Miguel: Kaleidoscope Dream (2012)

(RCA)

RECOMMENDED

Hi and welcome to 1998. Miguel might have a finger on the pulse of the oft-speculated-about, seldom necessarily, Future of Soul, but Kaleidoscope Dream is, like Frank Ocean's Channel Orange, the product of a post-internet savvy about pop music's breadth and history. At virtually no point is this more apparent than on the hit "Adorn," one of the most indelible, and honestly magnificent, R&B singles of the last ten years. That cut is a head-spinning revision of Bill Withers and Marvin Gaye traditionalism with the playful rhythmic trickery of urban radio just before we lost Aaliyah. If Dream has a failing, it's that it gets this masterpiece out of the way immediately; perhaps the tension could've used some stretching out.

This is Miguel's second album. I admittedly have not heard the first, All I Want Is You recorded way back in 2007 and released three years later. But I've listened to enough of it in response to the follow-up to detect that Miguel is, for all his charges of genre-bending innovation, a classicist pop singer whose key weapon is nothing more than an eclectic, elastic voice that scores big on sheer confidence, swagger even. Kaleidoscope Dream is nothing if not assured in its many sideways explorations and transgressions: his throwaways, in other words, are somehow "big." That includes "Do You...," a weirdo moment that puts Frank Ocean's weirdo moments out to pasture; the lyric is hilarious, the dreampop falsetto a punchline, but the drums are relentless, and for that matter so is the guitar. Or hell, near the end of this thing, following the airy secular gospel "Arch & Point" and just ahead of a worthless finale whose title I don't feel like looking up, Miguel offers some acoustic fuckaraound called "Pussy Is Mine" that's pretty much a shout-out and/or fuck-you to the kind of acoustic tomfoolery rock bands love to dabble in; Prince used to hide things like this on b-sides and in studio vaults. Miguel not only releases it like it's great art but underlines the excess with some sort of in-studio skit about how he's wasting time and valuable tape.

Yeah, the dude loves himself. So did Prince, who coincidentally is someone else Miguel seems both inordinately fond of and concerned about; "Where's the Fun in Forever" is a decades-late answer song to "1999" and "Let's Go Crazy" and all their hobbling around with the afterlife and fucking one's way into moral high-ground. Miguel's atheistic (or agnostic, we're not judging) impulse is to question whether immortality is really what anyone wants, which of course it isn't, and pitted against love he correctly reveals that the latter is impossible with the former. It's a salient philosophical point that offers this record's indisputable peak, along with "Adorn" and that stunning "Time of the Season" interpolation at the end of "Don't Look Back," which will melt more than the British Invasion buff in your life. (But him/her too.)

The only problem is that Miguel's overriding concern with getting across the hugeness of his ambitions often gets in the way of his actual strengths, which are of a more intimate variety. God fucking bless him for not getting stuck in a bunch of silly half-assed half-songs like Ocean, but the arena-rock plod of "Don't Look Back" and the stadium-lights fury of "The Thrill" betray a certain sense of obligation in the way we make and sell albums today. "Thrill" does end up seeming like a felt and human track, but not nearly so much as the title cut, the unstructured and cloudy nature of would seem surreal even without the hippie nonsense. Even that song doesn't need to go on for four minutes, however.

So this is more than halfway to great. Miguel's only going to improve as a singer between now and album the next, and in the meantime we can detect some of where he's headed in the way he tempers the purity of his highest notes on "How Many Drinks?" with frustration and hesitation, always commanding every bit of our attention in a way that even the best of his peers can't. While he's learning how to sustain that, if he also cut the shit in regard to accusing women who aren't obligated to return his advances of "wast[ing his] time"? That'd be, y'know, kinda nice too.

One-sentence reviews #4

Traversed through Pitchfork's "Best New Music" certifications for the latter part of the year, plus some other things that slipped through. Rolled my eyes a lot.

Lupe Fiasco
Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album, Pt. 1 (2012)
(Atlantic)

!! CAUTION !! - An improvement, but only slightly; none of the bewildering sonic embarrassments of Lasers but more than enough of the same weird musical apathy, dressed up in the pretension of the Everclear-like title.

***

Royal Baths
Better Luck Next Life (2012)
(Kanine)

!! CAUTION !! - As sardonic VU imitations go, "Faster, Harder" is near the top of the recent heap, but the drone of the album becomes repetitive and fatiguing; the thing with "Lady Godiva's Operation" is that Reed and Cale sounded like they sort of cared.

***

Metz (2012)
(Sub Pop)

!! CAUTION !! - This actually is your father's indie rock, or at least not mine -- heavy, pounding, screamy, thrashy, annoying, everything this blog is unqualified to judge.

