A Downloader's Diary (43): October 29, 2015
by Michael Tatum
A little late by my usual five to six week turnaround, but I spent
a great deal of time on two records below, one of which happens to be
the best album of 2015, the other which happens to be the worst. I
promise to be back with the next column by the end of the year, with a
few surprise bonus installments, including perhaps notes for Pazz and
Jop, assuming of course it's in the works. My top ten is starting to
look (and sound) pretty damn good.
The Chills: Silver Bullets (Fire) Between the death of
his second drummer, his former label yanking financial backing in the
middle of a 1992 tour, anti-depressants, alcohol, low-grade
home-cooked opiates, and a staggering thirty-three different lineups
of his band, Martin Phillipps has seen more than his share of
anguish. Currently clean and sober but in stage four of the Hepatitis
C he contracted from a fellow junkie, he told The Guardian's
Michael Hann last year, "If I'm around in 10 years, I think I'll be
very lucky." Yet even though the last proper Chills album dropped in
1996, between occasional concert appearances and uploaded
tracks-in-progress, he never quite closed the book on what without
question remains New Zealand's greatest rock band. And now we have the
impossible: this impassioned return to form, as sweeping in its modest
grandeur as the sublime 1990 masterpiece Submarine
Bells. Musically, the hypnotic guitar and keyboard lines aren't
played so much as plotted, labyrinthine constructions that wend and
detour, criss-crossing latticeworks to get lost in. Lyrically,
Phillipps retains his gift for naturalistic metaphors, a Shelley or
Tennyson beamed into the twenty-first century, whether he's writing
about the comfort of a sleeping woman's "warm waveforms" or the
despairing "underwater wasteland" of American class war. He offers an
uncommonly tender gesture of atonement to the tomboy he taunted in
grade school, but now knows was more confident in her skin that he's
ever been in his. And though he remains bitter toward Americans
unaware that Wall Street's gravy train has long been de-railed, more
than anything else this radiates gratitude for this small shot at
redemption. Spiritual but without much use for the literal Almighty,
his only prayer isn't to the Man in in the Sky for another decade, but
to Gaia to forgive us for the damage that won't be apparent until
after he's dead. A
Deerhunter: Fading Frontier (4AD) "Combien de temps?"
asked Michael Stipe on R.E.M.'s 1983 hunger song "Talk About the
Passion." The next year, Lionel Richie wrote the more forthright "As
God has shown us by turning stone to bread/So we all must lend a
helping hand" for Willie Nelson and Al Jarreau -- a slightly different
approach, no? Yet R.E.M. couldn't be mumbling obscurantists forever --
eventually they had to embrace a more direct avenue to connect to
larger audiences. Although Deerhunter's Bradford Cox shares with Stipe
a stream-of-consciousness approach to crafting lyrics (please
Bradford, not "automatic writing" -- that's for Ouija board apostles),
in the past what we might call his "wall" has not been, as in Stipe's
case, what psychiatrists refer to as "clanging," i.e. randomly
associating words by sound rather than concept, but utilizing
"transgression" as an emotional avoidance scheme -- you know, like
playing "My Sharona" for an hour to ridicule a heckler, or titling
their debut record Turn it Up Faggot. Supposedly spurned to
reconsidering his life by a near-fatal car accident, this dispenses
with the occult and aspires to be lyrical: "I've been spending too
much time out on the fading frontier/Will you tell me when you find
out how to recover the lost years," he declares wistfully, resolving
to "live his life" regardless. There's even a lovely song that
appropriates the old folks homes of David Greenberger's Duplex Planet
zine for a metaphor, climaxing with a gorgeous, fuzzed-up harpsichord
passage that you might say balances the band's newfound expressionism
with its trademark experimentalism. But though I won't argue this is
their most exquisite record -- prettier than R.E.M.'s Automatic for
the People if not Out of Time, and certainly weirder than either --
the indecisive rhythms, whether live or programmed, don't quite carry
the melodies emotionally, but plod them forward. So I suspect this
will appeal more to Deerhunter zealots than it will attract new
converts. As for myself, I'm addicted solely to 2013's grungy
Monomania -- and mourn the departure of one-stand-only lead guitarist
Frankie Broyles, who would have tempered this lyricism with as much
noise as Cox would have let him get away with. A MINUS
Robert Forster: Songs to Play (Tapete) In a 2006
interview I would cite if it weren't for the brief lifespan of online
