Nelly’s 2000 debut brought the life and sound of St. Louis to the world. It’s a syntactical maze of local culture that doubled as a flier for the greatest party you could ever imagine.

Country Grammar

It was April 1999, and Nelly was driving his close friend City Spud to a St. Louis police station. The pair were so inseparable and looked so much alike that they were often mistaken for brothers. They liked that, though Nelly and City would eventually dispell the notion. When Nelly dropped City at the precinct, it was the last time they would see each other before their lives split off into wildly different trajectories.
Days earlier, City, born Lavell Webb, was party to a botched robbery. He’d just quit his job at a North County McDonald’s and was relying on small-to medium-time weed deals to keep the lights on. On April 15, he was supposed to meet a potential customer for a $1,500 transaction. Customer gets off work, calls the pager, money and product change hands. Simple. The problem? Webb doesn’t have a car. The only person he found to drive him had proposed a new plan: instead of the arranged handoff, they’d rob the buyer, netting a grand for the driver and $500 for Webb, who could simply stay in the car.
Webb reluctantly agreed and waited in a parking lot near the mark’s home while the driver, masked and armed, headed out on foot. Minutes ticked by. Then: gunshots. Webb turned his head and saw his accomplice running back to the car; when he slumped into the driver’s seat, he was holding only $30. “Man, I had to pop him,” he said.
Police found the victim wounded but alive. He told the cops that his assailant knew about the $1,500 in his pocket, information that could have come from only one source: Lavell Webb.
Word trickled out that the cops were looking for him. Webb’s grandmother and her husband, who had been visited by detectives, urged him to have someone take him down to talk to the police. The husband told the Riverfront Times in 2001 that he feared what would happen if Webb laid low: “These trigger-happy cops—a young black man fleeing—were going to kill him.”
Barely more than a year after the robbery gone wrong, Webb would have four production credits and a show-stealing guest verse on Country Grammar, one of the best-selling rap albums of all time. But his royalties would only be topping off commissary accounts. Despite turning himself in, aiding with the investigation, and even helping to search for the gunman, Webb was arrested and charged. He eventually plead guilty to first-degree robbery and one count of armed criminal action, and was sentenced to ten years on the former, three years on latter, to be served concurrently. (Missouri’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws required that he serve 85 percent of his time before the possibility of parole.) Without his confession, the only evidence police had was circumstantial.
Just after City was locked up, Nelly would become a global superstar in commercial tugs-of-war with N’SYNC and Britney Spears. He and City’s work with the St. Lunatics—a tight-knit group of friends they met in high school and on youth sports teams—would define rap in St. Louis for years to come and net them millions upon millions of dollars. Kids across the country learned to wrap their tongues around “It’s all good—Range Rover, all wood” all while the man who rapped that sat in a jail cell because he didn’t actually have a car. Two friends diverged because the criminal justice system, and life itself, can be cruel and arbitrary. But Country Grammar was different: Country Grammar was a statement of purpose that gave order to the corner of the world Nelly and his friends inhabited, a syntactical maze of local culture that doubled as a flier for the greatest party you could ever imagine.
It almost never happened. Born in the fall of 1974 in Austin as the son of an Air Force man and a mother who worked mostly in fast-food restaurants, Nelly bounced from city to city. His parents divorced before he was ten years old; he was kicked out of a handful of schools, often for fighting other students. “There was a point in time when my mother couldn’t afford to keep me, and my father couldn’t afford to keep me, so I lived with friends, grandparents,” he told Rolling Stone in 2000. “When you a kid, that type of shit affects you. You don’t see that it’s not because they can’t afford you, you just feel that they don’t want you.”
He eventually settled with his mother in University City, a suburb on St. Louis’s West side. Nelly was an exceptional athlete, a shortstop who wore #1 and did backflips like Ozzie Smith, who was good enough to be invited to prospect camps for the Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Brewers, and even the Cardinals. He also played wide receiver and led his high school team—the same high school that Tennessee Williams went to—in catches. But his time was divided between sports and another kind of extracurricular: “Nelly was going to either be a number-one rapper or a number-one drug dealer,” Murphy Lee, a friend and member of the St. Lunatics, told Rolling Stone. “One or the other.”
And so the legal perils, grave and petty, that plagued so many kids in University City were a constant threat. On “Greed, Hate, Envy,” one of the first songs on Country Grammar, Nelly says he “opened up shop at 13”— dimes, dubs, quarter-sacks, and o-zs. Later on the song, he dedicates a whole verse to an imagined traffic stop, where he taunts the officer, brandishes a squeaky-clean glove box, then laments as he drives off: “You could tell he was pissed ‘cause the black man in the black Range/Doing black things with his black change/Doing the right thing—driving his ass insane.” (”Greed, Hate, Envy” was produced by City Spud.) On the album’s emotional closer, “Luven Me,” Nelly credits his mom for echoing City’s grandparents. Quoting her: “Ain’t nothing I can do when them laws get they hands on you.”
By 1993, Nelly had teamed up with City Spud, Ali, Kyjuan, and Kyjuan’s little brother, Murphy Lee, to form the St. Lunatics. Save for Murphy, the ‘Tics were finishing up or already graduated from high school. (When Country Grammar came out in 2000, Nelly was 25, but shaved four years off his age for the press, a discrepancy that was quietly corrected later in his career.) A sixth member, the perpetually masked Slo’ Down, was subsequently added to and then dropped from the group, though he was functionally a hype man and had little creative input. The group had some early success in 1996, scoring a serious local hit “Gimme What U Got” that sampled Le Pamplemousse and Tom Tom Club and buried vocals from “La Di Da Di” deep in the mix. In the video, the ‘Tics stood in a line and danced; they quoted Rakim; they skipped through comically calm barbershops. It was fun, it was summery.
On record, Ali was the group’s de facto leader: gruffer and more guttural than the other members, clearer and more commanding. That’s him in the Brett Favre jersey, heading straight to the bar for Henny and Coke. But the last verse belongs to Nelly. There’s a rambunctious verve to his delivery—maybe a little too freewheeling for the track—and a magnetism that cuts through even the goofiest camera work.
Despite the considerable buzz that the single generated around St. Louis, labels wouldn’t bite. “We were shopping the Lunatics at the time,” Nelly told Complex in 2015. “And nobody was tripping off our sound or giving us a shot.” Eventually, the group settled on a strategy: pitch one artist as a solo act to get a foot in the door and come back for the rest as soon as possible.
A CD made its way to one of Mase’s managers, and Nelly flew to New Jersey to flesh out a demo. He landed on four songs: “E.I.,” “Ride wit Me,” “Batter Up,” and “Hot Shit,” which would later be retitled “Country Grammar.” When he finally secured a contract, it was with a young A&R at Universal named Kevin Law, who had never before signed a new artist. (The Lunatics also landed a group deal, but it was contingent on Nelly’s record hitting certain sales thresholds.)
Universal agreed that Nelly was a better bet on his own, but his record was still far from a priority. The ten songs not included on the demo tape were finished in New York in “three weeks in a little shithole studio and a little-bitty-ass budget,” as Nelly characterized the situation to Rolling Stone. The album was slated for a summer 2000 release.
At first, the label was reticent to go with “Country Grammar” as the lead single, despite its popularity in St. Louis. They set aside $150,000 for the video—a sizable budget by today’s standards, but practically a vote of no-confidence at the turn of the century. Law came up with the now-famous radio edit (the percussive boom-boom in place of “street-sweeper” in the chorus) and sent it out to DJs before Nelly had even heard it.
With the benefit of hindsight, the song and its video seem like Nelly distilled. It opens with him tapping on the camera to get your attention: there’s Nelly, shirtless under a blue sky and the Gateway Arch, a red Cardinals cap laid backwards over a white durag, chain dangling. More accurately, it was a codification of the most interesting elements in the early St. Lunatics work, a fledgling style isolated and carried to its radical end. The bounce and swing that had served as undercurrents on “Gimme What U Got” became “Country Grammar”’s driving force; the chaos of Nelly’s early raps was quieted, the energy channeled into a sing-song delivery that made drive-by shootings sound whimsical.
It’s difficult to think of a music video that puts on more aggressively for its city. The block party scenes were shot a block away from Nelly’s Labadie Avenue home; there are Cardinals jerseys, Blues practice sweaters, Orlando Pace Rams jerseys worn backwards in the thick of the Greatest Show On Turf era. “Country Grammar” was so irresistible that Michael Jackson called Nelly personally to express his love for the song, then gave the Lunatics tickets to his show, where they were seated beside a pre-“Apprentice” Donald Trump. Trump, like Michael, was a fan, and particularly appreciated the shout-out Nelly gave him in the song’s third verse. (Both Jackson and Trump caught barbs elsewhere on Country Grammar: on “Tho Dem Wrappas,” Nelly says he’ll have “SoundScan like Thriller without changing my face,” and on “E.I.,” he raps about booking “a room at Trump Towers just to hit for three hours.”)
Country Grammar often feels like a Trojan Horse for the St. Lunatics. “Steal the Show,” “Batter Up,” “Wrap Sumden,” and “Thicky Thick Girl” feature members in various combinations. The diction—as Cedric The Entertainer, who invited the ‘Tics to perform at his shows when they were starting out, puts it on the album’s intro, “Puttin’ them two capital Rs in everything”—gives it a thoroughly regional air. The syntax has the same effect: girls are thicky thick girls, everybody’s “Mo.” At points, the album finds crevices in St. Louis’s underbelly or in Nelly’s psyche, but its natural habitat is a weekend afternoon, when friends lazily assemble, roll up, make liquor store runs, and try to conjure the perfect plan for later. It’s right there in “E.I.”’s operative question: “What’s poppin’ tonight?”
Nelly brings the parties to life with a charming specificity. In the verse from “E.I.” that ends in a Trump Towers suite, Nelly makes a shower and outfit change sound like a carefully executed heist. And the house party on “Steal the Show” spills out where it doesn’t belong: “Neighbors on the lawn, like, ‘Nelly, why right here?’” (”Here,” of course, is “hurr.”) The production, handled principally by Jay E and City Spud, often sounds like it could have been lifted from Hot Boys sessions, but benefits from bits of country flair and from the Midwest swing that Nelly brings to the mix.
St. Louis is rendered mostly in glimpses and fragments: the corner of Natural Bridge Avenue and Kingshighway Boulevard is pinpointed without elaboration, and the Plaza Frontenac, an upscale mall, is made to sound like the Taj Mahal. We hear about basketball hoops fashioned from milk crates and illicit monopolies in North County. There’s little hand-holding for outsiders, but plenty of hints at the gloss or horror that’s lurking six blocks in any direction.
The singles aside, Country Grammar’s two most thoughtfully written songs are also its best. “Utha Side” is like a reimagination of Masta Ace and Marley Marl’s “The Other Side of Town” for the dot-com boom, with crack swapped out for speed of all varieties. The song ends with a verse that manages to sound poised, even cool, while urging kids to stay in school—which makes Nelly’s eventual beef with a pious KRS-One all the more amusing. And “Luven Me” is endlessly touching: Nelly remembers his mother scraping together money to buy him name-brand clothing, only for him to turn around and sell dope on her front lawn and wreck two of her cars.
Cars are Country Grammar’s prevailing motif. Navigator, black sedan DeVille, red Expedition, a hooptie with insurance, the Mercedes, Cutlasses on the riverfront, the Range Rover the cops pull over. So maybe it’s unsurprising that the album’s highest-charting single is about driving. “Ride Wit Me” was issued to radio in April 2001—ten months after Country Grammar came out, and exactly two years after City Spud was arrested and charged. It’s an absurdly catchy song, full of slick guitar and feigned frustration and cash-couched call-and-response. It’s propulsive. Nelly talks with sheer, unmitigated joy about washing his hands of cocaine or about putting cars in his own name now, without his mom’s co-signature; he raps, “Damn, shit done changed now/Running credit checks with no shame now.” City’s verse is unveiled after a huge, climactic crescendo, as if he were an A-list guest, not a kid from the Midwest who got caught up because he caught a ride with the wrong person.
By the time Nelly’s second album came out, in 2002, he was wearing a band-aid on his cheek as a tribute to City; the St. Lunatics album, which Universal did release after all, was named Free City. City was finally freed in 2008. There was certainly plenty of money to go around—Country Grammar would eventually be certified Diamond—but any realistic hope of breaking City as a mainstream star had passed. Nelly’s album from 2008, Brass Knuckles, debuted at No. 3, but was buoyed by bankable guest stars like Usher, Rick Ross, T.I., Nate Dogg, LL Cool J, and Snoop Dogg. (That list is from the first four songs.) What’s more, the instantly identifiable St. Louis sound that the Lunatics forged had been largely abandoned in favor of neo-G-Funk and aping T-Pain.
So the moment was gone, and with it the industry’s brief fascination with St. Louis (see: Chingy, J-Kwon). A singular, irrepressibly fun record that serves, at least in part, to honor friends and makeshift family became a sensation while one of those family members was locked away. And when they were reunited, Nelly no longer had the muscle or magic to turn every camera in the country to him, to St. Louis. His creative peak, though, was captured at exactly the right time. No matter how the sands shift around him, Nelly’s still there on the album cover, staring down, head cocked to the side, the Arch looping back behind him.


