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Deltron 3030, Event II

Barry Walters — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:00:57 +0000

A retro-futurist opus with too many cameos to count

When ordinary hip-hoppers get famous, they usually bring along their new-money friends and strike while the iron’s hot. For Dan the Automator, producer of Dr. Octagon, Cornershop, Gorillaz, and other unconventional acts, success means waiting 13 years to issue a follow-up and recruiting Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Deltron 3030: Event II, the long-delayed sequel to Dan Nakamura, turntablist Kid Koala and emcee Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s 2000 debut, opens with a spoken monologue by the star, and features cameos by fellow actors David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the Lonely Island. Oh, it also includes restaurant entrepreneur David Chang; MCs Black Rob and Casual; and vocals by Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha, Awolnation’s Aaron Bruno, Faith No More’s Mike Patton, Pillowfight’s Emily Wells, Blur’s Damon Albarn and, lastly, jazz smoothie Jamie Cullum.

That kind of talent roster would be utterly top-heavy in lesser hands, but Nakamura’s finely finessed aesthetic specializes in off-the-wall excess: It’s everywhere on this retro-futurist opus. It’s unclear if the jazzy cop-show grooves that appear throughout out are sampled or freshly orchestrated; they sound like the former, but feel like the latter.

Nakamura presides deftly over the affair, keeping all of its disparate parts moving without colliding. Del is similarly dexterous: His flow is easier to follow than his ornate sci-fi superhero story, which is high on details and low on narrative arc, yet his diction and drawl always remain as distinct as Nakamura’s fanciful arrangements and Koala’s equally flamboyant scratches. All three brothers, despite the long hiatus, are right on time — even if it’s more than a little warped.

Drake, Nothing Was The Same

Nick Murray — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:23:11 +0000

At the top of his profession, but still checking the kids who dissed him in high school

The Game, the self-proclaimed guide to “penetrating the secret society of pickup artists,” tells the story of Style, a nerdy kid with a bad clothes and worse hair who studies all the great seducers before ending up under the tutelage of an eccentric genius who would be the best in the world, if only he could reign himself in. As it turns out, Drake, the child star-turned-rapper Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, has followed nearly the same path, and while his new Nothing Was the Same doesn’t hide who else he learned from — across the album, he quotes Ma$e, remembers standing at a Bun B concert, calls one song “Wu-Tang Forever,” and raps over Kanye-influenced chopped-vocal beats in a sing-song style that might best be described as “sad Nelly” — the result is almost sui generis.

As big as any of those artists but still rocking that same chip on his shoulder, Nothing is something like rap’s version of Jordan’s Hall of Fame induction speech, the point where our hero stands at the top of his profession but still checks the kids who dissed him in high school and girls who turned a shoulder shortly thereafter. Where on “Tuscan Leather,” he’s “rich enough that I don’t have to tell ‘em that I’m rich,” on lead single “Started From the Bottom” (my mom’s favorite rap song since “Day ‘N’ Nite,” incidentally), he brags that “just a reminder to myself/ I wear every single chain even when in the house.”

Here and elsewhere, the contradiction is meant to imply depth, but more often it disguises bitterness. “No help that’s all me,” goes the hook to one of the bonus tracks, a brooding banger that could be this album’s “The Motto,” but actual emotional depth comes, most memorably, from convos Drake has with the ones who created him, his dad telling him that he and his girl should try to work it out and his own mom worrying that she might end up 70 and alone. Reviews, so far, have been mostly positive, but should we be surprised? Style, after all, began his career as a music critic.

Ghostpoet, Some Say I So I Say Light

Sharon O'Connell — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 14:35:08 +0000

A far more cohesive and dynamic style of post-everything hip-pop

With his debut album as Ghostpoet, London MC and producer Obaro Ejimiwe declared his love of not only hip-hop, electronica and trip-hop, but also of blues, jazz, electro and straight-up indie pop. Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam heralded the arrival of a fresh, young voice that chimed well with then current enthusiasm for Jamie Woon and James Blake, but spread itself rather too thinly, its rampant diversity signaling a fuzziness of intent as much as broadmindedness. Nonetheless, it bagged a Mercury nomination. Now, the follow-up.

Some Say I So I Say Light is not only a more focused and purposeful record, but also a braver one, yet t sacrifices none of the strangely sun-dappled anxiety or quotidian, small-hours doubt that is Ghostpoet’s trademark. Leaving his bedroom for a studio has seen his production talents mature, too and he strikes a smart balance between vocal intimacy and textured electronic cool. His voice — equal parts Gil Scott-Heron and Tricky – is the album’s heart. Warmly cracked and with an oddly alluring, catarrhal thickness, his sprechgesang deals with everything from the gradual growing apart in a relationship to spending too much money on Amazon. It’s offset to fine effect on “Dialtones” by Lucy Rose’s distanced cooing and on “Meltdown” by alt.folk singer Woodpecker Wooliams.

Gone are the Beck-ish blues, electro and indie elements of Ghostpoet’s debut; he’s now opted for a far more cohesive and dynamic style of post-everything hip-pop. It’s one that allows for chip-tune freneticism with strings and heavily treated vocal loops (“Comatose”), surging and euphoric Afro-beat (“Plastic Bag Brain,” which features drumming don Tony Allen, and guitarist Dave Okumu of The Invisible) and an adventure in pulsing synth house (“Dorsal Morsel”). All represent the confident and considered pushing of his parameters by a distinctive talent who’s in it for the long haul.

Tanya Morgan, Rubber Souls

Nate Patrin — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:00:34 +0000

Merging goodwill spirit with a neo-soul vibe

Having broken through on 2006′s Moonlighting and reinforced their name on 2009′s Brooklynati, Tanya Morgan have hit that point in their still-evolving career where their biggest task is to simply maintain, especially now that they’re down to two MCs after a four-year lull. Even though it’d be easy for a group of their stay-posi caliber to coast off the easy goodwill they gained from emulating the brighter moments of circa ’93 Native Tongues rap, on Rubber Souls Tanya Morgan merge that spirit with a neo-soul vibe a decade ahead of their more direct lyrical influences. That live-band sound, provided by producer 6th Sense and a cast of sharp session players, switches things up ably — deep slow-ride bass murmurs and airy guitar strums on “The Day I,” mellow g-funk synth bounce on “Never Too Much,” funkadelic dark-alley foot-chase tension on “Pick It Up,” and snapping-tight snares throughout. Von Pea and Donwill’s softbatch-ducking earnestness radiates outwards in the service of romantic appeals (“All Em”) and hopes of leaving the next generation with the resources they didn’t grow up with themselves (“More”), lyrics that sound comfortable not only in their ease of mind but in how fluidly they ride.

Allen Toussaint, Songbook

Britt Robson — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Capturing the charm and sporadic magic of two gigs at Joe's Pub

Composer-pianist Allen Toussaint invented New Orleans rhythm-and-blues as much as anyone on the planet with his homespun songwriting, arranging and overall studio wizardry from the late 1950s onward — and true to the spirit of his Crescent City, it was expertise laced with amiability. Flooded out from his home by Hurricane Katrina, Toussaint relocated to New York City and began a regular gig at Joe’s Pub, which is where Songbook was recorded over two nights in 2009. The album captures the charm and sporadic magic of this odd interlude; Toussaint at 71 playing a well-honed nightclub show in a bare-bones setting, a transplanted producer with just his voice, his piano and his long and durable catalog of tunes.

Toussaint’s dignified yet unpretentious personal style extends to his music. Crooning, melisma and smooth shifts in rhythm are deployed sparingly but to maximum effect in his vocals, so that even the quasi-novelty tunes he turned into hits with Lee Dorsey nearly 50 years ago (“Holy Cow,” “Working In A Coal Mine”) don’t clash with his versions of poignant ballads he minted for Irma Thomas (“It’s Raining”), Etta James (“With You In Mind”) and Esther Phillips (“Sweet Touch of Love”). And his piano work — a silkier variation on Professor Longhair’s second-line style — epitomizes New Orleans funk-and-roll, especially on a glorious medley of “Certain Girl,” “Mother-in-Law,” “Fortune Teller” and “Working in a Coal Mine,” and his instrumental take on the classic “St. James Infirmary.”

Perhaps the best thing about Songbook is that it reminds us of the breadth of Toussaint’s talented contributions while also revealing new facets of his artistry. Few would think to list “Freedom for the Stallion” among his top handful of songs, and yet this riveting protest anthem disguised as a psalm, which inspired Bob Dylan, deserves to be exalted. And it is easy to forget that a song like “Yes We Can,” a sassy hit for the Pointer Sisters, came from Toussaint’s pen. Then there is the bonus of Songbook, which is Toussaint cast as intimate singer-songwriter, climaxed by his wonderful boyhood reveries enclosed in the heart of his 13-minute rendition of “Southern Nights” to close the disc. Toussaint is now back in New Orleans, where he belongs. But Songbook documents that he turned his unfortunate need to vacate his beloved city into an artistic tonic.

The Weeknd, Kiss Land

Barry Walters — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:00:26 +0000

A testament to how tour and excess take over mind, body and soul

The Weeknd’s Kiss Land plays like the alternative R&B version of sophomore albums by ’70s rock bands that documented how touring has thoroughly taken over their minds, bodies and souls. It’s a regressive worldview where women are represented either by prostitutes/strippers/groupies or long-suffering hometown girlfriends; drugs are ever-present, and Nix is as necessary as toothpaste.

Such excess ordinarily lends itself to comical clichés. Yet singer/lyricist Abel Tesfaye avoids the Spinal Tap effect by emphasizing the physical and emotional brutality of his vagabond existence: Kiss Land opens with “Professional,” a typically crepuscular ballad ostensibly delivered to a pole dancer/hooker that might as well also be targeted to Tesfaye himself. “You’ve got it made/ Because your freedom was here in this cage all along,” he sings in his tortured falsetto between choruses borrowed from Emika’s similarly bleak “Professional Loving.” A sense of impending doom hangs over this and every subsequent interaction, and if you don’t get the sense that the singer sees himself mirrored in all the squalor, you’ll probably be repulsed by the moralizing that comes entwined with his seductions.

Road life may have made the singer even more cynical, but all his newfound worldliness hasn’t broadened his palate much. The sole deviation, “Wanderlust,” is essentially a remake of “Precious Little Diamond,” a mid-’80s club hit by Dutch synth-poppers Fox the Fox, here rewritten to address a woman who Tesfaye beckons to climb aboard the Weeknd train. The beat drops out long enough to clear a floor, but otherwise it’s an uptempo club anthem. The rest sticks to the Trilogy mold: Another love song/sermon to an additional call girl, “Belong to the World,” even samples Portishead — as obvious a roots move as Aerosmith covering “Train Kept A-Rollin’.” Indeed, Kiss Land is essentially that band’s Get Your Wings with most every song a trip-hop variation on “Lord of the Thighs.” May Tesfaye live long enough to find his Toys in the Attic.

Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady

Barry Walters — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:00:26 +0000

Complex yet wholehearted, and dense with byzantine sparkle

Behind all the cameos, the sci-fi allegory, the eclecticism and the nearly cult-ish Wondaland collective that creates these ultra-intricate jams, Janelle Monáe specializes in generosity. Where others serve up instant-gratification earworms, this Kansas City-born, Atlanta-based dynamo delivers sprawling futuristic funk-rock operas that dazzle on impact yet sustain protracted pleasure. Three years after The ArchAndroid, a long-playing debut that’s still revealing carefully buried treasure, she now releases a sequel equally dense with byzantine sparkle.

The Electric Lady is much more than a monument to maximalism, though. It’s a testimony to the power of particularly female and African-American dreams well-honed and not afraid to freak. Interspersed with radio DJ breaks that only lightly allude to the Cindi Mayweather cyborg narrative of her previous releases, The Electric Lady is nothing less than concept album about black female empowerment via love, otherness and heaps of Hendrix-kissed guitar solos courtesy of Kellindo Parker, who, together with Monáe, Nate “Rocket” Wonder, Chuck Lightning and Roman GianArthur comprise the extraordinary Wondaland posse that write, play and produce this deliciously effusive stuff.

Sometimes she’s singing of women in general, like on her Solange-enriched title track. And sometimes Monáe sings about specific women, like Sally Ride, the first female and known LGBT astronaut; or Dorothy Dandridge, the first African-American nominated for a Best Actress Oscar; or her own hard-working mom in the Stevie Wonder-esque “Ghetto Woman.”

But even in those cases, Monáe is seeing macrocosms in her microcosms: Few musicians are more obsessed with the bigger picture than this wizard of her own Oz. And although she screams like a gal not to be outclassed by her idol on “Givin Em What They Love,” her supremely slinky duet with Prince, she’s elsewhere exploring in typically more refined fashion where her clear and versatile soprano can take her — from skittering New Wave (“We Were Rock & Roll” and “Dance Apocalyptic”) to psychedelic cabaret (“Look into My Eyes”). Besides being grounded in multiple generations and permutations of ornately orchestrated R&B, Lady is ultimately soulful for the simple reason that Monáe believes in the alternate reality she’s created for herself so very deeply. It’s complex yet wholehearted because she is.

Discover: The Dungeon Family

Hua Hsu — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 20:40:11 +0000

Before there was a family, there was the Dungeon — otherwise known as Rico Wade’s mom’s basement. It was in the magically stank Dungeon — described by Cee-Lo as “a crawl space with a bench that held a stack of blankets” — that Wade and a crew of friends smoked, slept, passed days without showering, traded rhymes and perfected an alien funk aesthetic that revolutionized what one could/should aspire to express within a single bar. This was music full of pride, personality, desire and a casual, hospitable wisdom, anchored by the earthy production work of Organized Noize (Wade, Ray Murray and Sleepy Brown). That was back in the early ’90s, and the out-of-nowhere emergence of first-wave Dungeon representatives like Outkast and Goodie Mob helped vanquish hip-hop’s coastal chauvinisms.

Those early years set a high bar, yet there was something original and exciting about every new, battle-tested rapper or singer who went from a cameo verse to their own record. Those collective dreams eventually outgrew the basement; they had to. The dozens of directions the Dungeon Family took — and, notably, still take — were part of their shared, hypercreative DNA. “Rhyme got strong/ Mind got blown,” and it’s hard to stay family when you’re no longer sleeping head-to-toe next to some keyboards and a mic stand. From Outkast, Goodie Mob and Joi to Killer Mike, Janelle Monae and Future, the family tree is a sprawling and complicated one. Started from a basement; now they’re everywhere.

