NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Aug. 30

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

The best albums out this week include Wild God from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Doechii's Alligator Bites Never Heal, Jon Hopkins' Ritual and more.Featured Albums:• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Wild God• Doechii, Alligator Bites Never Heal• Enumclaw, Home In Another Life• Ellen Reid, Big Majestic• Laurie Anderson, Amelia• Jon Hopkins, RitualOther notable releases for Aug. 30:• Muni Long, Revenge• Emily D'Angelo, Freezing• AWOLNATION, The Phantom Five• Big Sean, Better Me Than You• Shemekia Copeland, Blame It on Eve• Tycho, Infinite Health• Zedd, Telos• Chelsea Wolfe, Undone EP• Tank & the Bangas, The Heart, The Mind, The Soul• The Cactus Blossoms, Every Time I Think About You• Caleb Caudle, Sweet Critters• Amy Rigby, Hang in There With Me• Noah Kahan, Stick Season (Live From Fenway Park)See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a heads up, this podcast contains explicit language. And did I ever send you a video called The Broken Formula of Music Biopics? Have we talked about that? No. What is that? It's by a YouTuber named Patrick H. Willems, who's great, who does a lot of great video essays about film. This one came out when Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie, was doing its Oscar run in, like, early 2019. Yes.

People are more attuned to this problem now, but at the time, I think, thought he did a really great job of pointing out something that was under-discussed then, which is that even though biopics about musicians do good business and win awards, the problem with a lot of them is that they try to say everything about their subject. Totally. And they kind of wind up saying nothing. It's that cinematic Wikipedia problem. Yes, right, exactly.

So he goes through some of the main offenders, and he talks about some notable exceptions, the ones that he thinks are more focused. And then at the end, he pitches a biopic. that hasn't been made. Let me guess. Says how we'd make it. Maybe you can guess, given the news this week. Let's see.

Pulp? No. Definitely swayed. Definitely swayed. You're killing me. All right. We're talking about those brothers. Those brothers we love so much.

Maybe so. Maybe. Don't look back in anger. I heard you say. Okay. Now there doesn't have. have to be an oasis reunion because I just did it. I just sang, don't look back in anger. Yeah, we've got it covered. So his pitch for an oasis movie is, again, don't try to cram in

the entire career. His idea was you start in 1996. So they've just played this gigantic concert, Nebworth, which was like the biggest concert in British history at the time. And then you follow them for just the next year or so. Because his thought is, it is in that moment when they're at their commercial peak, that it really became clear that the Gallagher Brothers dynamic was not sustainable and that this whole enterprise was going to shake apart in time. So you miss a lot of fun stuff doing that, but I think it makes sense. Now, as of this week, we're ostensibly getting an Oasis reunion tour in 2025, as you said, which sort of complicates this vision.

Well, it does in a way, but you could make a sequel, one year in the, or maybe, let's say, two months in the breakdown and meltdown that will be the Oasis reunion. Biopic sequels. I wouldn't put it past Hollywood. Anyway. We'll be waiting. Yeah. Hey, everybody. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. Here to talk about the best and most noteworthy albums coming out today, August 30th. I'm Dawood Tyler Rameen here with critic and correspondent Anne Powers. Hey, Helmi. Hello.

A little later on today's show, art rock, what do we mean when we talk about art rock? We do not mean oasis. We do. I've got to stop. We'll look at that term in the context of some of this week's releases and ask if it still means anything to us in 2024. But first, we got a whole lot of new music to share with you, so let's get into it. And I'm going to let you start since you've recently come into some intimate knowledge of our first subject.

Well, it is a big week for fans of. Artie Rockers because Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are releasing their 18th album as a band in their first in five years. It's called Wild God. It is all about divine and demonic encounters. And let's hear a track before we even talk. This is called Joy. I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head. I woke up this morning with the blues all around my head. I felt like someone in my family was dead. I chumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees.

I jumped up like a rabbit and fell down to my knees. Call out all around me said, have mercy on me, please. Have mercy on me. So, yes, so, it's true. I got to sit down and talk with Nick Cave recently. It was an amazing conversation. He's such a brilliant mind. And I think Nick Cave is really, I mean, talk about an artist who's really been through everything,

tried so many different things artistically. And now in his 60s has found this incredible space with a band. He's been with, you know, forever. making some of the most vital music of his career on this record. I really truly believe that. It hits you in the eyes right away. I'm reminded by the mix of this album of some of the 90s Flaming Lips Records, although I'm probably conflating the influencer with the influenced in saying that.

Not at all, dude, because in fact, Dave Friedman, who produced some of the Flaming Lips Most Beloved albums, actually mixed this album as well. Okay, there you go. And when I talked to Nick Cave, he stressed the importance of Friedman's mix. I asked him, you know, you have said that this isn't really a rock record, and the songs, some of them are very slow tempo, you know, and orchestral. There's a lot of choir on this record.

