She was a tragic character from the very beginning—Lana Del Rey was Born to Die. And yet, half a decade later, her story continues; her myth still grows. The pouty princess who once served as Hipster Runoffs lifeline has made her way to the (literal) top of Hollywood with a renewed Lust for Life. "Were the masters of our own fate," she coos with confidence on the albums title track. Its a well-worn cliché that sounds downright profound coming from a woman who has meticulously created and refined a persona that is far more than meets the black-lined eye.Lana is not the tortured seductress we first assumed her to be. No, she is a true and shrewd 21st-century star. She glorifies outdated stereotypes, while challenging outdated perspectives on sex, race, youth, beauty, power, fame, and the American dream. She then neatly fits these ideas into classic archetypal figures that come alive in noir soundscapes as silky and sumptuous as her bed sheets surely must be. Here, we break down Lana Del Rey into her four most distinct roles and unpack the influences behind them.THE FEMME FATALE
Lana got plenty of heat back in 2014 for telling The Fader, "The issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept." The fact that she opens a song with a line like "my pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola" doesnt help her cause, but shes hardly proven to be a powerless woman. In fact, Lana is arguably at her best in her most infamous role: the femme fatale. Her idea of feminism is using and abusing the power of femininity, not unlike strong sex symbols before her, from the slithery slyness of Nancy Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot to the overt eroticism of Madonna. Of course, the femme fatale can be as lethal to herself as she is to the opposite sex. When her own dangerous games of sex, drugs, and intrigue turn against her, self-awareness becomes crucial. When Lana admits that she wants "Money Power Glory" and that "prison isnt nothing to me" (on "Florida Kilos"), she takes on the gall and grit of proud bad girls Rihanna and Amy Winehouse.
Lana will break an endless amount of hearts, but will forever find true love elusive. She can lure the boys in but never quite let them go. She is the hopeless romantic, much like "Lust for Life" collaborator The Weeknd, who once said, "she is the girl in my music, and I am the guy in her music." On her big, symphonic ballads, shell sweep you up in every intimate detail with the pained quiver of Antony Hegarty, the vivid imagery of Leonard Cohen (whose "Chelsea Hotel #2" Lana has covered), and the brooding intensity of Chris Isaaks sultriest unrequited-love song, "Wicked Game." All the while, she associates youth and beauty with romance ("Will you still love me/ When Im no longer young and beautiful"), believing that none of these things will ever last—but it doesnt mean shell stop falling in love.
Behind every calculated move and every shade of cool is a sad girl "crying tears of gold." This is the fate of a tough temptress with a soft soul. Lana wallows in her sorrow as much as she does in her drugs, booze, and boys. Her most indulgent torch songs are draped in infinite sadness, starting with the obvious "Sad Girl," with its dark, dusky swing in the style of Twin Peaks enchantress Julee Cruise, or "Million Dollar Man," in which she echoes the most "Sullen Girl" of all, Fiona Apple. She even finds a kindred spirit in Mr. Lonely himself with her stunning cover of Bobby Vinton’s "Blue Velvet." Still, through all that misery, at least she knows that shes pretty when she cries.
Lana embodies the American dream as every bit of the illusion that it is. The American flag is her most provocative symbol, whether shes standing proudly before it (mischievously winking) or suggestively wrapping herself in its stars and stripes. She finds money, fame, and all that dream promises—but never happiness. She sings of Springsteen in "American"; portrays herself as both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie O in the video for "National Anthem"; and even gets political on "Coachella – Woodstock in My Mind." Her vision of America starts and ends on the West Coast. She paints the Golden State as both scandal and savior with hints of EMA and Courtney Love; tells sordid tales of "Guns and Roses" like only Guns N Roses could; and finds her fellow California "Freak" in video co-star Father John Misty. All together, she is America the Beautiful, the Cunning, the Miserable.
