Kelela: Cut 4 Me (2013)

(Fade to Mind)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

There's not always a good reason why someone has only (thus far) scored big with the underground. Most hard info about this tremendously interesting L.A. singer-songwriter comes from just a couple of parroting sources in the bubble of online indie-oriented writing. Which is fine, but doesn't give enough credit to the excellent collection of stark, sensual R&B with which she has made her formidable entrance. It's available for free online and will immediately endear itself to you.

Kelela belongs in the class of modern soul performers like Miguel and the Weeknd who betray a strong resemblance in sonics and performance style to modern rock, mainstream and otherwise. A couple of key comparisons she calls to mind are the xx and Everything But the Girl, but this is not to argue that she belongs outside the R&B idiom, even if most of her press so far has come from the likes of Pitchfork and the Fader. It seems more likely that -- as much as the minimalism of production on Cut 4 Me seems naturally to limit her appeal -- she's simply one step ahead of where the inventive fringe of mainstream R&B is headed in a couple of years. With so much cutting-edge material currently showcasing a druggy ambiance, she strips everything back to its essence with the help of a crew of varied producers like Morri$ and fellow L.A. denizen Kingdom.

The show here is Kelela's range and confidence, but the producers do a remarkable job of helping make this such an instantly invigorating and addictive mixtape. Opener "Guns & Synths" means its title literally, but its ping-ponging acidic layers are downright ordinary when compared to the confrontational, nearly abstract rhythms of "Enemy" or the boldly strange and massive "Keep It Cool." The latter feels like half a song, but is played and produced with such maddened enthusiasm that it's magic. Yet the sense of immersion is at its greatest on "Floor Show," the memorably weird and romantic melody and hooks of which ("till the end till the end of time") make it surprisingly easy to drop, free of resistance, into its intriguing hybrid of proggish soul and rock. It's maximalist in the writing, not in the sound, which is important to those violently opposed to proggish anything.

Besides, Kelela's excellence as a singer is beyond question whether you care much for the drift of these songs or not. No matter how much of a stunt the track is, she is reliably sprawled out and adventurous in a most sumptuous sense, unflinching before all weirdness. Kicking drum machine imbued with oddly placed sax and ghostly hip hop chanting on "Go All Night"? Bird sounds and off-putting effects on the stirringly intimate and beautiful "A Lie"? No more a challenge than the skewed but radio-ready anthem of the title track and its crazy-ish synths under a voice and groove that go up and down and back again then wander off. So often, Kelela herself provides the hook, the melding together of everything. She can be filtered and manipulated to within an inch of her sonic life on the near-perfect "Something Else" or overdubbed into complex oblivion on "Cherry Coffee" but still she is the noise we wander into and don't wish to leave.

Cut 4 Me is one of the best mixtapes I've ever heard, often close to indistinguishable from a proper album except, I suppose, in the manner that some of the songs don't quite end, extrapolating and repeating themselves instead -- which depending on your mood, may just as well be a benefit. The shaky vulnerability running like blood through this arid, faultless atmosphere has the cohesion and depth of a remarkable, out-of-nowhere debut, which makes me all the more eager to see what happens when that true debut comes.

Fantasia: Side Effects of You (2013)

(RCA)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The calculation of Fantasia's Side Effects of You is not cynical, but a testament that this brilliant singer is acutely aware of the audience to whom she is singing, nearly a decade after she rose to fame. Like so many artists who essentially came of age under a microscope with a spotlight attached, Fantasia has begun to court what some A&R executive years ago decided was an "adult" audience, except she's good at it -- that is to say, this record, her fifth, is what's known as "tasteful." What a pity that this is so often a debit. Side Effects may lack the freshness of the best and sprightliest R&B of our time, but it's about as well-crafted and pleasurable an album as money can buy in 2013.

