Thursday, February 8, 2018

My Favorite Albums from 2017

I'm a forgetful and inattentive music listener, so that means two things: One, that I never got around to listening to a lot of good albums that would no doubt earn a spot on this list, even from artists that I really loved. Albums in that category include Mount Eerie's A Crow Looked at Me, Perfume Genius's No Shape, Vince Staples's Big Fish Theory, Moses Sumney's Aromanticism, Lorde, oh god stop me I'm going to go on forever and panic. If a big famous album like that is off, it's probably just because I didn't get around to it. Not that I care much – some of the music especially in the lower reaches of this list is creative and great and deserves to be highlighted. Two, you can be assured that when I did latch on to an album, I really really really loved it. This was a great year for music and I was never for lack of new, creative, inspiring stuff to listen to. Here's some of it.

25. Chinese Football – Here Comes a New Challenger!!!


Sometimes our global culture allows for beautiful and unlikely things. Case in point, Chinese Football, a band from Wuhan, China that worships 90s Midwest emo. Their self-titled debut album was a flawless but overlong imitation of American Football and Sunny Day Real Estate. On this EP, their music is louder, punchier, and more distinct. They've got catchy songs that punch and pull back, writhe and twist with all the unsteadiness and honesty of their heroes.

Listen: Chinese Football - “Electronic Girl”

24. Visible Cloaks – Reassemblage


It's not very “me” of me to skip over the hottest new ambient electronic albums like I did this year. Stuff happens. Reassemblage, at least, was there for me. Full of tactile, throwback synthesizer sounds not unlike Oneohtrix Point Never's, Visible Cloaks prove there's still plenty of life and possibility in mining the sounds of a time when we all used AOL.

Listen: Visible Cloaks - “Terrazzo” (feat. Motion Graphics)

23. Max Richter – Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works


Yeah, it's Max Richter again. What can I say? In the last few months of 2017 and bleeding into 2018 with no foreseeable end, this guy has really done it for me. This album is the score for a ballet based on three of Virginia Woolf's novels. Woolf is a writer who totally changed how I approach fiction and her words pop up frequently on this album. That's great when she's reminiscing about the power of language, and uncomfortably emotional when we get Gillian Anderson reading Woolf's suicide note. But the music? Flawless as always, incorporating more traditional Richter works (the “Mrs. Dalloway” act) with wilder and more experimental electronic dances (“Orlando”). Someone tell me how he manages to churn this stuff out with such consistency.

Listen: Max Richter - “Orlando: Modular Astronomy”

22. bedwetter – Volume 1: Flick Your Tongue Against Your Teeth and Describe the Present.


Sending my love out to Travis Miller, who formerly released music as Lil Ugly Mane before retiring the name in 2015 and now puts out music under “bedwetter.” Miller's music, especially the modern classic MISTA THUG ISOLATION and kissoff single “On Doing An Evil Deed Blues” is as important to me as music has ever been. Hearing a new album from him, different alias or new, is always a gift. He's still spitting with saturated emotion and intensity over exquisite lo-fi beats, bringing in some of the sound collage work he's always dabbled in, but the pleasure is undercut a bit when he's covering this particular subject matter. A dark and terrifying look into an institutionalized and depressed mind, Flick Your Tongue is obviously the work of someone with a long journey out of the dark yet to come. I'm glad you're still making music, Travis. But please take care of yourself and get well too!

Listen: bedwetter - “haze of interference”

21. Kedr Livanskiy – Ariadna


Hate to admit that sometimes Apple Music's recommendation algorithm works. Sometimes. But it worked this time! Livanskiy is from Moscow and makes electronic dream pop, and if it's not entirely unique then it is entirely impeccable. Easy to zone out to or appreciate on a close listen. Nothing else to say about it.

Listen: Kedr Livanskiy - “Ariadna”

20. Kirin J Callinan – Bravado


You can read my initial review of Bravado here, which comes across as a lot more fawning. Months later and I've cooled on the album a bit, but those couple of days when you discover it are really something else. The first half of Bravado contains the most jaw-droppingly bonkers genre pastiches and posturing anthems I've heard all year. Glorious kitsch, intentionally aiming for bad taste, and usually missing the mark to end up in a delightful swamp of even worse taste. Sure, the art-pop of the album's second half takes a while to get going and I still have no clue why Callinan just dropped all the pretense halfway through… but that's not going to keep the music video for “Big Enough” from being the most overwhelming experience of 2017.

Listen: Kirin J Callinan - “Big Enough”

19. Charli XCX – Pop 2


I swear, one of these days, "pop princess who was well on her way to fame only to dip and go make music with a bunch of avant-garde European experimental artists" is going to be an inescapable music legend. It's just too good a story.

The princess is Charli XCX of course, and the artists are PC Music, who gained a small but loyal fandom (myself included) when they arrived in 2014 with their feather-light uncanny-valley pop. Charli's been making low-stakes EPs with the collective for a while now, gradually getting her bearings within the Alice in Roller-Disco-land sound that PC Music and their leader A.G. Cook produces. All that hard work shows in Pop 2, which sounds almost like a sprightly pop album but for the gobsmacking textures and rhythms that animate the songs. The vocals are placed on top and drive these tunes forward, but they're not safe from being cut up, distorted, sent ping-ponging across your headphones. And the guests, which range from completely unknown to fellow pop princesses (hi Carly Rae) flesh out the palette and complement Charli. Older PC Music productions could be uncomfortable or scary; Pop 2 throws a party and invites everyone along.

