No drums, no hook, just new shit

I find myself worrying about the state of hip hop pretty frequently. Hip hop isn't dead. And any obituaries written about it are factually incorrect. Hip hop lives and breathes like any other music form. But there's no question that it's facing a midlife crisis. The most public faces of hip hop have divorced their wives, blown their annual bonus on a sportscar, and lost touch with their kids in the process. Hip hop is frequently embarrassing. Hip hop has bought and used more Grecian Formula in the past couple years than it's willing to admit.

Hip hop isn't dead. There are signs of life. He's still got his sense of humor (Lil Wayne), he can still be tough as nails (Raekwon). He's still more verbally dextrous than rock'n'roll (Ghostface). And when he puts on a suit with a crispy knotted necktie and a pair of freshly shined shoes, no one can stop him (you tell me . . .). Hip hop still has plenty of cool friends, but very few of them challenge him in the way they once did. They can be just as soft and lazy as he is. Hip hop, if he's serious about hanging around for a while longer, needs some new friends. He needs smarter friends. More disciplined friends. He needs weirder friends.

He needs to lose Gucci Mane's number. He needs to be careful about getting too close to Drake.

He needs to get closer to Jay Electronica. He needs to court him. He needs to hope that Jay Electronica is even interested in hanging out with him.



There's a lot here that could be gimmicky: the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind score sampling, the snippets of dialogue from Willy Wonka, the MGM lion's roar. But none of it is. None of it is played for laughs. Jay's seriousness isn't a downer; it's actually kind of exhilarating. What's so goddam great about the samples is that they never take center stage. They're a radically new underpinning to his voice. And, my God, his voice. His flow is classically smooth and effortless. He's very careful about not descending into that verbal abstraction that characterizes so many avant-garde emcees. In fact, he uses an impressionistic verbal paintbrush to create scenes that are almost always internal. Listen to the second movement of the song that begins around 3:08. Jay describes a genuinely poignant moment of romantic loss that moves effortless back and forth in time, shading both the physicality and sentimentality of the scene. Even his critiques of hip hop (all the rage among dudes without a contract) feel fresh and interesting. Instead attacking the authenticity of his competitors, Jay invents Voodooman, a sort of hip hop effigee that can take all the attacks as a symbol. He's pretty clear, I think, about the role of this Voodooman: "Same old rugged cross/Different crucified messiah."

It's been quite a while since I've been laid out by a killer line like that. Cleverness is never in short supply in hip hop. Jay Electronica isn't clever because a fully formed emcee is beyond mere cleverness.

Download the full 15 minute version (with the 6 minute interview (?) before the actual song) here.

Ridiculous... ly Good?

HYPNTZ

T.I.A. 2 (ep), Dan Black, 2009.

This is a great example of why we started this blog. I heard this version of "Hypnotize" over New Year's. The first time, I thought to myself, "This sucks. What a fucking insult." Then the second time, my stance softened. By the third time, I was walking upstairs singing Dan Black's operatic version of the chorus (which, by the way, works better because of his accent "cahn't you see" etc). By the time I got home, I was practically running upstairs to find it.

The fact that "Hypnotize" isn't even a top-10 Biggie song for me* works in Black's favor, but really, he just does an amazing job here. I think my initial problem was that it seemed like a total gimmick. Then as I heard it a couple of times, I realized that this was impossible. You can't make a song as heartfelt and carefully plotted as this without truly loving it.

I was told/read briefly Biggie's mom didn't allow this version to be released, so Black snuck it out on an EP. I don't have much real interest in figuring out how true this is, but the fact that he released the same song with different lyrics (decent ones, but not good ones) show how Black understood he'd really captured lightning in a bottle on this one. He couldn't simply let the fact that it was a cover that he had no rights to get in his way.

Symphonies

Black is a master of the swelling emotional moment, and I haven't listened to Un or his other albums enough to know if I find it annoying or appealing quite yet. Stay tuned, I guess.

*(too much Simmons footnote) Favorite Biggie (in no particular order): Juicy, What's Beef?, Kick in the Door, Gimme the Loot, Somebody's Got to Die, Things Done Changed, I Got a Story to Tell, Machine Gun Funk, Warning, Ready to Die. As you can see, the poppy songs don't really work for me, but Juicy is just undeniable.

The Empty Page - Sonic Youth

The Empty Page - Sonic Youth



Monday morning on the bus. My face feels really dry despite the after shave. Mouth kind of tastes like cold coffee. The newsprint smell coming off my newspaper is already giving me a headache. Something or another ends and my iPod rings up "Total Trash" by Sonic Youth.

