Best New Tracks - Pitchfork

King Louie: "Val Venis"

Jordan Sargent — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:29:00 -0500

"Val Venis" is Chicago rapper King L (formerly King Louie)'s first official record for new label home Epic, and despite its title, it has nothing to do with Val Venis, the kind of hilarious early-2000s wrestler who made a career out of dick jokes. It also has little to do with King Louie's ridiculous dance of the same name, which is now a micro-meme in Chicago. In the latter respect, the track itself most resembles Young Dro's "Shoulder Lean", a song about a dance that ignores the conceit entirely in favor of just rapping incredibly well. The song's empty space, simple three note synth line,and intermittent blasts of tuba sound like something that would've popped up in Atlanta half a decade ago. That makes sense, considering that Louie shares much more in common with rappers like Dro and Gucci Mane-- funny, charming, playful rappers who never had their writing skills acknowledged until years down the line-- than he does with rough-edged fellow Chicago rappers like Chief Keef or Lil Reese.

Here, Louie spins a catchy little hook ("I'm the man/ Little did they know") and then proceeds to write ruthlessly effective lines that show how simplicity can easily be a virtue in rap: "I made it, bro/ And they hate it, though/ I just say ‘so'/ And taste that dough." All of what makes Louie a potential star – pop instincts, lyrical ability, personality, penchant for tossing off memorable catchphrases – are on display on "Val Venis," and that should make his new bosses quite happy.

Ab-Soul: "ILLuminate" [ft. Kendrick Lamar]

Jordan Sargent — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:03:00 -0500

On "ILLuminate", Ab-Soul puts himself in the class of top five rappers dead or alive, says he's better than Jay-Z and Nas, promises to come at Biggie and 2Pac when he dies, and calls his Black Hippy crew the new N.W.A. Rapping has long hosted absurd boasts, but the power of "ILLuminate" is that you can hear Ab-Soul convincing himself in real time. He is, of course, far from those heights, but for five minutes he possesses a fearless underdog-turned-favorite swagger. "ILLuminate" is intoxicatingly confident, a calm and stoic song that makes you gleefully delusional about your own power.

Ab-Soul: "ILLuminate" [ft. Kendrick Lamar] on SoundCloud.

[from Control System; out now via Top Dawg]

Lower: "Craver"

Jenn Pelly — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:15:00 -0500

A mere 23 seconds into "Craver" from the Copenhagen punk band Lower's sub-nine minute debut EP and it's clear the song is a threat, its shrill, piercing guitar line screeching on like fingernails against a chalkboard. The track's ensuing two minutes are characterized by their loud, slow-pummeling brashness, working with creaking, distorted tension and menacing drum rolls that nearly suffocate a vaguely tuneful bass line underneath. Hardly any of what frontman Adrian Toubro shouts throughout the air-deprived "Craver" is even reasonably audible, save for a permeating desire for something inherent to survival. He's sinking and dragging us down with him.

Occasionally Lower make space by shaping back the brutality. But it's only at the track's very end, as the band races off, that there's an essential release; it's over with what feels like a bloody blink of an eye. And last summer that's precisely what led Iceage frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt to note, after a sole Lower gig, in conversation with The New York Times, "it was almost annoying that they could be so good." No chance of grabbing one of the original 300 Walk On Heads copies now, but their label, Escho, who first brought us Iceage's debut, promises a repress is on the way.

Lower: "Craver"

Avicii: "Silhouettes"

Ryan Schreiber — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:21:00 -0500

As genre names go, EDM is about as vague as "indie." While it's useful shorthand for the post-millennial rave movement's superstar DJs and producers, it doesn't give much insight into the stylistic diversity of the music. Its artists may share an affinity for dramatic, wind-up builds and earthquaking drops, but there's still a world of difference between Skrillex's glitched-out mayhem, Diplo's baile-funk bangers, and David Guetta's big-tent trance.

Then there's Swedish producer Avicii, who essentially makes straight-up house music with an ear for the kind of universal, candy-coated pop melodies that his homeland seems to produce with astonishing ease. More than six months after its official release, his 2011 electro house anthem "Levels" is still gaining momentum as one of EDM's defining singles. Its apex arrives about halfway in when it halts on a beautifully optimistic but fleeting vocal hook. That moment, in which Etta James gets sampled, cut up and transformed into a glittery house diva, lends a life-affirming touch of humanity to the track's mechanical stomp, and it's a major reason why the song has found such a huge audience.

