Beyonce – Renaissance [Parkwood/Columbia 2022]
She’s never been so unrelentingly sultry on a song-by-song basis like this, weaponizing an appeal that she was already a veteran of utilizing by the time she became a mother. After achieving creative freedom at the turn of the last decade every record since has been artier and more visceral. Who needs the archaic term “music videos”? They’re “visuals” now. Conceptualizing her pivot to the dance floor as a distillation of the last 50 or so years of queer Black music, most of it American, some not, makes this a work of both sociology (development and structure) and anthropology (sociocultural and linguistic) from a research perspective alone. And for credibility she works with experienced icons and producers that you can look up yourself since there are too many to name, be in awe at the length of their discographies. Even more relevant is the subject matter’s clear thesis of ebullience on top with a righteous political anger undercurrent in the double consciousness tradition that she knows she happens to encapsulate as de-facto Black royalty. Also note that despite it seeming logical that your brain should be turned off due to the clear and always ass-shaking physicality of this song cycle that her lyrics are so pointed it’s not just impossible to do so, it’d be disrespectful to try. 5/5
Jason Isbell – Southeastern [Southeastern 2013]
Six years, four records, and one marriage removed from his time as the wunderkind in Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell makes his sobriety album. It’s tempered and midtempo and thoroughly well written but not much fun at all, even on the songs where he’s getting blitzed out of his mind because they’re mostly cautionary tales. His voice is a kind of boyish but weary low tenor with an eternal rasp to it no matter how loud he sings that my Swiftie bunkmate who loves musical theater tells me is damn near impossible to maintain. So he’s a gift, maybe even a mensch – being a Southern Liberal is also something that’s liable to endear me to him and his Spotify numbers suggest that while he remains low key to the rock and hip-hop audiences mostly catered to in music journals, he has a devoted fanbase of Americana enthusiasts who like to root for an underdog. After all a redemption arc is key to Southern identity. 4.1/5
Steve Lacey – Gemini Rights [RCA Records/L-M Records 2022]
If there’s a concept here it’s as shallow as “love is hard to find for anyone”. Richly produced and made by an industry veteran even though he’s only 25, I have a sinking feeling that a certain brand of semi-misogynistic listeners who thinks that Igor and Die Lit are world beating masterpieces will claim this one too. Which is a shame because more than anything it’s cute, a view from being angsty about love instead of doleful. 3.5/5
Sleater Kinney – Sleater Kinney [Chainsaw Record 1995]
Queer women from a slew of separate bands in the riot grrrl scene based around Olympia WA’s Evergreen Sate College come together to vitriolically reject The Patriarchy and the dicks attached to the shmucks who adhere to it. Corin Tucker is the Kathleen Hannah affected wailer and Carrie Brownstein is the one who goes from sinister muttering to a scream. Both are incredible songwriters for only being early 20-somethings, utilizing masculinely aggro guitar sounds to get their rage across Lora MacFarlane’s competent drumming with texture and aplomb. What I can’t get over, besides how dark it is, is how this could’ve been a one off and we’d be all the worse off for it. The three tracks ending with “Song” in their title tells me that there wasn’t a lot of thought given to concept, this was just getting something off their chests. Such focus and such a reputation that they have now makes me wonder, how much better does it really get? Because if this is the floor, there mustn’t even be a ceiling. 4.0/5
The Chats – Get Fucked [Bargain Bin 2022]
Loud, fast, funny Aussies speak with so much slang that you need Google translate. Good thing they’re mad at gentrification and parliament. 3.6/5
Tyler Childers – Purgatory [Hickman Holler 2017]
Just when you thought that the geographical flattening and cross pollination that the Internet caused killed off The Hyper Regional Singer-Songwriter here comes a young good ol’ boy from Eastern Kentucky whose accent and bluegrass roots make him extremely affable (and highly listenable). If you couldn’t tell from the title, it’s about being stuck where you are, torn between how fun the sinning is and how ecclesiastically redeeming the love of a good woman can be though I don’t think anyone sees Childers converting anytime soon. 4.3/5
