** Staff Lists: The 100 Best Tracks of 2015 **by Pitchfork
December 14, 2015
Presenting our selections for The 100 Best Tracks of 2015, as voted by our writers and editors. Any track that was released in 2015 or had its greatest impact in the U.S. during this year was eligible.
** Dâm-Funk **
* “Free” *
-Stones Throw-
100
Funk has always concerned itself with liberation, and Dâm-Funk has long been an advocate for funk-as-freedom; he’d like nothing more than to lift your mind, your body, and your soul away from whatever’s holding it down. "Free", the closing track of Dâm’s wordless STFU EP, is a luxuriant ride from the boulevard to beyond the stratosphere. Over a bed of head-snap drums, twinkling Casios, and blunted bass, Dâm breezes down the block and off into the unknown. The eight-minute "Free" is a masterfully composed track, tidy as a cleanroom and filthy as a Black & Mild-stuffed ashtray, every chiming piano and wriggling keytar hanging, seemingly, in midair. More than that, though, it’s a testament to Dâm’s ability to make the music of the past—the mechanized precision of post-disco R&B and the subwoofer-decimating synths of left-coast g-funk—feel an awful lot like the future. It’s like the man said: Open up your funky mind, and you can fly. —Paul Thompson
Dâm-Funk: "Free" (via SoundCloud)
** Unknown Mortal Orchestra **
* “Can't Keep Checking My Phone” *
-Jagjaguwar-
99
On Multi-Love, Ruban Nielson applied his knack for layered hooks to his own polyamorous entanglement. Multi-Love’s jittery core untangles the anxiety of balancing partners, of unlearning the traditional forms of hetero marriage, and of doing so while that phone in your pocket begs your eyes to stay glued to its screen.
"Can’t Keep Checking My Phone" rattles with a nu-disco beat, finding its pulse in an octave-hopping bass line. Nielson’s production leaves plenty of open air for his blocky vocal phrasings to occupy as he stacks syllables that mimic a clipped long-distance conversation or shards of SMS swapping. All the while, a pitched-down version of his own voice haunts his words, as guilt and a yearning for freedom orbit each other. If "Can’t Keep Checking My Phone" isn’t the first disco slapper about wanting to chuck your iPhone in the nearest harbor, it’s got to be the most unexpectedly tender. —Sasha Geffen
Unknown Mortal Orchestra: "Can't Keep Checking My Phone" (via SoundCloud)
** Protomartyr **
* “Dope Cloud” *
-Hardly Art-
98
Proof that there’s life in post-punk beyond basic retreads of bands beloved in the 1980s, Detroit’s Protomartyr have restless energy to spare, both in their captivating live performances and their sharply structured songwriting. "Dope Cloud", built around propulsive drumming, a rickety and memorable guitar riff, and blown-out choruses, is both an ode to and a warning about escapism as a survival strategy. Vocalist Joe Casey’s perfectly blasé lyrics and delivery remind us that though it may feel good in the short run to plunge headfirst into hedonism, and that feeling good has value, it’s really not much of a lifelong solution to our continual search as a species for meaning and utility in this random and heartless universe. —Jes Skolnik
Protomartyr: "Dope Cloud" (via SoundCloud)
** Frankie Cosmos **
* “Young” *
-Bayonet-
97
One of the nice parts about getting older is watching younger people discover things that have been second nature to you for years. Among college-aged musicians playing the sort of lunchpail indie pop they were born too late to hear in the '90s, Frankie Cosmos seems like an outlier. Brief, simple, and direct in word but vast in sentiment, her best songs have the stature of haiku—it takes longer to hear them than it does to listen. "With this I’m scraping by/ I guess it’s cute that I tried," she sings on "Young", a self-portrait of a wallflower who seems to prefer her parties from a safe distance at the top of the stairs, as gentle as a lullaby and as sharply worded as hardcore. It all comes and goes in two minutes, with a five-second silence in the middle. Because wisdom is nice but time—time is of the essence. —Mike Powell
Frankie Cosmos: "Young" (via SoundCloud)
** Isaiah Rashad **
* “Nelly” *
-Top Dawg Entertainment-
96
Defying the conventional wisdom that rappers need to flood the market with as much material as possible in order to stay on the radar, Isaiah Rashad has kept a low profile since releasing his sleeper debut Cilvia Demo in early 2014, limiting his output to just a few guest verses and this very subdued single. "Nelly" is Rashad’s down-to-earth answer to every overly enthusiastic song comparing love to a hit single. "We can’t be no number one," he confesses upfront to neighborhood girl who appears to share his lot in life, "but we can be the jam." Like most Rashad tracks, it’s dense with autobiographical detail—in just two leisurely verses, he details his modest upbringing, his practical view of romance, and the low ceiling he sees hanging over his career. He can’t promise the world, and he refuses to feed the false hope that he’ll become a star and magically make this poor girl’s problems disappear. The best he can offer is some empathy, and someone to share a blunt and pass the time with. True to his word, "Nelly" wasn’t a number one hit—not even close—but it was, in its own understated way, a jam. —Evan Rytlewski
Isaiah Rashad: "Nelly"
** WOKE **
* “The Lavishments of Light Looking” [ft. George Clinton] *
-Adult Swim-
95
After the horror of the November attacks in the French capital, Thundercat released a gorgeous track simply titled "Paris". It made its way around the web, and some admirers, in their private moments, griped about the fact that it lasted hardly more than a minute. But Thundercat was involved with another, equally moving track this year with a far more significant runtime: "The Lavishments of Light Looking", which was released by the supergroup WOKE (Flying Lotus, two members of Shabazz Palaces, and Thundercat on bass).
The track was a paean to open-mindedness, approachable in its phantasmagoric psychedelia even as it preached transcendence through music. Its explicit spirituality was a balm for those aching from a news cycle filled with demagoguery, suspicion, and fear. When artists attempt to be political, the risk is often that of reductionism: politics are easier to translate into a speech than into a song. But with "Lavishments", WOKE managed not to evoke the anxieties of the time, but to repel them, appealing instead to a higher sentiment. —Jonah Bromwich
WOKE: "The Lavishments of Light Looking" [ft. George Clinton] (via SoundCloud)
** DJ Koze **
* “XTC” *
-Pampa-
94
There are two sides to DJ Koze: the hypnotizing shaman who spins one groove into another with ultimate finesse, and the winking illusionist who laughs at the shaman idea and teases you for your mindless devotion. Viewed alongside the finely tuned whimsy of his excellent DJ-Kicks mix from this year, "XTC" is a pretenseless, steady burner. Its lush, trance-inducing atmosphere, detailed with Koze’s typical quirky percussion, makes it one of his most straightforwardly satisfying recent productions. But it's just like Koze not to leave it there: a woman’s voice, ruminating on what ecstasy might provide for someone seeking enlightenment, emerges out of the mix. "I heard you say once that a lie is sweet in the beginning, and bitter in the end," she murmurs. "Is the drug like the lie, and meditation the truth? Or am I missing something that could really help me?"
