Semipop Life: Herstory often rhymes

Doechii, Allen Lowe, Sabrina Carpenter, Jonathan Tetelman, and more!

Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal

The story so far: “Yucky Blucky Fruitcake” was rap song of its year, while “What It Is” was a blatant sellout that, huh, worked. What she didn’t have hitherto was a first-rate full-length (Oh the Places You’ll Go was 22 minutes, of which the first ten were great-great), so here’s a credibility bid that, huh, works. White-lined CV gaps are expounded upon during argument with her therapist (herself) b/w dyspneic breathing exercises “Denial Is a River”, which is as troublingly funny as anything since Mimi Zima’s deleted EPs. More often she just raps well, with an introspection not signaled by the Florida Woman artwork, and, less expectedly, interesting singing: the vocal processing on “Hide n Seek” complicates the emotion as much as I. Heap’s “Hide and Seek” did. The blend of populist and freaky beats is deft, if not quite coherent; Doechii plays well against all kinds, peppering “Boom Bap” with sarcastic flows and vowelless syllables. On “Nissan Altima” she goes Kill Yr Problematic Idols on Nicki and Azealea and shows that comfort with dropping casual C-bomb rhymes has improved over time (and people say there’s no technological progress anymore.) As a vocalist and entertainer, the current top dog on her label.

Grade: A (“Denial Is a River”, “Boiled Peanuts”, “Nissan Altima”)

Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: Louis Armstrong’s America Volume 2

One of our most vital and, sure, crankiest music historians has survived cancer to attain the most dextrous sax form I’ve heard from him. Despite his notorious scorn for much of the last fifty years of music, he’s managed to get names of the magnitude of Shipp and Ribot to play with him on a two-volume, five-hour celebration that illustrates his rediscovered lust for life with titles like “I Should Have Stayed Dead”. The title concept balloons to include everyone within two degrees of separation of Satch, which covers all worthy American jazz through the 1960s, and at that point why not gerrymander in John Cage and Steve Albini? For those who think this is too much material from anyone short of the Hot Fives and Sevens, Volume 2 beats Volume 1 for me, and it doesn’t matter much if I’m wrong. It includes an Ellington one with trumpeter Frank Lacy playing Bubber Miley, an Ayler one on which Ribot or Ray Suhy (my download doesn’t say) leads the saints marching in spiritual impecunity, and so on. The music is often most perceptive when they stick close to the source material, as when “What Did I Do (To Be So Blue)” plumbs and is plumbed by low register tenor sax and full keyboard piano. If you don’t buy into Lowe’s exhaustively researched though not indubitable theory of American music, then perhaps all this reads as pastiche. If we’ve learned anything from Armstrong, however, it’s that pastiche and postmodernism are a grin apart.

Grade: A MINUS (“Black and White Fantasy”, “Name Her”, “What Did I Do (To Be So Blue?)”)

Sabrina Carpenter: Short n’ Sweet

Finally, after decades of Disney Channel stars going pop, here’s a record that feels like a sitcom: that is, notwithstanding the Diablo Codyisms (which I suspected were Amy Allenisms, except they’re absent from Allen’s own album), the humor is situational. There’s the one with the dumb boyfriend! The one with the boyfriend under the influence! The one with a different dumb boyfriend under the influence! Aside from “Please Please Please”, Jack Antonoff’s annual good idea, the production doesn’t aim to surprise, and it can veer close enough to rip-off territory to threaten replay value (not that that’s stopped “Espresso” from joining “Say So” in the billion stream club.) What keeps this from being pat are the bizarre song structure choices. The chorus of “Juno” ends abruptly; “Please” just ends. The off-kilter feeling this creates means Carpenter can focus on singing and acting (and swearing), all of which are within her talents. Before she gets to her Long n’ Bitter era, let’s have six seasons and a movie.

Grade: A MINUS (“Please Please Please”, “Juno”, “Coincidence”)

Jonathan Tetelman, PKF–Prague Philharmonia: The Great Puccini

Chile-born, Jersey-raised Tetelman came up as a baritone, packed away his vocal cords to DJ at Webster Hall, then realized he was a tenor and erupted into Deutsche Grammophon’s wet dream: sounds like Pavarotti, notably handsome, easy to sell to the Anglophones. He’s a lyrical singer, loud without shouting, and with some residual depth from his baritone days; no idea how he plays on the stage, but unless you’re sending me Met tickets that’s irrelevant here. Direct comparison reveals he lacks Luciano’s ringiness (sorry, squillo) on his high C in particular; he also doesn’t have the stretched emotiveness that some of us who haven’t lived in Italy interpret as oversinging. He rides the usual Puccini tenor warhorses (“Nessun dorma”/“Che gelida manina”/“E lucevan le stelle”), sprinkling in arias I can’t hum from Le Villi to La Rondine, and only on the more drama-focused songs might one kvetch about maturity. DG springs for strong supporting singers, and his interplay with Federica Lombardi on the La Bohème excerpts is quite fine. Get in on him before he sings at a World Cup.

