March 2024 - A Mystery Poet With an AI Avatar, an Ecologist Rapper, Some Pretentious Brits, and a Bit of Satanism
Albums
Headache - The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth
Headache, not to be confused with the punk band, the metal band, the hip-hop artist, or the ailment of the same name, is a collaboration between the trip-hop/downtempo artist Vegyn and a poet named Francis Hornsby Clark. Vegyn has been around for a while now, and has a very solid discography going back to 2014. Clark is more of a mystery. No one on the internet seems to know who he is, and according to the bandcamp, it’s not even his voice you’re hearing on the album, but a text-to-speech program reading his poems. You can pick up on it here and there, like on the strangely symmetrical delivery of “I shouldn’t be responsible for what I say. / Someone else should be responsible for what I say.” It’s hard to say exactly why he made that decision, but I do think it lends something to the sound from time to time, like he has a weird detachment from these surreal, intimate thoughts.
I’d love to know more about Clark’s story, since there are very clear themes running through the album: near-death experiences, drugs, love, nostalgia, a woman named Monica, and a strange sense of optimism in spite of it all. You can put together a kind of story here, if not an exact timeline, and it would be interesting to know if it’s in any way autobiographical.
One way or the other, there are some really beautiful thoughts in here. One of the ones I’ve been thinking about is, “But the thing they don't tell you is that it's your body that leaves your soul / Not the other way around.” I also just really love this collaboration. I like a lot of Vegyn’s stuff, but it benefits hugely from having some interesting words to give it some direction, and conversely, spoken word can easily get, well, boring, and needs a groove.
It’s beguiling stuff. When I first heard it, I assumed I would listen once and then be done, but instead it’s been one of the most enduring albums on my rotation.
Discques Debs International Vol. 1
Think back on tropes of the Caribbean in the 20th century, and one thing that might come to mind is a smoky nightclub where illicit meetings take place between spies and lovers. It’s a staple of literature from the era, but I’ve always kind of wondered like, where is all that music?
Well, here’s a fantastic compilation of music released by Disques Debs, a record label that was active in the French Caribbean for the latter half of the 20th century. It’s an astonishing collection, with one banger after another by artists that I’ve never heard of, presumably because they’re working in Creole, and historically the US music market has ignored anything that isn’t in English (much less true today than ever before, but still a thing).
This volume focuses on the earlier years of Debs’s existence, from 1960-1972, when they were primarily working with artists in Guadeloupe and Martinique. There’s also a Vol. 2, which focuses on the years when they were more of a pan-Caribbean enterprise and much more influential. Both are worth a listen, but for my money, Vol. 1 is the really incredible stuff.
W. H. Lung - Vanities
Last month I called out W. H. Lung’s single “High Pressure Days” as a catchy and fun electropop/dance track. Well, I went back into the archive and discovered this awesome album of euphoric, insistent dance music. It’s a serious evolution from what they were doing on their previous album, Incidental Music. While that one was more of a post-punk thing that was interesting and kinda fun, this has all the electricity of being in your 20’s, pregaming with your friends before a long night out.
I read a couple interviews with the band in which they talk about the album’s creation in 2021, and how intentionally they pursued their new sound. Like a lot of us, they had been cooped up for over a year, starving for live music to become a thing again, and as soon as they could, they threw themselves into the Manchester nightclub scene, soaking up as much as possible, and channeling it all here. It really does feel like a long-awaited explosion.
This is also the kind of album that makes me think “man, this would be incredible live.”
KAM-BU - BUILT 2 LAST
I love when someone has an alternative vision of what hip-hop can be. In this case, KAM-BU is chasing rave culture, audible in everything from the explosive bass to the chintzy keyboard grooves. He’s very frank about it, citing touchpoints like Prodigy and working with legends like Leon Vynehall. It seems like he actually sees partying as a political statement, and he likes to throw free dance parties on the street as a way to spread love in his community.
I mentioned his collaboration with Leon Vynehall on a track called “Black on Black,” an experimental, dystopian commentary on racism and financial literacy in minority communities. That was the track that really launched him, and he often comments in a kind of off-hand way on how surprising it is that his first hit is a song about something as boring as financial literacy, but it seems like this kind of off-beat theme is very much his thing. Check out his many comments about ecology.
The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy
The Last Dinner Party is unusually frank about their influences, and extremely unusual in that the artists they list actually check out with their sound. Kate Bush, David Bowie, Florence + the Machine. Yep. That’s all there. Their outsized sense of drama is definitely one of their defining qualities. They exploded onto the scene just over a year ago with a song called “Nothing Matters” and almost immediately got booked to open for The Rolling Stones. They’re definitely a buzzy band. The primary criticism seems to be that they’re pretentious, which well, doesn’t seem like much of a criticism at all. Pretention gonna pretent.
