According to Lea, ‘partner’ is “a song about moving through a memory… an involuntary memory that steals up on you the night after a rager (which takes place the morning after the song ‘damn’).”
Ada Lea’s new album, which will follow her 2019 debut what we say in private, is due for release on September 24 via Saddle Creek.
It’s an hour after midnight on June 11, 2021, the vaccine side-effects are just starting to kick in, and Lorde has emerged from her four-year hiatus with a new single called ‘Solar Power’. Considering my predicament, it’s no wonder I was among the many people who found it hard to connect with its relaxed, beachy vibe on first listen, but it was obvious the song was a grower, and its cultish video suggested her long-awaited third album might have an interesting conceptual bent. But beneath the discourse lay the simple truth that the singer known for evoking the unbearable angst of growing up now seemed perfectly happy, a fact that fuelled a small but vocal minority with a certain kind of envy by the time of the album’s release. When you’re busy scrolling through social media to keep up with all the takes, how could you not feel a pang of resentment at the person who’s managed to cut out all that noise to connect with the beauty of our fragile natural world?
But Lorde isn’t here to offer spiritual transcendence. In fact, she actively rejects that role. Belying Solar Power’s pleasant, sunny disposition is her usual introspection and self-awareness; she kicks off the album by introducing herself as a “teen millionaire having nightmares from the camera flash” who refuses to bear the weight of responsibility imposed on her. “Now, if you’re looking for a savior/ Well, that’s not me/ You need someone to take your pain for you?/ Well, that’s not me,” she sings, before embracing a vague but communal sense of direction: “Let’s hope the sun will show us the path.” Lorde’s writing on the record is vivid and compelling, particularly when she charts her own journey to success, as in ‘California’, which opens with Carole King presenting her with the Song of the Year award at the 2014 Grammys and ends with her returning to her native New Zealand to get away from the spotlight.
Solar Power finds Lorde reuniting with her Melodrama collaborator Jack Antonoff, who also co-produced Clairo’s recently released sophomore LP. But the proximity of the two albums – as well as Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever – is most interesting for the ways in which they grapple with fame, retreating into a mellower, more laidback sound that communicates both casual detachment and a fondness for another era. Here, those reference points are a little bit harder to pinpoint: the record is as inspired by ‘60s and ‘70s pop acts like the Mamas and the Papas and the Bee Gees as what she calls the “turn-of-the-century beachside optimism” of All Saints, S Club 7, Natalie Imbruglia, and Nelly Furtado, but they manifest as more of a vibe than a distinct, homogenous aesthetic. Its latter half, less breezy and darker than the first, makes for an interesting contrast, but Lorde fails to effectively accentuate that dynamic. Instead, she remains committed to a certain looseness that comes at the cost of strong hooks and resonant melodies.
There are glimpses of that euphoric rush. When Lorde summons that familiar drum machine on ‘Fallen Fruit’, the whole thing pulses back to life. “Come on and let the bliss begin,” she chants on the title track, echoing the “boom boom boom” that she broadcast on her previous album. ‘Solar Power’ turns out to be the kind of song that demands repeated listens, a highlight in an otherwise underwhelming album. Instead of channeling the movement and urgency of Body Talk-era Robyn, she invites her for a spoken word outro on ‘Secrets From A Girl (Who’s Seen It All)’, a song in which she addresses her younger self that ends with the lines: “When you’re ready, I’ll be outside/ And we can go look at the sunrise/ By euphoria mixed with existential vertigo? Cool…” You’re left wishing the album went to that place instead of alluding to it in an awkward interlude.
Though the lyrics can occasionally lack depth and specificity, the most persistent issue with Solar Power is that its languorous production does little to elevate them. ‘The Man With the Axe’, which Lorde originally wrote as a poem, contains images both evocative and radiant: “With my fistful of tunes that it’s painful to play/ Fingernail worlds like favourite seashells/ They fill up my nights and then they float away,” she sings, but the music is too listless to be immersive. ‘Stoned at the Nail Salon’ opens with one of her most striking lines – “Got a wishbone drying on the windowsill in my kitchen/ Just in case I wake up and realize I’ve chosen wrong” – but even as it touches on lofty subjects like the cyclical nature of time, the track as a whole feels static and weightless. Though it sometimes falls short, however, the instrumentation also allows Lorde to lean into both the vulnerability and lightness of her voice, which shines on the chorus of ‘California’ or the heartfelt ‘Big Star’, a tribute to her late dog, Pearl. The way she harmonizes with a background choir that includes Clairo and Phoebe Bridgers throughout adds not just texture but a sense of unspoken intimacy to the music, too.
