Here’s my true confession, offered with more shame than usual: much of hip hop resides in my musical blind spot, or deaf spot, I suppose. I tried and tried when I was in college radio, as a slew of formative acts in the genre released seminal albums. Time and again, I was left cold, maybe admiring the material intellectually, but never holding it to my rebellious heart the way I did punk or even, in the words on Kathleen Hanna, “the whole, like, big-white-baby-with-an-ego-problem thing” form of alternative rock that took hold at about the same time. Back in those … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: and the Anonymous Nobody

It happens every now and again. A pure pop performer, completely unabashed in their rejection of arty, anguished pretenses, flares up with a handful of songs that makes the cool, snobbish music aficionados decide the artist is briefly acceptable to embrace. Sometimes there’s a hint of irony to it, a genial protestation that insists a rule-proving exception is afoot. Kelly Clarkson had her dance on that particular floor several years back, when “Since U Been Gone” took up residence between Death Cab for Cutie and Decemberists on all the proudly scruffy mix CDs. These days, Carly Rae Jepsen is the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Emotion Side B

Let’s face it: punk isn’t known for its subtlety. So why not call the new album from the Julie Ruin, the band fronted by Kathleen Hanna, Hit Reset? The scorching performer has consistently taken charge of her own iconography ever since the days she and her band Bikini Kill punched back at grungy rock boy self-importance in the early nineteen-nineties, defining the fleeting but forceful riot grrrl movement in the process. Following an extended layoff from performing, necessitated by a humbling bout with Lyme disease, Hanna returned to the stage just last year. Officially the second full-length album from the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Hit Reset

Puberty 2 opens with “Happy.” Against delicate, intricate music, Mitski sings, eerie and ethereal. Initially, the lyrics seem settled in the mundane: “Happy came to visit me, he bought cookies on the way/ I poured him tea and he told me it’ll all be okay.” If it’s the contrast between the spooky and the plain that initially grabs the attention, the track insinuates itself further with its lurking abstractions, led by the anthropomorphizing of a highly coveted emotion. The music introduces itself as fairly standard aching indie rock. Then it drills to a deeper level. The fourth full-length from Mitski Miyawaki, … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Puberty 2