Last Reviews Round Up (for now)
Hi hi ! Thanks for visiting this space. This is my final roundup as a freelance writer. As i close my time as a freelancer, I wanted to share the last of my reviews before starting my new job. Gonna start writing on my own now. So get excited, if you wish. Okay. Now onto the reviews…
MICHELLE AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS Canvasback/Atlantic Records, Feburary 25th, 2022 | Key Tracks: SYNCOPATE, FIRE ESCAPE, MY FRIENDS
If you’ve spent any time sucked into the world of TikTok, you undoubtedly landed yourself in one of the social platform’s distinctive hyper-niches. From clips of funky cooking tutorials to day-in-the-life montages and DIY yard projects (or our favorite, AudiophileTikTok!), what ties these disparate universes together are narratives of authentic people with hearts on full display — free-flowing, seemingly disjointed, but somehow woven together in a scrolling continuum of vivacity and expression. On their debut record, the NYC collective MICHELLE builds a strikingly parallel meditation, one overflowing with delight and built with youthful vibrancy. AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS waltzes through heartbreak, innocent love, self-care, and unburdened friendship in triumphant, confidant swagger. With lusciously stacked vocal timbre, popping percussion, and warm fuzzy synthesizers, the record oozes joy with a collection of slow-jam R&B and indie-pop bangers.
MICHELLE’s sonic landscape is lush, hook-filled, and crisp. The sextet builds a dexterous instrumental foundation led by band members Charlie Kilgore and Julian Kaufman’s production. Atop, the swirling energies of Sofia D’Angelo, Layla Ku, Emma Lee, and Jamee Lockard, trade bars, melodies, and the occasional ad lib. On “SYNCOPATE,” a heart-thumping groove rocks underneath a glorious declaration of affection for the one you love. “LOOKING GLASS” and “SPACED OUT, PHASED OUT” are awash with immense sonic and lyrical sentiments of dissociation in life’s most challenging stretches. “MY FRIENDS,” a celebration of those closest to us, brings the record to a close with expressive trumpet squawks and a tasty extended piano coda. A little rough around the edges and a little blurry in its boundaries, but soul-filling if you lean in far enough, AFTER DINNER WE TALK DREAMS delivers a satisfying breath of fresh air and a gentle nudge that anything is possible with a posse of friends. Never sell pop music short. In addition to what it can tell us about ourselves, it’s a spirited reminder of our own bond to the greater world that we’re all spinning on. © William Card/Qobuz
Aldous Harding Warm Chris 4AD, March 25th, 2022 | Key Tracks: Tick Tock, Fever
Crossing a puddle in the rain can be perilous: the calculation of jumping force; the angle of attack; how to stick the landing. While often there is a roundabout path to avoid the literal depths of uncertainty, inevitably, we land in a squishy mess — one we thought was just past the soles of our sneakers but encompasses our entire ankle (yuck!). But in the same way, chasm-presenting puddles are often only as deep as our imagination builds them to be. Inside the world of Warm Chris, Aldous Harding offers an eerily analogous taut 10-track package of baroque, fanciful indie-pop jaunts with a disarming depth and lucid melodic transfixion. Each track simmers with an air of lightness and approachability. Once inside, the record’s surprising profundity is realized with explorations from the literal to the sweeping imagination.
Warm Chris employs bouncy piano riffs, warm fuzzy baselines, cozy horn honks, and vocal performances stretching from barbed lyrical delivery to slippery mumbling murmurs. Written in bits by Harding in her native New Zealand and elsewhere, and recorded at Rockfield Studios (the storied Welsh countryside recording complex which has hosted Oasis, Robert Plant, Coldplay, Queen, and more), Warm Chris has a sense of insulation and surrounding celestial timelessness. Harding reunites with producer John Parish (best known for his work with PJ Harvey), continuing a creative partnership that began with Aldous’ strikingly intimate 2017 project, Party. The sonic palettes the duo captures most notably flow from this partnership to frame the stage for Harding’s various narrative perspectives. The album opener’s soft marching shuffle and burbling layered hums pull the listener through the veil of Harding’s creative world; a varied, intimate, and curious setting. On “Tick Tock,” an encounter between two substance-users with aimless conversational musing, a slide-guitar-laced and sing-songy chorus bounces from person-to-person in casual exchanges. The strutting album highlight “Fever,” features a juicy piano lick and vibrant vocal passages cascading into a lush horn arrangement underpinning a story of two criss-crossing romantic souls trading accounts of one night under the light of the moon. The track presents a crystallized example of how the album, rather than ruminating from a single perspective, mingles and spins many views for the listener to poke, prod, and fully feel. Warm Chris is a funhouse — fuzzy and inviting, full of sweet, melodic and imaginative disjunction that grows richer right when you least expect. © William Card/Qobuz
Destroyer LABYRINTHITIS Merge Records, March 25th, 2022 | Key Tracks: It’s In Your Heart Now, Tintoretto, It’s for You
Labyrinthitis is a medical condition (inflammation in the inner ear which results in hearing loss, a sense of dizziness and vertigo) that seems to result in an unsettling state of being. In the opening moments of Destroyer’s latest album of the same name, a crackling drum loop and orchestra tune-up are swept into an eerily similar abstraction of space and sound that cocoons the listener from all sides. This panoramic dizzying state is constant throughout LABYRINTHITIS, but inside that envelope are dotted pockets of cynical lyrical subversion, insoluble anxious questioning, and restful acceptance. It’s a sonic bath so thick and luscious with the hypnotic, woozy wistfulness of frontman and maestro Dan Bejar’s voice guiding us through the fog. LABYRINTHITIS’ lyrical and sonic statements appear as non-sequitur. Still, when lifted out of line-by-line analysis, their meanings extend an invitation to get lost in their arcane maze. Because no matter where you end up, Bejar and his band have got your back.
