Kris Kristofferson, Feeling Mortal

When Rick Rubin trekked down to record Johnny Cash in his living room back in 1993, he unwittingly set off a trend: Performers from America’s pop past, ranging from Solomon Burke to Bettye LaVette, from Mose Allison to Charlie Louvin, were exhumed, paired with reverent youngsters, and offered a fresh turn in the spotlight. Along with brethren like Willie Nelson (see Teatro) and Glen Campbell (Ghost on the Canvas), Kris Kristofferson received a similar treatment with 2009′s rustic and stripped-back Closer to the Bone. Recorded again by Don Was, Feeling Mortal continues along the same track — contemplative and pensive, yet without a trace of regret as he looks across over his 76 years.

“Wide awake and feeling mortal/ at this moment in the dream,” Kristofferson sings the album’s first line, in a creaking voice as stoic and weathered as a butte. He goes on to sing of an empty blue horizon and an imminent descent “like the sun into the sea,” contemplating both the cosmic and the earthbound. Rendered with a six-piece backing band, what stands out is Kristofferson’s eye for detail, which remains whetted after all these years. He considers his blind “Mama Stewart,” how she can still see that “everything is new and full of wonder and surprise,” and keeps such a lesson close to heart over the course of Mortal‘s ten songs. So while the music is somber on “You Don’t Tell Me What to Do,” Kristofferson still has some kick left: “Losing myself in the soul of a song/ And the fight for the right to be righteously wrong.” In such tough, stubborn lines, the man comes around, remaining defiant to the end.

Jessie Ware, If You’re Never Gonna Move

Adele’s stratospheric success may have generated a surplus of British soul songbirds, but there’s only one Jessie Ware, who last year transitioned from scene-stealer on tracks by fellow pan-electronica acts Joker and SBTRKT to shooting starlet with her acclaimed solo debut Devotion. The softness and subtlety of her delivery initially sets her apart: While the competition wails, she sighs. But that restraint and poise also extends to her accompaniment, a canny mix of R&B, EDM and indie rock: Dave Okumu, her primary collaborator, fronts The Invisible, a Mercury Prize-nominated experimental London trio akin to TV on the Radio.

This EP serves as Ware’s official introduction to US audiences (as of early 2013, Devotion remains available to stateside fans as a download and a pricey import CD). That album’s “110%,” a cool and aching-speed garage romp, here appears as “If You’re Never Gonna Move,” its repeated, pitch-shifted sample of Big Punisher rapping “Carving my initials on your forehead” now replaced with a virtually identical sound-alike. Check out the song’s far slower Two Inch Punch remix, the final track, which features an alternate Ware vocal, ample vinyl surface noise, and a ghostly chillout groove. The main selling point is “What You Won’t Do For Love,” a smoldering, otherwise unavailable cover of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 slow-dance classic that particularly emphasizes Ware’s place in a long line of Brit-soul class acts like Sade and Loose Ends. “Gotta thing for you and I cahn’t let go,” she enunciates seductively, deliciously.

Six Degrees of A$AP Rocky’s Long.Live.A$AP.

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.

Zatokrev, The Bat, the Wheel and a Long Road to Nowhere

For their third album, Swiss nihilists Zatokrev have assimilated the collective aggression and atmospherics of the past two decades of psychedelic doom and post-rock to create a savage, bleak and beautiful collection of songs that casts no light and revels in the resultant gloom.

The six years that have passed since Zatokrev’s Bury the Ashes have served them well, enabling them to focus on and analyze their songs in order to create a cinematic ebb and flow that captivates as it enervates. The Bat, the Wheel and a Long Road to Nowhere is a study of slow-motion demolition that draws from the sprawling vistas of Melvins and Neurosis, the blunt, forceful riffage of Sleep and Electric Wizard and the throat shredding vocals of early Mastodon.

Only three of the nine songs are under six minutes in length, and unlike Pelican and Opeth, Zatokrev don’t rely on multiple rhythms shifts and prog metal progressions to keep their music moving. Instead, they gradually alter the volume and intensity of their songs, insert an abundance of meandering guitar leads and embellish their creations with ear-perking elements, including vocal chants (“Goddam Lights”) slide guitar (“9″), harrowing feedback drones (“Medium”) and even blast beats (“Feel the Fire pt 2″). Zatokrev’s third album may be a long, depressing road to nowhere but the ride is strangely satisfying.

A$AP Rocky, Long.Live.A$AP

If there’s an avatar for what rappers will look like in the future, it’s probablyNew York City MC A$AP Rocky. He was born in Harlem as Rakim Mayers, namesake of one of the most famous rappers ever, but that’s where his traditionalism ends. Rocky is the high-profile spawn of a mutating rap world that acknowledges no barriers between regional sounds, or the worlds of hip-hop and high fashion or the streets and Tumblr. His intoxicated, slow-mo major-label debut album is descended directly from Houston’s screw scene and its omnipresent purplish-pink mixture of cough syrup and soda — a heady brew that serves as the perfect emblem for an album with so many influences that you can almost imagine it as iridescent.

Rocky spits with classic New York focus and ferocity, but that isn’t his main strength: You don’t listen to Rocky for quotables. This might seem like a problem, but the world of rap, now more than ever, often has little concern for how your lyrics read on the page. The game is now about branding and innovation — which, uncoincidentally, are the two things that really power Long.Live.A$AP. The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic.

And at the center stands the man himself — icily cool, joined by a bunch of his famous friends and spouting off the names of fashion brands most of us can’t even spell. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like Long.Live.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.

Interview: A$AP Rocky

None of us knew it at the time, but when the Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky swung through the eMusic offices last spring, accompanied by a good portion of his entourage, his major-label debut Long.Live.A$AP was nowhere near seeing the light of day. That day, it was slated for a July 4 release, and “Goldie,” Rocky’s glossy gold-plated lead single produced by Hit Boy (“Niggas in Paris”, “Clique”), had just hit radio. He was riding high on the buzz from his free mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, which had delivered on the promise of his tantalizing earliest songs. Those songs, accompanied by compelling, stylish low-budget clips, suggested a marketable phenomenon, but even then he was on his way to proving he was also a budding star.

It was early afternoon; he had just arrived from BET, and he was affable but drowsy, with extremely low eyelids suggesting some early-morning mood-lifting had taken place.He was circumspect about the album’s progress (“It’s about 75 percent done,” was all he would say) but lit up when the conversation strayed into rap and memories. Above everything else, Rocky is a music fan with exquisite taste, and our interview veered quickly into a series of rap-nerd rabbit holes. I could never have imagined that the interview would end with mutual giggling, trading of Diplomats trivia, and a rapturous, wordless listening session to David Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul,” but end that way it did.

