At the time of Dangerous, Michael Jackson's universal popularity was on par with pizza and the polio vaccine. It was the last time that Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson.

Dangerous

On the night of November 14, 1991, 500 million people scattered across 27 nations simultaneously watched Michael Jackson grab his crotch 17 times. He simulated masturbation, shattered car windows with crowbars, and unleashed the primal screams expected from a man who owned publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue. Then he turned into a black panther. The video ends with Bart Simpson striking a B-Boy pose in a Michael Jackson shirt, and ordering Homer to “chill out, homeboy.” It shattered all previous viewing records on Fox.
The $4 million, 11-minute unedited telecast of “Black or White” ranks among the Smithsonian-worthy artifacts of ’90s pop monoculture—up there with Nirvana trashing their instruments at the ’92 VMAs, the premiere of “Summertime” after The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Hillary Clinton hitting the Macarena at the ’96 DNC. No one ever had more juice than Jackson did at the time, and it’s difficult to imagine that anyone ever will again.
This was right around the time when they named him an official king of the Ivory Coast. In Gabon, 100,000 greeted him with signs reading “Welcome Home, Michael.” His universal popularity was on par with pizza and the polio vaccine. Safe enough to be Captain EO at Disneyland, hood-certified enough to throw up the set with the Crips.
The 33-year-old had recently signed the most lucrative contract in recording history, worth hundreds of millions, giving him his own label and the highest royalty rate in the industry. What’s more, no one thought it was out of line for someone who had sold close to 70 million records in the previous decade. In the press, Sony claimed the deal would reap them billions.
So when he released the first single from Dangerous, his first album in four years, fanatical interest led MTV, VH1, BET, and Fox to televise it at the same time—offering the greatest strategic victory since the Berlin Wall tumbled two years prior. And even though Jackson technically didn’t cause the collapse of East German Communism, his star wattage was so supreme that the Stasi secret police spied on him during his 1988 Berlin concert, fearing that obsessive MJ fans would accomplish what Reagan couldn’t.
With “Black or White,” Jackson lashed out at his public perception. In the interim since 1987’s Bad, he’d grappled with both outlandish rumors (buying the Elephant Man’s bones, sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber) and some that drew blood (allegations of bleaching his skin). The innocent popcorn-eating Michael of Thriller was gone, but calling him “Wacko Jacko” was slander. He wanted us to know he was a man, an eccentric sure, but an adult with deeply rooted beliefs.
Released only five months before the LA Riots, the Rodney King beating and murder of Latasha Harlins almost certainly factored into Jackson’s increasingly political slant. “Black or White” articulated a utopian vision of a post-racial future while acknowledging the sins of contemporary bigotry.  He demands equality, shouting that he “ain’t second to none.” He growls, “I ain’t scared of no sheets” (presumably Klansmen). Its hook offers his dream of a color-blind society, echoing Martin Luther King.
But this was Michael Jackson, not O’ Shea. Being King of Pop meant the need for mass appeal. The “Black or White” video exists as a microcosm of Dangerous itself. It potently affirms Jackson’s manhood, offers passionate screeds against racial strife, gang violence, and a parasitic American media. This is the album as multi-media spectacle, a precursor to Lemonade, with accusations of infidelity substituted for videos of Macaulay Culkin doing air guitar windmills to a Slash guitar solo and lip sync rapping about turf wars.
The lone #1 single from the 32-million selling Dangerous, “Black or White” spent seven weeks atop the Billboard charts. Directed by John Landis (“Thriller,” National Lampoon’s Animal House) the first quarter of its video reveals Jackson’s mischievous child-like streak, with Culkin towing out Spinal Tap-sized speakers, amplifying the volume to “ARE YOU NUTS!?!,” and shredding so hard that George Wendt gets ejected into the stratosphere screaming “Da Bears.”
It blends into his idealistic visionary side that wanted to heal the world through philanthropy and moonwalking. There is pop locking with Balinese dancers, rain dances with Native Americans, folk dances in front of the Kremlin, and the serenade of a Hindu goddess on a freeway. This is the magical Michael Jackson of our early memories—the man with the graceful dance moves and lithe falsetto that seemed celestially ordained (masking a notoriously intense perfectionist streak). Faces of all races harmoniously morph into one another, the most cutting edge FX that 1991 had to offer.
In the third section, boy becomes man: Jackson struts through a wall of flames, Henley shirt open, screaming at his enemies like a mad king. It gives way to Culkin rapping in shades and oversized gold chains, which is just as well considering that this is the man who actually spit the bars. Jackson’s embrace of hip-hop not only aligned him with the popular sound of black (and white) youth culture, it adds an aggressive masculinity unseen in his catalogue, and ultimately paved the way for the late period Biggie therapy session.
Of course, in the final section, Jackson turns into a black panther. You understand that meaning. So did millions of parents in Tipper Gore America, who flooded Fox and its local affiliates with phone calls, forcing Jackson’s team to re-cut and sanitize the video.
A quarter century later, it seems absurd that Michael Jackson smashing a few windows before turning into a Jungle Book character could be cause for mass protest, but you have to remember how adored and family-friendly Michael Jackson was. My parents only owned two records: Thriller and *Bad. *So until I was 9 years old, I listened to those two almost every single day of my life, and honestly I didn’t really need anything else. Michael Jackson was my entire conception of music. Millions more could say the same thing.
So when he dropped “Black or White,” it was shocking. If he was previously pop’s Peter Pan figure, Jackson had suddenly adopted a more carnal streak, but even here it was cartoonish. If the adult world looked dull and stifling, Jackson’s imagination offered a hope that it was possible not to wind up like George Wendt, bloated on a couch with a bored housewife. You could hang out with Macaulay Culkin, dance on top of the Statue of Liberty, and if all else failed, you could transform into a panther and bounce.

