Melisma Summer 2015

M E L I S M A T U F T S ’ P R E M I E RJ O U R N A L O F M U S I C

MELISMA EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Grant Fox Jordan Rosenthal-Kay

MANAGING EDITOR Rebecca Sinai

ART & LAYOUT DIRECTOR Elias Jarzombek

DEPUTY EDITORS Ross Bretherton Chelsea Wang

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Avi Block Liam Knox Kristina Mensik Dan Pechi

PHOTOGRAPHERS Amy Kao Evan Sayles

FROM THE EDITORS H

ey, how was your summer? Go to any festivals? See any cool shows? Yeah, neither did we. We spent our summer listening to playlists the freshmen sent us and reading Pitchfork articles about the Drake and Meek Mill beef. But we channeled all the heat and humidity and captured some of the carefree energy of the best months of the year in this issue.

Our Summer 2015 issue is a stripped-down version of our normal 24-page magazine. But from the tastes of Drink QT to the smells of Justin Bieber’s perfume, we tried to capture this summer in music with all five senses.

And what a summer it was. We saw Boston bands rally for Bernie Sanders; Tufts class of ‘14 graduate Andrew Berman (aka Madeaux) dropped his first EP on Fool’s Gold; Cymbal blew up; Jamie xx took over with In Colour, all while Young Thug thought he was collaborating with “Johnny X;” Apple Music finally killed Tidal; Lil B became a political talking head, and we got fantastic new albums from Mac Demarco, Miguel, Toro Y Moi, and Tame Impala.

We’re back on the hill now, which means our focus shifts to covering Tufts and Boston-area music. Johnny D’s is closing down, but Applejam is planning a killer schedule. There will be the inevitable conception of new bands in Tilton dorm rooms, and we’re adventuring into putting on some of our own shows. In short, the upcoming semester won’t be boring.

What’s most exciting for us is that this is our first letter from the editor that isn’t about how Melisma is rebuilding. We’ve made it. But that’s not to say we’re complacent. Expect more videos, more Melisma-produced live shows, and more coverage of Cambridge/Somerville music and venues this year. If anything, we hope that we’re just getting started.

So, take a sip of DrinkQT, inhale the smell of Wonderstruck – the new fragrance from Taylor Swift – and put on a freshman-curated playlist. Here’s to the start of a great school year.

Cheers, Jordan Rosenthal-Kay and Grant Fox

Interested in writing, art, or design? Questions, comments, adulation, or hatemail? Email melismamagazine@gmail.com

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MELISMA TUFTS’ PREMIERE JOURNAL OF MUSIC PERFUME GENIUSES

Does pop music have a smell?

Grant Fox & Jordan Rosenthal-Kay

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WHAT HAPPENED TO SOAK?

We talk to NPR’s darling Kristina Mensik

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO

The most exciting albums and shows this semester

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I DRANK QT

100% Super-natural Ross Bretherton

FRESHMEN SONGS OF THE SUMMER

Incoming freshmen share the songs that made their summer

ON THE COVER

Drink QT, by Ross Bretherton

Melisma Magazine is a non-profit student publication of Tufts University. The opinions expressed in articles, features or photos are solely those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the staff. Tufts University is not responsible for the content of Melisma Magazine. If you would like to submit a letter to Melisma Magazine, please send it to melismamagazine@gmail.com. Please limit your letter to four hundred words or less.

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Perfume geniuses

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, so we decided to smell it.

BY GRANt FOX & JOrdan rosenthal-kay

B

ack in 2012, Justin Bieber released a signature perfume called Girlfriend. According to the packaging, Girlfriend “has been created for Justin’s female fans, and, just like him, develops into a mature, fresh scent that inspires confidence.” We’re by no means the preeminent source on Bieber news, but the sheer amount of results for “Justin Bieber arrested” would indicate that the Canadian pop star has yet to grow up into the “mature, fresh scent” his perfume envisioned. In an effort to explore the more obscure annals of pop music, and with an intense curiosity to find out what Justin Bieber wants his female fans to smell like, we set out to smell every celebrity musician’s perfume we could find. We wanted to know the full experience of pop music, not so much the feeling of listening to Bieber, Jennifer Lopez, or Rihanna, but rather what it was like to smell like their music, and why anyone would want to do that in the first place.