Who was your favorite rapper when you were seven years old?

Shit, back then it was probably the Wu-Tang Clan or Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. I can’t really remember. A year later, though, it was DMX. When I was eight, it was all about DMX. Eight was the same year I started listening to Rakim. My name’s Rakim; he’s my namesake. Growing up, my favorite movie was Juice, so my favorite Rakim song is still “Know the Ledge.”

How about your favorite DMX song?

I think “The Omen” was one of my favorites; that’s him featuring Marilyn Manson. That record was dope. That’s back when DMX was just in artist form; no one could dilute what he was doing. I like Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood as much as It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot; He put them both out in the same year and they both did great; I don’t think that could happen again. I associate that era with just a lot of dirt bikes and four-wheelers, from those videos.

When was the first time you spit a verse in front of a group of people?

I was nine years old. I was spitting this written rhyme I had.

Do you remember it?

I could try! Let’s see. [Thinking]: “It’s like a fatality/ Every nigga wanna battle me/ Cops never catch me, they always catch my shadow, see/ I’m like a faculty/ Step into my reality/ If we standing on the line than you in back of me.” [Everyone laughs]. It was wack. But I was nine!

But when I was 13? Ooh. 13, I was spitting. [Laughs.] Thirteen was when I first rapped over the “Grindin’” beat. It was the first time I ever recorded. How’d it go? “Now firmly be standin’/ [Mumble mumble] fan in/ The blood on his head looks like burgundy dandruff/ Words they be slanted…something something…Niggas beast, now money gone/ Popped like Sonny’s dome/ I could turn into a beast like Honeycomb/ My songs will have you laughing at cryin’ at the same time, like if you’d got popped in the funny bone/ Aim you, shame you/ leave more red on your body than The Game do…I’m also the nigga to rob you and say thank you.” That was dope for 13, come on! They was going pretty crazy for that.

When I was 14, Cam’ron and JR Writer were my favorite rappers. Cam’ron, JR Writer and Fabolous. They were at the top for me. I had this really dope rap that basically bit Diplomats’ style. How’d it go? Waitamminit, waitamminit. [Pause.] Oh! It went: “For Zeus’s sakes/ I let the deuce scrape/ Straight for this dude’s face/ ‘AIM’ like the toothpaste/ You’ll be a new case/ The D’s hate my Dro, cuz it stay sticky sorta like tape or glue paste…I got rubber bullets but they feel so real/ Shoot around with the heat like Shaquille O’Neal/ I used to didn’t like hoes, they used to be too mean/ Till they saw me with 100-pair Evizu jeans/ The cars, the high-top Pradas, pea-soup green/ Long hair, oh my god, he’s too clean…All these jealous niggas know not to play me, dick/ Cuz the right hook’ll leave you with a Jay-Z lip/ I drop 80 quick/ I drive a gravy Six/ I sell powder, not the type you change a baby with/Oh you think son hot?/ I’mma let the gun pop/ When you see my tennis shoes you gonna think the sun dropped/ Thug you done popped/ I get dumb guap/ The only time you get a brick is whenyou miss a jump shot…” [Laughs.] Ahhhhh man, I don’t know! That’s dope for 14, though! That was some Cam’ron/JR Writer flow right there. I was a fan at that time, I’m not gonna lie.

You and the A$AP crew did a Vice Magazine feature awhile ago where you posed in a bunch of classic album covers. There were some interesting non-rap choices in there that I wanted to ask you about.

We picked out the records, but they presented them to us. Some of them I knew as a kid, though. I ain’t too familiar with Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, for example — I’m going to check it out, though! And then Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours? Man, what I like about that shit is that it takes me into a David Bowie kind of mind state. The cover is so dope, because I didn’t get what the fuck they meant by it. What the fuck is this guy on his knees for, and why is this guy drinking out of an empty glass with a cane? I was like, “I don’t get it. I gotta do this one.”

You mentioned David Bowie. Do you have a favorite David Bowie record?

I got a few. In the ’70s, he was the fuckin’ man. You’ve got to have balls to walk around with a pink fucking lightning bolt on your face and shit, with a blond haircut. And he fucking married a black supermodel and shit; that wasn’t even a cool thing to do back then! That guy was just a fucking rock star. He did what the fuck he wanted. And then he did a song with John Lennon, and you don’t even know John Lennon’s on the fucking song. It’s just funky as fuck. And who the fuck can act as Andy Warhol? That guy’s a fucking legend.

If we lived in some alternate universe where you could easily clear the sample, what track what you rap over by David Bowie?

“Lady Grinning Soul.” This song is killer. This shit is melodic, it’s intimate. I fucked a bitch to this. It was intense; the lights were dark, and she was high. She was on coke, I was on weed. It was passionate, man.

A$AP Rocky, LONG.LIVE.A$AP

If there’s an avatar for what rappers will look like in the future, it’s probablyNew York City MC A$AP Rocky. He was born in Harlem as Rakim Mayers, namesake of one of the most famous rappers ever, but that’s where his traditionalism ends. Rocky is the high-profile spawn of a mutating rap world that acknowledges no barriers between regional sounds, or the worlds of hip-hop and high fashion or the streets and Tumblr. His intoxicated, slow-mo major-label debut album is descended directly from Houston’s screw scene and its omnipresent purplish-pink mixture of cough syrup and soda — a heady brew that serves as the perfect emblem for an album with so many influences that you can almost imagine it as iridescent.

Rocky spits with classic New York focus and ferocity, but that isn’t his main strength: You don’t listen to Rocky for quotables. This might seem like a problem, but the world of rap, now more than ever, often has little concern for how your lyrics read on the page. The game is now about branding and innovation — which, uncoincidentally, are the two things that really power LONG.LIVE.A$AP. The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic.

And at the center stands the man himself — icily cool, joined by a bunch of his famous friends and spouting off the names of fashion brands most of us can’t even spell. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like LONG.LIVE.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.

Various Artists, West of Memphis: Voices for Justice

West of Memphis: Voices for Justice, which is not quite a soundtrack to the new documentary about the West Memphis 3, opens with Henry Rollins reading a letter he received from Damien Echols about 10 years ago. Echols had been convicted along with two other Arkansas teenagers of the murder and mutilation of three young boys, despite little hard evidence linking them to the crime. For nearly 20 years, they languished in state prisons, their appeals ignored by the very courts that railroaded them. Describing the inhumane conditions of a new jail cell and the disappointment of yet another legal roadblock, Rollins’s voice never boils over with anger or rage. Instead, he trusts Echols’s words to convey all the fear and misery of a falsely accused man who has spent most of his life in prison. It’s a harrowing introduction to West of Memphis, which surprisingly turns out to be a celebratory compilation defined by the relief of their freedom (all three were finally released in 2012) than by the grief of their wrongful incarceration.

