2007 Pop Music Abstract
30 Seconds To Mars -- "From Yesterday"
Surely it has been pointed out that Jared Leto's post-notoriety combo sounds a lot like the music that was popular when My So-Called Life was still on television. His crowd-pleasing melodic sensibility does get choked by all the distorto guitar, but he digs The Cure and U2, and he's as likely to pilfer a sound effect from The Unforgettable Fire as he is from Vitalogy. None of that distinguishes 30 Seconds To Mars from any other band you might bump into on K-ROCK, and you might wonder why he's even bothering. But better a run-of-the-mill hard rocker in a run-of-the-mill band than a run-of-the-mill actor in an above-average teenage drama.
Now this is a truly strange rock song. The psycho-folk arrangement and higgledy-piggledy verse of "Beauty" reminds me of Stump, an Eighties band so out of step with the zeitgeist that they took Flann O'Brien as their lodestar. 31 Knots is hardly that literary or genuinely offbeat, and the rest of The Days And Nights Of Everything Anywhere sounds conventional by comparison. Still, it is nice to know that there still exist indie rock bands out there who aren't trying to rewrite Psychocandy (difficult) or Remain In Light (impossible).
50 Cent -- "Amusement Park", "I Get Money", "Straight To The Bank", "I Still Kill" (with Akon), "Ayo Technology" (with Timbaland & Justin Timberlake)
I really hate to open up the usual can of worms before I'm properly warmed up, but I do these alphabetically, and there's no time like the present: could all these honky record-review websites please go back to ignoring hip-hop altogether? No matter how much you guys rave about the latest Lil Wayne mixtape, I don't believe you're actually listening to any rap record more than once, and even if you are, you aren't coming to it with the base-level understanding I can expect from any of the ten-year-old kids who hang out on the corner of Monmouth and 4th. You don't need any "street credibility" to review rap albums; hell, you don't even have to like the genre. But you do have to show that you can differentiate between 50 Cent, who is an imaginary character and a projection of certain well-chronicled macho fantasies, and Curtis Jackson, who is a wealthy and talented dude from Queens, New York. That the new 50 Cent album is called Curtis and features a black-and-white photo of an anguished Jackson on the cover does not mean that it is now okay to confuse the artist with the artwork. Moreover, the fact that Jackson frequently plays the role of 50 Cent in public does not excuse you from falling for the oldest trick in the formal-realism playbook. The reviews of Curtis were among the year's most misleading (and that's saying something); and not because critics who would rather be listening to Melomane were forcing themselves through "Fully Loaded Clip". No, they sucked because they placed Curtis Jackson in a lie detector, and judged him on a script he wrote for his puppet. Of course Jackson isn't "still in the 'hood"; he's moved to Connecticut with his maid, his CFO, and his accounts-receivable department. But 50 Cent is, and if you don't get that distinction, you're lagging so far behind the rap audience that you can't hope to contribute anything meaningful to the discussion.
Aesop Rock -- "None Shall Pass"
Yay area backpacker redefines Wordy Rappinghood for a new generation of disaffected heads. I don't have any true beef with his murky production, but I often wish he'd slow down juuuust enough so that we can judge whether his allegedly trenchant one-liners are any good. Aesop Rock isn't so far removed from Twista -- they both use their verbal dexterity as a sonic smokescreen, and one more effective than any vocal filter. Aesop wants you to believe he's really and truly smart; Twista wants you to believe he really and truly has blue balls. Still, wiser heads heed the advice of the great Shock G: "The definition of a funky rhyme master?/ Cleverly put together, but not necessarily saying it faster/ See, that style isn't hard at all/ The object of the game is to have a ball, y'all/ And to see who can come the funkiest/ A lot of emcees think it's just a speed contest."
Air -- "Mer Du Japon", "Once Upon A Time"
Pocket Symphony attempts to inject some alertness into the somnolent Air formula through the use of traditional Japanese instruments. Unsurprisingly, these make the same sort of reverbed plinks that the Dunckel-Godin firm have coaxing out of their synthesizers for the better part of the decade. "Mer Du Japon" came with a boner-inducing Madame Butterfly-type video: lesbian ballerinas, one Asian and one European, dancing around, dodging a Chinese dragon, and tongue-kissing. If they could transfer some of that horndog energy -- or some of that cheesy exploitation -- to their music, they might make something worth listening to again.
Alicia Keys -- "No One", "Like You'll Never See Me Again"
Speaking of lesbians, we all remember when Melissa Etheridge released an album called Yes I Am. Keys, the Etheridge of R&B, calls her new one As I Am; you could swipe the Y and the E from the artist's last name and complete the puzzle without buying a vowel. We all know she likes to monkey around with vintage synths; I think that's a Jupiter 8 on "No One". Nerds dig the analog gear, me and Melissa (and Howard Stern) love these lyrics: "People keep talking/ They can say what they like/ No one can get in the way of what I'm feeling for you/ I know people will try to divide something so real", etc. Come to my window!, and take that, Jayceon Taylor.
Amy Winehouse -- "Rehab", "You Know I'm No Good" (with Ghostface)
Received as a liberation anthem by self-righteous drunks, "Rehab" sent thousands whistling to the pub. There's power in that, I guess, but if getting twentysomething girls hammered was really so difficult, there'd be a lot more horny gentlemen staggering around the streets of Hoboken and Seaside Heights. Winehouse plays the bratty rich girl begging for her bub so well that she was sure to appeal to same; she may have lost the rest of us when she actually landed in the gossip pages for her heroic overindulgence. Because there are consequences, see, no matter what "daddy says". I'll give her this: her backing group kicks tush.
