Pusha T and Sigur Ros (respectively) released singles in June and now I am writing a thinkpiece on them
Coke rap impresario Pusha T and moody Icelandic post-rockers
Sigur Ros have, like, little, if nothing, in common—save for the fact that a)
they both properly released singles on 23rd following a maddening
and confusing roll out for both respective songs.
And b) while I still like both of these artists very much, I
used to really like both of them, a lot. E.g.—I named Pusha’s My Name is My Name my favorite record of
2013, and I have been following Sigur Ros for upward of 15 years at this point.
So why have I apparently slept on listening to and reviewing
new singles by artists that I apparently really like?
Pusha T’s “Drug Dealers Anonymous” was released as a TIDAL
exclusive released at the end of May, and like many people in the world, I do
not have a TIDAL subscription. I actually have no subscription to any music
streaming service, despite the fact that TIDAL continues to get these
exclusives to entice people out of $20 a month or whatever.
Anyway, there was no way for me to listen to this song while
it was offered on one platform, and so I just kind of lost interest in even
trying, and wasn’t even aware until very recently that it had received a wider
release via the iTunes store.
On a side note, with Pusha T, yes I did name his proper solo
debut my favorite record of 2013, and so with the pseudo follow up to it, last
year’s Darkest Before Dawn, I went
into it expecting to be blown away. I wasn’t disappointed, per se, and I get
that it’s not the real follow up—it’s
a collection of songs that were deemed to weird or dark for the forthcoming King Push; but it was an uneven
collection of songs that made for a very unfulfilling listen.
Also, he was supposed to come and perform in Minneapolis at
the beginning of April, but canceled the show due to “recording commitments,”
which I think is a nice way of saying “low ticket sales.” Either way, I was
miffed, and I can’t say that I’ve really revisited Darkest Before Dawn since its release, and I can’t say I was, like, jumping at the chance to listen
to this new single.
Sigur Ros have been on the road since the start of the
summer, with a new stage show, and a new song called “Óveður,” which means
“Storm” according to Google. The song debuted at the end of June with a
confusing 24-hour streaming event that took viewers around Iceland, and ended
with the premier of the song’s video. Again, at no point in the news release
regarding the song was there any mention of its availability to purchase.
W/r/t Sigur Ros, I’ve seen the band live twice—once in 2008,
and once in 2013. If you are a regular reader of this blog (or just clicked on
the link there) you would know that things ended somewhat disastrously for me
during that 2013 show because I had a panic attack during their encore.
Also the show was on the one-year anniversary of my best
friend’s death. So maybe going to a concert that day was just a stupid idea in
the first place.
And in trying to remember anything about their last album,
2013’s Kveikur, I had to reference
back to my own review of it. For some reason, it’s not something that really
stuck with me after initial listens. Maybe it was because of the panic attack.
Maybe it was because one of our rabbits didn’t care for all the noise. Maybe I
didn’t feel like it sounded all that great on vinyl—less rich than I was
expecting due to all the layers of cacophony. Or maybe I was just kind of
burned out on their whole aesthetic at the time.
“Drug Dealers Anonymous” boasts both spooky production
values as well as a pretty solid guest verse from Jay Z, who I guess, this
year, remembered how to rap.
Built around swirling keyboards and simplistic percussion
thanks to production by DJ Dahi, both Push and Jay wax nostalgic about their
drug dealing pasts, going so far as to include a clip of a television talking
head from “The Blaze” criticizing Jay’s well known history behind pushing
product.
The song’s structure is based around the two very lengthy
verses from both performers—there is no refrain to anchor things down, which
his an interesting technique.
As a whole, it feels a little slow moving to me—while both
Pusha and Jay try their best to articulate specific words to punctuate a point
(the way Pusha says “catholic” is incredible)—their performances seem to be
lacking the energy they are both capable of having, and the immediacy and
urgency of previous work. But I mean, let’s face it, Jay hasn’t been an urgent
rapper since the early 2000s.
It’s not a bad song, and if this is, in fact, the first
single from the forthcoming King Push (release
date TBD), it is in line with the material on the album’s prelude—dark and
restrained, lyrically it paints vivid imagery, but there is something keeping
it from resonating on the level that the material from My Name is My Name did.
Still operating as a three-piece unit, Sigur Ros open “Óveður”
by juxtaposing their trademarked e-bowed guitar waves with a slight industrial
sounding rhythm, that then gives way to additional layers of percussion, along
with myriad atmospheric vocal manipulations, and low, rumbling drones. It’s a
song that, even in its restrained first half, has a lot going on for it nearly
right out of the gate.
Things change around the halfway point—noisy, dissonant
percussive hits take over, as do unnerving warbled string arrangements that
give the song a near-nightmarish like quality as it careens toward its
conclusion.
On the verge of allowing the noise to take things over,
Sigur Ros surprisingly never lose control on “Óveður” before it comes to a
somewhat abrupt conclusion. It’s less ominous than the work they were going for
on Kveikur, but it’s still equally as
dense; and by incorporating slick sounding electronics into the fold, they have
added yet another element into their already bombastic, sometimes overloaded
sound.
It’s a slowly paced song, and by contrasting the beautiful
(Jonsi’s voice) with the harsh (nearly everything else) Sigur Ros show that
they still haven’t lost interest in what they’ve been doing for well over 20
years and that their sound, while always identifiable to the ears, continues to
evolve with each project they undertake.
What both of these singles have in common, really, is that
they are previews of what’s to come—a new album from Sigur Ros, while rumored
to be in the works due to a single and a tour has yet to be announced, and the
long gestating King Push has been
labored over for nearly three years now, and is expected to be out sometime in
2016.
Both singles are available via iTunes.
Both singles are available via iTunes.
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