Pitchfork's Best New Album -- Priests: Nothing Feels Natural

Priests: Nothing Feels Natural Fire-starting D.C. punks Priests started work on their transcendent debut several years before election day, so don't blame them if Nothing Feels Natural feels relevant in the extreme at this moment. Since debuting with Tape One five years ago, the four-piece have never stopped shredding through corrupt power hierarchies and attempting to disentangle personal freedom from consumer choice. Across two tapes, a single, and an EP, they've used a deranged sort of surf rock to launch lucid, grimly funny exposés of the false binaries and systemic oppressions that built America. This, after all, is the band that screamed, "Barack Obama killed something in me and I'm gonna get him for it." As we enter 2017, we're in danger of tying every faintly despairing new piece of culture to the ascent of America's Cheeto-in-Chief, as if January 20 flipped a switch that instantly soured all milk. But injustice wasn't born earlier this month; it just became apparent to many who never had much cause to worry about it before. And the lyrics to Nothing Feels Natural show the existential weight of having spent a lifetime fighting. Priests' debut has an entirely different energy from their previous releases, expanding into a rich diorama of stinging guitar, funk, yearning indie pop, and jazz. The leap in range and ambition from their 2015 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power is huge: There hasn't been a punk debut this certain and poised since Savages' Silence Yourself. The title works a few different ways. There's the obvious what the fuck sensation that accompanies your early morning Twitter scroll these days, and Priests have always done a mean line in sardonic disbelief. There's less of that on Nothing Feels Natural, though it's no less potent: "Pink White House" is a hostile cheerleader chant about the illusion of choice, where the disorientation mounts alongside Taylor Mulitz's spiraling bass. On the boisterously funky "Puff," Katie Alice Greer sneers at accelerationism—the crackpot academic theory that society hitting rock bottom is good because it will surely engender radical change. And on "JJ," she balks at how easily we let branding influence the way we construct identity. "I thought I was a cowboy because I smoked Reds," Greer wails, as surf riffs and battered piano behind her evoke a debauched saloon caper. Priests have always had a keen eye for fakery and bullshit, though on Nothing Feels Natural, they're confronting 'normalcy', a force far more insidious than artifice, because the partisan values informing it are invisible. "It's a long movie, a long movie/And you are not you, you are not you," Greer exhorts on opener "Appropriate." Adding saxophone, piano and hand percussion to their sound, they change direction from song to song much in the same way that the Clash did with Sandinista!, and commit to every hairpin turn. "Appropriate" hurtles from spiny sloganeering through nihilistic thrash to a condemned doom jazz wasteland, leaving the listener as alienated as Priests feel. The title track brings to mind rain-thrashed British indie pop, and on "Suck," Priests try their hand at nimble ESG-indebted funk, though Greer's frustrated pleas expose the dark underbelly of the New Yorkers' effervescent cool. She had to stop screaming because it was killing her throat. The desperation in her singing voice might be more jarring than her howls. Priests have always been thrillingly direct, but that hasn't stopped their words being twisted by publicists who want to profit from them ("You hinge your success on that which you might bleed from me," Greer sneers on "Nicki") and guilty parties who interpret their calls for respect as personal attacks ("Please don't make me be someone with no sympathy," she pleads on "Suck"). Here, they sound unusually worn down by commodification, a lack of good faith from those around them, and the difficulty of surviving as a punk band: the title Nothing Feels Natural could also signify that the abyss has started to feel like home. We're told that this is where punk thrives, at the bottom of the barrel—accelerationism, again. Priests reject that idea in the most forceful terms. Led by drummer Daniele Daniele in a relentless, disbelieving sing-speak, the terrifying "No Big Bang" peers into the void of shame and failure that accompanies creativity. On the title track, a depressed Greer satirizes the sacrifices she'd make to feel balanced again. "If I go without for days will I finally hallucinate a real thing?" she pleads. The self becomes a slippery concept: "People are born and dying inside of me all the time," Greer sings on "Lelia 20." When kakistocracy reigns and George Orwell's 1984 is a bestseller again, you might wonder if now's the best time for Priests to get introspective. But their insistence on wriggling free from definition and feeling the weight of darkness has roots in resistance. On "Nicki," which rings with cavernous dread, Greer intones, "I don't make friends easily or naturally," sliding over the consonants like an eel escaping grasping hands. Priests' insistence on mutable identity, and their disinterest in pinning down a 10-point plan to vanquish fascism, let them slip free of those who seek to gentrify, identify, commodify. In a society where it's becoming increasingly apparent to everyone that your words can and will be used against you, Nothing Feels Natural is a valuable philosophy. February 01, 2017 at 01:00PM via Best New Albums - Pitchfork http://ift.tt/2kpeWKv Email me Pitchfork's Best New Albums, bro

