Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (2010)

(Asthmatic Kitty)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When you left me
I went crazy.
- "I Walked"

The followup to one of the most celebrated albums of the last ten years is, in a word, fascinating. The songs are slower, more personal, more aching than Illnoise, all packaged in a wisely overstated, occasionally silly, usually beautiful hyper-media pop parlance that lightly brushes musical touchstones ranging from John Lennon to T-Pain. The Age of Adz is both Sufjan Stevens' most assured album thus far and his most uncertain bout of navel-gaze. As an audio document of a truly brilliant performer's deepest thoughts, The Age of Adz is indispensable -- a vaguely surreal painting of Stevens as American adventurer looking inward. You really don't need anyone to tell you to listen to it, I hope, and you probably already have. So I'll assume you did and then we'll talk about it.

By the stopwatch standard, the only major American artist who's probably released more music in 2010 than Sufjan Stevens is Joanna Newsom -- and this after a pop-oriented silence of four years, five if you don't count the stopgap outtakes collection The Avalanche. Like Newsom, Stevens is blessed and cursed with a restless creative spirit; his music, like Newsom's, is tightly composed, gentle but biting, vividly pretty -- at times ridiculously, mockery-invitingly pretty. But as an artist, Joanna Newsom rails from the direction of rationality; if she has outbursts, they are constructed with a thought to every detail. It isn't so much that Stevens doesn't care where each note falls as he is willing to give vent to every incongruous, scary, buried thing that travels from his brain to his fingertips. An unfiltered oddball, you might say; where Newsom gives the impression of someone who knows exactly how to express herself, Stevens is constantly letting everything go and then doubting it. These are two kinds of genuine artists, their approaches and tastes in noise so similar, their pathology of ruthless creating identical, their music finally on opposite extremes.

The Age of Adz, Sufjan's sixth album, offers a startling portrait of an artist's entire world, no selective process of saying what and when visible (not that it doesn't exist), only a feeling of every word and every sound being felt and honest and a piece of a man. Just enough time has passed since Sufjan Stevens' last album, Illnoise, that his warm, fragile voice is suggestive of another era. It always seemed to come from a place we weren't necessarily permitted to know. Now, when he sings, that otherworldly quality has given way to a recognition. It's a more powerful tool than ever, and by diving headfirst into his most eclectic recording, he finds its best-suited purpose. No longer just falling amongst ornate arrangements, it's a ghostly wail today above unfamiliar terrain, allowing us the luxury of a guided tour with a man we know. Still, even friendly eclecticism has its enemies, and a lot of people are upset that Stevens' new LP is, well, "different."

Different, like, skittering drum machines and a chorus of "I'm not fuckin' around!" on the crazed, jilted "I Want to Be Well." Different like the purest pop in the man's catalog, albeit with an ominous undercurrent, on "Get Real Get Right." Different like "I Walked," a wrenching programmed breakup song on which he demands "Do you think of me now?" amid tortured analyses of minute dumpee details like the lack of a goodbye kiss. Different like the unhinged, scary, gorgeous "Now That I'm Older" which will send listeners racing back to the recent EP's moving but overwrought "Djohariah" to reevaluate the ambitions focused and realized here. And different kinds of babbling-book beautiful on the absolutely classic "Vesuvius," which is pure Sufjan, though even it contributes the memorable self-referential chorus "Sufjan, follow your heart."

So yeah, it's different, but only meaningfully different in a way hardly anyone's talking about. I admit to being taken aback when I heard "Too Much" in advance of the album -- less experimentation than pedestrian goofing off, it sounded like maddening radio pap. But this is deceptive. For one thing, the opposite is just as prevalent; disregarding a bit of extra atmosphere and the words, the two-minute opener "Futile Devices" speeds a five-year gap to an untransformative instant. Stevens' consistency of craft is a miracle, seeming not to have weakened one iota since the surely draining Illinoise experience. His songs and ideas are as bracing as ever, if not more so. The change most have found jarring is the entrance of heavily electronic-leaning production, utilizing synths, drum machines, computer bleeps and bloops, and sporadic tools such as AutoTune to create a phantasmagoric, ever-changing backdrop that seems to move and evolve as fast and as unpredictably as Stevens' brain. The songs operate in fits and starts that approach something like whimsy, but it seems to come from a far deeper place than is probably the norm in precious electro-folk. The songs are still intimate when he feels like it, but like the preceding EP All Delighted People, Age of Adz finds Sufjan exploring an expansive, intricate wall of sound, augmented here and there by strings and choir, usually doing absolutely nothing conventional. The result is an album that, indeed, sounds like nothing (no one) else.

However, while these new sounds and effects are hardly window dressing, they serve to disguise the most personal, harrowingly broken songs their composer has written to date, offering his most fragile performances as a singer. Less than twenty seconds into the record, here he is pulling the blankets over his head on the couch belonging to the ex he misses horribly, like some masochistic twist on "Hey Jealousy." He isn't Antony Hegarty, but he is walking wounded. As much as the intimate productions of Stevens' two States albums and Seven Swans frequently disrupted and offset the intensity of the huge subjects he tackled, the musical toying and tinkering replace the guard that Stevens once put up within his writing. This experimental music is not about experimentation; it is a conception. It's about loss, fear, dread, all manner of dark things, but mostly a broken feeling, seemingly expressed best by coldly programmed machines.

