Jason Isbell – “Foxes in the Snow”
Jason Isbell: What to say? No, seriously, what to say? He’s always existed to me as a blindspot: the artist that will “totally make you be into country, man, cuz he’s super different than every other songwriter in that scene.” What makes him so different? Maybe it’s his southern-rock bonafides, having been a core member of the Drive-By Truckers during his twenties, or his leftist tilt that sets him apart in the genre that gave us “Try That In A Small Town?”
None of these stick to me. They slide off my back like water on a goose or eggs on teflon. I don’t know, maybe it’s the genre itself, maybe it’s the baby face, maybe it’s the utter Springsteen of it all, it’s just never done it for me.
Until now, that is, because he’s no longer “Born in the USA” Springsteen, he’s “Nebraska” Springsteen, and “Nebraska” Springsteen rips. So on the wings of 13 years of sobriety, a fresh divorce from The 400 Unit member Amanda Shires, and after a performance at the Convention for Professional Spineless Losers (also known as the Democratic National Convention), we get “Foxes in the Snow.”
Before we run down some highlights, let’s hit the lows. Title track “Foxes in the Snow” is oddly corny, vaudevillian (in a bad way), and oddly horny to boot. It’s reminiscent of Elliott Smith’s “Cupid’s Trick”: take an album spotlighting a dark, terrible downturn in an artist’s life and insert one track about being whipped sexually. That’s not a joke. Isbell croons out “I love the carrot but I really like the stick” in the same voice he uses for the songs not about banging, and it’s just a little disingenuous. Have you ever had the experience where two people break up and suddenly they’re posting about all the strange they’re getting or taking photos with new and unique dudes every three days? Yeah.
I understand the idea though. Love is an odd thing. It’s laden with contradictions, which is highlighted across the record. “Crimson and Clay” contrasts his new and old loves with the places he’s lived in his life. It’s a story of trying to find yourself in others, whether that’s the red clay under your fingers from your hometown or Jack Daniels when you’re on the road, and coming across the startling fact that nothing will be what you want it to be, especially if what you want it to be is a panacea. Your hometown is racist and the gun you’ve been familiar with since you were nine doesn’t feel necessary anymore. What, in their absence, are you?
Let’s also spare a moment here to discuss the production. Let’s bring it back to “Nebraska,” yeah? This feels so raw that if the recording quality wasn’t spit-shined it could pass a demo. You hear the little squeaks and groans of his guitar as it moves. There’s emotion in every breath, every time his voice raises and spikes the microphone ever-so-slightly, and when he does get energetic there’s a brand-new weight given to it because it’s so different. When he’s not upping the ante, he’s bringing the music back down, and his fingerpicking is immaculate. There’s entire orchestras in his playing; dynamic shifts between bass and pace that create worlds and unspoken sentences.
I don’t know Jason Isbell. I don’t think I will, to be honest; there’s a whole world of music out there, and it can be hard to convince me towards Americana when Method Man and Thurston Moore exist. What I can say is that I feel like I’ve hit the absolute sweet spot. “Foxes in the Snow” feels like a night on the porch with an acquaintance you never talk to, where you work through a case of Budweiser and spill your hearts, the only listeners to the confessions being one another, the crickets, the reeds, and the moon.
Beck – “Sea Change”
Here’s a record that only counts as stripped back in the context of Beck having made it. I mean, this was a guy who built himself on innovation and fusion, on pushing forward his own weird, conceptual path through his music. He started with an amalgamation of 60s Laurel Canyon psychedelia mixed with the cutting edge of his day: alternative hip-hop and noisy, jangly guitar rock. That style made him the indie darling du jour and the underground’s newest candidate for “hit single fluke artist,” and his complete dedication to genre-bending and more out-there sounds solidified his place as a shapeshifting creative vanguard.
Then a divorce happened, and now there’s “Sea Change.” Take this blues-upon-rap-upon-dance-upon-country artist, give him an acoustic, and let him loose to tear out his heart and pour the remains on wax. Let’s take it from the top: opener “The Golden Age” hits us out of the gate with the lonesome slide guitar part to end all lonesome slide guitar parts. The song quickly becomes Radiohead-esque (ugh), with these sympathetic keys underpinning a lazy acoustic guitar part. Maybe the Radioheadedness of it all is intentional: the producer here is Nigel Godrich, known collaborator, working here in-between “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief.”
I think there’s a solid argument that this song alongside a lot of the track list actually isn’t important at all lyrically to the theme. Songs like “The Golden Age” sit alongside “Lonesome Tears” and “Already Dead” as tonesetters for monumental moments. Take, for example, “Guess I’m Doing Fine.” Recycle the same musical aspects as other tracks — the slide guitar, the solemn drums, the acoustic guitar — and pair it with some of the most despondent lyrics you can hear. The chorus conveys so much weariness and disillusionment in a set of simple, contradictory statements: “It’s only lies that I’m living / It’s only tears that I’m crying / It’s only you that I’m losing / Guess I’m doing fine.”
This is the point, in the end, of “Kill All Hippies.” It’s the beauty of context and comparison. In a raw listening experience, “Sea Change” can probably sound melodramatic, in the same way “Foxes in the Snow” can sound flippant and dismissive; and in the same way “singer-songwriter divorce album” trilogy entry “Blood on the Tracks” can sound bitter and violent. With background, though, a different picture is painted; one of a man who’s made his bones on irony and playfulness seeing nothing funny about his situation. It’s like when Spider-Man stops quipping; it gives the following actions more weight because it’s such a major tone shift for the character. Beck sounds destroyed all across “Sea Change.” You can imagine him leaving recording sessions and returning to an empty house, drafty and despondent, opening a beer, and falling asleep on the couch because who is he impressing anymore?
