REVIEW: Craig Finn – Clear Heart Full Eyes January 20, 2012

There's one thing you should know: Christ is with me right now.

Do you get sick of listening to me talk about the musicians who are insanely important to me? I’m sure you are. Get on with the review already! I can hear you screaming when I write about Radiohead, The Mountain Goats, or Neutral Milk Hotel. We get it, you have feelings! One of my very favorite Silver Jews lyrics is incredibly simple: “All my favorite singers couldn’t sing.” It holds true for the man singing it (David Berman), but it also holds true for a lot of the people I adore in music. Jeff Mangum, John Darnielle, Bjork, and Scott Walker? Tom Waits? They sound like they didn’t know what singing was before they started doing it, and then found out later that there’s a way to do it. And god bless them, I love that about them. But of all of the singers I know of that I can honestly say have influenced the way I do things, I’d say Craig Finn has done the most damage, for better or worse.

Craig Finn has almost never been a “singer,” so much as a “guy with a guitar who sing-talks through drunken stories.” It wasn’t until I first heard Boys And Girls In America that I realized that you don’t necessarily have to have the best singing voice, or even a singing voice at all, to convey the message you want to get across. Could you imagine some guy with a clear, lilting singing voice pulling off songs like “The Cattle and the Creeping Things?” What about “Positive Jam?” Of course not. His sound has always been as much of a part of the sound of his bands (it goes way back to the days of Lifter Puller, when his stories were actually seedier and more warped) as Tad Kubler’s guitar tone, and it almost feels ridiculous to picture it any other way. But what happens when, instead of taking the Craig Finn out of the Hold Steady, but you take the Hold Steady out of the Craig Finn?

The first few seconds of “Apollo Bay” sound like a late-period Iron & Wine cut, pumped with bluesy, warbling tinge. It could almost be Sam Beam waiting to chime in like an angel, but instead, it’s the nasally cadence of Mr. Finn, with a little bit of half-tone poetry. It’s a strange start to the album, but it sets the pace insanely quickly: Clear Heart Full Eyes is going to be an incredibly varied affair. And that really isn’t the worst thing.

One of the most interesting things to notice, on first listen, is that if you didn’t know it, you’d never think the aforementioned seedy stories were ever part of Finn’s day job. It’s imperative that I drive that point home: if you’re really just looking for a Hold Steady detour that’s a Hold Steady record (but without the rest of the band), you’re not in the right place whatsoever. Finn is 40-years-old now, and it’s pretty possible that his whiling ways have caught up with him, and made him incredibly sad. It’s a bouncy, breezy affair on the surface, but listening to songs like “When No One’s Around,” (in which he calls out every big-talker who boasts the exploits of what happened when nobody was looking) it’s clear that he’s getting a little sick of things around him. This leads to a surprisingly fully-realized record, not from a man who has something to prove (or new ideas to try out), but from a man who has nothing to prove. All the killer parties and massive nights are conspicuously absent, and they’re replaced by an incredibly insular series of songs (yes, even more so than usual). If pressed to sum up the record in a single line, I’d say it comes from record (and possibly career) highlight “Western Pier,” with its strange tale of having to run from your own personal history: “The girls that live in my heart / Keep coming up the boulevard.” “Rented Room” is an ode to cutting yourself off from the world, and really solidifies the difference between this album, and every other record with his stamp on it: it’s the counterbalance to the “woah-oh” themes all over his other works.

Its been two years since the last Hold Steady record, Heaven is Whenever, came out, and one of the questions that comes to mind for me is, where was all of this then? The feelings expressed by Finn on Clear Eyes are almost definitely not new, and would have turned that album into a much different album. Listening to that one, there was a definite lack of something (besides the departure of keyboardist Franz Nicolay), as though everyone involved was holding back. Clear Heart Full Eyes is possibly the best thing Craig Finn has done since Boys and Girls in America, and it would have lead to a beautiful leap forward for his main band. I, for one, hope that these changes made leak out onto the next Hold Steady record. If not, at least we know he’s still capable of beauty.

What We’ve Lost ’11: The Records That Didn’t Make The Cut (And Why) December 24, 2011

For me, the process of getting my hands on all of the records I didn‘t bother listening to, and trying to digest them, is both a much-wanted part of the end-of-the-year, and a much-dreaded part. When I first started the mad-dash effort to get all of these records, I found myself sitting on no less than 20 releases that didn’t make their way into my radar. It’s exhausting, but I almost always find uncovered gems by doing this (See: Tim Hecker’s Harmony in Ultraviolet, TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain, MIA’s Kala, etc.).

