Fluxblog Weekly #195: Maggie Rogers, James Blake, Deerhunter, Vampire Weekend
January 21st, 2019
It’s All Allowed
Maggie Rogers “The Knife”
The tension in the verses of “The Knife” is subtle and elegant – there’s a swing to the groove, and as the syncopation gets busier the overall effect of the bass and percussion is rather light and slinky. The trick of the song is making you feel comfortable in that groove before moving you into a cathartic release in the chorus that makes you realize in retrospect that you’d been wound so tightly. This is mirrored in the lyrics, in which Maggie Rogers sings about a sudden epiphany that’s rattled her psyche, and about then letting loose on the dance floor. The emphasis of the song both musically and thematically is placed on the verses rather than the chorus, with the heavy implication that the really important thing here is the epiphany, not the release. The release is great, sure, but it’s all about the process leading to the reward.
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January 21st, 2019
A Smaller Piece Than I Once Thought
James Blake “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow”
I always like the love songs that do their best to approximate the feeling the author is experiencing. “Can’t Believe the Way We Flow” is mostly James Blake singing about being perfectly in synch with his girlfriend, while the music softly glitches around him, as if it’s the rest of the world just outside their shared wavelength. It’s sweet and romantic, but makes an odd swerve in the middle as the music seems to abruptly click back to the start and goes off on a more neurotic lyrical tangent before returning to the blissful main theme. It’s an unusual decision that breaks the spell of the song, but allows for a deeper context for its sentiment. It’s also a reminder that even in that perfect euphoric flow, this is a guy who’s still very much in his head about this experience.
Buy it from Amazon.
January 24th, 2019
They Get Locked Out
Deerhunter “What Happens to People?”
“What Happens to People?” is light and brisk, with a melody that seems to float quickly by on a stiff breeze. Bradford Cox sings with a tone that’s half wistful and half distracted, like a fleeting thought about someone he’s fallen out of touch with has an entirely hijacked his mind. There’s a running theme of passivity through all of Cox’s work, but here it extends out to the whole world – life is a thing that happens to you, people are things that come and go around you. Everything is a chaotic drama that’s spinning on around you, and if you weren’t there, it wouldn’t matter too much. He seems so distant here, this guy on the outside of everyone just looking on as things happen to other people. They fall apart, they give up, they disappear, and there’s nothing he can do for them.
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January 25th, 2019
Til They Can’t Hear Anything
Vampire Weekend “Harmony Hall”
The first time Ezra Koenig sang “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die,” it was at the climax of “Finger Back,” on the second side of Modern Vampires of the City. That record was in many ways about the pressure to achieve goals and have experiences on a tight schedule, motivated by a deep fear of aging and the narrowing of one’s options. Every character on the album was terrified that their time was running out, or that they were in some trap they needed to escape.
That line has popped up again in “Harmony Hall,” the first Vampire Weekend single in quite some time. The music is more mellow and graceful, but Koenig’s perspective has shifted. He’s singing about frustration with a complicated world, and the seeming impossibility of separating wealth from power. It’s a song about feeling disillusioned and disappointed, and that phrase – “I don’t want to live like this, but I don’t want to die” – feels even more ambivalent than when he sang it the first time. Is he shrugging it all off? Is he going to try to fight it? In the context of the song, he sounds hopeful as he sings it. I hear it as someone trying to find joy in a world he knows is rigged and unfair.
Buy it from Amazon.