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Consumer Guide: The Prelude
This column is the prelude to the 29th or 30th Pazz & Jop Critics'
Poll. Unfortunately, and that's putting it mildly, it's also the
prelude to an American war on Islam. What does it mean that Islam gave
me more albums than the poll?
HAKIM: Talakik (Mondo Melodia)
Mixing producers from Natacha Atlas svengalis Trans-Global Underground
to jazz-funk hack Narada Michael Walden to several actual Egyptians,
risking a Moorish duet with Puerto Rican merengue diva Olga Tańón and
countenancing the cornball soul shouts of an unidentified
co-conspirator I fear is Walden himself, Hakim could have come up with
crossover crap, and without crossing over. Instead he provides an
object lesson in world fusion--even when it doesn't translate all the
way, Hakim's barely contained enthusiasm and pervasive musical
intelligence give you something to take home to mama. Figure that when
producers outdo themselves this much, it's probably the singer's
fault. A MINUS
ALI HASSAN KUBAN: The Rough Guide to Ali Hassan Kuban (World Music Network import)
Situated in that strangely familiar territory between kinda boring and
utterly weird, Kuban was modernity's musical ambassador from Nubia,
which some--mostly boring Afrocentric weirdos, but that doesn't make
them wrong--regard as a prime source of the Mediterranean culture all
Americans share. And though it says something about developmental
feedback and lineaments of greatness that this wedding singer from an
ancient land was known to tip his kufi to James Brown, his funk has
always sounded indigenous to me. For one thing, it's melodic in an
ancient, pentatonic way--that's the Nubian part. The instrumental
sound is Egyptian right down to its big-city horns and accordions. And
the vocals would fit into many black African contexts--think flat
rather than showy, Wassoulou rather than Wolof. Kuban cut four albums
after he began playing Europe in the '80s, and sometimes it's hard to
tell whether they're trancelike or soporific. This draws on all of
them. The best-of as public service. A MINUS
MR. LIF: Emergency Rations (Definitive Jux)
A funny guy, an angry guy, he sets up a concept album with a concept
EP that ostensibly plays off his disappearance, from where he ain't
gonna tell you 'cause you really ought to know. In fact, it's an
excuse to drop random science about the place of hip hop in the
military-industrial complex. A MINUS
MR. LIF: I Phantom (Definitive Jux)
I've long suspected that a musically pleasurable album would betray
everything the misanthropes at Def Jux stood for--their principles,
their vision, their neuroses. But all it took was a normal rapper,
which Mr. Lif is--for a rapper, abnormally so. However
autobiographical this song cycle, which begins with a stickup and ends
with a nuclear holocaust, it evinces not only conceptual ambition but
detailed knowledge of what it's like to work a job and raise a
family. It's underpinned by an analysis more Boots Riley than Talib
Kweli or Steve Earle. And it fleshes out its cohesive narrative and
cogent ideas with beats that respect the spare antipop ethos without
abjuring such wayward rhythm elements as femme chorus, bass-drum-whoop
jam, and $20 synth loop. A
NAS: The Lost Tapes (Columbia)
Remember that posthumous outtakes CD Bad Boy attributed to Biggie? No?
Good then--it was foul, not just ill shit but stupid ill shit. These
finalized versions of tracks fans have long bootlegged is the
opposite. Where the ex-dealer thought it wise to conceal his
brutishness, the fake thug thought it wise to conceal his
sensitivity. Surrounding outtakes that were just outtakes is
back-in-the-day recommended to Tim and Missy (even has some
pronunciation in it) and four autobiographical pieces. The two about
his parents are juicier than the mother love gushing from God's
Son. The Afrocentric pep song is so much deeper than the mawkish,
misinformed new "I Can" that you believe he might yet get
politics. And "Drunk by Myself" describes his alcoholism. Pass what
Courvoisier? B PLUS
OH-OK: The Complete Recordings (Collectors' Choice)
You want full disclosure, I'll give you full disclosure: Carola
Dibbell and I annotated this reissue of two long-lost early-'80s EPs
for $350, below my usual word rate but it was love--I did my part in
an elbow cast. Two Georgia girls, 16 and 18 when they started, tiny
and childlike and minimalist and sui generis and monumental--read all
about it when you plunk down your almost-a-buck-a-minute
(and-worth-it) for 10 songs in 22 minutes. Our notes, however,
celebrate the official oeuvre, not the 13 live bonus tracks, only one
a repeat title and only another--the best, as they knew--previously
released. Though a few hold up fine as is, these latter, which I first
heard when I got the final, are educational, as bonus tracks tend to
be. Their lesson is that the EPs, rude though they seem, comprise
recordings, not songs. As songs, the previously unreleaseds would be
good enough properly sung, arranged, and balanced, and they also
wouldn't be on a par with "Playtime," "Person," or "Such N Such."
