pitchfork
God damn I love Rosalía. She’s fun and weird and gorg and I just want to sit back and watch her thrive forever. This album is so fun and vibing to it all week is going to be nothing short of a delight and exactly what we need. The voice, the range, the references, the videos, I’m here for it alllllll.
This week, we all knew I had to catch my ass up on the culture of the moment, of the year, perhaps. Beyonce’s newest release (rumored to be part one of three albums in different genres) Renaissance is, as Pitchfork wrote, “an immaculate dance record”, among other high praises. It’s joyful and celebratory, it’s about liberation and reinvention, and it’s sampling and sampling and opening many people’s eyes (mine included) to music they’ve not previously explored. Very into it, very excited, we are Beyonce always.
Arcade Fire has done it again. This new album is joyful, painful, sincere, and very much of the times. Their performance of this song (primarily at Coachella) makes me weep. Honestly, just thinking about it makes me tear up. This album, upon first listen, felt too on the nose in it’s message. But soon, I found myself feeling seen, feeling heartbroken, and feeling hope in knowing not only that this art exists but that the artists themselves exist.
In preparation for seeing them live next week, I’m digging in and spreading out in the discography of, arguably, my favorite band, Together Pangea. They are too much fun to see live and I can’t waitttttt. This was our wedding song. This song goes on almost every playlist I make. This video makes me feel better about the world. This song (and video) honestly makes the link between my brain and my body make more sense.
Anyways, they’re the best, I can't wait to see them again AND (much later edit*) will by seeing them again in Lincoln in September!!!!
I love Kurt Vile. I love him, I love his music, I love the vibe. Forever and ever. I love when people hear things I love and then watch as they love them too. This happened this week with this album. On vacation with my fam, I played this album on repeat and my brother-in-law would ask, “Who is this?” every song. Suddenly, a fan was born. I love Kurt Vile. I love when other people love Kurt Vile. This album is very lovely.
This week I’m revisiting an album I only very briefly dabbled with when it came out. We are seeing Car Seat Headrest live in Portland in a few weeks, so I figured I’d take another whack at it to get myself in the Car Seat Headspace :P I love these guys and am so excited!
In honor of the recent passing of drummer Taylor Hawkins, I decided this week to listen to Foo Fighters. Specifically focusing on their first 1995 self-titled album, but also visiting other highlights throughout their long career. I’ve peripherally listened to them over the years, but never taken much time beyond the hits. Ready for a raucous week!
I’m using this week to break ground in an area of the pop cultural zeitgeist that I have heard about in passing many times but have missed up until this point: jazmine sullivan and the deluxe edition of her 2021 album, Heaux Tales. this album had everything i could have imagined and more. her voice is huge and full of nuance, her ideas are excessively specific to modern culture with undertones of timeless female experience, and the poetry of it all is astounding. I’m all ears for this woman’s career going forward.
the gang is stoked on this album this week. long time spotify wrapped top artist, played their music during our wedding ceremony, and all together too excited to be seeing them live in portland at the end of april, together pangea has put out another just plain fun album. as always, they are pumping out the “blazing, surfy garage punk” to my ears ever-welcome delight. i don’t have much else to say but get the fuck into it!
this week we are going pure, unadulterated 70s jazz-pop nostalgia with steely dan’s Aja, a cassette tape that lived and died in my dad’s white 90’s toyota forerunner, and then heavily rotated in our living room 6-cd changer upon the changing tech. As someone born in 1992, I can’t say if this album is or was underappreciated. Pitchfork gave it a posthumous 10/10 review in 2019 and I’m not here to argue. It feels like anyone I talk to about it over the age of 40 (1) is surprised I’m familiar with it and (2) loves it or tells me their favorite steely dan album is actually Gaucho. Fair enough. I know several huge steely dan fans my own age (who are actually going to see them on tour this May) and I’m here for it! This album fucking rules and I know it backwards and forwards already, but man I needed this week.
