Five Quality Tracks

Five Quality Tracks: March 2016

It’s an indie rock/pop kind of month! Except for Kendrick.

1. Car Seat Headrest: “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales”

Car Seat Headrest is my current obsession. The band’s mastermind, Will Toledo, has been making home-recorded music since 2010, but after almost 6 years, he’s finally getting some much-deserved attention. Last year’s Teens of Style was #17 on my Best Albums of 2015 list, but after listening to it a lot over the past month or so, I regret placing it so low. In retrospect, it was one of the 5 best albums of last year. Despite the record’s lo-fi, muddled production, Toledo’s songwriting ability and knack for melody still shone through (especially on “Times to Die”).

In May, Car Seat Headrest will release Teens of Denial, the follow-up to Teens of Style, and I can’t freaking wait. With recognition comes access to a real recording studio, and Toledo is taking full advantage on his new singles. He first released the 8-minute epic “Vincent”, but then topped it with “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales.” It’s a sobering song that compares drunk drivers to, you guessed it, killer whales, but it doesn’t do so in any kind of preachy way. Toledo makes his faults and rationalizations abundantly clear, but advocates the song’s subject to listen to the voice in your head: “But you know he loves you, and he doesn’t mean to cause you pain. Please listen to him, it’s not too late. Turn off the engine, get out of the car, and start to walk.” The music itself is powerful — it’s pretty by-the-book indie rock, but so well-executed, paced perfectly, and with an excellent melody. Toledo’s voice is like a cross between Julian Casablancas of the Strokes and Ray Davies of the Kinks. With some people, you can instantly tell whether they have that certain songwriting “spark” — the spark that takes what could be “good” songs to “great, stay-in-your-head” type songs. Toledo has that spark.

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Five Quality Tracks: February 2016

1. Miguel: “waves (Tame Impala Remix)”

I don’t get outright obsessed with songs very often. That may seem hard to believe, but it’s true. Even when I truly love a song to my core, it’s rare that I feel the need to endlessly play it on repeat. This Tame Impala remix of Miguel’s “waves” is a glowing exception. Miguel and Tame Impala are not only two of my favorite current artists, but they both had big breakout years in 2015. They both pushed toward each other’s worlds with their latest albums, past the boundaries of their respective “genres.” Miguel is known as an R&B/pop singer but I wouldn’t argue if you called last year’s Wildheart a rock album, while Tame Impala, the “rock band,” experimented with pop and funk on Currents. We can see evidence of this convergence between Tame Impala’s sound and the current pop landscape in Rihanna’s latest album ANTI. She straight-up took the production of Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” note-for-note and sang over it herself to create “Same Ol’ Mistakes”, and somehow it sounds completely at home! No one would have thought that was possible five years ago. The pop star behind “Don’t Stop the Music” sang over a track from the guys who made “Lucidity”? I don’t know man, but it works.

So, it turns out Tame Impala is actually a natural fit for a Miguel remix. The original version of “waves” is amazing in and of itself, easily one of my 5 favorite Miguel tracks. Kevin Parker, the wizard behind Tame Impala, punches it up a notch with a little more “oomph.” The opening harmonies, which sound like they were ripped from a sun-soaked Beach Boys cut, give way to classic Tame Impala woozy, gauzy psych rock. This seamless Miguel-Tame Impala combination hits my sweet spot dead on. I have a feeling this is going to be a constant presence in 2016 summer playlists.

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Five Quality Tracks: January 2016 + Bonus: Five Great Bowie Moments

These “Five Quality Tracks” posts stress me out. I want to pick 15 tracks, not 5. January was a really good month, and I’m passing over a lot of good songs from Hinds, Wet, Eleanor Friedberger, and even the guy who you see everyday in the header photo of this very website, Ty Segall! I can’t believe I didn’t include them. That must mean these next five songs are really good. Also, keep scrolling after the tracks for a bonus section with some of my favorite David Bowie moments.

1. Chairlift: “Moth to the Flame”

The indie pop duo Chairlift have been around for a few years, but they’ve always been somewhat of a footnote to me. They had a song in 2012 called “I Belong in Your Arms” that I really liked, but I hadn’t really heard anything else by them. They just released their new album Moth and it’s chock-full of jams. I was *THIS* close to selecting another track, the slightly emo but deeply affecting and equally awesome “Crying in Public” as my Chairlift representative. But I couldn’t ignore the sugary, danceable beat to “Moth to the Flame.” This is catchy, reach-for-the-stars, indie pop at its finest.

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Five Quality Tracks: November 2015

This was a feature that I used to do for the Daily Californian’s Arts & Entertainment blog. I decided to give it life again here. At the end of each month, I’ll post a feature highlighting five quality tracks released during that month.

This isn’t going to exactly be a ringing endorsement, but I have to be honest. First of all, this is the home stretch for the semester and I have a bunch of assignments due, so I can’t go as in-depth as I would usually like. Secondly, I’ve been hard at work on my “Best Songs of 2015” post, so be excited. The songs below are no less amazing though.

