What to Listen to This Week

How Josephine Foster is like Young Thug, when Suzanne Kraft went pop, why we’re calling Golden Boy a “junglist” and other knowledge to put in your ears.

Josephine Foste (M. Borthwick) Josephine Foste (M. Borthwick)
By Daniel Bromfield

Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

SOMETHING OLD

You know that meme about how Young Thug sings in cursive? Same goes for Josephine Foster, whose music is as pretty as Thugger’s but with way better guitar playing—she and her husband, Victor Herrero, both shred. 2016′s No More Lamps in the Morning is her best album: seven of her older songs, two of them adaptations of poems, arranged for twin guitar and that spine-tingling voice. It rewards repeat listens, first to soak in its sound, then to figure out what the hell she’s even saying.

SOMETHING NEW

Going pop is a good strategy for an ambient artist: Once you’ve mastered tone and texture, adding a beat and a melody is the natural next step. About You is the first album of song songs from Suzanne Kraft, who until recently made slow, melodic, Eno-styled ambient music with nary a vocal in sight. These 10 tracks envelop the ears, but they’re in no way obscure or impressionistic. They’re firmly pop, and it’s hard to imagine anyone not at least grooving to them.

SOMETHING LOCAL

The most you could hope from an album called Dream Jungle is for it to deliver on its title. The new effort from local junglist Golden Boy satisfies immediately: Its breakbeats switch between dainty and skull-shattering, and the chords explode like the popcorn in Portlander John McLaughlin’s famous Regal Cinemas roller-coaster animation. If you dig Lone’s Galaxy Garden, CFCF’s Liquid Colors, and other louche takes on the jungle sound, this should be up your alley. And if those names aren’t familiar, you heard about them here first.

SOMETHING ASKEW

Texas musicians More Eaze and Claire Rousay enjoy a fruitful friendship based, apparently, on listening to emo rap and making field recordings. The edges of the generously AutoTuned, almost-pop songs on their new collaboration, An Afternoon Whine, are filled with errant chatter, flushing toilets, dogs barking and other sounds of everyday, transient life. It’s the first album they’ve made in the same room together, and they’re clearly having a blast.

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