Category: pop
-
the sundays – reading, writing and arithmetic (1990)
The Sundays weren’t doing too much differently. In the previous decade, The Replacements had their edgy jaunt, Rickie Lee Jones had their unashamed sentimentalism, The Smiths had their riffs. At the start of a new age, and a refreshal of the consumer market, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic was equal parts mournful and joyous. Its effect […]
-
jockstrap – i love you jennifer b
Jockstrap had an EP out a couple years ago—the fantastic, but altogether unsettled Wicked City. While the duo’s experimentalism has since been ironed, edged, ILYJB nevertheless emerges with oddities of epic proportions. Moments of tender enlightenment burst through the jagged cracks: the tracklist is technically sharp in the vein of a classical song cycle, soft […]
-
gorillaz – plastic beach (2010)
Plastic Beach is about capability: what can be held in the hands and what can only ever be reasoned with in the abstract. While nature can be held in the hands, it has been undermined as a conceptual anchor that prevents a certain idea of capitalist progress. Streams of rubbish have lined our shores since. […]
-
various artists – after dark 4
Did you also watch ‘Drive’ aged 12, then brooded and pouted, seeking out toothpicks and scorpion jackets for a month after? Released by the label responsible for Chromatics’ ‘Tick of the Clock’, After Dark 4 revisits that same adolescent posturing with decisive colour. Like The Weeknd’s first mixtape, it conjures an elite, narcotic atmosphere; like […]
-
bat for lashes – the haunted man (2012)
Bat For Lashes, conceptually, is largely about competing with life. Her percussion sounds like feet running around the track, rather than feet running away from something frightening. The directness from ‘The Haunted Man’ comes, like it’s cover, from a nakedness. Despite its ostensible melodrama, Khan’s third record is an honest and forceful blend of glamorous […]
100 words 