Early Days

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

Outkast
1994 | Arista/LaFace Records

Andre and Big Boi met, as many teenagers do, at the mall. They were 16, aspiring rappers in a city brimming with talent but few opportunities to be heard beyond it. The Dungeon became their after-school hangout and practice space and, in 1992, they signed a deal with LaFace to become the label's first rappers. Following a well-received anti-Christmas single ("Player's Ball") and a guest verse on a TLC remix, they... released their daring debut album in 1994. The tongue-twisting title foretold its fiercely leftfield thrills: It was proudly Southern; it was filled with colorful new tropes and characters; and, at a time when samples and penitent sneers ruled rap, it was built on patient, live grooves and Dre and Big Boi's amiable charisma. Suddenly, New York and the West Coast sounded a bit provincial, as Dre and Big leaned into their country drawls one moment and then broke land-speed records the next. "Git Up, Git Out" (featuring Cee-Lo and Big Gipp) was the emotional center, a seven-minute all-in-the-Family statement of class and purpose.
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Soul Food

The Goodie Mob
1995 | Arista/LaFace Records

According to Cee-Lo, the first record from Goodie Mob ("the Good Die Mostly Over Bullshit") was originally conceived as a compilation. At the time, Cee-Lo and Big Gipp were solo artists and T-Mo and Khujo called themselves the Lumberjacks. The four of them formed a bond in the Dungeon, however, and they decided to become a group. Their 1995 debut showcased their diversity of voices, something you realize within minutes of "Thought... Process." These aren't boys passing around a crown, trying it on for kicks. "Frustrated, irritated, sometimes I don't/ Know myself, I be too numb" Khujo grunts, finding solace in his brothers, a blunt and the Dungeon. Meanwhile, the cherubic Cee-Lo pokes his head up from the grind and realizes, "I kinda like bein' poor/ At least I know what my friends here for." These aren't just great songs, they were the building blocks for movements to come: the local pride of "Dirty South" and "Soul Food," the paranoia and spiritualism of "Cell Therapy" or "Live at the O.M.N.I." If Outkast's stories promised fantasy and escape, Goodie Mob was trying to describe the feeling of visiting someone at the county jail, the micro-triumphs and aches of everyday life, the sound of a swinging screen door.
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The Pendulum Vibe

Joi
2012 | CAPITOL

Breaking Through

ATLiens

Outkast
1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

Emboldened by the success of (and perceived slights toward) Southernplayalistic, Dre and Big Boi put a great deal of thought into their follow-up. It had only been a couple years since their debut but they were no longer kids, and they tweaked their personas accordingly, as "Two Dope Boyz (in a Cadillac)" — with its "Welcome, earthlings" robot intro — showed. If Atlanta was too exotic and strange for the hip-hop establishment,... then why not embrace your alien status? ATLiens was a far more confident and ambitious record than their debut, full of the unafraid, almost absurdist swagger ("I'm cooler than a polar bear's toenails," Big Boi famously bragged on the title cut) and quiet pensiveness that would power their next few albums. No longer recording exclusively in the Dungeon, Dre and Big began making their own beats, including the singles "Jazzy Belle" and "Elevators." Despite its futuristic imagery and feel, there was already a sense of nostalgia and appreciation for where they'd come from. "Every day I sit while my ni — a be in school/ Thinkin' bout the second album at the Dungeon shootin' pool," Big raps, describing just a couple years before.
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Set It Off - Music From The New Line Cinema Motion Picture

Set It Off
1996 | EastWest

Soundtracks have always provided opportunities for labels and crews to test new artists or play with unorthodox styles between projects. For example, it's where you'll find some of Outkast's strongest ("Benz or a Beamer" for the New Jersey Drive soundtrack) and most experimental stuff ("Speedballin'" for Tomb Raider and "Land of a Million Drums" for Scooby Doo). The soundtrack for the 1996 heist flick Set it Off featured a few... classic Organized Noize moments. They collaborated with Queen Latifah on a really imaginative cover of Strafe's "Set it Off" and Goodie Mob, Cool Breeze and Backbone contribute the haunting, graveyard banger "Angelic Wars." But the biggest moment here — the one that helped the Set it Off soundtrack go platinum — was undoubtedly En Vogue's world-conquering "Don't Let Go (Love)," the Oakland quartet resplendent over Organized Noize's tamed swamp funk. (Random trivia: the song was originally written for Mick Jagger.)
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Brainchild

Society Of Soul
1996 | Arista/LaFace Records

While it remains an overlooked moment of the Dungeon oeuvre, Society of Soul's sole release captures much of what made it such an exciting movement. Released a few months after writing and producing TLC's hit "Waterfalls," Organized Noize collaborated with Dungeon guru Big Rube and singer Espraronza "Roni" Griffin" to make Brainchild. From the opening drag of "E.M.B.R.A.C.E." and the "Waterfalls"-isms of "Changes" (featuring T-Boz) to the psychedelic soul of "Peaches n'... Erb" and dubby funk of Cee-Lo and George Clinton's "Blac Mermaid," it's an album that captures the Dungeon Family at their diverse best: tight, thoughtful songwriting; moments of adventure and play; a sense of collective struggle. Perhaps that lack of a single, distinct personality is why Brainchild — driven by Sleepy Brown's charming falsetto, but far from an autobiographical record — is rarely recognized as one of the best R&B (or, if you prefer, "neosoul") records of the '90s — because it certainly deserves to be.
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The Dungeon-as-Playground

Still Standing

The Goodie Mob
1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

Cee-Lo, T-Mo, Khujo and Gipp followed up their 1995 debut Soul Food with the looser, wider-ranging yet no less absorbing Still Standing in 1998. Success hadn't changed Goodie Mob much — "What they know about the banana and mayonnaise?/ Slices of toasted bread on the nap-kin" Gipp goads on the slinking "Fly Away"; later, Cee-Lo reminds doubters they're still proudly from the "dirty, filthy, nasty dirty south," land of "silky drawls" and... gold fronts. They tinkered with some different sounds here — the rock snarl of "Just About Over," the minimalist, crystalline crunk of "Beautiful Skin" — but the highs were familiar ones. "Black Ice (Sky High)" was one of the Family's finest moments together, a Goodie Mob-Outkast relay run over a broken-down organ wheeze. A sense of desperation resounds through the chain-gang march of "Distant Wilderness," the "chill cold south" of "See You When I See You." The album closed with "Still Standing," a stirring, piano-backed reminder of why they've chosen to walk the righteous path, even as everyone else is "running out of things to say." "Unscathed, cause this is pain," they rap together on the chorus, "This is for soldiers to feel."
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Aquemini

Outkast
1998 | Arista/LaFace Records

Released a few months after Still Standing, Outkast's third album marked a turning point for the duo. They produced most of the album themselves and it feels intimately "theirs." This was an album obsessed with balance, equilibrium, how righteousness and evil complemented one another — even the title was a play on their increasingly unlikely partnership (Big was an Aquarius, Andre a Gemini). This embracing of difference resulted in a record that... was both celebratory ("Rosa Parks," which sounded like nothing ever before) and paranoid (the George Clinton-assisted "Synthesizer"), futuristic yet rustically local, hungry for love yet still untrusting. You could get lost in Aquemini's worlds — the intersecting lives of "SpottieOttieDopaliscious," the back-in-the-day folks Dre and Big left behind on "Da Art of Storytellin' (Part 1)." In retrospect, perhaps this was the beginning of the end, this intense exploration of the-playa-and-the-poet chasm. At the time, though, that space-between represented — and sounded like — vast, open possibility.
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Stankonia

Outkast
2000 | Arista/LaFace Records

The approach toward the year 2000 was an ominous one: the techno-paranoia and doomsday millenarianism of Y2K, that mythic string of zeroes finally upon us. Whether it was this forward-looking urgency or not, it was a truly profound moment for pop music. In early October 2000, Radiohead released Kid A, a paradigm-shifting reset of arena rock. And on Halloween, Atlanta's Outkast released Stankonia, still one of the strangest and most ambitious hip-hop... albums ever made. The Outkast duo of Big Boi and Andre had already prepared us for artful contradictions, most notably on their masterpiece Aquemini. But the Stankonia moment was announced by "Bombs Over Baghdad," a triumphant, jungle-influenced oddball of a single that was nearly twice as fast as anything else on the radio. By the time Stankonia arrived, it was clear that the always-improving duo had crafted a true masterpiece. The album was like a history of the future in about an hour, and with all due respect to Aquemini it is probably the greatest distillation of the Outkast vision. There were hits that sounded instantly familiar, like the ice-water swagger of "So Fresh, So Clean" and the complex, grown folks earnestness of "Ms. Jackson." There were moments of nasty, reckless abandon, like "Gangsta Shit" or the coquettish "I'll Call Before I Come." And there were songs that yearned for or described a better world, like the post-Hendrix wail of "Gasoline Dreams" or the skyward, Erykah Badu-assisted "Humble Mumble." That Stankonia could accommodate such a range of images attests to its power. It is swampy and thick and earthy and funky; it is sleek and cold and futuristic. It is as complicated as everyday life.
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The Dungeon Diaspora

A S.W.A.T. Healin' Ritual

Witchdoctor
1998 | Interscope

Witchdoctor's 1997 debut remains one of the strongest examples of how far one could take that early Dungeon aesthetic. Judging by his guest spots on Aquemini and Soul Food, it was hard to discern whether he was a fierce, eyes-agog rapper or a blissed-out gospel crooner. When it came time to compose his brilliant head-trip of a debut, he split the difference. He's an absorbing host, lazily stuttering through his verses and... then singing the cloud-high hook on "Island Koneelalee." "Lil' Mama's Gone" is stunning, Witchdoctor strumming an acoustic guitar and singing sweetly about love lost. S.W.A.T. clearly descends from the lineage of Outkast and Goodie Mob, but it takes that world-weary outlook in a different, distinctly God-fearing direction on tracks like "Heaven Comin'" and "Dez Only 1." "Atlanta got a bullet with yo name on it," he warns on "A.T.L. the Great Big Lick." For Witchdoctor, though, redemption won't come from fighting back.
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Deliverance

Bubba Sparxxx
2003 | Beat Club

When Outkast and the Dungeon Family first broke in the early 1990s, Bubba Sparxxx was just a country kid scheming for a way out of remote LaGrange, Georgia. Timbaland handled the bulk of his successful 2001 debut Dark Days, Bright Nights but Bubba brought Organized Konfusion in for a few tracks on his acclaimed and more introspective 2003 follow-up, Deliverance. Bubba tried to rebrand the region over a din of electric guitar... on "New South" — "Inspired by the efforts y'all made to pigeonhole me/ I rose from the pig shit without a smidgen on me," he scoffs, laughing off all the Yank haters. The swinging horns, jittering drums and Sleepy Brown falsetto of "Like it Or Not" captured the poppier side of the early-2000s Dungeon sound, while the speed-rush pogo of "Back in the Mud" showed their more adventurous side. Bubba ended up making his allegiance to the Dungeon Family official by signing with Outkast's Purple Ribbon imprint for his third album, The Charm.
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The Killer

Killer Mike
Grindtime Official Inc. / INgrooves

There have been a lot of great solo rappers — or rappers with great singles — who have been part of the Dungeon Family: Witchdoctor, Cool Breeze, Slimm Calhoun, Backbone. Killer Mike is the one who has emerged as the most successful. Groomed to be "next" just as Outkast was dissolving, Mike was the gruff foil to the dexterous duo on late-career tracks like "Snappin' and Trappin'," "The Whole World" and "Flip... Flop Rock." Mike's best solo moments capture a young rapper slowly mastering his mentor's playbook and paying homage at every turn. He was poised to follow his 2003 debut Monster with the forceful and politically charged Ghetto Extraordinary. It was shelved indefinitely, but some of its better moments surfaced on his 2006 mixtape, The Killer. On "Bad Day Worst Day" he talks trash about Creflo Dollar, Adolph Hitler and everyone in-between over some flickering organ, while "Ni---as Down South" is a majestic, sweltering planting-of-the-flag classic. Always the dutiful disciple, "Dungeon Family Dedication" pays tribute to the ones who made it all possible, the rise and the fall.
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Divisions and Diversions

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

Outkast
2002 | Arista

It was a break-up record without any real allusions to the break-up. Instead, they holed up in their separate corners and emerged with radically distinct versions of the Outkast legacy. Andre's half tried to establish him as some kind of twisted pop auteur, and the massive success of "Hey Ya!" brought the "group" an unprecedented kind of popularity. Despite its occasionally heavy-handed conceptualism, there were some truly gorgeous tunes here — the... melted thump of "Prototype," the showtunes-soul of "Roses," the IV-drip desperation of "Pink and Blue." Weirdly, Speakerboxxx is probably a better indicator of how extreme Outkast could have gotten had they stayed a mere rap duo. Dre deserved praise for his bewitchingly strange pop but Big's side was just as adventurous: the electro-onslaught of "Ghettomusick," the barnyard funk of "Bowtie," the brutally sweet melancholy of "Unhappy." The strange thing about the final "proper" Outkast album was that it yielded so few clues about Dre and Big's deteriorating relationship over the course of its two hours. They had already moved on, past where anyone could catch them.
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Mutant Mindframe

Big Gipp
2004 | In The Paint / Entertainment One Distribution

Goodie Mob wasn't in great shape circa 2003. Cee-Lo had left a few years earlier and found success as a kind of hippie-funk charismatic. There'd always been surplus energy spilling from the goofy hard rock Gipp and that year he took a sabbatical from the group to release Mutant Mindframe, a collection of the trippier moments that outstretched the Goodie aesthetic. The daredevil flow of "Make the People Say," the bottom-heavy crawl... of "Make it Happen" and the Neptunes-tinged "Wildout" (featuring the underrated Slimm Calhoun) were all solid slabs that drew from Gipp's past. But it was the spaced-out moments that brought out the best in him. He and Andre 3000 try to out-style each other on "Boogie Man" while "Creeks" (featuring Witchdoctor) sounds like an inside-out P-Funk tune. The Sleepy Brown-powered "Steppin Out" is pure ecstasy, an irresistible steppers' classic.
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Mr. Brown

Sleepy Brown
2006 | VIRGIN

With his bugged-out shades, Bic-clean dome and flashy threads, Sleepy Brown was always the most visible member of Organized Noize. Released in 2006, Mr. Brown was his third attempt at developing a solo profile, after neither the Society of Soul nor Sleepy's Room projects found the audiences they deserved. By now Sleepy was well known for his appearances on hits like Ludacris's "Saturday" and Outkast's "The Way You Move," and the festive,... romance/freak-centric Mr. Brown takes a more direct route to stardom. Big Boi and Pharrell — honors student at the Sleepy Brown School of Falsetto — show up for the joyous, buoyant "Margarita." Sleepy nicks a Jackson 5 tune for the majestic, carefree "Me, My Baby and My Cadillac." While they were no longer the go-to producers for their former disciples, Organized Noize showed that they were still full of ideas on the slow-motion writhe of "Oh Ho Hum."
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Strength in Numbers

Even In Darkness

Dungeon Family
2001 | Arista

Expectations were unreasonably high for the Dungeon Family album, and it's a compliment to the crew's high quality of output that 2001's Even in Darkness left most fans unsatisfied. There were some great songs — Cee-Lo's spine-tingling lead-in to the anthemic "Crooked Booty," Andre 3000's cavalier stroll through the Kraftwerk-tweaking "Trans DF Express," the celebratory reunion vibes of "6 Minutes," the punch-drunk funk of "Rollin'." Maybe too much of a good thing... was the problem. Organized Noize and Earthtone III (Outkast and Mr. DJ's production moniker) were in top form — Even in Darkness features some of the strongest crew productions of the era. But there was a sense of collaborative play lacking in some of the posse cuts, all these moments of individual brilliance at the cost of a larger struggle.
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Big Boi Presents... Got Purp? Vol. 2

Big Boi Presents...
2005 | VIRGIN

After the dissolution of Outkast, Big Boi attempted to recreate the Dungeon Family with Purple Ribbon, a loose collective of local survivors and Family stalwarts. The only prerequisite was style and Big's approval, which helps explain why Got Purp? Vol. II can be so simultaneously absorbing and exhausting. There's a lot going on here — limber, pristine-sounding singers (Scar, Janelle Monae), old friends (Sleepy Brown, Cool Breeze) and new allies (Bubba Sparxxx,... who contributes the excellent "Claremont Lounge"). Still, the highs are a reminder of Big's adventurous spirit, especially the funhouse thrills of the posse cut "Kryptonite" to the deconstructed old-school of Big, Bun B, Big Gee and G-Rock's fantastic "808."
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Kinfolk

Ali & Gipp
2007 | Universal

Slowly, the circle widened. In 2007, with Goodie Mob broken up, Gipp collaborated on an album with Ali of the St. Lunatics, who had helped do for the Midwest what Gipp and the Dungeon Family had done for Atlanta. It was a surprisingly good pairing; then again, Gipp's lumbering drawl sounds good alongside anyone. There was nothing conceptual about Kinfolk. It was heavy on features and a kind of newfound, multi-region solidarity:... Nelly and the irrepressible Pimp C show up for "Hood" while Cee-Lo and Bun B bring some menace to "I Told Ya." They were all drawn by the lowest common denominator, so to speak. "Work Dat, Twerk Dat" comes across as some stripped-down, country-fied Miami Bass, a spiritual companion to the minimalist thump of the rump-toasting "Go 'Head."
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The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (version 1)

St. Elsewhere

Gnarls Barkley
2006 | Downtown Recordings

Cee-Lo always had star power: his pesky scampering rapping anchoring Goodie Mob's songs, the bright, inspired moments on his 2002 and 2004 solo albums. He finally broke through in 2006 with St. Elsewhere, the first of two collaborative albums he recorded with DJ and producer Danger Mouse. Here, Cee-Lo showed off his versatility as a singer rather than a rapper, commanding his partner's quirky pop arrangements with class, wit and just a... bit of grit. "Crazy" conquered the world and inaugurated the third act of Cee-Lo's astonishing career. Fitting that their first encounter was in the late 1990s after a Goodie Mob concert, Danger Mouse still and up-and-comer, pressing a demo tape into the hands of his heroes.
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The Odd Couple

Gnarls Barkley
2008 | Downtown Recordings/Atl
The Lady Killer

Cee-Lo Green
2010 | Radiculture/Elektra

The Legacy: Leftfield Pop (take 2)

The ArchAndroid

Janelle Monáe
2010 | Bad Boy/Wondaland

"I grew up on Outkast," the visionary singer Janelle Monae recently explained. "I grew up on Goodie Mob, I grew up on Dungeon Family." When Monae moved to Atlanta as an aspiring singer, she was drawn to the lineage of chart-topping iconoclasts the city had produced. She became part of Big Boi's Purple Ribbon collective and she featured on a couple Outkast songs for the Idlewild soundtrack. It was Big who recommended... her to Diddy, who signed her to Bad Boy and — somewhat shockingly — afforded her the space to make The ArchAndroid, a dizzying and meticulous hour of post-everything, hooks-and-provocation soul that was clearly indebted to the Dungeon Family. Maybe it's a sign of how successful and mainstream Outkast et al became that Monae was afforded the freedom to create her galaxies in peace. She hasn't forgotten where she came from — Big Boi guests on one of the album's brightest cuts, "Tightrope," and she recently guested on the Goodie Mob reunion single, "Special Education."
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Metropolis: The Chase Suite

Janelle Monáe
2008 | Bad Boy Records

The Legacy: Still Grinding

Pluto

Future
2012 | Epic

The family business is in good hands: Janelle Monae's freak flag flies on behalf of the Dungeon, while Killer Mike continues to put out fantastic, bracing records. And then there's Future, whose 2012 debut Pluto was one of the year's best albums, a captivating mix of psychedelic highs and strange, bluesy wails. It opened with a voice familiar to anyone who had grown up on the Dungeon Family: "The future is now,"... crackled Big Rube, whose soft, grizzled voice and inscrutable adages have been a constant over the family's twenty year run. There are plenty of current-day Atlanta rappers who grew up on Outkast and Goodie Mob, but few grew up in their presence. Future experienced it all firsthand thanks to his cousin, Rico Wade. He got the name "Future" as a kid hanging out at the studio with Wade and his friends, back when they were all working their way up. He's proven their prophecy right.
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Sly and the Family Stone, Higher!

