Semipop Life: Cringe bangers

Fiona Apple, Serengeti, 100 Gecs, Selena Gomez, and more!

ALBUM OF THE MONTH: Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters

The most I can find to complain about is that while some of her lines shoot for the moon and get there, other similes fall to Earth like Skylab crashing into Australia. But that’s it. This is an original and creative album whose risks pay off better than on any rock album in years—perhaps since Tune-Yards’ Whokill, Fetch the Bolt Cutters’s most comparable predecessor in the way its songs emerge from its percussion, unless you want to argue, perhaps correctly, that Apple’s howl is Tom Waits’s, controlling for gender expectations. While Merrill Garbus puppeteers for an audience, Apple’s work is very much a studio creation that feels almost mechanical no matter how many dead animals she and drummer Amy Aileen Wood use as instruments. Apple asserts total control of her space, and if you enter, you do so on her terms: she gives “you raped me in the same bed your daughter was born” the most singalongable tunelet on the record, whereas you might have to practice “ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies” to sing it right. You don’t have to sing it right.

Grade: A PLUS (“For Her”, “Shameika”, “Drumset”)

Serengeti & Kenny Segal: Ajai

Two halves. Ajai’s a sneaker-obsessed cringe comedy character, but there’s no laughter. Even as the absurdities pile up (the father of four boys mentored by Ajai ends up on an SWV album cover; the absurb part is it’s a hit), Ajai’s consciousness is kept central, and while he possesses some awareness he’s a buffoon, at least when playing softball, he can’t stop himself from running out on a Parisian date to chase down a passer-by wearing Mars-themed Pumas. That’s pathos, I guess. Second half is Kenny Dennis caught before his complete break with reality, having recognized but not processed the permanent loss of Jueles to a plane crash and/or Tom Selleck. Kenny’s webs of self-reference, so thick he trips over his own Grimm Teachaz callback, are less Joyce than Grant Morrison: you can shrug in response or look up Douglas Wolk’s annotations on Blogspot or something. Connecting the sides: shoes, and also character-appropriate beats from Kenny Segal, ensuring any complete break with reality won’t happen yet.

Grade: A (“Summary”, “Jueles Trunk”, “Company Softball”)

100 Gecs: 1000 Gecs

Sure, there’s a difference between good-annoying and bad-annoying, but play it a few times and the distinction starts to become fuzzy. Is it better or worse when idiot-ska gives way to idiot-grunge? Is the Eurotrance schlock delivered at an odd or even number of levels of irony? Such questions seem uninteresting when one can just let one’s genre preconceptions be shattered the same way the pitch-shifting and -correction of the vocals obliterate gender. Then the salient distinction becomes songs versus not really songs, and while there are a few too many not-reallys, we do get just about the sweetest phone-related love song of the last couple of years, not to mention the second-best “horse”/“Porsche” rhyme.

Grade: A MINUS (“Stupid Horse”, “Ringtone”, “Hand Crushed by a Mallet”)

Kills Birds

A throwback to ’90s alt-indie, with Nina Ljeti straight outta riot girl with her Carrie Brownstein-like Western drawl, loud enough to be heard above the band’s ready-for-DGC roar. The songs are sometimes piecemeal: the killer lead “Worthy Girl” wanders off into some strange lyrics where it’s unclear if the subject’s refusal to water her own damn plants is a cause or consequence of her royalty. But then there are a bunch of bang-bangs in the chorus and one believes her plants will outlast their waterers. Inspirational verse BUT PLEASE WEAR A MASK, ESPECIALLY IF IT’S TO PROTEST: “Will you come with me, will you come with me, to the park?”

Grade: A MINUS (“Worthy Girl”, “New Friend”, “Jesus Did”)

Tomeka Reid Quartet: Old New

Second and better album from a group whose Other Three are Mary Halvorson, Jason Roebke, and Tomas Fujiwara; naturally, big things have been expected from such a lineup since the get-go. Reid and Halvorson are hella tight, spending minutes in unison before pushing off into different regions of rhythmic and tone-quality space, before homing in on each other again. Fujiwara provides coherent structure during the freest moments, letting the melodists find places of intersection with the composed material while doing their trademark bendy and squawky bits. Roebke has the least fun job, at least getting to pluck out some odd-shaped lines for his bandmates to respond to. They still have more room to grow.

Grade: A MINUS (“Old New”, “Niki’s Bop”, “Wabash Blues”)

Celso Sim: O Amor Entrou Como um Raio (Celso Sim Canta Batatinha) (2017)

Samba dilettante me is reminded of Arto Lindsay at his most neoclassical, down to the big resonant bass drum played quietly, but with a careful avoidance of noon chill. While not challenging, Sim’s arrangements of works by Soteropolitan composer Batatinha from the Sixties through Nineties foreground harmonic twists to keep you awake. Thanks go to jack-of-all-strings Webster Santos’s ringing harmonics and fretboard squeakery, Filipe Massumi’s block-rocking cello, and I don’t know who or what that is sounding like a dog begging on “Direito de Sambar”, but maybe it’s percussionist Maurício Badé. Sim sings with dynamics without overshadowing the songs, and although I only hit translate on the spaceship one, I’m sure they mostly fly.

Grade: B PLUS (“Toalha da Saudade”, “Imitação”, “Direito de Sambar”)

Wand: Laughing Matter

This takes a good half an hour to warm up, trying out an acoustic number here, a drone-pop number there, but it does eventually get very good indeed. They combine Car Seat Headrest’s widescreen takes on small stakes with Beauty Pill’s trying hard to sound pleasant rather than like shit. The rhythm playing is best-in-class, the guitar rave-ups generate both light and heat, and occasionally the male vocalist clams up and lets the female vocalist mete out the tunes. Still, those short on time can start on track 7.

Grade: B PLUS (“Airplane”, “Lucky’s Sight”, “Wonder”)

Selena Gomez: Rare

The production is sometimes tinny, sometimes dinky, in line with pop’s recent return to lack-of-overstatement that’s an ear-saver for those of us who still listen to the radio sometimes. Gomez delivers her material with clarity in multiple octaves, though she’s not really an interpreter. While she sings that she'll “show you all my demons,” she doesn’t do so on this record, even though she’s been through enough bad shit in her short life that the six distinct times she dated Justin Bieber only rank fifth to tenth. And of course that’s her choice. But if she also chooses to relegate the great “Back to You” and its demons-by-association, not to mention “Bad Liar”, the best Talking Heads appropriation since Mariah/ODB’s “Fantasy”, to the “Target and Japanese edition,” any playlist maker can add them as a supplement.

Grade: B PLUS (“Rare”, “Look at Her Now”, “Vulnerable”)