Sleater-Kinney – Call The Doctor [Chainsaw 1996]
Riff kweens, truly. But also, friends and lovers. Sometimes when youthful desperation sounds this loud there’s a chance it gets written off as pure histrionics, but I think the clear intelligence of the two songwriters tempers some of the callowness associated with such drama. For explosions, please turn your attention to Corin Tucker’s takedown of heteronormative society on the title track; for the dreamers there’s Carrie Brownstein’s “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone” where she wants to be not just Joey (fast, vulnerable, sensitive) but our Thurston Moore (strong, steady, powerful) too. 4.3/5
Dream Unending – Song of Salvation [20 Buck Spin 2022]
The problem I’ve always had with extreme metal bands is that they purport to use its inaccessibility as a form of avant-garde that usually turns out instead to be a group of edgelords. This is of course to say nothing of the various groups of white supremacists who enjoy trying to convert loners looking for community in the scene. Sure, jagged guitars, tinnitus, double kick drums, and growled/screamed vocals have something to say and can say it quite well when done with aplomb and even grace. But metalheads have diverged from the soul of its blue’s-based history to focus more on technics overall, speed and crunch mostly. From Pitchfork I read that this 5 song progfest was going to be more melodic in a dream pop sense which I supposed it is when you listen around the usual shredding and posturing. Less of a journey and more of an attempt to soften. 2.1/5
Danny Brown – Old [Fool’s Gold 2013]
If his bars didn’t emphasize how much of a classicist he really is then take note, yung listener, of how Brown divides this fantastically complicated song cycle into the reflective Side A and the drugged out Side B. ‘Slike he’s still in the vinyl days despite being a teenager (and thus forming strong musical bonds) firmly in the 90s, but the results seem to be art. In the era when Kendrick was still just a wunderkind who snot-nosedly called out every other up-and-comer except Brown, an argument could be made for this similar tale of the inner city’s effective collapse to almost go tit-for-tat with good kid M.A.A.D city. The elements are all here; trauma, drugs, women, economics, hardness (street), hardness (dick), family ties. Only this has the capacity to feel more sinister because of Brown’s constant polar swings between pensive and trashed, especially at night. Save for a trip to get bread and Brown’s mother twisting hair, the nocturnalness itself is something to behold – whether it’s the incandescents lighting a crack-house kitchen or the LEDs in a club, there’s no natural light to feel and therefore everything is given a cloak of unreality where bad things are bound to happen. It’s noir for the age of molly, a method of self-preservation that reveals itself to be just as much a document of tragedy as an entertaining bit of commerce both made by and starring a flawed, chemical dependent Man of Letters we can only wish the best for. 4.5/5
Special Interest – Endure [Rough Trade 2022]
Carnal, rageful, political, what’s not to like about these NOLA misfits? Nothing if that’s what you’re into, and curiously even though it’s a quick summation of my own interests I find them only halfway getting my attention at any time. This, I think, is because they’re only halfway reaching towards any kind of conclusions and at times can stray into rumination or pontification for its own sake instead of making an argument. Case in point: a The Wire-esque character study finale compellingly introduces folk around the state, a politically amelodic hook jars the listener in a dissonant sense that rings reflective of daily life under the U S of A and then after a friend’s Cajun or Creole poem comes, what, a plea to God out of leftfield after almost 40 minutes of secular frustration and irony? There’s a recovery though not to worry – in the wrap up invocation “The end of the world is just a destination”. 3.7/5
Arctic Monkeys – The Car [Domino 2022]
There’s nothing wrong with trading your electric guitars in for strings and a lounge singer dress-up with a Jesus complex but don’t expect the kitschy muzak to be seen as revelatory when it isn’t trashy or campy (or catchy) enough. 2.7/5
Drive By Truckers – Decoration Day [New West 2003]
The best thing about their follow up to Southern Rock Opera is without a doubt the addition of young Jason Isbell, whose two key cuts reflect not just a kind of poignancy but help refine the Driver’s own aesthetic as storytellers and mythmakers first and foremost. Tales of incest, drunken love, predatory bankers, and abandonment at the alter are compelling enough and they’re all in the first half wrapped in deceptively simple arrangements that could convince most novices “hey I could do that”. No you can’t. Or maybe you can, but you didn’t. Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley along with the neophyte Isbell have a gift for sonics that provides warmth even when the subject matter is at its darkest, which doesn’t mean good, mind you. Everyone knows a little confidence and a smile is how you get swindled in the mythic South whose aether they reach into for subject matter. 4.2/5
SZA – SOS [Top Dawg Entertainment/RCA 2022]
What’s changed isn’t Solana Rowe’s subject matter insomuch as the very framework by which she presents this 23-track song cycle compared to her 14-track last one. Ctrl SZA was an avatar, the epitome of what Aisha Harris of NPR once termed the Messy Black Girl archetype, newly formalized by Issa Rae’s HBO dramedy Insecure and utilized by anyone identifying with any of the term’s 3 facets, individually or intersectionaly, to take solace in how “not together” their own life was. This was in no small part because her frame of reference was closer to her roots – it was more ground level; more people could empathize. Even if she did date Drake back in the day (small world, right?), she sang about her mom, sex, her anxiety, sex, men in general being shitty, sex, ennui as a fact of life, and sex(!). Each one a marker of a life still yet-to-fully solidify and therefore more universal even in its specificity of her personal experience. All the while she sprinkled in moments of vulnerability so relatable that even the people out there who scoff at depression songs could find themselves reflected right back at themselves.