Arcade Fire -- "Keep The Car Running"
Yep, sure do sound like "On The Dark Side", don't it? "Keep The Car Running" lacks the great piano riff and guest appearances from Sal and the Word Man, but all the melodrama is certainly there. Turns out Win Butler does a credible Springsteen imitation; no mean feat, considering how many indie rockers are trying to cram their asses into that famous pair of blue jeans. It's almost enough to forgive the big Canuck for his tiresome anti-Americanism. Neon Bible improves on Funeral precisely because fake Boss > fake Bono, but they're really the same album -- four really good Eighties rewrites, some mildly experimental headscratchers, charmingly-stupid lyrics about transcendence, and a few shut-off-that-stereo-now! performances by Regine Chassagne. To be fair, there's less Chassagne here than there was on Funeral, and the Fire's handlers have decided to stealth her up a bit by running her glass-shattering "voice" through heavy processing. I recognize that they're married or something, but it should be obvious to everybody by now that this is Butler's act and the posse cuts are only wasting time and hard-drive space. You can never make your "Tender Years" until you tame your support band; even Eddie Wilson knew that.
Architecture In Helsinki -- "Heart It Races", "Debbie"
Show me a "collective", and I will show you a singer-songwriter surrounded by a coterie of delusional musicians. While none of the Bhagwan-robed backing vocalists in Polyphonic Spree really believe they're doing anything other than taking Tim DeLaughter's marching orders, the naïve Aussies of Architecture In Helsinki apparently thought they were part of a musical democracy. Cameron Bird put that concept to rest by relocating to Brooklyn, completely retooling the "group" sound, and punting those who weren't down with the new program. Which, as it turned out, had far less to do with experimental pop that any of us originally thought; apparently Bird, free from his quaint Melbournian strictures, just wants to get down. He hasn't changed his stripes completely: "Heart It Races" is just "Do The Collapse" with synthesized steel-drums and an even more abrasive vocal performance. But the rest of Places Like This is attempted white-boy funk of the most irrationally-exuberant kind. In practice, it sounds a hell of a lot more like Bananarama and the B-52's than any of his intended targets, but unlike the members of the Internet Rock-Critical Establishment (IRCE), I do give points for trying. C'mon, he's a skinny hippie from New South Wales -- of course he'd rather be Prince. I will make the IRCE a deal: the day you give guys like Bird a pass for reaching for the stars and falling on their faces, I'll promise to stop slagging your anodyne favorites for playing it safe.
Avril Lavigne -- "Girlfriend", "Keep Holding On"
More catfight anthems from the congenitally competitive Lavigne. "Girlfriend" suggests what The Go! Team or Le Tigre might sound like if they cleaned up their production a little and invested in reliable compression equipment. Which isn't saying all that much; I mean, Go! Team and Le Tigre have never been too hot. The act you're looking for is Paramore.
B.G. & The Chopper City Boyz -- "Make 'Em Mad"
American politics is rarely interesting or complex. Those in the mainstream media looking for the secret meaning of Bobby Jindal's upset win would do well to consult Occam's Razor. Surely everybody from David Vitter to Mannie Fresh had serious problems with Governor Blanco's response to the hurricanes, and nobody in Louisiana could have been too shocked by William Jefferson's freezerful of freshly-laundered cash. But the real reason socially-conservative Republicans stormed the statehouse is much simpler: most of the Democratic base is underwater. Two years after the flood, The Big Easy remains half-empty. To get a sense of the demographic shift, take a tour of spots made famous by the world-famous local rap culture -- storm fences ring 'Nolia, former center of the hip-hop universe and birthplace of bounce; St. Bernard, the setting for so many of Juve's stories, has been replaced by a tent city; Calliope Projects, long the headquarters and core constituency for the No Limit Family, has cautiously reanimated a handful of undead units. Chris Dorsey's flight to Detroit symbolized the exodus from Chopper City: if Uptown's best-known emcees couldn't stick it out, what hope had the average New Orleanian? But now B.G. has returned -- not to the Magnolia Projects, but at least to the general vicinity -- and he's brought a crew of competent mush-mouthed emcees with him. This is not the rebirth of Cash Money or anything, but in '07, we'll take what we can get.
Baby Boy & Lil Bootsie -- "The Way I Live"
During the heyday of Cash Money, Baby Boy Da Prince shared a management company with B.G.; if you're into obscure No Limit sides, you might remember Choppa, his big brother, from bounce cut "Choppa Style". His big-league connections did not save him from a FEMA trailer in 2005. He could have come back with a cold-eyed, nihilistic study in desolation a la Juve's Reality Check, or, like Mos Def on Tru3 Magic, raged against the indifference of the government. Instead, he rolled out of the toxic tin can with a BBQ anthem so laid-back in the face of adversity that Alex Rodriguez briefly used it as his intro music. Turns out it was just what the city wanted: not a ballad of victimization or loss, but a blithe affirmation that the life goes on as usual, full of boasts, hustle, conspicuous consumption, and ketchup-colored paint on the Lambo. For proving, once more, that it will take much more than a Category 5 to dislodge the dream of upward social mobility, Baby Boy became a hero in Chopper City and the latest bearer of a centuries-old mantle. It's anybody's guess whether Big Easy pop music will ever regain its footing or its casual chic, but listen closely: the wheels on the infamous N.O. production-mill are creaking back into action. Baby Boy even manages to get off a joke about the storm: "They say I'm like Katrina with money/ I blow that shit!" Hey, I didn't say it was a good joke.