Then, of course, there are the records that I enjoyed, but not enough to write about, or in the case of a handful, not write about again. In other cases, I enjoyed them a lot, but I didn’t absorb them quite enough to really judge them fairly. The records on this list are the ones that didn’t quite make the cut, but deserved some kind of praise, regardless. It is by no means complete; There are records that I just don’t quite have the words for. These are some of the records I do have words for, though.

Sound Sounds: The Best Records of 2011 December 20, 2011

One of the things that gets really old fast is listening to people complain about the caliber of music to come out in any given year. “This was the worst year for music, ever,” they say, like complete assholes. This is what you say when you’re too bored to be clever about things. I have never had any problem coming up with a slough of albums to write about at the end of the year, to be honest. Why would I? My only real problem has always been trying to narrow down my selections to a certain number, and then rate them in any given order. This, too, gets boring. Last year, however, I decided to simply talk about the albums that stood out, in no order, and with no limit. It turned out pretty well, I think!

So, without further ado, I give you the albums that I found worth hearing in 2011. Like any of my lists, it is by no means complete; I didn’t listen to everything I wanted to this year, nor did I listen to certain albums as much as I had wanted. This is just a representation of the things that I concerned myself with the most in the last 12 months. Enjoy.

Also, P.S.: I always end these things with a long-winded thank you to the people in my life. I’m not going to really bother with that. I’ll make this quick, though: To Kelly, Yousef, Arya, Darren, and Jordan, thank you.

REVIEW: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Traffic November 29, 2011

You're cruising with the bad kids in town.

I was probably 14 when I first listened to Pavement. During a wild hunt for lo-fi artists, I was given a very simple recommendation, which I will never forget: “Pavement <3″ So, I went and downloaded the deluxe edition of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (which I, due to my dyslexia, read as Cooked Rain), and put it on before going to bed. And about 15 minutes in, I turned it off and put on The Postal Service’s record again. I just didn’t understand it.

A year later, my computer’s hard drive died. Went kaput. It was gone. All I had to my name, musically, was all of the CDs I’d burned. So, I went through all of them, and found my copy of Cooked Rain, Cooked Rain, and decided to give it one more shot. After a year, my teenage brain had grown just enough that Pavement songs made sense to me, and Cooked Rain never left my CD player for months on end, until I knew the thing front-to-back. As a confused slacker teenager, I took solace in the confused slackerhood of Stephen Malkmus, who’s nonsensical lyrics made for private anthems in my bored and lonely brain. It was part of what made me want to learn to play the guitar (I give most of the credit to The Hold Steady, but that’s not important, really), and what made me realize that not all songs had to make much sense. It also taught me that it was okay to not know where you were going with your life.

I saw Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks on the night that their last album, Real Emotional Trash, was released. If you’ve heard that record, you know that it would be the kind of album Syd Barrett would have released if he was in Pavement: it’s noisy, it wanders constantly, and it makes very little sense, even though its storytelling is very good. It was a mess of an album, and to this day, I still love it immensely. And now, we have Mirror Traffic, which couldn’t be more at odds with Real Emotional Trash. It’s worth noting that, despite the fact that Mirror Traffic is five songs longer than its predecessor, it’s also five minutes shorter. What does that say about the record? Simple: it’s a Pavement record.

Another digression: In the space between Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion, Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) released Person Pitch, an album with such a personality, it bled into the creation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and it shows. In a move that felt like God was listening, in between Emotional Trash and Mirror Traffic, Pavement reunited. It’s entirely possible that the whirlwind tour supporting this reunion bled its way into the making of this record, but it’s not really something I would complain about: it’s an album full of short, breezy songs that feel crisp and fun, and incredibly Malk-tastic. To borrow a sentiment someone expressed to me: it’s the most Malk-y thing he’s done in years. And I absolutely love it.

From the moment “Tigers” starts, and you hear Malkmus’ air-whipped guitar tone, you can tell that it’s an incredibly different affair. To discuss his lyrics is basically pointless (they surely mean something, but it’s pointless to dissect them), but if the first line doesn’t tell you about the tone of the record, I don’t know what will: “I caught you streaking in your Birkenstocks / A scary thought.” It’s a line that almost feels – dare I say it – cute. And that’s how a lot of Mirror Traffic comes across. Even on “Senator,” which is an attempt at scathing political satire, comes off chipper, even with a chorus like “I know what the senator wants / What the senator wants is a blow job.” It’s gleefully profane, even mixed in with social commentary. Listening to the rest of the record, it’s clear that the album is a labor of fun above all else (gander at the rhyme “Alabaster wino / God speaks through that albino” in “Stick Figures in Love”), which makes its pointless, Pavement-esque lyrics feel worthwhile.

