I gotta be there, I wanna do something: July 2019 music diary

Note #1: I will not be grading or reviewing Purple Mountains as I had planned to, because as an outsider to the Silver Jews and David Berman's work it strikes me as strictly gauche to conceive of attempting to put his final album into a capsule review-sized box which would inflict nothing of any significance upon the world in the context of an entire human life that touched a great number of people I personally know. Friends who have been impacted by Berman's death speak with the most moving sincerity of an artist whose work meant the world to them, and the sheer fact of that means more than anything anyone who approaches this with greater distance could possibly say. Moreover, the intimacy of Berman's rapport with people I like and/or love makes it impossible to approach this with the necessary neutrality anyway. Seeing someone greeted by much of the world with open arms but still in so much pain that he would make a move of such crushing finality, and knowing the intricacies and unknowable things that would be involved in such a decision (if it can even be classified as a decision, something of which I'm skeptical) just leaves me wanting to say nothing less trite than: if you are hurting, or grieving, please don't try to do it alone. No human heart can take it, even a weathered one.

Thom Yorke: ANIMA (XL) [r]
The first thing to say is how much better this is than the last Radiohead album, while also being much more of a piece with his day-job band's output (therefore more appealing) than any of Yorke's prior solo material save the surprisingly enjoyable Suspiria score. With nine songs in 47 minutes, it's not particularly discursive, and amounts to the most playful electro-pop Yorke has put his name on in a great many years, with a decent bit of synthetic jamming and few signs of the insanely worked-over pretentiousness of Radiohead's worst work, plus plenty of the lovingly off-the-cuff beauty of their best. The beautiful, disorienting "Dawn Chorus" is stargazing shit that would leave Brent DiCrescenzo drunk and stoned and babbling, while "Not the News" achieves enough of a narrative to evoke Yorke emerging from some sort of gorgeous ethereal murk. The record does meander some, serving more as good atmosphere than anything more or less than that, with little spikes of humor (a song called "I Am a Very Rude Person"; accounts differ) and menace ("this is when you know who your real friends are") but it's not easy to imagine a typical Radiohead fan failing to get a kick out of it all.

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib: Bandana (RCA) [r]
Gibbs races through this faster than Wile E. Coyote; "Freestyle Shit" and "Crime Pays" sound like fun thanks to the sensory-overload combination of Gibbs' gleefully amoral rhymes and Madlib's head-spinningly restless production. The latter track in particular ingeniously combines '70s quiet storm and lite jazz with the feeling of a pedestrian sitcom about day to day lives and coke dealing in the Midwest, or something. The only shit is that Madlib isn't really ahead of the pack anymore, he's mostly twisting knobs for his own (and Gibbs') benefit and not stretching anyone's ideas of what this music does. While the throwback is charming, it's also obviously regressive in a variety of ways (the stoner rap of "Cataracts" could've been on a Curren$y tape ten years ago), and the brightest spots toward the end are Anderson .Paak's Kendrick-infected verse on "Giannis" (not that Kendrick is New School either at this juncture) and the apocalyptic gigantism of "Education." It's a great night out, at any rate.

MIKE: Tears of Joy (10K)
Respectable and creatively restless but not the least bit entertaining, because MIKE simply doesn't have enough of a personality to carry its sonic ambitions. You have to be more than half-awake to be good at this kind of thing.

Rhye: Spirit (Loma Vista EP) [r]
An extra half-hour of the godly horniness that flows out of Mike Milosh and whoever's turning the cranks like so many obscene bodily fluids. I've heard it all before but I still love it to death.

Jesca Hoop: Stonechild (Memphis Industries) [r]
This Santa Rosa native was swept up in the late 2000s indie folk revival but is only now, at age 44, really getting her moment. Her voice doesn't seem as singular as it once did, content now to vacillate between a traditionalist singer-songwriter posture with a militantly twee, art-teacher quality and an occasional specific resemblance to Joanna Newsom. But the songs and the atmospheres are a great leap forward here, starting out spooky and ethereal but also utterly confident on "Free of the Feeling." At its loveliest ("Passage's End," the sweetly propulsive "Outside of Eden") it's fragile without becoming sentimental, and if not for Big Thief recording a whole album transcendently fusing haunting, desolate forest tones with tough-minded indie rock, "Footfall to the Path" would be the fake Appalachian folk song of the year.

Moodymann: Sinner (KDJ) [r]
Veteran Detroit DJ's latest fine batch of club digressions sometimes has the crate-digging enthusiasm of Donuts, sometimes sounds like a Deee-lite album, both highly agreeable ambitions.

Mannequin Pussy: Patience (Epitaph) [r]
Verbose, riff-heavy Philadelphia punks offer nothing you've never heard before, really, but nothing you'll be sorry to hear again.

The Flaming Lips: King's Mouth (Warner Bros.) [r]
Warner still lets these cats do whatever the hell they want, including this storybook concept thing with Mick Jones, of all people, in the Jack Rieley role and a lot of chilled-out soundscapes similar to the last LP. You won't listen to it much but you'll feel all right whenever you do, especially if you're not in any condition to drive. God bless them.