Recorded outdoors during the pandemic with bassist Anna Butterss and guitarist Jeff Parker, the Chicago percussionist’s sunny, vibey jazz record brings back a distinct era of rediscovery and anti-nostalgia.

Lados B

If it sounds like Daniel Villarreal is rediscovering his drum set in real time in the opening moments of Lados B, that’s because—in a way—he is. He creates a groove one thwack at a time, poking gingerly at his cowbells and woodblocks as if to make sure they still work, building a curtain of percussion for nearly a minute on “Traveling With” before bassist Anna Butterss and guitarist Jeff Parker come in. The sessions of “high-level spontaneous music” documented on Lados B were recorded in October 2020 and represent the first time any of the three participants collaborated with another living musician after the beginning of the COVID pandemic––an arrangement possible thanks to International Anthem founder Scottie McNiece, who allowed the three to record in his backyard in L.A. There are no bird chirps or distant lawnmowers to let you know they’re recording outside, but there’s a lot of sunshine on this low-slung funk record—and a bit of bittersweet anti-nostalgia for the generator shows, street-corner open mics, and outdoor jams that defined the first stirrings of live music on the other side of lockdown.
Some of these recordings ended up on Panamá 77, Villarreal’s debut from last year, but Lados B zooms into the raw material recorded during their two-day jaunt in McNiece’s garden. Panamá was fierce and fiery, with Villarreal seemingly hell-bent on meeting the high stakes hanging over any debut album. Lados B is looser, and the tempo rarely exceeds a mid-tempo lope; on “Things Can Be Calm,” he ditches his kit entirely to play kalimba through a ghostly patina of metallic echo. Rather than a clattering virtuoso attacking his drums, it’s easier to imagine Villarreal as a sturdy and sedentary presence—the bole of a mighty tree, with his arms as the branches and the continuous wall of percussion as the rustling of the leaves. Butterss’ basslines are spare and precise, resting atop Villarreal’s beds of percussion. Parker borrows some tricks from his great 2021 album Forfolks, including using a looping pedal to elongate single notes and create lustrous ambient drones that free him from the obligation of playing chords.
The overall vibe is less reminiscent of Panamá 77 than Butterss and Parker’s last collaboration: the sumptuous live album Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, which is a thousand times more fun and front-porch-friendly than an improvised double album named for a David Foster Wallace reference has any right to be. That album folded hip-hop beats and ambient textures into its stately tribute to cool West Coast jazz, and so does Lados B, which has fewer tracks than Panamá but is slightly longer despite advertising itself as an album of B-sides (the literal translation of its title). The band nicknamed the garden in which they recorded “Chicali Outpost,” a reference to its California locale and to Parker and Villarreal’s roots in the fertile Chicago jazz scene International Anthem has been documenting for almost a decade. On top of sounding like the kind of place Hemingway might’ve sipped cool rum cocktails and pecked out a novella, it’s a name true to the record’s spirit: the restlessness and open-mindedness of the Chicago scene, pitched at the woozy tempo of G-funk and Palm Desert stoner rock.
International Anthem likes to follow up its tentpole releases with albums that serve as prequels, hyperlinks, or featurettes. A few months ago, UK saxophonist/poet Alabaster DePlume followed up his spoken-word epic Gold with an album called Come With Fierce Grace that documented the sessions from which the record emerged. Lados B serves a similar function to Fierce Grace and likewise inhabits a completely different sound and mood than its predecessor. The jams on Lados B sound slightly tentative at times; Parker never quite figures out what to do on opener “Traveling With,” and nearly all the songs begin with one musician introducing an idea and the others following, betraying the songs’ roots as essentially warm-ups. But it’s a testament to the trio’s formidable skills that Lados B hangs together despite the circumstances of its creation. On top of its bona-fides as a warm-weather album, Lados B provides the pleasure of hearing three top-tier players rediscover the joys of playing with each other in real time.


Bob Mould is at his best when he’s articulating anger at a high volume. His newest solo album, Patch the Sky, succeeds largely because these furious songs sound as if they're hardwired to raw nerves.

Patch the Sky

If ever there was a case to be made for the late career hot streak, Bob Mould is making it. After spending much of the 2000s lost in a fog of self-examination that didn’t always make for compelling music, Mould roared back in 2012 with Silver Age, a record on which he once again embraced the loud guitars of his storied Hüsker Dü youth. He also appeared to stop fighting against one of his greatest talents: the ability to write perfect pop-punk songs that feel and sound like getting punched in the face (in the best possible way). 2014’s Beauty & Ruin mined similar sonic territory, furthering the rip and roar of Silver Age without necessarily bettering it.
On Patch the Sky Mould seems to be at peace, if not with the world at large, at least in regards to the way he can best address it. He may always be one of rock and roll’s great contrarians—angry, angsty, and loud—but after nearly 35 years of making records, he no longer seems determined to be kicking against his own strengths. In fact, he's finally embracing them. “I’m a really good rhythm guitar player, a fair vocalist, and a pretty simple songwriter,” Mould recently told the New York Times. “Now that I’ve come to accept that, it’s much easier to work with.” To that end, Patch the Sky has a remarkable sense of clarity—playing like a record that is less concerned with reinventing the wheel as opposed to simply refining it.
“Can I find some truth within the noise?” Mould asks on opening track “Voices in My Head.” It’s a question that the rest of Patch the Sky answers with a resounding yes. The best tracks on the record are the most furiously full-throttled, many of which threaten to drown out Mould’s voice entirely. “The End of Things” lets fly with one of the best riffs Mould has written in a decade, bashed out with the kind of stupid raw enthusiasm that brings to mind the best of his Sugar output back in the ’90s. Similarly, tracks like “Daddy’s Favorite,”  “Pray For Rain,” and “Hands Are tied” (a punked out rave up that revs up and explodes in under two minutes) all provide the gleeful no-nonsense squall of the world’s most amped garage band.
Joined by drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy, Mould seems to be having a genuinely good time here, even when the subject matter veers directly (and somewhat predictably, for Mould) into apocalyptic territory (“Lucifer and God”) or tries to unpack frazzled relationships (“You Say You”). Mould still sounds best when he’s articulating anger at a high volume, and Patch the Sky succeeds largely because these songs sound as if they were hardwired to raw nerves. It’s only when the songs slow down slightly (“Hold On," “Black Confetti”) that they start to feel like a generic slog.
While he might never be able to duplicate the desperate urgency of his iconic punk rock past, Mould more than makes up with it in terms of sheer intensity. At 55, Mould has managed to do a bit of everything, his career having come full circle several times over. His voice—an odd, atonal yelp—still sounds the most absolutely right when paired with overdriven guitars. “I keep searching, hoping, waiting for the sun that always shines so bright on everyone,” he sings on album closer “Monument” providing a little light amid the dissonance. The songs here aren't necessarily breaking new ground stylistically, but that really isn't what matters. At this point, Mould clearly has nothing left to prove.


On her first album in five years, the goth-rock guitar virtuoso abandons her typically detached perspective to ruminate on gender, sexuality, and identity with newfound urgency.