Needless to say, I had a very productive day on Monday.

I graded lots of paper while listening to the strange assortment of SY on my iPod (Daydream Nation, Rather Ripped, Goo, and Murray Street). I listened to "Total Trash" a few more times, astonished as always that such a thing was actually composed by human beings. I mean, Thurston Moore is a man with a memory like mine. But whereas I forget my own fucking birthday, he can remember who has to claim the feedback squeal in "Candle." The simple factness of SY astonishes me.

Also, I had/have/will have a huge crush on Kim Gordon.

Anyway, I listened to Murray Street for the first time in years. I was astonished (again) at the first song, "The Empty Page." I didn't remember this song at all. I guess I only think of Murray Street as the one with "Sympathy for the Strawberry" and "Rain on Tin" on it. But "The Empty Page" defies normal SY distinctions. Think about those opening chords. They're clean, distinguishable. They seem to bear some resemblance to standard tuning. There's even an irristable hook embedded in there.

Look, the thing that makes Sonic Youth the force that they have become is their ability to both melt and solidify silly things like melody, chord progressions, and time signatures. They belong to one of the most elite clubs around: Bands Who Don't Produce Derivative Copycats. No one else sounds like SY because it's impossible to sound like them without actually, you know, having Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Renaldo in your band. There are very few bands who can claim this status. But "The Empty Page" is surprising only because of its utter lack of surprises. Sure there is that awesome guitar battle between Moore and Renaldo in the middle of the song. But it's more gorgeous and uplifting than actually abrasive. For fuck's sake, they played the song on Carson Daley's show! The rest of the song foregrounds a kind of nostalgia that bubbles up sometimes in their work. Those opening lines are pretty telling: "These are the words/But not the truth/God bless them all when they speak to you." The song is a weird homage to attempts, to effort, to potential. After all, isn't that white a blank page symbolizes more than anything else?

Andrew Bird and the Triumphant Trio

Anonanimal

Noble Beast, 2009.

My favorite music argument in college was bands with three straight great albums. Let me save you some time by saying it's not a very long list. Recent entrants to my mind include Radiohead (duh), Death Cab (maybe?-- Photo Album, Transatlanticism, Plans, Narrow Stairs are all pretty awesome), Cat Power... anyway, I am as sure about Andrew Bird as I am about Radiohead. Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs, Armchair Apocrypha, and Noble Beast are all drop-dead records.

As I said in my review of Noble Beast when it came out, it's weird hearing some other influences creep into Bird's records, because no one else sounds like him. At all, really. He's something unto himself, and that shit doesn't happen at all these days.

He has an enviable vocabulary, and writes lyrics that couldn't work for anyone else, like the opening lines of "Effigy," "If you come to find me affable/ Build an replica for me/ Would the idea to you be laughable/ Of a pale facsimile/ If you come to burn an effigy/ It should keep the flies away."

How he smooshes all these sounds together and mixes them with weird lyrics is beyond me. It just works.

"Anonanimal" has just been making the rounds in my head lately, and so I present it here. As is often the case with Bird, he's in no hurry to get to the meat of the song. The opening lasts a good couple of minutes, but they don't feel boring, with the plucking of strings, the electric guitar jumping in, and then some gentle strings. Bird himself begins muttering some things that I don't understand, about viciousness and transformations.

But when the song begins in earnest, with handclaps and stomps and Bird imploring, "Hold on just a second/ hold on just a second/ I know this one/ I know this song," and then explodes into a more regulated guitar line, drums, and, uh, more handclaps, the world feels like it opens wide, a panoramic view.

Bird's facility with tunes and melodies gives him the power to often use two or three in one song, and his songs often feel more like movements because of it. I often hear the opening of a song and can't remember which one it is right away because it so thoroughly becomes something else as it goes on. He's one of the best artists of the decade for certain, one of the most consistent, and one of the most adventurous.

Rough Gem

Rough Gem - Islands

I'm too sick to bother spending much time on my post this week. Apologies all around.

So, here's a song about being a diamond. Islands formed from the ashes of the Unicorns, a band almost too brilliant for words. Their only album is one of my favorites of the decade. And Islands' first album, too, is amazing. You should get it if you've never listened to it. Anyway, "Rough Gem" is told from the point of view of a diamond. That's cool. I could use more songs in my life from inanimate objects.

I'm tempted to write about the Damien Hirst piece right there, but I won't. I will only tell you that George Michael was interested in buying it for, reportedly, £50 million (something on the order of $82 million). George Michael has that kind of money!? Since when did a former member of Wham! become a Saudi prince?

Wait, Drugs CAN'T Fix Everything?

