RSSConsumer Guide: November, 2024
Hip-hop from 52-year-old grandpa-to-be, demure grooves from a 31-year-old producer-frontman, dreamlike and bone-simple songs from a Belgium-based 83-year-old, and radical politics from the beyond.
Blue Muse (Music Maker Relief Foundation '19) Assembled by the same idealistic crew that would eventually assemble 2020's magnificent Hanging Tree Guitars, this grab bag of entertaining singer-and-guitar blues you've never heard before features names as big as Taj Mahal and Eric Clapton (Captain Luke, "Old Black Buck"; Dom Flemons, "Polly Put the Kettle On"; Dave McGrew, "D.O.C. Man" ***
The Devil & God Meet in Church (Blues Images '13) Old two ways, I admit it: a long misfiled 2013 comp that starts strong and fades some second half—but as it turns out, only a little. Blind Blake's second-up "Diddie Wa Diddie" you know, I hope several ways by now, but Harum Scarum's "Alabama Scratch—Parts 1 & 2" and Ardell Bragg's "Pig Meat Blues" are no less worthy of your delectation. If you can locate a copy, that is. B PLUS
Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grāce) (Aftermath/Interscope) Is some new crime against humanity that's failed to penetrate my politically oversaturated attention supposed to justify the absurd 46 the Metacritic solons granted this album, which doesn't expand the 52-year-old grandpa-to-be's skill set only because there are so few places left for his clarity and momentum and rhyming to go? True, he obsesses on while hopefully circumnavigating the trans perplex clumsily but not anything like cruelly, though that he should feel the need does make one wonder whether Mr. "I suck my dick better than you do" has ever gotten his sex life together. Also true, his clean-edged boyish-to-adolescent flow has roughened and deepened with age. But the musicality of his sprechgesang remains unduplicated and undiminished, so that by now it's safe to assume it's inimitable, and if you were offended before, how about a little "Fuck blind people and deaf people suck/So do cripples dumb quadriplegic fucks"? But on the other hand, he establishes himself here as the only rapper ever to brag about his daughter's GPA—a 3.9 at Michigan State. You go girl. A
Fred Again..: 10 Days (Atlantic) This dance-identified, Grammy-winning, 31-year old British . . . producer? frontman? artist? what? not only has royal blood of some sort (we really don't understand that stuff over here) but started making music with his neighbor Brian Eno when he was still a tad. How its murmured lyrics, soft-edged electronics, and demure groove might function on the dancefloor I couldn't explicate either except to observe that all three effects pretty much abjure the big beats I associated with disco from a critical distance half a century ago. But I can observe that the way it dwells on such fondly repeated recitations as "I adore you" and even more so "she loves me" is more happy than emotional much less erotic, which is not only for the best but a pleasure and a boon to hear them done right. "I got places to be/ Like me next to you and you next to me," Fred croons. Amen brother. A MINUS
Hinds: Viva Hinds (Lucky175) The two women who now constitute this Spanish girl group say they were fortunate even to finance their third album, a wee thing comprising just 10 three-minute songs. But in some respects they've hit the jackpot—just not emotionally. "Your mum and dad are paying all your bills" unpropitious, "Please don't look at me with those eyes" worse, "You just fucked it up and now you can't take it back" ballgame. In not a single song do they achieve the romantic bliss that somehow remains their goal, and at times the shortfall is their fault. But aesthetically that's still what they're in it for, and aesthetically I believe they're good enough to get lucky or even make it happen some day. A MINUS
M.J. Lenderman: Manning Fireworks (Anti-) This excavation of trad-rock's relaxed charms pays special attention to Eric Clapton, who's admittedly a lot quicker-fingered than Lenderman and so what. It's the lyrics where his bitter quickness surfaces whether he's talking his drunk gf out of puking, asking her to put her two cents in because he needs the change, or draining cum from a hotel shower only I bet "draining" is an overstatement. "One of these days you'll kill a man," he tells someone else, "For asking a question you don't understand." Wasn't me, I swear. Probably one of those Trumpers. A MINUS
