Your house is a fine little house, Jack.” — Virgil

“Fame, it’s not your brain, it’s just the flame/ That burns your change, to keep you insane.” — David Bowie, or John Lennon

The art of architecture is impossible to separate from the music of Nicolas Godin, a French multiinstrumentalist and composer that gained fame in the late 1990s as one-half of Air, and who recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday — one he shares with the West’s approximation of the birth of Christ.

Godin studied architecture at the National School of Architecture of Versailles, or ENSAV, located today in the Royal Stables of the Palace of Versailles — the same stables that were commissioned by none other than King Louis XIV. Who knows if the Sun King was prescient enough to expect that one act of architecture would one day house the institution that can claim names like Jeanne Gang, of Aqua Tower fame, or Moussa Mostafa Moussa, Egyptian architect and political figure, among its list of notable alumni, but there you are.

“Concrete and Glass,” the album’s opener and tonal centerpiece, occupies a similar space as Lars von Trier’s “The House That Jack Built” (2018), a film about a middling architect-turned-serial-killer. One auteur described it as “50 percent ‘Cabin in the Woods,’ 50 percent ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’” The film prompted walkouts en masse when it premiered at Cannes Film Festival; Godin’s effort evokes no such reaction.

wastes no time in establishing its dichotomies. The two are stand-ins for the sinister and the sexy, respectively, with the sublime as the product. “I’m looking for a house/ Made of concrete and glass,” open the lyrics after nearly three minutes of instrumentals, rooting the record in an architectural space.

“Back To Your Heart” follows, a variation on the established theme. The sound is closer to a sort of electronic-lounge, dark as it is seductive — one can imagine Isabella Rossellini standing in for the exceptional Kate NV, on a stage drowned in blue light, singing for a scheming Frank Booth.

Any new project from Godin provides the excuse — as if one was really necessary — to revisit 1998’s 

Air’s brilliant debut and most critically acclaimed album to date. In part due to that record’s timeliness, “What Makes Me Think About You” could easily slide easily onto that track list. The same may go for a number of other songs from 

, but the particular rhythms and distortion of the vocals feel especially Air-like.

“Politics is a kind of architecture, isn’t it? With people as your raw material.” — Il Duce

What is it about modern architecture that evokes such a palpable feeling of existential dread? Perhaps because it is pornography of the sky; concrete-and-glass defiance of the natural order as ordained by God; a material erection clawing upward, taunting its creator. Gang’s Aqua Tower will outlive all of us — for the most part, not even earthquakes can topple a skyscraper built with an adequate foundation and proper flexibility. When one stares at the glass-paneled John Hancock tower, their mortality is reflected back toward them. Henry N. Cobb won’t live to see his creation fall, he’ll have only lived to see it erected.

. Had von Trier not opted to use David Bowie’s “Fame” almost exclusively for the “House That Jack Built” soundtrack, certainly a number of these tracks could suffice in communicating a similar tone.

“Cité Radieuse” closes the album, and the name comes from a literal “house of concrete and glass.” It means “Radiant City,” referring to the most famous building from an urban housing development project in Marseille, France. It still stands today, and is regarded as an extremely influential work of modernist architecture that kickstarted the brutalist wave. Anyone still lamenting the architecture of the Boston City Hall can thank Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, or “Le Corbusier,” a nickname he gave to himself. The real Cité Radieuse is rather horrid, but Godin’s track is a delightful closer.

Lars von Trier’s “Jack” is obviously more depraved than the aforementioned architects, but one still would be forgiven for asking what went wrong in their minds. Thankfully, Godin opted for a career in a less sinful medium.

Godin’s ‘Concrete and Glass’ is equally amour, imagination, et rêve

Unfortunately, it’s usually easier to just talk about the music.

For those unaware, Pinegrove took a year-long break from touring following sexual coercion allegations against frontman Evan Stephens Hall. An 

 earlier in January does a much better job than I could at explaining the full context surrounding the allegations, and anyone interested in learning more should reference that.

It certainly places the reviewer in an odd position, especially when Pinegrove’s music has traditionally focused so heavily on the brooding narrators of Hall’s creation. On 

, the band’s first release featuring songs written after the allegations were made public, this isn’t any different.

Pinegrove has acquired the “emo” tag over the years, which doesn’t particularly seem unfair considering both the lyrics and the music. Hall’s vocals steal the show almost immediately on “Dotted Line,” 

’s opener. His voice has tangible emotion behind it, it feels vulnerable, and a slight rasp adds a delicate touch to his unique vocal progressions. Zach Lavine’s strong performance on drums is mixed well. The song is crisp, but still retains authenticity. Less positively, the punchless chorus leaves much to be desired: “Cause I don’t know how/ But I’m thinking it’ll all work out.”