Listening to the album feels like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. It’s a shame that the album didn’t come out at the beginning of summer, rather than the tail end; it’s an album that feels custom-built for summer walks, road trips to the beach, and cookouts with your friends.

To critique the record almost feels beside the point. It’s clear when you listen to it that, above all else, it was released out of a sheer desire to have fun. I came into the record wanting to break it down into points, but sometimes, you just can’t do that. Mirror Traffic is one of those records that feels immune to the typical tricks used to discern the merits of an album. So, I’m just going to tell you this: if you enjoy Pavement, The Jicks, Stephen Malkmus, or guitar music in general, you’re probably going to enjoy Mirror Traffic a lot. It’s your loss if you don’t like it, but if you like any of those things, chances are, you’re going to have a blast. And if you don’t like it, just go listen to Slanted & Enchanted again and call it a day.

REVIEW: James Blake – James Blake November 29, 2011

Beacons don't fly too high.

Whenever I defend dubstep, I find myself mentioning three people: Four Tet, Burial, and James Blake. Though Four Tet isn’t  ”really” dubstep, he’s on the same level as the rest, and serves as a midway point between what Blake and Burial do: they use their art as an altar where they worship the human voice. It’s clear on Untrue (a milestone of the genre) that William Bevan (aka Burial) is a worshiper of the power of the voice, perhaps more than anyone else in his field.

To me, James Blake stands at the forefront of the genre. He’s currently one of the most prominent producers, and one of the more vocal. Recently, he came out against American producers, and their idea of things. If you’ll bare with me:

“I think the dubstep that has come over to the US, and certain producers– who I can’t even be bothered naming– have definitely hit upon a sort of frat-boy market where there’s this macho-ism being reflected in the sounds and the way the music makes you feel. And to me, that is a million miles away from where dubstep started. It’s a million miles away from the ethos of it. It’s been influenced so much by electro and rave, into who can make the dirtiest, filthiest bass sound, almost like a pissing competition, and that’s not really necessary. And I just think that largely that is not going to appeal to women. I find that whole side of things to be pretty frustrating, because that is a direct misrepresentation of the sound as far as I’m concerned.”

In just a few words (maybe more than a few, but you get the idea), he managed to air a very real complaint with the state of music. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a young kid who “really likes dubstep,” but will mention Skrillex and Deadmau5 first and foremost when talking about the genre. It’s a style fueled mostly by testosterone, with less regard for the sound they are making, but more for the fact that you can dance to it. James Blake the album is not a dancing record, and that’s what makes it special. It was made in a time-honored tradition of making dubstep that was meant for your living room, where you sit, and have a glass of wine with your lover. It’s sensual and mellow, and most decidedly not part of any pissing contest. And that’s part of what makes it beautiful.

Stepping back a moment, I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention the fact that Blake, like Will Bevan, is a voice worshipper. It’s omething that is instantly noticeable when you listen to the record; just a few short moments into Unluck, Blake’s chopped-and-skewed voice comes into the mix, intoning a simple message about the album as a whole: “Treated walls, care for me.” In five words, he manages to speak volumes about his lot in life, and though it’s so small in scope, it says it all perfectly. This simplicity serves as a pseudo-M.O. for James Blake, where it’s okay to let the music and the tone of the song speak for itself, rather than bothering with overdone strings of lyrics. “I Never Learnt to Share,” for instance, builds slowly and tensely off of one single repeated and echoed phrase: “My brother and my sister don’t speak to me, but I don’t blame them.” It’s incredibly simple, and yet you understand what he’s saying completely.

One of the focal points of James Blake is his stark rendition of Feist’s “A Limit to Your Love,” which echoes the slow build of the original, but strips it down entirely until it’s almost nothing but a piano line. He conveys the central point behind Feist’s version of the song, but in keeping with the rest of the record, uses half the words that she does. It’s almost magical how he manages to do it, and he does it on every song here.

