Since Y2K South Korea has been this kind of miraculous hub of thrilling filmmaking, producing an amazing body of work that’s both popular and auteur, from Bong Jooh-ho and Park Chan-wook‘s wild early films up through mega-sensations Parasite and Squid Game. In music, on the other hand, shiny and sugary K-pop is almost all that’s washed up on Western shores. Like any serious connoisseur of fine music I am a big fan of “Gangnam Style“; I’m sure there are plenty of other gems within the genre but what I’ve heard is, um, I don’t know, I mean I can be deeply moved by pop music but let’s not put too much pressure on a genre that’s 90% air. Seriously though, “Gangnam Style,” what a song, what a video, what a party. Parannoul, within that context, is kind of a bolt from the blue, an M83-style wall of passion based in idealism and friendship. Pretty much as indie as it gets. There were a couple of excellent jams on 2021’s To See the Next Part of the Dream. New one “A Lot Can Happen” (which in my experience is very true) is maybe their best track yet, with earnest, heartfelt lyrics that sound positively Midwestern. Translated into English, “Even after еverything, I want to believe the feeling lasts forever / Hope nothing happens tomorrow and the day after / See you soon.”
Sudanese Torontonian Mustafa has created a dark, perfumed well of a record, his remarkable, androgynous voice plumbing depths of emotion whilst considering matters of spirituality, bringing to mind both Tracy Chapman and Sinead O’Connor somehow. On Dunya, his arrangements straddle folk and pop, with middle-eastern accents; the production makes you feel like he’s confiding secrets from inches away. Show-stopping ballad “Imaan” is a sketch of a forbidden love story, a tangle of faith and religious taboos: “Imaan, I’m standing here / By your work place / Hoping that you’re there / I’m wearing the things you said / On my face / Like they’re a prayer / You left me on a tight rope / Between God and your father / And there’s not enough air..”
For whatever reason, Liars never made an impression on me, I’m sorry but they didn’t, and I don’t have time to re-evaluate their 10 albums plus singles and remixes. I’m a busy person even though other people might not consider me to be. I think of them as thrashy, arty, New York was so much better before Giuliani kind of stuff. Or am I mixing them up with The Rapture? In any case their keyboardist Aaron Hemphill has a rather louche and fragrant new one with his band Nonpareils that’s been haunting the damp underground corridors of slowgraffitti International Inc., luring in all sorts of unsavory characters — creating a fertile human substrate in which to root our ambitions of world domination. Everybody wins. Anyways, it’s called Rhetoric & Terror and it gets a little low-key demonic so proceed AYOR, but maybe check out these yummy lyrics from “Opening Chord“: “The cat got out and escaped but brought something back to you / C’mon let’s place the parts with heart out of view / You can call it prayer when we’ve all won / Then God will get named when boredom’s to blame it’s just what you do… Oh oh oh we argue fate / Oh oh oh we’ve all made big mistakes / Rodents will carry what dies away… Will we topple it down with sound?”
Who is Tony Vaz? We know he’s from Brooklyn, so that’s comforting. The Pretty Side of the Ugly Life album got reviewed in the Fork but otherwise there’s practically nothing online about him. He looks South Asian fwiw. In any case the album is pretty spectacular, sparking off in endless imaginative directions, grounded to some extent in 80s indie, with a shimmering sense of melody, dotted here and there with dollops of country and western sour cream. The specter of Dean Blunt lurks in certain dusty, deadpan corners of the proceedings, and fellow traveler Pretty V also comes to mind. On slowgraffitti charts smash hit single “9 Lives,” Tony enlists fellow up-and-comer Alena Spanger for some elliptical harmonizing: “In my home time / Delayed my soul time / Now war is over / So the night is soft / Stare through the wall at the setting sun / Nine lives, eight down […] Tonight I feel haunted and safe / Tonight I feel confidently like obsession.”
