Semipop Life: For your consideration 2024

Dlala Thukzin, Bad Moves, GloRilla, Wussy, and much more!

Dlala Thukzin: Finally Famous Too

Amapiano, gqom, 3-step, whatever: it’s 100% Thukzin. That means the usual effortless beauty, as on the approximately syncopated “Sohlala Sisonke”, one of his two current hits (single-only “Ama Gear” is also worthwhile), is table stakes. Though Thukzin can match almost any beatmaker for cool sonics, more than anyone else in his scene, Thukzin has the structures and the pacing to sustain bliss for a full-length; it helps that at an hour, by Afrotronica standards this is a mini. The percussion frameworks complement the singers: a big snare and an oscillating rattle for pop-leaning Simmy, while the rhythm-play vocalists in the center of the album get what I call “early fours”, where the fourth beat comes a sixteenth early for extra urgency. Towards the end, things get weird. Not sure what “VAR” has to do with the offside rule, but its high, hollow synths create an idiosyncratic groove; after a false start, the bass finally drops and it’s a tremendous contrast. “Ballito” has a different percussion sound again, like a faded memory of a beach party. “Whistle” starts off subtle, before fast rattle-rolls and the good old donk arrive in your face. I don’t think anyone since (sorry) Moby has better satisfied both the commercial and experimental imperatives of electronic dance music.

Grade: A (“VAR”, “Whistle”, “Hlala Nami”)

Bad Moves: Wearing Out the Refrain

A fun rock record? In this economy? True, that’s not unprecedented—not that you’d expect “unprecedented” from people who sent Brooklyn Vegan an arm-length influences list—but in this day and age, it’s rare that a band nearly a decade into their career can thrive without ending up adrift in neuroticism or ska. Part of the trick is that they enjoy being in a rock band. Regardless of the precarity of their settings, like an “Eviction Party” (T. Rex, Sly Stone, The Beths among others, per B. Vegan), said party comes through in melodic guitar solos, my-first-counterpoint singalongs, power-pop dynamics, and the bass getting to the new chord first. “Hallelujah” (Beach Boys, Modern Lovers, Parquet Courts), with the frontpeople trading reflections on the hypocrisies of present-day scribes and Pharisees, is a classic for our time. “New Year’s Reprieve” (okay, this one’s mostly just “Fairytale of New York” six days late), in which I think it’s guitarist Katie Park reflecting on “cleaning literal shit from a dive bar toilet” in December 2019. Not quite optimistic, she carves out space for future optimism that as it turns out would be necessary the following year. Yeah, that’s where I’m at.

Grade: A (“Hallelujah”, “New Year’s Reprieve”, “Eviction Party”)

Darius Jones: Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye)

After enjoying Jones’s Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) in 2011, I haven’t kept up with his Man’ish Boy project in recent years. On this seventh chapter of a proposed nine, he gets a hardware store’s worth of textures out of his alto, from smooth to vibratoed-out to the point of parody. His playing is both cerebral and felt rather than showoffy; every note counts on the ballad and everywhere else. Chris Lightcap and Gerald Cleaver are the most complementary rhythm section he could ask for: when he’s tone-stretching on “Another Kind of Forever”, they underscore him with staccato bumps, while on the abstract “We Outside”, they stage a complex rumble that makes Jones’s wanderings feel tuneful. The closing “Motherfuckin Roosevelt” (Jones’s uncle, not Teddy nor Frank) has the trickiest trio interplay, with Lightcap laying out a lengthy bass solo before providing something melodic for his leader to set himself against, which in turn lets Cleaver choose beats to accent. Jones’s strengths as a composer notwithstanding, best in show is the Parchman work song “No More My Lord”, on which he blows with the pain of centuries, but with the possibility of resolution.