Truly, my only complaint about James Blake is that it feels a little too minimalist. Blake’s ability to be the Rachel Ray of R&B (meaning, working with the bare minimum in his arsenal to make something wonderful) is possibly unmatched, but a start-to-finish listen of the album almost feels like walking through an unfinished house. It’s clear that this was his intent, but it’s almost disheartening. Blake is a young man full of promise, and he uses all of it to make albums that feel like they’re half silence. It’s a minor complaint, to be sure; his ability to work with those silences and change the mood of a room entirely is ingenious. It just makes me crave more.

Dubstep from Europe feels at complete odds with what is going on here with the people using the name, it almost feels unfair to use that name. There will always be arguments about what “punk” really means, and the same is true of “goth,” and “indie,” and pretty much any genre that isn’t staunchly defined. However, it seems to me that, no matter what, James Blake is still a lot closer to where dubstep started than anyone else at the forefront of the disagreement. No matter where you stand, and how you feel about what “dubstep” means, I can give you one small piece of advice, one that Blake himself would likely appreciate, for its concise nature: Keep watching this man.

REVIEW: EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints November 29, 2011

My arms are made of see-through plastic.

Far out in the outer reaches of the overdone end of the “chicks with great voices” genre lies a small, unregarded niche.

At least, it was once unregarded. There was once a time when the figureheads of the “powerful female lead” category stuck out like sore thumbs: Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Leslie Feist (among others). Then something different took hold, and that classification was overtaken by women who wanted to be just as powerful and affecting, but only knew how to imitate. It’s where we get Sara Bareilles, and Yael Naim, and Lily Allen, and to a lesser extent Lady Gaga. When once you felt like you knew where you stood, now the market is over-saturated, and nobody seems to want to truly grab hold and find their own voice anymore.

Erika M. Anderson (or EMA) sounds a little like each of the aforementioned figureheads, but at the same time exactly nothing like any of them (besides, possibly, Fiona Apple). Really, the only person to compare her to is Conor Oberst, but in the best possible way. Anderson has been around for awhile now (having been part of Gowns before going solo), so it’s no surprise that her voice comes to the forefront of Past Life Martyred Saints from the first moment of “The Grey Ship.” There’s something to be said about Anderson’s ability to come out of the gate so fully formed: even though the fuzzed-out sound signals a rough edge, once you brighten those corners, you find a remarkably solid piece of art. Her handle on the song structure, and how to drill her songs into your head without being invasive, is unrivaled, especially at this point in her career.

That’s one thing I’d like to highlight: for all of the rough edges, 3/4 of Saints is incredibly catchy. There’s a lot of repetition built into the songs here, but it never becomes obnoxious or sickly, nor could it ever be accused of being “infectious.” “Coda” introduces the vaguely nonsensical chanting that flows into “Marked,” an ocean-sized almost love song, where Anderson opines her wish that “every time you touch me left a mark.” These repetitions create a strange atmosphere, almost coming off as credos, rather than lyrics. The persistent chant of “twenty kisses with the butterfly knife” in “Butterfly Knife” is the most gruesome of these, but it adds a strange depth to the song, which is already a stark portrayal of a history of self-abuse: the line’s repetition makes it feel like it (and that which is being sung about) is a ritual. It’s disquieting at times, because it (and a lot of the other lyrics all over the record) makes it feel like a therapy session made musical. It never comes off as angsty or whiny, simply vulnerable, with an attempt at openness.

When I saw EMA perform, she closed her all-too-short set with “California,” and she politely asked the in-house sound-guy to turn up everything as loud as possible without blowing anything out. It demonstrates the power of that song that, despite being cranked to 11, it still functioned as a song. It also shows how well constructed the album is that, though the rest of the album isn’t quite as massive and overblown as that one song, it doesn’t overpower anything, or feel out-of-place. Anderson is incredibly promising, and if she (like the aforementioned Leslie Feist) spawns a nation of imitators, I can’t say I’ll be able to complain. The rest of the singers in the world (male and female alike) could take a lesson in power and confidence from her.

REVIEW: St. Vincent – Strange Mercy November 28, 2011

I don't wanna be a cheerleader no more.

One of the things I love most about Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is that she’s an incredibly warm person in real life. Her candid, friendly presence in interviews was what actually inspired me to give her (and, strangely, Arrested Development) a second shot. I’ve never regretted doing so; she’s incredibly reliable as an artist, and isn’t shy about explaining the meaning behind her art. She really doesn’t need to, though; on Marry Me and Actor, the stories told were incredibly self-explanatory, and devoid of convoluted metaphors. Is it really hard to interpret a line like “I’m a wife in watercolors / I can wash away?” Of course not. And that’s part of her magic: you could hold a lecture series based on the decoding of any given Bjork record. The same isn’t true of Clark.

