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Expert Witness: April 2012
s/s/s /Serengeti
The Diverse Moods of Serengeti
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
s/s/s: Beak & Claw (Anticon)
Serengeti has long been fascinated by the upper-middle class
arty-farties David Brooks once tried to lampoon as "bobos." But though
he's always been wittier and smarter about bourgeois bohemians than
Brooks, collaborators like Tony Trimm and Polyphonic have seldom
provided the eclectrobeats his jokes and ideas deserved. This one-off
EP with singer-songwriter cum symphonist Sufjan Stevens and
semiclassical drum'n'bassmaker Son Lux is different, because the
primary function of his raps is to ground the beautiful musics his
collaborators contribute. Stevens's Auto-Tuned apostrophe, Shara
Worden's soprano harmonies, the layered chorus hooks and
electro-percussion--all would float into the arty-farty ether without
Serengeti stumbling through his fictional misunderstood life, and that
confluence is the point. Croons Stevens: "If I could figure out what
it was all about." Repeats Serengeti: "I had the world figured out
beyond any doubt." Both are lost--but touchingly and even
nobly. A MINUS
Serengeti: The Kenny Dennis EP (Anticon)
A surprise comeback EP from the long-silent Grimm Teachaz crew may be
for Kenny Dennis fans only, but he deserves more of them. Who knew
from the likes of "Dennehy" that this superfan could speed-rap like on
"Flat Pop"--and also, who knows what he's saying when he does? Kenny
never falters as he disses Shaquille O'Neal, goes to bat for shamed
Cub fan Steve Bartman, and packs a Ruger as he smacks down a loud kid,
helps a stranded motorist, and tears up his parking tickets. The beats
are as basic as in classic Teachaz, only modernized with extra
effects, and the rhyming remains prime: "I'm Charles Bronson, I'm from
Wisconsin/Chicken MCs call 'em Swanson/They get grilled up like a
porkchop/Catch 'em on the street right in front of their bus stop."
A MINUS
Big Baby Gandhi
Smart Dumb Kid's Progress
Friday, April 6, 2012
Big Baby Gandhi: Big Fucking Baby (free download)
Like his patron Heems, this Bangladeshi-American is from the part of
Flushing "where the smart kids act dumb and the dumb kids act dumb."
He just acts dumb in a smart way. You could say his lo-fi debut favors
degraded rhythm samples and soprano voices, only from the boat-rocking
"Been Around Ya Girl" to the deep-soul "Summertime Thing" to the
Indian-children's-song-plus-keyboard(???)-loop "Woof Woof" you'd be
missing a lot. The flow seems effortlessly idiomatic, only not South
Asian idiomatic, whatever that would sound like besides Heems. The
rhymes bespeak a brainy slacker with an analysis underway, only he's
watched so much porn and heard so much hip-hop that he's dumber than
need be about sex. Here he's all "she's chokin' just hopin' to provoke
a nut," there he's telling her he was only kidding about that
handjob. Figure by now he's here and there both. He is a kind of
famous rapper, after all. A MINUS
Big Baby Gandhi: No1 2 Look Up 2 (free Greedhead mixtape)
"Terrorist with no turban/Lyricist with no sermon," he admits he'll be
proud to graduate from college and with the help of two resourceful
young beatmakers I never heard of cleans up his production like he's
ready to go pro. But for all his "Get $$$," he hasn't quite managed it
yet. He's still a kid getting his thoughts together one surprise rhyme
at a time, weeding out enough sex and dope to make room for a holy
Bollywood "Long Ass Intro," a law-abiding uncle who kept him out of
the army, a joke he jacked from Fall Out Boy, and other evidence of
grown manhood. A MINUS
Spoek Mathambo/Big K.R.I.T.