It’s a straightforward monologue with ambiguous implications. Is Koze cultivating a lie? Is he trying to reveal the truth? As the track progresses, it gets sharper and toothier, generating more and more friction, until eventually the tidal harmonic washes transition into something jittery and obsessive, like a person compulsively playing with a zipper. The question lingers, a nagging dichotomy that nods towards the self-aware state of electronic music. How long will it be before intellectualism and hedonism collapse back together? Are we missing something that could really help us? —Abigail Garnett
DJ Koze: "XTC" (via SoundCloud)
** Bully **
* “I Remember” *
-Columbia / StarTime-
93
"I Remember" is a song of betrayal, about how the more we share, the more vulnerable we become. Each line carries a small part of a much larger story, and as fragments of hurt whiz past like spinning knives, it mirrors the process of memory itself. Bully's Alicia Bognanno sings in a melodic scream that any '90s alt-rocker could envy over basic-but-catchy punk chords, and the spaces between her declarations hold even more than the actual words: "I remember getting too fucked up...I remember showing up at your house....I remember the way your sheets smelt." That's how our minds work: a picture, a smell, a taste, a box of photos—all become imprinted, the senses bound to feelings that are later assembled into narrative, leading then to the long process of figuring out what it all meant and what happens now. —Mark Richardson
Bully: "I Remember" (via SoundCloud)
** Cool Uncle **
* “Break Away” [ft. Jessie Ware] *
-Fresh Young Minds-
92
With the mythology built into pop music fandom, it can be easy to fall into a "born too late" mindset, where you believe that the music made before your time is somehow more sincere, more real. Obviously, this is bullshit, and every generation has its own version of this FOMO, but sometimes revisiting old sounds yields something so spectacular that the retro-worship urge is irresistible. With Cool Uncle, Grammy-winning R&B producer Jack Splash teamed up with soul singer Bobby Caldwell, who has been quietly releasing records since the late '70s, and hit this precise sweet spot. From the staccato electric piano line, to the swishy cymbals to the background horn section, "Break Away" sounds so pointedly retro you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a cut from some obscure compilation of forgotten slow jams. But the presence of Jessie Ware, who owes considerable debt to Caldwell's contemporaries, gives "Break Away" an undoubtedly modern flair. While it would have still been a brilliant track sung solo, Ware's butter-smooth vocals not only hold their own against Caldwell's seasoned tenor, but form an ideal partnership. It's a perfect balance of then and now. —Cameron Cook
Cool Uncle: "Break Away" [ft. Jessie Ware]
** Kamaiyah **
* “How Does It Feel” *
-self-released-
91
Kamaiyah is a rapper and singer from Oakland with only a couple of songs to her name, and somehow one of them is already perfect. "How Does It Feel" bubbles like the Moët she drinks in the video, a song about the good life from someone who doesn't live it. The music zooms giddily up a West Coast rap highway, touching on electro, G-funk, and the Bay Area sound. Kamaiyah sing-raps about the most American feeling of all: "I wonder/ How does it feel to be rich?" It is celebratory, yearning, triumphant, and bottomlessly sad all at once. It will sound as good the day you get fired and get day-drunk at a TGI Fridays as the day you hire a party bus to celebrate your promotion. It is a song about perseverance and hunger, about ambition and appetite, and every other emotion that has kept the flame alive in hip-hop since it’s inception. Not a bad introduction. —Jayson Greene
Kamaiyah: "How Does It Feel" (via SoundCloud)
** Ty Dolla $ign **
* “Blasé” [ft. Future and Rae Sremmurd] *
-Atlantic-
90
Despite taking place in Los Angeles, Ty Dolla $ign’s opus Free TC most resembles a Broadway play, complete with a wide-eyed, scene-establishing opener, a Babyface-assisted aria, and a closing song literally titled "Finale". The many moving parts hit some kind of crescendo with "Blasé", featuring Future and Rae Sremmurd, which loses all context on the radio and in DJ setlists, but even then is perceivable as part of a larger core. The propulsive banger is something of an outlier in Ty’s long, varied discography—he’s never aimed for a radio hit without leaning on West Coast slap, and "Blasé" is pure blurry, Atlanta-inspired low end. The hook is all about twisting typical hip-hop boasts into "who cares?" declarations—we’re in the club, we’re buying bottles, we’re driving Maseratis, blasé blasé blasé. There’s a slightly menacing tinge in everyone’s voice that makes it seem like this good time might be the last time: "I ain’t scared to die, on my dead homies", Ty sings, straining to hit his upper register. Ty Dolla $ign has made a career out of writing about his needs and how they mingle with disposability—toot it and boot it, how many girls can fit in his cabana, these hoes ain’t loyal—and here he sleepily lands on the most raucous song of his career while sounding like a somnambulant party machine, the guy still going well past 2 a.m. on a Wednesday. But what of it? —Matthew Ramirez
Ty Dolla $ign: "Blasé" [ft. Future and Rae Sremmurd] (via SoundCloud)
** Natalie Prass **
* “My Baby Don’t Understand Me” *
-Spacebomb-
89
What do you do when you realize you have nothing in common with the person you love, when it suddenly hits you that your entire relationship has been a slow process of growing apart? Is there any going back after a realization like that? Natalie Prass isn’t singing in hypotheticals on the lavishly orchestrated opener to her debut album—she really needs to know, and she’s posing the questions to you directly: "Where do you go when the only home you know is with a stranger?".
For all the Dusty in Memphis comparisons her album invited, Prass isn’t a belter like Springfield. She’s got a small, pleasant voice, the kind that doesn’t so much sing over other instruments as draw them in, and on "My Baby Don’t Understand Me", a magnificent congregation of strings, horns, and woodwinds shows up to console her, to offer hope when she needs it most. Like so many classic soul songs, it starts plaintively then picks itself up, and in the spirit of Gladys Knight, it ends redemptively with that most bittersweet symbol of farewells and fresh starts: a train. —Evan Rytlewski
Natalie Prass: "My Baby Don't Understand Me"
** Shamir **
* “Demon” *
-XL-
88
Not all great loves make you a better person. Nestled between the party tracks of Shamir’s debut Ratchet is secret weapon "Demon", a downturned love song that draws its fire from the underworld. "I’ve gone and sold my soul/ If I’m a demon, baby, you’re the beast that made me", Shamir sings over one of Ratchet’s sparser beats, "Falling from grace, but falling oh so gracefully". Dressed in sensual tones, "Demon" flips the lover-as-savior narrative on its head. Shamir isn’t looking for redemption, or to be ushered out of a past life into a purer one. Love is a means and an end in itself—and if it happens to corrupt you irreversibly along the way, so be it. —Sasha Geffen
Shamir: "Demon"
** Tate Kobang **
* “Bank Rolls (Remix)” *
-300 Entertainment / D1 Entertainment-
87
Regional rap hits often feel casual and lived-in. If Tate Kobang's feathery "Bank Rolls (Remix)" feels a little extra so, it's because Baltimore's been inhabiting this beat for more than a decade now: it was sourced from an old Tim Trees track produced by Rod Lee, an artist who knows something about being a local hero. Originally a short freestyle, the lyrics are dotted heavily with neighborhoods and street names, but Kobang abstains from boasts and shit-talking. The general mood is "I have friends in lots of these places!", and when Kobang expanded the track upon signing a label deal, the line he spun into a quasi-chorus was, "I love my city/ Ask about me and I bet they know me."