Another thing that’s incredibly wonderful about her is that she can reinvent herself as she sees fit, and it never feels unsure or rough. Though I didn’t like it at first, when I first listened to Marry Me, I never thought for a second that it was the work of someone just releasing a solo record, due to the fact that it came out gracefully, and without reservations. Strange Mercy marks the third transformation of Clark, and it’s hard to adjust to at first. There was something lush and gorgeous about Actor, with all of its string swoops and stereo vocals. Those two things are removed completely in favor of an almost claustrophobic, fuzz-driven sound. It’s immediately noticeable: ten seconds in, her overdriven guitar floods the mix, almost boiling away everything else around it. It almost overpowers her pleading: “heal my hurt.” This becomes a common theme for the record, and it even shows on the cover: cries for help are stifled herein.

What makes Strange Mercy remarkable is the fact that, despite feeling much smaller in scope than its predecessors, it’s still one of the most lush albums you’re bound to hear all year. Clark wields her guitar in a way that sounds as though the instrument is being raped, and yet it serves as the perfect counterweight to everything that happens on a typical St. Vincent record: its overblown nature is an odd, and sometimes ugly, reflection of the often despicable things that go on in some of her songs; it almost sounds itchy at times, especially when it slogs alongside the sickly drum machine pounding that amplifies the tension in just about every song.

Three albums on, it seems that she’s become a lot less adept at masking the routine malaise that coated her work thus far. She comes off at vulnerable, even scared in places, which is a drastic change from her incredible stoicism in the face of failing relationships, both romantic or otherwise. At times, it plays like Clark’s idea of a breakup album, like what would might have happened if Blood on the Tracks were made by a sober genius, instead of a drunken one. “I know honest thieves I call family / I’ve seen America with no clothes on,” she recalls on “Cheerleader,” opining the downsides of her profession being her life as an open book. On “Champagne Year,” when she sings, “I make a living telling people what they want to hear / It’s not a killing, but it keeps the cobwebs clear,” it comes across as almost remorseful, and it yearns for a change.

Two years ago, Clark sang an incredibly simple sentiment, and its message still rings true here on Strange Mercy: “save me from what I want.” She’s still noticeably happy in performances and in interviews, but if you didn’t know better, you’d wonder exactly how much of her music is autobiographical. The problem, of course, is that immense pain makes for great art, and even if her pain is fictional, it has made for incredible music. Would she still be so powerful without this desire for strange mercy? I’m inclined to say that, as the years go on, she’ll make everything she touches look effortless.

REVIEW: Jenny Hval – Viscera November 26, 2011

There are fox fur and feathers all over the suburbs.

The best albums are the ones that slowly pull you in, as though in a trance. It’s hard not to be mesmerized by albums like that: you sit there, quietly transfixed by that which is wrapping itself around your nerves and synapses. At her best, Bjork is  more than capable of this feat, but there are few musicians who really manage it. Scott Walker is one of the small number of men that accomplish this task. These musicians find a way to construct everything to the exact specifications for keeping you glued to your seat, heartily awaiting what’s coming next.

On “Engine in the City,” the first track of Viscera, I sat wondering what I was going to be hearing. And after a few seconds, Hval pops her head in. “I arrived with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris.” As you may know, I’m big on first lines, and as far as first lines go, this is a pretty jarring one. It sets the stage for the strange, sexual tone of Viscera (more on this later). The really unfortunate thing for her is, the way Hval chose to express that tone is, at times, a little off-putting.

I’m going to get the good part out of the way: Jenny Hval has a truly wonderful voice. It’s difficult to really place where it falls in the hierarchy of Women In Music, but if pressed, it would be somewhere between Leslie Feist and Joanna Newsom. That said, her way of articulating is all her own. It’s not unique, it is merely different. But it is different in that it is hypnotic. The way she’s chosen to express herself on Viscera is a gorgeous thing indeed, and if she happens to garner the fame required to “take off,” she’ll likely find a very good home in the spotlight as an immensely talented vocalist.

