Tag: Tune Time

Tune Time: August & September 2016

by zoelance, posted in Tune Time

Here’s what I’ve been listening to for the last two months:

Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way — Frank Ocean’s Blonde is a masterpiece. It withstood all of the hype, and was the best way to cap off the summer. I was instantly hooked the moment I heard the first few seconds of the first track.

I interpret Blonde as an album about identity, specifically the pains of growing into oneself and finding the right place in the world. It’s also an album about capital F Feelings about love and friendship, and authenticity in ambiguity. I think we all go through a period of introspection as we enter young adulthood, and Ocean has translated that into music with interpolation. It reminds me of collaging.

If Ocean never makes another record again, Blonde would be a great way to go out. My favorite songs are “Nikes,” “Ivy” (which I think has joined my list of favorite songs of all time), “Pink + White” and “Nights.”

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam’s I Had A Dream That You Were Mine.

Speaking of Rostam, I’ve spent the last month eagerly awaiting the arrival of his album with Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkman. Rostam left Vampire Weekend last year, but the more he does without VW the more excited I am about where his career is going. I’ve had I Had A Dream That You Were Mine on a loop for a week now.

What I love about this album is that it has such incredible storytelling, both on the overall album level and within each track. It’s about moments, and unpacking the feelings and emotions that are tied up in just a brief flash of time. Take “A 1000 Times,” for example. It tells a story about the narrator’s attempt to unstick himself from unrequited love. When I listen to it, I get this sense of tugging between the past and the future — the narrator is stuck on replaying his life’s scenes in his head, but using it to propel himself towards the future and whatever that might look like. You can hear that too between Leithauser’s voice and Rostam’s sonic choices.

 

My favorite songs are “A 1000 Times” (which I’ve probably played that many times), “Sick as a Dog” and “In a Black Out.” If you like this album, go check out Rostam’s solo work.

Grimes.

In late August, my sister Willow and I went to the first day of FYF Fest — which is a capital E Experience if you like peoplewatching and don’t mind being in the same space as tens of thousands of people. We went mostly to see Tame Impala and Kendrick Lamar, which were the two last acts of the night. We headed to the festival’s main stage to get a good viewing spot. When we got there, Grimes was up on stage performing. Whenever I look at music festival posters, I almost always see the name Grimes somewhere in the lineup, but have never looked her up.

I’d like to take this moment to publicly apologize for sleeping on Grimes’ music, because I should have seen the light a long time ago. Grimes is the performance name of Claire Boucher, a young woman from Canada who writes and self-produces all of her own music. She is a genius when it comes to laying down beats and using cool electronica techniques, and a superb performer. Her lyrical inspiration can come from out of left field — “Kill V. Maim,” for example, is apparently written from the perspective of a vampire Michael Corleone. But when she combines the electronic sounds with the themes she’s dealing with — ambition, agency and trauma, to name a few — she makes such an overwhelmingly strong case for the importance of self-expression and feeling strength in femininity. The interlude from one of my favorite tracks she performed goes:

I know most likely

How I used to be a frail and silly thought in your mind

Call me unkind

You’re so far behind me

In essence, Grimes is a straight-up badass and everyone should take some inspiration from her. I remember Willow and I turning to each other and going, “Damn, she’s good.” In my Sunday after-festival haze, I made it a priority to look up her FYF setlist and download the songs I loved the most: “Kill V. Maim,” “Realiti,” “World Princess Part II” and “Oblivion.”

Father John Misty’s “Real Love Baby.”

My first exposure to Father John Misty’s music was through the Alabama Shakes Spotify radio station (which is an A+ radio station, if you’re in need of one.) Father John Misty, aka Joshua Tillman, is kind of a weirdo — lumberjack hippie is the best way to describe him. He has a few albums under his belt, and just came out with a single called “Real Love Baby” that I can’t stop listening to. It’s got a little bit of the Beach Boys essence with a country twang — on the track, he sings about yearning for a love that’s pure and incredible.