Grade: A MINUS (“No More My Lord”, “Affirmation Needed”, “We Outside”)

Dylan Hicks & Small Screens: Modern Flora

I’ve respected musician/novelist/critic/humanist Hicks since long before he took to Substack and republished a monumental retrospective on my recent if much more limited subject of interest Barbra Streisand, without adoring his audio projects since 2012’s some-kinda-classic Dylan Hicks Sings Bolling Greene, despite some great songs. In 2024, however, he’s again made the year’s easiest album to listen to. His loungey little big band is underpinned by real musicianship, like from saxists Christopher Thomson and Bryan Murray, who don’t duel so much as make out. Four and a half minutes in, Hicks sings, and we learn the feelings expressed aren’t easy listening at all: spring, does it even exist? Yet the words flow like milk; “The Unicellar Spore” is not not language poetry. What prevents stuffiness or mold is Hicks’s singing. As he says of Babs, “range isn’t really the point”, and with one good octave it’d better not be. Instead, he uses little “ahs” and “I mean”s and refusals to breathe to connect phrases and ideas, so that the evolution from algae to Montgomery Clift seems if not frictionless then at least inexorable.

Grade: A MINUS (“The Unicellular Spore”, “All Thumbs”, “Modern Flora”)

GloRilla: Glorious

The second and more accomplished 2024 album from the favorite for rapper of the year until a week ago, fresh enough that there’s a Hawk Tuah reference that I’m sure will age well. “TGIF” is a big solo hit, “Whatchu Know About Me” with Sexyy Red is a rising collab hit, and the rest has variety: the way she chops her drawl to match the beat on the Timbaland is evidence she has the technique for the long haul. Not sure what Yo Gotti does for his production credits, but it’s plausible he nudges things towards some kind of unity (almost as helpful as getting her an accountant.) She does a much improved job cooperating with guests while maintaining her primacy—of all people, Latto turns out most valuable, allowing Glo to go low and/or sensible (“n— tryna get me pregnant, I need to tie my tubes”). On the Kirk Franklin one, she spits gospel rap that’s hard and theologically defensible, asking the Lord to bless her haters and even her baby father. Though I’m neither of those, I trust she wishes me the best too.

Grade: A MINUS (“Procedure”, “Rain Down on Me”, “Stop Playing”)

The Unholy Modal Rounders: Unholier Than Thou: 7/7/77

Peter Stampfel aside, guitarist Paul Presti is the only personnel overlap with Have Moicy! I think that’s him doing an admirable job playing Michael Hurley; Jeffrey Fredericks is as invisible as his hamburger. Still, to no one’s surprise, it’s Stampfel’s album: he’s in peak fiddle form and voice, a Muppet on his hand short of superstardom. When he sings “Wild Blue Yonder”, I worry he’s leading the Army Air Corps into the sun. Rounder classics are enlivened, including the fuckingest “Fucking Sailors in Chinatown” I’ve heard outside of a cover by one Girl George hosting a Berkeley open mic; the other great semi-lost Antonia song, “Places Where You Never See the Snow”, has a pathos worthy of Stephin Merritt. Standards like “The Minstrel Boy” and uh “Goldfinger” are wrung for every drop of populist emotion. Amongst the “where have they been hiding this one” entries, “Kansas City Kitty” (Donaldson/Leslie c. 1929) is a fine band workout, and on an obscure Hurley, “somebody calls me in a nightmare tone/I don’t wanna live in the Twilight Zone”. Ain’t it a beautiful world?

Grade: A MINUS (“Fucking Sailors in Chinatown”, “The Minstrel Boy”, “Places Where You Never See the Snow”)

Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola

Oldsters may chuckle that it took the imprimatur of one of East Africa’s top DJs, herself credentialed via a Ngege Ngege association, to get hipsters to listen to the soukous that dominates this comp (even if Resident Advisor classifies it as “Pop/Kwaito/Afrobeats”.) Youngsters may snicker that it took said DJ for oldsters to acknowledge the extent of women’s contributions to the genre. Let’s just admit that all of us outside of Africa listening to this stuff are dorks and enjoy the music. While I appreciate monarchs Samba Mapangala and Tshala Muana, it’s easier for the who-they artists to be revelatory, with Meta & Feza’s “Mivé Temoin”, recorded in France in the ’80s, closest to a lost classic. Further from the Congo is the (South) African House Party’s acid-bubblegum “P-Coq”; Kampire shows its synth bass and whistles nestle snugly with the speed and groove of the soukous of the Nineties. She makes it sound like she could collate little-known tracks of this quality for hours, and I invite Strut to test this hypothesis on further compact discs.

