Semipop Life: Collective soul

Jason Moran, Boygenius, JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown, Metro Boomin, and more!

Jason Moran: From the Dancehall to the Battlefield

The recorded output of unquestioned titan James Reese Europe always sounded stolid to me, though it’s not the Lieutenant’s fault that pre-electric recording couldn’t capture the frequency range and the little variations in tone and volume essential to the feeling of what people, once they could hear it properly, called big band jazz. No such impediment for Jason Moran, whose limitations as a Bright Young Thing weren’t technological but those of the Blue Note house style, not that they stopped him from racking up critics’ poll wins. Now on his and his wife’s own label, Moran’s been eclectic, mixing up solo piano recordings with collaborations with avant-gardists and art weirdos. While he’s never before come close to pulling the Grand Unification of All Black Music History that Greg Tate thought him capable of (let alone the Norah Jones numbers Blunimoth dreamed of), he has, however, learned how to make a rhythm section swing without having a drummer manslaughter him. Foremost, he knows that big bands are meant to be fun, and he emphasizes that Europe’s music fits as well with vaudeville (slide whistle, why not) as it did with bougie Vernon and Irene Castle parties. And of course with African-American music of the 1910s, fun wasn’t just fun—it could also be a reaction to loss or a demand for liberation or both. Moran folds Albert Ayler into Europe’s “Flee as a Bird to your Mountain” in a Minor Unification of Some Black Music History; on “St. Louis Blues”, there’s no need to be so explicit. And given a rag, he can still tear up the keyboard like a Bright Young Thing should. Roll over Europe, and tell Scott Joplin the news.

Grade: A (“Darktown Strutter’s Ball”, “St. Louis Blues”, “Memphis Blues”)

Boygenius: The Record

I tip my hat to them for finding a way to make a middle-class income out of being singer-songwriters in the 2020s: find a few tens of thousands of middle-class fans willing to drop thirty bucks for your vinyl. Few of those purchasers will have any complaints about this effort, so let me do a little kvetching for balance. There’s still no one willing to stop them when they latch on to a bad idea, like Julien Baker deciding to rip off “The Boxer” and inspiring the other two to strand polysyllables as risibly as Simon himself. And Lucy Dacus is still the only one who reliably sings words instead of sounds. Yet fans with or without excess disposable income will overlook this because as a trio, they’re exceptional songwriters, capturing the anxieties and desires of urbane late millennial women while doing all that pop melody development stuff worked out by pioneering women-likers like Paul S. and Leonard C. Again, Dacus is the standout in these respects, but Phoebe Bridges drives the best song and Baker has its best verse. And when they harmonize, they embody a collective strength and invite you to join in—boys allowed, at a distance.

Grade: A (“Not Strong Enough”, “True Blue”, “Leonard Cohen”)

JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes

The first JPEGMAFIA release that’s made me bother to write his name in uppercase, as well as a pretty okay Danny Brown album. “First off, fuck Elon Musk” is a fine way for Peggy to start (only “how the fuck we supposed to make money off this shit?” tops it), and he continues reeling off semi-sequiturs throughout, not so much engaging with the zeitgeist as showing how much geist is in the current zeit. Brown, a 42-year-old in a “young man’s sport,” has fewer great lines, though rhyming “narcotics” with “autopilot” gets an A for effort; it hardly matters, as his flow remains inimitable. Knowing he can tap the Brown noise whenever he needs to perk things up, JPEG restricts his production equipment to a quasi-retro sampler, which has the gigabytes to let him play up ornery synths and Japanese meat packing ad jingles like they’re obstacles to be negotiated. I hope they stick together long enough to get a few Run the Jewels-level festival payouts. Making Jack Harlow combo meal money off this shit might be a bit much to ask for.