The streaming battles that developed into an all-out war this summer underscore the desperate reality musicians face in transforming art into income. The need for pop stars to be the face of a brand – an immersive consumer experience – has never been more present. Music sales aren’t cutting it anymore. From the pop star’s vantage, pursuing a brand that encompasses perfume makes sense. According to a Billboard article from 2013, tour tickets and merchandise sales have increasingly composed a larger share of artists’ income over the past ten years. So why aren’t we seeing a ballooning market for musicians’ perfumes too?

To find out, we went to the Macy’s at Downtown Crossing to talk to some perfume salespeople. They told us that that if anything, the celebrity perfume heyday has passed. As one of them put it, “we used to carry Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson – they sold all the time, but all of a sudden, they got pulled; they stopped sending them.” Even more recently, Adam Levine’s perfume sold well and smelled great, but was pulled from the shelves for seemingly no reason. The sales staff hypothesized that demand for celebrity perfumes was falling short. Sometimes discontinued scents are brought back by customers requesting them, but even then, the market for celebrity perfumes is seasonal. It’s driven by teenagers around Christmas.

As a replacement for traditional, expensive perfumes, musicians’ perfumes perform poorly. They’re sweeter on average, less subtle.

Like pop music, they’re loud and cater to a maximalist sensory experience. And unlike other merchandise, perfume is a mediocre way for a fan to express themselves by identifying with the artist’s brand.

Spotting a Taylor Swift fan is much easier if they’re wearing a tour t-shirt than if they’re wearing her scent Wonderstruck.

They also carry a stigma. Suppliers know musicians’ perfumes are

stocked at rest stops and sold next to lip gloss at CVS. Upscale perfumers look down on KMart-quality scents like Jennifer Lopez’s Glow series (which includes sequels with names like Love at First Glow and Eau de Glow). In the luxury market where exclusivity and the value of a name drive sales, musicians’ perfumes, with all the subtlety of a Britney Spears music video, usually fail to attract a loyal fanbase. Teens will wear a celebrity scent for the novelty of it, but nobody wears Minajesty to work everyday. When we asked a salesperson at CVS if she would ever wear Minajesty, she laughed and told us she only wears Dior.

When it comes down to it, perfume is a bad product for artists to brand, and a purposeless product for a fan to buy. It’s expensive, hard to identify, and increasingly unnecessary for expressing fandom. The development of online culture – to the extent that the most important symbols of identity for tweens exist on their Tumblrs – could also be responsible for the decline of the celebrity perfume market.

Celebrities can maintain a brand image online that doesn’t require a signature scent to accompany their music, and teens no longer need to have migraine-inducing chemicals evaporating from their skin to feel like a true fan.

Above all, the largest problem with musicians’ perfumes is their collective predisposition to smelling terrible. They’re often a sour amalgam of discordant notes, mixing medicinal fruity smells with musty vanilla bases. Smelling the signature scents of Paris Hilton and Mariah Carey brought us back to the most tasteless time of our lives: middle school. They smell like Abercrombie and Fitch stores, gymnasium dances, overly made-up fourteen year-olds, and neon colored candy.

A desire to both form and express a sense of identity defines one’s teenage years. Celebrity perfumes are so pungent that they mask any natural scent befitting of a fifteen-year old. For someone who knows little of themselves other than that they really like Justin Bieber, it makes sense to sport loud, noxious fragrances to become Justin Bieber.

Our tour through the world of musicians’ perfumes ended with a detour to sniff Chanel No. 5. By comparison, it blew us away. This subtle and warm floral scent reminded us that perfume’s purpose is to enhance what’s already there.

The maturity and self-security that comes with growing older means that you look for scents that complement who you already are.

