The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
Your calves age you: each muscle, each sinew, a record of every mile you’ve walked, every minute you’ve milled about, every kilogram of excess weight you’ve carried. Lately I’ve been thinking about how the human body serves as a map of one person’s journey through time and space. I've also been listening to Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg, 2021's best post-punk album.
Angel Olsen – Aisles EP
Listening to Angel Olsen’s Aisles has me thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Something about these slow-burning covers of 80s hits like Safety Dance and Forever Young makes me jostle with the why-are-we-here and why-do-we-do-the-things-we-do variety of questions. Or maybe I was contemplative to begin with and just happen to be listening to Aisles.
Magdalena Bay – Mercurial World
At some point in the history of the now-old internet, the late night drive entered the collective consciousness. Its soundtrack: a long list of waves including chillwave, retrowave, vaporwave and simpsonswave. Why are our daydreams filled with ill-defined late night drives? And why do albums like Magdalena Bay’s Mercurial World remind us of these drives we’ve never had?
파란노을 (Parannoul) – To See the Next Part of the Dream
After decades online, you can tell when you're listening to something that's going to become forum famous. As the intro of White Ceiling floods through my newly-set-up home theatre system, I can imagine years of greentext word-walls and /mu/ shitposts written by kids that look like younger versions of myself talking about that night they discovered Parannoul.
The Weather Station – Ignorance
Much of the album serves as a great example of how exceptional lyrics, when supplemented by able instrumentation, elevate good music to very good or even great music. You can sing about emotions without being mawkish. You can speak about fundamental issues without being pessimistic. You can address wrongs without being angry. After all, what goes around, comes around.
Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
You’re not alone / Like you think you are / We all have scars / I know it’s hard. In the chorus of Hope, song 4 from her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, 20-year-old British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks repeats this simple message of, well, hope. This song, and the forty-minute album of which it is a standout track is like a warm breeze in the middle of a frigid winter.
Bicep – Isles
Combining elements of traditional house, 90s dance music, UK garage and reverby IDM with samples of music from around the world (Including Jab Andhera Hota Hai from the 1973 Bollywood film Raja Rani on Sundial), Isles is something most of Bicep’s previous music wasn’t: dance music for headphones on unkempt scalps and chairs under fat arses.