“The Alarmist,” the third track, is rather nice as well, at least musically. Hall paints the scene of a break up in the first verse before slipping into a sparsely accompanied refrain: “Singing be good to me / Be good to me.” The lyrics aren’t impressive, but one can sense the restrained emotion that plays out in Hall’s vocal frills, and it seems one’s enjoyment of the record comes down to how much this sort of vibe works for you. A lonely-looking Hall plays an acoustic version of “The Alarmist” in a 

 for Rough Trade at the edge of a forest creek, guitar string up and hoodie down.Better lyricism is probably required to justify that sort of melodrama.

Hall’s narrator finds himself a new love interest in “No Drugs,” a song about not doing any drugs. Again, the frontman’s vocals are delicate and compelling, and accompanying guitar picking at the start is a nice compliment, and again the track falters to a lackluster chorus: “Is it so wrong I wanna feel good?/ I wanna feel good.” The bass and drums kick in afterward in an arrangement that’s half-Fall Out Boy, half-Lumineers, and the second verse displays an optimistic narrator: “Let’s build us a new house for to live/ You fortify the outside and I got the interior/ I got the materials we’re gonna need right here.” Optimistic, yes, but it isn’t good.

The album’s highlight comes at the very end on the title track, a six-minute instrumental piece (is it really any surprise the best song is the one with zero words?) that is in no rush to go anywhere. The celestial guitar picking is almost completely outside of the confines of the song, on its own plane, and the composition is rooted by lengthy synthesizer chords that convey more feeling than any lyric on the entire record.

Pinegrove is clearly comprised of talented musicians. Hall possesses a unique voice, he knows how to utilize it, and he’s certainly earned his production-credit of an album that is musically quite tight overall. But the songwriting consistently gets in the way of the emotion the music seems to be attempting to express, creating something that’s bland and flat. It would be understandable if a Pinegrove fan didn’t quite know what to think, for it’s been a tumultuous last few years for Hall. But now he’s back, singing as he does on “Dotted Line” that he’s “thinking it’ll all work out,” and something about it doesn’t sit quite right.

Pinegrove’s ‘Marigold’ doesn’t sit quite right

Like any collective of superheroes, CZARFACE can seemingly assemble at a moment’s notice.

The rap “supergroup,” quotes employed only because it’s a laughable term and not because the talents of Wu-Tang’s Inspectah Deck and Boston-based duo 7L and Esoteric fail to meet that standard, have been prolific since forming in 2013. 

 their latest project, is their third of 2019 alone, preceded by the lo-fi instrumentals of 

 and the excellent collaboration with Deck’s Wu-Tang running partner Ghostface Killah, 

Perhaps most impressive about CZARFACE’s run to date has been that their reimaginations of an admittedly aged format of comic book-idolizing, old school-inspired hip-hop, have never felt stale. That’s surely aided by impressive collaborations with the aforementioned Ghostface or the iconic, mysterious, and positively legendary MF DOOM (remember all caps) as on last year’s 

, which extracted from DOOM easily his best performance in a handful of years. CZARFACE has historically been at their best when taking contributions from rap legends, themselves often larger-than-life characters akin to spandex-clad, radiated-yet-principled do-gooders, and bringing battles of a “Godzilla vs. Mothra” level into the verbal scale of the cipher circle.

So why mess with a good thing? The sheer talent of the group’s trio certainly helps, and it’s interesting to hear CZARFACE place their latest effort definitively in the year 2019; if not musically then certainly lyrically. The pivot is clear from the album’s opener, “Bizarro,” the initial sample inquiring “Is your, uh, computer operative?” and transitioning to a beat emptier and darker than the group typically produces, abrasive sound effects of blaring telephones buried in the mix. “Call Me,” further rooting the album in the sphere of technology, comically relates a story of a narrator struggling to communicate over text with a less-than-articulate partner, wishing instead to talk over the phone. The second verse responds with the other side of the argument: “Nah, I can’t cause I’m drivin’/C’mon man, you know how busy I been/Can’t you just say it with a meme?” Fair enough.