1. Missy Elliott feat. Pharrell Williams: “WTF (Where They From)”

WOW, this song is catchy. But it’s Missy Elliott and Pharrell — of course it’s catchy. Missy Elliott, who hasn’t released new music in a decade, reintroduces herself to the world with a bang. A gigantic, modern, infectious bang.

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Five Quality Tracks: October 2015

This was a feature that I used to do for the Daily Californian’s Arts & Entertainment blog. I decided to give it life again here. At the end of each month, I’ll post a feature highlighting five quality tracks released during that month.

October will probably remembered as the month that Adele said “Hello”. I thought about including it as one of my five tracks, but the idea of this post is to introduce people to songs that they maybe haven’t heard, or to songs that they can maybe appreciate in a new way. Everyone on the planet knows about “Hello,” so here are five additional songs that ruled my Spotify this month.

1. Grimes: “Flesh Without Blood”

Grimes finally announced her much-anticipated follow-up album to 2012’s Visions (which contained one of the best songs of the decade so far) — Art Angels, which comes out this Friday. Over the last year or so, Grimes has generated a lot of questions about what direction she would take on the new album, the primary question being: how ‘pop’ will it be? Last year, she released the extremely polarizing, intended-for-Rihanna track “Go”, which saw Grimes embracing full-on, drop-heavy, banger pop like never before. Would the new album go further in this direction, or was “Go” just a one-off? The questions only grew when reports came out that she scrapped an entire album because she believed it “sucked”. And it didn’t make her intentions any clearer when she denounced her own songs publicly, saying she hates “Oblivion” (which is ridiculous) and doesn’t like “REALiTi” a demo she posted on YouTube in March that I consider to be one of the best songs this year. If she hates her best songs, then what does she think is good?

ANYWAY, I’m just glad that all the speculation will be put to rest very soon. “Flesh Without Blood” is, without a doubt, another embrace of pop. On first listen, I was slightly disappointed — I thought it wasn’t as imaginative as her best work on Visions. It certainly was catchy, but it seemed a little too basic, too obvious, too simple. It just felt like all she did was provide a slight update to the guitar riff from “Since U Been Gone” — which, don’t get me wrong, is a pop masterpiece, but it’s not weird. The ultimate credit to Grimes — in both her music and her personality — is her innate weirdness. Where was the weirdness?

I was dead wrong though. Nuances and intricacies revealed themselves on repeated listens, and I realized that “Flesh Without Blood” isn’t basic at all. It’s teeming with unexpected sound effects sprinkled throughout, it skillfully adds and takes away elements at just the right time, and the various intersecting melodies are perfect. The lyrics are well-constructed and vivid: “Your voice, it had the perfect flow / It got lost when you gave it up though” and “I don’t see the light I saw in you before.” And did I mention it was catchy? This is a blast-in-the-car type of song. Art Angels looks to be very, very interesting.

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Five Quality Tracks: September 2015

This was a feature that I used to do for the Daily Californian’s Arts & Entertainment blog. I decided to give it life again here. At the end of each month, I’ll post a feature highlighting five quality tracks released during that month.

1. Deerhunter: “Breaker”

Bradford Cox is the face of Deerhunter, known for his stream-of-conscious style of writing and erratic genius, but the band’s secret weapon is Lockett Pundt, guitarist and occasional songwriter. Pundt released a solo album under the moniker Lotus Plaza in 2012 that was very important to me during three months that I spent in Chile. It was a time when, being in a new place, my vulnerabilities were more raw, and thus, the music I was listening to was especially potent and life-affirming. The highlight from that album was “Remember Our Days”, which featured beautiful guitar interplay and a simple but welcoming melody singing “If I don’t see you again, I’m glad that you were my friend, I’ll remember our days.”

Rarely does Pundt emerge from the background on Deerhunter songs, but he shares vocal duties with Cox on “Breaker,” one of two excellent singles released from their forthcoming album Fading Frontier. They harmonize gracefully on the verses, before Pundt takes over on the chorus — and let me just say that the chorus is straight-up amazing. It bursts open with a melody so good (and simple) that I can hear Paul McCartney singing it (which, by the way, is basically the highest compliment you can pay to a melody). “Breaking the waves, I can not, no, I tried, I can’t seem to stem the tide.”

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Five Quality Tracks: August 2015

This was a feature that I used to do for the Daily Californian’s Arts & Entertainment blog. I decided to give it life again here. At the end of each month, I’ll post a feature highlighting five quality tracks released during that month.

1. Beirut: “Gibraltar”

It’s been far too long since Zach Condon of Beirut graced us with The Rip Tide four years ago — I’ve been missing his pleasing style of sparkling indie pop. “Gibraltar” furthers the more minimal blueprint of The Rip Tide, largely foregoing the “world music” that Beirut became known for originally. There are no horns or strings to be found here, but there’s still plenty to keep us interested. The piano is bright and the melody sweet, but the percussion is what makes the song, with its combination of bongos, shakers, and well-placed handclaps. It’s a light, airy, and delightful song.

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