Pitchfork's Best New Album -- Migos: Culture

Migos: Culture Okay, just for a second—as a thought experiment—let's treat Culture as the sophomore album from the Migos. In this reality, it marks a sharp improvement from the North Atlanta trio's debut, 2015's Yung Rich Nation, an album that showed a tremendous amount of technical dexterity, but stiffer writing and only half-formed pop instincts. The Migos are better now, we'd say. They really grew. In the real world, of course, Culture comes in a long, long line of hits, mixtapes, and one-offs. Since "Versace" and Y.R.N. (Young Rich Niggas) marked their breakthrough in 2013, they've been one of the most influential acts in hip-hop, and frequently one of the best. Their most obvious mark on the culture has been the tight, triplet-laced flow they resurrected and perfected. They also brought the dab to the world at large, and injected a handful of slang terms into the syntaxes of aspiring rappers from coast to coast. So Culture arrives in what feels like the second act of a long career, by rap standards. The Migos came out as young upstarts, suffered through a litany of legal hang-ups and incarcerations, had short creative dry spells where they sniped at the kids on the lawn stealing their styles, and eventually came back around. This time, they have a #1 hit in tow, and they want to stick at the top of the commercial pyramid. The first voice you hear on Culture is DJ Khaled's, which couldn't be more misleading. This isn't a big-budget parade of set pieces and stunt casting; if anything, it's remarkable for how long stretches of it are sober, somber. Culture's midpoint is the phenomenal, Zaytoven-produced "Big on Big," which is towering and defiant, and even flips their well-documented label troubles into a point of pride. That track is followed by two more ("What the Price," "Brown Paper Bag") that stick to minor keys and contemplative piano. There are plenty of stray prescription pills and idle threats to go around, but they've been reassembled to be eerier, more perilous. (Incidentally, this would have been a perfect place to insert "Cocoon," their staggering loosie from last year.) Culture is front-loaded with singles, which—perhaps counter-intuitively—makes for a nice balance. Heard back-to-back-to-back, "T-Shirt," "Call Casting," and "Bad and Boujee" are not only packed with color and virtuosic rapping, but elucidate exactly what each of the three rappers bring to the table, how they complement one another. Hearing Quavo float is a joy, but it's even better when it's underscored by Takeoff's bass and Offset's serration. There are also fascinating reconciliations: The Cardo-produced, 2 Chainz-featuring "Deadz" seems to find a middle ground between the sparse Atlanta sounds and Chicago's maximalism that were warring around the time of Y.R.N. Then there are truly strange moments. "All Ass," from the album's (uh) back end, sounds like Magic City mixed with industrial Berlin. "Slippery," in an inspired move, turns a "skrrt skrrt" ad-lib into the song's melodic backbone. Even when Culture grasps for the radio dial, it skirts expectations. The arc here is not one of artists leaving their roots to chase pop—it's pop coming back around to accommodate them. While the Migos are decidedly of Atlanta (coupled with some cadences from up in Tennessee), their records frequently remind you of rap's earlier years, when creative kids holed up in bedrooms and tried to impress or make each other laugh—think The Migos Is Dead or Bizarre Ride II Nawfside. Culture might have national aspirations, but it's charged with the energy of history, of family. On "What the Price," Takeoff raps about the teachers and preachers of his youth who presented an inaccessible, exclusionary path forward. When he shirks that ("I'ma go find me a better route"), it's not flippant, it's resolute. Later on the same song, Offset runs through a consumer fever dream, anchored by the line "I don't plan on going out sad today." In other contexts, that might be a curious aside, but over Ricky Racks, 808Godz and KeanuBeats' somber track, it sounds like the album's spiritual center. The Migos are (probably) not better than the Beatles, but their existence shouldn't be reduced to memes that debate the issue. On Culture, their world is richly rendered, full of hopes and paranoia and unbridled joy. This gives the Migos the last laugh on those who thought they'd never crack the retail album format, marked all the while by the knowledge they never needed one to succeed. It's a definitive work. January 31, 2017 at 01:00PM via Best New Albums - Pitchfork http://ift.tt/2kOovyX Email me Pitchfork's Best New Albums, bro