Bat For Lashes -- "Prescilla", "What's A Girl To Do?"
Young heir to the Khan squash dynasty (no kidding) cannot decide whether she wants to be Bjork or Tori Amos when she grows up. Fur And Gold is, consequently, schizophrenic, unfocused, and derivative. But there are moments when she channels magic spirits that have been lost to her role models, and those suggest that the pleasures here aren't just guilty ones.
Intermittently compelling art band with a penchant for post-rock rhythms and weird vocoder effects; lead single "Atlas" sounds like a mash-up of King Crimson and the Seven Dwarves. I see you running for the hills, but I assure you that I went to high school with many nerds who would've begged for such a pairing. So feel superior if you want to, but remember: we could have fireballed your asses in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Beyoncé Knowles -- "Get Me Bodied", "Listen", "Upgrade U", "Suga Mama", "Beautiful Liar" (with Shakira)
So how's that solo career thing working out? I don't mean the bank-stacking, or buffing up the celebrity brand; we all know she's got those bases covered. But as the former moneymaking third of the Destiny's Child empire and a corporate pop star of the first rank, it's fair to expect Knowles to have made a few memorable records by now. She almost delivered with "Crazy In Love", but Jay-Z screwed it all up with his self-aggrandizing guest verse. Most of the tracks listed above are from the B'Day Anthology, a video plus remix collection released exclusively through Wal-Mart (though I doubt the bigwigs at Beyoncé Ltd. were really expecting their fans to visit a brick-and-mortar store). "Get Me Bodied" is almost certainly the most annoying song of the bunch, and as these things usually go, it became the most interesting story: Knowles paired the extended version with a six-minute dance extravaganza, and kicked back as a delighted MTV put the video into heavy circulation. The "Bodied" clip played like a high-gloss, infectiously-inane YouTube spot: the singer hollers out names of dances, and a team of hoofers demonstrates their moves for the camera. So, yes, just the sort of thing that would drive you bonkers if you had to experience it without the visual accompaniment. But one of the main duties of a CEO of a big service corporation -- like Wal-Mart, or RCA Records, or Beyoncé Knowles -- is identifying alternative channels for distribution and evaluation, and Billboard is no longer the only game in town. Knowles was aiming for the portable-MP3 market from the start, and by July, the clip for "Get Me Bodied" had hit #1 on iTunes Video. Consumer excitement warranted a re-release to radio; an edit was made available, but our local hip-hop and R&B station insisted on playing the version with the interminable list of dance call-outs. We were meant to imagine the video while we heard it, or maybe we weren't supposed to care. Meanwhile, the star was busy considering other market synergies: "Upgrade U" got a slight, er, upgrade, and became a commercial for HDTV. Eventually Beyonce Knowles will have to decide whether she wants to be a businesswoman or an actual artist, and -- oh, wait, what am I saying? Of course she's decided; I mean, really. Sometimes I forget what country I'm living in. Hippie writer, go back to Frisco '67.
Normal people have always considered Limp Bizkit less of a band than a public nuisance. Now that rap-rock is officially over and not coming back (at least not from the direction of fraternity-row), the fate of the perpetrators barely troubles the minds of the psychologically healthy. Those of us who aren't so lucky have often wondered whether Wes Borland could escape the stifling atmosphere of his band and mouthpiece, and make some worthwhile music on his own. Black Light Burns is that project, and perhaps all too predictably, it sounds more like Nine Inch Nails than P.O.D. "Lie" is less preposterous than "My Body Is A Cage", but it trades in the same arty anguish. I can't say I don't dig it, because I do, and my humanitarian streak applauds Borland for shaking free of Fred Durst. But sometimes a guitar (player) is just a guitar (player), and it shouldn't be all that surprising that there was less going on behind those jet-black contacts than some had hoped.
Bloc Party -- "Hunting For Witches", "I Still Remember", "The Prayer"
Listening to Bloc Party is like going to a chic, hyped, and stylishly-appointed restaurant, ordering the most exotic-looking thing on the menu, and getting served a loaf of Wonder Bread. Waiter, this can't be right… can it? I mean, it's certainly edible, and if you toasted it up and put a little butter and jam on it, it might even be yummy. But you can get this kind of bland repast at any corner store.
Bone Thugs 'N' Harmony -- "I Tried" (with Akon)
Now that everybody from Usher to Mariah Carey to Weird Al is chewing on a mouthful of his style, we can recognize Krayzie Bone for what he is: the most influential man in contemporary R&B. He's from Cleveland, so he isn't too cool to be emo; in fact, his most memorable numbers lay the existential angst on thick. "I Tried" is the latest anthem of street hopelessness, and here they've gone for sheer melodramatic overkill -- the Bone Thugs' worried-aunt flow, Akon's graveyard croon, and, just in case you've got any tears left to jerk, a typically wrist-slitting verse from old undead Tupac. Distraught hand-wringing is rarely so funky.
Bruce Springsteen -- "Radio Nowhere"
Boss and pro baseball connections, 2007 edition: Springsteen rocked the benefit for Joe Torre's Safe At Home Foundation, and even made room under the stagelights for the prodigal Bernie Williams. Don't believe me?, here's a photo of the two legendary clutch hitters onstage together at the Chelsea Piers. Patti Scialfa sure looks into it, doesn't she? Do you reckon she was thinking to herself, "boy, we could have used that big bat against Cleveland"? Anyway, MLB returned the favor by wedding "Radio Nowhere" to its "One Shining Moment"-style World Series montage; barely had Jonathan Papelbon jigged off the field at Coors before FOX Sports cut to the E Street Band in action. Notorious Boss booster Chris Russo may have kick-started it all this summer -- he declared the lead single from Magic an instant classic, and commanded the bewildered Mike & The Mad Dog producers to air it, over and over. Now that's a non-traditional distribution channel if there ever was one, and one sorely needed, considering that the song is a cranky old man's complaint that, to paraphrase Eminem, radio won't even play his jam. Ironic, then, that "Radio Nowhere" is a straight lift of Tommy Tutone's "867-5309", a track hardly capable of guiding a spirit home through the last lone American night. But I'll be damned if he doesn't resolve the contradictions and make it all work. He can blow that speedball by you, make you look like a fool, boy.