Lynda and Linda were charming live, you can tell. But on record, it
took plenty of artifice to put their naivete across. Docked a notch
for conflict of interest. A MINUS
PIXIES (SpinArt)
Up until Doolittle in 1989, when the tunes blossomed, I pretty
much missed this band. Put off by Black Francis's feyness, I sensed
what is now clear, that he's a pomo sociophobe of a familiar and
tedious sort. Where in retrospect his philosophical limitations seem
harmless annoyances, they portended many regrettable developments in
irony, junk culture, sexual eccentricity, and other folkways that
deserved better. But that wasn't reason enough to resist the music. In
such cases, the recommended m.o. is in the destructive element
immerse--understand its attractions from the inside, the better to
combat or, what fun, succumb to them. Now Surfer Rosa and the
Come On Pilgrim EP seem audaciously funny and musically
prophetic. I like the way the elements form a whole without
coalescing, and the brushed-aluminum patina they got on their
punk-pop-art-metal amalgam. I guess these nine Come On Pilgrim
outtakes are a little looser and wilder than the stuff they put on the
market, but in retrospect once again they're every bit as much a
galvanic hoot. A MINUS
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO RAĎ (World Music Network import)
Although I could easily manufacture Islamic dynamite (secular, true,
but so's Saddam) from my own store of cunningly concealed materials
(if the inspectors don't spy the chaba between the Faces and Donald
Fagen, am I really obliged to point her out?), I've never heard a rai
compilation that made me want to party till I puked. Ben Omar Rachid's
hard-to-find Tunisian Oujda-Casablanca Introspections still
comes closest, but for something more representative this will have to
do. It flattens when you want it to rev, decelerates awkwardly for
godmother Cheikha Remitti, and kisses Cheb Mami's pert ass. But its
highlights include an intense opener from cross-dressing Abdou, desert
romance from the murdered Cheb Hasni, and Cheb Zahouani's "Moul El
Bar," "The Barman" to you, about partying till you
puke. A MINUS
RACHID TAHA: Live (Mondo Melodia)
Brussels is already rocking when the cocky little French-Algerian
embarks on a greatest hits selection from Made on Medina, my
choice for hard rock album of 2001, though that Linkin Park joint gave
it a run and sold more copies to boot. Sandwiched around the
Berber-sounding chant "Bent Sahra," four songs climax with the
onomatopoeic "Foqt Foqt" before slowing down a little into the
midtempo "Ala Jalkoum," here differentiated with a Femi Kuti
cameo. Seems like cheating, reprising all that Made in
Medina. Only this album rocks even harder. A MINUS
TRANSPLANTS (Hellcat)
Power passion speed--there can't be any new way to configure those old
saws around guitar-bass-drums, can there? Only then there is. Hardcore
punk and hardcore ska join mook metal, hip hop criminal-mindedness,
and the occasional rap element to form a music whose intense focus is
absolutely punk and just about unprecedented. Rancid guitarist Tim
Armstrong and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker are the masterminds,
previously unrecorded hanger-on Rob Aston the singer who added lyrics
and meaning. Aston sounds like the young Shane MacGowan and writes as
both a drug-dealing scumbag and a street person on a mission. He could
be either, or both. He could have juiced a memorable one-off or a
definitive classic. A
ANDREW W.K.: I Get Wet (Island)
It's simple enough once you accept it for what it is, which is as hard
as the music is simple (and hard). It's a Ramones album for an era
when "Blitzkrieg Bop" is on the Shea p.a. and professional wrestling