As baldly personable as Kobang comes off, the star of the track is Lee's beat, a minimal funk oddity that bears the same relationship to, say, the Neptunes' productions as the Ramones do to the Supremes: a stilted, charming facsimile. The watery Rhodes piano lick that accompanies the chorus acts as a sublime counterpoint to the snub-nosed bass bursts. It's a beat that deserved a second life, strong enough not just to hit the same city twice but to propel a favorite son forward. —Andrew Gaerig
Tate Kobang: "Bank Rolls (Remix)"
** Savages **
* “The Answer” *
-Matador-
86
The first single from Savages' forthcoming album is an exercise in tension-building and suspense—no small feat in the context of a lunging, steel-toe-booted mosh-pit of a song. Gemma Thompson's buzzsaw guitar keeps moving away from its central chord and immediately dodging back to it, with a rhythm that lands just off the beat. (When she finally breaks free of that chord's gravity, more than a minute into the song, it's like a smack to the face.) Thompson, Fay Milton, and Ayse Hassan lock into the song's high-friction riff in a mode that's way too rare these days; for all the comparisons Savages get to late-'70s British post-punk, their rhythm section is closer to the obsessively precise mania of the Jesus Lizard.
What, then, is the answer that Jehnny Beth is whooping and snarling about? Love, but not the fuzzy kind. "The Answer" is about love as a cruel obligation, as fuel for corrosive jealousy, as the gift other people get that you know would ruin you. "If you don't love me you don't love anybody", Beth keeps repeating to someone—or to herself. Whether it's a hope or a fear, it's a desperate one. —Douglas Wolk
Savages: "The Answer"
** Lower Dens **
* “To Die in L.A.” *
-Ribbon Music-
85
According to singer Jana Hunter, the initial writing sessions for Lower Dens third full-length were not a merry time. "We hadn’t played together for a while, and we were in a cold, dark space—physically and emotionally," she explained earlier this year. Somewhere along the line, the Baltimore-based band realized that it had fallen into a kind of bad-vibe feedback loop. They took a breather and reconvened a month later with a new goal—to avoid writing miserable music while feeling miserable.
There’s no telling where "To Die in L.A." fell in this process, but I’m guessing it came after the break. The song has many strengths—it's catchy, economical, and perfectly paced. It makes lush and melodic pop seem like a natural extension of Lower Dens’ minimalist aesthetic, rather than a calculated change in scene. It is best, though, in how elegantly it shifts from anxiety to relief. Listening to the first lines, you’d think Hunter had slipped in her pledge toward positive thinking, but when the chorus arrives the music and lyrics align in uplift. It's possible to give the lyrics a darker reading, with the singer confessing a desire to shift positions of advantage ("Time will turn the tide"). But it feels more hopeful than that—an incantation against gloom and a melody you could hold on an indefinite mental loop. —Aaron Leitko
Lower Dens: "To Die in L.A."
** Titus Andronicus **
* “Dimed Out” *
-Merge-
84
If you ask their army of devotees why +@ is their life-changing, vital force, it's because no band gives more of itself. This band does not come equipped with brakes, nor does its leader Patrick Stickles. On a 29-song, double concept album, "Dimed Out" is the loudest advocate for Stickles’ hyper-driven maximalist ambitions, and it manages a trick we usually associate with hip-hop, not indie rock: Coining new slang and using it as a statement of purpose. Yeah, "Dimed Out" probably soundtracked some drinking games this year, but it goes deeper than that: Titus wants to transcend and to take you with them. You can see it in Stickles’ online persona as well, which fosters a cult of personality that can involve starting a one-sided beef with Kendrick Lamar, dominating his own Genius page, and making an overt bid for King of New York. "Dimed Out" overdoes it so you don't confuse it with just punk music. —Ian Cohen
Titus Andronicus: "Dimed Out"
** Moses Sumney **
* “Seeds” *
-Terrible-
83
Moses Sumney is one of seemingly hundreds of artists to benefit from rapid advances in both the quality and availability of live sampling, looping, and layering technologies. But while his embrace of these devices adds a dimension to his music, there's an earthy richness to his performances that suggests he could go on for hours with nothing but a handful of jazz chords on his guitar and his astonishing voice.
That voice is a truly beautiful instrument, whether he’s folding it into pillowy, wordless backing harmonies or using his otherworldly falsetto to put an exclamation point on a verse. He sounds not quite like anyone else, his style a big-armed embrace hugging the expressive jazz of Billie Holiday, Thom Yorke at his most atmospheric, or Antony Hegarty at her most reflective. His guitar here is simple, precise and propulsive, humbly underpinning the haunting drama of the full piece of music, where ghostly choirs swoop in and out, and an icy orchestral blast comes out of nowhere at three minutes to turn the whole thing on its head. Sumney is still at the very beginning of his career, but his utterly singular work so far points to great things ahead. —Joe Tangari
Moses Sumney: "Seeds" (via SoundCloud)
** Chairlift **
* “Ch-Ching” *
-Columbia-
82
Inspired by New York City, "Ch-Ching" marvels with its magnitude: from the trunk-rattling bass and whip-crack snares to the pop and hiss beneath the meandering melody. Like the city itself, the song's every square inch belies tiered, towering architecture. While its sonic immediacy and textural diversity make it a stellar pop song, the primary source of "Ch-Ching"’s appeal is that it avoids the expected. Listen to the way Caroline Polachek’s willowy soprano shimmies effortlessly among ghostly whistles and hollow whoops, or how the syncopated brass lends the steeled hip-hop framework a bit of antiquated charm. "Ch-Ching" is like nothing Chairlift have done before, and is one of the more bombastic and brassy pop singles in recent memory. —Zoe Camp
Chairlift: "Ch-Ching"
** Jenny Hval **
* “That Battle Is Over” *
-Sacred Bones-
81
Unsettling in its combination of lyrical bleakness and meditative instrumental beauty, "That Battle Is Over" finds Norwegian experimental artist Jenny Hval capturing 2015’s dystopian global political and cultural climate with terrifying accuracy. Late capitalism has devoured much of our free will, rendering individual boycotts and identification with movements toothless: What, then, is the point of struggle? Over droning organ and rhythmic hand drumming, Hval’s bending and swooping internal monologue, forced outward, wrestles with that question from the position that change is still necessary, even if it seems impossible. What has capitalism done to us? How has it eroded our sense of self? Can we still take care of ourselves and one another in such a world, or are we just going through the motions, despite our best intentions? As we sit perched on the edge of a rotting empire, we find resonance even in knowing others are aching the way that we are. Direct but never didactic, Hval cuts to the marrow. —Jes Skolnik
Jenny Hval: "That Battle Is Over" (via SoundCloud)
** Dej Loaf **
* “Me U & Hennessy” [ft. Lil Wayne] *
-Columbia-
80
Dej Loaf came into the year with the kind of cosigns that dreams are made of: Drake on Instagram, a slew of high-profile "Try Me" remixes, a slot on Erykah Badu’s year-end tour, a feature with Eminem. In 2015, she followed through, putting out her first studio EP #AndSeeThatsTheThing, while touring on Nicki Minaj’s Pinkprint Tour, before getting a shout-out from Nicki herself at the BET Awards.
