The xx, “A Violent Noise (Four Tet Remix)”
I’m going to be brutally honest: I think The xx is fine. I share neither the rapturous, openly weeping love for the band’s hushed pillow-talk murmurs that I’ve witnessed at its live shows, nor the rancorous, open contempt for its shy, minimalist mumbling that fills my social media feeds whenever the group happens to appear on television. I have all of The xx’s albums in an Apple Music playlist I’ve titled “Pleasant,” a collection of innocuous music designed for playing in the background in polite company (or whenever my kids need to calm down), but rarely do I listen to the group otherwise—and never does it leave much of an impression, beyond its general, whispering aesthetic. But I do love Four Tet, and I love what Kieran Hebden has done with “A Violent Noise.” Taking the original’s typically cautious, slowly building trance melody—which already sounds like an Underworld tune trying desperately to break free—he brings it to its natural conclusion by adding a knock-knocking house rhythm, stuttering arpeggiations, sparkling harps, and washes of ghostly vocals reminiscent of his pal Burial, allowing it to build into a grand (if still appropriately reserved) rave anthem. Granted, there’s barely anything left of The xx here, yet it’s also made me go back and form a new appreciation for the original. (Even if it’s not going to get as much play in my house as this.)
Playboi Carti, “Location”
Playboi Carti’s exterior is immaculate, and I’m not just talking about the fact that he’s handsome enough to attract Vogue and W profiles. I mean the entire Playboi Carti aesthetic, the way he rubs shoulders with the hip, subversive artists of Awful Records, as well as the style-conscious A$AP Mob, or uses a still from Gummo as his Soundcloud icon—even his inflammatory, offhand classification of himself as the “Jay Electronica of mumble rap.” Carti is good at being a rapper on the internet, in other words, even if his rapping has remained largely an unknown quantity. His self-titled debut mixtape won’t win over any converts, but it’s likable lifestyle rap, full of airy beats like the one on opener “Location.” Like a less-exuberant Yachty or a less lyrical 21 Savage, he takes a low-key tack against the beat, almost viewing himself as part of the scenery. When the beat’s as blissfully catatonic as it is on “Location,” the result is glorious, if characteristically surface-level.
Priests, “JJ”
Priests have been turning out loud, biting, often politically pointed punk since forming in 2012, and while their first-ever full-length album, Nothing Feels Natural, finds them leaning slightly further into tunefulness, it’s no less chaotic than the EPs on which they built their name. Like many of the band’s tracks, album highlight “JJ” eschews your usual verse-chorus structure for a stream-of-consciousness screed about some asshole that singer Katie Alice Greer can’t believe she ever had feelings for. As Greer wavers between nostalgia and disgust, the song teeters on the edge of becoming something more comfortable. Twinkling piano sneaks into the post-punk groove as if it’s ready to lead the band into some roaring chorus, but—like Greer realizing just how lame this Parliament-smoking nobody in her past was—the band snaps out of its build and moves on with its life, heading to the next feint toward complacency, the next thrill, the next killer hook of a song that refuses to ever settle for less.