Market

Across his tour de force fifth album as Market, Cleanliness 2: Gorgeous Technologies, NYC singer-songwriter Nate Mendelsohn develops a musical language designed to mirror the frenzied cadence of modern thought. His autofictional lyrical approach becomes the jumpoff point for expansive avant-pop compositions, scored by ghostly electroacoustic orchestras, hallucinatory brass chorales, and degraded samples, fusing iconoclastic songforms with melodic glyphs and production flourishes from contemporary rap and R&B. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, and engineer who has collaborated with Yaeji, Frankie Cosmos, Phony Ppl, and Dougie Poole, Mendelsohn has used the Market moniker as a staging ground for increasingly personal, singular, and sonically dazzling experimentation for over a decade. Whereas 2024’s avant-pop outing Well I Asked You a Question and 2022’s folk-rock-oriented The Consistent Brutal Bullshit Gong felt distinctly communal, Cleanliness 2 is largely a one-man drama in which his collaborators— Michael Haldeman (Dijon), Justin Felton (L’Rain, Big Thief), Rose Droll (Feist), along with mainstays Stephen Becker, Katie von Schleicher, Natasha Bergman, and Duncan Standish—serve as the supporting cast. The songs replay photographic memories of the past or zoom so far in on the present that context disappears. Eventually, the thought bubbles pop, and we return to Mendelsohn, backed by a lone warped electric guitar—or is it a trashed synth pad? A sampled Tascam recording?