By contrast, Lil Wayne was dealing with his Cash Money fallout, the indefinite postponement of Tha Carter V, and a slew of disappointing solo releases. Remixing Dej’s "Me U & Hennessy" was one of his more successful musical contributions of the year. His involvement brought wider attention to the slow-burning drunk sex jam that had originally appeared sandwiched in the middle of Dej’s Sell Sole mixtape.
Yet compared with some of the other sexytime songs Dej put out this year ("Hey There" ft. Future, "My Beyoncé" with Lil Durk, "Shawty" ft. Young Thug), there’s something a little less affectionate and starry-eyed about this one. The song slides and grinds by the flicker of a "couple candles", and there's an immediacy to Dej's lyrics. But there’s also a more tangible distance between the two, at least for Wayne: "Girl you don’t love me, you just love my doggy style," he drawls. "I guess chemistry is true, but I don’t know if it’s the Hennessy or you"—a brief thought he quickly eschews for more threesome- and dick-related pastures. Dej for one, per her characteristic, slightly-detached persona, is happy to keep it about the moment. —Minna Zhou
Dej Loaf: "Me U & Hennessy" [ft. Lil Wayne]
** YG **
* “Twist My Fingaz” *
-Def Jam-
79
In rap’s criminal cosmology, the gangbanger was superseded over a decade ago by the hustler. Gangsta rap’s basic themes of allegiance to an effort far greater than one individual person has been replaced with the coldblooded entrepreneurial mindset of the trap era. Yet over the past couple years, gangsta rap’s been making a stealthy comeback, thanks to efforts by artists as diverse as Freddie Gibbs, Kendrick Lamar, and YG. Following up his DJ Mustard produced debut album, My Krazy Life, the one-off single "Twist My Fingaz" reaches back to the mid-'90s for a nasty, funk-fueled beat, as well as lyrics that pair shots at a new generation of studio gangstas with an exuberant evocation of gang’s favorite nonverbal ways of signalling affiliation. Hearing it’s like living in a world where the G-funk era never ended. —Miles Raymer
YG: "Twist My Fingaz"
** iLoveMakonnen **
* “Whip It (Remix)” [ft. Migos and Rich the Kid] *
-self-released-
78
Like all the best Migos songs, "Whip It" sounds like it is made of pre-chewed gum balls and carcinogens. The beat starts with a dinky piano patch harking back to Master P; it's so dinky that reigning Atlanta Dink-Master Zaytoven might scoff at it. The song is a toy menagerie and iLoveMakonnen is lead toy. He's so sociable he even makes whipping crack sound like a rainy-day project for two ("My friend Makonnen is teaching me how to whip it"). The song is abjectly, joyfully disposable-sounding, but that hook jabs your brain like the upraised staple in the centerfold of a comic book. —Jayson Greene
iLoveMakonnen: "Whip It (Remix)" [ft. Migos and Rich the Kid] (via SoundCloud)
** Majical Cloudz **
* “Downtown” *
-Matador-
77
"Downtown" is, on one level, a song about the good times in a relationship, when things are flush with excitement and discovery and everything seems perfect: "Nothing you say/ Will ever be wrong/ Cause it just feels good being in your arms." But the way Devon Welsh sings the words, and the way Matthew Otto's skeletal instrumentation floats around them like a ghost, makes you think that at least some of it can be placed in the past tense. The line, "There is one thing I’ll do, if it ever goes wrong, I’ll write you into all my songs" may be the one thing that exists in the present. It’s hard to know for sure, but when a love song comes this close to an elegy, it brings to mind fellow melancholic romantics like Morrissey, Robert Smith, "God Damn the Sun" Michael Gira, and Leonard Cohen, which is a good place for Majical Cloudz to be at this point in their career. That it includes some of the best lyrics of the year—"And if suddenly I die/ I hope they will say/ That he was obsessed and it was okay"—shows that Welsh can back up deep sentiments with sharp, smart writing. —Brandon Stosuy
Majical Cloudz: "Downtown"
** Empress Of **
* “Standard” *
-Terrible-
76
It takes an immense talent like Brooklyn transplant Lorely Rodriguez, aka Empress Of, to write and produce a catchy, heartfelt pop song about income inequality without it feeling forced, corny, or patronizing. There’s no poor-them charity or Hallmark Channel pathos in the gut-wrenching chorus to "Standard", from Rodriguez’s stunning debut album. When "survival" means different things to different people across the globe, understanding the material details of others’ lives can be a catalyst for genuine connection. Instead of preaching, Rodriguez’s empathy resonates on a seriously human scale, getting its multilayered pop hooks into our hearts and heads as we nod along. —Jes Skolnik
Empress Of: "Standard"
** Lana Del Rey **
* “High by the Beach” *
-Interscope-
75
In 2015 it became clear that Lana Del Rey's aesthetic wasn't just "a phase," and "High by the Beach" is a song that only she could have sung. For every trite platitude—"lights, camera, acción"—there's an equal and opposite profundity ("You could be a bad motherfucker/ But that don't make you a man"). While "Getting high by the beach" is a vision not totally consistent with the manicured sad-girl aesthetic that has become LDR’s trademark, it's also a vision she executes perfectly—what could've been a painfully-literal complainers' anthem sounds breezy and somehow dignified. It’s moody and literal, sure, but it sounds, for once, like Lana has nothing to prove. —Molly Beauchemin
Lana Del Rey: "High by the Beach"
** Frank Ocean **
* “(At Your Best) You Are Love” (Aaliyah/The Isley Brothers Cover) *
-self-released-
74
In 1976, the Isley Brothers wrote and recorded "At Your Best (You Are Love)" for Harvest for the World, their 14th studio album; by then, the Brothers were a six-piece, ringed with gold medallions and bedecked in full disco-fringe, playing a smoother, slinkier iteration of the galloping rhythm and blues they’d built a career around. Almost two decades later, in 1994, seven years before her death, Aaliyah included a cover of the song on her debut LP, and this year, on what would have been her 36th birthday, Frank Ocean posted a high, spectral version of it—just voice and some wobbly keys—to his personal Tumblr. There might be no greater testament to Ocean’s extraordinary skill as an R&B singer than the way he turns the Isleys’ hokey bromides ("You are a positive, motivating force within my life") into something fully devastating, a lament that also feels healing, generative, kind. In Ocean’s voice, the song becomes about the futility of trying to understand a partner who’s dragging around a past you can’t begin to unpack, much less comprehend: "When you feel what you feel, it's hard for me to understand," he sings, his voice unraveling a little at the edges. "So many things have taken place before this love affair began." Feeling the full weight of history and all the complications it has wrought: There might be no better summation of the last 12 months. —Amanda Petrusich
Frank Ocean: "(At Your Best) You Are Love"
** Rick Ross **
* “Foreclosures” *
-Def Jam / Maybach-
73
Rick Ross’s charade has always hinged on regality over reality, but it’s hard to remain stately in a drought. Last year was tough on MMG, and the cracks in the small empire gaped with the release of two full-length duds from label-boss Rozay himself. On his first lead single of 2015, Ross toned it down for the better. He’s realistic and cautionary about the industry—cutting remarks about malicious publishing deals anchor the first verse—and he’s more endearing for it. A subtle, extended 50 Cent diss hits harder than the corny jabs the two usually exchange; sincerity about Meek Mill is more honorable than bawsy rhetoric. At the bottom of it all, as ever, is money, and "Foreclosures" is Ross’ believable dark side warning. "Learn to walk a tightrope/ Ever seen a rich nigga go broke?" he snarls over a dramatically streamlined J.U.S.T.I.C.E League beat. It’s a delightfully preachy takedown, but before it all starts, Ross admits, "I see it from both sides, I feel a nigga pain." —Jay Balfour
Rick Ross: "Foreclosures" (via SoundCloud)
** Hudson Mohawke **
* “Ryderz” *
-Warp-
72