A familiar, bitter/sexy croak pokes its head up from the rich soil of my Spotify “songs to preview” playlist. My old buddy Tricky is back with a new project called Theis Thaws, a collaboration with Mike Theis of Paris, and it’s a reliably rocky road to wicked late-night pleasures. “Fly to Ceiling” is a gothy dance workout with guest vocals by Tricky‘s latest Martina, Rosa Rocca-Serra. “Frozen Rivers” has the classic sound of lounge angst that made him a legend: “Longest time waiting for the light / The thaw / Shortest time drifting / A sudden night / It’s early evening and I’m / Watching it fall, each flake / I watch it fall, should we walk away / Snow fall / The words I can’t say / You hold me close / & I melt away…”
Lovely as it is, folk music can be a bit safe, a bit tried and tested, a bit dusty and tasteful, not much to say about it other than yep it sounds like the hardships of simple, hard-working people of olden times. Shovel Dance Collective disagree, creating bold and challenging work in striking new forms. They caught hold of my inner ear a few years back with the bitter proclamations of “My Husband’s Got No Courage in Him,” and now they’re back with a new, self-titled album and the rather astonishing eight-minute tour de force “The Merry Golden Tree.” The lead vocal becomes hypnotic, seeming to turn into a bagpipe on sustained notes in which a chorus of other voices eventually joins in. The subject matter is suitably rich with menace, death and betrayal — the small titular sea vessel comes across the Jolly Roger pirate ship and the captain despairs, “They’ll sink us in the low and the lonesome low / They’ll sink us to the bottom of the lowland sea.” But a little cabin boy claims he can sink the pirates, and the captain offers, “Well I’ll give you gold and I’ll pay you fee / My youngest daughter and she will marry thee.” So the cabin boy swims over and drills holes in the Jolly Roger and sinks it, but when he returns the captain totally fucks him over — no gold, no daughter, and in fact tells him, “I’ll sink you in the low and the lonesome low / Leave you to drown in the lowland sea.”
Remember in 2010 when Dan Snaith AKA Caribou lit up hearts and dancefloors with Swim? He’s had a couple of albums since then, but nothing quite as world-conquering. Now he’s back with a proudly bald junior high school math teacher look and an album called Honey on which — pro tip — make sure and seek out track 5 “Come Find Me,” a mid-tempo slow burner that reminds me of Daft Punk and Röyksopp at their most soulful/vulnerable.
I tried looking up musicians from Pittsburgh and yeah, not too many that made a big mark. The mighty Black Moth Super Rainbow, who actually have a really cool new song out called “All 2 of Us” (that is in no way a departure from their idiom), are from there — who knew?
Pittsburgh also claims Christina Aguilera, although per Mrs. Wikipedia her family actually moved around a lot, and during her time in the City of Bridges Beautiful Chris had to be taken out of school and homeschooled because of bullying and kept reminding herself —
What actually has transported me to western Pennsylvania, however, is a rather impressive new album by burger Merce Lemon called Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild. It’s lush, wide-screen, country or country-adjacent, high drama, and very American. Americana is what I believe the Brits call it. If we’re honest that’s a euphemism for dad rock, but Merce transcends it all with her drizzled dark honey vocals and soulful lyrics. She sets up a languid scene in “Backyard Lover“: “I am aimless in my lovin’ / Caught the tail end of your set / Before I went to bed / But I don’t get out much / Met a lover in my backyard / Watching from my room / Honey I’ll come down soon…” But the song turns out to be about a friend’s death, and builds to searing emotion: “Maybe she was / She was right / What dying felt like / A wooden spoon tossed in the fire / ‘Cause nothing’s good enough / You fucking liar…”
When a member dies while they’re still in their prime, bands have to make hard choices through their grief. Joy Division famously went from guitars to EDM; Stereolab poignantly replaced Mary Hansen‘s vocals with a plaintive horn; Pink Floyd undertook world domination. Come to think of it Syd Barrett didn’t actually die until decades after his Floyd tenure, but you know what I mean. So let’s talk about the new Alan Sparhawk album. I remember going check out Low on a warm Saturday afternoon in ’95, when they played on the sidewalk in front of the short-lived-forever-cherished No Life Records. Alan was quite a beauty, and I can’t say the thought of “how did the sour-faced chubby girl with an admittedly angelic voice bag him” didn’t cross our superficial minds. But of course Mimi was super special too, and their harmonizing on “Throw Out the Line” is a milestone in the history of pleasure. Low‘s sound was already embracing dissonance on their final album, but now Alan has re-emerged looking like a cross between Kim Gordon and Buffalo Bill for his first release since Mimi‘s death, tweaking his vocals with high-pitched chipmunk cartoon hyperpop autotune. It’s often quite beautiful — he’s always been a master of melody. But if you’re looking for tender ruminations on grief you’ll have to dig pretty deep into subtext — the vibe of the lyrics is more like druggy art rock Iggy Pop anarchy. On opener “Get Still” our Alan offers, “Do you want a big thrill / Do you wanna get real / Do you wanna get still / I’m a wanna make a deal deal / Eighty acres of trill / Everybody on strip pill / ‘Body on drip kick / And it’s so much wicked…”