Hey, y’all. It’s been forever since I’ve posted an end-of-the-week music roundup. Quarantine and attendant nonsense fucked with my ability to get these (and many other things, tbh) done, but I’m back! I will likely post a roundup of the good stuff that was released over the last few months that I didn’t get a chance to write about in one of these end-of-week entries — keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks. I guess I should also do a “the year’s half over” thing, too, huh? Anyway! So much good stuff was released this week, so I’m really excited to be getting back on the ball with this entry! Let’s get into it:
Favorites this week:
Julianna Barwick - Healing is a Miracle (Ninja Tune)
Opening with the familiar looping, rapturous harmonies Barwick is known for, Healing is a Miracle begins and ends as a sustained, restorative, much-needed embrace. It would be so easy for her to create beautiful, well-liked music with almost no effort — people fucking love reverb and layered vocals — which makes me even more grateful that she doesn’t rest on that. These songs are complex, meticulously arranged, and loads more sonically interesting than “ambient vocal loops” leads one to expect. On “Oh Memory” (featuring the wonderful Mary Lattimore), Barwick’s voice suddenly appears as a choir of high-pitched fairies fluttering in from above; later, Lattimore’s harp appears in layers, adding more otherworldly ethereality to this landscape. On “Nod,” a collaboration with Nosaj thing, Barwick seems to be leaning on the sonic capabilities of her breath more than normal. It’s lush, and stunningly beautiful. It may sound corny, but I don’t care: this album is a testament to the radically restorative power of music and love and hope. It’s an audible emergence from an oppressively dark place into a place of light (this is most audible on the swelling, surging, and aptly named “In Light,” featuring Jónsi of Sigur Rós). What else can I say? Sometimes you just need distant, angelic voices to reassure and hold you, and Enya’s unavailable right now.
The Streets - None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive (Island Records)
Sometimes I feel like the last remaining original Streets fan, which surely isn’t true (? Hit me up in the comments!!). Anyway. Mike Skinner is still doing the thing he’s always done, i.e. rapping and singing with a confidence so absolute it belies the awkwardness of the sounds he’s making, being generous with advice while simultaneously talking up his relationship failures, and tossing around the occasional dazzling couplet that strikes you right in the chest. He reminds me of Damon Albarn in that he has such a talent for choosing collaborators — the fact that they tend to outshine him every time, especially vocally, doesn’t even really matter in the end: he’s the framework, or the director of the record. This is in big effect on None Of Us (IDLES and Ms. Banks in particular are inspired choices). In many ways, this is a return to form and the simplicity of his earliest records — his observations are at the center (and he can still write lines so pithy you can’t believe they aren’t already in some famous chorus). It’s classic Streets to the point of occasionally feeling too on-the-nose, or dangerously close to self-parody (like when he says he’s “three Rizla sheets to the wind,” or claims he’d give you a kidney, just don’t touch his charger). If you have ever loved the Streets, though, it’ll just endear the record to you.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - All The Good Times (Acony Records)
All The Good Times is all covers, all acoustic, and gives the feeling of some folks enjoying themselves in quarantine and throwing their fans a bone. It’s great to hear Gil and Dave cut loose on fun tracks like “Jackson” or “Y’all Come,” especially in contrast to their seemingly obsessively curated, largely perfect LPs of self-penned stuff. The best songs here are the ones primarily sung by Gillian — vocally, Dave is firmly in a “singing like Bob Dylan” place right now that’s a bit intolerable, though his playing and harmonic singing are both as sweet as ever. There are a few intentionally “timely” tunes here, like John Prine’s “Hello in There” and “All The Good Times Are Past and Gone,” and a good mix of traditional tunes and singer-songwriter fare. Some of the songs lend themselves so perfectly to Gil and Dave’s whole thing (“Hello in There” they totally make their own, and Elizabeth Cotten’s “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie,” too) that they could have fit perfectly on Revelator or The Harrow and the Harvest. A couple are more of an awkward marriage, like the late 70s Dylan number “Señor,” which doesn’t beautifully wind its way into the distance like “I Dream A Highway” so much as it just winds down. These missteps aren’t a huge bother, though — it’s kind of nice to hear them let their hair down and make mistakes for once.
Other stuff released this week:
SPECTRUMRITES - Solstice Winter
From what I can figure out, SPECTRUMRITES appears to be a Chilean one-person ritualistic dark ambient project with a heavy online presence. This record in particular, said to be "dedicated to the death and birth of the new spirit," is meditative, full of live takes with extraneous sounds (the artist is explicitly opposed to any “manipulation” of the sounds they present, so this seems very intentional) and references to indigenous South American folklore. On the whole, this is very minimal, synth-based dark ambient music; at times, its repetitiveness and harmonic richness can be hypnotic. There are unexpected, delightful moments, like at the end of “Connection” — high, trebly notes intone in a major key, in a way that can almost be described as cute or lighthearted; on the title track, the main tonal motifs continually speed up into dizzying unrecognizability. Solstice Winter was recorded so that the room the music is being played in is very much present and part of the recording — at times, we can hear the keys of the keyboard being pressed, what might be a foot tapping, electricity running through instruments or appliances. It’s charming, and whatever’s going on here, whoever’s making this music, I’m enjoying it.
Roki Fernandez - Doble Clic EP
Doble Clic, by Argentinean pop singer Roki Fernandez, is a collection of short, cute, youthful songs, often made with presets, occasionally sounding like something from children’s television of a bygone era. Made in quarantine, the EP features some retrofuturism (like “Error 404,” which really could have been the theme song to something like Square One back in the day), a few more polished, developed tracks like “10k” (featuring guitar by Pablo Leal), and at least one lo-fi, garage rock-y number with handclaps and harmonies. “Nuevo Amor” is, you guessed it, an adorable Spanish-language cover of Bowie’s “Modern Love” festooned with synth pads and casio handclaps. (Nearly) twenty minutes well spent!
Dark Quadrant - Surface Textures EP (Dekonstrukt)
From the first note of Surface Textures (note: released on the Italian Dekonstrukt, not the U.S. label of the same name), Belgian DJ Dark Quadrant drowns us in concussive, throbbing bass. “Spectrum (STRKT remix)” is hard-hitting, with dazzling, rippling synths and hi-hats dancing above the striking, angular beat — giving the effect of seeing stars after being punched. The original mix of the same song is more of a straight, no-nonsense banger than its remix, with an extremely loud hi-hat and a tendency to speed up imperceptibly. Crazy, trebly harmonies bubble up seemingly independently and irrespective of everything else -- in volume, in time. There’s distant voice we can't understand. It’s a druggy, immersive record; pleasurably confusing.