I owe my current music writing to Chance the Rapper. That sounds weird to
say, but it's true. I was in a bad way before I heard his squawking juke cut "Good Ass
Intro" from Acid Rap in May 2013. Depression was gripping me
because I had real doubts about continuing to write. I was convinced that I had
nothing creative left to say, the worst problem any writer could have. Of
course that sort of fear only worsens depression because your future seems to
fall apart. Chance's track pieced things back together. I won't soon forget
mashing my laptop keyboard during a chemistry lecture, the
words flowing as quickly as he does on the song. It wasn't a great review
by any means, but dammit it got me to believe again.
I share that personal anecdote to show the inspirational effect a
22-year-old kid from Chicago's music has on people. I say "has,"
indicating the here and now, because Surf, his brilliant follow-up to
the equally brilliant Acid Rap, will
inspire people. It's too bright, warm, soulful and unapologetically upbeat not
to motivate. You'll want to call and thank your grandma after hearing
"Sunday Candy," the de jure closer which details Christmas
dinners and rent payments made by an impossibly good-natured human. Hell it
makes communion sound both lovely and sensual, which isn't easy considering it
involves stale wafers (at least in my experience).
In the material world, KYLE's verse on the hybrid electro-jazz/stuttering
barbershop quartet number "Wanna Be Cool" pushes me to go buyout a
Payless. "Nobody f****ng cares, so why don't you just be the you that you
know you are?" he asks us. Don't worry about the label, all that matters
is if it's comfortable. Chance and his collaborators Donnie Trumpet & the
Social Experiment hammer home the "be you" idea on follow-up
"Windows," though it's in a minor key. "Don't you look up to me;
don't trust a word I say," Chance warbles in his most sobering voice since
he sang about Chicago murder rates on "Paranoia."
Synthesizers gently fade up, horns shimmer, drums patter like morning rain,
guitars are delicately plucked and organs pipe in from a desert island. Between
the music and Chance's weary tone, you realize how important finding your own
path is.
The music of Surf consistently inspires through its warmth. I don't
know how much direct input Chance had in Donnie Trumpet & the Social
Experiment's playing, but I feel like he at least said "I want to feel
like I’m swaddled in wool blankets with the Sun beaming down on me." All
of the album’s components fit into that aesthetic. The kitchen percussion of "Slip
Slide.""Warm
Enough"'s tweeting birds. Every palm-muted guitar chord in "Rememory."
Migos member Quavo's pitch-shifting vocals on King Louie team-up "Familiar."
They all tickle your innards enough to move you off the couch (Side note: Quavo
needs to use more Autotune; he has a weird bluesman quality with it.)
Some listening to Surf will be tempted to say this album needs less
guests and more Chance, but we get the Goldilocks amount of Mr. Bennett. Just
when his voice might risk grating you, he disappears into brass ether. He’s
perfectly comfortable with having entire tracks be instrumentals and he's
doesn't seem to bat an eye when guest rappers go for his jugular. I echo
Stereogum's resident music scholar Tom
Breihan in saying I've never heard Big Sean or B.o.B spit the way they do
on "Wanna Be Cool" and "Slip Slide." Big Sean cuts the s***
with his corny jokes long enough to illuminate the legal struggles of a younger
brother, while B.o.B remembers when his roof used to leak. Had he been so
candid on 2010’s The Adventures of Bobby Ray, I can imagine he would
have a lot more critical cache. It's almost frightening the singular focuses he
displays.
As I've written on the blog before, metal (largely black metal) isn't
my bag. In many ways it’s my own version of reggae or country; two genres
people commonly dismiss as sounding "samey." It's not a problem with
black metal being typically violent music, Death
Grips are one of my favorite bands, but how it’s constructed. To
undiscerning metal ears, which mine unquestionably are, one ear-piercing howl
or heart palpitating blastbeat is indistinguishable from another. Words are
largely unrecognizable and to someone who places a premium on lyrics, that’s
incredibly frustrating. So instead of pushing through to the other side of the
suffocating music, I turn off because there's nothing for me to cling to.
All of that said, San Francisco black metal/post-rock/shoegaze experimenters
Deafheaven's set to a small, but intimate crowd at Lawrence's Granada Theater
was a revelation. I was drawn entirely to the show by their 2013 record Sunbather,
which was one of my
10 favorite albums of last year and sat at number one on aggregating site Metacritic's 2013
list. It's a sublime album, sui generis in construction but eerily
familiar. Meandering, Modest Mouse like guitar lines will explode into power
soloing. Pianos dawdle for a spell then disappear into a fog of galloping bass
and flailing percussion. George Clarke's distanced, often heartbreaking envy of
those with money is delivered in a banshee wail. Sunbather doesn't so
much rewrite the rules of what black metal can be, it throws the book into a
shredder then sets the scraps on fire.