But I said to him, like, this feels, you know, it rips your face off. And he said, that's partly, you know, or even largely the way that Friedman mixed the record. I don't want to let it go on said, folks, if you have not listened to or read Anne's interview with Nick Cave, it is such a good time. And you don't really need to know a ton about him going into it. Like they sort of start, you know, in a very relatable place. And he was super forthcoming. It was really, really game to talk to you about whatever. Absolutely. Well, as people who do know Nick Cave know, since the tragic death of his teenage son, Arthur, 10 years ago, well, 2015, Cave has become this sort of like rock and roll grief counselor to the world. And he's developed this kind of empathy and compassion and become such a vulnerable presence through his website, the Red Hand Diaries and in tours he's done, conversation tours. And he's made some records working with the bad seeds, but also with his primary collaborator

in and out of the bad seeds, Warren Ellis. he's made a couple records that were really about that grief. You know, Gosteen is one of them. Carnage, which is just a duo record with Warren Ellis is another. But he would want me to stress, I think, this is about joy. An overused word, in my opinion. But it is about joy. It is about, you know, we heard that track, joy.

It is about, he also would say the word conversion. He's sort of in the state of perpetual conversion. So, yeah, it's very powerful in that way. There's something that he said to you that I really took to heart, which is you floated some ideas to him about what a particular song was about, and he said that he hadn't quite worked it out yet, which is quite a thing for somebody of his stature to say out loud. I know. And he basically said that the songs sort of reveal themselves to him in time, especially as they're performed more, and that putting a meaning to a song, giving it to defined event about is a way of sort of shutting it down, which feels like a real gift to the song. listener because not that, you know, I think there are ways to be a little bit, you know, lazy and cop-outish about that and say like, oh, it's about whatever you think. But I also think

that in saying it in that way, he's sort of inviting you into the space of creation and inviting you to sort of define the meaning of a song along with him over time in a relationship that might play out over years. And there are songs on this album, like the song, song Frogs, for example, that, I mean, it's about many different things at once. It's about the Canaan Abel story in the Bible. It's about, I don't know, rage, but also maybe recovery from rage. I don't know what it's about. So I think you're right. Like some of the stories on this record, it is cave in storytelling mode. You know, there are some that are very straightforward. But there is just a lot of putting you in the moment of this intense encounter, whether it's love, whether it's with a

divine spirit, whatever force it is. It's about being in that moment. And for everybody, that's going to be different, like you're saying. Yeah. I could talk to you about this all day. We should move on, though. Yes, definitely. Because there's other amazing records out this week. It's true. But again, listen in the All Songs Feed or read it on NPR.org, Anne's interview with Nick Cave. It's a real gem. Why don't we move on then? Something very different. There is a new mixtape, not a new album. She does not technically have an album. yet. What is an album? By the rapper Dochi, the TDE rapper, it is called Alligator Bites Never Heal.

I want to dive into my favorite track on this record, which is called Denial is a River. Remember old dude from 2019, nice clean, nigga did me dirtier than laundry. Took a scroll through his IG just to get a DM from his wife. I was so confused, what should Dochi do? She didn't know about me and I didn't know about Sue. I opened up the messages and had to hit the Zoom Turns out the girl was really a doom Nicker think he slick back

Till I slipped back got my lick back Turned a knicker to a knick-knack I moved on dropped a couple of songs And then I went and got signed Now it was 2021 So you can hear right away We've got storytelling We've got multiple characters

We've got multiple flows She showed us that she could do this All the way back on Yucky Blucky Fruitcake her like breakthrough track from a couple years ago. But she is, I don't know, she's kind of just showing off now. It's true. Dyerty was funny because when this one surfaced pretty late in our preparation this week, and I think I sent you the link to it, and within 40 minutes,

you were just exclamation marks everywhere in the slack. You were so excited. You're instantly excited by this record. I just, it is a thrilling experience. And it's one of those things that I'm, interested to see what comes of it when she decides to finally make a quote-unquote album, if she does, but she seems really liberated by the mixtape format. A lot of these songs are short, and they sort of cut to the bone,

and it allows her to sort of, without putting too much weight on it, just try a lot of fun things. So here in Denial is a river, you have her having this sort of, you know, therapeutic conversation, unpacking some of the things that have happened to her lately. And near the end, the sort of alter ego other character asks her to do a breathing exercise. And what we get is this incredibly acrobatic feat where she's basically beatboxing, but just with breath. It's awesome. It's killer. It's killer.

And I love that you point out that it's all in the service of her characters, too. In that way, she reminds me, I hope this isn't too. obvious a comparison, but she reminds me of early Nikki Minaj. In the early days of Nikki, when we were like, oh, wow, she's Roman, she's herself, who is she? And that's what attracted me to Nikki. And I feel like Dochi even takes that a step further. She's really mastered that. And of course, we have to bring up Tiara Watt because I feel like they're kind of soulmates, you know? I think so. Yeah, sisters in oddity. Yeah, exactly.

She also seems like she's setting fun challenges for herself. Like Boom Bap, one of the singles from this record, opens, I would say, borderline incoherently. Boom Bap, rap, rap, rap, rap, rap, rap, bap, bap, bat, bat, bat. They said they can't, but they said they want me to rap. It's kind of like, I hate to make the comparison, but that Kanye song from like 2018-19, Lift Yourself, where he just like kind of scattered incoherently for a while. It's a little bit like that, but she lands the plane. She starts in this weird sort of free associative space.