At the turn of the millennium, it seemed unlikely that an aging record nerd hollering about his favorite bands could possibly become the vessel for an entire angst-ridden generation—but that was before we had Sound of Silver. When James Murphy released his second full-length as LCD Soundsystem 10 years ago, he revealed the deeply sentimental roots behind all the dance-punk chic, the hopelessly melancholic critic who, no matter how many albums he might amass in his enormous collection, still can’t escape the simple truths of getting older and saying goodbye to all your friends. Though their short-lived retirement is now over, with the arrival of their first new album in seven years, it wouldn’t be LCD Soundsystem without gazing longingly towards the past. So we’ve taken the occasion to unpack James Murphy’s shining moment, the weepy behemoth of a dance record that is Sound of Silver.Murphy’s influences are as vast as they are easily traceable (all one has to do is look up the lyrics to the climactic band-listing outburst of “Losing My Edge”), yet the real magic of the album is how confidently it inhabits its own skin, effortlessly mixing the mechanic rhythms of Kraftwerk, the starry-eyed synth-punk of New Order, and the reckless rock worship of Lou Reed into something as comfortable in the club as it is at home on a turntable. Its endlessly looping electronics nod to the simple majesty of Detroit techno as well as the prickly brain-funk of the Talking Heads, yet what’s fascinating about Murphy is the way that he turns his love of these disparate artists into his own defining quality. LCD Soundsystem is a band of fanboys and fangirls playing for devotees of their own, celebrating the act of loving music and creating something entirely theirs in the process. Sound of Silver was the moment where Murphy’s band ceased to be a loving tribute to the many shapes of punk and New Wave, and became a fully-armed dance unit for the 21st century. Without further ado, we present our mix of the many sounds the fuelled one of our era’s most distinguishing voices.
On paper, it might not seem like Ariel Pink has achieved anything drastic or revelatory with his lo-fi take on pop music. He’s certainly not the first songwriter to record smeared demo tapes on cheap equipment, or to reinvent AM-radio sounds from the ‘70s and ‘80s for the new millennium, or to tackle sexuality and gender fluidity with a theatrical flair. But it’s the way Pink combines these impulses—infusing his melodies with a terrifying, intensely antisocial sense of longing, and imbuing his ironic sense of humor with legitimate emotional release—that makes his music so insular and universal all at once. The man also has an innate ability for crafting snappy, gratifying songs that worm their way into your head, taking a little bit from every era in musical history while remaining unequivocally on his own trip.Whether he’s updating the vulgar antics of Frank Zappa and Ween for the 21st century, reinterpreting yacht-rock staples like Hall & Oates and Michael McDonald as gothy lords of the underworld, or evoking a Rocky Horror-like delight in sexual freedom and deviance, Ariel Pink is a truly unique voice in pop music, an experimental wizard as avant-garde as he is accessible. Hit play on our mix above to hear just what makes him tick.
