An Acute Case: 2nd December 2022
Your Spotify Wrapped is here! Or for something equally unrepresentative of your taste, read this
Loyle Carner: hugo
If The Guardian wants to call this a masterpiece, that’s their lookout as the self-appointed overraters of UK rap. I merely hear a soulful collection of healers, a few of which are [checks lingo] heaters, with the tepid ones just about getting over on personability and eloquence. Carner demonstrates an aptitude for thoughtful sampling throughout, and on the livelier first half some exciting snare patterns. In other words, promising. * (“Hate” “Nobody Knows (Ladas Road)” “Georgetown”)
c0ncernn: Dariacore3…At least I think that's what it's called?
Aims for the world record in drops per second and might get it if not for two minutes of atmosphere at the end. As for those drops, each one’s a megaton bomb turning the helium'd voices and EDM drums into so much confetti. It's a lot. Sometimes too much—for me and c0ncernn, who has a few issues with interest retention on the second half. But when it connects, you've never felt more submerged in hyper-stuff. As for its use values: as dance music, negligible; as driving music, hazardous; as an aid for nuclear fission, pretty handy. *** (“her head is soooo rolling!! love her” “fuuuuck we were supposed to wear argyle” “damn! we got it bad: you'll never guess what happens next”)
2nd Grade: Easy Listening
Sixteen songs in thirty-five minutes that bear an uncanny resemblance to the demos of that long-forgotten power pop band you’ve never heard of because, well, they didn’t exist, which I think is the point. Or in their words: it’s just the cross-section of a dream. One in which the lick on “Poet In Residence” sounds like lo-fi Stones, the yearning “Kramer In L.A.” lo-fi Paul Simon, the cowbell on the same lo-fi Beatles, the guitar buzz on “Strung Out On You” lo-fi Big Star, the closing flourish of “Hung Up” lo-fi Kinks, and pretty much everything else lo-fi Fountains of Wayne—at which point you might as well just call them lo-fi themselves. Inspirational lo-fi verse: “The back half of the B-side is where we belong / We lose our cool when the closeup begins / Smiling for a camera that isn’t there / Like demented newlyweds / Interlopers in the rock room / Tumbling down the demand curve / Double parked and half dead / We opened the time capsule / And this is what it said.” B
Priscilla Block: Welcome To The Block Party
Don't buy "My Bar" or "Heels in Hand" because she doesn't impress her personality on the neon genericism. Do buy heartfelt "Like A Boy" and “I Know A Girl” because she does. Love "Ever Since You Left", "Thick Thighs", “Wish You Were The Whiskey” and “Peaked In High School” because they’re when her personality extends to the arrangements—a kick up the arse that redounds on the sassiness of her writing and singing. “I can’t be the only one who likes extra fries over exercise”, “You can’t spell diet without ‘die’”, “I got a deal, you got divorced / Now you see my face on Billboard.” Like that. B
DJ Black Low: Uwami (2021)
This languidly batshit Amapiano sounds too full of ideas to be the output of one man, even when he's twenty years-old, so can be assumed to possess unimaginable energy. But the liner notes insist it’s just Durbanite Sam Austin Redebe, and his picture confirms he's not in possession of four arms, two brains, or twenty fingers. Accompanied only by the grunts and chants and yelps and stammerings of guests from whatever musical plane he’s operating on, he empties his entire chemistry set into Fruity Loops and alchemises. Skittish rhythms, warped Casio pre-sets, and alien landing patterns—incompatible by ordinary standards—become ineffably meditative. The drums on “Downfall Revisit” are blistering, the keyboard melody on “Alone in a Dark” straight from the crypt, the maladroit tinkering on “Stiwawa Quitter” pure Stone Ager in a recording studio. And yes, I picked those songs to highlight the peculiar titling strategy—it's all part of the most spectacularly odd decision-making I've heard this year. A
Lady Aicha & Pisko Cranes Original Fulu Miziki: N'djila Wa Madjimu
The second release from Nyege Nyege Tapes to find its way into this column in 2022, which warrants a hat tip to founders Derek Debru and Arlen Dilsizian—one a film school teacher, the other an ethnomusicologist (duh). Their stated aim is to showcase electronic music from in and around Kampala, though they seem disposed to include anything outsidery, digital or otherwise. That’s this. Formed by Pisco Crane in 2003 as a music-for-all initiative, the instruments are made from trash found in the slums of Kinshasa. As for musical purpose: rhythm rhythm rhythm—that compounds and confounds soukous and four-four and punk and more styles than you’ll care to count once they turn their clutter to clatter. In what may seem an harsh criticism of a group literally playing oil cans and computers, the start is a bit disjointed. But with “Halula” arrives a deeper, dancier groove as they milk chants and drones and vibra-things for maximum menace. Thirty-six minutes later, their seventeen-years-in-the-making moment is over. And it’s the last you’ll be getting, because immediately after recording they split. Internet says Pisco and Lady A are still knocking around the DRC, a couple of others started doing French music (alas), and the rest released a tamer (though at least actually electro) EP earlier this year—ironically, not on electro-championing Nyege Nyege, though perhaps for some kind of continuity on Moshi Moshi Records (though not Tapes). Confusingly, they did it under the name Fulu Miziki, hence the proprietorial “Original” stamped on this one. All in all, a mess. Which, as we’ve learnt, is the perfect thing to make music out of. A MINUS
Jeffrey Lewis: When That Really Old Cat Dies
Because lo-fi is Lewis’s only mode, there isn’t much between his outtakes and his in-takes, his A-sides and his B’s. Whether he’s solo acoustic or modestly supported, he goes after his subjects with laconic precision and grumpy wit, deploying the simplest of guitar lines to imbue the titular cat’s death with all the sorrow it deserves, reeling off a succession of tongue-twisting encomia to low-class food available to touring musicians in the UK, dirtying his hands trying to get a diamond out of the dust, and delivering the statute of limitations to guest list grubbers. A compulsive rhymer (“morning”/“corner”/“goner”, “cruddy”/“bacon butty”) and a painfully honest wise-cracker (“I know I'm just a drop in the bucket / But I wanna still make a splash / If I had another leg I'd be happy / That's one more pocket where I might find some cash”) he thinks people should have their funerals while they’re still alive to appreciate them, comes to terms with impermanence, and appreciates the allure of burning everything and starting from scratch. And as he feels it’s his duty to drop in a good word for a proper fish ‘n’ chips with vinegar, I’ll recommend No. 1 in Cromer and The Little Fish & Chip Shop in Southwold—though neither will be on any US musician’s tour schedule, and both are decidedly boujee. A MINUS
Alhaji Waziri Oshomah: World Spirituality 3: The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah
Fundamentally anti-heroic, he strikes up serene grooves within seconds then lets them go on forever, maintaining interest with endless grace notes. As for spiritual wisdom, in addition to encouraging forgiveness of your neighbour for all the usual reasons, he warns that jealousy towards your colleagues causes hypertension. Can’t verify it. Can believe it. ** (“Forgive Them Oh God Amin – Amin” “Jealousy” “My Luck”)
Plains: I Walked With You A Ways
I like this for the same reasons as everyone else—the immaculate harmonies and prepossessing lyricism make for a balmy listen without getting in the way of incisive takes on relationship dynamics: "If it’s all you got yeah it’s all you gave / I got a problem with it”, “I can’t hide in your line of sight”, “If I don’t ruin everything baby I’ll come back to you” add modern colour to country fundamentals. But there’s no point ignoring that Jess Williamson is surplus to requirements. Where Katie Crutchfield’s voice (not just singing but attitude) is singularly pungent, Williamson—for all her fineness as a writer—is, well, plain. And that takes its toll on the tempos. In between the slow trudge of overemoting “Abilene” and the death-by-simile of “Bellafatima”, Crutchfield—hardly at her most dynamic to begin with—does exactly what she says on “Hurricane” and comes in like a cannonball. Which is good for the four or five songs she leads but doesn’t flatter her helpmeet. B PLUS
Tommy Womack: I Thought I Was Fine (2021)
A songwriter’s songwriter, Womack crafts his rockers, rippers, chuggers, and swingers a line at a time, each one a fractal of a bigger idea pulled together for that “It’s a sweater!” moment with a simple hook: “Man on the exit ramp with a backpack and a dog”—hook: “You pay it forward as best you can”; “You can tie one on get a nice buzz / Tomorrow is a-dawning it always does”—“I thought I was fine”; “Rock and roll is a losing cause / All my old groupies got menopause”—“Free at last”. All are rendered with 50’s shake, rattle and roll and delivered in a nasally drawl packed with the life experience of a preacher’s son who’s had three bouts of cancer and a nervous breakdown, plus whatever baggage comes with that Southern accent. He breathes new (second lease of) life into the covers, but his most profound performances are on two originals. The first about a preacher, ten-year-olds, and some extremely creepy narrative lacuna. The second a whirlwind spoken-word account about late-brother Waymond and his third-and-final wife Lou’s separate encounters with Elvis decades years before they met. That one’s only the prologue to a closing tribute to Waymond, but it’s the set-up you’ll want to hear again. A