Britt Robson — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:00:57 +0000

A massive, spectacular collection of all the hits and more

Of the three pillars of funk — James Brown, George Clinton and Sly Stone — Sly was always the most adventurous and the most open-ended about his music, his politics and his self-identity. At the height of the Black Power movement, he championed integration and trumpeted inclusion with good-natured populist anthems like “Everyday People,” “Stand” and “Everybody is a Star.” And he walked his talk by assembling the first mainstream band — Sly and the Family Stone — that mixed races and genders among its core personnel while playing a racial amalgam of fatback soul and psychedelic rock, horn-driven funk and vocals that ranged from a doo-wop croon to a blues-fried scream. The sound fashioned by sonic auteurs such as Prince, Michael Jackson and late-period Miles Davis, let alone lesser ensembles like the Black-Eyed Peas, simply doesn’t exist in the same way without the musical and philosophical example of Sly.

Now comes Higher!, a 77-song compilation that includes mono masters of all Sly’s major hit singles, 17 previously unissued tracks that range from incendiary live performances to earnest formative studio sessions, a host of deep-in-the-album gems, and more obscure releases on either side of the band’s prime. Aside from the first half-dozen or so songs — amateur, now-anachronistic attempts by then-producer/DJ Sly to capitalize on the regional hit, “C’mon Let’s Swim” that he helmed for Bobby Freeman — nearly all the obscurities are much better than typical completist-baiting compilation-filler, especially the whisper-to-a-scream anti-celebrity lament, “Fortune and Fame,” the surf-rockish “Dynamite!” with guest vocalist Johnny Robinson, and the doo-wopping “What’s That Got To Do With Me.”

Then there is the cream of the catalog, which is just spectacular. The mono compression consolidates the punch of the horns and shouts on timeless material such as “Dance to the Music,” “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” and the aforementioned anthems. Even so, you’ll hear Larry Graham’s popping bass and baritone asides, Cynthia Robinson’s wailing trumpet and Sly’s vocals and rainbow keyboards poking through. The murk and despair of the classic stuff from There’s a Riot Goin’ On (which echoes and answers Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On) remains riveting. And for the veteran Sly fans with an already deep collection who think they can take a pass, there are a couple of previously unissued performances from the Isle of Wight Festival that belong in your ear buds — it will send you scurrying back to past favorites.

Goodie Mob, Age Against the Machine

Nate Patrin — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:00:34 +0000

It doesn't feel like 1995, but it still feels like Goodie Mob

Expectations are intrusive enough when you’re dealing with a reunion from a long-dissolved beloved musical act. With the new Goodie Mob album, Age Against the Machine, that reunion is coupled with a reinvention: 14 years separate this record and the pop-leaning World Party, the last album Goodie Mob made with all four members and something of a contentious stylistic departure in itself. Things get even cloudier if you factor in the styles that the core members have been indulging since — the dearth of straight-up rap on Cee-Lo’s solo and Gnarls Barkley work; the engagingly indie-weird side project Willie Isz that Khujo did with Jneiro Jarel. A return to the Dungeon Family-driven vital spot hit by first two albums Soul Food and Still Standing seems unlikely in this context — this isn’t a group that seems that interested in looking backward.

Instead, Age Against the Machine reintroduces their Dirty Southern sociopolitical edge over a string of beats that are just glossy enough to dupe the unwary into thinking it’s a crossover record. The production slate includes contributions by neo-funk oddball Jack Splash and executive production by Cee-Lo himself. But the only real underlying factor tying it all together is a sense of scale: blasts of fog-machine arena rock, spaceship-takeoff club-rap futurism, and manic chase-scene orchestration run through a record that conflates commercial potential with over-the-top bombast.

That’s the bait, at least, but the hook runs deep: The political message has scarcely been diluted, with cuts like “Power” and “Nexperience” cutting to the heart of racism’s omnipresence and “Kolors” ruminating over gang identity crises. Even the most upbeat cut, the retro-soul dance track “Amy,” joyfully celebrates a love affair with “my very first white girl.” Cee-Lo stands out in all his performances, but as a rapper with a sing-song cadence rather than a singer, and his theatrical tendencies helps make him sound righteously pissed and intelligently defiant as ever. T-Mo, Big Gipp, and Khujo put in strong enough work to keep this from turning into some kind of one-man show, though, and if this doesn’t feel like 1995, it still feels like Goodie Mob.

Earl Sweatshirt, Doris

Jayson Greene — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 16:45:47 +0000

A calmly incredible full-length debut from Odd Future's kid brother

When Odd Future crashed the party in 2010, they seemed, momentarily, like marauders. Now that the Golgi Apparatus of the music industry has more or less broken them down for useable parts — a cartoon show, a pop-up clothing store, corporate sponsorships — they resemble nothing so much as a good, old-fashioned, harmless dysfunctional family. Like any family, they have their louts and their geniuses, their ne’er-do-wells and good kids — Tyler, the Creator is the braying patriarch; Frank Ocean is the successful cousin who moved to Europe and who only returns for reunions.

But Earl Sweatshirt? He’s the kid brother, the one everyone huddles around protectively and gives extra space. He’s the only one with any of that original OF mythos still surrounding him: He’s the kid in the barbershop chair; he was the subject of an amateur manhunt at the blood-crazed height of the OF feeding frenzy. It’s a burden he grimaces slightly under but doesn’t reject on Doris, his calmly incredible and long-awaited full-length debut. Earl remains better at stringing words together than anyone his age, or triple it; pick any stretch of Doris and be mowed over by quotables, the kind that practically compel you to type them out so you can marvel at their wheels-within-wheels inner music: “In turn, these critics and interns admit that the shit spitted just burn like six furnaces,” he says on “Chum.” His verses sneak spring-loaded, incisive commentary into standard rap language: He’s “harder than immigrants’ work” on Chum, and on “Hive” he deadpans that he’s “riding dirtier than the sky that you praying to.”

But Earl is more than a great rapper; he’s a great writer, period, good at making you feel for him, see things from his perspective. On “Chum,” he reflects: “It’s probably been 12 years since my father left/ Left me fatherless/ And I just used to say I hate him in dishonest jest/ When honestly I just miss this nigga like when I was six/ And every time I got a chance to say it, I would swallow it.” Compare this sweet, sad sentiment to Tyler’s famous “I just want my father’s email so I can tell him how much I fuckin’ hate him in detail.” There is more bravery in Earl’s quiet admission, with its introspection and risk of vulnerability, than in anything Tyler yells.

It’s a quality Earl shares with Frank Ocean, the other sky-high superior member of Odd Future: He’s an empath. For Earl, the air is swarming with other people’s hurt feelings, and he writes as astonishingly well about those as he does about his own. On the album highlight “Sunday,” he and Ocean appear together, and Earl’s verse is a long, tangled love letter and apologia to someone close to him: “I don’t mean to offend you, I’m just focused today,” he admits, pleading, “I don’t know why we argue, and I just hope that you listen/ And if I hurt you I’m sorry, music makes me dismissive.”

For someone who seems distinctly uncomfortable in the spotlight, Earl seems unafraid to take emotional risks, to wear his heart on his sleeve even if it hurts. It’s ironic that he’s the only prominent member of Odd Future who is still a teenager; he seems decades older. On “Burgundy” (produced by Pharrell and one of only two tracks not produced by Earl himself), he says “I’m stressing over payment/ So don’t you tell me that I made it/ Only relatively famous.” For the rest of his crew, “only relatively famous” is all they’ve ever wanted. But Earl sees further than that.

A$AP Ferg, Trap Lord

Ian Cohen — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 13:44:17 +0000

Going for comprehensiveness rather than cohesion

The designated wild card of the A$AP Mob pays tribute to misanthrope rap heroes
A$AP Mob is a decidedly modernist version of a rap crew. They rep high fashion and veganism; they give equal time to obscene strip club raps and borderline horrorcore. But they’re also ardent hip-hop fanatics, and any student of the game knows a real rap crew needs both breakout star and a wild card. A$AP Rocky has taken on the role of the former and A$AP Ferg has played the latter with aplomb. You could call him an “impressionist” rapper rather than “impressionistic,” in that he can sound like damn near anyone — on his respective standout guest spots from Live.Love.A$AP and Long.Live.A$AP, he flowed like a sing-song screw rapper (“Kissin’ Pink”) and Cookie Monster (“Ghetto Symphony”).

Trap Lord is a Ferg’s first commercial release and goes for comprehensiveness rather than cohesion. You get 13 tracks with about as many different styles — Ferg flexes a melodic slow flow on “Hood Pope,” double-time Midwestern spitting on “Lord,” fake patois on quasi-hit “Shabba,” just to name a few. This versatility can work against Ferg; there are times on Trap Lord where you can’t figure out when it’s actually him. Trap Lord lacks the focus and commercial viability of A$AP Rocky’s albums, not to mention a clarity in his self-mythologizing. His lyrics aren’t particularly heady, but contain plenty of fly, quotable nonsense all the same — mostly requests for sexual pleasure and drug confiscation, giving shouts to Five Percenter leaders and sherm in the same damn line.

Although Ferg is a fringe figure at heart, Trap Lord presents him as a middleman, or at least a central hub, where the darker strains of ’90s pop-rap mingle with their current analogues. He draws a logical connection between Onyx and Waka Flocka Flame’s headbanger-hop without putting them on the same track, and then does the same for genial stoners Cypress Hill and Trinidad Jame$. And of course, any rapper making use of melody, occultism and heavy metal imagery needs to pay homage to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony — the Cleveland collective show up on “Lord,” sounding shockingly vital. Trap Lord is a weird one for sure, pitch-black in both sound and spirit at times. But even in its rushed, slapdash state, it’s a labor of love. The dank production and misanthropic lyricism can’t hide its creator nerding out over the past two decades of amoral hip-hop.

Various Artists, South Side Of Soul Street

Holly George-Warren — Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:52:19 +0000

Criminally overlooked soul singles from a vital, forgotten indie

The “boogaloo beat,” name-checked in Genie Brooks’s shake-your-tailfeather title track, is all over this collection of criminally overlooked singles from the Valparaiso, Florida-based Minaret. Though most R&B diamonds cut in Memphis and Muscle Shoals have gotten their due, the 40 sides included here represent a whole other batch of down-South treasures from 11 different artists. The label’s “Otis” is should-have-been-a-contender Big John Hamilton, from Augusta, Georgia. Not only does Hamilton have a magnificent voice, but he wrote distinctive, well-crafted songs like the heart-tugging ballads “I Have No One” and “How Much Can a Man Take.” His upbeat party tunes — “Big Fanny” and “Big Bad John” — illustrate Hamilton’s artistic diversity, as do his soulful duets with Doris Allen.

Minaret’s other stalwart, the honey-voiced Brooks, delivers wrenching ballads, such as “Fine Time,” cowritten by Spooner Oldham, who plays keys on some of the tracks, and the cinematic prison narrative, “Helping Hand.” Johnny Dynamite’s devastating “Everybody’s Clown,” like many tracks here, was cut with a killer house band at Minaret’s Playground Recording Studio, just over the border from Alabama, and still an operating enterprise. The South Side of Soul Street is one address you don’t want to forget.

Who to See at Lollapalooza 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 20:41:47 +0000

Headed to Chicago but still not sure who you want to see in Grant Park? Fear not: We’ve boiled the brain-busting Lollapalooza schedule down to 15 essential sets.

Nine Inch Nails

The Downward Spiral

Nine Inch Nails
1994 | NOTHING

There's a sense in which this write-up feels ridiculous — recommending you go see Nine Inch Nails is a little like saying you ought to check out eating and breathing some time. Whether or not you like their music is irrelevant; Trent Reznor consistently delivers one of the best live shows in the business, with no exceptions. It's not just smoke and fire — the show is meticulously crafted to follow... a story arc, the songs moving from anger to despair to, believe it or not, redemption and healing. The visuals — which, make no mistake, are stunning — are just a complement. Make no mistake: Nine Inch Nails are a live act completely without equal. — J. Edward Keyes
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The Killers

Battle Born

The Killers
2012 | ISLAND RECORDS

Anyone aching for the unselfconscious pomposity of old-style rock 'n' roll: Look no further. For 12 years running the Killers have been delivering all-smiles feel-good cotton-candy-rush-n-roll and bringing gloriously, heartbreakingly sincere reminders that sometimes rock clichés actually became clichés because they are the greatest. Their show is pretty much all crescendo; they've been opening with "Mr. Brightside" lately, which is the kind of move you pull when you're cocky enough to believe... you've got two better hours in store. And the thing is, they do. Even their hokiest songs feel vital live, their cornball lyrics ringing incredibly true and hitting the softest spot in your heart every goddamn time. Spoiler alert: They usually end with "When You Were Young," which sounds more like "Born to Run" now — in the best possible way — than it ever has. One more spoiler alert: When they do play it, you will lose your shit. — JEK
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Kendrick Lamar

good kid, m.A.A.d city

Kendrick Lamar
2013 | Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope

Kendrick Lamar is a tiny stub of a man — standing onstage, he doesn't seem to come much past 5'4". But his quiet charisma widens out around him like a crop circle, and with his triumphant 2012 masterpiece good kid, m.A.A.d city still resonating in the air, he will likely arrive trailing clouds of rap-savior glory. Liquid, languorous songs like "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "A.D.H.D." transform into shout-alongs when he's... onstage, and come prepared to rap along to every tongue-twisting verse: He usually gets heavy with the crowd participation. — Jayson Greene
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Eric Church

Chief

Eric Church
2011 | EMI RECORDS NASHVILLE

Eric Church's debut Sinners Like Me was the kind of sly alt-country classic that somehow sneaks into the mainstream once every few years, rollicking and dust-caked, every song ending either in a hug or at the bar (his "Two Pink Lines" remains one of the cleverest, funniest songs about a pregnancy scare ever written — twist ending and all). He foundered a bit on its follow-up, but his most recent album, 2011's... Chief, righted the ship, restoring his wise-guy persona and leavening its Jesus references with enough good-ol'-boy drankin' songs to keep you cockeyed 'til Tuesday. His live show is a big, boisterous party, his band spiking Church's songs with clever AC/DC quotes and ramping up the volume until the ground shakes. — JEK
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Matt & Kim

Lightning

Matt & Kim
2012 | FADER Label / The Orchard

Matt & Kim play punky electropop with huge, beaming choruses and feel-good lyrics about living every second like it's your last. In the last few years, the duo has risen from tiny club shows to a staple at every summer festival, and it's because they take on every live show with mile-wide grins and more energy than a 24-pack of Red Bull. Keyboardist/vocalist Matt Johnson is known for climbing up the side... of the stage, drummer Kim Schifino seems to stand on her drumset more than she plays it, and they both crowd surf. — Laura Leebove
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Father John Misty

Fear Fun

Father John Misty
2012 | Sub Pop Records

"Father John Misty" is actually Josh Tillman, the somber folkie and former Fleet Fox. Father John Misty is kind of Tillman's Tony Clifton persona; in case you are prone to conflating a musician with his music, Father John Misty is here to remind you that every song is a pose, and hey, also, your fly is open, thanks for coming and try the veal. Misty is a wisecracking, soused, Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter... scoundrel, prone to running naked in broad daylight and doing ayahuasca, and his 2012 record Fear Fun was a rollicking tumble in Harry Nilsson's bedraggled bathrobe. Live, he brings a sharp tongue, a Borscht Belt comedian's timing, and a practiced road warrior's worn charisma. Short version: If you're bored by Fleet Foxes, and indie-folk in general, go and be surprised by Father John Misty. — JG
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Jessie Ware

Devotion

Jessie Ware
2013 | Interscope/Cherrytree

In the video for breakout single "Wildest Moments," UK singer Jessie Ware appears, dressed in white, in front of a blank white backdrop and begins to sing. And that is pretty much all that happens. But the thing is, not much more needs to happen: The song itself is potent, big, "Paper Planes"-style bass drums and Ware's smoky alto preaching the gospel of two-way love as a path to self-actualization. It's like... that throughout Devotion, Ware's sneakily seductive debut that fuses the best parts of '90s R&B with current trends in UK dance. Throughout, the music is deliciously underplayed: cool blankets of synths, percussion that percolates like an 8-bit coffeepot and the occasional filigree of guitar. It makes for a new kind of high-tech lover's rock, cruising sleek and quiet as a sports car on a city street in the hours just before the sun comes up. Like all the best crushes, it sneaks up on you unexpectedly, and takes a firm, unwavering hold. — JEK
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Icona Pop

Iconic EP

Icona Pop
2012 | Big Beat Records/Atlantic

Here is Swedish duo Icona Pop summed up in six words: "I don't care! I love it!" That refrain — cribbed from last year's giddiest breakup song — perfectly captures Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo's exuberance and reckless abandon. Their songs are straight-up sugar shots, firework synths and hollered vocals and drum machines that wallop and squelch like medicine balls full of purple Kool-Aid. It's the sound of pure joy — a... nonstop barrage of leaping neon exclamation points. — JEK
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Ghost B.C.

