The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely underheard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments. This week I’m breaking format to preview an upcoming album that I’m excited about.
It’s almost certain that Melodie by Slow Pulp will be the new album I recommend to the most people this year.
The Chicago-based foursome’s upcoming long-player is a no-skips delight.1 Slow Pulp’s third LP skims bits off of a bunch of cozy, textured subgenres to make an album that’s incredibly accessible, rewards repeat listens and will fall within a Goldilocks zone for a lot of listeners.2
Melodie is often intricately layered and loud, but it lacks the paint-peeling abrasion that turns some folks off shoegaze. A few songs are more languidly paced, but Emily Massey’s front-and-center voice and an admirable restraint where song length is concerned mean that Melodie never drifts off into the ephemeral dreamland of the most somnolent bedroom pop. Melodic song structure and emotionally wrought lyrical sentiments are simpatico with Midwest emo, but Slow Pulp omits the formulaic feel and unintentionally humorous melodrama endemic to that subgenre’s dregs. When twangy textures and lo-fi crackle worm their way in, it’s both tasteful and in a way that serves the song rather than an attempt to check as many boxes in a cool music algorithm.
Although there is little doubt that Melodie checks a bunch of those boxes. This is one of the year’s most charming albums, and it can win someone over in a bunch of ways. Whether listeners like their indie rock soft and twinkly, rough and buzzy or confessional and twangy, they will find something to like, if not hopelessly love, on this album.
Lead single, “Better Man,” one of five songs on the album written by guitarist Henry Stoehr, serves as an excellent and efficient ambassador to the album. It’s an instantly and profoundly likeable song on an album that could be described in exactly those terms, and it takes maybe 75 seconds for that to become apparent.
“Better Man” opens with a muted, abbreviated take on the iconic “A Hard Day’s Night” kerrang before a propulsive, twinkling noise sends the song careening down a twilight highway and toward an improbably pretty dark night of the soul. A simple-but-modulated guitar riff slithers out of its ornate surroundings to become the dominant musical force of the track, and Massey poses the equally profane and relatable opening question, “Did I fuck it up again?” By the end of the first verse, Slow Pulp work the song into an urgent lather and begin the loud-quiet-loud cycle anew. By the time it winds down with a denuded3 take on its load-bearing riff, there’s a strong temptation to run through the cycle again by pressing replay.
The song is sometimes a recklessly ascendent bottle rocket, sometimes a wounded bird barely fluttering by. Slow Pulp sounds great in either mode and the periods of restraint make the full-throttle ascent even more thrilling. Melodie as a whole works that way, too.
“Yellow and Green” and “These Days,” the two songs that precede “Better Man,” find the band mostly operating in the ailing avian mode. The album-opener is a gentle strummer with quick bouts of shimmering effects. “These Days” is a somber, pleasantly plodding song that finds a jolt of energy in creaky strings during a folky instrumental break. So, when “Better Man” hits, it hits hard.
“Melodie” pushes the intensity and volume further. It’s a fizzy rocker with the kind of showy guitar licks that get punctuated by grunts. It quickly reaches a wonderful, blown-out apex and clears out in a hurry for the dreamy power pop of “Red Car,” Melodie’s most overtly gleeful song.
A zippy tempo, lyrics that are mostly automotive metaphors and a driving drum beat make “Red Car” an aptly titled tune. Its title also serves as a shout-out to the Cars, who, along with a red Mazda, helped inspire the song. While Ric Ocasek is in the song’s origins, its final destination is more Alison Goldfrapp-coded.4 Slow Pulp sculpts a mix of kitschy drum beat and cool everything ese into something slightly more jagged and depressive than would be typical for the New Wave greats, with the titular vehicle coming to represent a joy that’s fleeting and perhaps fatal.5
Slow Pulp decelerates hard for “Not for Nothing,” a piano-driven ballad and the album’s not especially representative second single. There is similar heartbreak in album-closer, “Slip Away,” but that song has a rough-voiced emotionality that is absent on “Not for Nothing.” On the other hand, sparse banjo-playing courtesy of producer Elliott Kozel and lyrics that paint a picture of a tough-but-necessary break-up make “Not for Nothing” the much cuter song.6
In between those two ballads lies only one relatively uptempo song, which makes the last third of Melodie feel like a denouement. This could be a drag, but the loping “Entertainer” is one of the album’s stronger songs. It gets a major boost from Slow Pulp’s springy rhythm section — Alex Leeds on bass and Teddy Matthews on drums — and its slow dissolve into swirling noise is thoroughly charming. Plus, Slow Pulp finds ways to delight and surprise while working at a slower pace.