And then that song actually does go to some really interesting places. There's a song called Wait, where she sings, and the singing is great. It's so smooth, and then halfway through, she starts rapping, and it's the 16th flow, and it's super clean. It's just, it's a great showcase release for somebody who's, you know, been through some things. When louder than a riot covered her last year, they talked about the release of the video for her song Crazy, which was a whole to do with YouTube who decided to not censor it, but I think they age-restricted it, which meant that you couldn't

embed it outside of the platform. It was a whole big deal. And that in the age of, I mean, let's just say it, in the age of our top pop stars, Sabrina Carpenter and Chapel Row and whatever, writing very explicit songs, but why is this black woman getting censored? Just just asking the question. It's true. No, no, no. I mean, it's, you know, and they, they, they, they, they, they got into that question. But yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm just, uh, I'm so excited for her. I know. I do have a question, though. Why do you think they're still calling these releases mixtapes? Like, I, I, I, maybe I'm missing something, but, you know, why not just say this as an album? I think this is something that we're going to be talking about a lot near the end of this year,

which is that a lot of the, this isn't true across the board, but I think, you know, but I think a lot of the event releases of this year in the pop world have kind of come and gone. They are, you know, they're still a big deal. They still charted. Taylor remains inescapable. Yeah. But we got so many, it was like unbending the garden hose. We got so many big pop releases in the first half of the year. And I know, you know, and I just, I don't really think about them anymore. And then along comes Brat and nobody can stop talking about it. And the thing about Brat is that it felt like a little bit of a mixtape.

Yeah, I mean, basically, when Hazel and I talked about that record, she called Charlie like a substack artist, which I think is kind of right. She always has the best line. She's so good. So that's the deal. I mean, I can't claim to know what Dochi is thinking,

but I do sort of feel like, with the track record that she's had so far and the kind of fun that she's had doing what she's doing, if she decided to say, okay, now it's time to get serious. There would be so much pressure that there just isn't for her right now. And it allows her, I think, to get away with doing a lot of fun stuff without every single pair of eyes and ears being on her, expecting her to just, you know, nail it. Well, get your ears on this mixtape at any rate because it's really something.

That's alligator bites never healed by Dochi. Where do you want to go next? Well, let's go all the way across the country from Florida to my home state, Washington State. this has got to be my sentimental pick of the week, Diyud. It's a band from Tacoma, Washington, but they're called Enumclaw. And if you are from Washington State, like our beloved editor, Jacob Gans, for example,

you're having that moment of comical, cognitive dissonance because Enam Claw is also a town in Washington State. That's not Tacoma where Enum Claw is from. But to me, that is so characteristic of what this band is doing, because it is a full-on 90-style rock and roll, fuzz guitar, J.Massis is my uncle kind of band. It is to use the word we never use. Pretty grunge, you know, pretty grungy in its own way.

Although it's in a way, it does evoke Dinosaur Jr. More than evokes, say, Pearl Jam. This is Enam Claus' second album. The first was the one that grabbed. my attention. It was called Save the Baby, and this one is called Home in Another Life. Aramis Johnson, who's the singer and the main songwriter, I think, for Enum Claw, he has a, I feel like I'm using such overused words today, Diode. I said joy like twice already, and now I have to use the word vulnerability. I'm sorry. I mean, it is what it is.

It's true. Aramis Johnson has a beautiful vulnerability to his songwriting. He also has a really wonderful, imperfect voice. And, I mean, a singing voice, not just a writing voice, but both. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. It feels very in tune with the... I mean, as you said, the guitar tones on this thing

are immaculate. I think J.Mascus would be very proud. Anyway. But there is a... There's a complementary relationship, I think, between the bed that the guitars make and the body that the voice is, that sort of lies in it.

Does that metaphor make any sense? Yeah, no, it does. I think also we have to mention Enum Clause drummer, Le Daniel Gibson. Man, he brings the wallop. You know, several of these songs start with just that kick drum and that. It's just killer. It brings you right in. But I think you're right. There is a way that the build of these songs and the kind of way the guitars veer in and out and careen around. And the way that Johnson's vocal and what he's saying in the songs, they just work. so well together. Yeah, I mean, I think if you had a really sort of polished clear Isabelle vocal singing some of these songs, it would feel very incongruous. Absolutely. Like, in this song that I love, not just yet, which is about a loved one suffering from dementia.

Heavy subject, but, you know, it's just executed so beautifully. And some of the lyrics, there's a line about, it's about an uncle, right? And at one point, Aramis sings, he owned the pants I wear, or he bought the pants I wear, or something like that. Man, that just brings you right into that moment of, you know, you're wearing the pants that you got one time. You were at your uncle's house and you got wet when you were like in the creek nearby or something and you had to borrow a pair of his pants and now you're losing him. Yeah. You know what I mean? Bizarer specificity.

