It is unexpected for an indie pop record to sound as violent as The Goon Sax’s We’re Not Talking. It’s still in the same world as his work with inc., but more misty and obscure, as if he’s trying to put voice to feelings only previously captured by old German words. His lead lines-often expressed with swooning synthesizers, the lilt of a slide guitar-are direct, but smudgy, as if scrawled onto the back of a postcard with a fountain pen. Without words, Aged has to lean solely on his melodies, the emotional effect of which is diffuse and complicated. Aged’s first solo record-a self-titled, self-released collection of eight instrumentals-continues that project of soundtracking with an even higher degree of difficulty. They seemed less intent on making R&B than capturing the hard-to-express emotions the genre often explored: vulnerable longing, ambient desire, and complicated lust. But their music was always slower, more amorphous. They built tracks around whispered vocals and downy guitars, and once enshrined Luther Vandross and D’Angelo as “saints” in an interview. It’s true that inc., his band with his brother Andrew, often adopted many of the genre’s signifiers.
Since his days as a teenaged sideman to earnest superstars like Pharrell and Raphael Saadiq, Daniel Aged has most often been lumped into the world of R&B. Who knows: You might end up shouting along to “Trouble” onstage. There are comedown ballads aplenty (such as the album’s ramshackle sailor-song of a closer, where they boys sing the words “Together’s the best place to be” in hoarse unison), but you’re probably going to want to put this one on when you’re getting ready to go out.
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Chris Bailoni and Clay Frankel take the most heart-skipping synth melodies from Low Life-era New Order, the most charmingly lazy guitar chords that The Band ever strummed, and the crack in your voice that happens when you’ve been talking too long at a crowded bar, and distill them into an actual sound-one that seems to be perpetually on the verge of keeling over, even on the level of each individual synth note. Grapetooth is light on fuss and big on easy thrills. The “red” theme extends to the Chicago synths-and-vox duo’s name, which refers to what happens to your teeth when you imbibe fermented grape juice, and should give you some idea of what you’re in for with their self-titled debut. It’s the sort of lighting choice you might use when you’re hosting a party at your post-collegiate apartment and trying to obscure the smudges on the walls.
Grapetooth has a song called “Red Wine,” and the video for it opens with a shot of an interior illuminated by a red light bulb. On the whole, the record is a prime example of clean and simple pop writing, but the group’s collective quirks make it stand above everyone else, regardless of language. The plush “Paradise” is the record’s standout-showing most readily the ease with which each member can bounce from lithe singing to rapping.
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While “Fake Love” has garnered the most success, songs like the jazz-inflected ode to Pluto “134340” and the 90s hip-hop-cribbing anthem “Anpanman” make the album feel full and diverse in a way that few pop albums do. BTS, South Korea’s most successful boy band in a pure numbers sense, capitalized on these overarching narratives this year with the release of their crowning achievement, Love Yourself: Tear.
The genre’s current mainstream success has been a long, steady build, and now, thanks to a generation of listeners who grew up on the internet no longer biased toward the sounds of their home regions, it’s fully entered public consciousness in North America.
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