None of These Are the Song of the Summer Though

[yasaman]

Guess I'm just going to be posting once a month now? WHOOPS. Anyway, here's a post about music I've been listening to lately. It is a wild ride that careens through many radically different genres, and some of it was released this year, and some of it wasn't.

• Julianna Barwick put out a new album this year, Will, and it's as luminous and lovely as her work usually is. She loops and layers her lovely voice over ambient noise and/or spare instrumentals to create expansive sonic landscapes. "St. Apolonia" is especially gorgeous, as is "Nebula." This is some good meditative calming and/or sleep music, the aural equivalent of being on a lake in a boat open to the sky, being gently lulled to sleep by the waves.
• Seratones: GOOD OLD FASHIONED LADY ROCK. A lady, rocking out. It's catchy and sly and fun. I have enjoyed their (debut?) album Get Gone. "Necromancer" is my favorite.
• The Very Best's album MTMTMK is album full of extremely danceable afro-pop. See "Rumbae."
• Palmistry's debut full length Pagan was sold to me as "minimalist dancehall", which, WELL-PLAYED, ITUNES. I do love me some minimalist music, and also I love dancehall. I also like this, though I feel kind of weird about how said minimalist dancehall is made by an Irish white dude. To his credit, he's not making any claim on dancehall, per se, just saying his particular brand of bedroom electronica is dancehall-inspired. For my part, I love how closely mixed this album is, the tender and sweet vocals high up in the mix so the effect is one of a bedroom croon set against chilly and spare synths. If you like the xx, you'll probably like this. "Club Aso" and "Beamer" are my favorites.
• Sarah Neufeld's Hero Brother is precisely my jam of post-minimalist violin music. Most of this is solo violin, with occasional wordless singing, but it's mostly the violin and the space of the room she's recording in talking. It's lovely, sometimes sere, and sometimes full and rollicking. The title track sounds almost Appalachian-influenced.
• Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld collaborated together on an album called Never Were the Way She Was, and uh, I'm not gonna lie, this is not precisely easy music to listen to. You know when you get to weirdass genre labels like "avant-garde" and "post-impressionist jazz" that you're about to listen to some weird shit. However, you can blame Olafur Arnalds' Late Night Tales mix for this, because he put "And Still They Move" on it, and I found it beautiful and haunting. Turns out "And Still They Move" is probably the most straightforward thing on the album, because the rest is something of an immersive sonic assault, an astonishing depth and volume of sound produced from solely Stetson's bass saxophone, Neufeld's violin, and occasionally both their voices. It's all acoustic, no looping or anything, and it's amazing. "The Sun Roars Into View" is transporting, and "The Rest of Us" is an exhilarating, galloping sonic assault of a piece of music.
• Public Service Broadcasting, because sometimes you want to listen to a concept album about the space race, titled, not surprisingly, The Race for Space. Not sure what genre they count as? They splice actual historical audio snippets into electronic/live music. It's pretty cool, and will probably give you a lot of SPACE FUCK YEAH emotions if you're anything like me. "Sputnik" is probably my favorite for its use of Sputnik's ping as the rhythm, aside from the propulsive b-side "Korolev." Also this is good workout music. YOU CAN FEEL LIKE AN ASTRONAUT.
• Lord Huron's dark, folky Strange Trails holds together very well as an album, but I can rarely get past the first song, as I end up playing it on repeat. "Love Like Ghosts" is kind of perfect, and I love the lyrics: "yes I know that love is like ghosts, oh a few have seen it, but everybody talks."
• James Blake's new album The Colour in Everything is maybe longer than it needs to be, but it's still great, melancholy and delicately crafted to hang between soul, dubstep, and R&B. "I Need a Forest Fire" features bonus Bon Iver.
• Penny & Sparrow, for when you just want to listen to dudes tenderly harmonizing with exquisite longing while strumming guitars. "Finery" is just pretty, with a sweet ache.
• Polica's latest album United Crushers is good, but I'm most stuck listening to "Berlin" and having Steve/Bucky emotions about it. AHAHA OTP HELL.
• Massive Attack have a new EP out! It's great, because Massive Attack. Title track "Ritual Spirit" is the one I've had on repeat. (Also I like the video.)
• Imarhan is a Tuareg band from Algeria, a little like Tinariwen, but they're a little more kicky and with more funk influence. NPR's All Songs Considered introduced me to them, and I liked their album as much as I liked Tinariwen's latest.

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comments there.