A Downloader's Diary (47): August 29, 2016
by Michael Tatum
I'll begin this by saying, briefly, that depression sucks. Also,
that I purposely kept shit back so I could return sooner, perhaps in a
month. This year hasn't been my best -- more on that next time. Until
then, here are some, you know, reviews.
Aesop Rock: The Impossible Kid (Rhymesayers) Ian Bavitz
is one of those guys who makes me embarrassed to be an English
major. Not because his facility with language is better than mine --
though it probably is -- but rather because his fans staunchly insist
it's his greatest asset. For example, a study by blogger Matt Daniels
(a digital strategist for Fortune 500 companies in his spare time)
cataloging rappers' usage of "unique" words found that Bavitz' lyrical
acumen surpassed 85 other major hip-hop artists, as well as
Shakespeare's works, thereby I suppose making Aesop Rock the most
brilliant man to ever pick up a pen. But not so fast, Matt -- I'd
argue this is ridiculous for many reasons. To begin with, there are
more words now than there were in 1604 -- to cite a few that appear on
this shameless argument for logorrhea, "terraforming," "schmoozing,"
"acrylic," "dreadlocks," "acne," and "cartoon," the latter of which
derives from the Italian and missed the first performance of The
Tempest by several decades. Furthermore, minimalists from Lou Reed
and J.D. Salinger have illustrated time and time again how far you can
go with very little. But most of all, showing off one's expansive
vocabulary is the preferred method of feeling superior for politically
correct guys who wouldn't dream of measuring their dicks over bar
stools, hence why they gravitate to a more socially acceptable form of
bullying. Not that Bavitz is a bully mind you, but too often his
polysyllabic rants feel too much like obfuscation -- I would never
have figured out "Supercell" was about Ae skipping visiting his family
over the Christmas holidays if I hadn't done the requisite
research. On the other hand, we also have fond memories of two
brothers, one scarred by a little league coach crudely dispatching of
an unlucky gopher around third base, and another who sneaks out of the
house to see Ministry after failing to convince their mom that they're
not a Satanic cult. We also have a very revealing dialogue between Ae
and his (female, of course) therapist: "She says, 'I'm not your
enemy.'/I said, 'That sounds like something that my enemy would say.'"
Now you know why Kimya Dawson was such a good influence on
him. A MINUS
Chance the Rapper: Coloring Book (free download)
"Gratitude is the opposite of despair," noted Mark O'Brien, the
poet-journalist and polio survivor whose life inspired the 2012 movie
The Sessions. In the 1995 documentary Breathing Lessons
(from which that movie cribs liberally) he quotes renegade priest and
theologian Matthew Fox, founder of "creation spirituality," the idea
that "we co-create the universe with God" and that "art is our way of
making the universe sacred." Those ideas compress into a nutshell what
makes Chancellor Bennett's worldview so appealing, how his stalwart
belief in a God who gives if only you ask avoids falling into the
sanctimony trap and thus entices atheists like me and probably you. I
suppose that his end game isn't bitches and cars is also worth
considering -- I mean this is a man who slips in a Louis Jordan joke
when he asks you for gas money (which he won't accept because you've
had too much to drink). From giving away his music gratis to
continuing his involvement in youth programs at the Harold Washington
Library, he operates from the assumption that if you put things out in
the universe for free, very often good things will come back to you:
if you send the praises up, the praises will come down. And come down
they do, from Young Thug indulging in a little self-parody, Kirk
Franklin continuing his 2016 Resurrection Tour, and assorted buddies
from Donnie Trumpet and Peter Cottontale providing absolutely gorgeous
backing throughout. Yes, Chance prefers "signs to science" -- his
James Early reference zings the Eddie Murphy character from
Dreamgirls, not the engineer who won a bottle of scotch whiskey
from John Robinson Pierce for inventing a transistor that oscillated
faster than 1 GHz. But this is a man so good he forgives Justin Bieber
for his sins, can fondly remember Chris Brown juke jams at the skating
rink without slipping into domestic violence jokes, and hopes that if
the mother of his child leaves him that his successor will treat her
well. Best rapper alive? Depends on what you mean by "best" -- which I
guess makes the answer yes and yes. A
Joey Purp: iiiDrops (free download) For me, the most
important news here is the contribution of two superb Chicago-based
producers: Knox Fortune and Peter "Cottontale" Wilkins, who either
separately, in tandem, or in conjunction with others, have their hands
in nine out of these eleven tracks, including the deliriously catchy
"Girls @," which should be an internet skyrocket in the manner of
"212," and the diabolical "Photobooth," based on a sample that sounds
like an elephant sticking its trunk into a light socket, recalling the
Bomb Squad's classic work with Public Enemy. These guys are major
players, both participating in the last two projects from Chance the
Rapper, including the new Coloring Book, reviewed
above. Unfortunately, I'm slightly underwhelmed by Joey Davis' rap
style, which gets upstaged by Chance and others, and only grabs the
ear when he lampoons (or perhaps pilfers from) his influences,
particularly Kanye West, who he quotes sardonically to no end and
imitates to the point of parody in the wicked "Say You Do" (does any
other rapper brag so much about doing it with the lights on?). Perhaps
he should spend less time on scheming to nick a pair of size 9.5
Yeezies (doesn't Chance get them from Kanye for free?) and more on
conceptualization, which supersedes mere entertainment for the
