I Like These New Songs (Pt. 1)

I had a music slump earlier in the year and didn’t feel like writing, so I’m going to catch up on all the stuff I’ve been listening to with a couple quick posts.

The Weather Station – “Robber”

One of my lifelong hobbies is making fun of folk music, since I find almost all of it boring and it’s hard not to poke at the reverence its’s often held in by the snobbier types of listeners. The Weather Station’s Ignorance is the folkiest album I’ve liked in a long time because of songs like “Robber”: this is musically interesting, with creative rhythms, a dense saxophone-heavy arrangement, and lyrics that are thought-provoking instead of the usual woe-is-me stuff that often passes for depth because it’s sad (which equals good, as we all know). Tamara Lindeman’s vocals are the finishing touch — I think they channel Sarah McLachlan, adding to my ongoing thesis that she is a quietly influential figure in acclaimed indie music right now.

Cassandra Jenkins – “Hard Drive”

Along with “Robber,” Cassandra Jenkins’ “Hard Drive” is part of why 2021 is the year of women in their late 30s making saxophone-heavy folk. This song is kind of the oddball on her album, An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, as it goes with a primarily spoken-word delivery that plays over the saxophone and a repeating piano part, eventually growing into a stirring crescendo over the course of five minutes. The understated vocals allow the lyrics to shine; there is maximum wordplay from the phrase “hard drive” that refers both to the mind and her experiences of literally having a hard time driving (relatable).

Lia Ices – “Earthy”

Lia Ices’ Family Album rounds out this trio of folky albums I’ve been into, and I might actually like it the most of them all even though it slid under the radar with a zero hype January release. After a move to California, Ices went for the classic Laurel Canyon sound, adding a slight tinge of psychedelia (the perfect amount, really) to her piano-heavy arrangements in part thanks to production from the late JR White of Girls. The lyrics are often about her experiences as a new mother, as the title suggests, which is part of what gives this album a sense of warmth and optimism that is refreshing in this field. Given how successful Weyes Blood was with a similar sound a couple years ago, I’m a little disappointed that this album hasn’t reached more listeners.

Chelsea Wolfe – “Diana”

I haven’t been a participant in society’s superhero obsession and largely consider the DC and Marvel movies to be mindless military propaganda that is used to make hordes of viewers obedient slaves of the U.S. government, the Walt Disney Corporation, and Warner Brothers. At risk of sounding like a snob, I believe not enjoying these films makes me superior to others in matters of taste and intellect. That said, Chelsea Wolfe’s “Diana” is inspired by Wonder Woman as part of a DC Comics metal collaboration, and it actually makes the character sound interesting compared to the celebrity cosplay version on screen. I like Wolfe in this more aggressive mode, and she brings her usual tension between light and darkness here, presenting Wonder Woman as a more conflicted and ambiguous personality.

Cold Beat – “See You Again”

I feel like I’ve said all I can about Cold Beat over the years. They’re the best band and “See You Again” is the first single from another new album from them that will surely be great. It’s a slower, shimmering ballad, similar to “In Motion” from Chaos By Invitation, but this time Hannah Lew’s lyrics are the most simple and easily relatable they’ve ever been, a sad but hopeful reflection on drifting away from people that rings particularly true in COVID times.

Spellling Shoots for the Stars on the Dazzling “The Turning Wheel”

Like many indie fans, I often am fascinated by shambolic, minimalistic recordings, which can have an authenticity and relatability that is refreshing compared to the big budget slickness of more mainstream music. But there is still that part of me that craves big sounds and large-scale ambitions, and some of my favorite albums are when an independent-minded artist goes all out with a bunch of crazy ideas. The Turning Wheel, the new album by Spellling (Chrystia Cabral), is one of the finest examples of this in recent years: following up her excellent 2019 album Mazy Fly, she successfully crowdfunded over 20,000 dollars on Kickstarter and used it to pay a massive crew of musicians to bring her concept to life. These resources, along with her natural development as a songwriter, have allowed her to bring her music to dazzling new heights.

Spelllling earns the obvious Kate Bush comparisons here due to the complex studio arrangements, fantastical lyrics, and the way she bends and twists her voice into different registers, at times seeming to represent different characters in the music. Sometimes these comparisons are unfair and burdensome, but I’d argue nobody has come this close to capturing what makes Kate Bush so fun to listen to: the feeling of being totally in the grip of an eccentric artist and transported to her weirdo fantasy world. Spellling does not sound like anyone else, and beyond the specifics of the sound or lyrics, what makes The Turning Wheel so addictive is its spirit, its desire to show the listener something new and take them somewhere far away.

It’s probably worth noting that there are ways to be ambitious without using entire orchestras and making hour-long albums, and I’m sure more low-key artists are also often pushing themselves to the limits in their own way. But there is still an epic, shooting-for-the-stars feeling with The Turning Wheel that is exciting and something I’d been missing in indie music lately. The opener and lead single, “Little Deer,” sets the tone with a lengthy piano and strings intro that leads into Spellling’s mystical vocals and lyrics which are later joined by some horns. This song alone has more ideas and complexity going on than most albums, and the rest of The Turning Wheel is similarly constructed to overwhelm the listener at all points.

This is an album for anyone who gets excited when they see 30 different instrumentalists credited on the Bandcamp page, including a clarinetist, a brass quintet, harp, and “shredding electric guitar.” The sheer volume of sounds contributes to every song feeling a bit like a self-contained fairy tale, with Spellling’s voice also contributing to a variety of moods, ranging from haunting spookiness to more upbeat and stirring sounds that almost sound like part of a Disney soundtrack. To attempt to describe everything going on would be fruitless, and also would ruin a lot of the fun with The Turning Wheel. It’s rare to hear an album that is this different and so authentically quirky and surprising at every turn.

