Bitches, boasting, Benzes, bullets: one of the biggest quandaries facing white, hipster hip-hop fans is rappers’ propensity to talk about themselves, their guns, their money, and their cars, all whilst talking shit about other rappers, talking shit about women, and just plain shit talking. It can be tiring for this humble, white listener, who considers himself something of a feminist. But I think I, and, by extension, my white hipster brethren, give Jay-Z a pass because of the “authenticity” thing.

The major challenge facing the collaboration that makes up Watch the Throne is that I extend no such courtesy to Kanye West.

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Buried deep in the back of the opening track of Bon Iver’s recent self-titled album is the click of drumsticks. In front is a guitar line that, by itself, is haunting and beautiful enough. But buried deep behind the beautiful things on the surface are the things like those clicking drumsticks, the things that creep up slowly, the things that fill in the space around the more obvious (more easy) beauty.

Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago was a careful study in intimacy and the smallness of the sonic space there, but that kind of intimacy is an easy sell. This record is all about what happens to that intimacy when the walls are pushed back to let in… well, everything.

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Two types of thoughts bump into each other when you listen to tUnE-yArDs’ newest record, w h o k i l l: the first are thoughts of pleasantness, of interesting sounds and melodies, of talented musicians and elegant, confident vocals. But the second set of thoughts are thoughts of violence, of someone exerting their powere against you, making you FEEL what they WANT you to feel. The miracle of this record, though, is that these thoughts actually work together to create something altogether new and unexpected.

It’s the most fun and sophisticated beat-down you’ll ever experience. (more…)

It’s interesting that the name of San Francisco band Blisses B’s newest album is Thirty Days, Sixty Years. The band’s sound certainly is refreshing and immediate, something that feels like it could be only 30 days old. But the hybrid genre in which the band is working pulls from all sorts of sonic traditions from the past 60 years. And in light of the juxtapositions that the band seems to relish, what could be a mess is actually a surprising and exhilarating pop album.

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I don’t think I have much that is of substance to say about Swedish band Dungen’s new album, called Skit i Allt. And maybe that makes sense; it’s not really a strikingly substantial record. But despite that insubstantiality, it still managed to make an impact on me, leaving its weird stylistic pastiche rattling around my head for a few days. It’s an impressive record if for no other reason than its sheer unexpectedness. (more…)

Kanye West: love him or hate him, you have to at least acknowledge that he’s pretty much always trying to do something interesting. He’s consistently defying expectations; sometimes he does this by making genre-bending (or genre-defining) music, but other times he does this by being a self-involved jerk. And both aspects of Kanye West seem to inform his work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. (more…)

When you’re Avey Tare, a founding member of cultural landmark Animal Collective, releasing solo material is a tricky prospect. For instance, I feel a little bad that any thinking I do about Avey Tare’s album will inevitably be in the context of what Animal Collective does with music, partially because they sound similar at times, but partially because they, to varying degrees of success, are trying to accomplish similar things. So how well does Tare succeed?

The best answer is probably that he succeeds “adequately.”

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