***

Muse
The 2nd Law (2012)
(Warner Bros.)

!! CAUTION !! - An amusingly unrestrained comedy album, the kind that contains lines like "now I have seen the light" and comes on like a local Battle of the Bands "Bohemian Rhapsody," probably hosted in the At the Hop Ice Cream Shop.

***

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend (2012)
(Constellation)

!!!!! AVOID !!!!! - I have no clue how or why people listen to / worship this shit (fun game for the Junior Jumble: which song title is Muse and which is Godspeed? -- "Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable" vs. "Exogenesis: Symphony Part 2 (Cross-Pollination)"), but it's really none of my business, yeah?

***

Bat for Lashes
The Haunted Man (2012)
(Capitol)

It's boring, but it's Kate Bush boring, which makes it difficult to really dislike; Natasha Khan's voice bears the scars of a child who once suffered mightily through vampiric Miss Sjlaka's middle school music lessons.

***

Andy Stott
Luxury Problems (2012)
(Modern Love)

I could see loving this, as the rhythms are loose and challenging, but the looping / sampling designed to melt it all into something vaguely conceptual just gripes me, like Jim Morrison-level relationship drama; we've firmly established by now that I'm not the electronic music connoisseur of my youth.

***

Mac DeMarco
2 (2012)
(Captured Tracks)

Another branch of your dad's indie, the singer-songwriter dork with the electric guitar in the power pop bargain bin (also interestingly, a record you actually can gauge very accurately from its cover art); more Jonathan Richman or Ben Vaughan than Ariel Pink, this seems just the right side of being a bit too juvenile and tossed-off, but the tunes are solid and the guitar playing fine, the singing deadpan.

Grizzly Bear: Shields (2012)

(Warp)

~ DRAMATIS PERSONAE ~

Edwarde Droste, the Prince of Twitter
Daniel Rossen, his waiting-maid
Justin Vernon, a peasant

ACT I: in which the hopes of a generation are quashed at the annual Ceremony

A BUSINESSMAN
Pleasing it is to present a recognition to Things of Youth and Color, the album of whom entitled Thr33$some P8888rtnerZZ has re-energized the shadowy forces which are truly in control!

DANIEL ROSSEN [in the audience]
huh huh this is lame man
whut is this shit

JUSTIN VERNON [beside him, holding towel]
Do not you recall
that these Multi Millionaires are full of Shit?
that they were full of Shit in their
failure to recognize my true Heart
whence I laid down The Kind Ladies of Hertfordshire [a Concept Album -ed]
albeit!
It had been recorded
using only the sands of the Earth
and a backyard generator
?

ROSSEN
yeah so

VERNON
I'm saying this is true Shit, the true Shit is that which
celebrates the craft of the Mass Beloved
we are the true Artists, we of the twisted minds
the twisted minds run Amok!
the twisted minds of Passion! of Grace! of Intellect!
you will gather the Shit they pile upon us, we will Recoil from it
but you will return in 2012

ROSSEN
didn't you win one of these things

VERNON
it is all Shit all of it

EDWARDE DROSTE
I have come to a decision
:
we will record the most Intelligent Music
that has ever been recorded!
THRONGS will march in the STREETS
proclaiming its great INTELLIGENCE
and that people will complain that it is merely
cerebral,
merely the pathetic prog noodlings of boredom writ large
it will be a mark of how the Shit, the Cunts, the Fucks
are in control
but we will blast through with our pur-
ity and passion

[The telephone RINGS. it is Jack WHITE]

JACK WHITE [in a special cameo]
and all that is real,
it won't be fake, it won't all be image
it will be Genuine, it will be Authentic
and it will be pressed on 50 vinyl LPs
that are shaped like Horses Heads

DROSTE
I do admit that I find this
Slightly absurd

WHITE
my Mistake;
I have forgotten that I dislike you immensely. [Hangs up]

ROSSEN
our record will be the Real Thing
we will Mean It
and that will Show Them

THE BUSINESSMAN
We will not PAY for THIS unless you will allow
it to be in our
barbecue sauce commercial

ROSSEN
ok i like bbq sauce

VERNON [aside]
These are years of sadness.

***

ACT II: Mother Hope returns at the Rock Concert, seven years later

DROSTE
We have a New Song it is about Flowers

{Clanging noises, in various time signatures which are Impressive; there are also horns and occasionally Drums]

DROSTE [Singing]
MMMMMMMMmmm proooove it allllllllll

ROSSEN
wo0wo0wowowo0w0w0w0owooweeeew0woe0owoeo00we0ooeoeoeoeoeooooooo

Sounds of pots and pans falling! Upon the DAT

THE AUDIENCE
Alive, I have never
Felt so.