Pitchfork's Best New Album -- The xx: I See You

The xx: I See You The xx's self-titled debut remains one of the great sleeper hits of the last decade. No one—including, it's fair to say, the xx themselves—expected that their murmuring blend of turn-of-the-millennium R&B and C86 indie pop would go on to sell a million copies and become hugely influential. But from the beginning, the London trio had a lot going for them. In Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, they had two songwriters conversant in the primal language of heartbreak and loss, whose vocals, though limited, conveyed anguish. Madley Croft's guitar lines did a great deal with very little, the single notes carving deep feeling out of broad subjects. And producer and programmer Jamie xx, with his unerring ability to find rhythms that fit with emotions, made sure each tune got its perfect beat. Coexist from 2012 was a decent re-statement of the debut's animating ideas, but the prevailing story of the xx in the years since that debut has been the rise of Jamie xx. The most exciting music coming out of their camp—from one-off singles like "Far Nearer" and "All Under One Roof Raving" to his 2015 breakthrough In Colour—belonged to him. The xx was all about working within limitations, with a prescribed set of sounds and themes; Jamie xx's solo music was built around samples, and was, accordingly, wide open, bound only by his adventurous ear. I See You, the third album by the xx, sounds like an attempt to incorporate everyone's talents into a new version of their sound, one true to their roots but richer and more varied. On their first two albums, the xx limited their arrangements so that the songs could be performed live. But here, Jamie xx's samples form the backbone of several songs, allowing them to move into territory that would be impossible with a guitar/bass/programmed-percussion set up. An early single, "On Hold," even cops a mangled hook from a Hall and Oates song. It's a quintessential Jamie xx sample, easily recognizable the moment you hear it but taking a moment to place, allowing your memory to fill in the blanks as the song moves and changes around it. Heard on its own late last year, "On Hold" sounded slightly forced, but it makes perfect sense as a brighter, poppier part of a record that takes the essential xx subject of uncertain love to near-concept album status.  As much as the expansive production helps move things forward, this is in many ways Madley Croft and Sim's album. Both have grown as vocalists. Neither has tremendous range or depth, but they're clever and resourceful singers, able to shape meaning through subtle inflections and shifts in phrasing. Sim's approach is more face-to-face and straightforward—he seems like he's holding up his end of a conversation—while Madley Croft seems like she's talking to a mirror, trying to steel herself to share her feelings with the world. The delivery of every line is considered, as the pair tug at the edges of lines to get the expression just right. "I just don't re-mem-ber," Sim sings, drawing out the final syllable in "Say Something Loving," imparting an additional touch of longing without overreaching; "Here come my insecurities/I almost expect you to leave" Madley Croft sings in the same song, nearly summing up the record's lyrical concerns in a single line. The defining characteristics of these voices is helplessness, fear, and hurt; the xx sound quite far from the indie pop of their debut stylistically, but they retain their connection to that world because they still traffic in shy introspection and vulnerability. For the narrators of these songs, there's a constant war between how the world sees them and how they feel inside, and self-love isn't part of the equation. On "Performance," Madley Croft sings about keeping up appearances, giving the illusion that everything is OK when she's dying inside. "Brave for You" is a tribute to her deceased parents, but it could be about anyone who believes in you more than you believe in yourself. All the existential wrestling—interior vs. exterior, the promises and betrayals—happens in the closest of spaces; "My name on your lips/Your air in my lungs/Drowned in oxygen," sings Madley Croft on "Lips," sketching out just how close and intimate this world is. "Performance" and "Brave for You" both feel like classic xx songs—they are naked and spare, with hints of strings and Madley Croft's guitar and a whole lot of silence. About a third of the album works with stripped-down, open arrangements like this, while others make judicious use of samples and layers of synths and sequencers. "Dangerous" opens the album with a startling blast of a horns that return on the chorus as a counterpoint melody. "A Violent Noise" has a winding and surging cluster of arpeggiating notes that explode at all the right moments—something of a Jamie xx trademark—and the production brilliantly traces the emotional arc of the song. As an album, I See You has the eerily seamless wholeness of the self-titled debut, a smooth and polished object with no visible edges. If it came apart, you would almost certainly never be able to put it back together again. As such, each individual song seems most realized in the context of the album, as it builds on or tweaks or develops what came before and hints at something to come, and the closing "Test Me" ties it altogether. The song's production is breathtaking, one of Jamie xx's masterpieces, all Eno-like suggestion, and the words are both simple and move the record's narrative forward. "Test me," both Madley Croft and Sim sing, "see if I break," suggesting an unspoken strength that might have been there all along. January 12, 2017 at 01:00PM via Best New Albums - Pitchfork http://ift.tt/2jGoRLz Email me Pitchfork's Best New Albums, bro

