Fluxblog Weekly #134: Red Velvet, Taylor Swift, Seventeen, Cupcakke, A$AP Mob
If you're looking for a good music podcast – and if we're being honest, there's not a ton of those – I recommend checking out 3 Songs. The show is simply former Pavement member Bob Nastanovich and Mike Hogan each choosing 3 songs to play per episode, and talking a bit about them. The show is very heavy on personal stories, and Bob is full of great tales of 80s and 90s indie rock life. I love the way the show represents a very Gen X model of music fandom and consumption, and I mean that in the best and most reverential way. The energy of the show is very relaxed and low key, and the aesthetic much more like a really good college or community radio show than a typical podcast. Check it out.
November 13th, 2017
We’re Cute Together And Cool Too
Red Velvet “빨간 맛 (Red Flavor)”
I don’t understand a word of Korean but it was pretty obvious what these girls were singing about just by hearing this music: “Red Flavor” is a big, goofy crush song. The melody and super-charged bounce of the beat capture a very young sort of crush feeling, amped up on hormones and undiluted by age and cynicism. I read a translation of the lyrics, and this all checks out – they’re basically comparing this feeling of joy to sweet candy flavors, ice cream, and fruity cocktails. It’s fun to know that, but it’s unnecessary as the ecstatic feeling of the music is so overwhelming that it makes Carly Rae Jepsen seem aloof and unenthusiastic about new love.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 14th, 2017
Don’t Read The Last Page
Taylor Swift “New Year’s Day”
The first music critic I read consistently was the New York Post’s Dan Aquilante, mainly because the Post was always around my house because my dad loved the sports section. Aquilante had an idea that would pop up in his writing now and again, and it’s stuck with me over the years: the final song on a record was usually an indication of where the artist would go on their next record. I don’t really agree with that; in fact it can be tricky outside of certain patches of The Beatles discography to find solid examples of this. But I actually hope it’s true of Taylor Swift’s Reputation, a record full of uninspired “pop” production and weak drum programming that ends with “New Year’s Day,” a song that both calls back to the craft of her earlier work while showing a deeper, more adult point of view.
“New Year’s Day” strips away the most grating elements of Reputation – the production choices that signal a need to fit in with radio trends rather than dictate them, the obsession with her own media narrative, the coldness and defensiveness and petty spite. I don’t dismiss those choices; I think they’re probably a very accurate summary of where this artist’s head has been out for a while. Artists have to get things out of their system, and you don’t always have to like it, even if you like them overall. But the song isn’t good because it’s not like the other songs, but rather because the simplicity of its arrangement and the sentiment of the lyrics seem like an epiphany for her. It’s all in the details – the slightly muted tone of the acoustic piano, the way the live-in-room tone of her main vocal contrasts with her overdubbed harmonies, the sparing use of acoustic guitar. The lyrics follow the form of the music, with her reflecting on small, specific moments that add up to something bigger, but also kinda fragile. The Taylor Swift we’ve known over the past few years, the version of her that maybe comes to the end of an arc on this record, was all about larger than life drama. The woman singing on “New Year’s Day” sounds like she’s over that, and has moved on to a more life-size version of romanticism.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 15th, 2017
It’s The Same Song, Right?
Seventeen “Change Up”
One thing I find fascinating about K-Pop as an ultra-casual dilettante is the way English words are scattered through songs that are otherwise performed in Korean. This song by Seventeen is a rather bold example, as the entire hook is in English – “change up, change up, change up” – so if you’re not paying much attention to the verses, it kinda loosely scans as something that’d fit right in with American pop. It’s very easy to imagine a “Despacito” scenario in which Bieber or Drake hopped on the track and smuggled it into the US mainstream, as this is a supremely catchy and well-crafted bit of vaguely hip-hop pop music. My favorite element is the synthesized horn sound on the hook, but the core appeal of this track is the way it flows so effortlessly between a series of strong melodies. There’s a density to the construction of this song, but you never ever feel it.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 16th, 2017
That’s Balls Blue
Cupcakke “Cartoons”
The chime sound looped through “Cartoons” lends an off-kilter psychedelic vibe to a rap track that is otherwise very aggressive and focused. Cupcakke’s voice has a punchy quality, so maybe it’s meant to feel like your head is spinning from getting pounded in the face with her words. As forceful as she is, she’s mostly being silly here – the entire chorus is funny wordplay on classic cartoons, and the verses are mostly clowning on lame guys and people who’ve had the nerve to doubt her. There’s a thing in rap where artists early in their career will brag as a way of willing their vision of themselves into reality, but that’s not quite what I hear on this song. She sounds confident but relieved, like she’s glad to just be the person rather than talk her way into it.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 17th, 2017
Stay In The Mix
A$AP Mob featuring Joey Bada$$, Kirk Knight, Nyck Caution, Meechy Darko & Zombie Juice “What Happens”
My favorite type of rap song is the posse cut, no question. I just love the thrill of hearing as many rappers on a track as possible, and the contrast of voices and approach to lyrics and flow. I’m a Wu-Tang guy, and they are unquestionably the gold standard for this sort of thing. A lot of that comes down to RZA’s production – not just the aesthetics of it, but also his remarkable instinct for sequencing and structuring rap verses for maximum musical impact. He wasn’t just hearing the Wu guys as rappers, but as approximations of instruments in an arrangement – Ghostface is a trumpet, Method Man is a sax, U-God is a tuba. (Thinking of U-God in this way will make you like him a lot more, I promise. That and appreciating how much of his style is lifted from reggae toasting.)
Anyway, here we are in 2017 and RZA is revisiting his greatest strength, but with a totally different lineup of rappers. “What Happens” is an impressive congregation of nine young NYC rappers, representing three different crews – A$AP Mob, Pro Era, and Flatbush Zombies. It’s sorta like a present day equivalent of the “Buddy” remix, where De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, and Queen Latifah all converged to capture the spirit of that moment in New York rap. The tone is very different, of course. The track approximates the tension and grit of classic Wu-Tang while having the digital gloss of latter day RZA material. I love the way the beat stutters, and how it puts this jagged frame around each rapper. The mic gets tossed around a lot through the cut, so key voices like Rocky, Ferg, and Joey keep popping up through the entire song. This is a smart approach, as there’s not as much variation of timbre and cadence in their voices so you can’t rely on major tonal or stylistic shifts to signal movement, but there’s more than enough energy just in hearing these guys bounce off each other.
Buy it from Amazon.