Previous industries – Service Merchandise [Merge 2024]
In the age of Divorced Dad Rock’s return why not add Divorced Dad Rap too? Against a production backdrop of wheezy cold sweat loops the cast is three Chicagoans who’ve known each other for decades and who’ve both hit 40 and moved to the City of Angels in the last few years; Open Mike Eagle, Still Rift, and Video Dave. All of whom – after introductions at the outset – reveal themselves to be male geeks by interest (Transformers, anime, comics, TV shows) and classicists by nature, focusing on measured calm-to-uptempo bars instead of hooks. As all three MCs share mic time and rhyme skill it should also become clear just how alternative they really are, a rap group of middle-aged men freshly formed and released on Merge? No wonder one of them pontificates correctly that “indie rappers deserve government subsidies” but don’t worry too much, another throws in “I’m kinda lyin’ sayin’ music ain’t payin’ no bills”. And that’s their charm, right? They won’t ever be millionaires, but they can pay their rent so they’re angsty but not bitter with plenty of levity because what else can you do about it besides be clear eyed, drink whiskey, and commiserate? Try to get it together before the big one I guess. Some examples: Open Mike: “His enemies tried to hem him up/They shut it down like CNN+” or how about “Dry January/Sippin’ on some coffee so I can feel something” Still Rift “I oil the squeaky wheels so hopefully they shut up” Video Dave: “I say I’ll see you next time, I hope there is a next time” and “I asked the doctor fix my shoulder, pain came right back” 4.0/5
The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree [4AD 2005]
A domestic horror story of child abuse in southern California that John Darnielle had to live through until his step-father actually died. It’s most definitely a comfort for people who have either lived through similar violence or are currently living through it – no matter how overrated and misused I think “This Year” is. But like a thought process during tough therapy it’s labored and slightly disjointed, the seams in the songs are visible in a way that threatens to pull the listener out every once in a while. 3.5/5
Drive-By Truckers – The Unraveling [ATO 2020]
The first half of their two-parter documenting Trump’s first reign is less vital and urgent than the one they released at the end of the Obama era though it sounds best when stripped down to acoustics. Topics are; kids in cages, the uselessness of thoughts and prayers; the opioid epidemic; and white supremacy logic fueling the rise of incels. It’s a lot of Occupy Democrats talking points, though because it’s the Truckers there’s groove and well-reasoned insight in their short stories and arguments because they’re thinkers as much as drinkers. Some points against them though are that Hood dominates this round – there’s 7 of his songs to Cooley’s 2 – and the verse “Are we so divided that we can’t at least agree/This ain’t the country that our granddads fought for us to be?”. The short answer is yes we are. The fact that the same guy who wrote about the duality of “the Southern Thing” even had to ask the question suggests a naivete that liberals born before 1980 seem to have for some reason in this age of cynicism. The Clinton-era 90’s are over people, turn off MSNBC and realize that the cruelty is the point, as it’s always been. 3.5/5
Drive-By Truckers – The New OK [ATO 2020]
The second half is more resigned in tone because it was recorded and compiled during Quarantine from demos and outtakes they’d already written but now had to finish via email. It’s a bit like a mixtape really – that’s why their bassist has lead vocals on two of them – and musically it’s lighter on its feet even if the subject matter and political analysis are still heavily weighing life under a dying empire. Despite the distance there’s a reincorporation of groove in their guitars, a fresh coat of horns, and vocal tricks that hadn’t ever used before; gang vocals, gospel backing, a bluegrass style echo. They know their people and their aesthetic so might as well get as big a bar as possible to sing along, right? Since Hood’s the anxious one he dominates six of the nine while Cooley gets one, and his is an incisive look at Sarah Palin’s way paving post truth politics leading to Trump itself. Choice quotes: “The unravelin’ is happenin’”, “I’d like to tell you there’ll be better days/But optimism’s runnin’ low today”, “What’s a girl gotta do to get a little bit of credit in a place like this”. 3.8/5
Kendrick Lamar – Untitled Unmastered [Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope 2016]
