Pop music and I have a tenuous relationship. I have tried for years to be a better poptimist, letting myself get lost in the catchy singalongs and feel-good beats. But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that most pop music is just vapid and corny.
But every once in a while, a pop singer will rise from the din of mass-produced hacks and sugar-coated copycats to create something truly special.
Michael Jackson was one of them. Lady Gaga is another. And now, we have Lorde.
After Hummingbird, Local Natives got busy. In 2013, they played a total of 188 shows, a figure that earned them the title of the hardest working band in the world from NME.
While the instrument-hopping arrangements on Hummingbird were born out of necessity (having lost their bassist an album earlier), after nearly 200 shows they became quite familiar in their skin.
So when they went to record its follow up, they weren’t afraid to push boundaries and adopt new sonic palettes. They knew what their voice sounded like.
Which is good news, because Sunlit Youth is a massive departure.
I’m a big Gorillaz fan. And while their unique brand of sadistic pop stands on its own, part of Damon Albarn’s talent is assembling the best collaborators possible. When I first heard Plastic Beach, I was immediately drawn to “Empire Ants,” and I set off to learn more about Sweden’s Little Dragon.
A week later, this record was on my turntable. Continue reading
Electronic music is often dismissed as cold and emotionless—a monotonous musical form that is too sleek to let any real humanity in. And it’s not like it requires any real skill to perform.
Those criticisms are rarely levied against LCD Soundsystem though.
Yesterday, I told the story about how Imogen Heap turned me into a poptimist. And while that narrative informed much of the narrative for that post, this record actually deserves most of the credit for that.
Because if we’re going linearly (rather than alphabetically), the moment that shattered my aversion for all things pop was when I logged onto MySpace and listened to the featured track of the week: a mournful, vocoder-only ballad called “Hide and Seek.”
In the fall of 2005, I started my freshman year of college. I was a certified scene kid: I wore girl pants and band t-shirts, painted my nails black. Almost everything I listened to was guitar-based.
Then, I discovered this record (and its spiritual sequel, Imogen Heap’s Speak For Yourself).
And God as my witness, it made me a poptimist.
Throughout their career, Kraftwerk had operated in the tension between their humanity and the cold mechanical tools they employed to compose their music.
But on The Man-Machine, they fully embrace their robotik tendencies without apology.
While Autobahn found Kraftwerk embracing a more robotik sound than their early largely-improvised avant-garde Krautrock, it still had a few fleshy bits sticking to its chrome exoskeleton.
Trans-Europe Express finds their cybernetic mutation nearly complete.
Before there was Daft Punk, there was Kraftwerk. The storied German electronica pioneers were playing with vocoders and pretending to be robots decades before the French duo picked up their LED-infused helmets.
But Kraftwerk wasn’t always the inorganic collective they’re remembered for. And while Autobahn is the first album to feature their signature robotic sound, it doesn’t stay there forever.
Austin, TX natives Explosions in the Sky have long been celebrated as the standard bearers of patient, cinematic guitar-led, climax-chasing post rock.
Their huge delay-soaked guitar riffs and narrative-based composition have led them to write a number of soundtracks.