And with this pick from William John, we *also* have not a lot left to say. This is our final post of our Amnesty 2k23 special.

[Video]
[7.57]

William John: We’re at the end of 2023, and while the Origibabes are finally back again, they’ve now got upstarts to contend with. Say Now, known by the dubious moniker “needanamebro” for most of this year, are three young singers who combine imperiousness and beatific harmony; the more things change, the more they stay the same. “Not A Lot Left To Say” goes by in a blink, but perhaps that’s by design, given that it’s documenting the painful moment of a relationship that sits somewhere between Erykah Badu’s “Next Lifetime” and a kind of detached apathy — to say anything more than nothing seems fruitless. The song’s spacious production reminds me of “Everything is Embarrassing,” Dev Hynes’ classic traipse through the gloom with Sky Ferreira. It was Hynes who guided Mutya, Keisha and Siobhan back from the figurative dead ten years ago, and while they’re hardly in danger of being replaced just yet, I’m excited by the prospect of Ysabelle, Amelia and Maddie continuing their legacy.
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: Ysabelle starts the song off on a tough but wistful tone, feeling a bit let down by how it all collapsed and ended, but slowly accepting the outcome. Amelia is completely over it all, wanting badly to move on and put it all behind her. Maddie is still not over it, still longing for those close days. But Amelia, allowed the only direct riff on the bridge, soars, her unspoken hurt lingering in those notes, then she returns to the alcove of the group, all of them united in putting this relationship to bed, but quietly wiping a few tears away, hurt yet resolute.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Breakup songs that also acknowledge “don’t wanna be your friend, don’t wanna be your ex” are too few and far between, and this one has a commendable sense of swing, vocal performances, and brevity to match. Like the relationship, it ends just when it needs to.
[9]

Michael Hong: Soft girl group harmonies and fluttering club kicks. Where those disappear, the song feels scant, yet the words feel stickier. For the amicable break-up song that “Not a Lot Left to Say” is, are you supposed to only come out thinking about the words “bet I’m still the one?”
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Densely packed pop product — every line genuinely makes impact, every hook connects with none of the excesses that aspirational pop groups sometimes burden themselves with. This is competent and poised but never stiff; the three of them balance the clear effort they’re putting into this attempt with the joy of having the chance to try it.
[8]

Will Adams: Formerly known as needanamebro, now known as Say Now. Both names are so bad I assumed this was a Xenomania project. They’re not, but the bland UK pop polish of “Not a Lot Left to Say” could have convinced me on its own.
[5]

Crystal Leww: One of the most wonderful things about UK pop music is how it’s continued the tradition of the girl group in Western pop, which has largely ceded ground to Asia. Say Now follows in a long lineage, which recently just made FLO the Sound of 2023, and “Not A Lot Left To Say” is just stacked and layered harmonies on top of each other. I feel like this is like the **~~Just Girl Things~** version of when the dude at the party busts out the acoustic guitar — just three girls riffing and seeing how they can jam together and make a little tiny shitting on their ex. Cute! 
[7]

Peter’s pick proves that we (mostly) still have time for house bangers…

[Video]
[6.00]

Peter Ryan: Lola Índigo’s path to Spanish pop prominence has has been a circuitous one, punctuated by nominally-unsuccessful stints (with plenty of time in between) on two reality competition shows (dance comp Fama Revolución in 2010, where she was fourth boot, and first out on the David Bisbal-spawning popstar boot-camp Operación Triunfo in 2017). And so it goes — ostensibly fueled by sheer force of will, in 2018 she re-launched with a stage name and a double-platinum debut single. She’s since notched three #1 albums and eight top-10 singles at home and collaborated with many of the current superstars of global Spanish-language pop, but anecdotally there’s a sense that the success might be a little soft, that her songs chart but evaporate quickly. “Corazones Rotos,” officially the fourth single from this year’s El Dragón, was marginally successful in a couple markets but by no means broke “the curse” (the album’s sixth single — “El Tonto,” a more typical reggaeton-lite-pop bit with Madrileño trap juggernaut Quevedo — finally accomplished that, going quintuple platinum and fast becoming her most popular song on streaming), but I’ve had it stuck on irrational loop since I heard it in a taxi in January, on a trip with spotty internet and lots of time for it to over-imprint. Índigo gives off a steely disillusionment; she’s a slyly effective vocalist, nasality belying the technique and intuitive sense involved in the little grace notes she wedges into syllables, or the weary fry she puts on words like “latas.” It nails the bleakness of hurdling headlong into the bad decision, brazenly shooting your shot with someone you know is still hung up on someone else, knowing how it’s all going to turn out — the descending melody on “Nunca / Me equivoco” cuts to the cold heart of it. Both verses start with the singer laying out what they know about the other, or what they want the other to know they know; it’s in service of selling a line, but there’s a clever friction between Lola’s part, which trades in clear-eyed realism as persuasive tactic (“Ya no eres de ella, se acabó el lio / No te asustes, tampoco mío”), and Luis’s cliched cajoling, like he’s talking to someone else entirely. It’s the tragedy of being the same boat but never quite seeing each other, the transitive property of dislocated desire, all over a corny schlager house bosh backdrop (ranking goofy production choices: 1) the first drop that’s heavier than it has any reason to be, 2) fake-out second drop; 3) the stupid turntable effect on the word “pide” after the second chorus). It’s not that deep — I’m an easy mark for a minor-key dance anthem with a double bridge and a manipulative melodic sense; El Dragón didn’t traffic all that much in this fare and she’s already put out another EP in a different lane entirely, but this is about everything I want from a big-label pop confection.
[9]