These moments appear to be something of a specialty for Avicii. His follow-up single, "Silhouettes", is a glistening progressive house number with guest vocals that recapture that all-too-brief endorphin rush on "Levels"-- and this time, those vocals run through the entire song. Lyrically, "Silhouettes" is an up-with-EDM rally cry, but musically, it's closer to the radio-ready dance cuts produced by current Swedish pop icons Robyn and Little Dragon. "We've come a long way since that day," sings guest vocalist Salem Al Fakir, as sparkling synths and pulse-like thumps build to a pupil-enlarging, major-key climax reminiscent of the Field, "and we will never look back." Here, the filter knob twists, evoking the aural sensation of a rapid ascent in altitude, before plunging sharply down a stomach-in-throat drop the size of the Kingda Ka.

If "Silhouettes" strikes you as more than a little cheesy, you're not wrong. I've sometimes wondered at what point I'm just listening to the modern equivalent of, say, DJ Sammy's "Heaven". But Avicii is one of the few artists from his world whose singles work as well for me in headphones as they do on festival stages, and his knack for balancing pure FM pop hooks with genuinely affecting vocal tracks makes his wide-eyed positivity an easy pill to swallow.

Baauer: "Harlem Shake"

Larry Fitzmaurice — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:36:00 -0500

One of the many unreleased tunes that appeared on Rustie's incredible BBC Essential Mix from earlier this year was Brooklyn producer Baauer's disorienting banger "Harlem Shake". Well, it's unreleased no more-- in fact, it sees release today on Mad Decent and the label's new imprint, Jeffree's. The irresistible appeal of "Harlem Shake" owes almost everything to the type of menacing, world-smashing bassline that would cause even the Cloverfield monster to shudder in his gills. Along with this purely visceral pleasure, it's hard not to marvel at how awesome those growling-lion samples sound.

Baauer: "Harlem Shake"

Savages: "Husbands"

Laura Snapes — Tue, 22 May 2012 08:35:00 -0500

Savages: "Husbands" on SoundCloud.

Violence and domestication rub against each other on London four-piece Savages' debut single, out digitally on May 28 through Pop Noire, though the pairing veers wildly from the obvious conclusion. In the chorus, French-born singer Jehnny Beth shrieks "husbands, husbands, husbands, husbands," over and over through shards of hysteria, orgasm and indignance, the lustful repetition of the spousal noun rendering it meaningless and empty as the soulless eyes next to which the song's narrator awakes one day. "Husbands" investigates the terrifying possibility that the familiar can flip on a knife's edge, a line straddled by the fight between the single's insidiuous, driving motorik bass and the chain-mail hurricane nightmare that explodes at the end of each line of the verse, exposing evil and chaos like the lid of Pandora's Box bursting from a ramshackle padlock. It's wrestled back down in a battle between athletic, lean post-punk and a breast-beating monster akin to Liars' "Scissor", two sides of a bristling power struggle possessed of a single, addictively nihilistic aim.

MS MR: "Hurricane"

Laura Snapes — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:39:00 -0500

Beating Lana Del Rey's record for "1990s influenced Tumblr photos per minute" with the video for their debut single "Hurricane", out July 2 via Iamsound/Chess Club, the shadowy New York City duo MS MR take a little of the "Video Games" singer's drama, and pair it with Poliça's gritty stride, along with a stroke of All Saints poutiness. "Welcome to the inner workings of my mind," MS MR's female half offers with a touch of hostility. Lyrically, "Hurricane" feels beset by a sense of hopelessness, but sounds as though it should soundtrack a heroine turning triumphantly on a heel as the credits roll.

Download "Hurricane" in exchange for an email at MS MR's site, or listen above.