Beneath all the flourishes and extravagance lies a moving and presumably semi-autobiographical portrait of an intensely creative individual who sometimes struggles to connect with the outside world. On “Always,” she sings “How can I ever know what love can truly be/I want to live alone inside my fantasies,” and its evident from the surrounding music that this album is a product of that mindset. “Boys at School” goes into the past, portraying a lonely 15-year-old who says “four walls is all I need of friends,” while on “The Future” she is like a possibly time traveling Rapunzel who is “hiding inside my mind in a tower no one would climb.” It’s not hard to piece together that this is an artist who really needs this kind of art to express herself.

These songs and words are the key to what makes The Turning Wheel so effective: rather than just being weird for the sake of it, there is purpose behind everything on this album and it all works together to bring Cabral’s fantasies to life. While these songs are undeniably theatrical — sometimes it straight-up resembles a Broadway musical or one woman show — it also all feels organic and genuine. I think Spellling put a lot of herself into this and it’s her most successful album at grounding her musical experimentation in more tangible feeling. Anyone who still looks for something new in art and values the power of self-expression should seek out The Turning Wheel and celebrate it.

Sleater-Kinney Becomes Just Another Band on “Path of Wellness”

Sleater-Kinney’s last album, The Center Won’t Hold, was an indie rock Hindenburg: in an attempt to “evolve” their sound, the band completely lost sight of their own strengths, making a series of hollowed-out dated pop songs instead of their usual visceral, thrilling guitar rock. While it got inexplicably positive reviews (which made me question the kind of favor-trading that goes into other music websites), the fact that beloved drummer Janet Weiss left the band like she was fleeing a burning building spoke volumes. Their new album, Path of Wellness, represents a different kind of disappointment: while it isn’t a fall-on-your-face embarrassment that elicits grimaces from the first note, it signifies Sleater-Kinney becoming Just Another Band that is going to hang around and churn out listenable but not particularly memorable songs while having little left to say.

This time, there aren’t many complaints to be had about the style or production. Sleater-Kinney almost sound like Sleater-Kinney again, and this album has some catchy songs with vocals and guitar parts from Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker that aren’t too different from the band’s glory days. But lurking underneath the whole album is the sense that something is missing. The obvious answer is Janet’s drumming, but I think it goes deeper than that: the band’s DNA feels different. They’re missing that sense of urgency that used to define them. Sleater-Kinney explored a variety of sounds, so some fans may disagree, but I loved their songs when they felt like life-or-death affairs, full of stridency and a clear sense of purpose. Songs like “Far Away” and “Sympathy” from One Beat had an uncomfortable level of intensity, and I admired the band for making songs that could knock over the listener, not just due to volume but due to the unguarded emotion of the members.

That was when Sleater-Kinney were a band with a chip on their shoulder; now their songs are more mature and refined, trading in that anarchic energy for more subtle, middle of the road arrangements. Which doesn’t sound bad on paper, except that I never really enjoyed Sleater-Kinney for their subtlety or restraint. It makes sense that Brownstein and Tucker wouldn’t have that same energy in their 40s as they did in their 20s, so they’re right not to force it. But it doesn’t change that the end result on Path of Wellness is simply less dynamic and unique compared to the Sleater-Kinney I used to love.

This isn’t a popular view in the industry, but I think women in their 40s are capable of making good music and should be allowed to do it. The issue here is that Sleater-Kinney’s lyrics don’t really offer any special insight into their lives, and similar to The Center Won’t Hold, the uncharacteristically bland music puts a spotlight on the lack of substance in the songs. “Method” is a very catchy pop ditty, but it also is generic for this band’s standards, and Brownstein’s song-about-a-song lyrics (“I’m singing a song about love”) remind me of when I had a creative writing assignment due and in the absence of real ideas tried to write some meta writing-about-writing piece because it was “clever.” The words on “Complex Female Characters” seem like a shot at the band’s mostly non-existent critics, with Brownstein mocking men who love messy fictional characters but can’t handle the real thing. There’s an irony there, though, because nothing in these songs suggests that the members of S-K are particularly complex or interesting people anymore, since all the listener is getting from Brownstein are these sorts of thin-skinned meta-critiques or rote lyrics about love that anyone could write.

Brownstein is the source of most of my annoyance. I think a large part of why S-K feels “off” is that she has taken a more casual approach to the band, viewing it as a fun side project to do to aid her comedy and Hollywood ambitions. A 30-minute video on their YouTube channel that presents the album with a series of mediocre comedy skits featuring all of the best buds she’s made from Portlandia etc. does little to dissuade me from this belief. She can do what she wants, but I miss when this band was serious business and when the songs felt like they needed to exist and didn’t just settle for being listenable.

Tucker delivers the highlights again here, with a characteristically emotional vocal on “High in the Grass” and another strong turn on the closer “Bring Mercy.” Even though those still sound more like Corin Tucker Band songs than Sleater-Kinney, at least there is some heart and spirit in them compared to a lot of the rest of this album, which most people have probably forgotten about already at the time I’m finishing this post two weeks after its release. Whether you loved them or not, Sleater-Kinney were never a band that just faded into the background like this album does, which is what makes it a disappointment even if it’s a step in the right direction after The Center Won’t Hold. I’m holding this band to a higher standard than just being pleasant to listen to in the background while at work.