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30 JAN 2026 · FEATURINGÂ
How You Been by SML, released by International Anthem in 2025. https://album.link/s/00xaBkvgiCZ7mMlcHIRgQy / https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/how-you-beenÂ
- https://song.link/s/6ry9hetnxINxPdwbeh9HVgÂ
- https://song.link/s/6wflH3E54AkBVOIPYrZs5aÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
Jazz wasn't meant to be like this. And I'm not talking about this music's sound or arrangement or atonality. In all those respects, this is exactly how jazz should be: exploratory, experimental, playful, and free. No, I'm talking about something much more basic: the fact that we are listening to a piece of recorded music, whereas jazz is meant to be experienced in the moment of its performance. So how, then, does this recording manage to sound so spontaneous and alive? More than any other jazz record I can think of, I feel like I'm hearing the music come together in real time, every player improvising wildly and continuously finding new directions to move in. Obviously there's the sax out in front, vigorously pushing everything forward. But I also love what the guitar is doing, syncopating with this piercing two-note riff. The drums are, frankly, out of control, and the bass is on a whole other wavelength, holding it down in its own time and feel. And lower in the mix, there's a rolling boil of synth sounds that I can only think to describe as aquatic mallet percussion. Yet somehow, somehow, it all works. And not just works: it grooves, it excites, it cooks, it kills. And as many times as I listen to this recording over and over again, it surprises.Â
What's not so surprising is that this music originates from live recordings of improvised performances. Its raw musical material was created on the spot. But for this recording, that raw material has been processed and refined, manipulated in post-production into whole new forms. It's like the band took their live performances and distilled what was most vital in them, reconstructing their various bits and bytes into something that's even more live than live. Which is, really, what any good recording should do: to present a rarefied version of what the music, in its original conception, was. But I don't want you to get too hung up on this music's backstory. It's not so important to know how this music came to be; what's important is to hear this music for what it is – to feel the wild energy coursing through its veins – and to marvel that a piece of recorded music could ever sound so extemporaneous and yet also, so intricately arranged.Â
And what's really remarkable is that this music has these same qualities even when it slows things down, even when it's not playing at full tilt, when it trades free jazz for smooth jazz and veers into something more plainly melodic and mellifluous. Even if it doesn't have quite the same energy, it retains the same spirit: of playfulness, creativity, originality, synergy – a commitment to discover new forms of expression in its motley ensemble of sounds. You can hear this even at the level of the individual parts, the way each instrument is subtly twisted and transformed, unravelling in new and unexpected directions. And some of it is just that these musicians clearly have a predilection for the goofy and the weird: the springy synth, the quacky guitar, the squawky sax. Where others might shy away from these sounds, they lean in, exploring their full sonic possibilities and proving that maybe they're not so goofy after all – that they can be hip or heady or high-minded or hard-nosed or even, in a way, beautiful. Listening to this music, I get the feeling that everything is fair game, and the point is to show us what we've been missing, to make every moment be full of surprise and delight, brimming with the unexpected and unconventional. And so we hear something like paper fluttering, a sax phasing in and out, crunchy static marching forward – an improbable symphony – the shape of jazz to come.
26 DEC 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
s h i n e by Tobias Jesso Jr., released by R&R in 2025. https://album.link/i/1853133625Â
- https://song.link/s/62IQrWmP0Gy5FaM0GjekCpÂ
- https://song.link/i/1853133629Â
TRANSCRIPTÂ
Most of the album is like this: quiet and delicate, just a piano man at his piano, recorded so closely that you can hear the air in the room, the creaks of the chair, the rise and fall of the piano's pedals. It's an intimate affair. Yet as much as I love this, I actually want to talk about the one song on this record that's not this way, that's loud and energetic and a brisk two minutes, so I better talk fast.Â
This song hooks me from its very first notes. And it never lets up – with each passing measure I feel myself falling deeper into its spell. And it couldn't be simpler: it's still just a piano man at his piano. But the production this time is almost claustrophobic, as if the musician's been shut up in a too small room, where every burst of volume reverberates and ricochets off the walls, like they're trying to break free. The whole song has this propulsive energy, as it builds and builds up to its inevitable eruption: a yawping chorus, set over new and thunderous chords – and then, it all dissipates, as quickly as it appeared.Â
And then, like any good pop song, we now do the whole thing over again: one more time through the verse and the chorus and then a final post-chorus and then we're done. It's like a distillation of pop songwriting, and part of what I love about it is that potency, how it manages to squeeze so much into such a small space, just like the production makes the song sound.Â
But it also does this other thing that never gets old: it's describing a feeling that the music itself creates in the listener. Because when I hear this song, I'm hypnotized, and I know exactly what the singer means.