The superficial key to the record's appeal is that Fantasia's eclectic performance style and the production by Harmony Samuels (who handles all but one cut) dabble heartily in the trends, radio-friendly and otherwise, of the present period but also feels, as does Fantasia, a kinship with the now-classic '90s hits of Mary J. Blige, Babyface, Toni Braxton, TLC and even En Vogue (whose best song, "Don't Let Go (Love)," is specifically referenced on "End of Me"). The result has an almost casually broad appeal, best indicated in the album's very first moments: through a cloud of modernist white noise emerges a perfect integration of atmospheric, vaguely paranoid R&B with Samuels' actual banger and Fantasia's florid invocation of her influences. Extrapolating a bit, even the mainstream pop-embracing single "Without Me" has a stretched and skewed hook, eschewing its natural sweetness for the stark sound of an unforgiving club floor.

The more interesting way of putting this -- and its actual impact on the music -- is that it as a whole is a glittery and glamorous affair but also chilled, almost methodical. Fantasia and her producer never stop aiming for the massiveness of beat; even the slow-jams that coat over half the album are designed to slam rather brutally, and suggestively. If you know even a little about Fantasia as a person, you can sense why she's attracted to the kind of tension that makes her mask a disturbing anthem of escape and getaway like "If I Was a Bird" with pretty little keyboard trills and doublespeak. She receives no writing credit on the bold, heroic, amply romantic "Lighthouse" but it contains one of my favorite lines in any pop song this year: "I'll always be the same for you / I'll never ever change for you," which when you really think about it is a challenge to conventional sexual politics as fueled by wordplay as the Kinks' "Lola" or Smokey Robinson's "Whatever Makes You Happy. That speaks somewhat to a theme. Fantasia also doesn't seem to have handled any of the music or lyrics for the title cut, which is probably a credit to her as it stretches its prescription-drug metaphor to its absolute unintentionally amusing limit, but that's where she and the epic sweep and rawness of her voice come in: she makes the thing mean something, desperation, loss, the sensation of being entirely alone. When she sings of taking three pills a day to help her smile, it strikes you to the core even if she's only kind of going there.

That's still dark shit, although not really dark shit by the standards of pop music if you spend much time with it, and it's hardly Phil Spector -- it takes no pleasure in its pain except as a means to escape into the rich emotion of a towering vocal. Side Effects touches on lighter matters, like the sonic nostalgia of "In Deep" and the excellent "Lose to Win" (which picks up the "Adorn" torch for early '80s non-Minneapolis R&B appropriation), but its undaunted strikes against misogyny mark a strong contrast against, say, Blurred Lines or even Big Boi's albums. Or even the work of Janelle Monae, who for all her brilliance tends not to hit these matters head-on or with quite Fantasia's determined fierceness. The mere presence of "Girl Talk," nothing more than a skit that consists of Fantasia chatting with a few friends, places the bro-filled attitudes of the average pop record in stark relief by mere virtue of having women talking about making sure their dudes understand how important their careers are. Of course, they're still talking about dudes, but the point stands. And all this can finally erupt in the total apocalypse of feeling on "End of Me." Her confidence absolute, she dismisses with demons with aplomb and grace in a genre that unfairly tends not to be taken seriously on such points.

The fast ones here have an impeccable relentlessness well suited to Fantasia's nuanced, cooled-down vocals. Within a minute she's righteously announcing herself as lady, woman, mother, daughter with no cutting down of any named role, and an expectation that every part of herself is to be accepted, loved, desired when relevant. Big KRIT -- remember when we were really excited about him? -- shows up but seems beside the point. The story is, again, Fantasia's ownership and control of her own desire, especially on the drilling, invasively snappy electro "Change Your Mind" and the terrific "Get It Right," which sees her exercising some splendid Mary Wells-style raspiness.

Nevertheless, the album never quite betters its second track, "Ain't All Bad," a relentless circa-1997 groove and the rare great song that keeps getting greater, nastier, goofier but not dumber ("never eva eva eva let you go oh oh oh oh oh"). Yeah, yeah, a great production that splices a chopped-up, tricky verse with a sweet and silky chorus, but its cabaret bassline and theatricality are pure schlock in the best way -- as divinely impressive as when Fantasia is just belting out grievances in the show-stopping manner of Fiona Apple. The final effect is all pop-hypnotic, just fabulous. Fantasia's not sold that many records or garnered a spectacular level of post-Idol attention outside R&B-devoted circles, but she's wearing the crown of a massive star and it suits her well. She's major whether we're listening or not.