“Dear Computer” is the most blatant departure from a conventional CZARFACE track; it’s difficult not to let out a bemused laugh as singer-songwriter Kendra Morris’ vocals kick off the song’s simple but catchy and well-produced hook atop a bouncy techno beat. It’s as lighthearted as expected, but the lyrics hold an unmistakable derision toward the track’s themes: “What would you do to go viral?/For 10 minutes of fame, when everybody likes you/Most know they hook, no denial/Your followers are up, but your life is in a spiral,” raps Deck on the opening verse. But it’s odd — isn’t the concept of going viral antiquated by now? Why, in 2019 of all years, is CZARFACE of all groups, tackling “10 minutes of fame,” an idea whose own 10 minutes of fame have probably expired by now?

One would think that the inherent bad-ness of the internet is already ingrained with one’s experience of it. We’re long past the point of worrying about getting toddlers addicted to screens, but not because of vague notions of eye strain or ominous “blue light.” It’s in part because the utility of the screen for selling people things necessitates their unavoidable omnipresence, but also because it’s the content of the screen that’s unimaginably worse than the screen itself. Open up Twitter on any given day and you’ll see what Esoteric mentions in his verse, “Let me get some, uh, inner city riots/Mass shootings, death, cute cats, and trendy diets.”

That’s about as close-to-home as the record gets. CZARFACE gets back to their usual fantastical, page-flipping capers on “The Problem With Frank” toward the end of the record, a track replete with cartoonish samples as the group takes on Punisher, a Spiderman villain, in outrageous musical fashion. 

 taken as a whole is another entertaining effort from CZARFACE, even if the attempts at placing certain songs in the “now” lack profundity and come off as a bit confused when considered next to the lighthearted tracks of old. But as Esoteric says on “Dog,” “Fuck a fucking critic.”

‘The Odd Czar Against Us’ is another entertaining effort from CZARFACE

A rapidly pulsating dial-tone is quickly joined by another at a slightly offset rhythm at a slightly higher pitch, creating a combined blaring, like a cosmic telephone ringing off the hook. We’re going back in time now, the symphony sounding probably as a portal ought to, to the height of the 1980s cold-wave scene, where the cool people wear black and sport some fashion of pentagram accessory. There’s a scream, then another, and then silence. The bass line appears now, out of nothing, possessing an irresistible momentum that the lo-fi vocal track and lush instrumentation barely manage to keep up with. This is, more or less, how Black Marble’s 

(2016) begins, and just one reason why the expectations for 2019’s 

 was the group’s second full-length album and first project without member Ty Kube, who acted as a significant contributor to the clear potential displayed on the band’s full-length debut album, 

 (2012). The duo that broke onto the music scene in Brooklyn was now down to a solo act, featuring Los Angeles-based musician Chris Stewart. To his credit, Stewart’s absorption of the LA aesthetic was rapid. 

’s album artwork features a suburban house that screams Van Nuys in the way that band 

’s album art screams Urbana. On top of that, 

’s art also features an ultramodern tween sorceress that appears to be in the middle of a conjuring.

Questions will be asked of any promising project that loses what can only be assumed to have been 50 percent of its creative direction, but Stewart proved to be up to the challenge on 

, a project which shares its name with a British new-wave band from Liverpool (compare them to the Manchester-based Joy Division and you have something like an inverse of the Beatles/Oasis dynamic). The album shows clear sonic influences from new wave’s highest peaks, blended with a touch of 2010s warmth.The bass line on “Iron Lung” has the power and tasteful monotony of an Iron Curtain record but leaves the production loose enough that the sounds of fingers sliding up and down the neck of the guitar are still audible. The album’s broader soundscape is a high watermark for what is perhaps the beginning of the end of enjoyable lo-fi music in contemporary indie rock.

, begins, it almost feels like a return to form. The opening track, “Never Tell,” is led by the driving rhythm of the drum and bass tracks, with slightly muted synths filling out the mix. But something is a bit off from the group’s previous work. The soundscape is deceptively shallow, the vocal track lifted out of the lo-fi shadows of previous projects, and perhaps not for the better. “One Eye Open,” the first single released with the announcement of the new record, auspiciously begins with the infectious energy of an underground house track but quickly loses steam. There’s simply no development of a promising beat, and the mix feels awkward and clunky. The crisp vocal track relative to former albums is simply an odd fit, and the track feels twice as long as its 4:43 minute run time (the longest in Black Marble’s discography).