I also think that this song might be a little commentary on living in the social media age. Father John Misty the performer likes to make really meta comments about social media and the world it has created — he had an amazing Instagram project, and everyone’s pretty sure he stole the crystal from Moon Juice. He even deactivated everything last week. I would not be surprised if he felt that he needed to reboot with a love song that differentiates the “real” with throwback sounds. I hope it results in a full album.

Do you have any music recommendations? Share them with me in the comments.

Tune Time: May 2016

by zoelance, posted in Tune Time

Here’s what I’ve been listening to lately:

Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home.

I realized recently that I don’t listen to a lot of Bob Dylan, and that I needed to fix that to keep my rock cred. I decided to start with Bringing It All Back Home, his fifth album. This is best known as the album where Dylan made a move to electric rock and roll, which was divisive at the time. On a side note, if you stumble across older music, I highly recommend reading about its history and what people thought about it at the time it was released. It’ll inform your contemporary understanding and help you to trace its cultural importance.

What I love most about this album is its exploration of bohemia, for all of its good and bad aspects. Songs like “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” are steeped in the political lyrics that Dylan is known for, which is reminiscent of what we’re going through today re: the 2016 election.( I can’t think of one artist who’s channeling Dylan today for the same purpose.) For the most part, he shines light on hippie shortcomings and tries to create some distance from the folk movement he’s so closely associated with. I’m still trying to decipher the enigmatic lyrics and what they could mean, and that’s how I know I’ve stumbled across a great album.

It’s hard to pick my favorite tracks, but I especially dig “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Now that I’m wading in the Dylan pond, I’m excited to see what I discover next.

The Strokes’ Future Present Past. 

Since high school, The Strokes have been one of my favorite bands. I was beyond excited when Future Present Past dropped out of the blue on Thursday morning, so much so that I impulse-bought the vinyl and didn’t care about the shipping cost. That’s how you know it’s real.

So much of The Strokes’ music focuses on the recurring themes of growing up, with the energy that only youth can harness. I think this is summed up so brilliantly in “Hard to Explain” from Is This It?: “I missed the last bus / I’ll take the next train / I’ll try, but you see / It’s hard to explain.”  You try and you try and you try, but you can never feel like you can get everything right — which breeds feeling of existentialism, debates of right and wrong, and of course, star-crossed love. From that first incredible record all the way to this three-song and bonus remix EP, the Strokes have tried to navigate these feelings. “Oblivius” picks that back up: the repetition of “What side are you standing on?” suggests a conflict on both personal and political levels, something frontman Julian Casablancas explores deeply in his solo work. Anyone who has ever been a young adult can find some resonance in the Strokes’ lyrics, and as someone who is on the precipice of Real Adulthood the Strokes are more important to me than ever.

My favorite song is “Threat of Joy,” because it sounds like quintessential Strokes from the riffs to the lyrics: “I cannot wait to chase it all / Yeah, I saw it in my crystal ball.” I cannot wait to see what else they unveil. Viva la Strokes.

Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City. 

A couple of weeks ago, Ezra Koenig played “Step” on his radio show, which made me realize that I hadn’t listened to the entirety of Modern Vampires of the City in a really long time. This album came out while I was still in college, and I spent a lot of time walking across campus and studying with it in my ears. I didn’t expect to be hit with so many waves of nostalgia when I replayed it this month, which I think mostly stems from the fact that I am back on campus but no longer a student.

Modern Vampires of the City is a dense album that deals with ontological themes of mortality, religion and time in a masterful way. If you trace the tracks as one narrative, you can see that the narrator is attempting to seek out deeper truths about who he is and his place in the world, and rebelling against what society is telling him to believe and accept. But these beliefs are also very contradictory, which makes it so wonderfully relatable. One of my favorite lyrics of all time comes from “Unbelievers,” where the narrator is simultaneously trying to work out some heavy romantic and religious stuff:

Is this the fate that half of the world has planned for me?
I know I love you, and you love the sea
But what holy water contains a little drop, little drop for me?

