[So um, after two and a half years of blogging I finally got the clever idea of adding a “subscribe” button — it’s down at the bottom. Thanks Mauro! ]
Here at the slowgraffitti tower in mid-town Manhattan the weather is blustery, and the biggest, warmest April shower is being rained down by Belgium’s Bolis Pupul. It’s practically golden. He’s a mad musical scientist soul living in a synth-pop body; on his new album Letter to Yu he generates a cascade of fresh and unusual textures, reinventing the genre from the inside, and delivers the slappingest of tunes. “Completely Half” is a lovely sketch of the internal and external processes that contribute to feeling like a perpetual outsider: “Each and every time people talk / To me like I am local / A sense of shame is my part / But I know I can take the blame / I wish I spoke what they speak / So I could blеnd in easily / Maybe I should learn what is good / I don’t want to bе misunderstood…”
Bolis also collaborates with Charlotte Adigery on her new one “Haha,” a brilliant deconstruction of a piece of laughter into an avant-pop song. “Guess – you had – to be – there” Charlotte shrugs.
I have a soft spot for the kind of earwormy soft rock that soothed my paranoid and friendless adolescence, and STRFKR kind of split the difference between 70s pop rock and Hot Chip. “Always Never” is a candy-coated ball of tragic yarn — like most great songs it’s about a breakup: “I should’ve never fallen for it / Somebody who never listened to me / Why that you’re wrong when you don’t mean it? / Why say it? You always never, you always never / Always, always, always, always / I need something to feel again / I need another who understands…”
Kayla Cohen aka Itasca breathes 21st century life into the Laurel Canyon ramblin’ down the road tradition of folk rock, but her lyrics could be from a faraway century, and sound more like moldy and verdant Europe than Southern California where she’s from. “Imitation of War,” the crystalline title track from her new one, could be about chasing after a love object or trying to capture inspiration: “She’s fleeing the judgment / In a careless rain / And her muse’s crown on my head / Stings like a tear / Was it a snare set by the devil? / Then I fell right in / Or I was a saint / There on the chapel font / In this Imitation of War…”
On their new one F. Lux, Glasgow’s Naum Gabo conjure up a kind of terror ambient, rich with abrasive textures to lose yourself in, but eventually they come around to a kind of almost danceable zombie techno. It takes me back to the machine music of Front 242, but the machines are charmingly twisted and corroded and have spawned an enslaved race of A.I. humanoids who attempt to sing along. Just delicious.
South Londoner Klein got on my radar with her brooding, turn of the decade, ambient-dread one “Claim It,” and the unclassifiable “No More Shubz,” which traversed something like Gun Club territory, visited the land of Dean Blunt and ended up in a long, cacophonous guitar abrasion. Her new one “Wicked Dreams” is her best yet, building up massive waves of sandpaper before moving into Organ Tapes-esque autotuned melancholy and folky acoustic guitar: “i find a special place / for us to cry and celebrate / im hoping i can understand / my mother / wishes will be just faint / she said worst is coming / she said a body shifts stays with me…”
OK, how’s your tolerance for swoony love songs? Let this be your trigger warning. So there’s a band from Canada whose name is literally Loving, and “Blue,” the last song on their new album, is just a normal rock ballad but it’s kind of perfect and it gives me goosebumps and it’s making me feel like perhaps I can love again: “When I first met you / Time was measured / By the moon / On your body / Oh so blue / Oh so blue, blue / The eyes I’ve made a practice / Staring into…”
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s please address the crucial matter of who is the current baddest bitch in hip hop. Flo Milli says it’s her and I’m feeling it. Fine Ho, Stay is the Keats and Yeats-evoking title of her new album, and pardon me while I drill down to skittering, faster than a Lamborghini deep cut “Tell Me What You Want“: “I be really rappin’, y’all be hoein’, damn / Michael Jackson, ho, I’m the baddest, uh / Fuck around, he might go get it tatted, yeah / Bet your nigga say the pussy magic, what? / Pretty lil’ thing, gettin’ ratchet, yeah / Told me that I couldn’t, oops, I did it again / I don’t like you bitches, I don’t wanna pretend…”
Queens band h. pruz, captained by singer songwriter Hannah Pruzinsky, just put out their debut album No Glory, a thing of subtle, smoldering intensity. Much of it is stripped back vocals and piano or strummed guitar. Opener “Dark Sun” captures with such feeling the bewildering potential for getting wounded and transformed by a love stud: “In the dark / Try to tell you / How I’m made / How I’m changing / In the sun / You are god / For a moment / As you soften / I’m your dark hiding place / crush me up / take a part / residue on your fingertips…”
My buddy Jensen from my early-2000s weirdo writers group had/has the best way of expelling the word “ooh!” from his lips, with tight fists and a quick shrug of the shoulders. The perfect expression of gay anticipation. So ooh! there’s been an unearthing of work by folky / clajazzical Ethiopian nun genius Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru in the wake of her death last year, age 99. Her actual name isn’t quite that long — “Emahoy” is just the equivalent of “sister” in Ethiopia. A lot of her stuff is solo piano, but on this new one she sings, and how dark and dusty and pained and wise and sweet is her voice. Definitely old-timey, charmingly so, but to my mind it’s in conversation with certain extraordinary contemporary artists like Satomimagae and Aldous Harding.
But for sure what’s gonna end up being one of the most remarkable albums of the year is the new Cindy Lee — it’s called Diamond Jubilee and mamma mia does it sprawl. Its 32 songs (strewn across 2 hours) tend toward 1969-1972 acid rock, or grunged-up (again, 70s style) takes on Lynchian 50s girl group tearjerkers. The mastermind behind it all, Patrick Flegel, sings in both an idiosyncratic/iconic female voice, both screechy and sweet, and a more conventional male voice, giving the album a bit of Fleetwood Mac flavor. There’s a grubby patina over the whole thing — it sounds like an old home-made cassette you found underneath a stack of TV Guides in your late Uncle Betty’s motel room in Gunter, TX. Literally and figuratively. If your uncle happened to be a musical visionary. Lost and found artists like Lewis or Donnie & Joe Emerson come to mind. What also blows the mind is that every song on this thing is pretty great, and it’s the strangest experience in 2024 to be confronted with an album that refuses to be quickly evaluated, loved, classified or consumed. I’ve been trying and failing to get a handle on it since it came out. Kind of perfect that it isn’t available on any streaming services, so you have to make a commitment to actively engage with it rather than just click a few of the usual buttons.