Lorde doesn’t have to replicate the emotional transcendence of an album as larger-than-life as Melodrama, but the path she carves out on Solar Power remains blurry and uncertain. It feels willingly out of touch and out of time, but Lorde seems so comfortable keeping a distant aura of mystique that she fails to fully express the immensity of both the joys and anxieties that burble beneath the surface. The problem is that it often doesn’t go far enough: its quiet composure rarely scans as tranquillity, yet there’s not even a hint of messiness to suggest a greater depth of feeling. It’s no surprise that, when she emulates a kind of detached persona on ‘Mood Ring’, satire becomes its own emotional shield. “You’re all gonna watch me disappear into the sun,” Lorde sang on ‘Liability’, a line as poignant as it is confrontational. Here, she seems content to simply bask in its warm glow.
Nirvana‘s surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic and the estate of Kurt Cobain have been sued by Spencer Elden, who appeared as a baby on the cover of 1991’s Nevermind. As TMZ reports, Elden has sued the above parties, as well as photographer Kirk Weddle and the labels involved in the album’s release, alleging that the artwork is childhood pornography.
The lawsuit, filed August 24, claims that Elden has sustained “injuries” and “lifelong damages” as a result of the artwork, including “extreme and permanent emotional distress” as well as “interference with his normal development and educational progress” and “medical and psychological treatment,” according to legal documents uploaded by Pitchfork. He also alleges that the band promised to cover his genitals with a sticker, though the album was ultimately released without one. Elder is asking for damages of at least $150,000 from each party named in the lawsuit, attorney fees, and a trial by jury.
Elden has recreated the image at various points in his life and had “Nevermind” tattooed on his chest. However, in a 2016 interview with GQ Australia, he revealed his perspective on the artwork had shifted around the time of his most recent photo reenactment. “It’s fucked up. I’m pissed off about it, to be honest,” he said. “Recently I’ve been thinking, ‘What if I wasn’t OK with my freaking penis being shown to everybody?’ I didn’t really have a choice.”
Charlie Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones since 1963, has died at the age of 80. His publicist confirmed his death in a statement, writing: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts. He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family. Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation. We kindly request that the privacy of his family, band members and close friends is respected at this difficult time.” A cause of death was not provided.
Charles Robert Watts was born in London in June 1941 and grew up in the Wembley neighborhood. He started drumming in his early teenage years after developing an interest in jazz music and befriending Dave Green, with whom he played in the jazz band Middlesex while attending Harrow Art School. “I bought a banjo, and I didn’t like the dots on the neck,” Watts said. “So I took the neck off, and at the same time I heard a drummer called Chico Hamilton, who played with Gerry Mulligan, and I wanted to play like that, with brushes. I didn’t have a snare drum, so I put the banjo head on a stand.”
After playing in various local bands, Watts joined Alexis Korner’s group Blues Incorporated in 1961 while working as a graphic designer. The Rolling Stones lacked a regular drummer after forming in the early 1960s, and before originally turning down an invitation to join them to keep his secure day job, Watts eventually became a permanent member. Watts both helped define the band’s sound and was capable of adapting to its evolution, and his work with the Stones earned him three Grammy Awards. In 1989, he and the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Over his seven-decade career, Watts continued to pursue his passion for graphic design and jazz through a variety of projects, including the 32-piece Charlie Watts Orchestra and the Charlie Watts Quintet. In June 2004, Watts was diagnosed with throat cancer, but recovered after two surgeries. Watts continued to tour and record with the band for another decade and a half, playing his last official Stones concert in August 30, 2019 in Miami.
Watts’ passing has been mourned by figures across the music world, including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Brian Wilson, Radiohead’s Philip Selway, Janet Weiss, Patti Smith, Liz Phair, Sheila E., Jason Isbell, Ringo Starr, Joan Jett, and more. Read a selection of tributes and revisit some of Watts’ most memorable performances below.
A very sad day. Charlie Watts was the ultimate drummer. The most stylish of men, and such brilliant company. My deepest condolences to Shirley, Seraphina and Charlotte. And of course, The Rolling Stones.
I’m just shocked to hear about Charlie Watts. I don’t know what to say, I feel terrible for Charlie’s family. Charlie was a great drummer and I loved the Stones music, they made great records. Love & Mercy. pic.twitter.com/C4q2zXvVKo
Charlie Watts was the most elegant and dignified drummer in rock and roll. He played exactly what was needed – no more – no less. He is one of a kind. pic.twitter.com/aasPZ2fMYX
RIP Charlie Watts 🌘😞💙 master of elegant simplicity. (Thx @bradwood3 for the CW tutorials and lineage in my songs.) By thy grooves, we knew ye 💔 https://t.co/5iaZ2oSm8T
Interior design trends come and go, yet a small stable of elements always stand the test of time. Vogue Australia highlights concepts as simple as using wood, through to deploying the statement armchair, as style icons that will always look good. Any home is capable of achieving these goals; by judicious use of statement pieces around the home, you can create a real sense of timeless beauty. This starts in the bedroom and the bathroom, where evoking scent can bring an aura to the home.