Maxo Kream: Brandon Banks (RCA) [r]
A Texan and a former Crip, which informs the hedonistic, harsh quality of his second album -- which, from our angle as rap consumers, is lovably chaotic and playful, engaging and lively in a way that can't help but evoke nostalgia for a carefree time when we were all watching cats threaten each other on TV; but regardless of thematics, don't underestimate what a rush it is to hear someone still totally high on the rhythmic thunder of his own voice, a hypnotic drive you can feel down to your core. Emekwanem Biosah's note of lyrical distinction is that he's reflective and brash in pretty equal measure (listen to "Bissonnet"), writing letters with a pen and telling comparing stories while indulging in violence as burlesque, violence as obligation to an audience, boasting "i ain't a fuckin' rapper I'm a fuckin' gravedigger." (Important note: that's rhymed with "masturbator.") Oddly, he falters the most when he attempts to combine these impulses into the Lou Reed-like sob story character sketch "Brenda," about a single mom mistreated by every man in the phone book whose life gets harder every day; inspirational sentiment: "Brenda been through a lot / now she sellin' her twat / she's a prostitute thot." A huge well of producers conglomerate into a mid-'90s mush ("Change" essentially is Bone-Thugs) that's appealing up to around the 2/3 mark, with the occasional shot of dissonant psychedelia. In other words, there's nothing modern about it -- that's why Schoolboy Q, such a bore on his own stuff, sounds like he's set up shop and found his home at last on his verse. But no question about it: "She Live," with a supreme guest appearance from Megan Thee Stallion and a gigantic, stark bass beat evocative of 1980s dub riddims, is a fucking titanic blast; and this verse of "Dizzy Draco" is, as the kids say, giving me life: "I had a job at Panera Bread, I took that work to work / I was sellin' niggas bagels, I was sellin' niggas Percs." Not even Pusha T could make it sound so romantic.

Peter Perrett: Humanworld (Domino) [hr]
It's deeply unfair that a guy like Perrett can sound like he's never even laid down since his heyday, after 67 years of ruthless attack upon and abuse of his own body, and over three decades after the dissolve of his definitive vehicle the Only Ones, an all-timer for fans of alternative pop at its most melodic, witty and sincere. The second record from a refreshingly celebrated and assured comeback hits a bullseye as these things go; it's not an exaggeration to say it stands proudly with the best work in his veteran master's history, and frankly, it's impossible to fathom how in the hell he does it. The legit full-on rock production on "I Want Your Dreams," riddled with thorny backing vocals and towering, ringing guitars certainly helps the sense of timelessness and, to be honest, ingratiating eccentricity. The rocky relationship chatter on "Once Is Enough" isn't the most inspired, but the pleasingly apocalyptic production more than takes hold, and Perrett's voice -- both literally and poetically -- is consistently challenging and provocative, full of the nuanced observation of someone who is absolutely not at rest. His protest riffs on "War Plan Red" make fiery power out of neutered cluelessness about how to improve the world we're living in. "Walking in Berlin" sounds like an immediate classic, a treasure worthy of the Only Ones; "Love's Inferno" is chaotic and beautiful. Some of the songs sound conventional. Some of the words ring slightly false. But some of them are "I'm gonna sleep on a bed of nails never to wake up" ("Believe in Nothing"). And some of the conventional songs, like "Master of Destruction," conjure up nothing so much as jealousy that any aged-out rocker asshole is able to make ancient texts sound fresh and totally engaging again. Where on earth did this come from!?

ALSO RECOMMENDED:
Lee "Scratch" Perry: Rainford (On-U Sound) [grandpa still knows more about the groove than we do; "Makumba Rock"/"Cricket on the Moon"/"Autobiography of the Upsetter"]
Sacred Paws: Run Around the Sun (Merge) [Scotland's own Katrina & the Waves (or Bow Wow Wow) lays claim to Eurovision for the next dozen years; "Brush Your Hair"/"What's So Wrong"/"Shame on Me"]
Bedouine: Bird Songs of a Killjoy (Spacebomb) [in the words of Leonard Cohen: "That's pretty... That's pretty too."]
Dylan LeBlanc: Renegade (ATO) [Louisiana alt-country boy whose songs all sound the same, and are all beautiful, and I'm a sucker; "Lone Rider"/"Born Again"]

ALSO RECOMMENDED FOR THE AMBIENT FILES:
Kevin Richard Martin: Sirens (ROOM40) [Novant Health Care continues its reign of terror taking over every nonprofit medical facility in the Southeast]
Sarah Davachi: Pale Bloom (W.25th)

FURTHER INVESTIGATION TO COME:
* Andre Bratten: Pax Americana
Night Moves: Can You Really Find Me
Felicia Atkinson: The Flower and the Vessel
Trash Kit: Horizon
Pere Ubu: Long Goodbye
Ada Lea: What We Say in Private
Beyonce: The Lion King- The Gift

REJECTS
Julia Shapiro: Perfect Version
The Black Keys: Let's Rock
Kokoko!: Fongola
The Soft Cavalry
Mark Mulcahy: The Gus
Banks: III
Tony Molina: Songs from San Mateo County [NYIM]
Ider: Emotional Education
Sum 41: Order in Decline

ORPHAN TUNES:
Julia Shapiro "Shape" [Perfect Version]

Note #2: This weekend was scheduled to bring us the first draft of my Favorite Albums of the 2010s list plus a nice little essay about the whole confusing mess of a decade. However, even slightly cutting back on how much re-listening I was doing (I will do a more complete pass at a later date, when I can actually incorporate 2019 stuff) hasn't prevented me from falling behind on it. So this weekend you'll get a different post I meant to write and publish a million years ago and got sidetracked, and hopefully about a week after that I will have the big list post ready. End transmission.