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luuurien · 5 months

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Garrett Atterberry - Vectrex

(Electropop, Synthpop, Alt-Pop)

Garrett Atterberry’s third full length pulls out every trick he has, breakbeats and psychedelic rap and dramatic balladry all part of Vectrex’s brilliant formula. It’s a colorful, bold, and lovingly overstuffed album that makes the most of his maximalist production and greater confidence as a vocalist.

☆☆☆☆½

Garrett Atterberry’s music is a combination of luxurious pop and a messy interior world, his sound the result of endless self-teaching and a constant pursuit of connection. It’s what made the best moments of his sophomore album Fairchild Channel F, surprise turns into pop rock and industrial dance-pop and atmospheric indie folk surprising but always delightful despite how far off course they veered, his wonderfully layered production and subtle vocals the throughline for it all. In the last two years, though, he’s further refined his style while holding onto all its distinctive qualities, his third and latest album Vectrex a loving overstuffed album that makes the most of his maximalist production and greater confidence as a vocalist, still jumping between genres and placing every texture he can fit in there but tightening the hooks and committing to a cohesive atmosphere even if he’s focused on playful hyperpop or brooding pop rap. It feels much longer than its 37 minute runtime because of how much is going on, pulling you into Atterberry’s world and balancing out weighty pop songs with slow jams and atmospheric electronica until there’s few other pop albums this year able to match its addictive formula. Vectrex knows what makes good pop stick and fuses it with his impossibly detailed production - it’s easy to see why it sticks the landing.

Atterberry’s writing and tone haven’t changed much, still painting in broad strokes with lyrics focused on heartbreak and mental instability, but it’s the triumphant tone and reinforced core of the music he uses to hold Vectrex together. Lead single Waste builds on its industrial percussion and buzzing pads with swirling vocoders that makes its anxious pining thick and overwhelming, later released in the warmth of The Road Home and Flatline Hotline’s final plea for understanding, the outline of Vectrex’s narrative found in the push-and-pull between waiting on connection and all the hope and anger between those few moments of release. The album’s first half is a killer six-track run, going from Sunshine (Like a Butterfly)’s apocalyptic electropop into the explosive back-to-back synthpop of Executioner and Heart Racer into the murky pop rap cut Mayday and Remains’ gorgeous drum and bass, culminating in the fiery centerpiece Light for a finale of jersey club drums and gospel harmonies - spreading the album out track by track might seem straightforward, but it outlines how Atterberry’s music can change in an instant, always pushing the boundaries of what can fit into his wiry electronica. There’s dozens of things to point out in any song here, be it Heart Racer’s panning arcade synths or the vocal sampling in New Vortex fully revealed in the outro, Vectrex filled with all these little things that make the full experience so fulfilling, sitting squarely in the sound and energy of homemade pop and operating on the idea that being able to make music on your own time should result in the fullest sound possible. Atterberry’s got as much time as he desires to pull off his vision, and Vectrex reaps the highest possible rewards from that.

All this detail can come at a cost to clarity, which is where the few rough spots of Vectrex reveal themselves. Vocal harmonies can feel unevenly balanced due to Atterberry’s lower voice and the digital effects needed to add those higher octaves, Sunshine (Like a Butterfly)’s chorus noticeably muddy between the thick chord layers and electric guitars and noisy drumming, while the undeniably lovely The Road Home is mixed quieter to fit in Atterberry’s dark bass voice, leading guest vocalist TaylorMae to stick out in her verse - none of these little things are enough to cause any major issues, but Atterberry’s fine tuning of the production for himself can leave features and certain instrumentation exposed much more than the rest, the monumental force of his music still tailored foremost to him. That’s not to say there aren’t fantastic features: hyperpop darling saoirse dream makes an appearance on the penultimate Flatline Hotline with a short and sweet verse atop its breakbeat drumming and thick piano chords; That Guy Veezy drops one of his strongest verses to date on the trippy final half of Mayday; shoegazer Divine Intentions layers their voice in hyperpop voice filters for the ear candy chorus of Heart Racer; but these features are given distinct sections where the production can be brought down to their level, whereas TaylorMae or The Arizon don’t fit in nearly as tight in their respective tracks. Regardless, Vectrex's uncompromising nature and passionate energy takes it all the way to the finish line, Atterberry’s quest for a steady path diverging across twelve lovely songs that make it clear how powerful he is with a specific and singular goal in mind.

A ton of ideas in just 37 minutes, Vectrex makes good on its promises, not a moment going to waste as Atterberry creates synthpop as catchy as it is adventurous. He never loses sight of what makes his music tick, even when drifting off into drum and bass or moody piano ballads, always daring to add one more level to his music and see how he can twist and turn it to fit somewhere in the mix. There’s no telling where he might go, but when he does reveal it the results are always electrifying - how many other albums would be so ambitious as to include a romantic dream pop cut between two of its heaviest electronic songs? It’s a joy from start to finish, cataloging the emotional waves of an uneven relationship and the loneliness that comes with every moment. His writing may speak of insecurity and confusion, but his music undoubtedly is not: Vectrex knows what it wants to be, and Atterberry materializes its every wish. He may still be doing it all on his own, but it’s tough to imagine him doing it any other way, Vectrex’s galactic pop achieved completely on his own terms. It’s a lot, and that’s exactly how he pulls you in.

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luuurien · 5 months

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Jeff Rosenstock - HELLMODE

(Power Pop, Pop Punk, Indie Rock)

With a luxurious studio and financial support from Polyvinyl, Jeff Rosenstock lowers the heat on his fifth studio album so gorgeous textures and catchy indie rock can take precedent. Despite HELLMODE’s shift in sound and resources, Jeff Rosenstock remains confident in his sharp-witted, reflective punk rock.

☆☆☆☆½

Jeff Rosenstock’s never made concessions to the music industry, even with Emmy nominations under his belt. The now 41-year-old musician has been a lynchpin in modern punk, from Bomb the Music Industry!’s rebellious power pop to his ska-punk collective The Arrogant Sons of Bitches fusing atmospheric and playful post-2000s indie rock with skank rhythms and melodic hardcore riffing, his solo career starting with 2015’s We Cool? taking those core values to even greater heights. But after over eight years of creating music on his own terms, Rosenstock took up the opportunity to record his next album at EastWest studios, a recording space best known for fostering the luxurious pop of Pet Sounds and I Will Always Love You, experimenting with echo chambers and studio trickery to give HELLMODE a distinct shine. It’s easily his prettiest album to date, replacing the blown-out mixing of 2020’s NO DREAM with glittery lead guitars and sugar-coated performances, HELLMODE Rosenstock’s answer to the past few years of lockdown and massive social upheavals. Where his last album sought respite in disorientation, HELLMODE aims its efforts towards Rosenstock’s privileges and paranoia to use them as fuel for the long haul. Rosenstock’s been fighting for independence and community since the start of his career, and expensive studio sessions have only served to heighten his message.

Despite the pristine mixing and catchy, melody-focused instrumentation, HELLMODE isn’t far from Rosenstock’s past albums: HEAD’s ferocious synth punk comes right out of the gate three minutes into the album; LIKED U BETTER nods to ska with its offbeat guitars and vocal chants; the seven-minute closer 3 SUMMERS is one of the loveliest songs in Rosenstock's discography; his use of EastWest’s resources to heighten the effect of his already fantastic power pop rather than try and reinvent it results in tamer but songs able to balance warmth and clarity with the euphoria rush of double-time rhythms and syncopated basslines. He also leans further into acoustic cuts and smooth indie rock to create distinct peaks and valleys rather than his usual barrage of killer punk rock, HEALMODE a sensitive singer/songwriter track allowing him to explore his new relationship with Los Angeles after relocation from his longtime home of Brooklyn, city rain and pine needles revealing a romanticism and gentleness rarely seen in his music, while something like the mellow first half of DOUBT slowly builds into its explosive final quarter, sludgy changes and one final crescendo into double time a glorious payoff from Rosenstock’s reserved and careful performance at the beginning. HELLMODE doesn’t use all the extra production polish and instrumental details to distract you from the core of these songs, Rosenstock instead keeping the music simple so all the extra effects stay exciting and fresh - he may be recording in the same studio that brought about Let’s Get It On, but he uses all those extra flavors sparingly.

Fitting to HELLMODE's musical renovations, Rosenstock’s writing finds itself less anxious and detached, focused on the future and continuing to fight against systemic injustices despite how slow progress can be. WILL U STILL U opens the album with questions of commitment and forgiveness that permeate the entire tracklist, its overarching worries of how far someone can extend their understanding before needing to fight back (“Will you still love me after I’ve fucked up? / After I’ve shown I don’t deserve your trust / …And would you transcend time and space so you can punch my stupid face”) brought about in GRAVEYARD SONG’s calls for destruction and HEALMODE’s desire for simple, uncomplicated connection, but also in the exhaustion from watching the world continue to spiral in the exhilarating skate punk highlight FUTURE IS DUMB and HEAD’s fiery outpour of anger towards republican pundits and violence against protestors, Rosenstock aware of the resources and opportunity he has and the responsibility inherent to it. He directly speaks of that culpability in tracks like 3 SUMMERS and FUTURE IS DUMB, the acute awareness of how your privileges affect others and trying to do as little damage as possible making Rosenstock’s most electrifying songs to date, the same language and message he’s been pushing since the start of his career given a new frame of reference as he entrusts his music to carry those ideas further than he could alone. It’s no surprise, then, that despise HELLMODE being the most expensive album of his career, Rosenstock still released it entirely for free a day early on his Quote Unquote Records website, still championing for artistic independence even with all the other worries hanging over him - he may not be able to change the entire world, but still takes every small chance to do what he believes is right.