music magazines, Grant McLennan noted that when "Bobby plays you five
songs and four of them are the best he's ever written, that's a pretty
good start to a Go-Betweens record." Forster added that McLennan
traditionally would offer as many as two dozen completed songs during
their pre-production sessions, and that he (Forster) would whittle
them down to the best five. That's how their non-collaborative
Lennon/McCartney-style partnership functioned -- separately, with
McLennan a one-man assembly line and Forster a more painstaking
craftsman. Now McLennan is dead, and Forster waited seven years before
releasing a follow up to 2008's elegiac The Evangelist, because
by his own admission the accessible, ingratiating melodies that were
his late partner's specialty don't come to him as easily. Here, the
modest tea-and-crumpet arrangements support Forster's amiable baritone
like embroidered throw pillows on a coffee shop sofa -- his Velvet
Underground cops sound as civil as that simulated Mariachi trumpet on
"A Poet Walks." Granted, the mundane violin passages of Forster's wife
Karin do make me wonder what delicate filigrees the more accomplished
Amanda Brown would have coaxed from the same space. But I'm delighted
how much mileage this lifelong bohemian ekes out of bemused
self-deprecation -- his beatnik existence is demystified as often as
it's romanticized. Sure, he's a "songwriter on the run" who skipped
the ballet to polish up his memoir, but what kind of free-spirited
troubadour lives by a credo as banally workaday as "I got a notebook/I
got a light?" Or would rhyme the sweeping declaration "A poet walks"
with the more prosaic "shits and talks," and then cap it off with a
breezily aloof "just a thought?" He claims only to stop for petrol or
Dylan once he "gets to moving," but he never gives you the impression
he would overtake Sammy Hagar on the Autobahn -- more likely he'd wave
politely and let him pass. Usually when rockers cry out "All right!"
it's to express and/or generate excitement. When this one does --
graciously, of course -- he's telling the band, "Oh my, that's pretty
good." And indeed, it is. A MINUS
Heems: Eat Pray Thug (Megaforce) "When I go to AA man, I
always feel too dark," complains this son of Indian immigrants, an
offhand revelation illustrating why his long-awaited "proper" debut
(after two free mixtapes) arrives carrying so much psychological
weight. While his former partner Kool AD remains enamored with flip
surrealism, puckish humor, and off-kilter freestyling, Himanshu Suri
instead chooses (step four) to make a "searching and fearless moral
inventory" of himself, which on this record includes working through
his drug and alcohol issues, confessing to mental health struggles,
deconstructing an imploding relationship, and wondering if he should
have sought counseling after watching the Twin Towers fall from
Stuyvesant High School, two blocks away. Unlike Suri, my own vantage
point was from an insurance office's meeting room, the visual an
antiquated combination VCR/television set, which was distressing
enough with the volume turned down -- I can't fathom what it would
have been like for someone whose school served as triage, who moans "I
seen things that I never wanna see again/I heard things that I never
wanna hear again." And while for most of us, particularly those of us
outside of New York City proper, the aftermath consisted of drifting
though vague numbness to a surreal detachment -- the most significant
impact on my life was consistently getting frisked every time I went
through airport security -- for Suri, a post 9/11 world meant being
lumped with the "Islamists" of Fox News saber-rattling, shopping for
American flags emblazoned with the legend "I am not Osama," and
wondering after another Pakistani cab driver was beaten to death if he
might be next. With dense, difficult, but ultimately rewarding music
amalgamating the best of both Bombay and Brooklyn, he drops the second
reference to Alex Haley's Roots this year on a hip hop record:
"They want a shorter version/They want a nickname/They want to 'Toby'
me like Kunta Kinte." Says the rapper who goes by the name of "Heems"
-- who knows adopting a catchy moniker isn't merely a good way to
endear yourself to the advertising agency for whom you do data entry:
it's also crucial to winning over the crossover audience, i.e. you and
me. Rarely has an identity crisis been a more powerful affirmation of
the human spirit. A
Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly (Top
Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope) To begin, that "butterfly" trapped
underneath the jewel tray as if encased in a stylized shadowbox is
actually an Ascalapha odorata: a black witch moth. So you say
