Fluxblog Weekly #28: Grimes, Aurora, Boots, Kate Boy
This has nothing to do with music or the site, but I'd just like to take this small moment to alert you to the existence of the new BuzzFeed QuizChat app, which has been one of my major projects over the past year and is now available for IOS and Android. Try it out!
Anyway...
November 9th, 2015
Running Every Red Light
Grimes “Artangels”
I can feel a bit jealous when I listen to “Artangels” because the feeling of love and excitement that Grimes is describing is so perfect and powerful, and I wish I had it in my life. This is a love song to her muse – sometimes it sounds like a person, and in the chorus it’s definitely the city of Montréal – and the feeling she’s so high on is inspiration and creativity. The music captures this feeling perfectly. On a superficial level it feels a bit like the intoxicating rush of a crush, but it’s really more about gratitude for unlocking something inside your mind, and feeling like you’ve been liberated in some way. It’s a precious feeling but it comes and goes so easily, and the fear that her muse could abandon her comes through in the music along with the joy. My favorite part is when she sings “everything I love is consolation after you.” It’s just a lovely sentiment, but also her way of saying that there’s nothing more important to her than art, and nothing more crucial to her sense of self than creativity. I can relate.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 10th, 2015
You Can’t Give Me The Dreams That Were Mine Anyway
Aurora “Half the World Away”
This is an old Oasis song, a b-side from the “Whatever” single that eventually become better known than the a-side in that “Noel Gallagher couldn’t stop relegating his best tunes to bonus tracks at his peak” way. The original was sung by Noel and has a ragged charm to it, as though he just rolled out of bed and casually knocked it out on his acoustic guitar and electric piano. This cover by a young Norwegian singer takes a more refined approach to the song – her voice is more traditionally beautiful, and there’s gently swelling strings that give it a Disney-ish sentimentality. If this version nudged any further in any direction it’d be a bit too twee or mawkish, but the balance is just right and it’s quite moving. Gallagher’s original comes from a very sincere place, but there’s a bit of an ironic shrug to it, as though he’s not ready to be totally vulnerable but doing his best. This version totally owns the conflicted emotion of the song, and my heart breaks a bit every time I hear her sing “I’ve been lost, I’ve been found, but I don’t feel down.”
Buy it from Amazon.
November 12th, 2015
Sweep The Past Mistakes Away
Boots “Only”
This song feels like a cousin to Radiohead’s “Nude,” and falls into a similar aesthetic territory in which terror, depression, and anxiety is rendered in this oddly graceful and sexy way. A lot of that comes from how the arrangement feels like a jazzy R&B ballad that’s been gutted to the point that only the scaffolding remains, and the way Boots’ voice has the echo of someone alone in a big, bombed-out empty space. He’d sound lonely and desperate even if he wasn’t being very literal in the lyrics and singing “I am the only one alive / that is the only thing I know,” but I appreciate him going in hard on the post-apocalyptic vibe. There’s maybe too much post-apocalypse in tv, movies, and comics, but you really don’t get much of it in music.
Buy it from Amazon.
November 13th, 2015
Feel The Ice White Heat
Kate Boy “Northern Lights”
Kate Boy sounds a little like if The Knife had decided to chase pop stardom after Deep Cuts instead of, y’know, going full goth, exploring avant garde opera, and creating abrasive electronic agitprop. This isn’t a bad thing – as much as I love and admire what The Knife became, there’s always that part of me that wishes they would’ve made some more pop music because they were so good at it, and so far ahead of the curve. (Seriously, people are catching up with where they were in 2003 in 2015.) “Northern Lights” is superficially quite a lot like The Knife in terms of rhythm and tonality, but the song itself feels more common. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily – Kate Akhurst has a good sense of melody and drama, and it’s interesting to hear a more conventional piece of music get a Knife-like makeover. It’s a spikier, more aggressive sound, and that icy vibe always has a way of disrupting any sense of traditional binary sexuality. Twelve years late, and it still sounds like the future.
Buy it from Amazon.