No Dope

Whispertown 2000
Swim
2008

This is one of my favorite songs of the decade. I think, having listened to that list in order on the way to and from upstate New York, "No Dope" may be the biggest leaper. In fact, it's one of my favorite songs ever. It's so, so simple and so, so crushing.

Who hasn't been so heartbroken/ destroyed/ depressed that nothing works? That's all this song is about. But what happens so wonderfully is the way Morgan Nagler's voice embodies the song and the guitar strumming sounds so forlorn. When the glimmering guitar comes in, that, too, seems too depressed to give us much more than a few notes before heading back to bed.

Maybe no set of lines does more so succinctly: "No dope/ No pill/ No drink/ can fill/ can tow/ this ton/ of tears." And it does seem like Nagler chops the line breaks there. Two syllables is all she can force out of her mouth. She's gathering energy. Later, she sings a gorgeous (simple again) line, "No medicine/ or heroin/ can make me go/ sweet blind." Sweet blind, if that is indeed what she says, is just an absolutely amazing phrase. I actually titled a story I've been working on "Sweet Blind" from this. I will swipe it ten times a day. It's that awesome to me.

This is perhaps the most depressing song on earth. EXCEPT, there are those magnificent moments where Nagler's voice lilts upwards, "I'll tell you what" that give just the slightest impression of hope, where that gathered energy has been hiding. She seems to say, Those fucking clouds aren't parting, but well, they've got to some time, right? I mean, for a goddamn second?

--Some notes on Whispertown 2000. Nagler is friends with Blake Sennett of Rilo Kiley, and became friends with Jenny Lewis. Then she started performing under the name-- wait for it-- the whole reason I am writing this small section-- Vagtown 2000.

Outlaw Questions

Country music, like punk rock, usually only attempts to answer a couple of questions: why don't you love me? what am I going to do now that you're gone? how do I really feel about my truck/case of beer/Southern heritage? But the best country asks better questions: how am I going to haul all this pig iron? how long will I love him? what the hell is a rhinestone cowboy?



Tom Ames' Prayer - Steve Earle


Steve Earle, a trader in great subjects (moonshiners, oxycontin, American Taliban fighter John Walker Lynn, among many others) asks a helluva question in "Tom Ames' Prayer": what does an atheist outlaw say when his luck runs out and he's forced to talk to God?

The answer is surprising. Tom Ames' monologue to God is not touching. It eschews sentiment in favor of nihilism and irony. There's no salvation here for our arrogant outlaw. The song requires no explication because the writing is so concise and clear. But just in case: Tom Ames, chicken stealer, horse thief, bank robber, general badass, finds himself cornered by Johnny Law in an alley in Abeline. With limited options he turns to the good Lord for some assistance. He recounts the Lord's previous intervention in his life: after Judge Parker throws the book at him, Tom Ames sits in jail talking to a preacher who is, presumably, giving some kind of end-of-life counseling. The preacher turns his back, Ames puts a shiv to his throat and demands the key from the deputy. As soon as he recounts his last escape, Tom Ames remembers that there is no God, cocks his pistols, spits in the dirt, and puts his faith in his last 4 shells. The ending is more complex than it initially suggests. Does Tom Ames only dismiss God because he recognizes his own prowess as a criminal? Or, does Tom Ames thank Him for sending the preacher who ultimately becomes the vehicle for his escape? The latter seems more interesting to me.



Las Cruces Jail - Two Gallants


Two Gallants, a pair of tremendous noisemakers from San Francisco, pose another great question: what do you say to your horse when you're facing the business end of a noose? Our nameless narrator seems like the first-person narrator from a lost Cormac McCarthy novel: a man for whom murder is as necessary as clothing. He's a poetic about his given trade: "quickest wrist of the chaparral and sage." Whereas Earle's sense of nihilism was touched with irony, 2G's nihilism is down right exhilarating: this is a character who has honestly made peace with his impending death. He wants to recount his own story because that's what criminals do; they're more invested in their crimes than the survivors of the victims. But the most humbling and surprising and moving parts of the song are addressed to his Andalusian horse. He bids the mare goodnight from his lonely jail cell in Las Cruces. He advises her not to believe in her captor's words. They are going to try to reclaim her, but she needs to remember the freedom that she enjoyed with the narrator. He can't respect what will happen to his horse, but he's not sorry that they had their time together. They were a pair, a couple, after all. The song, then, becomes this lovely (if simultaneously horrifying) ode to his freedom that came with his horse. And it's ultimately a tragic story: the narrator is going to die (he doesn't have Tom Ames' arrogance in this regard) and the horse now belongs to those who are putting its rightful owner to death.