Grade: A MINUS (“Nessun dorma”, “Donna non vidi mai”, “Che gelida manina”)

Patricia Brennan Septet: Breaking Stretch

Since 2016, vibraphonist Brennan has played on a lot of excellent records with the Halvorson/Fujiwara wing of NYC jazz. Her third album as leader adds horn players—saxists Jon Irabagon and Mark Shim and trumpeter Mark Shim—meaning she can keep her tunes simple (often bassist Kim Cass suffices to pluck them out) and rely on the others for the melodic delight, while she takes dibs on the electrotrickery. On “Sueños de Coral Azul”, she stops the band to amuse herself with pedals and pitchbending in a very Halvorsonesque way, use of mallets rather than picks notwithstanding. Conversely, on the full math “555”, the main theme gets hammered one note at a time, and outside of a short solo Brennan focuses on counterpointing her horns’ embellishments. “Mudanza” trims things down if not quite to minimalism then at least to one carry-on and a personal item. As a group, they’re still working out how to get all players to show their best sides, but there’s no shortage of excitement in the meantime.

Grade: A MINUS (“Five Suns”, “555”, “Mudanza”)

Polo Perks, AyooLii, FearDorian: A Dog’s Chance

A 27-minute album that sounds like it took twelve minutes to make. The sacrilege starts with “Rainbow”, as in “somewhere over the”, in Iz’s ukeleke version; Polo runs through a rather pro forma love/hate relationship with hoes, while AyooLii follows with “man, I love b*tches: Susan B. Anthony” and gets more tasteless from there. Flapping in his high register to express excitement, he stays in the vicinity of the beat better than most normie rappers. If AyooLii’s solo tracks are livelier than his partner’s, Polo’s a useful rhymer: “I get so high, I look like I’m Asian” eventually couples with “teriyaki wings and my fries Cajun”. FearDorian raids either side of Y2K to obtain fitting accompaniments; the only disappointment is “PaperPlanesSoulja” doesn’t have a “yuuuuu” in it. We haven’t yet regained the level before the good emo rappers died and the bad ones sold out, but for the first time in years, young weirdo rappers are offering some sense of possibility.

Grade: A MINUS (“Rainbow”, “PaperPlanesSoulja”, “They Love Ayoolii”)

Dan Weiss: Even Odds

Drummer Weiss, who’s played with nigh every northeastern avantish jazzbo over the last twenty years, grabs the alto of Miguel Zenón (who recently added a Grammy for Latin Jazz to his award shelf) and the piano of Matt Mitchell; they demonstrate together they’re specialist in all styles. They start with an intellectual bang on “It Is What It Is”, splitting the difference between bop and Reichian minimalism. Zenón initiates a trend of repeating phrases of as few as two notes at pace, and on the subsequent “The Children of Uvalde”, he’s sensitive without sentimentalizing. Mitchell sounds the most Latin, while “Nusrat” has residual elements of their shared interest in South Asian music; it’s lovely besides. Weiss controls the intensity in the more improvised segments, building up “Five to Nine” from an off-kilter boil to a controlled detonation over five minutes. If nothing else is as distinctive as the opener, the rest still has much of what makes “It Is What It Is” what it is.

Grade: B PLUS (“It Is What It Is”, “Five to Nine”, “Nusrat”)

Salma e Mac: S&M

Goiânia’s favorite heterosexuals get tastefully perverted, starting with the fetish-for-someone (them) cover art. Non-Portuguese speakers will need to do some extrapolation to hear this in the music, or pick through translations to work out if Salma Jo’s arousing the moralistas’ ire or just arousing the moralistas. The sound is throwback guitars-and-keybs MPB, sometimes stuck at super-competent (I wish they let bassist Marcos Paulo Barbosa go at it more), distinguished by sax so lubricated I’m surprised it’s legal in a Catholic country. The trickier tunes let Salma convey character by choosing which notes to extend a fraction longer. The sexuality she expresses is retro as well: walking over lava in heels is a very late night ’90s TV-MA series kinky image. It’s clear they’re enjoying themselves on their own terms, even if they do pull the shades down in the end.

Grade: B PLUS (“Astral”, “Diva”, “Tarefa”)

Bertrand Chamayou: Letter(s) to Erik Satie

This back-and-forth between piano works by Satie and John Cage is sparked by “All Sides of the Small Stone”, a rediscovered Cage composition in the Frenchman’s spare style. If that one’s sincere flattery, Cage’s fascination with Satie has a more profound impact in the way he uses prepared piano to stretch what the instrument can sound like without unseemly virtuosity. For someone with a declared disdain for melody, Cage sure can write ’em pretty, albeit the undulating kind of pretty that “In a Landscape” implies. As a bonus, this has close to everything you’d want from a Satie comp: all the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes plus a few deep cuts, almost all under three minutes a pop and without having their clarity pedaled out of them. That the music goes on forever is no excuse not to keep moving along.

Grade: B PLUS (Gymnopédie No. 1, In a Landscape, De l’enfance de Pantagruel: Reverie)