Antonoff, Jack

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Clairo Takes a Defiant Leap on ‘Sling’

      by

      The songwriter and producer’s second album is proudly retro and humbly indie, drawing on her emotional epiphanies and anxieties about the music industry.“Sling,” the second album from the introverted but openhearted musician Clairo, was inspired by two relatively common pandemic-era life changes: In the past year, the 22-year-old songwriter and producer born Claire Cottrill relocated to upstate New York, and adopted a dog.Fans have been acquainted with Joanie, a part chow chow/Great Pyrenees mix, via Clairo’s Instagram since she was a puppy. The musician’s gradual acceptance of Joanie’s unabashed dependency and unconditional love forms the emotional arc of the album. (Joanie is also credited with providing “chimes” and “snoring.”)One upstate lure was the scenic Allaire Studios in Shokan, N.Y., which Cottrill told Rolling Stone had a transformative effect on her sound: “Seeing mountains every day when you’re making music,” she said, “I suddenly felt the urge to put a horn on a song.” The transition from the gently kinetic pop of Clairo’s excellent 2019 debut album “Immunity” to the folk-pastoral “Sling” is a dramatic sonic leap akin to Taylor Swift’s shift between “Lover” and “Folklore.” Naturally, Clairo co-produced “Sling” with one of the architects of Swift’s Cottage of Sound, the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff.Clairo first came to prominence almost by accident, in 2017, when the charismatic, self-recorded video for her song “Pretty Girl” went viral. It was a YouTube phenomenon (75 million views) but its vibe now feels proto-TikTok: a casually dressed, slightly bored teenage girl passing time in her bedroom by performing for her camera and an imagined audience. The easy charm of the video may have unwittingly diverted some of the attention from Clairo’s songwriting, but it led to a record deal when she was 19.“Sling,” a strange, uncompromising and anti-commercial album, doubles down on the subtly defiant spirit that was already present on “Pretty Girl,” although this time Clairo’s target is not a narrow-minded partner but an entire industry poised to commodify and cash in on her artistry.“I’m stepping inside a universe designed against my own beliefs,” she proclaims on the bucolic but itchy “Bambi.” The album’s arresting first single, “Blouse,” features haunting backing vocals from fellow Antonoff collaborator Lorde; “Why do I tell you how I feel, when you’re too busy looking down my blouse?” the two women croon like a long-lost ’70s folk duo. “Mom, would you give me a ring? One for the ride, and one for the magazine,” she sings on “Management,” a winking critique of the sort of image creation she has felt pressured to stage in service of her career.Clairo may have initially arrived as an indelible product of the high-speed internet era, but the world “Sling” inhabits is miles from the nearest Wi-Fi connection. Its sound is proudly retro and humbly indie: Vampy Wurlitzers, woolly acoustic guitars and trilling woodwinds abound. At times, “Sling” sounds like Steely Dan’s “Pretzel Logic” had it been released on the D.I.Y. label K Records.Clairo co-produced “Sling” with Jack Antonoff, who has recently worked with Lorde and Taylor Swift.Adrian NietoUnfortunately, this sonic palette can make some of the less memorable songs bleed together, their meandering melodies and sludgy tempos failing to distinguish themselves. Tracks like “Partridge,” “Wade” and “Zinnias” get lost in dense, dizzying thickets of their own creation.Clairo sings in a low murmur that occasionally surges with great emotion — “Sling” makes the case that her most direct vocal precursor is either Elliott Smith or Phil Elverum — and her various co-producers have experimented with different methods of recording her voice. If the avant-pop producer Danny L. Harle threatened to drown it out with bells and whistles on her 2018 EP “Diary 001,” Antonoff sometimes gives it too much space to roam. Rostam Batmanglij, the atmospheric-pop-minded producer who collaborated with Clairo on “Immunity,” had helped her find a middle ground, buoying and giving structure to her delicate sensibility without overwhelming it.Clairo does pull off that balance, though, on the new album’s second track, “Amoeba,” a highlight anchored by funky, insistent keyboards and a steady beat — a song that manages to brood and saunter at the same time. Even more affecting is the acoustic ballad “Just for Today,” which, like the stunning “Immunity” song “Alewife,” finds Clairo to be a fearlessly vivid correspondent from the darkest corners of her depression. “Mommy, I’m afraid I’ve been talking to the hotline again,” she sings, her voice sounding childlike in its desperation but suddenly relieved by the release of this confession.“Just for Today” is further proof of a pleasant surprise: There was always more depth to Clairo’s sadness and songcraft than could be conveyed by the three-minute synth-pop ditty that made her famous. It also demonstrates that her music is at its most lucid and effective when an extended hand — or paw — is drawing her back up to the surface. The definitive version of “Just for Today” might be the demo she posted to Instagram in January 2021, the night after she wrote it. “At 30, your honey’s gonna ask you what the hell is wrong with me,” she croons, and then suddenly dissolves into giggles. A yelping Joanie has jumped up and thudded against her guitar, trying to snuggle into her lap.Clairo“Sling”(Fader Label/Republic Records) More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift Wins Album of the Year, Again