Listen: Charli XCX - “Out of My Head” (feat. Tove Lo & ALMA)

18. Lil Uzi Vert – Luv Is Rage 2


I'm not going to do a songs list, so I'll just say that “XO Tour Llif3” is my favorite song of 2017. Not only does it fuse emo and trap on such a deep DNA-level that it's amazing the two genres were ever separate, Uzi goes off on it. Lyrically it's just… devastating. I don't think any other song tapped into how deeply we, in 2017, were all fucked-up, horrified, addicted, flailing, failing ourselves and failing each other. As soon as “XO Tour Llif3” popped up on Soundcloud, it became clear that Uzi's debut album might not just be a good debut from a promising rapper, but something genuinely transformative and genius.

Luv Is Rage 2 is here and passed, and it turns out to fall between those two poles. Uzi proved the most important thing to us all, which is that “XO Tour Llif3” wasn't a fluke. Highlights like “The Way Life Goes,” “X” and “Dark Queen” proved he could tap into the same affecting emo vein without repeating himself. With “Neon Guts” he even shows he can make a traditional summer banger with the best of them. The rest ranges from average-to-pretty-good-level Uzi tracks, which means they're horribly charismatic and unique creations. In a perfect world Uzi would have materialized my perfect emo-trap masterpiece of an album, but after Luv Is Rage 2 I'm confident he has it in him.

Listen: Lil Uzi Vert - “The Way Life Goes” (feat. Oh Wonder)

17. SZA – CTRL


My first exposure to SZA was on Rihanna's “Consideration,” the opening track on Anti, my favorite album of 2016. Either Rihanna bled into SZA or the other way around, but their vocals have much in common – the stretching and bending of words but also the technical skill to sing it straight when the time comes to go for the jugular.

But Anti was a wild mash of genres. CTRL is more, well, controlled. The smoky, minimalist electronic beats provide SZA a perfect canvas to opine about sexuality and liberation. In any other year, this would be a clear pick for the best R&B debut album, but the creativity shown from black musicians and women this year was so astounding that SZA will have to settle with her huge mainstream success and acclaim. Darn.

Listen: SZA - “The Weekend”

16. King Woman – Created in the Image of Suffering


Identity and history suffuses Created in the Image of Suffering, an album that makes an impression on you first because of Kristina Esfandiari's ethereal voice. Not that a woman singing black metal is as uncommon as you'd guess, but Esfandiari's lyrics unflinchingly express her pain, mental illness and trauma at a strict religious upbringing. This music isn't interested in being trve kvlt blackness – the country-inflected riffs sound through loud and clear, and the first four songs all top out at three and a half minutes. Esfandiari doesn't take up metal because she was raised in it, but because its sense of doom and the great beyond is the only thing capable of expressing these deeply felt, beautiful songs.

Listen: King Woman - “Utopia”

15. Alex Lahey – I Love You Like a Brother


You've heard saturated, charging power-pop like this before – Japandroids, Tacocat, et. al. - but Lahey's effervescent energy and forthright lyrics make the music leap out of your speakers. She sings with such charming specificity about failing to take care of herself, about getting along with her brother, about hating an otherwise fine city because her ex lives there, that you can't help but laugh and clap because you know the feeling. Both the highs and lows of her life are channeled through the same immaculate and bouncy hooks. I Love You Like a Brother is the most fun album I heard all year, a time when we all needed some.

Listen: Alex Lahey - “I Haven't Been Taking Care of Myself”

14. Ibeyi – Ash


Ash is an album that confronts you with its idiosyncrasies so boldly – the combination of robotic art-pop and traditional French and Cuban instruments, the unsparing political imagery and close harmonies – that you don't realize how effectively it's gotten its hooks in until it's over. I was fascinated by Ash when I first heard it this year, and as the days passed I found that I kept turning it over in my head. That they can use their idiosyncratic palette to create songs as traditionally danceable as “I Wanna Be Like You” and as free-ranging as “Transmission / Michaelion” is incredible. Some of the artists on this list are showing up with an album that's clearly their masterpiece, but there are few I'm excited for the future of more than Ibeyi.

Listen: Ibeyi - “Deathless” (feat. Kamasi Washington)

13. Kelela – Take Me Apart


Kelela reminds me of FKA twigs, and not just because she's released an incredible debut album that lives up to the promise of her early EPs. Both singers employ some of the most creative producers out today to twist synthesizers and samples into blurts that are almost unrecognizable as music. But Kelela makes no attempt to suspend herself in a liminal space between genres. The spacey atmospheres, mind-bending beats, and wonderful vocals are purely in service of delivering the hottest R&B bangers possible. But even limiting herself to one genre still gives Kelela plenty of room to stretch. Lush dance beats sit astride quiet-storm jams. At a whole 54 minutes Take Me Apart overstays its welcome by a bit, but it doesn't detract from the astonishing songs and perfectly-honed creativity on display in the early going.

Listen: Kelela - “Frontline”

12. Bell Witch – Mirror Reaper


Mirror Reaper got a lot of hype and discussion for its backstory: an album-length doom metal song created in tribute to Bell Witch's former vocalist, Adrian Guerra, who died tragically young in the early creation of the album. But when I listened to it I didn't know any of this; it was just a doom metal album with a sick cover. And you certainly don't need to know the backstory to appreciate what a great album it is: simultaneously thick and spacious, two riffs spread out over 83 minutes and played with such expert dedication that you'll be leaning forward in your seat to hear the next strum or drum fill. It's beautifully produced, too – the guitar is saturated with warm overtones that flicker into space and the drums hammer your gut on a primal level.

