“Hand It Over” // MGMT

The indie rock band, MGMT is currently working on a release date for their upcoming album, “Little Dark Age,” and in the meantime, are providing fans with a series of singles to foster excitement for what will be their fourth studio album. Most recently, MGMT released “Hand It Over,” a single whose album art features an Edvard Munch painting, “Self-portrait with a bottle of wine.” The track presents, much like Munch’s painting, a representation of the artists’ feelings: anguish and helplessness. The homage to Munch speaks to the expressionist style and thematic profile of the track.

​

 

“Bartier Cardi” // Cardi B

After the commercial success of “Bodak Yellow” and features on tracks from Bruno Mars and Quality Control, Cardi B is proving herself a highly marketable voice in mainstream hip-hop. Her newest single, “Bartier Cardi,” features 21 Savage on a beat that manages a somewhat old-school feel. The instrumental echoes old-school techniques like compressed high hats and a dissident keyboard chord loop. These old-school techniques are contrasted by modern bass kicks on top of layered sub-bass notes. The track borders on being too repetitive, with four seventeen-bar choruses. That aside, Cardi’s articulation and delivery drips complete confidence and self-actualization.

​

 

“&burn” // Billie Eilish and Vince Staples

At only 16, Billie Eilish has managed an EP release with Interscope Records earlier this year and now a collaboration with one of the biggest new-school players in hip-hop, Vince Staples. The new track is titled, “&burn,” and features Vince Staples. Staples’ feature, although short, provides meaningful detail about the dynamic of the relationship that brought on the song’s abjection: “we droned down on each other […] trying to even the score” and now “we’ve all been found guilty in the court of aorta.” The track begins delicately and skeletal: a lone kick drum, synthetic shakers, and the sound of an exhale alternates between right and left channels. However, what starts as calm and reflective quickly into composed relish marked by the first chorus, “I’ll sit and watch your car burn, with the fire that you started in me.” The burning car image reflects both the barebones construction of the song, and the fury it harbors.

​

 

“To Imagine” EP // The Neighbourhood

Releasing their second EP in less than a year’s time, The Neighbourhood (and their lead vocalist Jesse Rutherford, who released his own solo album a couple months ago) have been busy. The new EP, “To Imagine,” is a conceptually dense, yet expected project. This is to say, that like previous projects, “To Imagine” is concerned with the shakable foundations of relationships especially when built around an existential mindset. This existential foundation is laid out by the first track, “Dust.” There is “no more water in the lake” and “no more fish in the ocean.” It’s post-apocalyptic, and apparitional synths mark the humanity that used to be before “everybody went to outer space the second that the sun exploded.” “Scary Love” employs an 80s synth-wave style and touches on fears of intimacy. “Heaven” takes aspects of “Dust” and “Scary Love” and merges them into arresting spectral melodies and withdrawn bass lines. The sounds promote a kind of auditory chase, which reflects the chase in the song of the subject: “no mistake that I need you […] there’s something ‘bout you baby.” “Compass,” hybridizes tangible story building like that in “Dust” with the pursuit found in “Heaven.” The song compares a love interest to a compass in his pocket which, “like a magnet, [he] can’t help that [he’s] attracted to [them].” The irony in this image is that a magnet near a compass makes the compass useless, so when they are together, the speaker has a false sense of direction, which is why he says that he “might” get lost if they separate, because being apart is the only thing that will make the compass work again. “Stuck With Me,” the final track, brings the project full circle with a kind of bittersweet union. After getting “caught up in the forest, hanging with the trees,” the speaker “realized [their] less important.” Now over themselves, likely due to a marijuana metaphor, multiple vocals join in to sing, “you are stuck with me, so I guess I’ll be sticking with [you].” It’s not a perfect or an ideal resolution, but it’s contented and optimistic – or it’s the weed, whichever is easier “To Imagine.”