A glimpse inside the studio for numerous outtakes and illuminating dialogue from the legendary “Second Great Quintet” sessions that would spawn Miles Davis' Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and Water Babies.

Miles Davis Quintet: Freedom Jazz Dance: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5

Freedom Jazz Dance, the latest volume in Columbia Legacy’s Miles Davis Bootleg Series, opens with a discussion. It’s October 24, 1966, and Miles and bassist Ron Carter are working out a bass line until Miles interrupts and scolds him gently: “No,” Miles rasps, “that’s too common. C’mon.” Carter at one point says, “I don’t understand.” Miles continues on, “Play E diminished…start with a B flat,” and finally, to producer Teo Macero in the control room, he says, as he does again and again on this set, “Play that, Teo.”
After eleven takes—and twenty-three minutes of talk, rehearsal, and some ball-breaking—Miles, along with Carter, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, and drummer Tony Williams (famously known as the “Second Great Quintet”), embark on the master of Eddie Harris’ soul-jazz number “Freedom Jazz Dance” that would appear the following year on the album Miles Smiles. In fact, each of the six tracks on Miles Smiles are broken down, pored over, and built back up by the musicians and the producers of this set (Steve Berkowitz, Michael Cuscuna, and Richard Seidel), who have unearthed outtakes, false starts, and, for the first time, studio dialogue.
Virtually two-thirds of this three-CD set is the making of—and love letter to—his 1967 album Miles Smiles, one of his finest works that’s often overlooked in “best-of” Miles shortlists. The rest of Freedom Jazz Dance includes reels of material that would later appear on Nefertiti and Water Babies. The alternate takes and the lively banter plop you right there in the studio as the artistic process unfolds. It’s what differentiates Freedom Jazz Dance from past volumes of this enthralling series, which were all live concerts that showed how Miles’s groups evolved on the bandstand. Here the studio is the laboratory—and what a studio, the storied 30th Street Studio, a converted Armenian Evangelical Church between Second and Third Avenue, where Kind of Blue was recorded seven years earlier. Though compared to what the new quintet was up to by 1966, Kind of Blue sounds almost quaint.
The dialogue on this set is often profane (“That was a motherfucker!”; “Don’t sit up there giggling, cocksucker!”); sometimes tedious (“Wayne, what’s happening? You want a drink? Want a hamburger?”); but usually mineral-rich. “Hey Wayne,” Miles says, this time in his brownstone on West 77th Street, “I was thinking about writing a blues…like in F and then going to A-flat, you know?” before he tinkers with the idea on an electric piano. During a take of “Orbits,” he says, “Don’t rush it, Tony.” On “Gingerbread Boy”: “Herbie, don’t play chords on your left hand, just your right hand.” Miles is nurturing, but very much the boss. While working through “Dolores,” he says to Herbie, “Don’t play nothin’ until you’re ready to play,” to which Hancock answers, “You don’t want that thing in there? I thought it was cute.” Miles says, “I don’t."
One could argue that this volume is superfluous (“Give Wayne half of that hamburger, Bobby”). New listeners to jazz or to Miles Davis particularly might be disoriented, especially if they don’t recognize the voices of the band members or understand the significance of Teo Macero. (“Teee-o? Teee-o?” “I need moral support Teo—immoral.”) For the uninitiated, Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and The Bootleg Series, Vol. I are almost certainly better places to start.
Who knows how Miles Davis himself would even feel about this. Would he want the outtakes included? The banter? In his 1989 autobiography, he wrote of these years: “I made six studio dates with this group in four years….We recorded much more than what was released….And there were some live recordings that I guess Columbia will release when they think they can make the most money—probably after I’m dead.” But one could also argue the exact opposite, that this set is found treasure, especially to Miles completists, enthusiasts, musicians, and students. The producers don’t take jazz or Miles Davis fans lightly, or as ATMs. This documentation underscores the artistic process of one of American music’s most seminal bands.
You can hear how the Wayne Shorter-penned “Footprints,” maybe the highlight of Miles Smiles, went from a slower tempo to the perfectly paced, ethereal master take. Or Tony Williams, just 20 in October 1966, go from great to spectacular by the session-reel outtake of “Nefertiti” eight months later. He’s equally mesmerizing on a rhythm section rehearsal of “Country Son,” as is Carter.
It’s been a big year for Miles Davis. In April, there was Don Cheadle’s biopic Miles Ahead, accompanied by Robert Glasper’s original score and his additional tribute album Everything’s Beautiful, which included Erykah Badu, Laura Mvula, and Bilal; Prestige reissued a box set of his early 1950s recordings on 10-inch vinyl; he has a presence in the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture. May would have been his 90th birthday; September marked 25 years since he passed. Even a Scotch whiskey called Kind of Blue, in honor of Miles, launched in August.
If there’s a drawback to the ongoing releases and reissues from Miles Davis, it’s that it can steer attention away from jazz musicians on the vibrant scene today. Not that they shouldn’t welcome it; there will always be a lot to glean from Miles’ canon. And there will likely still be more finds from his Columbia vaults; his early-mid 1980s’ work, for instance, hasn’t been sifted through yet. That’s a good thing. There will always be something to look back —and forward—to.


Much of Nicki Minaj's ambitious second LP sweats with a too-big-to-fail desperation. At its best, she innovates with the playful abandon of prime-era Missy Elliott or Busta Rhymes. But in her quest to avoid becoming just another female rapper, she settles for being just another pop star.

Nicki Minaj: Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded

During the making of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, Nicki Minaj had some sort of epiphany. The moment occurred while she was recording an evil moonwalk of a rap song called "Come on a Cone"-- after verbally shitting on any and all competition for two minutes, she peaks with, "If you weren't so ugly, I'd put my dick in your face." And then something special happens. She pauses the track and starts to sing "dick in your face" all melismatic, like she's vying to stay alive on "American Idol". She's skewering tired pop-star singing styles, hip-hop masculinity, and maybe even herself, because while her major-label debut turned out to be a star-making success, it often traded in Nicki's trademark, potentially-game-changing eccentricities for something smoother, blander, and more radio-ready. Reminiscing on the "dick in your face" breakthrough in a Complex interview, she recently said, "That's when it was like [makes soda-can spritz noise]-- explosion, Roman Reloaded is here!"
And that sound-effected bit of self-promotion proves to be true on the album. Well, on some of the album, at least. Those who buy this thing based on the delirious bubblegum hit "Super Bass" or the CD's kindergarten-art-class via Maxim cover will likely be quite vexed by an extended opening salvo of minimalist, futurist hip-hop that recalls nothing less than Clipse's devilish opus Hell Hath No Fury. This streak includes two brilliantly off-kilter songs from "Niggas in Paris" producer Hit-Boy, the livewire "Cone" along with "I Am Your Leader", featuring verses from rap-cred stampers Rick Ross and Cam'ron. There's the effortless, pinging schoolyard taunt "Beez in the Trap", and the hyped "HOV Lane", which ends up pretty vicious considering its beat vaguely recalls the "Inspector Gadget" theme song. And the instrumental for "Roman Reloaded" employs safety-clicks and bullet booms for percussion as Nicki flips the sellout claims on their head: "Nicki pop?!/ Only thing that's pop is my endorsement op." On all of these songs, Nicki is dartboard focused-- she's rapping harder here than on almost anything from Pink Friday; the verses are akin to those on her breakout mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty, or the myriad song-stealing guest shots she worked to leverage her big break in the first place. Listen to this album's first seven tracks, and it would be completely understandable to think that Nicki was using her first-class pop status to infiltrate and innovate with the playful abandon of prime-era Missy Elliott or Busta Rhymes.
But the next 12 tracks (15 on the deluxe version) by and large find Nicki doing exactly what she just said she wouldn't: going pop. Which, to be clear, is a perfectly fine (and admirably ambitious) idea-- in theory. Talking to Complex about her perfectionist streak, she said, "I'm doing it to prove to... myself that I don't have to settle for less because I'm a female rapper or because I'm black." And what was so great about "Super Bass" was how it married Nicki's inherent weirdness (see: flinging pink goop at muscle-bound dudes in the song's video) with a hook that reached everyone from Taylor Swift to little girls who have no idea who the eff Slick Rick is.
That kind of complementary appeal is missing in these new songs, which range from brittle Euro-trance to milquetoast R&B to washed-out balladry. Take lead single "Starships", produced by RedOne, whose bass-first style played a large role in making Lady Gaga the world's preeminent pop star on songs including "Bad Romance" and "Just Dance". The track throttles, its sky-aimed maximalism clearly designed to overtake the radio via pure volume. It seems to be born out of a creatively hobbled beer company's marketing team (an idea supported by the grossly pandering mention of "Bud Light" in the song's first few lines) rather than Nicki's gloriously odd brain. "Starships", along with the four club-ready tracks that come in its wake, do something that should be difficult; in her quest to avoid becoming just another female rapper, she inadvertently settles for being just another pop star. And the harsh truth is that she needs work in that department.
Just look at her recent "American Idol" performance of "Starships". Sure, she doesn't even attempt to sing most of the song live-- though, usually such blatant and high-profile lip-synchs are coupled with intense dance moves, or something to make up for the lack of in-the-moment vocals. But while Nicki's simplistic dancing has been endearing in other venues, it's less so when she's trying to sell a stupidly massive dance tune. So, on "Idol", she was essentially relegated to playing hype-woman to her own song. While she'd never be able to get away with her "Idol"-satirizing "dick in your face" theatrics on the show (though I'd love to see Seacrest's reaction to that), playing to both sides of the aisle sends a terminally mixed message.
Which brings up another inconvenient reality: Nicki's singing voice is a limited instrument, especially when contrasted with her limitless rapping. It can be shrill when it's not oddly blank or sounding like Rihanna ("Beautiful Sinner") or Ke$ha ("Young Forever"). But it's not hopeless; on the anguished "Fire Burns", Nicki embeds a palpable emotion into the song. She meets the track smolder for smolder, and her delivery on lines like, "You piece of shit, you broke me down/ Thought you said you, would hold me down," is more powerful than a thousand puddle-rumbling bass kicks. More common, though, is "Right By My Side", where Nicki flatly pines for a guy-- then again, her lackluster performance is somewhat understandable considering her duet partner is perennial asshole Chris Brown.
Nicki is well aware of the potential criticisms of her pop turns. On the confessional 2009 mixtape track "Can Anybody Hear Me", she recalls a disappointing label run-in: "When it rains it pours for real, Def Jam said I'm no Lauryn Hill: 'Can't rap and sing on the same CD, the public won't get it they got ADD.'" And on a defensive (and funny) 20-minute interview that closes out the deluxe Roman Reloaded, she takes on hip-hop diehards by recounting the unfortunate fate of many a 1990s female rapper: "These other bitches that only did rap and now they live in low-income housing-- is that winning? Just so that a nigga in the street can give me a fucking dap? Get the fuck outta here." Clearly, she's branching out to avoid that sad story. But, at the same time, this album's shortcomings are not the fault of a label or an attention-deprived audience or close-minded rap fans. Making a strong artistic and commercial statement that's true to (yet also more than) hip-hop is not easy in this climate, but it's definitely possible, a fact Nicki's friend Drake proved with last year's Take Care. But much of Roman Reloaded sweats with a too-big-to-fail desperation. "I'm a brand, bitch, I'm a brand," she raps. She's not wrong.