The masterful dupicity is best exemplified by the title track, on which filthy Depeche Mode synths collide with a melodramatic arrangement and deeply affecting, audibly pained singing, the plastic noises only deepening the human connection -- CFTPA writ large. And by the way, analyze this: "I'm sorry if I seem self-effacing / Consumed by selfish thoughts / It's only that I still love you deeply / It's all the love I got." The kitchen sink production lends Stevens the fearlessness necessary to give vent to words and emotions free of his typical poetic bent, as absent of boundaries of lyricism as of genre constrictions. At the very least, it is his greatest achievement as a vocalist thus far; there are moments in which he gets to That Point, you know? The staring-up-from-the-abyss-toward-the-open-window, throwing the head back, giving the self away Point. These songs are gut-splitters, and his submission to them is a life-affirming accomplishment.

Only thing is, the shock that's greeted this adventurous LP betrays sort of a naivete about Sufjan Stevens' prior career, and moreover, demonstrates an odd distrust of individualistic pop music making that seems to have crept into Rock sometime during the '70s. (Hip hop has never suffered from a fear of the tirelessly inventive half-crazed genius, but for whatever reason, within "alternative rock" only Beck has carried an ignorance of genre boundaries to platinum territory, perhaps because his choices tend to be safer, less direct and expressive.) First off, Stevens has never committed himself to the obvious. His old rarity "The First Full Moon" is a defiant and blissy feedback explosion that suggests spacey Britpop. His second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, already displayed an interest in electronic music. And most importantly, an even rote examination of his discography reveals a musician completely unwilling to relax. The only thing that would shock me more than The Age of Adz sounding like Illnoise would be if it were a dirge, devoid of hooks, instead of the often charmingly infectious pop record it is (listen especially to "Get Real Get Right" and portions of the controversial "Impossible Soul"). Like no one since Prince, whose '80s albums serve as an interesting ancestry to what Sufjan is doing here, Stevens is expert at matching avant garde, leftfield music with mass audiences via his fixation with the earthy, the expressive, the heartfelt.

And like Prince, he is a consummate showman. There's a case to be made that some calculation is at work here, at least on business terms. Stevens probably likes the idea of people creating a rumble about a radical departure from his biggest success; though it too displays craft and purpose well-suited to the central lyrical conceits of the album, the cover art by troubled artist Royal Robertson seems designed to confound those same people, even though if anything it fits well with the corny in-jokes populating the front of his last LP. Robertson was a fabled schizophrenic who flew into a seemingly permanent rage upon being divorced by his wife and forever afterward created images of science fiction space creatures screaming misogynistic insults at one another. The oblique sympathy and glimpse of grotesque hatred in his story feels like a classic Sufjan eyeballing examination of Discomforting Things, a visual representation of the wronged man buried deep inside him slash us who says and thinks horrible things, such as the bleakly cynical "Don't walk away when I am speaking!" on "Bad Communication." How telling that the sentiment is made almost serene by the intriguing, retro-futuristic Atari FX surrounding it.

In a recent interview, Stevens showed a remarkably progressive viewpoint toward the changes in the music business and how they affect perception of the album. He is a fan of the Internet free-for-all that allows additional vent for a prolific artist and thus opened the door for something now economically viable like the All Delighted People EP, an hour-long oddity that would've been unthinkable a decade or two ago. He also enjoys the lack of "event" now afforded a new LP release. I tend to agree, but there are cracks. First is that the final track here, the 25-minute "Impossible Soul," feels more like four songs of tangential relation strung together, and sure, they belong together, and sure, Sufjan feels they must be heard together, but in another age it wouldn't have been necessary to glue them together. (We'll talk about Lovesexy later.) The annoyance of this may be less than obvious until you imagine everything on Abbey Road from "You Never Give Me Your Money" to "The End" grafted together as a single cut. The overwhelming nature of the track somehow works against it, as grand as the music is.

And then there's the matter of momentum. With a five-year lapse, did Sufjan lose his audience? I couldn't figure out, given how many people were altered by Sufjan early in the last decade, why more hype didn't seem to be attending a record this long-awaited. It's just long enough for the Illinoise interest and goodwill to have faded, not long enough for Stevens to acquire a mystique with its own commercial viability and conspicuous absence. A new album in the three years after Illinoise would have warranted far more excitement, I think, than at this stage, when the artist has receded just enough that people are starting to need a reminder. That's the part of me talking that misses people looking forward to, marking their calendars for a new record. I got in the spirit and wouldn't listen to NPR's stream of Adz or any of the leaks, only hearing it on its actual release date. What can I say? I'm a sap.

The thesis statement of Age of Adz is buried in "Now That I'm Older": "I'm not over you," he confesses, and the story never goes much further than that. But the telling, sad details that anyone who's lost a lover will recognize end up carrying the album, and will resonate enough to end up being the bulk of its legacy, long after the quaint sonic tricks' novelty fades and we're left with another set of marvellous Sufjan Stevens songs. How about that.

