Semipop Life: Fighting tooth and nail

jaimie branch, Speedy Ortiz, Jack Harlow, Noname, and more!

Oct 22, 2023

Branch’s passing last year hangs like a shadow, not least over the Meat Puppets cover on which lifelong friend Jason Ajemian sings about “comin’ down”, and this third Fly or Die not counting the live one isn’t as startling as the first, on which Branch and Tomeka Reid’s trumpet-cello interplay seemed to come from another planet. Yet it’s at least as moving, with Reid’s replacement Lester St. Louis better integrated into the group than on Fly or Die II, and with a canny running order: even the marimbas arrive at the right time. That’d be on “Baba Louie”, which features Branch’s most fjuck-the-exact-notes playing and guest trombonist Nick Broste comping until everybody down to her dog Kuma must get stoned on the dubby outro. “Bolinko Bass” has Ajemian’s title instrument play a 10-beat pattern that St. Louis and Rob Frye’s visiting bass clarinet jab over, with Branch staying above the fray to referee. Her singing isn’t nearly as technically accomplished as her trumpeting, but she gets by on punk attitude, with her spilling syllables propelling “Take Over the World” almost as much as Chad Taylor’s cultured tubthumping does. The album pushes outward-facing jazz into the 2020s; moreover, it preserves Branch’s world, and makes it ours.

Grade: A MINUS (“Baba Louie”, “Bolinko Bass”, “Burning Grey”)

Speedy Ortiz: Rabbit Rabbit

It required seeing them live to clarify this album. Sadie D’s become an unusual guitarist: plucking with her nails (at least until she broke the one on her index finger at the show, which despite her evident discomfort IMO improved the setlist) and sliding up and down the neck like surf rock’s wave never broke. That her tunes and words are unusual, we knew. Tracks one through three are about magical totem Kim Cattrall, driving in Los Angeles, and scabs; the second is the scariest and nastiest. As the record progresses and the meanings become more MFA-ish, her melodies and singing carry the load. If most of the time she sounds like how we incorrectly thought Liz Phair would sound in her thirties, “Cry Cry Cry” and “Ranch vs. Ranch” resemble if Phair tried to go populist and didn’t have the Matrix to tell her what that meant. Instead, Dupuis has assistance from mixer extraordinaire Sarah Tudzin, bandmates past and present, and state-of-a-few-years-ago technology to create a multitracked flow that jerks as inexorably as LA highway traffic. As with her nail, painful, fascinating accidents happen.

Grade: A MINUS (“Ghostwriter”, “You S02”, “Cry Cry Cry”)

Jack Harlow: Jackman

Just when he seemed on the brink of being as safe a rap asset as the Spotify-Apple economy allows comes an album so (uh-oh) serious it’s self-produced and self-titled; expectedly, there’ve been no hundred-million stream hits and Warnermoth’s sent him to work with Jungkook as penance. Unexpectedly, it’s good. Confident in being the “hardest white boy since the one who rapped about vomit and sweaters,” Harlow doesn’t go out of his way to prove his skills, figuring that rhyme-stringing with ease and a little tonal variation will suffice. Like every worthwhile white rapper ever, he’s hyper-aware of his privilege, and if his corniness regarding that topic is closer to Macklemore than the spaghetti guy, he’s a better MC (than Mack, not Marshall, duh) which lets him get away with it. Not corny at all is “Gang Gang Gang”, about what it means to be loyal to friends he collected Pokemon cards with when they grow up to be sex offenders. It’s set to a Stereolab sample.

Grade: A MINUS (“Gang Gang Gang”, “They Don’t Love It”, “It Can’t Be”)

Noname: Sundial

The year’s most deft rapping-as-music: she’s acquired the downhomeness of a Badu without sacrificing clarity or authority. She doesn’t always make this easy to enjoy—by design, perhaps, though one notes this approach can feel incongruous on a record selling socialism. The inclusion of designated bad person Jay Electronica’s verse on “Balloons”, and her disinclination to take responsibility for it, acts as a political statement, and an indication that the coalition building she’s doing is more fitting for a vanguard than a mass movement. Which, again, could be fine: there are things she can say about the military-industrial complex that she wouldn’t if Navy jets were over her head at the Super Bowl. But her willingness to implicate herself seems unearned—while I’m sure she’s genuinely conflicted about her decision to play Coachella, if that’s the most hypocritical thing she’s done, I’m not sure she’ll bring about the revolution anytime soon. It’s left to Billy Woods to describe what a victory, however fleeting, might look like. Even that might not keep the fighters out of the sky.

Grade: A MINUS (“Namesake”, “Gospel?”, the first half of “Balloons”)

Janelle Monáe: The Age of Pleasure

Oh thank goodness, a fun one. No longer feeling any need to play the archandroid (playing Bowie is still on), and armed with confidence earned through multiversal acclaim (backed up by the security of a movie career waiting whenever her muse takes a couple of years off), she states her phenomenality plainly, leaving Doechii to dissect it: fashion, taste, and pussy are each deserving of a Wikipedia article. Not content to cruise over the familiar, there’s legit fusion, with dancehall along with Afrobeats singular and plural as prime components—not unprecedented in Nigeria, but there Kuti family horns play as retro, whereas Monáe couldn’t sound 2000 and late if she tried. On “Know Better”, she mixes in the “Darkest Light”/“Show ’em Whatcha Got” sample, and she sings as if it’s part of the accumulated knowledge of the world. Knowledge of what? Of love, of course, in configurations of one to n lovers, of whom one to n may be herself. And of the body: when the Greeks said Know Thyself, I’m not sure they had her level of detail in mind.