Ian Mathers: The most intriguing thing about this serviceable pop house sad banger is a certain vagueness in the lyrics (at least I think so; I’m relying on translations here, and these days probably machine ones). What is our narrator’s actual relationship towards the person who got dumped? Are she and Fonsi addressing each other or not? Are we really just drinking to forget here? Are the bandages just beers or are we trying to start something here? Inquiring minds want to know.
[6]

Will Adams: A competent house thumper that resides in its melancholic comfort zone. Those pumping piano chords at the last breakdown really amped things up; wish they’d stayed.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: The guitar loop in the back is at once too thin and too thick. It takes up large part of the mix but doesn’t overpower Lola’s strong alto. It also can’t hold up once it’s swept aside for a slumping, half played baseline over nearly hidden bass drums and flat, papery snares, that’s supposed to move the hips but just juggles the brain juice. Luis’s soft tenor also can’t get a foothold in the guitar loop — it’s so thick in how it’s been played and processed the voices have to be constantly panned to keep sticking and jumping out, but really just remain stuck halfway, not sinking any further into the mix than they need to do to carry the song but too high to truly lift the melody they both end up singing by the last chorus in a way that plays to either of their strengths as duet partners. The chopped fragments also sink in the quicksand of the loop, clumsily arranged but rhythmless.
[4]

Michael Hong: The melody of the pre-chorus feels familiar but I can’t place it. Maybe that’s the experience of meeting someone on the dancefloor who faintly resembles someone you still love. Maybe the garage house beat will be enough to erase their existence.
[6]

Rose Stuart: As a fan of mixing acoustic ballads with club beats, I was enjoying “Corazones Rotos” right until the moment Luis Fonsi got handed the mic. The beautiful guitar refrain contrasts wonderfully with Lola Indigo’s husky vocals, but that contrast disappears with Fonsi. His voice is almost swallowed up by the music, and what remains is unpleasant to listen to. It’s a similar problem to Ed Sheeran’s “Shivers,” where the song itself almost rejects its singer. All I can say is that I hope Lola Indigo releases a solo version at some point. 
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A complete hodgepodge — it sounds like the two credited performers brought in separate drafts and tried to weld them together live in the studio, with only middling success. But each individual hook is just good enough, and Fonsi and Indigo are skilled enough interpreters, that “Corazones Rotos” works despite itself.
[6]

It’s rare for us to cover instrumental songs, but Nortey is making sure our bases are covered…

[Video]
[7.38]

Nortey Dowuona: The first seconds of “Hawthorn” are looped guitar. They keep spinning in the back, a solid place to step on for the listener, just waiting for the song to begin, and slightly slipping beneath the newly added guitar and synthesizers, lush and full playing in a loop as well, then building and growing, smothering all other sounds beneath them. Meanwhile, the looped riff just keeps swirling in the left hand channel, waiting for the rest of the song to dissipate — before it is immediately cut off.
[10]

Ian Mathers: I liked the idea of Nayar’s Heaven Come Crashing LP more than I actually wound up playing it, but what “Hawthorn” suggests is: A. I should give it another try B. maybe I like Nayar better at miniature length C. It’s time for Caribou’s Up in Flames (originally released when he went by Manitoba) to get another revival D. All of the above.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The best parts of Heaven Come Crashing were explosions of sound — the breakbeat shattering the ambient guitars and vocals of that album’s title track, the way drones and percussion creep in and envelop “Tetramorph” over the course of nine minutes. “Hawthorn” is too neat of a fragment to have quite that impact, but as Nayar brings in layer after layer of guitar she reaches some alternate catharsis — less a breakthrough and more a resolution, everything in its right place for just a brief moment of grace.
[7]

Kat Stevens: Very pleasant! A bit like when Karl H manages to persuade Rick S to let him do some guitar noodling in the middle of an Underworld album.
[6]

Michael Hong: Gorgeous and glassy, yet I keep waiting, not for it to go somewhere, but for it to settle into stillness.
[6]

Will Adams: The loops, the ascending chord progression, the build-up paced like a rising sun: I was surprised to learn that “Hawthorn” was released as a standalone single and not the intro of a longer body of work. But those intros are works unto themselves, too, and gorgeous is still gorgeous in isolation.
[7]

Leah Isobel: My favorite Kate Bush song is “A Coral Room,” for its drifty musical simplicity and complex emotional tenor, slipping gently between images and passages and memories. The question the whole song hinges on — “What do you feel?” — is both plainspoken and vast, impossible to answer. To write words on a page or musical notes in a sequence is to reach into the water and see what it’s like. How does it feel? How does it feel? How does it feel? Earlier this year, I wrote about Vines’ Birthday Party, a relatively experimental record for my listening habits; I spent weeks listening to it again and again in different settings, trying to come to a conclusion, pushing for an idea. I still think it eluded me, that I didn’t have the capacity to get my hands around it. And yet it’s slipped into my favorite records of the year, maybe because it’s an outlier. I spent most of my formative years listening to either pop music or Pitchfork-approved indie rock, in the turn-of-the-decade boom times. That music worked to be articulated and likable because there was money to be made in it. Now, of course, everything is contracted. As a sometimes writer and occasional musician, I have (mostly) made peace with the fact that my art will not sustain me economically. I don’t even know if I’d want it to. A music made to be monetized probably wouldn’t hold what I’d need it to hold. In 2021, when I was living in New York, I met Rachika not at a show or via an interview, but through her day job as an electrolysis technician. She played incredible music while she worked. I didn’t know that she was a musician herself until she told me about a show she was playing — not as an invitation, just as idle chatter. I didn’t go. Then I moved away, and then I found out that her music was incredible too. A cross-country move, two lost friendships, a new relationship, a new job, new and unformed ideas and fears and hopes: my context for “Hawthorn,” inseparable from how it feels to me. The song curls upwards out of a maybe-sample, maybe-guitar, maybe-synth pulse; I’m stuck on the high plink that opens and closes the phrase, keeps the time, remains somehow unreachable. When the guitars and bass come in, folding and lacing around each other, that plink still sticks out, like the composition is either pulled in its wake or pushing towards the sound. It could be a radio transmitter or a metronome or a distant star, blinking, turning. It’s corny to say but it pulls me, too — whatever it is I’m searching for, however time reveals it or I distort it with my own insistence on rationalizing or controlling myself. I reach my hand into the water. What do I feel? What do I feel? What do I feel?
[7]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Catchy loops and post rock guitar that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. It beats the sleepy allegations perfectly. 
[8]