Luxury scents like Chanel No. 5 transcend the simplicity of celebrity perfumes because their buyers have more multifaceted desires than teens who want to smell good, like Bieber must.

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Nicki Minaj Minajesty

Crazy how the woman who got on stage at VMA’s and called Miley Cyrus a bitch and then looked into the camera and barked “Miley what’s good?” has the most boring perfume we smelled. It smells like every perfume worn by a 13 year-old, a generic flowery vanilla that’s closer to Hillary Duff than a rapper who got started rolling with the 1017 squad. Also the bottle looks like an art project gone wrong, as if the same 13 year-old that would wear this perfume also designed the gold and pink bust of a frowning Nicki Minaj to go on top of the bottle.

Ciara Revlon

Revlon sounds like one of those chemicals that’s known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects. Its smell is no better. Hints of bug spray, cleaning fluid, and chemicals that are supposed to smell like flowers almost knocked us out. Ciara smelling like Revlon is probably what caused her relationship with Future to go south.

Justin Bieber Girlfriend

Despite the casing looking like a series of pink and purple scribbles, we genuinely enjoyed Girlfriend, if not because its scent was much more subtle than the others. It was floral and sweet but not overpowering, it smelled a lot more natural and less intense than the others. Bieber knows his fans are going to drench themselves in this, so a muted scent is a smart move. It just sucks that the perfume we liked best came from the only male musician in the bunch.

Taylor Swift Wonderstruck

The Wonderstruck ads star Taylor as some sort of stupefied princess, transported to a mysterious prince charming-filled garden with one spritz from the purple plastic bottle. To us it just smelled like a cheap cocktail. Wonderstruck took us through the looking glass too, to a perfume factory, full of the sick-sweet, alcoholic byproducts of better perfume.

Jennifer Lopez Glow

Jordan: My middle school had a separate floor for the sixth-graders. They were quarantined in a small, whitewashed, linoleum-tiled addition perched on top of the rest of the stone building. The entrance was a pair of heavy fire doors. When you opened them, it smelled exactly like Glow.

Paris Hilton Paris

There are known knowns and there are known unknowns. What this perfume smelled like fell into the latter category. The bottle was a series of tight stripes that looked like zebra print, but the smell it contained was a mystery. It smelled nice, but that’s about as much as we can say. You know those scented candles that smell like something you didn’t know had a specific smell, like “angel’s wings?” This was like that.

Mariah Carey M

Sweet but not too sweet, a natural vanilla. We really liked this one, and it was probably the only scent we tried that seemed suiting for the artist’s music.

Britney Spears Fantasy

The bottle and commercial for Fantasy were clearly the inspiration for Wonderstruck, except Britney plays a goddess in hers while Taylor plays a mere mortal in a fluffy dress. Fantasy smells sour and fruity but incredibly average. We expected a lot more from Britney.

I DRANK QT

BY ROSS BRETHERTON

Can PC Music translate into physical reality?

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mong the many emotions I felt when my DrinkQT care package arrived was confusion. To me, the concept energy drink had only existed as a digital fantasy: impossibly hyped, and presented with complete control over the product’s aesthetics. But like any other physical object, the can in front of me had small scratches and dings from shipping, and my excitement about the product being real was quickly shadowed by my disappointment over the constraints a real product must abide by. These constraints often appear to be an issue for PC Music – QT’s label – as they attempt to adapt their aesthetic visions to more traditional merchandise. In effect, their strategy runs counter to the mainstream model; their groomed digital existence struggles to be retrofitted into old media, just as traditional brands have struggled to build a digital image.

For those who have not yet heard of PC Music, it is a concept label that consists of a group of friends with extreme personalities creating pop songs that sound like they were digested by a computer

running Windows 95. About a year ago, every major music blog was applauding PC Music’s releases as clever, thought-provoking parody of pop culture. But now, with label head A.G. Cook asserting in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that his label has never been a parody, QT actually creating a real product after the New York Times proclaimed it “fictitious”, and GFOTY facing major backlash for her racially-charged remarks which, despite falling in line with her vapid persona, were inexcusable even if her art were a parody, it’s now hard to know what to think. In the past few months, as their label began to reach commercial success, it seems PC Music’s artists are unintentionally trolling the entire musicjournalism scene.

