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| Shamir: best summer sounds of 2014 |
Highly recommended: Bahamas, Shamir
Well worth your while: Hari Kondabolu, Kasai All-Stars, Shabazz
Palaces
Strangely enough, the ghost of Kurt Cobain visits this month
in the form of Benjamin Booker and Mirel Wagner, two artists as different from
each other as they are from Cobain
Bahamas – Is Afie (Brushfire/Universal)
Another singer/songwriter album, another dozen love songs—except
that this one sets the bar considerably higher, right from the opening lyrics:
“I held your breath inside my lungs for days / and I saw myself as just one of
many waves / when I knew I’d become the ocean’s slave / I just stayed.”
As the title partially explains, Bahamas is guitarist Afie
Jurvanen, one-time sideman for Feist and Jason Collett. These days he’s selling
out theatres on his own—before anyone even heard this career-making album.
Jurvanen recorded his first two (highly acclaimed) albums in the
space of a week each. On this, his third, Jurvanen spent a whole summer in a studio. His
love of late-night sessions fuelled by Willie Nelson and wine hasn’t changed;
nor has his modest reluctance to showcase his skills as a soloist. But the
extra attention to detail is obvious in every carefully constructed track, from
the lovely vocal arrangements to the occasional string section to just the
right amount of space left inside every song: Bahamas is all about the subtle
charms, the soft sell.
There is no better album for the summer of 2014 to wind down a
hot day, but of course Bahamas is an all-season affair—and this album is going
to sound just as strong 50 years from now. (Aug. 21)
Download: “I Can’t Take You With Me,” “Bitter Memories,” “Half
Mine”
Benjamin Booker – s/t (ATO/Maple)
Benjamin Booker is currently the handpicked opening act on Jack
White’s arena tour. Growing up in Tampa Bay, Florida, the 24-year-old artist
had a poster of the White Stripes on his wall ever since he was 13. If nothing
else, Booker represents a passing of the torch: much like White did 15 years
ago, Booker is poised to reinvigorate garage rock, blues and soul and reclaim
it for his own generation. He does so with a voice that is at once a
beaten-down Sam Cooke and a resurrected Kurt Cobain, fronting a group that’s equal
parts Strokes, Constantines and a blues band you might stumble across in the
wee hours of the morning in a bar off a back alley in New Orleans (where Booker
now lives). His songwriting doesn’t yet match the rest of his talents, but he
sounds one album away from a major breakthrough. (Aug. 21)
Download: “Old Hearts,” “Violent Shiver,” ”Wicked Waters”
Big Sugar – Yard Style (EOne)
Ever since Gordie Johnson first turned his amp up to 11 on
1993’s 500 Pounds album, Big Sugar has been known as one of the loudest bands
in Canada—despite the fact that they started out as a jazz combo backing up
Molly Johnson. Here, Johnson unplugs again.
Yard Style finds Johnson and his band literally in someone’s
yard in Negril, Jamaica—you can hear the nighttime insects buzzing in the
background between tracks—with acoustic guitars, harmonicas, melodicas and a
nyabinghi drum, as well as reggae legend Willi Williams (“Armagideon Time”). Reggae has always been a primary element in Johnson’s
pallet, especially on the 2000 dub remix album Alkaline. It’s miles—nay,
continents— removed from the Sublime cover band playing at your local pub. It’s
(almost) enough to reclaim the phrase “acoustic reggae” back from Jack Johnson.
This Mr. Johnson is in a league of his own. (Aug. 7)
Download: “Calling All the Youth,” “Messenger Man” (feat. Willi
Williams), “100 Cigarettes”
Cold Specks – Neuroplasticity (Arts and Crafts)
“Come along with me / I’m a maker of dreams,” sings Al Spx of
Cold Specks. Sounds lovely—until you realize how ominous and creepy her dreams
really are. She doesn’t call her music “doom soul” for nothing. Even when she
uses major chords, there’s still some sinister sorcery at work underneath. It’s
not clear which witch is Spx: the benevolent one guiding you through dark
storms, or the evil one lording over armies of ghostly figures ready to pull
you into the night. Between her, Austra and Timber Timbre, some of the best
Canadian music of recent years has been decidedly more goth than usual.