Later in the album on “Ya Hey,” which deals almost exclusively in Christian allusions, the narrator is extremely critical of God and faith in something that seems so removed, despite wanting that for himself earlier:

Through the fire and through the flames
You won’t even say your name
Only “I am that I am”
But who could ever live that way?

There’s a lot of other examples throughout Modern Vampires of the City that could fill a whole book about this album’s cultural relevance. What I love most about it is that Modern Vampires of the City reminds me that I’m not alone in trying to figure out the deeper purpose of my life in relation to bigger cultural mores. Ezra Koenig is one of my favorite musicians that I find a kinship in. My favorite tracks are “Unbelievers,” “Step,” “Hannah Hunt” (The beat drop at 2:31 is better than most beat drops in all of music),  “Ya Hey” and “Young Lion.” Rediscovering this album now has solidified it as one of my favorites, and I’m looking forward to rediscovering it over and over again.

Drake’s Views. 

In general, I thought Drake’s Views was a huge disappointment. It’s about 10 tracks too long. It doesn’t have as many bangers as If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. The album version of “Pop Style” doesn’t have the Throne feature. And to top it all off, Future is a track-ruiner. It was so hyped and overdue that Views could never have been as good as everyone thought it was going to be.

I’m also not really interested in Drake’s lyrics — even though I love the bravado and one-liners that IYRTITL perfected, I don’t care for angry-that-a-woman-slighted-him Drake, which is a pervasive theme on Views. The narrative of “Hotline Bling,” for example, is really about Drake being upset that his ex is out living her best life without him. From my point of view, it’s really none of his business. This lyrical content is old, and doesn’t do anything to help Drake grow as an artist.

With all that being said, the Jamaican dancehall tracks are the best part of Views and the songs I think will have the most longevity in the pop culture sphere. These tracks are “With You,” “Controlla,” “One Dance” and “Hotline Bling.” Drake and Noah Shebib, his record producer, have picked up some samples that scream eternal summer vibes. Even though the lyrics are horrible, the beats are infectious and examples of good producing. I will probably end up playing them all summer as part of my driving-around playlist, and I will definitely forget that the rest of Views exists.

What have you been listening to lately? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

 

Tune Time: April 2016

by zoelance, posted in Tune Time

Here’s what I’ve been listening to lately:

The Last Shadow Puppets’ Everything You’ve Come To Expect.

I’m a pretty big Arctic Monkeys fan, so I will basically listen to anything that concerns Alex Turner. I loved this side project’s earlier album, and was so into the first single that I planned to buy tickets before I even heard the rest of the record in early April. That didn’t work out, and I’m still sad about it. Anyway, this album is good and feels like it came out of a 1970s time capsule. Alex Turner and Miles Kane have this lounge lizard thing down pat.

At one of its most basic levels, music is supposed to make you think and feel. The album is built on this “rockstars have Feelings” idea that’s borderlines on being a joke. But it’s so sonically beautiful, thanks to the layers of string arrangements, that it’s more about the aesthetic of Everything You’ve Come To Expect that makes it a good record. You want to feel the emotions of being loved by someone who would do the moon and back twice easy just to kiss half of your mouth (what a lyric, am I right), and a soundtrack to go along with it. I don’t think I would count it as one of my favorite albums, but there are some moments that make me want to return to it and feel wistful.

I always find it fascinating that people associate times in their lives with particular albums or songs, even if that time is long gone. I listened to this album the entire second week of driving to and from my new job, so every time I listen to it I can feel the warmth of driving home in the early evening. My favorite tracks are “Aviation,” “Bad Habits,” “Sweet Dreams, TN” and “The Element Of Surprise.”

The Arcs’ Yours, Dreamily,.

I love Brothers and think Turn Blue is great, but I have never been a huge Black Keys fan. However, when I caught wind of Dan Auerbach’s side project, the Arcs, the first single intrigued me enough that I bought the digital album on Amazon. This album came out awhile ago, but I went to one of their concerts last week and I’m currently in obsessed fan mode. It’s so fervent that I ordered vinyl copy that showed up at my house Monday. My favorite songs from Yours, Dreamily, are “Cold Companion,” “Pistol Made of Bones” and “Stay In My Corner.” If you have a chance to see the band live, take it — it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.