27 NOV 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
Nexus by Mohammad Reza Mortazavi, released by Latency in 2025. https://album.link/s/5UyR6cbOMxXgw55hksGRj6 / https://mohammadmortazavi.bandcamp.com/album/nexusÂ
- https://song.link/s/6yMPGPSc0HQeUNwMPyFDAoÂ
- https://song.link/s/7F7Vh7Q5DZ10kWcGaPbS0BÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
The first thing I hear is time: the time that has passed since I first heard this artist and since I decided to feature them on the very first episode of this show. Now, five years later and fifty episodes in, the artist is back and I have returned to the place where it all began. And how appropriate, on this occasion, which like any anniversary was bound to make me reflect on the passage of time – how appropriate that this would be the music to ring it in, as this music is effectively about the passage of time: this is what it seems designed to make us hear. And nowhere is this more true than in this song, which is just a pulse, tapped out on a drum, not quite as regular as a metronome but just as unrelenting. And in a way that this artist's music always does for me, I feel like I am hearing simultaneously time moving forward, but also standing still. Paradoxically, in this music that is nothing but rhythm, that is nothing but marked time, I feel that I have been lifted out of time – that past, present, and future have collapsed – that I have been transported to the eternal now – and that maybe the passage of time is an illusion, a shadow play on the screen of our consciousness, and somehow this hypnotic thrum has lifted the veil on the whole charade. Or maybe it's just that this anniversary has got me in a contemplative mood. Because as much as this music reminds me that five years have passed, it also makes me feel like no time has passed at all. I'm still here, listening closely, feeling just as affected by this artist's music as I was then, so much so that I am compelled to write about it, to let others know about it, so that they might feel it too. I can't hear this music without feeling like nothing has changed.Â
But that's not true, of course. So much is different; so much is new. Which is remarkable, that even for an artist limited to a single, percussive instrument, they are still finding new forms of expression, new arrangements of sound, new ways of surprising and delighting our ears. I honestly have no idea how this sound is even produced, what strange mix of movements is being used to make this drum come alive. It gives the impression of a thousand hands, all converging, fingers rapping, knuckles cracking, fervently tapping and scratching out a beat. And below it all, a steady and heavy thumping, anchoring everything in place – except it's not actually steady at all, being ever so subtly off-kilter, such that just when you think you've internalized its pulse, it hiccups and skips a fraction of a beat, shifting the song's center of gravity just an inch but transforming its orbital motions entirely. This music has always had for me this mesmerizing, trance-like quality, no doubt brought on by its seemingly infinite but never quite identical loop, an all-too-human conjuring of an unending spell. But really, in a way, this is what all music does for me, even music that is much more varied and dynamic: again and again, I find myself bewitched, suspended in time as the music moves around me. This is, I suppose, why I listen to music, and, I suppose, why I am inspired to make this show. I am always chasing this feeling, and when I find it I just want to stay there and hold everything else still, to marvel at the music and preserve it in amber for everyone to see. I still don't understand why music does this for me like no other medium can. But I am grateful that it does, and just like this music, I hope it never stops.