The Linda Lindas: No Obligation (Epitaph) The third album by this nominally bilingual four-woman g-g-b-d could almost make a fella nostalgic for L.A.'s punk years, because despite the short-fast-hard roots of their now 44-year-old label, they're a band that favors classic pop-rock's 12-songs-in-40-minutes dimensions. Plus they have so much attitude it laps over into politics, from "You'd like me better if they didn't stare/You'd like me better if I grew out my hair/You'd like me if I wasn't a mess/You'd like me better if I'd put on a dress" to "This is no resolution/This is a revolution/This is a revolution/This is a revolution." Four gals can dream, thank G-d for that. B PLUS
LL Cool J: The Force (Def Jam/Virgin Music Group/LL Cool J) Never the most cerebral rapper, LL tried to trade in music on an acting career that seldom ventured beyond NCIS: Los Angeles. So let's be glad that when he rides in on his first full album in over a decade, he has the sense to lean on Q-Tip's production if also the hope that capping the opening "This is my manifesto/The reason why I did it/The press will call me evil/And label me a menace/Don't let their lies deceive you/They pushed me to my limit/Racism's a disease/It's only right I kill it" by going on to hope that writing the first rap song ever to rhyme "specific" and "horrific" will help him achieve that all too elusive goal. Better that later he pays his respects to African sculpture, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Huey Newton, the Last Poets, Kurt Cobain, and, well, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. A MINUS
MC5: Heavy Lifting (Ear Music) This belated tribute to the sole hippie-era rock band to embrace the kind of radical politics that didn't begin to gain ideological sophistication and sectarian detail in the music until the punk era. Their leader is Wayne Kramer, who this past February died like the other four before him. But happy to climb aboard are such relatively sophisticated younger lefties as Tom Morello and Vernon Reid. Where the original 5 projected freewheeling excitement, this incarnation showcases dread in a bunch of new songs that make up for the loss of "Ramblin' Rose" and "Kick Out the Jams" with the likes of "Blind Eye" ("I see no hunger/I see no fear/I turn a blind eye/With a blind eye it disappears" and "Barbarians at the Gate" ("They're running up the steps/Blood coming out of their eyes/With the truth left behind/Comedy of thievery/In a red white and blue disguise/Smell of treachery/False battle cry." Just in time—we hope. A MINUS
Thurston Moore: Flow Critical Lucidity (Daydream Library Series) Quieter, neater, and you could even say more humane maturation not to say efflorescence of his old band's noise bombs ("Sans Limites," "New in Town"); ***
Trout Fishing in America: Safe House (Trout) Houston folk-rock duo celebrate four decades with relaxed, engaging songs about, among many other things, touring forever and a phone scam I hope isn't autobiographical ("We Have Not Arrived," "We'll Always Have Ardmore," "Don't Be Callin'") *
Tyler, the Creator: Chromakopia (Columbia) The Odd Future kingpin was always more a self-promoter than anything else, but after all these years that self has discernible humanity, detail, and humor to it ("Rah Tah Tah," "Judge Judy," "Noid"); **
Neil Young & Promise of the Real: Earth (Reprise '16) Lukas Nelson's expert backup band ain't Crazy Hose, so the main thing completists will get from this obscure 2016 live double is a few relatively obscure songs worth knowing about, though that said I'm glad I do ("Vampire Blues," "People Want to Hear About Love," "Show Me the Love") **
Tucker Zimmerman & Friends: Tucker Zimmerman & Friends Play Dance of Love (4AD) A Belgium-based 83-year-old who grew up in northern California and has recorded sporadically since co-writing a song with Paul Butterfield in 1967, Zimmerman is a minor legend who has ample music on Spotify. But not much of it takes off like this album, where the friends helping him out are Big Thief, with the inspired Adrianne Lenker enriching every song except "Leave It on the Porch Outside," where Tucker's wife Marie-Claire Zimmerman gets the cameo she certainly deserves. At once dreamlike and bone simple, half these selections had me marking up my booklet: "I'll medicate you with a dose of clam chowder/Stun you with a parodoxical pun," "Pick me a rose from the left hand of Moses/Kick out the jokers and the jams," "Someday I will move away/To the city on the hill/Leave behind the waterfall/Leave behind the water wheel," "They don't say it/But it's true/We're frozen glue/Ice cubes have a better chance," "Don't go crazy/Go slow release/Go with the flow/Go in peace." So often eightysomethings impress us with their vitality. Still plenty vital, this guy identifies just as much with his mortality. As an eightysomething myself, I know the feeling. A
And It Don't Stop, November 13, 2024
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October 9, 2024 | January 9, 2025 |  |