tUnE-yArDs

love this track, have not heard produced version hitting play now thank you for this owen!

okay i prefer the rawer screamy version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcmJnNYAkFI
though this is nice and dense and the horns really help and it gains on second listen. they're different animals?
very psyched for new album

sounds great, digging the step up in production

courtesy of the great eli crews and new, improved in oakland!

this makes me feel uncomfortable don't know if i want to listen to it again. like crazy person music

I have a feeling that I'll miss the dictaphone styles of the first record
But then I realized I could just re-record the album onto a dictaphone
If I ended up missing it that much

or getting shitty headphones

Bizness is fantastic, keep coming back to it.

I like this one

http://youtu.be/e31dpx-XGfI

Streaming here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/apr/11/tune-yards-whokill-album-stream

Really loving it.'gangsta', 'powa', 'bidness' and 'my country' all A+. Seems front loaded to my ears or perhaps the second half will take longer to get into.

sinking my teeth into this right now

HOLY FUCK the finished version of Gangsta is AWESOME

ooo

album is heavily zappa-d out, much more than birdbrains

This just got an A from Robert Christgau and is streaming on NPR. It's cool. Bizness is an obvious song of the year contender.

Pareles reviewed in the NYT and he gave it a qualified rave; only major complaint was the lyrics and I don't blame him there.

They're all over the place and often clever but sometimes just __shrug__

basically this and the quik are pretty much my fave albums this year so far.

freelancer Patrick Foster for the Washington Post loves it:

“Whokill” is one of this year’s boldest, freshest creations: A pulsating quick-step that feels utterly contemporary, careening down a city street while the detritus of consumed influence trails from the car windows.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/quick-spins-tune-yards-ralph-stanley-dj-quik/2011/04/19/AFjYmE6D_blog.html

That kinda makes want to hate it, but I will give it a shot.

It's definitely real good. Not what I expected at all.

the detritus of consumed influence

oh rlly

anyway I hated the first one and this one's more difficult but I like it a lot more!

I heard this (and Tune-Yards) for the first time today, it's definitely a good album but I'll need more time to process it. One similarity/influence I hear is dEUS circa The Ideal Crash, but maybe that's just the Zappa feel percolating down again.

This is a major record, people. Don't let the unconventional punctuation put you off. I'm telling you, this little lady is dy-no-mite!!!!!

ugh

i've come to really love this with repeated listens, it's leaps and bounds better than the first one (her ideas are too interesting to be mired in low fidelity). i've had the chance to play it out loud for some people over the past few weeks and have enjoyed the (mostly positive) reactions

I can't believe how little attention it's getting around here. It's such an ILM friendly record.

not for everyone i guess.

mental note: add this band to that thread about 'bands you'll never listen to because of their stupid name'

i.e. basically all of them?

She said the weird spelling was to increase her MySpace visibility.

i heard the single today ("bizness"?) and her voice kinda scared me off. maybe i will give the full album a shot later.

coming late to tune-yards - heard a few tracks off the new album last week and was v impressed, then went back to the debut. sometimes hard to believe it's a woman singing, due to the timbre of merrill's voice, but only occasionally. striking. a strong & distinctive vocals, memorable songs, forward-thinking arrangements & production, and a dazzling procession of reference points (which is to say i get where that washington post guy is coming from with his "detritus of consumed influence"). exactly the sort of record i'd like to be listening to this summer.

since i can't make sense of the dirty projectors comparisons i keep reading (a product of my own ignorance), i'll say that the music reminds me v slightly of animal collective, back when i thought i liked animal collective, circa sung tongs - you know, popping their panda tare heads up among the african, doo-wop, blues, hip-hop and gospel influences. probably a lazy reference point, but i'm hardly up to date on yr contemporary indie styles. cocorosie?

neneh cherry imo

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

Songs from the first album didn't make much of an impression on me -- I don't even remember whether I heard the whole thing or not. This one took a little while to sink in, but I'm pretty into it now. And I definitely hear the Dirty Projectors comparisons -- see, e.g., the guitar solo on "You Yes You" (about a minute in).

yeah, 'killa' esp. has a neneh vibe

it's a fair comparison. She's got a LOT of influences going on though; references the babenzele pygmies as a touchstone.

should listen to neneh cherry i guess

― normal_fantasy-unicorns (contenderizer), Monday, 2 May 2011 19:40 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes!

big lol to those on another thread dissing her supposedly tokenistic/trendy/not-'authorized' appropriation of african music (weirdly patronizing suggestions to "do her homework") when she in fact spent time in africa playing with african musicians there

also surprised to find that she is 32. from her videos i thought she was like 24

anyways like a lot of AC or dirty projectors i *get* why it is praised but don't find myself reaching for it that often

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmleSfx9hn8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Here, she makes a mockery of other so-called "live loopers". I can't even deal with this it's too good.