Killer Mike: "Reagan"

Jayson Greene — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:18:00 -0500

Ronald Reagan's presence looms so large in gangsta rap, and casts such complicated shadows, that to invoke his name in a rap song is to summon an entire worldview and refer to a constellation of injustices in two syllables. Killer Mike uses Reagan's name, smack in the center of his career-defining new album R.A.P. Music, as an artful metaphor for perpetuation of injustice. In "Reagan," Ronald Reagan is less a person than a tendency, to be stamped out wherever it is found, even within rap itself: "We should be indicted/For bullshit we inciting/Hand the children death and pretend that its exciting/We are advertisements for agony and pain/We exploit the youth, we tell them to join a gang/We tell them dope stories, introduce them to the game/Just like Oliver North introduced us to cocaine/In the 80s when them bricks came on military planes." Like all of his best work, it has the sweeping clarity of a dissertation, the galvanizing fire of a sermon, and the forcefulness of a hurled brick. This time, though, there is another quality present: the cleansing power of a confession.

R. Kelly: "Share My Love"

Eric Harvey — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:37:00 -0500

As the action commences in the video for "Share My Love", we catch R. Kelly and two of his female associates-- he's sharing his love, see-- basking in the afterglow, preparing to make an entrance. There's a party going on outside, and much, much more love to share, with several dozen of Kelly's closest friends and associates. This is the image we're given, but the track alone suggests alternate interpretations: an imagined night at Larry Levan's Paradise Garage, perhaps, or for those outside the know, the vicinity of an urban radio station in the mid-to late 1970s.

Kelly outfits "Share," a single off his forthcoming LP Write Me Back, firmly in the proto-disco firmament of Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra and the best of the Thom Bell-produced Spinners. It's a lush, string-laden 4/4 rhythm, with suggestions like "take that off, girl, and let the fun begin." Since this is Kelly, you know you're going to get at least one purely original moment, which arrives in the song's middle eight when he merges his virtuosic flair for intimacy-- "Now that we're in this room, let's do what we were born to do"-- with a shout-along slogan of vast proportions. All together now, as the beat drops out: "Populate!"

Azealia Banks: "Jumanji"

Mark Richardson — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:05:00 -0500

At this very early point in her young career, Azealia Banks is becoming known more for a flurry of self-imposed drama (starting random beefs, announcing and then shelving releases) than the songs she's released. But the most interesting thing about "Jumanji", from her new mixtape, is that it's more about what's going on around her. As these new tracks trickle out, we're getting a chance to hear how her distinctive voice works in different settings. Here, her rapping really functions as the bedrock, the steady pulse for the production (by Hudson Mohawke and Nick Hook) to swirl around. It feels like something new could happen at any moment. It brings to mind the way Rustie brilliantly mixed rap new and old into his dense electronic productions on his recent BBC 1 mix--it's an absolutely brilliant beat, bursting with possibility and exploding with color. And then, you know, in the middle of it, there's Azealia Banks. She can rap.

Oneohtrix Point Never: "I Only Have Eyes for You"

Mark Richardson — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:18:00 -0500

When I hear that Oneohtrix Point Never has created a version of the pop classic "I Only Have Eyes For You", I immediately have an idea of what I hope it might be: something disorienting and strange but also oddly accessible and, ultimately, beautiful. And that's what we get. Created as part of Doug Aitken's "Happening" at the Hirschorn Museum, Daniel Lopatin's version of "Eyes" mixes Popol Vuh's dark spiritualism with an Oval-like vocal cut-up. The lead vocal stutters on one syllable after another, drawing out the chorus line with an overpowering tension, until the track opens up and becomes a slow-tumbling float through the cosmos, like a lost soundtrack to the wordless sequence to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's not terribly far removed from the dry and brittle landscapes of Replica, but there's an extra surge of drama to the production, and the fact that it comes with a word that this is indicative of Lopatin's approach to forthcoming production and remixes is exciting indeed.

Icona Pop: "I Love It"

Larry Fitzmaurice — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:41:00 -0500

We've reached the time of year where people start talking about potential "songs of the summer", and Stockholm pop duo Icona Pop's latest single, "I Love It", seems like a righteous contender from the get-go. A slice of buzzy electro euphoria that fits easily with both modern pop and electronic music's recent turn towards total maximalism, the song finds band members Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo barely lowering their voices to arena-level volume, shouting defiantly about crashing cars and how they "threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs" with infectious, starry-eyed energy. Delectable, empowering, infinitely repeatable-- and it arrives with the added surprise, too, that none other than Charli XCX wrote the song herself. Who says colorful pop can't wear black?