Grade: A MINUS (“Phenomenal”, “Champagne Shit”, “Know Better”)

Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band of Africa: Nwanne Bu Ife (2022)

I demand “make it new” from almost all the music I love… except highlife. The groove of the 16-minute opener (on the streaming version; at least two other running orders exist) “Ka Anyi Ribe Ife” could’ve come from a lost Celestine Ukwu LP: it’s like so much you’ve heard before, and it’s glorious, the two-chord structure no restraint on the melodicism. Palenque Records says this is Ekobe music, and I guess if you pay attention, the hand percussion is a little different from standard Igbo highlife (there’s a semi-tuned instrument that I think is a clay pot with a hole in it), and later in the album a keyboardist doodling pseudo-randomly becomes more prominent. The dominant sounds remain a bright guitar, a mellow guitar, and Azuka Moweta leading choruses and calls-and-responses in a high, not-too-sweet baritone that contrasts with gruffer second banana Agese Amechi. Every song must end, but it’s always highlife time.

Grade: A MINUS (“Kamsi Ebinu Ndum”, “Ka Anyi Ribe Ife”, “Uma Nekwuke Mmadu”)

Morgan Wade: Psychopath

On a par with Reckless without the masterpiece “Wilder Days”. Its guitars and cultural references are more 20th century than I’d prefer from a recent 27 Club avoider (a country singer pedaling second-hand nostalgia, who’d’ve thought), and if her closest comp is Sheryl Crow, she has the talent to warrant aiming higher. But short of ’80s Hollywood romances as confessional realism, her desire-filled voice can sell anything, maybe even that a guy who uses “psychopath” as a term of endearment is a relationship goal. And with Julia Michaels and producer Sadler Vaden respectively, she comes up with two half-masterpieces. “Phantom Feelings” is analogous to a phantom limb, perhaps one on which “You finally got another tattoo and I didn’t even know.” “Meet Somebody” is self-explanatory—“Why the hell can’t I meet somebody?/All these people want to do is fuck someone at the party”—and not psychopathic at all.

Grade: B PLUS (“Phantom Feelings”, “Meet Somebody”, “Fall in Love with Me”)

Andy Fairweather Low: Flang Dang

Though in some quarters I have a reputation as a ’70s rock hater, I’ve always found this guy fun, within limits. On his first solo record since 2006’s Sweet Soulful Music (and his first with an old school Fairweather Lowian title since 1980’s Mega Shebang), he’s as easy-going as ever, albeit with a knack of delivering an innocuous line in a semi-enunciated way that gives you pause. One chorus begins “You can never ever have too many friends”, and I find myself spending the subsequent couple of minutes assessing the truth-value of his statement while he self-harmonizes about opening one’s heart and such. His crack band, consisting of mostly himself, harnesses grooves from skiffle to ska in service of drummer Paul Beavis’s backbeat. The flang dangs, the booga roogas, the spider can’t come to the phone right now but its spirit jives on.

Grade: B PLUS (“99 Ways”, “Keep Your Faith”, “Too Many Friends”)

Jim Black & the Schrimps: Ain’t No Saint

Drummer Black, most notable for his ’90s run in Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, gathers some Eurojazz kids, gives them a belittling name, and sets ’em motorvating. “Crashbash” gives the idea in name and in form: Asger Nissen’s alto and Julius Gawlik’s tenor state the head in unison and harmony, then they flip a coin and Nissen I think gets solo time while Black tries to pull the rug out from under him and bassist Felix Henkelhausen attempts to hold things together. Moments that drift into the avant are outnumbered by the show-offy bits, mostly Black’s, though he lets the young crustaceans blow away on “Schrimps BBQ”. Black gets a workout, the kids get an education, Intakt gets to say they do rock out sometimes: win-win-win.

Grade: B PLUS (“Schrimps BBQ”, “Crashbash”, “Asgingforit”)

Barbi Recanati: Ubicación en Tiempo Real (2020)

She led Argentina’s Utopians for a decade before a guitarist got Me Too’d and she pulled the plug; this was her first solo album. The effects aren’t laid on as thick as they are on this year’s El Final de las Cosas, so though it sounds like something 4AD put out back when they weren’t annoyed with the Cocteau Twins, you can still hear the songs. Lyrics often concern once-trusted men who have done wrong, band members who sent minors dick pics perhaps among them. Fortunately, she’s a major guitarist in her own right, eschewing peacockery in favor of a grandeur that’s soft yet resilient: even her overtones have a toughness to them. Just because she’s nice doesn’t mean she’ll take any shit.

Grade: B PLUS (“Que No”, “¿Qué le Ves?”, “En la Frente”)

Semipop Life