Fluxblog Weekly #150: Of Montreal, Margaret Glaspy, Janelle Monae, Breeders + R.E.M.
My old R.E.M. blog Pop Songs 07-08, in which I wrote about every R.E.M. song from Chronic Town up through Around the Sun, is now available on the Fluxblog site. The songs are now arranged into album pages, and I'm planning to write about the band's final two albums sometime this year. There's also a fan Q&A with Michael Stipe, who graciously volunteered to answer questions about songs after I completed the project. It's pretty amazing.
March 5th, 2018
The Last Year Has Been Kinda Rough
Of Montreal “Sophie Calle Private Game/Every Person Is A Pussy, Every Pussy Is A Star!”
Kevin Barnes’ work has a sort of internal logic in which electronic music and funk roughly correlates to manic hysteria, and more straightforward psychedelic rock loosely translates to either playful innocence or violent catharsis, depending on the tone. I like most everything Barnes makes to some extent, but I’m most attracted to his funky hysteria – Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping are his masterworks, and I’m very fond of the groovier passages on Paralytic Stalks.
The new Of Montreal record White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood belongs to this end of the Barnes spectrum, and pushes familiar vibes from Hissing and Skeletal into new, more expansive directions. Barnes has mentioned that one of his inspirations for this set of songs was extended 12″ mixes of songs from the ’80s and ’90s, and I absolutely hear that. It’s not just that the tracks are long, but that the grooves play out at a very leisurely pace, and the digressions feel more like logical destinations for the music than the often sudden jarring shifts of previous Barnes compositions. As a result, this music feels a lot more serene and grounded than usual, even as his lyrics express a lot of paranoia, confusion, and exhaustion.
“Sophie Calle Private Game” is basically a love song – or an infatuation song, or a seduction song, depending on the section. Or maybe it’s really an anxiety song, since so much of it is about trying to make sense of his desires, keeping himself from being too impulsive, and attempting to stay in control of his narrative. The chorus is very funky but fraught with caution and mixed emotions, but the groove eventually mellows out considerably in the last few minutes, where the lyrics move beyond “should we hook up?” to some point after consummation. (“You whispered ‘don’t be vulgar’ while I was making you cum” is quite a lyric, by the way.) This is one of my favorite Barnes tricks – showing the gradual evolution of a relationship over the course of a single song.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 6th, 2018
Straight To Your Face
Margaret Glaspy “Before We Were Together”
Margaret Glaspy’s songwriting is rather terse and economical, and I wonder if it’s the result of meticulous editing or a disposition in favor of blunt, effective simplicity. “Before We Were Together” is lean and tight, and moves at an impatient pace that makes her lyrics about finding the nerve to tell off an ex seem all the more urgent. It comes off like a fresh thought, an epiphany she’s having there right in the moment, and the sentiment is basically a second of consideration before spitting it out. Glaspy’s voice fills up a lot of the song, and the way it stands out in the negative space conveys both strength and a lonely isolation.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
March 7th, 2018
An Emotional Sexual Bender
Janelle Monáe “Make Me Feel”
In some ways it feels unfair and dismissive to say that a song like this or a lot of the better Bruno Mars songs of the recent past, are “retro.” I think it might be more accurate to say that this sort of funky pop – openly indebted to Prince, Michael and Janet Jackson, and James Brown in particular – is something people always want and can’t get enough of, but it’s just in very short supply. Not just anyone can do this sort of thing. It takes a lot of songwriting magic and expertise, and a performer with an extreme level of charisma because you can’t really pull off working in this zone otherwise. Janelle Monáe has that star power, can come up with a song like this, and we are lucky for it. Truly blessed.
“Make Me Feel” has a Prince groove, but a chorus that nods to Michael Jackson’s best hit single. It’s a song full of bold moves, but that (meta)contextual stuff isn’t as compelling as the actual feeling of it. Monáe’s lyrics and vocal melody are about 25% nervous anticipation, and 75% crushed-out strut. Her lyrics in the past have been a bit more conceptual or guarded, but this is raw, genuine lust. She sounds relaxed and free, and only the tiniest bit anxious about how anyone might perceive her.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 8th, 2018
Hopes Or Holidays
The Breeders “Walking With A Killer”
“Walking With A Killer” is sung from the perspective of a girl who gets murdered by the end of the song, but it’s not a particularly scary song. A bit uneasy, sure, but the feeling of it is mostly quite calm and the lyrics describe the situation with a serene clarity. Her killing is presented as a sort of cosmic inevitability, this thing that she’s somehow aware of in spite of herself. “I didn’t know it was my night to die,” Kim Deal sings in a guileless tone at the top of her vocal range, “but it really was.” It’s unnerving, but also strangely beautiful.
Buy it from Amazon.