Imagine being Teddy Riley in 1991. You’ve gone from humble origins in Harlem to inventing New Jack Swing; you've produced multiple hits for your own band Guy, Bobby Brown, and Keith Sweat (“I Want Her”). Then late one night, you get a phone call from Michael Jackson telling you that he needs you to produce his new album—in effect making you the new Quincy Jones. All before your 24th birthday.
Before Riley headed west, Jackson had labored on* Dangerous* for over a year to varying degrees of success. Something always seemed off. Bad might have been the last album before hip-hop became the de facto soundtrack of urban culture. 1988 changed everything. Public Enemy, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane left the competition sounding effete and timid. Gang wars and the crack epidemic continued to inflame inner cities. Songs like “Smooth Criminal” seemed obsolete.
Meanwhile Jackson’s sister Janet had recently delivered a hard-stomping R&B-pop classic in 1989’s Rhythm Nation 1814. Its influence on her older brother was so great that he even asked Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis to produce Dangerous. Out of loyalty to Janet, they turned him down. According to his engineer, Bruce Swedien, Michael was searching for something “very street that young people would be able to identify with.”
He wasn’t alone. His longtime competition Prince sought to re-connect in a similar fashion, forming the New Power Generation with rapper, Tony M. Released just one month before* Dangerous*, the purple one’s Diamonds and Pearls* *exists as a companion piece, documents of blurring eras. As ’80s pop gave way to ’90s hip-hop, they sought to find their place in the re-configured landscape. Except while Prince predictably constructed his own insular unit, Jackson looked outwards to Riley, the hottest producer of the moment.
If that seems obvious today, it wasn’t at the start of 1991. Many mainstream artists still saw hip-hop as a passing fad or stereotyped it as nihilistic and violent. Jackson needed to walk the fine line between disposable bubblegum rap like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, and alienating longtime disciples with something too radical.
After preparing grooves in Q-Tip’s Soundtrack Studio in Queens, Riley flew out to the Neverland Ranch to meet the master. There was a tour of the trophy room, the carousel, and the zoo, and then after they talked late into the night, Jackson put Riley on his personal helicopter and had him flown to the Universal City Hilton, a short distance from the San Fernando Valley studios where they recorded Dangerous. Riley began work the next day.
Jackson established nerve centers at Record One and Larrabee Studios, just a few miles down Ventura Blvd. The latter had the SSL mixing console that Riley needed to make the tracks slap, and despite his pop reputation, Jackson wanted his new songs as hard as humanly possible. Engineers remember Jackson demanding that they play the New Jack Swing songs so loud that your ears bled. He invariably blew up a pair of headphones each session.
As you’d expect, the recording process boasted its requisite share of idiosyncrasy. Nancy Reagan visited the studio once, requiring the Secret Service to search the place for hours prior to her visit. Brooke Shields called frequently to talk to Michael, who materialized every day in the same black dress pants and red button-down shirt (he had a clothing rack of just two items).
One night, he left early to go to Tower Records, which had been shut down just for him to spend $1,500 on CDs. Another afternoon, he ordered several $900 remote controlled motorcycles brought to the studio. Despite usually eating meals prepared by a personal chef, Jackson requested McDonald’s for lunch on one occasion. He’d never actually eaten there before, but someone told him it was good, so he ordered one of everything on the menu and took a small bite of each. (The fish sandwich particularly wowed him.)
Then there was Madonna. During March and April of 1991, Jackson and Madonna went out to dinner at least three times, which led tabloids to immediately report that they were dating. During these conversations, Jackson reportedly asked her to duet on the unfinished version of what became, “In the Closet.”
“I think all he wanted was a provocative title, and ultimately he didn’t want the content of the song to live up to the title,” Madonna said at the time. “I said, ‘Look, Michael, if you want to do something with me, you have to be willing to go all the way or I’m not going to do it.’”
His engineers remember her visiting him once at the studio, where they spent a little time in his private room in the back. “When I asked Michael later about her visit he said that she ‘scared’ him,” his engineer Rob Disner later said. “I think we all speculated that she tried to make a ‘move’ on him but Michael never said. In any event, we never saw her again.”
The creative union most likely fizzled due to major stylistic divergences. Madonna imagined an extreme makeover: giving him a Caesar haircut, getting him out of his bedazzled military uniforms, taking him to New York and hanging out with the voguers, House of Xtravaganza. Michael wanted to go hip-hop and ultimately enlisted rappers Heavy D and Aqil Davidson of Wreckx N’ Effect as the principal guest vocalists.
During the summer of ’91, competition broke out within the two studios and three rooms dedicated to *Dangerous. At Record One, *Bill Bottrell and Bruce Swedien worked on the album’s softer more adult contemporary material (and “Black or White”). At Larrabee, Riley handled the New Jack Swing half. Even though engineers remember the sessions as “giggly, innocent, and so much fun,” Jackson did his part to foster a friendly rivalry—bouncing back and forth between studios and taunting his teams, “Oh boy, they got some smelly jelly going on in there.”
As Sony’s deadlines kept getting blown, Riley’s beats began forming the spine of the record. After being initially awestruck, Riley asserted more and more control at Jackson’s behest. “It worked itself out when he shook me,” Riley told HipHopWired in 2009. “[He was like] listen, you’re going to have to really produce me like you’ve produced a new artist. I need you to talk to me, I need you to criticize me, I need you to comment, I need you to give me all of you. I want the Teddy Riley that got that record out of Guy and the records out of your previous artists.”
If Michael danced in the studio, it meant that a track sounded right. No matter what, Jackson ensured that the melodies were his own, while Riley sought to merge his trademark New Jack Swing with Quincy Jones’ baroque pop. At one point, L.A. Reid and Babyface were brought in to help produce, but none of their contributions made the final cut. Over 60 songs wound up being written over a period of 18 months. It cost $10 million in total, not counting video costs.
When Jackson revealed the final tracklist to Riley, the latter expected to see his name once or twice. Instead, Riley produced six of the 14 songs—arguably all the material that has aged the best. As a result of his contributions, you can convincingly argue that Dangerous is Jackson’s final classic album and the best full-length of the New Jack Swing era.
As soon as you pressed play on the tape, Riley’s drums attacked with Scud-era force. “Jam.” The sound of glass breaking, bells reminiscent of LL Cool J’s “Jingling Baby,” funky drums that knock like Clyde Stubblefield was behind the kit, and roaring saxophone licks. The words “you want to get up and jam” are initially buried in the mix, but the vocals are as acrobatic as a highlight reel, so it only made sense that the Chicago Bulls used it in their 1992 championship video. Starring Michael Jordan and Kris Kross, the “Jam” clip became almost as iconic as “Black or White.” Filmed in an abandoned rat-infested armory on the South Side of Chicago, it finds Michael Jackson teaching Jordan how to dance and the other MJ teaching him to hoop. Through the wonders of special effects, Jackson ultimately swishes shots that not even Steph Curry can hit; but not even the greatest dancer of the last half-century can teach Jordan how to dance. Point Jackson.
Riley recruited Jackson’s favorite rapper Heavy D for four nimble bars, his baritone artfully offsetting the singer’s falsetto growl. The first song wastes no time in articulating the album’s leitmotif. Jackson urges the world to come together, decries false prophets crying of doom, and admits that the universe is a complicated place full of “tears for fears.” He’s “conditioned by the system” and doesn’t want to be preached to. His ultimate realization is that you have to “live each day like it’s the last,” find inner peace to stay strong against the haters, and when in doubt, jam.
You can see these themes stressed on nearly every song. “Why You Wanna Trip on Me” exists as a mission statement. This is the Michael who fame has isolated and forced into retreat. There’s a newfound menace in his voice, an angelic sneer, as he recites a litany of crippling ailments (world hunger, illiteracy, disease, gangs, homelessness, drug addiction, corruption, police brutality)—and yet ironically, he has somehow become the media’s bullseye. Written during his 33rd year, Jackson can’t help but implicitly compare himself to Jesus—a popular healer who wants to help, misinterpreted and publicly crucified.
But even though Teddy Riley had Jesus, Jesus never had Teddy Riley. These drums could turn stone walls to white sand, the vocals are meticulously layered, the multiple bridges leave just enough room for interpretative dance moves. Jackson adapts seamlessly to the new genre, funkier than Guy, more lyrically incisive than Bobby Brown.
Without Madonna, “In the Closet” received a cameo from Princess Stephanie of Monaco, mainly because Michael liked her sultry speaking voice even though she couldn’t sing. Shot in the desert, the Herb Ritts video stars Naomi Campbell at her pret a porter peak. Michael wears a tank top with a plunging neckline. It’s probably the most erotically charged of his career, about as far from “Thriller” as Basic Instinct is to The Mask. * *
You can trace Timbaland and the Neptunes experiments to a song like “She Drives Me Wild,” in which their former mentor created the percussion tracks from automotive sounds: car horns, motorcycles idling and revving, vehicles starting and screeching. This is probably Jackson’s closest attempt to match his sister’s* Rhythm Nation*.
Some interpreted it as a desire to catch up, but it’s more emblematic of his lust to conquer. If Off the Wall was Jackson mastering late ’70s soul and disco, Thriller was his perfection of ’80s pop. This is Jackson showing that he could blend hip-hop and R&B better than anyone had previously imagined. The new decade starts here, with artists like Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, TLC, R. Kelly, et al. taking cues from Jackson and Riley’s alchemy. To say nothing of Kanye, Drake, and countless others still atop the charts.
Dangerous has its flaws. The ballads on the back (non-Riley) half of the album could pass for gospel renditions of Celine Dion schmaltz. Despite its noble message and Jackson’s statement that it was the song he was most proud of writing, “Heal the World” is essentially “We Are The World Pt. 2.” The theme from Free Willy, “Will You Be There” offers a sweet sentiment, but it’s not exactly “I Believe I Can Fly.” “Gone Too Soon” falls into that same category of beautifully intentioned crooning that ultimately sounds like a dentist office doxology, especially when contrasted with the brilliant funk of the first side.
If nothing else, they display the full range of his sharply targeted social consciousness, one that encompassed environmentalism, the AIDS pandemic, and every other affliction that still plagues the globe. In that sense, Dangerous might be Jackson’s most complete album, spanning dance music to dark nights of the soul. It’s a portrait of a persecuted genius, desperate to stay relevant, burdened with guilt and rage, lashing out at villains and offering inspiration to allies—always making it seem effortless.

My favorite song on Dangerous is “Remember the Time.” Like so many others on this album, it’s inextricable from its video, which also received the MJ treatment: simultaneous premieres on MTV, Fox and BET in February of 1992. Directed by John Singleton, it stars Eddie Murphy, Iman, the Pharcyde, Magic Johnson, Tiny Lister, and some adorable striped tabbies. It’s probably the only song from Dangerous that can still go off in any club on any given night.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s the greatest music video ever made, a New Jack Swing hybrid of Cleopatra and Indiana Jones. There are swirling hourglasses, busts of Pharaohs, hand drums, wriggling snakes, and Michael Jackson as a gilded wizard with dance moves so smooth that he can even elude the future Deebo. He’s so cool that steals the Pharaoh’s wife (who also happens to be David Bowie’s future wife) and then disappears into a cloud of gold dust, just as his capture seems imminent.
Being a child of the ’80s and ’90s meant that Magic Johnson, Eddie Murphy, and Michael Jordan were your heroes. (Maybe you liked Larry Bird or something, but I assume if that’s the case, you’ve long stopped reading this review.) And in his videos, Michael Jackson managed to best them all, making him the undisputed King. For most of my pre-adolescence, he was a pure sorcerer, a demigod immune to the gravitational pull and perimeters that stifle the rest of us.
At 10 years old, I assumed the video was shot somewhere in Egypt, because even though I no longer believed in bullshit like Santa Claus, I still accepted Michael Jackson at face value. Besides, nothing else he did seemed like it operated under any budgetary constraint. Only about a year ago did I learn that it was shot at Mack Sennett Studios in Silver Lake, a soundstage across the street from my apartment that I’d obliviously walked past thousands of times. It was one of those depressing realizations that makes much less sense than believing that Michael Jackson built a time machine and brought the star of Beverly Hills Cop, a supermodel, and the best point guard ever, along with him to the time of Ramses the Great. Watch that video again and tell me otherwise.
In that same way, it’s difficult to listen to Dangerous without considering the child molestation allegations that greeted him shortly after he came home from its marathon 69-concert tour. It’s tricky not to read too much into a song like “In the Closet.” How do you reconcile that someone as pure of spirit as Jackson could potentially have a monstrous streak?
Whether you believe the allegations or not, it’s clear that he was never the same after Dangerous. The damage became too absolute, the vitriol aimed his way too severe for someone that sensitive. Never again could his music exist on its own merits, the illimitable genius ravaged by prescription pills, insomnia, and obliterating pressure. Dangerous is the last time that Michael Jackson was Michael Jackson.
In an interview given shortly after the release of Dangerous, Jackson said that his goal was to do “an album that was like Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker Suite.’ In a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it…. Something that would live forever.” He’s been gone for over half a decade, but I still think about this quote every time I walk past that sound stage—considering the possibilities that Michael Jackson unlocked in every song, the infinite magic that he could create out of an empty room, the orphic visions of one of our final myths.


When in doubt, use pop psychology. Now, I'm no expert on the mechanics of the human psyche, but I've managed to piece together a semblance of expertise from horoscopes, radio call-in shows, *The Sopranos*, and the smattering of Freud I was forced to read as an undergrad (not to mention the invaluable contribution of my own mental shortcomings-- fuck my mother, indeed!). Sure, it doesn't add up to a diploma on the wall of my office, but it gives me the authority to comment liberally on the emotional well-being of friends and co-workers. Impressive credentials? No shit.