The rider is a mysterious figure. Bob Dylan sang about two of them approaching in the distance with the howling wind. Jim Morrison saw him as a killer in the night, stalking women and children. D.J. Rogers told us to watch out for the riders, too, and his warning became the core of the biggest, most blown-out track on Hudson Mohawke’s first solo album since he made his name with the TNGHT project. "Ryderz" begins with a mostly untouched minute of Rogers’ original, and it takes a lot of gall to gank a sample that completely. But when the rat-a-tat 808s and neon synthesizers begin to whizz and bang over Rogers’ lyrics, you remember that subtlety has rarely been the point of Mohawke’s most memorable music. It’s not so much a curated Fourth of July fireworks display as it is a match thrown into a car stuffed with Roman candles. The agitation of the sampled vocals is revealed by the colossal drop, which suggests the best way to heed a warning is not with words but with a show of strength. —Jeremy Gordon
Hudson Mohawke: "Ryderz" (via SoundCloud)
** Father John Misty **
* “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” *
-Bella Union / Sub Pop-
71
Jesus, what an ugly song. The story of a one-night stand in which no one escapes persecution, least of all songwriter/performer/narrator Josh Tillman: He can't get it up and, perhaps more damningly, misidentifies his company's linguistic faux pas as a malapropism. "The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment" surpasses the already high levels of cynicism and bitterness that exist in Tillman's second record as Father John Misty, the excellent I Love You, Honeybear. It's essential that bile at this level of toxicity be delivered via song, because if someone just started talking like this you'd stop them short and advise them to take a round off.
There's a ton of posing and preening on Honeybear, and even more during Tillman's excellent live show, in which he fully inhabits his arrogant, louche hippie persona. But when I saw him earlier this year, I found myself hoping he wouldn't play "The Night Josh Tillman…"; Tillman summoning the necessary contempt for the performance seemed like it would kill the party dead. (He never played it.) "The Night Josh Tillman…" is fascinating, darkly thrilling, and vicious. It's like a lot of the unattractive things that people do when they're drunk, or high, or lonely, or horny, or some combination. Tillman's retelling walks the same line between dark humor and obscenity. —Andrew Gaerig
Father John Misty: "The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment"
** DJ Rashad / DJ Spinn **
* “Dubby” [ft. Danny Brown] *
-Hyperdub-
70
Don't let Danny Brown's overstated rep as a drug-rap hedonist overshadow his essential musicality—the yelping sing-song variation of his flow may have been initially inspired by Adderall, but his Detroit-raised enthusiasm for a wide scope of electronic music propels the way he goes in. The through-line between Detroit ghettotech and Chicago ghetto house means the already-eclectic Brown knows what to do over peak-level juke beats from the immortal team of DJ Spinn and the late DJ Rashad. "Dubby" nails the sweet spot between relentless percussion and gliding soul-jazz atmosphere, and with all that lineage to ricochet off, Brown's verses feel as much like a merging of formative interests as it does an opportunity to show off. The graceful rampage of his choppy, on-the-kick delivery ("Idon'tknow'aboutwhereyafrom butthisishow my! hood! work!") makes the track's aggressive joy breathe deep. Never mind getting high to it—get high from it. —Nate Patrin
DJ Rashad/DJ Spinn: "Dubby" [ft. Danny Brown]
** Sufjan Stevens **
* “Fourth of July” *
-Asthmatic Kitty-
69
After trying on a variety of different stylistic hats over the past few years—folk troubadour, unwitting historian, electronic dabblist, full-time Christmas caroler—the mercurial Sufjan Stevens got back to his roots with Carrie & Lowell, both literally and figuratively. A meticulous examination of his childhood and the complicated relationship between himself, his stepfather, and late mother, the album delivers the kind of emotional wallop that made his early records such commanding listens. It offers the kind of lyrical directness and emotional candor that, from a lesser artist, could be treacly and precious. In Sufjan’s hands, however, the songs soar, offering a reverie bordering—as so much of his best work does—on the religious.
"Fourth of July" is the album’s emotional centerpiece, a rumination on his mother’s death that doesn’t flinch when broaching mortality—both hers and ours. "It was night when you died, my firefly," he sings. "What could I have said to raise you from the dead?/ Oh, could I be the sky on the Fourth of July?" The song itself is a kind of hushed explosion—at once a dialogue between Sufjan and his mother ("Shall we look at the moon, my little loon/ Why do you cry?" she asks him) and bittersweet examination of how we choose to face our ends. It’s hard to imagine too many artists capable of selling the line "We’re all gonna die" and wringing out so many layers of meaning. As the line is repeated—surrounded by hushed piano and a choir of backup voices—it becomes less a nihilist warning or an admission of defeat. It’s a reminder to live, to embrace, to remember, to sing. —T. Cole Rachel
Sufjan Stevens: "Fourth of July"
** Björk **
* “Lionsong” *
-One Little Indian-
68
A nine-song play-by-play of the demise of her relationship with artist Matthew Barney, Vulnicura was one of 2015’s most emotionally rending releases—densely layered, meticulously produced, and as creatively ambitious as anything Björk has ever done (which is no small statement). "Lionsong" is not necessarily the most devastating track on the album, but it’s arguably the best. The song documents a painful limbo—the claustrophobia of being held hostage by someone else’s emotions. "Maybe he will come out of this loving me/ Maybe he won't," she sings, as a cauldron of strings, electronic blips, and her own soaring, multi-tracked voice surges around her. The song is less of a plea for love as it is a request for respect. "I demand clarity," she sings, before admitting, "Somehow I'm not too bothered/ I'd just like to know." Like the rest of Vulnicura, the song seems to exist in a realm beyond intimacy—the sound of an artist at her most stunningly vulnerable. By so fearlessly and meticulously cataloguing her own emotional anguish, Björk manages a rare trick. She explores one of the most primal and well trod of all human narratives—heartbreak, the collapse of family—and still ends up sounding strangely like the future. —T. Cole Rachel
Björk: "Lionsong"
** Rae Sremmurd **
* “This Could Be Us” *
-EarDrummers / Interscope-
67
"This Could Be Us" is the most irresistible track on Rae Sremmurd's relentlessly catchy debut album SremmLife. It's the record's ebullient light amid forceful club-ready bangers. While the Sremm brothers spend much of the album doubling up on the success of 2014 hits "No Flex Zone" and "No Type" with songs filled with heavy bass, scattered synth, and loudly chanted hooks, "This Could Be Us" finds younger brother Swae Lee free to sing his heart out. His high-pitched vocals are endearingly sweet, especially when combined with a consistent "Chopsticks"-like piano melody and innocent one-liners like, "I ball like Tracy McGrady." Further, Rae Sremmurd take an otherwise ironic meme in #ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin—useful for scoffing at potential paramours’ lack of interest—and use it with complete sincerity to plea for a second chance at love. Such wide-eyed innocence and giddiness give the track a palpable joy. On tracks like this, Rae Sremmurd successfully turn hip-hop into pop. "This Could Be Us" is what happens when they focus hard on just the latter part of the equation. —Matthew Strauss
Rae Sremmurd: "This Could Be Us"
** Jazmine Sullivan **
* “Dumb” [ft. Meek Mill] *
-RCA-
66
R&B’s tradition of tell-off records runs deep. When the genre was last in the spotlight, in the late '90s, we saw some classics of the form, including Destiny’s Child's "Bills Bills Bills" and Blu Cantrell’s "Hit ’Em Up Style (Oops!)". But those looking for a more contemporary example of the staple should start with the track that kicked off Jazmine Sullivan’s album Reality Show.
