LIVING SO THE LAST NIGHT FEELS LIKE A PAST LIFE
It’s getting colder these days, for whatever that is worth to you. Funny to think about that kind of weather change in San Francisco, a city that never really sees winter the way other parts of the world do. Rather than closing everything down, there’s something bracing about the cold here. It keeps you awake, rather than encouraging you to pull the blanket over for another hour or two.
illuminati hotties - I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)
Nothing - Say Less
Frank Ocean - Nikes
In Love With A Ghost - Let’s Walk Across This Forest, I Can Feel Everything Being Real Again
Dave Brubeck - In Your Own Sweet Way
Turnstile - Blue by You
Earl Sweatshirt - Wool (Feat. Vince Staples)
Slipknot - Danger - Keep Away
Japanese Baseball - Memento
Olivia Olson & Half Shy - Monster
“I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” is the only Whitney Houston song that matters. There are other songs that share Houston’s technical prowess, a generational voice that was as powerful as it is resonant, but none of them capture the same joy. There’s something in the breathlessness of Houston’s anticipation, the want of being wanted, that is beautifully alluring. I suppose in 2020 we would say this is Houston’s attempt at having it all but that seems surface level—there’s a special intimacy to this kind of hope, a private ecstasy that comes from keeping a secret, that pulls us closer. Tenderpunk pioneer Sarah Tudzin taps into the same kind of too-shy-to-speak buzz here, whispered over an acoustic arrangement that’s teetering on the edge. It’s a refreshing love letter to someone that only ever wanted to share their love with the world.
Sometimes, I just want to listen to guitars that sound like they are collapsing into an interstellar trash compactor. Nothing delivered on “Say Less,” presenting a special kind of metallic bend against furious drumming and androgynous singing. For everyone that worships at the alter of Kevin Shields there’s always the risk that their guitar tones will fall closer to whale sounds than warped wizardry. On “Say Less,” Nothing find a way to pull us into the undertow, into an aquatic dreamscape, without letting us drown in gear-head pontification.
“Nikes” is about being caught in the middle of a life of comfort and a life of meaning. Frank Ocean is explicit about this, his pitch-shifted singing focused on the consumable nature of lust and the politics of aestheticism. In Ocean’s world, love and wealth blend together, engineering the same high with different pitfalls at 3AM. The song’s fluttering beat bounces off what can only be described as Ocean’s mausoleum of a memory palace—spacious, minimal, and empty—while we’re left to examine the essentialism of loneliness. You can’t curate a genuine connection with people when the world you live it doesn’t put that on the market. In that regard, “Nikes” presents the unanswerable question to the American Dream: what if you just do it and nothing happens? What if all this effort doesn’t really amount to anything in particular? What if our lives are just floating through the void? I suspect we’ll be waiting our entire lifetime to see how this pans out.
In Love With a Ghost’s electronica slow-core is good comfort listening. The project feels like Alice in Wonderland come to life—fluid, surreal, and buoyant in the way that can only make sense in a dream. “Let’s Walk Across This Forest, I Can Feel Everything Being Real Again” embodies a pure distillation of the ‘Ghost sound, shuffling along with bedroom beats and cotton candy weightlessness. If you ever need a break from this world, give this a spin.
One of the things I’ve always loved about great jazz pianists is how they are able to take you through eternity. My favorite jazz songs are romantic, presenting the opportunity to live a lifetime in minutes. I owe this love of jazz to Dave Brubeck, who I first heard during a New Years Eve party in 2007 as the world was ready to change. While I didn’t know it at the time, it was his gentle approach to piano that would make me a lifelong jazz fan, providing a soundtrack that’s as good alone as it is with someone special. “In Your Own Sweet Way” starts softly, building towards a cascade of crisp tones that make time stand still. I guess to put it plainly, my favorite jazz never really seems out of place, providing just enough tranquility to keep my most cherished memories alive.
Who doesn’t want a sweetly sung ballad set to double time hardcore chug? Couldn’t be me.
I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt could have never imagined the weirdness of 2020’s lockdown, or the low level annoyance that we’re all living with in perpetuity. Yet, there’s an insular and sour disposition throughout the effort that finds Earl syncing up with today’s default aggravation. “Wool” balances Earl’s Lebowksi-like drawl with Vince Staples’ punch you in the mouth flow, setting them against a sputtering beat that sounds like a piano being thrown down the stairs. Throughout the song’s runtime, Earl takes aim at everyone’s opinions about his music and life, staying true to the album’s title and thesis. This record may have been an odd fit for the technicolor hip-hop landscape in 2015, but in 2020, where none of us like shit or go outside anymore, it’s thrilling to listen to Earl air his grievances by proxy.
It’s easy to clown on Slipknot. At a certain point, they had three drummers and a turntablist on the payroll. Their annual concert festival isn’t that far away from providing Juggalos with an alternative to The Gathering. One of their members calls himself “Clown.” Try as I might to dismiss my teenage love for the ‘Knot, the group has actually continued to experiment over time, providing some great surprises along the way. If you want to point to where that sea change started, Vol 3.: (The Subliminal Verses) seems like the logical turning point. A ton of ink has already been spilled about this album, detailing how Corey Taylor hates Rick Rubin’s hands-off approach to producing and that the album was recorded in a haunted house. But results are results. The record really cements the possibility of a future for the group that felt uncertain in 2004 given the combustible personalities. Vol. 3... is a surprisingly arty album that eschewed much of the band’s jock-like tendencies for folk and electronic experimentation, ensuring the riffs they kept were leaner and uglier in the process. Over time though, it’s the softer songs from Vol. 3… that I keep returning to, like “Danger - Keep Away,” a minimal synthesizer meditation with brushed drumming, phantasmic samples, and a surprisingly vulnerable Taylor sifting through the darker recesses of his psyche. There’s a richness and longing here that isn’t that far from Radiohead, James Blake, or the thousands of other bedroom R&B bands in the Bandcamp era. The only difference is that this singer is wearing a scarecrow mask.
Japan Baseball won’t be confused with American Football but the two groups take their love of mathy, jazz-inspired emo to incredible extremes. On “Memento,” guitars bubble alongside each other, calling and responding like angry birds as they are supported by turn on a dime drumming. While Midwestern in construction, there’s a precision that suits the shape shifting instrumental, a careful restraint that keeps things stately rather than manic. It’s a beautiful song though, the kind of track where things come together and break apart, repeating forever and ever.
I’m concerned I might have spoiled the new HBO Adventure Times: Distant Lands for myself by listening to “Monster” but I’ll live with it because the song is sublime. Olivia Olson provides us with a sentimental valentine as Marceline the Vampire Queen, reminding us over gentle ukulele plucks that those we care for become a part of us. I’ve always appreciated Adventure Time’s ability to plainly state big emotional truths without pretense. I know the aesthetic might be whimsical, but the show’s enduring legacy is exploring our humanity in the face absurdity—a lesson that rings true no matter your age.
Originally published November 29, 2020 as part of Hella Vibes.