Video and audio (June 2020)
Brown Eyed Girls, Big Thief, Anna Thorvaldsdottir & the Iceland Symphony, and more!
Brown Eyed Girls: “Sixth Sense” (2011)
If one of the most thrilling K-pop anthems was before your time, as it was barely before mine, now’s the time to catch up with its video, in which the girl group and their male dance squad fend the riot cops with the power of sexuality—Bonello’s Nocturama in four-and-a-half minutes. For once the “it was all a dream” ending is appropriate.
Big Thief: “Not” (live from The Bunker Studios)
Every bit as strong as the studio version, with even more loss of emotional control without any loss of musical control. The footage makes it clear the band continues to work hard during Lenker’s solo (well, except bassists are gonna bassist.)
Kefaya & Elaha Soroor: “Jama Narenji”
A “jama” is something like a tunic-dress, while “narenji” is a source for English’s “orange”, and I wonder if it’s as hard to rhyme in the original Persian. Insistent chromatic riff, fat oompahing baritone sax, clarifying vocals.
Julien Baker: “Hurt Less” (live on KEXP, 2018)
Those skeptical but not entirely dismissive of pairing artfully expressed deep feelings with reverb and strings (I believe the technical term for us is “assholes”) might prefer this to the album version. With the studio the right size for her grand piano and one violin, listen and it’s hard not to be moved.
Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Iceland Symphony: “Metacosmos”
Exceedingly complicated in the details, but the programmatic elements are easy to follow: the ominous double bass and contrabassoon of the first part convey the unescapable gravity of a black hole, while the percussive and surprisingly melodic second section is exceedingly complicated. Capiche?
Annika Norlin: “Showering in Public”
The one great song on her epistolary album with Jens Lekman justifies the project. Insightful not just about what it’s like to be a girl and then a woman with a body amidst a world of perverts, but about how received perversion often is these days.
Petter Eldh & Koma Saxo: “Fanfarum for Komarum II”
(Koma)saxomania: a baritone helping the bass chug along, tenors treated to sound more plastic, a disciplined breakdown (displaying collective soul?) A triumphal march after an alien invasion, but I for one etc.
Jeffrey Lewis: “My Girlfriend Doesn’t Worry”
[March] “Hah! Finally my decades of pre-emptive angst and anxiety (mostly about Communism and Manson, but also more generally) pay off! People will listen to me!”
[June] “Well, they might’ve.”