Something about The Real Thing just melts me a little. I think it has to do with bits like the chorus on the opener “Miracle”, where Tubby Love is joined by a choir of voices that cry “How will we ever know?” The words are so small, but the voices crying out in unison build it to something enormous and powerful: strength by means of unified weakness. There’s a sincere thread of community running through The Real Thing, reflected through Tubby Love’s thoughts on love (and yes, sex), the economy, and his home. Title-track “The Real Thing” impresses with its nimble rhythms, as Love spits out his feelings to the target of his affections. The unabashed sincerity approaches poetry at times, but it also leads to a few awkward moments (such as when he declares he’d like to “peel you like a banana and eat you”—that will put you off both sex and fruit for a while); ultimately, though, it’s as sweet as it is dorky. Elsewhere, he declares war on an economic system and society that he views as heartless on the surprisingly catchy “Simple Life”. “And when I go to the grocery store / It’s hard for me to find what I’m looking for / They don’t care about me anymore,” he laments over a background of dark guitar licks and the unwavering stomp of a bass and snare, a moment that has implications that are just as universal as they are personal. Not that I need to say any of this: on its own, The Real Thing is a very likeable listen. It’s easygoing, spontaneous, and loaded with catchy melodies, all of which Love’s voice carries well. What strikes me as most impressive, though, is the fact that after listening, I would genuinely like to get the chance to meet with Love and have coffee with him someday. He may be a small fish in the music world, but his work belies ideas that are much bigger.
There’s music that fits a mood: celebration, anger, happiness, the list goes on—and then there’s music that creates moods. Chalk French musician Lyod in the second category: in only 15 short minutes, Abstractions takes us through an emotional wringer; it’s filled with moments that fit every color on our spectrum. The first track, “Comme un parfum dans l’air”, creates a haunting vibe that’s as immersive as any ghost house could ever be, before “Les cloches sonnent” swells up into an orchestral climax that fills the air with joy. “Movement pour cordes” is rather aptly named, featuring the entrance of beats into the acoustic stabs that characterize Lyod’s work, and the percussion creates a nice head of steam that bursts into urgency in the final moments of the track. “Passage a vide” forays into the darker territory explored earlier in the opener, and “L’echappee belle” pumps it full of air and explodes it with its bombastic, beatific framework. “Tintemarre”, one of the most frantically paced tracks on this album, picks up the remains and runs with them, finally laying them at the feet of the soothing “Devenir”, which brings Abstractions to a close. The whole thing lasts for only a few minutes, but it spans hundreds of miles, and Lyod’s work here is as memorable as it is fleeting.
Sometimes, if you wake up at just the right time, you can steal a glimpse of the sunrise. The transition is so gradual that you could look away from the indigo horizon for one moment, only to turn back and be blinded by a newborn white sky. A white day, untouched and full of promise. The sight of a fresh sun is a luxury to people like me, who set our alarms 30 minutes earlier than we have to just so we don’t oversleep, but for other people, it must be second nature to wake up and greet the dawn. Like ambient electronic artist Cloud—at least that’s the vibe I get listening to A Rush of Sun. It’s a fittingly short release, four tracks clocking in at just under seventeen minutes. It’s gentle and lush, baby blue synths and shimmering keyboards rising and falling with the clicks of beautifully organic percussion work. It’s not slow, but it doesn’t compensate with loudness, either; it’s gracefully nimble without ever having to raise its voice, as the layers of instruments it juggles at once speak for themselves. More than anything, though, it’s pure: in its solemn toybox melodies, in its contemplative, fuzzy production, in the sun-kissed snatches of rhythms stolen out of a fourth-grade music class, worming their way out. But enough of this; sometimes, music simply can’t be synthesized or analyzed. All you have to judge off of then is where it takes you. And where this release takes me is to 6AM on my porch, the dawn of a promising new day as I am once again humbled and blinded by a rush of sun.