The musicians who contributed to West of Memphis have all been deeply involved in the case for many years, and most of them have chosen songs that Echols listened to in prison, either to psych himself up for another appeal or simply to pass the time. Natalie Maines turns in a dramatic reading of Pink Floyd’s “Mother,” which is only somewhat sympathetic to the title character, and the White Buffalo eloquently countrifies Faster Pussycat’s long-forgotten L.A. Strip hit “House of Pain.” Other artists wrote songs specifically for the West Memphis 3: Eddie Vedder penned the simple, bittersweet “Satellite” as a love song for Echols and his wife in 2000. The music’s close relation to the West Memphis 3 lends this compilation a cohesive quality missing from so many socially and politically minded collections. While there are certainly a few skippable tracks (such as the cover of “Little Lion Man” by Johnny Depp’s band Tonto’s Giant Nuts), overall West of Memphis testifies to the power of music to comfort and console during even the most unfathomable tragedies and injustices.

Free Energy, Love Sign

The Philadelphia quintet Free Energy has a fondness for brash ’70s classic rock, ’80s pop and peppy’90s buzz bin fodder. But on Love Sign, the band’s second album, these touchstones amount to more than just a hazy nostalgia trip. That’s mainly because Free Energy executes its brand of retro-shtick without a trace of distance. “Girls Want Rock” is skinny-tie power-pop full of enthusiastic handclaps, falsetto oohs. squirrelly keyboards and zero air quotes; the Fleetwood Mac-esque “Hold U Close” is a heartfelt plea for romantic vulnerability driven by water falling harmonies; and the keyboard-slathered croon “True Love” is a straight-ahead ’80s R&B slow jam. Even the songs where Free Energy channels Bachman-Turner Overdrive (the cowbell-augmented “Electric Fever” and “Backscratcher”) sound gleeful and sincere.

Credit for Love Sign‘s expansive sound goes to producer John Agnello (Sonic Youth, The Thermals), who’s adept at coaxing bright, vivid sonics from the bands he produces. Agnello refines Free Energy’s sound into something crisper and more focused than their 2010 debut, Stuck On Nothing, allowing for little embellishments like horns (“Time Rolls On”) or arena-ballad guitar solos (the moody “Dance All Night”). At the end of the day, Free Energy arent getting any check marks for originality with Love Sign; the album’s strong songwriting ensures the band doesn’t have to. 

Jack DeJohnette, Special Edition

Jack DeJohnette is best known for drumming drummer with Miles Davis (including Bitches Brew) and in Keith Jarrett’s Standards Trio. He’s had a solo recording career for more than four decades, though, and this box set reissues the first four LPs from Special Edition, the project that has most elevated his profile as a bandleader. Though the only member common to all is DeJohnette, his compositions and arrangements, as multi-stylistic as they are, feel like the work of one inimitable voice.

On the first LP, 1979′s Special Edition, he works with David Murray (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Arthur Blythe (alto sax) and Peter Warren (bass, cello); DeJohnette plays drums, piano (his first instrument), and melodica. The voicings on the drumless arrangement of Coltrane’s “Central Park West” recall Murray’s simultaneous membership in the World Saxophone Quartet. Then again, so do some of the voicings on 1980′s Tin Can Alley, where Murray and Blythe are replaced by Chico Freeman (tenor, flute, bass clarinet) and John Purcell (alto and baritone saxes, flute). There are tracks that look back stylistically, but also some moments of aggressive free improvisation, and even down-home acoustic funk (“I Know,” on which DeJohnette also sings).

Inflation Blues (1982), making its digital debut, switches things up further. Purcell (who adds alto clarinet) and Freeman (also on soprano sax this time) return, but trumpeter Baikida Carroll plays on four of the five tracks; the new bassist, Rufus Reid, doubles on electric bass. Carroll’s bright, quicksilver lines let the music soar more, and he’s more of a free player, so Inflation Blues is the most frequently dissonant of the albums here, though surprisingly, the title track is a reggae tune.

Album Album (1984), by contrast, avoids free playing and is the most groove-oriented. It’s another quintet: Carroll’s place is taken by tuba/baritone sax player Howard Johnson; Freeman’s gone, but Murray’s back; Purcell and Reid remain, and DeJohnette adds synthesizer to his arsenal. Johnson’s standout arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s “Monk’s Mood,” with its thick horn chords in the drumless intro and outro, is the closest things get tojazz tradition on mostly the pop-flavored Album Album. The rollicking “New Orleans Strut” even sounds like it includes an uncredited rhythm box. Even as DeJohnette incorporates sounds from around the world, though, the spirit of jazz — of searching, and of swing — remain strong.

Holopaw, Academy Songs, Vol. 1

Academy Songs, Vol. 1, the latest from the long-running Gainesville, Florida-based outfit Holopaw, is set at a prep school, the sort of halcyon place you might recognize from any number of coming-of-age films. Luckily, the album evokes all the yearning, emotional tumult and poetry one would expect from a young man who has left home to become an adult. The six-piece band’s earthy, shape-shifting sound recalls the melodrama of Shearwater, but the album’s real attractions are John Orth’s lyrics and delivery. He has written 10 songs with the detailed scene-setting and novelistic phrasing of Sufjan Stevens’s Michigan and Illinois, and he sings them with practiced delicacy.

There’s plenty of drama on Academy, but little angst. Orth’s narrator begins and ends the album by professing his love for his time at the Academy, and he renders small moments with the dewy specificity of an Instagram snapshot, cataloguing “the low hum of Crown Victoria…growling just beyond these ivied walls” or admiring a Roman candle arcing over a lake at night. Reflecting on the pressures and rewards unique to growing up in such a setting, Orth sighs, “this might make diamonds of other men.” The sentiment might feel more a product of the 19th century than the 21st, but Academy highlights the many old-fashioned merits of being true to your school.

Interview: A$AP Rocky

None of us knew it at the time, but when the Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky swung through the eMusic offices last spring, accompanied by a good portion of his entourage, his major-label debut LONG.LIVE.A$AP was nowhere near seeing the light of day. That day, it was slated for a July 4 release, and “Goldie,” Rocky’s glossy gold-plated lead single produced by Hit Boy (“Niggas in Paris”, “Clique”), had just hit radio. He was riding high on the buzz from his free mixtape LiveLoveA$AP, which had delivered on the promise of his tantalizing earliest songs. Those songs, accompanied by compelling, stylish low-budget clips, suggested a marketable phenomenon, but even then he was on his way to proving he was also a budding star.