Cash Money / Young Money Entertainment / Universal Republic


Long-awaited U.S. release from this at times perplexing electronic British outfit, who come across like a mellow, hip-hop-lovin' version of LCD Soundsystem.

Coming on Strong

Bedroom laptop thug-pop. Electro-ironic soul music. Tongue-in-ass hip-hop. DF-Ay-Ay-Ay! There are all sorts of wonky titles we could create to describe Hot Chip, Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor's perplexing electronic British outfit. Hell, Goddard even looks like a mellow James Murphy. Their full-length debut, Coming on Strong, was released in Europe more than a year ago and warmly if not exasperatingly received. This slightly reconfigured U.S. issue comes off at first like slight pop-- novelty even. But extended listens reveal a goofy sincerity and romantic insouciance.
Hot Chip wear influences like yellow Livestrong bracelets-- quietly, gallantly, but a bit too noticeably. The Beach Boys, Prince, Ween, 60s girl groups, Dr. Dre, Devo, Stevie Wonder, Madlib: Each hallmark has their moment, or idea borrowed. The sum of inspiration isn't always rectitude, but Hot Chip make it work for them. American heavyweight counterparts LCD Soundsystem, a more forceful, knowing act, are clearly an influence, and "Down With Prince" is Hot Chip's "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House". Admiration is draped all over the production-- clipped hollow snares, noodly bass line, funk keyboards-- and it's impressive that they don't get us rolling on the ground with an opener like "I'm sick of motherfuckers tryna tell me that they're down with Prince." The desperate Purple allegiance is pretty apparent though. Someone oughta FedEx this record to Paisley Park. These guys have the gall.
"Keep Fallin'" is the big scandal ("I'm like Stevie Wonder, but I can see things.") and the funniest thing here. Built on a simple groove, Taylor, whose fragile vocals guide much of the album, drops all kinds of bombs on us. He nods at obvious lyrical influence Ween and daintily moans "Give up all you suckers, we the tightest motherfuckers and you never seen this before, now." The decision to end many of the unrhyming couplets with "now" usually signals amateur. Hard to say how much Taylor and Goddard are lampooning things, though. The whole pop-satire gag is a tidy little safety net to throw at critics. Chemical Brothers meets Art Brut or something like that. The synthesis isn't perfect yet though, like on the groan-worthy "Shining Escalade". Some of the melodies, the mortar of these attacks, are occasionally less than cocked, as well: They're all simple, keyboard-based splashes and once in a while the bottom of the paper bag gets too wet.
Lyrics are sung so delicately-- fogged up in the cushiness of the production-- it's hard to make out the gangsta-lite gags. This complicates the consternation over whether these guys are "serious" or not. But in a world where 12-year-olds quote 50 Cent to their aunties at Thanksgiving dinner, it's not hard to understand why Goddard, the rap fan with the baritone, would consider dropping a chorus like the one on "Playboy": "Driving in my Peugeot, yeah yeah yeah/ 20-inch rims with the chrome now, yeah yeah yeah/ Blazin' out Yo La Tengo, yeah yeah yeah." Everyone likes everything these days, Cam'Ron to Ira Kaplan. That's why a group like this makes sense. It's what separates them from the likes of Goldie Lookin' Chain and Kidz Bop.
Hot Chip's songs are lazy, or at least leisurely, but they're unafraid to roll up on you in the most unsuspecting ways. "Keep Fallin'" ends with a kazoo solo. "Baby Said" closes madly, with 30 seconds of honking Casio and buckwild kick-drumming after four minutes of parlor room mellifluousness. It's only really a tease, flirting with the concept of upbeating their sound. Four on the floor quaking seems to be their next goal. Hot Chip's new album, scheduled for a 2006 release, already has the danceteria types excited just on the strength of lead single "Over and Over" b/w with, fittingly, the DFA Remix of "Just Like We (Breakdown)." So, enjoy serenity now. The backbeat reigns supreme soon.


Sasha Spielberg reunites with her Just Friends bandmate, Nicolas Jaar, for a somber solo EP that finds the Wardell singer forging an identity of her own.

Facepaint EP

Sasha Spielberg has been meandering toward a solo career for years. In 2010, she formed the indie-folk act Wardell with her older brother Theo, and within a few years the pair were coasting on the appeal of their sibling-duo brand. (They happen to be the children of Steven Spielberg, but The New York Times urged readers to “Forget Their Dad; Just Listen to Them.”) By 2013, Spielberg was revisiting a slightly older collaboration, with her college friend Nicolas Jaar, the now-flourishing producer with whom she shared an electronic pop duo called Just Friends.
For her first solo EP, Facepaint, Spielberg has assumed the alias Buzzy Lee. Although it’s not a Just Friends release, Jaar produced every song on the record, which finds Spielberg forging an identity by distancing herself from Wardell’s folky aesthetic and inserting her own dreamy reflections into the experimental, downtempo electronic music for which her collaborator is known. Most of the EP’s five tracks are melancholy ballads with lyrics that sound ripped out of a journal, all mysterious, context-free drama. On the hymn-like closer, “Walk Away,” Spielberg delivers her curt opening lines—“Save it for the sake of the fight/Copy-paste the child inside”—with a bite, as Jaar surrounds her vocals in warm, languid synth tones. She has never found a better showcase for her breathy yet powerful voice than the production on these songs.
There’s a haunted elegance to Spielberg’s presence on Facepaint, a willingness to be still amid minimal production. “On the Radio” features the record’s sparsest staging, but she doesn’t overcompensate for that aural emptiness. “Pick the chairs and plates/I know that my things will find a home,” she coos, instead, describing a move into a new apartment as though she’s inside that empty space, watching someone else fill it with cardboard boxes.
Throughout the EP, Jaar’s flourishes—a steamy guitar solo or a sudden break into percussion—are like vivid, oddball details that thrust a dream out of believability and into surreal wackiness. Near the middle of “On the Radio,” he inserts the sudden, shrill peal of a bell. Often, these choices add necessary emotional gravity to Spielberg’s songs. At the end of “Walk Away,” her voice rises with the swell of the music, as she sings “Is this how you’re gonna grow old?” over and over until the angry urgency of a fight dissolves into exhaustion.
But not all of the lyrics bear repeating. On the title track, Spielberg frets about her heart being messed with “like face paint, like we’re children in the first grade, but with feelings.” The line doesn’t sound as awkward in the song as it looks written out, but it’s close.
The apparent outlier on this somber debut is lead single “Coolhand,” a boppy, infectious pop song about being sucked into social-media superficiality. But beneath the breezy hooks, Spielberg explores some trepidation about the way she’s curating her image: “Do I have to act like that/And chew a formula?” she wonders. It’s promising to hear her reflect on how she wants to present herself on a release that marks her emergence as a solo artist. Facepaint is Spielberg’s experiment in how to occupy space on her own—and it reveals a musician wise enough to give herself room to move around.


Nicolas Jaar returns to his dancefloor alias, swapping out the mid-tempo crowd-pleasers for a set of surprisingly stern techno that bristles with distortion.

2017 – 2019

Under his Against All Logic alias, Nicolas Jaar writes music that sounds like it’s trying to break out of itself. Textures undulate and basses overwhelm, while vocals flutter in and out of focus as if someone were flicking through channels on a decrepit television. The project’s first LP, quietly released on his Other People label at the beginning of 2018, folded half a decade’s work into one of the most accessible albums of his career. Now that A.A.L. is a known quantity, Jaar returns with 2017 - 2019, trading the warmer house music of his debut for a warped techno counterpart.
“Fantasy,” the opener, is all crunchy transients and harsh digital noise and—is that Beyoncé? Success has only further emboldened Jaar, who twists snippets of Bey’s classic Sean Paul collaboration “Baby Boy” into a hypnotic, mangled hook. But this sample is a red herring, as is the laidback gait of “If Loving You Is Wrong,” which follows. The classic soul flips that defined 2012 - 2017 are largely absent from that point on, replaced by frenetic clangs and extended, bristling percussion workouts like “With an Addict.”
2017 - 2019 has been rendered more purposefully than its predecessor, each track flowing into the next. It presents an identity for Against All Logic that transcends the previous mid-tempo crowd-pleasers, one that’s unafraid to draw from various club subgenres while injecting Jaar’s customary washed-out tape atmospheres. The harsh spirals of noise and pneumatic hi-hats of “Deeeeeeefers” sound like they’re pulled from a revised Justice cut or Thomas Bangalter edit, while “Penny” makes the case that “lo-fi house” might not be dead after all.
The most exhilarating moment on the album appears courtesy of its sole feature, Lydia Lunch, whose voice and philosophy Jaar borrows for “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard.” A longtime advocate of her work—he reissued her 1990 spoken-word piece Conspiracy of Women (C.O.W.) after layering clips from the recording into his live show for years—Jaar recontextualizes the no-wave icon’s uncompromising ferocity using brash distortion loops that make Yeezus sound tame by comparison.
“Because you can’t beat ’em, kill ’em/If you can’t kill ’em, fuck ’em/If you can’t fuck ’em, kill ’em/If you can’t do it good, do it hard,” Lunch snarls amid waves of mutilated feedback. It’s not the first time Jaar has remixed her, but “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard” turns what would otherwise be an intriguing experiment into a bona fide floor-filler. When the beat comes crashing down and Lunch’s manifesto echoes across a cacophonous explosion of drum machines, her brusque chant transforms into a menacing clarion call for the dancefloor. For the rest of the album, Jaar channels that same energy. The tracks pulsate with chaos and—on the introspective closer “You (forever)”—an occasional glimmer of hope.


His debut album—and sequel to a 2014 mixtape—is equal parts cash grab, roster exhibition, and résumé bulletin. But because it’s a Mike WiLL creation, it can’t help but thrill.

