Fluxblog Weekly #201: Solange, Billie Eilish, Elvis Costello, KH, 2 Chainz
March 3rd, 2019
Bathe In The Delight
Solange “Down with the Clique”
Solange is a rare example of a pop singer catering to the market and chasing trends by becoming more arty and esoteric. This is not to say that her work is contrived or insincere, but rather that pivoting away from mainstream pop and R&B – the domain of her extraordinarily famous sister – and towards a general “Pitchfork reader” demographic has allowed her to follow her muse and synthesize sounds from the more out-there Brainfeeder-ish reaches of contemporary jazz and funk into something more palatable to a wider audience. I’m a firm believer that the music ecosystem needs artists who can play this part, and Solange does it well enough to occupy an Erykah Badu-like role for a Millennial cohort.
“Down with the Clique” is not a cover of the Aaliyah song, but rather a meditative ballad that might qualify as a “slow jam” if it didn’t feel so ambiguous in tone. The arrangement sounds a bit like a fragment from electric period Miles Davis that’s stuttering a bit too much to settle into a tranquil loop. The smooth but off-kilter quality suits Solange’s voice, which can be a little character-less but sounds quite lovely when she pushes into the highest end of her range. The effect of her phrasing here emphasizes the sensuality of the chords, and softens the more jarring elements of the rhythm.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 4th, 2019
Staple Your Tongue
Billie Eilish “Bury A Friend”
“Bury A Friend” feels both anxious and playful, a contrast of a thud-thud-thud rhythmic pulse and a sing-song hook that’s just a little off from The Doors’ “People Are Strange.” Lyrically and musically it’s like Marilyn Manson reconfigured into precocious teen pop, with Billie Eilish’s youthful voice making the refrain “I wanna end me” feel a little more unsettling than it might with a more adult vocal. Eilish says it’s written from the perspective of the “monster under my bed,” but it’s more specifically about self-sabotaging anxiety given a voice separate from one’s consciousness. She makes the “monster” seem sympathetic, even when it’s taking credit for driving her to succeed. She still wants the voice to shut up, though.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 6th, 2019
Tulips Mistaken For Lillies
Elvis Costello “New Amsterdam”
In the New Pornographers song “Myriad Harbour,” Dan Bejar wanders around Manhattan while on a tour stop with the band. He takes in the sights, visits some shops, gets a feel for the energy of the city. In the third verse, after a clerk asks him if he needs any help, he finally says what’s really been on his mind: “All I ever wanted help with was YOU!” It doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing. He’s going to be distracted by someone who won’t get out of his head; this unfinished business that won’t let him be in the moment.
“New Amsterdam” is essentially the same song, but 27 years earlier, and written by someone a little less reluctant to say what’s on his mind. Elvis Costello sings about feeling lost in Manhattan, wandering around a place where he appreciates but doesn’t seem to like very much. Everything he sees seems to rhyme with something from back in England, and he can’t shake the feeling the place belongs to someone else – specifically, this woman he’s hung up on. Those feelings are complicated. He’s fixated on her enough to declare a desire to “have the possession of everything she touches,” but he’s also trying to break free from her influence. He doesn’t know what he wants, so he stumbles around the city, on a quest for nothing in particular. He’s nowhere at all in the biggest somewhere on earth.
Costello, always a consummate craftsman, is at a career peak on “New Amsterdam.” The construction is impeccable, but the presentation is casual – the melody is so smooth and easygoing that the tightness of the writing is barely apparent. This is one of the all-time best examples of Costello’s gift for writing flawless bridges which build upon the core melody and elaborate on lyrical themes before flowing gracefully back into the verse structure. In this case, it’s a digression that ends in an epiphany: “Though I look right at home I still feel like an exile.”
Buy it from Amazon.
March 8th, 2019
Please Don’t Do It
KH “Only Human”
This is Kieran Hebden, or Four Tet. You might have noticed that just by hearing it. The beat is a bit more thumping and aggressive than he usually gets, but the approach to slicing up and reconfiguring a vocal sample is extremely Four Tet. As far as I’m concerned, there are very few producers on par with Hebden when it comes to manipulating vocal samples. There’s a subtlety to his style – it’s never merely just about bending a sample into a hook and matching a tempo, it’s more a lead line in a dense arrangement. He plays around with time and phase, and focuses on the emotion in a voice rather than lyrics. “Only Human” is a bit of an outlier for him in the sense that more of the lyrical content is legible to the ear, but even with that it’s more abstracted than something than a pop vocal that’s meant to be clearly understood. It’s more about the movement, like this mad spiral spinning through this otherwise clean and orderly composition.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 8th, 2019
Some Toxin In Me
2 Chainz “Threat 2 Society”
There’s a lot of ways of framing a rags to riches story in hip-hop, ranging from euphoria to rage, but 2 Chainz mostly just sounds pleasantly surprised on “Threat 2 Society.” He sounds exhausted, even when he’s boasting. Everything good in his life seems to be above all else a relief, as he’s extremely aware of what things could have been. 9th Wonder’s track is similarly ambiguous in tone. It’s slow and meditative, with its central vocal sample – “it’s so good just to be alive” – manipulated and recontextualized just enough to make it seem more weary than celebratory. It’s not about thriving, it’s about surviving.
Buy it from Amazon.