It was early afternoon; he had just arrived from BET, and he was affable but drowsy, with extremely low eyelids suggesting some early-morning mood-lifting had taken place.He was circumspect about the album’s progress (“It’s about 75 percent done,” was all he would say) but lit up when the conversation strayed into rap and memories. Above everything else, Rocky is a music fan with exquisite taste, and our interview veered quickly into a series of rap-nerd rabbit holes. I could never have imagined that the interview would end with mutual giggling, trading of Diplomats trivia, and a rapturous, wordless listening session to David Bowie’s “Lady Grinning Soul,” but end that way it did.

Who was your favorite rapper when you were seven years old?

Shit, back then it was probably the Wu-Tang Clan or Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. I can’t really remember. A year later, though, it was DMX. When I was eight, it was all about DMX. Eight was the same year I started listening to Rakim. My name’s Rakim; he’s my namesake. Growing up, my favorite movie was Juice, so my favorite Rakim song is still “Know the Ledge.”

How about your favorite DMX song?

I think “The Omen” was one of my favorites; that’s him featuring Marilyn Manson. That record was dope. That’s back when DMX was just in artist form; no one could dilute what he was doing. I like Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood as much as It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot; He put them both out in the same year and they both did great; I don’t think that could happen again. I associate that era with just a lot of dirt bikes and four-wheelers, from those videos.

When was the first time you spit a verse in front of a group of people?

I was nine years old. I was spitting this written rhyme I had.

Do you remember it?

I could try! Let’s see. [Thinking]: “It’s like a fatality/ Every nigga wanna battle me/ Cops never catch me, they always catch my shadow, see/ I’m like a faculty/ Step into my reality/ If we standing on the line than you in back of me.” [Everyone laughs]. It was wack. But I was nine!

But when I was 13? Ooh. 13, I was spitting. [Laughs.] Thirteen was when I first rapped over the “Grindin’” beat. It was the first time I ever recorded. How’d it go? “Now firmly be standin’/ [Mumble mumble] fan in/ The blood on his head looks like burgundy dandruff/ Words they be slanted…something something…Niggas beast, now money gone/ Popped like Sonny’s dome/ I could turn into a beast like Honeycomb/ My songs will have you laughing at cryin’ at the same time, like if you’d got popped in the funny bone/ Aim you, shame you/ leave more red on your body than The Game do…I’m also the nigga to rob you and say thank you.” That was dope for 13, come on! They was going pretty crazy for that.

When I was 14, Cam’ron and JR Writer were my favorite rappers. Cam’ron, JR Writer and Fabolous. They were at the top for me. I had this really dope rap that basically bit Diplomats’ style. How’d it go? Waitamminit, waitamminit. [Pause.] Oh! It went: “For Zeus’s sakes/ I let the deuce scrape/ Straight for this dude’s face/ ‘AIM’ like the toothpaste/ You’ll be a new case/ The D’s hate my Dro, cuz it stay sticky sorta like tape or glue paste…I got rubber bullets but they feel so real/ Shoot around with the heat like Shaquille O’Neal/ I used to didn’t like hoes, they used to be too mean/ Till they saw me with 100-pair Evizu jeans/ The cars, the high-top Pradas, pea-soup green/ Long hair, oh my god, he’s too clean…All these jealous niggas know not to play me, dick/ Cuz the right hook’ll leave you with a Jay-Z lip/ I drop 80 quick/ I drive a gravy Six/ I sell powder, not the type you change a baby with/Oh you think son hot?/ I’mma let the gun pop/ When you see my tennis shoes you gonna think the sun dropped/ Thug you done popped/ I get dumb guap/ The only time you get a brick is whenyou miss a jump shot…” [Laughs.] Ahhhhh man, I don’t know! That’s dope for 14, though! That was some Cam’ron/JR Writer flow right there. I was a fan at that time, I’m not gonna lie.

You and the A$AP crew did a Vice Magazine feature awhile ago where you posed in a bunch of classic album covers. There were some interesting non-rap choices in there that I wanted to ask you about.

We picked out the records, but they presented them to us. Some of them I knew as a kid, though. I ain’t too familiar with Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, for example — I’m going to check it out, though! And then Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours? Man, what I like about that shit is that it takes me into a David Bowie kind of mind state. The cover is so dope, because I didn’t get what the fuck they meant by it. What the fuck is this guy on his knees for, and why is this guy drinking out of an empty glass with a cane? I was like, “I don’t get it. I gotta do this one.”

You mentioned David Bowie. Do you have a favorite David Bowie record?

I got a few. In the ’70s, he was the fuckin’ man. You’ve got to have balls to walk around with a pink fucking lightning bolt on your face and shit, with a blond haircut. And he fucking married a black supermodel and shit; that wasn’t even a cool thing to do back then! That guy was just a fucking rock star. He did what the fuck he wanted. And then he did a song with John Lennon, and you don’t even know John Lennon’s on the fucking song. It’s just funky as fuck. And who the fuck can act as Andy Warhol? That guy’s a fucking legend.

If we lived in some alternate universe where you could easily clear the sample, what track what you rap over by David Bowie?

“Lady Grinning Soul.” This song is killer. This shit is melodic, it’s intimate. I fucked a bitch to this. It was intense; the lights were dark, and she was high. She was on coke, I was on weed. It was passionate, man.

A 10-Point Plan For Getting Into Zappa

In 2012, the Zappa Family Trust reissued Frank Zappa’s original 58-album catalog through Universal Music, with nearly two dozen early-ish titles benefiting from a significant audio upgrade. So what better time to introduce yourself to the peculiar and prolific genius of Frank Zappa — composer, bandleader and guitarist extraordinaire? We’ll even make it easy for you: Simply follow this handy 10-step introduction to the 20th century’s most daring and wickedly satiric rock-classical crossover genius. It starts off easy and becomes less so. Save his Synclavier experiments and confrontational mid-eighties sampler sallies against the Parents Musical Resource Center (aka the “Washington Wives”) for later. This is what you need to consume right now!

Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Begins: The Flying Dutchman Masters

Given that Gil Scott-Heron is regularly referred to as the godfather of rap and this three-disc collection covers the raw, early stages of his career — recorded before Kool Herc and later Grandmaster Flash minted the touchstones of a nascent hip-hop culture — the temptation will be to highlight the historical importance of The Revolution Begins and discount its stand-alone value as musical commentary. But these tracks have always been destined to provide a visceral, socio-political jolt rather than become some academic shelf-filler.

For better or worse, the songs are organized in a non-chronological manner that discourages a straight historical overview anyway. Disc one corrals all the primary Flying Dutchman label collaborations between GSH and his former college classmate and most effective and empathetic musical partner, Brian Jackson. It includes the most polished rendition of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (often cited as the first real forebear of rap), the buoyant elixir that celebrates “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” and poignant, bitter ballads leavened by a soulful sweetness, such as “Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” “Pieces of a Man” and the woefully underrated vocal gem, “Did You Hear What They Said?” Jackson’s accompaniment on keys and flute is near-universally superb.