Even with that initial impression, the history and pain that went into Mirror Reaper makes its few moments of dynamism and change hit harder. The two distinct parts representing death and ascension to the afterlife, and the use of Guerra's vocals in the second half, not only satisfy musically but turn the song, from the structure on down, into a perfect tribute to a fallen friend. Hell, make an album like this for me when I die.

Listen: Bell Witch - “Mirror Reaper”

11. Elder – Reflections of a Floating World


I'll always be a sucker for some well-done sludge metal, but that alone won't get you onto a best-of list. Elder has been a low-key excellent band for years and years now, something that I only found out in October when I grabbed this, my first exposure to them. Rather than drone at your ears with the same riff, Elder takes their considerable chops and band interplay to spin odysseys. All these songs are long, multi-part things that organically evolve. Like prog, but without the corny baggage. You won't get any ambient or spoken-word sections outlining their high-minded concept and storyline. Every second of this album is gripping and fully developed. It's enough to make me second-guess my taste: did I just get lucky, or is there more music like this out there?

Listen: Elder - “Sanctuary”

10. Jay-Z – 4:44


On Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z gave us a lot of space. He paused, shot out a small phrase, then paused again. His bars were so barren that you often wondered if he had run out of things to say. After a quarter-century of rapping, who could blame him? He'd been doing it as long as anyone. I think we were all resigned to Jay-Z being on cruise control.

But four years later, Jay has more to discuss than ever. He's in a unique elder-statesman position to discuss topics such as black wealth and celebrity, younger rappers, being a father to his children. His mother came out as a lesbian and he pays tribute to it with the gorgeous “Smile.” And then of course, the cheating. The depth and viciousness of Jay-Z's self-examination on this album is astonishing. He cogently examines the factors both internal and external that led to his unfaithfulness without ever giving himself any slack in the rope. This deep plumb, through his demons of the past and hopes for the future, energizes his rapping. If he sounded before like he was out of ideas, now he sounds as if he's knowingly and expertly pulling his punches, knocking the beats around with the restraint and skill that can only come from, again, a quarter-century of rapping.

But the real genius of 4:44 is that Jay-Z takes this newly-struck emotional well and wealth of subject matter and creates his shortest, most focused album. Every song, every line, every word feels vital and groundbreaking, which is not an easy thing for a 47-year-old rapper to accomplish. With this album he recommits to the things that made him great – here's hoping he doesn't screw it up again.

Listen: Jay-Z - “The Story of O.J.”

9. The Menzingers – After the Party


Is it bad to relate, at 23, to an album which, in its first song, defines its mission statement as “Where we gonna go now that our twenties are over?”

After the Party was the biggest surprise for me this year, a band that I hadn't paid much attention to coming out and finally hooking me enough to realize that I'd always been wrong about them. What The Menzingers lack in innovation they make up in brilliant dynamics and melodies that won't ever leave your head. Every song here is a perfect rocker that engages with the question: is growing up and changing a healthy thing, or a betrayal? The Menzingers were always nostalgic and explored questions of how their upbringing shaped them, but now they're turning the magnifying glass on the years where they were a fairly acclaimed touring band making a living off music and wondering: was that fake, too?

The worry doesn't translate to the music, which is the same muscular punk rock that The Menzingers have always done so well, and with more consistency here than they've ever managed. I don't know if they really will be able to sustain themselves on their passion and love for music forever, not in this time and place, but at least they're asking the right questions.

Listen: The Menzingers - “Bad Catholics”

8. Converge – The Dusk in Us


I was more absorbed into contemporary metal this year than I have been ever, but the new album from a band I've long loved still tops them all. What can I say? Converge are just astonishingly good. After pursuing their crushing, resonant, demanding vision for almost two decades, the band plays off each other as naturally as breathing. There's no tricky time signature that Nate Newton and Ben Koller can't whip into shape, no guitar texture that Kurt Ballou can't achieve to heighten the intensity. A lot of fans prefer their earlier, crustier output, but to me they get better the more emotionally direct and musically clear they get. And if you're looking for emotional directness, this is the Converge album to get. Jacob Bannon stretches himself lyrically here with heartwrenching portraits of devotion, understanding, love, and patience. It's just, you know, set against the backdrop of crushing metalcore.

Which, let's be clear, they bring in spades. Musically all these are songs that the band could have written at any point in the last twenty years – the only thing that's improved are Kurt Ballou's production and engineering chops, so that everything hits harder. And that's enough. The punishing ending of “I Can Tell You About Pain,” the hellish winding sludge riff at the center of “Under Duress,” and the snaking guitar riffs of “Arkhipov Calm” bash your head in with a level of fidelity that isn't available, even on other Converge work. At this point, I'm expecting them to come out with another album in about four years that obviates The Dusk in Us and makes it sound primitive. Until then, this is the purest and most thrilling expression of Converge's sound yet.

Listen: Converge - “Under Duress”

7. King Krule – The Ooz


Six years after making his debut as King Krule, we still didn't know what a full-length statement by Archy Marshall's most prominent musical project really sounded like. 6 Feet Beneath the Moon was a great album, but a good half of it was re-recorded versions of songs he'd written as Zoo Kid. Since then he's kept himself busy with guest appearances and side projects – until, finally, King Krule came moaning back to life.

