Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood [SPINSTER 2021]
In terms of technique her guitar playing is genius and innovative; plucks, strums, and taps with the fretboard on her lap like it’s a keyboard since that made more sense to her. To label it just mood music is to do injustice to the long tradition of Southern Black guitar music that Williams is working to keep alive with timbres that pierce the psyche even as warm tones quickly give way to cold ones in an attempt to convey frailty and violence in the mere images of today. It also touches on the ethereal in ways that could convince even fans of lyrical music to pay attention. 3.7/5
Mach-Hommy – Pray for Haiti [Griselda 2021]
Admittedly I’m not well versed on the lore around this charming nasal New Jersey Haitian, something about him charging a lot of money for his records and previously beefing with the label that released this very gem. Judging by Westside Gunn’s presence, it seems like beef = squashed. Which is great because it means the focus can be on the work of sociology that this album really is. For every bit of cheeky gansta posturing (see: “Put this . 38 in your mouth, go ahead and spit your magnum opus”) there’s whole sections and even songs dedicated to the Hatian language’s (Kreyol’s) evolution and the diaspora’s attempt to show the world that country’s paradoxical beauty and harsh poverty, due in no small part to the fact that they were the only country whose slave population rose up to take control and were punished by the West because of it. As an educational tool Mach-Hommy is also keen on making you do your own research on him and his tales, note that despite his constant language swapping in his forked bars there are no lyric booklets and very very few genius.com entries for him. As a work of classicist-revival that Griselda is famous for it’s an undulating work of passion where the guy who incorporates a folk song about oppressors being true kriminals also says his god is a woman. Tight. 4.3/5
Aesop Rock – Labor Days [Definitive Jux 2001]
At a ripe 25 Long Island’s own Ian Bavitz chooses to spit rapidly and near incomprehensively about labor. Its value, how he wishes the value was used, and how that late-stage c-word has warped perception of the gen pop with such earnestness that your cynicism might instinctively kick in. The fix to this is to focus not only on Blockhead’s futuristic beats but the stray lines that you catch along the way; “Life’s not a bitch”; “We may not hate our jobs, but we hate jobs in general”; “I knew what I wanted and did it ‘til it was done” and note how truthful the hope and rhetorical logos feels. 4.2/5
Silk Sonic – An Evening With Silk Sonic [Afterman/Atlantic 2021]
31:19 with two retro-pastiche lovers is quite the evening ain’t it? Since tempering his mostly annoying tendency to swing for the fences as broadly as possible Mars has become more tolerable and .Paak needs those hooks to make his own shit-eating-grin strain of sound work here. That said, any time spent deeply thinking about its place in pop history is wasted, it’s a few funny jokers switching personae from yearners to dickheads to cocksurers, to “sexmasters” all at surface level for very real but very surface value pleasures. Her-ku-leez? Please. 3.8/5
The Front Bottoms – The Front Bottoms [Bar None 2011]
Avoiding this band for as long as I did says a few things. The emo/pop-punk/folk-punk scene that the Northeast corridor organically grew in the early 10’s could be categorized as a foil to the showboating, derivative, and usually annoying Warped Tour bands peddling the god-awful fashion of the time even as they shared the stage with them. They were a group of mostly white mostly men coming together to stare their problems in the face whether working class urban/suburban anxiety (The Menzingers/The Wonder Years), depression (Sorority Noise), or attempting self-actualization through bohemia-communal influences (The World is a Beautiful Place). This of course leaves out the two key others who were part of what we should term the Mount Rushmore of the fourth wave: The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball. Whereas Aforementioned Bands had specific cruxes to ground themselves, these two reeked of white privilege when they played their guitars and whined about their girl problems, which is why it took me so long to come around to them. MoBo having been liars and yuk-yuk-yukers in the vein of the Beastie Boys doesn’t totally make up for the shit eating “yea-but-I’m-smarter-than-your-boyfriend” vibe they give off even on their best and most adult record that I looked at on this website’s first post.
Brian Sella, Mat Uychich, & Co. however earn the benefit of the doubt by being more histrionic and vulnerable as entertainment for entertainment’s sake – which makes them smarter too. The acoustic guitar and drum boys hail from Bergen County NJ which if you’re from Jersey will make you press your skepticism button hard, but don’t. Hold off on it so that the musical theater delivery of Sella’s nasal tenor can wash over and the stories he crafts can reveal themselves to be more literary and insightful than their repetitive song structures would make them seem. Take note of how the intro to the penultimate track starts: “My head has thoughts/What a ridiculous place to start/She said, “Well how about my chest? Or more specifically, my heart?” which, right, is probably about a talk with a girl but is also about the process of Front Bottoms song writing as well. Or the way the junkie girl on the outset colloquially notes with Craig Finn-like clarity that getting fucked up is “kinda all I got” before muttering “it’s also all I need”. The full litany of emotional rollercoastering includes; the hope of “Maps”; the anxiety of “Swimming Pool”; daddy issues followed by considerations of parricide; the questions of were those really fireworks he picked up in PA(?), and did he really do steroids to impress someone(?); all of which in the mere act of making a listener question their validity makes this collection of songs written by a few 20-somethings more intriguing than anyone would think. I like them, and I would recommend them to those with an ear for the kind of yearning that post undergrads get to feel if they have the means. 4.3/5
Cosmic Hero 