“Like Me” moves at a tectonic pace, allowing one swirling plate of guitar noise to slowly slide over the previous buzzsaw chord until there is a formidable geologic stack of sound. All the while, Massey’s voice floats over the accumulated cozy din. “Spill” briefly snaps things back into focus, toddling along as a simple Americana-tinged song before howling ambience obliterates it. Up to You” is an even woozier, slightly lighter kindred spirit to “Like Me.” While the previous song is all shoegaze subduction, the LP’s penultimate song is blissed-out, breathy and psyche-tinged bedroom pop. By the time Massey is done wringing every last drop of emotion out of her voice on “Slip Away,” the mostly slow stretch feels like quite a journey.
While every song on Melodie works, a handful of songs —chiefly “Better Man,” “Melodie,” “Red Car,” “Entertainer,” “Spill,” and “Slip Away” — come across as a cut above their peers. The lion’s share of those songs fall within the vital viscera of the album’s middle third. This provides a nice sense of rise and fall, but also means there is about a third of the album spent rising and a third spent falling. At just 11 songs, it would be a stretch to call Melodie watered-down or overlong, but a Japandroids-approved eight-song cut of the album would likely land with a little more force.
Or maybe that’s a terrible idea. Cutting a single song from an album with this much multi-faceted appeal would inevitably mean doing away with someone’s favorite track.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
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The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Bill Bailey: Vaudevillean
Superstore, Season Two, Episode Four, “Guns, Pills, and Birds”
“I mean, without guns, how would you properly start a drag race?”
“I’m keeping a list of all the crazy white people shit you say.”
“Okay, fine, but I want my objection noted.”
“Oh, that’s definitely going on the list.”
“My bad. That reaction was very out of character for me. I normally have very cool reactions to things. I have a lot of cool habits and a very active sex life.”
“Why would you give that information?!”
“There’s a guy over there I really don’t think should own a gun. Or a car. Or a fork.”
“Do you wanna see some pictures of my kids?”
“No. Gross. I hate kids.”
“I’d explain why, but your brain could barely handle the science.”
“What I don’t know can’t hurt me or send me to hell.”
“Can you guys just act like an adults and have an affair or something?”
I meant to explain the Bill Bailey thing further. We went to his show, and I’ve never seen a comedian so resign themselves to losing control of an audience; lots of (good-natured) hecklers, which he rolled with even as he was baffled – he told a story of having to put on a raffle in Scotland once, which led to people repeatedly requesting a raffle for our night, and he apparently was unaware of what a meat tray is and riffed on that half the night. He initially referred to the audience as ‘Hobart and the surrounding areas’ a few times, then simply said ‘Hobart’, only to be loudly corrected – to his deep amusement, and he made a bit out of it later.
Obviously he also played around with different instruments; my favourite was the fifteenth century violin he made a beat out of, although I also enjoyed the Japanese one-stringed lute he showed off (which, as he discovered about a year into owning it, you adjust by squeezing). It was invented by Japanese puritans, so he made up a song about how you shouldn’t have sex while playing it. I also enjoyed his bossa Nova riff on Beethoven’s Fifth. My partner’s favourite bit was when he talked about meeting an Australian bureaucrat who was essentially his point of contact when he was made an honorary Australian of the year, who he later met drunk off her tits and demanding he come and dance.