Rose presents to us a long running K-pop duo who made a comeback this year…

[Video]
[5.50]

Rose Stuart: I have to admit, TVXQ!’s newest release had big shoes to fill. Infrequent comebacks can create lofty expectations, but “Down” proves what K-pop has been missing during their five year absence. This dreamy sex song (a genre that also has been rarely heard recently) floats from note to note, with soft, whispery vocals that manage to soar to new heights of TVXQ!’s already impressive range. It’s filled with yearning to the point of desperation, the drumbeat an almost maddening ticking clock, and the relaxing guitar contrasted with an almost aggressive electronic breakdown in the chorus beautifully showcases the conflict.  When the song reaches its climax, the energy is enough to knock you off your feet in the best way. Sex has been TVXQ!’s signature since “Mirotic,” but “Down” feels closer to “Wrong Number” and “Before U Go” in its R&B influences. Throwing back to past songs while also carving out a new direction for themselves is the best thing TVXQ! could have done for this release, and I have only the highest hopes for what their 20th anniversary album will bring.
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: The drum programming on this is amazing, in that it’s completely stationary beneath the post chorus breakdown and limp during the bridge and over compressed to the nines during the actual chorus. Truly amazing. Thank god these boys can sing.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Alternate 2010 history in which Justin Timberlake had a collab with Alex da Kid, with falsetto that’s practically countertenor.
[6]

Will Adams: A solid update of turn-of-the-millennium boy band pop, right down to the glitchy breakdowns that BT had once provided them.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Those growly synths on the chorus come so close to having that dog in them (especially at the end when the one guy starts really wailing) but “Down” feels like just one small push away from being properly and satisfyingly OTT.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Sounds like something Jason Derulo would reject on account of lack of subtlety.
[2]

Micha Cavaseno: Back in 2019, I grabbed a TVXQ! single from a used book store close to my family (along with records by xbxrx, Ellen Allien and something else I can’t recall), one of the ones where they still dressed up like Visual Kei artists on the cover. I found it less an interesting record and more a curious artifact given how K-pop has had its faltering existence on this continent for roughly as long as the group in question has been around in some incarnation or another. So as a result, I had to grab the CD in question just as a sort of totem, a weird reminder of where my Twice and Dreamcatcher CD books (with all its extensive paraphernalia) came from. It was more reverence than any sort of eagerness or desire. Listening to TVXQ! is kind of similar to that due to how any comeback single they make relies so much on their importance and not anything in particular that feels like a good song. It’s an R&B Imagine Dragons record of swagger-step that doesn’t feel particularly cool or sexy or beautiful, but you know it’s important! It’s not about actually enjoying it, but about respecting it. It’s unfortunate that I can’t respect them for making records I want to hear in 2023 though.
[3]

Michael Hong: Proven by single “Rebel” from earlier this week, SM’s experiments are still alive. That one might feel tame compared to the best of what they’ve done — it’s further evidence that the company formula has grown rather tiresome — but “Down” feels like nothing more than a set of ticked boxes.
[5]

Dorian offers us a prayer…

[Video]
[8.25]

Dorian Sinclair: OKAN’s invocation of the goddess Oshun has real power to it, and, as befits a deity so strongly associated with water, real depth as well. The layers of percussion, synth and violin are ever-changing, finding new ways to refract off each other as they wrap around Elizabeth Rodriguez’s vocal lead. And what a voice it is — expressive, forceful, and somehow simultaneously commanding and vulnerable. I don’t speak Lucumi, but Rodriguez easily conveys both loss and resilience, as the shifting tides of the instrumentation pool around her.
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The religious services that I have always found meaning within are all exercises in tension and release — the interplay of hunger, memory, and forgiveness embedded within the day long arc of a Yom Kippur service, the slow, trance-like waking of the early-morning Thai Buddhist rituals my mother and aunt would take me to as a kid. “Oriki Oshun” is not of those particular traditions, but it captures in its four minutes a similar build, sticking tight to a perfectly struck groove until the track flowers into something more, a feast of guitars and chants and rushes of drums that feels like exaltation.
[8]

Will Adams: The urgency and energy cultivated in the song’s main section — with bustling percussion, Rodriguez’s commanding vocal, that blazing guitar solo — feels like it could be sustained for over ten minutes. OKAN know better, though, and restrict themselves to four minutes, allowing the silence following the prayer to speak volumes.
[7]

Ian Mathers: That guitar solo feels a bit late period Santana-core in context, but in context it actually really works for me. Even without reading the description on YouTube and knowing the (personal, harrowing) context behind its creation “Oriki Oshun” feels like it earns the sense of drama and grandeur that builds and builds throughout the song.
[7]

