La Force may share a vocalist with Broken Social Scene in Ariel Engle, but the band is mastering the indie world on its own. Born out of the culmination of AroarA – her musical project with husband and BSS bandmate/ drummer Andrew Whiteman – Engles La Force is "a deep reflection on the magic and dismantlement of motherhood; the never-ending tightrope walk of life, and death; and the re-discovery of self." If that hasnt piqued your interest enough, the story she drew from and the themes she explores on her self-titled debut is how she was about to become a mother while her father was dying, which led to the exploration of family, identity and self. And having grown up all over the world from a home base in Montreal, Canada, Engles roots are not only something with a lot of ground to explore, but also why she didnt flinch in adding songs in other languages to the playlist she put together for us here at The Dowsers. Says Engle, "This playlist is an ode to rhythm and sound. The lyrics are second, half of the songs are in languages I don’t speak. These all make my ears perk up and my heart beat faster."Listen above or go right here.
Lana Del Rey promised us everything from the start: "Its you, its you, its all for you / Everything I do," she sang on 2011s "Video Games." Since then, shes remained completely committed to that line, doing everything in her power to continue to shock and seduce us with her purrs, her pouts, and her pen. As a songwriter, Lana Del Rey is utterly fearless. Some have even suggested she may just be the American Morrissey. Sure, shes just as romantic and melodramatic. But shes also crude and brash, sexy and sincere, and her sardonic side is vastly underrated. Though her tragic tales may be rife with clichés, her evocative telling of them remains her most intoxicating trait. Her fantasies and failures come alive in every vivid color, but what keeps us coming back for more is her unabashed openness: Shell tell you exactly what she wants, when she wants it, and how shes gonna get it. Here are 10 of Lana Del Reys sultriest, most biting lines.
Dont fall for it. Shes not unhinged—this girls completely in control.
This is our "gangsta Nancy Sinatra" playing it coy.
Lana 101: Anytime you want to tease and provoke, you can always debase religion…
…or patriotism…
…or multinational corporations.
We wonder if she recommends dosing daily?
The femme fatale finds her weakness.
She knows self-denial is never a good look…
…neither is holding on to a low-down loser.
Only Lana can get away with tying you up then setting your hot summer fling on fire.
A wide-ranging combination of Latin folklore and Anglo alt-rock form the crux of Latin alternative music. As inventive players paved paths to niche subcultures that shifted further from mainstream pop, rock and Latin regionalism over the years, they also opened up an immense portal of global yet Latin-minded formations. Whether artists pulled from radio-friendly pop (e.g. Paulina Rubio, Mariah Carey) or their parents’ classic rock (e.g., Los Locos del Ritmo, Elvis), this bicultural/multicultural recipe inspired game-changers to create a like-minded identity, with plenty of attitude.From vintage-synth-loving Chileans like Javiera Mena, Gepe, or Alex Anwandter producing rosey-tinted indie-pop, to electro-folkloric producers in Argentina (Chancha Via Circuito), Colombia (Bomba Estéreo), Ecuador (Nicola Cruz), and Peru (Dengue Dengue Dengue) ushering in a new digital cumbia enigma, the ever-elastic art form is essentially without boundaries.So what does it mean for brown-eyed soul troubadours like Chicano Batman to grow up on low-rider funk and Motown-style oldies at an L.A. swap meet? Or Mexican charro-clad rockeros Mexrrissey finding kinship with melancholic Manchester pop icon Morrissey? Or even Cuban/Puerto Rican soulstress Xenia Rubinos displaying an affinity for ‘50s-era jazz chanteuses and open-mic MCs alike? From hip-hop to electronic to folk and urban, this Latin-rooted concoction continues to flourish and take unprecedented shapes throughout the Americas and Spain.By no means is this a comprehensive list of the scene’s countless configurations, but instead a starting point for newcomers to explore Latin alternative’s numerous stylistic configurations, and to familiarize themselves with the compelling works of Latinx artists of Latin America, the diaspora, and beyond. (Heads up: you won’t find any Shakiras, Romeo Santos, or J. Los here.)
When rock made its entry into Latin America many moons ago (notably around the time Elvis Presley debuted in the continent during the ‘50s), it spawned a bevy of “refried Elvises” or imitators replicating The King’s style but with Spanish lyrics. Most Latin American bands spent decades aping the rock aesthetic coming out of America and the U.K., until the ‘80s. An unprecedented approach to the style took shape and musicians began to finally embrace their roots, fusing anything from brass melodies to boleros to cumbias and sones—all against traditional rock instrumentation—thus acquiring their own musical identity. Groups like Argentinean dance-punk agitators Todos Tus Muertos, Spain’s New Wave provocateurs Radio Futura, and Mexican dark-wave cumbieros Caifanes are among the slew of innovators to unflinchingly mix regional styles with rock arrangements.