Favourite turn of phrase: describing Boris Johnson as ‘a child’s drawing of bagpipes’.
Jonah’s (understandable) moral panic over who to sell guns to is great.
Ludwig, S2E1 – the best of the recent UK “cosy crime” shows (as far as I know) has returned for a second season, interested to see if it can survive with the initial hook resolved. In the first season, David Mitchell impersonates his identical twin brother – a police detective – while investigating his disappearance. The brother is still missing but Mitchell is now working for the police in an official capacity as a “crime-scene consultant”. This first episode starts strong with a flashy long-take / split-screen scene setting up the case of the week, in which an elderly woman is killed at the theatre and both of her daughters confess to the crime. I didn’t think the case was one of their better ones really but the ongoing plot threads were strong and the comedy elements are firing on all cylinders, so I’m excited to continue.
Elementary, “How the Sausage Is Made” – A really complex mess involving someone who died from horse tranquilizer he ingested with a sausage made from human parts, the development of vat grown meat, the power of “Big Meat,” and the possible profit you could make selling vat grown meat declared to be just meat substitute to religious Jews and Muslims. It was fun to hear Sherlock and Joan discuss kashrut and halal rules, but I don’t think they actually got much right. As seems to be happening this season, the pieces of the case are more interesting than the case itself. Fran Kranz (Dollhouse) guest stars. Meanwhile, Sherlock quits his meetings because he is just too bored, but Joan gets him to realize that this is pretty much normal for everyone and he returns. First time in a while we’ve touched on his recovery.
The Twilight Zone, “Elegy” – Doesn’t entirely come together but it does have its moments.
Barney Miller, “Fear of Flying” – Wojo has to take a suspect in a bigamy case (Jack Riley of Bob Newhart fame) to Cleveland, and admits that he is afraid to fly (despite having flown to and from ‘Nam and probably on heli copters while there). His NYC wife (Valerie Curtin from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) shows up and tries to kill herself! Good balance of comedy and not-quite-comedy. Meanwhile, an honest citizen finds $3,500 on the street and turns it in, but has second thoughts about being so honest.
Monday Night Football was not a particularly exciting game. The Broncos might be in trouble this year.
I meant to get around to some of my other shows but haven’t. Maybe today – I got four episodes from the last three nights to clear off, plus two entire streaming seasons that were released last week.
What did we listen to?
1001 Albums, etc.
Massive Attack – Blue Lines: Mezzanine was the only Massive Attack album I heard back in the day and I wasn’t that into it, aside from “Teardrop” being undeniably gorgeous. The wider trip-hop scene also never really clicked with me so I didn’t dig into their other work and apparently I was missing out! Really enjoyed this, it’s chilled-out without the relentless mopiness I encountered elsewhere in the genre and the closing track is absolutely gorgeous.
Primal Scream – Screamadelica: owned this one on CD previously and it didn’t make the cut when I trimmed down my collection. On a revisit, I’m still a little underwhelmed by it. I quite like Primal Scream’s move into krautrock influences later on but this “what if the Rolling Stones dabbled in 90s dance music” sound just isn’t really my thing despite its classic status.
Teenage Fanclub – Bandwagonesque: this is more my speed of early-90s UK indie rock! Big fan of Teenage Fanclub’s Scottish take on Big Star-esque powerpop, this isn’t my favourite album by them (Grand Prix will always hold that spot) but it’s very good indeed. Gerry Love’s songs are always my favourites.
Metallica – Metallica: I hated the earlier Metallica albums on the list but I cannot deny that this one has something, even if it’s not my bag. I think a big part of that is the production – they’re doing things like “allowing all of the band members to be heard in the mix” here and, hear me out, that’s a good thing.
Pavement – Slanted & Enchanted: I’ve contributed to two Pavement tribute albums and I chose songs from this album both times so was it ever going to be anything other than a 10/10 on my extremely nerdy tracking spreadsheet? It was not. A wonderfully odd, noisy album.
Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92: I think “Drukqs” was the only Aphex Twin album I’d heard in full prior to this, and it’s a classic “I like this, but not THAT much of this” album for me. This one stays more consistently in one lane (not exactly as ambient as the title suggests, but definitely chilled-out music despite the beats) and I enjoyed it a fair bit, although it never quite strays into the realm of electronic music that I fully love.
Arrested Development – 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…: the problem with the other acts in the vaguely “alternative hip-hop” zone is that none of them are as fun as De La Soul. This one has a bit more of a Southern US / Gospel influence than its peers (Tribe Called Quest etc) but falls into a similar zone where I enjoy the general vibe but find it a little overlong and samey.
Koffi Olomidé – Haut de gamme tcha-tcho “Echelon Ngomba” – Koweït, rive gauche: this has most of the same ingredients as some other African music that I’ve really enjoyed: bright guitars, upbeat tempos etc. – but I think the production lets it down a bit. Still pretty fun.
Morrissey – Your Arsenal: there is WAY too much Morrissey on this list but on its own merits, this is another solid solo album with plenty of good songs and no real skippers.
Baaba Maal – Lam Toro: another album from Africa, this one has a vocal style I’m not a huge fan of but still gets into an appealing groove when it ups the tempo a bit.
Lemonheads – It’s a Shame About Ray: another long-time favourite, my favourite Lemonheads / Evan Dando songs generally come from albums other than this one but as a complete work this is definitely their creative peak. Such wonderfully crunchy, sunshiney indie rock. Such a shame Dando was so intent on destroying himself.
Rage Against The Machine – Rage Against The Machine: obviously on a completely different level to much of the brainless rap-rock / nu-metal that would follow it but it’s still not my favourite genre even when done well.
—
Screen Drafts, 21st Century Palme D’Or winners – not a topic I was hugely invested in, but an interesting discussion. Excited to get onto the final part of the Robert Altman draft now.
Credit to Mick Ronson for how good and crunchy the guitars on Your Arsenal sound! I think this is the only Aphex Twin album I’ve listened to in full.
Two musicals, one new to me and one old, She Loves Me and Dreamgirls. She Loves Me is based on the same material as Shop Around The Corner and You’ve Got Mail and became a cult hit because of songs like “Vanilla Ice Cream” and “Will He Like Me”, which Barbara Cook made part of her concerts. No wonder! This is a really witty and surprisingly tender musical score, in part because the characters aren’t high-powered or extraordinary. They’re lonely, nice retail clerks looking for love and the play, while a comedy, still takes their desires and emotions semi-seriously. Good lyrics too: “Have you set your calendar for Tuesday/When we bring this chapter to a close? When I meet my lady of the letters/Who puts tiny faces in her O’s?”
I saw the movie of Dreamgirls as a kid so I threw on the Original Broadway Cast recording, very good stuff though the Eighties slathering on of reverb and perfected instruments threw me off, in part because this is deliberately evoking The Supremes and 60’s R&B. (Diana Ross reacted pretty negatively to Dreamgirls and considering the character is named DINA, I can sorta see why.) Jennifer Holliday’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” is a spectacular piece of music and as a vocal performance is famously a powerhouse, defiant, desperate, and heartbroken all at once.
Year of the Month updates:
This September, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, etc. from 1937.
Sept. 18th: Gillian Nelson: Pluto’s Quin-pup-lets
Sept. 20th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Hobbit
Sept. 22nd: Lauren James: Stage Door
Sept. 25th: Gillian Nelson: Donald’s Ostrich
And here’s all the movies, albums, books from 1998 you can sign up for this October!
Oct. 3rd: Gillian Nelson: Movie Surfers
Oct. 4th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Pi
Oct. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Mighty Joe Young
Oct. 13th: John Bruni: High Art
Oct. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Who Moved My Cheese?
Oct. 30th: Gillian Nelson: Halloweentown