Sullivan had grown disenchanted with the music industry after slugging it out in the trenches since signing to Jive Records at 15. In 2011, she announced that she would be retiring. "Dumb" was a ferocious annunciation of her return to music, its drumline rhythms and foreboding Greek chorus supporting her fierce declaration of superiority over the song’s subject, a man foolish enough to cheat. Sullivan has said that the song wasn’t based on anything that had happened to her, but that she wanted to be sure to do "a woman’s anthem" for her first song back. It’s a fitting sentiment for an era where the voices of black women are finding new arenas in which they can be heard, dismissing any and all of those who would deny them that space. —Jonah Bromwich
Jazmine Sullivan: "Dumb" [ft. Meek Mill]
** Deerhunter **
* “Living My Life” *
-4AD-
65
"Live in the now!" Garth so famously beseeched Wayne. That’s much easier said than done, particularly from the dark side of 30. Deerhunter attempt to make this bitterest of pills easier to swallow with maximum yacht pop creaminess on "Living My Life", a languid grudge match between pure mindfulness and past and future ghosts. If "will you tell me how to conquer all this fear?" is a riddle Bradford Cox poses to himself, "living my life" is the mantra-like answer he incessantly chants in reply. Couched in a gauzy, anesthetized splash of guitars and electronics, this dilemma achieves the sort of wary, anthemic grandeur we demand of our high-grade rock'n'roll: a sad song that feels happy, or at the very least capably anesthetizing. Yet no matter how many times any of us listen to "Living My Life" on repeat, a moment will arrive where headphones or earbuds must be cast aside to confront the very frightening, very tense world beyond ourselves, with all its attendant fear and loathing. —Raymond Cummings
Deerhunter: "Living My Life"
** Chance the Rapper **
* “Angels” [ft. Saba] *
-self-released-
64
On "Angels"—the rumored first single from Chance the Rapper’s next mixtape—which debuted on "Colbert", Chance addresses the flimsy narrative that he’s the conscious pop star ego to Chief Keef’s guttural id head-on, confidently telling the world, "Oooh, I might share my next one with Keef/ Got the industry in disbelief/ They be asking for beef." Take these lyrics to heart: Kill the drill vs. conscious mentality you have about Chicago’s rap scene.
Norwegian producer Lido (Halsey, Banks) channels a sunny day driving down Lake Shore Drive with equal parts gospel harmony and kettledrum, while Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment provide a big, cushioned horn section. Not just a feel-good throwaway in a year that needed some sunshine, "Angels" also served as a commendable guerilla radio promotion by a local act that barely saw love on the air. The play worked, by the way. You can hear Saba’s flawless "City so great/ I feel like Alexand'" hook during morning and afternoon rush now. (It’s important to call this out as a lot of local acts don’t get that shine. If you regularly listen to Chicago radio, you’d think Drake was the one born in Chatham, not Chance.)
Be it overhyped controversy over Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq or underhyped controversy over various cover-ups in local government, in 2015 we needed a megaphone reminding the world that these statistics you see on the news are still humans, that good people still live out south in Chicago and that it’s still juking out here. Lucky for us, "Angels" had our back. —Ernest Wilkins
Chance the Rapper: "Angels" [ft. Saba]
** Chromatics **
* “Shadow” *
-Italians Do It Better / Adult Swim-
63
After years of searching, Johnny Jewel and his nightbreed cohort have perfected the afterlife love ballad, which means they’ve perfected the Chromatics song. "Shadow", a post-disco "Teen Angel", slipped out this year while we waited for Jewel to finish tinkering with the perpetually imminent Dear Tommy. We’re still waiting, but judging by this necromantic teen dream, like M83 minus the bombast, it will be worth it. With an immaculately moonlit minimal house setting and a radiant hook worthy of peak Cure, "Shadow" is so subtle it blurs out into timeless myth—or maybe it is just a breakup. But the forensic evidence is there. A gleaming knife of guitar is swaddled in black-velvet ambiance like a hidden murder weapon. A couple is driving at night, trying to escape a dead-end town. "We’re watching all the streetlights fade," Ruth Radelet sighs in a silvered voice the size of a drive-in screen, "and now you’re just a stranger’s dream." Think about that—streetlights might recede as you drive away, or just wink out, but why would they "fade"? The verb seems to fatally ricochet back onto the speaker, who must be turning into a ghost to see things that way. Likewise, the amorphous music lingers at a threshold. Precisely where does that haunting stepwise arpeggio, twisting our couple so inexorably toward their fates, overtake that knocking drum, like footsteps approaching down a hallway? Where do the cold vapors trailing from the vocals stop and the warm ones curling off the guitar begin? What’s at the distant end of this purgatorial tunnel of reverb? "For the last time," Radelet sings eight times, as if she knows but isn’t saying. —Brian Howe
Chromatics: "Shadow" (via SoundCloud)
** Blood Orange **
* “Sandra's Smile” *
-Domino-
62
"Sandra's Smile" isn't a protest song as much as a platform for Dev Hynes to grapple with the kaleidoscope of emotions he experienced as a result of the death of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was arrested for a minor traffic violation in July only to be found dead in her Waller County jail cell three days later. A haunting, shimmering slice of R&B with a beat that eerily recalls a beating heart, the track captures a remarkable range of emotions in just over three minutes: exhaustion, confusion, anger, deep-rooted fear, all buoyed by a hopefulness that cannot be extinguished. "Sandra's Smile" refuses to admit defeat, forcing us to confront an ugly—and for too many, literally deadly—reality head on without sanitizing its message so that it goes down easier. —Renato Pagnani
Blood Orange: "Sandra's Smile"
** G.L.O.S.S. **
* “G.L.O.S.S. (We're From the Future)” *
-self-released-
61
"Singing in G.L.O.S.S. is kind of like getting to be a superhero," Sadie Switchblade told Bitch earlier this year. "Like weaponizing a lifetime of anguish and alienation." On their demo tape, the Olympia hardcore band burn the no-future scripture of punk history to the ground. Its opening track is pure insurrectionism—Sadie delivers a monologue for her fellow transwomen with a thrilling rage ("we’re fucking future girls, living outside society’s shit!"), before blasting off into a 90-second blur of furious noise. And she makes the group’s total irreverence unmistakably clear: "The straight boy canon is a royal bore," she shouts, emptying her lungs with soul-cleansing gale-force. It’s a tough-as-hell mission statement from the most necessary hardcore band of 2015. —Jenn Pelly
G.L.O.S.S.: "G.L.O.S.S. (We're From the Future)" (Buy on Bandcamp)
** Neon Indian **
* “Annie” *
-Transgressive / Mom & Pop-
60
Alan Palomo, one of the earliest and strongest voices of chillwave, released two Day-Glo bright albums before vanishing from sight for four long years. In the meantime, his peers moved on to fuzz-rock (Toro y Moi), garage rock (Ariel Pink), and screwed-down strangeness (James Ferraro). When Neon Indian broke his sabbatical this summer with "Annie", he doubled down on his '80s obsession. But instead of returning to chillwave’s vision of warped VHS tapes and MTV memories, now Palomo immersed himself in the decade’s songcraft, from its biggest freaks (Prince) to its one-hit blips (Matthew Wilder). "Annie" is the best Balearic song of the year, the sort of silken, breezy, featherweight faux-reggae, faux-tropical pop synthesis that acts like Scritti Politti and Duran Duran confected for play on la isla bonita. It sounds sterling in the present even as it inhabits a bygone time where there were such things as "answering machines." —Andy Beta