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Grammy AwardsGrammys: What HappenedWinners ListBest and Worst MomentsBeyoncé Breaks RecordRed CarpetAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyBeyoncé Breaks Grammy Record; Top Prizes for Billie Eilish and Taylor SwiftTaylor Swift takes album of the year, becoming the first woman to win three times.March 14, 2021, 11:37 p.m. ETMarch 14, 2021, 11:37 p.m. ETTaylor Swift broke a record with her album of the year win for “Folklore.”Credit…Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressTaylor Swift’s “Folklore” won album of the year on Sunday, making the singer and songwriter the first woman to win the prize three times, following her victories for “Fearless” in 2010 and “1989” in 2016. Swift tied Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon as the only artists with three career best album trophies. (The mastering engineer Tom Coyne has won four, including one for “1989.”)“You guys met us in this imaginary world that we created,” Swift said during her acceptance speech, flanked by her collaborators Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, Laura Sisk and Jonathan Low. Dessner, who collaborated remotely with Swift on the pandemic album, called her “one the greatest living songwriters, who somehow put trust in me.”[embedded content]A surprise release in July, “Folklore” represented Swift’s foray into more acoustic sounds and indie-rock textures following years of pop bombast. She was nominated six times in all on Sunday, but lost in five other categories before taking home album of the year.“Evermore,” the “sister record” to “Folklore” and Swift’s second secret pandemic release, came out in December, meaning it could be nominated at next year’s Grammys and represents her fourth potential album win.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift Illuminates ‘Folklore’ in a Stripped-Down Studio Concert

      by

      “Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is straightforward and cozy. Taylor Swift and her two main collaborators and producers for her album “Folklore” — Aaron Dessner (from the National) and Jack Antonoff (a linchpin of Bleachers and fun., and a producer for Lorde, Lana Del Rey and others) — play through the album’s 17 songs at Dessner’s Long Pond Studio, a rural haven in Hudson, N.Y. Conversations between the collaborators introduce each song; birds and insects chirp.“Folklore” was released in July, and the documentary, out now on the Disney+ streaming service, was shot in September. Swift, Dessner and Antonoff perform as a trio on guitars, piano and a handful of other instruments, stripping away some of the fussy intricacies of the album’s studio versions in a way that heightens the songs’ sense of pristine contemplation. Often the music is just a rippling piano pattern and a modestly strummed guitar or two, each note precious. “The Long Pond Sessions” is a small-scale, casual-looking production; Swift is credited as the makeup artist. Mostly it’s just three musicians in a room, wearing everyday clothes and headphones, analyzing and performing songs they’re proud of.The big twist is that the September sessions were the first time that Swift, Antonoff and Dessner were together in the same place. During the pandemic, they had each recorded in their own studios, collaborating long-distance. In a nighttime conversation on a deck at the studio, Swift says that playing the songs in real time will “make me realize it’s a real album. Seems like a big mirage.” Musicians deeply miss performing live; with any other album, she would have gone to tour arenas.Swift got her start bringing teen-pop scenarios — breakups, crushes, insecurities — to country music. Then she moved decisively into the pop mainstream, trading banjo for synthesizers. “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is not the first time she has made clear that she’s the songwriter and not just the singer. The deluxe edition of her 2014 blockbuster “1989,” which was made with the Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, included her own demos of some songs, demonstrating her authorship. And last year, alongside her album “Lover,” she released an extensive archive of journal and diary entries, including song drafts.“Folklore” backs off slightly from the bold-outline, clear-cut arena-pop songwriting of albums like “1989” and “Red.” In quarantine, Swift chose a more introspective approach — but also, as she points out when talking about “Illicit Affairs,” a choice to be less autobiographical than her past songwriting. For many of the songs, Dessner — one of the main composers behind the National’s somber, reflective rock — sent instrumental tracks to Swift; then Swift came up with words and melodies. In the documentary, Swift says she was nervous about telling her label, “I know there’s not like a big single, and I’m not doing like a big pop thing.”But her songwriting remains self-conscious and meticulous. Swift and her collaborators detail the ways that songs on the album overlap with and echo one another; three of them — “Cardigan,” “August” and “Betty” — tell the same story from different characters’ perspectives. She explains “Mirrorball” to Antonoff as a cascade of interlocking images: “We have mirrorballs in the middle of a dance floor because they reflect light. They are broken a million times and that’s what makes them so shiny. We have people like that in society too — they hang there and every time they break, it entertains us. And when you shine a light on them, it’s this glittering fantastic thing.”Swift has written and sung — particularly on her 2017 album, “Reputation” — about the pressures of celebrity. On “Folklore,” she sings about them more subtly in “Mirrorball,” “Hoax” and “Peace,” coming to terms with her place in the information economy. But she also knows how to feed tabloids. A big reveal from “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is that the pseudonymous, no-profile songwriting collaborator on two key songs, “Exile” and “Betty,” is her boyfriend, Joe Alwyn. She got her headlines.For “Exile” — a cathartic post-breakup ballad that’s a duet with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver — Vernon appears remotely, from his own recording setup in Wisconsin. His face is almost entirely concealed behind a bandanna and a baseball cap, but the emotion in his voice rises to meet hers as the song spills over in recriminations.While “The Long Pond Studio Sessions” is a positioning statement like her recent Netflix documentary, “Miss Americana” — which revealed her longtime struggle to declare herself as a left-leaning thinker amid the conservative assumptions of country music — it’s also, more important, a musical experience. Songwriting — mysterious, telegraphic, crafty and personal as well as potentially lucrative — is Taylor Swift’s mission. “Folklore,” made under singular circumstances and challenging old reflexes, is likely to be just one step in her trajectory. More