Neuroplasticity is Cold Specks’ second album; the first revealed
to us the glory of Spx’s voice, but largely suffered from similarity: same
tempo, same key. Here she plays with a larger palette, to greater effect, but
her songwriting ratio is the same: less than half of these 10 tracks fulfill
her potential. It’s not exactly true that she has the kind of voice that could
effectively sing the phone book, but it’s that voice that keeps us coming back
for more. (Aug. 28)
Download: “Bodies at Bay,” “Living Signs,” “Absisto”
FKA twigs – LP1 (Beggars Banquet)
The most lauded debut of the year, by this 26-year-old Brit,
most certainly deserves a “most promising” designation. But is FKA twigs really
all that? She has a stunning voice, no question: sensual, mysterious, equally
ethereal and soulful, often reaching the stratosphere with ease. Her
art-damaged take on bedroom R&B is alluring; the production is avant-garde
and intriguing, while she coos “When I trust you we can do it with the lights
on,” or, “I could kiss you for hours.” And yet—it all feels paper-thin,
ice-cold and distant. With two or three exceptions, the material is instantly
forgettable. With her talent and profile attracting plenty of potential
collaborators—T-Pain, for what it’s worth, who claims she changed his
life—expect LP2 to carry plenty more weight. (Aug. 28)
Download: “Lights On,” “Two Weeks,” “Kicks”
Kasai Allstars – Beware the Fetish (Crammed)
Shabazz Palaces – Lese Majesty (Sub Pop)
As album titles go, Beware the Fetish is more than a bit
intriguing. What fetish would that be, exactly? In the case of the 15-piece
Congolese collective Kasai Allstars, it might be the fetishization of African
music by Western audiences; despite the diversity of cultures on that enormous
continent, African music often gets distilled down into two or three
stereotypes. Kasai Allstars, on the other hand, sounds like little else in
Africa or anywhere else. Their use of electronically modified thumb
pianos—which can sound like croaking frogs or buzzing insects—sets them apart
from every African act for whom electronics means Western synthesizers, presets
and electric guitars. It also distinguishes them significantly from Western
electronic music, the vast majority of which is sterile and rigid.
Call-and-response vocals and traditional percussion round out the sound; songs
last as long as they need to, sometimes well over 10 minutes—the album is 100
minutes long, though it never feels like it. It’s raw, visceral and
hypnotizing—and more than anything else, it’s psychedelic.
Mind-altering psychedelia is also at the core of trippy Seatlle
hip-hop outfit Shabazz Palaces, whose second album features even fewer
concessions to conventions of pop, rap or anything else. Vocals are augmented by
disorienting amounts of delay and reverb; beats stutter and fumble; choruses
are non-existent. Ringleader Ishmael Butler used elements of jazz in his
previous group, Digable Planets, but here he’s into some next-level, mid-’70s
Miles Davis: pushing boundaries and challenging expectations. Eighteen tracks
coalesce into seven “suites,” but Lese Majesty works best as one piece—or,
perhaps, on shuffle in a playlist with Kasai Allstars, if you really want to
trip to the outer reaches of space and sound. (Aug. 21)
Download Kasai Allstars: “He Who Makes Bush Fires For Others,” “In
Praise of Homeboys,” “The Dead Don’t Dance”
Download Shabazz Palaces: “Forerunner Friday,” “Solemn Swears,” “#CAKE”
Hari Kondabolu – Waiting for 2042 (Kill Rock Stars)
Being a political comedian is much easier than being a political
songwriter—but it’s still no walk in the park. Channelling your anger into
humour, and simultaneously hoping to enlighten rather than just preach to the
converted, is a rare talent. Hari Kondabolu has a master’s degree in human
rights from the London School of Economics: he’s not here just to take cheap
shots at Republicans. He will, however, relish in pointing out the illogical
doublethink of racists who refuse to believe in a non-white Jesus or are worried
about America’s white population becoming a demographic minority by 2042—which,
as Kondabolu points out, is only even possible if you assume a) the other 51
per cent are all the same, and b) that all white people identify as one.
Kondabolu also delights in skewering those of his own political
bent, especially his myriad friends who, frustrated with the state of America,
continuously claim that they’re going to move to Canada. “Canada does not have
a special visa for American liberal cowards. That’s not how the immigration system
works!” Kondabolu hectors. He then goes on to debunk Canada’s good-guy
reputation, and suggests that we look good only because the U.S. is so widely
reviled around the world. “It’s like in high school, and there’s the dude who’s
punching you in the face, every day, against your locker. Then his friend shows
up and starts laughing. As the two of them start walking away, the dude that
was laughing turns around and says, ‘Dude, I’m so sorry.’ That’s Canada!”
