Album Reviews: Big Thief, Neko Case, Danny Brown

Danny Brown – Stardust
Detroit, MI

Always one to zig where one expects a zag, Danny Brown doesn’t slow down his dive further into new avenues on Stardust. Doesn’t sound as much like a Brown record but also rarely sounds like anyone else to the point that it feels more like a feature mixtape than something strictly in his personal auteur-ship as a musician. The genre fusion is so weird and often experimental that the record is either hitting you with surprising highs or borderline unlistenable songs. Blending a bit of hyperpop with his dark production style, “Copycats” is a warped and glitched out haze, with Brown coming off in this track like a broken computer trying to communicate through a booming pop track. The lean into the pop is even higher on “Flowers” with Brown playing like a driving feature amidst a blown-out pop grinder. The more driving-house focus of “Lift You Up” is a fun shift ripped right out of the 90s, that lets Brown bounce and swerve with the production to find a club drive one would never expect coming off his earlier work. The closest feel you get to Brown’s usual flavor comes in the frenetic beats of “Whatever the Case,” where the more demented parts of the record are focused into the punch of the drums to make a song that hits fast and hard.

Mette Lindberg – One in a Million (Single)
Herlev, Denmark

After a small run re-hyping up all her old work with Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Mette Lindberg is returning to drop new solo music with a low-key approach. Coming off like a smooth take on bedroom indie pop, not unlike the early work by fellow Dane MØ, there’s a quiet sound here that makes its push into more expansive sounds hit all the harder. With sparse synths and electronics humming like candles in the dark in the track’s early moments, Lindberg’s voice is the warm blanket that keeps this space comforting. However, the track finds its true light and x-factor in those cosmic drops every chorus, as the synths expand from small twinkling lights into a full galaxy of shining stars. Though definitely a more sombre track than expected for the singer who made her name in orchestral remix pop, this track shows she’s not pigeonholing this next phase of her career.

Big Thief – Double Infinity
Brooklyn

Shifting to a more effects-driven sounds, Big Thief don’t lose the thread of what makes them unique, but instead enhances it through small but effective emotional moments. Occasionally taking bigger departures for some weird sounds, it’s great to see this band do something new with their sound and not lose the meat of their appeal in the process. As the album sets off on “Incomprehensible,” there’s a dreamy and jazzy push in the production, letting the band’s slow approach feel like the calming anchor in the middle of a wondrous and busy fractal slowly expanding until it becomes something totally massive and enveloping. The sound is brought back down on “Los Angeles,” with Adrianne Lenker’s vocals taking control of the ship, to bring in a soulful guitar ballad that lets its sonic palette really just colour in the fringes of what the band is doing here, and to that effect make that solo hit like a solar flare. “Double Infinity” has a wispy aura floating around Lenker’s controlled wail here, giving the percussion room to slowly build out and lending the track the air like it was recorded in nature! Interestingly, the vocal approach amidst some of the more heightened production ideas on “Happy with You” creates a feeling like a folk pop band emulating electronic pop, as it almost feels like Lenker is looping a sample of her vocal at times. The result is a dazzling and shockingly dance-ready track by the band.

Area Resident – Driving to La Pêche in Opposing Lanes (Single)
Ottawa

The guitars are aflame, and the drums are exploding on Area Resident’s latest single, with a cooling effect to the vocals to balance it all out. Doug Hempstead brings out the raw fury in the guitar tones on this track, constantly finding a new edge to the burning roar of his sound to make the next chorus soar higher. Though the track follows a simple back and forth, there’s an intensity to Hempstead’s tilt on the track that keeps it constantly veering into something more. And as it sets out on its final blaring solo, the track is sunburnt and expanded out to the point that the lines between the guitar and the rest of the production have been blurred into oblivion, and they all become part of one wave of haze.

Neko Case – Neon Grey Midnight Green
Alexandria, VA/Tacoma, WA

A truly reliable driver of alt-folk and country-tinged indie music, Neko Case has always found something to say and a new way to say it. But   in blending some of the roots of her older work and blowing it up through a whole range of new instrumental arrangements, Case has made one of her most intriguing albums in years. Blending a folk drive with a mystifying mix of recording techniques, “Wreck” is Case at her best, as she crafts a charging and confident track that is brimming on every level with tiny details that one could base a whole other song around. After its surprisingly swinging intro, “An Ice Age” shifts into a rather sweeping and full orchestral swirl, leaving you caught in a full celebratory climax for the rest of its run like reliving a memory. Early Case records come out more in “Oh, Neglect…” and the slow crawl of its drums, as the changes here come from the way she swells the track’s bigger moments through the strings and horns that would never have fleshed out her older work quite like this. The pointed delivery of “Rusty Mountain” feels classic from the start, and the way it manages to cut through, speak its piece, and still leave a few sonic delights in the midst of all that is a joy to hear.

Click here for more music reviews from Owen Maxwell.