31 OCT 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
Baby by Dijon, released by R&R / Warner Records in 2025. https://album.link/s/3hKlec1wgYVJcI0YvwCFJBÂ
- https://song.link/s/6qR5YGunNSASaabs4kJB9V
- https://song.link/s/0XnD9GJRD01wvXFLWJXiYx
- https://song.link/s/6Qgy3ikLFnJsJ7xHL0mayFÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
How do I even begin to describe this music? Its unruly beauty – its unlikely collage - and then, this piercing vocal, cutting through the tempest aswirl around it – and then, this heartbeat, grounding us in place. This song defies my expectations at every turn, every second bringing with it a new and unanticipated flourish. But as much as it is unlike anything else I've ever heard, there's only one name I can think to give it: it's soul music – music that's full of passion – music of the heart.Â
But it's not just any kind of soul music. This is music for those emotions that make us want to jump up on the table and scream at top of our lungs. This is music for those emotions that feel like you're the first to ever feel them, and that need a sound that's equally new and unheard of to express them. This is music about the thrill of just feeling this way, the unbridled excitement that makes every moment vibrate with newly discovered possibilities. And that's why it's so perfect that the leading line of the chorus is this: "I'm in love with this particular emotion." Yes, this is a love song, but in its first instance it's a love song about the feeling of love itself, about how the singer is enthralled, not by their lover, but by the emotion that their lover makes them feel. And it seems to me that this music is an attempt to reproduce that feeling in sound – its ecstasy, its electricity, its effusiveness – and to make us fall in love with this particular commotion that's been conjured before our ears.Â
And I am in love with this music; it's worked its spell on me. How could it not? There's just so much going on, so much to hear, so much that seems like it shouldn't belong, and yet it all feels just right. Like this song, which is basically the same one groove on repeat: the drums with a classic backbeat, the keys on the right with those steady, staccato eighth-notes, and the big acoustic piano interjecting at regular intervals with these little harmonic flourishes. If this was all the song was, it would still hit so hard, and have us swaying in time to its irresistible rhythm. But the brilliance of this song is that this groove is the backdrop, meant to be obfuscated by the layers of other ideas thrown on top of it. And boy, does this song ever throw on a lot.Â
I don't even know what half these sounds are. They're chopped, distorted, mutated beyond recognition, zipping in and out faster than you can even clock them. Like, is that a car horn, or a horn horn? And does it even matter? Because as much as this song sounds like a sledgehammer taken to a music studio, it never stops grooving – and more than that, the chaos is part of the groove.Â
I've never heard music this excitable, literally bursting with energy and creativity, impatiently flitting from one idea to the next. Which is fitting, because, it must be said, this is also incredibly horny music. It's not about love at its most poetic or reflective or even articulate; it's about love at its most hot and bothered, the kind that makes you want to jump out of your skin and onto someone else's – the kind of love that can feel halting and disjointed and that can send your head spinning – the kind of love that sounds, I guess, kind of like this.Â
But this music can also do moments of more straightforward passion and devotion. Or maybe the better way to put it is that it doesn't see any separation between these feelings. They're all on the same continuum, all just different expressions of the same earth-shattering force of love. And what's really remarkable about this record is that the artist takes it one step further, and extends that continuum to also encompass a parent's love for their newborn child.Â
And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't the same music be able to give voice to both romantic and parental love? For all their differences, they share that same miraculous, revelatory feeling that floors us, stuns us, gives us a little shiver, and then makes us want to jump up and scream out in joy.Â
Yet even as the lyrics take us right into the delivery room, it's still hard to hear the singer's invocation of the word "baby" as addressed to their literal child rather than their lover. It's just so ingrained in how we hear the vocabulary of popular music. But that almost makes it easier to understand the passion they're trying to convey, how strongly they feel about this new life in their life, and how, in the end, it's all love, and all love should sound like this.