You may not be as excited as a lot of people are to have Kesha Rose Sebert back in action. But even the very worst of haters ought to give her a chance to make a second impression after what she’s been through.After she spent the first years of the decade establishing herself as pop’s preeminent hard-rocking, fast-talking, tik-tok-ing party girl, things came off the rails when her already rocky relationship with producer Dr. Luke took a toxic turn in 2014. The charges and counter-charges—including sexual assault and battery, unfair business practices, and much more from her side—put her in the starring role in a legal drama so ugly, it made the “Blurred Lines” case seems like 10 benign minutes in traffic court. Though that drama is hardly over, developments earlier this year freed her from the conditions that prevented her releasing any new music for three years.During that time, she did her best to convey her feelings through other people’s songs. Of course, that was far from ideal for a singer who’s long prided herself on being a songwriter, too— she clearly took far more satisfaction in her co-writing credits for Britney Spears and Big Time Rush than for any hook-up with Flo Rida. But at least Kesha’s choice of covers on recent tours—a smattering that ranges from Lesley Gore to Eagles of Death Metal—has proven she has a wider, more surprising set of musical tastes than was evident from the over-abundance of would-be club bangers on her two albums. Nor should the abundance of Bob Dylan tributes over the years—like her exquisite cover of “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” from 2012’s Chimes of Freedom tribute—be quite so surprising given the number of times she’s namedNashville Skyline as her favorite album.In fact, Kesha’s been eager to show off her affinities for classic rock, punk, and alt-rock since well before it all went sideways. When not citing The Damned as heroes, she was palling around with Alice Cooper and getting assists from The Strokes, The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney and Iggy Pop. And while that fabled Flaming Lips/Kesha collaboration—nicknamed Lip$ha—may have been sucked into a legal void from which it has yet to escape, we still got a tantalizing taste thanks to her mind-bending appearance on The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.So as for all those haters and doubters who didn’t miss her, I say: You don’t know what you were missing. To mark the arrival of her third album Rainbow, here’s a set of her most adventurous and most surprising songs, and many more she loves, which should demonstrate there was always more to her than she got credit for… though maybe that’s about to change.
On August 20, 2002, NYC was a much different place than it was just a year previous. Post-9/11, the air hung heavier, thick with apprehension and paranoia—exactly the type of environment ripe for an album as stunningly devastating as Interpols debut. Looking back 15 years, Turn on the Bright Lights remains the chiming centerpiece of 21st-century post-punk because it so acutely reflects its time and place of origin, while capturing a deep-seated malaise that would extend well past that time and place.Some 20-plus years before that, post-punk rose and fell with a sound that was so sharp and brutally real, there was no chance it could survive long. like PiL would invent it; bands like Joy Division would fully embody it. Their songs—tightly wound and always teetering on the edge of catharsis without ever fully realizing it—articulate that maddening clench in the pit of the stomach that refuses to ever completely let go. Its a similar feeling that Interpol intricately conveys on tracks like "PDA" and perfect album opener "Untitled," with its thick bass and quivering guitar jangle streaked in wavering drones. It doesnt hurt that Paul Banks stoic baritone fluctuates at the same low, dolorous tremble as Ian Curtis did.But where those pioneers stripped punks fiery brutality down to its starkest essence, Interpol also paint it in varying tones of goth and grey, echoing gloomy sonic architects like The Cure, Bauhaus, and Echo & The Bunnymen, whose seductive atmospherics, pounding rhythms, and damaged guitar jangle haunt slow-burning ballads like "NYC" and "Hands Away.”While Interpol may have found influence from dreary 80s England, their debut is purely rooted in early 00s New York. But youll never have needed to experience either time or place to wholly absorb the myriad shades of discontent—the disillusionment, dread, isolation, and alienation—rendered so achingly intoxicating on any one of these songs.
