Ólafur Arnalds continues to create some of my favorite music of the past few years. It’s mix of electronics and intimately recorded classical instrumentation always comes across with a strong textural identity that’s rich and complicated even when the melody’s are often the opposite.
Woven Song is another great example of what he does well. This intricate and otherworldly piano sound that dances around a thin vocal field recording. It sounds as if this field recording was very much the initial key ingredient that provided the muse for the piano and finally the string arrangement that takes over from them both halfway through the piece. It’s another great example that when you can make instrumentation sound this good and you give it room to breathe it can pack an emotional punch that far outweighs more complex tracks for the listener.
I have never been a huge fan of Taylor Swift’s music. I have never hated it but have never felt impassioned to talk about it on the site, especially when she’s so ubiquitous that most people will have already made their minds up about her music.
I have however always listened to her work. It has gained rave reviews and I’ve found it all to be great examples of modern pop, with exceptional production, but nothing that got its teeth into me.
That was until the latest album Folklore, which has really grabbed me. I think this is due to the choice of collaborators on the record; in particular the production work of Aaron Dessner, whose work – both as a composer for film and in The National – I have always loved.
It’s the production and instrumentation that elevates this album into something that should be heard by any music fan even if you have always avoided Taylor Swift before.
Instrumentally, Folklore is lead by piano and guitar, but with that usual cool slightly melancholic otherworldly sound that elevates the work of The National. It gives dramatic power to Taylor Swift’s lyrics, which have always been strong but have often felt a bit weightless under a more traditional pop presentation.
That strength continues with the addition of Bon Iver as a guest on this track Exile. It’s a great example of the sound design found on the album, It interweaves with a tried and true duet structure. Piano leads the track and is gently accentuated with strings that slowly grow into a dominant emotional force towards the tracks conclusion.
As the year comes towards a close, I listen to more music and try to get through as many albums as I can for my albums of the year list.
I really enjoyed album Beginners by Christian Lee Hutson. The album still proves the effectiveness of a traditional singer songwriter album when they have a unique world view that shines through.
It’s the same old formula of an instrumental sound and a stylised vocal delivery that has been done countless times, and yet it still holds your attention and proves that simplicity can be just as effective as experimentation when it is done well.
Twin Soul was the stand out track on the album for me from the way the narrative slowly reveals itself over each verse.
It’s a bitter sweet track slowly showing the worries and struggles of a relationship from an insecure narrator. The earnestness of the piece is what stood out to me and the ability of the vocals to reflect this fragility makes it work incredibly well:
Long term readers of this blog will know that one of my favourite bands is The Flaming Lips.
The Flaming Lips have been a regular fixture on my Track Of The Week segment, reflecting their frequent additions to my library of music since my teenage years. I continue to appreciate their unique identifiable sound that has remained consistent throughout their experimentation with musical form, and for the lyrics of Wayne Coyne. His take on the world has always been perculier and for a long time reflective on light and darker subject matter with a nuance I’ve always found uplifting.
They have always dealt with dark subject matter in their music; especially death. But throughout all their sci-fi and psychodelic constructions, the route of Wayne’s lyrics have always stemmed from a portrayal of grief and happiness that I find very realistic. This stands in opposition to most other music, which overdramatises for emotional weight.
Wayne seems to show effortlessly the way that both grief and happiness are fleeting, and so they should be respected and recognised for what they are, and we should be aware of both when experiencing either. They wouldn’t exist without their counterparts.
However, over the past decade some of that optimism seems to have been withered with time. It is still their on some tracks, but not as bright. Instrumentally the band has turned to darker textures which have reflected the less positive themes found in the Lyrics.
I thought this may have changed with their previous more whimsical album “Kings Mouth” but it has returned in spades with their latest record “American Head”. Its sounds like a very personal album this time around. The Lyrics repeatedly focus around the interactions of a family as it goes through some difficult emotional struggles and life changing events.
“Mother I’ve Taken L.S.D” is the track that stood out to me most on first listen. It exemplifies the darker and less hopeful contexts found the majority of the more recent flaming lips work. It also provides a great starting point for listeners to get a rough idea of the themes found on the album.
“American Head” is another great album from the flaming lips, A complete work that continues it’s themes throughout. It adds to a back catalogue of varied and wonderful records that all do the same. If you are new to The Flaming Lips then I would probably start with either “the soft bulletin” or “yoshimi battles the pink robots”. But If you’ve heard there stuff before but would like to dip into what their latest record is like “Mother I’ve Taken L.S.D” is a great place to start:
Oneohtrix Point Never has been one of my favorite acts for several years now. He has such a unique approach to sound design and its arrangement that it has become iconic for his listeners.
Although his music has always clearly come from the same artist, the textures on each album have been varied. From the minimalist verging on ambient washes of synths found in his early work, he then developed the darker plunderphonics and sample loops used on his album “Replica”. From there we got a more melodic, and at times romantic album, In “R plus Seven,” which pushes his use of space and textures further. He followed that up by the far harsher and aggressive album “Garden Of Delete,” and then the R&B inspired “Age Of.”