Infestissumam

Ghost B.C.
2013 | Seven Four Entertainment / Republic

As soon as Ghost swarmed out of the depths of Linköping, Sweden, in 2010, the metal community came running. Not only was the band's underground blend of Mercyful Fate riffs and Blue Oyster Cult melodies instantly appealing, its evil shtick was too goofy to ignore. Fronted by Papa Emeritus II, a cryptic skull-faced vocalist in a pope costume, and backed by musicians who all went under the moniker "Nameless Ghoul," Ghost were... a Satanic Spinal Tap with crafty, infectious songs they clearly sold their souls for the ability to write unforgettable songs. Ghost's (who had to add "B.C." to the end of their name to avoid confusion with another Ghost) blatantly Satanic content is likely far too extreme for commercial radio, but for those who value strong, unique songs regardless of genre or lyrical content, they're more illuminating that 100 burning Bibles. — Jon Wiederhorn
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Charles Bradley

No Time for Dreaming

Charles Bradley
2011 | Daptone Records / The Orchard

It's time to put to bed, once and for all, Charles Bradley's oft-repeated origin story as a James Brown impersonator. The Screaming Eagle of Soul, The Original Black Swan and, most recently, The Victim of Love, Bradley is at this point a performer fully his own, possessing boundless charisma, gallons of passion and the kind of unstudied, unadulterated joy that an outdoor festival desperately needs. To stand in the presence of Charles... Bradley is to be basked in 100 percent pure love — so completely unsullied and unpolluted you feel yourself choking up before the first song ever hits the chorus. To put it another way: if James Brown were alive today, he'd be impersonating Charles. — JEK
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Heartless Bastards

Lianne La Havas

Is Your Love Big Enough?

Lianne La Havas
2012 | Nonesuch

While inspired by the more robust Who Is Jill Scott?, Lianne La Havas's promising debut Is Your Love Big Enough? ponders dating an older man (fluttering ditty "Age") and lobs bitter accusations of betrayal (downbeat duet "No Room for Doubt") over finger-picked, reverb-tinged guitar tinged. Over top, La Havas's vocals beckon like flickering candlelight. — Christina Lee

Baroness

MS MR

Secondhand Rapture

MS MR
2013 | Columbia

"We fear rejection, prize attention, crave affection/ Dream, dream, dream of perfection!" That's the refrain of "Salty Sweet," a song MS MR wrote about signing to a major label — but on their stellar debut, Secondhand Rapture, it would seem that the duo's fears didn't materialize. Not only do Lizzy Plapinger and Max Hershenow deliver an array of haunting, period-skipping pop gems: They strike a rare balance between maintaining their DIY background... and opening up their sound for a larger audience to enjoy. By meshing classic pop with more experimental sounds, they're making up their own rules, as well as borrowing from the playbooks of some of the bands Plapinger helped launch on her label Neon Gold, like Passion Pit, Gotye, Ellie Goulding and Icona Pop. MS MR's approach is similar — as they put it: "Pop rooted in an indie ethos." — Marissa G. Mueller
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Hidden Treasures 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 12:00:21 +0000

Every year, hardcore music fans wrestle with the same wonderful problem: There are too many records. Even if we listened to nothing but new records, non-stop, the numbers just don’t add up; we’re going to miss something, it’s certain, something strange and special. But what? What are we missing?

We at eMusic know this exquisite pain better than anyone; the question “What are we missing?” keeps us up nights. Our Hidden Treasures feature is a partial answer. The records in this list span genres, from vintage soul to frozen Gothic pop; from death-obsessed classical song cycles to sloppy garage rock; from chamber music to churning doom metal. Some of these records were overshadowed by higher-profile releases in the same style; some are on labels that never get the attention they deserve. Some of these records are simply damned weird. They all caught our ears and hearts, however, for one reason or another, and we think they’ll do the same to you.

Bleak Visions

Lang: Death Speaks

David Lang
Cantaloupe Music

First, I feel it's important to say that, as of this writing, David Lang is nowhere near death. I see him walking through the neighborhood from time to time and he is his usual cheery, deadpan self. And yet the Bang on A Can co-founder has produced an incandescent string of pieces in recent years focused exclusively on death and dying. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion gravely watches a poor... young girl freeze to death as passersby ignore her. His yet-to-be-recorded Love Fail takes an oblique look at the fatal love affair between Tristan and Isolde. His haunting, drifting Salle des Departs (recorded here under the title "Depart") was written for a hospital morgue. And then there's Death Speaks, a five-movement work which takes up most of this recording. Here, death is not an event, but a figure, like something out of an engraving by Albrecht Dürer. But unlike the American folk song "O Death," in which Death is a scary, implacable foe — the singer asks, "oh Death, won't you pass me over another year" — Lang has assembled a text in which Death is addressing us, with a message that is ultimately reassuring, and comforting.

The text is built around the many and varied instances in the songs of Franz Schubert in which the figure of Death speaks. The music, as in the other death-themed works named above, has a transparent texture that sets off and subtly colors those texts, and the voice delivering it. That voice belongs to Shara Worden, one of the current breed of musicians who move fluidly between the worlds of classical music and indie rock. While still leading her own band, My Brightest Diamond, Worden has become the go-to voice for the so-called "indie classical" crowd. The rest of the ensemble here is equally remarkable: Bryce Dessner, one of the twin electric guitarists from the popular rock band The National, and a fine composer himself; Owen Pallett, the violinist, vocalist and composer who formerly recorded as Final Fantasy; and Nico Muhly, the in-demand composer and keyboardist whose works range from choral to electronic. With essentially an all-star band, Lang has chosen to write music which is not conventionally virtuosic, relying instead of the quartet's musicality and precision. The results are quietly stunning. Highlights include the gentle, chiming minimalism of part 1, "You Will Return"; the resonant percussive use of the piano's bass end in part 2, "I Hear You"; the deft, rhythmic use of the violin in part 3, "Mist Is Rising"; and the lovely duet that blossoms in part 5, "I Am Walking."

After Death Speaks, the album invites you to relax in the dark-hued but warm ambience of "Depart," for chorus and strings. Probably best not to think too much of the French morgue for which it was written.
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Meir

Kvelertak
2013 | Roadrunner Records

Metal typically exists in a kind of "either/or" dichotomy: either bands are grinding and infernal or they're triumphant and anthemic. The Norwegian group Kvelertak is strictly "both/and." Their scorching second record Meir pairs the bludgeoning brutality of bands like Cannibal Corpse Rotting Christ with the kind of sugary hookiness typically found on an album by Andrew W.K. "Manelyst" is the perfect example: It opens with a barrage of barnstorming chords, a terrifying... asteroid shower of sound, before cruising up into a refrain that's practically singable, sounding like something from the Rocket From the Tombs catalog, if someone set vocalist John Reis on fire. "Burane Brenn" opens full-hurtle, frontman Erlend Hjelvik's wrecked-larynx howls offset by a holler-along soccer-anthem chorus. Kvelertak ride AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" right to its fiery end, and stage a never-ending kegger amid the flames.
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Excavation

The Haxan Cloak
2013 | Tri Angle Records / SC Distribution

It may be glib to assume that London-based producer Bobby Krlic dwells exclusively on the dark side, but given the evidence it's hardly unreasonable. His alias references a 1922 Scandinavian docudrama about witchcraft and inquisition, and his 2011 self-titled debut album aligned him with avant-black-metal/doom acts like Mayhem and Sunn O))). And the sleeve of his gloomily titled follow-up depicts a single length of rope coiled into a noose.

However, The Haxan Cloak's... thrillingly dark and chilly aesthetic goes far deeper than the kind of parent-bothering occult primer these details might suggest. There are echoes of Burial's cavernous dub and Demdike Stare's haunted techno in Excavation, but its magnificently maleficent, post-dubstep soundscapes have more in common with musique concrete, Expressionist cinema soundtracks and medieval monastic cantos than so-called witch house or drone metal.

Krlic's sounds are again rooted in acoustics (cello, violin, guitar, vocals) and field recordings, but this time they've been heavily processed — magnified, stretched, dissembled, reconstituted and rearranged — to produce nine micro-symphonies of stark beauty and extraordinary menace. Whether suggesting the dull throb of an old nuclear power plant, the spooked echo inside an abandoned iron foundry or the howl of an Arctic wind at a remote scientific station, they evoke a compressed anxiety that seeps into every note, causing the likes of "Dieu" to heave and quiver before it dies away and underlining the fact that despite its title, epic closer "The Drop" is concerned with something rather more ominous than build-and-break patterns.
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Abandon

Pharmakon
2013 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

Pharmakon is noise artist Margaret Chardiet, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some infernal ghoul. Abandon opens with a scream, and then plunges to unholy depths, full of icepick electronics, horrifying turbine wooshes and suffocating layers of static. It makes Swans sound like The Byrds.
A Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside

Alexander Spit
2013 | Decon

Alexander Spit's bleak, baleful Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside is not good-times music. Spit is from California, but his dank, druggy rap music feels allergic to sunshine. Spit produced the entire album, and his sticky, bleary sound owes more to Dilla and RZA. Everything seems to move through a thick film, including Spit's raps, which gob up into bits of blacklit surrealism about Roswell and chemtrails and unspool into long spleen-venting rants.... If you've ever sat, stoned, in an apartment during a blazingly hot day with the blinds drawn, Breathtaking Trip will feel clammily familiar.
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Vexovoid

Portal
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Nirvana once wrote a song called "Endless, Nameless." Take a look at this picture of Portal's lead vocalist, and then submit to the swirling, backed-up churn of "Orbmorphia," from the Australian death metal band's fourth album Vexovoid, and you may find yourself with an entirely new appreciation of what those two words can mean.

Portal, as a band, is all texture, no melody. But they have mastered so many different textures... that you never think to yearn for melody. The down-tuned guitars, gurgling beneath the ever-shifting blastbeats of the drums, bring to mind all kinds of things, none of them musical: the alarming suck of wet mud when you walk in loose boots, the sounds old motorcycle engines make. The album title evokes a zone of confusion, a place where you can't get your bearings and the ground is constantly shifting. Exactly.
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Arriving Angels

Helen Money
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Play any of the songs on the harrowing third record by Alison Chesley — who records as Helen Money — on electric guitar, and you'd have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. But play them as she does on cello, and — well, you still have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. Much of this comes from Chesley's command of dynamic. Aptly-titled... album-opener "Upsetter" starts with a low thrum that skitters forward like a tarantula before erupting into slasher-film goring, Chesley's instrument so distortion-caked it sounds like a rotary saw. She's joined by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder on "Beautiful Friends," which progresses from seasick lurch to undead horse stampede, growing more violent and insistent as it goes on. It's a snarling, suffocating record, and by the time you get to the avalanche that concludes "Radio Recorders," it's clear the angels of the title aren't coming down from the sky, but up from below, horns gleaming, eyes yellow as old bones.
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Obsidian Spectre

Crosss
2013 | Telephone Explosion / The Orchard

In the chilling video for CROSSS's "Bones Brigade", a figure in an ominous black cloak kneels motionless on a beach, staring blankly off into the grey sky, as if in a trance. He remains like that, stock still, hypnotized, for a full three minutes and 30 seconds, his motionlessness becoming more sickeningly unsettling the longer it lasts. Finally, at the end of the video, he bows — as if in supplication... to some god or spirit or eerie form that only he can see. He straightens, and the video cuts to black. That turns out to be a handy encapsulation of the Halifax group's aesthetic: slow-moving, hypnotic and deeply, deeply creepy. Sounding something like Thee Oh Sees slowed down to about 2 RPM, the group tops grimy, repetitive chord patterns with wicked-warlock sneering, making for a final product that feels invested with prime '70s sorcery rock black magick. "Smoke" warns, "Look into your mind's eye/ don't forget to not let your guard down" as guitars churn and boil like the steaming liquid in a witch's cauldron. "Old Sound" draws its dark strength from its continual, gooseflesh-raising dives from major to minor key. Throughout, its members acquit themselves as if they've all just done kegstands with the blood of Kali Ma — dead-eyed, dutiful, and wearing sickening grimaces.
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Lost Mixtape Gems

Out of View

The History Of Apple Pie
Marshall Teller Records

On their debut album Out of View, London quintet The History of Apple Pie blend the most precious of indie-pop impulses with the messiest squalling noise-rock has to offer. Vocalist Stephanie Min's feathery vocals float high in the mix, leaving her teen-romance lyrics ("We're having so much fun in the light of the sun/ You're so cool") faintly discernible above the thick clouds of My Bloody Valentine-style glide guitar that threaten to... overwhelm them. It's that constant give-and-take between pop and art-rock chaos that keeps Out of View interesting: A gruff chord or two always cuts the cotton candy at just the right moment, like when the full-on breakdown interrupts the strawberry lemonade-flavored workout "I Want More." On "Mallory," the daydreaming verses and the yearning melody are tossed about by an underlayer of sneering riffs and distorted noise. No one side ever wins out over the other for long and the seesawing can give you a powerful sugar buzz.
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Cruise Your Illusion

Milk Music
2013 | Fat Possum Records

On Cruise Your Illusion, the first proper full-length from Olympia, Washington's Milk Music, the quartet wedges itself somewhere within the SST Records-Neil Young-Wipers universe, pitting sweat-stained, heavy hardcore punk against indelible melodies and endless sincerity. Since their early output, a 2009 demo cassette and a 12-inch in 2010, the band has turned their DIY determination into full-fledged ambition, and the songs on Cruise are as honest and spiritual as they are messy... and loud. On "Lacey's Secret," Alex Coxen's shouting, imperfect voice cuts through the instrumental heap with lines that that scan endearingly like poetry in a rest-stop bathroom: "You got to get all you can here/ when you're burning every night".

The songs on Cruise Your Illusion bask in youthful charm. "…And although the sun sets heavy on the dreamer/ You can feed your pain to the song," Coxens sings on "No, Nothing, My Shelter" as the band rips into the overdriven wail of "Coyote Road" before running amok on "I've Got A Wild Feeling," a populist manifesto that might as well be the band's anthem. When Milk Music started out, their songs were loud, fast and full of Big Muff. And while the sound is still bruising on their debut, they've found a larger scope and a deeper message. On "Cruising With God" Coxen invites the listener into the band's inner sanctum: "They all love our songs/ But even with the music on/ Baby you've got it all wrong/ You haven't danced in so long."
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Sock it to Me

Colleen Green
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records

Colleen Green writes simple songs about simple things and records them as simply as possible. The first song on the irresistible Sock it to Me is basically just Green singing, "Oh yeah, uh-huh, oh God, I really love my boyfriend," and the lazer-light dollar-store Elastica song "You're So Cool" builds to an equally straightforward refrain: "You're so cool, how do you do it? You act like there is nothing to it." Her... logo is a stick-figure drawing of herself that looks not entirely unlike Fido Dido's long-lost sister, and her music is defiantly, joyously basic: just Green's distorted guitar, pouting voice and a Goodwill Store drum machine.