While the rock en español forefathers of the 1980s laid the groundwork for the south-of-the-border movement (Spain included), it took until the following decade for the scene to explode globally. Each project stood as its own original fusion: Mexico’s Maldita Vecindad, armed with a boisterous sax, adopted pachuco swagger; Chile’s Los Prisioneros made rebellious synth-punk; Argentina’s Los Fabulosos Cadillacs created rowdy murga-driven ska; and Spain/France’s Manu Chao spreaded lover’s-rock bohemianism. The foundations, however, were similar: Each rebellious outfit delivered their own socio-political agenda while commanding the dance floor, or mosh pit.
As the scene reconfigured approaching the new millennium, acts who showed insatiable lasting power (like Café Tacvba, Babasónicos, Zoé) branched out of the then-tiresome rock en español category, and joined the new cohort of Latin alternative iconoclasts. Labels like Nacional Records, the forward-thinking U.S.-based Latin alternative imprint, helped to solidify this new movement. They housed luminary groups like Nortec Collective, a DJ/producer crew from Tijuana who mash-up norteñas and techno; the feisty Bomba Estéreo, who took electro-cumbias outside of Colombia; and French-Chilean rapper/poetess Ana Tijoux, who brought silky smooth rap verses that resonate across the diaspora. Others like ZZK Records—the Buenos Aires digital cumbia collective that began as an underground party—gathered electro-folk-minded DJ/producers like Chancha via Circuito, Frikstailers, and Lagartigeando. Santiago’s Quemasucabeza capitalized on the aforementioned rising electro-pop scene of Chile. And Monterrey, Mexico had its own alternative boom called la avanzada regia (a scene the channeled a similar spirit as Seattle’s grunge movement). It birthed the wild dance rock of Plastilina Mosh, Control Machete’s vicious rap-punk, and the electro-rock brilliance of Kinky.
With the Latin alternative ethos well established, the ever-elastic umbrella continues to mold, expand, and morph into further subgroups. This decade, spectators have witnessed the rise of the singer.songwriter—through Carla Morrison’s wounded confections, Ximena Sariñana’s heartbreaking jazz-pop, or Natalia Lafourcade’s rustic pop elegance. And while Latin trap, reggaetón, and all-things urban keep topping the mainstream charts, underground rap prodigies like Princess Nokia, cholo-goths Prayers, and R&B soulstress Kali Uchis formed a resistance to commercialism, adopting an unflinching mindset that’s on par with the Latin alternative philosophy. Cumbia-gothics (La MiniTK Del Miedo), indie-mambo prodigies (Orkesta Mendoza), Brooklyn baile funk (Zuzuka Poderosa), and unruly punk norteños (e.g. A Band of Bitches, Juan Cirerol)—the beauty of Latin alternative is that it will never be restricted to one beat or style.
At the turn of the millennium, it seemed unlikely that an aging record nerd hollering about his favorite bands could possibly become the vessel for an entire angst-ridden generation—but that was before we had Sound of Silver. When James Murphy released his second full-length as LCD Soundsystem 10 years ago, he revealed the deeply sentimental roots behind all the dance-punk chic, the hopelessly melancholic critic who, no matter how many albums he might amass in his enormous collection, still can’t escape the simple truths of getting older and saying goodbye to all your friends. Though their short-lived retirement is now over, with the arrival of their first new album in seven years, it wouldn’t be LCD Soundsystem without gazing longingly towards the past. So we’ve taken the occasion to unpack James Murphy’s shining moment, the weepy behemoth of a dance record that is Sound of Silver.Murphy’s influences are as vast as they are easily traceable (all one has to do is look up the lyrics to the climactic band-listing outburst of “Losing My Edge”), yet the real magic of the album is how confidently it inhabits its own skin, effortlessly mixing the mechanic rhythms of Kraftwerk, the starry-eyed synth-punk of New Order, and the reckless rock worship of Lou Reed into something as comfortable in the club as it is at home on a turntable. Its endlessly looping electronics nod to the simple majesty of Detroit techno as well as the prickly brain-funk of the Talking Heads, yet what’s fascinating about Murphy is the way that he turns his love of these disparate artists into his own defining quality. LCD Soundsystem is a band of fanboys and fangirls playing for devotees of their own, celebrating the act of loving music and creating something entirely theirs in the process. Sound of Silver was the moment where Murphy’s band ceased to be a loving tribute to the many shapes of punk and New Wave, and became a fully-armed dance unit for the 21st century. Without further ado, we present our mix of the many sounds the fuelled one of our era’s most distinguishing voices.