He wasn't wasting that time. Marshall has burned off nearly every entry point into his internal world to make a dense and challenging album that freely incorporates jazz, dream pop, art rock, hip-hop, and avant-garde styles on top of his already-divisive voice. The music explodes with details, like the high-pitched drone on opener “Biscuit Town” that modulates up and down to trace the song's emotional path. While his lyrics before were artful and freewheeling, Marshall has a theme here: Relentless dedication to the most disgusting, wretched, gloomy parts of humanity.

It's not fun in the slightest, and a good chunk of it isn't even good or compelling music (although the songs that are good music are some of the best music of 2017). It's hard to jump right in the middle without feeling lost, but if you start from the beginning the endless slog of the album will drain your patience. But I think that's expected, maybe even part of the point. The Ooz is a bespoke world packed with internal and external referents, and even if you cuddle up to it closely and get to know it, you still only feel like there are massive and frightening depths to its landscape.

Listen: King Krule - “Dum Surfer”

6. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.


King Kendrick has been to the mountain, and now he's back to show these wack artists. At least, that's how he seems to want us to take it. He did roll out the album campaign by telling us to stay humble.

To me, it sounds more like he's coming back up for air and reengaging with the world. We all loved To Pimp a Butterfly but its staggering musical complexity and density was only made possible because it was led by a massively beloved firebrand rapper at the peak of his powers. The world might never see its like again. Instead Kendrick decided he wanted to make some hits.

Now, Kendrick's still gonna Kendrick, and these songs are still shot through with strange, sticky musical fragments and oddball conceits (that this album flows perfectly with a reversed tracklisting is so dumb and so very Kendrick) but he's also thrown off his self-consciousness about wanting hits. The earmarked hits on good kid, m.A.A.d city were all presented as not “real” Kendrick (“Backseat Freestyle” was just young dumb Kendrick bragging, “Poetic Justice” was a song his character played on the way to a romantic fling, etc.). On DAMN., he just throws out “HUMBLE.” and “LOVE.” and “LOYALTY.” and they're just normal songs! By pulling back a bit on the high-mindedness, we can appreciate the simple truth: Kendrick is a very, very good rapper and a once-in-a-generation talent. May he always be allowed to do exactly what he wants.

Listen: Kendrick Lamar - “LOYALTY.” (feat. Rihanna)

5. Migos – Culture


For those who had been paying attention to the Migos after 2013 and before 2017 (this category doesn't include me) a slow evolution was evident. Migos burst onto the scene with a sound and approach that was easy to compartmentalize and dismiss, but they weathered commercial and legal misfortunes, tightening their flow and darkening their sound. In mid-2016, when the band recorded Culture, the path was clear and their artistry was stronger than ever. So they recorded an album that displays that mastery of craft while still feeding on Migos's underdog status. That friction is the key to Culture: Quavo, Takeoff and Offset all have something to prove and more than the ability to prove it.

These beats are shockingly avant-garde - “T-Shirt,” I'm pretty sure, is built on a reversed feedback loop, and the main riff of “Bad and Boujee” sounds like a distorted 16-bit video game sample. But the Migos bring them to heel, effortlessly spitting out memorable lines, jokes, catchphrases, and when all else fails just relying on their delivery. Is anyone ever going to forget the way Offset delivers the line “then I send that bitch through Uber”? The expertly-timed pauses on “Get Right Witcha”? If you tried to get me to explain what the phrase “Big on big” meant before I heard Culture I would've been lost but as soon as the Migos say it, it makes total sense.

Coming out in the early, early days of January 2017, Culture, appropriately enough considering the title, set the stage for a year where Atlanta trap dominated the music world, racking up hits and twisting and morphing into a new form every couple of weeks. After all the Migos have endured, they earned their success. Even if now, in February 2018, their saturation over the culture is draining, this album shows how confident they were in taking that step into the world at last.

Listen: Migos - “T-Shirt”

4. The National – Sleep Well Beast


Sleep Well Beast is the point where I stopped expecting The National to evolve. When I got into them they were about to release High Violet and ride to their greatest mainstream success ever, and it seemed like their future was limitless. It always seems that way. But I've been an avid music fan for ten years now, and those bands I loved and embraced initially, that seemed so exciting and doing something new with every release, have now mostly settled into ruts. The National has too, frankly. Their dalliance with electronic textures on Sleep Well Beast is the biggest musical evolution they've made since 2007 and yet they're still supporting the same type of songs: midtempo, lushly orchestrated, ruminative and clever.

Good! That need to embrace only the artists who will evolve and change and stay relevant is always based in insecurity and as long as The National can produce deep, relistenable albums like this one, they're guaranteed a slot on whatever year-end list I make. Low-key, this might be my favorite album of theirs. It has very few songs that I would place in the top fifteen National songs, but a hell of a lot that I would place in the top thirty. The entire second half of the album is full of stunners: the energetic pulse and muted horns of “Guilty Party,” the ornate waltz of “Carin at the Liquor Store,” and the title track that starts on shaky ground and unfurls further before dissolving into air. It's the kind of veteran album you only get from a band that's moved past all the excitement of being at the top of the world and still have their head solidly on their shoulders, even if the characters in their songs don't.