Ransom 2

As Metro Boomin became trap’s workhorse, Mike WiLL Made-It, so named by Gucci Mane in the thick of his prolific mixtape run, has expanded his repertoire with radical pivots—zany psychedelic trips and chic pop promenades. Since announcing himself on Meek Mill’s chest-beating fame-measurer “Tupac Back,” he has produced everything from spacey trap ballads (Future’s “Turn On the Lights”), to strip club anthems (“Bandz a Make Her Dance”), sensual R&B massagers (Ciara’s “Body Party”), pop bangers (Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop”), diva tributes (Beyoncé’s “Formation”), and even ad fodder, on his way to becoming one of rap’s most versatile soundmen. When WiLL shared instrumentals from his 2016 discography, it was a dizzying flex, a colorful mosaic of pop-trap stems that omitted key moments by mistake. There are so many jams he forgets some. In the middle, he scored his first-ever Hot 100 chart-topper by producing the viral sensation “Black Beatles” for Rae Sremmurd, the flagship act of his EarDrummers imprint. The victory seemed to affirm his vision: not only had thinking outside the rap box paid big dividends, it’d done so for artists he’d nurtured, who’d been all but denounced by old-fangled rap gatekeepers. The next logical step is a compilation projecting these accumulated successes. Ransom 2, WiLL’s debut album and sequel to a 2014 mixtape, is equal parts cash grab, roster exhibition, and résumé bulletin. But because it’s a Mike WiLL creation, it can’t help but thrill.
Ransom 2 isn’t remarkably different than its predecessor; in fact, 13 guests return from the first outing. The bigger names showcase a quick flip through Mike WiLL’s contact list: Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Future, Pharrell, Lil Wayne, Big Sean, Migos, YG, and more. The other faces are part of an EarDrummers promotion: Rae Sremmurd, Eearz, Andrea, Fortune and producers Pluss, Resource, and Marz. Though many are repeat visitors, the album narrowly dodges feeling like a remake and there aren’t any obvious fluctuations in quality. It’s marked by plenty of Mike WiLL’s signature boggy drums, which hit with a slosh as opposed to a thud. Atop a choice range of his finest productions, the hitmakers of today and tomorrow collide.
Over time, producers as accomplished as Mike WiLL acquire enough clout to cash-in the favors necessary to collect the one-offs and session extras that make up albums like these. They feel like rejects saved from the discard piles of more prominent releases. But many of the performances on Ransom 2 are so dynamic that songs don’t even feel like blips in the massive catalogs of constantly-active MCs like Future, Gucci Mane, and Young Thug. On “Perfect Pint,” the SremmLife duo trade raps with unlikely bunkmates Gucci and Kendrick Lamar, and the chemistry is a pleasant surprise. Future continues his recent form on the boomer “Razzle Dazzle.” Every good new Wayne verse feels like an affront to Birdman and “Faith” is no different, especially considering Young Money signee HoodyBaby tags along. With “W Y O (What You On),” Young Thug continues his trial runs with new flows, chattering through the first verse before ripping through the second in bursts. If anything, these tracks just feel like recaps for recent breakouts.
As artists at the peak of their powers show glimpses of what makes them special, the crop of MCs hand selected by Mike WiLL for his crew earn their signings. Sremmurd’s Swae Lee, clearly the greatest asset on Mike WiLL’s team, gives a taste of the solo album he’s been teasing on “Bars of Soap,” a punchy departure from his usual animated fare. Andrea follows suit on “Burnin” with more bruising bars and a slashing flow. As a team, Lee and Slim Jxmmi make the most of a reunion with Chief Keef, each a unique but complementary variant of rap’s Auto-Tune wave. But it’s Eearz who makes the greatest impression with “Emotions Unlocked,” cutting through waves of distorted bass by pairing a sonorous delivery with nonstop pacing.
Despite a slew of standouts, Ransom 2 doesn’t always get the most out of its guests. Lil Yachty’s ode to a Baywatcher, “Hasselhoff,” strays from the confectionary delights that made him so popular (and play to his strengths), opting instead for a straight-faced bar fest. Trouble and Problem’s tag-team effort, “Big God,” gets lost in the shuffle—neither big nor godly. And Fortune doesn’t show the same promise as his other EarDrummer colleagues on “Oh Hi Hater (Hiatus).” His mushy cadences get swallowed up by WiLL’s slimy synth gelatin. These minor misfires and a few forgettable verses aside, Mike WiLL Made-It’s Ransom 2 is an anthology that does exactly what it set out to do: fill his mantle with the shiny trophies of recent wins while making space for new ones.


Dame Fortune

There’s a good chance you know producer RJD2’s work, even if you didn’t know he was at the helm. He composed the Mad Men intro, a layered blend of strings and cascading drums depicting the main character’s descent. Then there’s the beat in this Miller Lite TV spot—a brassy number with blaring horns, soaked in New Orleans-style soul. In these instances and others, the composer skillfully blends genres, creating rap/funk hybrids that seem influenced by his living in Philadelphia, a city known for its rich musical history. For the new album, he says, Philly provided a context for all the soul music he's liked over the years.
RJD2’s art is full of unique twists and tough to pin down. His albums play like film scores, launching in one place and landing somewhere totally different. On 2002’s Deadringer—widely considered the producer’s magnum opus—his mix of jazz, New York rap and R&B went in all sorts of directions, but it made complete sense for El-P’s vaunted Def Jux label. Eleven years later, on More Is Than Isn’t, the results were decidedly electronic, pulling from the L.A. beat scene while streamlining his vast experiments over the years. Above all, RJD2 is a chameleon—able to navigate multiple scenes, eluding creative boxes along the way.
RJD2 doesn’t deviate from that approach on Dame Fortune, his sixth album, which resembles parts of his previous work while keeping with current sounds. “A New Theory” in particular, with its menacing rap knock, is a worthy compliment to any Cannibal Ox or Mr. Lif release. “A Portal Inward” is perhaps RJD2’s best Pink Floyd impression: Collecting light and dark synths, it’s a long—perhaps too long—album intro ala “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” For RJD2, it doesn’t quite set a tone for the music that follows, which moves quickly toward festive breakbeats and progressive rock. Much like the producer’s former offerings, Dame Fortune tries to be everything all at once, making for a good listen with occasional lapses. Parts of it feel a little too on the nose—like “The Roaming Hoard,” a kinetic funk track that loses a touch of steam when the vocals kick in, and “Band of Matron Saints,” an edgy rock track somewhat out of place compared with Dame Fortune’s more versatile songs. The producer’s style is commendable, but the album is inconsistent, and the noteworthy moments run the risk of getting lost. “The Sheboygan Left,” a shape-shifting instrumental near Dame’s beginning, thrives from a gospel-esque collection of crashing drum cymbals and choral moans. On the celebratory "We Come Alive," long-time collaborator Son Little is given ample room to shine.
As the album plays, you get a strong sense that RJD2 is traveling towards something. There's a road ahead that he's yet to endure, a path toward a destination he knows nothing about. Of course this isn't new for the producer. After all these years, it seems RJD2 is still searching for some sort of shade amongst the chaos, a place away from the pack. Dame Fortune is about the journey to some sort of eutopia—which for RJD2, is likely full of bright, panoramic views.


The Carters round out a trilogy of confrontational albums about their marriage with something lighter but no less resonant. It is a celebration of resilient Black love and proud Black extravagance.

The Carters  / Beyoncé / Jay-Z: Everything Is Love

Everything Is Love

Until recently, Jay-Z and Beyoncé had made careers of being astoundingly larger than life—cults of personalities we, in fact, knew very little about. He carefully crafted a narrative of corner-hustler-turned-corporate-CEO while guarding the intimate secrets of those closest to him; she was a perfectly manicured pop star who built an empire on turning the vagaries of life into empowerment anthems. Lemonade and 4:44 were watershed moments because they offered a glimpse of the more vulnerable traits of the mystical artists behind them. The Carters zoomed in close enough to show the cracks—to hear a man struggling to find maturity and a woman searching for clarity. Through those albums, we were allowed to see their flaws and we formed deeper connections to them because of it.
Their surprise joint release, Everything Is Love, completes the arc. It’s a testament to how a complicated love survived through self-reflection, compromise, and ruthless honesty. The quintessential power couple has reemerged to stunt on everyone—haters, mistresses, America itself—while serving up a spectacle of romance and opulence like make-up sex on a bed of money. The Carters’ final episode of a presumed trilogy packages truth in a way that makes it more captivating than any lie or tabloid fodder.
Elevator fights, rumors of discord, and marriage counseling swirled around their initial On the Run Tour in 2014. It took another two years to confirm the suspicion, and by then, it was near impossible to look away from their turmoil. But even now, with drama in the rear view, the return of marital harmony still holds a thrill. Opening track “Summer” picks up where Lemonade’s “All Night” left off, a slow dance with the warm sensuality of forgiveness. Above a soulful live band, Beyoncé croons sweetly about making love to her husband, but it’s one of the few times she’ll play the part of the mellifluous singer. This is “don’t think I’m just his little wife” writ large and there is little room for honeyed words; Bey is fired up and in rare form. The couple’s happily ever after is a celebration of both resilient Black love (to the chagrin of those for whom infidelity is irredeemable) and proud Black extravagance (to the chagrin of those who for whom money is not freedom).
As quickly as the opener’s majestic strings fade out, the thunderous “Apeshit” rumbles in. And so continues the second life of Beyoncé, your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. She kicks triplet flows all over Pharrell’s club-ready production, accented by Quavo and Offset ad-libs. She raps in double time, crashing the syllables into each other: “Put some respeck on my check/Or pay me in equity/Watch me reverse out of debt (skrt!).” Jay is an afterthought on the song despite seamlessly integrating Chief Keef’s “Faneto,” The Lion King, and some well-placed Grammys and NFL shade in the span of his verse: “Every night we in the end zone/Tell the NFL we in stadiums too.” And what audacity to film the video for a trap banger in the Louvre—the pinnacle of violent colonial history presented as high art—and to call it “Apeshit,” and to fill the place with Black creators who are rarely revered on the walls. Each frame of melanin situated against white space is a gorgeous piece of art unto itself.
Everything Is Love largely doubles down on the status symbols, generational wealth, and sustainability put forth in songs like “Family Feud” and “Legacy” from 4:44. Bey’s line on “Boss”—”My great-great-grandchildren already rich/That’s a lot of brown chil’run on your Forbes list”—is the best of many flexes on the album. Likewise, Jay’s assertion on the same song that “Over here we measure success by how many people successful next to you/Here we say you broke if everybody is broke except for you” echoes a form of cooperative economics. Communal connections thread the album, coming to a head on the sinuous “Friends” which finds the Carters recognizing comrades (and frenemies, probably) as the bedrock of their prosperity. When “did it on my own” rhetoric is still the go-to for success stories, Jay and Beyoncé pausing to honor those in their orbit who ground them is as admirable as it is relatable.
By and large, though, they hold the focus on themselves, staying in one another’s sight and playing off each other in a manner far removed from the honeymoon phase of “’03 Bonnie & Clyde” or “Crazy in Love.” He doesn’t even need to say anything else when he beams “it’s Beyoncé nigga, oh my god” on the synth-pop jam “Heard About Us.” Their peak synergy and star power make Everything Is Love an event, but Jay is the moon to Beyoncé’s sun. He has shown his spectacular bravado for 20 years, but we’re still getting accustomed to Bey, a woman of action over words, really talking her shit. She’s radiant here, a balladeer and trap rapper, an around-the-way girl and reigning queen all rolled into one. She works in nods to the stoner comedy Half Baked, Notorious B.I.G., Shawty Lo/Young Jeezy, and Dr. Dre by singing the hook of “Still D.R.E.,” a track her husband helped write. Her limberness on the album makes one of the best rappers to ever live look like a one-trick pony by comparison.
The Carters remain billionaires who are not interested in leaving their Blackness behind, and that, in some ways, is renegade—even if capitalism isn’t salvation. It’s what makes a song like “Black Effect,” an explicit ode to Black excellence set to a soulful soundscape courtesy of Miami producer duo Cool & Dre, so powerful. They’re still using their platform to acknowledge the history—through the names Kalief Browder, Trayvon Martin, Sarah Baartman, MLK, Malcolm X—and the current condition of Black people through affirmation and critiques of appropriation and police brutality. As director Ava DuVernay wrote in 2011 of Jay and Kanye’s Watch the Throne: “Tell me who has ‘made it’ to the highest heights and then started speaking the truth about the beauty of us, Black Folk, our souls, our bodies, our brains.” Of course, Kanye has reneged, but Jay and Bey remain committed to championing our lives and experiences.
Everything Is Love is a compromise between the spoils of Lemonade’s war and the fruits of 4:44’s labor. Jay and Bey extend an invitation to join their very public vow-renewal victory lap because we now know what it costs to get here and how expensive having it all can be. It may not be collective liberation (and why should it be?), but it is theirs. When Beyoncé declares, “We came and we saw and we conquered it all” on playful closer “LoveHappy,” it’s her final exhale, her reclamation of her throne of love pulled straight from the tongue of colonizers. Within this complex, messy and beautifully Black display, the Carters find absolution.


