Favorites this week:
Seeds in Barren Fields - Sånger som rämnar
Sånger som rämnar begins with gentle piano that becomes ever darker and more Schuberty, incorporates some untamed sax, and eventually gives way to something much louder and with a lot more teeth. Soon, it becomes chaotic and frenzied — truly wild black metal with an absolutely vicious vocal, thundering and insistent drums, and an truckload of unexpected flourishes. There’s just so much going on in this. At one point, the vocal becomes something like a mouse or crying animal; multiple guitars swirl in layers throughout, somehow chaotic but simultaneously crisp and detailed, like being caught in a tornado that’s also carrying around bits of recognizable objects. Strange and beautiful melodic moments and fierce noise are carried out concurrently, with the combination sounding violent and ferocious — the more tuneful parts don’t soften or defang anything, they just make it weirder. It often sounds like several songs are playing at once that just happen to sync up in a gorgeous way, but still sound a bit off from one another, just enough out of time or dissonant to be disorienting. “Akstorm” starts with a mean-ass riff, and then becomes more complex and deranged than anything we’ve heard yet; a sax seems to deliriously laugh at the tumult. Many of the songs seem to eternally build, ever teetering on the precipice of total destruction. This is definitely the sound of industrial decay.
Tami Nielsen - Chickaboom! (Outside Music)
Chickaboom! definitely has a country/soul, honky tonk thing going on, but the production quality and instrumentation give it a tangibly garage rock flavor, too. The instrumentation and production are stripped down to dry bones — lead-off track “Call Your Mama,” an anthem for women who have had it with raising their boyfriends, features just vocals, guitar, percussion, and a lot of dust floating in the air. “Queenie Queenie” is the most spartan of all, with just makeshift percussion and a vocal line that echoes children’s hand-clapping games, but tackles the endless, dehumanizing demands of womanhood in a “Lady Madonna”-type manner. Nielsen is known for her big, Wanda Jackson-esque voice, but she doesn’t really show it off until midway through the album on “You Were Mine,” a slower, more soulful number that provides enough space for her instrument to really run around in. “Any Fool With a Heart” is a gentler, dreamier change of pace, hearkening back to 60s rock approximations of bossa nova and featuring strong two-part harmonies, glimmering acoustic guitar, and quiet hand drumming. Closer “Sleep” is another one that shows her range — a diaphonous lullaby with close, transcendant harmonies. On “Sister Mavis,” Nielsen shouts out the song’s namesake as well as Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson as literally better than God, and her appreciation of these and other iconic women of country, rock, and soul clearly goes deeper than lip service — it’s deeply embedded in her voice and music.
Other stuff released this week:
Tink - Hopeless Romantic (Winter’s Diary / WD Records / Empire)
On this Valentine’s Day record (cute!), Tink seems to have fully distanced herself from rapping and grittier themes for good. From start to finish, this is poppy R&B about love, with the only extant rapping done in a pretty sing-song way, delivered in a babylike voice that’s not unlike Ashanti or Brandy at their sweetest. Neither of those two would have had “you ain’t on shit and that’s period” as a hook, though, and they definitely wouldn’t have this many songs about fucking. One of these, “Cum Get It,” is explicit as hell, contains the best hook on the album (“ay, ay, ay, I’m with it”), and makes liberal use of the ridiculous similes scattered throughout the album (like “riding your body like a four wheeler” and “study your body like you’re the final”). The production is great, and Tink shows range as she takes us on a multi-stop tour of romantic love (flying high on a crush, heartbreak, freaky sex, frustration), but the album does start to feel a bit samey by the end.
Ihsahn - Telemark (Spinefarm Records UK)
There are some moments on this (the vocals on “Nord” are pretty excellent, and the middle riff in “Telemark” is a stunning highlight), and there are some…moments. At this late date, Ihsahn has his shit all the way together, knows what he’s doing, and can pull a slick, effective black metal track together any time he wants. That is known. What is also known is that sometimes people think EPs are practice, or somehow less important than a full length; that they can let their hair down and indulge in some pet idea they’d never put on an LP. I like to think Ihsahn wouldn’t put a Lenny Kravitz cover (a pretty straightforward one, at that) on an LP, but who knows. It stands to reason that the “Wrathchild” cover should go over a little better, but it’s equally cringeworthy. The vocals are reliably great throughout, and there are some satisfying blizzardy, minimal riffs here, but someone please have a talk with this man.