Indie

Anthony Gonzalez is a singular force in French electronic music. Since 2001, operating primarily as M83, he has created everything from nostalgic shoegaze rock and pulsing electronic dream pop to film soundtracks, asserting his meticulousness both as a composer and performer. 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts explored the intersection of sampled sound, electronic synths, and post-rock, evoking both Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine, while the melancholy and ecstatic Saturdays = Youth stands strong as 2008’s best ‘80s album. Employing battalions of excellent vocalists, mixers, engineers, and more, Gonzalez always manages to push his perfect rhythms into crystalline atmospheres of sound. His expansive music is equally perfect for midnight cruises with friends and packed music festival fields, insisting that feeling sad can feel good, as long as you are dancing through it.

2018 has been a great year for music so far, so we decided to create a ‘currently listening’ playlist that captures the new (and new-ish) releases we’re listening to right now. Some of the tracks we’ve included are by our friends and others are by people we wish we were friends with, the common thread is that they’re all grade A bangers. It’s important to support other musicians and hopefully people who like Doe will also find something they like here. We’re going to keep adding to the playlist as the year goes on, if nothing else it’ll provide something we can listen to together in the car on the way to shows to get pumped. - Nicola (Doe)

This is part of a series where we create playlists for friends or colleagues. The following text is a transcript of an e-mail that accompanied the playlist. Hey Eric,Here is the Silver Jews playlist I promised you. I know you said that you’re interested in them, but hadn’t been able to dig into them, in large part because they are not on any streaming services. So I made you a Youtube playlist. You can find it here.I’m curious to see what you think of them. It’s difficult for me to separate myself from my personal attachment to their music to form an objective critical appraisal. To me, they represent both a certain time in my life (my early twenties) and a place: the South, or, more specifically, Virginia, where I lived on and off during that period in my life. I don’t think most people think of them as a Southern band. The opening sentence of their Wikipedia bio declares that they’re an “an indie rock band from New York City, formed in 1989 by David Berman along with Pavements Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich.” But that is bullshit. The Silver Jews are David Berman (the other guys just show up sometimes), and David Berman is Southern.But they/he embody a part of the South that most of us don’t know exist (or at least don’t think about). It’s steeped in history (in civil war battlefields and antebellum plantations and all that shit), but is very consciously burdened (and not ennobled) by it, and tries to navigate through these shadows with a fatalistic wit and soft-lit irony.In that way subverts the notion central to Americana that nostalgia equals purity. Memories -- personal and collective -- are conjured and batted away, or used as punchlines. On the song “Slow Education,” which opens this playlist, the narrator recalls “a screen door banging in the wind” and that “you wanted to be like George Washington back then,” all of which sounds like Richard Manual writing a Lana Del Rey song, before adding that “everybody going down on themselves/ No pardon mes or fair thee wells in the end.” Which is a jokingly formal and pretty funny way of describing a certain type of asshole.And that’s the thing about the Silver Jews. It’s incredibly, consistently sad music -- the title of the song “Death of An Heir of Sorrows” could double as the name of Berman’s biography; Berman quit music due (in part) to the (self) revelation that his father was an arms dealer or some such -- but he’s also funny. Exhibit #1 is the oft-quoted opening line on “Random Rules”: “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection/ slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction.”The guy has duende, or at least a southern surburban version of it. Wikipedia defines duende as “having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity,” but they’re wrong (Wikipedia is wrong about so much today). I prefer to think of it as having an acute awareness of death -- both one’s own mortality and a larger, communal death -- and the ability to laugh and fuck and play music anyway. “Pretty Eyes” is a perfect sad song -- more perfect than any sad song Dylan or L. Cohen ever wrote, at least. It begins with the line “Everybody wants perspective from a hill/but everybodys wants cant make it past the window sill,” and has the completely obvious but totally devastating line in the middle that “one of these days, these days will end,” before nailing the landing on the last stanza with this couplet: “I believe that stars are the headlights of angels/ driving from heaven to save us to save us." But theres also this amazing (and hilarious) image at its core: “The elephants are so ashamed of their size/ hosing them down, I tell ‘em ‘you got pretty eyes’.” If you’re only going to listen to one song from this mix, listen to that one.I know this is a bit rambling. I also know that I haven’t discussed the music. It sounds kinda like really shambolic Americana, I guess. Um, members of Pavement do some of it! Members of Pavement do the best of it, actually, which can be found on the album American Water. Outside of that, it’s often rambling, amelodic and lo-fi. It occasionally fits the lyrics’ themes, I guess. It’s the achilles heel, but it doesn’t get in the way.But I don’t want to end on a down note, because I really love Silver Jews. I’ve listened to them for 20 years. The connect me with the place that I’m from like few other bands (Outkast also do this, fwiw). They’ve gotten me out of tough spots. They’ve gotten a lot of my friends out of tough spots. You’re my friend, so maybe it’ll get you out of a tough spot some day. Or, at the very least, I hope you enjoy this playlist.Sam

