"Paper Trails"- Darkside

Darkside's opaque "Paper Trails" sweats with seduction. The opening finger snaps and fidgeting twang guitar is the alluring siren call out onto the dancefloor, before the bass locks you into the groove. Then from some far off corner, a voice emerges arises out of the shadows. A voice that commands respect while secretly quaking with fear. Nicolas Jaar's voice trembles with every pitch-shifted turn of phrase as partner Dave Harrington steadies the guitar and descends into late-night juke-joint runs. Both halves simmer, never quite erupting into roaring flames, but constantly threatening. For now, the only fire is the one burning in their heads.

Psychic the debut double LP from Darkside is out October 8 through Nicolas Jaar's Other People label, in partnership with Matador. 

 

What's New(s)?

Queens of the Stone Age throw shots at Jigga

Though it's hard to imagine them inspiring a "Takeover" like response, Queens of the Stone Age had some less than kind things to say about "the God MC" in light of their recent performance at the Jay curated Made in America Festival. In an interview with the CBC 2's "Strombo Show" frontman Josh Homme referred to Jay Z as a "kook", saying "He has his security frisking the bands on the way in." When the festival security asked to look through his own bag, Homme threatened not to play, intonating "no one's ever done that." Apparently the band was also given a bottle of Jay Z's champagne, which they later broke tagging it as nothing more than "a marketing tool". Listen at around the 1:56:00 and 2:16:00 marks for QOTSA's commentary on the incident, where Homme also wonders aloud "people never say anything bad about Jay Z do they?", not unless your Lil Wayne or Nas.


  




Beck debuts "Gimme"

Rounding out this summer's trilogy of stand-alone singles, Beck has released "Gimme" to follow-up previous entries "Defriended" and "I Won't Be Long". According to NPR affiliate WXPN, none of the songs will feature on his forthcoming full length LP or his rumored acoustic album. "Gimme" tows the line between the two, feature an organic gamelan like sound before rapidly mutating into mechanical pitch-shifting vocals. The song is now available as a 12'' on Beck's website backed by a 30 minute extended mix B-side.

James Blake teams up with Chance the Rapper

James Blake's original "Life Round Here" distinctively recalled the "rainy days" he detailed in the overcast number; a dour keyboard providing the cloud coverage and Blake's cascading digital voice supplying the downpour. The song appeared before the RZA feature "Take A Fall For Me" on the excellent sophomore release Overgrown. Since then, Blake has logged studio time with Drake, Kanye West, and now Chicago upstart Chance the Rapper. Before debuting the remix on BBC 1 Radio, Blake fittingly called from Trent, England standing in the rain shooting a video with Chance for the new version. When asked by DJ Zane Lowe how the collabo came about, Blake spotlighted Chance's SXSW performance and said "I never really felt the track was finished, even when it went on the album, I just felt there was this space". Chance fills in that space with a dizzying verse that scurries through "roundabouts" and chips in for another round. The exuberant touchdown Blake dejectedly referenced is reinvigorated by Chance's own take on the Ickey Shuffle. 

Look for the video to appear in a future edition of "What's New(s)?" which is said to feature everything from "Somalia Pirates to Chevy Impalas." 

"Nosetalgia" ft. Kendrick Lamar- Pusha T

"I started out as a baby faced monster," Pusha T pointedly snarls atop off-kilter guitar riffs and plodding percussion on new track "Nosetalgia". The image is ideal for Pusha, since day one he's been journalistically detailing his involvement in the drug game and rather than finger-wag we're only drawn in further. Here Pusha's as alluring as ever, his self-appointed moniker "Black Ferris Bueller" sizzles like the minute steak he compares his crack to. The attention to minute details "a million megapixels of the Pyrex, started on the scale my only Timex", ensure Pusha grandmaster status in the drug-dealing chess game. 

While Pusha sees Starter jackets in two-tone and "an arm full of watches", Kendrick Lamar can only envision "dead bodies". K.Dot carries us through scenes of his Sega Genesis getting sold for crack money and his father weighing out nine ounces in front of him at age 10. Showing us the other side of the coin, Kendrick's verse recalls the stomach-churning moments on Breaking Bad when the poisonous harvest that Walter White sows is shown. "Quantum physics could never show the world I was in," Kendrick barks. He and Pusha are at two places at once, and they couldn't be any further apart. 

Pusha T's My Name Is My Name is out 10/8 via G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam.  

