Fluxblog Weekly #50: Hundred Waters/Chance/Skrillex, Zayn, Xenia Rubinos, Sales, Nap Eyes
March 30th, 2016
Bacon That Eat Donuts
Hundred Waters featuring Chance the Rapper, Moses Sumney and Robin Hannibal “Show Me Love (Skrillex remix)”
Even just a year ago you’d see “Skrillex remix” attached to a song title and reasonably expect it’d be really fast and aggro. He’s a bit more subtle these days, and so this track is allowed to retain its gentle warmth even as he layers in dynamic beats and very sparkly synth notes. Instead of amping up the energy, he amps of the sentiment, and so the song feels like a big, teary hug. Chance the Rapper and the stylistically similar Moses Sumney are perfectly suited to this sound – it flatters their melodic rhymes, and nicely frames the kind-hearted humanity at the core of their aesthetic. Chance’s verse is brief, but it’s a super-concentrated dose of his seemingly effortless charisma and relentless Chicago boosterism that makes me even hungrier for a full album from him than even his SNL appearance or album-stealing verse on Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam.” That record can’t come quickly enough.
Buy it from Amazon.
March 31st, 2016
Let Life Take Its Time
Zayn “Truth”
It’s funny that although I’m pretty familiar with One Direction, I don’t think I had any sense of Zayn Malik as a singer until he released his first solo singles. One Direction songs are built so the five guys all sorta blur together, to the point that most of them sound like there’s only one lead singer, and the backup vocals have more or less the same timbre. Left to his own devices, Malik strays from the high-gloss rock of 1D and gravitates towards a very Frank Ocean-ish brand of R&B. It suits him well, particularly when he moves towards the extremes of his voice – the deliberately sexy early morning rasp he slips into on “Truth;” the stunning falsetto he uses on the chorus of “It’s You.” Those two songs are not coincidentally the best on his debut record, which suggests that he should probably lean into those strengths later on. “Truth” is particularly well-written, and though it has some of the best hooks on the album, it’s decidedly mellow and low-key. A lot of Zayn’s brand is projecting a very potent yet chill hyper-masculinity, and “Truth” conveys that better than anything else he’s recorded. It’s a sound he can grow into, for sure.
Buy it from Amazon.
April 3rd, 2016
Give A Little Space
Xenia Rubinos “Lonely Lover”
There’s barely anything in this track aside from Xenia Rubino’s voice, her bass, and Marco Buccelli’s percussion, but the song feels so robust that I barely noticed that at first. Rubino’s bass playing is dynamic and nimble, elegantly gliding from groove to groove without overwhelming the negative space or getting in the way of her own voice. I love the way her bass part will suddenly climb up or double back around Buccelli’s incredibly crisp snare hits, and how just a few perfect piano chords enter the arrangement for the chorus. Rubino and Buccelli make everything feel loose and improvised even when it’s clear that they’ve carefully thought out every bit of the song, and that carries over to her vocal, which is highly expressive and soulful, but also sorta low-key and conversational. It’s a gorgeous piece of music, and it pulls off the rare trick of seeming warm and familiar yet very distinctive and unusual.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 4th, 2016
Slow Motion Discussion
Sales “Ivy”
The sound of “Ivy” is fragile and tentative, conveying the feeling of attempting to communicate someone without disrupting some delicate emotional equilibrium. Lauren Morgan’s words sketch out a vague narrative – she’s concerned about Ivy’s insecurity, there’s some indication of submissive sexuality, a desire to subsume all her needs, and a breakdown in communication. She leaves you wanting more details, but immediately recognizing the feeling of wanting to repair something that was probably never actually working. The one time Morgan sounds totally certain in this song is when she sings “the distance between us, the size of a planet.” It’s a very intimate song, but that’s a bit ironic as it’s really about yearning for a deeper intimacy or lamenting an intimacy that’s gradually disappeared.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
April 5th, 2016
Another Life Some Other Way
Nap Eyes “Mixer”
“Mixer” has a distinct rainy day vibe, evoking the specific feeling of the sort of dreary, chilly, dark days that seem to move verrry sloooowly and sap the energy of pretty much everyone. It’s a feeling that can be quite pleasant under the right circumstances, just the same way sadness can feel comforting and pleasing sometimes. The song lingers in that space, with Nigel Chapman’s doleful Dean Wareham-ish voice describing what it’s like to drift along without a job or any particular motivation, and feeling trapped by inertia and resentful of people who condescend to you about your situation. There’s a bit of bite to the way he sings the chorus, but not a lot. The mood is exceedingly lackadaisical, and just after he pushes back against the notion that it’d be easy to fix his problems, the song just kinda slunks back down into a relaxed, resigned state of depression.
Buy it from Amazon.