Song of the Day: “Breathe Deeper" (Tame Impala)

May 10, 2020 in Music, Song of the Day

Artist: Tame Impala

Album: The Slow Rush

Song: “Breathe Deeper”

Label: Modular Recordings Pty

[0:01] The funk-bass refrain that opens the song has such a pleasant, round-rubbery chonk to it. It almost sounds like a taut rubber band being flicked and amplified.

***

[0:17] After every line, singer Kevin Parker tacks on this this plucky, upbeat little “I can!” Like a tagline on a tie-dyed, motivational blacklight poster. A one-man band creating his own background-singer doo-wop garnish. It’s both catchy and low-key adorable.

Also, I love the vocal effect on his voice. It has this silvery, swishy reverb that occasionally echoes back, call and response.

***

[3:02] The elongated synth notes that enter here sound AMAZING. Like the burbling fart of an electronic didgeridoo. Parker might as well have sampled it directly off the opening bars of Warren G’s “Regulate”.

***

[4:56] OK, the song’s over!

Whew, what a great song. I loved it. Maybe I’ll start it over again from the beginning so I can hear it again.

SIC! There’s more! You slurped the last drop of milkshake and didn’t realise there was a metal canister with EVEN MORE MILKSHAKE. But not only is there more milkshake, but it’s magically – impossibly, confoundingly – a different flavour entirely that’s even tastier than the original milkshake.

This unexpected, standalone outro section grooves like mad, introducing a scrape-y distorted synth pattern that just shakes its ass all the way until the song’s real ending. Parker sings a few little background lines but you can hardly understand the lyrics and it doesn’t matter. This parts all about the synth.

It’s almost unfortunate that this minute-long groove isn’t its own track that can be put on repeat by itself. Because I would definitely listen to it on repeat.

***

Here’s a badass live version if you’re still thirsty…

(Yeah, thought you might be.)

Song of the Day: “Saturday Morning" (Melorman)

May 05, 2020 in Music, Song of the Day

Artist: Melorman

Album: After Noon

Song: “Saturday Morning”

Label: Sun Sea Sky Productions

The mentalist and stage illusionist Derren Brown once described mindfulness as the ability to wake up in each moment, anxious and thinking you’re late for work, only to realise it’s Saturday morning and you can sink back into unhurried slumber.

There is no emergency.

We do not need to latch white-knuckled onto every thought that bubbles up from the murky soup of consciousness. The brain’s amygdala only cares that we stay alive, it has no interest in expanding the frontiers of well-being.

The title of Melorman’s song “Saturday Morning” reminded me of Brown’s comments about the uses of stoicism.

Melorman is the ambient-electronica project of Antonis Haniotakis, who hails from Athens, Greece. His music feels like a mix between lo-fi bedroom hip-hop and the chiptune-inspired soundtracks of composers such as Disasterpeace.

The chiming melody of “Saturday Morning” circles in a hypnotic loop. I imagine the music orbiting like a slow-motion funnel of wind. As it continues to circle and re-interrogate its core musical idea, there’s an upward lift that commences.

You start to feel less heavy. Then you float a centimetre off the ground, your shoes imperceptibly brushing the dirt. Then you rise.

Floating, feeling, falling back asleep.

Song of the Day: “Unite" (Mint Julep)

May 04, 2020 in Music, Song of the Day

Artist: Mint Julep

Album: Stray Fantasies

Song: “Unite”

Label: Western Vinyl

Sugary sweet. Refreshing. Chilled out and bourbon-warm at the same time. Occasionally a band’s name writes the sonic menu description for you.

Mint Julep is the electro-pop side hustle of husband-wife songwriting duo Hollie and Keith Kenniff, the latter of whom records ambient and solo piano music under the monikers Helios and Goldmund.

Though not one of the lead singles off their latest album Stray Fantasies, “Unite” is the track destined to end up on my Spotify most-played round-up at the close of 2020.

Throbbing, metronomic synth notes and lo-fi drum-machine snare hits set the tempo out of the gate. It’s a mostly unassuming preamble, however the song proceeds to blossom and expand like an orchid opening in timelapse photography. Tremulous keyboard flourishes. Then the chorus explodes with the joyous blast of a springtime supernova.

Like a top-down convertible stepping up through a superfluity of gears, the chorus just keeps climbing, ratcheting upward, gaining momentum. Hollie’s vocal melodies, which have been understated up to this point, suddenly open up, all sunbeam radiance and arena-rock, fist-in-the-air transcendence. An alternative universe in which The Killers tapped Hazel English as lead vocalist.

A winged creature not so much burning up in the sun as drinking it through a straw before belting out an iridescent dream-pop melody that could be heard a couple galaxies away.

Drink up.

***

[Support Mint Julep by purchasing music and merch on their Bandcamp page. They’ve been donating profits in recent months to Treehouse, a Seattle-based foster-care charity.]