It’s easy to imagine any of HELLMODE’s songs slotting somewhere on one of his previous albums, but the album remains distinct in how its eleven tracks reign Rosenstock in together, a prettier and less overwhelming album from him than ever before that’s still unpredictable and fun. He uses the extra funding given to him by Polyvinyl how he wants to, creating some of the loveliest pop punk in recent years that’s true to him in every way, doubtful and comedic and full of energy with excellent musicianship to back it all up. It’s not particularly surprising hearing him sing about the music industry or relationships or capitalism, but HELLMODE engages with the fuller spectrum of Rosenstock’s emotions, exploring his convictions through both furious punk rock and contemplative fingerpicked guitar, his storytelling sent through more than the usual power pop and indie rock and coming out the other side with one of his strongest releases yet. HELLMODE is simple, but that’s why it works: Jeff Rosenstock’s always known his music’s purpose, and what’s here is no different. His explosive, existential calls to action remain necessary as ever, and a new coat of paint is all he needed to make HELLMODE this year’s premier rock album. If you’ve liked Jeff Rosenstock before, there’s everything to love about HELLMODE.

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luuurien · 6 months

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High Pulp - Days in the Desert

(Jazz Fusion, Nu Jazz, Jazz Funk)

High Pulp’s new album explores wider expanses and drier, smoother jazz-funk, drawing on the psychedelia of their previous album while grounding the music in thicker instrumentation and bolder compositions. Rather than sweeping you into its world, Days in the Desert lets you marvel at its vastness from up high.

☆☆☆½

Though born in Seattle, High Pulp’s music feels attuned to the sweltering heat and quiet intensity of Los Angeles (where two of its members now reside), their music seeking to transcend the cold and rainy Pacific Northwest with futuristic nu-jazz and dreamy fusion compositions. The sextet’s Anti- debut, Pursuit of Ends, played off traditional jazz fusion with hints of dub and breakbeat in the margins, an immersive if overstuffed introduction to the band’s atmospheric jazz-funk, High Pulp continuing to draw on those ideas in their latest album Days in the Desert. Inspired by the Mojave desert the band drove across throughout their tours as well as reviving charts that were shelved during the pandemic, Days in the Desert plays out both like a new beginning and a change of pace for the group, building each song piece by piece and file-sharing until the songs found their final form, pulling influence from ‘90s alternative rock and lounge revival groups like Tortoise and Stereolab to give the album a smooth, low-key feel compared to Pursuit of Ends’ grander psychedelia. In turn, the album ends up a more enjoyable listen with its own unique hiccups along the way. It’s got all the same strengths as their previous releases, and Days in the Desert’s smaller scope highlights it all more than ever.

At its core, Days in the Desert doesn’t change the formula all too much: drummer Bobby Granfelt stills finds the most excitement in snappy breakbeats and minimal embellishments; Andrew Morrill and Victor Nguyen’s alto and tenor saxophone work respectively plays off one another during their individual sections while also locking in for gorgeous harmonic parts; the dual keyboard work of Antoine Martel and Rob Homan adds all those warm synth textures and extra rhythmic push; Scott Rixon’s bass playing is as study and in the pocket as ever. What has changed, through, is how these elements work in context, High Pulp unable to record these in person due to pandemic restrictions and making their music more linear and defined as a result, solo sections still important to their sound but nowhere near as prevalent as they were on Pursuit of Ends as they make room for James Brandon Lewis to solo in the second half of Dirtmouth or subtly sneak Jeff Parker’s delicate guitar playing into the corners of centerpiece Unified Dakotas. This lack of live-recorded intensity, that player-to-player communication naturally blooming through playing with one another, can be a detriment to the album in its slower sections - Slaw’s blocky percussion and hushed instrumentation is too restrained to really pull you in and Fast Asleep doesn’t build on its instrumentation and makes for a sluggish point in the second half - but the heavier tracks on offer like Never in My Short Sweet Life and its fantastic Mononeon feature or (If You Don’t Leave) The City Will Kill You chugging groove and soaring tenor leads show how High Pulp’s sweltering nu-jazz can work even when one member isn’t right in the spotlight. Days in the Desert knows its atmosphere, and keeps you coasting up and over its sandy expanse with the band’s unconventional take on jazz and alt-electronica.

One of the year’s most refreshing jazz listens, Days in the Desert offers a wonderful take on jazz fusion with the band loosening the screws to be able to make their music from a distance, shimmering ambient pieces and fluid jazz-funk brought down to eye level and letting you explore it to the fullest extent. Rather than returning to the skies, High Pulp ground themselves in the limitations put on them by the world and letting their music act as a breath of fresh air, able to wander when the band couldn’t and allow them to work together regardless of their physical separation. These songs are weary and restless, but they’re full of magic, too: Days in the Desert may keep the sun on your face, but the feeling of relief when the music blows against your face makes every moment worthwhile.

#high pulp #days in the desert #anti-#electronic #jazz #jazz funk #nu-jazz #2023 #7/10 #album review #album reviews #music review #music reviews #new music #music recs #new albums 2023 #2023 music #luuurien

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luuurien · 6 months

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Madeline Kenney - A New Reality Mind

(Dream Pop, Indietronica, Art Pop)

Trading indie rock for soft-eyed psychedelia, A New Reality Mind breaks Madeline Kenney’s world apart to reveal greater truths. The album’s sudden declines and greater experimentation lend a physical nature to the destruction of a relationship and Kenney’s recovery from that.

☆☆☆☆½

Rarely does a Madeline Kenney song feel like it ends too soon, the Oakland-based musician’s airy and reflective indie rock built on the premises of perfecting every little detail - the guitar textures, the little percussion embellishments, her delivery and commitment to every vocal line - and letting you untangle everything to find the magic at your own pace. Her first three albums were a natural progression for her from Night Night at the First Landing’s rough and wild dream pop to the lush production defining her magnificent Perfect Shapes before Sucker’s Lunch tossed in bits of sophisti-pop and shoegaze to both refine and darken up her sound, while her pandemic EP Summer Quarter brought vocal treatments and gorgeous psychedelia into her oft-grounded and introspective songwriting; this makes her latest release, A New Reality Mind, even more curious. It shares many traits with her last EP, the vocal manipulation and embrace of strange synth textures all present throughout, but Kenney contextualizes them through the sudden end of her relationship, using these artistic tools to voice her newfound loss while grounding it in the reflective rock of her first three albums, A New Reality Mind balancing the struggle of rebuilding yourself with the willingness to be transformed by pain. It’s her strangest, most uncompromising music to date, but few albums this year make such a massive impact with a sound this unusual.

Her hypnotic drum programming and instrumental loops in Summer Quarter works to even greater effect here, the concrete foundation the rest of A New Reality Mind needs to ground its strange textures and surreal lyrics. The album opens with an instrumental intro into the first full track, Plain Boring Disaster, new age pianos and soft-attack synths a gorgeous backdrop for Kenney’s contorted vocals and noisy guitars, introducing the contrast between her lucid songwriting and production that manifests the emotional chaos surrounding her. These songs are soft to the touch and have few harsh edges, but the paths songs like Reality Mind and The Same Again take you on are absolutely mesmerizing, Reality Mind’s noisy guitar work giving way to the second half’s lighter synth improvisation while The Same Again’s synth-against-drums polyrhythms make your head spin, the tidal shifts as Kenney wades through the aftermath of her relationship made present but beautiful in every moment. Tougher songs to crack, like the free-flowing I Drew a Line or overwhelming Red Emotion, expose tender spots in Kenney’s mind without losing their composure in the process, tethered by blocky programmed drums and plain songwriting that doesn’t abstract heartbreak in decorative imagery or wordsmithing. At its core, A New Reality Mind isn’t unlike breakup albums to come before it, but Kenney’s wider scope and readiness to be shaped by her loss allow the album to bloom with no difficulty.

A New Reality Mind’s magic comes from how beautifully Kenney takes hold of her loss, the relationship tension her previous release Sucker’s Lunch was filled with now let out into the air, simultaneously freeing Kenney and leaving her exposed to the open air. Superficial Conversation comes after the gorgeous relief of Plain Boring Disaster, and Kenney relishes in not having to hold herself back anymore, “That way of living / I’m over it” becoming a mantra throughout the verses. Her quieter moments may be where the real growth occurs - the insight into the relationship dynamics in Reality Mind and the accountability towards her own faults in closing track Expectations make for immediate high points in the tracklist - but her walking into the flames of HFAM or readying herself for disaster in Red Emotion is just as important to the album’s arc, balancing the growth out of a breakup as much as the time needed to let it hurt you so that healing can begin. For how plush its textures are and slow the album usually moves, the subtle ebbs and flows in emotion sell A New Reality Mind’s vision, Kenney progressing past her old relationship by letting the feelings wash over her at a natural pace. It might take time, but rediscovering yourself never comes quickly.

It’s hard to determine where Kenney will go after this - whether she’ll continue with this alchemical art pop or return to elegant indie rock - but A New Reality Mind marks a turning point in her discography, her most experimental and gorgeous project to date with an emotional core ready to burst but kept from ever losing its composure. As the dust settles from her breakup, Kenney chooses not to grieve the relationship so much as let it become another part of her story, knowing where it failed on both ends and looking to grow from the process. A sample from John Berger’s “Way of Seeing” at the midpoint of I Drew A Line verbalizes much of Kenney’s perspective throughout the album: “Everything around the image is part of its meaning / Everything around it confirms and consolidates its meaning.” She was swept into love and the many fantasies that come with it, but never shames herself for those desires and the position they’ve put her in now. Rather, she investigates those propensities, searching to understand how these choices happen in the moment and what it means to remove yourself from them and build a new reality with that clarity. A New Reality Mind is the sound of dreams being pulled away from you, and the clear skies Kenney finds with her eyes now open invoke infinite possibility. This is her new reality, and it’s more beautiful than ever.

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luuurien · 7 months

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Jessy Lanza - Love Hallucination

(Alternative R&B, Synthpop, Future Garage)

Jessy Lanza’s latest album pairs her warm, glossy production with the likes of alt-R&B, synthpop, and future garage, a mellow and breezy listen that often seems to drift into the background. Love Hallucination’s sound is undeniably solid, but it’s too laid-back to really pull you in.

