What Have I Been Listening to?
The first line of Ruth Garbus’ Spotify bio describes her as “a singular vocalist and songwriter.” Now, normally I would not quote marketing copy at you, but I think that “singular” really is a perfect word for describing Garbus’ new album, “Profound.” Take, for instance, the confidence required for the opening line of your entire album to be “When I penetrated that man, I felt just like a dog,” and then for the rest of the album to have absolutely no sexually explicit content whatsoever. Garbus’ writing is truly unique, and these songs never go where you expect them to.
I’m not interested in ascribing a genre label to “Profound,” because it’s easy to just describe what it sounds like. It’s a minimalist project, the music consisting entirely of Garbus’ voice (and in one instance backing voices from her musicians), an electric piano, an electric guitar, and occasionally a drum machine, the cover consisting of just a photo of Garbus’ face. The songs are soft and slow. Sometimes they conform to a verse/chorus structure, other times they are looser in their construction, driven by spontaneous sounding vocal melodies. Garbus’ voice is the centre of everything: it's both beautiful and possessing of incredible range, both in the pitch and performance sense. The guitar and piano surround it, usually panned to opposite sides. Both are tonally very warm. Sometimes their parts sync up, and they create one beautiful sound together. Other times they play off of each other to create fun little grooves. It’s all very delicate and warm sounding, and above everything else beautiful.
The lyrics are probably the actual star of the show here. Sometimes they’re flowery and hard to pin down, like the second verse of “I Think I’m Ready Now,” where she sings: “Well I changed my lining to sordid fleece/A perverted silver coating filled with candy pieces/It wasn’t me that made this happen/It was an interstellar chain reaction.” The meter is smooth and the language compelling, particularly this idea of an "interstellar chain reaction" that produces the narrator's behaviour, which suggests that causality and maybe even fate have as much control over our actions as we do. I love every little detail of this passage, and could spend ages digging into what it's getting at within the context of the song. Other times the lyrics are more simple and whimsical, like in the first chorus of “Sunny Summer Guy,” which opens with “In my pinwheel hat and my birthday surprise/I don’t even care if I’m wealthy or wise.” That’s probably my favourite couplet on the whole album. It makes me laugh, but I also find the sentiment being expressed genuinely beautiful. And that little bit of alliteration is just lovely.
These lyrics are elevated by their delivery. Garbus’ performances on this album are fantastic. When she sings that “interstellar chain reaction” line I quoted earlier, it’s with a lilt that turns the line into a delightful earworm. At the end of “Sunny Summer Guy” she hits the final note with such force and conviction that it lends real emotional weight to the story at the end of the song, wherein the narrator wins a stuffed Moana doll at a fair and gives it to a child. Her entire performance on “Tip of the Hat to Fleur” sounds a bit like Joni Mitchell, which I of course mean as a huge compliment, even more so because the rest of the album doesn’t sound like that -- it feels more like an isolated, intentional reference point than something compulsory or derivative.
The first half of "Profound" is slower and more somber than the second, which lends the album a real sense of progression. The one-two punch of “Sunny Summer Guy” and “Tip of the Hat to Fleur” at the start of the second half make for a sort of climax, as those are the highest energy songs, and then things cool down a bit on “Nocturne” and “All E-Lone.” The opener, “I Think I’m Ready Now,” and the closer “Tall Face” are both standout tracks unlike the rest of the album, the former for its structure and title-drop climax, and the latter for being the silliest the album gets, and being short enough that the silliness doesn’t even threaten to become annoying, remaining firmly delightful. So, the album opens and closes on strong impressions, and in the middle goes on a steady up and down arc. It’s pretty much perfect album sequencing, and it makes for a satisfying sit-down listen.
This album’s minimalism and idiosyncratic style won’t be for everybody, and might even relegate it to niche, hidden gem status, but I really think it’s something special. It’s one of my absolute favourite albums of the year so far, and I’ll be eagerly looking into Garbus’ other music over the next little while.
Rating: ☆☆
A new Boards of Canada album came out a couple weeks ago. It’s called “Inferno.” They’re sounding as Boards of Canada as ever, lots of smooth synth sounds and samples, overall a low-key and ethereal sound, with a touch of eeriness. I love this stuff. Now, I don’t have a ton to say about this album. I’ve been listening to it while writing, and have enjoyed it a lot in that capacity, but I haven’t really scrutinized it. Still, I felt like it deserved a shout-out here.
Rating: ☆
I think that pop singers passing Dan Nigro around is the 2020s’ answer to pop singers of the 2010s passing Jack Antonoff around. Now, Jack Antonoff was pretty well suited to that role. His style is transparent, which is probably why so many artists like working with him. There are recognizable similarities between, for instance, “Melodrama” and “Lover,” but they’re still stylistically distinct, because Lorde and Swift are driving the respective ships.
I’m not convinced that Nigro can fill a similar role. I say this because “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love,” Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, has enough Chappell Roan DNA in it that I spent most of its run time wishing I was listening to Roan instead. This album and “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” have similar sonic palettes, similar song structures and arrangement tendencies, and even sometimes similar melodies. The verse part in “honeybee” sounds bizarrely similar to the verse in “Good Luck, Babe!;” “expectations” is structurally similar to “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” and even leans on a similar, if inferior, synth bass riff.
Now, multiple artists with the same producer can still stand out even if that producer does have a recognizable style of their own, through songwriting and performance. Chappell Roan is an illustrative example here: “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” is firmly a Chappell Roan song, thanks to her performance and authorial voice, even though it contains a lot of what I would now call Nigro-isms. The issue with “you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love” is that I’m not enamored with anything Rodrigo is doing. On the writing side, her pop-punk, post-punk, and emo influences, which previously have been one of the main things that made her stand out, are smothered under broad 2020s pop stylings on this album. Lyrically, these are sort of unremarkable pop love songs. They don't do much for me, but admittedly I am outside their target demographic. As a performer, though, Rodrigo has a great voice and I love the vocal harmonies going on across this thing.
