Asking someone to define pop music is a lot like asking a Baltimorean whether their home town is actually like The Wire: you’re bound to get an exasperated sigh and some mumbled answer in return.
Yet we continue to speculate about what pop music means, largely in part because of bands like Oakland’s Makeunder, who write songs that manage to get stuck in your head even when they leave you disoriented and puzzled, hiding their sweetest moments underneath the surface of overwhelming, dizzying arrangements.
Makeunder began as the solo project of Hamilton Ulmer; on his first release, 2012’s Radiate, Satellite, he explored the peculiar point on the musical Venn diagram where soul music, Renaissance-era harmonies and Stravinsky overlap. Recorded on a laptop microphone over the course of five days, the EP pulls the listener into “the life and death of a rural California family;” its heartbreaking stories are wrapped up in immersive arrangements, immediately bringing to mind the creaky, mysterious world of Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House.