The bad part is the sexual tones brought up already. Singing about sex can be done in a non-cringeworthy way. It’s even completely possible to sing about it in a way that doesn’t make people bat an eyelash. But the name of the record says it all about it: Viscera. Parked somewhere in between “sex” and “intestines,” you’ll find this word. Clinically, you’ll find this word in your lower abdomen. It’s a gruesome word. And in keeping with that, the lyrics that deal with the subject are done exactly as well as you would expect from a feminist poetry reading. The word “clitoris” comes up more than once: during “Blood Flight,” she sings, “And on the edges of the cunt grew little teeth / The clitoris, that great Sphinx, opened it’s eye / So many blind years, acting Oedipus.” It’s hard to ignore lyrics like this. Later on, on “Golden Locks,” she not-so-coyly discusses her hair slowly turning into piss (I am not kidding) in the night. Just before that, she coos “My heart breaks, and my mouth breaks and opens like a clam” after being told “You need to get laid.” She also sings the phrase “golden showers” several times. I said I’m not joking, right?

Herein lies the problem with Viscera: if you could ignore the lyrics, it would be an extremely engaging album. The songs often feel aimless in length and direction, but given a subject matter more palatable, this would be a good thing, rather than a downside. I feel ridiculous having such a problem with the subject matter here: to say that the album is “minimalist” would be an insult to the word, being an album as close to bare-bones as you can get without falling apart. If you can pull yourself away from how awful some of the songwriting is, you find yourself listening to one of the most beautifully made record of the year.

But that’s not what it’s about, is it? You should be able to overlook clumsy writing (I grew to ignore the lines about semen in Neutral Milk Hotel songs) in the face of beauty, but it’s hard to completely ignore the lyrics altogether. Listening to Viscera, it’s clear that there was a definite intent, and nothing is actually poorly constructed, per se. Make no mistake: this album is striking in beauty. It’s just a little difficult to chew through the gristle to get to the really good parts. That said, I eagerly await another album, which hopefully won’t make me feel like a prude for cringing.

REVIEW: Drake – Take Care November 25, 2011

I guess you win some, you lose some, long as the outcome is income.

Somewhere along the line of hip-hop, it became okay to do a couple things: 1) You get to opine the downsides of being ultra-rich, super-famous, and hideously-good-looking, and 2) You get to do it in a really pretty way. The first time I noticed it was Kanye West’s Late Registration, which took his R&B infused glamor-hip-hop, and brought in a layer of sadness over the fact that, no matter how rich, famous, and good-looking you happen to be, you can’t do shit to change the lives of those around you. It was incredibly prominent on “Heard ‘Em Say” and “Roses,” two songs at odds with the massive size of the record that contained them (an album that was still fairly reserved when compared to the albums that came, minus the gloriously minimalist detour 808s & Heartbreak). Kid Cudi took it a step further with his tales of grungy rockstar excesses and drug habits on Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. It suddenly became cool to question your place in things. There’s something tragic about Take Care, and you know it just by looking at the album’s cover: Drake will always be a man with swagger, but he’s a nigga who goes through real shit, just like everybody else in the game.

One of the first things you notice about Take Care is that it almost never feels overblown. Marvin Gaye is sitting on Drake’s shoulder throughout the record, and it makes for an intensely interesting listen. You know you’re listening to a different breed of hip-hop record when the first line is “How I’m feeling, it doesn’t matter.” “Over My Dead Body” is an undeniably beautiful song, where Drake’s reserved bravado is spilled out over a gentle piano line and a drum loop. It sets the stage effortlessly for the record, which feels incredible in scope, and yet never quite takes off. Even when he delivers the biting hook of “Marvin’s Room,” though he delivers it under his breath (“Fuck that nigga that you love so bad / I know you still think about the times we had”), but it feels almost furious.

Don’t take that as a bad thing. Take Care is an album that could, if it wanted to, be the brightest thing you’ve heard all year, but it never even threatens to. Somehow, even when Nicki Minaj shows up on “Make Me Proud”, she chills the fuck out a few degrees. And she’s Nicki Minaj. ”Make Me Proud” is one of the only tracks on the record where Drake breaks from his sad sack mood to prove that he’s worth the intense hype, and somehow he still exudes an air of coolness. Here, he’s so cool that even The Weeknd feels like a second banana, and Abel Tesfaye is practically sub-zero. It’s almost beautiful. Even Lil’ Wayne, who shows up on “HYFR (Hell Yeah Fuckin’ Right)” rhymes with more passion than he’s exuded on the last three records he’s put out, and it rubs off on the star, who is almost unbeatable in the track.

