The artist formerly known as Butterfly… [Video][Website] [6.14] Iain Forrester: “It’s a feeling” but it’s barely even that, drifting by without ever making an impact.[5] Anthony Easton: Is that a piano around 2:31? Because if it is, it foregrounds the rest of the track. The track itself is a little chaotic, a little confusing in [...]
Get spiritual… [Video][Website] [6.62] Iain Forrester: SMD take a stab at ghost in the machine dance soul like Hot Chip used to do. It’s enjoyable but the haunting refuses to last past the end of the track.[6] Edward Okulicz: I’m imagining that dropped in a DJ set, “Seraphim” coming over the sound system would be [...]
The copyeditor in me really wants to make Marina put a space in this title… [Video][Website] [5.00] Michaela Drapes: Marina continues apace with her postmodern, footnote-providing stomp through the perils of contemporary femininity, a role she occupies with an intense glee that’s the flip side of someone, say, like Lana del Rey. But really, how [...]
More like a powerwalk in the late afternoon, these days… [Video][Myspace] [4.50] W.B. Swygart: Kevin Rowland’s career, and that of Dexys, has been riddled with commercial suicides — never intentional, because Kevin’s all about triumph, a battle to achieve whatever he feels is victory at that particular time. It’s just that victory on Kev’s terms [...]
Louis Louis Fendi Fendi Prada… [Video][Website] [5.88] Iain Forrester: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is a fashion blogger turned alternative model turned pop singer and apparently Japan’s most popular Twitter user. If you haven’t already watched the video to her first single “PONPONPON”, I recommend that (it’s a unique experience), but while I fall in the LOVE rather [...]
Now taking bets on when 90s revivalism will work… [Video][Website] [4.25] Jer Fairall: Plodding, lethargic grunge of the sort I had little use for twenty years ago, never mind now. If this is what 90s nostalgia is gonna sound like, we’re in for a few years that’ll last as long as this song feels.[3] Brad [...]
Reigning on all of ya’. [Video][Website] [7.29] Brad Shoup: The evolution’s in the flow, clearly. Diffused bass, slushy handclaps, a twitchy one-handed riff: this is practically preset stuff. Never easing up over three minutes of 140 bpm, Wiley goes chorus-free and nutrient-rich. At points it sounds like a cribsheet freestyle (I’m pretty sure Dave was [...]
May the odds be ever in your trailer… [Video][Website] [6.14] Sabina Tang: Little of The Hunger Games’ soundtrack seems to be actually featured in the film, at least not the songs in their original forms. I suspect this Pistol Annies number to have left its mark as an instrumental, trailing tendrils of inchoate dread that the [...]
We’ll charitably assume he isn’t side-eying this song in his promo photo…
Mohawky!