What's New(s)?

Azealia Banks debuts new track

Harlem rapper/R&B singer Azealia Banks debut LP Broke With Expensive Taste has been in a perpetual state of delay, but that hasn't stop the firebrand from staving off audience hunger with new material. Banks is already teasing a new mixtape, titled Fantasea II: Second Wave tenatively scheduled for a July 11, 2014 release. While such a far-off date might seem farfetched, Banks has supplied "Count Contessa" for proof. The beat supplied by producer Lone squelches and squeaks like interstitial JRPG music, if it was soundtracking a nautical themed house party. "If you can't dance and if you can't sing", Banks intones several times over the wavy synths. If the release date has any grounding in reality, we'll have plenty of time to practice our moves. 

 Daft Punk time travel in new video

If Daft Punk's rosy love-letter to the 70s Random Access Memories failed to demonstrate robots are capable of experiencing nostalgia, the French duo's new video featuring Pharrell and Nile Rogers is the final proof. Nothing overly complicated about the set-up here, just the four collaborators in an angelic disco glow playing for a dance conscious crowd at Studio 54 circa 22nd century. The camera pans the entire crowd and we find there isn't a single soul not caught up in the groove. Daft Punk has supplied a video that lives up to the song's lofty commands.

How to Dress Well releases "Hangover Mix"

  

"Ok i woke up super hungover today and made this mix of songs," Tom Krell of How to Dress Well begins his most-recent Soundcloud posting. The near 45 minute mix weaves through intermittent clips of Krell recontextualizing current rap juggernauts in the way of "Hold On We're Going Home" and a Ryan Hemsworth remix of "Honest". Krell finds the time to stop over and laconically back up Kanye West on "Hold My Liquor" with his breathless falsetto. We also detour to incendiary bits of Kevin Gates, subdued acoustic strumming from the reviled GG Allin,  and slow-burning pieces from Tink and Tracy Chapman. When considering the parenthetical title of "Hungover Mix", the genre-hopping starts to make sense. As Krell succinctly puts it in his post, "it's like a mix of songs that soothe and punish".

"Chamakay"- Blood Orange

In light of his production efforts on the ecstatic "Losing You", it's easy to see Blood Orange's Dev Hynes' new song "Chamakay" hiding in the shadow of the Solange track.  Waves of synthesizer wash up on the familiar shore, where tinges of mbira tiptoe across the sand. Even the video features Hynes in the exotic locale of Georgetown, Guyana endearingly auditioning his best R&B poses. An unflappable calm floats through the pair of songs, breathless in their approach. But that's where the similarities end. Solange's calm came as resolve in the face of the realization that the end was nearing. The clouds were overheard, though Solange could see through to the Sun on the other side. "Chamakay" spotlights the kind of calm that can only come with resignation. Hynes stumbles into the empty bass ravines of "Chamakay", caught up on the notion of giving leaving you empty. Charlift's Caroline Polacheck backup vocals linger long enough to stay in sight, only to disappear when the waiting game pushes closer. "Losing You" was a temporary layover, this is the final departure.

"Felt This Way"- Helen

As Grouper, Portland-native Liz Harris makes hazy ambient drones that have been called "silent cries for attention that go unnoticed". Grouper's music conjures a wounded animal's cries reflecting off every tree branch or the sound of a person slowly coming to terms with ocean waves washing over them. More than resignation, many of her great songs were about restlessness, searching for a place where "spirit meets skin". New side-project Helen (which Liz Harris formed with friends Scott Simmons and Jed Bindeman) retains that restlessness, while ratcheting up the RPMs. The band tongue-in-cheekily labels their music "pop" on their iTunes page, but anything this blown-out is unlikely to appear on Billboard anytime soon. Harris' vocals continue to fight to be heard, though the foes have shifted from floating ambient scapes to fuzz guitar, bass rumbles, and punctuating drum blasts. “Felt This Way” could pass as Best Coast if Bethany Cosentino stood 30 feet from the microphone and never saw the Sun. Harris never stays one line for long, she glides over all. Harris is still "searching"; new project Helen just hastens the pace. 

The "Felt This Way" single is available on iTunes now, backed by B-side "Dying All The Time".