DIIV: "Doused" (f/k/a DIVE)

Zach Kelly — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:11:00 -0500

Back when they called themselves Dive, DIIV's earlier singles sounded similar to the lackadaisical vibes of Beach Fossils, another band that leader Zachary Cole Smith's been involved in over the past few years. "Doused", the new single from DIIV's forthcoming debut LP Oshin, is the opposite of that sound, a gloom-shrouded track that preys on the gothier elements of guitar-driven post-punk, while somehow still managing to jangle a bit. Precise yet somehow still embryonic, it's dream pop for those currently having some very dark dreams.

[from Oshin; out 06/26/12 via Captured Tracks]

Meek Mill: "Amen" [ft. Drake and Jeremih]

Jayson Greene — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:57:00 -0500

Meek Mill is a murderously intense rapper. While his Maybach Music Group associates often have the aura of cats who just ate the canary, Meek seems like a Marines recruit who might be asked to drop and do fifty at any second. His verses are lean, ferocious, and taut. "Amen," an early highlight from his new DJ Drama-hosted Dreamchasers 2 mixtape, finds him throwing all of that out the window. This is a gospel-clapping, organ-greased cookout beat, something we're accustomed to hearing Kanye crack jokes over. Here, Meek Mill sounds like a cocky young rap star: shouting out ladies, joking about peeing pure rosé, and flipping the hook from Rick Ross's "Holy Ghost" to, well, shout out more ladies ("In that dress she look like the devil but I let her innn.") It's the first Meek Mill song to sound like a victory lap instead of a wind sprint.

Meek Mill: "Amen" [ft. Drake and Jeremih]

Animal Collective: "Honeycomb"

Larry Fitzmaurice — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:43:00 -0500

Animal Collective don't like to repeat themselves, but "Honeycomb", the A-side of the band's forthcoming 7" single, sounds familiar. The watery production is reminiscent of Feels' murkier reflecting pool moments, while Avey Tare's speedy, skipping vocal lines and the rhythmic tumble that takes place around them are reminiscent of the title track to 2008's Water Curses EP, or Strawberry Jam's similarly frantic "Winter Wonder Land". It only reveals itself over a few listens, but there's a sweet sadness to the Avey-sung melody, too, the same sort of soft melancholia that featured so heavily on his solo album Down There. It's ultimately an irrestistible knot of a song that resists categorization, another example of Animal Collective's enduring ability to make challenging music that pleases easily, too.

[from the "Honeycomb" b/w "Gotham" 7"; out 06/26/12 via Domino]

Eternal Summers: "Millions"

Jenn Pelly — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:10:00 -0500

The Roanoke, Virginia duo Eternal Summers made their name in underground pop circles with a ramshackle guitar-and-drum sound that celebrated a resurgence several years ago. Time has told it's a formula that generally only goes so far, so it makes sense that for their sophomore record Correct Behavior, the band has fleshed out its sound with the addition of a new bassist. Dreamier territory comes with those textural expansions, and on "Millions" Nicole Yun's honed melodies shine and snap with newfound clarity that at times recalls a hyperactive Sundays, or Amelia Fletcher in Heavenly or Tender Trap. This is a well-paced progression that doesn't feel overtly recycled or deliberately slick, and a proper maturation for an indie pop band coming further into its own.

Eternal Summers: "Millions"

[Correct Behavior is out July 24 via Kanine.]