The kinds of details that you would never, you would never think to put in a story unless you were the person who lived it. Yes, totally. And Johnson has said that this album, he really wanted it to be a. about not the negative aspects of his life, but just, he said an interview, you know, someone came up to me at a party or something and said, you're always so happy. Do you ever not feel happy? And he said to himself, I'm not a robot. And that drove him to write these songs, which actually really makes some risky leaps as far as the emotion. I know one that you loved. You mentioned one you love that does it. Well, there's, there's two that I can point

to, and there's sort of on the opposite ends of the shame spectrum. One, One is called This Light of Mine. It's the second to last track. And I heard the line, there was a baby, now there's not. And my heart really sank. And it's one of a handful of songs that I think deals with a real-life abortion. We don't have to get too deep into it. But it sticks in my mind because there's another song to take things to a totally other place that is called explicit content warning.

I still feel bad about masturbation. Great title, though. It makes me think about, I mean, basically just youthful shame is a really common yarn on this thing, but youthful feels like the important part, because he as a writer seems especially fixated, at least on this record, on the kinds of shame that you only realize years or maybe decades later wasn't really your fault. That said so well. And, you know, I hesitate to raise this, but I do think that,

that Aramis Johnson and this band have a different perspective on some of these stories maybe because they're also a mostly black band in a scene that's still mostly white and that was historically mostly white. And, you know, it comes up, he hasn't written like an anthem about racial equality as far as I know yet. But it's just part of the outsider perspective, I think, a little bit, you know? Yeah, I think those things wind up being sort of baked into the cake. If you're somebody, if you have that only one in the room experience, then you're sort of constantly watching your angles and, you know, thinking about how you present yourself to people and the kinds of projections that they can make onto you and whether sharing your pain is

a noble and honest and vulnerable act or whether it's, you know, you're putting yourself forward to be sort of exploited and sensationalized. It's, yeah, I think. that's all there, even if it's not. Definitely there in subtle ways, but just as the lineage is to great Seattle bands, and the one that I want to particularly name check is Mudhoney. If you haven't read Steve Turner's memoir, he recently, Steve Turner from Mudhoney recently published a memoir, and it's so great because it's super jovial and just like so bro, not bro in the bad sense, but like just so down to earth. And that book and this record represent what I love. about Pacific Northwest Rock.

Sometimes I get irritated by my own home state's rock scene because I don't know. Sometimes it felt a little closed off to me when I was growing up there as a woman. But what I will always love is just like the kind of earthiness of it. And they're just like dudes hanging out drinking a can of beer. Got to be a can of beer in the alley after the show. So that's really the spirit of Enum Claw. Cool. That's Home in Another Life by Enum Claw.

We need to take a quick break. We'll have lots more new music for you after this. It's New Music Friday, and our next artist has some serious hardware to her name. Ellen Reed won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2019. She was 36 at the time. She's still one of a very small handful of women to ever win that award. Our colleague, Tom Hisinga, called her that day for an interview when she was still a little in shock, but it's still a very nice conversation.

That Tom. He's got the end with all the classical winners, man. Anyway, her follow-up to that milestone is pretty darn ambitious, too. It's a work called Big Majestic, and for reasons that I think will become obvious, I want to start where the album does with the title track. So, this is effectively the home edition of what was originally a location-based piece of public art called Soundwalk. It was set up starting in 2020 in a handful of public parks around the world, Griffith Park in L.A., Central Park in New York, Regents Park in London, a couple of others. You would download an app and turn on your phone's GPS, and the music would change depending on where you

walked. I believe it was even site-specific, meaning that depending on which of those parks you were in, you might hear Shabaka Hutchings contributions on Woodwinds, or the singer Liesel, or Kronos Quartet, the menu was like a little different depending on where you plugged in. It was very much an early pandemic work, although it was conceived a little bit before that started. It was this moment when lockdowns had made public parks this kind of psychic haven, this sort of safe, shared space that was free from the kind of contamination of being indoors. I don't know, Anne, what do you think about this? You're nodding your head. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I love this record. I got into this.

record. I mean, I knew about Ellen because of Tom's writing on her, but there's a track on this record called West Coast Sky Forever. And as we were just talking about, I'm from the West Coast, though I am exiled away in the south. And I saw that song title featured on the homepage of the streaming service I use, and I immediately pressed play. And I truly was transported. I just felt like, oh my gosh, I can actually see the ocean in front of me. I can see the orange of the sky. So all I'm saying is Ellen Reed, it works. Thank you. Yeah. No, it's really, I mean, even in the opening track, Big Majestic, you do get this very present and evocative feeling of morning, sunrise, you know, possibilities sort of opening up before you. There are two tracks called Pavilion in the Trees that use Liesel's voice in this really intense, multi-tracked way.

and it feels like sort of a protective presence, or maybe like, you know, heralding your arrival, like a Greek chorus. Everything feels very visual. Even when Shabaka Hutchings jumps in on saxophone, you feel like a whole new corner of the world is being introduced, like, you know, when the hobbits go to Rivendell or, you know, or whatever, like Roger Rabbit when they go to Tune Town. It's just like, oh, wow, you know, what are we going to see next?

