Category Archives: Reviews

It would be hard not to notice just how orange the cover artwork for Channel Orange really is. It’s intensely, artificially orange. It’s practically glowing. Looking at it now, I can’t help but be reminded of the Nickelodeon logo. For better or for worse, images like that one from Viacom’s entertainment empire are inextricably linked to my memories of childhood. It’s a pretty frightening realization, but it’s undeniable. The impression made by television’s constant barrage of vivid colors and exaggerated characters on my nascent imagination is something completely immeasurable, and impossible to overestimate. It strikes me then, in listening to Frank Ocean’s latest, that he’s likely a product of the same set of influences that permeated the formative years of so many other twenty-somethings the way they did mine–Nicktoons, late ’90s MTV, a few dozen early internet fads, VHS tapes, Anime, Super NES, even Adult Swim. The fifteen seconds or so of Street Fighter music that kicks off Channel Orange is enough to trigger just about every nostalgia reflex my brain has at its disposal.

As far as imagination goes, Frank Ocean has a pretty boundless supply, and Channel Orange feels like nothing so much as a playground for those far-flung ideas and influences to run wild–a channel-surfing tour through the three or so pounds of gray matter sitting inside his skull. Sonically, it’s just as adventurous, a smattering of technicolor sounds, loosely revolving around a futuristic funk motif. The stories are bursting with all the rich detail and bizarre variety of a Saturday morning cartoon lineup, and the characters who populate this landscape just as colorful: unsupervised rich kids railing lines and joyriding in daddy’s Jag, the black queen Cleopatra who moonlights as a stripper, a lonely basehead reflecting on better days, a stage-diving Dalai Lama, and even a love interest based on good old Forrest Gump. Don’t get me wrong with the cartoon talk though. This is big kid stuff. Often what’s being filtered through that expansive imagination is raw emotion, the kind that bleeds through anything created in the midst of internal crisis. These are the kind of songs that make private emotions feel like they couldn’t possibly be expressed without reference to surreal, sweeping metaphors and sensational drama. It’s the kind of vivid, poignant storytelling that reaches out to you from somewhere internal and can’t help but pull big, disparate chunks of the universe into its orbit.

Download: Frank Ocean – “Pyramids”

There’s something classic, and iconically American about the cover of Twin Shadow’s new record. There stands the project’s mastermind George Lewis Jr., pristine rockabilly pompadour combed beyond perfection, wrapped in a worn leather jacket, the look across his face somewhere between pretty boy smugness and outsider vulnerability. In all its nostalgic simplicity, it almost immediately locates Lewis in a long and romantic mythology of bad boys, stretching back at least as far as James Dean. Lewis’ claim that Confess was inspired by a motorcycle accident, self-admitted fast living and debauchery on the road, even his slick, understated confidence at shows–all the pieces are there. And as personas go, Twin Shadow’s is a well-crafted one. More importantly though, talking about it offers a helpful introduction to a record that lives up to the all the grandeur that posturing conjures up.

Download: Twin Shadow – “Golden Light”

So I know it’s not really in any music journalist’s best interest to gush about another music journalist’s reviews, but Scott over at No Genre did a hell of a job summing up what’s so cool about Grimes excellent new album, Visions. You should probably just read it yourself, but to paraphrase, the review made the case that Visions manages to be transcendent because it’s an album that can be everything to everybody. It’s full of big, satisfying melodies and hooky, bite size pop songs. It’s completely, compulsively listenable in the way you wish Top 40 was.

And yet, those same songs are an exercise in building rich sonic textures, and their sheer pop appeal obscures just how deeply evocative and thoughtfully constructed each song is. An arsenal of analog synths and layers of ethereal melody make Visions a record that keeps unfolding itself with every listen. It feels fresh and revelatory even as it evokes ’80s nostalgia. It’s haunting and eerie even when it feels girly and fluffy, and there’s even a semi-based rap verse to close things out. Suffice to say that Grimes, the alias of Montreal-based singer and songwriter Claire Boucher, is a project that hits home on a lot of levels.

Download: Grimes – “Vowels = Space and Time”