Compton's favorite son fails the grade in lepidoptery -- what about
sociocultural analysis, his supposed raison d'etre? Do I believe, as
he posits in "Wesley's Theory," that America is far too hard on noveau
riche black men for mismanaging money, because as struggling inner
city kids they didn't learn basic economic lessons in school? Not
really -- those lessons are the responsibility of parents. Even so,
Wesley Snipes was the son of an aircraft engineer and a teacher's
assistant, a graduate of Orlando, Florida's prestigious Jones High
School. Do I approve of Lamar using a woman as a metaphor for the
temptations of greed, power, and money? Absolutely not (and by the
way, Kendrick -- the white bar streaking across the wings of that moth
indicates your specimen is female). But more than any competing media
artifact, this music gets me thinking. I recall watching an argument
between two black men on a Santa Monica Boulevard bus, one proud his
talented son might someday be drafted by the NBA, the other angry
investing too much hope in a pie-eyed dream would be unrealistic for
his son and detrimental to the black community. I remember Taylor
Branch claiming to Stephen Colbert the billions the NCAA generated
from unpaid college athletes being tantamount to slavery. I remember
Arthur Agee of the documentary Hoop Dreams, plucked from an
inner city playground when he was fifteen, held back from graduating
because the high school that recruited him to play basketball -- and
promised a scholarship -- demanded $1,300 in back tuition his family
couldn't afford. I'm betting Lamar knows stories like these and many
more, and those experiences provide the backdrop for a sprawling,
ambitious, musically varied album that even months after first
listening never stops unfolding. I'm especially taken by, to choose
one among many standouts, the brutal "The Blacker the Berry," which
begins with a painful litany of broadly-drawn black stereotypes, then
segues to Lamar declaiming in the voice of the archetypal street thug
he's "the biggest hypocrite of 2015" because although he might weep
for Trayvon Martin, "gang banging make me a kill a nigga blacker than
me." And this isn't a stray track tucked away on the back half of a
record -- this is a hit single. That popular artists have the freedom
to express such devastating sentiments shows how far we've come. That
it remains necessary to do so is a disgrace. That Lamar is conscious
of and can make triumphant art of the paradox doesn't make him 2015's
biggest hypocrite -- but one of its greatest heroes. If he wants to
hatch from a cocoon rather than a chrysalis, he's more than earned
that right. A PLUS
Jill Scott: Woman (Blues Babe/Atlantic) Geffen Records
urged the Roots to replace Scott with Erykah Badu on their 1999
classic "You Got Me" because they thought the single would make a
bigger commercial dent with a proven brand name attached -- even
though Scott wrote the chorus. The band went out of their way to
rectify that slight on their live album from the same year,
assiduously explaining to the audience who was responsible for what,
yet even now, the native Philadelphian has never captured the public
imagination as much as her Dallasite counterpart. You'd never see
Scott in a head wrap unless she was playing a TV role that required
one, nor would you see her arrested for disrobing in Dealey Plaza, nor
would she date a series of rappers in a string of high-profile
relationships. Partial to comfy sweaters and somewhat critical of hip
hop even though she got her start in that scene, Scott is very much in
the mold of the girl next door, so it's easy to take her for
granted. Yet although she's never produced anything as stellar as
Badu's 2000 landmark Mama's Gun, she's also been a hell of a
lot more consistent -- not counting the dregs coughed up periodically
by her former label, she's never released anything remotely
approaching a mediocre album. Sure, she's staunchly aspiring to
middle-class R&B a la Alicia Keys, but she displays more
personality than that genre usually requires: bragging about recipes
she's nabbed from Epicurious, longing for a night with her man because
she had to "reprimand a grown-up," telling that ex she's fucking
solely for "Closure" and better not expect those strawberries in agave
in the morning. Though the extended pussy metaphor "Wild Cookie" makes
a dandy beginning, the interlude about her man's double standards
should have been developed into a full-fledged song. And the lame
attempted Stax/Volt number "Run Run Run" has nothing on her cover of
Carl Hall's (really, Lorraine Ellison's) "You Don't Know Nothing About
Love." A MINUS
Sleaford Mods: Key Markets (Harbinger Sounds) Remember
when we all thought Mike Skinner of the Streets represented the voice