In Revue- "Repave"

"This is it, no turning back," the Christmas waif Kevin McCallister insists in Home Alone 2, immediately before he hurls a brick through a pristine store front window. Justin Vernon found himself at a similar stopping point post Blood Bank EP. Behind him was the gentle folk For Emma Forever Ago delivered, an album as beholden to artist mythology as it was to a tracklist. He'd slowly started to slip the albatross with Unmap, the first Volcano Choir LP released in 2009. But, for all its successes Unmap smacked of an artist attempting to outpace the pressure catching up to him. Sophomore Bon Iver release Bon Iver  was the brick through the window, smashing artist expectations into a million pieces.
 
For its tenderness, Bon Iver was an album of supreme confidence. Vernon's haunting voice towed the line between frailness and certainty in a way few can. Follow-up Volcano Choir release Repave continues to tiptoe for an eternal 38 minutes. Opener "Tiderays" corps drumming and steady build collapsing into a rousing chorus recalls Bon Iver’s “Perth”. Guitar strumming drips gently like morning dew on the grass, but soon enough it swells until busting lose from the dam. Vernon is already wading in the stormy waters of romance, “bracing for the tiderays”

Bon Iver was a record longing to escape the slow freeze of "the moment", Repave finds Justin Vernon doggedly trying to preserve it. “Comrade” intertwines frayed guitar figures and straying piano into a tapestry depicting Vernon’s last ditch efforts. He’s floundering, hooked on a long line of promises and tugging the entire time. An urge to “give it another fortnight” is a dying gasp. Failed relationships rarely collapse, more often they steadily decay. A bare falsetto floats through the tall pines on “Keel”. Here again the guitars flit, never able to rally around the task they’ve been handed. Their tremulousness mirrors the “cold slow” uncertainty plaguing Vernon as he plans for preservation. “Just stay here, just stay here loving me,” he mutely begs. When the time comes to make his pitch, he’s in pieces. Conveying your love rarely goes according to plan. All the rehearsals can’t hide a beating heart, still a shaking hand, or cool the heat of the moment.

While parsing Justin Vernon's lyrics is an effort more likely to lead to insanity than insight, there are prevalent themes encased in Repave's amber. Sex is a prominent part of the equation. The skulking guitars and dawdling pianos of "Byegone" carry Vernon down the mountain to the "north end of monogamy". Reupping on real love, “Alaskans” carefully fingerpicks guitar for a winsome folk-tune you could picture Fleet Foxes performing. Charles Bukowski's voice crackles: "when you take it away, do it slowly and easily, make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in my life, amen." “The Shower”s voracious sexual appetite masks a naked fragility. Carnality can only be staved off by connection.

Trading the physical for the mental isn't the only aspect of sex Repave documents. The confusion or post-coital clarity it affords is equally important. Vernon masks his anxiousness on the steadily stomping "Dancepack" with supremely self-confident vocal acrobatics. He steadfastly resolves "I'm already never gonna fail you". Soon resolve decomposes into the desperate yelp "take note, there's still a hole in your heart". "Acetate" similarly chest puffs via the Spartan half-threat "I won't beg for you on acetate". Past disappointments fuel Vernon’s fiery refusal to crawl. However, several noncommittal “mays” throttle an exasperated “will”. We’re hearing a snarl mask a silent cry.

Pictorial intimacy matters as much as the physical form on Repave. Bon Iver's roaring waves and towering mountains hid the backwoods roads "3rd and lake". Closer "Almanac" begins as a tightly coiled remembrance of Saturdays “toasted, roasting in your room”, before unhinging into sizzling memories unencumbered by time. The imperious synthesizer scoops you up and drops you onto a “slow lofty river”, guitars shedding their mortal coils and beginning ascent. Every bend and turn brims with joy, the kind that often accompanies “going for a homerun”, in whatever uniform the metaphor might dawn. Vernon alludes to a time when “all of us are sober”, an epoch yet to arrive based on the “dancing on your footsteps” he describes. “When all of this is over” is mentioned, though it’s as far off as the birds flying overhead on the album’s cover.

"Anthemic" has been a word bandied around quite a bit upon this album's release with suggestions it should already be soundtracking the inspirational locker room speech in sports films. I agree it's anthemic, but an anthem's loud pounding notes inevitably die down and are replaced by silence. Those inspirational speeches are forgotten once the roar of the crowd drowns you out. Physical, mental, spiritual, and personal connections carry us to the mountaintops, but as Volcano Choir reminds us on Repave's final line, we're always "coming down to the ground."   

"Dancepack"