worldpace dmt and rowan please - the velvet underground & rowan (rym review)
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https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/worldpeace-dmt/the-velvet-underground-and-rowan/
this album rules !! 2007 p4k-core is back and the production sounds contemporary !! something like the go team or grandaddy or dan deacon or softer sleigh bells or maybe some strawberry jam era anco. like ween produced by people who learned ableton properly with less gags.
“this music makes me wanna go yogurtbrain in bushwick with girls in rompers 😫🙏“
a lot of hyperpop discourse is about the genre fluidity or the post-cringe aesthetics. but i’d argue that the largest impact of a record like 1000 gecs is the speed at which songs move through different textures and ideas. in this way, ‘the velvet underground & rowan’ is post-hyperpop. while ween would have spent a four minute song exploring one of these cartoon textures, worldpeace dmt speed runs chocolate and cheese.
in the first 30 seconds of ‘love yourself’ we only get half a bar of underwater vocoder backup vox before the pointalistic-baroque-indietronica sends clean-pull-off-guitars to counterpoint against a midi-cello. then bro sneaks in a perfectly placed millenial whoop and we think we’ve settled until 10 seconds later there’s a bitpop drop. like a ‘paris 1919’ themed home in animal crossing where worldpeace dmt and rowan please invited their friends to a myspace rave.
‘so is this a hyperpop record?’
‘no !!’
‘why?’
‘the reference points are cool and good !!’
poptimism was necessary. it’s a good thing that there is no longer any debate over whether madonna is the goat but since p4k decided to take taylor swift more seriously than yeasayer we have new problems. like why are so many hyperpop acts pulling reference points from my middle school bully’s ipods (fans of benny benassi and attack attack were all jerks)? in 2009, i got into indie-rock as a way to differentiate myself from normies. of course the new bieber album is intriguing but don’t tell me it’s more interesting than whatever panda bear is up to. pop discourse is fun but i think we could pay more mind to production innovation.
the point i’m trying to make is that the go team is fucking sick and it’s a total bummer that so far 00s revivalism has focused more attention on indie sleaze electroclash than it has on bnm-yelping-summertime-in-brooklyn-indietronica. perhaps we needn’t mourn the dare’s success but i am excited that it’s still july and i have some contemporary-hbo-girls-core to bump in the park. gonna play this record for my date from the redscare discord. ‘he needs me’ is her song of the summer !! life is so good !!
sorry i’m having fun with this review. there’s a lot more to say about the production. so
indiepop used to be awesome and a genre where pop hooks could go to ease listeners into bizarre production decisions. however 20 years after ‘sung tongs’, the spotify algo has rewarded artists for sanding down the colorful edges of these productions. artschool boys may have continued to impersonate avey tare’s vocal affect but too often, the productions fall into three categories:
complacent-lofi-bedroom-pop (honestly can fuck when the songwriting hits)
mac-demarco-typebeat-ai-playlist-core (there are worse things to hear in a coffeeshop)
neoliberal-pc-landfill-indie (i need fent to kms)
what a lot of artists drawing from these aesthetic reference points miss is how ambitious this music was before the ubiquity of digital audio workstations. a producer can sound more like grandaddy or ween by adding tape hiss but gene and dean were not focused on the tape emulation. ween was trying to rip george martin and panda bear wanted to be brian wilson. the mpc may have been fundamental to the go team’s sound but through another lens, it was just the best tool the band had access to at the time to fulfill their colorful maximalist vision.
so when i talk about what’s so excitingly contemporary about the production of ‘the velvet underground & rowan’ what i’m getting at is that this is a band using all the tools at their disposal to carry forward the playfully innovative spirit of these 00s indiepop artists i love, but using production tools these artists didn’t have access to.
on the whole i’d say the lyrics on this album are quite serviceable and often fun but not my central focus as a listener. after five or six full listens to the record, the main lyrics which stand out are leo going cohen with the jesus on the sand line and rowan getting meta and telling me to put these songs on a playlist (i did).
to digress for a moment, the appeal of femcels limited releases rn is the dysfunctional-mean-girl-vibe being contrasted against vintage songwriting and song forms. the loose interpolation of shelley duvall’s popeye performance of the harry nilsson song ‘he needs me’ juxtaposes a classic theatrical songwriting against messy spiralling e-girl pining (at least i always think about the popeye song when i hear it. not sure how deliberate this was).
my current read of rowan please is that she wants to lend her toxic-twitter-poems an elegance. similar to worldpeace dmt’s sonic production on ‘the velvet underground and rowan’, at her best, the lyrics are about the tension between timeless dignity and abject ephemerality. it’s like fart sound effects in the beach boys pastiche or sylvia plath quotes in the onlyfans bio.