of the British working class? Well, funny thing about that -- Skinner,
who once described his upbringing in the Barratt residential estates
in West Heath as "not poor but not much money about, really boring,"
now seems as comfortably dull as Noel Gallagher. Hailing from
Grantham, the same market town that gave the world a grocer's daughter
named Margaret Thatcher, and looking far more grizzled and sinewy than
his forty-three years, Jason Williamson is my kind of working class
hero: where Skinner toiled behind fast food counters and Gallagher put
in time as a roadie, Williamson worked in a benefits office. In other
words, while Skinner and Gallagher collected the dole in their leaner
years, Williamson has been on both sides of the counter. While
curiously remaining somewhat mum on Skinner, to whom he has been
lazily compared, he's blasted Gallagher in the UK newspapers as "an
elitist apologist, a withered victim of luxury" and "a secret Tory." I
mention all of this because Williamson, hectoring and haranguing in a
tangy East Midlands accent against Andrew Fearn's minimalist
backdrops, strikes me as the first British rock and roll hero since
John Lydon to (as Lydon himself once sang) "really mean it, man," and
like Lydon, class isn't just his pet subject, it's his driving
force. Castigating aging '90s Brit pop heroes as "old cows graz[ing]
on grass from the boom" and indicting them with a brutal "You pretend
to be proud of ya own culture/Whilst simultaneously not giving two
fucks about ya own culture," he also has harsh words for former Deputy
Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who resigned after controversially raising
university tuition fees, but is now gunning for a political comeback:
"This daylight robbery is now so fucking hateful/It's accepted by the
vast majority/In chains years from now/Who's that tit?/Don't matter
who that tit is/He's still with us/In our arses, in our food, in our
brains and in our death/In our failure to grab hold of what fucking
little we have left." With Fearn's terse samples hanging on for their
dear lives to the bare essentials -- drums, bass, and little-to-no top
end -- he recalls Rick Rubin's austere early productions for Def Jam,
albeit punker and more lo-fi. Which means he doesn't want to grab your
attention -- he wants to stay out of the star attraction's way. This
is their eighth album, their third for their new label, and you know
what I like best about them? Their indignation and outrage are so
tangible and timely you can tell they're just getting
started. A MINUS
Omar Souleyman: Bahdeni Nami (Monkeytown) It's been said
that Souleyman, not unlike Ladysmith Black Mambazo or the Ramones,
mines a basic style so unwaveringly that it's impossible even
marginally differentiating one record from another. Though I haven't
sampled much of the output from the supposed 850 quickie CDs he doled
out when he worked Syrian weddings, music later excerpted on loving
compilations from Sublime Frequencies, his amalgam of electronic
production techniques and the Syrian nuptial music known as dabke is
approached differently here than on 2013's excellent Wenu
Wenu. Though at the time I praised producer Kieran "Four Tet"
Hebdan for taking a hands-off approach, this new set, incredibly the
prolific Souleyman's second proper studio album, recorded in Istanbul
rather than Brooklyn but remixed by western DJs, strikes me as more
carefully produced even as the instrumentation leans more toward the
traditional -- a nice trick. It's also a tad slower, which might
disappoint the ranters, revelers, and roisterers at Bonnaroo, but
might move me to describe the result as more "song-oriented" than what
he's offered previously if only I could speak Arabic. The arrangements
and improvisations are certainly more detailed and thought-through,
thanks not only to returning synth genie Rizan Sa'id, but also fresh
new recruit Khaled Youssef, who contributes intricate lines on the
electric saz (the baglama to my Turkish readers), a
stringed-instrument native to the Middle East, and a close cousin to
the lute and the bouzouki. In this thrilling context, the only failure
is Danny "Legowelt" Wolfers' lame, lo-fi tweaking of the killer title
cut, which sacrifices a compact, precise mix for one mired in a style
its creator describes as "a hybrid form of slam jack combined with
deep Chicago House, romantic ghetto technofunk and EuroHorror
Soundtrack." The remainder however, is so trenchant and persuasive it
might have me pensively fingering my misbaha as Souleyman does in his
videos if I actually owned one -- the perfect melding of the
amin and the hey-ho-let's-go. Not many electronica wizards
would graciously thank you for listening after a particularly banging
track. This one does. A MINUS
Honorable Mentions
