Songs of the Week 02/02/2024

Another batch of songs from November because I’m so blocked up from that hiatus. I really have to stop consuming music so quickly so I can keep you guys up to date on my cutting edge, ever-evolving, state-of-the-art taste.

LEAVING THE LIGHT | Genesis Owusu So you’re telling me this guy isn’t from Death Grips? I’m not making a joke here, that was genuinely my assumption after hearing Genesis Owusu’s “Leaving the Light” for the first time—that they’d made Life Grips a real thing—and I didn’t question it for weeks afterwards. In my defense, it’s not unthinkable for an abrasive, irreverent metal band to have a peppy, positive side project—Zeal & Ardor vocalist Manuel Gagneux writes just as many bangers under the indie-pop pseudonym Birdmask, and that’s hardly the strangest transformation in the metal world, so why not? Of course, you don’t have to be tied to Death Grips to be good—actually, Westworld and others would argue you’re automatically worse by association—and Genesis Owusu doesn’t disappoint on his own terms. Having fingers in hip hop, funk, and punk pies, it’s no surprise that “Leaving the Light” has elements of all three, which is why Owusu’s hybrid album Struggler has been lumped into “alternative rap” (my genre brain is kicking and screaming and crying and peeing). With a beat that’s just melodic enough to ride the line between electronic and rap, it’s certainly a song that’s made for club bouncing, but to me, it’s a bit more adaptable. Owusu’s bellowed vocals add variety to this song’s emotional landscape—I can’t pin it as either fun-angry or fun-happy, though fun is definitely the common denominator. It’s these vocals, though, that had me confusing Owusu with Death Grips’s MC Ride—both have low, loud, and groaning voices, too low to be whiny, but I could just be sensing Owusu’s, um, Australian-ness. Either way, Genesis Owusu comes close to itching a scratch somewhere between Death Grips and TV on the Radio, so I’m curious to see what else he has in store.

Pairs Well With: “Momentary Bliss” (Gorillaz feat. slowthai and Slaves), “Repetition” (TV on the Radio), “I’ve Seen Footage” (Death Grips)

HARD LIFE | Pip Millett And if you sensed a bit of nomenclature nonsense brewing with “Leaving the Light’s” genre, you might just have detected today’s theme—Pip Millett, why you gotta let me down like this?!

Before I go too hard on her awesome song “Hard Life” (or… is it hers?), let’s get one thing straight: not only am I big on supporting artists’ right to sample, I’m big on sampling itself as a valid art, period. If I wasn’t clear last time we reviewed Beck, De La Soul, or the Beastie Boys, sampling can be even more than just a good collage—it can unify eras, highlight unlikely connections, give a greater meaning to disparate parts, or, if nothing else, make the sampler look like a real smart aleck. I’ll freely admit where my own bias starts to creep in—I prefer it when samples are totally repurposed within the context of a song, and even more if they’re made nearly unrecognizable in combination with other samples—but sampling a hooky segment for a beat is just as valid, so long as something has changed.

That’s the disappointment I found in Pip Millett’s hard life, a song my girlfriend brought all the way back from ye olde Londontowne—its moody, hazy, and soulful sound is sampled straight from The Webs’s “It’s So Hard to Break a Habit,” sped up just slightly to keep pace with Millett’s rapping. I don’t say this to discount Millett’s lyrics or rapping themselves—both have everything “It’s So Hard to Break a Habit” does in spades, and maybe I just love Manchester accents, but her pronunciation adds an extra edge to her already bitter words. Still, if the original sample’s tone, theme, and key are all intact… that doesn’t smell like a sample to me, but a cover instead. This, essentially, is my issue: nothing about Millett, just nomenclature and credit. So, as the final arbiter of all things name and categorization-related, let’s get the story straight from my objective perspective:

• A Cover is when an artist performs another artist’s song, ideally with their own personal twist. This might mean doing something as simple as parroting the original entirely (and doing a good job of it sometimes, too—see Harry Styles’s version of Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”), but most covers take on the style of the covering artist (see Ministry’s industrial metal cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”). This can mean only adjusting the performance (as above), incorporating other songs from the same artist (see JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound’s funk cover of Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” featuring a verse from “Theologians” as the bridge), adapting the lyrics to a different vernacular (see the J Davis Trio’s AAVE cover [Reviewed 12/30/2023] of Kate Bush’s cockney victorian “There Goes a Tenner” [Reviewed 07/29/2022]), or even changing the lyrics to say something entirely new (see Dinosaur Jr.’s down-to-Earth cover of David Bowie’s cosmic “Quicksand,” which opens with the riff from “Andy Warhol,” a song that Metallica supposedly stole for “Master of Puppets...” I’m getting ahead of myself). That doesn’t even cover remixes, by the way. What have I gotten myself into? You’re thinking “he can always stop,” but let me be perfectly clear: I cannot.