Buke and Gase: "Hiccup"

Laura Snapes — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:00:00 -0500

"It is not entirely coincidental that we are releasing this on May Day," explains Brassland co-founder Alec Hanley Bemis, "in a sympathetic gesture toward a movement afoot." The first song (though not single) to be released from the the DIY Brooklyn duo Buke and Gase's follow-up to the 2010 debut LP-- due in September, the newly monikered band hopes-- is rudely hewn, as if from mechanical detritus and rough gravel whipped into a militant, stomping beat. (If PJ Harvey's Let England Shake had sounded uglier, this frequently dissonant, aggressive song could be an off-cut from the record.) In the spirit in which the release is intended, it's not hard to imagine a crowd marching behind singer Arone Dyer, punching the air as she calls "hup hup!", and echoing along with her mobilising, bodily cry, "Oh you know you'd better…"

Ty Segall Band: "Wave Goodbye"

Evan Minsker — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:14:00 -0500

At one point last year, after recording the relatively subdued Goodbye Bread, Ty Segall half-jokingly said in an interview that his next record would sound like a Hawkwind or Black Sabbath album. While that's not exactly what Slaughterhouse is, it's clear that the Ty Segall Band wanted to record something loud, heavy, and melodic. The Ty group consists of Segall, Emily Rose Epstein, Mikal Cronin, and Charlie Mootheart (also of the Moonhearts), and while Goodbye Bread and Hair, his collaborative album with White Fence, offer some markedly more mellow material, "Wave Goodbye" is an example of how the next album completely rips. There's an urgent, guttural riff. There's screaming. There's a sturdy, bluesy guitar solo that, yes, reaches into epic proggy territory toward the end. Two guitars gallop into a chugging finish, and after the song is over, Segall cuts through the silence by screaming "fuck YEAH."

Ty Segall Band: "Wave Goodbye"

[Slaughterhouse is out June 26 via In the Red.]

Cassie: "King of Hearts (Richard X Remix Edit)"

Larry Fitzmaurice — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:56:00 -0500

Cassie's latest single, "King of Hearts", has been out for a few months now, but it's been given a pair drastic, excellent re-works over the past two weeks. The first take showed up on Glasgow maximalist Rustie's recent BBC Essential Mix, when he took Kanye West's limp, low-key remix of the tune and threw his own explosive "Hover Traps" over the whole thing; the second arrives courtesy of UK producer and all-around remix expert Richard X, who seemingly does this kind of thing in his sleep. His "King of Hearts" is full and robust, with deep, seismic bass and celestial spirals of synth work filling the space around Cassie's voice like an overflowing mug. It's not a Richard X production without that "liftoff" feeling, though; sure enough, that same propulsive rush that runs through his recent single with Saint Etienne, "Tonight", is all over this one. Once again, Richard X shows how to take a great pop song and make it even greater.

St. Vincent: "Krokodil"

Lindsay Zoladz — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:00:00 -0500

Front page photo by Tina Tyrell

Last year, a video made the rounds of St. Vincent covering Big Black's "Kerosene" with a thrashing, punk intensity unlike what we'd come to expect from Annie Clark. The songs on her best and most recent album, Strange Mercy, float in a helium-light, pharmaceutical haze, but her take on the Albini classic was unmistakably heavy. "Krokodil," the A-side of the single she released for Record Store Day over the weekend, feels cut from the same cloth-- or, more accurately, shorn from the same jagged piece of sheet metal. Clark's distorted vocals are unusually low in the mix, while a manic, industrial chug of guitars and tinny percussion drive the track forward like an oncoming Mack truck in the wrong lane, high beams ablaze. "I need to bite," she seethes, screaming to be heard beneath the clamor. There's always a quality of menace to Clark's music, but it usually conjures the feeling of an eerie smile pulled too tight. Here, she's gnashing her fangs.

[from the "Krokodil" b/w "Grot" single; out now via 4AD]

Fiona Apple: "Every Single Night"

Jenn Pelly — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:49:00 -0500

Only Fiona Apple could deliver something like the psychologically complex self-analysis on "Every Single Night" and sound elated. Like the lead-off title-track from 2005's Extraordinary Machine, "Night" is all poetry, presented over instrumentation that's been pared to a minimum. "Every single night's a fight with my brain," she declares, and clarifies, "Every single fight's all right." She almost revels in it.

The song ebbs and flows from trembling, whispered musings to loud, triumphant declarations of self-awareness, and the most chilling bits come when Apple makes the quiet parts feel tense and visceral. With a typically exceptional execution of poetic device, she takes a muted affair and colors it, as she fluidly narrates how butterflies (the personification of "ideas") trickle down the spine and swarm the belly before swelling to a blaze. Even as Apple describes the pain of her all-consuming thoughts, it sounds like desire, and her ear for detail helps conjure a sense of physicality. Point in case: "My heart's made of parts of all that surrounds me," and later, "What I am is what I am cause I does what I does."