If the Boss is still sprightly enough to traipse through the fields of forgotten chord-progressions, plucking as he goes, give credit to those Turnpike chemicals in his bloodstream. It keeps us, eternally, in a Garden State. Others were born to be geriatric rockers; even back when he was writing about white riots and phoning up Robin Hood for wealth distribution, Mick Jones always seemed more than a little like an old and fed-up Eurosocialist professor. "The News", his latest effort, is just Big Audio Dynamite without the samples and drum-machines. You might have always thought that the beatboxes were just an old, fed-up Eurosocialist professor's attempt to stay current; if so, you won't miss them at all.
Cassidy -- "My Drink And My Two-Step" (with Swizz Beatz)
Swizz Beatz, master of the hip-hop designer fake, spits out this cut-rate version of "Through The Wire" for the recently salvaged Philly emcee. Cassidy doesn't have Mr. West's gift for self-dramatization, but he's still plenty excited about his headline-making travails. Kanye elevated his own car-wreck to the level of Norse mythology; Cassidy just wants to get drunk and holler about his indestructibility. Hey, it might not be the one that the stoics would recommend, but it strikes me as a legitimate reaction to the Jaws of Life.
Chamillionaire -- "Evening News", "Hip-Hop Police" (with Slick Rick), "Not A
Criminal" (with Kelis)Houston's superbrain could have followed up the incendiary "Ridin'" with a string of booty cuts, and nobody would have thought any the less of him. Instead, he jumped on the barricades, turning his collection of one-liners and witticisms on the police, the Bush administration, and conservative talkies in the mainstream media. Cham seems particularly offended by those who blame rap music for social problems, and he's as disturbed by Reverend Sharpton's interpretive failures as he is by Bill O'Reilly's cultural fundamentalism. "Evening News" (there's also a "Morning News" on the album; this emcee is a current-events junkie) strongly suggests that we're all being herded toward celebrity-worship by White House apologists who are desperate to change the subject. "Every time I talk about Katrina", he grumbles in the guise of a recalcitrant anchorman, "they look at me like it's a misdemeanor". "Hip-Hop Police" picks up where "Ridin'" left off; now he's down at the station, and getting the third degree. Even under interrogation lights, his mind is on our collective obsession with the boob-tube: "Till I talk to my lawyer, you get no reply/ You've obviously been watching too much CSI". So, yes, he's easy to pull for, he's got a great sense of humor, and pop radio is ennobled by his presence. But, quite honestly, I can't say I wouldn't prefer to hear Gucci Mane rap about the very freaky gurl who got it from her momma. I blame the aggressively understated production on Ultimate Victory; I mean, Kane Beatz?, Happy Perez?, CHOPS? This is a major-label rap release? I understand there are good leftist reasons for getting the hands of lumpenproletariat on the faders, but the masses still must boogie to something. Let's set Chamillionaire up with the Neptunes and see what happens.
Charlotte Hatherley -- "Behave"
The Ash refugee calls her vanity imprint Little Sister Records. The shoe fits: there's something about Hatherley's music that tugs at your jacket-sleeve, follows you to school, and demands candy. She's endearing, and annoying, and it always seems as though she's trying much harder than she needs to. But as a six-string artist, Charlotte Hatherley takes a backseat to no big brother. The Deep Blue establishes her as the most imaginative rhythm guitarist to emerge from Britain since Graham Coxon, and Coxon never had her casual virtuosity. As would become a little sister, her style is playful and expansive -- the riff that underpins "Behave" sounds as though it's been run through every phasing, flanging, and 'verbing effect in Sam Ash's showcase. It doesn't stop there: The Deep Blue was produced by Eric Drew Feldman of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, she namechecks "Siberian Khatru" in one song, and co-wrote another with Andy Partridge. In short, she is every prog-rock nerd's wet dream, and it is only a matter of time before she is recognized as such, and develops a cult of devoted (if slightly creepy) fans.
Chemical Brothers -- "The Salmon Dance", "Do It Again"The Chemical Brothers have always made music that required listeners to be tripping balls to appreciate, so if those of us who prefer to remain sober have never quite grokked, that shouldn't be too difficult to understand. Depending on your level of intoxication, "Do It Again" will either strike you as mesmerizing or boring; it's finely-filigreed aural wallpaper, suitable for postgraduate dinner parties and intense mall shopping. "The Salmon Dance", on the other hand, is an utter travesty: over one of the corniest beats ever committed to virtual wax, a blotto-sounding Fatlip -- who must have really, really needed the check -- recites kiddy rhymes about spawning migratory fish. No, I am not kidding. Either this represents the nadir of the already-discredited electronica movement, or it's part of the Euro conspiracy to destroy our cultural memory by redefining "old-school" rap as the work of simpletons horsing around. Someone get Nas on the phone; here's another chapter of "Where Are They Now?," unfolding right before our eyes.