explosive final three tracks: the brutal anti-kids-and-drugs screed
that nudges Future with an Auto-Tuned vocal filter, a harrowing
collaboration with Vic Mensa ("Winner's Circle," the Chi-Town version
of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero"), and a finale in which Adams
escapes from the killing fields that Ice-T wrote about half a
continent away, twenty-five years ago. I don't know what "reality" is,
and I don't have the background to know whether Spike Lee betrayed
Southsiders as much as Adams bitterly claims. But "reality" trumps the
usual money and bitches boilerplate any day. A MINUS
Konono No. 1: Konono No. 1 Meets Batida (Crammed Discs)
Electronica types dig this Congolese aggregation for two
reasons. First, despite the their harum-scarum arrangements, close
listening reveals their rhythm beds suggest old school MIDI sequencer
lines. Second, in classic postmodern style, their "futuristic" sound
is accomplished via the crudest instrumentation possible, namely
electric likembes (a variation of the mbira, the African thumb piano,
in which the metal rods are attached to a resonator) and jerry-rigged
"lance-voix" (literally, "voice-throwers," according to York
University's David Font-Navarette, a megaphone introduced to the
Congolese government by the Belgians, utilized by Mobutu during his
twenty-six-year regime). This makes them ripe for someone like Pedro
"Batida" Coquenao, Portuguese by blood but Angolan by birth, who on
his own albums toys with old hits from his adopted home country to
delightful effect, my favorite being a riff on "Tequila" that goes:
"Bazuka!" (actually, Carlos Lamartine's original hit spelled it like
the gun, not the UK wart medication). So you bet that while this is
less jarring than their past records, by most listeners' standards
this is an improvement: Coquenao structures these tracks so they boast
actual bass lines and distinct drum patterns, while at the same time
beefing up the weirdness at the top end (who can resist those metal
pea whistles?). I wish he had interfered more -- samples would have
brought something a little more audacious to the table. But if you're
looking for something to annoy that spouse or housemate who demands
that the sofa throw pillows be perfectly straightened when no one's
watching TV, look no further. A MINUS
Paul Simon: Stranger to Stranger (Concord) Back in 1966,
you would have been crazy to have pegged the weirdo who wrote and sang
"Visions of Johanna," rather than the earnest author of "The Dangling
Conversation," to be the one to cover "Young at Heart" and "Polka Dots
and Moonbeams" fifty years in the future. Yet here we are, with Dylan
making like a western swing Jimmy Durante (sans swing) and Simon the
only musician of his generation pretentious enough to describe his new
album as boasting a "rhythmic premise." I would never trade my more
extensive Dylan collection for his paucity of classics, but from
reggae to Peruvian flutes to mbaqanga to this record's embrace of
flamenco and Harry Partch's microtonal theories, Simon has exhibited
more musical outreach not only compared to the retro-minded Dylan, but
also such bettors as Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed. He
puts (solo) David Byrne to shame. Despite his many failures (Brazilian
pop, Broadway by way of Havana), this is what I call a rich, fulfilled
musical life. Although I wish the aforementioned "premise" had
continued clip-clopping into this record's second half, Simon redeems
himself with the usual quirkily beautiful arrangements and left field
subject matter: a scenario swiped from Alfonso Cuarón, center fielder
James "Cool Papa" Bell pontificating over the sad usage of the word
"motherfucker," the Golden Gate Quartet serenading a homeless street
prophet, the "werewolf" that comes for us all regardless of the size
of your tax return. But especially considering he still talks dirty
every time the sight of his wife in the doorway takes him aback, this
time around his worldview is slightly too dour for my taste. His
astrophysicists measure heaven as being roughly six trillion light
years away, Stevie Wonder has it at ten zillion, and while as a
committed secularist I'm not sure how the conversion tables work in
these matters, Stevie is wise enough to know it takes a long time for
us to reach Him because we've got so far to
come. A MINUS
Thao & the Get Down Stay Down: A Man Alive (Ribbon
Music) "Michael, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you were a
teenager," my father told me recently from across his long dinner
table. "If it's any consolation to you, I was really crazy at the time
-- I wouldn't have been a good father to you." Without looking into
his eyes, I replied: "Thanks for telling me that, Dad, but I forgave
you for all those things a long time ago." Which was true, but also
more complicated than I admitted -- is an absent parent in no
condition to be a positive force in one's life really better than him
screwing it up in person? And what of how I felt like his complicit
pawn during those years, in particular how he asked me to lie about
where he was, and about who he was or wasn't with? Those issues are at
the heart of Thao Nguyen's breakthrough record, a success with or
without the production expertise of Merrill Garbus, though those
off-kilter rhythms suit the tumult in her soul as much as her slightly
strained soprano. She knows "This is how the goods get stolen/No
science, just devotion," but that doesn't stop her from devoting her
life to capturing that "astonished man" alive, a "fool forever" who
won't come get his girl even though she's "easy to find." And then
there's the devastating closer, which pits a churning 6/4 chorus
against verses in 4/4, which is the most painful of all -- an "endless
love" that she doesn't want, begging to have to it (note the three
run-on prepositions, as if in desperation) "carved on out of her."
