corook: How do I relate to you?
Two songs about puppy going on forever love plus three more about getting by without fitting in, all set to music whose chief charm is tweedle-dee tweedle-dum melodicism that doesn’t hide the attention to detail that makes these ditties not just catchy but persuasive. That assumes anyone needs persuading about the rights of non-normies to a dignified existence. Unfortunately, Corrine Savage knows many do. Some are even in their family. “How can I find a way I can love you while hating your views?” they ask. They shouldn’t be the one having to stick their neck out, so at least respect them for throwing the bigots a bone and don’t blame them if one day they stop. A MINUS
Inpatient: Asylum
Stylistically, 37-year-old Connecticut-born Chris Webby and 36-year-old Anglesey-born Ren Gill owe everything to Eminem, rapping in clipped nasal tones about cartoon manias and violent fantasies over circus beats. But while Slim Shady scandalised, this is shock rap for a generation sensitised to taboo. So expect fewer laughs much less gasps and don’t be surprised if this still turns out to be the most entertaining album of the year purely on volume of ideas and kilowatts of energy. Organised around the question “When the world is an asylum, how do you stay sane?” there’s coherence, purpose, and momentum, though the duo’s animating force is clearly a desire to show off. Both are articulate rappers, crafty songwriters, and decent hook singers, while full-blown theatricality makes this feel like an old-fashioned event album. At their most audacious, they pull off a deal with the devil, a multi-generational vengeance tale, drug trials on unsuspecting kids, and parallel paths of self-destruction that get up close and personal with a Brighton bus. A
Sad13: 1331
The prolifically catchy Sadie Dupuis tries her hand at melodic hucksterism with surprisingly sleepy results and one throwaway keeper: “My contribution to the discourse is to shut the fuck up.” * (“Six Ways” “Locust Releaser”)
Steve Lacy: Oh yeah?
“Hard to smile ‘cause I had the coochie stuck in my teeth.” “I’m a big baby suckin’ on big titties.” “If I had a dollar for the friends I would fuck, I could buy a pair of really nice shoes.” All very naught, but his lusterman routine would be more convincing if he sped it up. ** (“show you me” “doom”)
Syd: Beard
Drunken eroticism that could pass a breathalyser test. * (“Always Be Mine” “GMFU”)
Twisted Teens: Blame the Clown
The drums are a dozen heads thudding into a wall. The guitars are sexy if your idea of sexy is a striptease in a pig pen. The title’s taken from the line “I don’t blame the circus I blame the clown.” And this duo are neither morons nor chaos merchants. They’re purveyors of something wild, tight, and erratic that’s more refined in conception than execution because that’s just the way they like it. Watch out for circumcised foreskins thrown from car windows. A MINUS
Twisted Teens: Florida Water Blues
Pronounced “floor-da war-da,” which these citizens of “a crazy swamp just about in the crotch of America” say will make you go blind if you drink it and I believe them and think maybe they have. Other things the improbably named Caspian Hollywell retches while pedal steel player Ramon Santos suggests and evades the genre tags of music critics include “I invented a good thing and it’s a rhythm” (true enough) and, during the bridge in what could pass for a slow dance, “Information is very influential as a rule / No matter who you’re fighting for they use you as a tool.” From which I conclude that these scrappy auteurs have bigger ideas than just slap-dashery. A MINUS
Vince Staples: Cry Baby
My cry-baby requires attention, so with due respect to Vince, this expertly assembled, energetically performed, typically lean record strikes me as anachronistic in a few salient ways: the political raps seem almost pre-BLM, the rock beats feel dated from twenty years ago, and there’s even a complaint about TV addiction for heaven’s sake. None of which reduces my enjoyment. Not only am I predisposed to the aesthetic, the anachronisms feel authentic to the worldview of a young black man whose experience of the law, the state, and the media were forged in a turn of the century childhood. “Promise me you won’t gun me down.” Not too much to ask, is it? A MINUS
Asylum sounds great. Thanks!