Even with the incredible amount of media coverage surrounding “Hey QT” – QT’s only song, a self-referential single that served as a promo for her drink – we know very little about QT the artist.

Her Instagram feed is filled with cryptic captions and images that

MELISMA become more abstract the further back you scroll. QT’s obsession with synthetic textures and materials shines through in her social media presence, as well as her desire for airbrushed perfection manifests in her art. Whether it’s through the effervescent synths that punctuate QT’s vocals on “Hey QT”, her big eyes and perfectly straight golden red hair, or the polished can design itself, every visible aspect of QT contributes to an extremely strong sense of brand.

Just like other contemporary pop-stars, QT’s brand is what makes her music so appealing, yet she is unique in that she doesn’t try to hide her shameless self-promotion. Rather than having a brand built around her music by record industry executives and marketers, she has built her music around her brand. The art itself is the brand.

As performance art, QT’s brand is very effective; she is able to leverage social media to reveal her image in a polished format. Being able to bring her brand into real life poses much trickier challenges.

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tart, eschewing Red Bull’s saccharine overtones for a much more nuanced flavor. It features notes of green apple and bubblegum.

The flavor of DrinkQT complements QT’s song so well I truly did feel like the I was listening to “Hey QT” through another medium while sipping the beverage. It is refreshingly tangy and sweet, but without any substance whatsoever.

Part of the drink’s image is its marketing. QT sells the beverage with the language you’d expect to see on a corporate retreat.

DrinkQT promises to “contribute to upward shine, vertical connectivity, and personal growth.” While it does none of these things, this marketing well-serves her satire; it illuminates the failure to turn digital promise into reality. However, its satire prevents it from succeeding as a standalone product, as only fans who are in on the story would pay for it.

The DrinkQT can design is as shiny and iconic as the song that

It’s brilliance as merch lies in its ability to match the other mediums in which QT distributes her art. If it were released with similar

advertises it, but oddly enough it’s not the original design. Instead, QT opted to replace her initial all-metal can design with a white la-

pricing and availability to its competitors, I think it would have a serious shot at gaining traction in the energy drink market, but is

bel that feels plastic and cheap. The plexiglass cube which encloses the can is cushioned with fluffy cotton on both ends and irides-

that its intention? For now it remains a novelty for those who have no qualms about paying $20 for an limited-edition energy drink.

cent caps, which are a nice dash of the QT aesthetic, but the cube scratched up the outside of the can in transit. I was surprised to feel

Considering QT’s brand is her art, DrinkQT transcends merch. We always knew DrinkQT would exist, the ultimate result of QT’s per-

so disappointed about a couple of dings on an energy drink can.

Just about any product comes with small imperfec-

fect brand. But what’s next for QT and her art? Does the production of DrinkQT complete QT’s artistic vision? Let’s hope not.

tions, yet they are exactly what makes it impossible for QT to bring her digital fantasy into full-fledged reality. Despite these flaws in the design, the can fits QT’s intended aesthetic well.

But with its price closer to a band t-shirt than a Red Bull, how many people would dare to crack open the can and actually drink QT? After chilling my can, I sampled a few sips of DrinkQT. Unlike in the music video, the drink in front of me had a subtle yellow hue – not purple – much like Red Bull, but paler. With PC music working closely with Red Bull Music Academy on their Pop Cube event this year, I was expecting the label to produce a beverage that tasted similar, if not identical to the namesake beverage of their sponsors. DrinkQT’s flavor is actually quite unlike Red Bull, and not in a bad way either. The energy elixir is significantly more

PC MUSIC ESSENTIALS: QT – Hey QT Hannah Diamond – Every Night GFOTY – USA SOPHIE – Hard A.G. Cook – Beautiful Danny L Harle –In My Dreams easyFun – Fanta Lipgloss Twins – Wannabe

WHAT Happened to SOAK?