Hunter

In the seven years since she released her self-titled debut album, British singer-songwriter Anna Calvi has reached a rarefied level of critical acclaim. Her haunting, operatic voice and complex guitar playing, rough and gentle at once, have made her the darling of the UK press. Calvi’s songs get heavy rotation on BBC Radio 6, and she has two Mercury Prize nominations to her name. But virtuosity doesn’t always yield inspiration. While 2013’s One Breath and the 2014 EP Strange Weather continued to showcase her considerable talent for lovelorn, gothic rock, they also felt a bit too familiar, as though Calvi had reached the peak of her impressive abilities too soon.
So it feels like there is a lot riding on Hunter, Calvi’s third full-length album and her first in five years. Musically, it’s on par with much of her earlier work, from the sparsity of the guitars to the way her lush, cavernous contralto swells between the searing riffs. But while she used to have the distant air of a demigoddess singing about how us mortals experience love, her perspective on Hunter feels looser, wilder, more intimate. Opener “As a Man” slinks along with finger-snaps and muted guitar licks, as Calvi whispers, “If I was a man in all but my body/Oh would I now understand you completely.” It’s ear-catching and eye-opening, this previously unseen aspect of a persona usually shrouded in theatrical pomp and romance.
“I believe that gender is a spectrum,” Calvi wrote on Instagram recently, in the same post where she announced Hunter. “I believe that if we were allowed to be somewhere in the middle, not pushed to the extremes of performed masculinity and femininity, we would all be more free.” That message—and more of Calvi’s ruminations on gender, sexuality, and identity—burst forth in every song on the album, giving her tried-and-true musical prowess a renewed sense of purpose. Her lyrics have often dealt with mysterious women, beginning with her debut single “Jezebel” and “Suzanne and I,” a sweeping track from her first album. On One Breath, she sang of “Eliza,” a woman who bewitched Calvi with her charm. But the sexuality on Hunter feels more frenzied, more carnal. The album’s cover art adds a visual element to this aesthetic: Head thrown back, slicked with sweat, Calvi looks dazed but powerful.
Hunter’s lead single, “Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy,” is the perfect encapsulation of Calvi’s new songwriting focus. In her sustained notes and androgynous vibrato, she channels the patron saint of rock‘n’roll gender benders, David Bowie. The song has a sexy swagger, its beat heavy and swaying, until the bridge, when she lets out a long, fierce primal wail, the culmination of her pent-up patriarchal angst. For an artist so controlled, it’s a thrilling moment of abandon, and you wonder if this reckless version of Calvi has always existed under the placid surface.
Calvi’s sound is recognizable enough here to please her loyal listeners: “Hunter” uses her trademark blossoming chord progressions to craft an epic ballad; her fingerwork makes a genuine lullaby of the dreamlike “Swimming Pool.” But her remarkable evolution on Hunter pushes her artistry to another level. To say that Anna Calvi has found her voice with her third album would be reductive; both literally and figuratively, her voice has always been crystal clear. Yet she’s certainly found a new way of speaking, one that uses her musical mastery to communicate something truly urgent.


The deluxe reissue of the heartland songwriter’s 1985 album reinforces its stature as the platonic ideal of a traditional American rock’n’roll record: It is direct, unfussy, and unpretentious.

John Mellencamp: Scarecrow (Deluxe Edition)

John Mellencamp: Scarecrow (Deluxe)

Scarecrow captures the moment when John Cougar Mellencamp, the rocker who once declared “Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did,” came to the conclusion, “You’ve Gotta Stand for Somethin’.” Mellencamp decided his somethin’ was the people who lived, loved, and lost in the small towns scattered across the United States, the Americans suffering from the suffocating consequences of the Reagan Revolution creeping across the country in the mid-1980s.
Smalltown America is a milieu that treated John Mellencamp well in the past, providing the backdrop for both the rousing “Jack & Diane” and the biting “Pink Houses,” a pair of hits whose popularity helped obscure the grim cynicism lingering at their core. A fatalist by nature, Mellencamp chose to battle his instincts when composing the songs for 1985’s Scarecrow, tempering his Midwestern gloom with notes of inspiration and solidarity. Take “Lonely Ol’ Night,” a cathartic rocker that served as the album’s first single: After singing it’s “a sad, sad, sad, sad feelin’ when you’re livin’ on those in-betweens,” he offers an offhand reassurance “but it’s OK,” deflating pitch black loneliness lurking in the song’s verses. Similarly, after offering a litany of anxieties on “Rumbleseat,” he ends the song on a note of self-help triumphalism that seems at odds with the roiling paranoia delivered in the previous stanzas.
All this is a deliberate choice, part of Mellencamp positioning himself as an advocate for the everyday American on Scarecrow. He was fighting for their hopes and dreams, mourning the disappearing downtown drags, and preserving the memories of the good times. There are storm clouds gathering on the horizon, peeking through on the deceptively bouncy “The Face of the Nation” and swirling on the ominous opener “Rain on the Scarecrow,” a vivid portrait of the wreckage left behind when all the farms in a town shut down. Mellencamp took this issue to heart, organizing the Farm Aid charity with Willie Nelson and Neil Young just after completing Scarecrow. The near-simultaneous release of the album and the staging of the concert created an illusion that Scarecrow had a political bent, which isn’t quite true. Save the pointed “Rain on the Scarecrow,” Mellencamp avoids antagonistic politics—despite its stirring title, “You’ve Got to Stand for Somethin’” is a stroll down Boomer memory lane that functions as a proto-“We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Throughout the album, he traffics in stories and nostalgia, painting a picture of a middle America so romantic that it could’ve served as the soundtrack for a Reagan campaign advertisement if it wasn’t for the pugnacious presentation of these songs.
Mellencamp married his vignettes of middle America with the music he associated with the heartland: the hit singles pumping on the AM airwaves throughout the 1960s. As much as he treated Bob Dylan as his spiritual guide, Mellencamp didn’t rely on earnest folk-rock for Scarecrow, nor did he indulge in baroque pop or trippy journeys to the center of your mind. He concentrated on the ravers that served as a soundtrack at frat parties, shindigs, and clambakes, the kind of hits he celebrates on “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to 60s Rock).” Mellencamp even put his longtime backing band in a boot camp of sorts, marching them through a hundred oldies prior to cutting a note of his new songs. Some of those cover versions show up on the 2022 deluxe edition of Scarecrow. Mellencamp croons sweetly on an acoustic revision of the Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk” and his band approximates a good JB’s groove on their take on James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” two tracks among the 11 pleasant, enjoyable tunes on the reissue’s bonus CD. More importantly, that woodshedding is felt within the marrow of Scarecrow. Larry Crane and Mike Wanchic intertwine to make one massive guitar roar while drummer Kenny Aronoff plays like a Charlie Watts with no patience for jazz. It’s impassioned, defiant rock’n’roll that serves as a retort to stylish, synthesized glamor being peddled by MTV in the mid-1980s.
Mellencamp was hardly the only rocker to recoil from the glossier sounds of the 1980s. College rock radio overflowed with cowpunks and Paisley Underground revivalists, not to mention the Byrdsian jangle of R.E.M. and their legion of disciples. The connection did not go unnoticed on the part of those seminal college rockers. R.E.M. would hire producer Don Gehman in the wake of his work on Scarecrow, recording their 1986 album Lifes Rich Pageant in Mellencamp’s studio. Peter Buck explained at the time, “I just like the sound of his records… the drum sound and the way the guitars intermesh. It’s a real good rock’n’roll sound without being overly slick.”
Buck’s simple assessment of Scarecrow is key to its endurance: The thing just leaps out of the speakers. The cool, natural efficiency of Mellencamp’s band combined with Gehman’s clean, muscular production adds up to a platonic ideal of a rock’n’roll record: It’s direct, unfussy, and unpretentious, barreling forward on the strength of a mammoth backbeat. Such simple pleasures are the core virtue of Scarecrow. Mellencamp’s growing social consciousness places him at the precipice of enlightenment yet he still can’t resist all of his instincts to create a joyful noise.


Remastered for its 10th anniversary, the debut album from the cult Boston DIY trio is the sound of racing thoughts spiraling into numbness—and the restorative power of connection.

Krill: Alam No Hris (10th Anniversary Reissue)

Alam No Hris (10th Anniversary Reissue)

When then-defunct Boston rock trio Krill formed the new band Knot in 2020, singer-bassist Jonah Furman was afforded the space to reflect on what differentiated the two projects. In doing so, he set the record straight on his beloved band after years of misinterpretation as weird, cheese-addled slacker rock. “When I was 20, I thought that making art was an important part of making a better world,” he said. “[Krill] was very much about ethics and morality. One’s moral responsibilities to oneself and to other people, and trying to be in conversation with other ethical art or moral art.” It’s a serious theme for an often playful band: Krill wrote songs about poop and squirrels and peanut butter. But if two rocks with googly eyes made you cry in a movie theater, then hearing a twig have a philosophical conversation with a blade of grass probably will, too.
Krill songs were so emotionally invested and logically overwrought that they became detached, a songwriting style introduced on Alam No Hris, their 2012 debut. Recorded in the band’s Somerville basement over two years and newly remastered by Julian Fader to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Alam No Hris is the sound of a muggy house show spilling over capacity. It’s scuzzy grunge pop tracked live and sprinkled with mistakes (a guitar unplugs during the bridge of “I Am the Cherry,” the metal riff on “Slug” occasionally lags) that capture the thrill of watching Krill in person. There’s personality in the way each member of the original lineup performs here: Furman uses a pitch-shift pedal passed down from his college video art professor to give his bass a rubbery, wobbling effect, like slime being stretched; guitarist Aaron Ratoff strums with a wiry, discordant tone, whether he’s playing chords or picking out melodies; Luke Pyenson drums hard enough to make heads bob, but works in deft fills that lighten the overall sound.
If Krill was a way to knead out ethical quandaries, then Alam No Hris marks the band’s loosest, most ecstatic approach to the subject. Later albums Lucky Leaves and A Distant Fist Unclenching contemplated what we owe to our community, to those we love, and to ourselves; Alam No Hris peers through the ingenuous lens of young adulthood to understand how to be a decent human in the first place. This often takes the form of actions: shaking off problems (“Wet Dog”), admitting first-love butterflies (“Piranha Girl”), and returning acts of tenderness (“Kissipaw”). Furman’s strongest lyrical moments come when he wades into his own mind in a private push for self-improvement. On “Coolant,” he runs in circles trying to determine who, if anyone, he’s beholden to: his parents, his own choices, God, the sun? During “Self-Hate Will Be the Death of Youth Culture,” he laments how misanthropy feeds into conceit, repeating the titular phrase as equal parts declaration and warning. As if he’s nervous and three beers deep at karaoke, Furman’s voice is routinely off-key and anxious, wavering between a mumble and a shout—a performance style he heard legitimized in Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Two-Headed Boy.” The combined effect makes it seem like he’s only just remembering the words at the moment they’re sung. In his hands, what should sound grating or unprofessional becomes urgent and sincere.
These are the meaningful trivialities that helped Krill amass a cult following before their dissolution in 2015. Arguably no song from Alam No Hris drove home that intricate simplicity as succinctly as “Solitaire.” Reflecting on the end of a relationship, Furman narrates his loneliness and all the shapes it takes: playing games alone, romanticizing past conversations, cringing so hard at himself that he falls in love all over again. Even writing “Solitaire” is “just a distraction,” he admits, criticizing himself as a “weakness, doofus, champion of nothing, just colossal time-waster.” Likening his soul to an apple core (a recurring motif in Krill’s music), Furman finally unearths a vulnerable reprieve and sinks the hook: “Put on some Arthur Russell, see how fast I change/It’s embarrassing.” Ratoff and Pyenson crash into the frame with synchronized downbeats, delivering a breakdown that emphasizes the intensity of Furman’s revelation. It’s an ode to burrowing so deep inside your own depression that you start to feel okay again—the song where Krill fans find the same relief that Furman does in the music of Arthur Russell.
Perhaps most impressively, Alam No Hris presents Krill as a band committed to everyday philosophy and ethics without navel-gazing. With no producer or high-tech recording equipment, it’s raw and loud, the sound of racing thoughts spiraling into numbness only to dip back into the moments—dropping the needle on a favorite album, finding a strand of your partner’s hair, letting a dog lick your palm—that make you feel like you’re actually living again. Furman once described songwriting as “kind of like we’re playing a board game, and you just keep playing, but it’s not even clear what you’re trying to win.” Alam No Hris may not offer tidy endings, but the process of searching earnestly, without preaching or pedantry, is its own much-needed answer.


