Semipop Life: Freeing the rock world
Group Doueh & Cheveu, Groupe RTD, Flo Milli, Napalm Death, and more!
ALBUM OF THE MONTH
Group Doueh & Cheveu: Dakhla Sahara Session (2017)
That I didn’t hear about this until last month is something of an indictment of the English-language world music press, of which I guess I’m now a part, so mea culpa. I suspect the reason Anglophones initially ignored it was Cheveu, a rock band—a French rock band—a French synth rock band that got reviewed in Pitchfork a few times, most recently earning a 6.6 for Bum, their album preceding this. So it's fusion, and of the most serendipitous kind, with plenty of common ground—Group Doueh being a synth rock band that got reviewed in Pitchfork themselves (7.6 for Zayna Jumma, which needless to say was too low.) This is closest-but-not-that-close in feel to Amadou & Mariam’s dalliances with fancy production and Manu Chao, but more of a genuine collaboration, and better. Crucially, both bands are willing to learn from each other, with Cheveu behaving judiciously on the more Saharawi tracks, like on “Charâa”, where faced with a foreign scale in 6/8, they successfully keep up with Doueh’s acceleration until both parties take a breath and reincarnate the song as a multinational chanson. In return, Group Doueh now know what garage punk is, if that wasn’t already a thing in the Western Sahara.
Grade: A (“Bord de mer”, “Azawan”, “Tout droit”)
Groupe RTD: The Dancing Devils of Djibouti
Djibouti is where I got stuck making my (never completed) “best song from each African country” playlist—I had to include their national anthem, as played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. But this record from Radiodiffusion Télévision Djibouti’s house band does more than fill a gap: it's as freewheeling a non-reissued East African album as I’ve heard in some years. At its synthiest, it sounds closest to Ethiopian music, which makes geographic sense; occasionally it sounds like early Dengue Fever, which doesn’t. As is the norm in popular music, Asma Omar, the woman vocalist, is better than the men, but the big-voiced older guy and the slinkier younger guy are more than capable of sustaining the party, and bandleader/sax guy Mohamed Abdi Alto (allegedly his legal name) plays scales from the Horn with bop vigor. The guitar and rhythm section just rock and sometimes reggae out.
Grade: A MINUS (“Raga Kaan Ka’Eegtow (You Are the One I Love)”, “Buuraha U Dheer (The Highest Mountains)”, “Raani (Queen)”)
James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Molecular
Unlike An UnRuly Manifesto, this isn’t the best tenor album since Rollins retired (some David Murray I never heard about conceivably excepted), but is difficult to fault by reasonable standards. Lewis gets some novel sounds out of his tenor—on “Helix” he sounds like he’s playing backwards—but mostly supplies the same tone he’s fattened over recent years. On the longer tracks, after an initial relatively straightforward tune statement, he often returns for a closing blast of high-intensity cardio. On piano, Aruán Ortiz generally supports, though he essays some neat runs when given the opportunity. The two avant-funk “Per” tracks are among the highlights, giving opportunities for Brad Jones to go hard and for Chad Taylor to contrast his toms with his fully unpitched drums, and to go hard. Good stuff from a group that has great stuff in them.
Grade: A MINUS (“Helix”, “Per 2”, “Neosho”)
Flo Milli: Ho, Why Is You Here?
An effortlessly natural rapper down to her overdubbed interjections, though she only really has one flow as yet (beside the one she appropriates from “Gin and Juice.”) The line-by-line pasted vocals let her crest to rhyme-word mini-climaxes, which resemble uptalk in function: kind of annoying, sure, but that’s compensated for by the prospect of the Wrong People being annoyed far more. Her subject matter is fairly limited—money good, looking good good, other women acceptable as long as they accept her alpha status—but her “pricey”/”bite me” rhyming and sense of play sustains 30 minutes. The beats she procures are kind of low-effort except when her producers spring for an SWV sample or when they’re literally other people’s, which is less alpha. Still, promising.
Grade: A MINUS (“Beef FloMix”, “Weak”, “May I”)
Not just an mbira album—a matepe album! The long, thin keys curve upward, resulting in a sound that to my ears sounds richer and less dinky than your standard thumb piano. And it’s not just thumbs: Anthony Zonke and Boyi Nyamande, two of less than ten matepe masters left in Zimbabwe, use their index fingers as well, and when they’re both plucking along with Zonke’s percussionist son Crispen, they make some of the most rhythmically complex music you’ll hear from a small ensemble. There are vocals too, with some words for ritual occasions and others pure celebration. Historic, and more alive than living history usually is.
Grade: A MINUS (“Wako Ndewako”, “Karera”, “Mhembwe Mukati”)
Napalm Death: Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism
The first thing I noticed was this was kind of catchy, with riffs as hooks, and thus kind of pop. Amidst all the tempo and time signature changes, there’s nary a hint of prog: their musical goal is concision whether they're blastbeating or trying on 5/4 with Brubeckian elan. The words on Britain’s longest-running leftist grindcore band’s sixteenth studio album can be hard to make out, but “filthy fucking factoid epidemic” is a pithy way to kvetch about fake news, while screaming “food not bombs, please, food not bombs” is welcome in any era. In any case: Napalm Death, welcome to the Resistance.
Grade: A MINUS (“Contagion”, “Backlash Just Because”, “Zero Gravitas Chamber”)
The culmination of a career spent bridging the gap between Intelligent Dance Music and Dumb Dance Music by committing to fun while hanging out with Golijov so no one can call him dumb. One might not achieve spiritual uplift from his koans unless one has already mastered yogic flying, but the pop uplift is there for sure. Give the people what they want: traditional chord progressions, fast arpeggios, pianos that sound like pianos, dramatic orchestral entries. If the early, more concise tracks have more niche hit potential, the four-part Arp suite has a skronk solo and beats to buoy at least two parts, and the longer tracks on the closing stretch cut off just before Deacon runs them into the ground. (The bonus disc of modest edits is unnecessary, however.)
Grade: B PLUS (“Sat by a Tree”, “Become a Mountain”, “Arp II: Float Away”)
D.C. bassist who played on An UnRuly Manifesto and in Irreversible Entanglements takes a working holiday in Chicago, teaming with the slightly odd couple of tenors/clarinetists Edward Wilkerson Jr. (of 8 Bold Souls) and Ken Vandermark (of just about everything in Chicago.) The primary interest in the way the two reedists play off each other. They never seem to stay on common ground for too long (except maybe when Wilkerson breaks out his didgeridoo), but the contrast can intrigue. Stewart also takes plenty of time in the spotlight, including a looong arco solo that miraculously isn’t dull.
Grade: B PLUS (“Harp and Concrete Silhouette Pt. II”, “Brown and Gray”, “Awakening the Masters”)
NEITHER OF THE MONTH
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist: Alfredo
The good news is that Gibbs’s flow, unlike many 38-year-old rappers’, is holding up fine and maybe improving: there are more memorable lines, and with The Alchemist off doing his own thing, he furnishes his rote lines with necessary variation. Less good is that he’s displayed absolutely no (rockism alert) personal growth over his career. This is shown up most baldly when Tyler guest-raps about how much he changed over the 2010s, while Gibbs still thinks the contrast between “b*tch n*gga” and “n*gga b*tch” constitutes clever wordplay. Dude, you’re 38!
Grade: B (“Babies & Fools”, “Frank Lucas”)
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Next week: Girls will be women, but boys will be baby sharks.