☆☆☆

Jessy Lanza’s vision of clubby alt-pop is an effortlessly entrancing one. Made up of breathy Janet Jackson-indebted vocals, golden synth pads, and bouncy garage and house drum programming, her songs subtly sneak earworm hooks and playful sensuality into moody club pop, easy to have in the background but with lots to love when you put it into focus. 2020’s All The Time, along with her masterful 2021 DJ-Kicks set, further sharpened her dreamy blend of euphoric dancefloor beats with catchy retro-pop, her fourth album Love Hallucination now following their footsteps while coiling those two styles more tightly around each other. In part inspired by her move to Los Angeles, Love Hallucination is a sweet and breezy listen, making for some of her lightest and loveliest songs to date and some of her most difficult to hold onto, so airy and easy to listen to that it can feel like you’re forcing your attention on it rather than naturally being pulled into the music. Love Hallucination’s sound is undeniably solid, but it’s too laid-back to really pull you in.

At just under 38 minutes, Love Hallucination’s gentle sound can begin to drag quick, relaxing but too downbeat to carry the album all the way through. The album’s best moments are the ones where Lanza goes full-on synthpop, the chunky synth bass and bubbly vocals of Limbo an immediate highlight in the tracklist while the scattered drum programming in Big Pink Rose makes its bubblegum melody all the sweeter, but the downtempo moments can occasionally be just as exciting, particularly in the glassy keys and synth plucks of I Hate Myself and Midnight Ontario’s bustling future garage beat. Where much of the album struggles, though, is to commit to more than just the atmosphere, throwing vocal melodies in but rarely developing them into anything satisfying, Gossamer’s fuzzy beat circling around the same ideas for four minutes while the pounding four-on-the-floor opener Don’t Leave Me Now never seems to harness the urgency its production has bubbling under the surface, solid frameworks for clubby electropop lacking the push it needs to go as far as it’s always tempting to. None of these songs are bad - Lanza’s production quality and ear for interesting textures keeps them from ever getting to that point - but only a select few are particularly exciting, able to get you in Lanza’s world of chilled-out electronica with the sun shining on it and the energy mellow yet buzzing through you. More than worth taking your time with, Love Hallucination knows what it wants to do and achieves much of it, even if it comes off a bit too understated much of the time. If you’ve enjoyed her work before, you’ll enjoy it here, and for what it lacks in presence it more than makes up for in atmosphere and its select highlights. For as difficult as it can be to get a clear view of Love Hallucination, what you can see of it is wonderful to spend time with nonetheless.

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luuurien · 7 months

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Lil Shine - Lovesick

(PluggnB, Pop Rap, Trap)

On his latest EP, Lil Shine’s candied cloud rap throws in more rock guitars and lush orchestration, his melodic flow given a little more space to breathe. Lovesick’s playful PluggnB hasn’t changed much from his debut, but it’s the little things that make all the difference.

☆☆☆☆

Underground trap’s idiosyncrasies often make for some of the wildest listens, and that’s especially the case for Minneapolis’ Lil Shine. With dozens of singles and his SH!NE and Heavenly Ascension mixtapes establishing his presence prior to his debut album Losing Myself, his nasally vocals and sugary plugg beats had already found their sweet spot, making the album one of last year’s strangest and loveliest listens. But, like before, his music had to continue expanding, his latest mixtape Lovesick throwing rock guitars and lush orchestration, his melodic flows given a little more space to breathe while the music stays as energetic and boastful as ever. It shares all its main characteristics with Shine’s previous releases, and Lovesick is all the better for it, a second helping of Losing Myself addictive PluggnB with just enough new flavors thrown in to make it distinct and exciting to hear.

Fitting to its name, Lovesick features more romantic arrangements replete with swooning strings and warm piano leads, distorted drum programming and synth chord progressions still here but driven by a softer spirit. Mistakes opens up with a grand piano progression and gentle strings before the beat kicks in, Shine’s midtempo flow letting him slowly work out tangled feelings towards a breakup, while the title track interpolates its melody from Paramore’s Stop This Song (Lovesick Melody) (even playing a bit of the song as the song fades out) to harness some of that bitter, heartbroken pop rock energy into a hazy cloud rap cut. The obvious heavy hitter is Jeans Soaked, a massive second half highlight pushed by a winding electric guitar and triumphant horns for one of his best hooks to date (I haven’t stopped humming “I spilled wockhardt on my jeans, now my jeans soaked!” for weeks now), but the surrounding song’s lighter presence makes for a good balance, Too Much’s 8-bit synth leads and the smooth guitar solo in One Last Time subtle but lovely changes to Shine’s sound that don’t mess with the form of his songs. It’s some of the best rap this year, and all of its weirdness only makes it better. Lovesick’s playful PluggnB hasn’t changed much from his debut, but it’s the little things that make all the difference. Leaner and more diverse in its sound, it makes a wonderful follow-up to Losing Myself with some new twists, taking on the sharper edges of rock and pop punk and sprinkling it around the usual bassy 808’s and synth leads. Still tapping into the possibilities of PluggnB and how far he can stretch its limits, Lil Shine’s music continues to be as fun as ever with all the weirdness and creativity those early Soundcloud releases got so much traction from. Lovesick may be about heartbreak, but it’s the most lovable and exciting music from Lil Shine yet, bittersweet alt-rap in all the right ways.

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luuurien · 7 months

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Travis Scott - UTOPIA

(Experimental Hip Hop, Trap, Southern Hip Hop)

Travis Scott’s huge, hollow new album is lacking in spirit and attempts to make up for it with a packed guestlist and his heaviest, most experimental production to date. The results are lacking at best.

☆☆

Ever since his watershed debut Rodeo, every subsequent Travis Scott release has become a big cultural moment, music that defines the conversations around hip-hop and sets the stage for mainstream expectations the entire year. It’s easy to see why: he features all sorts of different mainstream names from Kendrick Lamar on Birds in the Trap Sing Mcknight’s Goosebumps to John Mayer and Don Toliver on the ASTROWORLD highlight CAN’T SAY; his dark and nocturnal take on trap makes his music easy to listen to while rarely pushing past the background unless you want it to; the ambitious concepts behind each of his albums makes them feel absolutely massive even if the music doesn’t land with you. Little of this remains the case for his latest release UTOPIA, the album coming out with a 75-minute documentary/anthology CIRCUS MAXIMUS full of dark, celestial shots of waterfalls and caves and attacks from a giant octopus and conversations with Mike Dean, the visual representation of an album filled to the brim with content that reveals itself it be almost completely lacking in substance. As Scott pulls from the heavier, colder side of experimental rap (entirely borrowing from Kanye’s Yeezus at times), he strips down his beats to nothing but mechanical drums and sharp-edge synths but continues to fail to say anything as a rapper outside of his usual topics - drug abuse, sex, taking your girl - and leaves UTOPIA remarkably unfulfilling as a result. There’s no strong, tangible acidity to the vast majority of these songs, a hollow attempt at a summer blockbuster where the big name features and oversized tracklist do little more than waste your time.

The album’s few strong points are in the places where this cold, rigid style of trap production gives way to songs that utilize that space effectively. Opener HYAENA kicks things off with a fat, distorted boom bap beat and buzzing synth bass, keeping things minimal but the energy high; I KNOW ?’s dark pianos and subtle percs along with Travis’ bouncy flow are reminiscent of the twisted carnival beat of 5% TINT with some extra venom in it - Travis in his element still makes some of the most addictive trap music out there, and these occasional moments of his raw talent as a producer and rapper when the beats lean into his usual volatility are simply undeniable. The rest of the album either fails to make him appealing on emptier beats that demand greater content from him lyrically to fill the space or rely on half-baked features to keep things rolling along, the back-to-back performances of Drake, Playboi Carti, and Beyoncé on MELTDOWN, FE!N and DELRESTO (ECHOES) respectively either entirely abysmal in Carti’s case, phlegmy and low-pitched and lacking in any good qualities, or just plain boring with Drake’s safe disses towards Pharrell and Pusha T (“Since V not around, the members done hung up the Louis, they not even wearing that shit / …You lucky that Vogue was suing 'cause I would've been with the Wassas in Paris and shit”) while Beyoncé’s dry crooning atop a sauceless ballroom beat that sounds more like an outtake from her latest album than anything truly showstopping. Even the stronger features from SZA and Westside Gunn near the end of the album lack much of a wow factor, sounding more like they’re there to collect a check than to make an inspired collaboration that plays to their strengths - sure, Westside Gunn sounds as brash and confident as ever on LOST FOREVER’s chilly, detail-devoid beat, but it’s surely not the best he’s ever sounded, especially once you imagine him rapping on top of some of Scott’s heavier, hazier beats from the past. Scott has always relied on features to hold his albums together when he as a solo rapper just cannot, but few of the guests on UTOPIA are worth remembering by the time the album’s over.