The third 100-song vault-clearing contains unheard demos from Guided by Voices' classic mid-90s era.

Guided by Voices: Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now

Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now

There are just some bands whose output is so staggering in terms of both quantity and quality-- the Mountain Goats, say-- that sometimes you just want to load up the catalogue, close your eyes, hit shuffle, and let somebody else decide for you. Then, of course, there's Robert Pollard. With his Boston Spaceships and at least one fine solo offering, Bob's been having a kickass 2009. But you're forgiven if you're still poring over his even more kickass 1993; there's simply so much to listen to, and more all the time.
Take, for instance, Suitcase 3, Pollard's latest 100-song foray into the mythical valise-cum-vault that contains Pollard's unreleased material. These Suitcase sets, obviously, have been mixed bags, flitting between fidelities and vintages and bit players with little rhyme or reason and with even less consistency than your typical Pollard 28-songer. The third time out's much the same, with 75 cuts seemingly chosen and arranged at random (credited, in trademark Pollard style, to fake bands with names like Kelsey Boo Flip, Heartthrob Johnson Firestone, Erotic Zip Codes and the like) followed by an off-the-cuff demo session from the particulary fertile Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes era. It's a neat trick, really, doing it this way; though the first three-quarters of the set will almost instantly be relegated into every Bob fan's random shuffle, the last disc's total fanperson catnip, the basement of Indie Rock Valhalla, that sort of thing. At least on paper.
It's true that going through the first three discs of Suitcase 3 front-to-back isn't too far off from typing Guided by Voices into the search bar in iTunes and just letting it fly, for a couple reasons: jumping from a filthy Vampire on Titus track to a frothy Do the Collapse and almost everything changes: sonics, approach to hooks, song length, and personnel. There's no organizing principle that I can discern in Suitcase 3; a beat-up little banger from the early days sits next to stately late-era sweep, and back-and-forth it goes. There's an emphasis on the gnarly yet hooky mid-90s stuff, and even a few all-too-fleeting nods to the era; "Coastal Town" shares a few moves with Alien Lanes' "Closer You Are" and "Old Engine Driver" is a slightly different spin on "Hey Aardvark" from the sorta-classic Static Airplane Jive EP. You get drunken, silly Pollard ("You Gotta Lotta Nerve"), stoner metalworker Pollard ("Psychlophobia"), not-taking-more-time-to-record-this-than-it-did-to-write Pollard ("Take Me Back", among so many others); all the Pollards, really.
But even if one focuses on the good stuff, the sheer volume of this thing means that these first three discs to overwhelm. Something like "Janet Wait", a ruddy, barely-hanging-on ballad, is as fucking sad and gorgeous a drunk's lament as this guy's ever given us (no, really). It's just a shame it'd be so easy to miss, floating in a sea of middling half-sketches and neural misfires here. I mean, were the suitcase being used for its intended purpose, at this point we'd be down to black socks and sandals, and maybe that emergency bathing suit.
Which I reckon goes some way toward explaining why the fourth disc falls far short of expectations. The very existence of a bunch of unheard demos from the pinnacle of one of indie rock's greatest bands seems the equivalent of a Gary Young version of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain or something. What if there's another "Echos Myron" waiting in the wings? But Bob's been through this stuff a few times already, so if it was really something to hear, we probably would've heard it. And, as it turns out, these sessions really couldn't be more off-the-cuff. Everybody seems a little drunk and a lot worn out, several songs don't even attempt an ending, and at one point someone wanders down to the basement to chatter as the tape rolls.
Sure, there's at least one great scrap of Pollardiania to be had-- the acoustic intro to "Tractor Rape Chain" is here, in full, as "South Rat Observatory"-- but there's also more than enough long stretches of random strumming and Bob grasping for lyrical straws. The last bit of Suitcase does offer some insights into Pollard's process-- turns out, for all the jokes, the guy's not exactly shitting gold, nor was he ever-- but once the voyeuristic glee of being a fly on the wall while a bunch of cool dudes get loaded and write some rock songs wear off, you're not left with a whole lot.
That is, until you start moving things around. The first three discs of Suitcase suffer from a lack of cohesion; the fourth, from far too much of it. Mix it up a little bit more, though, and you've got playlist padding and mixtape fodder and shuffly stuff for days. That relatively little of it could stand next to Bob's best isn't really the point; this is the bottom of the baggage, so to speak, and its far-flung nature and relative lack of quality control make it one just for the superfans. But that lot's hardly going to mind 100 new and newish GBV jams to have and hold in their own vaults. When you really need it, it's good to have a little extra on hand.


Alejandro G. Iñárritu's new film The Revenant, starring  Leonardo DiCaprio, is a meditation on the unholy perserverance of the human soul. Yet its soundtrack—co-created by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, German electronic musician Alva Noto, and multi-instrumentalist Bryce Dessner of The National—wisely opts to complement that savagery rather than illustrate it.

Ryuichi Sakamoto / Alva Noto / Bryce Dessner: The Revenant OST

*The Revenant* OST

In Alejandro G. Iñárritu's new film The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio plays frontiersman Hugh Glass as he, his son, and his hunting team raid Native American land in 1832. After DiCaprio is unexpectedly mauled by a bear, the crew buries him, murders his son, and abandons their bodies, continuing the journey unaware that DiCaprio escaped the grave to seek revenge. Calling The Revenant "intense" doesn't begin to do it justice; among other things, it's a meditation on the unholy perseverance of the human soul. Yet its soundtrack—co-created by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, German electronic musician Alva Noto, and multi-instrumentalist Bryce Dessner of The National—wisely opts to complement that savagery rather than illustrate it.
Iñárritu’s Birdman, the 2015 Academy Awards' Best Picture winner, stuttered its way through an unconventional drum score by Antonio Sánchez. Here, things get even more minimalist. The Revenant trades in sixteenth notes on hi-hats for minute-long fermatas, or held notes, on cellos. Throughout all 23 tracks, the score straddles the line between weariness and wonder, like someone constantly recalling the danger this stunning planet is capable of unleashing. Under conductor André de Ridder, Berlin-based orchestra s t a r g a z e plays expansively and with great care, its 25 players sporting a serious side compared to their work with artists like Deerhoof and Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry.
That organic swelling matches the dramatics beneath the film. Iñárritu fought to keep CGI out of The Revenant. He fought to use natural light on set. He fought to film so deep within nature that 40% of the day was spent traveling there.  Each of the three contributors uphold this commitment to naturalism, even with Alva Noto's electronica. Sakamoto favors simplicity and clarity; as DiCaprio crosses frozen rivers and sleeps in animal carcasses, the brevity of Sakamoto's "Killing Hawk" illustrates the strength of Sakamoto's tight focus. On the minute-long "Arriving At Fort Kiowa", a single cello is joined by trotting string support, the group leaning forward in rhythm as a unified organism.
Noto brings three different dream sequences to the table—"First Dream", "Church Dream", and "Second Dream"—where electronic bass thuds in the background like a mattress falling to the floor of an empty room. It's eerie without offering obvious indicators as to why. In that, Noto's a pro. His use of electronics mimics the eldritch stares of a stalker, especially on "Goodbye to Hawk",  creating the kind of anxiety heard in films like Drive and Under the Skin. Familiarity with the film's graphic scenes or the brutal landscapes of southern Argentina isn't required. Noto's written work acts as the terrified heartbeat fueling Iñárritu's violent winter all on its own.
Bryce Dessner is the least involved of the three songwriters, but when he contributes, he creates a world overwhelmingly rich with life – the very thing DiCaprio's character clings to. The most emotional number on the album, "Imagining Buffalo", introduces one violinist to another and another, stitching them together so they form a single note stretching into the infinite and spilling joy over into illusory insanity. "Looking For Glass" rides a similar crescendo. When all three men join forces again, songs like "Cat and Mouse" use handclaps and violin tremors to communicate the indefatigability of cheating death. Sometimes, the soundtrack traces the film’s woes without coloring them in, but it’s still successful in creating the sound of mental exhaustion choosing life over death, no matter how torturous and unforgiving it — and we — may be.


Stax Records’ historic 1972 soul festival finally gets its due with a new 12-disc box set, presenting a pop label at its imperial peak and an unmediated vision of Blackness for a rapt audience.

