Fluxblog Weekly #243: Ariana Grande • Vampire Weekend • etc
Only one proper post this week, but I also have a big essay about Vampire Weekend's Father of the Bride – my favorite album to come out in 2019 – up as part of Uproxx's 2019 critics poll package. At the end of this email I've also got some links to other things I've written outside of Fluxblog this year. I've got a big thing coming next week, I can't wait for you all to see it. I think a lot of you are going to be thrilled.
December 25th, 2019
Unfollow Fear
Ariana Grande “Get Well Soon” (Live)
I saw Ariana Grande perform over the summer at the Barclays Center and it was one of the most memorable arena shows I’ve been to in recent years, largely because the energy of the overwhelmingly young and female audience was so overwhelming and purely joyful. I’m very glad that Grande’s new live album documenting this tour does a lot to preserve that aspect of the show, including big sing along moments as well as random girls near the front screaming out particular lines and little moments of Grande responding gamely to her fans’ enthusiasm. Grande is such a gifted R&B vocalist that it’s a given she can sing well, so this live album does some crucial work in conveying a casual charm that goes beyond that technical skill and what aspects of her persona would ordinarily make it through to a studio record.
“Get Well Soon” is one of Grande’s finest songs, and it showcases her exceptional taste in melody, her deft vocal skill, and her genuine warmth and empathy. Her lyrics are directed as advice to herself but easily double as kind, generous words to anyone struggling with serious anxiety and mental health. There’s a lot of songs like this now, and I find many of them to be rather shallow or even full-on opportunistic. But this one is the real deal, and given the circumstances of Grande’s life around the time this was being made, it very much came from a real place of sink-or-swim emotional survival instincts. But these are just the lyrics – the music is carrying a deeper, fuller feeling of love and kindness, and you can hear that resonating with people in real time in this recording. Solidarity with the girl in the front row screaming along to “girl what’s wrong with you, come back down!,” by the way.
Buy it from Amazon.
Vampire Weekend’s ‘Father Of The Bride’ Was The Adult Pop Album That 2019 Needed
Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig often seems like a man who’s never had an unreasonable thought or feeling in his life, and is always thinking about everything from as many angles as possible in an effort to be fair to all. This mix of generosity and intellectual flexibility is a big part of what makes him an intriguing character, both as a songwriter and as the host of his Beats1 internet radio show Time Crisis. But it’s also something that narrows the emotional range of his work somewhat, as all emotional extremes are kept in check by his cerebral tendencies and hyper-awareness of how anything he might say could be interpreted.
This could be a liability in some cases, but on this year’s Father Of The Bride (which comes in at No. 4 on the Uproxx Music Critics Poll), his unapologetically mature and unwaveringly reasonable approach to singing about the nuances of relationships and the complications of life in a deeply unreasonable world felt like a much-needed respite from a seemingly endless onslaught of anxious, nihilistic music in practically every genre. He’s not a contrarian, but he is the guy who’s here to try to put all this angst in perspective. (Click here for the rest.)
Notable things I've written elsewhere in the recent past:
'Morvern Callar' Paints A Devastating Portrait Of Grief Through Its Artfully Crafted Soundtrack for Decider
It’s never clear whether or not Morvern even likes the music on the mix, or if she’s only just listening to it to keep a part of him with her. Her boyfriend has excellent taste – you get multiple songs by Can and Aphex Twin, plus Stereolab, Broadcast, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and Boards of Canada. It’s all very particular to a specific type of late ’90s pretentious white guy, and in some way, the contents are a loving parody of that sort of guy. (Click here for the rest.)
Sarah Goldberg's Bravura Monologue Capped Off Her Emmy-Worthy Turn On 'Barry' Season 2 for Decider
This is part of a running theme in Barry, in which characters aren’t actually bad at what they do or anywhere near as dumb as they initially seem, but simply don’t believe in themselves enough to project their virtues because they’re too busy hiding their shame. Over the course of the season we see Sally’s best and worst impulses as a writer and actor, and how her best and worst impulses as a person correlate directly with those artistic decisions. We also see her genuine warmth and empathy towards Barry, even when it’s all filtered through her self-obsession and obliviousness to the extreme horror and violence of his life. (“I get what it’s like to be freaked out, OK? It’s like when I shaved my head for I Never Saw Another Butterfly without realizing how limiting that’d be for other casting.”) (Click here for the rest.)
Everything Hits: Spoon Releases An Old School Greatest Hits Album Into A Digital Age for NPR
The record also exists as a way of giving fans an entry point into a catalog with so many beloved albums that the band's incredible consistency is something of a commercial liability: It's hard to know where to jump in. Spoon is also a band whose best-known tracks aren't mainstream pop hits so much as songs that are out in the world without a lot of context. You hear them in TV shows and movies, or in bars, cafes and shops. Their best-known songs, like "I Turn My Camera On" and "Don't You Evah," nudge familiar classic rock sounds into odd grooves, and contrast tight pocket rhythms with surprising textures and moments of musical chaos. Their songs always have a strong atmosphere, but are too intriguing and ear-catching to fully dissolve into the background. It's the sort of music that gets Shazam'd a lot. (Click here for the rest.)
Wilco, Forever In Competition With Its Own Best Work, Tries Shifting The Stakes for NPR
All of this probably sounds wishy-washy, or like faint praise. And maybe it is: The curse of a body of work like Wilco's, which is never bad and sometimes absolutely brilliant, is that perfectly good material that might be the highlight of another act's catalog seems minor or disposable next to something as excellent and culturally significant as a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. This certainly isn't lost on Tweedy, who seems fully uninterested in trying to recapture a moment or outdo himself. There was a sense of life-or-death urgency on Yankee, and even more so on its follow-up A Ghost Is Born, that gave those songs a special emotional charge and musical oomph. Their relative merit is ultimately subjective, but it's indisputable that the Wilco that made those albums is far more ambitious than the one that produced Ode to Joy. That's not at all to suggest that ambition is a virtue in and of itself — just that those were albums with high stakes, musically and emotionally. They demanded your attention and encouraged identification. (Click here for the rest.)
Beck's 'Hyperspace' Is A Technicolor Breakup Album (With Beats By Pharrell) for NPR
The odd mix of emotions here, the sense of displacement and confusion, may be the point. Beck made Sea Change in his early 30s, writing with the pure, agonizing clarity of a broken heart. Hyperspace lands in the choppier waters of middle age, after the dissolution of a relationship that began not long after Sea Change, produced two children and lasted what is now a third of his life. It stands to reason that the narrator of these songs never seems quite sure what he's feeling, how he's doing, whether or not he's reacting to life with an appropriate sense of scale. (Click here for the rest.)
Why So Many People See Themselves In Alanis Morissette on Medium
The most interesting idea in “All I Really Want,” and by extension all of Jagged Little Pill, is insinuated but never directly stated. Basically, she’s asking you consider the possibility that all of her thoughts, concerns, and feelings are actually totally rational and reasonable. She’s not a psycho, she’s not a bitch, she’s not hysterical — she’s just being a normal person with normal emotions and normal expectations for how she wants to be treated in a relationship. So why is this guy — why is the world — treating her like she’s crazy? The obvious answer is that it’s because she’s a woman. But I think it goes deeper than that.
There’s a moment near the end of the fourth season of Mad Men in which Don Draper breaks off his relationship with Dr. Faye Miller by abruptly informing her that he’s just met someone else and is now engaged. Dr. Miller, a psychologist, immediately sees through Draper, and needles him with a line that succinctly describes one of the character’s defining flaws: “Well, I hope you’re very happy, and I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.” (Click here for more.)