You add to that a couple of movie projects, commissions and production credits on several albums, and you have a massively eclectic collection of music, which is always routed in his unique arrangement and compositional style. This is how they relate to each other.
His latest album “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” proves that an experimental and varied collection of sound elements used in his back catalogue weren’t actually that sporadically different after all. It feels like a collage of all his work up until now. As a fan who is well versed in all of his albums they are all represented in this one. It is a great summery of his work up to this point.
For someone who wants to get to grips with his methods and style in under an hour “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” is a fantastic place to start.
What resonated with me most about OPN’s work since the album “R plus Seven” is his ability to trade on the listeners own musical nostalgia. He toys with it regularly, highlighting figments of your musical memory briefly before jolting your focus in another direction. “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” shows that he now has a catalogue of his own music that’s large and old enough that it itself has become the musical nostalgia he can trade off. He has created an ouroboros for his own music. Its a bold and interesting vision that continues to be rewarding on repeat listens.
In its conclusion (as with all of his past works), I’m always left wondering where he will go next? OPN has always seemed to surge forwards with every release, moving in directions you wouldn’t expect. In “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” he has surprised me by doing the opposite and reflecting on the music he has created over the years.
Whilst it works incredibly well for this album, it puts the next one in another interesting predicament. Can he continue a style he has managed to wrap up so well on this album without loosing the surprise of what has made his music so great to me over the years? Are there more soundscapes and genres he can plumb the depths of to continue this style with a fresh take? Or is “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” a send off for the compositional style itself? A swansong to just over a decades work of major releases. Whatever the answer I’m sure fans of his work will be surprised by whatever comes next.
I’ve realised that this was more of an album review than a track of the week. I think the album is great as a whole, however the track that I would describe closest to a “single” and easiest to put into a playlist in its own right is “Long Road Home” so that’s a great place to start. Just bear in mind it’s only the tip of the iceberg for the music on this album and in his back catalogue:
Her latest track “Let go” is an evolving rock piece with a great pallet of sounds. It continues the trend of high quality pop music with a slight twinge of regret. Based on this example, it looks like she’s continuing to create great music. I look forward to hearing what she has in store for the future.
Bob Dylan needs no real introduction. His musical output has spanned decades and continued to be prolific. Any artist creating this much work over this much time will have varied output and Bob Dylan is no exception.
On the last track of his latest album “Murder Most Fowl,” he seems to have both the ups and downs of his career all wrapped up into a track that’s over 16 minutes in duration.
At sixteen minutes and fifty four seconds it’s certainly one of the longest if not the longest track he’s ever released on an album. His vocals and poetry are the focus of the whole track and he uses this time to speak in rhyming couplets throughout.
Although a fairly rudimentary poetic form, Dylan proves his unique vision and artistry can create truly iconic art using it.
But this isn’t the case throughout the track and it’s what interests me most about it on multiple plays.
Its long playtime allows this poetry and word association to drift in and out of poignancy for the listener. There are sections that seem to drift into the background before suddenly a few sentences are delivered with so much relevance that they resonate in your brain like sunbeams piercing through the clouds.
It’s in those moments that you remember what a talent Dylan has and will always be. It’s a style and thought process that will never be recreated and something that should be cherished.
Murder Most Fowl manages to play off it, with the maturity of an artist is coming towards the end of his career. A perfect swansong to his latest album and indication that Dylan can still create music that relates and is relevant to this day:
I’ve been a bit lackadaisical last week. Both Listening to and working on music has taken a sidestep.
I used my listening time for podcasts and audiobooks instead. And in this depravation of melody my mind always tends to wonder back to tracks from my teenage years. Oh Yeah drifted its way into my brain and lingered there for several hours until I had to play it to myself.
On a more analytical listen its quite a strange song in both its vocal delivery and composition. The track is clearly influenced from its time period with a mix of the garage rock/grunge aesthetic but blended with the string arrangement and production of 90’s Pop.
It feels to me like the track shouldn’t work, and yet it does. It’s this mix of two competing styles that has kept Oh Yeah in my subconscious over the past couple of decades:
In 2017 I gushed like a broken spigot about Mouth Moods; Neil Cicierega’s previous meme based remix album. Now in 2020, he comes back with its successor, Mouth Dreams.
I have decided not to pick a track from the album but say that you should just listen to the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I have my favorite tracks, but they work so well in the context that it would be a shame to split them from the rest of the work on first listen.
I don’t want to spoil the album by going into details about individual tracks however I will talk broadly about it.
Mouth Dreams has an even greater maximalist approach than Mouth Moods, which was already a layered and dense. The memes are even more grating, and the technical wizardry used to make the remixes is even more complex.
Listening to his work requires some humility from the listener. Niel Cicierega will blend massively different styles of music with a trolling wink and a nudge.
If you can get past that and accept that your nostalgia and connection to music is going to be challenged, and occasionally mocked throughout, you will be rewarded with some fantastic musical revelations that have resulted in me laughing maniacally many times.
You can download the album for free from Niel Cicierega’s Website below:
I thoroughly enjoyed the surprise release of a new Fleet Foxes album last week. Here’s one of my favorite tracks:
Bandcamp:
TOTW Playlist:
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