So, the sum total here is an album that has some great individual pop songs, but doesn’t cohere into anything particularly interesting. I think every song on here is a pretty good time on its own, but if I’m going to sit down with an artist for 51 minutes I want them to give me something that’s theirs, rather than reheating Chappell Roan’s leftovers.
Rating: ○
“Bingo!” is an album by Montreal art-punk collective La Securité. I have qualms with the term “art-punk” similar to the qualms I have with the terms “art-pop” and “art-rock,” (all three terms are vague and pretentious!) and would instead describe this album as a sort of egg-punk/riot grrrl fusion, a Devo meets Le Tigre situation, with some Cibo Matto flavour. I understand why they went with “art-punk,” though, because I’m not sure that “egg-punk” actually means anything to most people.
This album is packed with personality and fun guitar riffs. It won’t blow your mind if you’re familiar with acts like Guerilla Toss, Enon, and the already mentioned Cibo Matto, but it’s a fun, breezy listen.
I’ve spent most of this blurb comparing La Securité to other acts, but this album does really have its own voice, too. The vocal performances, the guitarwork, and the zaniness of the songwriting all lend the project a strong identity, even as it is working within some pretty defined traditions. I should divulge that the fact that egg-punk and riot grrrl are my preferred punk flavours is certainly helping this album in my estimation, but I think that anybody with a taste for any sort of punk will find something to like here.
Rating: ☆
One of the ways I’ve been finding things to listen to and write about on here is by browsing Album of the Year’s “New Releases” tab. It’s a pretty comprehensive list of new albums from labels big and small, which I appreciate. I’m enjoying this approach because it lets me discover a wide variety of stuff, and stumble upon some real gems that I never would’ve found otherwise, like that Ruth Garbus album. It does have its downsides, though, namely, in this case, that I come to this album, “Ancient History” by Wiki, with absolutely no useful context.
On this album Wiki is reflecting on his career, and on his home city of New York. Now, since I hadn’t heard of the guy before now, I do not have a rest of his career against which to set his reflections. So as a random listener coming in blind, this is sort of just an anonymous hip hop album.
Wiki is a solid MC, though. These songs are well written and elegantly delivered, and the subject matter is plenty varied, even as the songs generally orbit around the two main topics of New York City and Wiki’s past. A big standout for me was “Park,” a song about how much it rules to go to the park. “If any date ask what I planned for us?/Or any interviewer ask what my hobby was?/It was going to the park, is that too obvious?” This bar cracks me up, but also I absolutely love that slant rhyme from “for us” to “hobby was” to “obvious.” This is the sort of style Wiki exhibits all over the album.
On the production side, these beats are all pretty nice, but Wiki worked with different producers for every song, and you can kinda tell. I would’ve appreciated a more unified voice and intention on the production side. As it stands, this facet of the album is a drag on the pacing: with a couple exceptions, these songs sound like their own singles, rather than parts of a whole.
Despite that qualm, though, I enjoyed this album a fair bit, and there are a few tracks here I’ll be returning to.
Rating: ☆
Vince Staples’ “Cry Baby” is a rap album built on stripped down rock grooves, not unlike the work of Genesis Owusu. Staples’ take on this sound is fantastic: these songs move wonderfully, they have great bass riffs, crunchy drums, and fun embellishments, and there are a lot of great vocal hooks, too. The musical palette is minimal, but enough new elements get introduced as the album progresses to keep it sounding fresh the whole way through. And Staples as a performer is as fluid, versatile, and engaging as ever.
Lyrically, this is a protest album in part, but also a highly personal one, particularly in its second half. I don’t think I have anything meaningful to add through analysis to what the album expresses. It’s clear in its messaging and eloquent in its metaphor. Staples’ perspective on the current political moment is powerful, but at the same time the album expresses the futility of political art to effect real change. This is maybe the strongest message of all, as the album all but demands that you go out and actually do something about systemic racism rather than just listening to protest music.
I’d need to spend a lot more time with this album to really untangle it any more, but what I can say is that “Cry Baby” is an excellent alternative rap album, and one of the most potent works of political art of these last few years.
Rating: ☆☆
“Somewhere Good” is a new album from Tara Clerkin Trio, a UK based jazz/trip-hop/chamber-pop act. That’s how I would describe them, anyway. Sort of a running theme in this segment today is that genre is nonsense.
I’ve struggled with this one a bit. It has a lot of moments I really like, but overall I find it drags a bit. The album alternates between instrumental and vocal tracks, and a lot of the instrumental tracks move really slowly and take a long time to go anywhere. A lot of the time this is in the name of slow, hypnotic trip-hop style grooves, but in a lot of instances there isn’t quite enough going on for those grooves to be compelling.
I like the vocal tracks a bit more, generally, but they have some slow stretches, too. I would say “Lazy Daisy” is the only one of them I think is truly great.
Now, a caveat to my earlier complaining about the instrumental tracks: I like the intro track “Lake Walk” and the closer “Movin’ On” a lot. “Lake Walk” is a slow developing, sort of janky little introductory song, which I think works really well. “Lake Walk” is a groovy track with some wacky instrumentation that just has a lot going on -- it’s a lot of fun.
Overall I’d say Tara Clerkin Trio have piqued my interest, and I’ll be checking out what they do next, but I didn’t love this album, despite some highlights.
Rating: ○