Best New Tracks

• 
  More from this artist :

  Arcade Fire

  Arcade Fire: "Afterlife"

  Merge

  By Ian Cohen; November 22, 2013

  You have to wonder if the majority of the people lobbing accusations of "Classist!" or "Tone deaf!" at Arcade Fire's "MANDATORY" (but not really mandatory) dress code were even planning on attending. After all, the effort and experience of donning a black tie costume as opposed to a T-shirt is about the same as listening to an Arcade Fire album rather than a typical indie rock record. Reflektor, in particular, is emotional formal wear—maybe a little uncomfortable at times, but pulled out on special occasions to make everything really feel like an event.

  Perhaps that explains why Arcade Fire albums are now 4-for-4 in terms of "rousing, life-affirming, group-hug penultimate tracks": they always know to include a reminder and thank you note for the preparation you put in prior, the struggle, the investment, the fear that you might somehow seem ridiculous for caring so much when it's cooler to do the opposite. And ultimately it's a celebration of it all. There was "Rebellion (Lies)", "No Cars Go", "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" and now here's "Afterlife."

  As with its predecessors, you can certainly dance to it, but it's not overtly "dance music" the way the title track seemed to be. Arcade Fire lay down a vigorous rock rhythm that they've pulled off plenty of times without James Murphy; the bongos lay far down in the mix, and the sax solo is meant to trigger confetti cannons rather than evoke some gritty after-hours club. Compared to "Reflektor", there's a light touch countering lyrical concerns that are about as heavy as it gets—y'know, what happens to our metaphysical love once our physical forms pass on?  Arcade Fire don't seem to know either, so in the mean time, Win Butler and Regine Chassagne trade vocals, try to work it out, scream and shout and basically affirm the idea behind their dress code: we all gotta go, so we might as well go out in style.

• 
  More from this artist :

  Evian Christ

  Evian Christ: "Salt Carousel"

  Tri Angle

  By Ian Cohen; November 21, 2013

  Since 2011, Evian Christ has made a name for himself amongst producers working within a nebulous aesthetic that encompasses hip-hop, trap, ambient, early dubstep and just about any other electronic sound that's evolved out of the UK since 2008. As of today, a lot of people know the following fact and nothing else about the guy: he worked on Yeezus.  On the one hand, it's a crucial cosign.  On the other, a lot of new listeners may wonder what distinguishes Evian Christ from the scores of producers working in a similar aesthetic beyond the tautological explanation of "he worked on Yeezus and the other guys didn't." 

  So "Salt Carousel," the first single from his upcoming Waterfall EP, finds the guy under more pressure, and as a result, the smoky, moan-bap of his earlier work has coalesced into a diamond-hard banger that reflects him spending the past couple of years at festivals and high-end clubs rather than his bedroom. This is dark, populist stuff: there's edge to the main synth riff, but also melody, it's not just jagged texture. The drums bang, recalling TNGHT's arena-ready productions.  Unlike his past work, it doesn't drift; it wants your attention knowing that it has it in the first place. So "Salt Carousel" is massive and unyielding, but also a crucial pivot where Evian Christ evolves from a "ambient producer" to a guy who produces tactile songs.

  Evian Christ: "Salt Carousel" (via SoundCloud)

• 
  More from this artist :

  Mutual Benefit

  Mutual Benefit: "Golden Wake"

  Other Music

  By Paul Thompson; November 19, 2013

  At first, Mutual Benefit's "Golden Wake" feels awfully fragile, little more than a persistent click, a wriggling organ, and Jordan Lee's crumbling falsetto. Seeking strength in the "Golden morning hours," a newly unemployed Lee heads toward the water, but this sojourn's quickly interrupted by a glimpse of something lost just under the surface. Mind now racing, Lee takes a second to catch his breath, then another; if he can't outpace these rushing thoughts, maybe he can slow down enough to let them pass.

  "Golden Wake" is a song about the memories we can't shake, "the tyranny of the minute hand," the responsibilities that follow us everywhere whether we want them to or not. "We weren't made to be this way," Lee sings, and if he doesn't sound too sure about anything else, he certainly knows that much. After a rocky start, "Golden Wake" ends awash in piano and strings; seems whatever Lee'd been seeking, he found it down by the water.

  Mutual Benefit: "Golden Wake" (via SoundCloud)

• 
  More from this artist :

  Death Grips

  Death Grips: "Whatever I Want (Fuck Who's Watching)"

  Third Worlds

  By Jayson Greene; November 14, 2013

  "Whatever I Want (Fuck Who's Watching)", the final track from the newly leaked Death Grips album Government Plates, is nearly seven minutes long, and never settles, for three consecutive seconds, into comprehensibility. Think about the speed with which your mind seizes on and processes even the tiniest scrap of recorded music—we ID big pop songs from their opening seconds, they are specifically engineered to make sure we can do so. Now think about the harrowing intensity required to throw our relentless pattern-seeking ears off balance for that long. Death Grips are serious about chaos—as a creative strategy, as a way of life, as a healthy tonic to proscribe to whoever they can lure near them—and their best music processes and atomizes this impulse.

  "Whatever I Want" is Death Grips operating at their sensory peak, a falling-elevator-shaft collision of recorded sounds that interrupt each other ceaselessly. There are a million ideas here, and every sound—the too-bright synth arpeggio; the brief four-on-the-floor pulse; the new age keys and backwards drums—is the sound of arriving calamity, a heavy object plummeting towards fragile netting.

  Death Grips: "Whatever I Want (Fuck Who's Watching)"

• 
  More from this artist :

  Angel Olsen

  Angel Olsen: "Forgiven/Forgotten"

  Jagjaguwar

  By Lindsay Zoladz; November 14, 2013

  Front page photo by Zia Anger

  Most of the songs on Angel Olsen's bewitching full-length debut Half Way Home may have been acoustic, but no matter: her voice box is its own portable source of electricity. Olsen's live-wire vocals lit up muted, sparsely arranged folk numbers like "Acrobat" and "Tiniest Seed"—the latter of which offered up a line that captured the album's underlying tension: "It's known that the tiniest seed is both simple and wild."

  But how wild that seed's grown: On "Forgiven/Forgotten" the explosive lead-off single from her second album Burn Your Fire for No Witness, the instruments around her finally match the intensity of her voice. Foreshadowed earlier this year by her rollicking single "Sweet Dreams", "Forgiven/Forgotten" is an inspired blast of scorched-earth psych-pop—all charred distortion and kick drum blows that sounds like somebody's trying to stomp out a fire. Olsen's voice grows in power as it rushes towards its bared-heart chorus, "I don't know anything! I don't know anything! But I love you." At that, the kick drum steps off. May as well let it burn.