Hype. It's a bitch. Ascending mediocre bands to heights of unwarranted popularity, and smacking the truly great down to ...

Is This It

Hype. It's a bitch. Ascending mediocre bands to heights of unwarranted popularity, and smacking the truly great down to "critics' pet" status, hype has become a plague on any band hoping to achieve unbridled adoration among music elitists. When the media hounds smell success and respond with their annual cry of "saviors of rock and roll," disappointment is inevitable. So it goes with the Strokes, a band that's seen enough publicity in 2001 to make bin Laden jealous.
Touted by the press as "the forefathers of a bold new era in rock," "the greatest rock band since the Rolling Stones" and "the second coming of the Velvet Underground," the Strokes have nowhere to go but out of style. And the album only came out last week! So why all the fanfare? Are they really that good? Of fucking course not. There is no bold new era in rock; the Rolling Stones have yet to be contended with; and if there ever is a second coming of the Velvet Underground, they won't be doing second-rate imitations of Lou Reed.
The Strokes are not deities. Nor are they "brilliant," "awe-inspiring," or "genius." They're a rock band, plain and simple. And if you go into this record expecting nothing more than that, you'll probably be pretty pleased. See, while I can't agree with the Strokes' messianic treatment, I'd be lying if I said I thought Is This It was anything other than a great rock record.
What's refreshing to me about the Strokes is that, in a musical climate where even the dirtiest garage bands can create the illusion of million-dollar studio techniques through sound filters on mom's Packard-Bell, the Strokes prefer to rock in the classic vein: no laser sounds, no ethereal reverb, no pre-programmed Aphex beats. Their influences are so firmly rooted in the post-punk tradition that it's as if the last two decades had never occurred. The same names are always dropped: the Velvet Underground, Television, the Stooges. And while the Velvets are obviously a major source of inspiration, the Strokes' only similarity to Television and the Stooges is the confidence with which they play.
Frontman Julian Casablancas' vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to early Lou Reed, but where Reed seemed to accidentally dispense life-changing lyrics through a drugged drawl, Julian sings about the simple trivialities of big-city life with stark lucidity. These songs revolve around frustrated relationships, never coming near to approaching anything that might resemble insight. Yet, with Casablancas' self-assured, conversational delivery, and the almost primal energy of the four guys backing him, attention shifts from the simply present lyrics to the raging wall of melody these guys bang out like it's their lifeblood.
There's a hint of Britain's post-punk 70s in the Strokes' frenetic furor. Bands like the Buzzcocks and Wire subscribed to a similar less-is-more production aesthetic, and seemed naturally adept at scribbling out instantly approachable melodies. And like Singles Going Steady (and, to a lesser extent, Pink Flag), there's something in the Strokes' melodies that few other bands possess: they're immediate without pandering, relying on the instant gratification of solid, driving rhythms while maintaining strong but simple hooks that seem somehow familiar, yet wholly original.
Their production is stripped raw, and not terribly divergent from that of their band-of-the-moment contemporaries, the White Stripes. But the difference between the two bands lies in their degrees of skill: the Stripes have an air of amateurishness that belies songwriter Jack White's obvious talents; the Strokes, even on their debut album, sound like experienced professionals for whom mastering the form seems only an album away.
"The Modern Age" stomps like a renegade elephant with bashed kickdrums and turbulent guitar riffs while Casablancas passionately reels off, "Work hard and say it's easy/ Do it just to please me/ Tomorrow will be different/ So this is why I'm leaving," in an unsteady sing-speak that invokes all the right elements of a great rock leadman. "Last Nite" quakes with growled vocals and bluesy, blustery distortion. "Hard to Explain" eerily recalls the blissful pop of the Wrens' Secaucus with an unforgettable hook, distorted drumkits and fuzzed-out ride cymbals.
Of course, none of this changes the fact that Is This It lacks the creativity and unconventionality inherent in any of the all-time great rock bands they're so impulsively compared to. Still, the Strokes have struck an incredible balance between the two extremes of rock music: sentimentality and listlessness. Any sentimentality in these songs' lyrics is countered by Casablancas' self-reliant indifference, and his listless delivery is offset by the band's fervid attack. Beyond that, it's hard to pinpoint what exactly it is about the Strokes that keeps me listening. All I know is that it's not easy to come by, and I like it. A lot.


The indie rock vet’s intimate songwriting comes to life in blossoming arrangements seemingly plucked straight out of a vintage California bachelor pad.

Paint a Room

Chris Cohen writes songs so gentle and sweet they seem to practically nuzzle up against you, but he hasn’t always intended to be a steward of comfort. “I think that there’s something in my music that people misinterpret as like, contentment or being chill,” he told Flaunt in 2020, lamenting the times he’s noticed his laid-back bedroom pop crop up as background music in restaurants or at Urban Outfitters. “It might be something that I’m not succeeding at as a musician that makes people think that I think the world is fine and we should just feel good,” he said. “That’s like, the last thing that I want people to get from my music.”
Cohen’s curse may just be that he’s too adept at crafting gorgeous, heavenly little songs. If there’s one throughline between the various projects he’s been a part of—be it Deerhoof, Weyes Blood, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, or the Curtains—it’s this sense of him tapping out cracks in the edges of soft pop without ever letting it shatter. “Damage,” the opening track off Paint a Room (his first new album in five years) puts this dichotomy front and center: As Cohen, dismayed, sings about how abuses of power manifest in society, a summery bed of horns courtesy of Jeff Parker envelops his dread in a pastoral calm. “Somebody’s love was shot down again,” he coos, just moments before a smooth saxophone solo swirls into view.
Paint a Room is full of these types of frozen-in-time vignettes, as Cohen’s intimate songwriting comes to life in blossoming arrangements seemingly plucked straight out of a vintage California bachelor pad. Inspired by Uruguayan and Brazilian artists like Eduardo Mateo and Milton Nascimento, who pushed their folk pop to proggy, boundless new places in the ’70s and ’80s, Cohen lines his songs with flutes, congas, and Clavinets that instill a psychedelically tropical lilt. At times, the subtly pretty haze can threaten to dissipate into thin air, but its highs demonstrate why Cohen remains one of indie rock’s most quietly wondrous songwriters.
Cohen’s melodies convey everything his songs need completely on their own (he typically plots out all his chords and phrasings well in advance of figuring out what to actually say). His hooks can feel so simple and intuitive that it’s as if they’ve always been there: The central piano motif in “Dog’s Face” materializes as gracefully as a mist unspooling over the Bay, before a lightly dissonant guitar riff begins to pulse like distant thunder. The ghostly keyboard riff in “Randy’s Chimes” creeps around as if it were solving a mystery, while “Physical Address” cruises on a playful bossa-nova groove that glides up and down like a kid riding an elevator. When Cohen does attempt to say something more concrete with his lyrics, his concerns tend toward searching for hope in the modern day. On the radiant “Sunever,” he speaks to a transgender child about the future: “Up and up you climb, soon you’ll leave us far behind,” he murmurs tenderly, promising them that “you’re gonna find a way” and letting a joyous fiddle paint the path.
Vibrant moments like this bring Cohen’s introverted musings to life; at other times Paint a Room’s mellowness slumps into the sedate. “Cobb Estate” rides a three-note guitar arpeggio so lackadaisical it almost feels like pre-rehearsal noodling, and the Meat Puppets-like cowpunk groove of “Wishing Well,” though intriguing as an experiment, never seems to find a melodic center to rest its heels on. Cohen’s inviting arrangements may not always strike the delicate balance between peace and uncertainty that he strives for, but when they do, his music remains as warm and rewarding as a fresh cup of coffee at dawn.


The Beastie Boys' landmark second album is remastered and reissued 20 years on.