I feel as though “beautiful” is the  the one-word description for Take Care. There’s something to be had when a fast rising star spends the title track of his insanely-hyped record singing to his ex-girlfriend, and then closing that song out with a Gil-Scott Heron sample. It may be too soon for Drake to come off as “going soft,” but it’s a shade that suits him quite well. “Shot For Me” comes off almost defeated, with him trying desperately to be bitter at a girl who left him. Not many high-profile rappers are this comfortable making a record about the low-points that come with fame (the loneliness, the lack of privacy, the women who are with you because you’re you), but Drake pulls it off effortlessly.

That’s the other word that I could just use over-and-over to describe what Drake’s accomplished here. People will inevitably talk about how the woozy, sad-sack crooning is boring, but if it is, it’s because he’s made it look easy. Take Care is the record that we were promised when the good-but-lackluster Thank Me Later came out last year. Drake is on the fast track to being a major star (he already sorta is, but a bigger star), and if this is what we have to look forward to, I have no problem with his fame.

REVIEW: Atlas Sound – Parallax November 24, 2011

Is your love worth the nausea it could bring?

I made a firm decision a long time ago (around the time Deerhunter’s Microcastle came out) that Bradford Cox was a filthy, stinking genius. They do still exist in music, and they aren’t all musicians who have been working since the 70s. The current generation of musicians has them: Richard D. James, Thom Yorke, Win Butler, Isaac Brock, Kanye West, Tim Hecker. I’d personally count  Peter Silberman in that list, but that’s just me. The list doesn’t truly matter, to be honest. When I first dug into the meat of Microcastle, I became consumed with the weight of his simple brilliance. I had put some thought into the bands of that decade that were going to be remembered in the next generation, but it was then that I decided that, if Bradford Cox wasn’t remembered, it would be an insult to the medium.

Atlas Sound has always been a side-project that wasn’t too far off base from the original band. Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel and Logos were incredibly reserved records, ones that showcased the brilliant possibilities of being a true “bedroom producer”: it felt like it was truly recorded in a bedroom, and though that aesthetic added to the feel of the records, it wasn’t what they were about. All of the Deerhunter records were on a different wavelength: they did feel agoraphobic, but they felt open at the exact same time. The first to Atlas Sound albums were pure claustrophobia. And that was really beautiful.

Parallax is album three for Cox under the Atlas Sound name, and on first listen, it feels oddly like a solo Deerhunter record. The trademark Atlas-Sound-stream-of-consciousness is there, but there’s something else paired with it: it feels more cohesive. Believe me, this isn’t a bad thing: it stacks up wonderfully against its siblings. Opener “The Shakes” tells a story of an aging star who’s “Found my money and fame / But I found it really late.” It’s a quiet anthem of lonely excess, and it almost comes off as an extremely delicate counterpoint to the point made in MGMT’s “Time To Pretend.”

Even with all of the themes of claustrophobia that Cox sews into his lyrics, it’s hard to take a great deal of warmth from them, especially here on Parallax. It’s one of the best albums of the year to simply swim in, and doing so makes it rewarding to try and discern what he’s singing in any given stanza. It’s a little like Panda Bear’s Tomboy from earlier this year: there are lyrics, but it’s almost beside the point at times. On “Te Amo,” for instance, you can pick out fragments: “When you’re down, you’re always down,” “I’ll pretend you were the only one.” It makes for a dreamlike atmosphere, and rewards repeat listens.

It’s only once you dig in that you discover the delicate film of pain hidden in things. “Is your love worth the nausea it could bring? Is your love worth those you left hurting?” Cox sings on “Modern Aquatic Nightsongs.” There’s a strange malaise in these songs, and queries like those just written are sung like they’re No Big Deal. When he sings “Kick me while I’m down – why don’t you?” on “Praying Man,” he sings it like it’s an actual suggestion, and not a sarcastic one. It’s almost beautiful to hear someone sing from a place of hurt regularly, and yet seem unaffected by it. It makes the atmosphere of the record almost unearthly, and yet even when you do let his words wash ashore, it never loses its gorgeous sheen.

Parallax is the most fully-formed Atlas Sound recording yet, and it’s a great sign. I have yet to be bored or displeased with these records, and though they lend themselves best to sleep and background music at dinner parties, they offer gold to those patient enough to wade in and pick things out, which I highly recommend doing. If nothing else, you just found your new favorite record to take baths to.