I don't know about you, but I'm feeling '22

Janice Iche & NKC - Afterlife
Janiche Iche sings with a sense of too-smooth seriousness that, over the course of a whole album, can come across as portentousness, but which in single shots such as “How You Flow” and this song, both collaborations with producer NKC, can be captivating. Ironically, this may be her most portentous effort of all: “send me to the afterlife,” her self-harmonising multitracked vocals coo, “I want to know what is there.” It’s possible she’s talking about taking drugs - her 2022 album is pretty big on weed in particular - but the conviction of her performance here suggests she should be taken literally. What the lyrics do not give away, the seductive but menacing arrangement confirms: this is a dark seance. Pounding percussive hits and looped backwards strings imply that Janice’s desire is self-abnegating, and that whatever lies beyond is not friendly. “Afterlife” is also distinguished by being relentlessly rhythmic but never even hinting at dancing; its drums are threatening and ominous, perhaps slightly beautiful in their steely resolve, but you’d sooner die than call them groovy.

George Riley - Time
George Riley’s instructions on “Time” are charmingly explicit: “I'm very protective over my space / I don't let no one in unless I'm satisfied they're good and humble / Don't like to mingle with the fickle and fake / I like good guys and nice food / Happy weed and camp shoes / Don't like to small talk, I like to conversate / I like gold chains and drinkin' booze / Sunshine and fucking too.” But for all their directness, they’re couched within a song that feels more hesitant, as if George expects her assertiveness will be challenged before long: “so if you happen to see me having a good time / I’m just warning you to be wary.” And she’s wary, too, even defensive as she lists her preferences as if carefully placing a series of protective wards around herself. As with previous masterpiece “Power”, “Time” rides a papery, stuttering drum and base rhythm, but whereas “Power” fully embraced that style’s kinetic energy, “Time” always sounds fitful, uncertain of its strength, the rippling beats speeding up and slowing down while a dolorous bass guitar churn provides the song’s only constant. George herself sounds different, too, less jazz-inflected, higher pitched, slightly grainy and almost blank, recalling Kelis who similarly would manage to imply more by intonating less. What “Time” does share with “Power” (along with “Sacrifice”, another ace 2022 tune that heavily overlaps lyrically) is a keen awareness that the demand for autonomy is not costless socially; the price of freedom is, at a minimum, eternal vigilance.

TSHA ft. Clementine Douglas - Dancing in the Shadows
Producer TSHA has had one pretty good idea: realising that UK garage was always as enticing as a general concept - its winning fusion of R&B, house and rave music - as for its specific sonic calling cards. “Dancing in the Shadows”, as with her other would-be anthems, is like someone attempting to recreate UK garage based only on a description of what it sounds like, marrying jumpy and syncopated (though not that syncopated) percussion to impassioned and intermittently chopped-up diva vocals. It’s not the same: “Dancing in the Shadows” has little of garage’s Jamaican heritage and none of its habitual eeriness, but it swaps these qualities out for a straightforward, trance-inflected anthemism and a general “more is more” aesthetic that, combined, suggest Orbital or Ada, if either turned their minds to attempting to crack the current charts. Perhaps I like TSHA’s approach because it feels like she succumbs to the same sorts of manoeuvres that I would not be able to resist busting out if I was a producer, always wondering if the song could be improved by yet another arpeggio or fleeting, galloping counter-rhythm (there are several points here where the arrangement feels like it’s being stomped over by horses). At the song’s various pinnacles, Clementine Douglas’ vocal is cut up and refracted across the track like a laser beam, merging almost indistinguishably with winsomely harmonising synth patterns, beacons that light up the sky and leave no room for shadows at all.

