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389 · 7 months

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& the Charm | Avalon Emerson

#cover art #design #art #avalon emerson #cover #music #u

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taste-in-music · 4 months

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grrlmusic · 1 year

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Avalon Emerson & The Charm

#music #artwork #cover #design #vinyl #Avalon Emerson #AD93 #Alex McCullough #Tonje Thilesen

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dustedmagazine · 4 months

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Ian Mathers’ 2023: J'suis fatiguée tu sais pas c'que j'suis fatiguée

a picture of Mandy, Indiana by Chris Hogge

It has been, if you’ll pardon the language, a stupid fucking year (or maybe it’s just, as Yo La Tengo correctly diagnosed, this stupid world). On any number of levels: for me, personally; in terms of international politics (although “stupid” is treating multiple ongoing genocides with a bit too much flippancy); the endless buffoonery of local politics; the people we’ve lost, even as the now pretty totally unchecked global progress of COVID thrashes peoples’ immune systems if not taking them out itself; and all of this means I barely have any energy these days to worry about our imminent environmental collapse (remember?). It’s been a grind, but as always music is one of the things that make life worthwhile, despite it all.

Even musically, I felt a bit adrift at times in 2023; one of my longstanding methods of music discovery, the esteemed group review site The Singles Jukebox, called it quits in 2022. And except for one last round of our traditional year-end Amnesty picks (where each writer gets to pick one song for coverage with none of the normal criteria for selection), that very much appeared to be that. And then a stray Discord comment late this year led to getting the band back together, and starting in late November the Jukebox has made a pretty amazing (temporary!) return. As always, that led to me encountering a ton of stuff I simply never would have heard of otherwise (and some new discoveries even slipped onto the lists below, just one more reason the practice most places have of running year end stuff early December makes me wince). It didn’t shift my existing favourites from 2023 much, nor did I expect it to, but it did make me feel like I had more context on the year as a whole, across more places and scenes and genres than I did before (but still incomplete, always incomplete).

This in turn feels tied to a change in my year-end list methodology. At this point I feel like I’m never going to settle on a consistent format forever and ever amen; different years pull different things out of me (both in terms of listening and in terms of sharing), and there’s also a bit of a pendulum-swing effect. For the past two years I’ve gone expansive, 40+ records, various other lists to get more things in. This was me chafing at (entirely self-imposed!) restrictions from years past, and it gave me a sense of freedom, even relief. I still stand by those lists (as much as I stand by any part of my past self). But this year looking at my account of what I’d listened to, realizing my shortlist was around 50 LPs and that if I was applying the kind of criteria I’d used recently I could easily include them all… I could feel myself wanting to go in the other direction. It took me a lot longer than I expected to pare that shortlist down to 20 albums (still an arbitrary number!), and I found the process oddly satisfying. Trying to decide what made those last couple of spots had me thinking harder about what I currently value and what my year has been like (and what my differing experiences with all these pieces of music were like) than I’d had to in a while.

Those longer lists have virtues this one doesn’t, of course; I have an even keener than normal feeling of leaving things out, of failing to adequately represent myself or music or… something. So while it’s true every year that there are records I loved that I don’t represent in any list, I feel the need to re-emphasize that truth here, specifically. Sometimes what made the cut over the days I spent putting this together surprised me; there are albums I wrote positive things about that I fully expected to be here that are hovering just out of sight in the 21-25 range. Some of them are represented in the accompanying list of songs that either don’t have albums or just stood out from their surroundings (and as last year I’ve tried to track down music videos, a form I still love, for all of those). From past experience, some of those standouts will wind up representing albums that, if I’d gotten more time with them this year, could have made it onto the main list. I also couldn’t let go of one of my secondary lists; I just really love EPs, and I wish more people made them (even if one of the entrants this year is long enough I’d normally consider it an album, if not for the band themselves dubbing it an EP).