• A Sample is a sound spliced from an outside source to add depth to an artist’s own song. This can be as simple as ambient audio (the shattering glass in Kate Bush’s “Babooshka” [Reviewed 10/14/2022]), but anecdotally appears most often as music or vocals recorded by someone besides the artist. Being fragmentary, samples can be used much more diversely than covers as intros and outros (Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” starting with Malcom X’s “A Message to the Grassroots” speech and ending with FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”), background ambience (Nine Inch Nails’s “Help Me I am in Hell” shaking from TIE fighters’ bombardment of The Milenium Falcon’s asteroid shelter in The Empire Strikes Back), an artificial call and response (“is your name Michael Diamond?” “Nah, my name’s Clarence”), artificial percussion from repeating a non-percussion soundbite (The Ramones’s counting in the opening of “Commando” continues through all of They Might Be Giants’s “See the Constellation”) or a bridge that changes the key (De La Soul’s “Eye Patch” switches gears with “Deep Gully” by the Outlaw Blues band). Most samples, however, are used as a backing beat for a rap (Cypress Hill’s “When the Shit Goes Down” uses the same “Deep Gully” hook for the entirety of the song, although sped up, much like “Hard Life”). This is where things get tricky. In this snob’s objective opinion, while samples can augment a song, they should not be the entirety of said song—in Millett’s case, or that of De La Soul’s “The Magic Number,” I think it’s fair to call something so musically, lyrically, and thematically similar to the original sample a cover instead.

…but…(t)…

…my nitpickery is strictly categorical, and when copyright law is involved, things aren’t quite so simple. It can be tricky to categorize these things legally, which has lead to a lot of talented folks’s music getting stolen due to poor separation of these things. Ultimately, I think there’s no easy financial answer to this question—like all things, it’s a spectrum—but if it were up to me, I’d say pay homage all you’d like, just don’t copy the folks who inspire you. As for Pip Millett’s “Hard Life” itself, I think it’s too good of a groove not to listen to no matter what label you slap on it—I hope I didn’t go too hard on such a cool and moody song just because I’m neurotic about categories.

Pairs Well With: “It’s So Hard to Break a Habit” (The Webs), “Best for Last” (Adele), “Like A Feather” (Nikka Costa)

TOXIC | Jeff Russo (feat. Lisa Hannigan) covering Britney Spears Now that Fargo Season 5 has tragically concluded, I can finally say why I felt so comfortable coming out of the “Toxic” [Reviewed 12/08/2023] closet—I’m not the only arty snob that likes it!! Who sees what it could be!! Thanks to the consistently visionary Noah Hawley, this song has been brought into the spooky, goosebumps glory it was always meant for, and you guys are gonna have to stage an intervention before I overdose on it.

“Toxic” is a cover done right, and in order to pull it off, Hawley gathered a crack team of musicians who were guaranteed to deliver. Arranging this song’s chilling instrumentation is Fargo composer and Hawley’s frequent collaborator Jeff Russo, whose cover résumé boasts two entire albums of psychedelic covers with Hawley’s vocals for their show Legion, as well as a fantastic cover of “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby” for Fargo’s second season (referencing, of course, the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?—the same Coen brothers that did the original Fargo movie. There are layers). Clearly, Russo is equipped for the job, but for the perfect vocals, Hawley enlisted another occasional collaborator that has never disappointed: folk singer Lisa Hannigan, who provided her voice for a cover of David Bowie’s “Oh! You Pretty Things” on Legion, a rendition of “Danny Boy” on Fargo (once again, the second season), and a cover of The Beatles’s “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” for, you guessed it, Lucy in the Sky. All of them are bangers, in case you were wondering.