Disc two is almost entirely comprised of Scott-Heron’s early spoken-word performances. Many are prefaced by contextual explanations and describes as poems, which are then set to barebones beats and music. While the cadences are catchy, the delivery is raw and the emotions more-so. Some have been diminished by time — the bigotry of “The Subject Was Faggots” is as anachronistic as his calling out Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell on “No Knock”—but the racially infused fury of “Enough” and “Comment#1″ and the black-on-black truth-telling of “Billie Green Is Dead” and “The Get Out of the Ghetto Blues” is as riveting as it is incendiary.

Disc three contains alternate takes of varying quality, but, once again, should not be regarded as mere fodder for the Scott-Heron completists. This is an artist who consistently strove — perhaps especially so in these early years — to get up-close and personal by wearing his heart and soul on his sleeve, alternately lacquered with bile, balm and tears. It is sadly ironic that a recurrent theme in his Flying Dutchman material concerns the scourge of drug addiction and why black Americans are especially prone to fall prey to it out of despair. Dead at 62 in May of 2011, the haunting lament of “Home Is Where The Hatred Is,” and a half-dozen other songs here, can easily stand in as prescient eulogies. The artist is gone, but his words and music keep burning.

New This Week: A$AP Rocky, Christopher Owens and More

It’s been a long sojourn through a deserted holiday season, with not many new releases to speak of. So it’s not a moment too soon that we arrive at the first Big Release Day of 2013. I’ll roundup the ones we think are worthwhile, but I’d love to hear some feedback from you as well. Which albums did I miss? Which in this batch are you most excited to check out? And which do you think you’ll skip? Let’s turn this into less of a lecture, more of a dialogue.

A$AP Rocky, Long.Live.A$AP: FINALLY. Eternally-delayed full-length from justifiably buzzed-about NY rapper A$AP Rocky delivers on the promise of his early mixtapes. A$AP’s flow is the draw — it bounds and bounces and skips across the beats, which are mostly icy and digital and vaguely ominous. Jayson Greene talked to A$AP for us, and the conversation detoured into some pretty unexpected places (like the fact that A$AP’s favorite Bowie song is “Lady Grinning Soul”). The record is Highly Recommended. In his review for us, Jordan Sargent says:

The album sticks to the cold, melted-down sound that helped push Rocky to prominence — a combination of screw music and the blown-out, haunted instrumentals of Internet stew-stirrer Clams Casino — while folding in productions from industry heavyweights like Hit-Boy (“Goldie”) and T-Minus (“PMW”). But even those beats are dunked into a double-cup and emerge steeped in Rocky’s aesthetic. There’s often so much going on — from the ghostly, gasping vocals of “LVL” to Skrillex stomping through “Wild for the Night” — that it may seem like LONG.LIVE.A$AP is about everything except A$AP Rocky. Yet, that’s the point — Rocky argues that there is virtue in being a magnet for the ephemeral world.

Christopher Owens, Lysandre: Former Girls frontman casts out on his own with a concept record about his first tour, the breakup of his band and a misbegotten relationship. Barry Walters talked to Owens for us, and got him to reveal the true stories that inspired the album. Of Lysandre, Walters says:

Every song except the final, elegiac one that waves goodbye not just to the album’s title character but also to Owens’ own bandmates is written in the key of A, and musical themes reoccur across its compact 28 minutes, as if the album was one sustained composition. Tempo, volume, and intensity fluctuate: The sax-driven “New York City,” for example, evokes Lou Reed’s Transformer, the dirty, sexy flipside to the immaculate folk paid homage to elsewhere. There’s a unreasonable amount of florid flute tooting supplied by Vince Meghrouni, former leader of SST’s ’90s jazz-punk oddballs Bazooka; the arrangements are gentle but excitable as its narrator, who looks at the world wide-eyed and besotted.

New Order, Lost Sirens: You know, the advance billing really undersold this thing. Songs recorded for, but not used on, 2005′s (underrated!) Waiting for the Siren’s Call, Lost Sirens is actually just a few minutes shy of being a proper album. The songs here emphasize the group’s moodier side – which probably explains why they were excised from the album – but they also sound weirdly in step with much of what’s going on in indie rock that’s informed by electronic music. It’s Recommended, as is the excellent interview Barry Walters conducted with the group, which you really should have read by now.

Holopaw, Academy Songs, Vol. 1: Latest outing from Florida band is full of the spare, melodic indie for which they’ve become known. In his review for us, Eric Harvey summarizes it thusly:

The album evokes all the yearning, emotional tumult and poetry one would expect from a young man who has left home to become an adult. The six-piece band’s earthy, shape-shifting sound recalls the melodrama of Shearwater, but the album’s real attractions are John Orth’s lyrics and delivery. He has written 10 songs with the detailed scene-setting and novelistic phrasing of Sufjan Stevens’s Michigan and Illinois, and he sings them with practiced delicacy.

Lee Fields, Let’s Talk it Over: Long-overdue reissue of Fields’ 1979 album, rounded out with singles and B-Sides. Fields, as you may know, has risen to some level of prominence lately — and rightly so — thanks to his rediscovery by the great folks at Daptone and Truth & Soul (the latter of whom have reissued this). This is a smoldering collection of funk vaguely reminiscent of James Brown, but with nods to disco and gospel as well. Recommended

Adam Again, Ten Songs By Adam Again: There was a time when CDs of this album were selling in the high hundreds on eBay. The second effort from Los Angeles dream-funk band Adam Again, the album betrays a clear influence of classic soul artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder (“Who Can Hold Us” even cops Wonder’s “Pasttime Paradise,” but it funnels those through a decidedly New Wave framework. Admittedly the album, with its layers of synths and thumping drum machine, sounds dated now and bears little indication of the heights the group would hit on their bleak swamp-funk masterpiece Dig, but it’s still a fine curio for collectors.

Fig Dish, That’s What Love Songs Often Do: Blast from the past! My first exposure to Fig Dish came via one of those CDs that used to come with CMJ Magazine, back when CMJ was a magazine that used to come with CDs. I am not sure how this one has aged! For the uninitiated, Fig Dish were a band from Chicago in the mid ’90s that delivered a brawny take on melodic indie rock that was very much A Thing at the time, but might not be much of a thing anymore. Other bands of this ilk included Buffalo Tom. It is weird that now I am hearing this as a precursor to the Foo Fighters.