Wait, did I say Euro conspiracy? Let me expand that: the Canadians are in on it, too. The plan, as I understand it, is to hoodwink members of the IRCE whose knowledge of Eighties hip-hop does not extend past "Mary Mary/ why you bugging?" into comparing bands like Chromeo to vintage rap music. That way, we assume that there was a time when the old-school would ever have permitted anything as retarded as "Tenderoni" to exist. This, in turn, erodes our confidence in the entire rap enterprise. To be fair, Chromeo are getting a little bit better at making funky records, which is, after all, what this whole game is about. But they're still wallpapering over their staggering deficiencies -- and their liberal guilt -- by keeping all interpretive options open for their alleged audience. Are they kidding, or are they for real? Certainly they are acting much stupider than we'd expect grown men to behave; this implies that they are not wholly in earnest. Yet they've produced their record to fuck and back, and they pose like would-be thugs in their promo shots. If you're dumb enough to believe that what they're doing bears some actual resemblance to old-school rap and R&B, they'll take it; if you believe they're mocking rap music and rap conventions for the benefit of supercilious hipsters who believe themselves to be above Negro music, they'll take that, too. Really, all you need to know about Chromeo is that one of the members of this urban-music "posse" teaches French literature to undergrads at Columbia University. Tenured radicals, indeed.
Ciara -- "Like A Boy"
The Gumby-dancing R&B singer one-ups Alicia Keys with this oblique response to the claims of "her" alleged transsexuality. As spin-doctoring goes, "Like A Boy" rates slightly below the hot air generated by Senator Clinton's post-debate flacks, but I give Ciara points for creative damage control. The single describes all the things "she" would do were she actually a boy, which of course she is not, because if she were, then this song would make no sense, right? Right? Ignore its chart position: "Like A Boy" was a relative flop for Ciara, and made no meaningful radio impact, because all eyes were averted once it became apparent what "she" was trying to do. See, we talk a good, filthy game on the Internet, but when it comes down to it, there are some veils we don't want to penetrate. In 2007, the taboo territory included Ciara's panties.
Coco Rosie -- "Rainbowarriors"
Lest you think I'm calling out the urban audience for its inability to deal with female-to-male crossdressing, the indie-rock underground hasn't been any testament to broadmindedness, either. The Coco Rosie sisters get painted as shrill pseudo-folk fakers by the same gang of hipsters who are happy to mill about around Devendra Banhart's jockstrap. Bianca Cassidy's singing isn't all that much more annoying than Joanna Newsom's is. C'mon, admit it: you don't like that she wears a phony moustache.
This is not somebody you really have to worry about. Caillat is a solid-C mainstream pop singer, and her pop song (there won't be another) is aggressively okay. If Sheryl Crow is Liz Phair with a lobotomy, Colbie Caillat is Sheryl Crow drunk(er), half-asleep, slurring speech, and drooling.
Common -- "The People", "Driving Me Wild"
I think it was Byron Crawford who first complained about how much he hates it when Common slips into his "Def Poetry Jam" flow. Trouble is, that spoken-word mush is about the big lug is ladeling out at the hip-hop soup kitchen lately. Yes, Com has been buffing up his brand identity as the boho-liberal's favorite emcee, and that means he's given hope to every clown crowding the stage at your local open mike. Oh, you don't go to those? Remember the part on Late Registration where Common busts in and says, in that goofy-ass "wistful" voice, "relationships become jail/ children go unheld/ I wish love was for sale"? It's just like that, only it goes on for hours and hours, until the Master of Ceremonies passes out from pot-smoke asphyxia. "The People" is more of the same: Com sends the most predictable shout-out in rap history to his junior senator; his obligatory Obama/drama couplet is only partially redeemed by rhyming it all with "Botswana". When he sees the Chicago underclass struggling, he "thinks of how he's touching them"; as he steps into the gas-guzzling Lincoln Navigator that he shills in his shit-eating TV spots. Please, spare me from sensitive, big-hearted capitalist running-dogs.
Down South it is so much simpler. You have your plentiful ass, your candy-colored Cadillacs, the grind, and if you're lucky, a big styrofoam cup of that sizzurp to wash it all down. Rarely is there any pretense toward "conscious" rhyming or socially-progressive sloganeering -- MoveOn.org does not bother to enlist the Crime Mob in their petition drives. You may hear Southern rap as the end of civilization as we know it; to me, after the sanctimonious Chicago stuff, it feels like pure oxygen. The Crime Mob's mark of distinction is that they've got two girl rappers in the crew, and that is a rarity in a subgenre where "take you home/ let you juggle my balls" is the average emcee's idea of pillow talk. But theirs is no gimmick -- Diamond and Princess are both halfway decent emcees, and their presence in the group allows for some uncommon exchanges. For instance, on "Rock Yo Hips", Lil J kicks a verse about his erection, and then Diamond follows with another about her thirty-two flavors of bootylicious bubblegum. That may not be the rapprochement between the sexes that Gloria Steinem was looking for, but hey, at least the two sides are talking.
Crowded House -- "Don't Stop Now"
The next time somebody tries to sell you that hoary old line about how pop songwriting isn't a talent -- that it's all just craftsmanship, and any monkey with a copy of Smile and a decent six-string can do it -- think about Neil Finn. On paper, Crowded House isn't much different from Snow Patrol or The Fray, or any of those other soft-rock pretenders who've been clogging up the Billboard charts in recent years. But Finn is the only true heir to Paul McCartney's legacy in the bunch, and he can pen melodies that'll make your heart stop. Time On Earth contains at least three songs that Chris Martin would sell his soul to attach his name to; "Don't Stop Now" is one of them. Ironic, then, that it's his most sober-sided album yet: track after track, little brother Finn confronts depression and his former drummer's suicide. "Silent House", co-written with agitprop artist Natalie Maines (of all people), tackles Alzheimer's disease in brutal, unsparing language. In Mike Chunn's fantastic Stranger Than Fiction: The Story Of Split Enz, the author reports that Tim Finn once complimented his sibling's "sprightly poppish voice"; that's still there, but it's matured into a carrier of pure and scarred Kiwi soul. He's already levitated the Sydney Opera House at least once, and he's a legend in both hemispheres. His songs, and his performances, are going to outlast us all.
