Home is Where – I Became Birds [Father/Daughter Records 2021]
Though they allegedly bristle at comparisons to The Hotelier (but not their hero Jeff Mangum) it’d be almost impossible to ignore the spiritual influences in 25-year-old frontperson Brandon MacDonald’s finished product. Impressionistic writing, a voice like a horn, and a sound that toggles between the former’s emo laments and the latter’s acoustic strum + brass kind of make it a foregone conclusion, no? MacDonald’s focus on the intersection of growing up as a closeted trans woman (she/they) in Bible Belt Florida is given shape by her capable bandmates who come from the classic tension and release school of dopamine hits. As a whole these six songs in 18:46 prove compellingly substantive, moreso than I expected in this day-in-age from the way the guitars crash in at the outset to the harmonica being involved at all to calls that are both so full of hope and rage that “cops are flammable if you try” and “I became birds”. They’re all such simple and derivative effects that you’d think it should sound complacent. It doesn’t. Trust me. 4.1/5
Home is Where – The Whaler [Wax Bodega 2023]
Her home state having only grown more dangerous for her very existence it’s a wonder that it barely took Brandon MacDonald & Co two years to come out (ba-dum tss) with another collection of tunes, now approximately double the time and track length. Good thing she moved. That sense of defeat pervades every minute of this song cycle from rage to exhaustion, there’s a numbness to the calamitous violence of everyday USA. Levity comes and goes in the midst of such absurdity, an “aw shit” that sounds genuine, being “armed to the dentures” or the pitch-black joke at the center when after feeling a series of world shifting tragedies akin to the towers coming down, everyone just goes back to what they were doing the next day. “Crazy about that mass shooting!” “So true, bestie!” and then they drank their $12 coffees. MacDonald paints a fractured and fraught picture in her short stories, but it’d be incorrect to characterize the sum as defeatist or nihilistic, after all she’s here and she’s mad because it should be better. Hopefully she keeps rocking while she’s at it. 4.2/5
Sleater-Kinney – All Hands on the Bad One [Kill Rock Stars 2000]
A ramshackle comp, a stronger statement, a reinforcement of purpose, and a crisis of faith are all the facets that preceded this one. And wouldn’t you know, like a breakthrough in talk therapy, a weight has been lifted. With an almost Jonathan Swift-ian sardonicism they discover their senses of humor amongst the more typical fare of oppression and sexism, implementing camp and vulnerability with a measure that isn’t exactly 50-50 but has enough temerity to raise an eyebrow in reassurance. From riot grrls to pop punks, who still show their Gen X frame of mind by referencing “Rock n’ Roll” before it became a cringe phrase to even speak, they’ve learned that melody is their ally in the war against people like the guy on “Milkshake n’ Honey”. 3.7/5
Jay-Z – The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse [Def Jam/Roc-a-Fella 2002]
The bling era at the height of its power and bloat. 3.3/5
Drive-by Truckers – Brighter Than Creation’s Dark [New West 2008]
Christgau was convinced it was their greatest record when it was released, to the point the normally shrewd critic wrote TWO glowing hosannas in separate publications. And Pitchfork, no bastion of goodwill for anything outside of cosmopolitan guitar revivalism at the time gave them an 8.2. The scene is at the tail end of the Bush II years, two wars having stagnated, New Orleans still drying off, and an economic collapse was bearing down so vastly that the austerity it inspired is still crushing those which it claims to help. All of this captured by Hood and Cooley in their character study’s yin-yang perspectives while Shoanna Tucker replaces her recently fired husband as the third wheel between them. The music having to recover from their overblown last record, they shift subtly but noticeably from the Skynyrd inspired riffs of the past to a barroom countrified sound that you can almost hear bowling pins and pitchers of beer on in the background. From the acoustic chords + piano + banjo of the beginning to the washy guitars + keyboards of the one before the denouement, all the playing is stronger and more hopeful despite the working-class exasperation it sympathizes with. It’s odd to apply the word “maturity” to men and women in their mid-40s who have been working like this most of their lives, but what other word is there for folk who can express the tenuous grasp average people barely have on their own lives with such forthrightness and clarity without falling into over earnestness or parody? For everyone who dies on this record there’s another who is trying to deal with too much booze ruining the moment or their life. Which is funny, and sad, and real. 4.5/5
Gil Scott Heron & Jamie xx – We’re New Here [XL 2011]
A poet with a bad voice whose crack addiction could be seen as a coping mechanism for all the rage he held against a white supremacist system he never changed comes together with a 22-year-old dubstep fan who at the time was the quietest member of a quiet guitar pop band. The mission was for Jamie xx and Gil Scott-Heron to work together to remix the latter’s Richard Russell coaxed record I’m New Here, instead what we get is a prismatic view of the last thoughts of a man who died before it even came out. As a goodbye it functions succinctly, treating Scott-Heron’s voice respectfully by putting it higher in the mix and backing it with electro-beats and outside samples that feel thoughtful even as they induce a groove on this disintegration of consciousness. 4.0/5
