Few are as good as Fiona Apple at making beautiful music that sounds ready to crack. The perfect combination of Extraordinary Machine’s (2005) old-fashioned ballads and the quirkier, more aggressive sound of When the Pawn… (1999), “Every Single Night” is an excellent study in Apple’s preferred brand of edgy neurosis.

She sings here about fighting with her brain and the words and ideas churning within, keeping her from sleep. Imagery like “butterflies in my brain” recalls one of Apple’s best songs, “Fast as You Can,” in which she memorably declared, “Sometimes my mind don’t shake and shift / But most of the time it does.” “Every Single Night” also shares with that song an element of the grotesque, with all its evocative talk about a second skeleton, a chest opening up, and “The rib is the shell / And the heart is the yolk / And I just made a meal / For us both to choke on.” Not many can pull off lines like those with such spooky conviction.

Because of Apple’s reputation as a woman for whom sanity doesn’t come easy, she doesn’t always get the credit she deserves for her emotional, enrapturing vocal performances. On almost every song she’s nothing less than fiery, passionate, possessed; more like a gospel singer in spirit than an indie chanteuse. This is certainly true of “Every Single Night,” which takes short, simple lyrics like “I just wanna feel everything” and draws them out into a kind of whispered howl. The focus here is entirely on Apple’s fragile, scattershot vocals, backed by spare, bell-like keyboards and a gently rolling snare. Her voice wavers but keeps on key, flitting from low and strong to delicate in her upper register.

She’s got a talent for the tactile, like scratching a patch of skin raw, and on “Every Single Night” she once again pulls off the trick that makes her so unique: turning vulnerability into strength, becoming, ultimately, a little scary rather than a little scared.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Fiona Apple

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Prime-time Saturday release, a Super Mario sample, their first real release for the best part of three years; if Animal Collective give a shit about what the internet is thinking, they’re probably bemused as to why the world has gone all silent on them right now. Maura Johnston rightfully noted on Twitter that not so long ago “a new Animal Collective song would cause the internet to shudder in ecstasy.” This week, the new Passion Pit song has been retweeted onto my timeline more frequently. (Don’t read too much into what that might say about me.) If something that receives hundreds of blog posts containing a video and two perfunctory lines necessarily including the words “welcome” and “surprise” can ever be called a non-event, this is almost certainly it: the interest in this seems shallow to the point of being disingenuous.

Maybe that can be a good thing. These are only two songs, remember, the album on the horizon is still a mirage as yet, and discussion of Implications for Contemporary Music is thankfully someone else’s future nightmare. And so from this unburdened standpoint, let me state that I think “Honeycomb” is an excellent romp of a song, “Gotham” less so, but both are vaguely underwhelming, in that they lack the vitality Animal Collective have basically trademarked.

“Gotham” particularly feels a little too laboured, and it’s uncharacteristically legible structure negates the heady feel listeners of Animal Collective love and willingly inhabit. Even that Super Mario sample isn’t particularly clever when you consider what might have been. I mean, I love that “Honeycomb” is a gorgeous surge to oblivion, and think the Chinese box-like structure by which it packs its components within itself, verse into pre-chorus, pre-chorus into chorus, chorus into magnificent climax, is wonderful; all of that is great, but like the smallest box, ultimately hollow, as if it packs itself for the simply the sake of doing so. Maybe that’s all this 7” amounts to: again, these are only two songs, and most likely ones released with designs on sparking new enthusiasm for future, ubiquitous Animal Collective product. While that might not have been totally successful, it’s difficult to imagine that it’s less genuine disinterest, and more that we’re all just waiting for meatier bait before biting.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Animal Collective

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Sic Alps’ new EP Pangea Globe is kind of like a kid brother to another record I wrote about recently, Ty Segall & White Fence’s Hair. The lower-fi and scrappier of the two, Pangea Globe plays like a one-off show in a friend’s basement, total shit-kicking fun in the moment and better than any next-day descriptor could indicate. Though Sic Alps always echo their punk and garage rock heroes, this time they’re taking it all the way, faithfully covering four tracks by little-known London outfit Tronics, who released one record and a handful of seven inches in the early ’80s. Pangea Globe is a labor of love, but don’t get the wrong idea—it doesn’t feel like anyone’s laboring, not for a second.

It’s a nice selection of tracks, showcasing different sides of the Tronics: “Baby’s in a Coma” is a macabre take on retro pop, “Spending Time” is organ-aided garage rock, and “Squiddley Diddley” gets psychedelic and grimy. “Shark Fucks” especially stands out, an oddball-silly surf rock track with lines like “Here comes a shark attack / It’s a load of crap,” and “You can’t eat those creeeeeeps.” Sic Alps’ muffled, homemade sound is fully intact here, and one could easily mistake the track, and the rest of Pangea Globe, for an unusually satisfying and melodic Sic Alps original. Though this is ostensibly just a fun little covers record, the band would be wise to work the same exhilarating sense of fun into their new material. As it stands, Pangea Globe is over all too quickly, but it has enough shaggy charm to last through many repeat listens.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Sic Alps

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Chris Poole and Matt Farthing are a pair of Mancs with a very experimental edge. One of the things they’ve experimented on is their bank balance, determined to reignite physical releases by selling their EP Arem on folded 50” (complete with giant QR poster and newspaper sleeving). Earthlings can still pick it up as a twelve, or download MP3s, showing the creators have a crumb of remaining business sense and aren’t just on a Brewster’s Millions mission to insolvency.