[SEE ALSO:]
All Delighted People EP (2010)

T.I.: King (2006)

(Atlantic)

RECOMMENDED

Atlanta's T.I. is one of those artists who makes it tiresomely difficult to be altogether dismissive of mainstream radio in America; his work is built to blast, pure ear-candy for anyone with any more-than-passing interest in hip hop, including but not limited to those who regularly decry the dire landscape of commercial rap. Probably all the more frustrating for those who bank their existence on the "album-length statement" is that to be properly understood, T.I. needs more than an hour of your time, and he actually uses that hour extremely well, which must drive the haters nuts if they ever bother to give him such an opportunity to prove himself.

To the cynics' credit, there was a point when an awful lot of stuff on R&B radio sounded like T.I.; I don't know whether he was the pioneer of the juggernaut-arena sound that correctly forecasted the mainstreaming of live performance as integral facet of mass-consumer hip hop. But "What You Know" is the single that will instantly spring to mind when describing the sound of the mid-2000s to someone. There's nothing live about it, of course, but it has the sound and battering-ram crowd-surfing intensity of a stadium concert that somehow manages to get directly in the face of all bystanders. There were fresher songs on the airwaves then, but few of them stand up as well as "What You Know," which still gets the blood running all these years later, and feels like it stands apart from its imitators and even predecessors in its straight to-the-bone perfection. It is, above all, a pop single. And pop singles can spawn pop movements; you don't have to give a whit for modern hip hop to get why it connected.

But T.I.'s intent with King probably wasn't to chase everyone else out of the room with the outrageous, the loud, the big statement. The record actually is rife with lower-key moments that are often its strongest; other big hit "Why You Wanna" runs a teasing wronged-man tack over a Q-Tip hook around minimal backbeat, and the amazingly effective love song "Hello" is built on such a classic formula of rap-n-soul, replete with Isley Brothers sample, it could be a Common single (and Common guests elsewhere on the album, proving himself surprisingly capable of a killer verse as late as '06). But others, like the stunning Grandmaster Flash nod "Goodlife," the breathless "Told You So," and the instantly classic closer "Bankhead" practically enter wall of sound territory. The heavy, chilly anthems are the reason the album succeeded, but people stayed for the oddball stuff, the ballads, the slowed-down and slightly eccentric back half.

Nice folks seeking consciousness rhymes aren't likely to find them here, even if the shit inevitably makes their heads bob; T.I.'s big motif, as recent headlines have made all too explicit, is drugs and everything about drugs: obtaining, selling, taking, paying for, charged for. And he won't win the Father of the Year award, either; "Top Back" announces "Think I'm bad now, shoulda seen me before I had children." He does compensate some for the eye-rolling misogyny inherent to so much hip hop of his time with some genuine, knowing, Prince-like romantic tenderness on "Hello" and "Why You Wanna." Just as importantly, the man gives a fuck about his craft, throwing himself into his rhymes and flow like few other rappers -- you can almost hear him break into a roar a few times; no casual apathy here -- and even when there's a touch of telling lack of detail or just tired trash talk in his lyrics, he chooses producers wisely and comes up with a consistently powerful, slick set that is full of artful surprises, excellent beats, and songs that catch and won't let go. Disregarding the four or five duds (all on the first half), every track here is memorable.

Those duds also tend to be the longest tracks; after an opening 1-2-3 punch of genius tracks, T.I. decides to bore us to deah with "I'm Talkin to You," which comes off like a low-tier recording of the Wu-Tang Clan members all shouting over one another, followed by the obligatory Jamie Foxx cameo on the dull "Live in the Sky." The agreeable throwback funk of "Ride Wit Me" picks things back up, and after that the only song that makes me reach for "skip" is the intolerably annoying "Get It." But I did say song. Rant alert: Anybody who loves hip hop will admit to you that the genre has its baggage like any other. The same way I hate most 103-note guitar solos, I am immensely irritated by the "skits" that come packaged with most rap records of all eras. Even the best of them are funny, at most, twice, and these tend to come on records that are worth listening to over and over and over again. It's a simple matter of programming -- usually. But T.I. commits the double offense of tacking skits on to the end of several tracks, including the perfectly ill "I'm Straight," which runs 6:35 thanks to a nonsensical obscenity-laced rant at the end. The phone call at the end of "Goodlife" is slightly less bothersome, and the worst of the bunch, a lovers' quarrel that precedes "Why You Wanna," is skippable. But with an album that's already about a quarter-hour too long, these are needless indulgences. I wish we could scale back the template a bit on these records, but maybe most folks like these skits, hell if I know.

