Post Pop Depression

pitchfork.com

“America’s greatest living poet was ogling you all night; you should be wearing the finest gown.”

So declares America’s first and most famous punk poet -- a hoarse and greasy plunge into futility, graceless aging, and despair. If the object of our bard’s gaze is a voyeur's novelty, the great poet can only be the shit just below.

With Iggy Pop’s announcement of a collaboration with QOTSA’s Josh Homme and Dean Fertita, Post Pop Depression is promising to be exactly what one would expect from such a partnership -- filthy and brilliant. The album’s single, Gardenia, is as much about power and disappointment as it is lecherous love. What better backing ensemble than the likes of Homme? The track’s staggered drone not subtly mimics the psycho dream of the protagonist, and Josh’s lofty accompaniment makes it almost playful.

stereoboard.com

And we were just given the album’s opening track, Break Into Your Heart, effectively swaying us into the intrusive, obsessive, and pleading. Battered and warbling -- just like Iggy. It is so unbelievably appropriate.

These two songs offer a very positive preview of what we can expect. Dirty, lowdown lust; or maybe what happens when the love goes away, and the struggle of getting it back.

Gardenia

Nigel & the Dropout

Scattered across the vivid, kaleidoscopic tapestry that is the contemporary Detroit music scene, you’ll find groups that fit (however crudely) into the Big Genres: rock, punk, electronic, indie, etc. More often, you’ll encounter groups that really don’t have any clear genre to pair with. And they’re more memorable for that very reason. Nigel & the Dropout is an upfront example of what it means to exist outside of the genre, and why that’s the best thing possible in live music today.

detroitmusicmag.com

Nigel & the Dropout is a two-piece powerhouse. The ferocity and volume of their music together make up one the most electric and exciting features of their shows. But it doesn’t start that way. Each song has a calculated and melodic build-up, with lights, pop, and the occasional dramatic tempo shift. The force and dynamics of their onstage presence are really impressive — even more impressive is the control they exert over such a massive sound.

nigelthedropout.bandcamp.com

Any musician knows how important such techniques are to their craft; Nigel & the Dropout is no exception. They’re able to sustain that constant movement — a guaranteed strategy to keep your music interesting. The music is poppy, electronic, with guitar fuzz and vocal reverb; sometimes speedy, always steady. Driving. It has rapid crescendos and mellow downturns. And there’s constant tradeoff between the two extremes. They’re one of the most multi-dimensional groups I’ve seen in a long time. If Nigel & the Dropout is any indication of the state of music in Detroit in 2016, rejoice, and be proud.

If anything, you really should sit down and listen to them. It’s great hard-hitting, heady electronic music, sure to make you smile. Their latest album, Folderol, along with the rest of their discography, is available on Spotify, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud.

soundcloud.com

David Bowie -- Blackstar

The crushing sadness of four generations is contained in the passing of David Bowie. To reiterate his legacy here, it seems, is a task both difficult and unnecessary. It will do just to say his musical and cultural influence is the type natural, lasting, and rare.

Many of us will continue to struggle with the impact of his life and death.

It gladdens me to know he spent the last months of his life producing what some consider his best album in decades. Blackstar takes on obvious new meaning in light of David Bowie’s death -- an album already laden with a potent darkness and shadows of melancholy. Mortality, love, fame, poetry, language, and loneliness all are themes addressed between tracks one and seven. The record’s aesthetics, perhaps cathartically so, come through at times deeply unsettling and unimaginably beautiful, with altogether different readings now assigned to lines like “Look up here, I’m in heaven” since its release only three days ago.

And at the same time, it does not seem like Bowie says goodbye. I think it’s more true to Blackstar and the duration of his career to think of the album as a very real reflection on a life’s work well beyond summary, and as an enduring piece of art itself. It is a magnificent album, from beginning to end.

I have little else to say about a man who changed the world by being part of it.  

Jeff Buckley, or music as true misery

As I sit here reaching for words to accurately relay the profound sadness and emotional turmoil that characterizes Jeff Buckley’s music, I find myself considering more critically the vast and seemingly unanswerable questions of music in general -- that is, often, its effects are equally physiologically, intellectually, and spiritually life-altering, given the right set of circumstances.

grcmc.org

You see, what I’ve learned from my recent exploration of Buckley’s tragically short discography is that to be in true emotional pain, and to master the art of recording and projecting that pain, is exceedingly rare. Even in the world of art and creative media. It might be the case that such readings are subjective and only individually significant. But maybe, occasionally, these individually manifested interpretations can transcend the thing itself, becoming in some sense universal, and indescribable. I’m almost certain this is so with Jeff Buckley.

Critics of the early ‘90s swooned over his unique and versatile singing style -- sharp and sustained vibrato, much like his father Tim, though with a vocal range surpassing that. I myself see this fact, along with an unorthodox verse/chorus interplay, and subtly complex poetic performance embedded in the lyrical structure of every song, as the biggest reasons why Buckley is the most unusual, and perhaps musically enigmatic, artist to come out of the 1990s. In the face of grunge, Buckley offers something more tender, soft-spoken, and articulate -- all with the same degree of contempt and heartache elicited by a society and culture that failed its angsty and romantic youth.

theguardian.com

To put it bluntly, Jeff Buckley’s music is some of the most effectively depressing and terrifyingly dead-on I’ve ever heard -- and so quick, without explanation. His sudden death by drowning in ‘97 is almost as mysterious as his only album, Grace. It’s dark, poignant, dismal, and beautiful -- it will leave you a wreck. Proceed with caution.

rollingstone.com