But lean closer in and the images start to distort. Green opens the provocatively-titled "Every Boy Wants a Normal Girl" by singing, "Sometimes I wish I was a normal girl," and then follows it with the height of abnormality: "Like the ones on TV, like the ones in the movies." The drowsy "Darkest Eyes" scans quickly as plainspoken puppy love, with Green celebrating her true love's eyes and contemplating how to retain his affections. And what's her solution? "There's no better way to keep appearances preserved/ than a razor to the optic nerve." And then you skip back to that first song, the one where she's singing about loving her boyfriend, and catch what she says near the ending: "When he tells me that he loves me, I lose the air from my lungs/ his love has finally killed me." Sock it to Me is strychnine-laced Strawberry Fanta.
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Mozes And The Firstborn

Mozes And The Firstborn
2013 | Mozes And The Firstborn / The Orchard

Anyone looking for a 21st-century analog to Weezer's "El Scorcho" should start with "I Got Skills" from the debut album by the Belgian group Mozes & the Firstborn. It's got a similarly motley, gang-hollered chorus, that same nerdish braggadocio ("I got skills to make it through your doorway") and a shambling, thrown-together aesthetic that is charming in spite of itself. The rest of the record pinballs between that same kind of... Jr. High sheepishness — "Skinny Girl" is what Mellow Gold might have sounded like if Beck was a teenager when he recorded it — and genuine star swagger. "Peter Jr." opens with an instant-classic rock couplet — "The longer you work here/ the less you get paid" — before sailing straight into the kind of cruising melodicism that characterizes the best Brian Jonestown Massacre songs (its cocky stride singlehandedly earns the group the right to own this coat) Mozes and the Firstborn are teenage panic and grown-up confidence all at once.
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Paper Moon

Georgiana Starlington
2013 | Hozac / Revolver

As K-Holes, Jack and Julie Hines kick up an unholy racket. Their work as Georgiana Starlington is different in sound, but just as grim in feel. Their dusky, country-influenced songs foreground their dazed, trancelike vocals as they glide over arid guitar like phantoms across the prairie at midnight.
Ex-Cult

Ex-Cult
2012 | Goner / Revolver

Boasting the same feral ferocity as '70s US post-punkers like Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu, Ex-Cult (nee Sex Cult) solder clambering riffs to half-spoken, half-hollered vocals and drench the resulting songs in enough echo to make them sound almost alien. Much murkier and moodier than the music of their producer Ty Segall, Ex-Cult seethe and stalk where Segall storms right in. "Shade of Red" circles and circles, guitars humming like... old Cessnas looking for a place to land. "On Film" is doomier — its downcast bassline could have been lifted from Unknown Pleasures, its howled chorus coming off like some dark warning from a fortune teller. Throughout it sounds both ragged and well-aged — like a relic from an earlier era, recently unearthed. That they are both new and still active is to our great fortune.
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Ultramarine

Young Galaxy
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

On their fourth LP, Young Galaxy go big, trading woozy, lo-fi-leaning dreampop for busy, dancefloor-ready electropop hits. They returned to producer Dan Lissvik, who worked on 2011's Shapeshifting, but this time the group traveled from Canada to Lissvik's studio in Sweden instead of sending their unfinished recordings overseas. The result is slick, cinematic and cohesive: There are disco influences ("Out the Gate Backwards"), tropical beats ("Fall For You"), and glorious pop anthems... ("Pretty Boy," "Fever"). In losing all hints of the haziness that masks their earlier releases, Young Galaxy simultaneously shed the Slowdive comparisons and make their best record yet.
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Peach Kelli Pop

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Like a lollipop caught in a lint filter, Peach Kelli Pop nestles sticky sweetness beneath layers of cottony fuzz. The group, fronted and more or less embodied by White Wires' Allie Hanlon, takes their name from a Redd Kross song, and in many ways, they're that group's cheaper, sunnier analog. Both bands have a fondness for immediately-memorable hooks and piles of guitar, but Peach Kelli Pop seems to be constantly operating in... fast-forward. "Panchito Blues II" sounds like the Shangri-La's trying to outrun The Monkees, and "Julie Oulie" is floor-filler at a jackrabbit sock hop. By the time your brain has caught up you're ready to savor the sweetness, the next song is half over.
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Ready For Boredom

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys
R.I.P. SOCIETY

Australia's Bed Wettin' Bad Boys are basically a drunker version of The Faces, a bunch of hooligans getting shitty on Foster's then stumbling over to their guitars, cranking the amps and seeing what happens. Their live shows are notoriously sloppy (and, depending on whom you talk to, hilarious or infuriating) — bend members swap instruments, goof off interminably between songs and pound beer after beer after beer.

We're spared all of that on... the amazingly-titled Ready for Boredom, skipping instead right to the busted Mustang riffing and the blown-throat vocals. "Sally" is to The Rolling Stones "Happy" what Turkish Star Wars is to regular Star Wars: It has a lot of the same component parts — a blues lick deep-fried in axle grease, a somersaulting two-note hook — but is decidedly lower-budget and flaunts its inattention to detail. Their closest US analog is probably The Men — both bands mine classic rock for its junkiest spare parts — but the Bad Boys are sloppier and soggier still. The glistening album-closer "Keep it From You" is the closest they get to actual sentiment, but Nic Warnock's heartsick lyrics sound like they're coming from the business end of a drunk dial. He may not remember what he said in the morning, but he sounds like he means it in the moment. And isn't that all that matters?
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White Orchid

French Films
2013 | GAEA Records

The phrase "French Films" doesn't generally evoke the happiest images: the last-act betrayal in Breathless, a stricken Jean Pierre-Leaud standing balefully on the beach in The 400 Blows, pretty much all of Shoot the Piano Player. So chalk up the fact that this impossibly hooky Finnish band chose it as their handle to either irony or bad translation. Or move right past it and get right to the main thing that matters:... the songs. And what songs they are: French Films force-feed uppers to the Field Mice and kick the keyboard player out of New Order, delivering a batch of breathless Britpop-inspired songs with gargantuan choruses and guitar lines that glisten and glide like tiny tin airplanes. "Never let me go, never let me go," is the central plea on the rocketing "Where We Come From" — which, sonically, is the Pains of Being Pure at Heart by way of recent Mikal Cronin. As if shaking free of songs this addictive were even an option.
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Rare Birds & Strange Beasts

Sing to the Moon

Laura Mvula
2013 | Columbia

"I don't need love to rescue me/ I'll be all that I choose to be," Laura Mvula sings on "Make Me Lovely," the second track on Sing to the Moon. The British soul singer's voice is as strong as her sentiment, augmented further by delicate orchestra flourishes, soulful handclaps and college-a cappella-style vocal acrobatics. Elsewhere, Mvula fights against ideas of conventional beauty ("That's Alright"), sings about the power of music during hard... times ("Sing to the Moon"), and triumphs over loves that didn't work out ("Flying Without You"). A truly stunning, powerful debut.
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Apocalypse

Thundercat
2013 | Brainfeeder

Apocalypse, the follow-up to the madcap jazz-fusion/Saturday-morning-cartoon hallucination that was The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, explores the more chilled-out and unzipped side of Stephen Bruner. Bruner's command of jazz, R&B, Quiet Storm and straight-ahead bachelor-pad pop is stunning, and this gorgeous album makes a nice companion to the new Daft Punk.
The Moths Are Real

Serafina Steer
2013 | Stolen Recordings / PIAS Digital

Creating a sense of mystery in an age of instant information is difficult, but Serafina Steer manages it beautifully with her third album, The Moths Are Real. There's nothing particularly enigmatic about her CV — classically trained London harpist who has worked with Bat For Lashes, Patrick Wolf and John Foxx — but left to her own devices, Steer enters a world of her own, drawing you in by her side. Produced... by Jarvis Cocker, The Moths Are Real flickers between the physical realities of love, sadness and urban life — the naked romance of "Skinny Dipping," the wintery alienation of "Ballad Of Brick Lane" — and a frosted mythological wonderland that lurks the other side of the looking glass. It's a record that trembles on the threshold between worlds, not just in its merging of folk, psychedelia, prog and electronica, but in the way the lyrics are sweetly conversational one second ("Of course, my scanty life philosophy, as you suspected all along, is actually based on lines from songs," shrugs "Disco Compilation") and as stylized and strange as a temple oracle the next ("Island Odyssey," "Lady Fortune"). The reference points might seem to be in place — Joanna Newsom, Shirley Collins, Alice Coltrane, Robert Wyatt — but Steer sends the compass needle spinning, charting the places where magic and mystery poke through threadbare normality.
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Flume

Flume
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

Few have ever looked to Australia for the latest trends in electronic music. Although it has produced its fair share of innovators, from disco flirts Vanda & Young to hip auteurs The Avalanches, Down Under electronic music is largely seen as the foppish cousin to rock's more masculine manoeuvres. There was a brief flirtation with acid house in the early '90s, mainly fueled by British ex-pats, but interest was always confined to... pockets of aficionados. Until, that is, the arrival of Flume on forward-thinking label Future Classic.

With comparisons to The Weeknd and Toro Y Moi (whom he supported on a recent London date), 21-year-old Harley Streten has seemingly risen from nowhere to produce one of the most exciting electronic debuts of the year. Breakthrough single "Holdin' On" is a sublime slice of wobblesome R&B, while the instrumental "Ezra" has crunk beats leavened with a hook that could have been lifted from the Art of Noise. "Left Alone," which features Melbourne's magnificently-named Chet Faker, feels delivered straight from a Pentecostal church rather than a precocious kid from the Sydney 'burbs, while "More Than You Thought" veers towards stomping Skrillex territory without ever resorting to the easy pay-offs the American producer favors.

This album has already knocked Justin Bieber off the No. 1 spot in Australia — an astonishing achievement for music that is still some way from being pure pop. From a trickle to a torrent: This Flume is unstoppable.
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Leave Me Midnight

My Gold Mask
2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

At this point, the breakup album has been bent into countless shapes. So rather than try to re-shape it, on their debut album My Gold Mask's Gretta Rochelle and Jack Armondo simply amplified its effects. They didn't skimp on dramatics, with Rochelle's pleading vocals, Armondo's spiraling guitar riffs and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that's easy to... inhabit.
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Baroque

Nadia Sirota
New Amsterdam

Nadia Sirota is the violist of choice for the New York contemporary-classical scene, and on Baroque, she follows up her astoundingly assured debut, First Things First, with fresh works from many of the composers who contributed to that recording. Judd Greenstein's piece for seven violas (all of them multitracked by Sirota), "In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves," employs a variety of dizzying riffs, separated by episodes of subtle pizzicato, in order to... evoke the many stages of cosmos-crossing undertaken by the famous "Golden Record" shot into deep space by NASA back in 1977. It's also a tour de force opportunity for Sirota to show off her otherworldly chops and a variety of techniques: Nico Muhly's jaunty "Etude 3" is as memorable as the two others in his series, which he gave Sirota the first time around, and is a showcase for Sirota the player.

But there are new composers this time as well, even if they are generally familiar to the New Amsterdam coterie. Shara Worden's "From the Invisible to the Visible" is a brief, attractive offering that introduces keyboards and organs into the mix to considered effect. Missy Mazzoli's "Tooth and Nail" continues the electronic theme and is the album's standout, featuring some exciting hyper-glitch programming by the composer in during its opening minutes. Solid pieces from Paul Corley and Daniel Bjarnason complete this satisfying program, which, while more tricked-out electronically than Sirota's first offering, retains her aesthetic imprint.
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Smart Ass Black Boy

Fat Tony
2013 | Young One

Fat Tony is the kind of guy fated to slip between the cracks. He's from Houston, but sounds like no Texas rappers; occasionally political, but not much of a firebrand; muted and thoughtful, but no one's idea, really, of a "conscious rapper." He has a casual, conversational voice, and his raps tumble out like early Common, before he got too serious. There are dumb puns, a few trenchant insights and, above all,... an appealing confidence. The entire project was produced by Tom Cruz, a producer with a rubbery, cut-and-paste style, and Smart Ass Black Boy slips by agreeably like a late night dorm room bull session.
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Your Turn

Ceramic Dog
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

"We have a new business model, we'll blow you for a nickel." This is the acidic guitarist Marc Ribot, summing up the effect that the internet has had on the value of recorded music, in one pithy quote. Ribot, who played with Tom Waits just as the singer was morphing from hobo crooner to glass-spitting carnie barker, has never been afraid of sharp edges, and has made his career since his Waits... days in the avant-garde circuit. But Your Turn is a veer back into rock-song territory, albeit rock songs with big crayon doodles all over them: Title track "Your Turn" is a driving motorik groove defaced with a sloppy guitar solo that could be a Shreds video.
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Clayton: The Julius Eastman Memory Depot

Jace Clayton
New Amsterdam

In his performances as DJ/rupture, Jace Clayton has been part of that experimental breed of DJ/producers who draw on the sounds of the classical avant-garde. But while names like Edgard Varese, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen have become hip in DJ culture, Clayton has turned to one of music's true outliers, the gay African-American composer Julius Eastman. (Both his sexual orientation and race figure prominently in his titles.) The Julius Eastman Memorial... Depot is neither a mash-up nor a straight remix. It is a recasting and reimagining of two of Eastman's most important and defining works, "Evil Nigger" and "Gay Guerrilla," both originally for four pianos but arranged here for two pianos and live electronics. And it is a remarkable, heartfelt tribute to a man who was a fixture on the New York "downtown" scene in the '70s and '80s, performing with Meredith Monk and singing the lead role in Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs For a Mad King before succumbing to alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness and death at the age of 49.

"Evil Nigger, Part 1" is almost pretty, with the layered chiming of its minimalist pianos; Part 2 abruptly switches to a more obviously electronic sound; Part 3 takes on a darker, dramatic hue as the music descends to the bass end of the keyboards, heaving and rolling in waves of increasingly dense sound that almost sounds like a kind of broadband drone. The final part announces itself with the sounds of glitch electronica, while the piano textures thin out, creating a sense both of space and of expectation that something will soon come rushing in to fill it. Shards of gamelan-like piano, impossibly rapid trills and tolling chords hover around the edges of the mix, until a brief explosion of massive piano sounds takes over. It ends as ambiguously as one of Bela Bartok's nachtmusik ("night music") pieces, with the half-remembered echoes of those earlier trills in a haunted electroacoustic haze.

"Gay Guerrilla," in five parts, begins with the steady pulse of the pianos; Clayton's electronics are subtle but telling, often hard to distinguish from the pianos themselves. In Part 2, a web of shifting electronic drones grows out of the patter of almost bell-like tones in the upper registers of the keyboards. When the pianos return, in a gently galloping rhythm, the result is perhaps the most conventionally beautiful music here. "Conventionally" being a relative term, of course. Part 3 begins to build up rhythmic counterpoint that sounds reminiscent of Steve Reich's work, but no sooner does that happen then the sound of a turntable dying brings the music to a grinding halt — at which point we hear Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." (This appropriation appears in Eastman's original version of the piece.) Echoes of that tune flit through the thick piano textures of Part 4; and Part 5, with its endlessly ascending pianos, has a more reflective, even valedictory cast.