29 SEP 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
"June Guitar" by Alex G, from Headlights, released by RCA Records in 2025. https://song.link/s/1leMmYw98725djni7wSYhq / https://sandy.bandcamp.com/album/headlightsÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
There are some songs I think of as just perfect. It's a silly thing to think about any piece of music, but especially about something as humble as this. Yet there's an unmistakeable quality here, a potent mix of vulnerability, pathos, and yearning – a remarkable delicacy, like a bird that's just landed in the palm of one's hand.Â
It's sweet, but so strange: the gravelly voice, the uneven melody, a nonchalant hand drum, and this tinny vocal counterpoint. Why should this all come together so beautifully? I can't explain it; I can only say how it makes me feel – how I swell up inside, full of this song's emotion, entranced by its tune, awash in waves of melancholy yet still brimming with hope. See what I mean? It's just perfect.Â
And here I have to admit that I actually have no idea what this song is about. Heartbreak, surely. But also the wisdom that comes with age. And perhaps, despite this, a lingering wistfulness for youth. But the more I listen, the harder it is to pin the lyrics down. They remain suggestive, evocative, and, most of all, elusive – but that's how our feelings are too sometimes, and so maybe this song is just an apt articulation of inarticulate emotion.Â
And so it's fitting that this song doesn't end with any definitive statement. The vocals just fade out, a synth chimes in, the accordion returns, and the ensemble builds into this swirl of mixed feelings.Â
And as I'm also at a loss for words, I'll leave you instead with an image, from this song's music video, which closes with the band joining hands and circling the singer in a game of ring-around-the-rosy. It's incongruous, but it strikes me as the perfect image for this perfect song: dizzying, loving, intimate, childlike, and free.
28 AUG 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
Tether by Annahstasia, released by drink sum wtr in 2025. https://album.link/s/3SBuk7ZuXQCJQ6IfrOPfyz / https://annahstasia.bandcamp.com/album/tetherÂ
- https://song.link/s/0sUJVa3AFcEqdy11QtiZCYÂ
- https://song.link/s/32SubIZx2ZcDZlpmKukSPqÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
What does it take for a piece of music to capture our attention? Can it come down to just one thing, a singular instrument, a miraculous voice? That's all I needed to hear. With a single phrase I am captivated, fascinated by this individual before my ears, unlike any other I've heard before. Such precise phrasing, such precise control, jumping between the guttural and the angelic, hovering in its delicacy before landing firmly back on its feet.Â
And yes, this singer's voice recalls others'; and yes, there's so much else that's remarkable about this music. I don't mean to downplay that. The production is a perfect complement, the song is a perfect vehicle, but I can't help it, I just keep coming back to this voice.Â
And I feel like there's a lesson here, that for all the music that's been made before, a voice can still surprise us, can still stand out as utterly unique – that in the vast universe of sounds, we're still discovering new stars. And so here I am, transfixed by this star's brilliance, bathing in its light, marvelling at its individuality, the exact frequency of its sound, a world unto itself, opened up before us and beckoning us to jump in.Â
And we're not done. I couldn't just leave it there. We have to hear at least one more from this singer that I can't get enough of, and sit a little longer with this singular voice: its cooing vibrato, its breathy rasp, its mesmerizing weave of textures, its masterful delivery. It shouldn't be possible for a voice to contain such contradictions – both hard and soft, harsh and tender, assertive and muted, masculine and feminine. But that's what holds my gaze and keeps me coming back for more: the singer's ability to span the full range of vocal expression in a single performance, to encompass all of us, all we feel, all we can be.Â
But make no mistake: This singer is no abstraction, no mere amalgam of different vocal stylings. What is so remarkable about this music is how all these diverse qualities cohere in a single individual, to form a unique personality. To be confronted so fully with the reality of another person, in all their infinite complexity – it's not often that music gifts us this experience, but I don't mind a little waiting, if that's what it takes to find music like this.
