Something a bit different, now: My thoughts on some of the recordings I have listened to in recent months, as well as an old favourite. My personal listening is about evenly divided between classical, jazz, and everything else. However, I feel more on top of what is happening in the “everything else” category, and also find I have more to write about it. So if this becomes ongoing feature of this blog, I expect most of the reviews will come from there.
FONTAINES D.C.: “DOGREL” – If, after 56 years, the classic rock format of four or five guys playing guitars, bass and drums has not yet reached the point where it is by default reactionary, it increasingly seems that each iteration is an argument for its continued relevance. (And you might notice that none of the artists that follow observe the Classic Format). So what does this quintet from Dublin have to say on the subject? 1) The world you are trying to to transcend and escape through your art is the very thing that provides your art its grounding and inspiration. You’re going to have to deal with this. 2) When choosing a singer, character and conviction are far more important than stuff like pitch and range. 3) You have to be punk.
SLEATER-KINNEY: “THE CENTER WON’T HOLD” – The last time the band worked with a producer this interventionist was 2005’s “The Woods”, and it may have blown up the band, if only temporarily. This record, produced by Annie Clark, AKA St. Vincent, seems to have blown up the band for good, at least in its classic configuration. But when history repeats itself, it rarely does so completely. And while “The Woods” was arguably the band’s most assured and forward-looking record, “The Center Won’t Hold” sounds to me like its first failure. The difference, perhaps: On the earlier record the band pushed producer Dave Fridman as far out of his comfort zone as he did them, and the result was a sonic heaviness that did not previously exist in either catalogue. This time, the band’s signature skittering guitar counterpoint is often replaced by a compressed, sustained wash reminiscent of you-know-who, and the strongest songs tend to be the one’s that most resemble the old sound. I’m all for progress, but not when it means something unique and precious becomes more like something we already have.
MARIKA HACKMAN: “ANY HUMAN FRIEND” – Time was, Hackman’s career trajectory from low-key and folk-tinged to pop-wise and beat-centred would automatically be dismissed as pandering. But, thankfully, times have changed, and it would make little sense to expect this songwriter, one of whose major major preoccupations is the pleasures of the flesh and the spirit, to be an ascetic regarding the pleasures of the ear. And if her template for the latter is 80’s synthpop, well, why not? In any event, she’d have earned the right to do as she pleases if she’d done nothing more than peg BDE as “a venereal disease.”
BILLIE EILISH: “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?” – My two daughters, not that far out of their own teenage-hood, agree with me: Of all the teen idols in recent memory, Eilish is the most convincingly teenaged. She’s also a sharp lyricist, and I like her taste for scrungy sonics (Don’t panic while listening to “xanny”. Your speakers aren’t blown). On the downside, I do note an alarming number of sad ballads about being dumped by some guy. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
JAMILA WOODS: “LEGACY! LEGACY!” – These songs were gestated in a Chicago workshop for young writers where Woods, who has a day job as a legit poet, assigned students to write “cover versions” of well-known poems. By then taking on this exercise for herself, she produced this collection of songs dedicated to artists who inspire her, including Betty Mabry, Frida Kahlo, Miles Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sun Ra, and James Baldwin. If, like me, many of the literary dedicatees are unfamilar to you, Woods has prepared a helpful reader’s guide. A complex LP that repays repeated listens.
JENNY HVAL: “THE PRACTICE OF LOVE” – Never one to shy away from big issues and complex questions, Hval can sometimes be a little to abstruse for her own good. Her last record was something to do with female vampires and menstrual blood, but I could never quite figure out much beyond that. That could have just been me. It was still engrossing listening. This time her lyrics are more personal, and more focused, specifically on her thought about the meanings of love to her as a woman who is childless in her late 30’s. She and her collaborators contemplate whether this makes her a mere supporting character, or even the antagonist, in the human story. But later she realizes that, when writing a song about Georgia O’Keefe, she was emulating Joni Mitchell who once wrote a song for Amelia Earhart. And though she does not explicitly mention it, all three women also spurned motherhood in its full (though, in Mitchell’s case, not its biological), sense. As a supporting cast, that’s not a bad one to belong to.
LITTLE SIMZ: “GREY AREA” – How does one simultaneously dis and praise one’s rivals, while also fighting cultural hegemony, all in a single line? “I’m Jay-Z on a bad day, Shakespeare on my worst day.”
FROM THE VAULTS:
SLEATER-KINNEY: “THE WOODS” (2005)– The brighter, more pop-wise sound of the two records that have emerged from the extended hiatus that followed this one only further emphasize what a singular item it is in the catalogue of the best rock band of the the past quarter century. The cock-rock heaviness of the sound is not just a matter of Janet Weiss giving full reign to her inner John Bonham, but also of an improvisational looseness that stretches the tracks as long as the 11 minute mark. Listening to it today, its easier to understand why, after the drummer was asked to just sit in the back and keep time, she decided it was time to move on.