Wednesday – Rat Saw God [Dead Oceans 2023]
Initially I’d almost written it off completely as a Difficult Listen, a minus considering how appealing the “country + shoegaze” descriptor really is since everyone seems to be ‘gazing and mashing up with disparate sounds. Good shoegaze isn’t just a blast of atonal powerchords, there’s riffs and hooks and if it’s not pleasantly grinding like a pestle and mortar then it takes you somewhere instead. On a closer listen I realize that skipping the first two tracks and starting after whatever the fuck histrionics are going on on “Bull Believer” there’s something there – maybe. Karly Hartzman’s voice is constantly cracking and barely able to hold a tune, but her poetry is David Lynch’s innocence-is-a-lie contention meets any southern gothic from the last 100 years. Places that seem safe are fronts of murderous intent, children who should be studying are getting people pregnant, America’s in decline (duh), all backed by guitars trained in the jet engine school of emoting. Fans of it will probably be gluttons for punishment, in these days of micro marketing via touring touring touring and playing to the indie rock publications I can’t be convinced that I love it. It makes me like Blue Rev so much more that maybe I underrated it. 3.3/5
De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising [Tommy Boy 1989]
Now that it finally hit streaming, anyone can take a dip into this ostensibly suburban pre-Chronic summer day on the Long Island Sound where just being mildly more consciously Afro-centric was a radical stance to take. And indeed it’s true, compared to its revolutionary brother It Takes a Nation of Millions and its shit talking cousin Paul’s Boutique De La’s plunderphonics are warmer and more easy going. Joy as an act of resistance during those Reagan-Bush years wasn’t easy in retrospect but to the Native Tongues youths who came of age around then, they hadn’t known anything else politically. The group itself is Posdnuos, Trugoy, and Mase, friends from high school in Amityville who have plenty of in-jokes and slang that anyone can figure out given a moment or two. The architect of the record though is Prince Paul, who invented hip-hop skits are they’re known today, here a series of gameshow contestants that haven’t a clue and don’t always hit. As for the songs themselves, the quality outweighs the filler, though there is filler, and the drum machine under “Jenifa” is annoying. Their friends Q-Tip and Jungle Brothers feature as do their heroes La Guardia and Otis, albeit anonymously to keep the focus on the rhyming that straddled the golden age and modern eras of what was at the time just called “rap music”. It isn’t lost on anyone though, and nor should it be, that had their label and sample clearances not been held up for some 15 years Trugoy, who passed at a mere 54 years old a mere 19 days before it dropped, would’ve been able to reap some monetary benefit. 4.2/5
Caroline Polachek – Desire I Want to Turn Into You [Sony Music/The Orchard 2023]
“Sexing sonnets under the table” she says. How else would you know she’s college educated and horny? 3.0/5
Paramore – This is Why [Atlantic 2023]
Their shift from emo renegades to post-punk troubadours having been completed last time around, Hayley Williams shifts to a leftist perspective she’s never articulated so clearly lyrically. If you’ll recall she spent a decent amount of the last half decade sorting through femininity and toxicity CBT style on two solo outputs. Altruism aside, the aspirations of these 10 songs don’t reach for anything as profound or urgent as the rest of their discography. Is “War/A war/A war/On the far side/ On the other side of the planet” supposed to convey how necessary the news is but how exhausting the 24-hour news cycle is? Let’s give it another half a decade I guess. 2.6/5
Parannoul – After the Magic [POCLANOS 2023]
Brighter in sound and subject matter, the person behind the band excels at impressing once or twice before becoming exhausting. 3.1/5
Boygenius – the record [Interscope 2023]
Two thirds Southern Christians and one third So-Cal suburb, antifascists to the core, each of these queer white women has solo careers that range in pop culture from good to Voice of a Generation and for me run from meh to impressive. Thankfully, splendidly, most of all gratifyingly, their whole is more than the sum of their parts. While aurally entire songs can be identified with one of the three, there is a tempering of worst impulse tendencies that removes the seventh inning slog of their solo output – Baker’s self-loathing is kept in check from overwhelming, Bridgers retains dreams but leaves frustrating metaphor to the side, and Dacus starts hitting at universal subjects with such specific clarity it’s like she’s going to achieve Zen sooner than the rest of us who don’t follow astrology. Simply the way that they trade off harmonies like MCs passing a mic proves compelling. Whole essays can and will be written about it by folk much more educated than I as if it was one of the novels these literary musketeers love so much themselves; themes of female friendship and love; how queerness inherently breaks down any line between the platonic and the romantic kinds; the various functions of cars; anxiety in the age of post-truth. And because of the qualities of unembellished melody and intelligent lyricism set to moderate tempos they’ll be growers not show-ers, sneaking up until there’s a sense of comfort – then joy. 4.6/5
Sleater Kinney – The Hot Rock [Kill Rock Stars 1999]
Every punk band has their transition, every one worth their salt anyway. Eventually the white-hot rage of youth gives way to understandings of love and life and if there’s something real in the synergy of the band itself you retain passion and thematic clarity with a newfound aural sense that gatekeepers and chauvinists would’ve described as “accessibility” up until recently. There’s still plenty of power chords, and Corin Tucker’s hell-hath-no-fury vibrato remains an anchor, but now that functionality is grounded in textures and riffs that consist of singular notes instead of shredding. A quietness of uncertainty has replaced the urgency that propelled them until now, and whether Carrie Brownstein’s monotone or Tucker’s raw power it’s clear that their lyrics might be interlocuters, but they aren’t in conversation with one another directly. They talk past each other, mourning separately the idea of self-actualization being easier with independence. 4.0/5
Cosmic Hero 