Neon Indian: "Annie"
** Janelle Monáe / Wondaland Records **
* “Hell You Talmbout” *
-Wondaland Arts Society-
59
The Electric Lady bonus cut "Hell You Talmbout" was already eye-opening in its original form, evoking claustrophobia in a wide-open space as its street-crime snapshots intruded on lives spent trying to be lived. But after the events of the past couple of years, Monáe tore every allusive word out of the original and brought her crew in to replace them with a cry of rage and a seemingly endless roll call. The names in themselves speak volumes: there are the familiar ones that brought the Black Lives Matter movement into the fore (Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown), the ones less instantly recognizable but no less demanding of justice (Tommy Yancy, Jerame Reid, Philip White), and the ones who evoke not-so-distant memories of cases that turned a national spotlight on trigger-happy police (Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell). As a musical performance it all cuts to the essence, riding off rolling-thunder drumline momentum and a church mourner's chorus, a marcher's anthem that keeps its structure simple and strong enough to carry the burden of all those names. It's what happens when the demands for recognition that "I Am—Somebody" are ignored by the people with your life in their hands, beats for the streets when the streets are taken over by the people. —Nate Patrin
Janelle Monáe and Wondaland Records: "Hell You Talmbout" (via SoundCloud)
** Nicolas Jaar **
* “Fight (Nymphs IV)” *
-R&S-
58
Nicolas Jaar leaked music slowly this year. Outside of his unofficial Soviet movie OST Pomegranates, his only 2015 releases came in the form of Nymphs, a series of three new singles released periodically from summer through fall. Capping off the chain is the standalone "Fight", an eight-and-a-half minute exercise in snaking beatwork and destabilized melody. Jaar slices up his voice and tosses the resulting syllables into the fray, grinding his upper register in the nervous machinery. The track doesn’t follow lyrics so much as it lets phrases glance off its central apparatus like pixels of light off a disco ball. "So don’t you fight," Jaar insists at the dissolving finish. "Fight" takes an explicit look at the workings of the human body, how they connect and disconnect from the sounds they process. Jaar finds sympathy with the body’s quieter experiences, the ticks and hums that move in the background of our inner lives, and Nymphs as a sequence not only echoes those movements but extrapolates on them. Here’s a producer who’s always been as interested in the murk beneath the surface of his work as the surface itself; on "Fight", he finds plenty of glitter in both. —Sasha Geffen
Nicolas Jaar: "Fight (Nymphs IV)"
** Destroyer **
* “Dream Lover” *
-Dead Oceans / Merge-
57
"Dream Lover"’s unruly saxophones squeal a filthy poem of irresponsible adventure and unlikely romance. It sounds exhausted, and liable to collapse—as if Dan Bejar were acquiescing to just one last romp before seriousness sets in. "I think I used to be more fun," he admits. As much as the 43-year-old Canadian tries to act the Scrooge of indie rock, even he can't completely negate the joy in his own music. It was recorded with the studio doors flung wide, horns squalling at full blast, and made it onto Poison Season in spite of the inherent pop DNA that Bejar found so aberrant. —Laura Snapes
Destroyer: "Dream Lover" (via SoundCloud)
** Earl Sweatshirt **
* “Grief” *
-Columbia / Tan Cressida-
56
Earl Sweatshirt is good at writing about anxiety, and writing about anxiety is difficult. Perhaps the only thing more difficult than writing about anxiety is writing about good writing about anxiety. And when you live with anxiety you tend to cherish the rare art that manages to hit such a high level of simplicity as to relieve it. So why shake that all up and start over again by trying to break down "Grief" for you? Wouldn't retracing his "I just want my time and my mind intact" a few dozen times consecutively in a Jack Torrance style do more justice to this work than any amount of half-baked word goop about how well Earl distills the boom bap nihilism of Mobb Deep into Tumblr generation numbness or whatever? I mean let's be real—you are not going to read anything as beautiful, calming, or complete as even the shallowest bar on this song anywhere on the Internet today or tomorrow or next year. So go outside and like shit already. Earl did that so we don't have to go through that. —Andrew Nosnitsky
Earl Sweatshirt: "Grief"
** Nao **
* “Inhale Exhale” *
-Little Tokyo-
55
With "Inhale Exhale", London upstart Nao—Caracal scene-stealer, ex-Jarvis Cocker backup singer, and possibly-maybe foil for international man of mystery Jai Paul and his brother A.K.—offers up a smash-that-wasn’t, a rippling bundle of nerves in the guise of a brilliantly ambiguous pop song. Through a stream of scattered imagery—rivers, oceans, churches in the wild—"Inhale" finds Nao cataloging her demons over what sounds like a spaceship gaining sentience; "it’s me," she insists a little past the halfway mark, "it’s not you," marking what may be the first time in history that particular kiss-off is delivered in earnest. The tightrope-walking "Inhale" inhabits that all-too-familiar space between composure and abandon, when you and your cool are separated by a single breath. —Paul Thompson
Nao: "Inhale Exhale" (via SoundCloud)
** Jeremih **
* “Oui” *
-Def Jam-
54
"Oui" is easily the least debauched song on Jeremih’s shamelessly pleasure-seeking third LP Late Nights, and it’s all the better for it. Taking a page from The-Dream’s catalog of similarly lovelorn R&B stunners, "Oui" is like a shot of warm sunlight in Late Nights’ nocturnal glow, a heart-in-your-throat, no-frills love song that breaks devotion down to its simplest terms ("There’s no oui without you and I"). That clever sweetness paid off in a big way, making for an instantly likable comeback single. Jeremih saves his best trick for last, when the beat falls away on the bridge to make room for a vocal riff on Shai’s 1992 hit "If I Ever Fall in Love". With "Oui", Jeremih made it stunningly clear—there’s no other R&B lothario we’d rather spend time with. —Eric Torres
Jeremih: "Oui"
** ANOHNI **
* “4 Degrees” *
-Secretly Canadian-
53
The discussion around climate change is among the grand farces of our age, pitting the endless labor of scientists and activists against a general state of political inaction and conciliatory half-measures from powerful nations. "4 Degrees", the first song released from ANOHNI’s upcoming HOPELESSNESS, for which the singer formerly known as Antony collaborated with producers Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never, cuts to the quick of the issue with a disturbing ferocity. An apocalyptic vision of extinction, it equates a central shrug of indifference ("It’s only 4 degrees") with purposeful, systematic violence, turning it into a death wish for all life on Earth. Curling out of a steadily intensifying boil of drums and orchestration, ANOHNI’s distinctive vibrato becomes a violent oscillation, the voice of an avenging angel bent on punishing the innocent. A catalog of dying animals calls to mind an anti-Noah’s Ark narrative, the enlightened human willing each one in turn to its death.