Think Positive--Or Not
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Spoek Mathambo: Father Creeper (Sub Pop)
Although I slotted this Soweto-raised 27-year-old's 2010 Mshini
Wam as promising kwaito electro, I never imagined it promised a
hip-hop record so dark it reveals his labelmate Shabazz Palaces for
the arty pothead we can assume he is. Contra the nervous crits who
claim to hear a "palpable feeling of hope" or "summery highlife
melodies" (highlife, eh? I've heard of that--African, right?), even
the sweet opener about the sexual maturation of a guy who was feeling
it before his pubes came in ends ominously. After that come evocations
of oppression only more brutal because they're sometimes
dissociated--blood diamonds, why we hate our crap jobs, the deadening
surrender of the tricking American hip-hop makes light of. The music
suits because it's also dissociated--beaty enough to keep your foot
tapping and your subconscious involved, but devoid of the escapist joy
that is the miracle of so much Afropop produced from equally
horrendous daily struggles. A
Big K.R.I.T.: 4Eva N a Day (free download)
He was just Kritikal, but the Mississippi underground had trouble
pronouncing that word--check out the consonant-averse "1986" intro to
understand why--so he made it Big K.R.I.T., claimed it stood for King
Remembered in Time, and continued a rapping career that imagined high
school coaching as a fallback. No hip-hopper has ever been bigger on
getting up when you're down and making every minute count. Could get
tiresome, but on a no-cameos mixtape Def Jam couldn't clear, his
proudly drawled, lucidly conceived preachments go undefeated. Almost
every soulful track grew on me, with the clincher "Down & Out,"
one of his periodic explanations of why sometimes he sips and smokes
instead of trying yet again. A MINUS
Cotton Mather/Oasis
Oh--You Mean Those Beatles
Friday, April 13, 2012
Cotton Mather: Kontiki (Deluxe Edition) (Star Apple Kingdom)
Pieced together in 1997 from impulsively conceived, doggedly recorded
scraps of DAT and four-track by Austin mastermind Robert Harrison and
a Memphis tape wizard who loved how Big Star the band was, Cotton
Mather's second album caught the attention of some British Beatles
fanatics d/b/a Oasis, who brought them over to open and even generated
some U.K. sales. While allowing his vocal resemblance to "John Lennon
with a Southern accent and a head cold," Harrison's extensive notes
don't cite the Beatles much even though "My Before and After"
resembles "Ticket to Ride" more than its supposed inspiration "(Reach
Out) I'll Be There" and "Private Ruth" echoes "For No One" straight
up. Harrison is no more a genius than Noel Gallagher, so though the
lyrics aren't spaced-out gibberish or obvious pap, they're unequal to
the music--which definitely beats, for instance, the last three songs
on the first Big Star album, and even more remarkable, kind of makes
you appreciate Oasis. (N.B.: I'm recommending the Deluxe because it's
new and much cheaper, not because I expect ever to listen to its
alternates and new ones for anything except the research I presume is
now complete.) B PLUS
Oasis: Stop the Clocks (Sony BMG '06)
One of the many things I never got about this band was where the
Beatles were. Where was the ebullience, the wit, the harmonies, God
just the singing, and, uh, the songwriting? Cotton Mather made me
understand that when Oasis say they love the Beatles they really mean
they love the post-Help!, pre-Sgt. Pepper Beatles. Since that span
encompasses Rubber Soul and Revolver, many would say tally ho, but (a)
not me 'cause I love the Beatles start to finish and (b) only if
you're writing songs as good as, uh, "We Can Work It Out." Instead
Oasis, meaning loudmouth bro Noel Gallagher, write songs that resemble
"We Can Work It Out" in thickened texture and momentum but not depth
or charm, then add arena size in the swagger of the drums and the
bigged-up vocals themselves. This band-selected best-of--two discs
lasting 87 minutes, like an old-fashioned double-LP except it's only
18 tracks--capture their sonic moment as fully as any freelance music
historian needs. A 2010 package repeats 11 of these songs and adds 16
others--too many, I say. Also, it omits the opening "Rock 'n' Roll
Star." If ever there were guys whose message to the world is summed up
by an opener called "Rock 'n' Roll Star," it's these
bigheads. B PLUS
Odds and Ends 008
Rock After 55: Wise Maybe, Weary Definitely
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Lee Scratch Perry: Rise Again (MOD Technologies)
Surrounded by such coequals as Tunde Adebimpe, Sly Dunbar, and Hamid
Drake, he--uh-oh--behaves himself ("Orthodox," "House of God")
***
Wanda Jackson: The Party Ain't Over (Nonesuch/Third Man)
Jack White hits the geriatric Christian hottie with songs and horns
that remind us what a weirdo she must be ("Thunder on the Mountain,"
"Shakin' All Over") **
John Hiatt: Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns (New West)
Decades past his last outright keeper and 60 this year, he continues
to roll out listenable collections like he'll never stop ("Don't Wanna
Leave You Now," "Damn This Town," "Detroit Town") **
Bonnie Raitt: Slipstream (Redwing)
Bartholin's glands don't fail me now ("Used to Rule the World,"
"Million Miles") **
Dr. John: Locked Down (Nonesuch)
"For my next trick I will shuck my jive and generalize indignantly
over a declarative rock beat" ("Big Shot," "Locked Down")
**
Rick Berlin: Paper Airplane (Hi-N-Dry)
"And Sean looked grim and said, 'Suicide'" ("Sean Penn on Charlie
Rose," "If I Wasn't Such a Bum") **
Steve Earle: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West)
There'll never be too many songs about death or George W. Bush
("Little Emperor," "Waitin' on the Sky") *
Marshall Chapman: Big Lonesome (Tall Girl)