Crystal Castles: (III) (2012)

(Republic)

Not hard to get the gist of this record's oppression-targeted thematic passions; they sadly don't extend to any great musical revelation, least of all when compared to the bizarre, ear-futzing delights of the first two Crystal Castles records. This is exactly what you'd expect outtakes from the duo's earlier sessions to sound like; flabby and indistinct, it tracks how rapidly an innovative artist can begin to follow trends and fall behind the times.

Alice Glass' vocals are buried in the mix this time around; she often tries to shout above the din of Ethan Kath's trance-heavy production, to little avail. It sounds like a strange complaint, but the standardizing and calming of the band's sound gives us a record that's simply too pleasant. Some of what made Crystal Castles, marks I and II, so intriguing were their annoying and abrasive elements that would gradually reveal more to the more-than-casual listener. But casual listening is all that really works for (III), which involuntarily recedes into the background and never feels so pressing or important. Even when there's a bit of good ol' yelpy electro stuff ("Pale Flesh") it's all rather polite.

So it is that the nicest thing you can say about Crystal Castles' third album is that it sounds very much like Crystal Castles -- their carved-out sound remains a signature, but the world's caught up too quickly. "Insulin" is a neat creation, but just a repeat of earlier experiments; "Transgender" has a towering, church-like expansiveness tempered by trippy skipping effects -- but survey the par-for-the-course electronic records of 2012 and you'll find dozens of songs like those. Which brings us to the point that closing peak "Child I Will Hurt You" is pretty much a Beach House song -- all the beauty of the Castles' second record with none of the caveats, punishing blips, sonic terrorism. Maybe that's the future. Do we need more airlessly pretty, vaguely political indie rock albums? Probably not, but nor do we need more desolate and not-terribly-interesting electronic records.

[SEE ALSO:]
Crystal Castles (2010)

Quakers (2012)

(Stones Throw)

RECOMMENDED

I was listening to this lengthy, sprawling, odd album at the moment when I learned that Das Racist had split up. It was an interesting illustration of how quickly the culture moves along; a few short years ago, DR was just a promising new act before they legitimized a branch of wordy, reference-heavy, often sardonic hip hop ("Tumblr Rap"? Please, no) that had previously been given little critical attention. In the end, they bridged a gap in their brief reign before imploding. Now they're already influential: the hyperkinetic, tangential style of this 40-track, 70-minute opus, chock full of brief songs, annoying half-songs, and sonic jokes both good and bad may owe something to DJ albums like those of 2 Many DJ's and the Avalanches, but you can detect just as much of the eyeroll wit and scrappy futurism of DR's mixtapes.

Still, this is unmistakably a producer's album, even if it's more accessible than that would imply. Geoff Barrow and friends mean to present an album that's fun to listen to, and they succeed, but the mechanics of the thing are intimidating. They crowdsource MCs both semi-famous and completely obscure, some uncovered on Myspace's once-massive underground rap community. The volume of talent is rich, with not one person giving a duff performance, but the emphasis on style by producers 7-Stu-7 and Katalyst has the unfortunate effect of rendering Barrow's conception of hip hop kind of a monolith, despite the variance of talent on display; there's a bit of tokenism (only one cut showcases a female rapper, Lyric Jones) and it's a disservice to the general excellence of the vocal performances. It's less advantageous to emerging artists like Quite Nyce (who does a remarkable Kanye on "Jobless"), Dave Dub, Frank Nitty (who rhymes "Geritol" and "wherewithal") and the mysterious Deed than would be standard guest spots or even an amateur mix CD because they all find themselves subservient to the scope of Quakers' stunt.

Fragmented though it is, Quakers also coheres smartly, to the point that it's difficult to choose standouts until you make it through the record in its daunting entirety several times. The Radiohead-cribbing single "Fitta Happier" is an instant hipster-rap touchstone, and the Animals organ hook on "The Turk" will please a certain cross-section. The collective is at its best when the producers' noodling transcends its geekery into something foggy and new, and the corresponding MCs are able to keep up. "The Beginning" is a brilliant Beautiful Music concoction featuring newcomer Coin Locker Kid, while Phat Kat and Guilty Simpson pay their dues over the top of the dizzying disco-on-its-head chant "War Drums."