Like mononucleosis, grunge never goes away completely. When the body is exhausted, it flares up, and the next thing you know, you're weak and heaving. The American Idol television empire can be blamed for this particular relapse. Some might say that this is the price we must pay for Kelly Clarkson, but I think Fantasia Barrino is pretty dope, too -- so on balance, I've got no problem with the enterprise. Just don't ask me to watch the program.
Diddy -- "Through The Pain", "Last Night" (with Keyshia Cole)
Not content with a public inquisition of Stephin Merritt's race politics, Sasha Frere-Jones made another big stink this year about Whitey's unwillingness to get down with beat music. He should be careful what he asks for: is more Chromeo really something we ought to be working toward? No, the more interesting (and maybe disturbing) development is happening in the back of the bus, so to speak. Judging by video evidence, it's the rappers and R&B singers who suddenly want to rock out. Beyoncé fronts a band in the "Irreplaceable" spot, Lil Wayne grabs an electric guitar for the "Leather So Soft" clip, Rihanna makes like a CBGB ingénue in the "Shut Up And Drive" video; and then there were the Shop Boyz, who, in spite of their own willful stupidity, became a walking essay on cultural cross-pollination and musical desegregation. Kanye West's latest best-seller borrows from Elton John, Donald Fagen, and Daft Punk, and owes more to European synthpop than Run-DMC. When Graduation topped the charts, big brother Jay-Z bestowed upon Mr. West the highest compliment he could give: he called him a "rock star". Even Puffy, pillager of the new-wave songbook and famously unrepentant digital-sampler, has gotten in on the action: the "Last Night" clip casts him as a brooding indie bandleader, sound-checking in a dive bar. So what's going on here? Partially, it's just hemlines rising and falling -- back in the Nineties, snares and kick drums were compressed to the point of absurdity by rap producers, and we're hearing a return to a splashier full-kit sound. Check Rich Harrison's productions for Missy Elliott and Amerie (especially "1 Thing"); those gave other trackmakers the permission to loosen up the backbeat a bit, and maybe even to pantomime some live instrumentation. Never one to resist amplifying a trend, Puffy has dropped the biggest beat yet, and enlisted Keyshia Cole to sing over it; he does a little singing too, but the less said about that, the better. "Last Night" is, strictly speaking, a rock song -- it may wear its ProTools assembly proudly, but so does Minus The Bear. White-man radio still isn't going to play this jam, but that's why God invented podcasts. Musicians are culturally-absorptive people, and if you put Puff Diddy (or whatever the hell he's calling himself these days), Jay-Z, Kanye West and Keyshia Cole in a room with rockers, they're going to incorporate some of what they hear into their own mixes. They've got the ability to do that. You can't expect the same out of Arcade Fire, Panda Bear, or I'm From Barcelona. It's not that they wouldn't choose to periodically funk out if they could -- it's that indie rockers simply aren't as talented, and therefore they're nowhere near as flexible. When they try it, they become embarrassed, and often attempt to play it off as a joke, which isn't good for anybody. Far better that the rappers start to rock: that way, it's done with professional skill rather than self-conscious bet-hedging. This might not be the cultural dialogue that Sasha Frere-Jones is looking for, but it's been a gigantic musical storyline for 2007, and it'll continue as long as consumers are free to scramble playlists and share music on Last.fm and the like. Turns out it was a nation of a million program directors holding us back. Right, as if we didn't know.
DJ Khaled, T.I., Akon, Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne & Baby -- "We Taking Over"
Uninspired posse cut enlivened by a hilarious verse from Lil Wayne. As always, it's not what he says, it's the way that he says it. Plenty of rappers are as clever as Wayne is; few, though, have ever had so much fun playing with the sound and shape of words. If The Carter III was pushed back to the Day of Judgement, I'm not sure anybody would notice: Weezy can keep on putting out mixtapes, spitting on other people's beats (and showing them up), and guest emceeing, and his public profile wouldn't be diminished one bit. He's not looking for a spot on VH1 Classic Albums. He just wants you to call him the Greatest Rapper Alive, and, shrewdly, he's recognized that there are routes to the throne that do not involve the usual album-plus-tour slog. Smart guy, that Carter.
DJ Quik & AMD -- "Can U Werk Wit Dat?"
Quik returns from exile to rhyme "grow up and be somebody" with "want some calamari". He'd fit in great with my extended family. Good beat, good hook, spirited performances, decent booty rhymes. It's anybody's guess when the album will finally drop; Quik has relocated to Atlanta, which is surely exciting for him, but it means he's swimming in the deep end.
Bob Hope and Doris Day were unavailable, so the USO shipped Drowning Pool to Iraq instead. This nu-metal stomper shows genuine concern for the boys in sand-colored camouflage, but was it a good idea to bring to the Green Zone a band whose best-known song goes "let the bodies hit the floor"? Moreover, considering popular U.S. methods of interrogation, might Attorney General Mukasey not have something to say about the unfortunate name of this band? Aw, hell, I suppose the government knows what it's doing; you know, give the long-suffering guards at the black sites something to hum while waterboarding. Like Elvis Costello said on "Night Rally", it's just the sort of catchy little melody to get you singing in the showers.
