubt anyone would think it sounds like the future. But it’s mostly in Fiona Apple’s weathered voice, which invests Sam Beam’s lyrics with the accrued regret and exasperation of decades of getting burned by her own fiery passions. I like the way their voices contrast, her grit and gruffness set in sharp relief by his gentle, steady tenor. They’re singing a story about a relationship through time, and they make it sound like two opposites who’ve attracted each other and have spent ages trying to figure out how that makes sense.

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A few years ago I wrote about “cultural cartography,” an idea that floated through BuzzFeed during its peak era that boils down to the notion that all forms of content have utility, though a lot of the time the audience decides what that utility will be when and how they share it or make it part of their identity. The New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka’s new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture has a clear and specific utility, which is to reassure people who identify as having an interest in culture that the reason they feel disconnected from or disappointed by contemporary culture is that recommendation algorithms have compromised everything. It’s a book that exists to give people who have minimal active engagement in culture – but still perceive themselves to be tasteful – an easy way to write off contemporary culture completely. Ah, it’s all ruined by The Algorithm! It’s all bland and bad now! It’s a book that gives its readers permission to give up on the arts. 

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Sly5thAve “Monoxide”

I’m never unhappy to hear music that’s obviously influenced by D’Angelo, much less jumping off from ideas he laid down on Black Messiah. “Monoxide” starts from a similar point as the more gnarly tracks on that record but pushes a little further into jazz territory, with some bits recalling Herbie Hancock in his grandiose space-funk Sextant era or Miles Davis in fusion mode. Sly5thave is demonstrating a high level of both taste and skill here, and while I think it’s a fairly easy game of “spot the influence,” you can hear his distinct character in the disorienting quality of the music. The lyrics are basically just saying “I want to get high with you” over and over, but the music suggests a level of being stoned that would make communicating with someone a little challenging.

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Mary Timony “Looking For the Sun”

I hear a lot of English folk psychedelia in the songs on Mary Timony’s new record Untame the Tiger and I think it suits her very well, especially after an extended spell of records with Ex Hex which went for a more blunt new wave minimalism. “Looking For the Sun” is a different sort of minimalism, I suppose, but the scope suggested by her guitar feels much grander than that. She makes the verses feel like an expanse of barren desert, which only makes the brighter chords on the chorus sound more like a burst of sunlight through parting clouds. Like a few other tracks on the record, the lyrics describe a rather bleak state of mind in direct but not unpoetic language. She imagines misery as a bad friend, and misfortune only exacerbating a fear of everyone else. But despite all that the song mostly sounds like an expression of optimism, or at least faith in the light at the end of every tunnel.

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Astrid Sonne “Do You Wanna”

In most cases the implication of a song title like “Do You Wanna” is yes, you definitely wanna. You wanna have fun, you wanna have sex, you wanna get high, you wanna be free, etc. Astrid Sonne goes hard in the opposite direction, presenting the question full question – “do you wanna have a baby?” – and then leaving you in anticipation as it hangs in the air and a loud, clipped beat slowly moves you towards her next line. She makes you run through the possibilities in your head. Do you wanna commit to bringing a child into the world, the world we’re in right now? Do you wanna really commit? Do you wanna trust the other person to stick around? Do you wanna disappoint them by declining? Her answer ends up being “I really don’t know,” and she really makes you feel that confusion and uncertainty in your gut.

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Angelic Milk “Diana Ross”

“Diana Ross” is a song for anyone who’d say that they’d prefer to desire than be desired. Angelic Milk conjure the sound of early 60s girl group pop, but more importantly they tap into that sort of cosmic longing. Sarah Persephona sings about unrequited love like a highly aestheticized ritual, a personal religion in which whoever she’s singing about is the deity. They come to her in dreams, time seems to stretch out indefinitely, and songs from The Little Mermaid and Diana Ross are referenced like hymns. She shows some signs of doubt, but she clings to her faith and it’s quite beautiful.

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Four Tet “Daydream Repeat”

The first 30 seconds of “Daydream Repeat” go by about as you’d expect from Four Tet, with percussive elements gradually clicking together into an up-tempo groove. Then the noise kicks in. It’s like a screaming vacuum, a massive blade scraping metal, a blast disintegrating everything in its path. It comes and goes through the track like a brutal storm, broken up by sections led by a piano part that sounds very gentle and innocent. The piano is lovely but it’s that digital noise that allures, this sound that’s not quite musical but carries some recognizable humanity to it. It’s like some disruptive furious feeling getting in the way of, but also giving weight to, the more level-headed moments.

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Nourished by Time “Hand On Me”

A very cool synth bass part drops around the 1:40 mark in this song, which retroactively makes the first half of it feel a little hesitant, as though Marcus Brown is biding time waiting for this inevitable groove to kick in. That synth bass changes the way everything else feels in the song – what felt a little off-balance feels less precarious, what felt empty feels full. Brown opens the song singing “Have you never loved somebody, I’ve never tried,” and once the song fills out and the groove is complete, it sounds like he’s finally feeling that love he’s denied himself.

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