Fever Ray, Future, Mitski
Pitchfork #66 - 64
#66 Fever Ray, Plunge (2017)
Rating: 2
Fever Ray is an alias for Karin Dreijer, a moniker the Swedish songwriter used for their solo work after being part of the duo The Knife (they/them pronouns preferred). Dreijer released their first solo record in 2009 and played Coachella as Fever Ray in 2010. This is their second album, released several years later after lots of collab and theater work in between.
Simply put, this is unusual, experimental music, though it never really loses its mind. It definitely puts Dreijer’s voice to the front, usually dual tracked, and they sort of meld their Swedish accent with a vocal affect. Fever Ray’s vocals sound like a mix of Bjork and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Performance art seems an essential part of the whole persona. Stage shows seem rare but elaborate, weird, and mysterious. There’s lots of creepy makeup and bizarre costumes. And music videos are intriguing but a little disturbing. I wouldn’t show them to my kids yet. Dreijer carries a creepy clown persona through several of them, surrounded by…well..just see it for yourself. They’re reclusive, don’t acknowledge awards, and just seem to say what the hell, yeah I’ll do that.
The best I can do with music comparison is Peter Gabriel - especially “Red Trails” and “Mustn’t Hurry,” which sounds to me like Games Without Frontiers. It’s poppier than you might think. The lyrics are kinky and free, kind of a happy deliberate celebration of weirdness and liberty. Here’s a political statement that is oblique but believable when trying to just live a happy queer life:
That's not how to love me / That's not how to love me
Free abortions and clean water
Destroy nuclear / Destroy boringLovers got love in a love fist
Every time we f*ck we win
This house makes it hard to f*ck
This house makes it hard to f*ck
This country makes it hard to f*ck
This country makes it hard to f*ck
Pitchfork writers:
Karin Dreijer's 2009 self-titled debut as Fever Ray was about motherhood, but motherhood portrayed via a near-unbroken stretch of anhedonic sludge: postpartum depression as an album. So it was a surprise to many when, upon revisiting their solo project nearly a decade later, Dreijer inverted it entirely to release a playful, gleeful album primarily about queer desire and kink.
#65 Future, DS2 (2015)
Rating: 2
There is a Future A and a Future B. Future A is the character in the songs. The mumbling and Auto-Tuned rapper with a life of codeine, sex, and basic human disregard. I was ready to tolerate, and then make jokes about, Future A.
The album title is short for Dirty Sprite 2, which is a name for lean, the purple codeine drink. Future calls out the brand name of the cough syrup a few times. In the opening track “Thought It Was a Drought,” he “just f*cked your b*tch in some Gucci flip-flops” and he sees lean in his own urine. “Groupies” is about, well, his groupies:
Now I'm back grippin' that Uzi
I'll f*ck that bitch cause she's bougie
I f*ck that ho cause she choose me
Sip on my cup, it's a movie
I pop me a Perc, it's a movie
It goes on and on. I don’t really have much to say about the music. It’s AutoTuned trap music, it’s about drugs, it’s murmur murmur murmur. “Blow a Bag” is about having other kids do your crimes for you. “Rich Sex” is about how you should probably wear your Rolex and admire my gold chains while we have sex. “Freak Hoe” is about…guess what.
It’s fine. I even like “Where Ya At” with Drake as the album’s only featured guest. It’s about all your neighborhood friends who only started supporting you after you got rich.
Then I discovered Future B. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t care for the music. But here’s what I learned - the real guy, Nayvadius Wilburn from Atlanta, has a different life than his stage persona. He has worked his ass off. He’s prolific - between 2014 and 2020, Future released FOURTEEN full-length albums and mixtapes, including this one, his third studio album. It turns out, when he’s writing these crude songs, he’s at work. It’s not authentic life:
My better judgment was to go back and record music that I know people want. They want the rachet sh*t from me, I know they want to to say the most disrespectful sh*t because that’s where they come from. I gotta say the off the wall sh*t to get attention. - Future
He knows that the money talk is also a schtick:
I wanted the average person to feel like they’re gonna f*ck up some commas. It’s a motivation, feel like you got a chance. It’s about the feeling it gives you, no matter if you’re rich or poor. When you hear “new Bugatti” you’re gonna feel like you woke up in a new Bugatti. Even if you’ve never owned a car before - Future
Basically, it can be too easy to confuse an artist with the persona you see in their music videos. He might just be at work, making music, making a “feeling” and making money.
Does he really f*ck groupies? Well…yes actually, as he evidently has seven different baby mamas. Including Ciara, now Mrs. Russell Wilson.
But does he really take all those drugs? Umm, well, yes, that too. He does.