Listen: The National - “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness”

3. Slowdive – Slowdive


Slowdive return after twenty-two long years and gloriously fail to recapture their old magic. Before coming back, they were… weirder. Their last album, Pygmalion, was a daring leap into left-field after their first two albums of gorgeous, gauzy shoegaze. Slowdive, by contrast, zeroes in on the melodic, alt-rock side of their sound; this is the side of the band that influenced Beach House, Asobi Seksu, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Is it a simplification of their sound? Yes, but all revivals are, and at least this band is being honest about it. That approach frees them up to really nail what they do attempt: this band has never been better at swooping vocal melodies, brilliant dynamic shifts, and rhythmic chiming guitar echoes. Goswell and Halstead hit their precise, bone-simple melodies on “Star Roving” and “Sugar for the Pill” with poise and assurance.

You can practically hear all the effort that went into sculpting these eight exquisite songs: the hours experimenting to get just the right guitar tone, to find the right drumbeat, to leave just enough space in the mix so that the entire band sounds like they're floating, to capture the perfect expression of yearning in a vocal take. Slowdive isn't the greatest album of 2017, but it is the most improbably great: that Slowdive could return after so long and openly chase after a version of their sound that was (from a certain perspective) a watered-down imitation should never have produced results as immaculate and wonderful as this. Yet here they are, a band so close to my heart that I couldn't stand if they had failed, reintroduced to a new generation of listeners who love them just as much. And why shouldn't they? This would be a staggering achievement for bands many years their junior. But for this collection of musicians, it's just (and I am delighted to say these three words) another Slowdive album.

Listen: Slowdive - “Don't Know Why”

2. Arca – Arca


Arca is not a very consistent album; the highlights are among the best songs of the decade and the lowlights seem to wander listlessly. What makes it work so well is the simple fact of discovery and raw, powerful potential. Arca was already an acclaimed producer and songwriter with an organic, squelching take on IDM. I liked his previous albums just fine, but I never went back to them. What's different here?

The answer is obvious from the first track, “Piel.” Arca's singing for the first time, and his voice is… bracing. Haunting and otherworldly, like Jónsi without the technical skill. This last aspect he leans into, close-miccing his vocals to capture every flap and click of the mouth. “Piel” is already an uncompromising song, but once the synthesized strings come in, quietly wailing, you're absorbed into a wasteland atmosphere unlike anything Arca, or anyone else, has ever made. And the gauntlet is thrown down.

For the rest of the album Arca explores this intersection of chamber pop orchestration, electronic manipulation, organic percussion, and gentle vocals with improvised Spanish lyrics. Not that all the highlights have singing: “Urchin” is my favorite song on the album and it consists only of a stuttering percussion rumble whirring to life before being interrupted by an angelic choir over and over.

Arca's identity as a queer artist bleeds through in these songs. They are simultaneously confessional, tender, brazen, and imperfect without apology. Even when he seems unsure where and how to proceed, it hardly matters because the space he's found is so new and so thrilling. Even languishing in that space was a huge pleasure.

Listen: Arca - “Anoche”

1. Jlin – Black Origami


I enjoyed Jlin's debut Dark Energy a lot and knew she had a very interesting, thorny sound. But after sitting down and hearing Black Origami for the first time, I was convinced that Jlin was about to make it big.

I was wrong – she looks like she's doing very well for herself in the wake of this album, but frankly that's not good enough. Anyone who can make art this strange, thrilling, and uncompromising should be thrown a parade in the streets.

Let me back up. Black Origami fits broadly within the Chicago footwork movement, a genre of electronic music based on fast, dense drum programming and high-pitched vocal samples. The music is very good on its own, but it's meant to dance to, in competitions and such. Jlin, however, is not from Chicago proper, but nearby Indiana. And as far as I know, she's never been close to the competitive footwork scene. Her take on the genre, then, is much more cerebral and appealing to electronic tinkerers. Just take a look at the collaborators on this project – William Basinski, post-minimalist classical composer, and Holly Herndon, experimental raconteur. Dark Energy was acclaimed as the best album of the year by The Wire, a very chic and thoughtful electronic music magazine. You'd almost think that she would give in to the tide and start making techno music.

Instead on Black Origami she's stripped her sound to the most raw essentials. The instrumentation on this album is roughly 5% actual instruments, 10% chopped up vocal samples, and 85% drums. Just drums. And what drums they are! Channeling the disorienting intensity of traditional African rhythms, Jlin creates massive symphonies of percussion that clatter, pound and groove. At any given time there are three or more drum tracks shooting out the most complex and exciting patterns. Even the vocal samples are spliced so short that they become just another piece of percussion. It's 44 minutes of white-knuckle, gripping electronic music that sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. So what if Jlin hasn't blown up the world? She blew up mine.

Listen: Jlin - “Nyakinyua Rise”

Thursday, January 25, 2018

I Listened To 30 Different Versions Of White Iverson And Here's What I Thought Of Them

Post Malone was one of the big winners of 2017. Despite critics dismissing his debut album Stoney, its combination of trap and country-inflected confessional songwriting resonated with massive chunks of young people. Co-workers at my restaurant, sibling's friends, random guys cruising around college campuses… all people I heard blaring “Congratulations,” “Go Flex,” “I Fall Apart.”