is on drugs. It's a Gary Glitter/Kiss/Quiet Riot album with no lyrical
lapses, tempo shifts, self-expression, or other concessions to human
fallibility. The songs don't all sound the same because if they did
the thing would be perfect. And it isn't. A MINUS
Dud of the Month
DOVES: The Last Broadcast (Capitol)
I don't have the stomach to go check my Toto and Journey records; in
fact, I don't have my Toto and Journey records. But the burden of
proof is on the perp. Technically proficient, melodically resourceful,
sonically up-to-date--Toto and Journey were all that. They also rocked
moderato and sang as if thoughtfully plumbing their Caucasian
feelings. Admittedly, the Brits' squarer sense of form boxes their
corn up more discreetly, and their reassuring lyrical generalizations
address matters of the spirit more than affairs of the heart. Also,
they're not yet huge here, which means so much to young people seeking
identities they don't have to share like Legos, although older people
pining for their pop youth would just as soon they turn into the
Beatles (sigh). Nevertheless, this is as vapid as it is expert, and if
it ever does get huge here, a lot of slightly older people are going
to wonder what they were thinking. B MINUS
Additional Consumer News
Honorable Mention:
- Frank Black and the Catholics, Devil's
Workshop (SpinArt): makes writing short catchy postpunk songs
seem so easy--maybe too easy, considering how hard the longer ones
come ("Velvety," "Whiskey in Your Shoes")
- The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink
Robots (Warner Bros.): the good-versus-evil of dreams ("Fight
Test," "Do You Realize??")
- The High & Mighty Present: Eastern Conference All Stars
III (Eastern Conference): ill for its own antisocial,
tortured, sexist, barely profitable sake (Cage, "Ballad of Worms";
High & Mighty & Eminem, "Last Hit [Original]")
- Nas, God's Son (Columbia): confessions of a
mama's boy, tales of a hustler, lies of a mortal man ("Book of
Rhymes," "Get Down")
- AZ, Aziatic (Motown): the Nas sidekick's name
rhymes with ***-*, and he makes the most of it ("Once Again," "A-1
Performance")
- Raď Superstars (Mondo Melodia): except for Cheikha
Remitti, recorded in the shade of a nearby camel, the cosmopolitan,
Francophile article (Cheb Nadir, "Rani Rya"; Cheikha Remitti, "Rani
Alla M'Rida"; Noria, "Quin Rak Tergoud")
- Khaled, Ya Taleb (Mondo Melodia): these
daftly annotated old odds and sods could so easily be Les
Meilleurs, and ain't ("Ya El Mima," "Ana Bia Taxi")
- Xzibit, Man Vs. Machine (Columbia): he got a
right to brag da beats ("Release Date," "Enemies")
- Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head
(Capitol): let Green Eyes dump him for real and we'll see how long he
hums in the void ("Green Eyes," "In My Place")
- Jay-Z, The Blueprint 2 (Roc-A-Fella): anyone
who samples Paul Anka when he wanted Frank is no longer Jehovah and
will never be the Chairman of the Board ("U Don't Know [Remix],"
"Poppin' Tags")
- Scarface, The Fix (Def Jam South): cocaine
slanger as around-the-way G--paranoid, self-righteous,
public-spirited, so downhome ("Safe," "On My Block")
Choice Cuts:
- Frank Black and the Catholics, "The Black Rider," "1826"
(Black Letter Days, SpinArt)
- Sawt el Atlas, "Andalucia" (Donia, Tinder)
- Super Furry Animals, "Tradewinds" (Rings Around the
World, XL)
- The Vines, "Highly Evolved," "Get Free" (Highly
Evolved, Capitol)
Duds:
- Benzino, Redemption (Elektra)
- Mercury Rev, All Is Dream (V2)
- Mohamed Mounir, Earth . . . Peace (Mondo Melodia)
- Busta Rhymes, It Ain't Safe No More . . . (J)
Village Voice, Feb. 11, 2003
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Jan. 21, 2003 |
Mar. 4, 2003 |
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