But yes, given the Portishead pedigree, much of what's here seems rather safe, lost somewhere in early '90s arguments about the Positive Tip, which can only occasionally result in something so far-out and smart as a Digable Planets (who are openly evoked on "There It Is," if not elsewhere). Quakers shy away from politics apart from a pointed "where the fuck is the change, Mr. Obama?" on Emilio Rojas' "Belly of the Beast," and they don't fool around with any dance floor idealism. It's an intriguing sociological quirk when Finale namedrops Kanye West like some sort of distant god or devil on "Oh Goodness," underlining the disparity of class and fame in hip hop that the record mostly sweeps away. It seems as if you're supposed to listen to this and be really impressed and thrill to the aural stuntwork of it all. The biggest news might be that it isn't a terrible way to spend your time -- and across one or more of these songs, you might be hearing someone who will matter a good deal in the near future.

Flying Lotus: Until the Quiet Comes (2012)

(Warp)

More agreeable yet also less artistically striking than its predecessor Cosmogramma, Steven Ellison's latest tightly constructed set begins with a skittering bang. Soulful and tricky in the gut-level fashion of J. Dilla in the spaces where Ellison's generally been cerebral, "All In" and "Getting There" are shots in the arm of the modern R&B revival. Thanks to Niki Randa's contributions, they're a little sweet and at times stunningly beautiful. So were the strange, jazzy textures of Cosmogramma, but it seemed so much work to peel the layers of that record.

Hard to say where one expects Until the Quiet Comes to go after that, but unfortunately it settles into a kind of staid and habitual ambiance that's quite accessible but only makes a scattered impression. Lotus is undoubtedly a brilliant musician, and maybe the purpose of this record is to convince skeptics to miss the things they might once have written off about him. There are catchy half-songs here, lovely constructions all, but there are also tangents that just sound like someone fussing with a Wii ("All the Secrets") or like Erykah Badu covering a Wolf Parade song ("See Thru to U").

For a guy who claims to have little use for modern pop music, Ellison certainly adheres to its conventions surprisingly often -- you can be generous and say "DMT Song" owes a lot to the Free Design and Spanky & Our Gang, but it's glee-club pop now as ever, and hey, here's Thom Yorke to offer his take on Destiny's Child. Those with a taste for easy listening and jet-set lounge music will appreciate the blown-out spaceship bass of "Sultan's Request" and the whole record's mutated bachelor spy flick conceit (peaking with the mysterioso carnival piece "Hunger"), but Quiet is really summed up by the awesomely titled "Putty Boy Strut," which divides itself between the pursuance of twittering annoyance and the immersive loveliness of the smooth, the groove, etc. It's background music; for some of us, that's not bad. But all of us know it could be more.

[SEE ALSO:]
Cosmogramma (2010)

Wild Nothing: Nocturne (2012)

(Captured Tracks)

This is screensaver music, albeit deceptive. Choose a random cut -- my way in was the opener "Shadow," which I liked enough to decide this deserved a full review, which I now regret -- and prepare to be wowed by two things: first, how much you still get hit squarely in the jaw by the sound of late 1980s jangly dream pop, even when you're hearing a third- or fourth-hand imitation of same. Secondly, is this the same Jack Tatum, the same Wild Nothing who put together the ridiculous but sort of delightful Belle & Sebastian / Smashing Pumpkins imitation Gemini? The two records have strikingly little in common, which is neat except that Tatum's choice now is to walk over even more well-trodden ground.

Again, the romantically druggy sound of all this is striking. Tatum knows his way around the Smiths / Cure corner of the galaxy and has a way with chilly intoned vocals and overdriven synth atmospherics -- it all falls on the ear quite agreeably, if ineffectively. When he bursts out of the template, it's enough of a derailment that you wonder why it doesn't happen more often. "Midnight Song" boasts a British Invasion melody buried under innumerable layers, an actual hook appears amid the sludgy pop of "The Chain Won't Break," "Shadow" is catchy and breezy enough to be a lost La's cut, and even at its laziest and most plodding you can still imagine kids playing pinball on Friday night with the album playing.

This might all add up to magic for you. It quickly cops to trends rather than revealing much that's personal or unusual, and the dull sameness keeps much of it from standing out. When it does command attention, it still seems oddly restrained -- that splendid Tame Impala vocal on "The Blue Dress" is wasted on a song that sounds like something from the bottom tier of the Chocolate War soundtrack, and "Paradise" embodies some romance and vindictive sarcasm in its lyric ("crush me with the lies / and tell me once or twice that love is paradise") but never pushes the buttons of its surreal imagery like reference point Vince Clarke. And though the record isn't all that long, it seems to go on for ages -- good for backgrounding, bad for concentrating. Still, give it a listen; I'd opt for Twin Shadow for 2012 makeout music, but something tells me this will suit some in much the same way.

[SEE ALSO:]
Gemini (2010)