With these wizards assembled, it’s no wonder that “Toxic” is so fucking incredible, and I know I say “fucking incredible” a lot, but guys, I really mean it. It’s a cover that slips seamlessly into the style and tone of Fargo, like the two were meant to be. It was nothing short of genius to harmonize its iconic, slithery violins with the creaking cello that Russo seems so fond of, bringing the original’s sinister flirtation to the forefront. While I was surprised how close Hannigan’s vocal range comes to Spears’s, she brings a chilly rasp to this version that’s so much more hair-raising, though I’m sure the tweaked, high harmonies on “too high, can’t come down” are also part of the creep factor. All of this slowed down to a stalking tempo and accented by steady strides of acoustic guitar makes for an incredibly eerie piece that makes me smile from ear to ear.

Hawley and his collaborators always raise the bar with their needledrops, turning songs from simple references, cues, or tone-setters into the foundation of full sequences, capturing every emotion of the action so well that they might as well be full-on music videos (and, in some cases, they actually are). While this happens more in the spectacle-oriented Legion than in Fargo, after five seasons, it’s far from unheard of, which leads us to my first mistake and only complaint. Unfortunately, I knew “Toxic” was on Season 5’s soundtrack from episode 2 on, meaning I had six full weeks to dream up just how glorious this needle drop was going to be. No doubt, Dot was going to set the whole Tillman ranch ablaze toting a sawed-off shotgun and her bat with nails, maybe with some Fargo supernatural fuckery involved. When episode 8 finally dropped the bomb in perhaps the strangest way possible—a two-minute, one-take shot of John Hamm holding back alpha-male-eye-sweat while crunching through bleak, North Dakota snow—I couldn’t help but be disappointed. I mean, see for yourself:

To be clear, this one-take is just as awesome as “Toxic,” but I think it’s a really odd pairing, and one that certainly clashed with my idealized “Toxic” scene. While I get how the song’s speaker is sort of describing Roy in this context, I loved the idea of Dot reclaiming her dangerousness as she did her name, and this song’s vengeful, measured advance perfectly matches her character’s journey to burn out her past abusers at the source. To me, though it’s appropriately ominous, this song should have been reserved for a scene with more fire in its veins—to me, though Roy is boiling over with anger here, the soundtrack should’ve been something far colder, like the blustering horns and pulsing synth Russo often uses to signify inhuman villains. I should save the rest of my thoughts for the full season review we’re doing next week, so I’ll leave it at this: my girlfriend asked me if I’d have been disappointed with the “Toxic” scene had I never known the song was going to play, and I think the answer is both yes and no. Certainly, my expectations were insurmountably high, but at the same time, I just don’t think this was the best moment for Toxic to be deployed (although, once again, it was still pretty awesome). Separate from my expectations, this shot is one of my favorites in the entire series, and had my jaw on the floor for a whole other set of reasons, but again, we’ll save that for next week’s Fargo review.

Though this didn’t end up being Dot’s girlboss anthem, Russo and Hannigan’s cover of “Toxic” certainly pairs with all manner of badassery—so much so that I have a flood of honorable mentions outside of my usual three pairings. Some might say this makes “Toxic” formulaic, but I’d disagree—all this means is that I can’t get enough brooding melodrama, and I’m thankful that so many musicians have been able to express it in similar (but distinct) ways. I’ve done my best to pick pairings that are not only the closest soundalikes, but that also reach the sweeping heights of female angst, which I, as a man with objective opinions, understand innately. As for honorable mentions, I couldn’t help myself, so we’ve got whole categories of pairings this week: if you’re looking for something in the same key (and occasionally, tempo) that rocks just as hard, check out “Shake Dog Shake” (The Cure), “Cat People” (Giorgio Moroder & David Bowie), “The Red Brick” (Jeff Tweedy), and both “I Am Taking Out My Eurotrash (I Still Get Rocks Off)” [Reviewed 09/01/2023] and “Loved Despite of Great Faults” from Blonde Redhead. If it’s more the angst you’re looking for, there’s plenty in “Ptolemaea” (Ethel Cain) [Reviewed 12/01/2022], “I Shall Rise” (Karen O), “Angel” (Massive Attack), “I’ve Seen That Face Before” (Grace Jones), and of course, Belly’s cover of “Trust in Me” from Disney’s The Jungle Book—bonus points for being a cover, also. You guys, I’m no bootlicker, but if this was a brand, I’d be their biggest loyalist.