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Pitchfork's Best New Album -- Run the Jewels: Run the Jewels 3

Run the Jewels: Run the Jewels 3 On 2006's "That's Life," Killer Mike boasted "You'd be hard-pressed to find another rapper smart as me," opening up about Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, poverty, respectability politics, and civil rights, before taking on both Bush Administrations ("George Bush don't like blacks … and his daddy CIA had flooded the hood with rock"). A few months later, El-P was waging war with the same enemy in the 9/11 conspiracy theory thriller "Run the Numbers," concluding that "it always comes back to a Bush." The two songs sounded very little alike, but the music (and the rappers) shared a similar fire and presence: confident, conspiratorial, no-holds-barred, and razor-sharp. Neither were likely to be deemed "political" rappers then, but both were already dissenters and nonconformists; independent artists signed to themselves, free thinkers shooting off at the mouth. Nearly a decade after airing out the Bush family, the duo, as Run the Jewels, have found a creative renaissance. The group's latest self-titled album, Run the Jewels 3, is a well timed, finely tuned rap epic that confronts the ruling class (here addressed as "the masters") with deadly precision; it's rap as resistance.With a demagogue waiting in the wings to assume the presidency, their particular Molotov mix of explosive shit-talking and unfiltered insubordination feels vital. Their interplay is instinctual this time around; the songs move and shuffle with its MCs intuitively trading bars, filling the gaps in each others' phrases, and feeding off each others' energies, using their booming voices to cut through the startling noises of a future dystopia. "Poor folk love us the rich hate our faces/We talk too loud, won't remain in our places," El-P raps on "Everybody Stay Calm." They're both observers who refuse to sugarcoat. "I just try my best, man, to say something about the shit I see," Killer Mike told The New Republic in 2015. "Because I don't want to go crazy. I don't want to be walking around angry and feeling rage." To that end, RTJ3 isn't a response or reaction, it's a preemptive strike, laying the groundwork for the battleground ahead.  Their methods remain consistent, but the stakes have been raised over the years. RTJ1 was a fun experiment; RTJ2 was a classicist statement, and now RTJ3 is a reckoning. Many of these songs have more urgency than before; If RTJ2 was the music of protest, then this is the music of revolt. In that way, RTJ3 is essentially the Run the Jewels manifesto, an outpouring of rage and defiance that is never overcome by the moment and never loses sight of the objectives: rallying the troops, holding everyone accountable (from lawmakers, to other rappers, to Don Lemon and themselves), and toppling oppression wherever it may reign (on "Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)," El-P raps, "Fear's been law for so long rage feels like therapy"). "Thursday in the Danger Room" peers into the duo's personal turmoil and their shared history, and on "2100" Killer Mike lays out their President-Trump survival strategy: "You defeat the devil when you hold onto hope." The key to RTJ3 is closer "A Report to the Shareholders," which is plainspoken about the duo's message and intent: "Maybe that's why me and Mike get along / Not from the same part of town, but we both hear the same sound coming / And it sounds like war." Seconds later, Killer Mike goes full Malcolm X: "Choose the lesser of the evil people, and the devil still gon' win / It could all be over tomorrow, kill our masters and start again." This is the ire of a group that's tired of saying I told you so. This is by far the best produced record of their trilogy, with beats that find new and interesting ways to wreak havoc. "Call Ticketron" turns automated ticketing technology into a beacon for alien transmissions. On "Hey Kids (Bumaye)" crackling static and thumping bass crater open to reveal whirring, wobbling tones and ghostly whispers, and Danny Brown slots in an exceptional guest verse. On "Panther Like a Panther (Miracle Mix)," furnished by the shouts of Miami rap goddess Trina, rounded blips mimic the patter of hand drums before bursting into a wave of buzzing, distorted noise that slowly dissipates back into nothing. They're still clearly having fun doing this and it's still fun to listen to them work. It isn't quite as punchy as RTJ2, which was brutish in its tactics, with nonstop bangs and thrills, but RTJ3 is a triumph in its own right that somehow celebrates the success of a seemingly unlikely friendship and mourns the collapse of a nation all at once. "Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)," a song about riots as a response to violence as opposed to a means to create it, samples an iconic Martin Luther King, Jr. quote from the 1967 speech "The Other America": "A riot is the language of the unheard." In keeping with that idea, RTJ3 is a soundtrack for the riots to come. January 03, 2017 at 01:00PM via Best New Albums - Pitchfork http://ift.tt/2hMuS7u Email me Pitchfork's Best New Albums, bro