Where his past albums could get by with their weaker aspects by appealing to his Southern roots and musical influences (think ASTROWORLD’s liquid smooth boom-bap closer COFFEE BEAN and hometown homage R.I.P SCREW), UTOPIA relinquishes those few personal charms to try and grasp a more universal message, the few tinges of humanity present on the album in the sensitive alt-R&B highlight MY EYES with support from indie folk experimenter Justin Vernon and neo-soul recluse Sampha relegated to a few lines referencing the Astroworld Crowd Crush (“I replay them nights, and right by my side, all I see is a sea of people that ride wit' me / If they just knew what Scotty would do to jump off the stage and save him a child”). On the whole, though, not much of UTOPIA has anything to say, a death sentence when he also wants to deconstruct his production and leave so much open space, lingering for six minutes on the Young Thug-assisted SKITZO where a bog-standard trap beat and unrewarding beat switch tries to add just a little bit of excitement to their dead on arrival performances. If you didn’t enjoy Travis Scott as a rapper before, UTOPIA only gives you an ever clearer look into his shortcomings in that department, 73 minutes where only a few moments of him truly getting into a beat and having something interesting to say on it exist. For as much as UTOPIA aims for transgression, for its beats to hit hard and for Travis to make Coldplay references and voice his support for “Ye over Biden,” so much of UTOPIA feels like your standard, overwrought trap album where a concern for a stacked credits list and lots of songs to throw onto streaming playlists overrides any real artistic vision. The story he tries to convey of stepping into darkness in order to find what truly fills your spirit doesn’t translate in an album where no real magnetism is present - as much influence as he takes from Kanye, Travis Scott has none of the gravitas or raw emotion that made Kanye’s most unwieldy music feel so immense and meaningful. Instead, UTOPIA treats spectacle as the be-all-end-all, acting as if features for more than half of the tracklist and long runtime will make up for just how unexciting it all is. By breaking his music down to its bare essentials, Travis Scott makes it ever more clear just how bland much of his discography is when you take away the psychedelic trap beats and gritty Southern flair, UTOPIA so far removed from the few things that made his previous music attractive that the noisy, harsh production he’s already years late to only serves as another reminder of how all the smoke and mirrors were a crutch for him artistically. UTOPIA may try to take you under the surface of Travis Scott’s glossy trap, but there’s still little worth coming back for.

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luuurien · 7 months

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TURQUOISEDEATH - Se Bueno

(Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Shoegaze, Indietronica)

On his Longinus debut, the U.K.-based breakcore artist hones his blend of atmospheric drum and bass with alt-rock in the margins, blasts of shoegaze and post-rock builds fitted around lush breakbeats. Se Bueno’s heavy, ethereal indietronica positions TURQUOISEDEATH as one of the most exciting young acts in the electronica scene.

☆☆☆☆

TURQUOISEDEATH has been making music for some years now, but the U.K breakcore artist is only now unveiling his full debut. Releasing a handful of EP’s and singles before the growth of guessabelle from the EP of the same name and brisk future garage single hello? boosted his prominence to new heights, TURQUOISEDEATH’s music sits squarely in the world of breakcore and atmospheric drum and bass while using samples of shoegaze, glitch pop and other alternative genres to give his breaks a sharper edge, his two collaborative projects with the Barcelona-based vmrrobotic giving tastes of his unorthodox electronica around more traditional D’n’B and garage cuts. Now, his full-length debut on Longinus takes even bigger steps forward, mixing in his traditional long-form breaks with songs more indebted to indie rock with breaks as the foundation for its rhythms more than its entire style. Se Bueno’s balance of these, along with some new additions to his formula, ends up a little volatile, but the extremities are where TURQUOISEDEATH’s music shines the brightest, his penchant for huge crescendos and sensitive ambient comedowns making for some of the most thrilling electronica this year with more than enough tricks up its sleeve to keep you coming back. It’s unwieldy, but all the noise and energy constantly buzzing is part of the fun of listening to an artist chip away at their sound to unearth something greater.

A few old tracks return here in slightly abridged forms, Guessabelle and Starfields losing a minute or so of their old runtimes while holding onto their slow builds and massive impacts, but the new surrounding tracks make these moments of classic breakcore magic all the more wonderful. As loud as his older music can be, he steps fully into shoegaze more than a few times in Se Bueno, bringing on artists in the Korean dream pop scene to help him establish it within his sound: Brokenteeth rains down a layers of noise and a smooth solo at the tail end of The Sky Fell, while the duo of Asian Glow and Parannoul bring warmth and a frenzied intensity to centerpiece track Dive, TURQUOISEDEATH adding shoegaze’s thick textures atop his dense breaks without concerning himself too much with writing lyrics or adding vocals. You can hear him in his comfort zone with Se Bueno, but TURQUOISEDEATH avoids stagnation by letting the rock guitars take precedent outside of just turning on the distortion when the crescendo comes, Sinking Into You’s jangly acoustic guitars and punchy backbeat drumming the closest thing to pure dream pop on the album, a pitched-up sample of the unreleased Bearface track Quiver interacting with a think break groove and soaring string orchestration in the song’s second half, Se Bueno springboarding off new ideas with his signature style intact the whole way through. It’s an undeniably odd sensation on first listen, hearing giant walls of guitar with a drum ‘n’ bass beat chugging beneath them, but by harnessing all that energy at once TURQUOISEDEATH’s music forces you to look it head on, songs too intense and full of life to just leave on in the background. Hangups from his previous release still linger, the longer track times occasionally contributing to unnecessary bloat - Dive’s first half lingers in midtempo dream pop for a little too long before crashing head on into a breakdown of synth arpeggios and noise bursts and video games samples, while the seven-minute Vertigo’s saxophone solo and chillout atmospherics make for a cool comedown after the maddening breakcore highlight Starfields but ends up lethargic even when those huge guitars come back into the mix - but for the most part Se Bueno makes fantastic use of its fifty minutes, exploring new possibilities within breakcore and showing how versatile TURQUOISEDEATH’s production can be, the gorgeous Astrophysics-assisted Escape Your Dream closing the album out with bitcrushed synths and warm piano with a mellow downtempo pulse, TURQUOISEDEATH’s restraint letting the album wind down to a natural and satisfying finish. Se Bueno is exactly what his debut needed to be, branching out into new territory while keeping all the things his music initially pulled you in with present, the perfect balance of breakcore ferocity and shoegaze bliss where you can hear how excited he is to be taking the next leap in his artistic journey. It’s long, a little messy, and positively filled with spirit: Se Bueno couldn’t have gone over any more beautifully.

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luuurien · 8 months

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Carly Rae Jepsen - The Loveliest Time

(Dance-Pop, Contemporary R&B, Synthpop)

Carly Rae Jepsen’s companion album to last year’s The Loneliest Time ends up her most experimental, putting down her usual synthpop for songs that fizz with IDM beats and French house grooves and funk basslines. The Loveliest Time may not be her most consistent, but it’s by far her most surprising.

☆☆☆☆

Right from the start, The Loveliest Time places itself as Carly Rae Jepsen’s strangest album. Far from the anthemic synthpop she usually kicks her albums off with, Anything to Be With You is a dry, playful sunshine pop cut, a honking baritone saxophone and bouncy drum groove opening the album with a lighter atmosphere than ever before. It’s a strange but wonderful way to be introduced to her latest collection of outtakes and B-sides that are much stranger than her offerings from EMOTION or Dedicated, more like the excitement of a fresh start rather than simply more of a good thing. It’s hard to imagine these songs being slotted somewhere on last year’s The Loneliest Time, but all these songs are great regardless, making up her most diverse project yet where synth leads and dance grooves don’t always reign supreme, drifting into the worlds of IDM and funk-pop and expanding her sound without letting go of the bubblegum melodies her voice works best with. It’s more scattered in feeling than her other albums, lacking the thematic cohesion or onslaught of hooks her 2010’s releases prided themselves on, but The Loveliest Time’s slower pace and matured palette plays a different game entirely, seeking to contemplate and fantasize about romance more than it dives head first into it.

The album’s best moments are its most sensitive ones, where the softer beats and lighter instrumentation make way for a new kind of storytelling in her starry-eyed pop. After Last Night’s icy synth leads and scattered drum programming splits the difference between glittery IDM and Jepsen’s moody R&B cuts, Rostam Batmanglij’s sugar-coated production exactly what she needs for this romantic dreaming, while the glossy nu-disco of Shy Boy and Come Over replace her usual yearning with direct calls to action usually reserved for her most intense tracks, the fluttering guitar leads in the latter track the most intense part of the song as she makes her intimate moments as meaningful as the biggest gestures within her songs. It does make the heavier songs on offer feel unusually overpowering - Kamikaze’s fiery synthwave feels especially out of place situated between the breezy opener and After Last Night, and Stadium Love’s throaty belts and noisy synths clash too harshly with the warmth of all eleven tracks that precede it - but The Loveliest Time uses these contrasts to its advantage, expanding on the bits of soft rock and organic ‘90s R&B responsible for some of her last album’s strongest moments with the funk-pop jam Aeroplane or Kollage’s reflective downtempo, working her usual lyrical themes of breakups and hopeless romanticism into instrumentals who don’t require nearly as much intensity to get the same feelings across more effectively than ever before. It won’t knock you off your feet like Cut to the Feeling or sink you into a vibe like Too Much, but The Loveliest Time fully owns its brand of relaxed dance-pop where being a little left-of-center supports her new musical goals.

It does bring to the surface some of the strongest songs in her discography, particularly in the album’s magnificent second half. Psychedelic Switch’s blissed-out French house finds itself right at the heart of a new love Jepsen can’t get enough of, four-on-the-floor kicks and disco strings and flickering guitar loops pushing her music to a hypnotic, full-body high worn beautifully by her lively voice. Put It to Rest makes fantastic use of its darker atmosphere and snaggletoothed breakbeats as Jepsen lets go of situations and people she hadn’t handled with the most grace, taking ownership of what she’d lost and letting grief hang over her music more than ever before, putting the sentimentality of Shadow and After Last Night’s into context as part of Jepsen’s effort to let go of past hangups and push herself back into the light. The Loveliest Time is extroverted and willing to get a little weird with things, handling the artificiality of So Right and Come Over’s shuffling nu-disco with a commitment to her heart that overcomes just how gummy and bright the beats are, never so sweet to where it becomes a purely joyous experience as Jepsen contemplates how always seeking out romance puts her in precarious but wonderful positions, putting solid pop songcraft underneath songs foremost about Jepsen’s honest emotions. Her foundation hasn’t changed, and that’s inarguably a good thing.

While the wide range of feelings and production styles make it a little too clear it’s a collection of outtakes at times, the strength of The Loveliest Time’s songs nonetheless prevails. She scales every feeling here from sheer ecstasy to romantic defeat with the same confidence as usual, the flexibility of this being an outtakes album allowing her to add in new ideas and sounds without bending them to whatever the feel of her latest album is, The Loveliest Time going from careful and introspective to maddeningly euphoric in the blink of an eye and all the better for it. It’s easily her best B-side collection yet, matching the highs of EMOTION: SIDE B and the surprise left turns of Dedicated Side B and adding some new flavors of bubbly dance pop along the way. The Loveliest Time may be the strangest album she’s put out to date, and just through that it becomes one of her most thrilling and dynamic listens, promising even more electrifying anthems and oddball electropop with the same level of ingenuity and sincerity she’s always had. It may surprise more than usual, but Carly Rae Jepsen is as lovely to listen to as ever.

