I am not going to tell you that Sally Ellyson’s voice is perfect. You wouldn’t have to search long for singers with better pitch, tone, range, or phrasing. Even if rich within its range, the emotions she can express are limited — you’re not going to hear Hem doing may upbeat, euphoric songs. Theirs is the music for the night after a breakup, or for the days when melancholy feels like a familiar friend.
Yet, for all its imperfections, I find it irresistibly beautiful. It could not be any different, and I wouldn’t wish for it to be.
The story behind Hem is revealing. Apparently Ellyson, who had no experience as a singer, left a tape of lullabies Dan Messé, the band’s principle songwriter, which he accidentally listened to when he clicked play on the wrong tape deck. Ever since, he’s been unable to get her voice out of her head, and it’s the only voice he hears when he writes. My experience with her voice is similar: once I hear it, I cannot get it out of my head.
This is not uncommon. Certain voices resonate for me in ways that I cannot explain. All I know is that when I hear them, I am instantly pulled in and the world melts away a little. The voice becomes my world, and all else is periphery. Ellyson’s is onl one such voice.
Chet Faker’s is another. If you can get past the silly name, and the impressive beard (which is difficult, because it’s really big), you’ll may be surprised by what you hear. Consider this Burial song:
I’m going to steal Glyph’s words on Burial:
His songs also often feature two other prominent recurring elements: a patina of vinyl hiss and crackle; and samples of the sort of singing you might hear in a euphoric club tune, only here they are submerged or blurred; the voices pitch-shifted and digitally-slivered into vaporous androgynous fragments.
Here he uses these elements to create something haunting and ethereal. In Faker’s hands, however, the same song becomes a gritty, soulful question:
(By the way, is that drummer for real?)
Coincidentally, the context in which I first heard Faker was much closer to Burial than his scaled-down live cover of “Archangel”:
This brings to mind two other electronic R&B collaborations featuring voices I find irresistible. SBTRKT and Sampha:
And SBTRKT featuring Jessie Ware:
Even better is Ware with Sampha:
In these songs, Ware’s voice is subdued, in the first by SBTRKT’s bloops and bleeps, and in the second in matching Sampha’s airiness, but when she lets it go, Ware’s voice really may be perfect:
This might be a bit too straight pop for some of you, but if you like Frank Ocean, I recommend checking her out. I think of her as a British, female Ocean, except where Ocean’s defining feature is seriousness, Ware’s is playfulness.
And since we’re talking playfulness, I might as well get to the real reason I wrote this post: Anna Wise. Of all the voices in contemporary music, hers is the one I find the most addictive:
I first heard Wise featured in a CunningLynguist song:
(Damn!)
But it’s really in the duo Sonnymoon that she really shines. Sonnymoon is really just two kids with a computer and that voice, two kids who clearly spent too much time as children listening to their parents’, or perhaps their grandparents’ record collections. Their music is infused with 60s soul, 70s funk, jazz (they’re named after a Sonny Rollins Tune), and an extraterrestrial silliness that is hard to place in the world of contemporary music. It’s just odd enough that I’ve had trouble getting my friends into it. It’s either your groove or it isn’t, I suppose, but with that voice, it’s definitely mine:
Like I said, extraterrestrial silliness.
In addition to making wonderful little music, Sonnymoon also makes wonderful videos (“>here’s their latest) with what must be a fairly small budget (look at the viewer numbers on those videos!). This one, in particular, I come back to when I just need a smile:
“Any night, you should have someone to hold, tell you that you did OK, when your mind’s against you.” Truer words were never sung.
OK, I’ve gone from alt-country to whatever Chet Faker is to dance and electronica to pop to hip hop to Sonnymoon weirdness. I’m exhausted. I hope you find something you enjoy. Feel free to let me know about the voices or music that is perfectly in tune with you.
What a great genre choice, I’m still going through all the tracks but neo-R&B/electronica is really interesting. Along those lines, have you heard the recent collaboration between James Blake and Chance the Rapper (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6U_krabrk) it absolutely blew my mind and made go back and try to get into Blake’s work. The SBTRKT/Sampha vid also reminded me of the new Metronomy track (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBwHLFsiE-A), which starts off almost like an indie demo but kicks into a beat that wouldn’t be out of place in a Snoop Dogg track. Very much looking forward to their new album.Report
Glad you liked it. I’m a big fan of SBTRKT (and I can listen to Sampha all day), and I’m on record here as being a big Chance the Rapper fan. I hadn’t heard that Blake-Chance collaboration, though.
If you liked the SBTRKT songs, check out Flume. He’s usually compared to SBTRKT, and while I posted the song with Faker here, most of the time he uses female vocalists on his tracks, which gives his bass and beat-driven electronic R&B a very 70s feel.