Since it’s outtakes of his most important album it’s no surprise that they’re well written, avant-garde and evocative of the kinds of contradictions both he and his straw men subjects inhabit. But it’s really more of a snack than a meal right? 4.0/5
SZA – LANA [Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope 2024]
Tacking her last album onto this new one shows just how confused she is. “Ignore that and focus on the 15 new tracks” some might say, and I did. But even though I may just be Old Man Yells at Clouds-ing it, we should keep in mind that my time and yours is worth something despite music’s ultra-commodification into ~vibe~ setting “content”. Her voice containing its usual technique of ethereal percussiveness and melodic wisdom Solana Rowe delivers – what else – the horned-up messiness of a depressive beset by an ennui influenced need to self-preserve and self-actualize, crisply, clearly, and in tableau. 3.7/5
(“Scorsese Baby Daddy”, “30 for 30”, “Saturn”)
JPEGMAFIA – All My Heroes Are Cornballs [EQT 2019]
(“Free the Frail”, “Grimy Waifu”) 3.6/5
Touche Amore – Spiral in a Straight Line [Rise 2024]
Still holding it together and still coasting off of a good will that I’m not sure they could ever really squander at this point. Even though they’re all starting to hit 40 everyone plays and screams as the consummate professionals they are about anxieties much more shallow than the battles with mortality (legacy) and mortality (mom’s cancer) they created a decade ago. But as some of the last few dudes standing from that halcyon fourth wave of emo, I’m glad they’re still working, if only to show the youngsters another way to get it done. 3.6/5
(“Hal Ashby”, “The Routine”)
Stevie Wonder – Where I’m Coming From [Motown 1971]
Dipping my toes into a titan from a reality that doesn’t even seem real is always intimidating. These old guys are the stuff of legends and I have no firm grounding in what the world was like at the particular moment when this run up to his golden era existed. Sure we can all read about politics and war and social movements but would that capture the feeling of hearing something like “If You Really Loved Me” on the radio while doing homework in the kitchen? Or connect “Take Up A Course in Happiness” to Brian Wilson? Or how Berry Gordy promoted this as a rival to his other signee Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On? because the prodigal genius formerly known as Little Stevie Wonder was at the end of his contract and Gordy was widely known as an authoritarian who hated when people left? Well as I worked my way through I could hear a few things, there’s a great number of genre exercises the one man band attempts and mostly succeeds in emulating sound-wise. But also how oddly thin and sometimes even preachy it can feel since the songs themselves are trained in the jingle/keep it under 3 minutes school of commercial music that existed back then. On the whole, this isn’t revelatory, it’s just pleasant. 3.7/5
Q-Tip – Amplified [Artisa 1999]
Since Phife and Jarobi moved on as Q-Tip grew in his artistic ambition it’s no surprise that, he, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Dilla finally make the hard beats about sex and partying that the youthful Afrocentrism of Tribe proved too trappingly narrow to allow for. Not that there’s no shit talk, Kamal Fareed has plenty to say to other local rappers since he knows his ear is better than theirs even if his voice isn’t always. And as a member of a collection of about 15 creatively mature Black musicians called the Soulquarians whose combined synergy only too well predicted that it would all collapse, his rhymes and beats live in the avant-garde audibly removed from the light jazz of his previous life. Also that song about his truck really fucking bumps. 4.2/5
Doechii – Alligator Bites Never Heal [TDE/Capitol 2024]
Until it falls down into filler in the last quarter, noted bisexual Tampa resident Jaylah Hickmon sustains at conveying her relevance and skills on the mic – dropping double and triple time flows about anxiety in the social media age before hitting a singsong hook in her sometimes conversational and sometimes confrontational soprano. A number of her songs are around the two-minute mark which is a plus, knowing how to condense potent work into a limited space successfully is one of the hardest things a student of writing can do. Despite her frustration at her label saying she should stick to rapping, here her singing voice isn’t doing as much as it did on say “What It Is” which is a shame because she can definitely do that Y2K sound with panache when she locks in. Always humid, often electrifying, it’s nice to see TDE seeing that the future is female. 4.1/5
Cosmic Hero 