Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam – A 1000 Times
Like a few of Hamilton Leithauser’s other great songs, “A 1000 Times,” a collaborative single with Rostam Batmanglij, takes place as things are winding down. But while “In the New Year” found Leithauser gazing triumphantly toward the future and “The Rat” chronicled the bitter, desperate end of a relationship, “A 1000 Times” is too smitten to even notice its surroundings. “The 10th of November, the year’s almost over,” Leithauser sings dreamily, although it really could be any day of the year: “If I had your number, I’d call you tomorrow.”
As “A 1000 Times” evolves from a baroque, unmistakably Rostam lullaby into a blustery, Basement Tapes stomp, its instantly catchy chorus (“I had a dream that you were mine/I’ve had that dream a thousand times”) seems to have come and gone 1,000 times itself. It’s an affecting, infectious technique; the song’s shapeshifting structure elevates Leithauser’s simplistic, repetitive melody into something approaching a pop standard. As illustrated by the stars of the video, portraying Hamilton and Rostam at various ages, “A 1000 Times” is a song you can imagine growing old with.
Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork
Warpaint – Whiteout
On September 23rd, Warpaint will return with their third album, Heads Up. The follow-up to their excellent 2014 self-titled release was produced by Jacob Bercovici, and for the first time ever, saw the Los Angeles outfit record in pairs and alone rather than as a full band.
“The doors were a little more open in terms of what was accepted and what wasn’t, because we were sharing ideas so rapidly between us,” says the band’s drummer Stella Mozgawa of the recording process. “The roles that each of us individually had — or had established — were a little more malleable.”
Heads Up was said to be influenced by the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Janet Jackson, and Outkast, and the latest offering “Whiteout” certainly captures some of these artists’ sense of rhythm. “You know what I want, to know the secrets in your heart,” Warpaint sing and slinkily groove over curling guitar lines.
Read the rest of this article at Consequence of Sound
Elohim -Bon Iver – 715 – CR∑∑KS Hallucinating
Justin Vernon sings hypnotically about love and fading memory on “715 – CR∑∑KS,” a highlight from the new Bon Iver LP, 22, A Million. The song’s stark lyric video strings together Vernon’s mysterious phrases (“Low moon don the yellow road/ I remember something/ That leaving wasn’t easing all the heaving in my vines”) on the blank pages of a word processor.
“715 – CR∑∑KS” showcases Vernon’s soulful vocal delivery, filtered through an experimental software program called “The Messina,” developed for 22, A Million by engineer Chris Messina. The ghostly track follows previous singles “22 (OVER S∞∞N),” “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄” and “33 God.” Bon Iver debuted the full LP onstage during their headlining August set at Vernon’s own Eaux Claires Festival in Wisconsin.
“22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding,” the band said in a statement. “The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence. If Bon Iver, Bon Iver built a habitat rooted in physical spaces, then 22, A Million is the letting go of that attachment to a place.”
Read the rest of this article at RollingStone
CHROMATICS – “MAGAZINE”
Chromatics’ long-awaited Dear Tommy still isn’t anywhere in sight, but at least we’re getting some new music from them. Chromatics mastermind Johnny Jewel scored Fien Troch’s upcoming film Home, and he’s releasing the soundtrack as an album next month. His score will make up the second half of the LP, while the first will consist of new and unreleased songs from Chromatics and Jewel’s other project Symmetry. One of those, the shadowy, vocoder-streaked “Magazine,” has now arrived, along with a video featuring scenes from the movie.
Read the rest of this article at Stereogum
Lonely World – Moses Sumney
Moses Sumney knows lonely. For the past couple of years, he’s been serenading our alien impulses one track at a time, giving voice to the part of our psyche that would rather burrow inside a tree stump in a forgotten forest than face the outside world. He takes the elastic phrasing of Nina Simone and the purple-black undertones of Nick Drake and invites us to a place of eerie calm. The highwire theatrics of his voice are brought down to the dirt with soothing strums. A foggy echo keeps everything at a distance. His songs sound like lullabies for the self, hymns of fragile persistence.
At first, “Lonely World” seems to fit this pattern. There are the strums, the echo, the hesitant ache. “And the sound of the void flows through your body undestroyed,” he muses, as if he’s the last astronaut looking back at an imploding earth. But suddenly, he’s no longer alone. A bass drum starts to thump on time. Hi-hats flare and flutter. Pointillistic synths and guitars whirl. Thundercat’s bass pushes ahead. Then Sumney’s voice refracts into an endless mirror and starts to chant the word “lonely,” making it sound anything but. Everything crests. The last minute of this song sounds like a coronation, like a kaleidoscope, like a lost Radiohead classic. It is the ecstasy of being alone, rendered by a man who would know.
Read the rest of this article at Pitchfork
P.S. previous PLAYLISTS & more by P.F.M. // Top images: @suellengregory, @local_milk, Belgrave Crescent