Since 2012, L.A.-via-Brooklyn imprint felte has been shining a light on the dark, dissonant end of the indie-rock spectrum. This week, label linchpins Odonis Odonis and Chasms (pictured) wrap up the felte Presents: Everything Is Going According To Plan tour with shows in Portland (Dec. 6), Seattle (Dec. 7), and Vancouver (Dec. 8). Here, label founder Jeff Owens reveals the artists that have shaped feltes non-conformist ethos. "The bands on this playlist are by no means the only acts that have been inspirations for the label, but are ones that I have listened to on a consistent basis and have impacted our decision-making beyond words."—Jeff Owens, feltePhoto: Jess Garten

Whats This Playlist All About? Atlantas finest indie/experimental rock band have committed to curating a list of "interesting Spotify finds" every Sunday night. Perhaps their goal is to distract us from any hopes for a new Deerhunter album.What Do You Get? Since this mix changes weekly, we cant get down to specifics too much, but do expect smoky jazz from legends like John Coltrane, pleasant field recordings from far-off places, ancient instrumental song from even farther-off places, regrettably forgotten 80s art-rock, and pleasant harmonies from familial favorites like the Everly Brothers and the Carter Family.Greatest Discovery: So far, weve enjoyed dynamic jazz experiments from the George Russell Sextet ("Theme") and some calming contrabass compositions from Bertram Turetzky ("Reflections on Ives and Whittier").Is This the Best Way to Spend Your Sunday Night? Its a pretty ideal weekend unwinder, better than, say, "Netflix and chill."

We’ve all heard the grievances lobbed at Auto-Tune before; that it’s a stand-in for actual talent, that it strips away any humanity from a singer’s voice, that it just doesn’t sound good, etc. Towards the end of the ‘00s, the technology developed such a negative stigma that everybody from JAY Z to Death Cab for Cutie was taking public shots at it, fretting over the implication that a musician might be able to modify their voice in order to make better music. Call it a plea for authenticity, or perhaps just fear of a changing world, but when Auto-Tune began to dominate pop music, many treated it more like an epidemic than a novel sonic trend.Needless to say, many artists have embraced the vocal technology with aplomb, and over the past several years we’ve seen some incredible work done in the field of vocal manipulation that could not exist were it not for everyone’s favorite pitch-corrector. Like any great electronic software, the magic isn’t really in the tools but the hands that use them. And with Auto-Tune in particular, the possibilities are ripe for contorting and inflating the human voice to extraterrestrial levels, whether in the mainstream or in the underground.Respects must be paid to Kanye West, who were it not for his 2008 cybernetic reinvention statement 808s & Heartbreak or his 2010 masterpiece “Runaway” (the crowning vocal finale of which may be Auto-Tune’s finest moment), the sound certainly would not have taken root in the way that it has today. Whether it’s in the basement rap shenanigans of Lil Yachty and Sicko Mobb (whose digitized vocals soar with ecstatic, lovable amateurism), or in the dystopic, self-loathing warbles of Future, it often feels like Auto-Tune has become a tool for distorting and reinventing pop vocals rather than perfecting them, unveiling new depths in between the unnaturally shifting notes. Even breakout indie figures like Sufjan Stevens and Bon Iver have gleefully taken to the tool, further blurring the lines of what kinds of music we commonly associate with the sound.Much of the original gripe with Auto-Tune had to do with the sense of synthetic plasticity associated with just having a computer smooth out all of your melodies for you. It’s a completely natural instinct to crave that tactile, irreplaceable feel that comes with music made wholly from scratch, to say nothing of our society’s general paranoia over encroaching technological dependency. But the goal of art should always be to speak honestly, using whatever means are necessary to achieve that goal. In an age where artificiality rules the day, where human nature has become so deeply intertwined with algorithmic machinery, is it possible that a technology designed to turn our imperfections into beautiful music could be one of the most real things we have at our disposal?