Omar Souleyman: Wenu Wenu (2013)

(Ribbon Music)

RECOMMENDED

47 year-old Syrian dabke singer Souleyman has exercised in an unbroken tradition of poetic party music -- derived from traditional Middle Eastern songforms -- for decades, and one can be forgiven if it seems as though the fascination by various alt-rock luminaries with his work (Damon Albarn, Björk, and now Four Tet) carries the tiniest hint of cynicism. After hearing this record, I sampled a few of the hundreds of bootleg recordings of Souleyman enthusiastically belting at weddings and thought of how the last thing his sophisticated, exuberant music needs is to be appropriated as mere flavor for someone's rock festival or, worse yet, rock record or indie label.

Happily, Four Tet, acting as producer for Wenu Wenu, captures Souleyman without compromise and without covering up or smoothing out his almost confrontationally celebratory repertoire of spiritually exhilarating, bombastic gulps, yelps and wails. Souleyman is always as subservient to melody as any pop singer -- which perhaps anticipates his popularity in the West -- but he has ferociously commanding and virtuosic way with a tune. Speeding up, slowing down, guttural and sweet in rapid succession, he seems often to be singing both above and below the melody but engaging with it beautifully. I can't comment with great intelligence upon the lyrics, sung in at least three languages, but despite the fact that all seven of these cuts are rapid-fire body music, Souleyman's voice in and of itself expresses a spectacular range of emotional thought, accessible and challenging at once.

Four Tet's own records are hit and miss, especially lately, so much as when Beck took on Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM back in 2010, it must be said that it's a relief he subsumes his own preference toward slick repetition and sonic gimmickry in favor of helping to craft a record that's truly stylistically adventurous, in and outside the context of nonwestern music courting an American audience. The legacy of Wenu Wenu as a part of what's likely to become a massive recorded legacy is just how well it captures the sophistication and courageous weirdness of Souleyman's vocal interactions with the brilliant keyboardist Rizan Sa'id, whose work here is sufficiently staggering that there are times he seems to deserve the role of session leader more than Souleyman himself. As traditionalist as this music is, the layering Kieran Hebden parses out without interfering with the band interplay and the wiry, playful, sometimes even menacing keyboard lines of Sa'id spin it into something that seems quite new, and entirely unique.

Ciara (2013)

(Epic)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This is the one of the best R&B albums in recent memory. At a time when even so many good records in and out of the mainstream of the genre go on too long and get overblown or overly reliant on a specific style, Ciara is a brilliant antidote in three important ways: it is substantial but quite brief, running under forty minutes which increases its immediacy and the desire to return to it; it is mostly pounding body music with a couple of well-placed ballads that aren't turgid or meandering (no cut exceeds four and a half minutes); and more than anything, it's extremely well sequenced.

This is one of the few modern records with the courage to build upon itself, starting out with an introductory bang but allowing its songs to grow ever more propulsive and exciting until achieving a full-on climax with the last two songs. There are some who may think that "I'm Out," for all intents and purposes a Nicki Minaj song with mere flavorful intrusions by Ciara herself, is the moment that plays all the powerful cards here. But Ciara boasts something rare these days: it's surprising, and consistently so.

Born in Texas but hailing from the fringes of a healthy pop scene in Atlanta, Ciara has long been an adventurous performer with a splendid range of influences. Her voice is similar to Aaliyah's -- quite startling company to be in -- but in the high-concept performance art elements of her aesthetic restlessness, she more readily calls Madonna and Prince to mind, though she already seems to be compromising less than even the boldest performers within the mainstream. In interviews she's mentioned Missy Elliott, and this seems apt. After a string of good records that were commercial mediocrities, Ciara has come to rely on her own brand-building instead of depending upon a label to allow her to develop -- because as you know, they don't really do that anymore. She's moved from LaFace to Epic on what seem to be better terms, and the result is a confident and gigantic leap forward.

Ciara is a party album, but like Prince's 1999 it captures the full range in intensity of a heated night -- beginning with track number two, every selection is a bit more intense than the last, even if not necessarily faster (as opposed to something like Purple Rain or Janelle Monae's ArchAndroid that changes pace and tone repeatedly). You don't need to hear these songs all together to appreciate them singularly -- that collision of soft and hard on "Sophomore," sensual "make Mama proud" bridge versus sneering "so soft my skin so soft my booty" chorus, is as easy and liberating on its own as the youthfully charged, savory "Read My Lips" -- but what's impressive is that the varied, across-the-spectrum smorgasbord of production styles, innovative and dated (and experimental in both directions), complement one another so well that you find yourself preferring to hear this material all in conjunction.