The Weeknd: Beauty Behind the Madness (XO/Republic)
Best production since House of Balloons, but really: if you can find a
woman who will blow you all night, make you come three times, and
you're not sobbing for her to stop by 9:30, you're in the wrong
fucking business ("Losers," "The Hills") ***
Jazmine Sullivan: Reality Show (RCA) You can't fool
me with all this "condemnation of our tabloid news-obsessed society"
stuff, Jazmine -- I saw you tending bar on Watch What Happens: Live
("Silver Lining," "#HoodLove") ***
They Might Be Giants: Glean (Idlewild) So hooked on
novelty this time around that when a song is actually "about"
something, you notice ("All the Lazy Boyfriends," "Good to Be Alive,"
"Aaa") **
Daniel Romano: If I've Only One Time Asking (New
West) The problem with playing it straight: he might become Bobby
Braddock, but he'll never be George Jones ("Strange Faces," "Learning
to do Without Me") **
Maddie & Tae: Start Here (Dot/Big Machine) Since
their attention-getting hit deconstructs country cliches so well, you
wonder why the rest of the record revels in them -- until you realize
the follow-up single ponders their careerist ambitions ("Girl in a
Country Song," "Your Side of Town") *
Trash
Ryan Adams: Live at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note) Comprising
ten songs in the physical version, an endless forty-two in the digital
download, this record is damn near critic-proof -- to anyone in Adams'
fawning, sycophantic claque, this is a treasure trove of sensitive,
heartfelt singer-songwriting. To those of us unimpressed by his
portentous tenor, nebulous tunes, self-involved lyrics, turgid tempos,
and lazy instrumental technique, this is torture akin to being wrapped
in a straitjacket and forced to watch a turtle on Quaaludes attempt to
crawl out of a half-filled bathtub. The enraptured silence that
surrounds Adams during this unceasingly lugubrious, all-acoustic
showcase is unfathomable, unless they're checking their cell phone
feeds as often as he jokes. As for the revealing, self-aware
between-song patter, it could make a companion disc at least as useful
as 1974's notorious Having Fun With Elvis on Stage. "We're not
gonna make it louder -- you're just gonna have to listen harder." "I
don't remember writing [this song]. I was just super, super fucked
up . . . and then I woke up the next
day . . . in my serial-killer handwriting it was
written on a cereal box or some cliché like
that . . . like a cry for help." "I don't know if this
kind of, like, sadness is interesting for this long." "I can't fucking
play [piano] at all . . . in fact, when I learned this
thing, I only learned what barre chords were on the black keys because
there were less of them . . . because apparently I had
something else to do like . . . probably drugs." "Oh
fuck, wrong key." "This song is so sappy." "[I'm sure] 86% of you are
on Paxils [sic], so you understand about
depression . . . you're at a fuckin' Ryan Adams show."
"This song is really long, so if you have to go to the bathroom, go
now." "I made this record . . . and I didn't like it
because it was stupid . . . and then I made another one
and I really liked it, but it totally was
stupid . . . and then I made another new record that
just has my face on the cover." "I don't even know what capo position
[this song] is in . . . I'm assuming it's in [this one]
because I'm usually too lazy to change it." "Thank you for coming to
see me play this depressing shit." The latter of which, naturally,
earns him resounding applause from the front row to the box seats, as
the poor, piteous testudine sinks dejectedly under the surface of the
water, glub, glub glub. D PLUS
Dr. Dre: Compton (Aftermath/Interscope) Andre Young has
shelved two projects since 2001's creatively-titled 2001, and
though he credits "perfectionism" as the reason, I'm more convinced he
nixed them, particularly the long-awaited Detox, because he wanted to
protect his "brand." Never one you looked to for deep thinking or
original ideas, Young is less a passionate craftsman than a consummate
businessman. Most of his "greatness," at least the parts he didn't
mooch off George Clinton, belongs to his proteges. As a performer, his
greatest "accomplishment" is creating and popularizing the G-funk
paradigm, which from its lazy musicality to its cynical embrace of
casual sexism and rationalized violence stunted hip hop
evolution. Nevertheless, 2001 was the swansong for his schtick
--one of the many things you can say about Eminem is that he subverted
the form with irony, humor, and psychological complexity, setting a
standard that made the old modes passe, as he himself illustrated on
the retrogressive "horrorcore" homage Relapse. Dre was
responsible for much of that disaster's music, and don't think its