But once you get into what Stay+ do, perhaps the 50” is the only way to hear it. The ebbing strings and sighs of “Guardian” are genuinely alien, the sighs provided by Daniel O’Sullivan who flips it over into electro-pop. His soulful lyrics glide around the beats while he coaxes insomniacs through the witching hour, where playing a 50” record is the only alternative to vodka or phoning the Samaritans. “When the day breaks / And the night falls / Don’t be afraid / You are not alone,” he groans, the bass approaching like an underground train, Stay+ swinging the focus in and out. It’s a hybrid that really shouldn’t work but it does, like catching Jamie Woon at a rave. Shame there are no mushrooms in that 50”.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Stay+

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On “Goldie” A$AP Rocky achieves a sustained, high-end delirium; if last year’s superlative LiveLoveA$AP mixtape was a hazy origin story, this is in media res: “I said it must be ‘cause a nigga got dough / Extraordinary swag and a mouth full of gold.” “Niggas in Paris” producer Hit-Boy supplies a quick, flighty loop—some kind of fife and drum arrangement—encouraging a more immediate and complex delivery than anything Rocky’s done before. And what is being delivered? Self-actualization; universal swag; effortlessness. His rhymes are as in-the-pocket as Biggie’s, but without the hard-knock sting; “Tell ‘em quit the riff raff bitching with your bitch ass” just sounds cool. There’s no biographical imperative after the mixtape, but to release a “radio” single would undermine A$AP Rocky’s greatest strength: his otherworldly self-confidence. So “Goldie” is a debut single that sounds timeless, divorced from the context that birthed it.

The lengthy chopped-and-screwed hook is brilliant, a gimmick that amplifies Rocky’s wordplay by obscuring it. All the tiny decisions within the verses—Cristal or Aces? Ferrari or a tank?—communicate the excitement of the new rich world Rocky’s inhabiting through the uncanny familiarity—which perhaps sums up his appeal—of self-taught Bloomberg New York cool, of growing up in the hood in an era where luxury goods are more prominent than urban decay. And in the music video, we see him driving around the Eiffel Tower wearing sunglasses like the ones Prince wears on the cover of “When Doves Cry.” He is one of the “Niggas in Paris” Kanye raps about, who radiates belonging and inhabitance without a shred of self-doubt. This is poise not as a path, but as a way of being.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Asap Rocky

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2 May 2012 :: Mavericks, Ottawa, ON

I’ve written at length about both my love of Future Islands (even if I didn’t love their last record) and their insane touring schedule. It needs to be said and re-said: hardest working band in dodge. I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they came to my hometown.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Future Islands

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Clay: It’s always easy to tell MCA on the record. He hangs back in the mix, an affable scratchiness to his voice; without him, it’s all the leering caterwaul of the other two, flying unhinged into the stratosphere. But MCA hung back, sorta preparing: an absolute calm amidst all the ruckus. When all three shout to punctuate a line, which they do a lot on records, he’s the bass-note that makes it work, the low end theory in practice. Onstage, Mike D and Ad-rock are up front, hyping the crowd, but MCA hangs back—hung back, I guess, not shirking eye contact with the crowd but approaching the entire effort with a bit more concentration. He’d do the dance moves, but only because everyone needed to for it to look cool. Then he’d go hang back. It was cool. It was important, given that there were three of them. Now there aren’t—there are two Beastie Boys, but that’s not enough. There had to be three. But there will still be the records, and you will still be able to pick out Adam Yauch on them, every bit as clear and cool as a morning in May.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Beastie Boys, Mca, Rip

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Unlike other guitar bands fronted by brothers, the Shutes have a secret weapon: Michael and Dave Champion can both sing high, convincing home listeners they’re a couple doing accompaniments. They’ve already fooled fans on the Isle of Wight scene and are now going overseas with the formula, taking their Echo of Love EP to the Eurozone. Hopefully it should make up for the continental tobacco that smugglers on the Isle keep getting confiscated.

The EP’s big hook, “Bright Blue Berlin Sky,” shows off the Champions’ voices to full effect, and rightly got them flashing on the NME’s radar. Sighing along to some starry folk, brother Mike pines for his absent Fraulein; a European vision who men would cross time zones for. “When she moves she’s like a rolling sea / She’s got more love than she will ever need,” he warbles, a hint of jealousy in his feminine voice. It vanishes once harmonizing brother Dave steps in, helping him cook up one of the most bittersweet choruses of the year: “And I don’t ever want to see you surrender / And I never want to say goodbye / Because the last thing I remember / Is a tear falling from your eye / As you flew into the Berlin sky / Into the bright blue Berlin sky.” It’s got to be the most immediate inter-continental love songs going, and is just primed for the airport scene in 2013’s big rom-com—or a Zweiohrküken sequel, now that Til Schweiger’s gone international.

⊙ Keyword Tags: Shutes

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