Peter Ryan: Magdelys Savigne’s blistering percussion is so overpowering that it took me a few listens to key into Rodriguez’s vital rhythmic violin-work that underpins most of the track, two obvious virtuosos propelling each other from vibey ceremonial first half through a tenacious conclusion. More prayers should have this urgency.
[8]

Michael Hong: As prayer music should be, OKAN’s offering is lively, trading electric guitar licks and urgent drums in exchange for a demand for protection. If the chant offers something repetitive, Rodriguez forces her voice to offer something more, wailing as if wondering if it’s all enough.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: One of the many public narratives about Lido Pimienta was her leadership capabilities for young brown girls. But the best example of leadership is by example; Lido brought OKAN on tour with her, four months after their first album dropped. And in the time since, they have released a second, even better album, collaborated with Bomba Estéreo and Lido again, featured on Miss Colombia and lost a child. They now ask Oshun for protection for their new child’s life, with a stunning violin solo that winds across the branches of the drums and trunk of the bass into an outstretched hand, waiting, the ebbing synth notes a question mark on whether they have received the blessing. A prayer we are all allowed to hear because of Lido.
[10]

Tara Hillegeist: My fondness for popular culture often runs me at odds with my personal interest in leaving a stranger’s grief at their doorstep, out of my earshot, where I believe it belongs unless I’ve already been invited in to share, communally, in their lives beforehand, to such degree that I can no longer credibly accuse myself of being unknown to them anymore. I am not willing to play the thief of another’s sorrows nor call that performance “compassion.” As such, upon being presented with the very real experience inspiring this song’s creation, I personally felt it would be too inappropriate to engage with the song within the confines of the Jukebox format, and thus… I chose to set it aside, until or unless I could find a means to reconcile my own convictions about the use case or lack thereof for a blurb and the material at hand. It’s been about a month since then. What changed my mind?  Well — I couldn’t stop listening to the song itself. And it was somewhere in those listens that I realized I was making a stiff-backed fool of myself for the sake of my principles. It’s difficult to hear something as welcoming, as open, as purely delightful-as-in-“full of delight” as “Oriki Oshun” and feel something besides invited in. This is songcraft as community-healing practice, whatever its origins: a plea rooted in hope, motivated by its grievous origins to kick up a righteous enough noise that it can chase that pain far, far away, where its echoes can reach home no longer. And I, at least, shall not continue to fear dancing with it, together.
[10]

Anna S. brings us another League of Legends tie-in…

[Video]
[5.33]

Katherine St Asaph: Given that each ephemeral member of this hypothetical boy band corresponds to a League of Legends champion, “they’re praying for the death of a rockstar” is indeed an accurate description of the gameplay. Somehow that literal meaning makes the song’s meaning — fame can suck, haters are known to hate — even less compelling.
[4]

Anna Katrina Lockwood: To what do we owe the joy of hearing Baekhyun fuckin’ SING like this–perhaps his freedom from SM’s vocal strictures? His chorus on Heartsteel’s “Paranoia” is a gear I don’t think he’s used before, an effective confidence. The song is totally fun–they’ve competently executed a gleeful K-pop himbo vibe despite Baekhyun being the only actual K-pop person involved. Riot Games nailed the casting as well, with a great interplay between Baekhyun’s anchor chorus and the verses–especially Cal Scruby’s lackadaisical drawl on the first, a great foil to Baekhyun’s tension. The whole thing gives the effect of barreling precariously around a cartoon racetrack with your bros, which is surely intentional. Anyway, “Paranoia” is basically a [7], but I’m adding a discretionary parasocial point. 
[8]

Anna Suiter: Aphelios and Yone were robbed, and doesn’t Kayn’s voice have a little too much editing on it? I think it would’ve been nice if they had given Ezreal a high note, but I’m glad they gave K’sane the bridge. Hope Riot doesn’t keep them in the dungeon for three years like they’re doing with K/DA right now!
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: At least K/DA had hooks! 
[2]

Will Adams: Pop stars > rock stars. We’ve been over this.
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: Props to the producers for not simply churning out the MGK/Mod Sun/Yungblud type beat that the “death of a rock star” lyricism was screaming for. They also understand the importance of proportion and negative space in making big sounds sound big and not just cluttered. Even more so than the fictional boy band in Pixar’s Turning Red, the cast members of Heartsteel could not possibly cohere as a group in real life, which ironically gives the proceedings an air of whimsy and even relative freedom that belie the song’s origins in demographic dial-turning. Baudrillard be praised — hyperreality still has its uses.
[8]

Michael Hong: Not sure anyone here qualifies for “rockstar” status, but sure, go ahead.
[3]

Nortey Dowuona: Telling this is a virtual boyband animated properly with actual different members. They think I’ll fall for Gorillaz but good because Tobi Lou is in it. They’re right. It’s a problem.
[6]

Ian Mathers: The odd joke I’ve made over the years notwithstanding, I genuinely haven’t encountered much of anything in music that makes me feel like I Don’t Understand the Kids These Days. That’s true of the actual *music*, at least. The increasingly common move, post-Gorillaz/Studio Killers/etc., of having that music represented by animations does feel like there’s a generation gap of some kind there (especially and specifically in the form of video game characters, even more so than the whole VTuber thing). I just can’t find anything to get a grasp on, and while I’m not fully a “digital native” (sigh), I say that as someone who’s had online personas since I was prepubescent. From the perspective of the artists, I do understand how you might want to avoid the downsides of fame and fandom in our current era; from the bosses’ side, I get that increased fungibility and brand loyalty are their own rewards. But even if I liked the song a lot more, even if it was a lot less generic, even if “ft. BAEKHYUN, tobi lou, ØZI, and Cal Scruby” meant something more to me than “this could be a throwaway joke from Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” I just don’t think I could ever be interested in the music-video exploits of a bunch of Fortnite skins. And if that’s just one more demarcating line where I’m sitting on the Old side, well, death comes to us all eventually.
[5]