http://vimeo.com/22883825

i think i mentioned it upthread, but it becomes kinda a chore when she has to build up the loops at the beginning of every song

mad looping skillz tho

xp that's the nature of looping though?

also, the music aside, the looping she's doing there seems pretty standard? just technically i've been impressed with how jamie woon does it, in terms of dubbing out different elements of the loop etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cys2hJM0gaE

is that how woon plays when he's live? because if so i'm a little sad i didn't go see him

i dunno, what woon does is cool in that he's varying the textures and stuff. but the breakdowns in the tuneyards clip / the little vocal bonus bit at the end, those just made me go HUH CHOPS

possibly this is bcz i have such little rhythm that it would take me until i was 32 to be able to do that if i did nothing else in the interim

whereas to do what woon is doing i would merely need to be blessed with decent voice and two hands, like what he has

I love this album by the way. Top five.

I'm having similar issues with what I've heard off of this that I have with Sleater-Kinney; there is something going on in the vocals, something slightly on the reedy side of things, that sets my teeth on edge.

in the tune-yards clip she's just stopping the entire loop and turning it back on, no big deal. woon is doing similar things but in a much more subtle way - he's not playing a live instrument besides singing, so he does a lot more with bringing in and out the different layers of the loop, adding effects etc. that takes a lot more mental independence imo.

(btw that comparison only came up because SK was playing on THE CURRENT radio stream and I was all "wow I am not enjoying this in exactly the same way that I do not enjoy tUnE-yArDs")

Yeah, compared to w h o k i l l, sure, but in early press she made it sound like HERE COMES MY TOP 40 RECORD. Or maybe I just saw it mentioned one time too many and expected something more straightforward. But I'm glad she didn't dumb it down; and yeah, it rules.

love it

It definitely hasn't gotten a tenth of the buzz of whokill. I have a theory--the lyric "a blood soaked dollar" from the single is to blame. It comes across as a Grade Z Occupy Wall Street trope, just so obvious and clumsy. It kinda mars what is a kickass song.

i just never warmed to this album.

I admired the previous album, but rarely wanted to play it. This one I actually enjoy listening to.

Saw her live last night. What an awesome gig. It made me appreciate her songs even more, especially the Nikki Nack ones.

they sound better live, yes.

New song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAadziqcQZw

The album, I can feel you creep into my private life, is out in January.

I am really surprised by how hard I've turned around on her. I guess once I acclimated to the shouting, I could start enjoying what she was doing.

lol reading upthread shows I have both a great mind for inference and a terrible memory

Very cool!!

Love it. Welcome back.

Love this.

"Heart Attack". Like the way the track starts very basically, then gradually blossoms to an opulent 70s disco sound. Album's going to rule. Don't like this video much though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-7je-jsuC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xd097nWH2s

I like the video better than the song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hcG6UgTHiU

this is the best thing i've heard from them in a long time

This 1000% reignited my fandom... I love when she plays to her strengths (biggest voice out there, puppets)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy3xdHw4YTs

I mean it this performance is crazy and great, vocal performance alone even

yeah that's a fantastic performance

i feel pretty optimistic about the new album now

i kinda like the cover of Cannonball

Me too

i really like this album, her best since whokill! haven't paid enough attention to notice if there's any of the real embarrassing clunkers there were on the last one though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyXwmyjNco8

idioteque cover is cool too

oh meant to say "lyrical clunkers"

dang at that idioteque cover, nice blend of styles

now that i've paid attention to them i can say it holds up lyrically too! delightful

This album is REALLY REALY good

I agree

yes

That's quite the triple recommendation.

This is great and I can't really figure out what I want to say about it besides that

Didn't know they did the score.

The Tune-Yards score to I Love Boosters is amazing and I also think they are a strong position for Best Score of 2026. The score album is out now.

The lead song is called Hi Ho

and in case you have trouble with the lyrics, we've got this lyric video to help you out: pic.twitter.com/jTSEIkmwi5

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) May 27, 2026

Jesus that's almost enough to make me not want to see it

I don't remember much about t-y apart from not liking them whenever they first debuted, but the score works well in the film fwiw

Nice. It's wild how a piece of music could come off as a bit annoying or quirky in isolation (or in album-listening mode), but as a bold and effective score. Seriously.

My first reaction is “I can see how that would work in a score but I would never want to listen to that by itself”

I loved their score work on Sorry To Bother You and I’m A Virgo tbh

Jesus that's almost enough to make me not want to see it

― Cattedrale metropolitana di Santa Maria de Episcopio, Wednesday, May 27, 2026 5:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol otm

ffs I think this is the number one thread where everyone just moans about how much they hate the band, but it's a band I really like. I don't even want to open it. serious bad mid-2010s ILM vibes.

WhoKill is an absolute classic.

Amazing score.