The Brooklyn What, Hot Wine: Roughed-up and rollicking blue collar punk rock, this combines the heart-on-sleeve passion of early Springsteen with the loose-and-messy aesthetic of contemporary groups like The Men. Solid songcraft with enough rough edges to keep things interesting.

Jessie Ware, If You’re Never Gonna Move EP: Jessie Ware was one of my personal favorites from 2013 (I spoke about her at length on this edition of NPR’s On Point last week). This EP, weirdly, seems to just gather up a few songs from her excellent debut plus one new one and a remix. Probably a good place to start for the curious first-timer.

Datahowler, The Crystal Gazers:New one on the excellent California label Velvet Blue, this one from Texas producer Datahowler. The cover telegraphs exotica, but this is some dreamy, bucolic, electronic dreamscapes, soothing and surreal — not entirely unlike that Gayngs record from a few years back, without the vocals.

Cornell Campbell, King Jammy’s Presents: The Best of Cornell Campbell: Cornell Campbell has one of the most beautiful, soothing voices in all of reggae. A high-set, impossibly tender falsetto, it’s perfectly suited to the gentle style of Lovers’ Rock he’s spent his career exploring. This compilation gathers up songs Campbell recorded for the King Jammy’s label, and it finds his gorgeous voice acting as a nice contrast to the restrained, electronic production.

The Lost Dogs, Scenic Routes: Reissue of long-lost alt-country cult classic. The Lost Dogs were a ‘supergroup’ made up of the frontmen of California bands Daniel Amos, The Choir, Adam Again and the 77′s and bringing out the best in all of them. Smooth country-pop brushes up against rugged blues, gentle elements of psych float up and fade away. Final track, “Breathe Deep” was a minor alt radio hit. Recommended

Deux Filles, Double Happiness: The first thing that caught my eye is the fact that this is being issued by the great LTM Records who, in the early ’00s, were responsible for reissuing the better part of the Factory Records catalog (which, until that time, had been woefully out of print). The back story on these spooky records from the early ’80s is that they’re the work of French orphans namedGemini Forque and Claudine Coule. The truth, though, is that Deux Filles are an alias for Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker. The music here is great — spooky ambient synth compositions that feel ominous and sinister. It’s terrifically skin-crawling stuff. Recommended

Bvdub, A Careful Ecstasy: Really lovely new effort from Brock Van Wey, A Careful Ecstasy is full of keyboards that blink like buttons on the control panel of a deserted spaceship. Alternately soothing and unsettling, the songs here feel like ghostly lullabies, a soothing song sung in the midst of an apocalypse.

Aura Noir, Dreams Like Deserts: 1995 debut EP by the infernal Norwegian metal band Aura Noir, gets reissued and, er, fleshed out with outtakes and rarities. Aura Noir walk an unholy path between black metal and thrash, and most of the songs here land squarely between both genres. It’s primitive, to be sure, but that also makes it feel more dangerous and demonic.

Pickwick, Covers: Seattle soul/folk outfit Pickwick dashes off an EP of covers of Damien Jurado, Richard Swift and Lou Reed. Sharon Van Etten guests!

New This Week: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Serafina Steer & More

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Jubilee Street The second single from the album Push The Sky Away, out February 18, is another stunning slow-burner that sounds utterly distinct from anything Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have done before, and is about “redemption through degradation and humiliation” according to the great man himself. Recommended.

Serafina Steer, The Moths Are Real Produced by Jarvis Cocker – who called her album Change Is Good, Change Is Good his favourite of 2010 – Serafina Steer’s third LP is full of the romance and mystery you’d expect from the mythology-obsessed, classically-trained harpist. Victoria Segal reviews:

“It’s a record that trembles on the threshold between worlds, not just in its merging of folk, psychedelia, prog and electronia, but in the way the lyrics are sweetly conversational one second and as stylized and strange as a temple oracle the next. The reference points might seem to be in place – Joanna Newsom, Shirley Collins, Alice Coltrane, Robert Wyatt – but Steer sends the compass needle spinning.”

Christopher Owens, Lysandre Ex-Girls leader Christopher Owens’ solo debut is a concept album about being a young singer-songwriter that evokes the early-‘70s era of Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. Barry Walters reviews:

“Owens is one of those rare artists who manages to be both streetwise and guileless: when he sings of escaping a ‘Hellhole Ratrace,’ despair and dreams alike dance vividly in his weary delivery because the former Children of God cult member pursues truth and self-expression to the near-exclusion of all else… This is a love story that actually feels like love, not fabrication.”

Dutch Uncles, Out Of Touch In The Wild With their brittle, jittery time signatures, subtle strings and melancholy melodies, Manchester’s Dutch Uncles rekindle the understated possibilities of ’80s pop wallflowers Talk Talk and Japan. The quintet’s third album should see see them pinball up the charts, thanks to the brilliant singles ‘Fester’ and ‘Flexxin’. Read Andrew Perry’s interview with the band here.

Lee Fields, Let’s Talk It Over (Deluxe Edition) Veteran soul singer Fields – who was nicknamed “Little James Brown” when he emerged in 1969 – had a vintage year in 2012, when his album Faithful Man was acclaimed as one of the year’s best. This is the first digital release of the 1979 debut that Fields used to sell out of his car at gigs, and is a groove-heavy snapshot of Brylcreemed, velvet-trousered ’70s soul, epitomised by the unintentionally hilarious ‘She’s A Lovemaker’.

Deux Filles, Silence & Wisdom This gauzy dream-pop album was originally released in 1982, claiming to be by two French women called Gemini Forque and Claudine Coule. Really, it was Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker of The Gadgets (not Grayson Perry, as you might imagine from the sleeve). Available for the first time digitally, it has been described as “what Brian Eno might do if he recorded on 4AD”, which is recommendation enough for us.

Teleman, Cristina Formed by three of indie band Pete and the Pirates, Teleman could be about to eclipse their old band’s success with this sweet, simple three-minute love song, produced by Bernard Butler.

Vic Godard, Vic To Vic (Feat. Mates Mates) The Subway Sect man teamed up with Catalan band Mates Mates for this endearingly ramshackle single.

Interview: Christopher Owens

Christopher Owens’s solo debut Lysandre is a concept album about his very first tour with Girls, the much-loved indie rock band he recently dissolved. In it, the 33-year-old San Francisco songwriter sings about his excitement over playing in New York City, encountering a former flame, experiencing stage fright, and falling in love with a girl in the French Rivera.

Musically, it’s inspired by the folk music he’s now covering as an encore to complete performances of Lysandre — songs like Cat Stevens’s “Wild World” (the first tune he mastered on guitar), Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” all of which he heard at the notorious Children of God commune to which his family belonged. It was an organization where secular pop was forbidden — unless, of course, it happened to be these oldies favored by the cult elders.

