Monday, July 16, 2012

Music Mondays

Gothic Pipsqueak






We're in the thick of summer, which may incline one toward beachy tunes, sunny indie-pop,  or maybe even some over-the-top Miami party jams. But today I took a break from the cheery numbers and flashed back to a couple artists I was listening to during the winter months: Grimes and Salem. The two fall under the genre of goth-pop, which sounds like something birthed from Hot Topic and Justin Beiber, but is actually just a darker but just as sexy sister to electronica. 

Grimes has marched to the beat of her own synthesizer since her debut album in 2010, but met critical acclaim this year with her third album, Visions. Her "grave-wave" style (Forget naming nail polishes, wouldn't you love to name musical movements?) is at once sexy, strange, and danceable in a lo-fi, ethereal kind of way. In a makes-you-want-to-apply-black-eye-makeup-and-twirl-around-in-a-field-on-a-cloudy-day kind of way. You know.

Grimes's latest album, Visions.
Oh, one more thing about Grimes, she (real name: Claire Boucher) sings in a chipmunked baby voice. So if you ever doubted that goth could be adorable, think again. It's unexpectedly charming against the dark beats and gives me no choice but to employ the ever-pretentious word -- juxtaposition. As in, the juxtaposition is real good (Said with a hillbilly twang. There, less pretentious?).

                                                            
                                       Grimes's single, "Oblivion", from her latest album, Visions.



Grimes's song, "Vanessa" off of Darkbloom, her 2011 collaborative album with fellow Canadian musician, d'Eon.

Onto Salem, which also falls under the grave-wave umbrella, but in a hip-hop way. It's so cool when opposite genres collide. Airy vocals hover over distorted bass beats and Southern snares to create a world in which Gucci Mane might be serenaded by an Arwen-looking chick wearing a crown of daisies. In a field on a cloudy day. I'm getting a lot of field-imagery.

Here's my favorite Salem song called "Redlights":



Now that all that adorable, sexy doom and gloom is out of my system, I think I'll go back to the new Frank Ocean now. Maybe I'll cover that next week? What are you guys listening to this summer?

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