In Which Something Happened When You Were A Kid

Nothing She Can't Do

by JANICE LEVENS

Stranger in the Alps
Phoebe Bridgers
producers Tony Berg and Ethan Gruska
September 22nd on Dead Oceans

"Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time, and that's just how I feel," Phoebe Bridgers admits on "Funeral." Disturbingly, this is one of the most uplifting tracks on her debut album Stranger in the Alps, a preciously perfect debut in the vein of collaborator Conor Oberst and a litany of folk predecessors who were nowhere near as good when they were 23.

But age is not anything but a number, and Phoebe herself is more than an amalgamation of moody ballads. Most prominent in Stranger in the Alps is Phoebe's hometown of Los Angeles, which lurks like the effete ghost on her album cover over the proceedings.

One reason that Phoebe's dark act isn't always convincing is that she is so articulate about her hard times. While she explains "I won't be home with you tonight" to Leonard Cohen on "Chelsea", you can tell that she is having fun in her melancholy. "No it's not important, they're just pretty words, my dear," she explains, "there is no distraction that can make me disappear." Thank God, for Stranger in the Alps is the most exciting debut this year.

Bridgers' low, gravelly voice works perfectly on this material, although it lacks the resonance we encounter when she duets with Conor Oberst on the restrained, "Would You Rather". Hearing another voice echo Phoebe's comes as an alarming surprise, and is probably mistake. Breaking this sonorous monologue is distracting to the real purpose of Stranger in the Alps, which is to present a devastatingly accurate portrait of a woman in a particular time and place without any self-censorship; Bridgers' honesty is like a dinosaur bone delicately preserved in amber. Oberst is the dinosaur.

On "Scott Street", Bridgers hones in her self-doubt on an exterior force. Her subdued anger is all the more sour for its contained aspect, as she sings, "There's helicopters over my head every night when I go to bed. Spending money and I earned it. When I'm lonely, that's when I'll burn it." Here the underlying sound recedes from her singular voice, whereas on "Georgia", one of her oldest songs, the piano is more prominent, as if she is now slightly embarrassed by the directness of lyrics like "if I had breathed you, will it kill me?"

In the album's showpiece, "Smoke Signals", Bridgers ascends to another level of lyrical sophistication.

I buried a hatchet, It's coming up lavender
The future's unwritten, the past is a corridor
I'm at the exit looking back through the hall
You are anonymous, I am a concrete wall

By the end of Stranger in the Alps, Phoebe seems to have encapsulated how she wants her music to appear in the folk catalogue: on the serious, hard side of the ledger. "You gave me $1500 to see your hypnotherapist," she says without the slightest hint of irony. Let us hope she stays that way.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording.

In Which We Have Curiosity From The Cavity

Shame Is Going To Die

by JANICE LEVENS

Plunge
Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson
producers Karin Dreijer Andersson, Peder Mannerfelt, and Johannes Berglund
October 27th on Rabid Records

The sheer number of identities inhabited by Karin Dreijier Andersson — whether in her influential project with her brother, The Knife, or in this solo incarnation — makes any lyrical statement absolutely believable. On the last track of Plunge, "Mama's Hand", she has returned to her mother role. "We have no one to trust," she explains to her progeny. "I'm yours to rock in place, I write to be at ease." Finally, there is an explanation for being a chameleon — it is substantially more facile a project than sticking to one thing.

Andersson, who is married with two children, is less at ease on tracks like "IDK About You." Plunge finds her vocals more substantial than they have been in the past. This is both a blessing and a curse on the record, because while Dreijer Andersson comes across as more confident in her vocal ability, to some extent this confidence is misplaced. Still, when she echoes the restrained hum of a bassline, there is very little to fuck up, as on the album's sinister highlight, "To The Moon and Back."

I should not be too hard on Dreijer Andersson's vocals, because in most ways they could suit the industrial, rapacious mood of her nightmares better. Her best vocal performance happens on "Falling", as she sings, not particularly convincingly, "You made me dirty again." Dreijier's aesthetic is meant to be political, and much of her lyrical efforts concern feelings of helplessness, anger and inequality that rationally consume all of our lives to some extent.