Avey Tare and Panda

Danse Manatee

When in doubt, use pop psychology. Now, I'm no expert on the mechanics of the human psyche, but I've managed to piece together a semblance of expertise from horoscopes, radio call-in shows, The Sopranos, and the smattering of Freud I was forced to read as an undergrad (not to mention the invaluable contribution of my own mental shortcomings-- fuck my mother, indeed!). Sure, it doesn't add up to a diploma on the wall of my office, but it gives me the authority to comment liberally on the emotional well-being of friends and co-workers. Impressive credentials? No shit.
Avey Tare and Panda Bear are undergoing what real psychologists call regression-- that is, a return to a more developmentally immature level of mental functioning. The Animal collective has always evinced a juvenile sensibility, but a line needs to be drawn. There's a difference between playful, spirited getting-in-touch-with-your-inner-child juvenalia and the less wholesome pants-crapping juvenalia. And between Tare and Bear's last effort, the radically inspired Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished, and this year's Danse Manatee, our patients have moved unmistakably from the former to the latter.
While Spirit freely colored outside the lines in its pursuit of beauty, Manatee is the musical equivalent of paste-eating. The addition of a third Animal, the Geologist, on keyboards seems to have eviscerated their candy-coated noise-pop rather than augmenting it. Gone are the stylized mod-pop mannerisms, the fevered rhythm guitar, the Daltrey-esque yowls, and the sweet-and-sour lyrics; in their place we find Speak N' Spell vocals, hyperactive clatter, and the single-minded pursuit of the most irritating sounds imaginable.
The bleepy electronic sylvania of the opening track, "A Manatee Dance," is momentarily intriguing, but soon passes into the explosive "Penguin Penguin" (the titles are a dead giveaway). "Penguin" submerges the largely tuneless vocals beneath a thick cacophony of symbol crash, bubbling noise and cricket chirping. "Another White Singer (Little White Glove)" possesses a kind of a sparse tribal funk, sustained by Panda's deep forest bongos, but Avey's vocals are shredded and torturous. "Essplode" is one of the highlights of Manatee, recalling the deftly catchy pop experimentalism of Spirit, as well as the organic drum-n-bass lines that dominated the former release. But "Essplode" is still shot through with the high-pitch squealing of which those Animal boys can't seem to get enough.
"Runnin' the Round Ball" is the album's strongest track and the only one that justifies the frequent comparison to Can and Amon Düül II. It's a thumping, motorized little romp, accented by breathing synths, baby whines, and frenetic glitchcraft. Unfortunately, it's one of the album's briefest tracks, and its incredibly percussive thrust is cut short before it really comes to any fruition. There's also a certain genius in the later track, "Throwin' the Round Ball" (round ball fixation = bedwetting, I'm told), a kind of cut-up pastoral of tinkling organs, spliced with odd, broken-sounding vocals, thunderous rumbling, and violent shreds of noise. The throb and chant of "Ahh, Good Country" is also oddly compelling, reminiscent of the rustic psychedelia of Flying Saucer Attack and the ecstatic primitivism of Hochenkeit. But aside from the few bright experiments, Danse Manatee is mostly intolerable make-believe. It's like having an imaginary friend you simply can't stand.
So, let's say the ideal of all progressive music is Freud's phallic phase: "Wow, this feels good when I touch it! I'll just keep doing it." Then, Danse Manatee might be located firmly in Freud's anal phase: "Mommy, look what I made!" But we must try to be reassuring. After all, Pitchfork has never been in the business of invalidating feelings. So, boys, we're not mad, just bitterly disappointed. And even the stinkiest dump provides an occasion for personal growth. Besides, Avey Tare, Panda Bear and the Geologist are always entitled to seek a second opinion. But before they do that, they should know that some kid I met at a party last week pretty much confirmed my whole diagnosis. And he was almost a psych minor.


Drake's course correction to VIEWS bursts with energy—more South African house, more grime, more Kanye. It's a long player made for luxuriating and a total immersion into Drake's world-pop lifestyle.

More Life

Drake’s VIEWS was a commercial pinnacle and a creative and personal dead end. He scored the biggest hit of his career with “One Dance,” but the album surrounding it was so aggrieved and solipsistic you felt like you were insulting Drake by listening to it. His telepathic bond with producer Noah “40” Shebib had turned stale and over its punishing 80-plus minutes he wrung every last drop of sour grapes from his Beta-Male Conqueror persona. He had crushed his frenemies, seen them driven before him, and heard the lamentations of their women—or at least purposefully ignored their texts. What was next but exile?
He seems to be tacitly admitting to this stagnation throughout the warm, pulsing, and generous More Life. His solution is a “Playlist” (not a big old serious Album, the implication goes, nor one of those little “mixtapes” other rappers bother with) that forces Drake out into the sunlight again, where he can once again mingle with the people. On More Life’s closing track “Do Not Disturb,” he acknowledges the bleak spot he was in: “I was an angry youth while I was writing VIEWS/Saw a side of myself that I just never knew.” He even lets his mother pipe in with a voice message two-thirds of the way through the record on “Can’t Have Everything” as she admonishes her son for the hostile, suspicious streak he was nurturing. “That attitude will just hold you back in this life, and you’re going to continue to feel alienated,” she advises.
He doesn’t exactly drop the attitude, but he does play the background on More Life, implicitly acknowledging that he is often the least appealing element of his massively successful art. Dialing back on his self-pity allows all his skills that have kept him on top to float back to the surface: his ear for melodies, his sophisticated tastes, his curation skills. The more voices he lets into the frame, the fuller and richer the results, and More Life bursts with energy and lush sounds—more guests, more genres, more producers, more life. It is as confident, relaxed, and appealing as he’s sounded in a couple of years.
Drake steps back and lets the dusky-voiced 19-year-old British singer Jorja Smith soar over a sinuous club track from the rising South African house producer Black Coffee on the gorgeous “Get It Together.” Black Coffee and Jorja comprise at least 80 percent of the song; Drake is mostly relegated to mumbling or doubling the hook. Sampha bleeds his gorgeous hurt over the entirety of “4422,” with no one else in sight, and Skepta claims an entire track, boasting that he “died and came back as Fela Kuti.” Young Thug steals not one but two songs, spitting a dense verse with no vocal filter on “Sacrifices” and yelping along with the roots-reggae horns of “Ice Melts.”
Throughout, Drake’s appetite for the music of other cultures remains ravenous. “I switch flow like I switch time zone,” he raps on “Gyalchester,” the song title itself a patois nickname for the neighborhood of Manchester. On “Sacrifices,” he boasts “I got Dubai plates in the California state.” In both reach and sound, Drake may now be one of the most global pop stars in history. He is shrewd and relentless about his globe-trotting on More Life: “Dis a habibis ting, yeah?” he asks on the intro to a track called “Portland,” invoking a vivid zone of confusion where Arabic and Caribbean slang collides with Atlanta’s own Quavo somewhere in the rainy Pacific Northwest.
As always, there are moments when it’s unclear what Drake thinks he is borrowing. He tackles “No Long Talk” in an unsteady tough-guy patois—“things” turns to “tings” but then sneaks back into “things” when he’s not watching it, so he sounds a bit more like a kid with a hairbrush in the mirror than he probably intends. He also proudly shouts out his bodyguard Baka Not Nice, a man who faced human trafficking charges and was imprisoned on domestic assault charges (Drake boasts that Baka’s “quick to let a motherfuckin’ TEC slam”). It’s a reminder of his unsavory tendency to borrow street credibility from figures like Baka who have paid the price for it, the same impulse that had him pointing to a “prison visit” on his song “Two Birds, One Stone” as evidence that he wasn’t some “privileged kid.” Who stunts about visiting a prison?
As one of the first rap superstars forged entirely outside the crucible of the American drug war, Drake has always had a confused relationship to the “rules” of hip-hop. This makes his moments of flexing interesting if only for the friction they generate between the role he’s assuming and the figure he cuts. He opens More Life with “Free Smoke,” a hard-charging and take-no-prisoners track, the sort of moment on a rap album where you ruthlessly cut down challengers and re-establish your dominance. But he spends it remembering how he used to eat Applebee’s and Outback, or the time he drunk-texted J. Lo (“It was an old number so it bounced back”). He does address his disgraced foe Meek Mill, who fell on a sword trying to expose Drake as a fraud: "How you let the kid fighting ghostwriting rumors turn you to a ghost?” he taunts. This is a peculiarly self-skewering line of attack, a bit like punching yourself in the face before going for your opponent’s gut. It doesn’t exactly elicit the classic, crowd-of-bystanders “ooooh!” that direct shots are supposed to incite; more of a “uh...hmmm.”
This pluralistic and self-contradicting identity has always been part and parcel of Drake’s inheritance to hip-hop; it will be a large part of his legacy. Name a pop star who has ever had a clearer picture of their place in the culture, who senses exactly what they can get away with and what they can’t (other than Taylor Swift). He knows himself and his worth, at least as a market entity. “They don’t know they gotta be faster than me to get to me, no one’s done it successfully,” he boasts, truthfully, on “Do Not Disturb.” More than anything,* More Life* plays like a just-in-time course correction to the excesses of VIEWS, a remarkable feat of troubleshooting that assures that October’s Very Own—whose catalog passed 10 billion Spotify streams before this release—continues to own several Octobers henceforth.
More Life is long, for sure. It is, of course, designed to be long, to swallow up all of your streaming bandwidth. Twenty-two songs all but asks you forget other rappers and musicians exist for a while. This is the new power play in an age of digital infinitude. He doesn’t offer insight in return, really—eight years into examining the wages of his success, he’s still stumbling on thoughts like, “How you run out of gas on the road to riches?” and, “Winning is problematic” as if they are actual epiphanies. But he does offer immersion. When everything is just right—the mood, the lighting, the production, the melody—that immersion feels total, and it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else. The gorgeous “Since Way Back” stretches the beat way out, the silences in between yawning wide open so you momentarily lose all sense of time and momentum. It stops the album dead in the best way possible. This is the Drake moment, when you exist inside the bubble of a single drunken thought, where all priorities bend like light through a water glass and you find yourself hanging on your phone, watching the twinkling ellipsis of a responding text message like it’s the answer to all of your prayers.


Chan Marshall's new album comes 17 years after her debut as Cat Power and six years after her most recent collection of original material. Sun, her first album to feature synthesizers, Auto-Tune, and Iggy Pop, exists completely and defiantly outside of any larger musical trends.