Grade: A MINUS (“Lean Beef Patty”, “Garbage Pale Kids”, “Scaring the Hoes”)

James Brandon Lewis: Eye of I

Signing to Anti- looks to have been a good career move—even Sony didn’t get him on to Metacritic. His playing has changed little, deploying modernist tricks over a deep blues base, if in straightforward ways compared to my faves An UnRuly Manifesto and Molecular. The title track is the best display of the strengths of the core trio, which includes Chris Hoffman trying to make his cello not sound like a cello (which on some tracks results in dirginess) and Max Jaffe on drums/Sensory Percussion™. The next most alive Lewis becomes is when dueling Kirk Knuffke’s cornet on Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free”. When he invites old flame Anthony Pirog and some of Fugazi around for the closer, he doesn’t rise very high above the dirge, which miraculously parts when it’s Pirog’s turn to solo. Maybe JBL needs to invite his new Anti- colleagues to the studio to enforce discipline. Ask Tom Waits to bring a big stick.

Grade: A MINUS (“Eye of I”, “Someday We’ll All Be Free”, “Fear Not”)

​​Okwy Osadebe & Highlife Soundmakers International: Igbo Amaka

A strong predictor for the artistic success of sons following in their family musical businesses is how much they vocally resemble their fathers, and Okwy sounds a lot like Chief Stephen Osita. His crew too reproduce the highlife sounds the Highlife Soundmakers made a generation ago, without overlap in personnel. Close listening reveals some differences: the horns are stripped back, Okwy’s vocals are a touch sweeter, and lead axeman Chima Ezekiel Ejimkonye isn’t unaware of bluesy trends in 21st century African guitar music. They sound like a studio band, polished up by everyone’s favorite Colombian Afropop superfans at Palenque Records rather than honed over countless live shows for maximum excitement. But have your rhythm section lock into a groove that it seems like you can stay in forever, get a muted trumpet or wah-wah soloist to step up, and it’s highlife time forever.

Grade: A MINUS (“Igbo Amaka”, “Matador Sound System”, “Odira Chukwu Mma”)

Zulu: A New Tomorrow

Black LA band “known for their blend of hardcore and powerviolence” led by one Anaiah Lei, who sings and plays most things, though drummer Christine Cadette plays a workhorse role in fulfilling the hardcore side of the equation, helping them to go for land speed records and to lay into grooves at less death-defying tempos. Unlike many bands that try to integrate non-punk elements into a punk ethos, they’re very strong at making the likes of growling and double kicks seem like logical outgrowths of their sound. They’re adept at making their musical hard lefts with a minimal turn radius, whether they’re doing a credible soul jazz track for some reason or sampling an anthem as obvious and fitting as “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”. Lei is adamant that he has more to say than just recapitulating 400 years of Black pain, but also that it’s essential to know where you’re from to know where you’re at. If his present strength is the pain bit, he has plenty of friends and helpers to convince us that sometimes life can be beautiful and, maybe, funny too.

Grade: A MINUS (“Our Day Is Now”, “Fakin’ Tha Funk (You Get Did)”, “52 Fatal Strikes”)

Metro Boomin: Heroes & Villains

Skip tracks one (grandiose even by psych-rap album opener standards) and two (Chris Brown) and you’re left with 42 minutes that prove that while the imperial phase of Atlanta trap is in decline, it hasn’t been overrun by the Visigoths yet. Metro’s strength is orchestration, with the same rumbling kicks and attenuated hi-hats he’s been riding for a decade illustrated by string and brass sections simplified into pure frequency. Actual radio star The Weeknd gets an actual song, with 21 Savage adding to the Fugees’ and Mario Winans’s accretions to Enya. Otherwise the rotating cast of rappers play nice without saying much as they’re absorbed into the soundscape; only Young Thug shows fleeting signs of vibe-spoiling idiosyncrasy. Statement of themes is farmed out to Morgan Freeman, who’s been adding gravitas to doggerel since at least Driving Miss Daisy. In all, easy listening, and maybe even PG-13 if you allow the usual rap vocabulary, even if personally I’d hold off handing Metro a Spiderverse wristwatch until he’s saved a universe or at least a genre.