Apple has a genius for articulating the power that comes with solitude and self-reliance, and here she expands what that can mean. "I just want to feel everything," she sings, illustrating the point by stretching her voice across the full spectrum of her register. Fifteen years later, she still has an uncanny knack for getting under your skin and inspiring you to go with yourself.

[from The Idler Wheel; out 06/19/12 via Epic]

The Flaming Lips: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" [ft. Erykah Badu]

Mark Richardson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:25:00 -0500

It had been around for more than a decade by the time she recorded it, but the definitive version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" will always be Roberta Flack's. It's a song about oblivion, about being so overcome with feelings for someone else that boundaries-- between you and this person, between this person and the world-- disintegrate. "The moon and the stars were the gifts you gave to the dark and endless skies"; "I felt the earth move in my hands." That Flack plays down the grandiosity with such a gorgeously low-key delivery makes the song relatable, something that works as metaphor.

The Flaming Lips, on the other hand, working with Erykah Badu on this version of the song from their excellent Heady Fwends release, do their best to turn the song into something literal. Badu has obviously internalized the phrasing of the original, but she puts her own half-step drag on it while also taking a rare turn toward the purely ethereal. At points, she sounds delicate and just out of reach, but eventually, the song swallows her whole. For their part, the Flaming Lips transform the song into an epic, 10-minute shoegaze dirge that feels like nothing more than a drawn-out explosion in slow motion: the earth moves, the sun rises, over and over until the end of time. It could happen.

[from The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends; out now via Warner Bros.]

Daughn Gibson: "Tiffany Lou"

Jayson Greene — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:18:00 -0500

Daughn Gibson has a thing for old cowboy music-- the kind that you find on musty, old shellac vinyl in thrift shops. He largely built his solo debut, All Hell, out of those records' bits and parts: imagine James Blake in a ten-gallon cowboy hat, or J Dilla working out a serious Glenn Miller jones, and you might be floating somewhere near the stylized little Americana snow-globe that Gibson is gently shaking on All Hell. "Tiffany Lou" is one of the album's strongest tracks, a song that's made up pitched-down, highly medicated-sounding vocal loop, harmonizing tiredly with itself. Over this unsettling backdrop, Daughn spins a song about the exact kind of no-hope characters these songs are supposed to be about, telling an compelling and inscrutable little tale even as his words are slurred to near-unintelligibility.

[from All Hell; out now via White Denim]

Beck: "I Only Have Eyes for You"

Larry Fitzmaurice — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:55:00 -0500

No Age, Devendra Banhart, Lucky Dragons, and others have contributed to multimedia artist Doug Aitken's "Song 1" happening, in which their covers of the crooner staple "I Only Have Eyes for You" will soundtrack 360 degree video projections cast upon the exterior of the cylindrical Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Of all the covers we've heard so far, none is as simply striking as Beck's take. His cover goes for the straightforward approach as a tribute to the Flamingos' essential version of the song, from the tinkling bar-room piano to those "she-bop she-bop"s-- but the star of the show here is Beck's vocals, which are pleasurably aching and warm. Beck's spent a fair amount of time away from the public eye recently, so it's a welcome surprise to hear him take on a familiar tune and make it sound so incredibly personal.

Beach House: "Lazuli"

Jayson Greene — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:33:00 -0500

The first 34 seconds of "Lazuli", off of the upcoming Bloom, retell Beach House's story as a band in miniature. The song begins with a muzzy, coughing-ant drum-machine puff and a tiny music-box synth tone-- the same musty, dimly lit, cramped musical space their first two albums fit into, a place lit by candles but untouched by fresh air. Then, after a slow cymbal wash, the colors come flooding in, a sunburst that overwhelms every inch of space, like kicking your way out of a stuffy closet into a cool stone cathedral. "Lazuli" is a forceful, overwhelming reminder of the world Beach House discovered on 2010's Teen Dream, one that hovers in the air, glowing and benevolent, like a giant Rothko painting. It's gratifying just to be near it.