With the real age of the gangsta long past us now, the hip hop world has become a sort of poetic apocalypse -- we've entered an age when the most exciting, innovative rap isn't necessarily the most fun rap. The problem is, as Mos Def has argued, both divisions of the music have value that's consistently undervalued by occupants of the other contingent. I'm a Roots guy myself; De La Soul and Run-DMC are still my favorite hip hop artists of all time. If I have to pick the current masters, I can't escape the cliché that Jay and Kanye are the kings because that'd be like saying the Beatles and the Rolling Stones weren't the kings in 1968. But I was listening to a lot of urban radio when this album came out and ultimately found that a lot of my resistance crumbled in the hands of the sheer rock & roll mastery of what amounts to an elevation of classic populist folk and blues. What T.I. is basically doing, whether he's boasting or lamenting a real injustice or bawling about some shit that's his own dumb fault, is what John Lee Hooker was doing fifty years ago. It's sometimes an ugly -- if catchy! -- world he and many of his peers seem to occupy, in the real world and on store shelves, but goddamn if it isn't as evocative an artful distortion-slash-representation of reality as pop culture has ever offered us. Testimonials about drug dealing and other unpleasant matters set to music this sick from talent this deep sure beats a Wall Street Journal op-ed about rap being mindless junk, doesn't it?

Tame Impala: Innerspeaker (2010)

(Modular)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

No longer a kitsch notion, psychedelia lives on today, filtered through the new capabilities and pop-historical consciousness of current rock musicians who long for an ideal of near-institutionalized mainstream experimentation, even if such a thing was largely mythical. Some bands actually experiment; some issue fervent, loving valentines to the age when everything seemed like newly forged territory. You'll find a bit of the latter in this Australian band's trippy, Beatlesque new album. It is a full-on retro move, with vocal and guitar and melodic pop doodling that will sound comfortably familiar, but it's so much fun -- and the songwriting is so solid -- that the derivative elements wash over into a respectful, personal new investigation of late '60s music. As immediate as the best power pop, as serious-minded and convincing as the tightest post-punk outfit, this is music that requires no setup, no introduction. The second you hear it, it feels like it's all in the blood.

And that sounds like a case of backward-looking fever, but it's actually the mark of extraordinary skill. I'm miffed by the idea that someone can't make a kickass record steeped in '60s artifact without accusations of unoriginality. A band like Tame Impala configures the past as a palette to draw on, and they're too young for the baggage -- political, social, musical -- inherent to their period of strongest influence. They don't necessarily know about the scenes, the pomp, the attitudes that produced Jefferson Airplane and the Doors, but they know what sounds cool, and by reliving the notion of sounding cool within a pop joy free of Airplane and Doors iconography, they render something altogether more special. It can evoke a memory while feeling alive, creating dreamlike waves.

There was a lot, as you know, both good and bad about rock music in the late '60s. For someone to filter all of that into comfort food like this -- rock & roll with cutting, vibrant energy and imagination -- is commendable. Given the band's youthful appearance, it's startling how confident and grown-up they sound when dabbling in light guitar funk on "Solitude Is Bliss" or just laid-back mod rock on "Lucidity." Each track is distinct but all share an identifiable, instantly enjoyable style. And the record only gets more interesting, brighter, niftier with each listen.

It's a mistake to suggest Tame Impala is all rejuvenated vintage and distorted Beatlemania. There's dream-pop here too, for one thing, on a pair of beautiful tracks ("Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind" and "Expectation") that offer a Jesus & Mary Chain tower of college-rock sound and even conjure up the pure, modern infatuation with beauty of a Sufjan Stevens or Owen Pallett -- and a bit of shockingly fresh U2 arena rock in "Alter Ego" -- but they also are wise enough to comprehend the sheer voltage of guitars, bass, and drums, a medium that never dates. Their melodies and performances are strong enough that all other definining characteristics are embellishment, whether they're fearlessly exploring Roky Erickson heavy (and archetypal wide-eyed '60s lyrics) on "The Bold Arrow of Time" or offering up true psych-rock epic, replete with McCartneyesque bass, on "Runaway, Houses, City, Clouds." Tame Impala's Beatles costuming is handiest less because they're soundalikes (although vocalist Kevin Parker is at times a dead ringer for John Lennon) than because they share the older band's propensity for filtering big ideas through precision and economy. A six-minute song here can pass by like nothing at all.

This album is oozing with goddamned fun; it's hard to say what the best song of the crop is. I vote either the stoned-addictive "Lucidity," with its snakelike melody and ample cool, or the closing pop bliss move "I Don't Really Mind," enough of an infectious dazzler to call to mind your favorite garage rock nugget (or, naturally, early-to-midperiod Beatles 45). Whatever. If you love rock & roll and psychedelia, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot and feel the unqualified-awesome shimmer of this fantastic record. Indie rockers need a little more of the '60s in their juice, and folks stuck in the past need to hear what the youth are up to; what better and more delightful compromise could there be?

2 Many DJ's: As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 (2002)

(PIAS)

You're looking at a mashup album, a mix tape with the twist of recontextualization, here aimed for dimly lit dance clubs with a cheery, almost masochistically over-the-top sense of fun. The rush of pleasure comes out of recognition of a zillion popular favorites; the secondary aristic appreciation is a gut-level wonder at how many records are being culled from at once, and how they are jumbled together into what sounds bizarrely logical. If the mashup album is a genre, As Heard on Radio Soulwax, Pt. 2 could reasonably be described as one of two quintessential examples.

