Halloween has come and gone. The autumn foliage giving way to bitter chills and fireside evenings. The perfect time to find some new tunes, and this week’s got some great ones. From a rising star to returning royalty, 2014 appears to be ending in a much better place than it began, so get ready for the concerts to come and plug into this week’s Headphones.
Album: 1989- Taylor Swift
You don’t wanna like it. You really don’t wanna like it, I know. But you best be ready to pop some Swiftamine, because 1989 isn’t just the most consistent record of Swift’s career, its the best album of the year, hands down.
The infectiously catchy “Shake It Off” was just a warning shot before the blonde bard dropped a megaton pop record on the world, chock full of influences like Lorde and Lana Del Rey to craft something so undeniably enjoyable that even the most hardened of hearts will be jamming. Sure, the weakest track is unfortunately the opener, “Welcome to New York” which feels as though it was written by a wide-eyed teen on a school field trip, but its followed up by the best track of the record, and perhaps of Swift’s career, “Blank Space”. A lot has already been said about this very modern-sounding track, and more will likely be written when its made a single, gets an equally enjoyable video and inevitably wins a Grammy (mostly because what the hell else could win anything this dismal, platinum album-less year?), but it should be noted how enjoyable it is to hear Swift come into her own. Yes, she had albums before Fearless, but truly that’s her debut, her big hit, the one that established the idea of “Taylor Swift”, and idea recurred to less acclaim with the follow-up Speak Now, dodged and toyed with in Red and finally observed, accepted and almost lampooned on this track, with its mocking reference to a “long list of ex-lovers” who say she’s “insane”. She’s no longer trying to claim she’s not a serial dater, but rather that she “loves the players” just as her new intended target to fill the blank space on her list loves “the game”.
“Style” comes as close to a rock feel as she’s gotten thus far in her career (though that would be an interesting turn when the pop phase has run out), and while its not exactly single material, it’s a catchy car jam, and it makes a great bridge between “Blank Space” and the I’m-A-Grown-Man-And-Shouldn’t-Be-Half-Dancing-To-This beat of “Out of the Woods”. While a few tracks on the record can be a tad over-produced in a determination to break the mold of “girl with an acoustic guitar” (like the following track, “All You Had To Do Was Stay” which suffers from a painful, uncharacteristically falsetto chorus), “Out of the Woods” is masterfully mastered with a gargantuan sound that perfectly fits the composition. “Shake It Off” is a track we’ve tackled before, and its the most single-ready track on the record, catchy, simple and sing-along-able in a way few tracks on the record can match, and “I Wish You Would” is enjoyable enough (though you can already imagine the stripped down acoustic version buried beneath all the production, awaiting an MTV Unpluggedspecial), but it’s “Bad Blood” that stands out as an example of “new” Taylor.
Sure, “Bad Blood” isn’t the first angry Taylor song, but its the first to be embedded with something beyond impotent rage. Rather than lamenting some boy with a box of Kleenex and regret, “Bad Blood” is clearly directed at a former friend with a fierce bitterness, a sense of betrayal wrapped up in a “f--k you” so clear you’d swear the words were lyrics within the sponge itself. Lyrically, no, it isn’t “Positively 4th Street”, but that’s the closest song one could compare it to, so clenched fist/clenched teeth fury burns beneath the electric beat. “Wildest Dreams” feels like a lost Lana Del Rey track, filtered through Taylor’s optimistic Springsteen-esque vision of love as an escape, a runaway daydream in a fast car with the roof down to be treasured and buried within the abyss of memories long past. This sentiment is repeated and reversed in the narrative, pseudo-instructive “How You Get The Girl”, a track which feels the most in line with “old” Taylor Swift, the only track that could remotely feel like it fits on a bygone album, like a lost track from Red. “This Love” begins with a more acoustic tone, teasing us of how things were (and reminding us where all these heavily produced pop tracks were conceived by the “little girl with the guitar” we loved back in the Fearlessera) and keeps its mellow tone even with the electronic backbeat.
“I Know Places”, the penultimate song on the album, has a weird vibe to it. It’s near feral in its wooden imagery, with breathy vocal, orgasmic choral wails and a pulsing beat that gives the song a passionate, animalistic and admittedly almost sexual tone, a maturity that has never been present in any of Swift’s tracks before, even on this record, as though this track (with its inclusion of the uncharacteristic swear “all the damned time” ) was Taylor fully maturing past the juvenile country starlet to the woman she intends to be, a towering pop icon, and closes out the album with “Clean”, stripping it back down and highlighting her lyrical imagery “You’re still all over me like a wine stained dress I can’t wear anymore” as though to prove she’s inching ever closer to the compositional comparison proposed by Brad Nelson of The Atlantic back during the dawn of the Red-era, Leonard Cohen.
No, nothing on 1989 reaches the heights of Songs of Love and Hate or I’m Your Man, but then she wasn’t trying for that at all. She was trying to break free of her prior image while still staying true to who she is (or her public persona, as she seems to smart and crafty to truly expose all of herself to the world), and there she succeeded. She was trying to craft an exquisitely catchy pop album, and there she succeeded to an impressive degree. It’s all the more remarkable that her lyrical flair and personally poetic imagery managed to shine through even on an album so intent on avoiding the introspective. 1989 is a must hear, must own album that closes out a dismal year on a remarkably high note.
Single: Sure, normally we at Headphones like to highlight a track that’s out on iTunes, one you can track down, pop on your iPod and blast in the car. This week, however, scoring that sweet tune will be a bit harder, but we couldn’t not highlight this insanely killer cut from an otherwise dismal SNL. His majesty, the once and future Prince took the stage to deliver a searing, astounding 8 minute medley in lieu of two singles, and he and his backing group tore it up for every second of it. Click play and bask in the master, baby.
Music Videos:
Electronic: “Dare You 2 Move ft. Problem”- Destructo
This 8-bit video game sounding track is accompanied by a bizarre video that riffs on rap cliches, driving montages and even the cult-classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Hip-Hop: “My Own Parade”- Mayday! x Murs
Its hard to define a video that seems at the same time minimalist (or at least cheaply achieved) yet in line with the absurd artistry of Odd Future’s typical visual output. Either way, well worth a watch.
Pop: “Beyaz Sevda”- Kendi
It’s weird, oddly Priscilla Queen of the Desert-esque with an element of Jodorowsky and a hint of “Perfect Drug”. It’s in another language. Yet “Beyaz Sevda” is strangely engaging, as though through watching the actions of the darkly dressed women you might begin to understand what the woman in pink so passionately sings about, like trying to unravel the mystery of the spanish “Crying” singer in Mulholland Drive.
R&B: “Life”- Efya
Efya uses her newest, aptly titled video “Life” to explore her own, utilizing dramatized sequences, concert footage and home movies to chart her trajectory from unknown to engaging R&B performer.
A fun little lampoon of old B-horror flicks, the grit of the indie band is perfectly accompanied by the grainy footage and the Troma-esque fascination with smoke and slime. Indeed, the video could well be a Nuke’Em High sequel all its own.
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