The material on the first half isn't any less appealing or striking than the rest, it's just that it's a gathering of energies, even the hit "Body Party" and the yearning "Where You Go," which might at first seem an outlier. But with "Super Turnt Up" -- which is indeed -- the album kicks into tirelessly playful overdrive, shutting up and driving drunk on "DUI" then spilling into pop-blissful club catharsis on the instant classic "Livin' It Up" and the holy-fuck perfection of the New Romantic-derived "Overdose," maybe the banger of the year.

Through it all, what makes it magic is less the writing and economy -- however endearing -- and mostly Ciara's joyous and expressively nuanced voice, which she wraps around everything with enthusiasm and fully trustworthy passion. But yes, some major part of the brilliance of Ciara is it's the work of a performer who knows her audience, and who means to give an intense and quick dose of thrill that leaves the head spinning, wondering what the fuck just happened. Ten minutes shorter and it wouldn't be enough. Longer and it wouldn't work. As it is, it keeps you stranded on the dance floor wanting more, all the more anxious to play it again.

The Julie Ruin: Run Fast (2013)

(Dischord)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

And here it is, the hardest album of the decade to turn off. Go ahead and try it; set Run Fast, the first official LP of Kathleen Hanna's new band the Julie Ruin (though she used the name for an apparently avant garde-ish side project back in the '90s), playing on your turntable or laptop or whatever and try to persuade yourself to shut the thing off after track two or three. Track eleven, even. Impossible. The thing is such a damn unrepressed, unfiltered joy that it's a true act of self-denial not to give it your full attention and make yourself a space in your probably messy work area for a small dance party, solo or otherwise.

It's so fucking reductive to classify this as "riot grrl revenge" or whatnot, which isn't meant as a knock on Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, L7, Sleater-Kinney, whatever other bands you might classify under a label that was once very necessary to point up the changeover in '90s rock that happened underneath the distraction of all the now-irrelevant grunge sludge doldrums. Those are great bands and the trend of women asserting their place in the rock sphere without apology was and is worth commenting on -- but at this point, why gender it? Even some pro critics have asserted Run Fast as music "for girls," and it may be true (and is perfectly reasonable) that women seeking jump-start rhythms and top-of-lungs exuberance are a prime target audience. No objection to that. Objection to the idea that music needs to be condescended to, ghettoized, or "classified" strictly as a result of the gender of three of the four members of the band. This is rock & roll music played by women, and it's okay to be heartened by that. It is not "female rock & roll music."

Hanna's presence, of course, inevitably brings forth the riot grrl response; she's a genuine giant in the alternative popverse and has been for a couple of decades now. Sidelined for a good while by a serious illness, mostly silent for several years, she put together this new band in 2010 and unfurled it with a bang on this triumphant, consistently wonderful debut record that aims itself squarely at those without a point of reference in the '90s lineage of the music. It's not meant necessarily for Bikini Kill fans, though they'll almost certainly dig it, or those who witnessed firsthand the gradual sickening standardization of rock radio in the '90s that briefly made room for imaginative, exciting music like this and then buried it all in a macho sea of Staind and Pearl Jam clones. If anything, the better moment for the Julie Ruin is now, when most of us are no longer reliant on the same tastemakers to find our music -- tastemakers still, but a larger number of them. To lay out influences and origins and pages and pages of ancestral context for Understanding the Julie Ruin seems completely pointless, an unnecessary roadblock in what is finally a pure shot of pleasure that one appreciates immediately and then increasingly so with further listening (and dancing).

