Fluxblog Weekly #55: James Blake, Bas, Underworld, Leapling, Guided by Voices
May 9th, 2016
I Can’t Believe This
James Blake “Radio Silence”
James Blake’s deconstructed R&B has gradually shifted from strange outlier to mainstream trend over the past few years, to the point that his own music doesn’t quite have the same “whoa, what is this??” quality it had when he started releasing songs with vocals. He’s still a bit too weird to pass for normal, but his tracks are far more rich and sophisticated these days, with “Radio Silence” feeling so lush, dynamic, and emotional that it’s easy to miss how odd it is in compositional terms. Blake’s voice is great here, circling just a few sad sack lyrics with varying degrees of anger, self-pity, and loneliness as his piano and keyboard parts clank, hum, and sputter around him. The song captures the feeling of being stuck in a single negative thought, and your mind doesn’t just snap into a monotonous rhythmic pattern but instead makes the rest of your brain riff around it.
Buy it from Amazon.
May 10th, 2016
You’re Never As Low As You Think
Bas featuring Cozz “Dopamine”
“Dopamine” belongs to a long line of rap songs about willing yourself into a better life, and reasons to accumulate wealth that have nothing to do with cheap glory. Bas’ verses are mostly focused on a sense of responsibility to family and friends, and his eagerness to be generous is inspiring, but also weighed down with expectations. You can hear that weight in the song, and the way how even that gorgeous swell of spacey strings feels like this enormous thing relative to Bas and Cozz’s voices, which seem to rest at the bottom of the music along with the beat. It sounds like triumph just out of reach, and every time the sample comes in it’s like – is he gonna reach out and grab it this time? Or is he gonna wreck himself trying to do it?
Buy it from Amazon.
May 11th, 2016
Keep Away From The Darksides
Underworld “Motorhome”
The first half of Underworld’s Barbara Barbara… feels very dark and oppressive, and I feel stressed and claustrophobic just listening to it. The feeling disappears midway through the record, and the back half is much lighter and brighter. “Motorhome” is the first song after this transition happens, and it sounds like you’re coming out of a bad time and feeling cautiously optimistic but aren’t 100% certain you’ve escaped. Karl Hyde’s voice has a lovely tone, but he seems fragile and wounded, and even when he sings emphatically, he seems a bit shaken and unsure of himself. But as the song goes along, the pressure keeps releasing and by the time it ends that pressure is almost completely gone.
Buy it from Amazon.
May 12th, 2016
Tie Me In A Bow
Leapling “Alabaster Snow”
This is one of those songs that is slightly aggravating in that I swear it reminds me of something specific from 20+ years ago, but I can’t place it at all. It might be a lot of things at once – the vocal melody is very Elliott Smith, for example, but the shambling rock of it is more Sebadoh-ish. Part of what makes this exercise in trainspotting annoying is that it does a disservice to the song, which is very lovely and emotional entirely on its own terms. I love the vulnerability in this guy’s voice, and how the loud guitars are like this very flimsy armor for these raw feelings he’s expressing. You could dismiss this as wimpy or twee, but it strikes me as mature and brave for the most part. You can always kinda tell when the “sensitive, kinda broken” act is a cynical ploy, and I don’t get that vibe here at all.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
May 13th, 2016
Letting Sunlight In
Guided by Voices “Kid On A Ladder”
The thing I always tell people about Robert Pollard is that you don’t realize the extent of his genius until you realize that he’s written at least 100 songs you love. He’s written a lot of duds, sure, but dwelling on that distracts from the overwhelming number of great songs he’s written in the past 25 years or so. On the scale of quality in the Pollard discography, “Kid On A Ladder” probably rates a solid B. This is such a Pollard-y song, to the point that it can feel a bit Pollard-by-numbers on a structural level. The melody and rhythms are familiar, and the way the song moves through its parts efficiently before leading to a clear conclusion in just under two minutes. Having heard so much of his work over the years, I think one of the defining characteristics of his music is the way his songs almost always progress toward a definite ending, like they’re all well-formed little paragraphs of sound.
Buy it from Amazon.