Tag: 2020

On “Shimmering Basset,” The Green Child Create Mysterious, Evocative Pop

The thin line between subtlety and impenetrability is explored to great effect on The Green Child’s Shimmering Basset. It’s the second album for the duo of Raven Mahon and Mikey Young, who keep a very low profile: no social media, very little promotion, and their music is in a quiet, beguiling psychedelic style that doesn’t necessarily grab attention, but leaves listeners with plenty to think about and few sure answers. All I really know about this album’s background is that Mahon moved to Australia to live with Young, and they recorded Shimmering Basset together in a new home studio, which might be why it feels a little more focused and cohesive than their initial long-distance collaborations. The retro-futuristic sound they explored on their debut, with the 80s synths and 60s guitars, is still on display, but it’s honed into concise pop gems that are simultaneously challenging and pleasant to listen to.

Mahon’s big move drives a lot of these songs thematically, rooting Shimmering Basset in a more domestic form of psychedelia that they also showed on their single earlier this year, “New Dungeon.” While it is hard to understand a lot of her lyrics, the sound tells the story, and every moment on the album is underpinned with a sense of wonder from someone who is in a new place and is noticing all of these little differences around her. Songs like “Low Desk/High Shelf” and “The Installation” give the feeling of someone in a new home, spotting all of the odd quirks of its décor and falling into a daydream while staring at them. The genius of The Green Child’s music is in its ability to turn something like a bland household item into a portal through time.

In the same way Mahon finds wonder in these familiar items, the duo takes sounds everyone has heard before and turns them into something that feels new and remarkably evocative. “Fashion Light” opens the album with a first half that is somewhat traditional synth pop, but it grows into a stirring conclusion featuring a twinkling synth part, Mahon’s saxophone, and the refrain of “I’ll try to know it” — a good proxy for the experience of listening to this album and trying to figure it out. “Tony Bandana” is the band’s version of an up-tempo rock song, with a twangy guitar part that could have been on album by the Byrds and an earwormy chorus. The woozy instrumental second half of “Health Farm” transports the listener with an eerie synth solo, and it’s another case of the band creating as much intrigue as possible out of simple parts.

Shimmering Basset is about the closest a band has come to replicating what made me so obsessed with Trish Keenan and Broadcast. These are unassuming songs with simple, vague lyrics, but when the quirky sounds are combined with Mahon’s voice, they open up a whole world that is fun and addictive to explore. This album is also an antidote to so much music that is performatively sad and depressing. There is a real sense of joy and imagination in these songs, which feel like the product of two people who have chemistry and enjoy making art together while discovering new sounds and ideas. That part is clear to me, even if everything else on Shimmering Basset is a hazy mystery.

Thoughts on Widowspeak’s “Plum” and The Nature of Success

Molly Hamilton of Widowspeak wrote an interesting article for The Talkhouse about her experience as a musician who is currently unemployed and job-hunting while reckoning with what the notion of “success” means for an artist at her level. Widowspeak is in a position a lot of bands I’ve liked for a long time find themselves in: they are successful in the sense that they have an audience, and their music is getting out there to a degree, but they also aren’t gaining massive critical acclaim or hitting huge levels of popularity. Now that the band is 10 years and five albums deep, it’s also hard to see them gaining much more momentum. There’s an endless churn of new artists who are perceived as more exciting than this band, and they’re the ones who will be the target of any kind of hype.

Her article strikes a balance of honestly articulating her plight without it devolving into self-pity. Hamilton doesn’t feel like she’s owed anything, but at the same time, it’s easy to relate to her struggle as someone who puts her heart into this band while not really profiting or getting high praise from the most influential tastemakers. Some of Hamilton’s thoughts, both in this article and on the band’s Twitter account, informed my writing about Taylor Swift’s album — just the frustration I feel that a rich celebrity can pretend to be indie and she gets all the love and excitement from the people who are supposed to be supporting artists like Hamilton, who is instead job-hunting and pondering whether it’s worth continuing to make music. And of course, for every band like Widowspeak that makes it this long and is able to put out a few albums, you can imagine how many talented artists have to quit because it’s just not economically feasible to be in a band.

I relate to this band on a much more micro level: I’ve put a lot of what could be considered “work” into this blog, for basically nothing in return except a feeling of pride I get when I write something I feel is particularly good or when I look back and see how much I’ve improved. I’m past the point where I can cling to some fantasy that this is going to “take off” and I’m ever going to really connect with a real readership. Writing this has meant confronting the awkward reality that no one really cares what I think, and that the kind of music writing I enjoy producing and reading is not a remotely marketable or profitable enterprise (also, that I’m probably not very good at it). So I’ve moved to mostly finding internal validation and doing the best I can, but of course there are times where it’s like “why bother.” Notably, posts like this about a band like Widowspeak are basically the blog equivalent of ratings poison. If it’s not a hot take, or about an artist a ton of people know, it usually ends up disappearing into the echo chamber void. Like Hamilton, I’m not delusional about the broad appeal of writing some mediocre posts about obscure music, but it’s still hard not to be frustrated at the general state of the industry, which is so celebrity-driven and often seems to punish thoughtful, worthwhile work.