And then the album ends with the sound of walking on Lee. and it's sort of granting you safe passage out of the story. I love it. I highly recommend listening to this record on headphones while you're walking through your favorite park and seeing how each song adapts to your own environment. It's a beautiful experience. That's Big Majestic by Ellen Reed. Well, speaking of taking journeys with and in music, Daoud,

our next record that we're going to talk about is by the great inimitable Lori Anderson. It's called Amelia. and you can probably figure out from the title what this is about. I'm going to guess it's the world's most famous Amelia. You're absolutely right. It's inspired by the last flight of the aviator, Amelia Earhart, where she was lost at sea. This is a really absorbing album.

It's actually pretty short. And I recommend people listen to this album the way you would listen to a podcast or an audiobook. because, you know, Lori is so brilliant at telling stories through music to be utterly corny about it. But at creating these immersive environments and has been for this story career. And on this one, she just uses the audio space so beautifully to put us on the plane with Earhart. It's immersive right away. It's almost like a, you know, a radio play. Let's hear that very beginning.

Yeah, let's hear that very beginning because that really puts us. us on that plane right away. I talked to Lori Anderson actually at Big Ears Festival this past year and she was finishing up this record. And at the time I was getting ready for the publication of

my Joni Mitchell book and so of course I brought up Amelia. Her song, Amelia is probably the most famous song named after Amelia Earhart and I was like, Lori, you know, Amelia Earhart is the symbol of freedom and mystery, etc. and in her, like nobody else, she just cut to the quick and said,

you know, I just was really interested in the science and the mechanics and what was going on inside the plane. And that might be my favorite thing about this record. There are songs that kind of contemplate gender, there's contemplate, you know, exotica, exoticism, big themes. But the best moments for me are the ones where she really, really gets into, like, what was going on in that plane. I mean, what's the first line? It was the sound of the motor I remember most.

Exactly. Exactly. It's a line that comes back later in a very chilling way. It felt like, what's the Emily Dickinson line? First chill, then stupor, then the letting go. Exactly. Exactly. Something very foreboding about it. But you're right. There's a lot of sort of majesty and possibility near the top of this recording. And it's only over time that there are hints of something more menacing afoot, even if it's not imminent, you sort of feel the hero coming to terms with the magnitude of the task, just sort of looking at the earth laid out before them.

The instruments quiver. All the meters burning out. Lorga Anderson also does, I mean, what I would call, akin to acting on this. There's a moment where she's talking about being in the desert, and the way she says, it's so hot is as if she's getting, If she's getting weak herself, this blurring of sort of a transcendent state and maybe, you know, crossing over into oblivion. Yeah, absolutely. The narrative style that we know so well from Lori Anderson from, you know, her very familiar works like big science or whatever.

Here she uses it in the service of this character of Amelia. And also the music, I mean, she works to create a set, basically, a theater set. One interesting factoid is that throughout the record. I got this from John Perillis, and he did a great piece on Lori in the New York Times, by the way. Throughout the record, you hear the sound of kind of an engine drone. Yeah. But it actually is from, created from a guitar drone that Lou Reed, Lori Anderson's late husband, had created. Oh, wow.

Using his, you know, using amplifiers, whatever. And she mixed that with her own viola playing and some other recordings, like of tires going over gravel. to make this airplane sound. And I just love that, you know. It's so creative. No, it's really... I can't believe I just called Lori Anderson creative, by the way. I need some more coffee.

She is very creative. All of that to say, it's a heavy subject, but for as heavy as it is, it's actually, like, really entertaining. And it goes quickly. Yes, and for those who love the voice of the majestic Anoni, Anonis also sings on this record. It's an orchestral record.

the conductor, Dennis Russell Davies, who initially kind of inspired it by asking Anderson to do a piece about flight. So it has that orchestral feeling, has some interesting guests. It's just a great experience all around. Yeah. That's Amelia by Lori Anderson. One more before we move on. This is the electronic composer John Hopkins with a new album called Ritual. And when I started at NPR Music in 2011, it was actually you and I started around the same time. We did. It's like on Love Island when people enter the villa at the same time. They're bonded by the experience. It's true.

But it was February of that year, and half of the team, it seemed like, had already chosen their album of the year. It was an album called Diamond Mine, which was a collab between a Scottish songwriter named King Criusote and John Hopkins, this English electronic musician, who I had never heard about, who combined the acoustic sounds that King Creeusot. so it was coming up with with since, but also with field recordings. That record starts with, I think, a server taking orders in a cafe in a very heavy accent

and moves through a lot of sounds from everyday life. This record ritual, going back to some of those thoughts that Nick Cave shared with you on songwriting, this is something that John Hopkins wrote about ritual in the press materials. I have no idea what I'm doing when I'm composing. I love that already. It is a mindless act. I'm following a thread, a trail. I don't know where it's coming from.

I don't know where it's going, nor does it seem to matter. So all I can really do is feel my way to the end and then try and retrospectively analyze what might be going on and what its purpose is. What is clear is that this one has the structure of a ritual. It feels like a tool, maybe even a machine, for opening portals within your inner world. In some ways, we could call this religious music,

the way that Nick Cave calls his music, religious music now, although I think Hopkins would probably prefer that more squishy word, spiritual. Yeah. I mean, well, so not having even read that yet, the way I experience this track, evocation, it uncannily aligns

with what he's saying. The sound of this track to me is very mechanical, it's very industrial, it's very methodical, it's not really bound by human pacing and logic, and it's that way that witnessing a really powerful piece machinery can be both thrilling and terrifying. Are we back in the plane with Amelia and Lou Anderson now?