Michael takes us from IRL to URL with this Chinese internet collective…

[Video]
[6.27]

Michael Hong: The last few years have been difficult for physical connection in China; it’s only logical that groups like the collective Shopping Mood and the four-piece BRAINFREEZE have formed from the Internet. Their debut EP attempts to crib the stylings of what they believe to be “hyperpop,” a term that has become a sort of catch-all in the country — as evidenced by “idol” artist Deng Dian, whose label, Sony Music China, cites hyperpop influences on one of his last projects, despite it being only a bit uptempo. But “Debut” is too clean to completely fall within the lineage of hyperpop. It’s pretty girl music, music you put on in the background as you shit-talk and sweet-talk with your friends on a Friday night. BRAINFREEZE points the swirling lyric “trust this dream” at one another as if in promise of connection, whether that’s physical or something more, and deepen it with a final tossed-out “baby, please don’t feel like you are useless.” Over pretty synths, each member is painted golden. Something’s endearing about their broken English; they reject outside voices, but the syrupiness of the song makes their middle-finger salutes lack any bite. And they tie themselves together with the promise of jumping off the roof, a sweet sentiment for how it’s so non-adventurous. A lot of my favourite songs this year — María José Llergo’s “Tencontrao,” Subsonic Eye’s “Yearning,” Leah Dou’s “Monday,” Pasocom Music Club & Mei Takahashi’s “Day After Day” — take a circular phrase, verse, melody, or even just a motif and twist it into a spiral. Llergo’s “look at me and tell me you love me” on its own is impactful, but it’s the repetition, the demand for reassurance, that feels like love. “Day After Day” reframes the circular movement of its undercurrent with one line, “but I realized / those small, boring moments / can also shine / so bright that it melts my heart,” as if regarding each passing flicker of the sun and moon with a contented sigh. I get a similar feeling from the hook of “Debut.” That pitch-shifted “trust this dream” is woven in a graceful circle, as if in realization that this is not a dream but reality, and also in understanding that there’s more beautiful work to come. It’s no accident that the music video for “Debut” starts with BRAINFREEZE in a physical embrace. The song is the corporeal manifestation of their digital bond, a helpless spiral into a deeper affection.
[9]

Taylor Alatorre: The title of “DEBUT,” as well as the “trust this dream” refrain and the synthetic twee motifs, suggest a hopeful yet halting first step in the direction of new encounters. This perhaps explains why its most palpable signs of urgency and its willingness to risk offending the listener are shunted off to the final 30 seconds, by which point an ambivalent first impression has already been made. Never mind the dream for now — the song doesn’t seem to trust itself.
[5]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: It’s frenetic without being completely overstuffed, stimulating if not a tad bit unintelligible. I think I trust it. Maybe.  
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: I think it’s kinda telling all the lyrics are in English. They think we’re a damn lick. They’re right.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Exactly the kind of clumsy single that I’ll always be charmed by. All the voices, and all the ideas they’re clamoring to express, spill out of “Debut” with such a feverish glee that I can forgive the slight feeling that there’s about a minute too much song. It helps that the core vocals-and-synth hook is sturdy enough to withstand the chaos that gradually envelops the track.
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A bit too Spotify Playlist-core for me, but any modishness on display is offset by how easy it all goes down.
[6]

Ian Mathers: This is a lot more chill than I expected from a band called BRAINFREEZE: a perverse statement on multiple levels. Not least because I like the floatiest bits the best.
[6]

Crystal Leww: BRAINFREEZE’s EP is like a sampler through what “hyperpop” has evolved into in the last 24 or so months, in sometimes horrifying ways, but “Debut” gets it right by letting the girls set the tone so that the boys can be soft and pretty, too. I want to bury myself in the chest of the “get away, get away, get away…”, which seems to drift off into a tucked-away dimension. By the time that the track snaps into something more harsh in the final section, I’m already in the clouds.
[7]

Will Adams: It’s got that Porter Robinson vibe: hyperpop swaddled in gauze and delivered with a face-holding-back-tears-emoji smile. “Debut” is pretty to listen to, ephemeral once it ends.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Finally, hyperpop gets its own Owl City.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Listening to stuff like this makes me think that PM Dawn were perhaps too many decades too early (and too many levels un-Good) to be able to achieve their dreams. “Debut” is a perfect slight of disposable sugarfeather. I couldn’t tell you what any of the vocalists do or try that’s worth mentioning, and the production is a nice crochet of nostalgic pastels that isn’t strong enough to support the weight of scrutiny. Oh well, perhaps next time!
[5]

Next, Tim brings us a two-part rumination on life’s end…

[Video]
[7.54]