29 JUL 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
Paradise by The Westerlies, released by Westerlies Records in 2025. https://album.link/s/7tFIV5jbM9WzJxqdmeORHX / https://thewesterliesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/paradise Â
- https://song.link/s/4ZBpb8Zw6ZH3K1UiaFGz8fÂ
- https://song.link/s/62pmpvS2hR8uGDBVxiqfoXÂ
TRANSCRIPTÂ
Such a timeless thing, music – despite the fact that it exists in time, is inextricably bound to time, somehow it's able to transcend it.Â
I could tell you that this song was released this year, was recorded not long before that, but this says so little about how the song actually sounds and feels. What I immediately hear is history and tradition, or something deeper than that, something elemental, the very essence of music itself: a communion of voices, some human and some instrumental, coming together in harmony and forming something greater than the sum of their parts – a hymn, a prayer, an ode to the paradise that awaits us, which, in its bewitching amalgam of elements, seems in a small way to make that paradise manifest before our ears.Â
Perhaps this is to be expected, as this is explicitly spiritual music, as its lyrics make plain. But its purpose is not to proselytize. It's as if the musicians are borrowing these idioms to reveal the spiritual power inherent in music: its ability to make palpable worlds beyond our own, to make us feel the touch of a higher power brushing up against our side.Â
And there's something else I can't help but notice: As the song proceeds, its subject shifts from "I" to "we", and the singer turns to address us, their "comrades through the wilderness", their "partners in distress", to assure us that "we have a home in glory". I hear this as a reminder that paradise is never reached by oneself, and is only ever discovered in the collective – in the same way that music is an intrinsically relational phenomenon, a special alchemy that emerges between the disparate pieces it brings together: between melody and harmony, between singer and ensemble, between music and lyrics, and between musician and listener.Â
And on that note, let's hear more of this alchemy in action. Because I don't want that first song to give you the wrong impression about this record, which is a collection of songs by a brass quartet, occasionally accompanied by a vocalist, but for the most part just playing on their own, weaving together their different tones and timbres into a tapestry of totalizing sound. And because it's a quartet, you can still make out its four different strands, its chorus of voices, some sustained, some staccato, some high, some low, some quiet, some loud, some melodic, some harmonic, and some almost textural. And because it's a quartet, there is also something to it above and beyond its individual members, a manifest image that comes into view from each instrumentalist playing and moving in concert with one another – in a word, there is music.Â
I'll admit: A lot of the joy of this music for me comes from its novelty. I don't spend much time listening to brass ensembles, and so I'm especially struck by the distinctive pleasures of the form: the punch of the articulation, the interstitial breaths, the thick bass of the trombones, the squeal of a trumpet, the dynamic fluidity, the sheer power of horns. It's all the expressiveness of voice, amplified by a bell, and thus transformed into a clarion call. It calls us to attention. It calls us to assemble. It calls us to listen and behold.
30 JUN 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
caroline 2 by caroline, released by Rough Trade Records in 2025. https://album.link/s/1CmdanwOGnV5QevtJQL6bN / https://caroline.bandcamp.com/album/caroline-2 Â
- https://song.link/s/5GHYjIrLwK4e7WTTZZcJt5Â
- https://song.link/s/3SAepbmfa2jEMXu6OWrwyhÂ
Â
TRANSCRIPTÂ
If this is the first time you're hearing this music, I envy you. And actually, if this is your first time, maybe stop listening to me talk about this music and give yourself a chance to hear it firsthand, unadulterated. I'll still be here when you're done. And I'll still be hearkening back to the first time I heard this music, when it still felt like a jumble of unpredictable rhythms, a band of musicians just barely hanging together, a little orchestra teetering on the edge of collapse.Â
Because the thing about this song is that, once you've heard it enough times, everything starts to feel like it's in exactly the right place. And even though I still recognize how the song is playing fast and loose with its rhythm and synchronization, it no longer has for me the palpable quality of unruly chaos. To the contrary, it now feels like a carefully choreographed dance, its every step planned out to fall precisely as it does.Â
Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle. What this music really consists in is moments of deliberate serendipity, of intentional spontaneity. It was never meant to be just as it is; it was just meant to be performed in such a way that it could be, in such a way that it would result in something as beautifully chaotic as this. But in being recorded, this performance becomes reified into seeming like the music's true form, the only way it ever could be performed, the exact way it was always meant to be. And the more I listen, the more like this it seems. But I can still hear, however faintly, an echo of my first encounter with this music, when it still felt utterly unknowable, unforeseeable, and unreal.Â
And even as the music slows and softens into something more legible – a simple and steady progression of chords repeated under a plaintive melody – even still, it remains uncanny. Listen closely and you can hear a distant throbbing, the muffled reverberations of a late-night banger, like the song is being performed in the bathroom at a party, and the party is starting to push through. Â
It's a wild thing to leave in the mix, or not "leave" but "put", because of course this is meant to be there. The song wasn't actually recorded in the bathroom at a party; it was just made to sound like it was. So the question becomes, Why? Sure, it helps to create a tableau, a setting of sorts for the singer's inner monologue as they contemplate leaving the party and returning home. But it also makes me wonder if there's an aesthetic to the experience of being in a bathroom at a party, a sonic palette with its own distinctive character that can be deployed and appreciated in other contexts, too: the sound of distance, isolation, interiority, overwhelm, the fear of missing out, and the desire to be far away.Â
And just as it's all starting to click into place, the party disappears, replaced in the background by some crickety static, while the foreground shifts to some decidedly unmetronomic rhythms. It's like we've stepped out only to immediately lose our footing. Which is how it feels sometimes, is it not? Again, the longer I sit with this music the more it seems to be exactly as it should be, with all its sharp corners and rough edges and uncertain tempo – because all of it creates a feeling that couldn't be created in any other way.Â
And I haven't even mentioned the lyrics yet – the lyrics, which express at best a fragment of a thought that gets jumbled and repeated across the song: "When I get home / I might just ask / What you need to". The song never tells us what is needed, or if this intention is ever played out. It holds us, rather, in that liminal space of mental inarticulation, as an idea gets tossed around one's head without even being fully spelled out.Â
If music can be about this, then music can be about anything. Or, put another way: Anything can be made into music. Everything has an aesthetic. There is beauty in even the smallest of moments. And there is art to help us see it and make it come alive.