Classic perfumes
Perfumes are there to powerfully evoke an era. Yves Saint Laurent Opium was the luxury of the 70s; Dior Poison a spice-bomb of the 80s. However, timeless perfumes like Chanel No.5 have changed the world, according to the New York Times, and they can change your house to boot. The use of vintage perfume bottles in your bathroom or bedroom can give a certain sense of luxury and classic taste to the home. It harks back to an era where perfumes were powerful focal points, a way to announce yourself to a group or party, and to leave a lasting memory.
Historical combinations
What you keep in your kitchen is a reflection of your personality, too, but it can display a timeless quality. Architectural Digest notes how the blue-and-white porcelain that adorns countless kitchens is rooted in 14th-century Chinese design, and there’s a reason it has always looked good. Whether exuberant homes or quiet social boltholes, blue-and-white China can provide a gorgeous quality. Equal forms of China, routed in 17th century Dutch distribution networks, will do the trick, too. Put them on display for full effect.
Simple upholstery
Perhaps the most simple trick of all, but one that works magnificently, is upholstery. This provides warmth and livability to your home as well as a classic display of luxury – after all, not every home had upholstered furniture, and relied on rattan, wicker or wooden chairs. Even a cheap sofa, kept in good maintenance, will provide a focal point to your home and a timeless quality that will keep the home looking stylish.
The vintage look is a timeless one, and achieving that in the home is not difficult. It just requires a little planning and a commitment to the style. The most timeless style tricks are the most simple, and that’s good news for the modern home planner.
In 2015, Perry Blackshear took the festival circuit by storm with his multiple award-winning debut feature They Look Like People, a slow-burning, lo-fi exercise in psychological horror propelled by an astonishing central performance from MacLeod Andrews. While Blackshear’s follow-up The Siren (2019) was not quite so well-received, When I Consume You marks a welcome return to form – a grubby and disquieting metropolitan nightmare in which two siblings are relentlessly pursued by someone (or something) determined to make their lives a misery. Our Culture reviews the film here as part of its selection from the 2021 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Daphne Shaw (Libby Ewing) is a nurse who is hoping to adopt a child, though her history of addiction is proving something of a stumbling block. Her brother Wilson (Evan Dumouchel) is a janitor looking to find work as a teacher, but his resume leaves a great deal to be desired. Struggling emotionally and financially, both siblings are living in sparse and cramped New York City apartments while trying to advance in life and let go of their traumatic past. Daphne is particularly troubled; she has long been menaced by a shadowy figure who seems to find her wherever she goes, leaving her bruised and beaten in the streets until their paths cross again. As the enigmatic stalker closes in on Daphne and resolves to make Wilson its next victim, the siblings try to find a way to rid themselves of it for good.
The great triumph ofThey Look Like Peopleis its central metaphor. The tale of a single man who sincerely believes that everyone around him is slowly being replaced by otherworldly doppelgängers, it has a great deal to say about the paranoia bred by urban alienation; its pervading theme is that we can be surrounded by people and still feel utterly, dreadfully alone. In many ways, When I Consume You uses its monster to serve a similar allegorical function. Even in a city home to nearly nine million people, Daphne and Wilson have no one but each other – and even if they have a chance of defeating the malevolent entity that blights their lives, they will have to do so without external help.
The acute isolation of the film’s central characters is captured perfectly in its cinematography (by Blackshear himself, who also serves as writer, director, editor and producer). The New York of When I Consume Youis a dark and desolate concrete labyrinth, an endless maze of empty sidewalks lit only by the fiery orange glare of streetlights. It’s a terrifyingly vacant and entirely unromantic vision of the city that would make William Lustig proud. The film’s internal scenes are closely shot to create a palpable sense of claustrophobia, as if the walls are forever closing in on Daphne and Wilson. The combined result is an unbearably hopeless atmosphere – one that is greatly aided by Mitch Bain’s dissonant, foreboding score.
Perry Blackshear’s desolate New York City
But this is not just a story about the essential loneliness of the urban existence; it is also one about the struggle to survive in a capitalist society. It is implied that Daphne and Wilson have always been disadvantaged, lacking in education and financial resources. Much of the first act is dedicated to establishing their hopes and dreams (to start a family, to find a good job, to live a happy and stable life) before grinding them into dust. Every attempt to move forward, to “succeed,” is met with seemingly insurmountable resistance. With this in mind, the film’s monster – a creature determined to literally and figuratively beat its victims into submission until they finally give up hope – is the perfect metaphor for the systemic forces that ensure those at the bottom of the ladder stay there and suffer.