More than anything, this music seems timeless, evocative as much of core rock & roll skewed by bands in the '60s -- the restless good humor and playful, warped pop of the Remains or the Raiders and the slapdash "let's make noise" giddiness of Sam the Sham or early Love (compare the shout-into-sweetness of "You I'll Be Following" or sheer chaos of "7 & 7 Is") -- as the more obvious punk references: the Slits, X-Ray Spex, the Adverts. My first emotional thought was one of the bands I've most passionately championed over the last few years, the Swedish shouty punkers Love Is All, who of course were informed in large part by the very music Hanna was making back in the '90s. I don't know if Hanna has even heard LIA's records, but what makes Run Fast so special, I think, is that beyond the aesthetic similarities, it shares Love Is All's open-hearted passion and sense of the spectacular. There is less open yearning and romance in Run Fast, and the writing owes more to hallowed, blistering '50s rock & roll, but I feel the same kinship with these shout-along words and indelible melodies, and the absolute vibrance and enthusiasm both bands share. Who won't be singing along by the end of the very first cut, "Oh Come On"? Probably nobody who's much fun to hang out with, frankly.

That timelessness is fulfilled not just by the splendidly straight-ahead, banged-out perfection of the band itself but the way they so readily interpret and carry to the brink of bliss the songs Hanna's written. She has a way with a pop construction, and there are so many delightful tics and cathartic peaks in these songs it's hard to name highlights without getting overwhelmed. Numbers two and three, the clever surf-rock snarl "Ha Ha Ha" and magnificent Spectorian creation "Just My Kind," are so phenomenal I first mistook the album for being slightly front-loaded, but at this point it's clear that were the record to begin with any three of its thirteen selections one would initially have the same impression, simply because the band's sound is so immediately appealing and the hit to the jugular takes a bit to wear off.

As it happens, heard over and over again, the album doesn't let up, and one three-minute perfection strikes back and follows another. (The only lengthier song until the dramatic closer "Run Fast" is a delightful keyboard interlude called "Goodnight Goodbye.") These shouts and melodies certainly have a little anger and distress in them, but your overriding impression is of their joy, alive and pure at their simplest and most complex ("Kids in NY," a sort of hipster-targeting "White Riot"; the partially spoken-word and poetic "South Coast Plaza"; the towering title cut). No weak cuts here, all electric and enormous, maddening and crazed guitar rock -- with well-placed shots of synth and propulsion. They don't make 'em this fun nearly often enough, and it sometimes takes a brilliant veteran to have the focus and experience to provide us with an insight that deep.

***

[I don't usually do this, but read this excellent interview with Hanna if you have the time. Then buy the fuck out of this fabulous record, please.]

One-sentence reviews #11

Hope you don't mind these things, cause there's at least two more on the way.

The Range
Nonfiction (2013)
(Donky Pitch)

One of those pleasant enough electronic records that seems to exist at all only in the spheres of certain very specific reviewers; needless to say, it ain't easy for the rest of us to see what they're on about but maybe we're the crazy ones.

***

Los Campesinos!
No Blues (2013)
(Wichita Recordings)

Hyperenthusiastic pseudo-arena rockers have invited comparisons to Fang Island, Titus Andronicus, Arcade Fire, etc. and are too sweet and sincere to be super-annoying, but their bombast doesn't have much backing it up except a lot of heart and maybe that's plenty.

***

Kasey Musgraves
Same Trailer Different Park (2013)
(Mercury Nashville)

Made a conscious decision to dabble in one of my few forbidden genres this year, pop-country (metal will not be joining it, sorry), and came away with some respect for a gifted performer like Musgraves but the conclusion that the on-the-nose lyricism and flat polish of the production just ain't for me.

***

Mutual Benefit
Love's Crushing Diamond (2013)
(Other Music)

RECOMMENDED - Flowery, gorgeous little nothing is hypnotic in all its pillowy layers and breathy detail, better yet as diverting but unintrusive ambiance.

***

65daysofstatic
Wild Light (2013)
(Superball Music)

I prefer my background music (uh, sorry, "math rock") to avoid constantly asserting its machismo, thanks.

***

Pistol Annies
Annie Up (2013)
(RCA Nashville)

See Musgraves above, although the Annies' songs are a little better, the singing less spontaneous and interesting.

***

DJ Rashad
Double Cup (2013)
(Hyperdub)

!! CAUTION !! - Chicago footwork DJ is probably capable of making you dance if you're very high, but I can verify that he can irritate the living shit out of you while sober.

