Fluxblog 463: did you know the same guy co-wrote "Summertime Sadness," "Heaven Is A Place On Earth," "Loud Places," "I Follow Rivers" "White Flag," and a bunch of Stevie Nicks songs?
Plus new songs by Iron & Wine and Fiona Apple, Yas Reven, Ariana Grande, and Real Estate
This week’s playlist is THE RICK NOWELS sound, a career retrospective for a prolific songwriter/producer best known for his frequent work with Lana Del Rey, Stevie Nicks, Belinda Carlisle, and Lykke Li as well as other collaborations with the likes of Madonna, Dido, Jamie xx, Marina, fka Twigs, Anita Baker, Celine Dion, Dua Lipa, John Legend, James Blake, several Spice Girls, and many more. This one is a lot of “wow, this guy really did all that?” [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
Something Wants To Eat Us All Alive
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.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
All Of The Champagne In California
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.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
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.
Buy it from Amazon.
Until The Windows Are Open
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.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Michelle “inthefade” Catalano wrote a fabulous piece about growing up during the New Wave boom of the early 1980s for I Enjoy Music.
• Larry Fitzmaurice talked to Air about every song on their classic album Moon Safari for Stereogum.
• Larry also talked to his high school buddies in Real Estate for his Last Donut of the Night newsletter.
• Jennifer Lopez has cancelled several dates on her arena tour due to extremely soft sales. I’m not very surprised given how cold her music career is these days, and there’s some hubris in the booking and ticket prices. I’m more curious about whether this is a J Lo problem, or something that other B and C list pop stars may face on the road. Like, can Meghan Trainor actually pull off a big arena tour? We’ll see.
Had no idea about the Nowels-Lana connection. That’s longevity