I Don’t Need A Sample, I’ve Got

This is how I imagine recording a fresh track must look like. Everyone recording their channels together, dancing around the studio and improvising lyrics as they go: “I don’t need a sample, I’ve got a girl with a banjo.” From the very beginning–the girls singing the sampled vocal–it’s immediately jubilant, in the same way that this now-famous Minnesota couple’s wedding is. Everyone is just so fucking happy. Where Nyle surpasses Chris Brown is [not in girlfriend beatings, but] in the way the song builds. The increasing layers of instrumentation and Nyle’s vocal crescendo make it bigger and more exciting as it goes on. That is after all what you expect from a song titled “Let the Beat Build.”

The sample, if you didn’t immediately recognize it is from the Lil’ Wayne song of the same name, which is really from the Eddie Kendricks song “Day By Day.” The Lil’ Wayne song is one of my favorites from Tha Carter III, but this cover (so to speak) has a different energy, partly because of the video, but mostly because the lyrics just feel more inspired.

Two Weeks, and an Homage to Le Ballon Rouge

Just came across this beautiful, yet unofficial, video to the new Grizzly Bear single “Two Weeks.” It reminds me of my own dusty memories of Le Ballon Rouge and makes me want to find the box that the book is buried inside. The images of the extraordinarily rotund red balloon, and its fat rope for a string, are so familiar that they feel like a part of my own childhood. Plus, I used to dress like that.

Wait… I still dress like that.

Pitchfork says: “It’s not afraid to be pretty; unapologetically retro and baroque, “Two Weeks” sort of crawls by like a gloriously ornate float in an Easter parade.”

I wouldn’t compare it to an Easter float, but I would say I’ve never enjoyed Grizzly Bear this much.