Does this refer to a childhood anguish that can never be healed, or is
it a metaphor for an aborted child, a signal that she fears she's
enough like her father that she might be one more link in the chain?
My father used to ask me time and again when I would ever have
children. These days, he knows enough not to bother. A
White Lung: Paradise (Domino) I'll come clean: gothic
hardcore punk has never been a priority of mine, even when I could
hear this merciless Canadian outfit markedly improving (or as young
people say, "selling out") as they went along. Musically, they recall
A Place to Bury Strangers, with Kenneth Williams' guitar riffs and
Anne-Marie Vassiliou's beats more precisely mathematical and producer
Lars Stalfors, formerly of Mars Volta, tidying up their sound, adding
synthesizers and nicely splitting the difference between thrash and
prog. But let's face it, no one into this group analyzes or even cares
much about aesthetics -- they're into them solely for front woman Mish
Way, one of those Grace Slick/Siouxsie Sioux types who define feminism
as "you step on me, I'll stomp on you with my jackboots, provided I
don't get those aforementioned boots too dirty." No point arguing
whether her approach to the subject constitutes second- or third-wave
thinking -- she's a philosophical tsunami unto herself, championing
downward mobility as her protagonist gives birth in her boyfriend's
trailer, or taking a pointer from the Camille Paglia playbook by
celebrating physical beauty because it "dies" and therefore should be
admired. Dishing out icky corporeal metaphors on the order of the
opening "A pound of flesh lays between my legs and eyes/Secure the
sutures, he'll grow beneath the ties," her philosophy is best summed
up by an article she wrote for Vice in which she insisted that
female "accomplices" of male serial killers are every bit as brutal as
their male counterparts, and only patriarchal assumptions about
womanly weakness prevents them from receiving equal treatment and
punishment under the law. Which I agree with in theory, but makes me
uncomfortable in practice, and I imagine is the idea. Of limited use
spiritually, sure. But in this ugly moment, her all-purpose rancor has
its uses. A MINUS
Honorable Mentions
Skepta: Konnichiwa (Boy Better Know) I wonder if
grime fans think all trap records sound alike? ("Shutdown," "That's
Not Me") ***
Flume: Skin (Mom + Pop) Maybe next time he can get
better guests than AlunaGeorge and Little Dragon ("Lose It," "Say It")
***
Kaytranada: 99% (XL Recordings) Maybe next time he
can get better guests than AlunaGeorge and Little Dragon ("Got it
Good," "Bus Ride") ***
DJ Shadow: The Mountain Will Fall (Mass Appeal) Well,
no AlunaGeorge or Little Dragon here, but remember when he didn't feel
the need to have guests at all? ("Mambo," "The Sideshow")
***
Sturgill Simpson: A Sailor's Guide to Earth
(Atlantic) He's the one who covers Kurt's real pretty song, but he
don't know what it means ("Sea Stories," "Keep It Between the Lines")
***
Animal Collective: Painting With Animal Collective
(Domino) So nerdy even They Might Be Giants skirt them in the
school cafeteria ("FloriDada," "Bagels in Kiev") **
Avalanches: Wildflower (Modular/Astralwerks/XL/EMI)
More calypso and rap, less Bobby Goldsboro and Harpers Bizarre --
please ("Frankie Sinatra," "The Noisy Eater") **
Daniel Romano: Mosey (New West) I know I said last
time he needed to get his weirdness back, but a John Fowles tribute
and a number where he cajoles Rachel McAdams into seducing
Toulouse-Lautrec wasn't what I had in mind ("Medium Cool," "Hunger is
a Word You Die In") **
Dori Freeman: Dori Freeman (Free Dirt) If I were a
alt-country songstress from Appalachia, Teddy Thompson wouldn't be my
first choice for producer, but apparently, she hit him up on Facebook
("Fine Fine Fine," "Tell Me") **
Trash
Bob Dylan: Fallen Angels (Columbia) With the song
selection even more ridiculous than that on the more "sublimely" awful
Shadows in the Night, it's about time we ask the hard
questions, such as: if critics hated Self Portrait (and
Dylan even more), why are they fawning over this? And
furthermore, what's Dylan's motivation? A truly perverse wool-pulling
exercise? I say it began with Dylan singing with Springsteen and Ol'
Blue Eyes himself over a piano in Palm Springs, the two rockers
sheepish as Sinatra cajoled them both to project a little more: "Come
on, you guys are singers aren't you?" So Bobby says to himself: "Hell,
Lord knows I can't swing, but damn it, I'll warble 'Polka Dots and
Moonbeams' better at seventy-four than Frank could have at eighty!"