In 2007, Kanye didnt know he would effectively end the near-20-year reign of gangsta rap by outselling 50 Cents lackluster album Curtis on their shared September release day. Kanye didnt know his mother would pass away suddenly, or that his longtime fiance would leave him, or that hed marry into the most famous American television family by choice. Graduation is a victory lap, the third part of a scrapped four-album story that was supposed to culminate with Good Ass Job, which instead became 808s & Heartbreak.Graduation continues the plucky underdog narrative built on 2004s breakthrough debut The College Dropout and 2005s Late Registration, which heralded the emergence of an artiste/hitmaker. Kanye was beginning to be regarded as the biggest egomaniac in rap history while still not showing his face on the cover on his record, something he still hasnt done. Kanye’s album covers hint at the music within: College Dropout is warm soul music, with brown, yellow, and burgundy tones on the cover and Kanye dressed in his trademark cuddly bear mascot. Late Registration is orchestral, full of strings, keys, and languid arrangements from Jon Brion—tellingly, the cover depicts the bear mascot, purposefully small, entering a vast new doorway that looks academic and orderly. By contrast, Graduation is exploding with anime, while the color choices of blue, yellow, pink and purple symbolize its ambitious energy, extravagance, and solidified confidence. Designed by Takashi Murakami (who Kanye described as "the Japanese Andy Warhol"), it nails Graduations wider palette of sample choices: Michael Jackson on "The Good Life," Krautrock gods Can on "Drunk and Hot Girls," Young Jeezys famous gravely "ha ha" adlibs on "Cant Tell Me Nothing," Elton Johns crooning on "Good Morning".Graduation was Kanyes leanest album up until that point: zero skits, and eight tracks shorter than both Dropout and Registration. Instead of telling the listener about all of his plans, his failures, his dreams, and his mostly bad jokes on songs and on skits, Graduation shows us his improved flow, his vast tastes, his arena-inspired hooks, and his added weapons of samples, live instruments, Southern-rap synths, and 808s (thanks to the inclusion of DJ Toomp and Mike Dean). 50 Cents music career has never recovered from the sales showdown he lost to Kanye West, but the truth is that if 50 Cent could make hits like "Stronger," "Flashing Lights," and "Cant Tell Me Nothing," gangsta rap would possibly still dominate the charts. Instead, a fashion-loving backpacker who wore Marty McFly shades and a Roc-a-Fella chain has remade rap and pop culture in his image every year for the past decade.
This post is part of our program, The Story of Kendrick, an in-depth, 10-part look at the life and music of Kendrick Lamar. Sound cool and want to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out and share on Facebook, Twitter, or with this link. Your friends will thank you.For many, good kid, m.A.A.d. city was their entry point to Kendrick Lamar, and it was one of the greatest revelations in hip-hop this decade. Tracks such as “Money Trees” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” pare the vulnerability and earned spirituality of a trauma survivor with the heft of a master technician, while his intricate raps carry a conceptual framework that revealed the full weight of the post-millennial American collapse—the dead homies, the dead-end jobs, the deadened interpersonal relationships. Released one week before that album dropped, and in conjunction with this “making of” article published by Complex, this playlist—in Kendrick’s own words—captures “some of the records that inspire me to this day.” It’s predictably diverse. The first two tracks veer from the hardscrabble pathos of DMX’s “Slippin’” (“Im possessed by the darker side, livin the cruddy life”) to the haunting atmospheric grumbling of Portishead’s trip-hop trailblazer “Roads,” before eventually settling into the G-funk (DJ Quik’s “I Don’t Want to Party Wit U,” MC Eiht’s “Straight Up Menace”) that provided the soundtrack to Kendrick’s youth.This playlist comes with a minor caveat: As of 2017, it contains only nine tracks. Probably, at some point, it contained more tracks; and, at some point in the future, it will contain fewer. Spotify either lost rights to certain tracks on the playlist, or else the labels redelivered them in different versions. This Dowsers is a site dedicated to looking at playlists as artistic/critical artifacts, and this is both one of that medium’s charm and vulnerabilities: It’s ephemeral, susceptible to the vagrancies of anonymous digital-music content-operation teams. Like graffiti—which is itself vulnerable to time, weather and gentrification—this doesnt make it any less of an artform, but it’s important to understand.