There seems to be a general misconception about “lo-fi” music, in that the deployment of a rugged, less-than-polished production quality is often used to smooth the rough edges of dodgy musicianship. Only under the microscope of a crisp mixing style can the true worth of the music be measured, or so goes that line of thinking — this would be incorrect. Lo-fi, at least inasmuch as Black Marble adhered to it, is about letting the atmosphere of the music supersede the music itself. Hiding behind the production style implies a reduction of form, but Black Marble’s innovative re-imagining of late 70s/early 80s soundscapes with an 

 twist is anything but. Lo-fi epitomizes postmodern art; it is a rebellion against the impossibly flawless production of mainstream pop, an alternative to predominant but unrelatable soullessness.

almost stays true to that definition, especially on its highlights, like the track by the same name as the record and the first minute or so of “Never Tell.” However, despite the few standouts, ,the album as a whole feels deceptively empty and bland. The record is like a domed tartlet in that the sheen of its outer layer has remained more or less in tact but the organic sweetness of the core has been replaced by animal hoof gelatin. Perhaps a die hard Black Marble fan will throw the aptly named “Feels” onto one of their “feels” playlists, but it seems unlikely that 

 will be nearly as well received as the group’s previous projects.

Black Marble releases lackluster ‘Bigger Than Life’

That’s right, folks. We’ll get to the music, but first, we have to go back to the summer of 1964.

Sure, The Beatles had already landed and were on their way to altering the course of rock history, but changes were coming for the jazz world as well. By now, the inimitable John Coltrane was well into his time at Impulse! Records after breaking off from a fearsome foursome spearheaded by Miles Davis. His “classic quartet” (comprised of Jimmy Garrison on bass, Elvin Jones on drums, and McCoy Tyner on piano) had just finished recording 

, and were about to begin studio sessions for Coltrane’s opus, the legendary 

Meanwhile, French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard had just released 

,” his latest installment in a filmography that shaped the next decade (or more) of cinema. The “French New Wave,” led by filmmakers like Godard, Françoise Truffaut and Agnés Varda, was becoming an artistic response to the brewing social revolution soon to erupt on both sides of the Atlantic.

These two worlds collided when Coltrane was approached by Gilles Groulx, a Montreal-born documentary filmmaker, to record the soundtrack to his feature film debut. The result was a day-long session that became 

, which compiles eight recently uncovered studio takes that clocks in at 36 minutes.

By 1964, Groulx had demonstrated a particular interest in different aspects of Quebec society. The socio-political history of Quebec is long and complicated, but we can at least study the version that Groulx would have known: Maurice Duplessis had come into power following WWII, and oversaw a conservative government that maintained the backing of the Catholic-Church. A number of other prominent politicians, including Pierre Trudeau, eventually formed a liberal coalition in opposition, and by the late 1950s Quebec was experiencing a sort of societal upheaval similar to that which would take place in the U.S. and France in the 1960s.

Groulx was making plans to direct his first feature film around this time, which he called 

. The Godard/New Wave influence is obvious in the film, which is shot using a handheld camera, instead of a typical steady mount, like the documentaries of Groulx’s past. The emerging style gave the politically interested Groulx the perfect framework to explore the social and political tensions of his modern Quebec. He didn’t have much of a budget, but he still needed a soundtrack.

The decision to approach Coltrane is a curious one, and his agreement even more so. Coltrane and his quartet were at the peak of their powers, delving deeper into an avant-garde style of post-bop jazz that was less interested in standard melody than they were in elaborate and spacious solos, and Groulx was asking for a much more conventional sound for his moody portrait of Montreal society. Coltrane dug up four of his own compositions and one jazz standard, “Out of This World” (renamed “Blue World”), all of which the quartet had long since done away with playing live. It would be like if Taylor Swift agreed to record a handful of country songs for a low-budget indie film that even A24 wasn’t aware of.

 begins with a version of “Naima,” a ballad written by Coltrane dedicated to and named after his ex-wife which first appeared on the explosive 

(1960). The mixing on the opener differs greatly from its counterpart recorded four years earlier — Coltrane’s saxophone is featured more centrally, the cavernous atmosphere of the original lost to a crispness that does a disservice to the nature of the composition, and the same can be said for the rest of the album. Both takes of “Naima” that appear on 

 feel much more like swing than the version intended for 

, executed nicely by the bouncy effortlessness of Tyner and Jones on piano and drums. The resulting track becomes less a haunting ode to a former lover than a kind of fluffy ballad in a film about urbanite melancholy — which, by no coincidence, was exactly the point.