Lysandre is also influenced by Don McLean’s American Pie, which he got special permission to hear in a Danish library so that he could perform it while busking to raise money for the cult. Yes, Owens has an extraordinary backstory, but he’s an equally exceptional talent. This is what eMusic’s Barry Walters learned about him in a community garden, high in the absurdly picturesque hills of San Francisco that, for the course of the interview, were backlit by a bright pink and blue sunset.

In Lysandre, you say goodbye not only to the title character, who you met on Girls’ first tour, but also to your band. Knowing what you know now about yourself and how things would work out with Girls, what would you have changed?

If I had known that I never was going to be happy, I just would’ve presented the songs as my own and would never have tried to have a band. The hardest thing was knowing I had to pull the plug on it, and doing that. People were disappointed. It was difficult on certain friendships. [Sighs.]

Have you allowed yourself to fall in love while touring in the wake of what happened with Lysandre?

I have. You play three or four shows with another band and there’s somebody in that band who you connect with, or you just meet somebody. Do you know [starts singing the jazz standard] “I Fall in Love Too Easily”? I’ve always identified with that song [laughs] because I allow myself to behave like that. You have the hard parts where you feel the heartbreak, but ultimately it’s a rich experience. Now I’m in a relationship, and have been for a few years. But I have had a few experiences on the road that were very nice.

Have the people you sing about on this album heard it?

The ex-bandmates have and Lysandre has; I sent her the album before anyone else heard it. Girls went back to France so many times, and she was always there, even though we figured out within a couple months that it wasn’t going to be a relationship. Even if she would bring a boyfriend, we’d hang out. We just performed the album in Paris. She came and I think it was probably a mixed bag of emotions, but we had a good time.

“A Broken Heart” at first seems as though it’s about you running into a bisexual ex-girlfriend in New York. But after listening closer, it’s clear that it’s about an ex-boyfriend. How has it been to put that out there?

It’s something I like to talk about because it’s something I feel so normal about. I never expected to have those relationships because I’m just very straight. But different things happened in my life — mainly very persistent other guys who I at some point just gave in to — that have allowed me to have those relationships. For me, I feel like they’ve been very beneficial. They’ve helped me to understand a lot of things about myself and about life just by jumping in the deep end and giving it a try.

The guy that I’m singing about in that song, we had a long friendship that turned into experimenting with a physical relationship. Then he wrote an email to tell me he was getting married and that we could never talk any more, that we could never even be friends. I saw him a few years later in New York with a bunch of old friends, so he did say hello and he tried to act like everything was fine, but it just seemed so crazy. My girlfriend now is fully aware of all the different experiences I’ve had and would probably be happy to meet my ex-boyfriend.

Your music is an unusual mix of experience and innocence. Few artists with your history embrace that open-heartedness.

That’s the only time I’m motivated to start writing and the only time when I have good ideas. I don’t write under any other circumstance; it’s really all I’ve got to work with. I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like if I don’t get those feelings of openness and vulnerability, like I’m giving something of myself, then probably the song isn’t very good. When I do get those feelings, that’s when the song is worth something.

Those are the same things that in other hands might be hackneyed or hokey, but your ability to pull them off distinguishes you as an artist.

There are times when I find an artist and can start to feel uncomfortable because they’re getting into something deep and heavy. I don’t feel like that’s always good. You have to do it tastefully. I think a lot of it has to do with whether the lines rhyme or if the song has a nice melody, and you’re not trying to cram too many words into a sentence.

One of this album’s themes concerns putting yourself out there as an individual and being judged as one. Having grown up in a cult, do you have more than the usual challenges of being an individual?

I don’t know. [A deep sigh] I’ve never really thought about that. [Long silence] And it could be why I want to so badly present myself as one. There was a big effort made by the people who raised me to cause all of us kids to be all the same. That was something I always rebelled against.

You traveled a lot with the Children of God. How did those experiences of being constantly uprooted prepare you for touring?

When we go to places where I spent a little time as a kid, it’s very meaningful to me now. I’ve noticed that I’m well behaved when we travel: I wanna know what the customs are; I try to fit in and learn the languages, and I collect stamps everywhere I go. I think that may have to do with growing up in all those different places. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking what things are directly because of growing up the way I did and what things are just personality. It’s hard to always tell.

You were brought up to love God as part of a group. How has that helped or hindered you with loving another person one-on-one?

When I was really young, I was always with my mom and two sisters. We were Children of God members, but she was on her own teaching English in China; it was just our little family. But after that, from six to 16, when we moved to Japan and then on, it was all communes. I went from being very attached to my mom and sisters even — there was no dad — to having that taken away overnight. We went to Japan because my mom needed help, and [all of a sudden I was] sleeping in a big room with kids my age. The family was broken up, and that was difficult for me. I find myself trying to replace that with relationships sometimes [laughs], just to find Mommy’s unconditional love again — someone who’s partially taking care of you and partially needs you too. I wrote about that in “Honey Bunny.”

From a very young age I rejected the whole God thing. I was really uncomfortable with praying. I would get punished ’cause I wouldn’t pray and I didn’t believe in Jesus. I couldn’t even get myself to do it; it just felt silly, and that caused me a lot of problems. I might’ve escaped some of the effects of the ideals they were pushing because I fought ‘em very hard.

Have you ever written songs to God?

No. Once I was watching Mad Men — I really like that show — and there was this one episode where there’s a priest, and at the end of the day he goes back to his apartment, takes off his collar, picks up a guitar and starts singing this song. [Singing]. “Early in the morning about the break of day I ask my God”…to do this or that for me. It really hit me somehow. So I got my guitar and wrote the same song but reversed. Whereas he sang, “I lay my burden down on Jesus,” I wrote, “I carry my own burden because I don’t have anybody to give it to.” I wrote it as a reply, and that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to any kind of gospel song.

You’ve said that the songs you sang in the cult helped you like gospel music helped the slaves. Is music still a form of escape and salvation for you?

At the writing stage, it’s very much spiritual. And in the recording process too. There are a lot of things that can come in and turn it into work and a business. But I think by only writing in those moments where it’s very genuine and you’re truly inspired and it’s a spiritual, cathartic, pure moment, then you’re OK. Even if the day has been very much about work, and it’s the second week of the tour, and I’m over it, as soon as we get on the stage and I start playing the songs, it gets right back down to the fundamentals. I feel lucky.