Even more powerfully, the song coincides with ANOHNI’s own decision to leave the name Antony behind and release music under the name she uses personally. How much courage and how much anger does it take to make such a brutal statement alongside your own professional reinvention? J. Ralph, the composer who worked with ANOHNI for the music in the documentary Racing Extinction, recently commented on the idea of mass extinctions whittling the world’s sounds down to a single voice. "4 Degrees" is the prelude to that moment, a savage stirring of frustration and catharsis run through with bitterness. —Abigail Garnett
ANOHNI: "4 Degrees"
** FKA twigs **
* “in time” *
-Young Turks-
52
Few modern artists communicate longing as well as FKA twigs does, and on "in time", she nestles snugly into the idea of a future that may never come. Over pinched but percolating synths, she pines for the familiarity she and her lover knew before they slowly became estranged. She illustrates this disconnect in the little asides: "In time, your hands on my body will resonate through me/ Like they did before." It's a half-hearted attempt to convince herself things will get better or that they even can. "in time" is one of the most sumptuous moments on the singer-producer's EP, M3LL155X, a stunning audiovisual experience that encapsulates her strengths as an artists and auteur. twigs and co-producer Tic crank out a production that clicks and bumps in bursts, creating the little pockets though which her muted voice breathes. "in time" is the centerpiece that anchors the project, rounding out her previously shapeless and wispy soundscapes into something more solid and whole. —Sheldon Pearce
FKA twigs: "in time"
** David Bowie **
* “Blackstar” *
-Columbia-
51
As a boy, David Robert Jones loved a book called Starman Jones by science fiction icon Robert Heinlein. It helped spark Jones’ fascination with space, one that’s sustained him throughout the decades, long after he changed his named to David Bowie and launched his career in earnest with 1969’s "Space Oddity". Bowie’s latest single, "Blackstar", is both an extension of that fascination and a reinvention of it. Unlike the relatively restrained astral voyages of "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" and "Dancing Out in Space" from his last album, 2013’s The Next Day, "Blackstar" is one of Bowie’s cyclical retreats from rock convention; its 10-minute sprawl is fractured, episodic, and experimental, with a chant of Gregorian proportions bleeding into movements of jazzy syncopation, atmospheric pop, and breathtaking orchestral ecstasy.
The overall impression is one of cosmic awe—a filmic immersion in Bowie’s science-fictional universe that doesn’t even need the song’s astounding video to vividly evoke. Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti has admitted that Blackstar, the upcoming album due January 8, was influenced by Kendrick Lamar, and that’s evident in the single’s fluid lushness and elastic dimensionality. Still, there are plenty of clues in "Blackstar" that Bowie still genuflects before Scott Walker, from the art-rock gauntness to the cryptic mystique of his refrain, "I’m a blackstar". Bowie’s timbre is haunting and stentorian, and that enormity is driven home by the scope of his vision: Steeped in pomp, space, and myth, "Blackstar" not only rekindles his conceptual fire, it reestablishes his nomadic orbit around science fiction. —Jason Heller
David Bowie: "Blackstar"
** Kurt Vile **
* “Pretty Pimpin” *
-Matador-
50
Kurt Vile is the pied piper of easy vibes and carefree contentment. His voice is a graceful, assured mumble, and his songs take their time to make their points, suggesting that the singer rushes to do little but relax. Sometimes, though, even bros get the blues. During "Pretty Pimpin", the anthem of and thesis for the anxiety-tinged b’lieve i’m goin’ down…, Vile awakes to a state of "Once in a Lifetime" confusion. He’s caught off guard by the face staring back from the mirror and the circumstances that brought him to this moment, as he brushes his teeth and considers (at least briefly) combing his cascade of curls back, like an adult working a normal 9-to-5. "Who’s that stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink?" he quips. Even though slightly out of his mind, Vile sidesteps his worries long enough for a sly smile, realizing that, in spite of onset of middle-aged responsibility, the man in the mirror remains "pretty pimpin." —Grayson Haver Currin
Kurt Vile: "Pretty Pimpin"
** Beach House **
* “Sparks” *
-Bella Union / Mistletone / Sub Pop-
49
Dissonance and distortion have never played a big role in Beach House's music. For all their pervasive melancholy, they tend to keep their harmonies consonant and their signal clean. But both qualities creep into "Sparks", a song whose very name implies friction. The gleaming guitar lead is caked in fuzz, the looped vocal that runs beneath is encrusted with static. But it's the organs that really buzz, throwing off harmonics like a sharpening wheel tosses tiny points of light, in a steady cycle of tension and release, tension and release. It's not all so rough—Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally singing in unison is as smooth as the onset of night, and the whole song radiates a hush reminiscent of Yo La Tengo's nocturnal And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. The lyrics suggest a hazy vision of homecoming and all the bittersweet emotions that come with it. "And then it's dark again/ Just like a spark," they sing, in a twist that is subtle but significant: treating sparks not as a symbol of light, but its opposite. Everything fades to black eventually, just some things quicker than others. —Philip Sherburne
Beach House: "Sparks"
** Kelela **
* “Rewind” *
-Warp / Cherry Coffee-
48
Where 2013’s Cut 4 Me showed off Kelela’s dexterity with languorous, metallic club music and R&B, on "Rewind" she increased the pace to a well-suited sprint. A standout from this fall’s Hallucinogen EP, "Rewind" uses heavy, So So Def-nodding bass and lazy keys to speak to that singular, spark of a moment when you connect with another person, drawing on "the narcotic that is loving someone," as she explained. "It makes you feel drained, it’s in your body and it affects you so completely." It’s fitting, then, that "Rewind" is so utterly catchy, with a spacious, lean bounce to it that lends itself exceptionally well to dance (see: the runway models who memorably broke out into elaborate choreography during the song at an Opening Ceremony fashion show this fall). The song’s ecstatic pulse and Kelela’s airy, polis Reported by Pitchfork 2 days ago.