BY KRISTINA MENSIK

SOAK’s Before We Forgot How To Dream was one of the most anticipated albums of the summer, but its release went almost unnoticed.

What happened? n early February SOAK, or Birdie Wan Swanson, released her single “Sea Creatures,” an upbeat song with a subtle, dark atmosphere. It featured bubbly lines like “I don’t understand / what her problem is / I think she’s just a fish!” tempered by the rich ringing of low piano keys over the sound of a sea breeze. NPR promoted it as one of their “Songs We Love.” Music media gravitated towards her underground, but established work – at age sixteen she was featured in The Guardian as “One to Watch” – making her album Before We Forgot How To Dream one of the summer’s most anticipated releases. I too was anticipating a great summer album, and, even more so, my interview with SOAK at the Mid East this July. Yet, the album’s release passed without the expected explosion of acclaim.

I wanted to know what happened.

SOAK approached the booth in the Middle East Restaurant with both the sheepish grin of a teenager and weary walk of someone far older. I’d been waiting only a few minutes, with a sense of mounting intimidation as I thought of how cool the nineteen-year old, Irish singer-songwriter would be. SOAK’s casual “hey” and somewhat awkward handshake put that discomfort to rest.

With the impressive experience of five years in the music industry, SOAK has a quiet confidence that suits her relatively unknown persona. Dressed in all black, and wearing plenty of tattoos – including a geometric-moose that I’d seen before on Pinterest – she projected the reticence and flippancy of a teenager. Her music reflects these staple themes of adolescence.

SOAK stood alone on the stage, equipped with her guitar, an amp, and her pleasant, though heavy Irish accent. The Middle East Upstairs housed a sparsely-crowded mix of twenty-something kids – sporting similarly stupid tattoos – greying couples, and a father with his two children seated, cross-legged on the floor, stage right.

SOAK’s music is enthralling because of her silly, youthful lyrics – on the unembarassingly titled “B a noBody” she sings, “the teenage heart / is an unguarded dart” – and interesting because of the dense layers and contours of its production. While Birdie herself is undoubtedly talented, her solo show was at best pleasant and at worst boring. Unlike her studio versions, it was difficult to hear the lyrics through her accent, and the texture of one guitar made each song indistinguishable from the next. I found myself counting the songs that had identical strum patterns.

photos courtesy @soakofficial

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felt. Having it down in front of me made it a lot easier to understand.

i see a lot of people define my music badly. different than what i think it is.

”

In our interview, SOAK expressed an understanding of these muted

and uninspired aspects to her solo shows. We talked about songwriting, and whether she writes with a specific audience in mind.

“When I started, I was never writing for an audience, but just for

me. In the past couple years, I write knowing the band, and what it sounds like live, but don’t know specifically. The solo stuff is kind of quiet and delicate, I guess, and the band is really loud, big songs, a lot of fun. I now try to write songs that we can do with the band, and have it really loud and fun. Just a lot of fun onstage. For the quiet shows, the solo shows, people tend to not sing along or anything, because like everybody’s just trying to listen.”

It was unclear from our interview why SOAK would do a solo tour when she writes with the intention of playing with a full band, and enjoys those shows far better. Was it a funding problem? Did she not have enough of an audience to support a full band?

“I kind of get weird audiences. Some places, the audience will be a lot of people that just turned eighteen. Or I get a lot of ‘scenesters,’ people that clearly are just there because they heard about it on like, some Tumblr or something. A lot of those guys come to my shows.

A lot of 18 to 35, but then sometimes they’ll be like 50, 60 years old, which is kind of weird but also nice to have that reach.”

This makeup does not indicate a substantial fan base in the US, but it holds hopes for people who would at least spread the word about SOAK, whether blogging about the show they went to, or by gifting one of her CDs to their grandkids.

