Young Gully - Mislead You (off HM5, 2012, self-released)

The Bay Area’s Young Gully is responsible for one of my favourite hip-hop songs of recent years, ‘The Go-In’, a playfully masterful example of rappin’ ass rappin’. He compares himself to a cockatoo, a Doberman and a schedule; calls his opponents vegetables and eats them; claims he’s in your girl “like a condo”, which is both a goofy metaphor and a potential Grandpa Simpson reference. “I am not trying,” he laughs as the track fades out, ruefully shaking his head as though to say: this is effortless, this is nothing to me.

By comparison, the recently released HM5 mixtape (props to Thizzler) is all effort. There’s playfulness there but it’s in brief spurts, replaced by an intensity to keep rhyming, keep proving, keep going. Gully is on his tunnel vision shit here. Once you delete the momentum-sapping for-the-ladies jams - yeah, do that immediately - HM5 reveals itself as a solid tape full of good beats and impassioned rapping. Its best track is ‘Mislead You’, containing not only one of Gully’s more intense performances, but a wordiness and a worldliness that keeps you listening: “sometimes I’m blind to the facts like they come in braille,” he spits, in total understanding of his follies, sifting through the wreckage through tumbles of words.

Annie - Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts (digital single, 2013, self-released) [via thesinglesjukebox]

Sometimes I have problems that are hard to soolllllveeeeee and I address them by writing megashort stories in place of traditional music reviews.

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “12:30/I’m about to depart.” The night has begun, a cavalcade of bad vibes. As Norwegian public transport trundles along, Annie sits shaken and broken on the way to… somewhere. Anywhere. There’s got to be a beat on the other side, and until that appears, there’s “Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts” in her head. You can almost see the white lights flashing, those huge claps reverberating from wall to wall. With Annie, these sounds do not offer escape from the twitchiness of her words; the ability to nullify the anxiety is not on the table. Here, the club sounds are a welcome extension of bad vibes, a zone where internalized gloom is writ large as nocturnal beats. The music is unnerving and rickety, under its own spell of spookiness. But she’s not there yet. She’s stuck on public transport, keeping as calm as she can with strokes of glossolalia nonsense: “mamama oh mamama oh nanananana”. [8]

Nanananana.

Disclosure feat. Eliza Doolittle - You & Me (off Settle, 2013, PMR) [via thesinglesjukebox]

Patrick St. Michel: One day, these brothers are going to slip. They’ll release a mediocre song, or even a straight-up dud, and we will all be a little surprised. That’s because Disclosure are on a Miami Heat-like run of fantastic music. Have they even released something approaching so-so? Even more impressive is they’ve done this while sticking mostly to the same formula — straightforward intro into woozy build-up swinging into a fantastic chorus, usually featuring a guest singer absolutely slaying. This is “You & Me,” too, another impressive “W” as they march toward the NBA Fina — er, album release date. [9]

Will Adams: The pop-kissed deep house of “Latch” and “White Noise” are great, but it was the shuffling garage of “Control” that first drew me to Disclosure. “You & Me” picks that up while adding a warmth that sets it apart from its icier predecessor. Disclosure’s skill is in portraying so accurately the intense emotions one feels on a dance floor. Their synth pads wrap around the song at all the right moments, and with Eliza Doolittle’s precise vocals it’s a winning combination. These two are unstoppable.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Another in their winning string of no-fuss dance gems, “You & Me” basks in Doolittle’s warmth. It’s not a matter of pulling any punches: she creates a sonic space in which she and the listener can two-step to the “Show Me Love” template.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: So dance music in 2013 is going to have elements of the musical summers of ‘93 and ‘03 with a vocal performance that could have been straight off an underground disco pop record from ‘83? Even if it lasts just the length of this record, hopefully that movement has a nice long chart life.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Disclosure, so far, have managed an illustrious career of making me love vocalists I previously gave zero shits about; when they get Katy B in, it’ll either be amazing or ruin my year. (Quite the feat, that.) “You & Me” continues the streak, but only just. Too pat, maybe; too much contentness, too little tension, too much of a drift toward the coffee bar. Basically, 2015 is going to be full of worse versions of this.
[7]