Christopher Owens, Lysandre

Ex-Girls leader Christopher Owens is one of those rare artists who manages to be both streetwise and guileless: When he sings of escaping a “Hellhole Ratrace,” despair and dreams alike dance vividly in his weary delivery because the former Children of God cult member pursues truth and self-expression to the near-exclusion of all else. Of course, plenty of lesser artists have made fools of themselves attempting to do just that: Joni Mitchell and James Taylor set an introspective example that many followed but few matched. Owens evokes that early-’70s era with his solo debut, a singer-songwriter concept album about being a young singer-songwriter. “And if your heart is broken you will find fellowship with me/And if your ears are open you will hear honesty from me,” he sings at its start, as if lacking irony on a molecular level.

Lysandre is his autobiographical tale of Girls’ first short tour in 2008. It deals with his excitement and insecurities while playing in New York City and Paris, running into former lovers, partying on the road and falling in love with a stranger he must soon abandon. Every song except the final, elegiac one that waves goodbye not just to the album’s title character but also to his own bandmates is written in the key of A, and musical themes reoccur across its compact 28 minutes as if the album was one sustained composition. Tempo, volume, and intensity fluctuate far more than the Mitchell/Taylor norm: The sax-driven “New York City,” for example, evokes Lou Reed’s Transformer, the dirty, sexy flipside to the immaculate folk paid homage to elsewhere. There’s a unreasonable amount of florid flute tooting supplied by Vince Meghrouni, former leader of SST’s ’90s jazz-punk oddballs Bazooka; the arrangements are gentle but excitable as its narrator, who looks at the world wide-eyed and besotted. This is a love story that actually feels like love, not fabrication.

Interview: Dutch Uncles

With their brittle, jittery time signatures, subtle strings and melancholy melodies, Manchester’s Dutch Uncles rekindle the understated possibilities of 1980s pop wallflowers like Talk Talk and Japan. They may have be around for a few years, but the intellipop quintet’s third album, Out Of Touch, In The Wild, released on diehard indie label, Memphis Industries, is about to see them pinball straight up the charts thanks to serious radio play for the singles “Fester” and “Flexxin.”

Duncan Wallis, Dutch Uncles’ singer/pianist, has a rep for being both brainy and “sexually interesting,” if a little tetchy on hearing his band being compared to Hot Chip. Andrew Perry tracked him down to see if any of these theories really hold water.

Dutch Uncles hail from Manchester. But rather like New Order, you don’t sound like the classic post-punk “miserable Manc” band…

We’re all originally from Marple [suburb, near Stockport], but I live in Chorlton [trendier hood] now, and will do for the foreseeable future. It’s good here. There are a lot of musicians around — you see Damon Gough [aka Badly Drawn Boy] every now and then. There’s a record shop at the end of my street, which is great because I DJ a lot, and I always do it off vinyl. I spend most of my time in the ’80s section. You can’t beat a bit of Wang Chung — “Dance Hall Days,” what a single!

You can certainly hear such preferences in Dutch Uncles’ sound.

Sure! I love a lot of stuff that came out in the ’80s. We’re definitely influenced by the xylophone sounds of Japan’s Tin Drum, and the string presence on Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. One track on the album, “Flexxin,” sounds like Prince. We wrote it after we played on the same day as him at a festival. I don’t mind people saying we sound like him, ’cause he’s a genius. It’s not so good when people say we sound like Hot Chip. I actually really like Hot Chip, but it’s gone way too far now, it’s just become what everybody says. It’s made me scared to look on Twitter.

In the past, you’ve said Talking Heads are your favorite band. Why them?

The first five albums just show the most brilliant progression, especially through their relationship with Eno. Then Eno left the mix, and they did Speaking In Tongues and, that could be their best album actually, with the complete pop sensibility they brought to it — the whole “Stop Making Sense” aesthetic. After that it kind of veers off, but Talking Heads were always the band to look back on for us, because they had five completely different albums there, each one flawless in its own respect. Such an artistic variety coming out of one band. Ridiculous!

Have you tried to replicate that restless spirit in Dutch Uncles, to keep moving from album to album?

Yes, and they’re definitely all different. The first one, self-titled, was literally a live album slated up in two weeks in Germany, completely minimal. The second, Cadenza was us first beginning to realize the idea of instrumentation. It was the first time we had a producer, who unfortunately stepped in too late in the mix, because all the tracks had been pretty much road-tested by that point.

This time round we had our producer, Brendan, with us from the very first notes. We always knew that we wanted the album to be a complete surprise to people who already knew us — a surprise to them and us, really. You increasingly realise with pop music that everything’s been done, so you have to just have fun with it. So this album feels like less of a statement than the last two did, for me. It feels like, Look, this is something we’ve done in a year. Give us another year, we’ll do something else. These are all just parts of the story now. It’s not trying to make a full stop on anything.

You’ve said that the lyrics on Out Of Touch, In The Wild are loosely themed around addiction and friendship…

I’m not sure that’s quite right, on reflection. An album of bad habits — that would be a more accurate generalisation. “Nometo” is about an old guy who regrets the habits he had earlier in his life. But it’s not a drugs album — it’s a third of a drugs album, perhaps. It gets a bit psychedelic in the production side, and lyrically it gets more abstract the more psychedelic it gets.

It’s focused more on negative ways of thinking, but there are some upsides. The last song, ‘Brio’ is all about the naughty excitement of getting caught with pornography, and building a habit round that. But that’s not based on personal experience! It’s been said that a lot of our older material was about porn. I wanted to make a nod to the older songs — to the history of Dutch Uncles.

Do you crave chart success?

All bands do. It’s not like you’re gonna put a gun to anyone’s head for it. It’s just, “We want it, now how are we gonna get it?” “I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to be really lucky.” It’s hopeless to focus on it, so we just keep going, and try to get better. Every time, we want to make the listener’s first listen with us better.

Blaudzun, Heavy Flowers

Johannes Sigmond, aka Blaudzun, sings tenderly through clenched teeth. His sweet tone is utterly at odds with his aggrieved delivery, and the contradiction becomes even greater when you see him: a burly Dutch dude with a big beard, chopped-up hairstyle and D.M.C.-vintage Cazal glasses. He looks impassively cool, but what comes out of his mouth suggests he could alternately swoon or snap at any moment.

Not only does that riveting vocal presence elevate him above lesser indie folkies, but his melodic gifts also make his tunes go pop without any apparent effort. Nearly every song on Heavy Flowers, Blaudzun’s third solo album and American debut, is as catchy as the one before it: He writes, arranges, and produces everything here (and plays most of the largely unplugged instrumentation as well) with a nuanced focus that matches the intensity of his crooning. On soft, simple mid-album highlight “Solar,” he summons a magically spare lyric that perfectly aligns with his quiet desperation — “It hurts too much to stay but I won’t let go” — and he sings it over and over again until it cancels out all the ambiguity and abstraction found elsewhere. He will obsess, alone, the end.