As always these lists are alphabetical instead of ranked (and where I wrote about them, I’ve linked to it here); as I said, just narrowing them down was hard enough. I have no idea how to assess the relative merits of (say) L’Rain’s playfully, kaleidoscopically deep I Killed Your Dog versus a.s.o.’s self-titled, lush trip hop throwback versus the Drin’s gnomic, garage-bound bad vibes. They’re all great. But I did have two that felt like albums of my year, in different ways. The first of the National’s two 2023 records, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, was already a favourite when some of the personal stuff I alluded to above made me profoundly grateful that they’d put out this record, about mental health and the ends of things and mixed feelings, in this particular year (and then they put out a second record, which is not here because nobody gets to double dip, but it’s also good). I had a less specifically autobiographical resonance with Mandy, Indiana’s incredible debut i’ve seen a way but it did blow me away on purely sonic grounds in a way few bands have in the last decade or so. The greatness of that record to me is in more than just how stunningly different it felt the first few times I played it (although that was an experience I loved); as I said when I made their “Pinking Shears” my Amnesty pick for the Jukebox this year, it felt like a second miracle when the album did cohere into a set of songs that they wound up being some of my favourite songs of the year. Despite all the other ways I’ve been tired in 2023, it’s never been with music, and artists like the following (and the prospect of whatever I’ll encounter next year) are the reason why.

20 LPS

a.s.o. — a.s.o. (Low Lying Records)

ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT — “Darling the Dawn” (Constellation)

Avalon Emerson — & the Charm (Another Dove)

Brìghde Chaimbeul — Carry Them With Us (tak:til)

Carly Rae Jepsen — The Loveliest Time (Interscope)

Chappell Roan — The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (Island)

The Drin — Today My Friend You Drunk the Venom (Feel It)

Eluvium — (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality (Temporary Residence Limited)

Ghost Marrow — earth + death (The Garotte)

The Hives — The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (Disques Hives)

L’Rain — I Killed Your Dog (Mexican Summer)

Ladytron — Time’s Arrow (Cooking Vinyl)

Mandy, Indiana — i’ve seen a way (Fire Talk)

Mute Duo — Migrant Flocks (American Dreams)

The National — First Two Pages of Frankenstein (4AD)

Pearly Drops — A Little Disaster (Cascine)

Spanish Love Songs — No Joy (Pure Noise)

Tacoma Park — Tacoma Park (Self Released)

Tørrfall — Tørrfall (De Pene Inngang)

Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)

5 EPS

Babygirl — Be Still My Heart (Sandlot)

Death of Heather — Forever (Big Romantic)

hkmori — forever (Self Released)

Tara Clerkin Trio — On the Turning Ground (World of Echo)

Weaklung — We Bring About Our Own Demise (Self Released)

20 MORE SONGS

100 gecs — “Hollywood Baby”

Blur — “Barbaric”

boygenius — “Not Strong Enough”

Caroline Polachek — “Dang”

Dua Lipa — “Houdini”

Eslabon Armado y Peso Pluma — "Ella Baila Sola"

Jiraya Uai & MC Tarapi — “Hoje Tem Rodeio, Baile De Favela”

Kesha — “Eat the Acid”

Lexie Liu — “delulu”

Maria BC — “Mercury”

Mitski — “My Love Mine All Mine”

Olivia Rodrigo — “bad idea right?”

Picastro — “Earthseed”

Raye ft. 070 Shake — “Escapism.”

Sho Madjozi — “Chale”

Tinashe — “Needs”

Tyla — “Water”

Troye Sivan — “Rush”

Victoria Monét — “On My Mama”

Water From Your Eyes — “Barley”

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unbornwhiskeyy · 1 month

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closer to the sun, just hit 31 the ring ran out of fun and now it's warm like bathwater

the walls we put up sneaking up on us the world is a fuck and accelerating

this moment flung you far into a future where you are another unreality star

and now it's here again astrology poisoning these strangers aren't your friends

#avalon emerson

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grrl-operator · 1 year

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Avalon Emerson & The Charm

#music #artwork #cover #CD #Avalon Emerson #& The Charm #Alex McCullough #Tonje Thilesen #Bandcamp

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c01n · 1 year

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a cute banger (it's almost spring)

#avalon emerson #music #Bandcamp

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groovesnjams · 4 months

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4 / 50

"Entombed in Ice" by Avalon Emerson

DV:

If there's one thing I love about pop music above all else, more than singalong choruses and emotionally-wrenching details in the second verse and even synths themselves, it's nonsense words. Put "Da Doo Ron Ron" on my grave. So while MG and I both loved Avalon Emerson & the Charm's album, and we nearly put "Sandrail Silhouette," (which has a second verse where Emerson calls her friends' daughters "a reason for an optimistic view," an incredible line) on this list, that song was fundamentally outmatched when up against "Entombed in Ice" and its "Ba da da-da-da-duh." This song addresses someone, a former friend, maybe an ex-lover, fondly but without remorse for what once was. And it gives them direction, if not directions. This is a post-breakup song, maybe the year's great anomaly, full of love but not in love. It's a harsh message delivered in the gentlest way possible. "There are some things you can do for yourself now," repeats Emerson, leaving the things up to our imaginations. But only a little: "rotten hearts will decay" is where the first verse starts, and the blanks are easy to fill in. This song's subject has some shit to work through. But maybe they can! The bridge's "Ba da da-da-da-duh" echoes like freedom. It's possibility, not condemnation. Avalon Emerson stretches to the top of her range, echoing and melting into a short guitar solo, unencumbered by words and saying so much without them. We all have something we can do for ourselves; those syllables sound like they believe.

MG:

Avalon Emerson’s Soundcloud DJ sets are a staple of my household – like toilet paper, iced coffee, or a bed, she is both a necessity and a presence. But also! We only even made acquaintance with her work at the beginning of this very year via both Four Tet and Gorilla Vs. Bear putting “Sandrail Silhouette” on their playlists. I had no idea who she was but it felt like when I first got Napster and I’d search for something and only one, single user had uploaded it – you just know this thing that you haven’t even heard yet is cool. And yes, Avalon Emerson is very cool, so if that’s your criterion, please, stop here and make friends with the whole of & The Charm immediately. I wish I could be like “but if you must know why she’s cool, read on” but some of it eludes me to this day! Not in the emperor’s new clothes way where there’s no cool but I want to project cool on to her so badly that I’m making shit up, but in the way where you start scratching at the surface of a piece of art and it just starts yielding all these layers, some dense and some flaky and some immediately understood and some fleeting wisps of recognition. I continue to be stuck on this interview she gave to Pitchfork where she says (and I will quote the whole thing, not just the part relevant to me):

Since I’ve been involved in dance music, there’s been this arms race toward harder and faster, and it’s not really something that I identify with. This cathartic release that people seek when they go out clubbing, I get it and I respect it, and I participate in it as a DJ. But when I’m listening to music, my idea of a perfect record is a Cocteau Twins record, things that are soft and beautiful. I wanted to make this a soft, pretty record, but lyrically, the things on my mind are dark and sad, and very black-pilled at times. That juxtaposition is important, because something beautiful can also be coming from a place of pain. I think that’s where most good art lies, to be honest.

If anything, I find the way she describes her own ideas here reductive. But the part about it being a contrast to the “harder and faster” of club music is what’s relevant to me. I think “Entombed In Ice,” composed as it is of fragmented thoughts and ideas and sounds and bits that wander in and do their thing and dissolve into vapor or fade into the wallpaper, is a contrast to that club sound but it also does the thing that club music does, it provides a “cathartic release.” To talk back to Avalon Emerson, I’d say that as a culture we’re very hung up on this idea of catharsis as a WHOOSH or a BANG and then silence, nothingness, ending. But I think since we all keep going afterwards, since catharsis is an ending but not the ending, we must also listen quietly for those fragments and appreciate their soft approach and disappearance because that very gentle, loping cycle is also cathartic and we need little catharsis as much as big catharsis. Now back to you, reader. You have to keep listening to “Entombed In Ice,” you won’t get all it has to offer once through. That’s part of what’s cool about it, but just a part.

#gnjsoty2k23 #avalon emerson & the charm #avalon emerson #entombed in ice #music

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shoegazekid · 8 months

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@avalon_emerson #shoegaze

#avalon emerson #dreampop #shoegaze #alternative music #indie #music #nugaze #bandcamp

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knightofleo · 1 year

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Avalon Emerson | Astrology Poisoning

It all burned up Just like you said it would Hometown you left is ash and black When your family failed, and your city fell hard Heat death is all that awaits for you at home That moment kicked you out, and then a decade Running from a silhouette of crisis at heart Would you have felt it all, another day Of glamorous euphoria, in spite of it all And you returned again Water rights poisoning This desert isn't your friend

#one of my least favourite of a musician's potential creative trajectories #is ''brilliant electronic artist deciding to hollow out everything they excel at to make room for a misguided singer/songwriter venture''#'''(that they patently do not excel at)'*#but this is actually pretty good #that pastoral 80's kate bush synth riff though #avalon emerson #astrology poisoning #& the charm #songs of 2023 #*(there's more of these than you would think nn)

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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.