If not for her solo-shows, SOAK certainly deserves some of the attention she has received from publications like Pitchfork and NPR. Despite at times immature lyrics, the songs she writes are nonetheless transcendent. I’d asked SOAK about her songwriting, and to what extent her own experience informs the process.

“The way I write songs is that whenever I didn’t feel comfortable talking about something, talking to my friends or family about it, I’d sit down and play and kind of sing along, and write out what I

That’s how I started writing, and all those songs were written in that kind of state. So I guess, when it came to recording, we tried to

keep each song kind of true to the moment it was written, and not to change it up too much. They’re all real life.”

Her lyrics are genuine, and recording with a band has allowed her to make them both dynamic and energetic. The varied instrumentation of her album is impressive, but when I told her this, she scoffed.

“Yeah, people have said that before. A lot of instrumentation and

structure of the album wasn’t expected. Then in the UK we’re doing a lot of like full-band festival shows, so it’s a very different dynamic.”

Seeing SOAK with a full band would be an entirely different experience. It would highlight the potent feelings that SOAK’s music captures. An adolescent sense of uncertainty and pre-mature fatigue is present in songs like “Sea Creatures” in a way that even her older audience can recognize. Perhaps because of her age, SOAK’s musical process is some ways in a similar transition to that which many teens, twenty-something scenesters, and even balding dads experience.

When I asked SOAK to describe her sound, she said she simply could not.

“I have no idea. I know what I don’t like being described as. I always get described as like, folk, and I don’t think I’m that at all. It’s like, people see one person on tour, singer-songwriter, and they say it must be folk or it must be pop. I see a lot of people define my music badly. Different than what I think it is.”

As she spoke of this incongruence between how she is seen and how she sees herself, SOAK became visibly uncomfortable. She seemed to be feeling the unease that is potent in her music, that of the seemingly endless process of growing up. Perhaps that uncertainty and failure to self-define halted SOAK from capitalizing on her momentum.

SOAK ESSENTIALS Sea Creatures Blud (CHVRCHES Remix) B a noBody Reckless Behaviour

SONGS OF THE SUMMER CURATED BY WINNERS OF THE “SOUNDTRACK YOUR SUMMER” PLAYLIST COMPETITION FROM THE CLASS OF 2019

SUNSHINE

FLIGHT FACILITIES FT. REGGIE WATTS

by Avi Block

If you ask me, a summer isn’t successful unless you spend the occasional few hours home alone, dancing like a lunatic in your living room. That’s why “Sunshine” is the song of the summer. The infectious, undeniably groovy foundation of this track make it practically impossible not to bounce to right off the bat. As the song progresses, it spreads throughout you, taking over your entire body. By the time the smooth, bright chorus comes in you find yourself crooning along at full volume while your arms and legs finally team up to carry you to Funk Legend status. Any jam with that kind of transformative, rejuvenating power deserves the song of the summer throne.

Killin the Vibe Ducktails ft. panda bear by dan pechi

“The best time of my life was when I was your age!”

Hearing these words from people sucks. As graduating seniors moving on to the “next great step in life,” we hear this all the time. What are we supposed to say? “Thanks, I didn’t know that sitting around binge-watching Netflix is going to be the pinnacle of my existence?” In short, realizing you’re supposed to be having the time of your life right now is scary. There’s something to be said about just living in the moment, and “Killin’ the Vibe” embodies that ideal. As Ducktails frontman Matt Mondanile sings, “can’t you just sit a while / and try your hardest to smile.” Sure, we’ll all have to snap back to reality sooner or later, but now’s a time for nothing but good times. It’s totally reasonable to think September 2nd marked the day you entered through a turnstile dividing carefree adolescence and the looming, responsibility of young adulthood.

This song’s lo-fi beach pop provides the perfect accompaniment to those last weeks. It’s not a complex song, but it’s got that enjoyable, hazy “whatever” attitude that summer is all about. As long as you’re keeping the vibe positive, that’s all that really matters.