Post passed me by in the years that he was coming up, so my first exposure to him was “Congratulations” on the radio. That song says everything obvious about itself before you can; I wanted to say it was self-congratulatory, but the song is already named “Congratulations.” I wanted to call it an “I made it” anthem, but Post spends a good 20% of the song saying the words “I made it.” The song seemed predestined for success with a honeyed chorus so saturated in vocal overdubs that Post probably has diabetes after recording it, a guest verse from Quavo, the most visible guest rapper of 2017, and a beautiful beat from Metro Boomin, who is in the middle of a white-hot production streak. A song about success that would never allow itself to not be successful. It's tautological.

Hearing “Congratulations” as my first Post Malone song made me wonder what he was building this legacy of struggle on. All I had to do was rewind back two years to hear his debut single, “White Iverson,” which, for the people paying attention (not me) put him on the map. The phrase I saw most attached to “White Iverson” was “viral hit,” though. Which… I don't think that's a term most people use anymore? Viral, for real? Is it 2007? This isn't “Chocolate Rain.” It's clear that when “White Iverson” came out in 2015 that people listened to Post Malone and saw a white goober from the Texas suburbs making disposable music. They were right about Post but wrong about the music.

So when I heard “White Iverson” in like September 2017 it was as a prelude to an explosively successful career and not a goofy one-off like it was in February 2015. And I loved it.

I can take or leave most of Post Malone's other songs but “White Iverson” is a jam. And people agree with me, because a few nights ago I typed in “white iverson” to listen to the song again on Apple Music and found 30 different versions of the song – musicians, all of them young and unknown, paying tribute to the song in various ways. It's nearly a folk standard now.

Why not listen to all these different takes on the song, and see how it's disseminated into the culture? It's 2018, after all. We're taking Post Malone seriously now. And if you want to take him seriously with me, I made a playlist of the covers you can listen along to.

Post Malone:


So what makes “White Iverson” work?

Well, in the first place, it has a great cloud rap beat. The buoyant synthesizer bed interplays with a sad, stately piano figure on top of coiled trap drums. If you know my musical loves, you know I'll stan for anything that sounds like Main Attrakionz could go in over it.

But Post deserves a lot of credit too. He curls and slurs his syllables such that they wash into each other. The secret of the chorus is how he mashes his words: “That's my shaw / That's my shaw / That's my shawty, yeah,” for example, lives in that moment of tension between “shaw” and “ty,” where he's given you a mess of syllables and, for one high-wire instant, you're not sure how, or if, he's going to make words out of them.

As for his flow, Post Malone has (like Lil Uzi Vert) a gift for constructing his verses out of distinct, melodic flows that build on each other. The first verse is sleepy, laid-back, easing you in, so that in the second verse when his voice leaps an octave to proclaim “Fuck practice, this shit just happens!” then you feel as excited as he does.

Now, any of these cover versions could be chasing that same magic, or they could take the building blocks of “White Iverson” and create a new monster. All I'm trying to find out, here, is whether musicians who go to all the trouble of arranging and recording a cover of this song see the same appeal in it that I do. To that end, let's go to:

French Montana / Rae Sremmurd Remix:


If you told me that you had strong feelings about French Montana, I would laugh in your face. He barely shows up here, spitting a quick and mediocre eight bars before turning it back over to Post's verse and chorus.

Rae Sremmurd acquit themselves better. Sing-songy and charismatic as they are, they're talented enough to spin an entirely new flow from the beat, which is more than most of these cover artists do. When Slxm Jxmmi lapses back into the original flow, it feels like a communion of one creator to another rather than a lack of ideas.

Grace Mitchell:


Mitchell keeps very little of the original beat, following the original melody over a UK house rhythm. She's a good singer who doesn't overdo it – she recreates a few of Post's vocal tics but confidently bites into them (“I ain't rich yet, but you know I ain't broke-uh”).

Her most jaw-dropping change is a single line at the end of the first chorus - “and you know my dad always wanted to have a son.” It feels like a cut to the quick, especially in this familiar context; that line alone is a bold emotional excavation dropped in the middle of a song which is otherwise more interested in blank masculine braggadocio. Bravo.

Money Woe:


This is a straight cover – same instrumental, same lyrics, same flow. It's not good. Imagine a frat boy doing a karaoke cover of “White Iverson” (and given what I know about Post Malone's fans, this is a common occurrence nightly nationwide) and then slather it in Auto-Tune. This singer sounds entirely too eager to be the character in the song. At least Post laid back in the beat.

The Score:


This version has DNA from Charlie Puth, The Chainsmokers, and Disclosure in it. The singer seems uninterested in the “character” of the lyrics, which is a great change from Money Woe's version. Instead he delivers a clean and professional X-Factor reading of the song. The beat is reorchestrated to good effect. It ends up more generic, but accentuates the original melody just as well.

Kiana Ledé:


Interesting – this version is only a minute and a half, lasting for the first verse and chorus plus a brief original stanza at the beginning.

The brevity combined with the vocal performance makes me think it's just a talent showcase, because Ledé oversings the hell out of this. She has a good voice, but… being a better singer than Post Malone is not that stunning an accomplishment. Mission accomplished, though?

Pollie Pop (Screwed & Chopped):


The chopped-and-screwed industry is alive and well in the absence of its originator and master DJ Screw, but the fact that half of these new releases have to clarify “chopped not slopped” is a testament to how many people do it badly and how singular Screw's vision and talent were. Not to get into a huge chopped-and-screwed exegesis.