Sun

Seventeen years after Chan Marshall's debut as Cat Power and six years after her most recent album of original material, comes Sun, her ninth album. But let's drop the math right there. Because Sun is a record with its own peculiar temporal logic, one that's circular rather than linear. Take that picture on the cover, for example. It's Marshall 20 years ago, but toward the end of Sun's almost six-year gestation period, she chopped off her hair and looks, once again, like the image in the photo. At the risk of engaging in cheap analysis, this fact feels not entirely trivial. "When we were teenagers, we wanted to be the sky," she sang on her enduringly haunting 1998 record Moon Pix, her voice warbling at that moment as if she were delivering an elegy, like it's a shame we all at some point give up on those lofty and poetically illogical dreams. But Sun is a testament to what happens when that sensibility and logic somehow survive a turbulent adulthood: This, these weather-beaten and irrepressibly hopeful songs all seem to say, is what it sounds like when you still want to be the sky at 40.
In just about every way, Sun is a declaration of independence. There are, of course, the biographical facts, the things the record's defiant tone feels like a direct break with-- stage fright, substance abuse, break-ups, creative demons (it's been reported that Marshall scrapped some early demos because a friend told her they sounded too much like her older stuff). It is also the first Cat Power record to feature prominent synthesizers and (occasionally) Auto-Tune, though that doesn't exactly mean it sounds like anything on the radio right now. But you'd get these ideas about autonomy and independence just from perusing the lyric sheet, too. "I want to live my way of living," she chants on the meditative "Always on My Own". The next song, "Real Life", is about the universality of grass-is-always-greener yearning ("I met a doctor/ He want to be a dancer/ I met a mother/ She want to be alone"). Spinning her years of tour-induced wanderlust into wisdom, Marshall offers them all some sage advice: "Sometimes you gotta do what you don't wanna do/ To get away with an unordinary life."
In the way it simultaneously embraces darkness and light and exists completely and defiantly outside of any larger musical trends (and clearly operates with no particular fear or hang-ups about kitsch-- check out that eagle sound effect on "Cherokee"), the closest thing to Sun we've heard this year is probably Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel. But whereas Apple focuses on the highly idiosyncratic clockwork of her own brain, Marshall is more interested in the ways in which she is, in some fundamental human way, no different from anybody else. In some cases, this means grappling with her own privileges ("Ruin"'s deceivingly upbeat chorus actually goes: "Bitchin'/ Complainin'/ When some people ain't got shit to eat"). And in others, it means those sorts of bald-faced cosmic statements about mortality that few other artists can pull off (see: a song called "Human Being" that goes, "You got a right to breathe/ You got a right/ You're a human being.") In her recent profile of Marshall, Amanda Petrusich linked Cat Power's songwriting philosophy back to an earlier time when ownership was a much looser concept and all songs were considered public domain. She sees people like this, too, including herself. So in the moments when Sun feels kitschy, it's because it's got a generousness of spirit that's fallen sharply out of fashion at some point, that something about our experience is public and shared, that we're all pretty alike just by virtue of being human.
Sun's middle stretch from "Always on My Own" to "Human Being" suffers from being a little muddy and unmelodic, but stick around for the finale. It starts with the late-night, long-walk-home soundtrack "Manhattan"-- gorgeous, hypnotic, and quietly, unsentimentally lonely ("All the friends we used to know ain't coming back"). And then there's Sun's late-sequenced, 11-minute centerpiece, "Nothin But Time". Which brings us back to that "public domain" idea: With its parade-float pace and self-consciously anthemic lyrics ("You got nothing but time/ And it ain't got nothing on you... It's up to you/ To be a superhero"), it is, yes, a clear homage to Bowie's "Heroes". But it's "Hey Jude", too: Marshall wrote it to cheer up her ex's teenage daughter, and the longer it goes on, the truer its optimistic truisms ring, the stronger the urge to holler them along with the rest of of voices ("You wanna live!"). It's an odd but fitting peak. By the sixth minute, when Iggy Pop's voice comes in god-sized and benevolent, it's like some sort of peyote daydream where one of the faces on Mount Rushmore stoops to talk to you and has only the kindest things to say.
Then again, maybe she's just talking to herself. "Time, nothing but time," was another lyric she sang on Moon Pix, except there she moaned it a little bit like it was a prison sentence. Here it's a mantra. Sun doesn't reach the heights (or more accurately, wallow in the depths) of Moon Pix, but more than anything else she's made, it feels like a companion piece to that record, a conversation with an older and wiser voice. But what she seems to have learned out there is that wisdom means knowing less than you once thought you did, whether that means embracing some new instruments even if you have no idea how they work, or seeing sense where others see paradox. Sun is a double-exposed photo. You know those afternoons when the sun's high but somehow the moon's just unexpectedly hanging out, too? That's the kind of sky Marshall got to be.


Justice Tripp has a blast channeling the affirming and aggressive spirit of Southern California, even if it sounds a little stuck between stations.

Brand New Soul

Justice Tripp probably gets a good laugh whenever he’s included in the “next Turnstile?” dialogue—in a lot of ways, Angel Du$t was supposed to be the first one. When Turnstile’s 2015 album Nonstop Feeling was still a twinkle in the eye of Baltimore hardcore, the Trapped Under Ice frontman was already imagining a future where the Lemonheads and acoustic guitars were every bit as welcome as Bad Brains and blast beats. But while Tripp has shared band members and bills with Turnstile, Angel Du$t albums lack their brethren’s ambitions to define hardcore’s worldwide agenda, preferring to remain a loose collective that can pop in and out at will to contribute to the conversation. And in their latest incarnation, Angel Du$t convince their friends from Toledo, New York and Seattle that their Brand New Soul lies in sunny Southern California.
Encompassing Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego in equal measure, Brand New Soul is every bit as SoCal in sound as it is in spirit; “Love Slam” is the title of one song, but it’s really the M.O. for the entire album collectively. Or really, just about everything Angel Du$t has done up to this point, including the similarly self-explanatory Rock the Fuck on Forever, Pretty Buff and YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs, that all expressions of camaraderie for one’s fellow man should be as affirming as they are aggressive.
Does Tripp truly believe that “ain’t no flame burn like my fiyah?” Or is writing a fake Chili Peppers rap-rock hook even more fun to do in the studio than it is on Twitter? Challenging hardcore audiences to circle pit to an acoustic guitar? Also a blast. Mocking naysayers with doo-wop basso vocals? Hell yeah. Retconning Wavves’ King of the Beach as a progressive punk classic? That was basically the template for an Angel Du$t/Panda Bear collab and “I’m Not Ready” cuts out the middleman this time around. Whether or not Rob Schnapf had a tangible impact in the mixing process is immaterial; his mere presence places Brand New Soul in a proud lineage of punk bands who decamped to Sunset Sounds because they had a chance to work with the guy who wrangled all of those harpsichords and horns on Elliott Smith’s XO.
Yet, the uplift mofo party plan of Brand New Soul is occasionally at odds with Tripp’s bluster, at least on the title track and “Racecar,” when it sounds like he’s still addressing the scene puritans who shunned Angel Du$t a decade ago. You can take him at his word when he says that Angel Du$t was even more divisive than the Trapped Under Ice album produced by a guy from New Found Glory. But for a band that touts its progressive approach to hardcore as a primary draw (and, often, subject matter), Angel Du$t seem hemmed in at this point—not as distinct as the bands who’ve honed in on a singular sound, more conventional than the ones who’ve ventured far beyond the requisite Weezer and power-pop influences. “Born 2 Run” is an impressive accomplishment in its own right, making fine use of Mary Jane Dunphe’s harmonies, squiggly Captured Tracks guitars, and Tripp’s most impassioned lyrics. It would be inconceivable in Baltimore even five years ago. In 2023, it might trick a new listener into thinking that Angel Du$t formed immediately after hearing Turnstile’s Glow On. Such is the mixed blessing of Brand New Soul as Angel Du$t’s culminating achievement—a record that only sounds conventional due to their own massive influence.


Sidewoman to the stars (well, Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree, at least) Annie Clark steps into the spotlight for her St. Vincent debut, with results so inventive and impressive you wonder what took her so long.

Marry Me

"The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it."
-Saint Vincent de Paul (b. 1581 - d. 1660)
Maybe that explains it. Maybe that quote from the real Saint Vincent, namesake of multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark's nom du rock, explains why, rather than step right into the spotlight, Clark instead chose to spend so much of her time as an oft-befrocked member of both Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree's flock.
One might have assumed that, hey, maybe she was just more comfortable as a group utility player, but like most assumptions it's simply not borne out by the imposing reality of her various talents. As her St. Vincent debut immediately asserts, Clark's more than ready to be out front. In fact, it's amazing she didn't step into the spotlight sooner, considering the countless ideas swirling about Marry Me, an art-rock album at times redolent of prime Kate Bush and Lodger-era David Bowie.
Maybe "humility" isn't the first word that springs to mind when you read the liners crediting Clark with "voices, guitars, bass, piano, organ, Moog, synthesizers, clavieta, xylophone, vibraphone, dulcimer, drum programming, triangle, percussion." Triangle? Is that really something to boast about? Then again, with its brilliant production flourishes and impeccably left-field arrangements, false modesty does not behoove the disc.
In the case of music like this, the devil to conquer is preciousness and indulgence. No doubt, in lesser hands Clark's quirks and eccentricities would mark the St. Vincent project a no-go from the start. But at every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life.
Clark's hardly alone in the endeavor. Not to be out-Spreed, Marry Me features, among other helpers, a chorus (used mostly as melodic and rhythmic counterpoint), Bowie pianist Mike Garson, and Polyphonic Spree/Man Or Astro-Man? drummer Brian Teasley, a wiz at picking the right beats for all the perfectly wrong places. But from the frenetic first half of the disc, where the ideas are coming fast and furious and Clark lets her inner prog run wild, to the mellow second, Marry Me is clearly the product of one person's fertile-- and clearly very well organized-- subconscious.
"Now, Now" dances around a tricky little guitar pattern and Clark's sweet vocal melodies-- her big-girl voice a welcome respite from indie rock's lame habit of faux naivety-- as bass and drums push and pull the song taut then loose again. The grace of the track suddenly gives way to explosive guitar, the previous precision dissolved into distorted passion. "Jesus Saves, I Spend" bounds along in 6/8, with the chorus and sped-up vocals countering Clark's own coo. "Your Lips Are Red" mutates from throb to tribal freakout, a croaking, scraping guitar and sinewy lead hinting at the chaos that never quite comes. "Apocalypse Song" features a polyrhythmic voice, drum and handclap breakdown that vies with strings and more skronking noise.
The war-is-not-over "Paris is Burning" is a woozy Weimar-esque waltz filled out by phased effects, a martial groove and sneaking, cynical lines like the Shakespeare allusion "Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear." Elsewhere Clark slips in a few other memorable lyrics as well. In "Your Lips Are Red" she complains, "Your skin so fair it's not fair." In the title track, Clark gets off the lasciviously blasphemous come-on "we'll do what Mary and Joseph did...without the kid."
The slower vibe of the last few tracks isn't as immediate as what came before it, but that doesn't make it any less impressive. "Landmines" is like "Subterranean Homesick Alien" redone as a torch song. "All the Stars Aligned" plods along like a pleasant Beatles outtake, at least until Clark's mini-orchestra briefly (and curiously) quotes John Barry's "James Bond Theme". "Human Racing" begins as a gentle bossa nova before blossoming into a hypnotic pulse for its fade-out. The jazzy final song, "What Me Worry?" is as traditional as the disc gets, except for the fact that Clark picked it to end an album that spends most of its previous minutes exploring the unconventional.
"Love is just a bloodmatch to see who endures lash after lash with panache," Clark sings, without coming across nearly as precociously as she could have. "Have I fooled you, dear? The time is coming near when I'll give you my hand and I'll say, 'It's been grand, but...I'm out of here.'" And then she's gone.
Oh, and the final sound you hear before you inevitably press play and listen to the whole beguiling thing again? A triangle. Guess those lessons paid off after all.


The back-to-basics album Wasting Light reunites Dave Grohl with producer Butch Vig and former Nirvana mates Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear.