The other one? That would be Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a far more focused and linear fusion of Jay-Z and the Beatles, which was never legally released but virtually launched DM's career. But the mashup existed well before the 2000s; it is arguably an outgrowth of early underground hip hop. Sampling was so advanced and admirably reckless by the end of the '80s that records like the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique (produced by the Dust Brothers) and De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising (Prince Paul) render every use of the tool thereafter nearly beside the point. Still, Beck's Odelay and the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust slowed down and discovered nuances in the tool that the feverishly paced earlier records were too drunken on a million possibilities to investigate. And a tool was what it remained; the sampling, the mixing, the tampering, the twiddling was a rush of interactive joy providing the backdrop to these performers creating something wholly unique, something beyond its sources.

Though I'd consider making a case for Paul's Boutique since nothing else the Beasties did came even close to its brilliance, the only great record that's actually about sampling, indeed the masterpiece of the "mashup" ideal before there was a mainstream term for it, is the Avalanches' Since I Left You. One of the reasons Since I Left You is so compelling is that it doesn't sample a damn thing you've ever heard of. Actually, it samples the sort of unloved leftovers you find in the fifty-cent bin at your local record store or goodwill: spoken word nonsense, easy-listening, obscure dusty soul, bad jazz, worse disco, worst Beautiful Music. It is the crafting of divinity from tripe, of something from nothing -- art, right?

So you can think of this 2 Many DJ's record as the same idea with another school of thought: the speed and pace of sampling is just as breakneck even if the rhythms and detail are less densely layered. The difference is that you've heard an awful lot of these records. Probably not all of them, sure; Erykah Badu's approval notwithstanding, the overlap of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (and/or Mancini) fans with Breeders fans, much less Basement Jaxx fans, remains miniscule. But anyone who has been alive and not living in a monastery at some point in the last forty years will recognize a significant number of the songs used on this album.

Rather than carving out an experience of its own like Since I Left You, and thus becoming a singular work, the 2 Many DJ's record draws upon the listener's emotions, culture, and experiences. The mashup trend of the 2000s relies muchly on a hardline view of pop music history -- it throws around touchstones, gems, and nearly-forgotten distractions of the prior fifty years and blips them in and out speedily, just enough time for that sheer rush of recognition. The latter is what all pop music DJ's thrive on, but I've always preferred the ones (and been the one) who let the songs play out untouched, little attention given to BPMs and mixer-melding. When in service of music like this, such trickery plays for me as almost cheap -- an easy way of proving one's adept genius at mixing and matching, a way of speeding up the process of enjoying music to a simple system of momentary impulses, button-pushed feelings.

There's value in that, to be sure, and the record is a fun listen. Once. I miss the feeling of something new laid on top of it, and moreover I'm distressed at the chronology drawn upon, in service of an eclectic but blind-spotted nostalgia that generally cuts off at the dawn of the MP3 age, nods to Destiny's Child and "Fuck the Pain Away" aside. We are much more in the service of "9 to 5" and "Oh Sheila" here; there is the notion of an underground in the form of, well, the Velvet one, but that savvy and prescience is locked away in 1967. I can't imagine the record would be much different released eight years later, when mass awareness of popular music has cut cleanly between those who really, really care and those who don't pay much attention at all. Radio Soulwax serves as a slightly disturbing reminder at how the communal experience of pop has been cut off at its knees since the dawn of the millennium. I usually don't miss it, but the magic-discs-in-The Time Machine quality of the permanent rotation and re-re-revision of past generations' keystone moments here is disheartening. Like listening to classic rock radio in 2010 that isn't aware the world kept moving after 1974 (in ways beyond Guns N Roses, AC/DC, and The Wall). There's nothing wrong with Top 40, but to so limit a joyous scope only serves to in turn limit future perception, untrue perception, about the worth and meaning of Western popular music. That's operating on the theory, of course, that the 2 Many DJ's record would prove an exception to this cutoff point, which I admit is probably not the case.

I hasten to add that I understand why this has accolades. I have nothing but admiration for the skill and calculated aural button-pushing required to put together something like this, which I'm certain was not easy. I can't identify with it because it feels like a celebration of music that it truncates, rather than a ruthless chopping-to-bits of it all into something genuinely new -- a rapid-fire flipping of the proverbial channels. And even when you're dancing, well, nonstop is nice. But the occasional tense, pregnant, giddy pause is better still.

Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot- The Son of Chico Dusty (2010)

(Def Jam)

RECOMMENDED

I'll be honest -- I'm troubled by the fact that this record isn't clicking with me more than it is. It gives me no pleasure to brand one of the world's most talented musicians, and one of this year's most universally acclaimed albums, with anything less than highest praise. Straight up, here's the truth: Most everyone is loving this one. I'm digging it a lot but I don't love it; I'm severely outnumbered. Chances are you'll side with the folks who are unequivocally flipping for it, and you're likely to find their smart, articulate reviews more helpful. Big Boi undoubtedly deserves the praise, and this is on its way to being a modern classic. But if you're curious about why I'm not fully sold on it, do read on.

