Fluxblog #298: Four Tet • Burial • Playboi Carti • Darkside • Vampire Weekend | Second Bananas playlist
This week's episode of Fluxpod features Ilana Kaplan, a journalist who specializes in artist/celebrity profiles – just this year she's talked to Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, Halsey, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Alicia Silverstone, Kim Catrall, Lenny Kravitz, The Weeknd, and many more. We talk about how she got into doing this, the challenges of writing celebrity profiles during quarantine, and how Rob Sheffield inspired her to become a writer. You can find the episode on all the podcast platforms, and on the Fluxblog Patreon.
This week's playlist is 100% Bananas, a celebration of "the other guy" and not "the main guy" in many beloved bands through the past six decades. If you love an underdog, this one is for you. [Apple | Spotify]
Before we get to this week's regular posts, I'd like to celebrate the end of 2020 by rerunning this post about Vampire Weekend's song "2021" from July...
July 9th, 2020
Copper Goes Green
Vampire Weekend “2021” (Live in St. Augustine, Florida 2019)
Father of the Bride is full of lyrics that have taken on new meanings during the pandemic – “I don’t want to live like this but I don’t wanna die,” “things have never been stranger, things are going to stay strange” – but the track that’s most transformed in the new context is “2021.” The song, just over a minute and a half long, is brief meditation on time and patience. It’s all questions and incomplete thoughts, the space between weighing options and making decisions. The core question – “I could wait a year but I shouldn’t wait three” – changes over the course of the song, the second time Ezra Koenig sings it the second part becomes “couldn’t wait three.” He’s thought about it enough in that space to realize the damage the wait would do to him, but it still doesn’t sound like he’s fully committed to anything else.
The live arrangement of “2021” is quite different, and extends the length of the composition by an extra three minutes that mostly elaborates on the lovely guitar melody that breaks up the more minimal and vibey piano-centric verses. I prefer this version, largely because it focuses on my favorite melodic part and emphasizes the “lost-in-thought” character of the song. The harmonic aspects of the song are much deeper too, and when you move through the instrumental break before reaching the final verse it feels like an emotional journey, as if you’re flash forwarding through entire potential timelines full of good and bad possibilities. Whereas the studio recording is so elliptical it doesn’t suggest any end to a holding pattern, the live version suggests an eventual path out of this purgatory. In a moment when we’re all waiting around to find out what our lives might be like in 2021 for reasons Koenig could have never foreseen, the more hopeful version of the song feels like a gift. The suspense of waiting is excruciating, but it’s not forever.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 28th, 2020
Too Many Tets
Four Tet “0000 871 0018”
I listened to Four Tet’s 871 before reading the fine print: “recorded between August 1995 and January 1997.” Well, that certainly explains it – the use of live instrumentation, the approximation of that particular Loveless/”To Here Knows When” glimmering sound, the proto-post rock drumming aesthetics. What had initially come off to me as an intriguing detour is in fact Kieran Hebden sharing his juvenilia, which turns out to be far better than many artists in their prime. “0000 871 0018” is the most inspired track in this collection, the one that displays Hebden’s exceptional taste in textures and tones, and is an early indication of his gift for composition. There’s a gentle drama to this one, like it ought to soundtrack a moment of sudden clarity upon encountering something just beyond comprehension.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
Four Tet “Parallel 4”
Parallel comes without caveats or context, so it seems safe to assume this is recent work by Hebden. “Parallel 4” reminds me a lot of the track I featured from the EP he had out under his wingdings name, which makes me think this may in fact be a more evolved version of that song. It doesn’t have the sort of pop bluntness of that song, which I appreciate but can imagine is sort of dull and obvious to him, but I appreciate the relative elegance of this track as it transitions from its beat-centric first part to a more ambient and lovely mid-section.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
December 29th, 2020
Just Can’t Explain
Burial “Chemz”
“Chemz” is an elaborately constructed dance epic that’s built around the ambiguity of whether it’s a song about drugs or a song about love, and nudging you towards the question of whether there’s much of a difference given that either way it’s all chemical reactions in your brain. Burial’s track goes hard with chaotic rave breaks that bring on a heightened level of stimulation – a little bit of panic, a lot of rush. His vocal samples are very inspired, weaving together bits from Ne-Yo, Wolf Alice, and Allure to express a potent mix of joy and paranoia that the joy is about to end. All the lyrics that rise to the surface are about dependence, and worrying what you are without this thing that’s making you feel happy and whole. The feeling of the song doesn’t change but the music mutates quite a bit, shifting through stages of highs and plateaus before abruptly fizzling out, as if the song just passed out on the sidewalk at 4 AM.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
December 30th, 2020 1:41am
I Walk In The Mall, They Go Crazy
Playboi Carti “Slay3r”
Playboi Carti’s best songs feel like things that shouldn’t work – raps that don’t sound like raps, melodies that aren’t quite sung, chaotic energy that somehow coheres into pop forms. There’s an internal logic to what he does, enough that a lot of the tracks can sound basically the same, but when he really clicks it’s like magic. Every element of “Slay3r” sounds like it’s moving in nearly parallel circles, just off kilter enough to feel a little goofy and strange but not enough to distract from the bits that congeal into melodic hooks. The title is indeed a reference to the metal band – “I’m a rock star, I could’ve joined Slayer” – but as with everything this guy does, the rock of it all is mostly in his visual presentation, though there is an anarchic energy to his vocals that is kindred in spirit.
Buy it from Amazon.
December 31st, 2020
The Color Is Wrong
Darkside “Liberty Bell”
The feeling of “Liberty Bell” is very easy to connect with but difficult to name – it’s numb but not too numb, bleak but not too bleak, cold but not frigid. It sounds like a journey into unknown territory with a lot of caution and fear, but also a dim hope that you may come upon something extraordinary. The arrangement is excellent, particularly the use of acoustic guitar as much for ambiance as rhythm and the lead guitar part that starts as a bit flamenco before devolving into an odd clatter.
Buy it from Bandcamp.