The Arcs’ sound is like garage rock mixed with some mariachi (check out the band that does the backing vocals) and Faulknerian Southern Gothic vibes, which I immediately signed up for. The narrative that flows through the album is about a musician with a flair for the dramatic. He also sounds like a dude who watches old Western movies on loop and picks out blues songs on the jukebox. I don’t say any of that to discount the music or criticize it, but to paint the picture of where the sound is steeped — and maybe it’s all just a dream that we’re hearing recounted. It’s a lyrically powerful record that circles around themes of alienation, nostalgia and the price of fame. “Outta My Mind” is the cornerstone track for those ideas. But my favorite lyric is from “Cold Companion”: “She’s a cold companion, like a desert rose / the worse it is, the more she glows / Woman, are you undone?” You get the feeling that this woman, who is for the narrator a perpetual flame, is a woman that doesn’t ascribe to the damsel archetype. I love that.

If you like The Arcs, the Spotify radio station is exceptional. You will also probably like listening to Father John Misty, Timber Timbre and Dead Man’s Bones. You’ll also really enjoy this Song Exploder episode about “Put A Flower in Your Pocket.”

Parquet Courts’ Human Performance.

I have yet to find a Parquet Courts record I didn’t like, and Human Performance is no exception. The band released the record a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve kept it on heavy rotation. Parquet Courts’ sound is both heavy garage rock and experimental, which I really like.  It’s perfect driving music — there are some real bangers mixed in with instrumental interludes. My favorite tracks are “Human Performance,” “Paraphrased,” “Captive of the Sun” and “One Man No City.”

I also have yet to find another band that so masterfully handles the ~~millennial condition~~ in earnest and emotional ways. As a culture, we’re working slowly towards shifting the conversation around mental health, but it’s still extremely stigmatized. Using music, the band approaches that conversation. The sound is loud and messy and haphazardly layered, which mirrors what’s going on in our heads. Human Performance in particular deals with alienation, depression and anxiety, and how those concepts affect one’s sense of identity and feelings about one’s place in the world. The band’s narrator is trying to work through the idea that meaning is constructed by the language that we use and that this concept is related to identity. But he also asks how we can give words any power when life seems meaningless in light of what’s going on in our heads. A lyric like “Sometimes I drop definitions from my words / Sometimes my speech recalls moments of violence / Sometimes I can’t be repeated, I can’t be paraphrased” speaks to that.

If you like this Parquet Courts album, you’ll love Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea. Then try listening to Mac DeMarco, who interprets the same themes in his own music.

De Lux’s “Better at Making Time.”

I find that I work best when I’m listening to a really awesome soundtrack, and I put on a playlist I titled “drop the beat” when I need some real pump-up music. De Lux’s “Better at Making Time” is the first track on that playlist. I discovered this song by listening to the Spotify station that someone at my old job played often, and even though I hated that there was communal office music — it was a real vibe killer most days — I didn’t mind when this song came on. I’m mostly interested in the instrumental aspect of “Better at Making Time,” but the narrative centers on a realization that a relationship that’s not fulfilling won’t work out. The song is very disco-y and kaleidoscopic, and it makes you want to get up and dance out your feelings. Sometimes you need that.

What have you been listening to lately? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

 

Tune Time: March 2016

by zoelance, posted in Tune Time

At any given moment in my day, there’s a very high chance that I’m listening to music: on my phone, in my car or via my record player. (Shocker: I’m listening to music as I’m writing this post.) Music — and talking about music — has been a very big part of my life for as long as I can remember. I figured that if I spend so much of my time listening to tunes that I should document it and talk about it here. While I’m interested in sharing my favorite artists with you, I’m also interested in talking about what makes their work important. Here are a few songs and albums that I’ve been listening to lately.

Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda.”