Although The Knife was a cohesive and engaging effort, it always felt like something of a side project. When Dreijer Andersson released her first album as Fever Ray eight years ago, a part of her shook loose. The producer of that album was the talented Christoffer Berg. He is gone, but Peder Mannerfelt returns to join newcomer Johannes Berglund, who mixed the album. 

On "Mustn't Hurry", another high point for Plunge, Dreijer Andersson collaborates with the brilliant Paula Temple to create the album's genre-bending, defining track. She sings,

Drove out in the morning
Where shame is going to burn
Shame is going to die
I'm feeling weak
A beast to seek
Licking my fingers
Got the last crumb
My curiosity from the cavity
Is something to stick in

Given all that she has in life to be thankful for, you expect something other than the relentless dirge of the album's title track. Maybe Plunge as a whole gets closest to that on "Red Trails", when a violin emphasizes the chanting of the refrain. "Touching in the snow one day, laying low and kissing," she chants, in something of a celebration. Plunge is all about having total choice in the way we express ourselves, and if the album isn't exactly something you would put on to cheer yourself up, it is Dreijer Andersson's prerogative: "Blood was our favorite paint, you were my favorite pain." That she can derive such a meaningful darkness from these events is its own kind of joy.

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording.

In Which Casualties Hang From The Balcony

Begging You Please To Wake Up

by JANICE LEVENS

Masseduction
St. Vincent
producers Jack Antonoff, Annie Clark, Lars Stalfors and John Congleton
October 13th on Lorna Vista

A very cynical person — a far more cynical person than I — would call St. Vincent's new album Masseduction an album of Jack Antonoff covers. But this would not be really fair, since in having the good sense to use Antonoff as her producer and co-writer on the vast majority of Masseduction's tracks, Dallas native Annie Clark has made far and away the most exciting album of her career.

On the exceedingly dull detour of the past few years, involving a lengthy, unproductive collaboration with whatever was left of David Byrne, Clark has threatened to waste her primary skills as a musician and performer. Those would be her anthemic, flexible voice and her chameleon-esque synthesis of various styles of electronic music into what (this can no longer be denied) is a pop archetype. Some of the songs on Masseduction could easily have been recorded by Lady Gaga. "Los Ageless" in particular is the kind of empty vessel that could almost be covered by any artist.

As much as it would be easy to criticize Masseduction for being overly mainstream, the songwriting of Mr. Antonoff turns everything into a new wave Simon and Garfunkel deal. As a lyricist, Antonoff has few peers in his industry, and all the best tracks on Masseduction were written by him. His hopeful, angsty tone meshes perfectly with Clark's vocals on tracks like the magnetic "Happy Birthday, Johnny" which finds her singing, "Accused me of acting like all royalty, always for show, no true charity." It is not the best rhyme, but who cares? Quiet desperation is so rare these days.

This is not even the peak of the Antonoff-Clark combination. It is great fun to see Jack's focus on a tight, penetrable lyricism mix with the emotion Clark can put into her voice seemingly at will. You have to take a good deal on faith and credit to give two shits about a romantic vision of the Eiffel Tower ("I heard the robins and thought they were sirens" she explains on "Young Lover"). In order to enjoy the music of St. Vincent, you have to accept that a good portion of it will not feel authentic at all. Her strangled cry ("New love wasn't true love") still sounds good.

with Fiona Apple

By his own admission, Antonoff isn't the most polished singer, but he seems to have an endless supply of brilliant songs to offer to his collaborators. Among so many fully realized tracks, he seems to have no trouble knowing which ones are particularly suited to Clark's naivete. His summer album under the Bleachers moniker, Gone Now, kept most of his finest work for himself, and justly so, but I wish he had given "Everybody Lost Somebody" to Annie.

In Clark's most ostensibly emotional moments, there remains the pervasive hint of phoniness, but this is a symptom of 35 representing the very beginning of middle age for most in her generation. Her voice alone papers over this hesitation. Working with Antonoff is a massive change; shaking off even more of her musical past would be too much of an imposition. On "Smoking Section" she sings, "Sometimes I stand with a pistol in hand: I fire at the grass just to scare you" as if there could be no other reason. "I sway in place," she offers on "Slow Disco", admitting "I'm so glad I came but I can't wait to leave."

Janice Levens is the music editor of This Recording. She is the pseudonym of a writer living in Los Angeles. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.