Brad Shoup: The next entry in Disclosure’s “we can turn everyone icy” sweepstakes. I’m glad Doolittle’s taking a break from being Nellie McKay for nice folks, but someone like Foxes would have brought the fire to an otherwise fine 4 a.m. two-step.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Everyone Disclosure works with has a distinct voice and personality, but they still end up sounding like they’re singing a Disclosure song — weightless, bustling, and slightly mournful. I was going to say I’ve never had a problem with Eliza Doolittle before, and then I realized I was confusing her with Holly Golightly; she acquits herself better than that, at any rate.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s probably not a declaration you’d ever expect to see, but Eliza Doolittle is an asset to this song, her Estuary emulations almost approaching some definition of soulful. Not in the way of Sam Smith’s contribution to “Latch”; her vocal limitations probably ensure the level of restraint that keeps the all-important space intact, but there’s feeling amid the glo’al stops.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Does this sound brittle to anyone else, hiding exhaustion with jittering attention to energy? If that’s the case, it’s a difficult trick to pull off well.
[8]

Crystal Xia: Doolittle isn’t trying too hard to be clever, and that sincerity goes a long way. The way that she sings “my darling” in the chorus is so out of breath and sounds so precious, like she really believes it. But my favorite vocal part is the outro where Doolittle sings about her lover’s house on the hill and refers back to the heart that she had given him several verses earlier. It’s such a simple yet effective bit. Doolittle’s voice is put through some vocal filters that lower the volume and make her seem a little more faded. Disclosure’s done this sort of thing before, where they distort a vocal without losing the emotional intensity. The fact that it works is a testament to their production ability.
[9]

David Lee: Disclosure have this knack for summoning impassioned vocals and then running them through drum loops, stuttering basslines or glowing synths in order to create a vibrant narrative. “You and Me” encompasses the dark nightclub corners and thrilling excursions of an intense, loving relationship, torpedoing my pleasure centers with the tension and release of electric string sections and wound-up synths rising over a sea of skittering jungle and garage rhythms. Few songs, “White Noise” excepted, have racked up as many plays as quickly in my iTunes this year.
[10]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox ]

My blurb, which was lost somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning:

Perhaps it was because I stumbled upon a Simon Reynolds piece on the genre from a 2001 issue of Vibe. Maybe it was the fact I went to a club night celebrating Craig David’s thirty-second birthday. Either way, I’ve been thinking a lot about two-step the past couple of weeks and how its particularly British amalgamation of R&B, dancehall and house has surfaced in the DNA of bass-music acts like SBTRKT, Koreless and Disclosure. “You & Me” finds the Lawrence brothers exploring senses of comfort, a turn away from the sexual and emotional anxiety that traversed through “Latch” and “White Lights”. Guest Eliza Doolittle vows to her beau that she will let nobody “inside of our happiness”. It’s loyalty to the cause. Likewise, Disclosure find that underneath their bag of tricks (plutonium-bright keys, unassailable melodic approach) there is a loyalty to their two-step influence. In the final minute, Doolittle’s ode to loyalty fades away and her hosts strip the track to its bones. The bubble-pop melodies fade into the aether, revealing the heart of the track. Disclosure confidently allow the shuffling percussion to show their understanding of two-step, displaying their reverence and comfort with the genre’s murky stop-start rhythms. Doolittle’s devoted to her lover - the Brothers Lawrence are devoted to two-step. It’s lovely on both accounts. [8]

Jarina De Marco - Main Dish (off April Showers, 2013, self-released)

I’m not downloading a thirty-three song mixtape by Wyclef Jean on principle, even if he did put Pharoahe Monch and Kenny Rogers on the same song back when I was thirteen years old, even if he did premiere this song on it. Nuh-uh, no thanks. I should be sleeping (it’s almost five) but wanted to throw this video up on my page while I’m remembering reference points: particularly the arch post-Beasties pop of Cannonball Jane; the ensuing internet years of internet-savvy popstars accentuating their cool-kid/populist reference points (‘Big Pimpin’ sample!); early M.I.A. mythbuilding (“age five, got kicked out of [the Dominican Republic]/revolution from the start”); makeshift crayon-streaked visual presentation. All the above make ‘Main Dish’ sound like a cynical piece of groupthink pop when it’s actually quite good.