“Silver Trembling Hands” is really the first time we get a consistent drum beat, sixteen songs into the massive, two-part Embryonic. Hell, there are portions of the song that sound like a real song, like you might hear on an alt-rock radio station’s bi-monthly indie hour. Guitar! Repeated phrases! It’s all there. All in all though, it’s the beauty of how well “Silver Trembling Hands” fits seductively into the sane tail end of an insane journey that makes it memorable.
Pop on St. Vincent’s Actor and you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get. A few moments of graveyard whispers feed into something gentle, whimsical, dark, something that wouldn’t feel out of place in the Land of Oz. “I threw flowers in your face on my sister’s wedding day” has both celebratory and bitter elements, the sumptuous gray area of the real world made twisted and cartoonish. “The Stangers” therefore represents the perfect foreshadow for the kind of fancifully juxtaposed light and dark to come.
How Tobacco (think the thick, hazy synths of Black Moth Super Rainbow) teamed up with backpacker and nonsense-enthusiast Aesop Rock is beyond me. Yet, thankful I am. It takes a few listens to weed through the layers (Oh, he’s saying “squirrels in the chimney too stubborn for puffin out”) and another few to attempt translation (“squirrels in the chimney...” wait, wtf?). The necessary follow-up question: where is my thick, hazy synth-rap micro-genre?
It’s amazing what a little simplicity will do. The Dirty Projectors spend most of Bitte Orca compiling every instrument and mid-song structural change they can muster without segregating themselves from that precious label we call ‘pop.’ “Two Doves,” as just an acoustic guitar (played perfectly cattily), some strings (jutting in and out on their own terms) and Angel Deradoorian's lovely voice, is absolutely stunning.
21) JJ – “Are You Still in Vallda?”
Some moments last forever, and some things are impossible to let go. Perhaps best known for their Lil’ Wayne-sampling, power pop drug anthem “Ecstacy,” a great song in its own right, JJ hits its peak with this little slice of acoustic Euro nostalgia. There’s an unembellished vulnerability in lines like “Someday I know we’ll meet again/But I say that every summer” and the quiver at the end of “Are You Still in Vallda?” She’s still stuck on a summer ten years gone, and I'd imagine still will be ten summers on.
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