An Acute Case: 31 May 2024

Dividing lines between Kinshasa and ​Brazzaville, dumb and smartdumb, renters and owners, secrets and revelations

Congo Funk! - Sound Madness From The Shores Of The Mighty Congo River (Kinshasa​/​Brazzaville 1969​-​1982)
The 14 tracks on this comp from Analog Africa (the first I haven’t found a touch conservative) were apparently selected from 2,000. Based on the average track length, that’s around 11,000 minutes of music, so give the traditionalists their due. Titans Franco and Rochereau feature, as they must. Besides them, I couldn’t put hand on heart and say I’ve heard the others before. Some are genuine rarities. “Sungu Lubuka” is taken from an album recorded in one evening but never released in Zaire (presumably nowhere else either), while “M.B.T's Sound” is the product of the eponymous youth band led by Abumba Masikini, who failed to find any success in his career (thoughtfully, he’s sequenced before his sister Abeti, who did). Brazzaville and Kinshasa are given equal weighting, with notables including Les Bantous De La Capitale—who were honoured (I guess) when Mobutu anointed their Le Boucher the national dance—and cavachabeat pioneers Zaiko Langa Langa. Both are still going. The Bandcamp page argues that James Brown’s appearance at Zaire ’74 was the event horizon for all the developments charted here. If that seems simplistic, when the defence calls “Lolo Soulfire”, the shrieks and jitters make a compelling case. Unsexy as it sounds, a chief part of the appeal is organisation and discipline. Stripped of fat and drilled to the nth, this music moves with a lightness that defies its intricacy. No must-keeps, but over the runtime you’ll appreciate how vast the territory is. A MINUS

Ekko Astral: pink balloons
The invitation from this D.C. five-piece: "you know that you want it / the rebelling yonic / the idiot tonic." Their chosen genre: “glitter punk”. Their first line: “bubble gum vodka.” Their second: “I will carry a knife, it’s my right.” Their sound would be assaultive, but their love of crunching guitars is undercut by their gift for cracking jokes—bratty “on brand” ups the ante of ebullient “uwu type beat” before art installation “somewhere at the bottom of the river between l’enfant and eastern market” gets wooed by jangle-charmer “make me young” and “stick and stones” jumps out to shout boo. Named after a misspelt Death Grips lyric and formed as an excuse to make garage punk for lead guitarist Liam Hughes’ masters’ thesis, they’re now definitively led by trans frontwoman Jael Holtzman. She’s careful to avoid lyrics that invite politicisation of her gender. But as is the way with pranksters, the jokes don’t divide neatly between dumb (“Vincent van go-cart”, “Coca colon”) and smartdumb (“dysphonia dial tone”), and serious is only ever just round the bend (“I have friends still hiding while you throw a parade.”) A MINUS

Margaret Glaspy: The Sun Doesn’t Think
If anything, the settings of these five songs—composed on acoustic guitar in hotel rooms while touring and recorded with little more equipment than that—confirm what a singular guitarist Glaspy is. Strumming, picking, and plinking inquisitively without compromising song form, she’s up to the comparison when Paul Simon comes to mind during the “Would You Be My Man?” bridge. If you expect an “…over troubled water” gag here, you’re in luck. Her lyrics (more singular than I’d credited her with) describe a turbulent inner life: cutely (“whether life is hell or heaven / I worry twenty-four seven”); poetically (“I'm swimming upstream with rocks around my feet / you might think I was a martyr or some kind of triathlete”; and plainly (“I need help / and it’s hard to admit it.”) But as any well-adjusted adult must, she still keeps some secrets: “I could be holding two clubs or hiding four aces / but I'll let you know on a need-to-know basis.” A MINUS

Kim Gordon: The Collective
Breathless dispatches from the edge of amelodicism. ** (“BYE BYE” “The Candy House”)

Home Counties: Exactly As It Seems
Having relocated from rural Bucks to London, this formerly competent but undistinguished post-punk five-piece expanded to six with the addition of Lois Kelly, a Neko Case soundalike who sweetens Will Harrison’s less mellifluous tones. A keyb player to boot, she seems to be the catalyst for their move to disco four-fours and high energy button pressing. They don’t go the whole nine, er, Yard Act, though that has as much to do with the lyrics. Compared to James Smith’s, Harrison’s are a work in progress, even if he does have points to make. Those start with gripes about strobe lights and the cost of Bud Light, but soon his Britishness takes over and he’s grousing about property ownership and land access. It culminates with the relatively epic six-minute existential crisis “Posthumous Spreadsheets”, where he goes from a blank-staring A-level textbook revolutionary to appraising the prospects of a “city job of limitless promotion” that he’ll eventually quit to tour the south of England with the original line-up of the band. Then he falls apart completely and questions whether his chorus is even a chorus at all. Which, come to think of it, is worthy of James Smith. A MINUS

Taj Mahal: Swingin' Live at The Church in Tulsa
Don’t read too much into a second half that begins with “Slow Drag”, but also don’t read too little. * (“Mailbox Blues” “Lovin' In My Baby's Eyes”)

Saigon / Fredro: The Jordan Era
For hip-hop’s 50^th anniversary: some terms and conditions. * (“Think Twice” “Stop Poppin' Sh*t!”)

A. Savage: The Loft Sessions
The product of the Parquet Courts frontman’s day-long mess-a-round at Jeff Tweedy’s studio. Accompanied by his jam-happy touring band, he loosens up to liven up two queer covers—one a Lavender County song about gay hook-ups in the ‘70s, the other a Kevin Ayers sorta-nursery rhyme about a gender non-conforming oyster—and to juxtapose Johnny Paycheck’s ornery break-up song with his own tender torch song. As usual, the arrangements tend arty, but he never loses sight of the catchy or singalong-able. Which, despite a vocal range limited to drone/intone, he continues to be. A MINUS