Various Artists: Soul’d Out: The Complete Wattstax Collection

From their plane back to Memphis, the Astors could see the fires. Four days earlier, you could’ve caught the group performing their hit record “Candy” on the syndicated Los Angeles television show Shivaree. The appearance was part of a media blitz devised by Stax Records co-founder Estelle Axton and popular local DJ Nathaniel “Magnificent” Montague. In August 1965, the label dispatched a large portion of its roster to the West Coast; the Stax Revue was capped by a two-day stand at the 5/4 Ballroom in the South L.A. neighborhood of Watts.
After the Saturday show, a teenage fan named Jacqui Jacquette invited Stax star Carla Thomas to her house for dinner, then a tour of Watts. During the tour, she told Thomas about people killed by the LAPD, then brought her to a community meeting led by her cousin, Tommy Jacquette, who was teaching passive resistance as a lifesaving measure to teens. The following Wednesday, a violent LAPD traffic stop sparked a full-scale revolt; 34 people would die during the six-day Watts Uprising. Whatever cultural impact Stax hoped to make dissipated with its jet exhaust. On the ground, the people of Watts were chanting the Magnificent Montague’s catchphrase: Burn, baby, burn!
When Stax returned to Los Angeles, it wasn’t as a guest, but as a transplant. Newly independent and riding high under the leadership of label president Al Bell—plus an astonishing star turn from staff writer/producer Isaac Hayes—Stax opened a West Coast branch in 1972 and started looking to expand into motion pictures. A back-of-the-napkin pitch (“Black Woodstock”) quickly ballooned into an audacious event: Wattstax ’72, the cornerstone of the Watts Summer Festival. (The festival was intended to commemorate the uprising; Tommy Jacquette served as its executive director from 1966 until his death in 2009.) The one-day concert featured more than two dozen acts from the Stax roster, capped by a performance by Hayes. Tickets were priced at one dollar when they weren’t given away; the organizers would proudly note that the estimated 112,000 attendees represented the second-largest gathering of Black Americans in history, after the March on Washington. It was an utter triumph, and Stax commemorated it by issuing the Wattstax film and two soundtracks the following year.
Even taken all together, though, these releases told an incomplete—and at times misleading—story. Stax added crowd noise to studio cuts by the Staple Singers and Eddie Floyd, then included them on Wattstax: The Living Word as “live” singles. The film had to drop Hayes’ opening performance of “Theme From Shaft” after MGM raised a contractual point; director Mel Stuart responded by filming Hayes and band performing a new song on a Hollywood soundstage, then splicing the footage into the final edit. A slew of hitmakers including Johnnie Taylor and the Emotions were dropped from the lineup due to time constraints; the ever-industrious Stax booked them makeup dates at L.A.’s Summit Club in the fall, then seeded select performances into the second soundtrack. Over the next few decades, Stax released portions of select Wattstax and Summit sets piecemeal; in 2003, a recut Wattstax with restored Hayes performances (including “Shaft”) dropped alongside an expanded soundtrack that boasted a CD’s worth of unreleased material.
At last, we have the final word. Soul’d Out: The Complete Wattstax Collection presents Wattstax ’72 in its entirety and in correct sequence: every song, every introduction, every plea to get off the grass. (The festival was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, in the middle of the Rams’ preseason schedule, and the organizers had to obtain field insurance. Various artists and emcees cajoling people back to the stands forms a massive subplot on this recording.) Crucial sets from the Staple Singers and Isaac Hayes are now whole, and Hayes’ set-opening “Theme From Shaft” (which had to be performed twice due to a filming issue) is available for the first time, all fibrous wah and off-mic shouts of yeah!
Half a dozen Summit sets appear in their entirety, as well as a bonus disc of Wattstax-related tracks. Wattstax wasn’t strictly a concert film; in order to display the fullness of the Black American experience, its performances were interspersed with on-the-street segments featuring local actors riffing on various topics, as well as bits from future Stax signee Richard Pryor. (Pryor’s routines are present in full.) Craft Recordings and Stax have also released a box that’s just the Wattstax concert, as well as a single disc of highlights. But Soul’d Out is the real deal: a portrait of a pop label at its imperial peak, presenting its unmediated vision of Blackness for a rapt audience.
Even at a third of the length, the scope and presentation of Soul’d Out begs comparison to Rhino’s 38xCD Woodstock: Back to the Garden set. Each box goes for total immersion, preserving every stray stage announcement while restoring excised artists and performances to their proper context. Wattstax kicked off with the world premiere of Stax producer/arranger Dale Warren’s “Salvation Symphony,” a kind of fourth-stream music melding soul propulsion and classical motifs. Only an eight-minute excerpt had previously been issued; in full form, it’s the triumphant counterpart to Warren’s bleaker work with the prog-soul act 24-Carat Black. Tommy Tate’s set is a triptych of deep soul in the Dave Godin vein: wistful and melodically rich. It’s capped with “School of Life,” a teen-pregnancy power ballad that, in its tenderness and lyrical detail if not its bombast, is a cousin to Big Star’s “Thirteen” (originally released on a Stax subsidiary).
The majority of the unreleased material, though, comes from the Summit Club dates. They’re valuable enough as newly restored chapters in the Wattstax story. But as Stax historian Rob Bowman notes in a Soul’d Out essay, live nightclub R&B (official or bootlegged) from this era is all too rare, especially from second- and third-tier acts. If there are undiscovered soundboard recordings that approach the deranged energy of Chicago’s Sons of Slum—who handle Otis Redding’s “Respect” like a frat-rock band paid in amphetamines—we could use them.
Still, we can marvel at what’s here. There’s an audacious medley from pop-soul cousin act Mel & Tim of their jangly pre-Stax hit “Good Guys Only Win in the Movies” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” that uses an instrumental excerpt from Isaac Hayes’ “Walk on By” as a sort of step-down transformer. It’s even more astonishing considering that a month earlier, the duo withdrew from Wattstax at the last minute due to Tim McPherson’s acute pain revealing itself as pancreatic cancer. The Emotions were bumped from the concert itself but scored a documentary highlight with their dramatic and finely wrought rendition of the gospel standard “Peace Be Still” in a sweltering storefront church. Even so, they weren’t a gospel act, and their Summit set shows the trio flexing the same sense of pace and ecstasy on their magisterial Supremes homage from 1972, “I Could Never Be Happy.”
In the final accounting, Wattstax may have been the success that sunk Stax. Al Bell’s ability to execute his ambitions impressed Columbia enough that the label agreed to become Stax’s distributor. But Stax was producing more product—R&B, gospel, comedy, rock—than Columbia knew what to do with, and within two years, the companies’ competing priorities would bring them to war. At the same time, Stax’s elevated profile drew federal attention to its complex (yet, for the time, largely standard) financial relationships with promoters and DJs. On top of all that, its overextended lenders were crunched by the 1973 recession. By the end of 1974, Isaac Hayes and Richard Pryor had left Stax due to nonpayment. By the end of 1975, the Stax offices had closed under court order. It was an infuriating end for one of the country’s great labels.
Introducing Stax in his opening remarks, the Reverend Jesse Jackson invoked “liberation through music and lyrics.” It may have been true that Stax offered that possibility, and that this possibility was deliberately forestalled by the existing power structures. It may have been true that actual liberation was achievable not by the organization headlining the Watts Summer Festival, but by the energies of the uprising the festival commemorated. For the musicians involved, the energy of Wattstax was enough to arouse awe for the rest of their lives. On that day, anything seemed possible.


Durk’s latest offers some of the best and most honest crooning bars over smooth piano lines, but the formula is starting to wear thin.

7220

Equipped with a melody bathed in AutoTune, melancholy piano-backed instrumentals, and a willingness to embrace his vulnerable side, Lil Durk has completed his rebrand as the voice of the voiceless. It’s as if he was chosen by a higher power to speak for everyone who has been through some shit. His stories—sometimes centered on a poverty-stricken upbringing that led to a life full of death and addiction, other times focused on self-inflicted heartbreak—are personal but tend to be universal. Yeah, there are a lot of singing rappers in a similar lane, but Durk stands out because of his bruised wailing and lyrics so specific that they have to be based on some truth.
His latest album, 7220, is more of the same. Working within a framework isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are cracks in the formula. Mostly on the production side, which is incredibly played out. Since 2018’s Signed to the Streets 3, Durk has leaned into the trend of mushy keys with a ’90s R&B ballad feel. It’s not that good albums haven’t been made with this production style as the foundation (see: Polo G’s Die a Legend) but there is a uniform cheapness to them that doesn’t work when you use them time after time.
Still, even with the stale sound of the album, Durk is such a complex and colorful writer that it’s worth it to stick it out. The appeal is in his details. My criticism of a few of the other hugely popular rappers who croon about their pain is that they tell us they’re hurting without actually describing why. Durk doesn’t have that issue. He can flesh out an entire scene with one bar. On “Headtaps,” what’s getting him down is more than being in jail, it’s missing out on small moments with his kids like watching Peppa Pig. Or on “Started From,” in which he remembers being so broke that he went over to his neighbors with a water jug to keep the bill manageable.
But unlike, say, a Rod Wave album, Durk’s 7220 isn’t all gut punches. Since 2017’s Love Songs For the Streets, he’s been a part-time toxic relationship guru. It’s a mess every time, but on occasion, the over-the-top melodrama of it all is pretty fun. Just check out “Blocklist” where he’s pretty much on his knees coming up with bullshit reasons for his ex to keep in touch with him: She made him cry once, he gives her an allowance, he answers the phone whenever she calls. Not very convincing! The same can be said for his duet with Summer Walker—which has a few of the album’s more interesting vocal refrains (too often he coasts on one note)—even though I was disturbed by him setting the mood with Justin Bieber’s “Yummy.”
It’s worth it to note that these two tracks aren’t really intended to be fun; conversely, the two sleazy duets that are meant to be fun I find less so. “Petty Too” continues this tiring viral-chasing run of Future features. Then the Morgan Wallen two-hander is forced, with Durk attempting to widen the appeal of his lyrics with references to riding bulls and horses and P!nk and Ed Sheeran name-drops. C’mon now, that’s not him. Lil Durk has become a huge star because of lyrics that focus in, instead of zoom out. For the most part, 7220 gets that.


Again working with producer Jim O’Rourke, the Japanese singer/songwriter explores a peculiar family history in songs that pull her own musical past into the present.