No doubt influenced by Godard’s 1960 film 

” in which Martial Solal’s jazz soundtrack mocks that of a typical noir-standard or schlocky 50s action film, Groulx utilized the subtle darkness of Coltrane’s compositions to complement the bleakness of his own artistic vision. Despite some tender moments, 

 possesses a disgruntled protagonist that appears neurotic and paranoid, and eventually abandons his relationship and city lifestyle altogether. Coltrane’s score in the film is both sarcastic and innocuous. The film gives a reason for these songs, otherwise nothing more than simply “listenable” jazz, a reason to exist.

exist? The album is, almost surely, the least interesting collection of songs Coltrane and company recorded in the years leading up to 

, and likely in the years after as well. It is also, and not paradoxically, extremely polished, technically masterful jazz music from a group at the apex of their creative output. Its most obvious utility seems to be a rare, brief glimpse into a soundtrack session that might mildly interest the most enthusiastic Coltrane fan, albeit for a film they likely haven’t heard of. Beyond that, there’s virtually nothing about the music worth examining in great detail. Though perhaps a pessimistic take, is more likely that 

exists primarily because of the commercial success of 

 (a recently discovered album released last year), and Impulse! Records sought to replicate a respectable payday. One can understand, then, why a reviewer might spend so much time on the circumstances that brought about the original recordings instead.

John Coltrane’s “new” album is really just a commercial gimmick

Domino Recording Company · September 13, 2019

It’s difficult to keep track of the total number of projects produced by (Sandy) Alex G, but in just five years, Philadelphia-born Alex Giannascoli has come out with his seventh studio album, 

 the multi-instrumentalist, who had already amassed a following thanks to Bandcamp and a series of strong projects already in his discography, has gone on to become one of the most important names in indie rock.

is probably Giannascoli’s most thematically-focused and musically polished to date, with Jacob Portrait’s production lifting the layered haze from a record anchored in loss and addiction. The House of Sugar is a metaphor at different times on the album for Giannascoli’s former residence, the fairy-tale site of Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel,” a vice-ridden casino in Philadelphia — in every instance, an embodiment of places or situations that appear designed to forbid one’s escape.

Yoshida Kenkō, a Japanese-born Buddhist monk, once said that “It is the ephemeral nature of things that make them wonderful.” In 

 they seem too wonderful, the high too good to leave behind. When the album is at its best, the richness of the mixing allows the subject matter to come to the surface in devastating fashion. On “Hope,” named after the street Giannascoli lived on until 2017, Giannascoli sings “He was a good friend of mine, he died//Why I write about it now?//Gotta honor him somehow//Saw some people crying that night, yeah//Fentanyl took a few lives from our life, alright.”

Indeed, “fentanyl,” by no means one of Webster’s more euphonous terms, is uttered with the same nonchalance one might expect from a narrator that doesn’t quite understand why he’s writing about his friend anyhow. It’s possible that this expression comes off to some like a shrug, like an ineffective way of communicating just how tragic it would be to lose a friend in this manner, but that’s also what makes Giannascoli’s songwriting so human.

On the back-half of the record, “In My Arms” stands out as another highlight, following the intense, droning “Sugar.” Giannascoli describes a moment in the midst of radio-fueled car romance in a relationship of nebulous origin: “He laid his head back on my chest//Once had a wife, now nobody’s left//You said the song makes you wanna do bad things, yeah//You know good music makes me wanna do bad things.”

The understated-yet-biting style is reminiscent of that of Raymond Carver, the American short-story writer who gained admiration for his portraits of the quietly tragic lives of American white working class. Critics of Carver typically say that the illusion doesn’t work, that the prose is either so understated that to suggest it contains any worthwhile depth would be absurd, or that the simplicity does more to undermine the seriousness of the subject matter than it does to highlight it.

The works of (Sandy) Alex G fall in the same debate. Like Carver, Giannascoli’s songs reveal a feeling — sometimes of outright suffering, sometimes just mild sadness — that seems too painful to simply reveal outright. Or, when one of its causes is named, as on “Hope,” it’s only natural way of expressing itself is to fall breathlessly off of the tongue, with no emphasis on any particular syllable. There’s no need to be poetic in cases like these, when no words can possibly capture the effects of a drug like fentanyl, no song the suffering it continues to cause.

For the most part, the focus on loss and addiction are effective. The recorded is nicely bookended by tracks that emphasize the record’s themes in “Walk Away” and “SugarHouse,” the latter named after the SugarHouse casino in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia that by all indications maintains a Hotel California-level of inescapability.

Giannascoli has historically assembled his projects as Carver might, creating a sort of anthology of vignettes that trades in consistency for richness. This is the area in which some of the best moments on previous (Sandy) Alex G records have laid, but it’s lost on 

 as a necessary consequence of making a project this airtight. It’s a new challenge, but Giannascoli’s songwriting is up to the task. The experiment works, and the result is a beautiful record.

Seamus McAvoy