Wasting Light

Dave Grohl didn't make it easy for himself. Not long after Nirvana dissolved in April 1994, following Kurt Cobain's suicide, Grohl was offered the opportunity to back Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. For him, a Petty fan, that was a dream job. Though he would drum with them during a "Saturday Night Live" performance later that year, Grohl ultimately declined, to start over from scratch and do what he's still doing today: front a band.
At the time, that decision was probably daunting. Grohl had already spent some time in a Seattle studio recording a humble demo tape that would become Foo Fighters' debut, one for whose release rights major labels were already grappling. But the sizable shadow cast by Cobain and the weight of his legacy and death was immense. This week, coupled with Wasting Light, their seventh full-length, Foo Fighters have been screening their new, somewhat revisionist, sometimes 3-D retrospective documentary, Back and Forth. There's some great footage early on during what was Grohl's very first tour (opening for Mike Watt) with his brand new band. There, despite having never heard any of the yet-to-be-released Foo Fighters songs, young Nirvana fans were showing up early and in numbers. "Marigold!" they'd scream out between songs, in hopes of hearing the one Grohl-penned Nirvana tune there was. He never played it.
The idea of Grohl opening for anyone now seems just as ridiculous as him having to field requests for anything but one of the two dozen modern rock hits he's released since. But in Wasting Light, Grohl is attempting to come full circle. The plan was to go back to basics, in a few ways: 1) record the album to tape in Grohl's San Fernando Valley garage, 2) hire famed Nevermind producer Butch Vig to man the boards, 3) bring former Germs, Nirvana, and Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear back into the mix, 4) have founding Nirvana member and bassist Krist Novoselic down from Seattle to guest on some of the recordings. As Grohl says during Back and Forth, before recording began in earnest, "I love that we're going to make an album at home. It's going to sound like it was recorded in a house. I know it will."
It doesn't. In fact, said garage was built with the arena in mind, and as a result Wasting Light sounds just as mammoth and capable of knocking out teeth as anything Foo Fighters have recorded since the late 90s. That's more a product of force than hooks. As evidenced by the opening roar of "Bridge Burning" and "Rope" or metallic uppercuts of "White Limo", the new, three-guitar attack in place provides a wallop that wasn't there before. Vig is renowned for sugaring up recordings, but here, the aim seems solely about knocking down walls. Front to back, Wasting Light meets that cause with lean, workmanlike aplomb. Grohl's screams haven't registered this dangerously, gleefully shredded in years-- if he was hoping to exorcise some demons, it sounds as though he made that happen.
But Foo Fighters' long-standing foundation has been built on fist-pumpers. While Wasting Light features a host of worthy set-openers, few prove to be as sticky or memorable as any number of their previous singles. There just isn't a melody or hook to really amplify. Those songs here that hold tightly to Grohl's long perfected, quiet-LOUD formula and crescendos-- see: alt-rock lullabies "Arlandria" and "These Days", or the pop-punk door-to-ass closer "Walk"-- come closest to matching the energy of his best work. In theory, as a form of therapy, it still works. Former Hüsker Dü frontman and fellow 80s punker Bob Mould guests semi-audibly on the Zeppelin-like crunch of "Dear Rosemary" and then of course, there's Novoselic's turn on "I Should Have Known", where the latter's bass sounds as round and bowling ball-heavy as it did on Nirvana's "Sliver".
There's a scene not long into Back and Forth, when Grohl remembers, "People really resented me for starting this band, for making music they thought 'sounded just like Nirvana.' What? You mean loud rock guitars? Melodies? Cymbals crashing? Big-ass drums? Well, that's what I do." It's true. He always did. It's just that, this time out, it's his melodies that are missed most.


A peerless storyteller gazes deep into domestic life and offers a long, sun-warmed double album that is a highlight of his career.

Bill Callahan: Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest

Listening to a Bill Callahan album used to mean contemplating solitude. His music wasn’t about aloneness, but the man making it sounded supremely alone. His baritone voice rumbled near the bottom of his arrangements, and it sounded so serious, so grave: If you weren’t paying attention to what he was saying, you might have conscripted his music into all sorts of cliched lone-wolf expeditions: staring at mountains, nighttime highway drives, reading Hemingway on a fishing trip.
On his long, sun-warmed new album, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, Callahan doesn’t sound alone. He sounds surrounded. For one thing, the woman he loves isn’t an absence haunting his nightmares, as she was on 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle; she’s in his house. His son, their son, is in the next room. The sights, sounds, smells, and textures of domesticity are everywhere: “Sesame Street” is on the television in his living room, and in the bedroom, his wife is laying out a towel on the bed so that they can start “making love.” Does Callahan underline exactly what he means by this scenario? He does: “It’s late,” his wife tells him. “I’m bleeding.” There you have it: The first Bill Callahan album ever to mention period sex.
All of this might sound disarming or odd, but what is tremendously rewarding about Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is how thoughtfully Callahan writes about his happiness, and how much his happiness proves to be enlightening for us. Happiness is a difficult emotion to plumb for wisdom, after all—we tend to reserve intensity of observation for the feelings we are trying desperately get rid of, hoping that if we study them hard enough we might never have them again. Happiness? Well, happiness we just try to enjoy, praying we don’t fuck it up.
And yet Callahan seems unafraid of fucking up his contentment by thinking too hard about it. Somehow, Callahan with a mile-wide grin on his face has as much to say about the universe as the grave, stoic guy he used to be. His career—from his early lo-fi instrumental experiments as Smog, to his slow evolution into the singer-songwriter he is today— is too rich and storied for easy superlatives, but Shepherd feels like his most something album ever—his warmest, his most generous, possibly his most profound. It is his longest, for sure, lounging comfortably across four sides of vinyl, none of it wasted. It is a high note, fond and deep and sustained.
The sound is looser than is typical on Bill Callahan records. The arrangements are full of sensual touches, like the upright bass that wriggles with pleasure in response to Callahan’s announcement, “You can call me anything just as long as I can sing” on "Call Me Anything.” There is a beery honky-tonk lilt to “Black Dog on the Beach,” a single muted pedal steel guitar crying in the background. On “Confederate Jasmine,” he compares the scent of the flowers to “a soft note from a dented horn”—a precise and lovely image, and also a perfect evocation of the album’s sound and feel.
It is a livelier record than his last two, full of quiet noodling in the edges. “What Comes After Certainty” foregrounds two acoustic guitars, one fingerpicking and the other doubling up an octave higher, traveling up the neck to find little improvised-sounding turnarounds. The two guitars are not tightly in sync, and some of those little solos sound messy, like the player chimed before they figured out what to play, but the smudged notes add a texture of rumpled joy to the songs. His records tend to sound monastic and spare, but this is a living-room record, made in and around a roomful of clutter.
Every note, no matter how spontaneous-sounding responds lightly and immediately to Callahan’s voice, which remains the central character. “I never thought I’d make it this far/Little old house, recent-model car/And I’ve got the woman of my dreams,” he sings on “Certainty,” and as if shuddering a little at the unlikeliness of all this, the song dropping briefly into two minor chords at the words “dreams.” Contentment, after all, can feel terrifyingly fragile, particularly when you are in the full flush of it. “True love is not magic, it is certainty/And what comes after certainty?” he wonders. He does not answer.
Callahan writes about his contentment in the same vivid, tender, and elegiac way that Leonard Cohen did. Any sunburned grinning idiot in a hammock could admonish you to “live in the present”—irritating, if technically good advice. But Callahan examines that same wisdom more closely and retrieves this: “Well, the past has always lied to me/The past has never given me anything but the blues,” he sings on “Young Icarus.”
Writing classes call this work “defamiliarization” but it’s not really a technique to teach as much as a habit of mind, a peculiar way of seeing the world: “We are flies on a mule, and we’re good at what we do,” he concludes on “747.” The song is one of a handful of masterpieces on Shepherd. On it, Callahan is on a plane, writing about the thoughts that slide into and out of his head as the plane ascends to 30,000 feet. Mark Kozelek, another would-be poet of the mundane, might stare into his vacuum-sealed airplane dinner and wonder about the last time he was served pasta primavera, and which pro wrestler had just died; Callahan wonders about the border between birth and death, about the clouds he’s flying through and the light seen by the born and the dying: “I woke up on a 747 flying through some stock footage of heaven,” he begins, before giving us this: “There was blood when you were born and the blood was wiped from your eyes/This must be the light you saw that just left you screaming/And this must be the light you saw before our eyes could disguise true meaning/And this must be the light you saw just as you were leaving.”
Callahan isn’t the first writer to identify, in the deep and elemental stillness of the soul that comes with true contentment, a note of death. On the album’s fourth and final side, death looms over everything, without darkening the landscape: “Death is beautiful,” Callahan tells us. “We say goodbye to many friends who have no equal.” One of the last songs is a cover of the Carter Family’s “Lonesome Valley,” a song essentially about facing the terror of your ending alone. But Callahan tweaks the words so that the verses are about all his loved ones—not only does he have to “walk the lonesome valley” by himself, but so do his mother and his father. We all share this passage, he realizes. A cognitive dissonance, maybe, more than a paradox, a thought to be savored more than a puzzle to be solved. As Callahan adds new verses, killing new family members each time—“My sister’s got to walk that lonesome valley”—the song swells behind him. Women’s voices appear behind his, as does a piano and a few different guitars, all of them wandering into what feels like a curtain-call. Perhaps in this moment, he suggests, we won’t be nearly as alone as we imagine.


Focusing on new material, this live 2xCD collection from Swans' first tour in more than a decade finds the loud, mean, and complicated Michael Gira-led sextet beating past successes with the purpose of the present.

