Review: Grace Jones' "Warm Leatherette" Reissue
Warm Leatherette, Grace Jones’ career-shifting 1980 release, gives a glimpse of the artist just as her true genius was coming into sharp focus.
Review: Lush's "Blind Spot" EP
Given all the recent shoegaze reunions—My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive—it makes sense Lush would make a comeback. Rather than simply embark on a nostalgia tour, Lush recorded this 4-song EP.
Review: M83's "Junk"
Arthur Andrew
If the last decade in pop music has taught us anything, it’s that nostalgia can be a double-edged sword. When it goes wrong, it’s about as satisfying as swallowing a mouthful of processed spray cheese. When done right, revisiting the tropes and aesthetics of decades past can go down nicely. M83’s 2011 double album, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, fell into the latter camp and—bolstered by its ubiquitous single “Midnight City”—transformed Anthony Gonzalez’s curious 15-year-old project into a soundtrack for Victoria’s Secret commercials and Tom Cruise sci-fi flicks. Surely this shift explains something about the new M83 album, the fascinating and somewhat flummoxing Junk.
Review: Bob Mould's "Patch the Sky"
Bob Mould is at his best when he’s articulating anger at a high volume. His newest solo album, Patch the Sky, succeeds largely because these furious songs sound as if they're hardwired to raw nerves.
Review: Public Memory's "Wuthering Drum"
Public Memory is the solo nom de plume of Robert Toher, a Brooklyn-based musician who formerly served time as a member of Eraas and Apse. While those projects blurred the edges of rambling space rock and synthy post-punk, Public Memory dives headlong down the electronic darkwave rabbit hole, exploring a Korg-constructed sonic palette that weaves together a variety of primitive beats, delicately employed samples (bells, chimes, the weeping of ghosts), and woozy electronics that sound as if they might have been recorded at the bottom of a lake. Created over the course of a year while Toher was temporarily decamped in Los Angeles, Wuthering Drum is a work of restrained gloom—a remarkably textured electronic record whose minimalist tendencies keep it from collapsing under the weight of its own moribund aesthetic.
Review: MONEY's "Suicide Songs"
I wrote about the excellent new record from MONEY, Suicide Songs, for Pitchfork.
Deerhunter's Bradford Cox Talks About His Lifelong Love of "Beautiful," "Christ-Like" David Bowie
Photo by Matt Lief Anderson
Late in the day yesterday, I spoke with Deerhunter and Atlas Sound’s Bradford Cox aboutthe death of David Bowie. Bowie has been an enormous influence on Cox’s life. He expounded on the legacy the man left him personally and to the world at large.
Pitchfork's 100 Best Tracks of 2015
I wrote about Sufjan Steven's "Fourth of July" and Björk's "Lionsong" for Pitchfork's 100 Best Tracks of 2015.
I Made It Through the Wilderness: On Gay Fandom, and Growing Older with Madonna
Photo by Mert & Marcus
As stereotypically gay music experiences go, you can’t go much gayer than attending the opening night of a Madonna tour. I say this fondly, and as a forty-something gay man who has seen lots of ostensibly very gay things, including but not limited to Kylie Minogue’s Fever tour, a semi-private Celine Dion concert in New York City, and multiple Erasure tours. Within the pantheon of music culture that gay men hold dear, Madonna has been serving as a defacto ambassador for nearly 30 years since. Admittedly, talking about gay diva worship in pop culture is to trade in both old stereotypes and terrible clichés, but standing outside Montreal’s Bell Centre Arena on the opening night of Madonna’s Rebel Heart tour, it’s hard not to ponder the connection, standing amid sea of excited gay men—most of them sporting Madonna shirts from previous tours, with a few of them dressed as Madge herself. A DJ outside the venue was spinning Madonna remixes and a pack of horned dancers provided "Living for Love" photo ops in front of a Rebel Heart backdrop. There were of course women, and perhaps a younger audience than expected, but Madonna’s audience of gay men is holding steady.
As Much as I Can, As Black as I Am: The Queer History of Grace Jones
Photo courtesy of Daily Mail / Rex / Alamy
I wrote about Vamp as part of As Much as I Can, As Black as I Am: The Queer History of Grace Jones by Barry Walters.
Grace Jones fascinated me at a young age (seeing her as a kid while watching Conan the Destroyer with my dad both scared and excited me), but I didn’t become obsessed with her until seeing the movie Vamp at a sleepover in 1986. In the film, Jones plays Queen Katrina, a wicked vampiress running a strip club somewhere in Kansas (naturally). She makes her first on-screen appearance nude, save for a red bob wig and full body paint, doing a seductive dance that is as bizarre as it is weirdly erotic. At the time I didn’t really know much about her music (I was 11 years old and lived on a farm) nor could I appreciate that her body paint and the chair upon which she writhes were done by Keith Haring. The film is glorious ‘80s trash of the highest order, but Jones manages to transform the whole thing into high art by virtue of simply being there and, even though she’s playing the undead, sort of just being herself—beautiful, artful, exotic, and frighteningly wild.