I’ve never given much of a hoot about halsey, I know they’re around, they’ve been pretty good on SNL, and i’m obsessed with Evan Peters, so obviously the twitter dating saga of all that was hot on my radar. But I’ve never taken much time to listen and explore the tunes, and seeing pitchfork’s assessment that it’s their best work to date, here we are and here we go!
ooooh la la, this week’s album, y’all! i listened to a few of these songs when this album came out last year (“Melting of the Sun” gives me all of my life), but i needed to deep dive it to see, to know, to realize how much i continue to dig St. Vincent. what a dream, what a ride, what a groovy time. I’m obsessed. not much more to say.
this week, I’m taking a dive into an album I saw on almost every “best albums of 2020” list, live forever by bartees strange. it was praised and acclaimed and supported and played over and over. and it’s not getting much of a different response from me. it’s cool, it’s fun, it’s jittery, it’s a ride I don’t want to get off of.
hey y’all, back at it with another new release and, i mean, how could i not? taylor IS music culture and tayla IS canon. can you tell i listened to the episode of the las culturistas podcast before listening to this new album? can you tell that they convinced me to not sit on this album and listen to it sooner than 6 months from now? can you tell i’m not sure if i’m enjoying it because i actually like it or because matt and bowen spoke so passionately about it? anyways, it’s taylor being a new but old but new version of taylor (kind of like always) and, despite her being a controversial figure in the pop-cultural zeitgeist, goddamn the girl can smash a catchy tune. oh, and bon iver and the national are involved, which complicates the narrative just enough to pique my interest <3
welp, so far, this album is a dream and an honor to listen to. it’s a lot of what i needed in this messy and upsetting and tiring and illuminating time. i wasn’t familiar with this duo before seeing Queen Bey post about them and this album on her insta, but who am i to ignore recommendations from my president? according to pitchfork, these massively talented sisters: “starred in three seasons of the sitcom Grown-ish, snagged two Grammy nominations, opened for JAY-Z and Beyoncé’s joint tour, sang at the Super Bowl—oh, and Halle was cast as Princess Ariel in Disney’s upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid. In whatever free time they had, the Atlanta duo also managed to write, perform, and contribute production for their second album, Ungodly Hour.” I mean, I’m 6 and 8 years older than them, respectively, and i can barely keep up with this blog, let alone be rad and talented triple-threat powerhouses. basically, give it a listen and then play it again. you won’t be disappointed.
hopped on the bandwagon this week and didnt hate it. i’m not a long-term fiona apple stan so I haven’t the perfect point of reference to OBSESSING over this album, but I did like it. I like a wild and rowdy and seemingly very miscellaneous style. obviously we all already know that pitchfork jizzed in their pants over it and i’m no expert (lol but neither are they. BURN) but it was cool and weird and fun and I dug.
this week, I’m finally getting around to an artist that has been in my peripheral music view for years and years. katie crutchfield, aka waxahatchee. the name has always floated around my various cultural-interest spheres, and once i started following marlee grace on instagram (also seen on insta as @personalpractice) sometime around late-2015, early-2016, waxahatchee began popping up even more because they’re buds.
she’s always here and there in release radars and daiy mixes, but she recently released Saint Cloud in late-march and the time has finally come for me to give her an intentional and fair shake, and i really want to read this article with the knowledge of the songs, not just the knowledge of her friendship with marlee <3
pitchfork rave
This week we’re throwing back to an album recommended by Mitch and his Omaha-based roots. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning from Bright Eyes (Mitch has been blasting Bright Eyes every chance he gets these last few quarantined weeks). Conor Oberst is a longtime fave (in part because I was a teen in the mid-aughts, in part due to living in Omaha for 4 years) and as I first listened to this 2005 album this week, I realized I already knew most of the songs on it (in part because a guy I had a crush on in high school listened to them, in part due to living in Omaha for 4 years). I’ve been listening to it a lot outside, on my daily 30 min bike rides, while weeding/gardening, while walking the dog, and it’s truly making an excellent soundtrack to this strange and surreal moment in our world’s history. It’s sad angst and joyful noise and power and aggression and gentleness and making the best of your situation and drowning and invigoration. I’M HERE FOR IT AND NOW LET’S FUCK IT UP BOYS MAKE SOME NOISE
This week, we’re tackling the queen of weird and wonderful pop’s new album, Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene. I’ve been a “grimes gal” for many many years, and she really never ceases to disappoint me. Now she’s pregnant with Elon Musk’s baby (a union we all followed to the depths of hell) and releasing even more thrilling and heart-achingly wonderful tunes. I’m here for it and I’m always going to be here for it when it’s from earth angel Claire Boucher <3
This week we continue on with friend recs, but now heading in a less nostalgic direction as I take on my first specifically all-male album, Foxygen’s 2019 album, Seeing Other People (I’ve just really been feeling the ladies in 2020!~). While many loved it and I have enjoyed my first few listen-throughs, others…well, did not receive it so well. That’s neither here nor there (we all have known for the better part of a decade, if not longer, that Pitchfork is absolutely not the end-all-be-all). But it’s fun and funky and kind of the perfect vibe for a week of work bike rides where the weather will actually be consistently nice!
xx