The album concludes with a Jace Clayton original, a short song that takes the wry humor of Eastman's own work and turns it on the usual "equal-opportunity employment" speech, turning it into a pensive contemplation of a man who was driven to despair in part by a lack of employment opportunities.
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Betty Rubble: The Initiation

Mykki Blanco
2013 | UNO NYC

Mykki Blanco is a performance artist, a black gay drag queen and a rapper. She is the center of her own Venn diagram, in other words, and on Betty Rubble she went from "promising" to great. Her voice is raspy and manic, a bit of Lil Wayne at his most enthusiastically unhinged and a bit of Young Dro in how audibly she relishes the vowel and consonant sounds leaving her mouth. The... beats on Rubble are a collision of electro, snap music and Neptunes, a lot of empty space and room for attitude and personality. Blanco obliges, calling herself "Richie Rich with a clit in the middle" and interpolating "If I Was a Rich Man" on "Angggry Birdz" and telling a hilariously detailed story about a tour-stop conquest on "Vienna."
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Out-of-Time Dispatches

Sudden Elevation

Ólöf Arnalds
2013 | One Little Indian / The Orchard

The most attractive thing about Ólöf Arnalds's music is the sense of mystery. Beginning with her beguiling 2007 debut Við og Við, Arnalds spun songs that felt like recitations from some yellowing old elvish spell book, her soprano curling like enchanted vines and gentle guitar spinning out notes like spiderwebs reflecting sunlight. That she sang in Icelandic — with its strange vowel runs and twisting cadence — only made her songs feel... more otherworldly. So it's no small risk for her to write and sing the entirety of Sudden Elevation in English; like a sitcom actor suddenly deciding to go Method, peeling away Arnalds's gauzy façade leaves the raw essence of her music exposed.

The good news is that the songs can bear the scrutiny. Sudden Elevation contains all the tender beauty of Arnalds's previous efforts — the wandering-bard guitar playing, the vocal melodies that bob like butterflies in a spring breeze. And though her lyrics are in English, that doesn't mean they're any more easily parsed. The verses in the gently waltzing "Return Again," for instance, are tangled as old riddles. Though the decision to forsake her native tongue could be read as a bid for more mainstream acceptance, thankfully, Arnalds has resisted any temptation to further burnish her sound. There are no horn charts, no swooping orchestras, nothing much beyond Arnalds's guitar and voice. All of this only contributes to Sudden Elevation's dreamlike feel: You can understand the words and make sense of the general narrative, but the overall meaning remains as alluringly ambiguous as ever.
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Leanin' On Slick

Aceyalone
2013 | Decon

From the breaks that first propelled Kool Herc's parties in '73 to Dre's minimoogs to Mystikal's manic James Brown tics, funk has not only provided a foundational structure to hip-hop, it's often risen to the surface and flat-out driven it. West Coast indie-rap vet Aceyalone has spent more than 20 years riding the outskirts of that territory, through his time with Freestyle Fellowship to his cult-classic solo debut All Balls Don't Bounce... to the later-career triumph of RJD2 teamup "A Beautiful Mine" (aka the Mad Men theme song). So after a long career — concurrent with a stab at making another excursion into grown-man rap — Leanin' on Slick sees Aceyalone toeing that line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on.

The title track draws off the J.B.'s sound more in a way befitting a '70s indie-label garage-funk band (or a Daptonian revivalist group) than, say, the Bomb Squad, and the lyrical conceit isn't the only throwback — Acey's smooth-rolling delivery relays hustler tales from days when Caddies rolled long and low instead of high on 24s. That's not the only nod to vintage soul: "I Can Get It Myself" cockily struts through the door that James Brown demanded be opened back in '69, the handclaps and horn stabs of "What You Gone Do With That" is an old-school road-show with Acey's own overdubbed echoes standing in for call-and-response vocalists, and the pairing of his steady-job grind motivation with a wailing Cee-Lo chorus makes "Workin' Man's Blues" the closest Aceyalone's come to a genuine but uncompromised potential pop crossover. If the record vibe skews older, it's by design — leadoff cut "30 and Up" practically decrees it — but if this is the album young Aceyalone figured he'd be making once he approached middle age, he had some right-thinking foresight.
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The Coming Tide

Luke Winslow-King
2013 | Bloodshot Records

The 29-year-old singer/songwriter, slide guitarist and eMusic Selects alum Luke Winslow-King is from Michigan, but he has called The Big Easy home since 2001. On his third full-length, you can hear that the city has made its way into his bones. On The Coming Tide, Winslow-King masters the art of revivalist folk, seamlessly blending New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and ragtime into an album as sweet and satisfying as devouring plate of... beignets and sipping a café au lait on the banks of the Mississippi.

Accompanied by his girlfriend, the sugary-voiced, washboard-wielding Esther Rose, Winslow-King amasses a fine collection of traditionalist originals and personalized covers on The Coming Tide. Rose sings harmony while a thumping upright bass and a brass section leading call-and-repeats accompany them, and the album sways with easy confidence. Winslow-King particularly shines in his blues numbers, namely a faithful, slower rendition of Blind Willie Johnson's "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning" and a slide-driven cover of "Got My Mind Set On You," made famous by George Harrison in the late '80s. Nostalgia rains heavy on The Coming Tide, but Winslow-King reins it in, refashioning weathered words and sounds and branding them his own.
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The Stand-In

Caitlin Rose
2013 | ATO Records

Given her avowed love of old Hollywood glamour (just check out that album cover), the title of Caitlin Rose's sophomore full-length likely refers to the 1937 backlot comedy The Stand-In, about a love triangle between the title character, a hapless number cruncher and a hopeless film producer. While Rose does write about similar romantic confusions, the film reference nevertheless comes across as false modesty: On these dozen songs, she emerges as a... confident, distinctive pop-country artist with a biting lyrical style and a smart way with a hook. Perhaps A Star Is Born sounded too cocky?

Like any good actress, Rose has impressive range. The Stand-In has roots in classic country, displaying the poise of Tammy Wynette on "Everywhere I Go" and the assertiveness of Loretta Lynn on "Waitin'." Standout "Golden Boy" casts her as a countrypolitan chanteuse against a widescreen arrangement that recalls Owen Bradley, and she turns that chorus into a gently devastating plea: "Golden boy, don't go away/ I won't ask you what you're here for/ If you stay." Occasionally she holds her twang in check, but for the most part her vocals are expressive, building from the conspiratorial whisper of "When I'm Gone" to the full-throated belt of "Only a Clown."

Rarely reverent to one style or genre, The Stand-In mixes country with classic rock, radio pop, and even speakeasy jazz on closer "Old Numbers." The rollicking Hank- and Tennessee Williams-inspired "Menagerie" and first single "Only a Clown" both hinge on Byrds-style guitar riffs that suggest an affinity for West Coast nuggets, and the Las Vegas-set "Pink Champagne" is debauched country folk, a sad-eyed and slightly sloshed reimagining of Gram Parsons's "Sin City." No matter how blue she sounds, there's always a lively hint of humor even in her despair — a distinguishing trait that suggests she may be ready for her close-up.
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Berberian Sound Studio

Broadcast
2013 | Warp Records

When it came to soundtracking Peter Strickland's horror film Berberian Sound Studio, about a British sound engineer working for an Italian film company in the 1970s, there could have been no other name on the list than Broadcast. The band, aka Trish Keenan and James Cargill, were recording this album when Keenan died from pneumonia in 2011, age just 42, and it is a sublime, sad reminder of a remarkable talent lost.... On their own albums, the pair's haunting songs are constructed from elements that evoke half-remembered television themes, or a ghostly folk group transmitting from the future. It's rare that a soundtrack album constructed from fragments of music and snatches of dialogue is a rewarding listen, but Broadcast — perhaps because they are so adept at creating otherworldly sounds from pop's detritus — managed it beautifully here. Some of the tracks are genuinely unnerving, such as "Mark Of The Devil," its mean electronic pulses and chants sounding like wraiths in charge of a power station, or the guttural gabbling of "A Goblin." These terrifying moments are contrasted with pastoral instrumentals, built largely from flute, xylophone and organ, which could soundtrack a cold, misty morning as well as the original film. A bewitching last Broadcast.
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Kid Face

Samantha Crain
2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

Singer-songwriter Samantha Crain has always sounded like an old soul, her dusty alto worn down by restless thoughts and free-floating anxiety. On the autobiographical Kid Face, the Oklahoma native sounds even more wizened as she explores loneliness, wanderlust and emotional disruption. Produced by John Vanderslice, Kid Face is a sparse record, laced with stark folk and Americana signifiers: acoustic guitar, wobbly piano, curled pedal steel and keening violin. Shambling banjo, stabs... of synthesizer or electric guitar add occasional jolts of urgency to the mix.

But significantly, Crain comes into her own as a lyricist on Kid Face. Besides being a meticulous wordsmith ("I'm going to shows, counting my toes and crying over you" is how she describes one particularly trying breakup), she offers thorough, unflinching self-analysis. Crain uses Kid Face's songs to examine her place in the world — and figure out how her actions affect others, for better and for worse. "Churchill" addresses the realization that "my whole life I thought I was an opportunist/ But I'm not"; "Sand Paintings" struggles with overcoming self-sabotaging tendencies; and "Ax" is a call to be kind in the face of negativity. Perhaps most impressive is "Never Going Back," which describes (hopefully) breaking free from a disastrous affair: "The ending of 10,000 dreams/ My soul has finally been set free from his cool eyes." The song is devastatingly effective because of its economy, the same trait that also makes Kid Face a wonderful record.
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Fairouz: Native Informant

Mohammed Fairouz
Naxos

Native Informant begins with a tense, mournful clarinet, sobbing quietly in bent phrases. The soprano Melissa Hughes joins in, her voice blending eerily with the clarinet. The piece is "Tahwidah," by the composer Mohammed Fairouz, and it blends harmonic languages and geography in a way that will remind modern classical listeners of the famous Osvaldo Golijov, before the composer got lost in his own hype. The piece is meant as a lullaby,... but it carries a deep sadness that could curdle milk.

Native Informant is an arresting showcase for Fairouz's voice, which is plangent, melodic, folkloric and unpredictable: His lines spool out in ways that don't follow your ear's predetermined path for them. He wrote eloquently of soaking in Armenian and Lebanese art and poetry for the Huffington Post, and Fairouz's music is that of a thoughtful traveler: Native Informant traverses boundaries without ever losing its gentle footing.
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Nightmare Ending

Eluvium
2013 | Temporary Residence Ltd. / SC Distribution

As gentle as mist settling over a lake at daybreak, Nightmare Ending, the latest album from Eluvium, is a work of tender beauty. Piano drifts down slow as snowflakes, soft bands of sound expand and Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan turns in a lovely, fragile vocal on "Happiness."
Selected Studies Vol. 1

Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius
2013 | Bureau B

Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a towering figure of Krautrock: He formed Qluster (later renamed Cluster) and Harmonia, and his deceptively simple synth pieces in the late 1970s and early '80s are a genre unto themselves. Lloyd Cole is better known for literate guitar rock than synth drones, but here the two find a serene common ground, creating an airy, spacious album full of twinkling, twirling little mobiles. The music seems to move forward... and backward at once: Roedelius's genius was in creating gently hypnotic pieces out of minimal materials, and Selected Studies, belying its forbiddingly dry name, sparkles.
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Lady

Lady, The Band
2013 | Truth & Soul Records

This invigorating retro-soul album comes from a duo consisting of one-time UK 2-step garage star Terri Walker and Nicole Wray, whose "Make It Hot" (under her first but not last name) was one of a half-dozen Jeep bombs Timbaland concocted in 1998. Nothing about Lady, also the name of their act, feels forced — Walker and Wray sound like they're having the time of their lives, not least because nothing is stopping... them from getting to dig in lyrically. "If You Wanna Be My Man" analyzes a relationship sharply but without rancor ("You changed, and I changed/What we used to be") over a groove that's equal parts Spinners and Bill Withers. And the amazing "Money" is a bad-boyfriend anthem (she likes the green better than him) that doubles as a proud feminist declaration ("I feel proud that I'm an independent lady") — not to mention a classic soul single, whatever the calendar year.
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Underdogs and Introverts

TORRES

TORRES
2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

The debut album by this woman who calls herself Torres (real name: Mackenzie Scott) was recorded in a creaky old Nashville house that happens to be owned by Tony Joe White, he who gave the world "Polk Salad Annie." But that may have just been a lucky coincidence. These songs feel as if they were bound to come crawling out of Scott's body no matter what she did or where she was,... a strange litter of scowling, writhing fuzzballs just dead set on getting born. Dominated by the wavery tones of her Gibson 355 electric, the songs explore the fragile architecture of human relationships, often finding Scott standing amid a steaming pile of rubble, wondering not about what caused the house to fall but what to do, now, with all the shattered pieces left behind. "Everything hurts, but it's fine, it's fine," she sings — almost seethes — on "Honey," the album's lead single, a languid meditation on stasis and confession that builds up slow around a ground-out guitar line and crests in waves of pummeling drums, frayed vocals, frayed everything. Though lit up with distortion and drum-machine pulses, Torres is easily imaginable as a stripped-down acoustic affair, and in some ways might be better as such; "Come to Terms" finds Scott unplugged and fingerpicking, allowing lines like "just because the two of us will both grow old in time/ don't mean we should go old together" the time and space to make their full devastation known.
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Ripely Pine

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
2013 | Ba Da Bing! / Revolver

The first two minutes of Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's Ripely Pine seem to reinforce the notion of fragile acquiescence that 23-year-old Aly Spaltro's stage name suggests. "Take me by the arm to the altar/ Take me by the collar to the cliff/ …Take me by the braid down to my grave," she croons on "Hair to the Ferris Wheel" over a languidly-thumbed electric guitar, the ghost of an autoharp shuffling around in... the background. But on this, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's first record cut in a proper studio, nothing is quite as it seems. Just when a lesser song might be content to wrap up its delicate reverie, the wool is ripped away and a Technicolor blast of crunchy guitars and detached-garage drums gush forth, Spaltro's dusky voice bottoming out over the deluge. This is par for the course on Ripely Pine; these songs tend start in one place, end in another, and cycle through sometimes a dozen imaginings of themselves on the way — like "You Are The Apple" which, over seven minutes, slides from a nervous acoustic twitch to a swampy low-slung romp to a billowing, spiking orchestral swoon. The album's lyrical turf is both elemental and surreal, like a funhouse mirror turned on a dream of an anatomy lab; hearts are eaten like strawberry cake, blood is canned like jam, love is handled like a newborn's skull. By the end, it's clear those opening lines weren't a coy feint, but a trap; it's you who is being led, and Lady Lamb the Beekeeper with her claws in your arm. And you will go with her — to the altar, to the grave, wherever — and love every weird minute of it.
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A Love Surreal

Bilal
2013 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Bilal's career is odd: He is indelibly associated with the rise of early-'00s neo-soul, and while he hasn't become as famous as some of his contemporaries, he also didn't disappear down a wormhole like D'Angelo. Bilal's elastic, glorious voice has been a reliable presence on Roots records and other rap projects over the last 10 years, but his solo career, hampered by the usual setbacks, sputtered. His name seemed destined to be... forever preceded by a "ft."

A Love Surreal, released last winter, is only his third in 12 years, a batting average only slightly higher than D'Angelo's. The album doesn't reflect any bitterness or discontent, however; it is a lush, relaxed album, one that pivots neatly between styles. "West Side Girl" is grotty, sexy and Prince-ly; "Slipping Away" gazes at the stars like Donny Hathaway; "Lost For Now" even sounds remarkably like Big Star.
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Open the Crown

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Slnga
2013 | K Records / SC Distribution

Now 16 years into his career, Arrington De Dionyso is essentially doomed to be underrated. His work with the brilliant, ignored Old Time Relijun channeled the same chaotic mania of The Pop Group, full of slashing voodoo guitars, hyperventilating percussion and De Dionyso's urgent, terrified howl — which bore more than a passing resemblance to Pop Group frontman Mark Stewart. Since embarking on a solo career in 2006, his work has only... gotten more daring and more fascinating. It's guaranteed to appeal to anyone with any measure of fondness for pioneering late '70s UK groups like the Slits, Swell Maps and PiL. Like those groups, De Dionyso dismantles jazz, dub and reggae and uses the individual elements to create something riveting and otherworldly. "There Will Be No Survivors" crawls grimly forward, a strangled saxophone punctuating De Dionyso's seething promise: "We're going down in flames." "I Create in the Broken System" is essentially Satanic reggae, De Dionyso doing his best Don Van Vliet over burnt-to-a-crisp, undead two-step. The title track is glorious cacophony, full of falling-down-the-stairs drums, horror-house organs and De Dionyso's madman proclamations ("I am the shapeshifter! I am the song of psychic fire! 10,000 tigers in my temple!") It's one of the year's most fearless records, daring music for those who dare investigate.
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House of Woo

Maxmillion Dunbar
2013 | RVNG INTL. / SC Distribution

Maxmillion Dunbar, a DJ/producer from Washington, D.C., makes sleek, spacious electronic music pitched between the current vogues for the rhythmic action of vintage Chicago house and the heady contemplation of cosmic synthesizer jams. About half of House of Woo plays as certifiable dance music, with upright rhythms that assert themselves with force, while the other half has nary a beat to speak for. Representing the former, "Slave to the Vibe" opens with... unbound '80s keyboard sounds, patiently arrayed in floating fashion, that snap into a formalist grid when the beat kicks in a little more than two minutes in. The way the hi-hat hangs in what sounds like a sweaty expanse of the stratosphere evokes old Chicago house anthems by the likes of Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers, Fingers Inc.), but "Woo" pulls back, quiets down, and drifts into comparatively ambient territory. A few beats still clack and clang, but the background textures creep the fore, and a wandering, thinking-out-loud synth-riff establishes itself in a way that remains present in tracks like "Coins for the Canopy" and "The Figurine (Nod Mix)." The funky dancefloor-filler "Ice Cream Graffiti" goes big and beat-intensive again, but it's never long before the sound spaces out and spreads in a manner befitting the title of "Loving the Drift."
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Ugly Heroes

Ugly Heroes
2013 | Mello Music Group / The Orchard

Ugly Heroes is comprised of two rising emcees, Verbal Kent and Red Pill, and one veteran producer, Apollo Brown, who set out to create rap music that embodied the spirit of the diminishing blue-collar workforce. "It's the person that works on your car. It's the factory worker that's counting parts all day, smelling like oil and grease," Brown says. "That individual that provides for their family, makes a living and is a... human being — that's a ugly hero." Ugly Heroes' debut, self-titled album takes a hard look into a life of grueling work: clocking in long hours, drinking afterward and somehow maintaining enough strength to continue.
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Haw

Hiss Golden Messenger
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

After making music for nearly 20 years, veteran Michael Taylor is just now finding his largest audience with Hiss Golden Messenger. It's actually his third band, following the short-lived punk group Ex-Ignota and the longer-lived San Francisco alt-country act The Court & Spark. When the latter broke up in 2007 — after four albums and nearly a decade of near-constant touring — Taylor settled down in Durham, North Carolina, where he started... a family, pursued a degree in folklore, and made music more as a hobby than as a priority.

