A Downloader's Diary: February 20, 2017
by Michael Tatum
While plugging away at 2017, I thought I might as well publish
these two leftovers from 2016, especially since one of them provided a
comment to Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll (attributed to Leonard
Cohen rather rather than Will Toldeo, but that's showbiz for you). See
you "for reals" in a few weeks.
American Honey: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (UME)
No mere rock critic would ever have conceived this wondrous treasure
chest of rhinestone and pyrite -- no music nerd or A&R wonk
either. Stitching together songs from genres that don't mesh, from
artists you probably have avoided if you've heard of them at all, I'm
not sure how these tracks work in the Andrea Arnold movie of the same
name -- from lowbrow trap to wispy indie rock to cornball country to
gauche electropop, can this mismatched tapestry really represent the
southern youth subculture she imagines? Since the nearest art house
theater is 25 miles from my current abode, I'm moved to ask: who
cares? This works so much magic and mystery that I find myself even
digging songs I couldn't stand on the radio, namely Lady Antebellum's
"American Honey" (fuck you and your bullshit nostalgia, Hillary) and
Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" (they're called consonants, Hope). Wish I
could tell you what makes this melding of chalk and cheese taste like
champagne and caviar -- Lord knows it's not quality artists, of which
you'll find here a grand total of one: Steve Earle, represented by the
title track of Copperhead Road, his (first) arena rock move (it sounds
dynamite). But I will say the sequencing, particularly in the nineteen
track version that should be a physical pronto, runs so far left field
Barry Bonds should make a dash for it and put his glove up -- you'll
wonder for example where Arnold dug up the spritely opener from
Quigley, a Soundcloud denizen so obscure she doesn't merit a Wikipedia
page, yet provides Arnold with several key thematic threads ("This is
the beginning?" "Truth is a socially constructed point of view?" You
better believe it). Then there's the cornball closer from Razzy
Bailey, who research tells me is a "C&W" singer of some sort, but
sounds here like someone who flunked the audition for Hamilton, Frank,
and Joe Renyolds -- yet his "I Hate Hate" is puerile as it is
magnificent. In short, "patriotism" at its most mellifluous -- the
kind of country I wouldn't mind visiting. Or for that matter, living
in. A PLUS
Car Seat Headrest: Teens of Denial (Matador) Even if he
only wants to be there "half the time," all Will Toledo wants to do is
go home. "Freaking out of his mind" in a house that's not his, the
first thing he wants to do when he stumbles to through his front door
is wail to his mother about how he's been "destroyed by hippie
powers," but unfortunately he's not sober enough to convince that
breathalyzer. So instead he splits from the party on foot, crying as
he drags himself down the block, getting harassed by the cops. Talk
about your metaphors being rammed, er, "home" -- it's there even in
his mysterious reference to the 2013 documentary Blackfish, in
which a former trainer points out that killer whales can't be released
into the wild because they don't have the skills to survive there,
while grudgingly admitting they might not be too crazy about being in
captivity either. In other words, they can't go home either, and they
don't exactly have the benison of fetching melodies and memorable
guitar riffs to sing in their chains like the sea. Speaking as someone
who's spent the bulk of 2016 living a trailer behind his father's
house, I'm not sure I have much useful advice for Toledo -- I'm old
enough to be his father and I'm still lost. But I will say although I
agree the self portrait of Van Gogh on the Wikipedia page for
depression (he's referring to 1890's Sorrowing Old Man) is
certainly powerful, I'd draw Will's attention to 1889's Irises,
which is simply one of the most beautiful things ever made by mortal
hands: green stalks reaching out of ruddy earth, blue-green blossoms
bent but unmistakably reaching up toward the sunlight. He painted it
in the Saint Remy insane asylum. He couldn't go home either -- and
what beauty he found in the most heartrending of places. A
Trash
De La Soul: De La Soul and the Anonymous Nobody (AOI)
All De La albums deal thematically with the trio's relationship to the
current commercial climate, but when this began with Jill Scott
melodramatically bemoaning the dearth of "love" in this world like she
was Hattie McDaniel, I was a little disgusted when I realized she
wasn't referring to George Zimmerman or our current Führer-elect, but
rather to a certain Long Island-based unit that is no longer either
blowing up or going pop. Seems a little tacky to spend an album
bemoaning a culture that no longer adores you when you surpass your
initial $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal in less than ten hours,
don't you think? But this isn't news -- the old guard resents the young
turks in any genre, and hip hop in particular is hardest on its elder
statesmen (though jeez, at forty-seven, Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer is
only two years older than your humble downloader). What really blows
my mind is the failed hit single features none other than Snoop Dogg,
who in 1994 represented their g-funk polar opposite, but two decades
later is yet another fellow hip hop legend eking out a decent
existence from middling records because he's got his own vanity
label. Although to be fair, Snoop's records do put more time into the
drum programming than the synth string sections. B
Permalink
|