So…maybe that’s a detour in making my point. He’s thoughtful about his career and how it works, he wants to stand on the stage or in the studio and just deliver what fans want, be they freak hoes or not. Artists aren’t obligated to be role models in their personal free time.
And he’s been very influential on the genre. It’s not gansta rap, it’s not conscious rap, it’s not party rap. It’s woozy rap. And if you just open the lyrics and read them, they look like modern beatnik, dense and creative like a poetry slam, albeit quite crude. Not kidding. Here’s “Stick Talk” - imagine it spoken word, like a movie narration.
I'ma tell a lie under oath
I can see it in your eyes, you're going broke
Oxycontin got her with a body count
Riding in a car I barely can pronounce
Ordered up a chauffeur, told him, "ride me round the whole world"
I was on the E-way with that molly and that old girl
Get a little cheaper, you could win
Hit it little harder, get the Benz
And just try this one, “Kno the Meaning,” a true story about losing an entire hard drive full of recorded music when his favorite producer “caught the case” and got arrested. He’s transparent.
There’s a documentary track on the Spotify deluxe version of the album, basically the audio from this actual video he made. Yes, it’s 25 minutes long, but if you’re interested in liking Future way more than you expected, I sincerely recommend it. That will happen.
I…don’t much like the music though.
Pitchfork writers:
Future’s consistency works to his disadvantage; his relentless stream of albums and mixtapes this decade can feel like a level plane. Dirty Sprite 2 is manifestly some kind of peak, though, in quality and mainstream impact. The album works as a microcosm of Future’s career: fixated in themes and mood, a steady accumulation of dirge upon dirge sustaining his bleak vision of joyless hedonism. It could be ambient music, almost, if the beats—mostly by Metro Boomin—didn’t hit with such pummeling physicality.
#64 Mitski, Be The Cowboy (2018)
Rating: 3
Mitski is an enigma.
Born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father, she lived in 13 separate countries in her childhood, including Malaysia, Congo, China, and Czech Republic, on the path to settling in New York for college. She was following her father in his job with the State Department (there’s a rumor it was really CIA, but who knows, she won’t talk about it)
In New York she went to music school and studied studio composition. Her first two albums were student projects, very piano-based and skewed orchestral and classical-trained in form. Later she adopted a more distorted-guitar base and had a couple of indie hits. She toured with both The Pixies and Lorde in 2017.
This album, Be The Cowboy, was a mainstream breakout, and it seemed to change Mitski’s relationship to the industry and her stardom. She just…doesn’t like it. She said the industry was “a super-saturated version of consumerism.” She felt like she had herself become a product to be “consumed as content,” and she regretted using her real name for the stage. She doesn’t like the pressure of being asked to represent an Asian-American perspective. She said her fans’ “worshipful commentary” about her online was damaging her psyche.
It got the point that when her tour ended, she said that it was her last performance indefinitely. She said she was going to quit music forever and “find another life.”
The hiatus didn’t last too long - she just released a new album last month and will be playing Glastonbury this year.
The music itself reflects her enigmatic state. She’s not baring her soul in the lyrics because it’s not necessarily her. And it’s not so much love songs as one-act plays of longing or despair. “Me and My Husband” for example, is a sketch of a trapped housewife. “Lonesome Love” is also full of resignation to an unfulfilling relationship. And here’s “Washing Machine Heart”:
Baby will you kiss me already
And toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart
Bang, bang it up inside
Baby, though I’ve closed my eyes
I know who you pretend I am
She’s not lovestruck, and she’s not simply lonely - she’s looking at the world and saying welp, I guess this is the best I can get. 14 tracks, only 32 minutes - only two songs are over 3 mins. Seems that mindset could very well have come from a childhood of rotating in and out of schools, friends, and apartments every single year. How do you ever invest in bonds that feel lasting?
Her stage presence evokes St. Vincent a little. Clear ownership of the “solo” performer state, and even a little mild choreography.
The music behind the anxious lyrics is confident. Varied influences, minor chords. Astute arrangements and clever melodies. The first song I heard from her, “Nobody,” had such a Nile Rodgers-style disco rhythm section that I thought she was a ‘70’s retro singer. But that was a fluke - overall it’s more of an ‘80s feel, with her vocals carrying a folky vibe and mixed to the front. See “Old Friend”, which reminds me a bit of Suzanne Vega.
Pitchfork writers:
Be the Cowboy, her fifth album, is a stunning piece of theater on the subject of wanting. Whether she’s spinning pain into something danceable on “Nobody” or pushing away a devoted lover’s touch on the searing “A Pearl,” the stories Mitski tells may be imaginary but the emotions are real. As she expands her sound, swapping her signature guitar shredding for synthesizers and disco, assuming the voices of weary wives and swaggering conquerors, Mitski’s songs are the most complex they’ve ever been.