Lemaitre is the electronic duo of Ulrik Denizou Lund and Ketil Jansen of Oslo, Norway. Together, they ply a unique brand of maximalist, candy-coated electronic pop, as likely to resolve to a sing-along vocal hook as to a dance-floor shaking bass drop. But its not all fun and games, either. Lemaitres songs also explore moodier and more thoughtful territories, as this playlist, curated by Lemaitres Denizou Lund nicely illuminates.Denizou Lund says, "[The playlist is] a few songs that are all time favorites with a few recent discoveries as well. It’s a mix of fun playful music like Superorganism and the more melancholic like the track by Radiohead and Mew. But mostly melancholic. I guess it’s that time of year. We also like making fun music beside more melancholic tunes. Our latest track ‘Big’ is bit of both. I must admit I had never given Radiohead a proper listen before I recently went through their discography, so I have been listening a lot to them lately. And Weird Fishes/Arpeggi has got to be one of my favorites.”
Subscribe to this playlist here.On “Suzanne,” the first song from Leonard Cohen’s debut album, Cohen positions Jesus Christ as a “broken” and “forsaken” figure who watches “drowning men” from a “lonely wood tower.” Cohen’s messiah is a cypher for longing and solitude — a totem for the lovesick and desperate. As a metaphor, it might seem bizarre, or even blasphemous, but twisting the sacred and profane into odd, interloping configurations became Cohen’s modus operandi for the next five decades. His most famous composition, “Hallelujah,” refashions the biblical story of David and Bathsheba into a tale of sexual obsession and, ultimately, spiritual transcendence; while the late-period classic “Show Me the Way” is a meditation on mortality that is addressed to either a savior or a dominatrix (or maybe both). For Cohen, faith is a complicated thing, but it’s ultimately humanistic and forgiving; it doesn’t seek to judge the transgressions of the sinner as much it attempts to understand our failures by chipping away at our ideals of divinity. It interjects tragedy into the holy order, and adds a whiff of squalor to the sacred spaces. It bridges the gap between heaven and earth. -- Sam Chennault
Since forming in the early ’90s, the musical collective Lettuce have been pushing the boundaries of sound itself with their skillful and often futuristic blend of funk, jazz, hip-hop, soul, psychedelic rock, and myriad microgenres in between. In 2020, they received a much-deserved GRAMMYⓇ nomination for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for their sixth studio album, Elevate. To celebrate that honor, we turned over our playlist-making machine to Lettuce’s keyboardist and vocalist Nigel Hall, a GRAMMYⓇ winner and unofficial professor of all things Quincy Jones. Here, he gives us an in-depth lesson on the music legend’s deep catalog, including his 21 favorite Quincy Jones songs and some important notes to go with each.
Without further ado, let’s hand this over to Professor Hall:
The following is a list of my favorite Quincy Jones music. Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past 70 years or so, you know that Quincy Jones is one of the most recognizable names in music and one of the most successful producers in music history. If they had smartphones back in the day, his contacts would be only the most famous and dopest musicians, singers, activists, and artists in the history of—well, history! None of these are in any particular order.
Smackwater Jack: Released in October 1971 on the A&M label, this is Quincy’s 21st solo record. (Go ahead and read that again.) It’s really amazing to reflect on the body of work of such an OG. Anyway, here we go. It must be nice to have all the greatest musicians of the day on your Rolodex, itching to play with you. You realize that by this point, Quincy had been on the scene making music for the very fabric of this country’s culture for 20 years. His film score résumé was “ice cold,” and he had spent the better part of 10 years touring with Sinatra. So this record represents a very well established producer, conductor, and arranger. Basically, he had already established himself as the master, and everyone else knew it, too. My favorite songs are: “Smackwater Jack,” “What’s Going On,” and “Theme from ‘The Anderson Tapes.’”
You’ve Got It Bad Girl: This record was only a couple of years after Smackwater Jack, and he’d also issued a compilation on Mercury Records the year prior. A lot of the same people from the last record. You see that this is George Duke’s first run with him, so that always makes for a happy Nigel. It sounds to me like Quincy is very much in his film vibe, although on his version of Stevie’s “You’ve Got It Bad Girl” he shares a modest vocal, while still creating a very conducive vibe that fits any situation. In English, you’ll hear on this record that Quincy is in fact the Golden Child and can do no wrong. Here are my favorite tunes from this record: “You’ve Got It Bad Girl,” “Sanford & Son Theme,” “Chump Change,” and “Summer In The City.”
Sounds… And Stuff Like That!: If I had to choose one record of Quincy’s to take on a desert island, this would be the one. A headphone record for sure. This record I affectionately call the “Oz” record. I feel like he recorded this record in the land of Oz because it sounds so much like The Wiz. It makes sense because he recorded The Wiz the same year. Take a look at the personnel, though. Again, the baddest people in musical history. My favorite moment of this record: On “Tell Me A Bedtime Story,” Herbie’s solo is transcribed and performed by an entire fucking orchestra. You can only do something like that to Herbie’s solo if you’re Quincy Jones. Herbie wouldn’t let you. My favorite songs are: “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You),” “Tell Me A Bedtime Story,” and “I’m Gonna Miss You In The Morning.”