The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein [4AD 2023]
Matt Berninger overcomes writer’s block by realizing that he needs to give more of himself to his wife. Wish it didn’t sound so much like the arena rock they’ve been avoiding though. 3.4/5
A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory [Jive 1991]
Conceptually it’s a celebration of themselves and a fuck you to a music industry that they feel doesn’t treat them with the respect they deserve and they’re probably right. Philosophical man Q-Tip tackles the craft of rhyming itself, women, the nature of the physical, and his history with world class shit talker Phife Dawg finally making his mark as someone worthy of the bebop + hardcore beats that Ali Shaheed Muhammad and The Abstract put together. As Afrocentric living in a “Zulu nation” that Afrika Bambaataa envisioned it’s at times both juvenile in its humor and treatment of women while being progressive about the way to move a community forward through a music they can call their own and be proud of. Even now that it’s a classic that’s influences thousands, “Buggin’ Out” sounds like something looking to the future in sound and spirit. 4.3/5
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps [Backwoodz/Fat Possum 2023]
“Every victory pyrrhic” is probably the best way to relate the frustrations he’s feeling on this travel concept record which both starts and ends in New York whilst traveling all over in between. Money is never enough, scraps happen, and the weed can’t quell the racing thoughts. Within the oddball pocket of NY rap that’s become jazzier and more insular over the last decade the faceless Woods has always been a more accessible godfather to the twentysomethings creating lyrical mazes so dense they get lost in them as much as the kush smoke. Now on his second full collab with beat maker Segal the sound doubles down on an anxious contemplative pallet splitting the difference between Blade Runner and Soul. Through the brass and stomps are such observations as “my taxes pay police brutality settlements” and such jokes as “delivery fee is oof” in between monotone-enthusiastic mentions of food from every possible angle painting Woods’ perspective as the poet wanderer longing to return home – that’s a heady tension. 4.0/5
Wu Tang Clan – Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) [BMG/RCA/Loud 1993]
My studies in classicism having taken me further back for reference, I figured I’d better give this combination axiom/shibboleth a spin and see what awaits – and perfection it ain’t. A masterpiece? Definitely. Any of dozens of write ups will mention RZA and his master plan to make it big in the rap world of the 90s using a bunch of energetic masculine goofballs from Staten Island by combining his dark and gritty beats with their free associative rhymes. Their greatest coup in a music industry that had too much money and time was to get everyone signed individually to different labels as solos and as a group. Really, these guys haven’t the narrative focus that much of their later work would demonstrate in spades despite how iconic the song titles and small quips have become, but that’s probably because they’re all under 25. Within, Method Man and GZA have their solo breakouts for sure, ODB is an insane seesaw of mush mouthed rhymes who seems like he’ll flow off the page, and Ghostface and Raekwon the Chef prototype their lamenting of death so close to their money with zeal. As cinema and as an explicit business plan it’s a bold way to showcase a portfolio and a master class of what would soon be termed hustle culture. 4.7/5
The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die [Bad Boy 1994]
The simple “limelight/rhyme tight” internal couplet from “Juicy”s autobiography is one of hundreds of reasons that Christopher Wallace’s myth is so large, no other rappers were articulating with rhythms, cadence, and confidence so daring and incredible, all while he was under 21. And the song remains the only respite from the anxiety and depression he and Diddy craft so cinematically from his birth until suicide takes him away. But that’s partly persona, Wallace had always intended to live and eventually shift toward the moguldom his protégé and producer each ended up taking over after his murder. The real details are the stress he felt on every block due to his day job in Raleigh as a narcotics pusher and how childish his sense of humor could be before shifting to darkness – “You look so good I’ll suck on your daddy’s dick”, anyone? That said, women are either sex objects to be passed around or doing him wrong unless they’re his mother or daughter whose lives he claims to be making all this blood money for. His greatest strength besides the rhymes is the way he can convince his audience that he’s just a crook filled with regrets, he gains sympathy due to his struggle and takes himself away so realistically at the end that it inspires a hope that at least he achieved some peace as a consolation prize. Probably the greatest to ever do it. 5/5
Cosmic Hero 