Paul's Boutique

It’s easy to forget exactly how painted into a corner the Beastie Boys were after Licensed to Ill came out. Every complaint people harbor against so-called “hipster rap” today had its genesis in that debut album nearly 23 years ago—a bunch of upper-middle-class, never-been-battled punk rockers in leather jackets and skinny jeans bellowing knowingly obnoxious, semi-ironic lyrics—and it only escalated once the question of the inevitable follow-up came around. The only thing that would piss purists off more than the notion of three clownish white Jewish kids accidentally inventing frat-rap is the fact that they wound up ditching a beloved hip-hop label in Def Jam for the corporate juggernaut of Capitol Records. Not to mention jetting their asses to Los Angeles to cut records with the dudes who produced Tone Lōc’s “Wild Thing.” When Paul’s Boutique famously tanked upon release—peaking at #14 on a pre-Soundscan Billboard 200 and, even more damningly, only #24 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Top Albums chart—the haters triumphantly chortled along with 3rd Bass: “Screamin’ ‘Hey Ladies,’ Why bother?”
Twenty years later, nobody’s asking that question. Paul’s Boutique is a landmark in the art of sampling, a reinvention of a group that looked like it was heading for a gimmicky, early dead-end, and a harbinger of the pop-culture obsessions and referential touchstones that would come to define the ensuing decades' postmodern identity as sure as “The Simpsons” and Quentin Tarantino did. It’s an album so packed with lyrical and musical asides, namedrops, and quotations that you could lose an entire day going through its Wikipedia page and looking up all the references; “The Sounds of Science” alone redirects you to the entries for Cheech Wizard, Shea Stadium, condoms, Robotron: 2084, Galileo, and Jesus Christ. That density, sprawl, and information-overload structure was one of the reasons some fans were reluctant to climb on board. But by extending Steinski’s rapid-fire sound-bite hip-hop aesthetic over the course of an entire album, the Beastie Boys and the Dust Brothers more than assured that a generally positive first impression would eventually lead to a listener’s dedicated, zealous headlong dive into the record’s endlessly-quotable deep end.
There’s a lot that's already been said about the daring eclecticism and arguably irreproducible anything-goes technique with which the Dust Brothers assembled the album’s beats. The music is a big, shameless love letter to the 1970s filled with a conceptual bookend (the Idris Muhammad-sampling, ladies-man ether frolic “To All the Girls”), numerous line-completing lyrical interjections from Johnny Cash, Chuck D, Pato Banton and Sweet, and, just for kicks, nine truncated songs spliced together and stuck in at the end as a staggering 12 and 1/2-minute suite. If the sonics on It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back evoked a sleep-shattering wake-up call and 3 Feet High and Rising a chilled-out, sunny afternoon, the personality of Paul’s Boutique completed the trinity by perfectly capturing the vibe of a late-night alcohol and one-hitter-fueled shit-talk session. Even now, after being exposed to successively brilliant sample-slayers from the RZA to the Avalanches to J Dilla, it’s still bracing just how meticulous the beats are here. These aren’t just well-crafted loops, they’re self-contained little breakbeat universes filled with weird asides, clever segues, and miniature samples-as-punchlines.
There’s dozens of clever touches and big, ambitious ideas that still sound inspired: a cameo appearance by the opening drumbeats of Mountain’s “Mississippi Queen” in “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”; the manic yet seamless percussion rolls and the giddy tour through the Car Wash soundtrack on “Shake Your Rump”; the two-part slow-to-fast tweaking of late-period Beatles on “The Sounds of Science”; a sparingly-used Alice Cooper guitar riff adding a mockingly pseudo-badass counter to the whimsical Gene Harris-based soul jazz backbone of “What Comes Around.” It all gets writ large in “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” the aforementioned album-closing suite, which careens through turntablist striptease, a not-yet-throwback 808/beatboxing showcase, funk grooves of every conceivable tempo, and a Jeep-beat bass monster so massive and all-consuming that Jay-Z and Lil Wayne 2.0’d it in late 2007. Even the less-frenetic moments are sonically inventive; there’s only two acknowledged and minimally-tinkered-with samples in “3-Minute Rule,” augmented with a starkly simple bassline from MCA himself, but it’s one of the finest examples of deep, cavernous dub-style production on any golden age rap record.
And, of course, there’s Ad-Rock and MCA and Mike D themselves. Where the aesthetic of Licensed to Ill could have permanently placed them in the crass dirtbag-shtick company of “Married With Children” and Andrew Dice Clay if they’d kept it up, Paul’s Boutique pushed them into a new direction as renaissance men of punchline lyricism. They were still happily at home affecting low-class behaviors: hucking eggs at people on “Egg Man”; going on cross-country crime sprees on “High Plains Drifter”; smackin’ girlies on the booty with something called a “plank bee” in “Car Thief”; claiming to have been “makin’ records when you were suckin’ your mother’s dick” on “3-Minute Rule.” But they’d also mastered quick-witted acrobatic rhymes to augment their countless pop-culture references and adolescent hijinks. “Long distance from my girl and I’m talkin’ on the cellular/She said that she was sorry and I said ‘Yeah, the hell you were’”—we’re a long way from “Cookie Puss” here.
While each member has their spotlight moments—MCA’s pedal-down tour de force fast-rap exhibition in “Year and a Day,” Mike D having too much to drink at the Red Lobster on “Mike on the Mic,” and Ad-Rock’s charmingly venomous tirade against coke-snorting Hollywood faux-ingénues in “3-Minute Rule”—Paul's Boutique is where their back-and-forth patter really reached its peak. At the start of their career, they built off the tag-team style popularized by Run-DMC, but by ’89 they'd developed it to such an extent and to such manic, screwball ends that they might as well have been drawing off the Marx Brothers as well. It’s impossible to hear the vast majority of this album as anything other than a locked-tight group effort, with its overlapping lyrics and shouted three-man one-liners, and it’s maybe best displayed in the classic single “Shadrach.” After years of post-Def Jam limbo and attempts to escape out from under the weight of a fratboy parody that got out of hand, they put together a defiant, iconographic statement of purpose that combined giddy braggadocio with weeded-out soul-searching. It’s the tightest highlight on an album full of them, a quick-volleying, line-swapping 100-yard dash capped off with the most confident possible delivery of the line “They tell us what to do? Hell no!”
As reissues go, the 20th Anniversary re-release of Paul’s Boutique is relatively bare-bones. There’s a richer, cleaner audio mix remastered by the band, a tracklisting that splits “B-Boy Bouillabaisse” into its separate parts, and a sharp mini-gatefold package highlighting the iconic cover photo. That so little has been changed is more of a relief than a problem; between the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd samples, you’d think the clearance issues would be prohibitive. Just the fact that this album’s being reissued with all this care and attention should be enough. After Paul’s Boutique failed to move units, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that the Beasties would wind up like the protagonist of “Johnny Ryall”—with “a platinum voice/But only gold records,” reduced to obscurity while their most ambitious work faded into cutout-bin purgatory. As it turned out, they created an album we’ll probably never hear the likes of again—good thing it’s deep enough to live in forever.


Melina Duterte's careful, wise, and excellent album is the rare debut that expands the borders of a genre. It's not bedroom-pop because it sounds a certain way, but because it feels so intimate.

Everybody Works

Virtuous though it may be, patience is a difficult quality to capture in guitar rock, a medium that much prefers boldness, concision, and urgency. Perhaps that’s why Bay Area multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte’s reverence for the human capacity to wait and think and grow comes across as a revelation on Everybody Works, her first official album as Jay Som. “Take time to figure it out,” she advises on lead single “The Bus Song.” In its context, she’s caught between relationship statuses, assuring the object of her fixation that she’ll “be the one who sticks around.” As an introduction to an album full of reminders not to rush things, though, the line is a relief, enough to make you involuntarily exhale.
Bedroom pop is a genre designation that loses meaning by the year—not just as technology creeps closer to erasing any distinction between studio production and home recording, but also as the musicians associated with it develop tastes more varied and less retro than, say, Ariel Pink’s. Twenty-two-year-old Duterte made the fuzzy, dreamy, plaintive aesthetic her own on Turn Into, nine self-recorded tracks she uploaded to Bandcamp on a tipsy whim over a year ago and re-released with Polyvinyl in late 2016, billing the makeshift debut as a collection of “finished and unfinished songs” rather than a proper album. Although she made Everybody Works alone in her bedroom studio, its repertoire ranges from folk to funk to chart pop. It’s not a bedroom-pop album because it sounds a certain way, but because it feels so intimate. Most of Duterte’s elaborate songs could be mistaken for full-band compositions, yet her preference for writing and recording in solitude imbues each one with an introspective quality.
Liberated from the obligation to conform to any one sound, Duterte investigates new styles with purpose. She’s smitten with Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION, and it shows in the hooky choruses of “The Bus Song” and “Remain,” two tracks steeped in exuberant longing. With its smooth keyboards and slinky bass line, “Baybee” comes on like an R&B slow jam, but instead of steaming up the windows, it’s about seducing yourself into seeing your beloved through a rough patch: “If I leave you alone/When you don’t feel right/I know we’ll sink for sure,” Duterte coos on top of the music, like a layer of pure calm. “1 Billion Dogs” submerges anxious lyrics in a cloud of feedback that melds shoegaze, indie pop, and grunge as if it were a forgotten gem from the DGC Rarities compilation.
But the most arresting songs are the ones that defy categorization entirely. The first minute of the album, on “Lipstick Stains,” sounds the way orchestra instruments might upon waking from an afternoon nap, blinking and stretching in the sunlight. When the vocals kick in more than halfway through the track, Duterte’s murmur is just as drowsily blissful: “I like the way your lipstick stains/The corner of my smile,” she breathes. Everybody Works closes with “For Light,” an epic, seven-minute ballad that transforms a whispered promise—“I’ll be right on time/Open blinds for light/Won’t forget to climb”—into a sing-along prayer by adding in the voices of backup singers. The mood of weary resilience is reminiscent of Nick Cave’s “Push the Sky Away,” another album-closing message of encouragement that fully acknowledges the herculean effort it takes, sometimes, to merely keep going.
As that comparison suggests, Duterte has absorbed more of life’s hard lessons than most of us do by age 22. The patience that suffuses Everybody Works doesn’t reflect the naïveté of a kid who’s sure she has unlimited time to chase her ambitions and find love; it comes out of an emotionally mature view of relationships and the 10 years of work she has already put into her songwriting, taking shitty jobs and enduring family strife to become the musician she is today. “I’ll remain under your moon,” she pledges on “Remain,” an anthem of (perhaps one-sided) commitment. “Everybody Works” registers Duterte’s resentment at how easily success seems to come to the “rock star” who make her wonder, “Did you pay your way through?” But empathy wins out in the end; she makes “everybody works” a mantra, repeating the phrase as though to remind herself of the way other people’s painstaking efforts can be invisible to us.
“All of my songs are so different, but you know it’s me,” Duterte remarked in a recent Pitchfork profile. She’s right, and there’s no better indicator that a songwriter has found her voice than the ability to explore new styles and still sound like the same artist. Just a few years into her adult life, and only one album into her recording career, Melina Duterte has swept past a milestone many musicians never even get in their sights.


On his latest album, the Atlanta rapper lacks curiosity, imagination, and charisma. It’s like being whacked with a slab of styrofoam.

