Fluxblog Weekly #145: Grace Vonderkuhn, Caroline Says, Camila Cabello, Charlotte Day Wilson, MGMT
The Awl ended its nine-year run this week. It was an excellent site run by many talented people including co-founder Alex Balk, who was an early supporter of this site. The Awl's archives are full of blog entires, articles, and stories that are some combination of smart, interesting, and funny. I am extremely proud to have had two pieces published there, both stories I was invited to write as part of a year-ending tradition. The Ballad of That Guy From Titus Andronicus and its sequel At the End of the World with Gauntlet Hair are two of the strangest and most ambitious pieces of critical writing I've ever done – they are both works of fiction – and I'm very fond of them both. There is no way I would have ever written this stuff without Alex's encouragement.
January 29th, 2018
Not That Serious
Grace Vonderkuhn “Worry”
In all of my time writing about music, one of my highest compliments that I have for a song is that it has a sense of urgency. I loooooove urgency. I love when musicians sound like they are very present in the moment, and when recordings convey a genuine spark of inspiration and emotional (and physical) commitment. I hear that in this song by Grace Vonderkuhn. It’s there in the way her riffs pile on with this enthusiastic and playful “OK, ya like that, how about this?” feeling. It’s there in the way her band bash out the rhythm with a raw energy that makes the song sound like it’s being played faster than usual even if this is the only version of the song I’ve ever heard. This is the sound of a band that’s putting it all on the line, and that just amplifies the anxious sentiment of the song – the nervous energy is there, but so is the triumphant spirit of overcoming it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
January 30th, 2018
I’m Exactly Where You Want Me
Caroline Says “Sweet Home Alabama”
This is not a cover of the famous Lynyrd Skynyrd song, nor is it a piece of music that sounds anything at all like Southern rock. The lyrics of the song address being stuck somewhere – “I used to love this town” – so I figure the song is set in Alabama, and the title is ironic. One way or another, it’s some kind of joke.
This “Sweet Home Alabama” has a hazy, drowsy sound that reminds me a lot of Yo La Tengo when Georgia Hubley is on vocals. The song is built out of looped samples, but as much as the song moves in circles, it’s not entirely static. Subtle vocal harmonies and shifts in keyboard tone give the song shape without breaking its spell or upstaging a low-key lead vocal part that adds a dash of dark humor to its clear-headed introspection.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
January 31st, 2018
There Will Never Be Enough
Camila Cabello “Inside Out”
Camila Cabello is charismatic and has a good voice, but I think the major reason she’s been so successful in the past few months is that her songs pivot away from rigid production and nondescript ambiance of so much mid-10s pop music and embrace things like… chords. The piano chords in “Havana” are crucial to the song’s appeal, and they’re not something that just blends into the mix, or signify cheap sentimentality. You’re meant to hang on the sound of them, to feel the groove and the reverb and the slight imperfection of someone playing a piano in a room. It feels alive in a subtle way that makes it seem vibrant in comparison for doing something that in the grand scheme of recorded music is more normal than not. And she does this without selling “authenticity.” It just is, and it makes the more modern elements like the very Rihanna-ish chorus pop a bit more than if it was presented with the same airless production as everything else. “Inside Out,” an album track I have to assume will be issued as a single sometime this year since it has a very “song of the summer” feel to it, does the same trick by contrasting acoustic piano and steel drums with a glossy approach to the vocal production. All signs point to Cabello being just ahead of a stylistic curve, and frankly, I’m relieved.
Buy it from Amazon.
February 1st, 2018
Selfish And Dumb For Your Love
Charlotte Day Wilson “Doubt”
“Doubt” has a very restrained and controlled sound, which supports its lyrical sentiment about trying to stop yourself from giving in to your worst romantic impulses for your own good. “I’m done with doubt, I’m done with your game,” Wilson sings at the top of the song, and the slow, steady bass groove underlines her resolve. But given the lush, sexy sound of the track, it’s pretty clear that she knows from the get-go that she can resist the gravitational pull of this person she’s addressing. The key line here is in the chorus – “I’m selfish and dumb for your love.” A fool for love, sure, but selfish…well, that’s intriguing. Selfish to want it? Selfish to need it? Selfish to have these inconvenient feelings in the first place?
Buy it from Amazon.
February 2nd, 2018
The Only Reason We Didn’t Work Out
MGMT “She Works Out Too Much”
“I’m constantly swiping and tapping, it’s never relaxing,” Andrew VanWyngarden sings midway through “She Works Out Too Much.” It would be easy for this to come out sounding shrill and judgmental, but he sounds legitimately bored and exhausted. This song is particular to Instagram, but I think it speaks to something a lot of people have been experiencing with different social platforms in the past two years or so: Is any of this still fun? And what are we getting out of this, besides new ways to feel anxious, insecure, or unsafe?
I personally ran into this wall with Twitter, and have stopped reading and participating in that platform altogether. At first it was because I was tired of constantly checking a timeline that was increasingly packed with paranoia, dread, anguish, and in the worst moments, outright hysteria. But once I stopped reading the stuff, I stopped writing tweets as well. I didn’t anticipate how freeing that would be. Twitter is a platform that rewards anger and negativity, so even my fairly benign presence took on a snippy, aggrieved tone. The platform subtly encouraged my worst impulses, but I’ve found that once I stopped having an outlet and audience for bitchy little thoughts, I stopped having so many bitchy little thoughts. I’m better for it, and so is anyone else. No one needs this from me. No one needs this from the vast majority of people.
But I digress. “She Works Out Too Much” is a very light-hearted song, but it’s coming from a sad and dissatisfied place. The central lyrical conceit is the way it contrasts different meanings of the phrase “work out” – in literal terms, a reference to a girl’s endless workout selfies, and in idiomatic terms, “work out” as in a relationship succeeding or not. VanWyngarden’s lines in the chorus are toothless complaints – “she works out too much” – but that’s answered with a cool, relaxed, and weirdly uncanny female voice calmly intoning “the only reason we didn’t work out is that we didn’t work out enough.” There’s a disconnect here, they’re speaking past each other. It’s a great way of illustrating the point that these two people are not compatible, have totally different ways of engaging with the world, and value different things. I appreciate that this song is not angry or accusing. VanWyngarden sounds disappointed. He just wanted it to all work out.
Buy it from Amazon.