Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Crushing On

Music Monday: “Can’t Get Enough of Myself” – Santigold, featuring B.C

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santigold-99cI love Santigold’s album 99¢, out earlier this year. It’s easily accessible and mercilessly catchy.

Does it sacrifice some of Santigold’s idiosyncrasies to get there? I’m not sure. Santigold is among a number of late-00s Electropop artists that I never entirely absorbed upon their first hit of fame. I don’t know where she’s coming from and I don’t have a raft of expectations to battle against on each new LP.

Maybe that’s s why I don’t know quite know how to talk about “Can’t Get Enough of Myself.”

Its easy, loping stroll topped with a constant bustle of triplets and a whistling high synth flute melody. The sound calls back to Stevie Wonder and post-Motown/pre-Disco 70s soul (even with modern touches, like a slight digital detuning on the flute riff).

(My mother loves an obscure (though frequently-sampled) 1976 LP by the band Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band that occupies that some space in my mind, particularly “Sunshower.” I remember when it was finally released in CD she was rapturous.

Oh, the 90s.)

Is it typical of Santigold? Are these her typical influences? I don’t know, and when a song is this good I’m happy to delay my research while I listen to it on repeat for a few more hours.

Aside from the inherently sunny charm of the throwback sound, there’s the unabashed happiness of the track. It’s infectiously cheerful, both melodically and in lyrics. Here’s the opening verse and chorus:

If I wasn’t me, I can be sure I’d wanna be
I’m pretty major and I’ll say it out loud
Living my life in a fantasy
Living my life in my vanity
Hey mom maybe you’ll see me now

…

All I wanna do is what I do well
Ain’t a gambler but honey I’d put money on myself
All I wanna do is bottle it to sell
Cuz my brand does vainglorious much better for your health

That’s a refreshing take on modern “drunk on my own fumes” braggadocio without lessening the intensity of self-love. It simply removes the component of superiority from self-love. When Santigold sings, “look at them liking me,” there’s no indication that just because she’s the the best she’s any better than anyone else.

In fact, maybe everyone should be exactly this vainglorious in their own heads as they walk down the street. They certainly might feel that way if they had this song pumped into their ears.

Music Monday: “All The Rage” – Allie X

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You may recall that I was a huge fan of Violet Chachki’s aethsetic on last year’s seventh season of Drag Race, so whenever she tweets about a fashion or art influence I’m generally all ears. When I clicked through this tweet, I was expecting to learn a little about Helmut Newton, not get absolutely slayed by an amazing pop song.

Quite suddenly, I was introduced to the pop genius of Allie X on her new single, “All The Rage.”

“All The Rage” is slightly squalling and I might not have made it through the full length had it just streamed without a visual. That would have have been a mistake. Luckily, this weirdly transfixing low-budget video held my attention long enough to hear just how many hooks are tucked away in the electronic cacophony of synthesizers.

I bought it approximately 15 seconds after the video ended.

There are so many jagged little bits of lyrics and melody. It starts with a wickedly catchy repeated refrain that jumps an octave on the word “up” while descending just a second on “down / out.” I didn’t automatically catch the intervals on first listen, but the machine-gun delivery paired with the up/down device is an immediate earworm. I was singing it back before the song was over – always a good sign.

allie-x-violet-chachki-all-the-rage-stillThen, the pre-chorus uses a clever and very Gaga-esque trope of starting mid-word, then repeating the word and rhyming it. You have to be careful not overuse these sort of tricky dropped sound devices, but here’s it just enough.

-jected, I was rejected
I wasn’t good enough to be elected
Lava, it was like lava
Moving through my body like fire
-jected, I was rejected
I wasn’t good enough to be elected

Then, the core is pure shout-along pop in the mold of Icona Pop. The underlying sound never rely changes, but each section of the song is transformed by the vocal. Coming out of the chorus, the top of the second verse is in the highest, purest tone Allie X summons the entire time. The contrast is great.

It’s pretty rare for me to get blind-sided by an artist who already has an album out – her debut, CollXtion I – so I cannot believe this will be from her sophomore effort – especially when Idolator intros this song by saying, “Allie X has quietly put together one of the most consistent bodies of work of any new pop artist over the last couple years.”