Grade: A MINUS (“Mivé Temoin”, “P-Coq”, “Sala Mi Toto”)

Kate Nash: 9 Sad Symphonies

Her pro wrestling career cut short by Netflix, she returns to music (on Kill Rock Stars, why not) with an OnlyFans to cover expenses and having not grown up at all. Political as well as personal times are testing enough for her to put “far right scum” in a singalong chorus. Yet crippling depression or no, she still plays the wide-eyed ingenue, reveling in the vastness of the world and staying one step ahead of misery at least some of the time. Lovers, who are sometimes immaterial and sometimes watching 2001: A Space Odyssey with you (“so fucking long”; no one tell her partner about Barry Lyndon), help. She tries to regulate her humors, with about as much success as your average ancient physician; it’s her effort at understanding that’s admirable. The arrangements are complementary, with Frederik Thaae’s modest beats and Rhea Fowler’s expressive violin adding impetus or a sense of the possible, as required. Even crying in a Home Depot parking lot, the world is always with us.

Grade: A MINUS (“My Bile”, “Space Odyssey 2001”, “Misery”)

Mach-Hommy: #RICHAXXHAITIAN

Uncannier than 2021’s Pray for Haiti. The reluctant title track party with Kaytranada and 03 Greedo aside, the atmosphere is humid. Especially on the SadhuGold productions, even the samples drone, and Mach’s flows modulate around a root tone, so that when a snatch of tune drifts in from the Cordillera or somebody living or dead decides to sing, there’s an air of mystery about it. While a few of the guests are relieved they can get away with monotone, the savvier ones find opportunities for contrast, even if that dogfucked line from Your Old Droog is a bit much. The politickle meanings have to be inferred, though I’m confident that as far as popular musicians who’ve namechecked the IMF go, Mach has a sounder moral foundation than Thom Yorke. At the least, when Mach reports that “white phosphorus fell on civilians in Gaza”, there’s no question he thinks that’s an atrocity.

Grade: A MINUS (“Politickle”, “The Serpent and the Rainbow”, “RichAxxHaitian”)

Wussy: Cincinnati Ohio

Even America’s Best Band (emeritus) and/or co-producers Johns Curley and Hoffman aren’t immune to the return of the hypnagogic, with Lisa mixed down like a voice from a transistor radio. Fortunately, they still have rock’s finest semiprofessional rhythm-cum-accordion section, plus Chuck’s guitar is tending more abstract, or maybe he’s just hitting random notes. The songs, of course, are there. Chuck gets full band versions of work he’s been carrying out for years, with the “The Night We Missed the Horror Show” here more muscular, if less horrorific, than on his solo record. Lisa’s road song “Inhaler” is among her most hopeful, and when she and Chuck do their dueling chorus thing, you’re reminded that you get one or two bands a decade that can pull that off. Newcomer Travis Talbert has some cool pedal steel effects and will fit in better with time. On two tracks, the late John Erhardt makes forever sounds.

Grade: A MINUS (“Inhaler”, “Winged”, “The Great Divide”)

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party: Chain of Light

Despite some remedial work, I remain unequipped to tell the difference between great and average Nusrat records, so all I can say is I find this album of rediscovered 1990 sessions one of the interesting ones. Of its four tracks, the praisesong “Ya Allah Ya Rehman” and the ghazal “Khabram Raseed Imshab” are standard showcases for one of the late twentieth century’s most memorable voices. “Aaj Sik Mitran Di” has some tricky tempo shifts, letting Nusrat demonstrate his improvisation at high speed and pitch. “Ya Gaus Ya Meeran” is even more technical, and at times the party barely keeps it together, but as with almost every Nusrat performance, there are passages of immense skill. As for the music’s cultural meaning, I recommend reading this entry from the estimable Hamnawa Substack, which by the way informs me ukelele indie is reviving in Pakistan as elsewhere. To each their own sublime.

Grade: A MINUS (“Ya Allah Ya Rehman”, “Khabram Raseed Imshab”, “Aaj Sik Mitran Di”)