23 MAY 2025 · FEATURINGÂ
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) by Japanese Breakfast, released by Dead Oceans in 2025. https://album.link/s/4qqdOkr3Ff3kN8GxoxvRES / https://michellezauner.bandcamp.com/album/for-melancholy-brunettes-sad-womenÂ
- https://song.link/s/6VfeVmzckgv3N0qYutzJOg
- https://song.link/s/6ulXBujSnG7qR3vjURcw4u
- https://song.link/s/02olsPYJypEE0IyuaGS4K4
TRANSCRIPTÂ
The best music, in my opinion, simply makes us listen, captivating our attention so fully that everything else falls away. So I guess it goes without saying that that's what this music does for me, unspooling with this lush, rococo exuberance that audibly shimmers in its brilliance. Sounds upon sounds upon sounds to just get lost in. Its cup runneth over, and I just want to drink it all in. There's something new and wondrous around every corner, to hold our focus and delight our senses – even these pitchy little flutes, with their unexpected pathos. This song is like a secret garden I've wandered into and now never wish to leave.Â
And then there are these lines, that break my heart every time:Â
Watching you from the yardÂ
Life is sad but here is someoneÂ
SomeoneÂ
SomeoneÂ
SomeoneÂ
SomeoneÂ
There are many ways to hear those lines, but to my ear they recall that experience where we are suddenly jolted out of a depressive and anxious state of mind by the apprehension of a concrete individual before our eyes, in all their particular beauty and infinite possibility. Even if only for the briefest of moments, our attention becomes fixed on something outside our selves. And sometimes that's all we need. And sometimes that's what music does for us, too. So let's keep listening.Â
Because this music will keep holding our attention, even as it changes in its sound and its feel, and even as it turns its own attention elsewhere. If that first song was showing us a way out of life's sadness, much of the rest of the album seems devoted to cataloguing its diverse and many causes: absent fathers, unfaithful partners, or, as in this song, "incel eunuchs". It's looking the enemy square in the eye.Â
But here, too, the music shows us a way out of this ugliness, through the sheer jauntiness of its groove. It dazzles with a cornucopia of sounds: little rattles, big drums, a pulsating synth, and a tender accompaniment on guitar. It's enough to make you forget about everything wrong with boys these days.Â
But that raises the question: Is this song offering deliverance, or distraction? And as if on cue, the singer delivers this chilling couplet:Â
Well I better write my baby a shuffle goodÂ
Or he's gonna make me suffer the way I shouldÂ
In this final turn, the song presents itself as written for one of those disturbed young men, as a means of pacifying the violence within. And although this might make it seem like some gross performance, a coerced pantomime of country western swagger, what I hear is a note of radical hope: that if anything is gonna reach these boys, if anything is gonna turn their attention away from the false gods they worship, it will be music, if we can just get them to listen.Â
And now, a different kind of struggle: a song where the narrator is the one in need of saving, and where the cause of life's sadness is the enemy within, the singer's own mind, and in particular an anxious chittering of intrusive thoughts, permeating their experience and overtaking their consciousness, like this:Â
Are you not afraid of every waking minuteÂ
That your life could pass you by?Â
Again, it sure doesn't sound like a song about obsessive compulsion, with its soft throb of slide guitar and pedal steel. And the chorus is weirdly affirming of these mental preoccupations, with its sweet refrain of "All of my ghosts are real". There is no denial in the lyrics, only acceptance. But in the music, I hear emancipation.Â
It's yet another juxtaposition of sadness and salvation, with music appearing as the saving grace. And really, that's what this entire album is about: the push and pull between mental distraction and refocused attention, between the forces that plunge our minds into darkness and the moments that make us come up for air and see the light.Â
The point is not to deny anyone's reality. Life is sad, your ghosts are real. The point is to show us that there are other realities out there too – that alongside all the death and violence and infidelity, there is beauty and joy and music. There's enough out there to save us. We just need to turn our mind towards it and let it in.