Breakup album about a musician who up and died on her ("Big Lonesome,"
"I Love Everybody") *
Loudon Wainwright III/Lee Ranaldo
What Do You Mean You're an Old Man? I'm the Old Man Around Here
Friday, April 20, 2012
Loudon Wainwright III: Older Than My Old Man (2nd Story Sound)
A reluctant 50, he started playing the Old card with the adulthood
album Grown Man; now, a saggy stripling of 65, he trumps
himself with a mortality album. Wainwright has been writing death
songs for years, of course, but on his eighth album and label of the
young century the theme turns concept. In one song he's a ghost;
another features a reflection his late father wrote about his own late
father; the one that begins "Somebody else I knew just died" is
followed by the one called "The Days That We Die." Family members
abound, including the late Kate McGarrigle in a remake of her sole
co-write with her husband, from before either was 30, which happens to
be called "Over the Hill." There are cameos from Ramblin' Jack
Elliott, Chris Smither, John Scofield, the winsome Dame Edna Everage;
Tom Lehrer declined but loved how Wainwright fit the word
"Mercurochrome" into "My Meds." With Elliott, Loud-O bids for a
do-over: "You don't know what you're doin' and you can't just
wait;/You go ahead and do it and then it's too late/You need a double
lifetime." After he goes down on his knees and prays, as he promises
he will, this album will be Exhibit A on his application. A
Lee Ranaldo: Between the Times and the Tides (Matador)
Never much of a singer even by Sonic Youth standards and always
abrasive solo, Ranaldo applies his best-in-band chops to riffage and
filigree so lovely his well-meaning and far from altogether tuneless
plainsong has the welcome effect of situating the guitar in the same
reality occupied by his lyrics, which always make sense and often seem
a mere detail away from total lucidity. Throughout he recaptures the
repose of A Thousand Leaves's "Hoarfrost," his will to
reconciliation and renewal always palpable whether the songs reach out
or recalibrate his options. Just the album you'd hope from a
thoughtful 56-year-old after his band of 30 years breaks up. Best in
show is "Angles," a love song to someone he knows well and can always
stand to know better. Not a bandmate, either. A MINUS
Nicki Minaj/Macy Gray
Both Badder Than Donna Summer, and in Such Different Ways
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded: Deluxe Edition (Cash Money/Universal Republic)
Since the positive and negative reviews say pretty much the same
thing, we can agree that this is an overstuffed, musically
manipulative, thematically directionless bid to put the pink-haired
alien on the singles charts until Katy Perry absconds to rehab. She
isn't "the female Weezy" or some ill-defined male alter ego. She's an
aspiring and most likely inevitable pop queen who raps exceptionally
well, sings quite well, rhymes inconsistently but sometimes superbly,
and will do anything to be rich and famous. This obviously doesn't
make her a heroine. But if you enjoy contemporary pop whose
market-tested blare offends both rockist philistines and IDM
aesthetes, her second album is a worthwhile investment. It begins
strong and, counting the three bonus tracks, ends strong. In between
it tends mawkish and loud, neither of which precludes fun, especially
with the right cameos. There is, however, a Chris Brown track. (Hey--I
said anything.) A MINUS
Macy Gray: Covered (429)
Ten non-Gray songs, three comedy skits, and three brief cameos for her
kids and their high school pals. The songs are all post-1980, meaning
post-song--from the era when bands began distinguishing themselves by
sound. Credit producer Hal Wilner with isolating the melodically
verbal in Metallica, Radiohead, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sublime, My
Chemical Romance, and lesser lights. But 1) the high point is the
opening "Here Comes the Rain Again," an anthem on the face of it that
Gray wrests from Annie Lennox forever; 2) a low point is the closer
from the anthemic-on-the-face-of-it Arcade Fire, a major structural
mishap; and 3) an even lower point is the Metallica centerpiece, which
could be my problem but I bet isn't. Casting directors should note
that the comedy skits are genuinely funny; Gray should note that I'm
omitting the cameos when I put this in iTunes. But both are
distractions. Fun as it is to hear her do "Creep," "Teenagers," and
"Smoke Two Joints," this is a bigger mess than it had to
be. B PLUS
Odds and Ends 009
Also-Rock
Friday, April 27, 2012
The Kills: Blood Pressures (Domino)
Love still hurts, but they understand it better ("The Heart Is a
Beating Drum," "Pots and Pans") ***
Dum Dum Girls: Only in Dreams (Sub Pop)
Pretty darn good Pretenders ("Wasted Away," "In My Head") ***
The Shins: Port of Morrow (Aural Apothecary/Columbia)
Problem's less the precious lyrics he attaches to his premium melodies
than the increasingly precious way he sings them ("Simple Song,"
"September") **
Imperial Teen: Feel the Sound (Merge)
"Too many songs we sang are left unsung"--that about sums it up ("Last
to Know," "Out From Inside") **
Cloud Nothings: Cloud Nothings (Carpark)
Sincere ex-brat faces mortality and/or sexual insecurity without
whining or fronting about it ("Nothing's Wrong," "Been Through")
**
The Coathangers: Larceny & Old Lace (Suicide Squeeze)
The meat remains, the sauce does not ("Go Away," "Jaybird") **
The Wax Museums: Eye Times (Trouble in Mind)
Brat-punk lives in Denton, Texas, and that's a good thing ("Midlife
Crisis," "Mosquito Enormo") **
Dengue Fever: Cannibal Courtship (Fantasy)
Not only are their English lyrics easier to understand than their
Khmer lyrics, they're easier to understand than your English lyrics
("Cement Slippers," "Mr. Bubbles") *
MSN Music, April 2012
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