Eiko Ishibashi: The Dream My Bones Dream

The Dream My Bones Dream

Memories of a distant place and time haunt The Dream My Bones Dream, the sixth full-length album from Japanese singer/songwriter Eiko Ishibashi. These songs began taking shape after her father died two years ago, prompting Ishibashi to investigate a period of his life spent in Manchukuo, a puppet state created by Imperial Japan before the start of World War II. “It was just an abstract concept, like something that happened in a faraway land,” Ishibashi said in a recent interview with The Wire. Talking with relatives and finding photos from the era made it real, inspiring her to connect this foggy family past to her present life. This set not only became an experiment in bringing memory to bear on this moment but also a nine-song summary of Ishibashi’s oeuvre.
Since Ishibashi launched her solo career in 2006, each of her albums has represented another stylistic upheaval. She moved from the instrumental maximalism of 2008’s Drifting Devil to spacious, piano-based songs on Carapace only three years later. She has since pivoted to smoky jazz and even burrowed into the space between Merzbow’s static blasts. U.S. expatriate and producer Jim O’Rourke has been a constant in her recordings this decade, although he steps back a bit for Dream, leaving all the musical ideas to Ishibashi. (“I kind of decided to be almost invisible,” he told The Wire.) Many of Ishibashi’s contemporary interests reappear during Dream, from the upright-bass-assisted jazz of the title track to the piano sparseness of the saccharine “To the East.” New electronic elements afford these familiar approaches a dreamlike atmosphere.
Though Ishibashi has gravitated toward keyboards recently, she played drums in Panicsmile, a noisy rock band that incorporated complex rhythms into their whirlwind. She places a renewed interest on rhythm here, a surprising turn that gives these songs an anxious urgency not found on other recent releases. The beat of “A Ghost in a Train, Thinking” subtly mutates from a militaristic march into fragmented meters, pulling listeners deeper into its slow motion. Twin drums disrupt “Agloe.” Sudden kicks and snare hits that lurk deep in the mix add tension by taking unexpected shots at the lush keyboards and vocals at the song’s center.
Drumming contributes to the album’s exploration of a part-reflected, part-imagined past, too. The rhythms across Dream often recall trains, connecting the numbers to Ishibashi’s original inspiration to explore another newly revealed fold of her family history—that her grandfather worked on the Manchurian railroad, a vital transit line running through the Japanese puppet state. On “Tunnels to Nowhere,” Dream’s most aggressive song, the beat pounds beneath lurching keyboard bursts and swelling strings, arranged to enhance the claustrophobic feel. It’s unnerving, a fitting reminder that nostalgia often hides something ugly. By comparison, the weakest moment here, “Silent Scrapbook,” lacks the ballast of drums and feels vaporous.
The past fades in and out of these songs. Using transistor radio snippets of speeches and musical performances, “Agloe” becomes a collage of uneasy atmosphere draped around the bones of a soft pop song. (September’s After the Smoke plays with similar ideas and, in retrospect, is an experimental prelude for Dream). She occasionally accents its lyrics in Mandarin with chants of “remember,” the effect again reconnecting the past and present.
During “Iron Veil,” someone speaking Mandarin announces train station names as the drums rumble on. This is Ishibashi’s most direct attempt to place this release in a geographical and historical context, but the setting seems just out of reach, not actually there but imagined. Rather than offer answers, The Dream My Bones Dream grapples with memories that aren’t one’s own and tries to find some kernel of wisdom within them. It’s a multilayered, foggy work and one of Ishibashi’s fullest collections to date, showing us how the past can propel us forward.


In its second release in one year, Ricked Wicky—the latest undertaking from ex-GBV frontman Robert Pollard—is starting to feel like a proper band. While King Heavy Metal isn't quite as front-to-back consistent as I Sell the Circus, its aims are higher: a surefire sign of a band getting comfortable with themselves.

King Heavy Metal

It didn't take long, but Ricked Wicky—the latest undertaking from ex-GBV frontman Robert Pollard—is starting to feel like a proper band. Ricked Wicky, if you'll recall, is the so-called "sophisticated arena rock band" featuring Pollard, constant companion Todd Tobias, former GBV drummer Kevin March, and Dayton lifer (and relative newbie to the Pollard universe) Nick Mitchell; their latest, King Heavy Metal, follows their debut I Sell the Circus by a scant five months. The second LP from any post-GBV Pollard enterprise always feels a little like a dare: as the project starts to define its own borders, there's always the sense that the famously restless Pollard could abandon this one just as blithely as he has so many others. Still, Ricked Wicky feels different. Mitchell, for one, has clearly ingratiated himself to his new boss; after a few scene-stealing cameos on I Sell the Circus, he gets a strong supporting role throughout King Heavy Metal. And Pollard—content, presumably, with the way this latest venture is shaping up—turns in a weird, wide-ranging set.
Chiming opener "Jargon of Clones" could just be the out-and-out loveliest Pollard track of the decade, a swaying self-examination that finds our Uncle Bob deep in dialogue with himself. "This Has Been My Picture" is similarly lovely; after a lengthy buildup, its triumphal, harpsichord-ticked chorus makes for a well-earned payoff. And the svelte, surefooted "I'll Let You In" is a top-flight Pollardian rocker, a hard-charging, brain-sticking wonder in the grand tradition of "Motor Away".
Of late, the best Pollard records split the difference between spontaneity and craftsmanship; too much (or little) of either, and the whole thing starts to feel overworked, undercooked, or some combination thereof. The songs Pollard brings to Heavy Metal are smart—and occasionally downright elegant—without resorting to all the look-at-me bells and whistles that bogged down 2013's scatterbrained Blazing Gentlemen. Not that they're all winners; the dirgey "Walk Through Glass" takes a beat too long to get where it's going, and "Earth Among Men" lays a thick layer of Psychocandy fuzz atop one of the set's more threadbare melodies, in the hopes that no one notices.
And then there's "Come Into My Wig Shop", a surefire top-five contender for weirdest Pollard song. Slinky spy-movie keyboards? Check. A bizarro-world version of the "Thunderstruck" intro? Sure, why not. "Wig Shop" is more science project than song, its goofball verses grafted awkwardly into a sundazed chorus. It shouldn't work, and it doesn't; still, after so many years of Pollard padding out albums with gormless ballads, blandiose rockers, and barely-there sketches, the sheer chutzpah of "Wig Shop" is almost enough to redeem it. "Wig Shop" is a lot of—probably too many—things, but boring isn't one of them.
"Wig Shop" is a Pollard-Mitchell co-write, one of Mitchell's three writing credits on King Heavy Metal. His "Weekend Warriors" is either the Who song they never got around to writing or the shameless pint-hoister the art-damaged Pollard won't quite allow himself to pen. Either way, it's a hoot, a would-be anthem for every heavy-lidded 9-to-5er staring down another early Monday alarm call. To its credit, "Warriors" cuts to the quick and guzzles straight from the bottle; to its detriment, Mitchell's other contribution, "Imminent Fall From Grace", does much the same. The metaphor-eschewing "Grace" finds Mitchell doling out a stern warning to a high-flying character who's due for a fall. If Mitchell's "Warriors" is a better-than-average Roger Daltrey bite, "Grace" is sub-Eddie Money bar-rock. Ill-fitting and uninspired, it's the record's sore thumb, an unusually earnest, uncomfortably literal song floating in a sea of Pollardian abstractions.
Just two records in, it's only natural that Mitchell and Pollard are still feeling each other out; given how capably Mitchell's slotted himself in with Pollard—whose many idiosyncrasies long ago calcified into his distinctive style—elsewhere, this misfire seems easy to chalk up to growing pains. While King Heavy Metal isn't quite as front-to-back consistent as I Sell the Circus, its aims are higher: a surefire sign of a band getting comfortable with themselves.


Riding the E Street Band’s familiar uplift, Springsteen grapples with the complexities of nostalgia, a tension that animates his writing and manifests in the sound of the music itself.

Letter to You

When the world first met him in the mid-’70s, Bruce Springsteen might have seemed like a throwback. He sang about first loves and teenage runaways; he dressed like a greaser and worshipped at the altar of jukeboxes and summer nights on the boardwalk. Many of his influences—Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Phil Spector—were at least a decade past the peak of their cultural impact. A glowing early review by Jon Landau claiming to have witnessed “rock and roll future” at a Springsteen concert helped define his mythology, but the opening words of the next sentence were just as crucial: “On a night when I needed to feel young....”
Springsteen has spent much of his career wrestling with this penchant for nostalgia. (“I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it—but I probably will,” he sang in “Glory Days,” 36 years ago.) Some artists evolve through reinvention and others through refinement, but Springsteen has often compared the span of his career to a long conversation: He can revisit certain themes, even repeat himself, but the idea is to keep it moving. Springsteen turned 71 last month, and his 20th studio album, Letter to You, indulges in his past like never before. Following the autobiographical thread of his memoir and Broadway show, it seems to feature Springsteen himself as the narrator, observing the ways that music can sustain us, with a tone pitched between deep reverence and loss.
That simple but elusive power forms the thematic heart of the record, and it also informs the sound. Last fall, Springsteen enlisted his longtime accompanists in the E Street Band to record the whole thing live in the studio during a snowy week in New Jersey. The goal was to approximate the untappable energy of their concerts and classic albums like Darkness on the Edge of Town. Working again with his 2010s collaborator Ron Aniello, the plan might have also been to avoid the obsessive tinkering that has distracted from his straightforward, earnest songwriting on recent records.
Flourished with organ and saxophone, music box piano and glockenspiel, surf guitar licks and driving rhythm, Letter to You is bold and self-referential, using the sound of Springsteen’s own catalog the way he once treated the entirety of rock history. The songs are occasionally great—“Ghosts” and “Burnin’ Train,” in particular—and sometimes they feel remarkable just due to their old-school presentation. It is a welcome return after two decades of E Street records that, even at their best, tended to downplay the band’s strengths.
Ironically, some of the strongest moments come from a time before Springsteen settled on those trademarks. A trio of original songs written in the early ’70s, while he was still an unsigned solo act, are given their first official studio outings, all enlivened with full-band arrangements that stretch out past the six-minute mark. My favorite is “Janey Needs a Shooter,” with a stunning coda and a Stevie Van Zandt-accompanied chorus, like a sea of fist pumps rising from a sweaty crowd. The other two songs—“If I Was the Priest” and “Song for Orphans”—aren’t quite as seamless, but it is fascinating hearing the band find their place behind Springsteen’s feverish word-association, a challenge that results in joyful chaos.
The lyrics to these older songs are filled with skepticism toward salvation and sentimentality, an undercurrent to the record’s more romantic moments. (“Forget about the old friends and the old times,” he shouts in “If I Was the Priest.”) He approaches the idea again in “Rainmaker,” a gravelly outlier about desperate people in dire times, putting their faith in false prophets. “Sometimes folks need to believe in something so bad,” he sings, his voice full of fire and empathy. He claims to have written the song with political intent during the Bush years, but it gains resonance coming from an artist who has commanded so much loyalty and devotion on his own. Surrounded by songs about the life-affirming power of music, it poses a question: What happens if the people we turn to for answers, transcendence, and hope have none to offer? What happens when the show is over?
This darkness and self-doubt is the other side of his story: the bandleader in “Last Man Standing” leaving the stage alone, with “just the ringing in [his] ears.” These lyrics are frequently offset by the E Street Band’s cozy presence, like sonic pep talks, adding a new purpose to their familiar roles. The album begins quietly with “One Minute You’re Here,” a gorgeous fragment featuring Springsteen on acoustic guitar, singing in a low, helpless drawl over faint brushes of piano and twinkling synth. When it segues into the wistful, mid-tempo title track, he introduces his bandmates less as a triumphant return than a man fighting back tears before collapsing into a group hug.
In a black-and-white documentary accompanying the album, Springsteen’s home studio appears as a kind of interactive museum, filled with old guitars and faded pictures of past collaborators, including the Castiles, his teenage rock band. The 2018 death of George Theiss, the Castiles’ frontman, inspired Springsteen to start writing these songs. In “Ghosts,” he describes a welcome haunting—old friends passing through by surprise, in a world that can otherwise feel sad and empty. The best moments on the album have a similar effect. The closing track is called “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” and the verse melody shares a striking resemblance to the guitar riff from “Born to Run.” “We’ll meet and live and laugh again,” he sings hopefully. “For death is not the end.” The future has never been more uncertain; the past has never seemed further away. But as long as the band is playing, the dream is alive.