And that suffering is perfectly captured in the film’s two central performances. Dumouchel (making his third appearance in a Blackshear film) gives a heart-wrenching turn as Wilson, a grown man with the sensibility of a little boy lost in a world that wants to eat him alive. Meanwhile, Ewing imbues the downtrodden Daphne with a fierce and quiet defiance as she tries to keep her brother safe. The ever-excellent MacLeod Andrews – who starred in both of Blackshear’s previous pictures – takes a much reduced role here, and the less said about that role the better. Suffice it to say, though, that he steals every scene he appears in after making his entrance.
Leaving behind the rural setting of The Siren, When I Consume You ultimately feels very much like a thematic sequel to They Look Like People: an unnerving, cerebral horror film about what it means to feel alone amongst the urban masses. But, importantly, it does not simply repeat those themes – it deftly extends them. Daphne and Wilson feel alienated from society because society has failed them; they are two of life’s “losers,” but only because the game is rigged. Their battle against Daphne’s “stalker,” then, represents a steadfast refusal to give up – even if the odds are stacked against them.
Brooklyn’s Geese have announced their debut album: Projector arrives digitally October 20 via Partisan/Play It Again Sam, with a physical release to follow on December 3. Today’s announcement comes with the release of the new single ‘Low Era’, which follows previous single ‘Disco’ and comes with a music video directed by Fons Schiedon. Check it out and find the LP’s cover art and tracklist below.
Projector was written, produced, and recorded by Geese while they were still in high school and was mixed by Dan Carey. The band said of the new single in a statement:
We had been trying to get everything to sound super heavy, creepy crawly, and complicated, really because that’s all we knew how to do. Four-on-the-floor songs like ‘Low Era’ had felt a little like poison to us for a while, until we consciously tried to challenge ourselves to write something more danceable. Once we stopped enforcing certain boundaries, it ended up working out without us expecting it to, and even ushered in this psychedelic 3-D element that ends up appearing throughout the album.
We like the idea of confusing the listener a little, and trying to make every song a counteraction to the last, pinballing between catchy and complicated, fast and slow. ‘Low Era’ is one end of that spectrum, and ultimately broadened the scope of songs we thought we could make.
Projector Cover Artwork:
Projector Tracklist:
1. Rain Dance
2. Low Era
3. Fantasies / Survival
4. First World Warrior
5. Disco
6. Projector
7. Exploding House
8. Bottle
9. Opportunity is Knocking
My Morning Jacket have announced a new self-titled album. My Morning Jacket arrives October 22 via ATO. It includes the newly unveiled track ‘Regularly Scheduled Programming’, which comes with an accompanying video co-directed by Jim James and George Mays. Check it out below and scroll down for the LP’s cover artwork (by Robert Beatty) and tracklist.
“This song really hits home for me after what we’ve gone through with the pandemic,” James said of the new single in a statement. “But even before then, it felt like so many of us were trading real life for social media, trading our own stories for the storylines on TV, trading our consciousness for drugs. We need to help each other wake up to real love before it’s too late.”
Last year, My Morning Jacket issued The Waterfall II, their first full-length record in five years following 2015’s The Waterfall.
My Morning Jacket Cover Artwork:
My Morning Jacket Tracklist:
1. Regularly Scheduled Programming
2. Love Love Love
3. In Color
4. Least Expected
5. Never in the Real World
6. The Devil’s in the Details
7. Lucky to Be Alive
8. Complex
9. Out of Range, Pt. 2
10. Penny for Your Thoughts
11. I Never Could Get Enough
Caribou has shared a surprise new track called ‘You Can Do It’. The song, out now via Merge, is accompanied by a dog-filled music video directed by Richard Kenworthy of Shynola. Check it out below.
Last year, Caribou released Suddenly, his first album in six years, which landed on our 50 Best Albums of 2020 list. A reimagined version of the LP, featuring remixes from Four Tet, Floating Points, Morgan Geist, India Jordan, and more, arrived this past March.
Self Esteem has shared a new track, ‘How Can I Help You’, from her upcoming sophomore album Prioritise Pleasure. The song is accompanied by a self-directed video, which you can check out below.
“‘How Can I Help You’ is one of the first songs I wrote for the second album,” Rebecca Taylor said of the new song and video in a press release. “After touring the first record and most weeks being told that I am underrated or intimidating I just felt very fed up. I guess I’ll be eternally angry for the way as a woman unless you’re sweet, nice, settled and quiet, you’re considered ‘different’ and ‘difficult’. I wanted to play the drums in the video to reclaim how often I used to feel self conscious playing them. The physical act of a woman playing a drum means your tits move – all I ever wanted to do was play but it always came with this fear of being looked at in that way. Now my tits move for me, my song, my video. I’m also aware it’s probs a nice watch if you’re that way inclined, but I’m afraid if you wanna watch it you have to hear what I’ve got to say. Click for the tits, stay for the feminism!”
Prioritise Pleasure lands on October 22 via Fiction Records. Taylor previously shared the album’s title track.