Walking in Space: This record reflects his amazing abilities as a conductor and arranger. Certainly, my favorite arranged record. This record was actually produced by Creed Taylor (from the famous CTI label). Lots of classics on this record too. I listened to this record only the last time I was in Japan. It helped to provide such a vibe! My favorite songs are: “Love And Peace,” “Killer Joe,” and “Walking In Space.”
Mellow Madness: This is Quincy’s 25th record. This is also the record that he had after his double aneurysm. Let me just say, to make a record after surviving something like that is more than a blessing. But this also showcases a different side of Quincy thus far: Quincy’s funky side. If you look at the players on this record, you can see immediately how it differs from the other records. You wanna make a funky record, you gotta go where the grease is. BTW, this is also the debut of The Brothers Johnson. My favorite songs are: “Cry Baby” (featuring Wah Wah Watson), “Is It Love That We’re Missin’,” My Cherie Amour,” “Bluesette,” and “Tryin’ To Find Out About You.”
Body Heat: This record came before Mellow Madness and Q had not had his aneurysm yet, so as you see in the credits, he’s still playing trumpet. But if you listen closely, you can hear the funky side of his nature starting to show—a budding example of his producer skills starting to come alive while adding to the arranger and conductor that he was naturally. My favorite songs are: “Everything Must Change,” “If I Ever Lose This Heaven,” and “Body Heat.”
Lettuces new album Resonate is out May 8th.
Photo Credit: Jay Sansone, Human Being Media
In September 2017, Colombian-Canadian experimental pop artist Lido Pimienta shot straight out of the Toronto avant-indie underground to the international spotlight when her most recent album, La Papessa, became the first self-released album (not to mention the first sung entirely in Spanish) to win Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize. Here, she shares the soundtrack to this transformative year in her life. “This year has been an exciting one for womxn in music and queer artists, like it always is, but the notoriety that womxn are getting as not just singers but producers is really inspiring and motivating. I am drawn to these songs because they carry interesting point of views and production. I enjoy making experimental music, so this list too reflects my personal taste and inspiration.”—Lido PimientaNote: Lido also wanted to include Xenia Rubinos’ “L.O.V.E.” on her playlist, but the song is not available on Spotify. You can listen to it here.
Apart from being the best album of the year, The Life of Pablo is an encyclopedia of contemporary culture. More than any other album in 2016, it is about bourgeois subjectivity. It’s about religion, sex, family, friends. It’s about medication, entrepreneurship, loneliness, and fame. But more than anything, it’s about what it means to be human today. Over the course of the album’s 20 tracks, Kanye explores the far reaches of his conscious mind, ever teetering between faith and despair, confidence and suffering. It has become popular to dismiss Kanye as crazy when taking into account his social media presence and public antics; however, an analysis of The Life of Pablo’s contents show him not only as sane, but vulnerable, in-touch, and acutely reflective.Part of its vast cultural reach is the fact that The Life of Pablo is infused with with a heavy dose of popular music history, from Nina Simone to Desiigner. Its author’s impressive use of Arthur Russell’s “Answers Me” anchors one of the greatest beats on the album (“30 Hours”), while his rhythmic and thematic interpolation of “Jumpman” by Drake and Future is the lifeblood of “Facts (Charlie Heat Version),” a song completed by Kanye’s imitation of Future’s vocables and his use of sound bytes from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. These references aren’t merely references—they’re so thoroughly woven into the music of The Life of Pablo that they could not be extricated without compromising the totality of the album. In this sense, the album is a monumental achievement.It’s difficult to excerpt any single song or reference as exemplary from an album that nods to everything from Lexapro to Albert Einstein, so the goal of this playlist is to highlight a few great songs on the album and to intersperse them with some of its most interesting samples and musical references.
For fans of R&B ballads, the supersized emotions, frequent vocal gymnastics, and production maximalism can seem to be the most direct window to the artists’ inner life, revealing some deeper vulnerability or emotional longings that the more uptempo tracks generally ignore. Beyoncé, being Beyoncé, does this better than most. This Spotify playlist, from KH Bionic Chiu, is one in a series of pop star ballad playlists. The track selection is solid, even if there’s very real rhythm to the selections and the inclusion of the Luther Vandross so close to the top of the list is a curveball. Usually these type of playlist front-load the hits and get around to the collaborations, and, here, a track like “Best Thing I Never Had” doesn’t appear until we’re over a dozen tracks into the playlist. -- Sam Chennault
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
