Fluxblog #268: Sonic Youth • Armand Hammer • Shamir • Marques Martin
June 18th, 2020
A Wonderful Vision Of The City Today
Sonic Youth “Saucer-Like”
Sonic Youth’s records have a way of reflecting the environments in which they were made – Confusion Is Sex and Sister evoke different angles on the gritty Manhattan of the ’80s, Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star is a snapshot of downtown Manhattan just as a new wave of gentrification set in, and Murray Street and Sonic Nurse have an open and pastoral feel that made sense given that half the band had moved out to Western Massachusetts.
Washing Machine, released in 1995 only a year after Experimental Jet Set, covers similar ground but it conjures up very different weather. Whereas Experimental Jet Set sounds like overcast skies and cramped subways, Washing Machine feels like walking around the city on a gorgeous sunny day. The guitar tones are clean and bright, and the music feels light and spacious, largely because there’s very little bass guitar on the record. The classic Sonic Youth tension and noise is still there to signify the city-ness of it all, but the palette brings out the beauty of the place rather than the grime.
Lee Ranaldo sings on two Washing Machine songs – “Skip Tracer” and “Saucer-Like” – and his lyrics directly address living in the city. In a sense they are two sides of a thematic coin, with “Skip Tracer” written from the perspective of a New Yorker who feels out of place anywhere else – “L.A. is more confusing now than anywhere I’ve ever been to, I’m from New York City, breathe it out and let it in” – and “Saucer-Like” is more about drifting along in Manhattan and embracing the joy to be had in feeling small in this grand and densely populated place.
A lot of writing about New York tends to be about someone feeling as though the city and its people are encroaching on them in some way, like it’s this external pressure sapping their energy and driving them mad. “Saucer-Like” is the opposite, in which internal anxieties dissolve just by going out into the world and watching so much life go on all around you. “I’m having a wonderful vision of the city today,” he sings during the bridge, observing the landscape and architecture, and boats coming into docks along the coast. He sounds so grounded and grateful to be “just a little free,” and fully present in his surroundings while lost in his thoughts.
Buy it from Amazon.
June 17th, 2020
Wait For The Hex
Armand Hammer featuring Nosaj “Leopards”
Fat Albert Einstein’s track for “Leopards” feels unsteady and wild, it feels like you’re knowingly walking into dangerous territory. A lot of that is just that it’s built on a foundation of tinny hi-hat patter that signals anxiety and structural fragility, but it’s also in the way the main organ riff seems to lunge out menacingly and how the bass line seems to lurk around the beat rather than groove. The rappers in Armand Hammer take slightly different approaches to the beat: Billy Woods’ verse expands on the environment evoked by the track by fixating on specific scenery and grounding his story in Flatbush, Brooklyn before shifting into more overtly horrific imagery. Elucid’s verse leans into the unstable feel, packing his lines with quick-cut images like Ghostface, but letting his performance fall out of the groove as the music gets woozy.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
June 16th, 2020
A Cosmic Game Of Meetings
Shamir “On My Own”
Shamir Bailey’s guitar parts on “On My Own” remind me how Pixies songs could feel raw and brutish but also graceful and gleaming at the same time. Bailey’s lyrics do a similar thing, where he’s pushing through dark and lonely feelings towards a softer, more self-accepting state of mind. The point, at least in this song, is that this is all a continuum, and the rough defines the smooth. The most powerful parts of the song are when his voice conveys vulnerability and triumph in equal measure, as if to underline that the vulnerability kinda IS the triumph here.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
June 15th, 2020
A Mannequin Of A Genius
Marques Martin “Hailey”
The tensions in “Hailey” are constantly shifting around Marques Martin’s lyrics, suggesting an emotional context of anxiety and fear that’s often in stark contrast with the confidence – or affected nonchalance – of his words. Martin’s arrangement is dynamic and thoughtful, giving space for more relaxing or neutral moments and rendering some of the more nervous sections with subtlety and nuance rather than going with full-on claustrophobic dread. The overall effect of the song is a very vivid portrait of a young man sorting through a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings. There’s ego and obsession, genuine affection and snarky dismissiveness, and layers of different sorts of fear overlapping with joy and a sincere desire to be vulnerable.
Buy it from Amazon.