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luuurien · 8 months

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George Clanton - Ooh Rap I Ya

(Synthpop, Chillwave, Hypnagogic Pop)

Loosening the screws and letting his throwback synthpop melt into itself, George Clanton’s brilliant new album exists halfway between his dreamy hypnagogic pop and his early vaporwave work. Ooh Rap I Ya’s surreal, liquid production centers itself on powerful choruses and the most gorgeous soundscaping in his discography thus far, a powerful and one-of-a-kind pop experience.

☆☆☆☆☆

George Clanton’s music is at once 80’s stadium pop and nostalgic vaporwave, his position as an innovator within the independent electronic space coexisting with his music’s innate desire to call back to the music of his youth. There are times he sways heavily towards one direction - his work as ESPRIT 空想 and Mirror Kisses are fully submerged in chillwave, while his 2020 collaboration with 311 frontman Nick Hexum lives in the more traditional synthpop and trip hop realm - but Clanton knows what he wants his music to sounds like and how to achieve that sound, his masterful 2018 release Slide delivering the best pop songs he’d ever written alongside production that split the difference between ‘90s breakbeat and futuristic electronica. After five years of relative silence for his solo output, his latest album Ooh Rap I Ya works with all the same parts that made Slide such a success, but melts them into one big pool of neon, smeary synths and bouncy alt-dance grooves to soundtrack Clanton’s darker frame of mind, dramatic pop anthems colored in vibrant blue and orange hues. The saturation is heavy and the beats are slow, and it works to Clanton’s advantage in every moment: at just 38 minutes of runtime, Ooh Rap I Ya is an album you could float in for hours, hypnotic chillwave beats where Clanton’s voice is used more as an instrumental texture à la dream pop more than ever before. Somewhere between his dreamy hypnagogic pop and early vaporwave work, Ooh Rap I Ya seeks to consume your entire world.

Of its three singles, only one truly shows off how the album’s thick and fluid production bolsters its sound. Not to say I Been Young and Justify Your Life aren’t fantastic songs in their own right, the former’s hands-in-the-air chorus and the latter’s grungy atmosphere making for catchy and atmospheric synthpop, but it’s the split piece Vapor King / Subreal that most expertly brings his vision to the forefront. The first half pulls from ‘90s trip hop, but lends it a warmer hue, a slow and sturdy breakbeat rhythm situation around Clanton’s vocal embellishments and sloshing synth pads to settle you into his new psychedelic realm before Subreal kicks into gear with pure progressive breaks magic, utilizing a relatively untouched Funky Drummer sample to open up the atmosphere and play some other clever production tricks - echoing synth pulses and spacious pads a breath of fresh air in one of the densest albums this year. The rest of the album isn’t all so different from these singles and Clanton may not stray far from Slide’s anthemic chillwave, but it’s the subtleties working to his advantage here: the lurching trip hot centerpiece You Hold the Key and I Found It is a blurry and slow five minutes, but functions as both a necessary comedown from the opening four tracks and an introduction to the more directly psychedelic second half; a rework of his 2021 single Fucking Up My Life adds extra layers of ethereal synths and lightens up on the distortion for a sweeter but still intense listen. Ooh Rap I Ya is the same George Clanton experience at its core, and by liquidating his many influences into one big pool of dreamy synthpop he continually strikes at the core of what makes his sound so distinctive and addicting.

Clanton’s debt to the past here is fused to his pop songcraft more than ever - while 2015’s 100% Electronica brought a direct mix of vaporwave and blended pop songcraft into it, Ooh Rap I Ya does the inverse, expertly crafted pop where all the colors splashed atop it serve to enhance Clanton’s gorgeous pop. Punching Down’s angst-riddled songwriting gets a shot of thumping synths and rich, heavy chord swells, taking his signature sound and dialing it to 11, and the shoegaze/vapor fusion For You, I Will builds and builds and builds with pitched-down voice samples and detuned synths and a slow ambient burn to finish, Clanton not straying from his roots but weaving them into music that carries more weight in its center.. It’s a perfect balance where he doesn’t have to sacrifice the heft of his production or the hooks he pulls you in with, Ooh Rap I Ya as fun to listen to for its sticky melodies and groovy beats as it is for the detail he puts into every little corner of the mix. Clanton anchors his sound in familiar places, but lets all the colors bleed until those same sticky melodies are merely another wonderful texture in a song filled with hundreds of others.

The magic of Ooh Rap I Ya is one of a kind, Clanton’s curated mix of vaporwave and shoegaze and ‘80s pop and trip hop and virtually anything else he can mine for atmosphere cut up and stitched together into a whole new beast. Functioning dually as a return to his experimental roots and a greater embrace of pop song structuring, Clanton’s music has doubled in its impact, replacing slow builds and big cathartic climaxes with songs that smack you down from the start and only keep on piling. Rarely does Ooh Rap I Ya give your ears a moment to rest, and not a moment goes by where you’d ever want it to. It may be harder to pin down, but floating on Ooh Rap I Ya’s dreamy beats is a wonder to behold no matter how deep you’ve sunken in.

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luuurien · 8 months

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Old Saw - Sewn the Name

(Ambient Americana, Drone, Avant-Folk)

Moving from the pastures to the farmhouse, Old Saw’s latest album is a darker, dustier collection of ambient folk music where Americana and Appalachian folk are given jagged edges and cold textures. As the quintet tear apart the earthy loam of their sound, Sewn the Name leaves you stranded in some of their most immersive, evocative pieces to date.

☆☆☆☆☆

If you’ve ever spent an extended amount of time out in the country, you’ll know the distinct difference between how it feels at sunrise and after sunset. Early in the morning, when the sun is drifting just enough above the horizon to reveal the dew left atop the pastures and make the wheat sparkle in the wind, there’s an unspoken sense of safety and comfort in it all; when you can hear and see all the life moving around you, it’s hard to feel anything but warmth. It’s when the darkness consumes those very same fields, when the rustling past the edge of the fence becomes too nondescript to tell whether it’s wind or a wildcat, when every creak of the porch steps seeming to have doubled in volume, that the magic of open land reveals its true duality. For the New England based quintet Old Saw, both of these feelings are essential to their music, their masterful 2021 debut Country Tropics somewhere between the memory, the dream and the reality of American folk music, reeling fiddle drones and soaring pedal steel creating gorgeous backdrops for spindly banjos and dark orchestral bells and blurry organs to duck in and out of, a vast expanse of ambient country built on the idea of calling out to the open country without forcing a particular vision of it. Their latest release does much of the same, but chooses the darkness rather than the sunrise for more intimate country laments with an extra layer of mystique, Sewn the Name’s six pieces leaving more space for silence and colder textures. It’s nowhere near as welcoming as their debut, but Sewn the Name pushes you into these quieter, lonelier environments to make you hunt for the beauty inside all the mess.

With this greater emphasis on decay comes an embrace of new recording techniques, tape machine manipulation done by pedal steel player Henry Birdsey giving these songs weight and an acute awareness of how they move through time. There’s heavy tape hiss and crackling in midsection highlight Ira Dorset Suffering From Moonblindness, the titular fiddle player’s whining drones wrapped around reversed 12-string guitar and bell recordings to keep you from getting a full understanding of the piece’s mechanics, and the absolutely spellbinding Spinner’s Weave lends different fidelity to each instrumental part, layers of fiddle covered in a fuzzy haze while Al Lakey’s intricate 12-string improvisations sit crystal clear on top like flashes of sunlight reflecting atop lake water. If Country Tropics let you drift through its pedal steel and soaring string lines, Sewn the Name forces you to confront its physical limitations as music - not one of these songs gets close to the ten minute mark outside of centerpiece Highgate Ledger, and it’s not just so they can fit more songs into the runtime, the heavy banjos and creaking fiddle lines dominating closing piece Bobcat Sarabande never heading to a big crescendo or crash into silence. Here, the edges are rougher, the textures more unvarnished, Old Saw burrowing into the roots of American folk music and reveling in how rugged yet timeless sound of these instruments puts their gentle ambient music in such a precarious position.

It’s beautiful all the same, which is largely why Sewn the Name still achieves such heights despite being a more reserved experience. While many other ambient albums have succeeded in holding their music in a single space or feeling (Irrlicht, Music for Airports), Sewn the Name traces different paths that all stem from the same country road: Brooksville Trestle Remains is distinctly eerie with its wandering guitar work and long pedal steel whines, while the previous Weathervaning uses rich fiddle layers and trickling banjo improvisation to reach for the homey warmth of old folk songs, tethered to the roots of their sound while seeking to pull unique moods out of every individual song. It can almost feel intimidating the first few listens, like the quintet are trying to pull you out of the Country Tropics’ sun-drenched warmth and trap you in the dusty wine cellar, but after settling into the album there’s a permeable sense of grief and devotion within these pieces not near as present in their debut. Music with this deep a connection to American folk history will always be in some part worshiping Appalachian country music, but Old Saw’s ambient pieces make listening to them feel especially tender, Bob Driftwood’s intricate banjo contributions in Highgate Ledger and Weathervaning easy to imagine being part of a live folk group and Dorset’s magical fiddle work in every piece beautiful enough to be in any country band, but in these grooveless expanses their dedication to the technique and feel of these instruments becomes meditative, becomes careful and focused on evoking the places this folk music comes from rather than just performing songs in a traditional country style. It’s a tricky task to pull off, but Old Saw’s willingness to play with the usual ambient elements - sound manipulation, tape machines, minimalist arrangement styles - places their songs right in the perfect sweet spot between ambient and country, utilizing the former’s generous stretches or space and the latter’s emotional sensitivity for some of the most powerful instrumental music this year. Sewn the Name may lie on the moonlit end of ambient country, but by trading the genre’s established norms for gloomy Americana dirges Old Saw unlock whole new dimensions to their sound. For them, ambient country can be as cold as it is familiar, soaring as it is trapped in the past; through their refraction of American folk music through the lens of modern experimental music, Old Saw’s music feels especially out of time, Sewn the Name leaving all the rough edges so you can fall in love with the memories the band is sharing. It can be a tough album to crack, but once you do there’s few other albums this year with such a robust vision and vivid storytelling. The floors might creak and the fields intimidate past sunset, but Sewn the Name makes exploring the darkness beautiful all the same.