Swans: We Rose From Your Bed With the Sun in Our Head

The voice of Swans frontman and founder Michael Gira is one of stentorian command. Even during the lightest moments of his three-decade career, Gira's bellow has been deep, dark, and direct, both an apt vehicle for his raw lines about spiritual tumult and human filth and a compelling accompaniment to Swans' stylized roil. But at least on We Rose From Your Bed With the Sun in Our Head, the new live double-disc set from his rebuilt old band, Gira sounds exhausted. That Pentecostal bark has weathered into a battered bleat. At the start of "Eden Prison", for instance, Gira's voice shakes and breaks, barely shaping the syllables into their proper forms. "Within the walls of Eden Prison," he opens, struggling to climb over the relative quiet of drifting guitar and a twinkling vibraphone, "there is a mark upon our stone." We Rose comes culled from Swans' first tour in more than a decade, an intercalary period in which Gira introduced the world to Devendra Banhart and Akron/Family, played solo acoustic shows, and led the comparatively mild-mannered Angels of Light. Pushing 60, maybe he just doesn't have the requisite stamina to lead Swans, a band once so loud and dangerous they made fans vomit.
But sit tight. The 100 minutes of music that precede "Eden Prison" on We Rose make for an exhaustive listen, with 15-minute sprawls of suffocating noise, drums that suggest a fleet of fists to the face and loads of shouts about praising God, committing infanticide, and welcoming slavery. It's the kind of hyper-brutal album that requires an intermission or, at the very least, a long hard look at a plain white wall when its two hours have ended. Though We Rose pulls from gigs in Melbourne, Berlin, and New York City, this collection offers a mostly accurate recapitulation of the 102 sets that this iteration of Swans played since the 2010 release of My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, the band's first album in 13 years. Loud, mean, and complicated, this six-piece is an articulate goliath, capable of drowning out Gira in waves before disappearing into pools of silence without warning. Each piece of this unit deserves mention: The finesse of Norman Westberg's guitar playing offers the perfect foil for Gira's general force. Christopher Pravdica's bass snaps as much as it throbs, while Christoph Hahn uses his double-lap steel guitar not as a country-music accent mark but as an origin of general abrasion. Drummer Phil Puleo and multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris often double the rhythm, giving that old Swans stomp bigger feet. This band is at once visceral and subtle, reverent with the source but relentless with the sound. During "Sex, God, Sex", Swans suggest the sound of a thousand whips lashing at once; during "The Seer", they shape feedback into geometric patterns that Sonic Youth and Sunn O))) alike might admire.
So back to Gira's apparent feebleness: Both times I saw Swans on this tour, they pounded harder than I could have remembered or imagined; Gira lead them through these live shows for two years, so of course he was tired. For one gapless, 30-minute expanse, Swans segue a new sheet-of-noise instrumental, "The Seer", into the barking-and-marching classic "I Crawled". Gira spends the last quarter of the track moaning, sighing, and doing whatever else he can to sound completely mad. The band lashes together one more time, more malevolent and urgent than before, Gira hollering like he's finally lost. When it's over, he verifies the drain: "If I had a fucking knife, I'd cut my head off right now." Somehow, Swans then manage to play a 12-minute version of "Eden Prison" that starts and finishes like a whisper but, at its middle, reaches an apogee of high-volume repetition and reward. It's a marvelous payoff of perseverance, a promise that, no, this band or its leader isn't done.
In January of 2010, when Gira announced that he was reforming Swans, he wrote a predictably didactic open letter that made his purpose with the band clear: "After five Angels of Light albums, I needed a way to move FORWARD, in a new direction, and it just so happens that revivifying the idea of Swans is allowing me to do that... THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It's not some dumb-ass nostalgia act. It is not repeating the past." Some will see this 10-song tracklist and bemoan the absence of old material; four of the tracks come from 2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, while two supposedly come from The Seer, the new Swans album that the first, very-limited edition of this package helped fund in a sort of de facto Kickstarter campaign. ("I decided to start touring Swans, and it's like mainlining heroin," Gira told me just before the tour started, prophesying the apparent addiction.) But there are plenty of other Swans live albums if you need to hear that old stuff, and Gira has long clung close to what's most recent, trying new sounds and new members and new modes with admittedly variable results. We Rose is a perfect void of nostalgia that comes at a moment when similar indie rock heroes have reunited to defile the corpses of early works for lump sums of cash. For the last two years, one of the world's most bellicose bands has paid respect to its legacy largely by leaving it alone and tried to expand it by testing its old limits. Here, they do just that, beating past successes with the purpose of the present and showing that-- reunion or no, 58-year-old frontman or no-- this is exactly the kind of forward-pointing roadmark Swans deserve.


Drive-By Trucker's second solo album features many songs written years ago, but the whole still hangs together and comes across as cohesive and sharp.

Patterson Hood: Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs)

Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs)

Patterson Hood's a prolific songwriter, cranking out tunes at a relatively rapid clip, premiering them at solo shows, and posting them to his site. But team player that he is, there's only so much space for Hood's material on each Drive-By Truckers disc, making room for partner in crime Mike Cooley and now contributions from bassist Shonna Tucker as well. It's a balance that pays off, too: last year's Brighter Than Creation's Dark was sprawling and diverse-- and possibly the group's best record.
Still, there's the matter of that backlog of songs, and churning out solo albums doesn't seem to be Hood's M.O. But even if it were, saying you're going to get it done apparently doesn't make doing it any easier. Hood's ostensible solo debut, 2004's Killers and Stars, was made three years before its belated release, as a form of what Hood branded "therapy." Yet that's nothing compared to the set of songs that comprise Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs), Hood's second album, whose origins stretch back even further than his previous solo disc. One case in point: "Heavy and Hanging", which was written in response to Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide.
That year also marked Hood's relocation to Athens, Georgia, from his home in Alabama, setting in motion the events that would lead to the Drive-By Truckers. Plenty of things have happened to Hood since then, including a new marriage, fatherhood, and the gradual success of the DBTs, and all these things inform Murdering Oscar to some degree. Even the musicians backing Hood offer a sort of career overview, from fellow Truckers Brad Morgan, Cooley, and Tucker and longtime associate John Neff to producer and Athens staple David Barbe to frequent tourmates Will Johnson and Scott Danbom of Centro-matic, and finally to dad David Hood, legendary Muscle Shoals session bassist. Even the name of Hood's new label, Ruth St., refers to the address of the apartment he and a friend shared when he first moved to Georgia and began work on this record some 15 years ago.
That said, this is hardly the stuff of either nostalgia or what one imagines a Truckers disc full of Hood-only songs would sound like. To his credit Hood has collected 13 tracks that, for whatever reason, hang together well. If anything, the title track (inspired by Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors) and "Heavy and Hanging" (which is paired with the Crazy Horse-y "Walking Around Sense", which may be taking aim at Courtney Love's parenting skills) are among the album's darker moments. The rest largely feature Hood sometimes mirthful, sometimes rueful, but always surprisingly sanguine, even mature, in the way he addresses life's ups and downs.
"Pollyanna", for example, the oldest song on the album, was written as Hood realized his marriage and band Adam's House Cat (which he formed with Cooley before the two reconnected in the Truckers) were both falling apart, but the song's a genial classic rock nugget, while "Foolish Young Bastard", a put-down aimed at an old manager, comes off oddly forgiving and c'est la vie optimistic rather than mean-spirited. "Screwtopia" was written as a sardonic portrait of suburban domestic tranquility, and seems almost wistful (at least until Hood suggests his hypothetical wife take a few more pills to ease her worries, and gives his son a loaded gun to play with).
On the domestic front, Hood's life has turned out better than he predicted all those years ago, at least if his post-marriage and fatherhood tracks are any indication. The moving "Pride of the Yankees" is Hood throwing his protective arms around his newborn child in a post-9/11 world, while "Grandaddy" finds him fast forwarding several more years to a time when he can spoil his future descendants with candy hidden around the house. The poppy "I Understand Now" is Hood happy and content, "She's a Little Randy" is Hood in a silly (and, um, sexy) mood, and "Back of a Bible" is a love song to his wife the singer literally scribbled in the final blank pages of a motel's good book while out on tour.
Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary  capsule capturing how he ticks, right down to his cover of the Runt-era Todd Rundgren proto alt-country gem "The Range War", a response to anyone that, in Hood's words, thinks all he does is "sit around and listen to Molly Hatchet." What it and the originals on Murdering Oscar do is emphasize Hood's respect for and attraction to lyrical and emotional honestly above all else, the universals that have linked a lot of good music from the past to present. With every note, with every song, Hood sounds like he increasingly, if modestly, recognizes he's part of that great songwriting continuum, working hard to live up to his end of the obligation, as long as it takes.


The Atlanta rapper’s new project stumbles around in search of a hit and comes very close to finding one.

Crazy But It’s True

In Atlanta, they don’t pledge allegiance to the flag, they pledge allegiance to a burned copy of Young Thug’s Slime Season 2. There’s a never-ending flow of artists springing from Thug’s garden—the most prominent being the drip-enamored pair of Lil Baby and Gunna. Last year, Lil Gotit, alongside his older brother Lil Keed, joined the ranks of rappers inspired by Thug’s quirky delivery. Lil Keed made his stamp instantly, dropping in a guest verse on Thug’s Slime Language, followed by his breakout song, “Nameless.” Unlike Keed, Gotit wasn’t off to such a fast start, as the 19-year-old’s instinct for melody wasn’t nearly as developed. But, in a matter of months, Lil Gotit’s verses have become more lively, his delivery more animated, and his songs often feel like a fantasy set in Atlanta’s Lenox Mall. His latest project, Crazy But It’s True, has one purpose: to capitalize on this improvement by finding Lil Gotit a hit song, so he can officially be knighted as one of Atlanta’s next stars.
For Lil Gotit, the concept of an album is meaningless. Crazy But It’s True isn’t meant to be a cohesive body of work or made to be consumed in one sitting, it’s 18 darts thrown at the board and hopefully one hits the bullseye. Lil Gotit’s dire search for a hit first began when he dropped a few unenthused Triller videos on Instagram that seemed like an Alamo Records executive was behind the camera holding a match to his contract if he didn’t. Then, he tried to create a viral dance challenge, which of course didn’t work because the dance was overly complex.
The gimmicks were unnecessary Crazy But It’s True has more than enough potential to end Gotit’s tireless search for a hit, especially with “Da Real Hoodbabies.” Gotit’s music sounds best when his only cares in the world are letting us know about his love of Percocets and ignoring morals and fashion brands getting canceled to drape himself in a designer that most can’t afford: “Gucci ain’t racist, I still rock their clothes.”
Gotit isn’t as much of a crooner as Thug or Lil Keed, his voice is harsher. “Now” is Gotit at his most belligerent, taking a break from the fanciful flexing for lyrics that warn others not to test him in the streets of Atlanta: “I can get the Glock and squeeze it like a lemon, oh/I take his top and twist it red just like its Trippie, huh.” But similar to Lil Baby and Gunna, Gotit’s search for a hit song may end with pairing up with Lil Keed. Next to Keed’s high-pitched delivery, Gotit sounds menacing. And together they are able to successfully replicate the “Drip Too Hard” acoustic guitar formula on their second collaboration on the project, “Drop The Top.”
Though a handful of the album’s tracks are duds, it’s to be expected when the project bets on them all becoming breakouts. There’s the generic collaboration with Hoodrich Pablo Juan called “Off White”—we get it, Virgil sends you free clothes—that could be mistaken for any Atlanta-based leak that’s surfaced on Spinrilla in the last year. Then there are songs that are bogged down with features like “We Da Gang” and “OverT” that take away from Lil Gotit’s moment.
For some rappers, albums are nothing more than a vehicle to push singles and videos premiered on WorldStarHipHop. Lil Gotit doesn’t care if a portion of his album winds up unessential filler, as long as fans gravitate to a chosen few—songs like “Da Real Hoodbabies” and “Now” are good enough to do that. Crazy But It’s True is Lil Gotit not waiting for fate to take its course, he wants to see if the Atlanta crown fits comfortably on his dome.