About 70% of chopping and screwing is having the taste to know which songs will sound good when given the treatment, so Pollie Pop's got that aspect covered. The intoxicating lethargy of “White Iversion” is a great fit.

25% of it is chopping in the right places, of which I'm going to give them 10%. They overdo the chopping at every single point in the song and end up with some truly strange edits (“spendin' all my fpay”).

Last 5% is the mixing. They get 2% for abusing the flanging effects.

Final grade: 82%, B. You passed, Pollie Pop, but don't get complacent!

Cloud Talk:


Cloud Talk strip the low-end out of the song, focusing on the piano and drums. This arrangement leaves the whole thing feeling empty and strait-laced.

But they do have one good trick, which is to switch into double-time halfway through. When they get to the end and let the chorus ride with that beat, you can hear them grabbing at, and mostly grasping, a unique and worthwhile take on the song.

Key Notez:



A mostly straight cover – Key Notez sings the same chorus and lays down some original verses. He's really indebted to Post's flow, which would already be a problem if his lyrics weren't so generic. But it speaks well of Post that not many other rappers can find another way to grapple with this beat.

Casper (feat. Young Carter):


Casper goes one step further than Key Notez, using the same chorus flow but with original lyrics the whole way through. I'm assuming that Casper is the first rapper on the track and Young Carter the second here. Casper attacks the track too suddenly, going full-force and then lightening up. That can work on a certain type of beat, but not one this lackadaisical in the first place. You'll notice that Post did the opposite.

Young Carter fares alright – he sounds like he's only heard the instrumental and not the original song at all, leading to a verse wildly disconnected from Post's flow. Among so many biters, that's a blessing.

DJ Pro Code (Chopped & Screwed):


I prefer this chop-and-screw to Pollie Pop's. It's even lower-pitched, with less obnoxious flanging, and leaves the chorus mostly alone, saving the chops for the verses. DJ Pro Code does a good job with those, and he tends to make strange new words with his chops (“this shit just happens / can't stancan'tstand it”) which I suspect is the best approach.

Broken Boulevard:


Even more unbearably frat-boy than Money Woe. The singer attacks everything with the roof of his mouth, making for a bouncy, rubbery vocal that doesn't suit the song at all.

Shouts to the instrumental, though. Either it's the official one or it's the best recreation on the entire playlist. There's an art to these things, as we shall see.

Instrumental Trap Beats Gang:


This… sounds like it's in the same key? I could maybe see the original vocals fitting over this with some time dilution and stretching. But aside from that, the pouring and breathing sound effects make it sound more Weeknd than Post.

It's also way too busy to be a good rap instrumental. Constantly breaking into a new section or riff, with no space to breathe and let someone get in a verse. Hell, shuffle the arrangement around, add some more instruments at the end to develop it, and you've got a passable standalone instrumental song. But since it's made by “Instrumental Trap Beats Gang” and is presumably made for someone to rap over it, it misses the mark.

Young Carter (feat. KirkoCrazy):


Oh hey it's Young Carter again!!

I'm just going off my ears here and not any research into the matter, but it sounds like the same song as the Casper (feat. Young Carter) version. Except the good verse that I enjoyed for its originality is swapped out for a different rapper (KirkoCrazy, one assumes) with the same problems as Casper: bitten flow, generic lyrics. Maybe it was Casper who had the good verse after all?

Fletcher Fletcher:



Same beat. Same flow. Same lyrics. Singer bends his words in the chorus to emphasize the long 'A' sound - “saucayn / saucayn / i'm saucayn on you.” This is a vowel sound that fits into the song like scraping iron.

Instrumental Hip Hop Beats Gang:


Okay, I could kind of put Post Malone on that other instrumental and it made sense, but this is just a terrible Lex Luger ripoff beat that's mixed like tepid lentil water. Trash.

Don Mula:


I'm fond of this one, not entirely for reasons Don Mula intended. It's the same beat and samples Post's vocals for the chorus. To his credit, Mula tries to make it sound lively, like they're in the same room: “Aight Post… I see you, Post.”

The hilarious part of this is that the vocal sample is TERRIBLY mixed – overblown, distorted, wobbly. It sounds and feels like Don Mula is trying to commune with an enormous digital spectre. Ghost Malone.

Mula's good, though. He has good mic presence. I feel like he needs some jokes. Get him writing some hilarious one-liners and he could make a couple worthwhile songs.

Tiny-O:


Another instrumental beat that has little-to-nothing to do with “White Iverson” in form or feeling. Utterly forgettable.

Jonny, Greg and Allie Gorenc:


I see that this is from an album called Covers, which tips me off to the kind of act this is. I got burned out on these clean-cut cover bands back in like 2012 when Karmin got big and my life got exactly 3% worse. That may not sound like much, but it was my whole life.

This is fine, though. They change up the piano riff enough that the lighter, spidery vocal approach feels appropriate. And while the singer (no clue if it's Jonny or Greg) hews closely to the melody, he sometimes lets a vocal lick fly off. Those moments are nice.

Andrew Grant:


Once again, a vocalist that loves their long A's. Even moreso than Fletcher Fletcher. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against long A's on principle, but they don't fit in this song.

Either this one has an uncredited guest vocalist or it's a woman singing named Andrew. I find the second option infinitely cooler.

Casper:


Casper! You again?! I don't even know which one you are anymore. This version is credited to Casper solo but it's the exact same as the (feat. Young Carter) version. I just don't know who this guy is. Fix your tags, dude! If any readers out there want to dive into the mystery of Codeine Finesse Gang, hit me up.