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luuurien · 8 months

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Hannah Jadagu - Aperture

(Indie Pop, Dream Pop, Indie Rock)

Hannah Jadagu’s Sub Pop debut places her squarely in the world of confessional indie rock while decorating it with hints of sophisti-pop, R&B, and noise pop that keep the edges blurred and the energy intense. Her intimate, hook-laden lyrics focus on what she chooses to carry into the future with her and the fear of what will happen to the things she lets go of.

☆☆☆☆

Like many of her bedroom pop contemporaries, Hannah Jadagu began making music on her phone, working in Garageband with the help of an iRig, guitar, and microphone,j her debut EP What Is Going On? the kind of homemade indie rock that’s easy to connect with and warm on the ears. What underlined those songs, though, was Jadagu’s smooth and mellow voice and sensitive lyrics, the indie rock she fell in love with in her sister’s car becoming the lifeblood of her own music. With the success of that EP came the opportunity to expand, her signing to iconic indie label Sub Pop giving her the space and connections to make even bolder, heavier music unbound to the limitations of MIDI instruments and an iPhone. Alongside French pop songwriter and producer Max Robert Baby, she began incorporating more analog elements into her music, thick percussion and warped synths replacing dry jangle guitars and drum loops, the twelve songs that became her debut album Aperture indebted to ‘00s indie rock as much as the church music and rap she grew up on. Her writing remains steadfast and emotionally charged between stylistic shifts, the new textures within her songs heightening the effect of her catchy-yet-surreal indie pop.

Balancing simple verse-chorus-verse pop music with the sharp edges and unexpected turns of alternative pop is Jadagu’s main concern with Aperture, and the album achieves those goals without sacrificing the main appeal of her music - the writing. For the most part, her songs remain structurally simple - singles Say It Now and What You Did are both two verses and a chorus, while Warning Sign omits the chorus entirely for its moody sophisti-pop atmosphere - and it’s in the details where the character lies, the watery synths soundtracking family tension in Admit It or the kids choir-esque vocoder in the outro of Shut Down more important than playing with complex song structures or unconventional songwriting. The mood here is noisy guitars and rock drums,mellow vocals and dreamy effects, early highlight Say It Now’s slunking guitars and drowsy percussion befitting of Jadagu’s emotional denial within it, while the penultimate Letter to Myself surrounds her voice with slowcore guitars and synths that sparkle like fireworks before the drums kick in at the end - it’s all under the purview of indie rock, but Jadagu branches out her sound to keep you invested in how her storytelling works alongside it. Aperture is catchy, classic pop at its core, and Jadagu knows she doesn’t need much more to pull you in.

She doesn’t risk going outside of the alt-pop/indie rock sound here, but it’s not an issue when what’s here is so consistently rewarding. The post-punk revivalism of Lose and What You Did harness their blend of volatile instrumentation and introspective writing for some of the album’s most effective songcraft, working in opposition to the digitized vocals and clean pianos of Scratch the Surface or Warning Sign’s R&B leanings to add some grit without straying from her norm. There’s a precision to what she does even as the music commits itself to uneasy emotions, Six Months speeding and slowing down as it follows her anger towards someone who can’t invest themselves fully her and Dreaming centered on finding out a romantic interest is seeing someone and the immediate crash that comes with it by having the instrumentation suddenly drop out from under you. She’s a masterful songwriter and producer, and the polish Baby helps her put on these songs take them to another level, Aperture choosing when to open itself up to the light at the perfect moment for each song to be a pristine and vivid snapshot of what she’s feeling. Hannah Jadagu has had the foundation of her sound settled for a few years now, but Aperture still functions as an introduction to her by showing off what she’s able to achieve with more support behind her, how she can interweave different sounds around her melodic indie pop without losing the charm of her homespun EP. Her music is made to sink into, for the melodies to become earworms you hum throughout the day and are easy to listen to anytime, Aperture addictive through how easily it makes playing Jadagu’s songs on repeat. She knows what she wants to keep with her, and Aperture takes a perfect picture of all those memories.

#hannah jadagu #aperture #sub pop #bedroom pop #dream pop #indie pop #indie rock #pop #rock #2023 #8/10 #album review #album reviews #new music #music review #2023 albums #luuurien

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luuurien · 8 months

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Avalon Emerson - & the Charm

(Indietronica, Dream Pop, Downtempo)

Trading techno for lush indietronica, Avalon Emerson’s debut album embraces pop song structures, explosive shoegaze, misty balearic beat, and atmospheric alt-dance with existential lyricism and an eye for ‘80s and ‘90s retro charm. Gentle, inventive, and full of personality, & the Charm is exactly what its title promises.

☆☆☆☆☆

By the time Avalon Emerson and her wife, guitarist Hunter Lombard, moved out to San Francisco in February 2020, they already had to change all their plans. Initially heading there to branch out as a producer and spend a few months around L.A., where she could escape the constant touring and international DJ gigs that had subsumed her life after becoming one of the most in-demand performers with her energetic but sensitive take on techno, the 15-month lockdown that went into place took away both her inspiration to DJ and her ability to collaborate in the city. So, Emerson and Lombard took a lengthy 2,700 mile drive across the U.S. to New York City (where Lombard had family) and set up camp there, holed up in a small Brooklyn studio and inspired by the ethereal ‘90s pop of The Magnetic Fields and Cocteau Twins, the resulting album a collection of misty indie pop with an eye for ‘80s and ‘90s retro charm. Techno breakbeats and her signature synth work are still present, but they’re wrapped around pop song structures with warm chord progressions and lush chamber instrumentation; Emerson still knows her way around a hypnotic beat, but it’s no longer the sole focus of her songs. & the Charm constructs itself around the warm, crisp sound of old downtempo and dream pop bands, but Emerson makes it her own with writing focused on her anxieties as an artist and an individual, the breeziness of these nine songs helping to cushion those fears with some of the prettiest production this year. It’s a softspoken album where much of the magic comes from how subtly Emerson and her team let these songs bloom into gorgeous, heartfelt indie pop.

The album’s debut single, Sandrail Silhouette, makes it immediately clear the album is a dive into new waters for Emerson, jangly guitar chords from Lombard accentuated with a rich string section and soft synth swells, imagery of deserts and travel and technology letting Emerson drift into the sunset even as her worries follow her (“Any conversation will do, really / Or we don’t have to talk at all / …Hot dunes, an oasis / More ancient than the rocks between us”). The following eight tracks keep in lockstep by way of swirling ambient pop (Entombed in Ice, The Stone), bubbly dance pop (A Vision, Hot Evening), and surprise stylistic detours (Dreamliner, A Dam Will Always Divide), Emerson using her time working as a detail-oriented DJ with unusual sample sources and from Coil to Alicia Keys to stay in touch with her influences and imparting bits of herself onto them along the way. She makes it easy to fall into & the Charm’s ebb and flow, keeping a steady stream of groovy pop tunes going in between the quieter, experimental sections: The Stone makes use of Keivon Hobeheidar’s gorgeous cello tone to split the album in two, placed between the synthpop jam Astrology Poisoning and moody house highlight Dreamliner, and the penultimate Karaoke Song makes for a final moment of reminiscence between Hot Evening’s romantic 2-step and the nine minute shoegaze closer A Dam Will Always Divide. Making these songs provided her with a sense of balance and drive throughout her hectic time in lockdown, and the renewed spirit in her music is evident in every track and how they connect back to the same core ideals.

Club artists going pop isn’t an especially new thing in recent years - Everything But the Girl returned after an over 20 year stint with the dark alt-R&B of Fuse and Alison Goldfrapp’s May release The Love Invention went full on electropop - but unlike those older artists making a return to the music scene, Avalon’s only been around since the mid-2010s, her creative stream uninterrupted and only changing its course here. Entombed in Ice, for how minimal it is up until the drums pick up in its second half with a smooth electric guitar solo, is bursting with exciting musical ideas, the soft digital hand drums reminiscent of old balearic beat, and even the straightforward pop structure of Karaoke Song is outfitted with light vocal filters and crunchy synth patches, Emerson still toying with texture and atmosphere even with her eye turned towards more conventional music styles. In this effort to keep the music light and easy to listen to, the little things are all the more meaningful: the prominent bassline in A Vision lends the song a playfulness found nowhere else on the album, letting the phaser-covered drums guide A Dam Will Always Divide into its vast expanse of fuzzy synths and chugging guitars (it bears some resemblance to her remix of Slowdive’s Sugar for the Pill, but trades breakbeats and synth pads for a hypnotic rock beat and intricate arrangement work). & the Charm comes right after the many years Emerson’s spent touring and playing live sets, and you can hear her excitement at getting to sit down and really dig into the meaty bits of song composition, the album’s gorgeous textures and incredible ear for detail a direct result of Emerson slowing down and letting her music truly breathe for the first time.