Grade: B PLUS (“Creepin’”, “Trance”, “Too Many Nights”)

Gina Birch: I Play My Bass Loud

Committed to delivering what she promises, as soon as she says the title, lo, the low-end increases in volume. That this opening track features five other bassists shows she’s not above accepting help, most usefully from Thurston Moore on “Wish I Was You” and from fellow first-waver (turned academic) Helen McCookerybook, with whom she Pussy Riot in a long tradition of feminist protest. Though no one these days would take ’70 punk as a complete political program, she’s adamant there are still lessons to be learned from it—not least how to live while being angry at the world for half a century, on and off. Birch distills decades of experience into succinct cases for wearing sensible footwear and being a bubbling cauldron of rage at opportune times. Not the most melodic vocalist, tunefulness abounds in her song structures, as when the chorus of “Feminist Song” hits like a Waterloo sunset, and in that bass. But it never excludes treble.

Grade: B PLUS (“Feminist Song”, “Wish I Was You”, “Pussy Riot”)

Star Feminine Band: In Paris

Since their 2020 debut, they’ve suffered COVID postponements, endured European weather, learned English, and, in a team-up so inevitable I’m annoyed I’m not the one who suggested it, collaborated with the Go! Team. This second full-length maintains their impressive rhythm sense and adds a few Western embellishments to keep things from feeling stale. It’s more polished if less magical than the first; such is maturity (they’re all teenagers now) and such is France. Now that they’re on UNICEF’s payroll, band dad/real dad André Balaguemon’s subject matter is often serious. Titles include “Le mariage forcé” and “L’excision”: worthy topics, though one wouldn’t mind them singing about boys or whatever. Still, the older girls bring spirit, the younger ones bring attitude, and whenever the songs don’t quite hit, you can always listen to bassist Julienne Sayi, who’s ridiculously good for her age.

Grade: B PLUS (“Le droit de l’enfant”, “We Are Star Feminine Band”, “Ete we gbetoyi”)

Kala Jula & Gangbé Brass Band ft. Fama Diabaté: Asro

Let’s see: Kala Jula is Samba Diabaté, a Malian griot, and Vincent Zanetti, a Swiss kora and djembe guy; the Gangbé Brass Band is a Beninese ensemble; balafonist Fama Diabaté is maybe 15; and somehow the opening track is a Professor Longhair rip. Recorded at a 2019 tribute to the late world-fusion mainstay Kassé Mady Diabaté, the totality can get a bit too democratic for home use: with everyone from the trombonist to yet another Diabaté (Fama’s dad I think) getting their shining moment, this goes well over an hour and isn’t as consistent as I’d like. But there’s fun aplenty along the way, especially when the Gangbé Brass Band controls the floor, whether they’re lining up with military precision or goofing on Western genres. And Fama shows enough as a singer that you can see why the United Nations has taken an interest in him.

Grade: B PLUS (“Azanlin Takin”, “An ka ke nyogon fè”, “Treme cissé”)

Kate Soper (ft. Sam Pluta): The Understanding of All Things

En-Guggenheimed soprano and Smith prof Soper’s avant-theoretical construction explores issues of epistemology, (im)materialism, dye-jobs, etc. Think Laurie Anderson with more expensive degrees, except Soper has a bigger bag of vocal tricks when she’s in character, though when she’s not she and her electronics emit a certain hesitance, which might reflect the uncertainties of the age or might just be a cool sound effect. The philosophy ranges from provocative to dorm roomy (some of it’s by Kafka, some’s by Berkeley); the meta-philosophical point is that if dialogue and its stuck-up cousin dialectics have been so valuable to Great Dead Minds, surely music and art can be even more liberatory thought modes, not limited to mere rationality (we have computers for that now.) Whether or not this is right I’m willing to leave to the professionals, so it’s good for me that there are songs in here, however obscured.

Grade: B PLUS (“The Understanding of All Things”, “Dialogue I”, “So Dawn Chromatically Descends to Day”)