Tyla - To Last
There are lots of notable qualities about amapiano, but among them I am always particularly struck by how techno-like in their construction even the most pop-minded productions can be: you can hear it in the length and spareness of the intros and outros, and the frequent sense that, left to their own devices, the grooves would simply clang along forever (the former qualities facilitate, and the latter is exacerbated by, amapiano tracks’ capacity to be mixed in with other, very similar grooves so as to create a vibe of an endless and unchanging present). “To Last” exploits the additive nature of amapiano arrangements - which typically control the levels of tension and intensity by adding and subtracting elements to or from a basic groove. In Tyla’s hands, this allows “To Last” to shift from mournful reflection to… what? My best stab is that the song’s instrumental passages, structured around a booming and rippling logdrum bassline archetypal for the genre, together with ratatat snares and odd sound effects, imply the inevitable and dark outcomes of Tyla’s ex-lovers actions - loneliness, lovelessness, regret and possibly social ostracism or even untimely death - so that Tyla herself doesn’t have to. Her vocal, gentle and regretful, quietly observes her lover’s demise, but there is no vindication here, and no victories - only consequences.

Mr JazziQ ft. F3 Dipapa, Lemaza & Boontle RSA - Jaiva
It’s no criticism (not of the music, at least) to say that my engagement with amapiano mostly treats the music as largely interchangeable. That’s partly on me, of course, but it also reflects many qualities of the music itself, in particular its deliberately narrow band of intensity, that seemingly inexhaustible capacity to bubble but never boil over. Anyway, interchangeability is a frequent and perhaps even crucial quality of most emergent dancefloor sounds; it does, however, pose challenges when engaging in an exercise such as this where the task is to identify something specifically special about a particular tune. It would be easier to focus on another outlier or genre fusion like “To Last”, and I could more readily have tackled something like Tiwi Savage and Zinoleesky’s excellent “Jaiye Foreign”, or the Virgo Deep remix of Amaarae’s “Sad Girls Love Money”. But I chose “Jaiva” because it’s one of the amapiano tunes I loved from 2022 that I felt really exemplified the music’s appeal for me. In particular, the relentlessness of its rhythmic attack: it feels like every component of the song is designed to service to the groove - the way the hand percussion seems to skip over the surface of the arrangement like a stone across a lake, the near-drone of the chanted vocals and in particular the way the percussive bass ripples of the log drums seem to cut in and around the vocals, pausing to flatulently fill out the spaces in the arrangement where they can. The call and response feel of the vocals (and frequent heavy breathing, like one or more of the vocalists have just completed a footrace) mirrors the arrangement, which feels like an elaborate dance between competing elements, each balanced between understanding their place within the grander scheme and striving desperately in a last-ditch bid for your attention.

i caught onto "gotta move on" rly late in the year, good song

Thanks Tim for your thoughtful write up on "Looking for Somebody." As you know, some of the points you've made were argued about in the 1975 thread (kicked off here for those interested in reading). I had not caught the subtle change in lyrics (which Healy loves to do, generally), and these types of examples, along with the undeniable melody and construction allow me to appreciate the art despite my reservations and general discomfort with the subject. It is undoubtedly a great song.

At the live show I attended, they opened with it and the crowd went unsurprisingly wild. Healy used his guitar as a gun to "snipe" his fans while they danced in excitement. I found it all humorously macabre, and in your words, "slightly crazed." Having sat with it, I do agree that's much of the point, I just don't find it particularly clever or endearing.

Most troubling to me are Healy's public statements about the subject matter, which seem far less profound or interesting than your commentary.

I keep reading this as I feel like I’m 22 and I’m very happy for you.

@ indexed for me the thing is the objections you bring to it arent to the subject matter but to the tone in which the subject matter is addressed , in a song that is specifically about how tone manipulates us.

I do agree at least that Healy does not describe what the song is doing very well - but we wouldn’t forgive a song for falling short of its writer’s objectives, so I’m not inclined to dampen my appreciation when the opposite occurs.

(The thread title is a homage to Swift’s “22” btw)

I didn't get around to writing up the techno-heavy end of my 2022 playlist (at or near the final stretch), but I assembled another playlist of percussive recent (mostly 2023) techno here:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6oSmqQJQLnhkRGolYg99s1

Tim you are spoiling us!

Awesome

Was stoked for the achterna write up tho x