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| Angel Olsen, Lilianna Saumet (Bomba Estereo), PJ Harvey |
Old man meets new music: Here are the results.
21) Brian Jonestown Massacre, Seven Kinds of Wonderful (2012): Not sure what’s going on here, if what we’re hearing is a sample of the advertised Tess Parks’ vocalizations or something else. The warbling lines of the female vocals intermixed with the flutey sounds and the synth string pads form a nice lattice of support for the groove. The lyrics are French which, having no idea what they mean, sound preachy and sexy at the same time – like being scolded by your teacher crush.
22) Ought, Pleasant Heart (2014): Formed in 2011 in Montreal, Ought was immediately greeted with gushing praise from Pitchfork and others. The plucked rage of the guitars, the stumbling drunk drum beat, and the fatigue in the vocals all convey well that pained and stressed sound that guitar rock does so much better than anything else on the planet. The unobtrusive and eery keyboards add effective atmosphere. It’s not a pleasant sound but one that makes an appropriate soundtrack to the loathing of a toxic working life.
23) Preoccupations, Continental Shelf (2015): Yet another from Canada – Calgary in this case: The ambiance of Continental Shelf is as wide and inhospitable as the Canadian tundra itself. The guitars add a welcome but strained orchestral backdrop and offer just the right platform for the down-spiraling lyrics.
When all is said and done/You'll be around until you're gone
Crystallized, canceled eyes/Illegitimate merchandise
The band was originally named Viet Cong, a name that was a far more interesting choice, I thought. But, alas, one that proved to be too controversial – claims were made that it was “racist” and “culturally appropriating.” Gigs were canceled over it. Old wounds and their denials of the war period still live on, it appears. Given the United States and Canada’s involvement in the Viet Nam debacle – but only Canada on the low – you’d think people might have a more enlightened appreciation of the reference. But, sadly, that’s not the world we live in.
24) Dilly Dally, Know Yourself (2018): What’s up with Canada? Dilly Dally hails from Toronto. This Drake cover pushes away the THC clouds of the original and moves the needles into the red where they should be. Her scream is a delight.
25) White Lung, Dead Weight (2016): Continuing the trek across the inhospitable North: last stop Vancouver. Usually, it’s the vocals that are the vector of the best in punk. The spitting mouth being the proper and most direct font of the most effective rage. And in between the screamed lyrics, some light thrown into the dark corners of our messy urbanized existence. The rest of the accompaniment is generally perfunctory but the listener goes with it. This was famously the case with the Ramones.
Not so with White Lung – that guitar player is the messenger here. He eschews the crunchy buzzsaw chords that are standard issue and goes for a more fluid, surreal kind of gloss. He’s digging into new territory and it elevates the otherwise generic proceedings into something far more noteworthy.
26) Flying Lotus, Never Catch Me featuring Kendrick Lamar (2019): Flying Lotus is the stage name of Steven Ellison. Beat music is what it’s called. I’m guessing that hip hop doesn’t apply here because of Ellison’s style involves a more intricate and academic musicality, much more than isolated and repeated grooves and oblique jazz references that we usually come to understand as the form. I also hear many tips of the hat to Parliament/Funkadelic and for me it’s about f--kin’ time. The sound Ellison drops here sparkles down like mylar confetti interspersed with streamers of fuller themes, plus a few leans toward what might be considered avant-garde.
This may be the future so we’d better get used to it.
27) Bomba Estereo, Fuego (2008): From Columbia and as sexy as only someone saying exotic stuff you don’t understand in a dayglo bikini top can be. (Props to the bilingual!)
28) Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band, Waiting for the D Train (2009): AllMusic called her “one of the most gloriously influential and notorious women in the history of rock.” She’s likely the most reviled non-political public figure in history. No one has endured more ire and condemnation for so little. She’ll forever be the Dragon Lady and Beatle-killer to many. Her childhood was ruled by upheaval and racism–moved to the U.S. from Japan during WWII where she was hated, returned to Japan, tainted by her American experience and was hated. Her very life has been an act of resistance.
Her art was often confrontational but joyful too. Her music could be difficult, her vocals pitchy, and words too often treacly and a wee patronizing in that heavy-handed, drugstore greeting card way. Though she’s had her moments, including a few great ones. Her album Between My Head and the Sky was written “in six days and recorded quickly.” And she was 76 (!) at the time. What have your grandparents done lately?
I once dug deeper into Ono’s backstory here.
29) Silvia Pérez Cruz with Raúl Fernández Miró, Carabelas Nada (2014): The Spanish Cruz (b. 1983) works a variety of genres including fado, jazz, native folk, and flamenco. Her style tends toward the eclectic and goes between hard and a MOR* kind of soft. (Hear a softer treatment of the same song here.) For me, it’s the harder stuff that’s the more interesting, as is this one.
*Middle Of the Road
30) PJ Harvey and John Parish, My Black Hearted Love (2009): Deep in her career when a less alloyed artist might be spinning toward creative entropy, Harvey voices this masterpiece.
Bonus! Angel Olsen, Lark (2019): The brilliant if overwrought histrionics of the orchestrations grabbed me right away. Wiki claims she grew up listening to punk, noise, and Christian “rock.” She clearly has a record collection loaded with 80s selections – probably also spent some time with her parents’ Joni Mitchell records.
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