Mainly written in 2020 and pieced together through early 2021 with frequent-collaborator and fellow-New Pornographer John Collins, LABYRINTHITIS is a continuation of Destroyer’s cerebral, life-is-messy-so-embrace-it revelation. Bejar has said that his lyricism has a “hermetic” and “unconscious” stream of consciousness, which is highlighted in “June.” Muted bass bounces and synthesizer glimmers open to Bejar proclaiming “Fancy language dies, and everyone’s happy to see it go” into decisive reflections that wage workers are “Happy to strike for more pay.” While seemingly unrelated, Bejar’s wandering slurs weave the different ideas together (Consider a title like “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread”). Shrouded in a misty sheen, the instrumental soundscapes of LABYRINTHITIS are another striking high point. Crashing keyboards, driving drum patterns, muted horn honks, and pulsating synthesizers speckle the vistas of each track. “Tintoretto, It’s for You” (yes, like the Italian painter) and “The States” are serpentine with no predictable structure, but imbue a sense of meditation amidst swirling destruction their very lyrics are describing. Destroyer’s hazy, scalable labyrinth is anchored by the distinctive paradox of feeling lost and self-assured, all in the same swing. A fitting illustration for the world at the time this record arrives. © William Card/Qobuz
Sharon Van Etten We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong Jagjaguwar, May 6th, 2022 | Key Tracks: Darkness Fades, Mistakes
Sharon Van Etten observed a binding interplay between the experience of loss and growth over the last 24 months as our world has shared innumerable tangible and metaphorical endings and beginnings. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, is her 10-track meditative blueprint to make sense of the connective human experience, while immersed in societal trauma, and the resulting transformations. One of Van Etten’s many songwriting talents is her distillation of emotional complexity into innately resonate lyrical passages. 2010’s Epic demonstrated the simple, pliable prowess of her songcraft; We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is an assured extension to this. “Darkness Fades” opens with soft fingerpicking, and Van Etten’s smooth, warbling melodic voice crooning for life’s metaphoric night to end: “I’m dreaming of a place/ I held close in a state/ Darkness fades.” Frustration and gnarly, synth-backed instrumentation fuel “Anything” and “Headspace” with anxious, innocent curiosity leaning to overwhelmed, dissociative numbing. “Come Back” longs to reconnect with a distant partner. “Darkish,” an album highlight, fuses lyrical sentiment and akin sonic textures. Backed by chunked suspended guitar chords and Van Etten’s solo vocal, a message of resilience resonates abound. Throughout a decade-plus career, Sharon Van Etten has offered a body of work swaddled in empathy, companionship, and vulnerability. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is a new chapter that carries a bespoke urgency embracing a strewn, beautifully messy portrait of life. This record reminds us that solace is cultivated where the gradients of light and dark revel, and where our mending hearts have the space and time they need to heal. © William Card/Qobuz
Maria Chiara Argiró Forest City Innovation Leisure, May 6th, 2022 | Key Tracks: Bonsai, Home
Even from its detached, lonesome opening, Maria Chiara Argirò’s latest record, Forest City, exudes a hopeful imagination. Filled with sweeping electronic compositions, rich with melodic muscle, and marked by delicate atmospheric textures, Forest City captures the vivid dichotomy of sprawling urban cityscapes meeting the organic beating-hum of nature’s cyclical beginnings and endings. Argirò is a prolific creative collaborator and live performer whose previous projects span a handful of solo releases, touring with post-punk rockers These New Puritans, a lush jazz hybrid record with guitarist Jamie Leeming (2020’s Flow), and an ethereal collaboration with London jazz percussionist Riccardo Chiaberta (2021’s “Mahi Mahi”). In Forest City, Argirò returns to her own. It’s an excursion of her collective experiences liberated through the structureless sonic boundaries of electronica and jazz harmonics. On “Home,” a nodding hum is enveloped through tweaked and chopped oscillating arpeggios. “Greenarp” finds Argirò’s airy, atmospheric vocals over pillowy synthesizers, leaving the listener surrounded in a quaint solace of meditative relief. Club-minded “Bonsai” radiates as the album’s centerpiece. Propulsive percussive patterns and sliced vocal hums canter underneath luscious cascading waves of opulent sonic bliss — each moment extending and teeming with organic energy. A singular muted horn pierces the silence at the pinnacle of this track, clearing room for a satisfying conclusion of dissipating ambient energy. With a brilliant kaleidoscopic fusion of jazz textures and spatially-bound electronica, Argirò elevates and transports the listener to a place eerily similar, but profoundly distinct, from our world. Forest City’s curious spirit bubbles with a sanguine glow and invites the listener to dive deep into its glistening sonic sea. © William Card/Qobuz