Over several albums — a few self-released, a few more via North Carolina indie label Paradise of Bachelors — Hiss Golden Messenger has alternated between an austere solo acoustic project for Taylor and a full band featuring Scott Hirsh on guitar and Terry Lonergan on drums. For Haw, the fourth and arguably best release under the HGM moniker, they added members of Lambchop, Megafaun and the Black Twig Pickers to the line-up. Whether alone or with friends, however, the primary elements of Hiss Golden Messenger remain constant: Taylor's voice, which sounds both genial and mysterious, and his lyrics, which examine thorny issues of faith, fidelity and family.
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Bazooka

Bazooka
Slovenly Recordings

The house band at the Wild Rumpus, Greek grime peddlers and brothers-in-arms with fellow countrymen Acid Baby Jesus and Gay Anniversary deliver big, clanging songs built for late-night deep-woods campfire dancing. They've got two drummers, which is probably part of what makes the music feel so frantic: "Koritsi Stin Akti" roars forward like some kind of demonic Mustang out for one last, doomed street race; "Bye Bye Girl" is deranged country, twanging... guitar and full-gallop percussion while "Ravening Trip"'s steady chug almost sounds like a bunch of greasers mocking Madchester, its shuffling backbeat smothered by horror-film riffing. This is party music for 20-foot monsters.
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Come Cry With Me

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

Singer/songwriter Daniel Romano hails from Canada but sounds like he's from America's Deep South as he writes old-school country ballads sung in a deep, Man-in-Black drawl. On his latest record, this year's aptly titled Come Cry With Me, there's a dirge about unrequited love, reflections on being a rejected middle child, and a rambling saga about getting a ride with a guy who calls himself Chicken Bill.
Jay Arner

Jay Arner
2013 | Mint Records / Revolver

Jay Arner's self-titled solo debut begins with a low bass groove that sounds like an engine idling, ready to rev "Midnight on South Granville" into high gear. To say the song never bolts away is no complaint, though, as the lyrics recount a night spent catching the bus, missing your stop, getting lost and wandering aimlessly. Set against that chugging bass line, those buzzy synths and that stoner guitar, half-drunk anomie has... rarely sounded quite so epic. A Vancouver-based musician who has helmed album by Mount Eerie, Apollo Ghosts and Rose Melberg, Arner recorded these new songs during lonely sessions at his practice space, recording straight to laptop to emphasize a DIY mid-fi sound, and the resulting Jay Arner mixes mopey postpunk instrumentation with power-pop song structures. Even though the unhurried tempos are far too laidback to sell the "power" in the pop, that spacey, narcotized vibe can be deceptive: The music reveals new sonic and lyrical details with each listen, whether it's the M.C. Escher hook on "Broken Glass" or the world-weary cautions of "Nightclubs," which finds a tricky balance between wry and romantic.
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Fat Tony, Smart Ass Black Boy

Jayson Greene — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:50:13 +0000

Fat Tony is the kind of guy fated to slip between the cracks. He’s from Houston, but sounds like no Texas rappers; occasionally political, but not much of a firebrand; muted and thoughtful, but no one’s idea, really, of a “conscious rapper.” He has a casual, conversational voice, and his raps tumble out like early Common, before he got too serious. There are dumb puns, a few trenchant insights and, above all, an appealing confidence. The entire project was produced by Tom Cruz, a producer with a rubbery, cut-and-paste style, and Smart Ass Black Boy slips by agreeably like a late night dorm room bull session.

Fat Tony, Smart Ass Black Boy

Jayson Greene — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:50:13 +0000

Alexander Spit, Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside

Jayson Greene — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 18:27:08 +0000

Alexander Spit’s bleak, baleful Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside is not good-times music. Spit is from California, but his dank, druggy rap music feels allergic to sunshine. Spit produced the entire album, and his sticky, bleary sound owes more to Dilla and RZA. Everything seems to move through a thick film, including Spit’s raps, which gob up into bits of blacklit surrealism about Roswell and chemtrails and unspool into long spleen-venting rants. If you’ve ever sat, stoned, in an apartment during a blazingly hot day with the blinds drawn, Breathtaking Trip will feel clammily familiar.

Mayer Hawthorne, Where Does This Door Go

Barry Walters — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 13:00:17 +0000

The cheeky guy gets a bit more serious on his third album

Mayer Hawthorne doesn’t insist you take him seriously. He shoots deliberately goofy videos. His vibe is playful, not tortured and belabored. Yet his records rank among the most detailed and precise of today’s vintage soul practitioners, even if the results favor pure entertainment over profound enlightenment.

On his third album, the cheeky guy gets a bit more serious. Teaming with Pharrell Williams, Anthony Hamilton/Cee-Lo Green producer Jack Splash, Mika/Katy Perry collaborator Greg Wells and other hit-makers, he broadens his palate beyond the blueprints of the past, mixing, matching and updating styles rather than the straightforward Motown and Philly soul mimicry of his initial records. Now he alludes to Steely Dan, Frank Ocean, Hall & Oates and Pharrell himself, particularly on the Williams-produced cuts “Wine Glass Woman” “Reach Out Richard,” and “The Stars Are Ours.”

Having spent the past few years constantly touring and recording, Hawthorne sings more confidently while also doing a better job of masking his vocal limitations. Multi-tracking and other production tricks haven’t turned him into Marvin Gaye, but they help him get Doobie-smooth on “Back Seat Lover.” And although that opening song picks up where earlier cocky cuts like “Just Ain’t Gonna Work Out” left off, much of what follows is sincere: “Wine Glass Woman” and “Allie Jones” send reality checks to self-destructive vixens; “The Only One” and the title track ponder life’s vicissitudes, while “Reach Out Richard” addresses a father who blames himself for Hawthorne’s mistakes.

The singer takes all that heaviness and, through his newfound polish and plenty of allusions to ’70s West Coast pop, makes it all seem much lighter and sunny. Hawthorne and his producers play most of these elaborate arrangements themselves, but the buffed results suggest an all-American variant on the studio perfectionism Daft Punk rediscovered with Random Access Memories. Instead of packing tart punch lines into his falsetto love ballads, he makes the music itself far more fun.

Bilal, A Love Surreal

Jayson Greene — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:27:27 +0000

Bilal’s career is odd: He is indelibly associated with the rise of early-’00s neo-soul, and while he hasn’t become as famous as some of his contemporaries, he also didn’t disappear down a wormhole like D’Angelo. Bilal’s elastic, glorious voice has been a reliable presence on Roots records and other rap projects over the last 10 years, but his solo career, hampered by the usual setbacks, sputtered. His name seemed destined to be forever preceded by a “ft.”

A Love Surreal, released last winter, is only his third in 12 years, a batting average only slightly higher than D’Angelo’s. The album doesn’t reflect any bitterness or discontent, however; it is a lush, relaxed album, one that pivots neatly between styles. “West Side Girl” is grotty, sexy and Prince-ly; “Slipping Away” gazes at the stars like Donny Hathaway; “Lost For Now” even sounds remarkably like Big Star.

Who to See at Pitchfork Music Festival 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:00:14 +0000

From the fiery blast of White Lung to the superb showmanship of R. Kelly to the rowdy, jagged guitars of Parquet Courts, we’ve got you covered when it comes to who you should be seeing at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park this weekend.

Want eMusic’s take on this year’s festivities? Be sure to follow our Twitter account and visit 17 Dots throughout the weekend for our editors’ complete coverage.

Bjork

Biophilia

Björk
2011 | Nonesuch

Twenty-seven years into her career, Bjork is running the risk of becoming a pop music Alexander the Great, weeping for there are no more worlds to conquer. She has reconfigured her sound in nearly every conceivable way, moving from adventurous electro on the still-classic Post through skewed orch-pop (Vespertine), voice-only compositions (Medulla) and globe-gobbling world music (Volta). She is one of a very few musicians — there are maybe three of them... worldwide — whose rare failures are even interesting, because they at least display evidence of ambition and novel ideas. That ambition extends to her staging. A run of shows at the Hall of Science in Queens, New York featured specially-constructed instruments and a loose theme (including voiceover narration) about the destructive power of nature. How much of that she'll carry into her festival performances remains to be seen, but if history is any indication, an equal won’t be found all weekend. — J. Edward Keyes
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R. Kelly

Write Me Back (Deluxe Version)

R. Kelly
2012 | RCA Records Label

When R. Kelly toured in 2007, he first appeared in silhouette, wearing a top hat, standing at the top of a giant staircase, underneath a neon sign that read "Mr. Showbiz." When he toured in 2010, his first appearance was in a five-minute black-and-white, note-perfect Casablanca-style short film. When he toured in 2012, he had two lackeys bring out an oversized white throne halfway through the show just so he could... sit relax for a number. Simply put: R. Kelly is a showman, and the live setting is where he gets to indulge the frustrated musical theatre director within. Songs become set pieces (In '07, he performed "Feelin' On Yo Booty" as an aria, tongue firmly in cheek), the banter is tautly-scripted and generally hilarious, and Kells visibly relishes every indulgent flourish. To say nothing of the fact that he remains one of our greatest living male vocalists, that he sings live every time, and that even 30 seconds of hearing him reinforces the notion that he is the heir to greats like Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye — even if those two never used an extended jungle metaphor to sing about doin' it. — JEK
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Solange

True

Solange
2012 | Terrible Records / The Orchard

Solange Knowles released her first album in 2011, but it was last year that she truly broke out as more than just Bey's little sister. Her EP True is all dancefloor hits, from the funky, giggly start of "Losing You," to the nostalgic heartbreaker "Some Things Never Seem to Fucking Work," to the Daydream-era-Mariah Carey-channeling "Don't Let Me Down." — Laura Leebove

M.I.A.

MAYA

M.I.A.
2010 | XL Interscope

M.I.A. took no small amount of critical heat for 2010's ///Y/, an album that took its musical cues from Skinny Puppy and Nitzer Ebb and opened with the "paranoid" notion that the U.S. government was monitoring its citizens Google searches. Flash forward three years later, in the wake of both the NSA wiretapping scandal and Kanye West's similarly industrial-influenced Yeezus, and you could argue that the only real problem with ///Y/ is... that it was too far ahead of the curve. Say what you will about M.I.A., she remains an artist stubbornly guided by her own muse, even what that muse causes her to fall afoul of even her most ardent one-time supporters. The live shows supporting ///Y/ featured backup musicians in burkas "playing" power drills, Einsturzende Neubauten style. Whateve she pulls at Pitchfork this year, don't be too surprised if you catch another artist nicking it four years from now. – JEK
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Phosophorescent

Muchacho

Phosphorescent
2013 | Dead Oceans / SC Distribution

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck is a country-rock troubadour with a broken voice, a Willie Nelson tremble overcome with unpredictable hiccups, that some people find irritating and many find devastating. He uses it to sing to us from a series of characters who probably find a lot in common with crushed birds.

His 2013 record Muchacho is an ethereal meditation on fate and the limits of free will delivered by a sadly broken soul. It... is a record full of beautiful, inscrutably poetic language — koans, charms, blades, invocations. And all those horn charts and pedal steel guitars are still here, but they’ve been put to a larger task than ever before: Houck is contemplating his place in the universe, and ours. Live, he abandons the pretense of fragility, and rips through his music with road-warrior, alpha intensity. — Jayson Greene
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White Lung

sorry

White Lung
2012 | Deranged Records / The Orchard

White Lung vocalist Mish Way is a human tornado, a blinding corkscrew of motion and sound ripping up the center of her songs like the Tasmanian Devil turned loose in the middle of a Safeway. It's the musical equivalent of being grabbed by the shoulders and throttled repeatedly. Which is a great thing. White Lung's second full-length Sorry inflicts more damage than a runaway rotary blade, and their live show is just... as devastating. It's a blast of fire and fury, an endless barrage of megaton cannonballs aimed directly at your throat. — JEK
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The Breeders

Last Splash

The Breeders
2008 | Rhino/Elektra

Arguably the least-likely '90s crossover success, the Breeders used tart candy pop single "Cannonball" to lure an army of unsuspecting Alternative Nationalists into one of the most delightfully bewildering rock records of the last 30 years. Last Splash defies one convention after another — drums drop out and re-enter, guitar lines are curl and collapse like Shrinky Dinks and Kim Deal's voice is one part fairy godmother, one part bad witch. Twenty... years on, they sound better than ever, playing the songs from Splash better than they ever did, recreating all of its oddball glory for a new generation of acolytes. — JEK
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Killer Mike

R.A.P. Music

Killer Mike
2012 | Williams Street Records

Killer Mike hasn't made a career habit of taking prisoners: Whether you're a Forbes list millionaire ("a whore's list," as far as he's concerned), a rapper like himself who is an "advertisement for agony and pain," or, god help you, Ronald Reagan ("I'll leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead"), Mike has choice words for you. And the emphasis is on "choice": his bellowing, burly voice and big gut might... give the impression of someone heavy-footed and lumbering, but Mike can rap as nimbly as he does forcefully. Live, he will leave you feeling like the slab of meat in Rocky's freezer: tenderized, worked over. But in a good way. Also, if the gods are kind, his new confidante and best friend El-P will show up. — JG
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El-P

Cancer 4 Cure

El-P
2012 | Fat Possum Records

Over his nearly 15-year career, whether as part of Company Flow or on his own Def Jux label, El-P has filled your ear with the kind of verses you can pull back on eight times in a row and still feel like you're scrambling to catch up. His mind races, his heart hammers and his production, frenetic and detailed, dramatizes every neuron firing. He has nursed occasionally a reclusive misanthropic streak, only... emerging every few years with one of his enveloping, internal full-length solo records, but he stepped back out into the spotlight, big time, in 2012, alongside the Atlanta underground king Killer Mike. The two have collaborated on three projects now; El-P produced Killer Mike's career-high R.A.P. Music; Mike guested on El's Cancer4Cure and the two traded verses on the free collaborative mixtape Run The Jewels. They are ideal partners, sharing the same coruscating, passionate anger that builds things instead of razing, the kind of purifying gale that loving something moves you to. — JG
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Waxahatchee

Cerulean Salt

Waxahatchee
2013 | Don Giovanni Records / Believe Digital

Waxahatchee is singer/songwriter Katie Crutchfield, whose home-recorded debut LP American Weekend is spare, raw and intimate; mostly fuzzy acoustic guitar with hollow vocals, about the emotional turmoil of a failing relationship and succumbing to vices in hopes of happiness. Her follow-up, this year's Cerulean Salt, is more polished, recorded with electric guitars and a band, but Crutchfield is no less wrenching in her lyrics. — LL