Sign me up!

Crushing On: “Ain’t I” – Lizzo

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In a major shock, Sleater-Kinney reassembled in 2014 and released a new album in January 2015.

This is not a post about Sleater-Kinney. It could not exist without them, though.

Being a massive, massive Sleater-Kinney fan and working with another one, I decided we absolutely must see their show despite it being sold out. I procured a pair of tickets, and David and I found our way to my favorite spot in just about any venue – the back left corner of the soundboard.

(Totally by coincidence, both my friend Jenn from high school and CK hall-of-famer Aim were standing within ten feet of us. People with good taste in music always stand behind the soundboard.)

I had never heard of the opening act, Lizzo, and hadn’t bothered to look into her much further past divining she was some form of rap artist. I thought: Good for SK for bringing something different on tour with them, I thought.

My body was not ready. Nothing about me was ready. Lizzo’s set was one of those soul-devouring sets you get lucky to see from time to time, where you don’t know one note of a performer’s music and it doesn’t matter a damn bit because they come out on stage and swallow the audience whole.

I have never danced so hard at a concert. I have never heard anyone so effortless swing from an emcee flow and dance moves to ridiculously amazing vocals. Like, diva-level vocals. I could not believe they were even happening, on top of recorded tracks, a DJ slash emcee, and an incredible live drummer.

As soon as Lizzo left the stage and the lights came up, I SPRINTED into the lobby to buy a copy of her CD. It was in rotation in the car for a little while and it featured a ton of the songs from her set, but they mostly just didn’t PUNCH like she did live. They had the same beats and samples, but not the same raucous energy. They had the same explosive vocals, but without the visual of Lizzo cutting back and forth from rapping to belting.

I’d straight-up pay $100 just to see another Lizzo set, so when she released another album – for free! – in December 2015 I was all over it. “Ain’t I” is the first track from Big Grrrl Small World.

This feels a lot more like her set to me than the material on her first LP. It’s a little less festooned with stuff – the entire first verse is only drums and a fuzzy two note bass, but it’s still head-noddingly catchy. If this comes on while I’m driving I reflexively reach over to crank the volume. [Read more…] about Crushing On: “Ain’t I” – Lizzo

Music Monday: “Springsteen” – Eric Church

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I don’t hate Country music.

I don’t think that I ever did. In fact, I had not consciously formed much of an opinion of it at all given my scant signposts of Patsy Cline, Garth Brooks, and Shania Twain.

However, a thing I’ve learned about being an adult is that sometimes the unconscious – both your own and the collective – decides something on your behalf, and that determination lingers in your mind in the place of an actual decision until you realize you’ve started making other decisions based on it.

Case and point: Country music. I don’t hate it. Yet, from absorbing a “my truck” here and a “my woman” there from songs playing in the background of life, I was passively assuming I hated country music. People at Smash Fantastic shows would request country songs from time to time and I would selectively ignore them. When Ashley gently suggested that it was finally time for us to learn a few country songs for the band, my reflexive response was, “UGH, NOT COUNTRY MUSIC.”

Despite that, I love to please a crowd, so I looked up a few of the artists that had been shouted in our direction. One was Eric Church. I fired up iTunes and YouTube to see what his most popular song was and they came back with a resounding answer of “Springsteen,” from Church’s third album, Chief.

Fast forward six months and “Springsteen” is AKA my favorite cover song to sing and my toddler’s bedtime song and generally just a fucking masterclass in songwriting.

(Advance to :24 to get to the beginning of the song.)

To get to that realization I had to stop hearing the twang in Church’s voice, because it was activating that unconscious bias of “UGH, NOT COUNTRY MUSIC.” Honestly, it’s a tiresome affectation on any singer, especially when it’s obscuring wonderful pop songs or gatekeeping them from the wider consciousness. You just have to hear past it to get to the performance and the lyrics. Singing it yourself aids in that, if you are able.

Somewhere between that setting sun, “I’m On Fire” and “Born to Run”
You looked at me and I was done. We were just getting started.

Beneath the twang and beyond the minimal band arrangement is the wonderful device of singing about how to find a person who doesn’t exist anymore. Not his long lost high school lover – she’s still walking around in the same town, skirting the edges of his life.