Kondabolu’s true brilliance, however, is not just his political
or racial material, but his self-awareness (including his use of third person)
and meta-jokes, in which he analyzes his own delivery and set-ups immediately
after delivering a punchline—and sometimes the footnotes are funnier than the
original joke. (Aug. 14)
Download: “My White Chocolate Joke,” “Toby,” “2042 and the White
Minority”
Shamir – Northtown EP (Godmode)
Shamir Bailey is a 19-year-old from Las Vegas with a gorgeous,
androgynous voice—that’s not a falsetto, folks. At the end of his disco-driven
debut EP is a cover of Toronto country singer Lindi Ortega, a solo
guitar-and-voice take on her song "Lived and Died Alone." It’s a shocking twist
following four tracks of joyous dance pop that owes more than a few debts to
early ’90s house music (which is undoubtedly on its way back; see: Kiesza).
Apparently he’s also a huge Tegan and Sara fan and used to play in a punk band:
this guy’s taste is all over the map. “I still don’t feel like there are too many
artist around my age that are being very diverse with their music,” he told Pitchfork. The stark Ortega cover is the only evidence of his catholic
interests on this EP; otherwise, he sounds like a musical sponge who’s been
dwelling in discos his whole life, displaying the range and control of a
veteran diva—especially on the show-stopping R&B ballad "I’ll Never Be Able
to Love." Undoubtedly the most promising act of 2014. (Aug. 7)
Download: Everything you possibly can. Listen here
Spoon – They Want My Soul (Universal)
Operators – EP1 (Last Gang)
An interesting title choice for this band’s first major-label
album in over 15 years. Yet little has changed for these critical favourites,
who are still a minimalist rock band writing classic pop melodies with R&B
swagger and experimental electronics hovering in the background. They’ve
already sold hundreds of thousands of records and cracked the American Top 10,
so it’s not like this album will suddenly break open new doors for Spoon: if
you like Spoon, there’s plenty of Spoonness to like here, with fewer of the
weird detours found on 2010’s Transference. It’s hard to fault a band this good
for their consistency.
But if you love Spoon, you’ve heard it all before—and They Want
My Soul is far from Spoon at their best, despite the fact they brought in
outside producers for the first time: Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Tame Impala)
and Joe Chiccarelli (Morrissey, Shins). They certainly don’t need them, as
drummer Jim Eno has been a principal architect of Spoon recordings since the
beginning. (Eno also helmed Telekinesis’s 2013 album Dormarion, which is one of
the best American rock records since Spoon’s 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.)
Singer/guitarist Britt Daniel’s side project Divine Fits, whose 2013 debut flew
under most people’s radar, contained both better songs and wilder detours.
Unfortunately, Divine Fits also outshines Operators, the new
band by Daniel’s partners in that band: Dan Boeckner (Handsome Furs, Wolf
Parade) and Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks). Boeckner has been surrounding himself
with more and more electronics since the dissolution of Wolf Parade—which until
now has worked well, especially on the Handsome Furs’ second album, Face
Control. Yet Boeckner sounds best when he’s at least anchoring himself with a
guitar slung over his shoulder; at the very least, it inspires him to write
better songs than the five on offer here. (Aug. 14)
Download Spoon: “Inside Out,” “Do You,” “Outlier”
Download Operators: “Ancient,” “True,” “Start Again”
Mirel Wagner – When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day
(Sub Pop)
Cheery title, that. This Finnish folk singer opens her album
with a morbid minor-key children’s rhyme: “1, 2, 3, 4, what’s underneath the
floor? / Chewed up lips, milky milk teeth, little bit of pain and a whole lot
of need.” Things don’t lighten up from there. Not that you want them to: Wagner
is so effective at creating a sparse and desolate atmosphere that any hint of
redemption would seem disingenuous.
There’s very little decorating the skeleton of her and her
acoustic guitar; she sounds like a ghostly girl discovered playing in a corner
of your attic. It’s not just the instrumentation that’s sparse; so is her
playing, almost amateurish in its rhythm if it wasn’t so obviously intentionally
creating a mood. Her chord choices are right out of Nirvana’s Unplugged, a
mixture of folk and blues motifs and occasional left-field chords borrowed from
the Beatles or Pixies; her deadpan drawl recalls Townes Van Zant at times.
Wagner keeps her songs short and sharp; yes, she delivers a downpour of dread,
but never is it maudlin or obvious or remotely gimmicky. She’s a charismatic
storyteller who can stop you dead in your tracks. (Aug. 28)
Download: “1 2 3 4,” “The Dirt,” “The Devil’s Tongue”