The Brooklyn-based funk singer’s latest project strikes a balance between sweet and larger than life, aided by Chromeo’s sleek production.

AUNTIE

In Black culture, the title of “auntie” holds specific, almost folkloric meaning. So much more than an aunt (merely the sister of a parent), aunties may or may not be blood relatives but always serve as a vector for an extravagant, all-encompassing feminine force, not as nurturing and direct as motherhood but still having a hand in shaping a young child’s perceptions. They are the women whose Sunday outfits are the most glamorous, whose nails are always freshly done, whose presence is the most anticipated at Thanksgiving like a midpoint between Anita Baker and Mary Poppins.
The fact that Ian Isiah, the multi-faceted, unapologetically freaky singer-songwriter, has named his new project Auntie isn’t a coincidence, and it’s not just a nod to his Black lineage. To anyone in the know, it positions him as the benevolent diva, the fun-loving, streetwise pastor preaching to the neighborhood kids. It says that his ever-changing hairstyles, his half-shaved eyebrows, and his bejeweled grill are not “alternative” by Black standards, but rather firmly anchored in his heritage.
This is abundantly clear as soon as Auntie takes off, with “N.U.T.S” (which, amazingly, stands for “Nigga U the Shit”), a velvety mid-tempo funk number built around plaintive saxophones, a slack and supple bassline, and twinkling electric keys. However, a dark current runs through the groove—the opening and closing sample of the track is a woman screaming homophobic slurs in the middle of a busy street (“He’s a man, he’s a woman? That’s a disgrace! An abomination!”). It’s ugly and unsettling, but Isiah’s lush falsetto completely embraces you by the time the chorus kicks in: “You gotta make some room for the people that wanna love ya.” You can hear the carefree smile in his voice, and like that, the tone of Auntie is set—one of self-love, self-acceptance, and self-assurance.
On his two previous mixtapes (2013’s The Love Champion and 2018’s Shugga Sextape Vol. 1) , Isiah explored a more contemporary side of neo-R&B, melding hip-hop, electro, experimental, and trap into his funk and gospel background. Auntie, however, is produced as a collaborative project with Canadian duo Chromeo, who have spent nearly two decades perfecting their own retro-’80s signature. The marriage of these two sounds—Isiah’s futurism and Chromeo’s nostalgia—sets a mood that’s less envelope-pushing than what we’re used to hearing from Isiah, but still marks a definite evolution in music and vision. This is far from a bad thing. Sleek, hi-fi production choices make Auntie’s message of exuberance all the more explicit.
Isiah, raised Pentecostal, is blessed with the kind of voice that only an upbringing in the church can produce—deeply soulful, grippingly melodic, downright heavenly. While a dancefloor-ready track like “Lady Bug” sees Isiah delivering sexed-up vocal runs to rival Rick James at his slinkiest, it’s on “Loose Truth,” the project’s tender closer, that he truly soars. “This is my truth,” he repeats, elevating the lyric to a mantra, his voice taking on a different flavor at every turn: soul, gospel, funk, R&B. The harmonies are impeccable, like a choir beamed directly into your skull. He’s harking back to summer block parties where open fire hydrants sprayed the street with rainbows, where a Holy Trinity of Patti LaBelle, Luther Vandross, and Chaka Khan blasted from cars parked on the corner. On a record so sure of itself, “Loose Truth” stands out for its vulnerability, embodying Isiah’s own experiences and sense of community. Like its namesakes, Auntie revels in being larger than life while retaining a sweetness that only amplifies its sass.

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Kehlani has been compared to Tinashe and other alt-R&B singers, but a closer comparison is Frank Ocean. Kehlani, along with right-hand-man producer Jahaan Sweet, shares Ocean’s auteuristic vision and plainspoken eloquence. You Should Be Here’s dynamism and generosity is something to be amazed by, especially considering Kehlani is all of 19 years old.

You Should Be Here

As red herrings go, first single "The Way" off Kehlani’s first official album, You Should Be Here, is a doozy. The song is a sensual shuffle that channels SZA, Jhené Aiko, and Kelela, from spacey, hesitant vocals, to a slowed-and-pitched-down rap (from the typically nimble Chance the Rapper), to the lyrics—it’s a straightforward ode to lust, all about desire and longing and waiting for the moment where wanting and having your partner collide. It’s a fascinating song, and only in the most superficial ways does it suggest anything about You Should Be Here’s loftier goals.
The song’s lyrics might be the biggest red herring of all. Kehlani spends most of You Should Be Here switching between telling various dudes to get their shit together and the rest on a mission to inspire humanity. Kehlani has little in common with other former-child-stars-turned-singers Zendaya or Tinashe (Kehlani and her band made it to the finals on "America’s Got Talent"), and she has little in common with the music of cool, casually misogynistic R&B bros, and in spite of a connection to PARTYNEXTDOOR and hailing from Oakland, neither of those facts figure much into her music, at least on an obvious level. If there’s a contemporary comparison to be made, it’s Frank Ocean. Kehlani, along with right-hand-man producer Jahaan Sweet, shares Ocean’s auteuristic vision and plainspoken eloquence. And, much like Ocean, when Kehlani veers toward the maudlin, somehow the sincerity of it all redeems itself.
The beating heart at the center of You Should Be Here forgives some of these dips into mawkishness. You Should Be Here’s dynamism and generosity is something to be amazed by, especially considering Kehlani is all of 19 years old. On the stunning "Wanted", she sings, "As a woman/ When you are broken/ You make a choice to stay down or go in," but the chorus, one of resounding triumph, begins with the declaration, "He makes me feel wanted/ Like no one has before." Kehlani weaves an emotional, stirring thread through her songs that mostly feels joyful, even when she’s lurking on Instagram ("Jealous") or being vexed by a new flame ("Yet").
When some of these songs soar in their choruses, like on "Wanted", the title track, and the synthy, bubble-gummy kiss-off "How That Taste", Kehlani’s full-throated vocals and live-band sound recall '90s R&B groups like Total. But the album also strays to lots of other places: into jazzy, new jack swing-influenced R&B, straight-ahead devotion hymns (penultimate stomper "Bright"), capital-P pop ballads (closer "Alive", which would not sound out of place in a current adult-contemporary rotation). It’s this unabashed ambition that makes You Should Be Here resonate long after one has internalized its motivational urges ("Can't nobody love somebody that do not love themselves") and tender observations on the mechanics of relationships (see the wistful "Unconditional"). That Kehlani manages to breathe new life into these sounds and romantic musings is inspirational. She keeps telling people to follow her lead, too—just refer to the album’s title*.*


Initially conceived as an orchestral tribute to Iceland’s remote majesty, the Blur and Gorillaz frontman’s second solo album blossoms into a wide-angle commentary on grief, loss, and climate crisis.

Damon Albarn: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows

For Damon Albarn, the ability to disconnect is vital for creativity. It’s what drew the Blur and Gorillaz frontman to Iceland’s remote wilderness nearly 25 years ago (he wrote “Song 2” on his first visit), and what has kept him returning so frequently that he’s now a dual citizen. The British singer-songwriter and musical polymath is rarely short on inspiration; he’s made more than a dozen albums spanning Britpop, Mali folk, film soundtracks, and opera (next up, he recently said, is a ballet). But in recent years, and especially during lockdown, he’s spent considerable time sitting by his piano at his home near Reykjavik, gazing out the window into the extraordinary countryside.
His sprawling second studio solo album, The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows, is a tribute to this landscape—a majestic panorama of grassy meadows, black sand beaches, glaciers, and active volcanoes. It’s the sort of otherworldly vista that makes you think big and feel small, and Albarn, now in his fifties and increasingly worried about the climate crisis, has become protective of its quiet, pristine beauty. Using misty, classical atmospheres and melancholy pop melodies that evoke a sense of awe and loss, he presents a love letter to a beloved landscape that he wants to preserve but is already mourning.
Albarn’s initial vision for the record wasn’t quite so sentimental. In 2019, he was commissioned by Lyon’s Fête des Lumières to take on any project of his choosing, and suggested creating an orchestral interpretation of the view outside his living room window. With the help of local Reykjavik musicians, who came over for long improvisation sessions, he began to build an instrumental sketch of the terrain. “Someone would be in charge of the clouds, someone would be in charge of the outline of [Mount] Esja, someone would be on waves, and birds, and golf carts,” he told Reykjavik’s Grapevine. “Once you take it out of the moment and the environment... immediately it becomes very abstract.” When the pandemic shut the sessions down in early 2020, Albarn had to reimagine what the project might become. He enlisted two old friends, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Gorillaz collaborator Mike Smith, to help turn the recordings into a more song-based, pop-oriented LP.
The final product is loosely based on the pandemic-inspired concept of particles (a lyrical point that Albarn overuses), but it feels larger, like a stream-of-consciousness meditation on earth’s natural forces—extreme weather systems, gravitational pulls, the migratory patterns of birds. They’re rendered in swirls of ambient soundscapes, waltzing lullabies, and stormy, jazzy inflections, and you can hear threads of those early orchestral sessions seeping through. At times, the wide mix of sounds feels erratic, and the instrumentals don’t always work (“Combustion” has dizzying, you-had-to-be-there energy), but perhaps there’s an argument for discomforting friction. Nature is volatile, unpredictable, and clearly in charge.
Albarn is notorious for rejecting fame and protecting his private life (see: Iceland), so it’s surprising that so much of The Nearer the Fountain feels biographical. Drifting from Iranian funeral ceremonies (“Daft Wader”) to Uruguayan architecture (“The Tower of Montevideo”) to the foggy beaches where his daughter grew up (“The Cormorant”), he reminisces about all that is lost with the passage of time. “I now drift, daydreaming, to when we were happy here on this beach,” he sings. “We played with our children and they were happy, too.” Although he has often used his musical projects as travel diaries of sorts, there’s an intimacy to his solo work that we simply don’t get elsewhere. These songs are more like vivid journal entries than faded photographs, with rare glimpses at how he thinks, feels, grieves, and remembers.
There’s another reason for all this existential thinking. In the middle of the recording process, Albarn lost his longtime friend and close collaborator, the legendary drummer Tony Allen, sending Albarn on what he’s called “his own dark journey.” That phrase, along with the album title and opening track, are references to the elegiac poem “Love and Memory,” by the 19th-century English poet John Clare. Albarn’s mother had gifted him an anthology of the writer’s work when he was a teenager. When he rediscovered it during lockdown, it became a companion text for grappling with the magnitude of loss happening all around him.
Clare was a champion of the countryside and his own era’s voice of environmental alarm. He regarded mortality and nature as one, death as natural and certain as the seasons. Albarn found solace in this wide-angle thinking, and began considering the human condition as an extension of nature rather than the other way around. The album’s dark cover art—a large rock with a poetic epigraph, the artist’s name, and the year—feels like a visual reference to a gravestone. At first the boulder seems enormous, nearly taking up the whole canvas. But the sea just beyond it, ceaseless and sparkling, has a way of lending everything a new perspective.
The album’s most affecting moments zero in on Albarn’s close relationship with nature, one built on trust and deference. In the wistful piano ballad “The Cormorant,” he describes his daily swims in Devon Bay, off the English coast, and the helplessness he feels being swept up in the ocean’s cold, black currents, which have recently become inhabited by great white sharks. “Tipping goes the cormorant, I think she knows I’m a pathetic intruder into the abyss,” he sings, his melodies dipping and diving as gracefully as a shorebird.
On the deceptively lighthearted “Royal Morning Blue,” he marvels at the way a slight shift in temperature can turn rain into snow and transform an entire landscape, only to disappear. Everything is fleeting, he seems to say. Don’t get too comfortable. When he starts to sing about “the end of the world,” his voice is suddenly slanted and uneasy, as if the day has shifted from a far-off theoretical to a palpable, inconvenient truth.