commercial failure didn't scare him, especially when his own 2011
single "I Need A Doctor" failed to (as they say in board meetings)
perform to expectations. Supposedly what this offers in penance is
"consciousness," which basically means Dre wants to impress Kendrick
Lamar fans with a few gratuitous references to the injustices of
police brutality. But in fact what we get mostly are retreads of the
usual palaver: preaching the same small-minded rugged individualism,
shutting up his numerous detractors, likening his "art" to badass
street thuggery, and of course, lyrically recapitulating past
successes. Meanwhile, Kendrick and Eminem rap from the back pages of
their notebooks, Dre re-stages the scenario of "Kim" while stripping
it of its context, and various no-names provide so much ghostwriting
one suspects Eazy-E is earning some royalty points. "One day I'mma
have everything" boasts one of his underlings, a brag so much more
one-dimensional than anything on To Pimp a Butterfly, which
doesn't bullshit about the high price tag of the African American
success story. But what do you expect? Lamar's main man is Wallace
Thurman. When Dre wants an inspirational speech ("And to do better
than the next guy, I just had to kill") he channels famed civil rights
leader Jimmy Iovine. Only one mean street walked down here, and it's
not in Compton -- it's in Santa Monica. C PLUS
Muse: Drones (Warner Bros./Helium-3) I always figured
this British pop-prog power trio were what Queen would have sounded
like had they been into manscaping, which I suppose is one of the many
things that makes them attractive to swooning teenage
girls. Nevertheless, if they want to challenge their tween demographic
with a concept album about the dehumanization of technological
warfare, or in leader Matthew Bellamy's words, "a modern metaphor for
what it is to lose empathy," between the football stadium fascism of
their here-come-the-choppers pomp rock and their sanctimonious
two-dimensional tracts, this doesn't connect with anything resembling
compassion or reason. Branding those in service as drones, psychos,
reapers, and puppets but somehow never abandoning his overblown
metaphors to call out the true jingoists and warmongers out by name,
Bellamy is as philosophically hollow as the straw men he
condemns. Ever met any Marines, Matthew? I have -- many are filled
with regret, guilt, and anger toward their country, far from the
Orwellian stooges that populate your songs. For every unhinged
sociopath there is a misplaced poet, like the literal one who read his
harrowing, versified experiences to a writing group I once proctored,
and who within minutes reduced us to babbling brooks. All of which
reminds me that Freddie Mercury dug a man in uniform -- and was smart
enough to have a sense of humor about it. C PLUS
Destroyer: Poison Season (Merge) Dan Bejar is not a
lounge lizard -- he's a lounge Gollum, scampering across a cramped
stage in an abandoned Ramada Inn, hissing about "his precious." I
suppose this is intended to be "ironic" -- but does that make it
listenable? B
Lou Barlow: Brace the Wave (Joyful Noise) I was
initially going to go easy on the archetypal indie rock balladeer's
best batch of tunes since the '90s -- sure they're essentially demos,
but half a great Sebadoh album could come from them, right? Then I
realized that not one song radiated the magic of 1993's
essentially-a-demo "Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)" B MINUS
Ryan Adams: 1989 (Pax-Am) I'm sure there are many
bepenised twits who secretly think Adams "ennobles" Swift or some
bullshit like that, but I say it's about time he had top drawer
material. Now if only he could do something about his drummer. Hell,
his whole band. And his cheapjack production values. And while he's at
it, do something about being Ryan Adams. B MINUS
Tame Impala: Currents (Interscope) Evolved from being
indie-rock's Todd Rundgren to its Mannheim Steamroller.
C PLUS
The Clientele: Alone and Unreal: The Best of the
Clientele (Merge) In which London's Alasdair MacLean wonders
what the Left Banke would have sounded like with the Auteur's Luke
Haines as the frontman. Creepy and "beautiful," I guess -- but after
seven albums, where's their "Pretty Ballerina" or "Walk Away Renée?"
C PLUS
Petite Noir: La Vie Est Belle (Domino) "And while
[Yannick] Ilunga frequently incorporates elements of his
half-Congolese, half-Angolan ancestry, his music shouldn't be shoved
off into that condescending, colonialist hangover, 'world music.'" So
sniffs Pitchfork's enlightened Miles Raymer, and fair enough -- but
who said we King Leopold II types pined for someone on the African
continent who evoked David Bowie, Depeche Mode, and Peter Gabriel?
C
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