Semipop Life: Cardamoms and guarded dads

Panic Shack, Fever Ray, Robert Forster, Karol G, and more!

Panic Shack: Baby Shack EP

These four Welsh women are the most exciting up-and-coming punk band since… saying Sleater-Kinney would get me in trouble, Fluffy double, so let’s cop out with Downtown Boys. The six songs are chronological on the streaming version, so you can hear their journey from the elemental “Who’s Got My Lighter?” to narrative and to a limited extent musical complexity. They’ve become more aggressive, thumping the kick and smashing backbeats, and have barely enough chops (the best quantity of punk chops) to accelerate then return to the original groove on “I Don’t Really Like It”. Singer Sarah Harvey is their most distinctive feature, ENTJing with righteous fury according to her personal preferences, some arbitrary (“I didn't think anyone actually put the milk in first”), some quite reasonable (“you do not shush me in the cinema”.) Her force of personality overwhelms any qualms I might’ve had about her turn towards sprechgesang—talking is fine if you use your outside voice. The rest of the group also contribute vocals to reinforce her inspirational voices, echoing “I don’t want to hold your baby”, which as far as arbitrary preferences go I must admit I find refreshing to hear from these anti-maternal Ronettes of my dreams and your parents’/kids’ nightmares.

Grade: A (“The Ick”, “Baby”, “I Don’t Really Like It”)

Fever Ray: Radical Romantics

Karin Dreijer’s offhand coolness grants them an ability near-unparalleled among middle-aged people to post cringe and get away with it—they’re at the level of Kate Bu[NO, bad male music critic], I mean Bowie. No doubt the “cinnamon bun in the oven” posited in the first verse here is not too sweet and generous with the cardamom, but does it also allude to one or both children from her abandoned attempt at heterosexual marriage? She retains plausible deniability. Where 2017’s Plunge was in large part about learning to deal with the immediate physical and social realities of embracing genderfluidity, this one works out how to not reduce oneself to that identity, how to create conditions that allow others to self-actualize, how to love ecologically when love is so much carbon dioxide. Changes of pronouns aside, the continuity of their project going back to the Knife is evident: the synthbending they and brother Olof, who co-produces the first four songs, got famous for is instantly recognizable and as great as ever, to the extent that I regret track five is produced by Reznor/Ross, regardless of how appropriate those two are for a revenge castration fantasy. No matter who’s producing, there’s plenty of sex, plenty of vocal filtering all across the gender spectrum and beyond, plenty of we’re all in this together, even the bullies.

Grade: A MINUS (“Kandy”, “Tapping Fingers”, “What They Call Us”)

Kwon Eun Bi: Lethality mini-album

One of the few K-pop releases to approach the aplomb of 2017-18 Sunmi, though Eun Bi, leader of the short-lived group Iz*One (which disbanded because they were too successful, go figure girl group economics), and her crew have to work harder for it. From the introductory “Waves” with its bowed bass evoking a funky Jaws swimming into the single “Underwater”, they’re putting their whole asses into this. On “Croquis” (a quick sketch of a model, I learned a word), the literal meaning is less important than the staccato rhythm she imparts to the chorus, which she combines with a trad tune before wrapping up the whole thing neatly past the three minute mark. On the beat-change heavy “Simulation”, the repeated English title seems unrelated to the Korean lyrics (except that love, pop, society, it’s all simulacra, said Jean, puffing on his cigarette.) Since this is a mini-album, it’s over before we can get too deep into post-structuralism, Eun Bi ending with straightforward banger “Hi”. Why would she say goodbye?

Grade: A MINUS (“Hi”, “Underwater”, “Simulation”)

Robert Forster: The Candle and the Flame

The guy knows how to write a song, and you can bet he isn’t going to break his winning streak on the record on which he revisits scenes from a 30-year marriage to his now cancer-stricken wife (plus a closing return to the Seventies in which young Robert whines “Perceptive girl/Of 21/I looked high and low/I found none.”) Often context is left to be inferred (“Heidelberg is a German city/By a river, very pretty/And it was there that timing was our friend”); more often the emotional meaning is unmistakable (“She’s a fighter/Fighting for good” is the entire lyric of the opener.) Never the melody guy in his old band or apparently in his family, choruses nevertheless grow to sizes his drawl can manage. Production is a family affair, with Louis and sometimes Loretta Forster picking up the slack so dad can focus on strumming in time. And having Mum participate as health allowed, whether plonking a xylophone or ah-ing along like a reverse Lorelei luring itinerant Australians and chemo patients alike towards life, is a masterstroke.

Grade: A MINUS (“It’s Only Poison”, “Tender Years”, “When I Was a Young Man”)

Ernesto Djédjé: Roi Du Ziglibithy

Le Roi Ziglibithien (1977) is more consistent; however, this collection, in four tracks and twenty-six minutes, gives a fuller picture of the development of the Ivory Coast’s biggest star before Alpha Blondy. The even-numbered entries date from the late Seventies, by which time singer-guitarist Djédjé had been leading relatively straightforward Afrosoul bands across two continents for over a decade. With African musicians at the time instigating new genres left, center, and far left, enter his creation: ziglibithy. Despite Wikipedia claiming that he railed against “Congolization”, he’d listened to all the same Congolese musicians we listened to last month. The sparkling leads and the ever-so-slightly out of tune horn section reflect prevailing trends, albeit with trap drumming busier than the norm and a four-on-the-floor relentlessness motorvating the syncopated one step forward, point-nine steps back jerk guitar. The odd-numbered ’80s tracks are more Frenchy (e.g. in tune), glossier, a little disco, almost as catchy. Djédjé died aged 35 of an untreated ulcer; the neighbors might’ve started complaining about Ivorization had he lived.