Song of the Day: “Desired Constellation" (Björk)

August 29, 2017 in Music, Song of the Day

Björk's music is dear to me, and has been for a long time. Her vulnerability makes me feel like maybe it's possible for me to be vulnerable, to sing loudly over quiet music. This morning I rediscovered this track from Medulla, and it vibrated in me.

"With a palm full of stars / I throw them like dice

On the table

I shake them like dice / And throw them on the table

Until the desired constellation appears

How am I going to make it right?"

The question "How am I going to make it right?" is one I feel all the time. I struggle with the thought of saying it out aloud, never mind singing it.

Song of the Day: "Masterpiece" (Big Thief)

June 25, 2017 in Music, Song of the Day

It's Sunday morning and I’m getting choked up at the kitchen table. I'm only halfway through my first cup of coffee. It’s that song again, folding me into a hug till my throat cramps. Big Thief's ballad “Masterpiece”, the solo acoustic take. When I retreat into my music-critic mind, I feel embarrassed at how effortlessly the songwriter has snipped through my heart's yellow perimeter tape ('crying scene - do not cross'). Simple guitar chords. A pretty but uncomplicated melody. No production or compositional sleight of hand. An acoustic guitar, for bob's sake. Have I always been such an easy mark?

Back in the mid naughts I served on the editorial staff at Paste, which had a special fondness for singer/songwriters, folk and Americana, disproportionately so in the company’s early years. Three chords and the truth, an acoustic guitar. That sort of thing. We got savaged routinely for promoting music that our critics described as “boring” or “beige” or – if the nuclear strike was to be called in – “safe”.

Why am I getting weepy then? Why do I feel so vulnerable listening to this song? Isn’t that the opposite of safety? Isn’t that the very definition of risk? And if I feel vulnerable even listening to this song, how must the singer feel singing it?

“Years, days, makes no difference to me babe / You look exactly the same to me / Ain’t no time, crossing your legs inside the diner / Raising your coffee to your lips, the steam.”

The coffee-sipping woman in the diner arrives and all of a sudden I picture my little girl grown. The same girl running through our kitchen shirtless in her underpants while I type these words. Rowan, five years old, not yet banished from Eden snake-bitten and self-conscious.

The economy of the song’s details pare flesh with scalpel sharpness. The affection of the word ‘babe’. The neutral ground of the diner table a world away from the intimacy of the kitchen table at which I’m drinking my own coffee. Rowan doesn’t even drink coffee yet. She calls it a “daddy drink”. Some time has clearly passed but a parent always recognises a child. The pair in the diner, perhaps it’s a strained relationship. The crossed legs might suggest a defensive posture, the lower-body equivalent of folded arms.

“You saw the masterpiece, she looks a lot like you / Wrapping her left arm around your right / Ready to walk you through the night.”

'Masterpiece', what a lovely bit of name-calling. Liam, you are a masterpiece. Rowan, you are a masterpiece. The fact that you look a lot (or even just a bit) like me is something I hold dear. That outward clue to our ineradicable kinship.

Tears come more easily as I get older. Maybe it’s parenthood. Maybe my defences are getting weaker, less stubborn. Or maybe I’m actually getting stronger – in my ability to plunge myself into difficult, unsettling feelings. Maybe it’s because my own parents are getting older and the cycle of existence, birth and death, is never far from my mind. I want to experience life free of illusion, hold the milk and sugar.

Over the past year I’ve started drinking my coffee black. Was it fair to say that I liked coffee if it needed all that sweetening and cream before I could appreciate the flavour? I’ve grown to appreciate the hint of bitterness. Life without the assurance of God, of heaven, of rapture, has been the same. A brew too bitter for many, though one whose character you can grow to appreciate.

The experience of listening to music can function in the same way. If you strip away all the production and instrumentation and aural confection that sweetens the taste, sometimes you’re left no escape from the truth. As "Masterpiece" reminds, our children will become adults in the span of time it takes us to blink and reopen our eyes, an experience Frans Hofmeester mirrored so poignantly in the timelapse he made of his daughter's journey from newborn to teenager. After leaving the hospital room hosting our welcome party, it can feel as though we get little more than a stroll around the block before we're back in there for the send-off.

“Old stars / Filling up my throat / You gave 'em to me when I was born / Now they’re coming out / Lying there on the hospital bed your eyes were narrow, blue and red / You took a draw of breath and said to me

"You saw the masterpiece, she looks a lot like me / Wrapping my left arm round your right / Ready to walk you through the night.”

Stars punctuate the darkness. Not by a lot. They’re small specks, to be fair. But their glow is reassuring. Sometimes a bit of milk starlight is all you need. The milk of human kindness, one person's arm wrapping around another's. Not all is dark. The coffee is bitter, the mug is warm.