I'm not sure if Cube's eleventh solo album - assuming I've counted right - is his greatest, but there's a chance it might be, my only doubts arising from the possible absurdity of narrowing it down to just one record given that no two of them sound like quite the same deal. Man Down expands on the sound of Everythangs Corrupt in certain respects yet the overall impression is of something like an old school soul album - and soul as in Al Green, Stevie Wonder, even Luther Vandross and those guys with the synth-bass funk, electric piano and so on; and I mean soul as something predating R&B in the modern sense, except it's soul with rapping as the main feature, a natural blend rather than a hybrid. Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise given quite a lot of the man's back catalogue, but the emphasis of the album as a whole is slightly different, a little breezier, a little more uptempo even when he's lyrically angry as fuck. More than anything, this is the sound of a man who enjoys what he does and doesn't feel any obligations towards whatever the rest of us might expect. It's grown man music.
You'll be familiar with the subject matter from the back catalogue, and because some of that shit is even worse than last time we were all here, but the undiminished punch of righteous anger is carried with maturity, better understanding, and an emotional depth you may not have noticed on previous albums. Other MCs may deliver greater lyrical acrobatics, but no-one tells a story or draws you in like Ice Cube, to the point of his almost occupying a field of one. It's still angry, still funny, but this time it could make a grown man cry - as the saying goes - in addition to anything else.
I don't know if he'll get to the point where he feels like he's said everything he has to say, or how many more of these we can look forward to. I hope there'll be more, but if there isn't, this is a fucking amazing finale.
Bricklaying the Charleston
Monday, 6 January 2025
Ice Cube - Man Down (2024)
Monday, 30 December 2024
Run DMC - Crown Royal (2001)
It wasn't exactly a comeback given that Darryl McDaniels turns up on just three tracks, having regarded the project with scepticism; but it's a great album, regardless. Run was keen to remind us of the group's significance in rap history, particularly with respect to the whole rock-rap crossover deal which had pretty much begun with Run DMC - not just Walk This Way but their whole sound which was always heavy even in the absence of guitars. Thus we get guest slots and collaborations with Kid Rock, the bloke from Limp Bizkit and other rock-rap types unlikely to have scored points in the pages of The Source; also Method Man, Fat Joe, Nas and others, because Run DMC were integral to the evolution of rap as we know it, not just the Beastie Boys. It looks a lot like the old school getting down with the kids, at least until you listen to the thing.
Contrary to what one might expect, Crown Royal was never about old guys trying to stay relevant and even without guests, these tracks are as good as anything they've ever recorded. If Run's delivery remains rooted in the old school, it wasn't like he'd ceased to evolve and expand or had lost any of his powers. This is also true of the music which kept the faith as we'd recognise it while nevertheless moving with the times - at least as of 2001. It was a new album more than it was ever an exercise in smoking a pipe and looking back with a wrinkled smile.
Of the rock-rap numbers, the collaboration with Trump's fave homeboy, Kid Rock is the one which goes hard and blows even the strongest possible objections out of the water, but none of them are surplus to requirements, even though I don't have a fucking clue who or what Sugar Ray or Third Eye Blind may be. In the name of variety, more than half the album is regular hip-hop and so we get Queen's Day featuring local lads Nas and Prodigy, effectively passing the baton, I suppose. There are two you'll need to skip. Both feature Jermaine Dupri, and if It's Over is musically decent, the Jagged Edge collaboration is a waste of both time and its half-arsed Marvin Gaye impersonation. I'm sure Dupri must have done something to justify his reputation, or at least the fact of my having heard of the fucker, but I have no idea what it might be. He doesn't actually rap on It's Over, for example, instead preferring to explain the extent of his own popularity as quantified by how much he has in his savings bank, delivered in the usual whiny voice of wasps in a jam jar somehow as a tribute to Run DMC, the logic being when someone as amazing as what I am pays a compliment then you better believe it means something; and the cunt won't shut up. Every gap created by Run pausing to draw breath is filled with Dupri reminding us how wealthy he is or just saying yeeeah in case we've stopped thinking about him. Run rhymes about buying his girlfriend a Mercedes, and we hear Dupri croaking me too in the background just in case anyone had begun to doubt his financial standing.
It could have done with a bit more Darryl, but Crown Royal remains a classic despite requiring two judicious stabs of the skip function; and with rap's increased tendency to drift off into the realm of music for furries and anime twats, we really need to remember the originators and how music works best when it does what it should do. This one does what it should do very well.
Monday, 23 December 2024
Kleistwahr - Where the Word is Never (2024)
It's probably fair to say Gary Mundy is a musical pioneer by some definition, at least by virtue of Ramleh being the other name most commonly associated with power electronics back when it was mostly tapes shared amongst friends of friends, photocopied lists of the same returned to the curious in stamped addressed envelopes. Whitehouse may have had the greater influence on what followed (although I suspect that's very much open to debate) but the appeal of Ramleh, at least for me, is that there was a lot more going on than just sonic assault. It was harsh as fuck, violent and free-form for sure, but it was never just random noise with the volume jammed on eleven; and this is as much true of Mundy's solo recording as Kleistwahr. Ramleh, for example, have switched between layers of screaming feedback fed through effects, to walls of guitar, to the single, It's Never Alright which somehow reminds me of the Groundhogs; and yet all feel like the work of the same individuals, communicating a similar mood regardless of how it's played.
