It’s another post with a listen-along playlist! Because no one asked for it!!!! But I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about some music that needs to get out. This one is all about electronic music that still manage to have great melodies. So read and listen, or don’t. Share your own thoughts and feelings or tell me some new music to chickety-check out.
Handy YouTube Playlist for if you’d like to play along.
Purity Ring
When I first heard Fineshrine by Purity Ring, I was just like, “What. Is. This.” It’s weird and unlike anything I’d really heard before. And it’s awesome. Very electronic, with kind of a wubby bass that shifts around, dupsteppish beats and a few drops (especially in Belispeak), and a lovely female singer holding it down. Kind of hard to describe, and I’d say watch the video to hear it for yourself but just be warned… the video is weird. I tried to show it to Richard and he was just like, “What is happening. No thank you please.” It ended up putting him off the whole band. For a time.
Their first album, Shrines feels very experimental, a little ambient even but with some melodic hooks that make you want to try and figure out what the hell they’re saying.1 Belispeak has a wobbly, dark wall of sound that pulls you into some kind of spooky but very cool new-age dance club. Maybe in a cave? Obedear is a sneaky little track that takes you on some kind of fantastical journey through drippy dark pools and wispy foggy landscapes full of maybe helpful or maybe evil sprites. And sometimes there’s a cave troll.
I highly recommend listening with good headphones at a high volume. Especially if you’re drunk. And on a train. It’s what I imagine a good drug trip feels like.
Their new album, Another Eternity, came out recently and is so. good. Almost R&B in the backing tracks and song construction. Richard is now fully on board and loves the crazy syncopations of Flood on the Floor, while I tend to have the dead-sexy and aptly-named Repetition on repeat.
In fact we saw them in concert at The Fox Theatre in Oakland in June and they were GREAT. The dude of the group created some sort of light-up Q-tip xylophone music board, and the lighting effects just fit the music perfectly. ENGAGE SHITTY CONCERT FOOTAGE!
CHVRCHES
Much peppier and poppier and therefore probably easier to consume than Purity Ring. Also? Impossible to type even if you know exactly how to spell it. Be careful while listening ‘though, they may be an entry drug to this whole genre… Richard wouldn’t come with me on Purity Ring at first until he was deep into CHVRCHES. And then it was easy to slide right into Purity Ring.
Which sounds really dirty. And uncomfortable? Like, maybe, a chastity belt for dudes.
Anyway, my fave of this Scottish band is Lungs. Very listenable. So catchy. (Wow.) Recover is great too, with a nice stuttery beat that she anticipates ever so slightly and makes me feel pleasantly off-kilter. The Recover video gives you an idea of what their shows are like (I guess—their Oakland show sold out instantly.) Anyway, it kind of highlights the appeal of this music for me—cool electronic production with a live singer.
They did have a song on the Mockingjay Part 1 soundtrack, so I guess they are over. OVER. Dead Air is fun though, and shows off some of the sweet ’80s retro foundation that a lot of their songs build on.
Despite being too popular to admit to liking anymore, I think I’ll join the million or so people who’ve watched the single from their upcoming new album. Leave a Trace has some peppy beats straight outta the late 80s/early 90s and I wanted to sing along the first time I heard it.
Alina Baraz & Galimatias
Fantasy was another song that came up on my Pandora station that stopped me in my tracks. In my… MUSIC tracks. It’s so simple and hella sexy in a cool electronic, jazz-besampled, smooth and dreamy vocal melange. Menage, I guess would be more appropriate.
Jazz x R&B x house x big-band standards = this, and although it probably makes me sound like a psycho to describe one band with all of those genres, trust me. It somehow works. I could find almost no information about these two, except for this short NPR article which is more articulate than I am. The author’s description of their music as an underwater dreamscape is on point.
Not to be an early ’00s teenager and quote some lyrics to express some feels, but… “Let yourself unwind and get lost in the garden of my mind.” This garden is weird and wonderful. Maybe in the ocean. Maybe in space. With sexy aliens.
