Fluxblog Weekly #23: White Hinterland, Bad Bad Hats, Arcade Fire, Born Ruffians, Janet Jackson
I hope you're all still enjoying/exploring that 1989 survey mix from last week. I'd love to get your feedback, and your suggestions for the 1988 set, which is in the works right now. In the meantime, here's a particularly strong set of songs from this week. The first track by White Hinterland is easily one of my favorite songs from this year.
October 5th, 2015
A Slow Motion Free Fall
White Hinterland “Chill and Natural”
Casey Dienel’s music has changed dramatically over the course of her career, and though her new single “Chill and Natural” isn’t a drastic departure from the elliptical, atmospheric electronic music of her last album, Baby, its industrial pop sound and overtly feminist lyrics are a world away from the twee, introverted piano tunes of her debut from a decade ago. I first heard this song while working on the 1989 survey and was listening to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like A Hole” all the time, and I immediately recognized it as a cousin to those songs. A lot of that resemblance is in the aggressive, confident tone of the music, and the way the intensity of the sound seems to escalate on a constant 60 degree angle. But where those songs come from a place of incredibly certainty, Dienel’s singing about being driven crazy by straight men’s inconsistent yet inflexible expectations for women and their bodies. Her tone switches between droll sarcasm – “Tom says he likes girls who are down for whatever / down for whatever, yeah, that’s me” – and total exasperation at both the women who play along with these arbitrary rules and the men who can’t grasp that their preferences are tied up in contradictions and come off more like demands. The humor and anger in this song is balanced just right, and it perfectly captures that feeling when you’re so impatient and confused that you think you’re losing your mind, but you know it’s not your fault.
Buy it from iTunes.
October 6th, 2015
Be This Sad With Anyone
Bad Bad Hats “Say Nothing”
“Say Nothing” is one of those songs that come along and you just wish the band could somehow take it back in time to the point where it could’ve been a huge hit. And while I do think “Say Nothing” could – and should – take off today, it’s pretty clear that the point in time where it would’ve made Bad Bad Hats very rich is somewhere in the mid to late ‘90s. This is a flawlessly constructed alt-rock song, and the kind that hangs together so well that it feels ragged and off-the-cuff even though it’s rather polished. Kerry Alexander’s lyrics are also precise yet casual, and in this song she’s basically talking her way out of a relationship with someone who becomes silent and emotionally withholding in a clear attempt to force her hand to break up. The tension in the song is in her stubbornly refusing to do what they want, even if she knows it’s the only way out of it. So she at least tries to get a moment where she’s the silent, withholding one: “stop, let me be the one to say nothing!”
Buy it – or download the album for free – from Afternoon Record
October 7th, 2015
Your Words Are Fire And We Are The Spark
Arcade Fire “Soft Power”
A couple weeks ago, Arcade Fire quietly released one of the best songs of their career as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of their album from two years ago. So much time has passed since Reflektor that I wonder why they didn’t just bank this material for another record – maybe they just want a clean break, maybe they don’t think it’s good enough. But “Soft Power” is excellent, and its ragged but graceful sound nods in a direction that honors the anthemic past of the band while giving Win Butler a lot of room to grow old and wearier. It’s a very solo John Lennon sort of song, and though there’s a trace of “Imagine” in it, it’s mostly Butler’s version of “Isolation.” But you never get the wild catharsis of that track – this is a more relaxed piece of music, and the melody just sorta loosely winds around, implying less conviction as it goes along. The most famous Arcade Fire songs are empowering, but this one is about passivity, and getting a feel for how the world really works and knowing there’s not much you can do about it. He doesn’t sound defeated, but he certainly seems deflated.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 8th, 2015
Transcend Beyond The Living Dead
Born Ruffians “Stupid Dream”
If you squint a bit, you can pretend this is a brand new Vampire Weekend song. I know that’s unfair to Born Ruffians, but at the same time that is VERY HIGH PRAISE coming from me. And a big step up for them – their songwriting has really leaped forward since the last time they came around, and while you can hear a lot of VW in “Stupid Dream,” there’s a lot of interesting borderline abrasive textures that you might not find in one of their tracks. I love the way the main guitar riff comes in so hot but still has a crisp, clean tone, and the way the bass groove seems to elbow its way to the front of the arrangement for the verses. Luke Lalonde’s vocals are a revelation here, his performance is so vibrant and extroverted, and his frustration in singing “I am not the cream of the crop, and I am never rising up” is so present and real even if he maybe shouldn’t feel that way.
Buy it from Amazon.
October 9th, 2015
Cause A Love Intervention
Janet Jackson “Gon’ B Alright”
Janet Jackson works through a lot of grieving and uncertainty over the course of Unbreakable, but she wraps up the album with this celebration of love and joy in the style of Sly and the Family Stone and The Jackson 5. Janet’s only touched on ‘60s and ‘70s R&B styles a couple times before in her career, and in the case of a song like “Whoops Now,” she was going for a more light and feminine sort of song. This pushes her in a very different direction, with several multi-tracked versions of herself covering a variety of timbres ranging from androgynous to overtly masculine. She does a lot of this pitch-shifting on the record, in part because it’s just so uncanny how much she sounds like her brother Michael when pitched down just a bit. It’s her way of channeling him, and bringing him back to us. I think if anyone else could do that, it’d just feel creepy and wrong, but with her, it’s genuinely poignant. I love the way “Gon’ B Alright” feels like Janet paying tribute to her brothers, and after all this time getting her turn to be a member of the band rather than just a baby sister.
Buy it from Amazon.