I think so, because it's just, it's this feeling just like this big, you know, hot, intense thing that just, you know, it's bound by physics. It doesn't have remorse. It doesn't have, you know, it's not limited by anything like that. I also had the feeling of, it was very sci-fi or very, you know, genre storytelling. I imagine, you know, an elevator that goes down forever into. some secret base or a bat cave or something and there's a super weapon that's charging to full capacity and the light in the room is just getting brighter and brighter and blowing the scientists

hair back all of this is just coming to me and i'm not really having to work that hard to do it and i think it's because of what he's saying is that he he's tapped into something that is totally intuitive he's not intellectualizing the meaning of it at all and he's just like no i'm following a trail and you know there's a visual uh component to this for me um and maybe you'll experience it the same way too. What you were saying just made me think about, you know, 2001 of Space Odyssey or something. Yeah. It's got that Kubrick style vision of something sublime, you know.

And what is the meaning of the word sublime? It's not just, ooh, really beautiful. It's brain and soul and body transforming. When you encounter the sublime, you are changed. And I think that's in a, I want to say, when people listen to this and they listen to what we're saying about, they're going to be like, I don't know, but it's kind of subtle. It's not like it hits you really hard, like a wave of heavy metal guitars or something. It's very graceful.

A good example is that there's a moment on this record where I heard something that I thought was maybe a banjo. And then I was like, it's probably not. It's probably a machine that has been told how to sound like a banjo. And it is close, but it is a little off. And it's the uncanniness of the difference, I think, that really makes its point. you have this feeling over and over of these near organic sounds, kind of building and building and building and building and sort of drawing you further and further into the spell of what they're doing, and then everything will recede all at once and, you know, the spell will be broken and you'll kind of remember where you are. I wonder what that has to do with the idea of ritual. Is the ritual aspect that, you know, humans take the organic or the spontaneous or the everyday and shape it into something transformative through ritual?

Is that what's going on? I mean, to me, it's kind of like what you were just saying about the feeling of passing into another phase of existence. That's, I mean, I think that human beings, I think, use ritual in order to simulate the experience of. Anyway, that is Ritual by John Hopkins. Real quick, some other albums out today. Blame It on Eve by Shamika Copeland. Infinite Health by Tyco. Zed, the producer, has an album called Telos.

Chelsea Wolf has a new EP called Undone. Big Sean, the album that we initially thought was coming out on August 9th, has been delayed to today. It is called Better Me Than You. And our old pals Tank and the Bangas have a release called The Heart, the Mind, the Soul, a set of mini albums that has been compiled into one. And you had a couple others that you were excited about. A couple from the sort of Americana Country Roots space. The sibling duo, the cactus blossoms, have a lot of. another beautiful album of Everly Brothers style harmonies called Every Time I Think About You. One of my favorite Nashville connected singer-songwriters, Caleb Caudill, has a great one called Sweet Critters. And

Amy Rigby, a titan to people of my generation, a power pop queen, one of our best singer-songwriters and observers of modern life, has a record out called Hang In There with me. Let's hear a little

of her song celebrating acknowledging entering the elder phase of your life it's called Hell 060 and that is

H-E-L-L-O-H-60 20 20 was 20 After the break inspired by some of the avant-leaning records let's say that we've been spinning this week

we will spend a little time talking about art rock the places that that term has traveled over the past couple of decades and what it means or doesn't for the music being made now. That's in a minute. Welcome back to New Music Friday for August 30th, 2020.

I'm Diud Tyler Rameen here with Anne Powers. And when you and I were prepping for this episode, it became clear pretty quickly that we were looking at a weird, vibe-week release ways. Yeah, for sure. A bunch of records that seem to lay across two or three artistic categories or that had connections to classical and other music forms outside of pop, Or that were just never meant to be just musical compositions in the first place.

To which you said that it might be a good opportunity to take a fresh look at the idea of art rock. It's a term that gets thrown around about certain kinds of music and musicians when it seems like nothing else quite captures what they do. But it's slippery. Those words have meant a lot of things in their time. And it can sometimes feel easier to name examples than to define the thing itself. you agree? Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, when I said the term art rock to you, as we were talking the other day, what came to your mind? What initially came to your mind? Because when I first heard the term art rock, I think I was definitely thinking about a guy

in a cape. This is back in the days of Prague Rock. I was thinking about like rock opera, I don't know, queen or something like that. But what about you? You're a little younger than me. What comes to mind when you hear the term art rock? I mean, what comes to mind is the first band that I ever heard described by it, which was talking heads. Right. Literally art rockers in that they came out of the Rhode Island School of Design, right? Right. Which maybe, I think, gets us to an idea of like, what do we mean by the art in art rock? Because we're talking about a particularly arty release week, let's say, with Nick Cave and Lori Anderson being these sort of seen elders from a slightly older generation. And then

Ellen Reed and John Hopkins seeming to pick up on some of the same threads. And I'd even throw Dochi in there. I mean, you might not, but I would throw her in, not as a, she's obviously not rock, but I think in the same way that a Tierra Wack is, belong to the art world as much as she belongs to the pop world. Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, certainly the video for crazy, you know, putting aside all of the drama behind it feels like, it feels aligned with some of the sort of multidisciplinary aspirations, I guess, of a lot of the artists that we're talking about. So I wonder if we can try to at least approach a taxonomy of what we mean when we use this term. A pocket taxonomy. We've only got a few minutes. So let's make it quick.