Kleistwahr began back in the eighties with one foot in more or less the same cacophonous camp, but has continued to evolve - or possibly to refine its attack - particularly since the resumption of activity back in 2009, and more recently the annual release of one new album each year, sort of like the Beano Book when you were a kid, but more harrowing.
Frivolity aside, this is the latest, again representing a certain evolution from its predecessor - last year's For the Lives Once Lived in this case. The sound is loosely familiar - a pensive drone of organs, instruments and noises sharing some imaginary cavernous space which, for what it may be worth, definitively sounds like a studio - as distinct from the usual bloke sat in a cupboard with his digital reverb. It drones and it's dark, but it thankfully isn't - ugh - dark ambient. There's too much going on for this to sit in the background despite an undeniably hypnotic quality. Where the Word is Never expands on previous offerings in that it almost comprises songs - which isn't immediately obvious, but the more you listen, the more you notice the drones and the slow chords falling in line with the heartbeat rhythms of something happening a few buildings away; and similarly distant vocals deliver just enough of a legible narrative to underscore themes proposed by titles such as Hell Won't Want Your Soul or It's All Escape. The effect is akin to a droning soundtrack which doesn't quite admit to being comprised of songs, albeit songs on the verge of collapse, until third or fourth listen; and it's grim, except that it goes beyond grim into something uncomfortably numb - like Swans with all the ego and bluster kicked out of them, which actually makes it very difficult to describe, as may be obvious from this paragraph; and because it's all catharsis, there's something ultimately comforting about this noise, or at least a suggestion that it understands.
Monday, 16 December 2024
Eminem - The Death of Slim Shady (2024)
I assume there has probably already been more than enough said about this album, all of which I've avoided - which has been easy given that I don't even like the internet that much. To get to the point, here's yet another Eminem album, something like his millionth despite having slowed his pace in recent years, at least in terms of how much of his music is out there. You already know what it sounds like because it sounds like an Eminem album, and I'm sure you already know whether or not you really want to hear it.
It does a lot of the same stuff that the previous records did, bending over backwards to offend more or less everyone, and arguably ramping up the aggressive insensitivity to an unprecedented level; which is probably necessary given how easy it is to cause offence now, requiring our guy to go the extra distance. The running joke here is that he's trying to get himself cancelled, but as ever there's a point as serious as a corpse underlying the slapstick. The point is stop behaving like fucking idiots, you fucking idiots, but feel free to roll your eyes from whatever you have apparently mistaken for the moral high ground.
So it's the same Eminem album yet again, but somehow moreso, and the differences soon become obvious. On the surface of it, he's sharpened his own beats to a fine point, and they've honestly never sounded better - meaning I'm probably going to have to go back to previous albums and give those Addams Family rhythms another crack of the whip. He's doing the same thing here, except it's bigger, more filmic, sounding less like something which hadn't yet decided whether or not it was going to work; and lyrically, I don't have the hyperbole for how far ahead of himself he's travelled, with internal rhyme schemes and multiple puns so complex, so rapid fire effortless that it takes a few listens even just to unpick them. It feels like the album he's been trying to make all these years, and there's no longer much point denying that he's genuinely one of the greats.
Tuesday, 10 December 2024
Pixies - The Night the Zombies Came (2024)
Anyone who has been listening will have noticed a certain mellowing in the last few Pixies albums. It probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise. They're not so young as they were and everyone changes over time and, lest we've forgotten, bands and musical artists have every right to record the music they want to hear and which they enjoy playing. This will perhaps sound like a preamble to a series of excuses, which it isn't. The Night the Zombies Came isn't so startling as, off the top of my head, Doolittle or Trompe le Monde, although it's startling that they've recorded something this good nearly three decades later. While I noticed the conspicuous absence of that scream or the overt use of characteristically upsetting imagery - although it's still there if you listen - I also noticed that I've been playing the thing all week without caring too much about whatever else I might listen to instead. The Pixies still sound big, still combining the mellow twang with pounding drums or a wall of guitar, and the wrench of pathos is as strong as it's ever been; and yet it's almost easy listening with a mood parallel to the more wistful corners of country music, without resembling either. You may recall that Roxy Music mellowed more dramatically over the passage of much less time, and yet still packed a punch, albeit one in a more expensive glove. If The Night the Zombies Came is older, slower, and fatter, it still sparkles and does that which you'd hope it would do, particularly the oddly chilling Johnny Good Man - probably the standout track for me; and - frankly - if you can't appreciate this one, maybe rock music just isn't for you, buttercup. If anyone tells you different, punch them in the face*.
