House Playlist: Deerhoof, Mariah Carey, & Trip the Light

San Francisco’s indie-rock veterans’ upcoming album, Breakup Song, is being billed as a showcase of “Cuban-flavored party-noise-energy music.”

House Playlist: Deerhoof, Mariah Carey, & Trip the Light
Photo: Island Def Jam

Deerhoof, “The Trouble with Candyhands.” Evidently drawing from a different set of influences than they did on their last two outings, which both displayed a more straightforward yet still precisely Deerhoof-y eccentricity, San Francisco’s indie-rock veterans’ upcoming album, Breakup Song, is being billed as a showcase of “Cuban-flavored party-noise-energy music.” A track from the album, the groovy “The Trouble with Candyhands,” is a funky federation of Latin jazz and the band’s signature idiosyncratic pop, resulting in a head-bobbing crowd-pleaser that places Satomi Matsuzaki’s breezy, nonconforming vocals and John Dieterich’s robust guitar licks alongside silky-smooth horn and piano. Refreshing that, 18 years after their formation, Deerhoof can still reinvent themselves with such ease. Mike LeChevallier

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Mariah Carey, “Triumphant (Get ‘Em) (Vintage Throwback Remix).” Despite Mariah’s insistence that she doesn’t want to make dance music “just because it’s ‘in’,” she seems to want to have her cake and eat it too. After premiering the terrible hip-hop album version of “Triumphant (Get ‘Em),” Mimi quickly dropped a pair of dance remixes of the single. The “Vintage Throwback Remix” plays more like the original should have, eschewing Rick Ross and Meek Mill’s guest spots and featuring full (and newly recorded) verses from Mariah. The chorus still feels a little anemic, but a rousing vocal arrangement at the song’s climax sells Mariah’s inspirational message of perseverance and harks back to her ’90s heyday. (Here’s the Pulse Club Mix.) Sal Cinquemani

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Trip the Light, “Lunar.” The best way to honor your favorite artists is obviously to crush their music into a whole, and that’s what Trip the Light has done with “Lunar”: a lashing-together of the best bits of Com Truise and Tycho. The result is some strangely digestible electronica that builds a chilled-out melody from softened keyboards and a marching, uncomplicated drum pattern. Halfway through, the atmosphere gets shattered by piercing feedback, perhaps proving that no hybrid lasts forever, but at its peak this is some excellent Betamax-era ambience, or a trip-hop song for people with oxygen machines. George Bass

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