Rebecca Black – “Salvation”
God, “Friday” is slipping out of the public consciousness at a rapid rate. It’s the perfect microcosm of everything in 2011. On the one hand, there’s a do-it-yourself attitude to the entire affair that’s at least somewhat commendable; it’s the last gasps of a monoculture which allowed things to be truly viral, it was indicative of a DIY mentality where the only thing stopping you from being a star was your desire to want it, and at the end of the day it was a cute little bop about having fun, which there was no shortage of post-recession. On the other, it was taking the melting vitriol of internet white dudes pre-gamergate, focusing it through the magnifying glass of proto-cringe culture, and blasting that power directly onto a 14-year-old. Yikes.
But there’s a beauty in even that, because we’ve all stuck our brains into microwaves long enough for the internet to absolutely love cringe. Scene is back! Nu-metal is back! 2010s “don’t look outside please party more” pop is back! Naturally, Rebecca Black reemerges, like King Arthur coming from Avalon to reclaim England’s crown.
She dj’d, she partied, she released a “Friday” remix with who else but Dylan Brady of 100 gecs — and Big Freedia, and 3OH!3, and Dorian Electra — and this is her second studio release. “Salvation” the album is covered head to toe in the stylings you’d expect: percussive Timbaland drums mixed with crunchy EDM bass and layers upon layers of vocal harmony and autotune. “Salvation” the song has this huge clapping snare that just overpowers everything in the best way, as well as a eurodance-esque squelchy bass line underneath it that gives it this incredible forward momentum.
It is absolutely nothing groundbreaking, and if you’re under the impression that hyperpop-adjacent acts should be boundary-pushing, this one isn’t for you. Then again, I take slight (slight) umbrage with the idea that absolutely everything needs to be abrasive and forward-thinking. It’s Rebecca Black, guys. It’s twenty minutes of bops and bangers and if you can’t appreciate that you gotta get out. If every meal was tweezered-to-hell-and-back halibut pucks over sauce au connerie then we’d never know the joy of scarfing down a handful of McDonald’s fries at a red light. So yeah, let’s remove the hyper: this is pop, baby! This is, in my mind, kinda the final evolution of PC Music on the mainstream: its favorite children have spread far into the public vernacular, its sound thoroughly enmeshed within them, and its ethos of sonic ironic self-destruction has been both validated and destroyed by Rebecca Black. Rebecca Black, unwitting teenager blasted into stardom. Rebecca Black, a mocking joke and a “look at this idiot” water-cooler laugh. Rebecca Black, queer popstar. Rebecca Black, playlist fodder. Pop has always existed on the teetering edge; is it, like my poptimist contemporaries believe, theeee genre, or are the previous generation right, that it’s just noise and celebrity and garbage? Listen to “Salvation” and read between the lines. You’ll find the answer.
“You haven’t said anything about the music,” my editor shouts while pointing at my pitch for a music review column. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” I shout back. I get a glare. “Do You Even Think About Me?” has these megaphonic vocals and an absolutely relentless bassline that skitters between the ears during the breakdown, ending in an impressive high note from a person originally derided as much as she was. “TRUST!” has an incredibly hooky guitar part as its backbone up until it morphs into a searing lead that, while I love, is giving me flashbacks to “Satisfaction.” “Sugar Water Cyanide” has chipmunked vocals and a sparse, crunchy beat. Black swaps between club chants, spoken serving, and a standard pop falsetto. I’ve just described for you half the tracklist, there, now go listen to it.
Charli XCX – “Vroom Vroom EP”
It’s not fair. Charli XCX got the second shot almost no pop artist has ever had the luxury of getting and it’s not fair. Sophie didn’t get the chance to propel herself into the mainstream with her and it’s not fair. This has literally no right being as good as it is and it’s not fair. I sound like a broken record.
This also sounds like a broken record, but in a different, better way. Sophie did magic here, quite frankly: throw The Neptunes into a blender with The Black Eyed Peas and Aphex Twin’s more upbeat works. Throw that resulting pink slime into a jar and hotwire a Robocop body for it. That’s “Vroom Vroom.” Do I need to say more than that? Can you not just live within the distant drums and squeaky synths on “Trophy?”
God, “Trophy.” Legend states Sophie never used a sample; every ounce of her production was created for that song, to fit that need, and that level of tailor-made care bleeds through the song. I could highlight literally every aspect of the song, but let’s mention a few. Always forward-thinking, Sophie somehow manages to predate the drift phonk cowbell by, like, seven years (although, actually, Teriyaki Boyz did it first) but manages to make such an annoying sound absolutely work in context. The bass rattles your chest at any volume level and the bed squeak noise that plays for, like, three seconds is perfect. Let’s not ignore Charli, of course, who channels a level of brattiness (heh) that matches the repeated sample of “I want that trophy” amazingly.
“Vroom Vroom” the song sounds like suiting up for a jewel heist. Does that make sense? Is that one of my metaphors that gets too into the weeds? Whatever. Talk about whiplash; on a three minute song we get sparse drums like Clipse’s classic “Grindin’.” Throw in a climbing arpeggio, building tension until the drums come back in, and in-between those two ideas add more earth-shattering bass, pop snaps, and sparkling vocals from Charli, who switches between her beltable, conventional pop singing voice and laidback, trap inspired couplets. It’s… weirdly grime-like? Not Grimes-like, which is a different thing, but grime, proper U.K. grime. Wait, music by two U.K. musicians that’s a throwback to an earlier, iconically British sound, utilizing a natural British accent? Is this Britpop?
“Vroom Vroom” is twelve minutes long. Just go listen to it. You’ll get the idea way better than I can convey it here. To warp Paul McCartney, “It’s great, it didn’t sell, It’s the bloody ‘Vroom Vroom EP,’ shut up!”
Graphics by Marty Alexeenko