Swans

The Seer

Swans
2012 | Young God / Revolver

"They're just so loud." That's the reverent description that follows nearly every live performance by Michael Gira's recently-resuscitated, more-vital-than-ever body-throttlers Swans. Any attempt to describe them fails outright. Are they metal? Yeah, kind of. Post-punk? Kind of that, too. Drone? Yup. They also take the practiced monotony of krautrock and bulk it up and blast it out so that the repetition is both hypnotizing and purposely maddening — Chinese Water Torture, except... the water is 20-ton bowling balls. Swans remain one of rock 'n' roll's most punishing live acts, holding audiences spellbound with just the sheer force of their fury. — JEK
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Low

The Invisible Way

Low
2013 | Sub Pop Records

2013 marks Low's 20th year as a band, as well as the release of their 10th album, the Jeff Tweedy-produced The Invisible Way. That much history means their performance at Pitchfork could be all over the map, pulling songs from their lo-fi, slow-burning early recordings, the life-affirming electric bombast of 2005's The Great Destroyer, the moodier, tightly-wound and politically-fueled Drums & Guns, and their more polished and melodic newer releases. But then... again there's always some chance they'll do something along the lines of their recent gig in Minneapolis, where they played a 27-minute version of their song "Do You Know How to Waltz?" — LL
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Wire

Change Becomes Us

Wire
2013 | pinkflag / state51

When post-punk legends Wire first reunited 13 years ago, it was in support of the astonishing Read & Burn EPs, a trilogy that found them trading the jagged angles of their influential late '70s work for brute, clobbering force. They spurned all of their classics in concert in favor of the new material, but nobody cared: All that mattered was the intensity. Their last two records have been more mannered and more... sedate and the setlists a little kinder to their vast back catalog, but if they play with even half the force they had at the beginning of this century, the results will be astonishing. — JEK
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Frankie Rose

Interstellar

Frankie Rose
2012 | Slumberland Records / The Orchard

Frankie Rose used to be a Dum Dum; she used to be a Vivian. Now she's just Frankie, and her 2012 breakout effort Interstellar shot her modest indie-pop into, well, the stars, trailed by violet comet-trail synths and misted vocals. Few albums have sounded quiet so delightfully artificial; it's like listening to the fondant of a wedding cake. Live, she scrapes all this patina away and rocks, loudly and startlingly. — JG

Mac DeMarco

2

Mac Demarco
2012 | Captured Tracks / SC Distribution

Mac DeMarco's grubby, Pigpen-Eagles version of yacht-pop might not prepare you for the full-blown, indie-rock-Andy-Kaufman hilarity of his live set; Mac is one of few humans on this planet who can make smirking assholery seem downright endearing and infectious. It helps that his bandmates are in on the fun, that they crack each other up, and that they play their often-shoddy instruments like gangbusters: in previous sets, I've seen them cover both... Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" and a Rammstein/Rob Zombie mash-up of "Du Hast Mich" and "Dragula." — JG
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Blood Orange

Coastal Grooves

Blood Orange
2011 | Domino Recording Co

Twenty-seven-year-old Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange, has an impressive CV, having written and produced for the likes of Florence & the Machine, Solange, Kylie Minogue and Sky Ferreira. The songs on his 2011 Domino release Coastal Grooves are perfect summery pop pick-me-ups, made with shiny guitars, quirky percussion and, not surprisingly considering his clientele, some serious hooks. — LL

METZ

METZ

METZ
2012 | Sub Pop Records

The Canadian trio METZ devote themselves to a dank, fertile corner of underground rock: the baleful, misanthropic, sonically hateful squeal-rock of Jesus Lizard. Like that band, METZ doesn't write songs so much as hock them, through clogged sinuses, into your field of vision: The screaming guitars hurt your nerve endings, the drumming kicks over alley garbage cans. But their racket is militantly organized, and martially brutal, and to see them live is... a thing of cleansing beauty. — JG
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Andy Stott

Luxury Problems

Andy Stott
2012 | Modern Love / Revolver

Andy Stott's recent albums — specifically, Luxury Problems and Passed Me By, are marvels of mood and tone. They drift from dreamy ambience to crushing drone and back again, delirious and feverish, electronics clanging and whooshing like wind rushing through empty metal hallways. His DJ set at South by Southwest, though, mostly abandoned these doomy atmospherics in favor of slightly more crowd-pleasing techno. It's hard to say how things will skew in... Chicago, thought given Pitchfork Fest's audience tends toward the adventurous, it's likely Stott will veer toward the doomy, Lynchian delirium of his records. — JEK
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Parquet Courts

Light Up Gold

Parquet Courts
2013 | What's Your Rupture?

Now several months on from the release of their perfect debut Light Up Gold, it's clear that Parquet Courts may, in fact, be trying to imagine a less-dysfunctional version of The Fall. They've got the deadpan, cleverly-constructed, surrealist-narrative, written-to-be-quoted lyrics ("As for Texas? Donuts only. You will not find bagels here."), the jagged guitars and, above all, the jaw-dropping, airtight live show, where they careen breathlessly from one song to the next... before collapsing straight into a 10-minute, drawn-out drone composition with which they've been ending recent shows. After a triumphant near-year since the release of their debut, their Pitchfork performance could well serve as their coronation. — JEK
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Angel Olsen

Half Way Home

Angel Olsen
Bathetic Records

Chicago-based singer/songwriter Angel Olsen's Half Way Home was one of 2012's most beautiful — and at times devastating — releases. Her delicate songs are about the journey from lost to found, told through finger-picked guitar and a soulful, wavering voice that often cracks as it slips into her higher register. In a festival setting, though, it's likely she'll focus on the more (relatively) upbeat numbers, like the jangly, '60s girl-group-channeling "The Waiting"... and "Free." — LL
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Jay-Z, Magna Carta… Holy Grail

Jayson Greene — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 16:45:19 +0000

The first real glimpse into rap's most fascinating mind in years

From the moment it was announced, in a commercial broadcast during halftime at an NBA Finals game, there was a distinct feeling of “Once as history, twice as farce” to Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail. The three-minute short, which showed Jay shooting the breeze with Timbaland, Pharrell and a reclining, cherubic Rick Rubin (who evidently had nothing to do with the album’s creation), played like a bad mirror image of 2004′s Fade to Black, the film surrounding 2003′s The Black Album, complete with a parody of the Rick Rubin involvement. “The idea is to really finish the album — and drop it,” Jay tells the camera earnestly, as if this was a novel concept for what to do with an album. He pretends to play stirring piano chords on a table top. Rubin waggles his socked feet at us. The whole thing plays like sketch-comedy satire.

Then we learned that instead of bothering to try to sell this magnum opus to actual music consumers, Jay-Z went and sold a million copies directly to a phone company, which would share the album with us in exchange for our personal data. All in all, there seemed to be very few reasons to be excited about Magna Carta. Jay-Z had become rap’s Bloomberg, a king who stayed too long, threw around too much weight, and Magna Carta seemed like just his latest piece of expertly engineered corporate synergy.

Sean Carter is aware of this mounting skepticism, and addresses it early on: “Even my old fans are like, ‘Oh man, just stop’/ I would if I could but I can’t, I’m hot,” he raps on “Picasso Baby,” one of several songs on MCHG produced by Timbaland that recapture the limber rhythmic vitality and sense of surprise that marked the two’s collaborations on Vol. 2…Hard Knock Life and Vol. 3: The Life and Times of Sean Carter. Of all the surprises on Magna Carta, the most welcome is the feeling that despite all the up-front commerce, the obvious brinksmanship with Kanye West’s Yeezus, released just weeks before, Magna Carta feels like an album Jay-Z wanted to make for his own reasons.

For one, he sounds as if he’d genuinely rather be rapping, as opposed to, say, being interviewed by Charlie Rose. Over the metallic, swarming production, he falls back on the hard, blunt style he leaned on in the late ’90s, chopping his raps up into biting phrases: “Pardon my laughing, I happen to think you sweet,” he sneers on “Tom Ford.” On “Somewhereinamerica,” an acidic song about the Black nouveau riche, Jay raps, “Somewhere in America, Miley Cyrus is still twerking,” which easily the funniest twist on the white girl/heroin simile game since his “Her’on’s got less steps than Britney” from “Roc Boys.”

More surprisingly, he also makes something compelling out of his inner life for the first time in years. Post-Black Album, Jay-Z has struggled to find a frame for his thoughts: Who cared about the existential doubts of, or wanted to root for, a CEO? American Gangster allowed him to slip back into his dope-dealer duds once more, which only highlighted the problem, but on Magna Carta Jay finally sounds self-aware, instead of simply self-conscious: on “F.U.T.W.,” he takes an uneasy tour through Flatbush and Red Hook, Brooklyn, reminding him that his “one percent of a billion” makes him the exception, not the rule, in Black America. In “Picasso Baby,” he underscores the hollowness of conspicuous consumption by applying it to art-buying (“I wanna Rothko/ No, I wanna brothel,” he says). And on “Jay-Z Blue,” the song about his daughter Blue Ivy, he explores the lingering taste of panic that fatherhood brings into his mouth — “Baby needs Pampers/ Daddy need at least three weeks in the Hamptons” — and ties it back to his missing father, still a looming figure in Jay-Z’s work. “I done seen my mom and pop drive each other motherfuckin’ crazy/ I got that n*gga blood in me/ I got his ego and his temper all that’s missing is the drugs in me,” he reflects.

To be fair, MCHG has its share of clunkers and missteps — opener “Holy Grail” is an insight-free meditation on the prison of celebrity, while Jay’s clumsy puns on artist names in “Picasso Baby” (“Jeff Koons balloons, I’m blowing up”) are painful. “Part II (On The Run),” his duet with Beyonce, is lukewarm and interminable. But nearly every Jay-Z album, save for perhaps Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint, has its soft spots and weak moments. What Magna Carta offers, in surprising abundance, is the sound of Jay-Z’s mind. Jay-Z’s not one for feelings, and emotions, but his mind — which he once bragged was “like a flower in bloom” — is still a pretty marvelous place to spend time.

Interview: Bobby Whitlock

John Morthland — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 15:09:28 +0000

Bobby Whitlock was the son of an alcoholic, pill-popping, transient Southern Baptist preacher who regularly beat him and made him work the cotton fields of the South before abandoning him and Bobby’s mother entirely. When he was 15, his mom dropped him off in downtown Memphis with $50 and he was on his own. After hanging out at the Stax studios and gigging around Memphis, he moved to L.A. with Delaney and Bonnie to help them put together Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. That association led to friendships with D&B fans George Harrison and Eric Clapton, which led to the formation of Derek and the Dominos (which grew out of sessions for Harrison’s All Things Must Pass) and the epic, wrenching Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album, with Whitlock and Clapton co-writing most of the originals. From there he cut Bobby Whitlock and Raw Velvet, two albums of rockin’ blue-eyed soul just reissued as the single disc Where There’s a Will There’s a Way: The ABC-Dunhill Recordings. Today, after long stints in Ireland and Mississippi, he lives in Austin, Texas, where he performs and records with his wife CoCo Carmel.

The way you were raised, in retrospect how would say that shaped your music?

A preacher’s life is a vagabond life. I came up around interesting people, to say the least. I come from whores, river rats, moonshiners, Southern Baptists. A lot was gospel influence. And I toted many buckets of water and picked cotton, in the fields where people would sing while they worked — they’d be calling me, “Hey, little water boy,” all down the line. My dad’s churches were nearly always black, so I’d always be hightailing it to the church to hear them singing. That’s my roots — gospel music was what I knew.

The fields and the church, are those the only places you heard music?

I had a little 45 player at home that my grandma gave me, and I’d play records by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Little Richard. Dad came home one day and heard the music I was playing and threw it out in the back yard. I never saw it again.

When you first started hanging out with Clapton, is that when you began writing your own songs? All that Derek and the Dominos stuff you wrote together, did it come pretty easy?

I’d written a couple songs before that. “Dreams of a Hobo” and “Thorn Tree in the Garden” and one more. But “Where There’s a Will,” that was the first rock song I ever wrote. But yeah, it came real easy with Eric. We’re a natural songwriting team, like Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards. We just let it flow. There’s no set pattern to writing, it just materializes. You let the creative principle of the universe, god or whatever you want to call it, that which keeps the stars in their place, work through you and for you and it happens naturally.

Conventional wisdom is that the Dominos broke up because of drugs; would you agree?

No. Drugs were part of the problem but it was a lotta things — personality conflicts, egos, all of that. And remember, a lot of people were drinking and drugging then; look at the Stones. We were choirboys compared to them. What killed our band was we started trying to control what we were doing. When the music is coming from a divine source, that’s when it works. When we started trying to make it happen instead of stepping back and letting that divine source make it happen, that’s when it all imploded.

And after that, how did you do your own two albums?

All the songs with George and Eric were live, except the horns were overdubbed. The rest was with Jim [Gordon, the drummer] and myself, Klaus (Voormann, the bassist] and myself. Jim and Klaus and me were the root of that album. It was so simple, there were no preconceptions; we didn’t think, “We’re gonna combine country and rock,” “We’re gonna combine soul and country,” nothing like that. Everything fell into its place, and we were letting go of it, guided by something divine, holy, spiritual. Writing used to be arduous before that. Writing that album, it’s like looking for your keys when they’re lost; you can’t find them anywhere and then you stop looking and there they are. Given the idea for a great song, the rest will fall into place if I step out of the way. It makes so much sense, and it’s absolutely true — people take credit for this kind of thing and all they are really is an instrument for it. You can’t take credit for all that personally, and if you do you’re lost.

It sounds like you retain a lot of the religious thought you grew up with…

There’s no way I’d have anything to do with organized religion; I don’t believe and I never have. Religion is a crock of shit, a buncha hypocritical crap. I’m a preacher’s son and I know what it ain’t. I would never darken the door of a church and there’s no need to: there’s no place God is not, so you don’t need a church to be able to find him.

Your song “Country Life,” you say it’s based on your growing up. But the song makes your childhood sound positively idyllic, when in fact it was a really hard life, even a brutal life.

I never gave much thought to rich or poor; I never gave life much thought in terms of “Oh, what will I do when I grow up.” Ever since I’ve had a memory of myself I’ve been a singer and a singer was all I knew. When I was eight or nine years old and climbing up saplings with my best friend, or swimming in creeks and mudholes, you didn’t know about poor because your life was rich. I don’t believe in material goods. If you’re judging me by material goods you’re misjudging me. I’ve always been happy even when I was unhappy. I look back on all of my life and I was in fear a lot of the time but I was also happy.

Mavis Staples, One True Vine

Barry Walters — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:00:06 +0000

Her second Jeff Tweedy collaboration is spare but deeply spiritual, dignified but down-home

Decades after her 1969 solo debut and a whopping 63 years since she joined her family in the Staple Singers, septuagenarian Mavis Staples is once again doing work that eclipses records of singers a third her age. The follow-up to 2010′s stunning You Are Not Alone, One True Vine continues her collaboration with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, a pairing that seems strange in theory but sounds utterly sweet and mutually flattering in the grooves. As before, Tweedy gets unguarded performances from Staples that have sometimes eluded more conventional producers, and Staples helps Tweedy focus on musical and emotional fundamentals in a way he hasn’t always done with Wilco.

This time around, though, the results are even more relaxed and at times experimental, as if their mutual trust had expanded even further. Unlike its resolutely traditional predecessor, her 13th solo studio album strikes a low-key tone with the disarming opening track, a definitive take on Low’s “Holy Ghost” from their Tweedy-produced album The Invisible Way, and then sticks with unadorned expression of muted moods. The results are akin to Johnny Cash’s American albums with Rick Rubin — spare but deeply spiritual, dignified but down-home. Who knew but Staples and Tweedy that gospel with simultaneously rootsy and artsy droning would work so well?

The clincher is a faithful yet liberating rendition of Funkadelic’s 1971 minor hit “Can You Get to That.” The Maggot Brain track has always been a Staple Singers record in disguise; it’s got their simple but profound karma philosophies down pat. Tweedy recreates the original’s see-sawing acoustic funk and Staples shares the mike with a swinging choir.

The original material compliments the gospel covers elsewhere with folky reverence: Tweedy’s “Jesus Wept” and the title track, a Wilco out-take, combine incorporeal and interpersonal themes, while Nick Lowe’s “Celestial Shores” looks to redemption in a sparkling afterlife. But it’s the singer’s late dad who gets in the most commanding words: Pops Staples’s “I Like the Things About Me,” a black-pride anthem the Staples sung for the early-’70s Wattstax concert and documentary, resonates even more deeply in an era where ideals of physical perfection loom in every Photoshopped image. Understated yet authoritative, Mavis proves it’s best to keep things real.