Whats This Playlist About? Before the release of their third album, Marble Skies, the British electro-psych-pop act compiled a mix as weird and wild as their own grooves. Or as they semi-accurately sum it up: "Booze, Broads & Barbershop Chords."What You Get: A veritable mish-mash of genres and eras, blind geniuses (Moondog) and brilliant enigmas (Prince), rap queens (Missy Elliott) and pop masterminds (The Beach Boys). Theres also old-school dancehall squeezed in beside classic trip-hop, experimental hip-hop, cheesy jazz-rock, smooth Philly soul, and Brian Enos inimitable ambient mastery.Greatest Discovery: Nuyorican Souls jazzy/Latin/house hybrid "The Nervous Track," presented in a "Ballsy Mix" by pioneering production team Masters at Work.Guiltiest Pleasure: Lipps Inc.s "Funky Town." Nuff said.Whats the Best Way to Enjoy This Playlist? At a summer barbecue, but only if you have really cool friends.

There is something special about Kranky Records. Amidst a sea of labels that release a consistent bill of fare, Kranky puts out everything from avant-garde electronic and ambient to noisy dream pop, going out of their way to shed light on original and imaginative voices. Since its founding in Chicago in 1993, Kranky has released albums for such visionary artists as Deerhunter, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tim Hecker, and more. In her time on the label, Liz Harris (Grouper, Mirrorring) has developed a wholly unique and prismatic aesthetic, while Bradfox Cox (Deerhunter, Atlas Sound) took his bedroom pop project to its post-punk and shoegaze fruition. With hazy synths, towering guitars, impressionistic vocals, and a decidedly experimental sensibility, Kranky Records really does do it all. -- Adam Rothbarth

To celebrate Grizzly Bear’s first album in five years, the solid-if-not-revelatory Painted Ruins, Ed Droste assembled his favorite “under the radar” tracks for Entertainment Weekly. Unlike some artist-curated playlists—which are often cobbled together by the star’s handlers and/or is stacked with their own tracks—Droste truly digs in the digital crates. Good luck finding any information on Guise, a mysterious singer-songwriter whose “Weekend Relationship” is included here. Then there’s serpentwithfeet with the soulfully baroque “four ethers,” and rapper Thed Jewel, who calls himself “Fuschia.” Not every track dazzles: “Tremble,” a single by LPX of MS MR, is a fairly bland slice of electronic pop. But overall, this 10-track collection is an intriguing dive into the netherworld of Internet-mediated indie-pop. And this wouldn’t be an artist-curated list without at least one selection featuring Droste. He’s clever enough to avoid Grizzly Bear material, though, and instead includes “Faultline,” a new single by dream-pop duo Dede featuring himself alongside Los Angeles producer Kingdom.

Birmingham, UK art-rock brooders Editors return with their sixth album, Violence, this March. To get you pumped up for it, the band has shared the music they use to get pumped up. "Music is a big deal in our dressing room. From late afternoon, on show days, we normally have the speakers set up playing a wide variety of records from varying genres and styles, both new and old. But it’s an hour before stage time where things really step up a gear, so the playlist I’ve selected here is a greatest hits of what we listen to before we walk out on to stage. Crank it LOUD."——Elliott Williams, Editors