28 APR 2025 · FEATURING
Cupid & Psyche 85 by Scritti Politti, released by Virgin Records in 1985. https://album.link/s/0nBH3ITWaQDYT2wAWRdg3K / https://scrittipolitti.bandcamp.com/album/cupid-psyche-85-2022-remaster
- https://song.link/s/1cMZTMXTITVxkHsgXNKKeB
TRANSCRIPTÂ
Imagine, for a moment, that it's 1985, and a British band of post-punk Marxists have decided to pivot into pop. What would you expect their music to sound like? Abrasive? Ironic? Overly cerebral? Perhaps that would be the most likely story. But what if I told you it sounded like this? Angelic, mellifluous, radiant, and undeniably groovy.Â
I don't usually like to do that, to historically situate what you're hearing before you actually hear it. I like to let the music just speak for itself. But in this case, I believe the context helps, to prime us to be surprised and to notice these curious little details, like the fact that this radio-friendly bop is a love song addressed to the "Absolute". And if you're wondering if I mean, like, the Absolute in the Hegelian sense? I do, and they do, too.Â
But let's not get too heady right away. Because the most important thing to notice about this song is how immediately infectious it is, reveling in its newly expanded palette of synthesized sounds to create a sonic concoction that never ceases to delight and surprise. And yes, it does have a certain sheen to it – but what a sheen it is.Â
I say all this to underscore the fact that this song, for all its self-awareness, is never condescending. It's fully in it and committed; it's pop music through and through. And that's what allows it to be a little bit meta.Â
So let's get into it. Let's talk about this love song to the Absolute. Because the way I see it, it's a distillation of what pop music is always actually about: the musical expression of desire, in all its thrills and throes. And here's the thing about desire: We like to talk about it as if it's for some particular person, but it's never that simple. The object of our desire is always some ideal, some figment of our imagination, some distant glimmer that beckons us from beyond what's in front of our eyes. We cannot actually grasp it; that's why we desire it. So isn't it just more honest to address your love song, not to pop's paradigmatic "boy" or "girl", but to the transcendental principle of a perfect and self-sufficient form of being?Â
And if that all sounds like a little much for a pop song, the good news is that you can set all that aside and just luxuriate in the sound of this music, because this song is never overbearing with its philosophy. But make no mistake: This album is full of these bits of wisdom, these incisive one-liners that encapsulate the fundamental nature of desire better than anything else I've ever heard in a pop song, lines like:Â
There's nothing I wouldn't do / Including doing nothingÂ
I got a lack, girl, that you'd love to beÂ
Now I know to love you / Is not to know youÂ
These are lyrics I never thought I'd hear in a pop song. But what I love about this music is that, as philosophical as it gets, it never stops sounding like this. Because it knows that this is the sound of desire, in all its ecstasy and magnetism and larger-than-life feeling. The music reifies, even as the lyrics deconstruct. It's the essence of desire made manifest. It's absolute idealism at its finest.
Reflections on the joys of discovering new music
Information
| Author | Willie Costello |
| Organization | Willie Costello |
| Categories | Music Commentary |
| Website | theyearofmagicallistening.com |
| theyearofmagicallistening@gmail.com |
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