No, the person that no longer exists is his long lost high school self, and the only way to find him for a moment is to hear Bruce’s ragged baritone. [Read more…] about Music Monday: “Springsteen” – Eric Church

Music Monday: “Chasing Time” – Azaelia Banks

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azealia-banks-chasing-timeStop whatever you are doing and fall in love Azaelia Banks.

(I was supposed to be loving her in person in a few days during her first big national tour along with K. Michelle, but it was cancelled and now I am bereft, so the next best thing is sharing my love with the rest of you.)

If you’ve heard of Ms. Banks, I can 98 and 3/4 percent guarantee that it’s for one of two reasons. First, it could be for her international smash debut single “212.” (Yeah, it was awesome.) Second, it could be her ongoing social media feuds that critics use to paint her as the crazy foil to more media darling rappers like Nikki Minaj or Iggy Azalea.

My bold proposal is that Banks’s music ability and virtuosic genius far outstrips any perception of her being a loudmouth on social media, and that in fact her loudmouthedness is really just the combination of her relative youth and intellect manifesting as rage at all the injustices small and large in the world around us. And, not for nothing, but we accept young loudmouthed men and white people all the time and merrily consume their music, but as a woman of color we’re expected to dissect every single thing she says.

Consider that.

Azaelia Banks does not need me to say these things. I don’t even want to talk about them. I am saying them for you, because if Bank’s media image as a Crazy Girl or Big Bad Wofl are getting the way of you listening to her music you are losing out. I fucking love just about every piece of music Azaelia Banks releases.

Case and point: “Chasing Time” from my favorite album of 2014, her debut, Broke With Expensive Taste.

This song. This fucking song. I’m not even sure where to begin.

Let’s start with her voice. The song starts with a husky contralto rap, then shifts up to that nasally standard female R&B voice, then through to the chorus it gets bigger and clearer until we we’re getting fully, throaty stacks of harmony unlike anything today’s crop of rap crossover stars are delivering. You can hear the influences in there, but you can also hear how Banks’ voice doesn’t fit simply into a box. There’s no straight-line to a single prior act.

(Spoiler alert: this is not a fluke. That amazing dynamic range is all over her album.)

Next, the music. Despite being born a few weeks after “Vogue” hit the charts in 1991, Banks has a sound that’s deeply rooted in the 90s house music of the period that Madonna summed up in her major hit. Yet, it’s not the only noise she knows how to make – “212” is a much more straight-forward beats-driven rap song. In fact, Banks even issued an EP titled 1991 that was bathed in this sound. Here its represented by sustain passing synth chords and rapidly changing clanging chords, but also a weirdly alien burbling drum track.

(Spoiler alert: this is a star whose brain is wired for ingenious arrangments. I’ve seen interviews where she describes singing all of the parts of an arrangement to her producers, a la Michael Jackson.)

Finally, the lyrics. While the chorus has a hook-and-repeat vibe, the track on the whole is a lot deeper than that. Here’s how it begins.

I want somebody who can take it apart, stitch me back together make me into who I wanna be.
But all you ever do is sit in the dark. Dealing with the Devil, you ain’t never ever gonna be mine.

Cause I’m born to dance in the moonlight
I feel like spending my nights alone
I try to give you a little more space to grow
White lies, I don’t wanna be around anymore
I’m through giving, I’ve got to go….

Am I chasing time? Cause I wasted all mine on you.
Am I chasing time? Cause I wasted all mine on you.

Check my watch, I had the future in my pocket, but I lost it when I gave it to you.
If tomorrow drops, I had my time right in my locket, but I lost it when I gave it to you.

These are all reasons I am in love with Azaelia Banks, and with “Chasing Time” in specific. She is a rare pop auteur putting the pieces together in new and interesting ways, made all the more interesting by the fact she is an outstanding rapper. Good rappers who are good singers are few and far between, and ones with ideas this interesting (and, frankly, images so seldom about sexual provocation) are far fewer.

I want you to give her a listen, and don’t take her advice from the final lines of this song.

And you’re like, “Girl, how you do that?”
My attitude is bitchy but you already knew that…
And since we can’t get along
I think we should both move on