Few things seemed like more a foregone conclusion than Big Boi's solo debut being an excellent record. I almost have this feeling that it's one of those "automatically brilliant" works, the sort of thing everybody's formed an opinion on well ahead of release date. I certainly anticipated this as a landmark, the sort of permanent turntable-fixture that even Outkast's lesser albums have become. I'm not particularly disappointed with it, either. I'm just not blown away -- and in another year, an inferior year, that might not matter much. But this year, I'm just overrun with music that has stabbed my gut and moved me on a level beyond what I'm getting from the Big Boi LP.

Remember what Paul McCartney said about Get Back slash Let It Be? That it was an old album before it even came out? I have that strange, discomforting sensation in regard to Left Foot. Recording began in January of 2007, an entire lifetime ago in musical terms, and far enough back that the year can spark a note of nostalgia. It was supposed to come out in 2008 but label disputes, supplemental material, and other delays kept piling up until the record inevitably becomes a time-lapse photograph of three years of hip hop innovations. If you're nice. If you're not nice, it becomes a final resting place for a number of stale trends amidst all the experiments.

Big Boi is undeniably playing with tricks and ideas new to him, and largely new to us -- the massive, blurping, recontextualized synth sound of "Daddy Fat Sax"; the keenly infectious vocal-beat experiment on "Shutterbug"; the metallic funk of "You Ain't No DJ"; the impossibly heavy, murkily evocative slamming of "Tangerine," one of the album's scattered notes of absolute perfection; Organized Noize's head-spinning juxtaposition of soft rock sound and aggressive rhyming on "Turns Me On" (OutKast heroes ON are the star producers of this record; their tracks come off best of all). Some of these connect and some don't. But one thing I know about music I love is something I can't articulate: there's a spark. Something that comes out and grabs and intrigues, regardless of setting. I keep listening and listening for that certain spark in Left Foot and it all just seems too explicit, too straightforward, too grounded and basic. I almost feel as though Big Boi could make a record like this with one eye open.

Part of what's missing is what I feel is missing from a lot of hip hop far more popular than this. Dance music requires a certain abandon to come across properly; hip hop is much more than dance music, but I think Boi is operating from a body vernacular to craft his work. It's likely just a question of taste, but for me, despite their immense depth of detail, these tracks don't bang and move like they keep wanting to. The beats are almost tentative; as soon as the pupils roll back and that thing starts to happen, it's like he loses interest and moves to the next wild idea. That restlessness is wonderful for an artist and proves he's at the top of his game. I just want the record, the songs to breathe a tad more. Sometimes, when they do, the result feels too familiar; the now nearly expired slow-burn radio rap sound exemplified by T.I.'s classic "What You Know" has the awkward effect of making a few cuts here seem oversized, dated, obvious: "Shine Blockas" is inoffensive enough but "General Patton" grates, with its three central elements -- the stadium backdrop, the choral sample, and Boi's usual quick, breezy vox -- failing entirely to hang together, while the Eminem-like "Follow Us" owes a bit to the heavy rap-rock sound of yore, Vonnegutt's vocal hook sending us back into afternoons dragged into Hot Topic with younger siblings.

The greatest virtue of Left Foot is Big Boi's flow, which is consistently breathtaking; his double-speed flair and wit keep every track moving and falling onto the ear if not the feet with ease. These lyrics aren't the best he's done, but despite a few fallbacks into generic boasting here and there, they're still frequently, effortlessly ingenious. He talks and rants about '08 politics, coke boasting and busting, marital committment, and well, "My heart says 'Do Not Disturb,' and yours is like a doorknob, everybody get a turn." It's never seemed fair to declare Boi the less intellectually stimulating half of OutKast when his time on the mic is so economical, so well-crafted, so damned addictive. (I mean, who listens to rock & roll for intellectual stimulation? Wit and wisdom, maybe, both of which Big Boi offers in spades.) The rapping is so consistently great on this LP I have to conclude all my problems with it are production matters. Tons of great rap albums have as many producers as this one and scamper back and forth from one to another track by track... but I can't remember the last time I heard that happening, so explicitly, until I feel like I'm listening to a years-spanning greatest hits collection. Which, in a sense, I am.

That's probably not the full body of what's bugging me here. While its length (just under an hour) is perfectly reasonable, I think the record has an unfortunate sprawl: there are too many songs -- by my count it can stand to lose three: the only out-and-out failures are "General Patton," the disappointingly annoying "You Ain't No DJ," and the unnecessary Jamie Foxx guest spot "Hustle Blood" -- and the best songs should go on longer than they do: the Prince-like "Shutterbug" (3:35), the exceptional George Clinton pastiche "Fo Yo Sorrows" (3:42), the ideal Big Boi showcase "Night Night" with its blazing momentum (3:45), and the startling "Back Up Plan" (3:43). As with Arcade Fire's The Suburbs -- a record I do love, but with reservations -- the key word is "overwrought." Despite the ability to make their point (and a brilliant album) in ten or twelve tracks, these artists drive the point home with an extra three, five, seven, etc. In the age of shuffle, it shouldn't be an issue, but listening to the album straight through is exhausting, and makes it all sound less interesting and exciting than it is. I'd wager even the act of having to pick up the vinyl to change the side would help it, as it certainly did when I got the Suburbs LP. Do I sound like a nutcase?