Released on September 24, 1996, Illadelph Halflife marked a turning point in the Roots’ career from free-spirited jazz-hop players to soothsayers of doom. Much of rap music was obsessed with the Y2K apocalypse, the New World Order, and the presumptive demise of hip-hop – see De La Soul’s pivotal single “Stakes is High” – and the Philly ensemble was no exception. More than just Black Thought and Malik B launching cipher battles on “Uni-Verse at War,” and waging jeremiads against rapper “Clones,” the album sounds cloudy and introverted. The beats seem to mostly consist of organic bass, keyboards and drums, resulting in blue beats as sparse as a Wes Montgomery jam session, and moodily ominous vibes similar to contemporaneous works like A Tribe Called Quest’s Beats, Rhymes & Life, the Pharcyde’s Labcabincalifornia, and Slum Village’s Fan-Tas-Tic. When neo-soul and jazz guests like Raphael Saadiq (on “What They Do”), D’Angelo (on “The Hypnotic”), and Cassandra Wilson (on “One Shine”) appeared, they contributed pained vocals that contributed to the overall sense of melancholy.As a clear product of 1996’s pre-millennium tensions, Illadelph Halflife may have not aged as well as the band’s next album, the more successful Things Fall Apart. Its deeply rooted entropy is more suited for late-night listening, or perhaps the kind of contemplative smoke-out sessions the Black Thought, Malik and Bahamadia rhyme about on “Push Up Ya Lighter.” However, it established a theme. Led by drummer and group mastermind Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the Roots have continued to assess cultural and political trends with skepticism and occasional hope ever since.
Deep in the heart of Nicolas Jaars latest album, theres an extended domestic vignette: Jaar, a small boy, at home with his father, the Chilean visual artist Alfredo Jaar. Their talk, in Spanish, is playful and perhaps inconsequential; its actual content matters less than the way their voices charge the music with a special aura. Here is a tape, the snippet seems to say, rescued from a box long forgotten in the back of a closet; here is a memory brought to the light of day.It signals the extent to which Sirens—depending on how you count, either his second or third or fourth proper album—is the young electronic musicians most personal recording yet. As he explained to Pitchfork, with his previous records, he had taken aspects of his own identity for granted. "But in the months leading up to Sirens," he says, "there was a lot of change in my life—when you come back from a long tour, you really have to pick up the pieces in a way."And the album really does feel like a process of unpacking. It takes stock of the elements that have long characterized his work—the slow tempos, freeform arrangements, and shadowy atmospheres—while confidently pushing into a number of new directions at once. The pensive piano and effects of the opening "Killing Times" give way to a fairly rocking vocal number that sounds for all the world like a cover of the Bauhaus side-project Tones on Tail. "Leaves" incorporates a plucked string instrument—koto, perhaps—with ambient textures in a way that suggests an ambient musician like Biosphere. "No," the song that features his childhood home tape, taps into a spongy reggaeton beat faintly reminiscent of the Berlin producer Poles scratchy ambient dub—though the songs examination of his multi-national identity (Jaar, whose Chilean parents fled their home country after Pinochets coup in 1973, grew up between Chile, Paris, and the United States) also recalls the Ecuadorian-American musician Helado Negros own multi-lingual self-portraits.There are further surprises along the way: "Three Sides of Nazareth" hints at New York proto-punks Suicide as well as the contemporary UK musician Powell—which is pretty funny, because in most respects youd never think to mention Jaar and Powell in the same sentence. And it ends with a gorgeous, airy doo-wop song that cant help but bring to mind the Beach Boys weightless harmonies. Whatever else Nicolas Jaar may intend with his choice of title, theres no denying the seductive power of the final songs ethereal web of harmonies. Like everything on the album, it draws you in.
Solange Knowles’ album, A Seat at the Table, is a crisply executed R&B pop album that wooed fans and debuted atop the charts. The album blends elements of pop and electronic music with various threads of soul, adding afrofuturistic flourishes as well as guest appearances from Lil’ Wayne, Kelly Rowland, and Q-Tip. And while that sounds like a hodgepodge of sounds and personnel, the album is subtle and graceful, anchored by Solange’s soft, confident voice and down-to-earth musical sensibility. “Borderline (An Ode to Self Care)” and “Don’t Touch My Hair” champion ideas of black liberation and self-empowerment, and are powerful statements from one of pop’s most socially conscious singers. On this playlist, we look at some of the inspirations for Solange’s beautiful new album, from the woozy otherworldly hip-hop of Shabazz Palaces to the astral jazz of Alice Coltrane. -- Jordannah Elizabeth
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