Eskimo Joe -- "Black Fingernails, Red Wine"
In this era of cultural imperialism it may strike you as quaint, but Australia still has its own homegrown pop stars. Many of them are not even kangaroos. Eskimo Joe, L.D.U. chart-toppers and ARIA-award winners, represent Perth, the capital of Western Australia and the most isolated major city in the world. You probably remember Siberian Yakut from nights spent crouched over the Risk board; that's the only sub-national region anywhere in the world with a larger area than Western Australia. Three-quarters of the state -- a million and a half people -- live in Perth; past city limits, a driver confronts hundreds of miles of strip-mines, badlands, and uninhabitable desert. Yet somehow, despite that physical remove, Eskimo Joe makes slick, pro-quality indie rock indistinguishable from that of the typical Brooklyn careerist combo. Fans at their '06 CMJ showcase could have been forgiven for assuming they were watching three guys who'd just stumbled down to the club from their Lorimer Street apartment. The point: do not send your rockin' Doctor Livingstones out to discover fresh sounds in fresh territories; that day is over. If it's an English-speaking corner of the world, no matter how remote it is, the musicians there will surely be chasing the same consensus, established on the Internet by rootless cosmopolitan scenesters with weblogs. Metacritic, Pitchfork, and the All-Music Guide are accessible wherever wires can run; properly studied, they offer a guide to aesthetic homogenization unbeatable in the history of mass-produced pop music. The only strange bits of real-estate left to explore are the brains of first-world weirdos with the will -- or just the perversity -- to stand against conventional wisdom.
Warning: not a Nirvana cover. Nope, Amy Lee is having communication problems with her drunk boyfriend again, and her latest piece of enabler-rock is about what you'd expect: piano, distorted guitar, and hefty melodrama. Which is all fine, I guess, but shouldn't the Goths who constitute her audience be listening to Choirgirl Hotel instead? It's the exact same thing, only cogent.
Eve -- "Tambourine"
Because it's a Swizz Beatz production, Eve's "Tambourine" has lots and lots of, um, tambourine. And that's the whole problem with Swizz; as much heat as he can bring, the guy has never bothered to develop a change-up. As for the former First Lady of the Ruff Ryders, she can count her blessings: she's not deaf, or in jail, or saddled with a daytime talk show. Instead, Eve keeps making records, and in an environment that is about as supportive to a woman's career as the atmosphere of the moon is to tropical vegetation. Her mid-decade move on the pop market has, ironically, alienated her from the same charts she regularly visited as a g-rapper. "Tambourine" probably deserved to be a bigger hit, especially since it's another one of those novelty dance-instruction numbers that all the stars are rushing to upload to video file-sharing sites. But the ladies were all doing the scissor-leg and Naomi Campbell walk with Beyoncé, and once the kids figured out what "superman that ho" meant, there was no stopping them from cranking it along with Soulja Boy. Aim for the YouTube audience, suffer a YouTube fate.
Fabolous & Ne-Yo -- "Make Me Better"
I don't know, is this song any good? You tell me. Every time this one comes on MTV Jams, I immediately turn the channel to C-SPAN; I figure who knows?, there might be a scientist testifying before a Congressional subcommittee about depleted uranium. I probably encountered it while grocery shopping and figured it was some new Mase cut, maybe from the soundtrack of a new Rush Hour movie. Normally, if Timbaland has anything to do with a song, I'm all over it; but this one interests me less than a Gray's Anatomy spinoff. Fabolous must be the most ineffectual emcee in recorded history -- he must have, what, eighty-eight top ten hits by now?, and I couldn't name a single one of them. And in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a little bit obsessed with this stuff. In fact, I'm moving right along to the next entry so I can go back to pretending Fabolous doesn't exist.
Fall Out Boy -- "This Ain't A Scene… It's An Arms Race", "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs"
Damn, the next entry is Fall Out Boy. That's no fun at all. And unlike Fabolous, there's no wishing them away: from their promontory point atop Fueled By Ramen HQ, they keep sending their epigones out to swarm the emo-pop battlefield. What's more, they've lately taken to complaining on record about the dog-eat-dog world of professional rock and roll. Pete Wentz's fine whine would go down smoother if, oh, I don't know, he didn't own his own corporate-rock record label. If indie rock is now more an arms race than a scene, he's partially responsible. Moreover, no matter what literary aspirations he's developed in his old age, his band is the new Foreigner, and will surely be remembered as such.
Further evidence that America desires not supermodel good looks but legit talent from its pop stars: the shovel-faced and portly Fantasia Barrino, winner of one American Idol season or another. Not that her handlers know this; otherwise, they never would have allowed her to appear in a bathtub, covered in suds, in the video to "When I See U". My scientific estimates suggest that 75% of viewers immediately changed the channel to a depleted uranium special on C-SPAN, and the rest of us suffered irreversible retinal damage. The tragedy is that "When I See U" is frothy, twinkling, wholly engrossing modern R&B, and Barrino's sultry ad lib at the end elevates it into the rarefied territory inhabited by Mary J., Alicia Keys, and, lately, Keyshia Cole. She can croon, that's for sure. But I'm afraid she's going to have to try again.