There are some notes of total, life-affirming wonder here: along with the aforementioned "Tangerine," there is Janelle Monáe's glorious cameo on "Be Still"; as on her "Tightrope," the cumulative effect of these two breathing life into a track together is a thing to behold. But best of all are the two closing tracks from Organized Noize: "The Train Pt. 2" reverses every problem with the attempts at Tyrannosaurus-clossus production earlier in the LP -- it's intense and dramatic in all the best ways, musically tricky, genuinely new and singular, teeming with modern life. But the most fascinating piece of work here is the finale, the unprotected-sex lament slash PSA "Back Up Plan," not only well-expressed and funny but a fully successful pop move, as catchy and innovatively oddball as anything here. It propels forward in alternately gentle and furious moments, with the logic and thrust of great storytelling. But again, it cuts away just when it's starting to really cook.

And then, I wonder if another personal prejudice is coloring me here. I tend to pout about this sort of thing, when a career that is at its absolute peak is suddenly grounded. I was extremely hesitant to ever listen to Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean's solo records because I was so irritated about the Fugees being gone. I've never been able to objectively evaluate Gorillaz because Blur was so special to me that I spend Gorillaz's albums demanding no one in particular to know why Damon Albarn isn't working on new Blur shit instead. OutKast hasn't broken up; they claim they'll be back in the game in a few years. Truthfully, it's not simply that I miss André 3000; I adored The Love Below and I'm anxious to hear what he does solo next. What I miss is OuKast itself -- these two cats playing off each other, which made for frankly some of the most compelling hip hop of the last two decades. If not for a completely maddening dispute with Jive Records (who inexplicably felt this album was too uncommercial to release), we'd have Dré (who produced "You Ain't No DJ") guesting on Sir Lucious. Maybe that's another reason I'm not jumping as high in the air for joy about this album as a lot of people -- the record industry is still a fuckin' life-taker.

The Beach Boys: Summer Love Songs (1963-71)

(Capitol 2009)

Summer Love Songs is the fifth major Beach Boys hit compilation of the last ten years, following two that were a response to catch-all mass popularity collections like the Beatles' industry-shaker 1 and Elvis Presley's Number Ones. In years of old, EMI's "themed" Beach Boys records and cassettes were everywhere, gathering ten songs here and there about "cars" or "surf" or "girls." Let's hope the balladeering here, which cuts off at a more generous twenty songs but still isn't remotely as long and extensive as the last two discs, isn't a harbinger of similar foolishness to come.

The idea seems to be to gather a set of songs that define the Beach Boys at their most "romantic"; it's hard to take issue with this, because they are among the most romantic of rock groups. And some of the songs selected are divinely good examples of just that -- "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "Keep an Eye on Summer," and especially the woefully underappreciated "Your Summer Dream," a 1963 expectation of the nerd-rock prom turn. But then there are the baffling inclusions, such as "Girls on the Beach," "Help Me, Rhonda," and "California Girls," that seem to promote rather the opposite of romance.

At least the "theme" in this case seems to make actual sonic sense. The songs blend together quite well and will hopefully remind listeners of the depth of the Beach Boys' catalog, thanks to unusual choices like the shatteringly grand "In the Parkin' Lot," never a single but among the band's most evocative productions. The problem is that there are already CDs on the marketplace that serve the same purpose; the best of these is the fine Greatest Hits Vol. 2: 20 More Good Vibrations, a set guaranteed not to make even the hardest BB skeptic cringe, packed with graceful, lovely, often brilliant songs that concentrate on reflection and introspection, easily as noble an idea as Twenty Songs About Girls.

Who is the target audience, then? Chances are even the most casual Beach Boys follower already owns "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows," and "California Girls," perhaps multiple times, and I can't imagine anyone recommending this as an across-the-board introduction (for which purpose Sounds of Summer remains the strongest CD on the market, although I still prefer Endless Summer, in print only on vinyl). Beach Boys expert Bret Wheadon commented some time ago that Capitol's packages of previously-unreleased Beach Boy material were feeling increasingly like bootlegs; in a similar vein, their greatest-hits packages are starting to seem more like fan-made mixtapes. "Here's a few of my favorite Beach Boys songs; maybe now you'll stop bitching about how they're surfing Doris Days. Love, Mark Linett." In that vein, the CD is a fun listen, but that's largely because it has one of the world's greatest catalogs to draw on, and it's hard to screw that up; I grew up on those terrible EMI Special Markets cassettes and they certainly made me a lifer.

Of course, hardcore fans are attracted differently, via the ever-continuing painfully slow trickle down of new Beach Boys stereo mixes. As on Sounds of Summer and The Warmth of the Sun, many of the new offerings are mere revisions for tracks that already existed in stereo, which strikes me as excessive. The Beach Boys' '60s work is almost universally better in mono, and even when it's not, the mono mixes contain touches and subtleties that should be part of the canon and no longer are: on this disc, the primary example is Brian's lead in to the final chorus and fadeout of "God Only Knows," a jarring enough change that I can't for the life of me understand why they continue to use the stereo GOK on every compilation. I'm sorry, but that's not the song, folks.