There couldn’t have been a better time for Emerson to make an album like & the Charm. Had she not been stuck in lockdown, she might have kept up with her plans in Los Angeles, working behind the scenes for other musicians and learning how to work around the ideas of others and bending her production skills for them. Instead, she was given the opportunity to define her music as an individual outside of her idiosyncratic DJ sets, keeping her love of different genres and soft, ethereal music and making it for herself. It’s as creative, ambitious and full of life as any of her best techno work - it’s easy to find similarities between tracks like Dreamliner and One More Fluorescent Rush - and works to all her strengths while stretching out into new territory she’s never gone before. She always allows her music to speak for itself, & the Charm accepting of the future she never got to explore, but it’s also creating her a new future, one of moody pop choruses and strummed guitars and earthy synth tones. & the Charm is exactly what its title promises, and revels in bringing Emerson’s music to a whole new dimension.

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luuurien · 8 months

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Jessie Ware - That! Feels Good!

(Dance Pop, Disco, Funk)

Luxurious as its predecessor with red-hot sensuality as its guide, Jessie Ware’s follow-up to her 2020 juggernaut What’s Your Pleasure? features more live instrumentation, more expressive performances, and more glamorous disco fantasies. It’s classic, classy disco revival, and nearly every moment is a dream.

☆☆☆☆½

That! Feels Good! sounds expensive. It’s in the album’s DNA through the luxurious strings and live backing band and Jessie Ware’s magnificently trained voice, but also in the feel of it all, how the music transports you to her world of fruit innuendos and 70’s disco-funk and anthemic choruses until nothing else matters but the next beat to grace the dancefloor. Her music has always had romance as its guide - think back to her ravishing 2012 single Running or her smoky R&B hit Say You Love Me - but it wasn’t until 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? she could show off a more expressive and distinctive side of her, stepping away from clean-cut pop soul and diving headfirst into swooning disco-pop, putting her music back in the spotlight her 2017 record Glasshouse produced relatively middling results. Now, with a balance in her life that’s strengthened every side of her, That! Feels Good! continues the work of her previous album with a greater connection to ‘70s disco foundations, linking with jazz-funk octet Kokoroko to bring a jolt of live band energy to her music while keeping in line with the tight and fast disco style of her previous release. It’s a wildly joyous and uplifting album that, unlike its predecessor, captures love rather than pining at it, Ware commanding the dancefloor with expertly crafted disco where surrendering to your immediate desires is the only concern; if love is the solution, Ware ensures it’s delivered in utmost glamour and excess.

From its first moments, That! Feels Good! makes it clear Ware is not here to linger: the opening title track packs food innuendos (“I gotta something to get you high / Sugar 'n' salt it, lick that lime / Lick, lick, lick, lick, lick, lick that, get in line!”), calls for gratification (“Freedom is a sound / And pleasure is a right!”), and sumptuous verses (“Every time I get a little bit of an inclination / You can throw me to the shock of a new sensation”) into its four-and-a-half minute runtime, laying the groundwork for the following songs and heading right into the heart of the nightlife. Ware has always been an exceptional vocalist with a propensity for both smooth jams and sing-your-heart-out anthems, but That! Feels Good! reveals her excellence as a performer, often playing the party host as much as she plays the singer on the stage - Shake the Bottle anchors itself in Grace Jones-esque speak singing with only the chorus fully sung and These Lips sends the album off with elegant strings and seductive spoken word - and it pulls you right into Ware’s fantasy like never before. The first seven tracks are a masterclass in pop album structuring, coming right out of the gate with the opening trio of the title track and album singles Free Yourself and Pearls before opening up with the Philly soul-indebted Hello Love, sitting squarely in the world of organic 70s disco and soul (save for the notes of garage house and europop in Free Yourself) but never sticking to a single style - Ware has done her homework in this era of underground dance. It’s not to say she’s the first to do this kind of pop revivalism, disco and dance pop have come back the past few years in all sorts of different forms from Dua Lipa’s crisp nu-disco to the glamorous ballroom of Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE, but Ware opts for more directly retro sounds without too much touch-up, going for classic french touch on Freak Me Now and letting instrumentalists solo through sections of Begin Again and Beautiful People, staying far from being a rehash of old sounds by perfecting all the little details. It lacks some of the chillout, atmospheric warmth of its predecessor, but never before has Ware’s vision been so bold and in your face, That! Feels Good! guiding you through every step of the party from first stepping onto the dancefloor to sneaking away with a new lover to leaving at sunrise with the music still blaring behind you.

Her focus here is almost solely on physical desire, letting her need for touch propel Freak Me Now’s uninhibited house-pop and Pearls’ dance ‘til you drop diva house, but Ware’s music has never been unfocused, this turn away from What’s Your Pleasure?’s yearning for connection during pandemic lockdowns replaced with music that knows exactly what it wants and where to get it. Beautiful People makes it Ware’s mission to fit as many people into the party as she possibly can, fueled by cowbell and a peppy horn section and rejecting misery in favor of finding a new person to party with and pouring another drink, while Begin Again finds spiritual rebirth through a syncopated Latin disco groove and lush, elegant backing instrumentation, each finding euphoria their own ways while staying true to the inclusive, community ethos that ‘70s disco was built upon. Even Lightning, the album’s one slight misstep due to its trading of disco for the moody alt-R&B jams of her early albums, doesn’t lose a whole lot of magic, still functioning as a breath mark before the album comes to an end even if it’s too drastic a step away from everything before it. She doesn’t need to take up too much of your time because these 40 minutes are more than enough to get every idea of hers across - Ware the club diva, Ware the romantic dreamer, Ware the sexual temptress - and no time is wasted in that, Ware keeping the album focused and on a defined path from start to finish.

That! Feels Good! is the kind of party where everything seems to go right: the perfect amount of people, the right kind of drinks, the perfect lighting across the dancefloor, and the most welcoming host in the form of Ware. Her music may stay in one place, but it’s because she’s never sounded better than she does here, a smooth and singular listen with one goal it achieves with absolute precision - few pop albums, especially in this revivalist style, manage to be so refreshing and true to its roots at once. Balancing so many different ideas so effortlessly is a feat in itself, yet Ware makes That! Feels Good! exciting to come back to outside of its pure craftsmanship with her passion for her musical forbearers and how she carries their ideas forward. These songs are waiting for you to lose yourself inside their rich, timeless disco fantasies, and it’s impossible to resist Ware’s invitation to the party.

#jessie ware #that! feels good!#emi #dance #dance pop #disco #funk #house #pop #9/10 #2023 #album review #album reviews #music review #2023 music #new music #2023 albums #luuurien

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luuurien · 8 months

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Indigo De Souza - All of This Will End

(Indie Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Indie Pop)

With exceptionally raw songwriting packing an incredible amount of emotion, Indigo De Souza’s third album confronts toxic relationships and traumatic scars from her youth in a more direct fashion than ever before. Now knowing how she wants to be loved and refusing to let negative emotions sit inside her, All of This Will End’s explosive songcraft makes her music hit harder than ever.

☆☆☆☆☆

There’s a moment in All of This Will End where the power of Indigo De Souza’s music is more immediate than ever before. As the plush electronic drums and jangly guitars start up in The Water, you can feel the perspective shift to a snapshot of her past, comforting but with an awareness of being back in a more turbulent point in her life. It’s an effortlessly beautiful song, one that basks in the warmth of childhood innocence in an album where anger and desire tend to rule, and it’s this balance of resignation and rage Indigo De Souza’s third album perfects. Where her debut caught her in the midst of overwhelming darkness, and Any Shape You Take chronicled self-discovery and the rush of feeling every emotion that comes your way, All of This Will End seeks growth through purging all the feelings she’s been holding in, acidic indie rock where quick flashes of fury dance around intimate scenes of De Souza’s youth. It’s a fabulously dynamic album where De Souza’s exceptionally-pared down songwriting packs an incredible amount of emotion, committed performance and a new production team letting her music bounce between styles without having to bend her songwriting to it - the sound of these songs aims to compliment her earnest songwriting rather than force it to fit in a box. As quickly as the album comes to a close, every feeling of hers has been fully transferred to you.

With a new sound after the departure of Any Shape You Take bandmates Owen Stone and MJ Lenderman- an event that entirely shook De Souza after starting to feel that those people were the only people for {her}” - All of This Will End lovingly embraces the gauzy dance-pop and country twang pieces of Any Shape You Take hinted at never fully explored. Compare the album’s first two singles, Younger & Dumber and Smog, and you can find the intersection where the album’s two thematic paths cross. The former is a haunting country ballad built on a foundation of strummed acoustic guitar and warm piano, a direct conversation between De Souza and her younger self, how the abuse she endured in the past so deeply changed her into who she is today even if she knows she deserved none of it (“You came to hurt me in all the right places / Made me somebody / …I didn’t know better”). Smog exists back in that past, De Souza protected by moonlight as she escapes the pressures around her through carefree synthpop (“I want to face it head-on / But it’s so easy to turn it away / …I don’t know how to turn around if I’m not ready”). The rest of the songs fit largely into those two categories with De Souza’s perspectives on her past and present self always in the mix, the new doors opened up for her music making each one feel special and cared for, be it the heavy riffage and headphone-crushing percussion that manifests feelings of overwhelming insecurity in early highlight Wasting Your Time or the title track’s breezy indie rock where not having any answers allows her to love and take care of herself regardless of where she’s struggling (“There’s only love / There’s only moving through and trying your best / Sometimes it’s not enough / Who gives a fuck, all of this will end”); by providing many iterations of herself in All of This Will End, she makes an immensely comforting album in its ability to own all its emotions, letting you into her world and see her forgive and heal from her past without letting those who hurt her escape from accountability.

Her straightforward emotional storytelling works as well on short tracks as much as it does on the album’s two slow-burns, Not My Body and Younger & Dumber. Sequencing-wise, they take up an eight minute stretch at the album’s end that initially feels at odds with the brisk pace and urgent feel of the previous songs, still dealing with heavy emotion but choosing to wade in them, slow and reflective in ways her music rarely has been up to this point. De Souza’s songs have always been deeply attuned to her emotional states both euphoric and miserable, but there’s something fresh and cutting about the way she leans into the crushing midsection of Not My Body, letting the fourth between the two notes she sings in the first three lines of the final verse ascend quickly before slowly sliding down the final half of each line, her desperation to escape the physical limitations of her body coming to its breaking point before the last half of the song smoothly drifts out into a smoky alt-country sunset. These two extended moments of songcraft give even greater meaning to the songs before them: the panic attack at the center of Parking Lot is only two and a half minutes and Always’ gutting attempt to make sense of her father’s extended absence in her childhood are that much more important when it’s clear just how present and heavy those feelings are within her in each. All of This Will End doesn’t mind lingering, but it’s De Souza’s choosing of when to sit with feelings and when to let them pour out that the album earns such a beautiful sense of wholeness, content with not having a final answer as long as she’s moving forward into a better future.