X

Ken Car$on networked his way from military school expulsion to dilettante hanging around two of his city’s essential beatmakers of the last decade (TM88 and Southside) to the first signee of Playboi Carti’s Opium label, all while maintaining an apathetic relationship with music. To this day he’s not a fan of R&B because it’s so “nasty” that it used to make him angry as a kid; he would rather listen to the All-American Rejects than hip-hop, and he rarely spins music that isn’t his own. The schtick he’s going for is that he’s not like other rappers. He’s too extreme, too rebellious, too much of a delinquent—which is really just a bunch of nonsense to make up for the fact that he’s a cardboard cut-out propped up by influential friends and access to great producers.
The easy way to harp on Ken Car$on’s latest album, X, would be to ask why such a supposedly singular artist made a project that sounds like a worse version of music that already exists: specifically, Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red, which was similarly based on explosive synths and 808s heavy enough to cave in a dancefloor. Carti stretched and bent his vocals to make that album feel like an immersive experience, but X isn’t a clunker just because Ken Car$on isn’t Carti. It’s because Carson lacks the curiosity, imagination, and irreverence to do anything more than lay down the same glazed Auto-Tune raps, with only rare attempts to liven them up. It’s fine not to have anything to say as long as you say it in an interesting way. If you don’t, the music winds up like X, which hits without any effect, like being whacked with a slab of styrofoam.
For rappers like Ken Car$on, without a drip of charisma, the loud and busy sounds of a production style that has been classified as “rage” makes a good cloak to hide behind. It’s a bad sign for Car$on that even still, the album is as forgettable as it is faceless. He tries to snap out of his zombie flow on “Go” by raising the energy a tick, but it’s just a distraction from an Outtatown and Starboy beat full of exciting bleeps that make it feel like you’re in the Top Gun control room. The same production duo shows out with the disorienting synths of “South Beach,” yet Car$on plays it chill rather than latching onto the weirdness. On “Intro,” he raps harder than he typically does, but all the song made me feel is a fonder appreciation for the more meditative tracks on Yeat’s 2 Alivë, which are similar in structure but have this stream-of-consciousness edge that distinguishes them. When Car$on strives to create a mood, it comes across as performative. “I do some illegal shit every night,” he vaguely raps in what’s supposed to be a badass moment in “Fuk 12,” which tracks if your idea of “badass” is Bart Simpson shooting spitballs and making prank calls.
X is such a slog that the smallest signs of taste are cause for celebration. The pitch change at the end of “Get Rich or Die” is something! When he’s listing off his drugs on “PDBMH,” the Auto-Tune is turned up and in that instant the sped-up flow is slightly (emphasis on “slightly”) reminiscent of Thug! On “MDMA” (which has a pretty amazing beat, by the way), he raps, “Everybody rockin’ all black, I wanna be different, so I’m rockin’ navy,” and it’s pretty dumb but the dumbness made me laugh. That’s something, too! If you’re here for the beats—since you’re here for the beats—it’s fairly easy to block out Car$on’s monotony and reimagine X as an instrumental album. Too bad it’s not, because we’re at max capacity of rappers whose interest in the genre doesn’t extend beyond opportunities for free clothes and IG followers. But if Ken Car$on is going to insist, he should listen to a few more rap songs first. Maybe that would help.


The NYC-based duo have collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, and William Winant, among others. Accidental Sky marks their first outing with Wilco's Nels Cline.

Accidental Sky

Regardless of whoever is sitting in with multi-instrumentalists Lin Culbertson and Tom Surgal, the White Out modus operandi remains the same: daft, improvisatory pieces that spread like runaway kudzu or sputter like an overheated Datsun, often within a single song. The NYC-based duo have collaborated with Jim O’Rourke, Thurston Moore, and William Winant among others over the years, but Accidental Sky marks their first outing with Nels Cline, the inventive avant-garde guitarist who has been a member of Wilco since 2004. The result is the band’s most abbreviated LP-sized outing, clocking in at a 38-minute length so economical that the record seems to conclude almost before it’s even begun.
Given Accidental Sky’s pointedly terrestrial vibe, this brevity proves instructive. Surgal, Culbertson, and Cline aren’t hot-wiring and joyriding across the skies in an interstellar jalopy here; they’re locked outside the hangar, desperately MacGyvering some means—any means—of ingress. By his lonesome, in combos, or with Wilco, Cline is an inventive, expressive player, but his communions with White Out tend toward the quarrelous and cerebral.
Sky is at its best when it runs the risk of suffocation. "Imperative" opens as a hashed blues, then quickly descends into a dark brew of mini-riffs, topsy-turvy synth jags, and savage little drum rolls. Flutes flutters through "Under a Void Moon" besieged by clawed noise, distended guitar, and Dada-esque utterances. At moments, White Out can sound as lost in the weeds as some listeners may feel: Culbertson’s zig-zagged wails and the pair’s bells, whistles, and effects congeal into an unstable nucleus around which guests revolve, wildly.
What’s most frustrating isn’t ultimately that Sky doesn’t make it beyond the stratosphere, but that some of these songs should go on longer; they need more space to stretch, breathe, expand into stranger, deeper realms. The album winds down with "Soft Nameless Absolute", where contemplative Cline chords are buried beneath several strains of jittery, mirroring synthesizers. There’s a generous, sunburst grandiosity to the song, which is so coherent that it seems to have wandered in from an album by a different band. Given the tendency to self-edit and considering how Cline’s guitar elbows gracefully out of the fray and "Absolute" drifts to a measured close all suggests that, artistically, White Out may be nearing the end of a well-trod path.


A concept album about killing his alter ego can’t save the impishly clever Eminem from the same tired, dated, developmentally arrested material.

Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)

The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)

Eminem used to be reckless and thrilling. In the early days, he was a cruise missile slicing through the sky with the names of his targets spray-painted on the side. He aired grievances with a bullhorn, scaffolding crude insults with dynamic turns of phrase and flashy internal rhymes. Eminem could be arrestingly clever, sometimes issuing a line as meticulously written as it was shocking, but you’d never accuse him of being subtle.
That was 22 years ago. A generation removed from The Eminem Show, his last great album, Eminem is a shadow of his former self. His lithe and menacing flow now feels antiseptic and strained. The high-pitched, manic tenor of his voice gave way to an ever-ratcheting growl; any East Coast groove or nervy West Coast slink in his beats was replaced by chintzy Casiotone melodrama. He became blocky and unwieldy, careening through tracks with the grace of a Cybertruck crashing into a ditch.
His anger and defensiveness never dissipated, though. By the time he dropped his second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, his early screeds yearning for a colorblind hip-hop meritocracy had already lost their impact—by that point, Eminem was an unavoidable cultural force. Those diatribes sound even whinier now. He remains one of the biggest-selling and most-streamed artists in the United States, but Em’s perpetually on a back foot, like a wealthy barbarian at the gates working as hard as he can to convince his critics he’s worthy of praise. His music still clearly strikes a chord for a sizable audience, but he seems to look past them, more concerned with convincing someone—anyone—that he’s the deadliest to touch a mic.
Seldom does a blockbuster album sequel recapture that initial magic; The Marshall Mathers LP 2 often felt like trying to draw the original from memory with expensive crayons. Em honed his technical skills so sharply—the lightning-speed flow on “Rap God,” the precision syllable-matching on “Legacy”—that it rendered everything sterile. Notably, he tried to distance himself from his Slim Shady character, using several songs (including the smash hit “The Monster” with Rihanna) to destroy—or at least explain away—his trollish persona. Ten years and three middling records later, he’s back to kill off his alter ego for good. The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) is his attempt at Jungian shadow work, opening the closet for a knock-down drag-out screaming match with the skeletons.
It begins with the sound of a hocked loogie. It could be Marshall Mathers trying to rid himself of the taste Slim Shady’s words leave in his mouth. Or it could just be a warning shot: This is gonna be gross. “Renaissance” functions mainly as a list of Eminem’s bona fides, comparing himself to rap legends like Big Daddy Kane and spitting lightly chuckle-worthy double entendres like, “Soon as I quit giving a fuck I started to sell a bit.” Near the end it devolves from a brash pen exercise to an attempt to shield himself from the criticism he can already feel coming. You get the distinct feeling we’ve been here before: “Premonition,” which opened Music to Be Murdered By, covered the same ground. It’s a grim harbinger that we will be exploring no new territory for the next hour.
The loose concept behind The Death of Slim Shady, as reinforced through a few skits peppered throughout the tracklist, is that this is the final showdown between Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady. Slim kidnaps Mathers, a nod to his early work, and forces the captive to write the kind of outlandish songs that made him famous. The first half of the album is a dilapidated funhouse, a cheap reconstruction of Slim Shady’s oeuvre. He opens “Trouble” by sneering, “Fuck blind people.” “Brand New Dance,” a leftover from the Encore sessions, is a three-and-half-minute diss track aimed at the late Christopher Reeve, who died in 2004. He mentions Caitlyn Jenner six times before the 30-minute mark. There are confused, angry rants about pronouns and references to South Park. It would all be outlandishly offensive if it weren’t so tired, dated, and developmentally arrested.
The album’s centerpoint, “Guilty Conscience 2,” is the ultimate standoff, the two characters meeting eyes and circling each other with hands hovering over their holsters. Em raps with two voices, one slightly affected with distortion to represent Shady, and one with a drier mix for Marshall. The two characters argue like drunken reality show contestants, scrunching their noses and waving a middle finger. Marshall limply explains that Shady’s cruelty is merely a product of his addiction, immediately decimating his own point by needlessly comparing Slim’s embarrassing antics to David Carradine’s accidental death by autoerotic asphyxiation. Slim’s retorts sound like a “debate me” guy invoking the “it’s only a joke” defense. Finally, after exhausting each other’s arguments, the two voices combine. It’s probably supposed to be a moment of absolution, but reads more like an admission of guilt. “I gave you power to use me as an excuse to be evil/You created me to say everything you didn’t have the balls to say,” they both howl. Then, as the album title promises, Marshall gains the upper hand and shoots Slim Shady dead.
The day before its release, Eminem tweeted that The Death of Slim Shady is a concept album and should, therefore, be listened to in order. It’s a long slog to get to “Guilty Conscience 2,” but there are moments of genuine inspiration along the way. Though he deflates “Fuel” with an overlong, technique-heavy tirade, Em enlists JID, one of his stylistic descendants, for a breathtaking verse. He shies away from the stadium stomp-clap bombast of his late career, selecting beats that run the gamut from goofy clarinet trap to the crisp, slithering boom-bap that marked some of his best early work. He’s still good for a dumb laugh, even if it’s a bit of a walk: “Call this sex ed with a splash of necrophilia/’Cause when I say that I’m really the evilest, I’m fucking deadass” from the otherwise bloodless “Evil.” But the album flounders, unsure of what it’s trying to say. There are five songs after the ostensible climax, none of which seem like a direction where the real, unburdened Eminem might travel.
Maybe The Death of Slim Shady is Eminem’s attempt to indict a bloodthirsty American public, to reflect the zeitgeist of book-banning ideologues and armed protestors showing up to drag storytime. Maybe it’s a treatise on addiction and how substance abuse can amplify the worst parts of yourself, causing untold harm to others. It’s hard to believe any of this in good faith, though. Eminem seems pleased to be wading back into the culture wars: He uses the term “woke BS” and complains he’s being squashed by the PC police. In “Head Honcho,” the first song after he’s “killed” Shady, he admits that “punching down ain’t beneath [him].” His sincerity has the tenor of a bad celebrity apology: “I’m sorry if you were offended, but…”
Mostly, The Death of Slim Shady just feels sad. No matter how self-aware he is about becoming the old white guy scared of a changing culture, Eminem can’t seem to get in front of that fact. He was so provocative on his first few albums not because of his lyrics—plenty of horrorcore and gangster rap records were just as gnarly—but because he anticipated the criticism his lyrics would inspire. He set up the hall of mirrors and led you right into it. Despite its dated, unnecessary content, “Brand New Dance” might be the best song here. It comes from the era when he still felt comfortable in his own skin, his gleefully provocative nature and undeniable skill sharing the same space. But now he’s stuck between contradictions; he claims to be above Slim Shady’s acidity but included that song anyway. If Slim Shady’s a mirror, as he asserts in “Guilty Conscience 2,” Marshall Mathers still can’t smash it. All the shards show the same reflection.