So let's run through a couple of things that I think, I know that you and I are both thinking of. One is just literally music that is aligned with visual art institutions. And Lori Anderson is big there. Yeah, and not just visual art, I would say, I mean, I hate the word high art. That's a weird way to say it. But I know what you mean when you say it. Yeah, yeah, institutions in general, I guess. There is music that is RT. I put Nick Cave in that category. There are things like what we're talking about with talking heads and a couple of other names that we can mention where there's basically a multidisciplinary bent that is integrated. into the sort of founding ethos of these projects, where they're never really meant to just be

music that uses visuals, uses these other media as a sort of means to an end, or uses them as ornamentation, or uses them just as promotion. It's sort of all meant to be part of it from the very beginning. But is it also maybe, I mean, sometimes it can maybe just survive. Well, that's the other thing. I feel like this experience, you know, made me want to put on my artie, lady clothes and go sit in a white room with one orchid in a vase and have an artistic experience while listening. Yeah. I mean, in the know it when you see it category, that's when my brain starts going kind of bonkers

and just sort of reaching in every direction. I'm just like, Aldous Harding, she's kind of arty, you know, Eve Toomer, like they're kind of arty. The smile and Godspeed you Black Emperor just both announced new albums. Those kind of feel like art projects. Oh my God, talking about radio had it reinvented art rock. I mean, everything, the guys put away their capes and suddenly they all looked like Tom York. Well, can we go back to the multidisciplinary thing? Because I think that feels more compelling to me as a sort of through line than anything else. I thought a lot in thinking about this of Claire Rousey, who I got to see live this summer, who did this amazing thing in the middle of the show when she just stopped the show and asked. asked people to describe something bad that had happened to them that week.

Wow. Went up to them, got their, you know, consent to use it in the show and said, like, basically, like, this is how I'm going to use it. This is how it's going to play, whatever. Took a voice memo on her phone, air dropped it to herself, plugged it into her Ableton session, and then started looping these stories on top of themselves. And basically, you heard two or three different people's stories about something awful that had happened in their lives, you know, layered on top of each other.

And I kept thinking of Nan Golden, a photographer, who made this body of work that is split between diary and documentary and creates a world out of these fragments of relationships that feel very telling and that capture people in ways that could feel kind of sensational or exploitative if they were handled differently. But instead they feel really sort of mutually felt and mutually cathartic. Well, two points out of that, I think that's a great way. to think about it for two reasons. One, the Claire Ruzzi example that you cited, it also bears the device, you know? I mean, I think one thing that distinguishes various forms of this amorphous term, art rock,

is that it shows us something about the art making process. This is something David Byrne has done consistently throughout his career, whether with the talking heads or in his own work, you know, he's always kind of exposing, even like when they made Remain in Light, It's like, here's this band. This is where we're getting this rhythm. These are how the rhythms from Africa are entering in.

Then he made a film, True Stories, that connected the African spiritual traditions with kind of American ideas about spirituality and religion. So it's about exposing what is, you know, exposing the secret sauce in your music in some way. So that's one thing. And then the other is, as you said, the way the multidisciplinary aspect works. So Nan Golden, for example, music is a huge part of what she does. And I think one reason why I think this is a moment of art rock is that artists of all kinds

across all disciplines are having to scramble for resources and they're looking to other kinds of artists to make connections. And, you know, they're looking beyond the borders of whatever their discipline is. Everything's crumbling. Institutions are crumbling. You know, visual artists are, if you're trying to show in a gallery, you're not getting as much traction as someone who just created a meme and has a million views on a social media platform. In music, we know. I just died a little inside.

You're in a band. Now would you know, it's like the conventional means of touring and all of that, it isn't working anymore. So as everything crumbles, artists have to redefine themselves in a broader way. And I think that's what's happening. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I think a lot of smaller artists are kind of interdisciplinary by default. They have to handle their own visuals and video and other kinds of extra musical engagement. And in some ways, that maybe means that the term itself has a little bit less currency.