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Claire Boucher's early experimentations were a far cry from the music she makes today. Halfaxa, 15 ethereal tracks in which her vocals approached pure glossolalia, is Grimes at her most mystical.

Halfaxa

Montreal, 2006: a young misfit from Vancouver enrolls at McGill University. In between studying neuroscience, philosophy, Russian, and electroacoustics, Claire Boucher started making freaky GarageBand songs under the name Grimes. She became a fixture at Lab Synthèse, a DIY loft space that encouraged collaboration among artists like Sean Nicholas Savage, Braids, Blue Hawaii, and Majical Cloudz. Boucher's early experimentations were a far cry from the sugary K-pop punches she makes today, instead leaning towards slow-building, dense, and jumbled productions. Her first proper release, 2010’s Geidi Primes, received unexpected praise beyond her local scene. Nine months later, she released Halfaxa, 15 ethereal tracks in which her vocals approached pure glossolalia.
Halfaxa is Grimes at her most mystical. Boucher has referred to it as her "medieval album" in terms of intent and subject matter. She once explained that the record is meant to be an electronic interpretation of Middle Age Christian reverence, an exploration of sensations beyond earthly experience: "I wanted to capture the beauty of being in a beautiful cathedral and hearing reverbed (naturally), devotional, vocal music and really believing in heaven and hell." Many of Boucher's theories for Halfaxa were inspired by her own "idol" at the time, Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century German saint without musical training whose music was inspired by divine visions she received starting at the age of three. As explained in von Bingen's theological text Liber Vitae Meritorum, after The Fall, music became a means of accessing a lost state of perfection. Boucher would later lament that her early musical ventures were recorded when she "didn’t really know what [she] was doing," but listeners discovering Halfaxa in 2016 are aware of her technical ascent, producing and engineering 2015’s Art Angels entirely on her own.
Accordingly, Halfaxa is not direct in the same manner as Visions or Art Angels, which are less enigmatic and perhaps more easily digestible. Lyrics are abstracted to the point of becoming unintelligible, but not in a way that is grating or guttural. Instead, Boucher channels her inner cherub; her singing evokes harps atop clouds. Vocally, Halfaxa finds Boucher inspired by Mariah Carey's soaring top notes and purity of tone. On "Intor / Flowers," Boucher’s voice stretches towards heavenly octaves before layering itself beneath soprano sighs. The most mysterious songs on Halfaxa rely solely on tone, elongation, and repetition so heavily that it is best to give up the search for linear movement completely. Her vocals reaches such high peaks throughout that by the end of the record the distinction between machine and musician blurs.
Offering a deeper sense of Grimes' world, Halfaxa's song titles reference Boucher's diverse intellectual interests. "Weregild," a jittering incantation of a dance track, takes its name from an archaic legal value placed on all beings and pieces of property, based on social rank. The latter half of "sagrad прекрасный" means "beautiful" in Russian, and "Dragvandil" is a Viking sword in Final Fantasy XI.  With these titles, Boucher is teasing signifiers and then distorting meaning, ultimately keeping the personal to herself, underscoring her eccentricity. Referring to her ex-boyfriend, Majical Cloudz’s Devon Welsh, "Devon" is the closest thing to an explicit expression of devotion. Inside her syrupy murmurs, Boucher proclaims, "But you don’t love me anymore/ And I’ve never felt so broken up before." It’s a startlingly clear moment within an album that strives to limit direct interpretations.
Somewhere along the line, Boucher lost the rights to her early records. Six years after its original release, Halfaxa is being reissued by Arbutus, her first label. Boucher has made it clear that she has nothing to do with the reissue. Copies of the record sell for over $200 online, so reissuing it on vinyl is a convenient way for Arbutus to make Halfaxa more accessible while also making money. It's an unfortunate shadow to have attached to her early work, but nonetheless, Halfaxa foreshadows the musician Boucher is today: enigmatic, intimate, and uncompromising.
Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that Boucher receives no payment for sales of this reissue.


On their debut LP, the Norwegian trio emboldens their customary celebration rock by adding emphatic stretches of post-rock and power-pop.

This Is Not the End

Distant Star, the 2018 debut EP from Oslo’s Spielbergs, took less than a second to put its target market on notice. Throttling, distorted octaves and massive drum rolls moved in lockstep, instantly evoking decades worth of bands, both boyish and brawny, who most effectively communicated their feelings through “whoas.” This style of rock is perpetually deemed obsolescent, but it always seems to find an audience dealing with the same issues. Played with enough urgency, it doesn’t become relevant but simply asks, “Why do we waste so much time caring, anyway?” Spielbergs clearly understood those mechanics; their original band name, after all, was We Are All Going to Die, which doubles as the name of the first song they wrote. It’s the fourth tune on their debut LP, This Is Not the End, where it now serves as a weighty sentiment rather than a mission statement.
Spielbergs are a new band, but they are not necessarily a young one. All three members cut their teeth in the upper middle class of 2000s Norwegian indie rock—this means things like “playing shows with Yeasayer” and “making a music video starring a Boy Scout uniform.” This Is Not the End doesn’t directly reference any of this, but these are load-bearing biographical details. Sincerity is the most essential element in this style of rock, the counterbalance to its inherent lack of innovation or currency; even the slightest perceived lapse of good faith can make it seem pandering. Spielbergs formerly struggled with indie careerism, and this is now what they do for fun. The irony—that is, they achieved far greater and quicker success with Distant Star than with their past projects—simply reinforces Spielbergs’ spirit.
This Is Not the End includes two of the three singles from Distant Star, and the bulk lands within that celebration-rock mold—physical intensity, gooey emotions, devotionals that are joyous without being party music. While 85 percent of Spielbergs’ main influences trace back to the Replacements, they don’t have much use for the requisite self-deprecation and sabotage, veering instead toward glammier, bolder gestures. The late chorus of “Distant Star,” for instance, drops the guitars so Mads Baklien can lead the handclaps over the kick drum, while a climactic scream during “You All Look Like Giants” finally exposes the band’s old roots in esoteric post-hardcore. Their experience shows through making payoffs seem generous rather than gratuitous.
Distant Star could feel unbalanced, with excursions into shoegaze and synth-pop textures that didn’t feel like priorities. This Is Not the End is convincingly expansive. Spielbergs dabble with sturdier, shinier forms, the stuff that most bands of this sort don’t touch until subsequent albums. “Five on It” reintroduces Spielbergs as a propulsive power-pop project, though “Familiar” and “McDonald’s (Please Don’t Fuck Up My Order)” float in post-rock ether. Scratchy acoustic excerpts and instrumental interludes make This Is Not the End feel coherent, despite the substantial range.
Spielbergs don’t deal in complex subjects, and they sing plainly enough that any hook heard on the first chorus can be joined on the second: “You’re a bad friend! You’re a bad friend! You’re a bad friend to me!,” goes a song called, well, “Bad Friend.” But it’s harder to say what Spielbergs are about. This Is Not the End’s only real flaw is its proximity to bands that achieved transcendence precisely because their monomaniacal commitment risked embarrassment. Japandroids write almost exclusively about having your best girl under one arm and your best bro under the other, a beer in hand. And for about half an hour, seemingly anyone could get swept up in Beach Slang’s thrill of a 40-something singer pushing past fear of judgment.
Chalk up the comparatively low stakes here to the cozy production or the fact that Spielbergs were borne of an “adult youth club thing” rather than desperate artistic straits. “We could be soulmates,” Baklien screams during “Distant Star,” too hesitant to insist we will be soulmates. It’s the difference between a mid-afternoon daydream at your cubicle and a record that might actually make you quit your job, like Our Band Could Be Your Life for people who need a backup plan.


The New Zealand band’s best songs are what one might call picnic disco: lazy in the best way, like stretching out under a hot sun with only the occasional drum loop to gently poke you awake.

Truth or Consequences

Some say that pretty isn’t everything, but isn’t it nice sometimes? Like charm bracelets, miniature pastries, or Timothée Chalamet—everyone loves those. New Zealand band Yumi Zouma have been making pretty, soothing dream pop since 2014, and their newest album and first release on Polyvinyl, Truth or Consequences, is no exception. Enveloped in gauzy synth and vocal harmonies, their music is as sweetly tart as a ripe raspberry. But for all the technical perfection, the winsome aesthetics prove too insubstantial to stick.
The highlights of Truth or Consequences are what one might call picnic disco: songs that feel lazy in the best way, like stretching out under a hot sun with only the occasional drum loop to gently poke you awake. On the bright “Right Track / Wrong Man,” vocalist Christie Simpson sings like she’s about to doze off, dreamily remembering a time when “we were bleeding sunset.” Simpson excels at this kind of sweet, sleepy delivery, which imbues her lines with heartache. When she sings the word “sad” on “Lie Like You Want Me Back,” it feels personal and specific. “I thought so hard about it,” she says of a lost relationship, turning the statement into an urgent plea for love to return.
Yumi Zouma are very good at building these wistful, fleeting moods. “I’m hoping that you’ll catch me/Text me when you’re heading out,” Simpson sings over the crystalline arpeggios of “Mirror to the Fire,” a song that shares its nostalgic synth-pop sound with bands like Alvvays and the 1975. The echoey synths and billowy vocal layering of “Cool for a Second” are as rich and soft as butter in a hot pan. Even the title of “My Palms Are Your Reference to Hold to Your Heart” is full of saccharine melodrama—specific without being specific, like the painfully earnest message you might send to a crush after much deliberation and re-writing. Truth or Consequences is prime teen romance soundtrack fodder: unblushingly indulgent and emotional, deeply invested in truth, love, and reverb.
But eventually, pure sentimentality wears thin. There can only be so much shimmering synth, ticking drum machine, and naptime vocals before it all begins to blend together. A truly great teen movie or 1975 track isn’t defined by an unwavering commitment to genre and form, but by the challenging of it. Even when an experiment comes up short, mistakes and failed attempts allow us to see others as the messy, raw, difficult humans we know ourselves to be. Truth or Consequences is more like a Valentine’s Day card—pleasantly sentimental, at times gratifying, and all too easy to forget.