Tim de Reuse:  It’s a Joan Didion quote, from The Year of Magical Thinking: “You sit down for dinner and life as you know it ends.” Didion continues this train of thought by mulling over “the question of self-pity.” But Kazu Makino has no time for this. She chirps enigmatically: “No pity.” There’s a trickster’s lilt in her enunciation, as if she’s snatching pity away from you. Through both parts of this suite she describes shocks, traumas, getting “hit,” abandoning plans, and deaths that come in an instant, but grief does not find purchase here; her characteristic half-formed sentences flow structureless over gently galloping ostinati, dodging banshee-scream synths, forming too slippery a surface for anything to stick to. “No pity” as a taunt from the ambivalent cruelty of loss, but also “no pity” as in “get up.” Her nonchalance and fragmented delivery make the freight train of grief seem like a momentary tumble, communicating a kind of resilience that full sentences would be too brittle to get across. For a song very much about death, it performs an unthinkable magic trick: it makes it hard to imagine doing anything but continuing on.
[10]

Peter Ryan: Pt. 1 is an allusive moving target, Makino’s voice bending and melding into an echo of the barely dissonant guitar arpeggio line, evoking disaster & shadows of unspecified griefs; at the risk of trying to hear this too literally, Pt 2. tightens the focus on more (but not entirely, of course) specific endings — she dials in the feeling of being far from home when the time comes so artfully, economically, bluntly. More than what’s there, I’m caught by what isn’t — hand-wringing or time for apology. Empathy, yes — “I know you don’t deserve” — but pity, no.
[9]

Alfred Soto: The point of view shifts from “you” to “we” and “her” match the rhythm of a track that won’t stay put. Kazu Makino sings as if she’s comfortable with secrets, perhaps gravely so: her scenario unfolds like overheard shorthand. 
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: Makino’s voice is light and weak. It constantly threatens to go off key, crumple at the pianos in the first half or be cut off once the programmed drums appear, a flat plodding snare driven arrangement that speeds up the second part, but it consistently hovers, refusing to be drowned out. And within the second part, the lilting guitar and piano lingering near the front of the mix settle behind her, little bits of synth trickling out and crackling awake. The first part is tentative and meditative, and her light voice places you in a comfortable stasis, waiting for the softly played drums to fade and you to hang alongside the synths and piano, floating. The brief strums of guitar wake you and Makino’s voice settles onto them, then flits up and onto the snares. “But dying is not so easy” — and neither is singing about it. Maybe the light, weak voice is the right person to voice this anguish and turmoil — a harsher voice couldn’t help but overpower it all. But all our voices are weak when we are vulnerable, afraid, weak. “You sit down for dinner, and the life as you know it ends.” In her voice, it carries weight, it feels exhausted, it’s trying to be at peace. It’s not.
[9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Kazu Makino’s voice is one of my favorites in all of rock music, and this two-parter is one of my favorite showcases of its power. She tosses out melodic phrases with a pithy flair, every word becoming a staccato’d exclamation or wispy curlicue. There’s comfort in hearing someone blurt out something and being able to understand their intent without having a full sense of the lyrics. It’s moving: She sings about death, and her emotions are as legible as a toddler’s half-formed yelps.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: A downtempo first half that’s wistfully compelling like a melancholy afternoon, or like the charred, spent traces of some bygone tension, or for that matter like these last leftover days of the year; then, just as the mood starts to deepen, a midtempo Little Dragonish half that leads to nowhere from nothing.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: It sounds like a bad dream: Brian Eno gone wrong or Jonny Greenwood gone right. That’s the first half; the second is when it turns out this was no dream, and waking life is a bustling drum pattern that hurries about its day while Kazu Makino flails in somnambulant uncertainty. The mix is impeccable; her gasped lines pull across the track like a moving form smudged in a photograph, and we’re drawn into the background details — all those beautiful muted key intricacies — and barely wondering what we might be missing from the great smear that forms the foreground.
[8]

John S. Quinn-Puerta: Mood music for indescribable melancholy punctuated by bouts of restlessness. A soundtrack tailor-made for my in office ennui. Enough to get me off my couch to dance in the stunning second act. 
[9]

Ian Mathers: I am a known hater of songs that split themselves into “Pts. 1 & 2” (or more!) and then just sound like the same thing the whole way through (doesn’t count if the split was to fit within the physical limitations of your recorded medium, of course), so full points to Blonde Redhead for making the split something I could pick out even without seeing track titles. I find the gossamer first part significantly more compelling than the click track-y second, although the latter is still perfectly pleasant. Call them an [8] and a [6], which makes this…
[7]

Michael Hong: Sometimes I eat dinner in silence with my dad — he’s too busy thinking about his work, I’m too in my head about saying the wrong thing. That’s what “Sit Down for Dinner” sounds like with Makino’s deliberated delivery and the TV blaring in the background. It’s the silence that consumes me, the absence of what you’d hope to hear when the whole family’s seated. I can’t make out what Makino means. A lot of the time, it’s the same with my dad — his presence is comforting nonetheless.
[6]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This year for me has felt so often like a series of questions with incongruous answers — never resolution, always further opening. There is a certain satisfaction to be found in that lack of catharsis, pleasure that can be gleaned from the uncertain and unexpected. In its two part structure, “Sit Down for Dinner” captures some of that feeling, the dreamlike amble of its first half mounting not to some grand climax but something equally illusive, a jazzy groove-piece that seems to recede into further fuzziness rather than clarity.
[6]

Harlan Talib Ockey: “Sit Down for Dinner” does capture the deluded anxiety of Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, but it’s also seven minutes long with only strange, fleeting glimpses of a narrative. Circles without haunting.
[5]

Taylor Alatorre: “Adulting is hard / And then you die”
[7]

We just couldn’t help ourselves: Amnesty 2k23 is continuing for a few extra days before wrapping up for good. First, Micha asks us to revisit an artist we last covered eight years ago…

[Video]
[3.75]