Maybe is just such a watery spacegarden. Real seductive and moist. (Sorry.) It’s the kind of sexy slow jam I’d expect during the makin’ it scene in a supernatural teenage drama on the CW, but in a good way? Featuring heavy bass, appropriately-timed drops and a pretty, breathy vocal. And then about 2 minutes in it kind of gets out of control. Supernatural teenage hormones takin’ over.
Pretty Thoughts is a soothing, non-stop wave of a song where echoey, muddy vocals circle around over a steady beat. It morphs inexplicably into a sweet Disneyesque symphony right at the end.
Again, listen with good headphones to get the full shifting stereo effect. In a dim room lit by candles. Next to your teenage sea creature boy/girlfriend.
Marian Hill
Marian Hill follows the one-lady-singing-while-one-dude-makes-beats-n-music formula, to perfectly balanced, jazzy ends. I even forgive the extensive use of saxophone on their EP Sway, and the riff on their catchy-as-fuck single One Time.
My favorites on the EP are Wasted, the slow-bumpin song about how lame bar-dwelling bros need not apply. The retro synths remind me so much of playing with my cousin’s keyboards in the late ’80s. “You mean you just say something and then it comes out on all the different keys? Wow! Better think of something cool to say…
…
Butts.”
And then there’s the stripped down, oddly R&B jazzy fly girl anthem Got It. Just some boss lyrics, drum pads, and brass riffs. If this song came on at a bar where I was partyin’ with my gurls, I’d be all “GUUUUURLS!!! Our jaaaaammmmms!!!” and insist we dance on the bar. As has literally never happened in my real life.
And a final video if you feel inclined to watch: a live version of I Got It. I’m at a point in my life where I’m confident enough in my value as a person that I can say I like the synthed sax better than the real one. Because in general, FUCK SAXOPHONES. Take your unnecessary smarm elsewhere.
But I love the little lady (whose name is not Marain Hill); she’s tiny and I think her hair is full of secrets. Also I think I read that she got her degree in music marketing or business and that’s kinda boss. I cannot really with the guy’s (whose name is also not Marian Hill) overly-embellished Launchpad flourishes, but I do love when he rubs his hands together before diving into what I guess is a complicated series of button pushings. À la Mr. Burns. Or a fly before it regurgitates maybe?
(1) Maybe don’t worry about it? Some of the lyrics make me think that English is not their first language.2 Like, “Watching me is like watching the fire take your eyes from you,” from Repetition, or this from Fineshrine:
Get a little closer, let fold
Cut open my sternum, and pull
My little ribs around you
The lungs of me be crowns over you
… or this bit from Belispeak:
Grandma my sleep is narrow
Bid you bring me some strong drink
Strain out the pulps and set them close outside
For when my belly
For when my little belly speaks
…just, what? Someone dumped some meaningful text into Google Translate and called it a day. That, or it’s really fantastic poetry that I really fantastically don’t get.
(2) Wikipedia says3 both the members of Purity Ring are Canadian. Albertian. So, unclear if English is their first language.
(3) Wikipedia also classifies Purity Ring as dream pop and witch house. WITCH HOUSE.4 How great a term is that?!
(4) Wondering what other bands are in the witch house genre? DO NOT click this link for Wikipedia’s list. It is impossible to read and makes me feel nervous. Like if I read the list out loud a horror indescribable would manifest from my keyboard.
I’m glad you wrote this post, so I could give CHVRCHES another chance. I was traveling a ton last summer, and EVERY. SINGLE. MOVIE. on Delta required me to watch a commercial (not skippable) of this band and so all I decided was that I hate this band because they were wasting precious time on planes where I binge on every movie I was too cheap to see in theaters.
I like these posts!
Haha, well glad you can give them a second chance! There are many movies Richard has written off because he’s seen the trailer 2x a week on planes.
I actually only sold that keyboard a few months ago. (Well, the smaller one. Still have the larger sampling keyboard, because it’s hard not to wanna hang on to those sweet ol’ Casios.)
I remember you being Very Small and really getting into Eurythmics “Beethoven (I Love To Listen To)” during some indeterminate family gathering, so…uh…not exactly surprised by this music…
I wondered if you would see this! That’s kind of amazing that you still have one of the keyboards. I didn’t remember that song but I just looked it up and its… interesting. Actually the music video is terrifying.