I realize this is rather meandering, and anyone who’s made it this far is like “talk about the music, already, no wonder nobody reads this” but all of this is cooked into Widowspeak’s new album, Plum. Like all albums by this band, it’s in a well-defined country/shoegaze zone, with the pleasant reverbed guitar from Robert Earl Thomas and Hamilton’s vocals, which remain honey-sweet and the main appeal of the band. In some respects, Widowspeak are a victim of their own consistency: their sound has never evolved on the surface, and they aren’t outwardly ambitious, which makes their music somewhat unexciting. But the band has quietly made consecutive albums (Expect Their Best was one I loved in 2017) that smartly use that sound to their advantage, with lyrics that can sneak up on listeners who are lulled in by their gorgeous sound.

Hamilton has said she wanted to write more directly on this album, and the songs on Plum are straight-forward, conveying her anxieties about work and life in a way that is relatable because she is putting her feelings out there so honestly. “Breadwinner” (which I already covered when it was released as a single) and “Money” each deal with the notions of success mentioned in her article, and the difficulty of trying to profit in this environment while staying true to yourself. The sharpest song is probably “The Good Ones,” which has a darker sound and is a blunt reflection on privilege and feeling like you should be thankful for what you have, even as you desire more. The chorus, “you’re one of the good ones,” is a familiar reassuring line a lot of people tell themselves, and it shows the self-awareness that runs through this album.

Like I mentioned in the “Breadwinner” post, this album serves as a case study for why there is still a difference between true indie artists and pop celebrities, regardless of what the “music is music” crowd wants to say. Plum is effective in part because Hamilton’s lyrics are real and come from actual experience, and that also makes her singing more moving. I don’t necessarily need to directly relate to everything I listen to, or entertain the possibility that the artists would be friends with me or are similar to me, but there is feeling in this music that can’t be constructed.

Nothing on Plum is too challenging or adventurous (listen to that No Joy album if you want that), but in typical Widowspeak form, it’s music that is satisfying to listen to because it’s such a well-realized version of their cozy little niche. While Hamilton’s lyrics contain a lot of self-doubt, the actual sound of the band is self-assured. After so many years together, Widowspeak at this point know who they are, and while that might not make them super-exciting or popular, they continue to succeed on their own terms.

A Whole Not-So-New Mess

Angel Olsen’s newest release, Whole New Mess, is a science experiment in album form. It serves as the control group to last year’s All Mirrors, which was my album of the year and one I was pretty much obsessed with, to the point that I briefly became an Angel Olsen “stan” and was beginning to prepare for an existence of coordinating harassment campaigns of her online detractors and doxing critics who didn’t breathlessly praise her music to my standards. In the end, I decided that life wasn’t for me, mostly because it just seems like a lot of work. But the point is, I liked the album a lot.

What I loved about All Mirrors was its grand, big stage feeling, which came from its elaborate and showy orchestral arrangements. I felt it accomplished something seemingly contradictory: while heavy production is often used to hide a singer’s lack of talent and ideas, in this specific case it actually elevated Olsen’s singing and material, and it felt like a massive leap forward from her more lo-fi music. This makes it very interesting that Olsen is now releasing this album, which is a stripped-down version of the songs from All Mirrors, allowing listeners to hear it on a smaller scale, separate from that album’s somewhat polarizing stylistic choices.

My initial gut reaction to Whole New Mess was that it seems like a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist — its presentation could be interpreted as being the more honest, soul-baring version of All Mirrors (and some have interpreted it that way), but that album already had those traits, just in a different way than usual. I reject the premise that music with less production and fewer instruments is inherently more genuine or real. After listening to it more, though, I don’t believe that was Olsen’s intention: this is understood better as a companion to the original, one that I’m sure some listeners will prefer, and those who don’t will have their appreciation for All Mirrors deepened even further by these versions. It’s also, if nothing else, a useful tool for debate, and whichever one you like more probably says something interesting about your taste.

Whole New Mess erases any doubt that the strength of All Mirrors was about more than just production tricks. Olsen’s songs with minimal accompaniment still jump out, as does her singing, and the songs feel surprisingly complete. “Lark,” the dazzling, almost structureless opener to last year’s album is presented as “Lark Song” here, and even without the epic strings that sounded like fireworks, it’s an affecting, dramatic song. “We Are All Mirrors” is the reimagined version of the (former) title track, and it’s still a highlight, as it’s Olsen’s lyrics, singing, and writing that made it one of my favorite songs of the last few years. A couple new songs are mixed in: “Whole New Mess” and “Waving, Smiling” are Roy Orbison style minimal ballads that fit more with Olsen’s older work and are hard to imagine fitting on All Mirrors the way it was presented.

Since it’s clear that Olsen’s songwriting holds up regardless of how it’s produced, the question then becomes whether the ambitious sound of All Mirrors improved on these versions. And I’m sticking to my guns on this.  These are great songs in any form, but they deserved to be on the big stage and presented with the splendor and majesty of last year’s album. Listening to Whole New Mess gave me a newfound appreciation for Olsen’s talent, but also made me recognize how much the production choices filled out and enhanced her songs, turning them from the minimal folk-rock heard here into cinematic, immersive showcases. The stripped-down versions lose a lot of the fun of All Mirrors, which was hearing an artist plunge into new musical territory while pushing their talent to epic heights. They also don’t have that fascinating tension between the dense sound and the intimate lyrics and performance. Most of all, what’s missing on Whole New Mess is the feeling of hearing something monumental that couldn’t be easily replicated by anyone else. There are tons of solitary lo-fi folk records, but there is only one All Mirrors, which is what makes it Olsen’s most towering achievement.