Grade: A MINUS (“Ziglibithiens”, “Golozo”, “Nini”)

Kaitlin Butts: What Else Can She Do

Tulsa-born singer-songwriter, the kind of Southern feminist who puts drag queen Paris Van Cartier to waitress with her in her video—so the good kind. While Butts sounds and writes a mite theatrical, her inspirational mantras raised to anthemic choruses serve to develop empathy with her women subjects, and her third-verse-or-bridge twists offer complications rather than just piling on. There are stories of dreams dying in diners and of people dying in codeine dreams; there’s an Angaleena Presley co-write called (double meaning alert) “Blood” that’s the one time she can’t outsing the professionalism of her session players. If sometimes her characters remain characters, on the two best songs she plays off country-folk tradition to create something new and alive. “Jackson” makes the Mississippi capital seem impossibly far. And if you thought Cobain killed off all the mystery of “In the Pines”, Butts uses her vocal torque to twist it open again: pay attention to what she gender-swaps and what she doesn’t.

Grade: A MINUS (“In the Pines”, “Jackson”, “What Else Can She Do”)

Ablaye Cissoko & Cyrille Brotto: Instant

Kora maestro Cissoko has a rare ability to participate in “world” music team-ups of the mildest sort and make them beautiful. Traversées, his album with Canadian Renaissance revivalists Constantinople, was a Semipop Life fave a few years back; on this one, he collaborates with French accordion guy Brotto, and that’s it: who wants to deal with a drummer? In addition to being a clean plucker, Cissoko also has a heck of an upper register for someone in his fifties, reminiscent of his countryman Ndour, albeit without the otherworldly range. Brotto holds up his end, often taking the melodic lead, with Cissoko draping decorative runs over the top while keeping the rhythm clear; their tandem control over dynamics impresses. Travesées is a smidgeon more nutritious—the Instant instrumentals lean too Euro, plus it is worth forking over union wage and a bottle of claret for a percussionist—but this has sweep and grace aplenty.

Grade: A MINUS (“Miliamba”, “Pa Kaw”, “Kolda”)

Pool Kids

Mixed-gender Tallahassee oh-fine-call-it-emo quartet with a debt to Paramore so evident that of course their big break was a Hayley Williams shout-out. They’re fancier or at least mathier than Paramore ever were, with speed change-ups and double-time guitar riffs. Hints of upper division STEM education are soon overwhelmed by Christine Goodwyne’s force of personality. Her knack of resolving polysyllabic verses (“I can’t hear my own thoughts over your performative opinions”) into big, emotionally apt choruses (“You fucked it up again”), is a reminder that emo’s way of processing negative emotions has always been, at least, an ethos. On midtempo occasions the band can be caught between two worlds, but give them semi-major payola money and stardom is attainable. Or else crush their dreams of the big time and leave them to lord over the phone-crashing Florida emo group chat; I bet they’d continue to make excellent music.

Grade: B PLUS (“Arm’s Length”, “Talk Too Much”, “That’s Physics, Baby”)

Quantic & Nidia Góngora: Almas Conectadas

I put off getting to Sounds and Colours’s 2021 album of the year until now, perhaps because the blurb said “Latin American Portishead”. The good news for me is that one full song and a few fragments fit that description; the remainder is firmly in the traditions of cumbia, salsa, and the African-derived musics of Góngora’s home on the Colombian coast, no matter how much it stems from expat Will Holland’s laptop. The first few tracks show sturdy construction, with neat chord changes and drunken ritardandos on “Balada Borracha”. On occasion, Holland misjudges how interesting his virtual orchestras are relative to Góngora’s voice and doesn’t allow her room to maneuver; still, given half a chance, she powers through, delivering booze to the boozers, blood to the blood cultists.

Grade: B PLUS (“Balada Borracha”, “El Chiclan”, “Adorar la Sangre”)

Karol G: Mañana Será Bonito

It’s easy to hear the core appeal of the 32-year-old Colombian who, if you’re slower to notice these things than SNL is, has become one of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest stars: she conveys openness with sufficient strength that she can riff off “Don’t Worry Be Happy” without sounding like a sap. A literal student of the biz, her pan-American revenue plan budgets for name collaborators from Romeo Santos to her countrywoman Shakira, with longtime producer Ovy on the Drums ensuring consistency. Since Hispanophone America isn’t sick of the dembow riddim yet (it’s like if Bo Diddley beats ruled the Eighties), there’s no need to fiddle with the formulas of reggaeton and its offshoots, save for adding a few extra layers of pop varnish. The end product is more an ideal MBA case study than an idiosyncratic work of art, yet it wouldn’t work if she didn’t push basic pleasure buttons, and she has the might of Universal Latinomoth behind her to let her mash them hard.

Grade: B PLUS (“Mientras Me Curo del Cofra”, “X Si Volvemos”, “TQG”)

Charlie Puth: Charlie

Perhaps the first record by a majorish American star to sound like K-pop. Melodies prance in the high treble, with Puth’s pitch-corrected head voice signifying moral purity, or at least harmlessness. The primary subject matter, a breakup, is detailed with messiness; “I hope your jacket smells like me” is a pleasant creepy-lite chorus for a pop radio airplay bid. He gets away with it in part because he’s a bit of a putz (“Charlie Be Quiet!”, self-instructs one title), and in larger part because he presciently befriended BTS’s Jungkook, whose appearance here has extended Puth’s relevance a couple more years. In the long run, American cishet males need a more appealing romantic role model than a benign doormat, but he’s a lot better than most current alternatives.

Grade: B PLUS (“Loser”, “Smells Like Me”, “There’s a First Time for Everything”)