Like her previous albums, All of This Will End deals with De Souza’s internal world and how devoting yourself to love both breaks and reconstructs you, but what has changed is how her existential dread now gives her a reason to go as big as possible, musical colors more vivid than ever and writing with a desire to do nothing but say exactly how she feels with nothing in between you and her. Her ease at describing feelings so simply without losing an edge to her writing is second to none, and her passionate performances that go from elated to terrified in the blink of an eye keep you right next to her throughout every moment. The core of De Souza’s music is in honesty and expressing every feeling without fear, and All of This Will End’s willingness to let every version of De Souza exist together gives every song the opportunity to pull you into her world for a bit, admire the beauty of it all, and move forward into the future alongside her. It may be short, but that makes cherishing every second that much more valuable.

#indigo de souza #all of this will end #saddle creek #alt-country #indie pop #indie rock #singer/songwriter #synthpop #2023 #10/10 #album review #album reviews #new music #music review #2023 music #luuurien

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luuurien · 8 months

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James Ivy - Everything Perfect

(Alternative Dance, Indietronica, Dream Pop)

James Ivy’s latest EP mixes angsty alternative rock with flashy new rave and overwhelming shoegaze to immense effect. Underneath Everything Perfect’s fuzzy surface lies some of the most addictive pop this year with a uniquely bittersweet twist.

☆☆☆☆☆

James Ivy’s got a grip on his sound, and he won’t let it go for even a second. While he started out making PC music-indebted pop with a razor-sharp twist to it going back to his early snappy emo-R&B single Yearbook and alt-dance jam Texas, the fall of 2021 had his debut EP embracing angsty power pop with pieces of his old sound orbiting a new inclination towards hooky indie rock and sugary indietronica, classic rock formulas given a delightful new coat of paint. Building on those ideas, Everything Perfect tones down the punkier side of Good Grief! in exchange for more intimate alt-rock where sensitivity makes for even sweeter music than before. Its seven songs work with all the same ingredients - dream pop guitars, explosive drumming, Ivy’s swooning vocals - but twist them around funky drum grooves and dramatic glam rock and hints of emo-pop sourness, Everything Perfect some of the most addictive pop this year a uniquely bittersweet twist. As a reintroduction to Ivy in a new year, it does absolutely everything right. Energetic but thoughtfully produced, Everything Perfect strikes a masterful balance of excitement and nuance in Ivy’s spiky alt-pop. L-Trip opens the EP in a woozy 3/4 pulse, snare drums hit on unexpected beats and rhythm guitars pummeling through sharp and sudden chord changes, heavily off-kilter songcraft with a chewy pop center Ivy uses to set the stage for the next six songs. Under Tongues and Stereo Play operate on throwback alt-dance grooves, and for what they lack in punch they more than make up for in atmosphere and character, smooth and lowkey tracks that slot in comfortably between Everything Perfect’s wilder moments. None of the EP strays from this particular sound of Ivy’s - The Last Place You’d Ever Look is the closest thing to it with its glammy guitars and heartland rock piano - but such cohesion just works for these songs, a barrage of fluorescent alt-pop where the hooks are immediate and all the little details keep your eyes from staying in one same place too long. All seven songs land around the same area of Ivy’s sound, but he reaches absolute perfection in this alt-dance/shoegaze blend that not a moment of Everything Perfect isn’t a joy to spend time with. Everything Perfect rounds itself out to make the whole experience a dream, seven tracks with a few unique characteristics that work towards the EP’s larger goals. Each is a snapshot of Ivy’s gorgeous new sound with variations on the secondary ingredients, be it shoegaze or pop punk or indietronica, his charged songwriting adding a final touch of dramatic flair to Everything Perfect’s already solid sound. There’s not a moment where the energy drops or you’re pulled out of Ivy’s world, and its 28-minute runtime ensures there’s more than enough here to make a strong impression. It’s just really, really good pop, and that’s all Ivy needs to make Everything Perfect one of the year’s leanest and most electrifying records.

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luuurien · 9 months

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Kelela - Raven

(Alternative R&B, Breakbeat, Ambient Pop)

In her long-awaited sophomore album, Kelela finds herself effortlessly shifting between sensual dance bliss and ethereal, healing ambient music, Raven a harmonious and fluid album whose unique vantage point on R&B lends Kelela’s breathtaking electronica with an incredible amount of humanity behind it all.

☆☆☆☆☆

By stepping into the shadows, Kelela found herself an incredible new energy. In the years that have passed since her innovative 2017 debut Take Me Apart, Kelela’s minimalist, sensual R&B with unconventional textures and command of both the dancefloor and the bedroom has only become all the more alluring, Kelela careful in her presentation to perfect every element of her music and leave no spot of her world untouched. But with that came both new personal stressors and the terror of the outside world weighing on her: writer’s block and reestablishing personal boundaries in her relationships compounded by the global pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings around the United States turning her inward to better understand herself and what she wants from the world, her sophomore album Raven the result of six years of contemplation, reinvention and emotional restoration whose expansive soundscaping achieve the same effect as the heaviest dance music she’s put out to date. Across its more than an hour runtime, Kelela creates an oasis for herself through breathtaking electronica with an incredible amount of humanity behind it all, the album’s pitch black atmospheres lit up by neon synths and breakbeats but calmed by luxurious dancehall and ambient cooldowns, Kelela’s emphasis on fluidity letting her seamlessly slip from song to song with her own needs and growth always at the forefront. It’s cathartic through subtlety rather than explosivity, Raven rewarding deep listening with an endless ocean of Kelela’s R&B magic situated between new styles and an embrace of boundlessness.

With a handful of left-field electronic producers working alongside her, Kelela pushes Raven forward through a perfect balance of downtempo R&B jams and dancefloor bliss, meditation and euphoria both essential for her to leave the strongest impression. The most immediate parts of Raven are the latter kind of tracks: the futuristic breakbeats of Happy Ending and Contact spurred on by ballroom master LSDXOXO; Acemo and FAUZIA come together on the title track as it shifts from hypnotic synth ambiance to a rapturous dance breakdown, freeing and ecstatic as Kelela harnesses herself as her own source of energy and sheds the weight of the past; German ambient dub artist Florian T M Zeisig brings thoughtful tides of energy to the album’s slower sections, Let It Go propelled largely by a bassline and soft keyboard layers and second half highlights Holier, Divorce and Enough for Love some of Kelela’s most brilliant tracks despite how slow stormy they are. Her sound is rooted in electronica staple sounds - ambient, jungle, dub - but Kelela’s divine visions of Raven as an album of protection and rebirth keep the album remarkably refreshing and fantastically luminous. For her, Raven is a renaissance of her own resolve, dance music as both a personal salve and her way to nurture the world and those around her as Closure leans on Rahrah Gabor for an unexpected but electrifying rap verse that brings out a rawer, heavier sexuality Kelela tends to avoid with her hazier lyricism, Gabor riding LSDXOXO and Bambii’s decelerated beat with clever wordplay and loads of charisma (“Uh, what the lick read? / I'm waiting for you to pull up and come lick me / It's been a minute since I let you come and stick me / You know I always leave the situation sticky”). As Kelela works to nourish her own soul, the limitless reach of her music allows her to fill your own body up with her presence and make Raven a marvelous, transformative experience.

It’s an album that moves slowly and methodically, its fifteen songs spread across 62 minutes to make her dance songs deeply layered and the ambient tracks rich and expansive. Washed Away and Far Away open and close the album, hypnotic synth pads and her serpentine vocal improvisation expressing similar but distinct expressions of change, the former Kelela drifting away from the world and the latter the result of her fully immersed in her own mind for the previous hour, all the tension inside her released as the same sounds embody a new and rejuvenated Kelela. Despite much of the album being that sort of ambient electronica, many of the songs can easily be imaged as glorious ballads, Holier’s gentle pads careening around the gentle throb of a bassline that doesn’t ever establish a tempo for the song, instead soft pulses of low end that play against Kelela’s angelic vocals, while the melting delight of Sorbet runs with its fluttering synth arpeggios and reverb-soaked everything as Kelela loses herself in the moment-to-moment slow rush of physical contact (“Waves when we touch, rippling in / Soft on my mouth, sweeter than / I wanna lay out, sun on my face”). The calmness across all of Raven makes it endlessly relistenable, where the transitions between Closure and Contact and Fooley are so seamless you have to go through the entire thing again just to experience it in context another time, where drowning yourself in Kelela’s expansive ambient pieces makes those rushes of club intensity in Happy Ending and Bruises that much more incredible. By working for emotional cohesion as much as she does musical and tonal cohesion, Raven ascends to a level of mastery her debut gave dozens of glimpses of, Kelela entirely in her own element with a control over her sound she refuses to fully restrict, always assured in her ability to go off course for a moment and captivate you nonetheless.

Raven’s seamlessness and innovative take on atmospheric, imaginative R&B lifts it far beyond anywhere people expected Kelela to go, ditching the heaviness and deconstruction of her debut for a weightless and emotionally resonant album where putting herself back together is an act of patience and dedication rather than the jolts of energy Take Me Apart’s stories drew from. It’s a relaxed album whose creator is still fully aware of what she’s cleansing from her mind, every breakbeat groove and rumbling ambient piece so lush and layered to wash those negative feelings out of her. Raven pulls you in like nothing else will this year, Kelela’s quiet return to the world a tranquil and multilayered listen with more magic to discover every time.

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