"Why Do Fools Fall in Love" comes with a newly discovered Brian Wilson introduction, which is quite pretty, and is vastly superior to the older stereo mix; "Fools" was the first full-on Wrecking Crew production made explicitly for the band, and one wonders why this elaborate intro was cut off. (It's been said that tyrannical dad and former manager Murry Wilson wanted Brian to ditch the legendary opening moments of "California Girls"; perhaps therein lies an explanation.) "Don't Worry Baby" fixes the harsh channel separation on old copies and attempts to approximate the emotional punch of the mono version -- it's close, but not quite there. After listening to the new mix of "Girls on the Beach" a couple of times, I'm having trouble working out the difference. Neither "Hushabye" nor "Time to Get Alone" needed a remix in the least; the former was already (no longer, here!) one of the few early songs that worked better in stereo, and the latter is from the extremely well-recorded 20/20 LP. Overall, I don't recommend plunking down cash for any of these except maybe "Why Do Fools Fall in Love," which wasn't a fabulous cover to begin with.

The major bait, of course -- there's even a sticker on the shrinkwrap! -- is the "new Dennis Wilson song" called "Fallin' in Love," or "Lady" if you like. The track offers a double serving of Capitol Records lies: it's not previously unreleased, nor is it actually a Beach Boys song, though you wouldn't know either of these things from any of the information offered. "Lady" was actually issued along with another fine Dennis composition, "Sound of Free," as a solo single in the UK in 1971 under the name Dennis Wilson and Rumbo. There is a new string arrangement, which sounds rather nice, but it'd sure be a lot nicer to have the original back on the marketplace. Capitol's intent was clearly to establish a market connection to Sony's massive, unsurprsing-to-everyone-except-the-boneheaded-music-industry triumph with their reissue of Dennis' solo album Pacific Ocean Blue. It's a great song. I recommend Lush's cover version. Or buying the track on its own. Anything to avoid having to pay money for this pointless compilation.

Fans groaned at the precedent Summer Love Songs seemed poised to set. Next: Summer Car Songs, Summer Songs About Summer, Songs About the Sun, Beach Songs for Summer, Songs About Divorce, Songs About Personality Disorders, Songs That Become Creepy When You Learn More About Brian Wilson, Songs That May or May Not Have Been Cowritten by Charles Manson, Songs Mike Love Sued Over, Songs on Which Mike Love Doesn't Sound Like a Total Fucking Douche? But in just one year, the market for compact discs has shrunken to such microscopic size that we may never have to sort through the one or two New Mixes populating each of these potential classics. Maybe someday the surviving Beach Boys' fragmented consensus will allow for the release of actually substantive new material. But I doubt it.

Fang Island (2010)

(Sargent House)

The highest compliment you can pay this band is that they're really, really enthusiastic. The music Fang Island puts together on their debut album is some seriously pumped-up, fist-in-the-air stuff, ideal for motivation or jogging. While listening to "Life Coach" I found myself thinking of it as an emo variation on Jock Jams -- the voices are whinier but the effect is mostly the same. The aggro-singalong sheen is even more pronounced on "Daisy," which sounds like a mid-'90s Mountain Dew commercial: it's sort of invigorating and you can picture kids screaming and skydiving along with it. But it also sounds a lot like things I tend to avoid, such as all the pseudo-punk dickheads who were so difficult to escape on the radio eight or nine years ago. Or, yikes, Journey. Or, yikes, Queen.

Except, like, without songs. Most of these tracks are less pop music than pop chants, wordless or mostly wordless wailing; witness "The Illnois," opening on what sounds like a men's choir covering My Chemical Romance or something before it starts stomping around with heavy guitars and orderly, nonsensical masculine venting. The intent is for these to feel massive, not just a chorus of vocals but a wall of them, all the citizens of the world yelling along to babadapabadabababa. There are a few instrumentals as well, and while it's hard to tell them apart, these too work off a communal intensity seemingly geared to letting it all out while the heart rate goes up. It isn't so much joy as just asexual expelling of pent-up energy, something that both teenagers and working folk can probably latch on to with no trouble.

I'm not feeling much personality in all this drama, so I tend to relate to a more modest sound; Fang Island does deliver this once, on the appealing "Treeton," which abandons the brashly broad strokes and plays more with rhythm, texture, and subtlety. Otherwise, I have a hard time getting inside this music; it seems designed more for concert throngs than one-on-one contact, but based on a vague, almost unexpressed, connection. An intriguing idea, but at this stage, the trappings still seem too obvious, the influences too easy to spot, the methods too rote, for me to be ready to take the trip.

That doesn't mean you won't. It's just that this is all a bit too bright, sunny, and anonymous for me (and the guitars are much, much too clean; did Mutt fucking Lange produce this!?) -- on the surface, it doesn't really signify much beyond a sort of juvenile good-times celebration, and the music's too loud and proggy to get underneath. I dig musical liberation -- it's just a question of what music you find liberating; this doesn't take me there. It has a bit of Candy Mountain overbearing: it's not bubblegum, but it could still hurt your teeth. Worth a look anyway if you need a new exercise and/or revolution incitement playlist. And at thirty-one minutes, it's not asking for a whole lot of your time. You might even fit it in twice before you finish your workout/coup d'etat.