12/3/2023 0 Comments Sam says sweet sounds so softly![]() Romy's solo debut, Mid Air, feels particularly transformational for an artist whose fans have watched develop from an awkward teenager alongside her bandmates to a producer, DJ, and creator of joyful dancefloor moments. Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | BandcampĬasual listeners might not think of The xx as being a home to some of the most euphoric dance music of the last decade, yet the solo work of both Jamie xx and now Romy Madley Croft acts as a neon-hued riposte to those who dismissed them as gloomy and shy. It’s a testament to Barnett’s guitar ability that she can still inquire and interrogate through only her chords. It’s not fair to describe End of the Day as a collection of meditative tracks –– Barnett has always been a meditative songwriter, reflecting on the minutiae of the everyday and beyond –– but tracks like “Start Somewhere” and “Electricity” pose subtle questions, ask queries. Initially written as music for the documentary, Barnett enjoyed the compositions so much that she ended up creating a whole record’s worth of stripped-down, contemplative soundscapes. ![]() Instead, she turned to composing meandering, ambient instrumental tracks with her soft guitar-playing at the forefront. Barnett has been a master of wry, observant lyricism that often pokes at her own ennui and loneliness, but during this particular interval, no words could come. There’s a moment in Courtney Barnett’s documentary Anonymous Club where she says, “My heart is empty, my head is empty, the page is empty.” The film follows a difficult period in Barnett’s life where she deals with an all-consuming apathy towards creativity, and what it means to be creative. A song like “Sidelines” trades in the guitar-inflected emo style that made Peep a star, but DIAMONDS by-and-large shows a different side of the eternal goth boy, trading the seasonal depression of his earlier work for a euphoric bubblegum sound. ![]() It’s refreshing to hear the previously-released “I’ve Been Waiting” as it was originally intended: as a song sung by two men infatuated with each other, and not an awkwardly forced threesome with Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump. The duo captures a kind of queer joy very rarely expressed in hip-hop the ecstatic “Guiltiness” imagines an alternate universe in which the Pet Shop Boys made Jersey Club. The affection between the two artists is palpable in a song like “Really Loving You,” a glistening synthpop duet between two star-crossed lovers: “You can tell it when we’re walkin’ by / You can tell it ain’t no other guy.” But even when the feelings between the two aren’t explicit, they still share an effortless chemistry, as surprisingly harmonious foils: Peep the baby-faced bad boy with grit in his voice, Makonnen the colorful crooner. In the months prior to his death, Peep recorded a collaborative album with iLoveMakonnen, which has long circulated in bootleg form but now officially sees the light of day. Since his tragic passing in 2017, the estate of Lil Peep has taken a considerably different approach under the supervision of Peep’s mother, his team has spent the past few years formally clearing samples on his early mixtapes so they can be added to streaming services, as well as reissuing previously-unheard music from his archives. Posthumous rap releases can so often feel crass more than properly respectful, cobbled together from left-over scraps of an artist’s voice.
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