In fact, maybe next week I’ll just do the 70s is today’s electronica. I was trying to figure out some way to get Radio Citizen into a post anyway.Report
By the way, here’s Radio Citizen’s “hit.” If this song doesn’t make you tap your foot or bounce a bit, I dunno what will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeqqrrSHfDM&noredirect=1Report
now, this one, I <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. Thanks for posting it. (And I love the idea of a "the 70s is today’s electronica" post.)Report
Well, since I got Russell this week, I’ve already set my goal for next time: get Maribou. 70s in the 21st century it is! With more Radio Citizen for sure. They don’t just do 70s, though. They do the islands sometimes, too. Plus more Bajka (the vocalist featured on that track). In addition to having a great voice, she’s a pretty fascinating person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxc94EMkk-o
Smoooooooooooooth.Report
I approve heartily of this plan.Report
Oh wow oh wow oh wow.
I have only just listened to the first song on your line-up (and also “Kali” because I’d already heard it once and really liked it and felt like listening to it again first). I positively adore it, and if her voice isn’t perfect it’s close enough for me.Report
Score!
I thought to myself the other day, “This week, I’m going to get Russell.” So again, score!Report
Also, I changed the video at the top, because for some reason it was playing weird on my phone (on my computer, it was normal speed last night).Report
OK, having now had a chance to listen to most of these…
“Just Before Dawn” remains my favorite Sonnymoon song. It is pure, distilled loveliness.
I loved “Running,” not just for her (gorgeous) vocals but because I am a complete sucker for amped-up glam, which that video has in spades.
But nothing can top my initial reaction to your first video, which was absolute adoration. There is nothing I don’t love about it. Her voice, the instruments, the lyrics — right to the heart, all of it.Report
This makes me extremely happy.
“Half Acre” is one of those relatively rare songs that will make me stop what I’m doing, whatever I’m doing (short of rescuing kittens from a fire), to listen. And if you just need an album to sit with, you can’t do much better than Rabbit Songs.Report
Works for me, too.
Her voice is ear deliciousness.Report
It’s funny how personal something like voice timbre is… these artists are all lovely but none of them make me sit up and beg. (Glad you got Russell though 🙂 ).
The voice I can’t get out of my head (also rather mainstream for this audience) is Ella Eyre’s. Doesn’t even matter if I would otherwise like the song.
Started around 1:30 of this Bastille cover of the xx and TLC:
And I fell completely into the well with this one:
Which I may’ve listened to approximately 500 times by now.Report
*sadface* could someone fix my embeds?
Report
Not surprisingly, given the similarities between the two, the first time I remember being that captivated by a female voice was Lauren Hill’s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GfUPXfw5MgReport
Oh man, I remember seeing The Fugees live, and when she did “Killing Me Softly,” I thought I was in heaven.Report
i gotta say i was somewhere beyond skeptical on a cover of a burial song but that is pretty damn good.Report
I don’t know if I would have even recognized that as a Burial cover, had I heard it out somewhere. It also resembles Portishead (the descending bassline/keys melody) and the xx at times.
SHALLOW TIME – I don’t know if that drummer is for real, but I like how the band members all look like they are all moonlighting from their day bands – the drummer normally plays in an emo band, they have Arlo Guthrie’s hat on guitar plus some random 90’s math-rock guy on bass; while the singer has been hiding out at Bon Iver’s cabin.Report
It is basically a rent-a-band. His studio work is pretty much all electronic, but he’s doing live band live shows, so he recruited whoever those crazy-lookin’ young people are.Report
i definitely would have because the vocal snippets are so distinctively grouped.
however, would anyone recognize the original song?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_aUaiCXtJE
agree about the band, since i am a book cover judger if the still shot in a youtube vid seems dodgy i will often pass just on that alone.Report
This is what is usually behind Faker, instead of his collection of hipsters snatched from a Melbourne hookah bar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwpARGF4ZmkReport
Double score!Report
CURSE YOU, CHRIS!!!
“Half Acre” and “Just Before Dawn” have been waging a battle for supremacy in my head since yesterday. I went to bed with alternating snippets playing in my head, and pulled up this post first thing when I got to the office so I could listen to them both again.
So thanks. Whatever virus is subtly encoded in the tones of their voices, you’ve infected me with the same brain condition as affects you.Report
A couple things:
1.) I cannot express to you how happy this makes me. When Glyph asked if I wanted to do these posts while he went on hiatus, my first reaction was, “Hell yes!” but my second reaction was, “Oh man, I have no business doing this. I don’t know music like that, and I can’t write like that.” So I decided that my one goal would be for each post to introduce at least one person to at least one song/artist that they really liked. So now I feel validated, and we all know how good validation feels.
2.) While I would never pretend that my musical taste is particularly sophisticated, you’ve picked the two songs on this post that I not only like the most out of them all, but that would probably be on my list of “songs I would have to have on a desert island,” so you can no longer leave comments on these posts to the effect that your musical taste just isn’t sophisticated enough, because as far as I’m concerned, you’ve proven that you have excellent taste.Report
If you were to design the perfect “Russell Likes This Song” song, I don’t think you could do better than “Half Acre.”
And I still think my tastes are less rarefied than all y’all’s. But I’ll take your reassurance gladly.Report