The debut solo album from the breakout grime MC is a detailed portrait and full-throated riot, switching between clapping back at lesser rappers and serving up smoothed-out Quiet Stormzy.

Gang Signs & Prayer

Two years ago, Michael Omari stood on the stage at the 2015 Brit Awards, shoulder-to-shoulder with a who’s who of UK rappers. Clad in all black, the MC known as Stormzy rocked along with Skepta, JME, Novelist, Jammer, Krept & Konan and dozens of others, flanking Kanye West as he performed his Paul McCartney collaboration “All Day” amid a sea of white faces in tuxedos and cocktail dresses.
It was an important moment for British hip-hop and grime in particular. For years marginalized as too violent or “gang related” and mostly shut out from Britain’s biggest pop music awards show, the heroes of the London underground had snuck in through a back door propped open by an American iconoclast. To say it had a profound effect on Stormzy—and the entire underground scene—would be an understatement.
It also marks the jumping-off point for Stormzy’s bum rush on the pop charts. The overwhelming success of “Shut Up”—the original video has now over 48 million views and the single bundled with “Wicked Skengman 4” cracked the charts—indicates a new paradigm in UK underground hip-hop. On radio shows and YouTube channels, in low-budget videos surrounded by the neighborhood squad, young MCs battle each other with pre-written “freestyles” spit over well-known beats. And it’s obvious why Stormzy has emerged from the scrum with a crown on his head: His booming voice and charisma are infectious and his 100-watt, silver-toothed smile lights up the screen.
Stormzy brings this battle rap mentality to Gang Signs & Prayer from the get-go. Opening track “First Things First” was intended “to be a punch in the face,” and the hyped-up grime rippers like “Cold” and “Big for Your Boots” are full of dire warnings to lesser rappers that might consider challenging his supremacy. But while he’s made a name for himself battling, it’s clear that he’s set his sights on something bigger: Stormzy fancies himself a crooner. He spends much of Gang Signs & Prayer going back and forth between clapping back at lesser rappers and serving up the “Stiff Chocolate” of smoothed-out Quiet Stormzy.
He goes full-on gospel on “Blinded by Your Grace, Pt. 1,” forgoing a protective autotune armor for a gentle—and pitchy—prayer. He gives it another go on “Velvet,” which also features NAO, singing declarations of love to his “princess.” It’s all painfully earnest, yet despite the cringes his croon inflicts, these moments feel essential to the ethos of Gang Signs & Prayer.
Both hard and soft, belligerent yet spiritual, Gang Signs & Prayer reveals a vulnerability belied by his 6-foot 5-inch frame and menacing glare. Even as he barks boasts on “First Things First,” he admits he’s battled depression, and he follows up the horn blasts of “Mr Skeng”—a scathing screed against doubters and dickheads—with “Cigarettes & Cush,” a tender recollection of a doomed relationship featuring Kehlani and Lily Allen. He presents these parts of himself unapologetically, juxtaposing the gang signs of his youth with the prayers from his Ghanian single mother, which quite literally grace “100 Bags” in a touching ode to her love and influence.
This dichotomy is fully realized on the album’s final track, “Lay Me Bare,” a syncopated confessional peppered with a chipmunk’d vocal sample and mechanical trap hi-hat. He bleeds for five straight minutes, admitting his brief retreat from the spotlight in 2016 was a crisis of faith that left him depressed and isolated. He relives the pain of running into his absentee father, whose first words in years are to ask for a handout rather than forgiveness—the one moment where his otherwise plaintive delivery is infused with rage. Even his catharsis is violent (“Grab this gun and aim it there/Shoot my pain and slay my fear”), taking a street-wise approach to conquering his demons.
Stormzy’s biggest hits to date have all been testosterone-charged badman anthems, but he's also trying to reveal an artist with more than one dimension. It doesn’t always work—it’s hard to ignore the shortcomings of his singing voice, and the otherwise relatable lyrics on “Cigarettes & Cush” are mired by a trite composition. But from the themes to the production choices to the sequencing, it’s a remarkably well thought out debut from the ascendant 23-year-old MC.
Even more impressive, Stormzy’s rapid rise to relevance comes independent of the major label/commercial radio industrial complex. It’s hard to imagine a major putting out a debut LP from a hardcore battle rapper with a song like the smoochy “Velvet,” but maybe that’s the point—he doesn’t need them. He’s thus far made his living playing shows, releasing Spotify singles and low-budget YouTube videos, and hyping his favorite artists on his Beats 1 radio show, #Merky. And almost exactly two years after Kanye snuck him in the backdoor at the Brits, he strode into the 2017 ceremony on the red carpet, glad-handing with Bradley Walsh and cheesing for the cameras in a crisp Burberry suit. And when Ed Sheeran brought him onstage to debut his verse on the “Shape of You” remix, the crowd’s fervent reaction proved he was anything but backup.


A little more than a year ago, Mark McGuire announced his departure from Emeralds. On his kaleidoscopic new LP, Along the Way, he wrote, played, and produced everything, stepping beyond his usual guitar tessellations to add keyboards and mandolin, drum machines and hand drums, vocals and noise. It is a meticulous solo rendering of a full band’s effort.

Along the Way

Mark McGuire does not idle: A little more than a year ago, the guitarist announced his immediate departure from Emeralds, the space-exploring Ohio trio that had emerged during the previous half-decade as a vivid, prolific syndicate for a romantic hybrid of electronica and post-rock. McGuire’s kaleidoscopic new LP, Along the Way, is, in some fashion, his post-Emeralds debut. It is, after all, his first album for Dead Oceans—a commercially accessible imprint that, after years of small experimental labels and self-releases for McGuire, might as well be a major. But before, during and after Emeralds’ steady rupture, McGuire has maintained an astonishing creative pace, appearing on nearly six dozen titles in about six years. Since the end of Emeralds, he’s recorded and released Along the Way, the hour-long Tiding III, and the playful Active Imagination EP, plus three reissues of earlier material. He just moved to Los Angeles with the hope of being more productive. McGuire lives, it seems, to make music.
Indeed, McGuire’s individual work has often bridged his instrumental virtuosity with a charming Midwestern sweetness, creating a personal workspace of skill and sentimentality. His records have often felt like momentary cocoons of memories, realms in which to get lost and simply ponder one’s existence. The explosive “Brothers (for Matt)” closed 2010’s Living with Yourself. It opened with a cassette recording of Mark and younger brother Matt hanging out with their father as children before launched into ecstatic instrumental rock and ending with a tender reverie for acoustic guitar and windswept electronics. The Sounds of Xmas, a private Christmas collection initially intended only for friends and family, let gently crisscrossing guitars twinkle beneath home recordings of seasonal memories. Even when it’s 60 and sunny outside, it’s a fully operational time machine into childhood.
Along the Way is an apogee of this dual approach to music. Again, McGuire cuts moments of his past, such as a tape recording of a “roast” of his father by friends from 1989, into complex musical webs. McGuire wrote, played, and produced everything here, stepping beyond his usual guitar tessellations to add keyboards and mandolin, drum machines and hand drums, vocals and noise. It is a meticulous solo rendering of a full band’s effort—and deservedly so, as Along the Way work as much as an empirical field guide for life as it does a mere album. In addition to the 13-track, 68-minute set, McGuire includes a nearly 8,000-word series of lyrics, essays, and acknowledgements that position this music as a sonic parable. “This is the story that turns in the heart of all mankind,” he writes, “the quest of the individual seeking the answers to the great mysteries of life.” The text follows a character from birth into the confusion of adolescence and the worry of young adulthood, where he realizes that the institutions of the world are gaining purchase of his ideas, honesty, and expression. The hero eventually ascends to “The Palace of Self”, hoping he (McGuire favors the male pronoun, perhaps as a matter of autobiographical self-reflection) might overcome those obstacles and wait for others to join. That story is the guiding force behind the album, as McGuire turns his prose into elliptical poetry that he coos like a phantom throughout the record.
Accompanied as it is by a philosophical treatise and song-by-song pontification, Along the Way runs the risk of seeming didactic. When your liner notes include sagas divided into parts divided into Romanized subsections and phrases such as “psychic predators,” “interpersonal chaos,” and “the magic underlying life,” the ideals undergirding the music threaten to overrun the music itself. Certainly, Along the Way bends somewhat to the will of the narrative its notes espouse: Opener “The Awakening” feels like a sunrise, and closer “Turiya (The Same Way)” suggests a Ratatat-ready celebration of what’s been learned. The 12-minute “The Instinct” unfurls a rather literal rendering of its accompanying drama. “The individual does not flinch, and rides right into the heart of the beast,” writes McGuire of his hero, who has emerged from his own Plato’s Cave, prepared to lash away the world’s constraints. The music suggests every Rocky training montage ever, collectively soundtracked by Manuel Göttsching’s E2–E4. And both “The Human Condition (Song for My Father)” and “For the Friendships (Along the Way)” include not just long cassette recordings of the characters their titles name but also enough major chords, incandescent harmonies, and bounding rhythms to convey the character’s slow, hopeful evolution. When the text says smile, Along the Way absolutely beams.
McGuire, however, seems too concerned with personal transcendence to closely follow the tale he outlines, especially when it involves existential anxiety or despair. Just before the record’s midpoint, for instance, the protagonist realizes that religion is a lie, that power systems are evil, and that his wisdom is inherited—essentially, he goes to a liberal arts college, discovers the bottom end of a bowl, and drops out to find himself. Aside from gobs of distorted bass and chord patterns that don’t always resolve, though, the supposedly troubled portions of the narrative still sound hopeful, as though McGuire’s chosen one knows enough to push ahead. For all the darkness McGuire suggests, he rarely pulls it into the sounds. That’s something of an easy way out, right, softening the story until the album feels more like a breezy mixtape than a document of personal crisis? It’s not exactly what Beethoven would have done.
But both on the page and in speakers, Along the Way demands a certain suspension of cynicism or, perhaps more exactly, a willingness to accept the world the way someone else has come to see it. The same new-age principles that drip through McGuire’s passionately constructed sentences and gently rendered lyrics ripple through the music, too—those neon-green guitar lines and Sunday morning piano themes, arms-outstretched synthesizer lines and B-movie action sequence drums. It’s earnest enough to be called goofy, a vacuum of irony that revels in what McGuire might kabel “the possibility of an endless string of opportunities and destinations.” That guru-like sense of wonder might push some away, especially those interested in the dexterous marathons McGuire made with Emeralds or under his own name. There’s no chest-puffing here, no braggadocio; this is only the very sincere statement of a person doing his best to work through the worries of living and share any delight he’s stumbled upon along the way.