***

Youth Lagoon
Wondrous Bughouse (2013)
(Fat Possum)

!!!!! AVOID !!!!! - Following an inoffensive debut I came around eventually to thinking was slightly better than decent as these dream pop-ish things go, here we go full-bore with moony, self-regarding nonsense along the lines of These New Puritans -- yo, "indie" "rock" people: this is why they hate us.

David Bowie: The Next Day (2013)

(Columbia)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The long absence of a luminary is something that tends to deserve the respect of the rock & roll audience. As much as we can commend Ringo Starr for even showing up for his recording dates, what observer doesn't prefer the career path of the man or woman of few words, who pops back upon the radar only when s/he has something to contribute? Of course, public figures laying low inevitably create death rumors, health rumors, retirement rumors, you name it. David Bowie hasn't played a show since 2003, has only made sporadic public appearances since then, but suddenly with barely any lead time for the thinkpiece brigade to start speculating, there was The Next Day, recorded in secret and in utter routine as though not a day had passed since the LP its cover coyly references. Bowie was prolific for three full decades and more, even if everyone from planet to shining planet acknowledges that the fire underneath him during the '70s was never to be repeated. Whether you cottoned to Let's Dance and all thereafter or not, The Next Day comes across as a major shock. Not merely a respectable return to form, it's one of the best records in Bowie's catalog -- the hiatus has done wonders.

What's so remarkable about it? Well, it's the voice, first of all. Not exactly youthful but by no means a Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen growl, it retains much of the old yelpy and freaky registers alike. Secondly and perhaps most crucially, the writing: it's top-caliber whether you consider this as a new record by some new guy (no new guy would be this bold, adventurous, or fearlessly individualistic out of the gate) or a proper addition to the Bowie library, requiring no veteran's-rights apology in either case. "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" is anthemic night-drive perfection down to every oooooh, "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die" the playful doo wop we never knew to expect, "How Does the Grass Grow?" a tremendous creation out of messy melody and restless procession of sonic and musical ideas. Thirdly, the performances, arrangement, production. It's unmistakably Bowie, unmistakably Tony Visconti, but also new: complex and detailed, synthy and organic, its hopelessness and chaos so well organized. "Art rock" (remember when that was the phrase?) is back in good hands out of nowhere. "Your maid is new, and your accent too / but your fears are as old as the world," goes "Love Is Lost."

Maybe the point of all this is that so much less has changed than we think, but an even cursory listen to the maximized sound of these songs indicates that they will age with infinitely more grace than many modern records, many of Bowie's own records from the '80s and onward -- that's sonics, really, playful and tricky but never falling down a synthetic ProTools rabbit hole, never burying itself in the gimmicks of meaningless guest spots and bones thrown to some label executive's idea of modern love. As it must always in Bowie's body of work, paranoia wins out. Enthusiastic paranoia, dramatized and played with precision and natural depth, all filtered through the unerring sensibilities of a giant who remains such, disappearance and floundering or no. It was clear by the time the first single, "Where Are We Now," showed up like a Stevie Wonder ballroom dance imbued with brutal cyncism. It's clear on "Valentine's Day," a power pop power riffage marathon about murder. It's the '60s again, or the '70s, and not, thankyouverymuch, because it sounds like 'em.

The Next Day is lengthy -- after ten full years, there's a fair bit of ground to cover -- but after roaring out of the gate with the dirty ass rock & roll of the title cut and the filthy, horny "Dirty Boys," it never really falters, retaining its pace and curious sense of disorientation all the way to the arid, terrifying "Heat," this record's variation on Talking Heads' "The Overload," the kind of audacious '80s experiment that owed everything to Bowie. Everything cycles around, of course, and now Bowie is just another musician saying his piece, taking cues from others and trying to further the envelope a little just like everyone... except that most 66 year-olds don't even know where the envelope is, much less do they have any idea how or why they should push it. Which is not to discount or defame them, just to point out that by Bowie's determination to issue a strong record he cares deeply about, he's ahead of the game once again. We missed his voice in this modern era so much it would have been OK if the record was merely decent. Instead he's given us something that holds its own against several albums that altered the course of rock music. It's a different time but still, we can't get enough of that doomsday song.