Danny Brown – XXX [Fool’s Gold 2011]
Detroit’s own Danny Brown is a man of contradictions to the point that he has two voices; the high pitched squeaky one that will be your Rorschach test, either you love it or hate it, or his deeper almost baritone that he uses to conjure “hard” as an aesthetic sometimes for laughs, sometimes not. The persona he presents is an interesting one; a mentally ill goofball junkie whose background as an ex-dealer, ex-con, and skinny jean wearing alt/goth gives his clearly classicist ethos an outsider status that shouldn’t be this accessible. Basically he’s a fucking weirdo. But he’s got such charm and such bars it’s impossible to deny. One cunnilingus obsessed verse manages “calling me yo papa/singing ‘La La Bamba’/bongos in samba/on that ganja” rhymes which as both cultural signifiers and pop cultural references are so intelligent you almost forget he’s ravishing some lucky woman. Then when he lets his darkness out via fears of being a hereditary addict or describing how many fields are around his house post de-industrialization you realize he’s probably right to have been so fucking stressed in the whole of his twenties. 4.3/5
DJ Shadow – Endtroducing… [Mo’ Wax 1996]
The first ever hip-hop album made entirely out of samples seems more trip-hop in its alternating warm and cold ambiance as the narrative travels through its creator’s psyche than the love letter to the drums most critics of the time paint it to be. The feat is almost wholly technical; that someone used technology to create something piece by piece from other creators works, finding sounds that lined up with the right BPM or a melodic line that was in the same key as the rest of a composition so that it cohered. But not just that, it sounds deep, there’s personality and dare we even say it…soul? Such demonstrations/arguments/theses of soul + tech have been in literature, movies, and whatever else pop culture totems you can find littered in human history since at least Frankenstein. But in the 90’s there was a renewed sentiment of it amongst a culture that had such clear blends between the rockers & the hip hoppers and the electronica musicians. To not get too off topic I’ll refrain from naming any names, just feel free to google the The Matrix soundtrack and follow the rabbit hole from there. Shadow on the one hand has made something incredibly of the moment in doing this blend, but he actually has a sense of humor about it even in the throes of existential pontification. Which, even if it’s marginal makes it smarter. 4.3/5
The Avalanches – Wildflower [Modular Recording 2016]
Aussie sound collage-ists make an evocation of a childhood summer afternoon that spends way too much time on its least interesting ideas. 3.7/5
Drive-By Truckers – Southern Rock Opera [UMG Recordings 2001]
On their third LP they finally achieved some semblance of mainstream attention if not success. The raspy voiced bandleader is Patterson Hood who with his more handsome voiced co-pilot Mike Cooley (and on two tracks, yowler Rob Malone) architects a lamentation first and foremost for Lynyrd Skynyrd instead of whatever vague “protagonist” they think they’re carrying along and Northern Alabama second rather than The South as a whole. The South, as Hood and Cooley both know, is a place of myth and glorification; Lost Cause aside, take note how just after detailing the horrific car crash at the outset that the omniscient and matter-of-fact description follows with “But the next day…”. And they know the best way to make these tales feel even truer is with real chunky riffs to help them go down easy. Even the ones about Southern duality and George Wallace are enough to complicate the generalized views that little ol’ Yankee me has about the region, and this was made pre-9/11 before racial politics had reentered the national dialogue so fervently. I think at 91 minutes it’s too long but that there’s so much pleasure and literacy that however much of it is half-truths it deserves to be seen as a remarkable ode to an identity too fraught to exist anywhere else but here. 4.4/5
Jay-Z – In My Lifetime, Vol 1. [Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam 1997]
He likes jokes, he’s charismatic, he’s dangerous, he’s got bars, he’s got friends, he’s loose, he’s unfocused as he attempts to imbued hip-hop with capitalism. 3.8/5
Cosmic Hero 