Ian Mathers: Whenever we cover someone on the Jukebox I’m not already familiar with, I wind up looking up what I can about the artist/album/song, just for my own edification. In this case, between having a Wikipedia page with a “Sexual assault allegation” subheading, the language I saw her fans using to defend her/defuse said allegations on reddit, and reading the lyrics to “Evil” afterwards… well, I got the ick. (For the record: the genders and identities of the relevant people do not exacerbate or mitigate any of the accusations for me, and even if I grant for the sake of argument the most steel-manned version of Martinez’s defenses, even if her accuser was every bad thing claimed here or else, that still does not eliminate the ick or make me like the song.) And seeing as how I am not a court of law and I can neither punish Martinez in any way nor do I have any desire to do so, having the ick does not need to meet any further burden of proof for me to say I don’t particularly want to hear this one again.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Maybe you shouldn’t make a song about how someone is calling you evil when you abuse your friend’s love and trust and can only say they didn’t tell you that is what you did. That IS evil.
[0]

Taylor Alatorre: Thank you, Melanie Martinez, for deciding to stop making kindercore concept albums with song titles like “Sippy Cup” and “Lunchbox Friends,” so I can listen to your stuff without feeling like I’d be aiming a flamethrower at my eternal soul. “Evil” is still rooted in the rococo fantasy impulses that have animated Martinez’s career — there’s a stock sound effect of an egg being cracked — but it puts them to more workmanlike ends, crafting a realistically spiteful break-up narrative that’s upsetting within the song’s moral universe but not viscerally so in ours. That straight-outta-Guyville guitar chug, steady and reliable as ever, helps ground the spritely vocal theatrics in something tangible, and the decision to let the chorus marinate for a few extra bars was a bold yet correct one. I’m probably grading on a curve due to low expectations, and judging from the Alex Garland-meets-Tim Burton aesthetics, I assume the rest of the album is nothing like this. But still: “tears of oxalate”? That’s one of the most genuinely grunge-sounding lyrics this side of No Code.
[8]

Michael Hong: She snarls and fills the whole thing with cool details (the sound of an egg cracking when she sings, “wanna see the yolk”). Neat moves until the muffled framing lifts, the realization that she’s not the victim of this story, but the girl who once wrote a diss track against someone who leveled accusations of sexual abuse against her.
[0]

Frank Kogan: Interesting vocal, halfway between cute and smoky.
[4]

Alfred Soto: The professionalism of its structure — the hooks go boom-boom — doesn’t endear to me this honing of angst and decent rhymes. 
[4]

Tara Hillegeist: This wouldn’t have been out of place on Everything Is Embarrassing, which does about track for where Martinez’s general inspirations draw from, compared to her contemporaries; she’s still about two decades out of date, only now she’s grown out of her kinderwhore-but-make-it-more-coquette era and settling herself solidly in A&Rechtshai’d also-ran wonderland. To be clear — there’s nothing that is unappealing about that steady grunge-fuzzed bass lick keeping the song grinding along beneath its childish piano twinkling and vocals that sound like they were sung into enough sheets of gauze to cover Martinez’ signature squeaky pitch, with more sheets layered on the squeakier her voice threatens to get. And the lyrics are some of the strongest I’ve seen from her yet; certainly, her target demo could do worse for a self-liberation anthem than a singalong that proves this catchy and caustic beneath the sandpaper faux-distress sonically draped over every word — better this than, say, “Alice Practice“, almost certainly, yes? But I still feel like something’s missing, here, and I wonder what it says about myself and Martinez alike that the best way I can think to articulate that lack is, indeed, to ask all over again, if wincing for different reasons this time than the last: what if she just — acted her age, for once?
[5]

Will Adams: Because I refuse to stop melting my brain on Twitter, I log on daily and am continuously confronted with the fact that Melanie Martinez has many, many fans. Specifically, Stan Twitter, who regularly include her in prompt tweets like “WHICH POP GIRL IS TAKING IT IN 2023” or “YOU HAVE $15. WHAT ARE YOU BUYING” alongside everyone from Lana and Taylor to Charli and Carly. Having only ever heard approximately 1.5 songs of hers, my reaction is always, “is she really that special?” Listening to “Evil,” I hear the appeal: “Kill Bill” cuteness over scuzzy indie pop. I still don’t hear the special.
[3]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: An innovative, path-breaking exercise at the intersection of Yeule and Disney Channel Original Movie Soundtracks.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: This is such a crowded genre, there’s no reason to listen to songs this plodding by people this shitty.
[1]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The plinking piano doesn’t set itself up against the rest of the instrumentation to provide the necessary contrast: her knowing devilishness just comes off poorly rehearsed. The schoolyard chant of a chorus doesn’t help.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: Me, the late Prodigy, and Melanie Martinez all have at one point hailed from the greater Hempstead/Queens area and similarly have a miserable personality. Now, while I am not shooting up Demerol in order to function, nor have I had any issues with sexual assault allegations (P and M, respectively, for those who don’t know), I too suffer from a sort of paranoia and gothic mistrust around the world around me; gothic in the general instability and unreliable nature… and y’know, overbearing maudlin evil spooky shit. Which is why I have always had time for how “cringe” Martinez’s music has read for people with her kinderwhore one-trick pony provocations. I don’t mind the Hot Topic narcissism and edgelord tendencies because at the end of the day, it’s a reminder of how easy it is to believe in truth as victimhood. “See the horns on my head they’re from goddesses; On God.” is easily my favorite non-rap lyric this year to overanalyze because it’s a perfect synthesis of New York ethnic AAVE blended in with faux-feminist self-appointed martyrdom in an alt-rock style. The witches you could not burn wearing fishnets and Timbs, but without any of the seams from such a wave of clichés showing. But whereas Prodigy’s foes were the great peril of fake MCs and/or fake thugs, Martinez’s foe are her own fans. She already demonstrated her obsession with this on the APPALLINGLY BAD K-12 record, one of the worst artistic expressions about “cancel culture” you could ever ask for and a distasteful response to accountability. “Evil” (and most of Portals) is better for avoiding jeering in favor of defiance, yet it still makes me incredibly sad that all Martinez wants to do (like so many people in the world) is see snakes and betrayal, and those who would tear her down and live life in hopeless nihilistic rebellion in any direction. I remember craving that sense of power to mask for my own senses of guilt and cowardice, and how worthless that feels after you’ve had to live on it for so long that it’s all that defines you. Maybe there isn’t a world without armor and thorns, but I wish to God I knew people dreamed about it anymore. It made being unable to believe feel less painful.
[7]

