Semipop Life: Songs of innocence and experience
Eric Revis, DJ MA1, Baby Queen, Roddy Ricch, and more!
Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass
A ridiculously overpowered band, including Kris Davis, Darius Jones, Bill McHenry, and Chad Taylor, that bassist Revis hangs with comfortably, staying unobtrusively prominent in the mix and pairing especially well with Davis through all manner of piano preparations. Still, what makes a Revis album as much of an A-list lock as anything is his compositions, which are as pretty as any semi-avant jazzer’s even before Davis trills them up. My only complaint is that it seems counterproductive to break the title piece into three fragments, though I estimate this may have earned him up to sixteen dollars in additional streaming revenue: enough to buy a CD, if you don’t prefer to take in the album through “a series of 11 art films” on YouTube. Listen to Jones and McHenry take a tune in one of many plausibly logical directions, and you might prefer to save up to see this group live someday.
Grade: A MINUS (“Baby Renfro”, “Earl & the Three-Fifths Compromise”, “ProByte”)
DJ MA1: RKS Presents: MA1 Collection
A straightforward, unpretentious, highly effective dance album, switching between straight house and UK funky: essentially reggaeton-flavored beats with house trappings. None of this has been cutting edge for a decade, which, along with MA1’s vast experience (the lead “Do It Better” dates to 2011), might be why my far-from-cutting-edge self can take such pleasure in the lusher tracks, with calming synths casting a skeptical eye at the hyper synths and vocalist Sophia (just Sophia) providing reassurance that the big wheel keeps on turning. In contrast, when the hyper synths get some alone time, as on the ironically bassless “Bassbox”, there's nowhere for them to go but in straight lines, no matter how much the syncopated clapping cheers them on. As satisfying as working out Newtonian mechanics problems, or working out to them.
Grade: A MINUS (“Circles”, “Umboh”, “Do It Better”)
Baby Queen: Medicine EP
She’s like an early Neil Tennant with a trace of a South African accent, wryly observing her (heavily digital though bad parties will always be with us) milieu, though far more willing to implicate herself. Maybe a little too eager: you’re not even a full pop star yet, why are you already bemoaning your lack of authenticity; go write more songs about being obsessed with Jodie Comer. A more positive difference: she’s a natural sing-singer as well as talk-singer right off the bat, capable of giving her middle eights a little more oomph when they demand it. “Buzzkill” is the best thing here by some distance, but her plethora of ideas suggests she could make an all-good full-length, if she gains control over her screen time.
Grade: A MINUS (“Buzzkill”, “Internet Religion”, “Want Me”)
Space rap, maybe? Bk—the name Brooklyn, not the location—has a signature trick of repeatedly tracing out the same melodic contour: two contours in the case of viral hit “Tweakin’ Together”, not included here. This itself isn’t unprecedented if you've listened to anything that’s come out of Atlanta in the last ten years, but she takes it to extremes: she’s sometimes barely singy enough to qualify as rap-singing; other times she’s the opposite. As for her subject matter, she brings the intensity of feeling and absence of perspective on love and relationships that you’d expect from a teenager. Producer Digital Nas—the name Nasir, not the rapper—keeps things hazy and, on “Gango”, shoegazy, so that her comparative clarity shines brightly amidst the Large Magellanic Soundcloud.
Grade: A MINUS (“More”, “ILUVUBACK<3”, “Gango”)
They’re already up to Ill Considered 10, but their first session in drummer (and “Making the Most of the Night” co-writer) Emre Ramazanoglu’s studio is the release Tom Hull, for one, has rated the highest. Great rhythm band, sure, with Leon Brichard initiating easy skanking basslines and Ramazanoglu and percussionist Yahael Camara-Onono layering on grooves that nod toward freedom in all time signatures. Still, the primary selling point is Idris Rahman. He apparently spent the last couple of decades playing Afrobeat, and you can hear it in his tenor tone, which stays rich through both long held notes and extended flights of improvisation. Maybe the best thing I’ve heard out of the mildly overhyped current London jazz scene (hey, that’s what the British music press is for.)
Grade: A MINUS (“Upstart”, “Building Bridges”, “Unwritten Rules”)
Reissue of a late ’90s cassette performed by the top guy in traditional Gnawan music (and friend of Santana) until his 2015 death. Recorded in Gania’s home town on the coast west of Marrakesh, this is ritual music: the tunes he plucks out on his bass guembri are repeated with minor variations for seven or eight minutes, at a pace he undoubtedly could keep up indefinitely. Castanets and call-and-response vocals create momentum while any number of spiritual presences are given their due in turn. This can be a little pious for secular me, but it’s well-performed and well-recorded, and might be the best available way to engage with this heritage, if crashing an all-night ecstatic trance party seems too intrusive.
Grade: A MINUS (“Assamaoui”, “Al Boudali”, “La Ilha Illa Allah”)
Roddy Ricch: Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial
Setting aside the career-making hook stolen from “Feel Good Inc.”, what this Compton-via-ATL youngster gives us is the full-on West Coast-Southern rap fusion we hitherto never really got at this length. The Southern part consists of post-Thugga tool-assisted flows, which Ricch executes jazzily, expressing personality through his curation of contrasting rhythms and registers. The West Coast part is straight outta Kendrick. This has its good side—a thoughtful sense of seriousness, even about money—and its bad—a lot of seriousness, as well as a huge blind spot in his thoughtfulness when it comes to women. He’s still barely old enough to legally (lol) drink; one hopes he’ll grow out of this.
Grade: B PLUS (“The Box”, “Gods Eyes”, “High Fashion”)
I played this Ecuadorian beatmaker’s 2019 album Siku and forgot about it, but this immediately caught my attention and only slightly flagged over 21 whole minutes. Helps that this time the Multi Culti (his label name) is heavy on the African: the Igbo and Masai samples ground the work in recognizable human feeling. Not overly reverent of the traditions he appropriates, Cruz nevertheless gives them room to tell their sonic stories and sets them in unexpected lights. The oud guy gives his beats something to rumble under and parody with bleeps, and even the Italian guy making up his own language while pretending to be Tibetan sounds as natural as the pitch-corrected wind.
Grade: B PLUS (“Aima”, “Naeku”, “Drom Tradisie”)