But I think it's still valuable because I do see in the artists that we're talking about this week an extra effort to be mobile, to connect pop music with classical. and ambient and electronic music. And, you know, I see people who maybe grew up absorbing pop and rock and kind of know how it moves and create music in their own fields that comes out being legible to people with slightly more pop taste. Absolutely. I mean, the word that maybe we throw out in the term art rock isn't the word art. It's the word rock, right? Because the ultimate goal isn't to be queen and be standing on a stage in front of tens of thousands. of people at a festival and do your rock opera. That's not the goal anymore. The goal is just to

create different kinds of spaces where music can realize itself or you can connect music to other aspects of culture. Yeah, sure. I mean, look at Bryce Desner, who just put out a new album of classical solos. That's somebody who can play with the national. He has his band Clogs. He's in with the bang on a can, folks. He can get tapped by a... Aaron Desner to come in do a session with Taylor Swift, if you so chooses. There's your fave, Cassandra Jenkins, who's, you know, a songwriter who is fluent enough in sort of instrumental interludes and ambient jazz and stuff like that, that it can feel like just an essential integrated part of what she does rather than some, you know, rather than

an exercise. And she's been doing, well, she did at least one event at a planetarium recently, So talking about like going beyond the boundaries of our ears and thinking about, she's thinking about how one of the stories she's telling on her new album, My Light, My Destroyer, is about how space, literally space, outer space, kind of overwhelms us with its grandiosity, with its sublime quality. She was inspired by when William Shatner went into space and his reaction. So, you know, here she's doing events in a planetarium, really bringing home that idea in a multidisciplinary presentation. Yeah. And granted, there are plenty of musicians who just make music that is like ambitious or challenging or pretentious or nerdy or whatever that you wouldn't necessarily call art rock. But I think in that, you know it when you see it way, we're talking about people who make a little bit of an extra effort to sort of associate. themselves with these different worlds because it feels like the truest evocation of what they want to do. Calling it an alliance between different worlds feels maybe a little bit reductive, but there

definitely is some kind of mutual exchange between visual art, you know, music, classical, all of these things that we're talking about. They're all sort of trading cultural capital as they link up. To return to your example of the primary art rock band, the Talking Heads, I think a good way to think about art rock or art music or whatever art pop, hey Lady Gaga, I see you out there, is to think about it not as a genre or even a style, but more as a moment, you know, it's like, is this a moment where this kind of interdisciplinary arises?

And I want to go back to the late 70s, early 80s in New York, and think about how hip-hop, visual art, performance, conceptual art, punk rock, fashion, we're all colliding. And we don't have a neighborhood like that anymore, like the East Village, exactly. But we have the neighborhood of cyberspace or whatever. It's floating around. I feel like all those things are colliding again. I think so. I mean, I think that's what's happened to, you know,

not that regional scenes don't matter anymore, but there's this thing that you hear all the time that it feels like, you know, downtown Manhattan became the Internet. Brooklyn became the internet, you know, Silver Lake became the internet, whatever it is. Exactly. But to that point, and maybe this is where we should leave things for today, I heard a song recently from an album that I thought we were going to be talking about today that got delayed at the last minute, Asap Rocky, who is one of these chameleonic figures who, from the very beginning, seemed so cosmopolitan and so aware of things beyond the, you know, just the simple task of

of rapping over a beat. He, you know, is a guy from Harlem who never really had a distinctly New York style who seemed to be interested in music coming from all over the place and who also instantly through, you know, through ASAP mob, his crew, and just through some of his solo endeavors, you know, put his fingers in, in art, in fashion, you know, it's, like, it's funny that, that Drake's may knock against him earlier this year was like, yo, go put some clothes out and you know, raise your kids with Rihanna. It's just like, that sounds great. What a cool life.

But his connection to these other worlds kind of reminds me of the way that, like, you know, Blondie would link up with, you know, Fab Five Freddy and Jean-Michel Basquiat and make it seem like the most natural thing in the world, even if, you know, I mean, Rapture is like kind of a goofy song, but it's, it feels so important in terms of demonstrating how people in these ostensibly different worlds could find each other and see themselves in one another. Totally. I think that's a great observation. And the fact he's collaborating with outsider artist, Queen Jessica Pratt on this song. That's right. Is this the future of art, rock, rap, hip-hop, whatever we want to call it? Why don't we go out with that? Let's hear a little bit of

the song, Hi Jack, by Asap Rocky and Jessica Pratt. Me, this ain't a life wrath. Talk to God before I go to sleep. He hit me right back. He says, stay calm. Put your trust in me. You on the right path. These niggas want my wife back.

The people want my next track. The coppers want my black ass. Fruct up, but it's like that. That'll do it for our discussion today. Listeners, we know we left out a lot. So get in touch at all songs at npr.org if you want to tell us about your favorite art rocker. Or, even better, if you think you have a definition that gets closer than we did. We love hearing from you, and it gives us ideas for what to talk about next.

That is it for this week's New Music Friday. Next week, new albums by M.J. Lenderman, Fred again, Toro and, like a Phoenix, a resurgent L.L. CoolJay. You heard me. Can't wait. I can talk for the million time about L.L. Cool J winking at me once backstage at Radio City. I love it. I love that story. In the meantime, you can send your feedback on today's episode to all songs at npr.org. You can leave us a review or just tell two friends to listen.

Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash music newsletter. And remember, you can get this show sponsor free by joining NPR Music Plus. Go to plus.npr.org slash NPR Music or search for NPR Music and Apple Podcasts to sign up. Today's episode was produced by Noah Caldwell. Our editor is Jacob Gans. I'm Dawood Tyler Amin. And I'm Am Powers. Come back next week for more new music Friday.

Until then, happy listening.