*: This is intended as a humourous remark made for the sake of emphasis and should under no circumstances be acted upon, okay?
Monday, 2 December 2024
M - New York, London, Paris, Munich (1979)
As with many of my generation, I was completely hypnotised by Pop Muzik, albeit not enough as to have me rushing out to buy the album. I made a mental note to do so once I heard Moonlight and Muzak, the follow up single which seemed to suggest the possibility of quality. Finally getting around to ticking that box more than forty years later, I'm surprised to find that the record is weirder than I expected and doesn't exactly contain songs in the traditional sense. More surprising, at least to me, is that on the strength of this, M seemed to foreshadow both Heaven 17 and Yello, sort of. On the one hand we have what is essentially disco draped with the trappings of Motown-inspired hit factories, boogie with a suitcase, casinos and international playboys; and regardless of ostentatiously fancy song structure, Robin Scott vocalises, performs, and narrates rather than sings and is something like the disco equivalent of a hype man, which is where the Dieter Meier comparison comes in.
This adds up to something which combines the influence of pop art with a touch of Bryan Ferry, Bond movies, and Giorgio Moroder, resulting in what are mostly pieces of music with vocals rather than songs; and very expensive sounding pieces of music built with a perfectionist drive for whatever was deemed state of the art at the time. We're building songs on melodies which border on pub rock but using sequencers and Brigit Novik's surreally flawless vocal harmonies, arriving at something so removed from the organics of its origin that it hints at a sort of Ballardian sterility; or, if you prefer, it's so squeaky clean that it's weird. Because even the occasional synthesiser pulse has been custom fit by the finest tailors, New York, London, Paris, Munich has somehow avoided dating, or at least hasn't dated as the usual retrofuturism. It's a novelty record, and entirely self-aware, which is its strength.
Monday, 25 November 2024
Frequencies - Blame Frequencies (2016)
I was at junior school with Sean, the bass player. I lived on a farm. Sean and my friend Matt lived in nearby villages. We'd spend most of the summer holidays commuting between our respective houses on bikes. Sean was the first person I knew with a record by the Sex Pistols, also Tubeway Army and Cheap Trick - which was an interesting development being as we'd spent at least one summer prior to that formative moment playing the Wombles album into a flexidisc. I mention this just so you know this is unlikely to be an impartial review.
Sean and I lost touch for a couple of decades, then hooked up again more recently, which has been nice, bringing the unexpected discovery that those early friendships have ultimately proven more enduring, and more fun, than most of those made in more recent years. Apparently the stuff you believe yourself to have in common with people isn't always what you actually have in common with them, but enough of memory lane. Let's give the disc a spin.
Sean gave the disc a spin - several spins in the end - as the three of us sat around shooting the breeze at his house, filling in a couple of decades worth of gaps, the usual stuff. I hadn't been aware of his musical inclinations when we were children, it being something which just kind of grabbed him in his twenties. There was, for me, a moment of unease - as there usually will be when your old friend gives you a blast of his band and you're scared it's going to be the worst music you've ever heard, and fuck it you're going to have to say something nice; but thankfully it never came. The music, I soon realised, sounded good. Then we played it again, there being just seven tracks on Blame Frequencies and I realised it sounded like something I would listen to out of choice - which is pretty good going. I have a fair few all-time favourites which didn't really sound like anything until I'd been playing them for at least a week.
I kept thinking of Led Zeppelin as we sat listening, not that it sounds anything like Led Zeppelin, but it has that same breezy quality they had in their gentler moments, like a spring morning captured on tape. Listening now and hence probably closer, Led Zeppelin doesn't work at all, although it retains that elusive early morning sparkle, invoking an era before rock bands channelled themselves into whichever genre got the bums on seats, before anyone was really trying to sound like anyone else, when you might hear an accordion or even bagpipes on a record despite a painting of Satan on the cover and the band logo in sheet metal lettering. The bass slaps and throbs, funky as anything. The guitar illustrates with metal chords, jazz chords, or the sort of frenetic chopping that famously got James Brown up off of that thing; and the vocals are golden, soaring up from the music with everyone else perfectly balanced in their own corner of the sound. It's beautifully put together - tight, clean, clear, and no flab. This is probably what you'd call classic rock these days, except I wouldn't because it seems a little insulting, implying a revival or preservation of something we used to enjoy, and Frequencies shouldn't be defined as such. Their myriad influences were, I would guess, never more than starting points, and none of them seem obvious;, although if it helps, Blame Frequencies also reminds me of Porcupine Tree in so much as that they too invoke what you'd probably call classic rock without sounding like revivalists, beyond which, the comparison is vague, more to do with mood than anything.
Anyway, I have no idea how you would get hold of this disc should you be so inclined, and it seems the band no longer exist in quite this form, a shift of line-up having regrouped as something which will probably be called Squoove, which I may have spelled wrong; but they play live, and I'm sure there will be other discs so - I don't know - keep watching the skies, I guess.