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In the clubs of Tokyo, psych-rockers Kikagaku Moyo have always let noise and chaos linger on the edges of their songs. Stone Garden, however, rejects familiar structure in favor of improvisation.

Stone Garden

Japanese underground artists possess a flair for myth-making, from Les Rallizes Dénudés’ shrouded history to eventual Boredoms founder Yamantaka Eye driving a bulldozer on stage for a gig. Tokyo’s Kikagaku Moyo have their fair share of good yarns since forming in 2012. The first song on their debut album was supposedly “written over a night spent jamming on a suspended footbridge in remote mountains,” while drummer Go Kurosawa took a significant period of time before starting the group living out of a backpack in Central America. Stone Garden, the band’s latest release, was recorded in a Prague basement during several near-continuous days of improvising, and then pieced together back in their hometown. The real hook, though, is that the five-song album finds a band who’s attracted attention for a folk approach to psychedelic rock showing off their experimental and often messy side.
It’s a deliberate pivot by a quintet that has found attention well beyond the cramped clubs of Tokyo. Whereas many Japanese experimental artists are celebrated for their loudness, Kikagaku Moyo often let noise and chaos linger on the edges of their music. They aren’t shy about a feedback-loaded electric guitar solo or 20-minute-plus sitar drone session, but recent full-lengths Forest of Lost Children and particularly last year’s House in the Tall Grass stood out for their organization of sound.
Stone Garden rejects structure in favor of improvisation, or at least jamming for hours on end and piecing the results together afterward. Album opener “Backlash” delivers over six minutes of distorted guitar and drums. It’s a rumbling cut nodding to Krautrock, and one content to barrel forward with slight variations and not much else. That’s followed up by “Nobakitani,” revealing the other big change between Stone Garden and Kikagaku Moyo’s last couple of albums: Each song on Stone Garden occupies its own stylistic universe. “Nobakitani” is a slow moving guitar-and-sitar haze featuring scattered vocals breaking through the trance-like tempo. It sounds like a House in the Tall Grass castoff and feels far removed from the maelstrom preceding it.
This showcases Kikagaku Moyo’s stylistic variety and experimental tendencies, but highlighting the latter makes them feel jarringly unfocused. Despite an immediate and forceful chug, “Backlash” sounds sludgy in a way that adds little to the song, while “Trilobites” garbled quality makes one think they should have just recorded the jam session from the other side of the basement wall. It’s this constant feeling of good ideas settling rather than pushing forward that hurts Stone Garden the most. It’s filled with great sonic bits—“Backlash’s” driving guitars, “Nobakitani’s” meditative atmosphere—but Kikagaku Moyo rush them, every song falling into a groove and then fading out rather than go off in some new direction. They show their experimental merits in frames too small to really let them shine, even if a lot of these songs feel like teasers better suited for live settings.
The highlights from their last two albums tower over the sketches here, while their psych-rock bona fides should never be in question after something like 2014’s Mammatus Clouds EP, boasting a 28-minute-long opening track slowly shapeshifting as it went along. Stone Garden features good ideas ending prematurely, but album highlight “In a Coil” shows everything that has made them the next buzzed-about psych outfit from Japan—guitar and sitar wrap around each other, charging the song forward while voices lock together, everything building in intensity before reaching a crescendo. It’s a reminder of how compelling Kikagaku Moyo’s story can be, even if Stone Garden is only a minor chapter.


After the tight, familiar turns of 2004's Antics and a major label deal, these dapper NYC rockers' lofty aspirations are finally kicking in. Horns, extended outros, strings, an oboe, and album art featuring more than three colors-- welcome to the new world of Interpol.

Our Love to Admire

Despite its title, Interpol's 2002 debut Turn on the Bright Lights was marked by its seductive shadowiness. The product of a bygone New York City filled with dank alleys and smoke-choked dives, Interpol fed on their own mystery while translating cool kid record collections into sexy downtown paranoia. They received a few positive notices, too. In the glowing Pitchfork review of the LP, Eric Carr wrote, "Although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights." And now-- after the tight, familiar turns of 2004's Antics and a major label deal-- their lofty aspirations are finally kicking in.
Horns, extended outros, strings, an oboe, and album art featuring more than three colors-- welcome to the new world of Interpol. Our Love to Admire is the sound of a minted Madison Square Garden band seeking to freshen its damp atmospherics. It's not a terrible idea: On Antics, even Interpol seemed tired of Interpol, capping the disc's 10 tracks with a couple drawn-out duds. But, as anyone who's bought laundry detergent knows, "new and improved" does not always mean "new" or "improved." Admire's predictable adornments quickly prove fleeting and expose Interpol's nagging limitations rather than their potential.
With cleaner production and an arsenal of instruments at their disposal, the group indulges, and the songs often suffer. Tracks like six-minute opener "Pioneer to the Falls" and the limp lowlight "Scale" grate due to overly repetitive song structures that rely too heavily on choppy breakdowns and pointless solos. And the band's previously economical songwriting, built on quick, bursting hooks and seamless transitions, is now grand, stately, and bloated-- more like a depressing U2 than a poppy Joy Division.
While it would be easy (and probably accurate) to blame Admire's flaws on the group's heightened commercial ambitions, that's only part of the problem. With their first two LPs, Interpol vaulted over like-minded contemporaries thanks to their superior interplay between rhythm and melody. Instead of letting Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler dominate songs with their trebly timbres, bassist Carlos D. and drummer Sam Fogarino provided perfect complements, at times overshadowing their bandmates altogether. (Just listen to the loping low-end of "Untitled" or the stutter-step snares on "Evil" for proof.) But Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine. Gone are the death-disco grooves that made "Slow Hands" and "Obstacle 1" strangely danceable, and without those dynamic rhythmic counterpoints, the tempos slacken, songs drag, and the focus inevitably turns to Banks' increasingly frustrating word splatters.
Banks has always been a between-the-lines lyricist-- his default is somewhere between opaque and lazy free association. With each new song, though, it becomes less certain that there was ever anything worth searching for between the lines in the first place. On Admire, he's slightly more overt, but this time his gripes with the opposite sex sometimes take on a surreal 80s rock star quality. "No I in Threesome", ostensibly about convincing a girlfriend to invite her friend into bed, is either a hilarious parody of an embarrassingly self-serious Paul Banks song-- or just an embarrassingly self-serious ménage a blah. (It's not both.) "The Heinrich Maneuver" rails against a cold-hearted, phony, manipulative actress (shocking!) and "Rest My Chemistry" has the singer grappling with an eternal query: Can you ever be too worn out on drugs to have sex with a young groupie? (A young groupie subject to head-smacking lines like, "You look so young like a daisy in my lazy eye," no less.) More than ever, Banks tries to add some sympathy to his reedy robot croon and nearly succeeds on the wistful "Wrecking Ball". Still, when he monotones, "I've got this soul, it's all fired up," he sounds as thrilled as a sleepy Stephen Hawking.
On "Threesome", Banks suggests, "It's time we give something new a try." And his quest for a guilt-free three-way is as doomed as Interpol's dalliances with heavy-handed, big-budget gestures on Admire. Can they make an OK Computer or Closer? At this point, another Antics would suffice.


The second album from Tom Misch, the London-based musician and producer, is an expansive and fruitful collaboration with drummer Yussef Dayes, one that brings out the best in each other.

Tom Misch / Yussef Dayes: What Kinda Music

What Kinda Music

After Tom Misch’s beige and overly polished 2018 debut, What Kinda Music, a collaboration with drummer Yussef Dayes, brings a flutter of hope. Yussef Kamaal, Dayes’ project with Henry Wu, was instrumental in bringing the South London jazz scene to the fore in the mid-2010s, and was championed by tastemaker Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood imprint. After the duo split in 2017, Dayes went quiet and Wu went on to perform as Kamaal Williams. As a fully collaborative album, What Kinda Music feels doubly heavy. For Dayes, it represents his first full-length release since the breakup of Yussef Kamaal; for Misch, it’s a proving ground for his musical chops. What Kinda Music is cosmic in scope; the reverb layered throughout the album makes it expansive, and you can hear both musicians stretching themselves to the outer limits
As a pair, Dayes and Misch bring out the best in each other. Where Geography was almost too clean, What Kinda Music is muddied with depth and darkness from Dayes’ rhythms, offsetting Misch’s pitch-perfect vocals. This is particularly true on “Tidal Wave,” where Dayes’ drum rolls and hollow wooden taps provide a counterpoint to Misch’s layered vocals. The mutual respect between the pair is tangible: From Misch’s admiring lyrics in “Nightrider” (“Mr. Dayes with the break of the drums/It’s icy cold”) to the tight interplay between the separate drum and guitar improvisations in “Kyiv,” the album bears both their signature imprints.
What Kinda Music also feels indebted to the collaborative nature of the South London jazz scene, as does the presence of saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi and Dayes’ previous collaborator, bassist Rocco Palladino, as features on “Storm Before the Calm” and “Lift Off.” The interplay between the three different musicians on each track feels tightly coordinated, without necessarily requiring distinct sections for each player. Elsewhere, What Kinda Music is catchy without being insincere or vacuous. “I Did It For You” is just one repeated refrain, and Misch’s whispered vocals seem wistful over a multi-layered guitar riff and Dayes’ buzzing drumline. The pitched-up vocal sample on “The Real” plays against Misch’s brief and softly sung interlude, which has the effect of parting stage curtains for a well-delivered monologue.
Not only do Dayes and Misch offer an alluring marriage of virtuosity and pop, the album feels like the best recent example of Brian Eno’s theory of scenius as opposed to genius: the theory that it takes community and collaboration to spark something incredible, rather than the work of one gifted individual.

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