And fortunately for me and those fervent metal heads in attendance, the
quintet's main-set drew entirely from the game-changing release. "Dream
House"'s heavily arpeggiated chords had Clarke
"screaming" in a near whisper as he ruminated on "sober
restlessness." They were less the exhortations of a black metal singer and
closer to a cat's inaudible death screeches. Sunbather's title track saw the morbidly dressed frontman flapping across the
stage as the two guitar attack crushed the bones of the common man "down
to yellow." For captaining such chaos, Clarke has a remarkable stage
presence. His hands would curl up in a manner reminiscent of Magneto's flight
routine and command the small crowd to rival his screams. There a certain
cultishness to it, robotically disciplined but remarkably passionate.
The band's bloodstained passion dripped continuously
throughout the 60-plus minute set. You'd have to have passion to play songs
that stretch to 8 or 9 minutes at a time. And any time their love of
"violence" seemed unable to carry them over another wall of noise, Sunbather's interstitial passages of flanging guitar arrived on time. They
weren't there simply as a breather though. Each My Bloody Valentine inspired
echo was meant as a contrast; a sign that any beauty we eek out of our
"short" lives is impossible without the occasional brutality.
I brought a friend of mine to the show who is also
indifferent to more violent strands of heavy metal. Zach had largely come to
see Arkansas doom metal band Pallbearer, whose set was riff manna from heaven
to a starving crowd. They debuted two new tracks from their highly anticipated
album Foundations
of Burden, which figures to be one of metal's most
important releases in 2014. Immediately after their set we could only say how
"rad" it was. When the entire grueling night ended, he didn't have
the same things to say about Deafheaven, but there was admittance to how
powerful they were live. More than any other descriptor, that might be the most
apt. Deafheaven’s a powerful band and they masterfully wield that power.
There's a piece of conventional
folk wisdom which posits "smaller scorpions are more dangerous than the
larger ones," and while the legend has no logical grounding, it's continued
to linger around in our collective conscious. So much so that sagely Indiana Jones doled
out the advice. It's akin to colossal elephants cowering in fear
when confronted by a mouse. They leave “craters” in the ground, but scurry
away upon seeing a tiny white fuzzball. Though these anecdotes seem
disparate, they're part of the larger notion that big things come in small
packages.
Indie-folk singer Angel Olsen's Burn
Your Fire for No Witness is the latest example of this phenomenon. Even at
its most bristly, there's an unmistakable tenderness to Olsen's sophomore LP.
Behind massive walls of fuzz in "Forgiven/Forgotten"
she warbles "I don't know anything, but I love you." Subtract the
jangle and driving percussion, you're left with a romantic equation. Second
single "Hi-Five"
performs a similar concealment; spiky guitars raise hell, barrelhouse piano
trots around, and Olsen dips into the muddy waters of honkytonk. However, it's
the "Tear
in My Beer" Hank Williams variety, where libations won't submerge
a broken heart. Shaky, Olsen demands "all I need is someone out there who
believes" and by her tone it'll never happen. "High and Wild"s
facile chug paves over the maudlin end-road of "your spirit's
disappeared."
Not all of the record goes to such great lengths to hide the high-stakes.
"Stars" immediately crystallizes into a faux-Spoon
groove to request a larger voice. Not to expose any human rights violations,
simply to exhort "we exist." In an instant, you know "White
Fire"s death-blues carries tremendous weight. "Everything is tragic,
it all just falls apart" Olsen whispers from a desolate plain. Calm
summers can't hope to right the sinking ship she's boarded. To Olsen, trying to
find love in such dire straits amounts to "burning your fire for no
witness," a desperate act done in solitude.
Necessity being the mother of
invention, sometimes desperation can be a Godsend. Olsen finds paradise
hiding in between strokes of brushed drums in "Iota." A cynic would
note speculation rules and they'd be right, if not for Olsen citing time. As
much as it ravages, time is an opportunity creator. Elegiac organ in closer
“Windows” stretches time to its extremes. A withered Olsen demands “what's so
wrong with the light?” Hiding in the shadows is no longer working as a
life-choice and she’ll leap out of a window to escape them. The song's final
push, aided by rousing drum fills, relates to the moment in a relationship when
one person realizes it's over. Instead of prolonging the suffering, they cut
ties forever because there are some things time can't heal.
Often this decay can be spotted
from a mile away. You'll constantly think "this can only work for so
long" and soon your fears are confirmed. Burn Your Fire for No Witness occupies
this depressingly predictive realm. In the album's first chorus, Olsen's
admitting "I lost my dream,” wanting an end to come swiftly. Given enough
time a fire will always die out. No amount of knowledge (folksy or otherwise)
can stop that.