The Shaggs' Philosophy of the World became an enduring classic for its beguiling amateurism. But in its 2016 reissue, it's easier to hear the darkness and sadness behind the Wiggin sisters' story.

Philosophy of the World

The Wiggin family of Fremont, New Hampshire were an all-American bunch. Father Austin Wiggin Jr. and Mother Annie were blessed with a lovely brood of six: Two boys, Robert and Austin III, and four daughters, Dorothy (Dot), Betty, Helen, and Rachel. However, in Austin’s eyes, his traditional-seeming clan was anything but—their existence was actually a case of cosmic circumstance. When Austin was a young child, his palmistry-practicing mother predicted that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, have two sons after she died, and that his daughters would form a successful music group. Having witnessed the first two prophecies come true, Austin decided to give his preordained fate a little push. In the mid-1960s he pulled his three eldest teenage daughters, Dot, Betty, and Helen, out of school, equipped them with guitars and drums, and dubbed them the Shaggs.
Though Austin had no real musical experience, he took quite naturally to the role of a Svengali-type manager. He demanded that the Shaggs practice all day in the family basement: While he was at work, when he came home, after dinner, and occasionally before bed (sometimes, this pre-bedtime practice was replaced by calisthenics). The Shaggs would play a song over and over and over again, until Austin deemed it perfect (or as close to the level of perfection an untrained group could reach). As Dot later explained in Songs in the Key of Z, “He directed. We obeyed. Or did our best.” Wanting to get the girls while their sound was “hot,” in 1969 after about five years of practice, Austin dragged the Shaggs to Fleetwood studio in Revere, Massachusetts, to record their first album, Philosophy of the World.
“Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options,” Half Japanese’s David Fair writes in his brief manifesto “How to Play Guitar.” “If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.” Even though they barely learned any chords, it seems safe to say that even after countless hours of practice the Shaggs never mastered their instruments. But the essence of *Philosophy of the World *lies within Fair’s words: that technical limitations can equal musical freedom.
By all accounts, the Wiggin sisters’ voices are painful—not nails-on-a-chalkboard unlistenable, but bizarre, like hearing early Animal Collective for the first time. Dot and Betty’s guitars are cheap and off-key. Helen’s drums have no consistency and jump from rumbling rolls to soft and stuttering taps for no apparent reason. The Shaggs are literally the sound of teenagers without any real training who are suddenly tasked with creating pop tunes. “It just came out of my head,” Dot explains in the reissue’s liner notes. “When I wrote the lyrics, I already had the way the song was supposed to be, the tune of it, so then I matched the melody with words and then chords with melody.” As such, the guitars follow the warbling vocals note-for-note, and since each accented word receives its own unique pitch, the plucking is acrobatic and difficult to follow. Rarely is there a moment on Philosophy of the World that feels cohesive. Yet, even though each sister moves at her own tempo, somehow the structure never falls apart. There’s something intriguing about the noises the Shaggs create and the way they become catchy; chaos is negated in the same way that after enough contemplation the violent splatters of a Jackson Pollock painting become calming.
As the voice of the band, Dot wrote about the things she knew, the life her sisters lived, the world they dreamed of discovering. The Philosophy of the Shaggs, as explained via the chorus of the album’s self-titled opener (“you can never please anybody in this world”) is one of moxie, faith, and pragmatic emotional compromise. While the longings of other girl groups of the late 1960s were also marked by melancholy, an unsettling sense of darkness permeates the Shaggs’ songs, especially when one considers the forceful conditions under which they were created. Perhaps if the same lyrics were Spectorized and accompanied by some claps or twinkly piano they would come off as less nervous. But instead, the combination of the Shaggs’ creaky chords, jumpy vocals, and irregular melodies ring an alarm that something is off. Take “Who Are Parents,” a creepy call-and-response ditty about the righteousness of guardians, the ones who really care, the ones who are always there. “Some kids think their parents are cruel/Just because they want them to obey certain rules,” Dot sings, sternly beseeching other youths to stick to their morals. “Then they start to lean from the ones who really care/Turning, turning from the ones who will always be there.” “Who Are Parents” fails as a family anthem and instead is a haunting example of the pressure and fear Austin instilled in his daughters.
Most of the Shaggs’ lyrics reflect their strict upbringing and ensuing social anxiety. On “I’m So Happy When You’re Near,” Dot and Betty unite to sing about the sadness that arrives when the song’s subject departs. In between verses, the Shaggs’ countless hours of practice truly shine with some intricate guitar work. Shortly after, “Sweet Thing” delivers a tale of woe and is perhaps the strongest display of anger the Wiggin sisters  muster. “You used to make me happy/Now you make me sad/You’ve told me many lies/I’ve never told you one,” Dot points out in the same, even voice used throughout the record, even though she’s sharing a deep moment of betrayal. The pain truly shines when Betty squawks “Hurt you, hurt you,” like a stuck toy. Out-of-tune, sharp moments like these could be overlooked as amateur, but they are really the rare occasions when fervor seeps out.
The Shaggs’ introspection is best explored on “Things I Wonder” and “Why Do I Feel?.” The former slogs along with the simple chorus “There are many things I wonder/There are many things I don’t/It seems as though the things I wonder the most/Are the things I never find out.” Even from reading those words in your head, they are so clearly jumbled, so unbalanced. Beneath Dot and Betty’s stiff, severely accented vocals, Helen’s drums rumble and clang. Yet these elements are so unchanging that “Things I Wonder” becomes hypnotic. “Why Do I Feel?” is less repetitive and rather than just discussing the unknown, the Shaggs seem to be truly wondering. “Why do I feel the way I feel?,” they ask, drawing out each word with longing. “My Pal Foot Foot” has become a Shaggs anthem of sorts: a drawing of the legendary cat adorned the cover of a 1988 compilation album as well as many arms and legs of ardent fans. Their clumsy search for a roaming cat sounds like it is being delivered at the edge of a cliff. “Foot Foot…,” one of the sisters nervously murmurs. It’s sing-songingly charming in the way that nursery rhymes are until you realize the dark underlying message. All of this considered, there are perhaps only two purely innocent songs on Philosophy of the World, the radio-worshipping  “My Companion” and “It’s Halloween.” “It’s Halloween” and its talk of ghouls seemingly could have been sung by the Peanuts gang three years earlier in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
When Austin died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1975, the Shaggs immediately disbanded and resumed normal lives, working blue-collar jobs and starting families. “We figured when we ended it and we went on with our own lives, that that was the end of it,” recalls Dot. “That was one life, and now another.” But destiny had other plans for the Wiggin girls, who had yet to become the popular group of their grandmother’s prophecy. Even though 900 of the 1000 copies of Philosophy of the World produced disappeared immediately, the record managed to fall into the hands of influential obscure music fans who were drawn to discordant sounds produced by three sisters from New Hampshire. By 1980, new fans were introduced to Philosophy of the World thanks to a reissue campaign led by the band NRBQ.
The Shaggs were quickly embraced by the exact opposite audience Austin desired: the longhaired avant-garde intellectuals. Listeners were amazed by this music that seemed ahead of its time, and totally different than what one might expect if they handed three teenage girls instruments with little instruction. The Shaggs pre-dated the trend of making music that sounds untrained; they probably would have hated Beat Happening. “I don’t know anything about music,” Captain Beefheart told Lester Bangs in 1980. But the big difference between Beefheart and the Shaggs comes down to intention. Whereas Don Van Vliet was improvising and experimenting, the Shaggs were simply surviving.
On top of the musical strangeness, there are the universal sentiments that the Wiggin girls capture, their juvenile dreams and desires illustrated as intimate. Big ideas become small and accessible in their voices: Don’t you remember when you felt scared, sad, or alone? So do the Shaggs, and it’s comforting to relate. Kurt Cobain called Philosophy of the World one of the top five records of all time—what did he hear in the Shaggs? Perhaps he was entranced by what he saw as raw innocence.
But in truth, contemporary listeners and critics will never identify with the Shaggs because their words are not for us.
Since Philosophy of the World became a cult classic in the ’70s and ’80s, critics have been quick to label the Shaggs as outsider musicians. But if the outsider music genre is meant to be the logical counterpart to outsider art, the Shaggs do not quite qualify. Yes, their bumpy music pays no attention to conventional practices, yes, by all means they are amateur. But they had certainly heard mainstream music like Herman’s Hermits and sources differ on whether or not they received music lessons. Outsider art, and therefore music, is meant to come from an undisturbed place. “Here we are witness to the artistic operation in its pristine form, something unadulterated, something reinvented from scratch at all stages by its maker, who draws solely upon his private impulses,” said Art Brut founder Jean Dubuffet.
The Shaggs were forced to make music by a father who physically removed them from school. While the Shaggs may have been expressing genuine emotions, it was not of their free will. “It’s just something we had to do,” one sister recalls in an interview with the BBC. One might consider the anecdote that the Shaggs would occasionally sneak away from practice to a nearby lake and then rush home as if they had been rehearsing. Calling them outsiders negates the trauma that is deeply rooted within their music. Austin emphasized over and over how “pure” the Shaggs were, how they were “unaffected by outside influences.” But their purity is that of claustrophobia. Outsider artists are expected to possess a degree of unconsciousness that acts as a path into the profound psyche. But the Wiggin sisters were self-conscious teenagers. Their peers tossed soda cans at them. Even though Dot’s lyrics clearly come from a significant place within (her adolescent anxieties) the difference is that of writing a daily journal to share with a classroom of peers versus writing a diary entry before bed.
If new or old fans wish to experience a pure version of the Shaggs, check out 1982’s Shaggs’ Own Thing, a collection of unreleased recordings and covers. Shaggs’ Own Thing finds the Wiggin girls to be playful and free of anxiety, perhaps because there’s no clear-cut purpose behind the recordings. The covers (which include versions of the Carpenters) are faithful, graceful even. It’s a drastic shift from Philosophy, which comes off as even more abrasive and awkward in comparison. But Philosophy of the World is the realest version of the Shaggs, flaws and force in full-view. A teenage symphony this is not.