Pool day

The lonely biscuits by liam knox

This summer was my last summer—at least, my last in the way I’ve come to know the word. The last time I would experience that American cultural phenomenon of adolescence, the stuff of wiffleball and fantastically nervous flings. The past three months were my chance to say goodbye to old friends, basements, and suburban sprawl. Of course, it also meant cramming as many hours as possible into my minimum wage job so I could maybe afford some textbooks. One song remained that embodies the unique mix of relief and nostalgia I felt all summer. That song is “Pool Day.” Listening to it, I can feel the comforting pull of the ocean as well as the invigorating shove of the mosh pit, and I am reminded of both the beauty of life and its transience. Music has helped me through a lot in my years as a stressed out high schooler—bad breakups, AP exams, even processing the LOST finale. Hopefully it will help me get through my life’s next big step: becoming a Jumbo.

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WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO

SHOWS SEPTEMBER

20 - Young Thug | House of Blues 20 - Joyce Manor | Royale 21 - The Internet | The Sinclair 22 - Purity Ring | House of Blues 29/30 - Built To Spill | Brighton Music Hall 30 - Thundercat | Middle East Downstairs 30 - LVL Up | Great Scott

OCTOBER

5 - Girlpool & Eskimeaux | Mid East Upstairs 5 - Oberhofer | Great Scott 10 - DIIV | The Sinclair 11 - Adventure Club | House of Blues 11 - Tobias Jesso Jr. & Wet | The Sinclair 15 - Titus Andronicus | Brighton Music Hall 17 - Glass Animals | House of Blues 18 - AlunaGeorge | Brighton Music Hall 22 - Autre Ne Veut | Middle East Downstairs 22 - Mikky Ekko | Brighton Music Hall 27 - Chance the Rapper | House Of Blues 30 - Youth Lagoon | Paradise Rock Club

NOVEMBER

4 - Lido | Brighton Music Hall 7 - Beirut | House of Blues 8 - The Hotelier | Cuisine en Locale 13 - Diarrhea Planet | Great Scott 15 - Hudson Mohawke | Paradise Rock Club 18 - Shamir | The Sinclair 22 - Slow Magic & Giraffage | Royale

DECEMBER

3 - The 1975 | House of Blues 4 - Parquet Courts | Middle East Downstairs 6 - The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die | The Sinclair 17 - Mac Miller | House of Blues

ALBUMS Beirut - No No No. September 11 via 4AD. Gone is the gypsy folk of Beirut releases past. Frontman Zach Condon is in a different place both physically and creatively. His voice has never been better, but will people care about Beirut now that they sound more American than ever?

Mac Miller - GO:OD AM. September 18 via Warner Bros. Detox, a move across the country, and a signature on a major label contract combine to make the backdrop for Miller’s followup to Watching Movies With The Sound Off, his 2013 transition to a darker, weirder side of hiphop. If anything is clear it’s that Miller is more intersting than ever.

Disclosure - Caracal. September 25 via PMR/Island. The English producer duo follows up their breakout 2013 release Settle with a more vocal-focused, experimental sophophomore LP. Sam Smith and the wobbly bass will still be there, but expect less club and more Youth Lagoon - Savage Hills Ballroom. September 25 via Fat Possum.

Trevor Powers follows up his 2013 Wondrous Bughouse with 10 new tracks laced with his characteristic delicate falsetto. Horns and stuttering hi-hats come together on the July single “The Knower.”Hopefully Powers can recapture some of the magic that was 17.

Autre Ne Veut - Age of Transparency.

October 2 via Downtown Records.

Little is known of Arthur Ashin’s new album, other than the alt. R&B singer has been experimenting with more jazz sounds. Expect heavy lyrics exploring the inherent impossibility of transparency, and honesty in performance.

Joanna Newsom - Divers. October 23 via Drag City. After appearing in Inherent Vice last year, Newsom’s homely voice deserves to break into the mainstream, and this is to say nothing of her intricate, classical harp performances.

If the sprawling “Sapokanikan” is any indication, Divers will be a wild ride.

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