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On My Everything, Ariana Grande ditches the manic-Disney-dream-girl ballads that made up her debut and goes straight for the bangers. As a whole, the album feels like Grande’s arrival as a true pop fixture, not just a charming novelty. The Weeknd, Childish Gambino, Big Sean, and others guest.

My Everything

The debut album from Nickelodeon star-turned-pop force Ariana Grande, last year's Yours Truly, had charming qualities that also turned out to be unsustainable. Marked by the sort of puerile whimsy that can only really happen once a career, it split the difference between doe-eyed doo-wop and remember-the-'90s pop-R&B (the latter intentionally courting the ensuing Mariah comparisons). Grande proved just the type to pull off this sort of broad-stroked pastiche: she’s a theater kid at heart, slipping in and out of characters with practiced finesse (she’s got an arsenal of impressions on YouTube, from Britney Spears to a crying lamb). In a way, it was a risk—these sorts of throwbacks were, if not totally unfashionable, decidedly out of season.
But it was a calculated risk, one that blatantly positioned Grande as a wholesome, PG-rated alternative to the ratchet Mileys of the 2013 pop spectrum. Despite her obvious training—what more can be said about That Voice?—there was a pointed adolescence to Yours Truly, down to the eerily infantilized (and wisely scrapped) initial album art. And the Instagram-filter nostalgia, though pretty damn adorable, often rendered the project impersonal. Though it’s her calling card, Grande’s voice doubles as a weapon and a shield; amid all the puppy-love ballads, the album’s emotional centerpiece had her professing her undying love, not for a boy, but for a piano. And fittingly so: the emotional charge of Grande’s music comes from the rush of singing as an act, the clear delight she takes in the power of her own voice, moreso than whatever she’s actually singing about.
On My Everything, Grande ditches the manic-Disney-dream-girl ballads and goes straight for the bangers; while it may not be as consistent a statement as Yours Truly, it’s refreshingly grown-up. It’s no coincidence that the album’s two lead singles were produced by Max Martin, the guy who practically defined millennial pop bildungsroman and, 14 years ago, penned “Oops!…I Did It Again” and “Stronger” for a transitional Britney. They might be the year’s strongest one-two punch of singles: “Problem”, with its alluringly strange reverse-build-up (Grande’s howling pre-chorus primes us for an even bigger release, only to drop impishly into Big Sean whispers, mirroring the un-met expectations of the song’s bad-news boyfriend), and the Zedd-produced stomper “Break Free”, a colossal kiss-off that doubles as a “Stronger” for the EDM age. Grande’s side-step to the dancefloor feels pre-ordained, rather than a cash-out: “Break Free”’s festival-closing ambition perfectly pairs with her stadium-sized voice, and injects some much-needed femininity into EDM’s typical machismo.
Where Yours Truly was willfully off-trend, My Everything reveals a better understanding of “cool,” even if it occasionally misses the mark. Here, Grande exists gleefully in her own age, rather than gesturing vaguely towards a second-hand idea of “retro.” Even when the plinky soda-fountain sounds of her debut trickle back in, as on Cashmere Cat-produced “Be My Baby”, the effect is more Terius Nash than Pinterest-board pastiche. The features represent more grown-up choices, and coax some stunning performances out of typically middle-of-the-road guests: the Weeknd skulks out from the shadows and into the light on throbbing big-room ballad “Love Me Harder”, and A$AP Ferg delivers arguably his best guest spot ever on the Christina Aguilera-nodding sex jam “Hands On Me”.
It’s fitting that the two most sexually explicit songs on the album are some of its best; Yours Truly’s blinky innocence would’ve bordered on patronizing if carried on any longer. It’s bigger than sex-positivity, though—Grande’s directness in general is what's so refreshing. Where she once coyly avoided her crush’s gaze, here she stares him dead in the eyes with to-the-point come-ons like “May be a little thing, but I like that long.” In a recent New York Times feature, Grande says longingly, of the uphill battle against her squeaky-clean image, “Maybe one day I’ll get away with something naughty.” This certainly feels like a start.
Thanks to those chameleonic theater roots, Grande’s always been able to pull off rap crossovers better than peers like Katy Perry, but despite the handful of successful guest spots, her taste in rap features remains tragic. My Everything’s worst moments revolve around hokey appearances from serial cornballs Big Sean and Childish Gambino. The former drops clunker after clunker on “Best Mistake”, making a mockery of the song’s serious tone with hysterically awful lines like “How can we keep the feelings fresh/ How do we Ziploc it?” The latter takes the “he’s cheating… with a MAN!” storyline and rubs its face in its own feces with the beyond questionable punchline “Yes, I’m a G, from the A, and they ask Y” (get it, guys?)—as though the message wasn’t already made painfully obvious by the dorky, distracting “I’m Coming Out” sample running underneath Grande’s vocals. It's a bizarre choice for a singer whose occasional unintelligibility is already something of a meme.
Still, despite its missteps, My Everything feels like Grande’s arrival as a true pop fixture, not just a charming novelty. Where she once felt like an actor dutifully playing the part of blinky-eyed, malt-sipping romantic, here Grande slowly but confidently comes into her own; and while her personality may still take a backseat to her technical skill, it’s beginning to wink through the theatrics. Turns out, so-called mini-Mariah can hold her own in 2014; and while the best songs here may not be timeless, they certainly feel right for right now.


Black Laden Crown is Danzig’s strongest album in some time, because he’s mostly built it around his own limitations. His thunder has quelled, but his ear is sharpening again on these metal blues.

Black Laden Crown

Being a metal singer is physically demanding, and even the most seemingly triumphant of them know you can’t slay age. Rob Halford knows it, James Hetfield knows it—does Glenn Danzig know it? His “metal Elvis” voice isn’t what it used to be, and he is his voice. It hasn’t kept him away from touring—the Misfits reunion finally happened last year, after all—but his performances have suffered live and in the studio. He’s not known for being self-aware (except for when dealing with photographers at shows), and an eccentric like him can’t be too self-aware. That doesn’t excuse his sloppy wreck of a covers album, 2015’s Skeletons, or the fact that he put footage of one of his teeth falling off into his “’68 Comeback Special” homage “Legacy.” But perhaps he has found a critical voice within. Black Laden Crown is Danzig’s strongest album in some time, because he’s mostly built it around his own limitations.
Many of the song here are on the slower end of the metal-blues he pioneered with his first three records, and his aged croon needs that slack. “Last Ride” feels like it could have come from the in-the-round jams on the “Danzig Legacy” television special—it’s primitive and laid-back, his lack of self-awareness working in his favor at last. He doesn’t overextend himself, gliding over the swampy buzzes of “The Witching Hour” and the pounding chugs in “Skulls & Daisies.” Like the more extreme bands he’s taken on the road over the past decade, his vocals are becoming more textural and less the main focus. That actually works, as Crown has his smartest writing in years, keeping his youthful demons alive, if not running amok. He may have matured, but we don’t want to him to grow up.
While Crown exists to show that there’s optimism about Danzig, “Devil On Hwy 9” is an argument to be cynical (and it wasn’t the wisest choice as the album’s lead single). Vocals notwithstanding, it lands among his most charging songs, like “Dirty Black Summer” and “Am I Demon.” He wants to capture the biker spirit he’s singing about, but when he tries to rage, he’s just hoarse. There’s none of the warmth fused with menace that he once singularly commanded. He should heed “Eyes Ripping Fire” as a better model for what he can do in a more rocking mode, as its sludgier pace meshes better with his moan. Even if “Devil” is the only real misstep on this record, it confirms the worst fear about him: he just isn’t built for the more driving songs anymore.
Guitarist Tommy Victor deserves a lot of credit for Crown’s successes. The mechanical playing style that suited him in Prong was initially a mismatch for Danzig’s heavy blues, and 2004’s Circle of Snakes tried to graft both styles to no avail. 2010’s Deth Red Sabaoth made headway into restoring the classic Danzig sound, and while it would be presumptuous to say he’s transformed into O.G. Danzig guitarist John Christ, this record is the closest Victor has sounded to him. Repressing your own style to ape your most beloved predecessor would seem like a disaster, but Victor has loosened up, scaling back on the pinch harmonics and embracing fluidity. The title track also shows how Victor takes the pressure off of Danzig to go grand, furiously soloing where the singer would once howl into abandon.
Danzig III: How the Gods Kill will turn 25 in July, and Danzig is well aware; he says he’ll play more material from that record in his upcoming live shows. On Gods, he found a tenderness in his dark craft, focusing on slower songs—which is also what works with Crown. The anniversary might overshadow this new album, and that may have been a welcome distraction in the past—but Danzig is, for once, on the right path here. His thunder has quelled, but his ear is sharpening again. And it’s that ear that made some of the most approachable yet enduring metal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.