Michelle gets us some metalcore coverage…

[Video]
[6.36]

David Moore: Power music, nu metal revival!
[7]

Michelle Myers: Metalcore is less a genre than an approach. It’s hardcore-shaped music rendered in a metallic palette. In thrown’s case, the hardcore is modern, post-Knocked Loose heavy shit with a tough NYHC beatdown influence. The metal is thuddy, dissonant thall, pitched straight down to the depths of hell. In an interview with Ola Englund, Thrown’s multi-instrumentalist/producer Buster Odeholm said, “It’s 2023. Notes are overrated.” Thrown’s willingness to eschew melody for texture and rhythm lends their music gravitas. The riffs on “On the Verge” are never sterile, and Thrown’s considerable technical prowess doesn’t overshadow the intense emotionality of their music. They don’t need to play fast. They don’t need to squeal like hellspawn. When the breakdown comes, they just chug slower. The new pace allows frontman Marcus Lundquist to add a new layer of despair to his words as he repeats the first verse. “I’ve tried,” he insists, in the past tense, “to come to terms with my mind.” He doesn’t need to tell you it was an unsuccessful attempt.
[9]

Brad Shoup: One of my favorite bits is “Nuggets, but for __”. If it worked for garage rock–a very bad style of music–why wouldn’t it work for Eurodance or gabber or freestyle? Or metalcore? This would be one for the Children of Nuggets box: the anguish is rendered from a very old and muddy palette. (Referencing “demons” is bad enough; did they really have to rhyme it with “screaming”?) But to their credit, they take their torment and swing it against a brick wall. The track, frankly, slams: the breakdown is sick, the klaxon-like guitar ostinato and rap sample are a nice nod to the massively influential (!) Linkin Park. Another hint we’re dealing with a new generation of metalcore: they’re out in a breezy 2:15.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Satisfyingly chunky, like a good peanut butter. After the relative velocity of the opening salvo, it’s a nice change when they downshift into something more stompy. Kind of wish they kept it there, but this is so short I can just play it again.
[7]

Will Rivitz: If not for the TikTokicity of this song — phonk-inflected intro and interlude, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridges-are-for-suckers structure — you could have convinced me this came out in 2007. As that was the last time this type of -core featured regularly in my musical diet, I don’t mind the throwback at all.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: This wasn’t my thing then, and it still isn’t my thing if you add a Tyga intro.
[4]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: I’m mostly interested in this as a barrage of textures: the phonk intro, the revved-up guitars 40 seconds in, the breakdown’s constant pummeling, the way things cohere in the final seconds. And yet, I still feel shortchanged — there’s not enough time for the heaviness to really hit you.
[5]

Nortey Dowuona: The snare drum is the most underrated drum in music. It settles a song, makes it translatable and danceable — a space for vocalists, other instrumentalists and a poet — but it rarely gets as much praise and love as the bass drum or the kick or the hihats. Here, the snare punctuates the frothy guitar and drowned bass and drags the song back to earth, allowing one to get immersed as the song lurches to a stomp, then a hop, a jog, all made possible by the snare.
[8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Linearly gets more conventional (and less interesting) with time; I was so disappointed when it switched from the very fun groove-like riff of the first half to the more pounding downward spiral of the B section that I immediately ran back to the start of the song.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: One of the more fascinating things about the death of rapper XXXTentacion is just how effectively he helped bring dirtbag aggro rock energy back from seeming death. His flirtations with “screamo” and “nu-metal” (themselves emulating the work of fellow post-Raider Klan rapper Bones) led to a bunch of kids in rap and rock alike taking his DNA and merging it into filthy Adidas Rock wallows, whether for aesthetic purposes or genuine appreciation. “On the Verge” is the same beatdown hardcore knucklescrapes that I’ve heard for decades, but until fairly recently your average rap homages were funk beats or a guy rambling about his third eye, not fake Memphis-style loops or Marcus Lundqvist barking in a Three Six-style staccato pattern. I can’t help but be taken with the idea that we live in a world that’s slightly discolored even in the monochrome.
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: I spent the better part of a week trying to gather my thoughts for a blurb that would weave together digressions on the etymology of “metalcore,” the history of abortive nu metal revivals, the performance of masculine self-loathing, and the ethnomusicology of hardcore shows. Had the footnotes ready and everything. Then, after around my 37th time listening to the mini-breakdown before the chorus (“well I cannot fucking wait“), the urge to write had dissipated completely, and the urge to slam had taken hold. I am no longer thinking about what the next word in this sentence will be; I am astral projecting myself from my office chair into a violently teeming mass of bodies that I’m several years too old to safely be a part of. I am at war, I am at peace; I have given up.
[7]