What’s the vanguard of music distribution for a band these days? It’s not a video, like it was in the early eighties. It’s not a free online exclusive, like it was five years ago. It’s not the placement of a song in a television show, or in a greeting card like in “Flight of the Conchords.” But is it an app? Radiohead is trying to find out.
This week, the band released PolyFauna, an app inspired by and built around “Bloom,” the opening song from the band’s 2011 album, “The King of Limbs.” Created in conjunction with the design studio Universal Everything, and available on the iTunes store, the app leads viewers (listeners? users?) through an interactive landscape. The aim, to the extent that there is one, is to follow a red dot. While you’re following it, you can draw on the screen, creating squiggles that fray and then vanish. Sometimes it seems like you’re lost in a mountain range. Sometimes it seems like you’re in an electrical grid. Other times, it’s a bloodstream or a forest. Peaceful and a little psychedelic, occasionally beautiful, occasionally bleak, the experience plays like a cross between a doodling program and the iTunes visualizer feature.
Radiohead isn’t the first band to try this sort of thing. Björk was (of course) an early adopter, with her “Biophilia” record and its accompanying software, in which she both created accompanying visuals for her songs and extended the themes of her record (life, change, adaptation). PolyFauna works along those lines, too: “Bloom” is both soundtrack and motif, with lines stretching, ramifying, shrinking back. It’s a different approach than that taken by classic-rock bands like the Rolling Stones and the Doors, who have used apps more as coffee-table books or online stores. And while it’s hard to argue against the innovation or even the beauty of the app, it’s also hard to imagine that it will catch on as a broader trend. Apps like this are immersive—they tie up your phone or your tablet. Most often, the outside world is all the accompaniment that music needs.
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Chances are, Nicole Atkins can sing better than you—with power and subtlety, sometimes lush and moody, sometimes sharp and witty. The songs on her third record, “Slow Phaser,” are about characters, mostly women, battle-tested by everything, from love (“Red Ropes”) to touring (“Gasoline Bride”). Since her début, “Neptune City,” Atkins has viewed albums as an opportunity not only to release a new set of songs but also to craft a certain sound that operates in and around her ideas. This time, working with the Swedish producer Tore Johansson, she relies more on electronic instrumentation and danceable bass lines (the opener, “Who Killed the Moonlight?,” is a textbook example of the approach). This has the strange effect of making the songs about feeling bad feel good, and it also clears out space for her vocals. “It’s Only Chemistry,” one of many standouts here, starts with a sing-song chorus before Atkins swoops in and then swoops away, and the lead single “Girl You Look Amazing” is the rarest of things: a nutritious confection.
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Petra is the best-known member of the Haden Triplets, thanks to her painstaking vocalese-style arrangements of pop songs and movie themes. But the band’s name isn’t false advertising: here, Petra reunites with her sisters Rachel (formerly her bandmate in the power-pop group That Dog) and Tanya; the triplets are the daughters of the jazz bassist Charlie Haden. The album is overseen by Ry Cooder, who stays away from distracting glossiness, foregrounds the vocals, and provides guitar backing that is never less than distinctive. In theory, the album’s mission is to preserve old folk and country classics, from the Carter Family’s “Single Girl, Married Girl” to Webb Pierce’s “Slowly,” but there are also newer selections like Nick Lowe’s “Raining Raining.” (Alec Wilkinson wrote about the trio earlier this week.)