Krojoe:


See, I actually downloaded and listened to Krojoe's album because of this. It's an 80-minute freestyle where he goes off the dome the entire time. Over the same beat. And if it wasn't clear from this blog post, I admire someone who can fanatically commit to an exhausting and stupid idea.

As you could guess from the “same beat” part of that description, this is not “White Iverson.” Dude just split the freestyle into chunks and named the tracks after popular songs to increase his search hits. I suspect that the Instrumental Trap/Hip-Hop Beats Gangs did this, too.

But I didn't like them. I like Krojoe. Some of these tracks, he's at a loss for words, which is forgivable when you're spontaneously rapping and singing for 80 minutes. But on this one, he's in a groove, and he spits some extremely nice nonsense. He should keep putting in work for a couple more years, and then I can see him getting some hype. You go, Krojoe.

Delux Twins:


A dance remix! I was wondering when we would get one of these.

Quite a good one, too. It takes what it needs from the original song – Post Malone's vocals, mostly the chorus – and disregards the original when it's time to dance.

Post sounds surprisingly natural as the focal point of an EDM track. He has that swagger in his voice and isn't trying too hard. Major Lazer collab when?

The Theorist:


Here's another type of song I knew we'd get to eventually: the muzak piano cover. These unimaginative versions of popular songs are everywhere now. You can't even get into an elevator without hearing a melody that Wiz Khalifa thought up turned into a dull tinkling.

Just take “White Iversion” and imagine every element rendered straightforwardly onto a grand piano. This sounds exactly like what you think it does. The only creative liberty in The Theorist's reading is a bit of glissando on the main “saucin', saucin'” riff. He probably took an hour and a half to arrange this and a day to lay down a good take. Bam. Sent off to a recording engineer to buff it up, then a manager to place it on an album and release it on Apple Music.

The album, by the way is volume six of a piano album series. Making these things is an industry now. Do you really care about “White Iverson,” The Theorist? Does it speak to you? I've listened to 30 versions of this song and I've driven myself so crazy trying to understand what makes it tick that I banned a vowel.

But you don't care, do you, The Theorist. You're probably recording a cover of one of those new Fall Out Boy songs as I speak.

Mia Malone / DJ Post Remake:


A remake of the beat for other rappers to use. This one is actually “White Iverson” though, not just a faceless instrumental that someone titled “White Iverson” to rack up the hits.

It used to be, when hip-hop singles came out on 7” records or CDs, that the B-sides would include clean versions and an official instrumental. But now that everything is digitally released, no such obligation exists. Rappers who want to try their hand at a hot new song have to rely on amateur beatmakers who upload “remakes” to YouTube. So I'm surprised that this is on Apple Music, which is a more professional market.

Anyway, you already know what I think of the “White Iverson” beat. It's great. If I wanted to freestyle over it, I would choose a different remake, because this one doesn't get that very resonant, old-church piano sound right. Tweaking those mixing knobs can be tough.

Shady Boy Pi:


On first glance I thought this was another Krojoe where he just uploaded a bunch of original songs and titled them after Post Malone songs, but I looked at the album this comes from and… it's just an original song named “White Iverson”? The chorus is even “White / white iverson!” so there's no mistake that it was intentional.

My brain is fried from trying to litigate all this shit. This is a really damn good song regardless. Sounds like a Spanish Fort Minor. Very conscious hip-hop, which I haven't bothered to listen to in a while since everything's all trap music now. I like it.

Lutes Vegas:


God, I'm so close to the end and you want me to write about some no-name who just wants to be The-Dream? He titled his album Love Hate, for fuck's sake. This version is the final nail in the coffin for long A's. Lutes just repeats “I'm faded / I'm faded / I'm faded on woo” instead of the actual chorus and it's so grating.

Karaoke Guru:


Another beat remake, but this one shoves in a muffled wood-block rhythm on the offbeat that isn't in the original nor, for that matter, any of the other beat remakes. Very distracting and cheap-sounding.

DJ Kushingham Productions:


What lies at the bottom of the barrel? Another instrumental “remake” that's actually just an original beat. This is the laziest, most annoying one yet, a lethargic dirge that shuffles between two notes. With prominent bongos. By the time the trap drums and twinkling lead line comes in, it sounds more like a Three 6 Mafia lift than a “White Iverson” lift. And no, you don't get any points for ripping off something I like better if your beat sucks this much.

“DJ Kushingham” is a great name, though.

Money Woe (Acapella):


CHRIST WHY

***

“White Iverson” isn't impossible to successfully translate. Most of these covers did a mixed job of it, but out of all the options, Grace Mitchell does the best job at flipping the song and adding new dimensions to it. Honorable mentions go to Delux Twins and DJ Pro Code. Gotta give some love to Krojoe and Shady Boy Pi even if what they made wasn't “White Iverson.”

This might surprise you, but listening to all these different takes on “White Iverson” doesn't destroy or wear out my love for the song. I'm listening to the original again as we speak, with a new appreciation for how delicate the mix of elements needed to be for it to come off right. How much the song's heart relied on Post's particular talent for words and sounds. Actually kind of sad that he went straight into self-parody with "Congratulations" instead of building a larger discography as an underground rapper doing what he does best. But we'll always have "White Iverson." And "White Iverson." Also "White Iverson." "Don't forget about "White Iverson"!