Pairs Well With: “Bachelorette” (Björk), “Criminal” (Fiona Apple) [Reviewed 03/03/2023], “The Abyss” (Chelsea Wolfe)

TUNNEL LIGHTS | Chelsea Wolfe Hey, and speaking of dark girlbosses, we’re now four singles into Chelsea Wolfe’s new album She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She—releasing this month!!!—and though that’s a dangerous amount of singles before the whole album is spoiled, I couldn’t be more excited. Originally, her most recent single “Everything Turns to Blue” was slated for this week, since it’s super hooky and sounds surprisingly similar to Ty Segall’s “Harmonizing,” but upon listening to all four songs again, I realized that my least favorite of the bunch, “Tunnel Lights,” had suddenly lurched towards first place. I was initially distant from it for the same reason that I now really like it: unlike most of Wolfe’s deliberately dark and spooky work, “Tunnel Lights” is inscrutable and ambiguous. With a straightforward melody and a standard time signature, it’s not exactly what I’d call avant-garde, but the looped piano chord that scaffolds this song sounds more like a computer pulse than a note meant to convey any one emotion. Even when Wolfe has worked with this chord before—“Erde” from her past album comes to mind—her dissonant harmonies, whispers, and skittering build turned that inhuman quality identifiably creepy. For all my weird taste, I can’t say “Tunnel Lights” hooked me the same way on my first listen, but I’m glad that curious chord brought me back to this experimental piece.

Despite its effective simplicity, I can’t say I’ve heard anything quite like it—my Dad said it was channeling Björk, but on some reflection, I think it reminds me more of Radiohead’s similarly stilted “Everything in its Right Place,” and the comparisons I’ve seen to Portishead seem pretty spot on as well. Like “Everything in its Right Place,” perhaps I connected “Tunnel Lights” and computers because it imitates the motions of conventional songs, but with sounds I have no emotional association with. In a way, I suppose that’s more alien than robotic, but the patterns, pulsing, and overall flatness aren’t organic enough for a label like that.

That’s not to say there’s nothing human in “Tunnel Lights,” especially when backup harmonies kick in at 1:27—in a way, I think this song sounds so distant because it’s discussing an enlightenment too far from most listeners’ minds to process as more than a distant flicker—a tunnel light. Certainly, most of us have heard the sentiment of lyrics like “if you deny death, you deny life / let it suffer, let it shine / what must be severed, left behind? / what is there yet to find?” and “I’m sanctified in my lover’s eyes,” but it’s one thing to recognize this wisdom and another thing entirely to embody it. Like the deceptively scary “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” [Reviewed 11/10/2024], “Tunnel Lights” seems to be a healing song despite its prickly exterior. As of now, I can’t perceive whatever plane Chelsea’s reached, but I’ll gladly follow her there. “Tunnel Lights” proves her musical versatility more than any of the previous singles, which is why I can’t wait to see what She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She might still have in store.

Pairs Well With: “Erde” (Chelsea Wolfe) “Everything In Its Right Place” (Radiohead), “Mysterons” (Portishead),

I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT I WANT | Robyn Hitchcock I think I might just be too lame for Robyn Hitchcock. After seeing him tear down the house solo at Swallow Hill last week (at seventy, no less), I’ve come away with a few key lessons for future Hitchcock listeners. First off, the dude is an incredible guitarist (though I can’t imagine the nails are worth it), but it doesn’t show in most of his recordings. Maybe virtuosic acrobatics aren’t his style, or maybe simpler compositions are his style, but whatever the case, to an untrained ear, most of his work is too subdued to move me musically. Counterintuitively, seeing his stage presence actually taught me my second lesson—once he had my attention, I realized Robyn Hitchcock is a wildly talented lyricist. Like we discussed with “The Shuffle Man” [Reviewed 08/25/2023], when I’m hooked enough for a second listen, his rock-leaning songs give away what a verbose and witty weirdo is at the wheel, for better or for worse. Post-show, I’ve been appreciating every snide line of “I Want To Tell You About What I Want,” which seems to be an indictment of capitalistic entertainment, but, you know, in a fun way. Dwelling on this suicidal state of things is a pretty bleak prospect, but Hitchcock’s sarcasm makes it almost peppy, though his words are exactly as misanthropic as you’d expect. This is one of those songs where every line is a gem—a snappy comeback I’d only think of in the shower days after an argument has passed—so I’ll just list some of my favorites:

• The song begins with “We dive for pearls in the drain / And hold dying competitions / Who can squirt blood furthest / Into the mouths of our cannibal overlords,” which is an accurate summation of America’s current culture war, but put maybe the whackiest possible way.

• The dismissive delivery of “You think I'm ungenerous? Oh really? / In what way?” never fails to make me crack a smile.

• When Hitchcock talks solutions, he doesn’t drop the humor, putting it like this: “I want world peace / Gentle socialismo, no machismo / And the only god should be the god of LOVE / I want a non-invasive kind of telepathy / That lets you feel what it's / Like to be somebody else.” Not only is this the correct way to do political comedy—putting the punchline before the point, so it stays a joke and not a soapbox—but it’s also such a beautiful image. “A non-invasive kind of telepathy” is so neurotic but the idea is just so interesting, right? Isn’t that brilliant?

• And bringing it home with the surrealismo with the last verse, perhaps the most imagistic of the bunch while pulling off onomatopoeia: “We're replacing ourselves with / Artificial thought (boop boop b'doo) / And that could be our legacy / Before the feline dynasty / Scampers over history / Skiddly bop skiddly bop skiddly bop.” It sounds as good as you’re imagining it. I love cats almost as much as Hitchcock does—especially when those cats are tied up in cosmic time and space—but even for those who don’t, this sweeping image of the strays overtaking deserted cities when the last of us keels over is enough to astrally project. Again, though, Hitchcock just keeps cutting even while we’re having fun, bringing it home with the line “And the machines count up to heaven / 24/7 / but 8 billion zeroes/ Is still zero if you've got no heart.” That last line—“if you’ve got no heart”—is once again an A+ delivery, dropping the sing-song for a flat, spat punctuation. Great stuff.

It’s sad to think I wouldn’t have noticed these lyrics if “I Want to Tell You What I Want” didn’t rock as hard as it did, with plunging guitar that punches every line further in listeners’ faces. I often struggle with realizing what I’m missing when the music doesn’t hit me, because I’m insecure about my intelligence and all that (you know the drill). On one hand, I often wonder if some songs should be left as poetry, and the musicians behind them chose music as their medium only because their words are more likely to be heard. On the other hand, though, that’s not a very empathetic perspective—much as I like for my emotions or opinions to be the “right” ones (otherwise, how can I even justify disliking something that’s inarguably good to someone else?), I’m glad Hitchcock and others are expressing their souls exactly how they feel is right. Short of non-invasive telepathy, I’m not sure I’ll catch everyone’s awesome words hidden behind subdued music, but for what it’s worth, I’m glad I’ve given Robyn Hitchcock more listens.

Pairs Well With: “Horse Pills” (The Dandy Warhols), “Superman” (R.E.M. covering The Clique) “When the Levee Breaks” (Kristin Hersh covering Memphis Minnie & Kansas Joe McCoy)

HELLBOY IN HELL #1 (YEAR OF MONSTERS VARIANT COVER) | Mike Mignola Reading DC’s latest convoluted, rushed, and (in some places) pretty awfully written crossover event, Beast World, has me missing the great comics that have spoiled the rest for me. Though Sandman and Swamp Thing have been my most frequent stops this year, I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed Hellboy until I stumbled across this cover art. Though I sometimes worry how much they’ve spread HB’s story thin in recent years, Mignola’s main run on the original series is an essential part of my comic pantheon. Like so many other classics, I blew through all of Hellboy well past my bedtime in middle school, and even if the late nights didn’t curb my brain development, they certainly curbed my retention of most of the story—particularly the brilliance of Hellboy in Hell, where this piece hails from. Our next media review will be about Fargo’s fifth season, but after that, all bets are off—it might be time to revisit Hellboy with just as little care for my sleep schedule.