Fluxblog Weekly #142: Zizi Raimondi, Ty Segall, Electrelane, Tune-Yards
January 8th, 2018
It Doesn’t Have To Be A Certain Way
Zizi Raimondi “Folly Dolly”
Zizi Raimondi is a bit tricky to figure out. The music on her Bandcamp is all over the place – sleepy indie rock, synth kitsch, extreme lo-fi weirdness, Casio replicas of classical music, and faithful, beautifully sung renditions of jazz standards. And all of this, from the most primitive work to the most accomplished performances and compositions, has been released between late August and last week. This could be years of work being put on the internet in a random order, or maybe it’s the chaotic and eccentric workflow of a very busy and restless talent. I have no clue. But it’s fascinating, and “Folly Dolly,” the A-side of her most recent single, is one of the best and most interesting rock ballads I’ve heard in a while.
“Folly Dolly” is a very Lou Reed sort of song with a gentle groove and lyrics that sketch out a romantic entanglement that hasn’t quite started to tangle just yet. The narrative of the song is ambiguous, with the lyrics shifting between first, second, and third person perspective. Who is this woman she is describing? Who is this person she’s addressing? Raimondi’s breathy, yearning vocal and the shift to first person in the end suggests a frustrated, unrequited love triangle.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
January 9th, 2018
No One’s Baby
Ty Segall “The Main Pretender”
The saxophone is central to this song, driving the main melodic hook and contrasting starkly with a bass part that I’m guessing is being played on a synthesizer on a “robot belching” setting. The sax part is strong, but it’s made even better by an extremely dry recording that seems nearly devoid of reverb and is very loud in the mix. It has an uncanny effect – accurate, but unnatural and vaguely alien. It’s perfectly suited to the tone and aesthetic Ty Segall is going for here – heavy and soulful, but slightly off. There’s a grandiosity to it that is relatively new to his body of work, but it’s undercut by the clever and perverse choices in the arrangement and recording.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
January 10th, 2018
I Could Not Tell You
Electrelane “Enter Laughing”
The main guitar part in “Enter Laughing” moves in circular pattern at a relaxed pace, but the mood is more pensive than chill. Despite the clear patterns, there’s never a feeling of resolution, so the music seems to drift along. It’s a bit like convincing yourself that you’re wandering aimlessly while actually pacing in circles. The lyrics follow the form, with Verity Susman singing about wanting to break out of patterns and feeling for not committing to someone or be able to be emotionally available to them. Susman’s voice has an ambiguous quality – she conveys regret and tenderness in some moments, but also an odd neutrality and distance. It’s hard to place this song on an emotional timeline. Is she in the moment, and the opportunity to follow through on this relationship still there? Or is she looking back on something that’s too far back in time to recover? It’s such a wonderfully ambiguous piece of music.
Buy it from Amazon.
January 12th, 2018
Until She Was Gone
Tune-Yards “Heart Attack”
Merrill Garbus’ catalog follows a trajectory of her access to equipment and collaborators, with each record more polished and professional than the last. And, also, maybe a little less compelling? Her debut was essentially built out of lo-fi digital recordings pieced together in Audacity – perhaps the most ambitious piece of art anyone’s ever used that program to make – and is startling in its textural contrasts and intimate feeling. The follow up, w h o k i l l, added fluid, slinky bass and horns, and while it was recorded more traditionally, it still felt wild and untamed. One of the exciting things to me about these records is that Garbus’s performances and arrangements were raw and unorthodox, but definitely not naive. When I wrote about the second album at Pitchfork, I described her vocal as being like a feral Mariah Carey. I stand by that! Her best work is always in this thrilling space between unhinged feeling and total control.
Fast forward to her fourth album, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, and things are a bit different. The band has stabilized enough so that she’s no longer the only permanent member, and she no longer seems to be limited by instrumental choices or the need to arrange songs so they can be easily performed live by two or three people on stage. You can sense her thrill about this in a lot of the music. “Heart Attack” in particular piles on textural elements rather playfully, but she’s careful not to clutter the beat. I love her vocal on this track – it’s like she’s living out a fantasy of being a house diva, even if the music never fully enters that realm.
That hesitation to fully embrace genre conventions is part of what makes this kind of a strange album to process. It all sounds so transitional, and it’s hard for me to listen to it without feeling like I’m listening to her work. Every moment sounds like a decision, and nothing feels instinctive. Obviously a lot of records, good and bad, are the product of endless editing and overthinking. It’s just that Garbus is someone who has always thrived on impulse and intuition. It’s noticeable when it’s missing.
Buy it from Amazon.