I was lucky enough to catch them about a year ago and was totally blown away by the power and versatility of Abigail Morris’s voice. My favorite track is “The Feminine Urge,” in which she gracefully jumps two octaves in the space of four notes. I’ve heard that song dozens of times, and it’s still startling to me every time she hits the high note and switches her delivery to a delicate breathiness.
As often happens these days, I find that the album doesn’t really open up until track 4 or 5, but from there it’s brilliant.
Tracks
Noname - namesake
If you ever had every any doubt that Noname is an absolutely fantastic rapper, this ought to make up your mind. She’s got an incredibly precise flow. This track caused her a little trouble in that she called out Jay-Z, but hey, I feel like Jay-Z should be able to take the heat.
There’s a lot of variety on this album, and it made a lot of bloggers’ “best of 2023” lists, but this is the track that really hit for me.
The Jesus and Mary Chain - jamcod
I suppose it makes sense for The Jesus and Mary Chain to make a return about now. After all, they’re one of the originators of the shoegaze and noise-pop sound that’s been making a comeback. But the thing that really surprised me is that a lot of “reunion” artists are kind of rehashing their old sound, if not actually just playing their old hits. Instead, they’ve had a series of great singles, including this one, “Girl 71,” and “Chemical Animal.” There’s an album on the way too. Keep an eye out.
Youth Lagoon - Rabbit
At its highs, the newest Youth Lagoon album, Heaven Is a Junkyard is right up there with his best work ever. This track is particularly nice because it has a bit of a dreamy groove along with the gentle americana-plus-psychedelia that he’s known for.
Kevin Abstract - Blanket
A lot of Kevin Abstract’s stuff is a little too poppy for me, but this one hits a great tone of discordant rock music. It reminds me of Blur’s “Song 2,” both for the frequent “woo” and also because it’s a great rock bop that’s a bit off-brand.
The Curse of K.K. Hammond - The Ballad of Blue Docherty
The Curse of K.K. Hammond has a lot of tracks like this: bluesy/folksy grooves with a narrative thread. This one appeals to me particularly. Probably because it involves an alligator.
Twin Temple - Let’s Have a Satanic Orgy
If you ask me, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a novelty act. After all, music is supposed to be fun, right? What’s wrong with being silly sometimes? Twin Temple takes it to the nth as a “satanic doo-wop band,” which is a pretty good joke just on its face, and I legitimately like a lot of the songs on this album, God Is Dead. They’re catchy, extremely true-to-the-sound throwbacks, and who doesn’t like doo-wop?
Of course, if you take your novelty act in this direction, you end up running afoul of religious groups that don’t get the joke. Or maybe they do get the joke, they just don’t like it. Either way, they get a lot of death threats. And, the thing is, they really are satanists. Not in the Satan-worshipping sense - that’s a different thing - but in the sense of “Satanism” as a loosely organized “religion” that is actually more like atheism. I’m not sure what group they identify with, if indeed there is a specific one (here’s a page on the sect created by Anton LeVay), but the general idea is that there is no actual God or Satan, except as archetypes in which God represents restriction and Satan represents freedom and individuality. If you’re curious, there’s a pretty good Love and Radio episode about it.
At any rate, I respect Twin Temple, both for committing to the bit, and for doubling down when the death threats started pouring in.
Glass Beams - Rattlesnake
I love me some hypnotic psych-rock, especially when it takes an interesting twist. In this case, Rajan Silva is a musician of Indian origin living in Melbourne, Australia, working in heavy references to his Indian heritage like the work of Ananda Shankar.
James Blake - Fall Back
When James Blake really hit back in 2011 with his haunting cover of Feist’s “Limit to Your Love,” it was actually a bit of a turn from his more electronic tracks like “CMYK.” It’s no real surprise that he stuck with the vocal-heavy sound for most of his career - it’s all pretty great - but if I’m honest, at the time I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t doing more dancy and/or electronic stuff. This track has him going back to that sound a bit, with very limited vocals and some nice repeating synth patterns. I like it a lot. We’ll see if he keeps going in this direction or not.
Kiki Rockwell - Burn Your Village
Kiki Rockwell has said that “Burn Your Village” is kind of a sequel to her previous big track, “Same Old Energy.” They explore some of the same themes and are set in the same universe focused on the Salem witch trials. This track in particular is full of sonic surprises, with a constantly increasing tempo and a great piano outro.
hot face - dura dura
Put these guys in the category of “artists to watch.” There isn’t a lot out there about them because this is their first single, but these messy discordant guitar solos and psychedelic washover chords are beautiful.
Coach Party - All I Wanna Do Is Hate
It’s not complicated, but there’s an overwhelming wall of guitar buzzing and a catchy shouty chorus.
grouptherapy. - FUNKFEST
I appreciate how many different directions this track goes. There’s a great rap verse, an unexpected harmonic bridge, poppy verses, and a repeated guitar riff. The album is interesting, but this one works best for me, I think because it’s the best balance of all the disparate parts.