An Acute Case: 3 May 2024
Pop stars as country stars, country stars as rock stars, rock stars as the great pacific garbage patch
Beyoncé: COWBOY CARTER
Beyoncé’s cachet is so high that she can lay the smack down on artificial cultural fault lines whenever she wants to, yet I doubt it’s a coincidence that she chose an election year to take on a genre so vexed by exclusionary practices. As it happens, it doesn’t matter whether her idea of kntry matches yours. The idea is that after eighty virtuoso minutes it… still won’t. But on her terms. The “looka there” country angle is a feint to draw attention to the dubious practice of cultural demarcation. So it’s fitting that this is all over the place. There’s a civil rights anthem written by one white Beatle and sung by five black women. An interpolation of Nancy Sinatra and the Beach Boys. A chipmunked Chuck Berry. A river dance break. A flamenco break. A murder ballad fantasy that starts with Leonard Cohen fingerstyle guitar and finishes with a rendition of “Caro Mio Ben”. If her vision is staggering, her chops have never been better. But notwithstanding the musical achievement, arguably her greatest triumph is how the much pored-over subtext is just text. From the Willie and Dolly walk-ons to Rhiannon Giddens’ MacArthur-winning banjo to Linda Martell’s “genre is a funny little concept” asides to a duet with Miley Cyrus that implies the lineage back to her super trad dad, no wider is reading required. She’s laid it all out for you. And as a perfect lesson plan, she’s included plenty of energisers. “Ladies?” she asks at one point, the class braced for a test on whether they’ve been listening. Then she pauses. Then… “Fuck it. We shakin.” A
Carsie Blanton: After the Revolution
Blanton’s ninth album is softened by a languor that suits both her honeyed voice and her feelings about our beleaguered political state. Regarding the latter, the change she’s hoping and, committed socialist that she is, organising for is made plain by the title. Conceptually, that’s done and dusted after the opening two, with the title track depicting how strained relationships become under a failing system before “Empire” imagines watching that system crumble. After that come the two most poignant songs here, both concerning a subject new to her catalogue: motherhood. “Caroline” is named for the child who’s rekindled her hope (that word again), while “Labour Of Love” (“cause it sure doesn’t pay”) is a tribute to working mums that doubles as a rallying cry for their collective strength. The kind of person who’ll throw herself “Right in the Middle of It” when things get dicey for her friends as well as a revolutionary in it for the long run, she more than earns her break in the middle to lounge in the pool while thinking sexy thoughts. Which is also a good tactic for mustering support for your cause. A MINUS
Dawn Landes: The Liberated Woman's Songbook
Treated with a simplicity that befits their origins and a significance that befits their cause, the 11 songs on this document (all with the date of composition helpfully in their titles—a practice I’d like to see more of) naturally lack for levity, so the one that subverts a nursery rhyme gets my vote. I mean, they all get my vote, but… oh, c'mon, you know what I'm saying. * (“Cotton Mill Girls (1939)” “There was a Young Woman who Swallowed a Lie (1970)”)
Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven
Smartly, efficiently, and (oh look, more Congletronics) muzzily digs into the dialectics implied by the conceptual distance between “Loud Bark” and “Softly”. ** (“I Got Heaven” “OK? OK! OK? OK!”)
Leyla McCalla: Sun Without the Heat
Lyrics-wise, maybe none of these songs are knockouts. But in their studied non-specificity and thoughtful choice of subjects, they get the ball rolling on emtions and ideas McCalla can develop with her far more expressive voice, which isn’t big or showy—just disarmingly nuanced, sweet, lilting, natural. As importantly, they provide a motor for her politely arty, peculiarly instrumented folk tunes, all of them originals steeped in tropical traditions whose inherent loveliness goes some way to assuaging the often lonely and bereft tone. Things get quieter as they progress; a situation McCalla is more than capable of handling. But when the whole band is cooking, the result sounds every bit as organically grown as the marketing material claims—limber, intricate, and irresistibly fetching. And when McCalla exhausts her nature metaphors (like the one where she becomes a tree), they get her over the hump by summoning the collective spirit of their avant-garde forbears and freaking out. A MINUS
Dolly Parton: Rockstar
Released on the same day as 2023’s other bonkers genre departure (clue: “Oms Over Baghdad”), this is more my speed, though at just under an hour-and-a-half it hardly flies by. But if its function is to simulate an entire rock and roll career worthy of Dolly’s induction into The Hall, that’s justification enough. One reason the run-time isn’t just bearable but enjoyable is she knows how daft it is, which is why she opens with a joke: dad yells at her to cut out that racket, she strops, mum gets caught in the middle, ha ha ha she’s 78-years-old. After that, it’s all chutzpah and glee, with the schlock tactics only bothering the songs that were soggy to begin with: "Purple Rain” maybe, “Let It Be” definitely, and a “Free Bird” featuring actual bird twitters because why do this otherwise? When it doesn’t rock, it sways. Dolly upstages every one of her star-studded accomplices. And based on “Heartbreaker”, if she ever gets inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame, I’m confident she’ll make a credible Headbanger. A MINUS
Pissed Jeans: Half Divorced
Nothing says disenfranchisement like disagreeing guitars and vomit vocals, though “sixty-two thousand dollars in debt / that’ll be the day I never forget” comes close. *** (“Everywhere Is Bad” “Junktime”)
Rosie Tucker: UTOPIA NOW!
“How many songwriters does it take to screw a tune?” Tucker asks up front. And if you want an answer, the credits are a good place to start: not a single cowrite. Once you hear any of these 13 home-recorded songs—each sufficiently catchy, clearly sung, and riff-driven, which is to say they’re compositionally a little mathy—you’ll know why. They’re so idiosyncratic I can’t see how they could accommodate an outsider’s perspective. Of course, someone else’s interests might overlap with Tucker’s. But it’s unlikely they’d also express commodification of art in terms of planned obsolescence, compare past relationships to the great pacific garbage patch, or address the paperclip maximiser thought experiment as if it was a person. But much as I’m drawn to Tucker for their habit of splitting hairs for a pastime, their songs feel most complete when they consider the personal implications of all this modernity. “If it can't counted does it count?” is the kind of thought pattern they’re up against, which makes “the metadata proves you’re the real thing” something of a step forward and “what you give to me no one can frack” a positive triumph. And given how many of these songs seems to relate to a particularly unpleasant ex, “if at the bottom of everything we are all alone / then I want nothing but unending bliss for my enemies” is downright heroic. A MINUS