SOS SZA on the other hand is different, she’s got our favorite rapper blocked and our favorite athlete begging for a text back (hopefully Hobo Johnson and John Cena get back on her good side). With money and fame having granted access to places and situations less relatable to the everyperson that stans her she’s no longer an avatar to identify with but a woman to root for. With regard to the record itself, a boon for whoever was waiting hat in hand for every morsel she’s dropped between then and now, I think it’s fair to say she succeeds on these new “sensitive bad-bitch” terms. Though there is plenty of overproduction and filler, about a third of the track list is unnecessary, the aggression and pettiness, not to mention the sexual obsession, is clearly a way to cover for the loss or losses of important people (mostly men) in her life, which is why as fun as it is “F2F” rings hollow and “Nobody Gets Me” rings true. I admire Ctrl a lot and am curious to see where SZA goes from here, but what these songs need is more development; why is it that Don Tolliver and Travis Scott mail it in and it’s ODB’s posthumous feature that shines so brightly? Why is it that it feels like there isn’t more maturity? Stuck somewhere between cascading beauty and just getting off the couch is probably why. 3.6/5
Taylor Swift – Midnights (3AM edition) [Republic 2022]
Having critically redeemed herself after back-to-back guitar + piano releases while her once arch-rival has moved from crazy to evil, Taylor Swift now stands as the moment’s consummate superstar, able to sell more hard copies than Adele and more streams than Drake. This has inspired any number of think-pieces which always seem to leave out that her commercial base has grown not because she’s attracting more fans (though she is) but because the Swiftlings she converted when they were in elementary school now have access to disposable income and careers of their own. And so on this lushly textured late night rumination comes mostly stories and posturing that The Dedicated have heard before; “I’m the villain (but not really)”; “New York tryst”; “Men only want me to be submissive”; *cringe one*;“jk I actually love my long term partner”; and most interestingly “I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care” lightly coddled with new flourishes like autotune and 808s. With 7 supplemental tracks released all of 3 hours after the ‘canon’ version it’s worth noting that most are padding on the mustard and burgundy aura Swift-the-careerist evokes save maybe for the miscarriage one and the John Mayer one. Where she goes after her massive stadium tour, who knows. 4.0/5
Jay-Z – Vol 2. Hard Knock Life [Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam 1998]
The funk is funkier and his gangsta posturing is getting even more explicit, it’s not just Carlito’s Way referenced now, a whole scene from Goodfellas is bitten off after the end one of the more enjoyable odes to money, power, and women, though he’d never use such dignified terms. I’d say that Shawn Carter was getting arrogant with his Annie flex but he keeps backing it up with charisma and rhyming ability. I think the other thing worth noting about this trilogy post Reasonable Doubt is the producers (DJ Premier, Swizz Beatz, Timbaland) all on their way toward canonization and the features speaking to a particular era of bygone hip-hop. In the midst of it’s transformation from commercial music to commercialized culture such names as Jermaine Dupri, Foxy Brown, Memphis Bleek, and DMX had a momentum around them that made them seem like they could really change things. And yet, and yet, and yet, time somehow got away. 3.9/5
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg [4AD 2021]
It’s really hard to pin down what makes this London post-punk foursome work so well outside of it just sounds good. The instrumentalists having been brothers-in-arms previously across a slew of bands, they added their poet friend Florence Shaw onto vocals, but she doesn’t sing because she can’t. Instead her almost spoken word free verse takes snippets of observations and conversation and spits them back out in a cohesive way. A collage style lyricism that isn’t new but is simply done well. Some favorites: “A woman in aviators firing a bazooka”; “An emo dead stuff collector”: “Every day he’s a dick/Strong one/Great one”. 4.2/5
Dry Cleaning – Stumpwork [4AD 2022]
A touch slower than the first one, more brass/quieter distortion probably because it’s been less than 18 months. Such topics include going to see some otters at an aquarium, notes on sexting, Gary Ashbeeee, and violence. Tuneful but meretricious. 3.7/5
Cosmic Hero 