so while few lyrics on ‘the velvet underground and rowan’ reach the transcendence of ‘he needs me’, the greatest pathos comes on ‘say the sky is grey’. rowan mourns her a love interest’s porn consumption and wandering eye and commitment issues. there’s a few lines conjuring wedding imagery before she laments that her boyfriend keeps masturbating alone rather than cumming on her. it’s a song about the internet and how it complicates a relationship’s intimacy but the declaration ‘i am real and you are such a whore’ is delivered with the earnestness and severity of a spectre produced motown heartbreak classic.
stray notes on each song:
air force - wonked-up throbbing synth hits chopped acoustic chords ricochetting across the stereo image. blooping randomized world music percs. dubbed delayed guitars. the highlight is when the instrumental exposes the garagey distorted lead gtr.
numbers - verse enters with this ‘here comes the sun’ exposed acoustic arp. its a revelation when rowan emerges yelping the chorus. everything but the frankensteined drum kit leaves and then a dog is barking. chopped sfx splinter across the mix in ways that seem semirandom at first but upon repeat listens, reveal themselves to be very thoughtful.
love yourself - its a duet !! hey its stuttered vocals without autotune. thats based. not everyone is doing that. is there a banjo solo modulating?? cannot get over the chops paired with the cello. and this vocal melody is emotional.
the ledge - rowan is on some kimya dawson type nursery rhyme. bloopy synth adds the levity and weirdness to stop it from being too trad twee.
untitled dmt - have to think a lot about elephant 6 while listening to this stuff. there are synths that feel lofi in a performed way but whats unique is the pairing of the kontact midi strings over top. so i am thinking about apples in stereo. not quite the same texture as the soft bulletin but its adjacent. when the half time drums and distorted bass enter, the track turns into a cuddle puddle.
marina - god it is the bass that ties this whole record together. no one else this good at ableton is embracing such a dirty garage rock bass for a whole album. also love the power popping gtr on here.
say the sky is grey - honestly this one is all about the lyrics for me but the (melotron??) choir synth on the bridge is beautiful.
shoes - goofed up catchy melody at the top is hype. the way the glockenspiel enters is such nice arranging. but what the song is really about is that bridge omg. the guitar hits and we enter some weird ass cartoon harmony complete with sound effects that feel like switching a 1960 tube tv between different saturday morning cartoons (there really werent that many channels at the time so im not sure thats really the best analogy but yall can imagine. no one who lived through the 60s will ever read this review). what am i hearing? doopees ?? graham kartna does the smile sessions ?? and then there’s that very melodic guitar solo brushing up against the steel pan in the outro. so beautiful so fun.
neighbourhood announcement song - yes rowan i will be adding this to a playlist :) meta lyrics give the record a refreshing twee levity. so goofed up and playful. but never so stupid i have to change the songs. samples of people talking are transportive aesthetically but don’t disrupt the prettiness of the progression.
hey marshmello - the chops at the beginning are beautiful and mysterious. and then the chords get gorgeous in an epic way that the rest of the harmony on this album basically never reaches for. this is the centre of the album and a moment of pure emotion. give this guy the emo tag !! is this a scramz record all of a sudden because of the vocals or are we gonna categorize that as a folk punk shout? track makes me wonder whether this band is from the uk or the us. this song makes them feel american to me, will not elaborate. why am i writing this in the review lol. remember those classic brent dicrescenzo reviews where he went totally dummy? i can’t write like that but i miss when this hipster shit was fun
b-side story - true love for goofy as 60s records. lets list the instruments for the kids (seriously i think this album could mean a lot to 10 yo’s. use this shit to teach your precocious child relative pitch !!).
sound-waves - production feels more connected to hypnagogic pop trends from the last decade. is worldpeace dmt thinking about james ferraro at all? maybe all my other writing is bullshit and it’s just been ariel pink worship the whole time. regardless, choir synth melody is play fr and the way lofi bleepbloops juxtapose against the vocoder is very fun. but really what makes this production so deranged is the tuned percussion (is that a steel drum !?). it’s these kind of decisions that really elevate the record for me beyond 00s hipster tribute into something original because anco would never make like 30% of these decisions, but these production choices conjure the same stoned dopamine chase that avey tare has always been on.
leo’s great brass adventure - congrats on the adventure leo !! you may have a great future in soundtracking quirked up indie games. this has a victory stage ost type vibe.
impossible - this one is a ballad. it is quite nice.have been going back and forth on whether the harmonica was recorded live or if it’s midi, but to me, the way this album creates ambiguity over whether the instruments are real or fake is the heart of why the production is so beautiful. is this producer real or just a whore?? reminds me of my favourite chris olsen songs. would love to hear these guys collab.
not a ton of info on this record or these artists yet, so i don’t know how many of my assertions would ring true to them. maybe they really are just excited about these sounds and there isn’t a greater statement about bringing back gatekeeping. but the album title does make me think they care about the deep shit.
either way, this record accomplishes an incredible feat in the way it reminds me of a ton of music i love while throwing in enough original ideas to ensure i won’t just turn it off and listen to it’s influences. can’t wait to hear what’s next.
album of the year let’s get it