And guess what? He does! C PLUS
Brian Eno: The Ship (Warp) I would be a little terrified
to do a personal inventory, but Brian Eno might be the most shameless
flimflam peddler whose music ever meant something to me -- did you
know he once claimed in an interview never to have owned a copy of the
Velvet Underground's third album, on the pretense of loving it so much
he didn't want to become overly familiar with it? Now that only shows
he's not a fan -- if he was, he'd be like me, feverishly purchasing a
newly remastered copy every time a new deluxe edition or what-have-you
hit the racks (am I on my fourth copy?). But I digress. This little
item, which I'd describe as a "dodge" if the thing actually moved, has
been earning a few huzzahs because it's the first Eno release in years
to feature his distinctive vocals, but this ain't no Wrong Way
Up, let alone Here Come the Warm Jets, because an album
that features vocals isn't quite the same as one that contains actual
songs (oh I'm sorry, "compositions"). The interminably long
twenty-one-minute title track, structured around a harmonic compass so
narrow it makes the Gregorian chants it mimics sound like "Scrapple
from the Apple," flows at a pace so glacial it will make you want to
bulldoze a Brazilian rain forest. This segues into yet another "suite"
with the dubious title "Fickle Sun" and an even more dubious eighteen
minutes of aimless fucking around, "climaxing" with actor Peter
Serafinowicz attempting a prosody reading inspired I'm guessing by the
godawful versifying that opened and closed the Moody Blues' Days of
Future Passed (I was almost expecting to see "insipid figures of
light" to pass by). Until finally we get to the pièce de résistance --
what have we here? -- a cover of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Set
Free," which I'm assuming Brian spent an afternoon with on YouTube or
something to, you know, refresh his memory. It's rather beautiful. But
if anyone needs to "find another illusion," it's this guy. I say we
help him out by sending him a coat without elbow
pads. C PLUS
Nice as Fuck: Nice as Fuck (Loves Way) Jenny Lewis'
new side project consists almost entirely of arrangements pitting her
voice against bass and drums, with minimal guitars and keybs --
because when you think Jenny, the first thing you think of is: rhythm
section. B MINUS
Gold Panda: Good Luck and Do Your Best (City Slang)
Well, the "Orientalism" is down -- what a relief! B MINUS
Case/Lang/Veirs: Case/Lang/Veirs (Anti-) Comparing
these lasses to Parton/Ronstadt/Harris vocally doesn't wash -- even at
their most "angelic," their harmonies are pretty wan. What's more,
Ronstadt/Harris accepted long before they hooked up with Parton that
songwriting wasn't their métier, unlike grande dame Lang and the
ickily precocious Veirs. As for the hit-or-miss Case, her most
striking tune here is a throwaway that admits she hides behind an
"armory" (what, a "plackart" wasn't good enough?) and begs you to love
her anyway. Good luck with that. B MINUS
Frankie Cosmos: Next Thing (Bayonet) I know the
phrase "manic pixie dream girl" has been denigrated by feminists, but
Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates' daughter has boiled the archetype down
to one truly pathetic couplet: "I haven't written this part yet/Will
you help me write it?" B MINUS
Whitney: Light Upon the Lake (Secretly Canadian) A
supergroup -- why, just like Poco! -- except rather than being led by
the third banana and fifth wheel from Buffalo Springfield, we get a
reshuffle of Smiths Westerns and the Unknown Mortal Orchestra. This
time around however, the drummer is the lead singer, which might
explain the lollygagging rhythms -- hell, George Grantham was livelier
than this. It doesn't however explain his weedy tenor, which suggests
Neil Young being given a rim job by an iguana. C PLUS
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