Song Of The Day 7/1/2014: Wye Oak - "Before"

New Music Week: I don't know if you've noticed it -- I'm still not swaddled in proof myself yet -- but it certainly feels like I've been more forgiving of electronic music in the last few months or so. I mean, it's not as if I ever hated electronic music. Being a keyboardist I have to maintain some cock-eyed modicum of interest in it. I never took it out behind the woodshed, you know? On the other hand, I could never invest fully into it because damn it, this stuff is just cut-and-paste -- any idiot can do it! But that was before I got a cheap (well, free) audio software program, found some samples, and made some semi-okay recordings I auspiciously called "soundscapes." And that's when I enthused... damn it, this stuff is just cut-and-paste -- even I can do it! There is no paradigm shift I won't try to cash in on before it's too late. I just like to give you all a head start. Keep in mind, however, that this does not mean I'm cozy with dubstep. All those "drops." I got enough dropping off-a me as it is, youknowwhatImeanfolks? CanItellyouaboutitfolks? Forget about Skrillex -- where's my Celebrex? YouknowwhatImtalkinbout!

All right, I'm back from the Catskills.Wye Oak started off as a folk-esque group who made some very good albums. Then gradually Jenn Wasner started experimenting with some keyboards in her side project, and now Wye Oak's Shriek is pretty much an electronic pop album. It's one of my favorites of 2014 so far. (Here, I've already said as much on Treble.) "Before" is exactly the kind of synthesized music I would have gravitated towards in the '80s: it's melodically sound, it squeezes as much melancholia as a shiny bright object can muster, and it takes me back into what that nice young man called "the comfort of being sad."