I found out about Alice Coltrane’s work through an episode of the Dinner Party Download, where Father John Misty picked one of her songs for his hypothetical dinner party playlist. First of all, Alice Coltrane was a complete badass: besides her marriage to the great John Coltrane, she had her own impressive musical career and a deep interest in Eastern spirituality that makes for beautiful music. The six-track album fuses avant-garde jazz with Eastern traditional music. If you are interested at all in jazz, regardless of whether or not you know famous names or compositions, you will probably like this. 

What I love the most about this album is that Coltrane translates feelings through the rhythm and music, not through lyrics. When you listen to an artist like Coltrane, you’re able to appreciate the artistry of music making that in some ways the lyric component can obscure. I’m not listening to the track right now as I type this, but the bass line of “Something About John Coltrane” immediately jumps into my head.  I am instantly transported to the hippest jazz lounge on some dreamy planet, and Life is Good. “Something About John Coltrane” has to be my favorite track, and I’m making a note to explore more of Coltrane, her husband’s, and Thelonius Monk’s work.

Iggy Pop’s “Post-Pop Depression.”

The only exposure I’ve really had to Iggy Pop is “Raw Power” (which is a great album you should listen to), so when I found out he and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age were collaborating on an album, I thought it was pretty cool. But when I watched their performance of “Gardenia” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and found out the drummer for the Arctic Monkeys was also on board, I immediately wanted to hear the rest of the album. I listened to it on NPR’s First Listen before its official release last Friday, and I think it’s a very, very good record. It’s heavy, and loud, and sassy. If you told me he actually recorded it in the 1970s, I would probably believe you. I like “Gardenia” and “American Valhalla” the most.

I know Iggy Pop has been saying that this is going to be his last record, partially because he wants the room to experience music. I was listening to an episode of Sound Exploder where Homme mentioned that there aren’t many people in rock who have the same perspective as the 69-year-old punk legend. And in that light, I think this album is a meditation on the rock scene that grapples with both physical and cultural death. Rap and pop are the music du jour, and Iggy Pop and his contemporaries — if they’re even still alive — don’t have the same cultural clout as they once did. While this album is great, it’s not going to shoot to the top of the Billboard 100. But that’s what makes it a real gem — the mastery makes the case for why this kind of music is still relevant and why we need to keep talking about it. If this is how Iggy Pop chooses to retire from making music, this is a good way to go out.

Mac DeMarco’s “Some Other Ones.”

While I might not seem like the kind of girl who would like the grungy Mac DeMarco, I really like Mac DeMarco — not so much for his lyrics, but for his instrumentals. Again, instrumental albums like “Some Other Ones” are reminders that the beats and melodies are speaking their own languages that we can derive personal meaning or feeling from. When I listen to his music, I feel like I’m living in an endless summer of good vibes — and as someone who spent my adolescence in California, it brings me back to those memories in the best of ways. This record is great background or driving music, and my favorite tracks are “Onion Man,” “Young Coconut” and “Hachiko.” “Some Other Ones” is available to download for free on DeMarco’s Bandcamp.

Kendrick Lamar’s “untitled 06.”

The whole of Kendrick Lamar’s “untitled unmastered.” is the work of a genius, but the track I really, really, really love and need to talk about is “untitled 06.” On the sonic level the bossa nova / funk influence is groovy, and I wish that this song was at least 10 minutes long. I want to zoom in on a few of the lyrics in “untitled 06”:

Look how unique that my mystique is a round of applause
And yours equally valued
You stick out like an alien compared to those around you
And that’s alright because I like it
You and me are the same

I know for sure who you are
You’re the goddess of the odd
I am yours

This is a song about loving another person’s imperfections while also embracing your own flaws, and how that confidence makes you human and real. This is a song about being open and honest about your feelings, and giving people the room to explain theirs. This is a song about how someone you love can know you better than you know yourself. And most importantly, this is a song about how self-love can bring you to a deeper love with someone else. I think this is a beautiful sentiment, and I love that Lamar continuously explores the concept in many ways throughout his work.

What have you been listening to lately? Recommend something to me in the comments.