Of all of the lies perpetuated by the American advertising industry over the past decade, the single most nauseating (and maybe the most pernicious) is that purchasing an Apple computer or electronics product is tantamount to striking a blow for individual freedom. Walk into Tekserve sometime, if you can stand the sanctimony, and inhale the propaganda: PC users are hopeless squares, while Mac owners are battering down the doors of perception by shelling out for the latest MP3 player. Never mind that a genuine nonconformist would build his computer from components and run Linux; folks, Apple is an international corporation, and one that operates on the same bottom-line, dolo-first principles as Gateway or Dell. Steve Jobs is not a revolutionary: he's a Silicon Valley establishment businessman with a clever plan to divest you of your money through hocus-pocus, empty rhetoric, and pastel colors. If he's hired an agency shrewd enough identify Leslie Feist as an artist with the proper caché to appeal to his self-entitled fanbase, that doesn't mean he's on your side. It means he's figured out exactly how to exploit you -- what music to play and what pretty pictures to flash in order to convince the Apple loyalist that she's a better, more stylish individual than her friend stuck running Windows Media Player. Furthermore, the iPod is not a transformative, world-changing piece of technology -- it's a digital Walkman with a firewire port and a light-up touchscreen. Portable MP3 players have been available since 2002 at least; were they really destined to stand the music industry on its ear, we'd see some evidence of that superpower by now. Go back and look at my abstract from 2002, and notice how many of the names on the list are the same. Certainly the genre structure hasn't changed at all: there's hip-hop, corporate rock and pop-punk, indie rock, and adult-contemporary singer-songwriter music. It may be true that people are privy to more music these days than they once were. But if that's so, it's because of file-sharing websites and social-networks, not Apple's visionary leadership. Make no mistake: Steve Jobs does have a plan to transform the music industry, and that plan involves seizing the major labels by the balls, sucking their catalogues dry, and seating himself on the vacant throne. This plan will only work if we buy into the fiction that the pop music now revolves around his dinky device and its accompanying software. Right now, he's cranking the PR machine as fast as he can, because he can smell the money. We've all seen the cutesy commercials, and read the corporate porn about the world-historical product launches. But if you think the new boss will be any different than the old boss, I've got a mainframe in Brooklyn to sell you.
Fergie -- "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Glamorous", "Clumsy"
The cashmere-smooth synth hook on "Glamorous" serves as an aural signature as boldly-scribed as any by Pharrell Williams, and it ought to be instantly recognizable to anybody who has heard the Rich Boy album. Polow Da Don is the most purely musical of the new "it" producers -- even on a roughneck track like "Boy Looka Here", he juggles harmonies, instrumental textures, and verse-by-verse internal variations with the sure, velvet-gloved hands of an orchestra conductor. This means his cuts are always worthy of close engagement and repeat listens, even when, as on "Glamorous", his vocalist isn't capable of working with any of his nuances. As for the star herself, I agree that she's pretty ghastly, but there's no need to call out the SWAT team. She's roughly 150 years old; I doubt she'll be hogging the spotlight for too much longer. Ride this one out.
Texas Christian hard-rock band with a deftly-concealed spiritual message. Lacey Moseley wants to sing about the Son of Man, but she also wants to get on mainstream radio. She's heard the second verse of "Jesus Walks"; she knows what time it is. "All Around Me" is, among other things, a beautifully-rendered account of a theophany, but if you asked the singer about it, she'd probably tell you it's about some boy. America 2007: land of upside-down priorities.
Foo Fighters -- "The Pretender", "Long Road To Ruin"
It's been sixteen years since Dave Grohl introduced himself to us with the Fill Heard 'Round The World. (Go ahead, you know it; hammer it out on your desk.) It took him five seconds to cement his place in rock history, and it's fair to say he's had nothing subsequent to add. In retrospect, it's clear that Grohl was the most likely member of Nirvana to make a showing during Century 21: his instrumental talent was obvious, and he was exorcised some of his unhealthy aggression behind the kit. By the time he'd established the Foo Fighters, he'd become the pure careerist entertainer he was always destined to be: nothing special on the mic, but handy with a melody and a thunderous backbeat. The songs above are the usual grind-'em-out power pop, but he remains a stupendous rhythm player, and "The Pretender" suggests a nascent political conscience. We expect Kanye West to lash out at authority; he's terminally adolescent like that. When good corporate citizens like Dave Grohl and Adam Levine begin to express doubts about the government, that's when you know the dissatisfaction is real, and widespread.
Girl In A Coma -- "Clumsy Sky"
San Antonio sister act possesses a few achy-breaky poptunes and, in Nina Diaz, a vocalist who developed her phrasing and tone by parroting performances on Morrissey records. The band's name, too, is a naked allusion to The Smiths. The Moz noticed, and chose the Girls as the support act for his 2007 tour. Imitation might get you ignored by critics; it can also land you a high-profile opening gig. Provided, of course, that you're imitating somebody with a massive ego, and a will to self-replicate.
Good Charlotte -- "I Don't Want To Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem)"
Joel Madden's uber-dorky quintet has lately been pilloried for pinching from The Killers; they have, it seems, become exactly what they lampooned on "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous". But that wasn't a very good song, either, and at no point did Good Charlotte ever have a distinctive identity separate from that of their better-publicized peers. Anybody who thought we had a real Holden Caulfield on our hands in 2002 needs to go back and revisit seventh grade. Madden was always a trendspotter, an unrepentant camp-follower, and a professional nuisance; he wasn't knocking celebrity culture, he was standing at the doorway and hoping to sneak into the party. Now that he's made it, he has, predictably, identified the popular kids and decided to shadow their movements around the room. While it is nobody's idea of a dancefloor anthem, "I Don't Want To Be In Love" is a sharply-minted imitation. Numismatics experts will surely identify it as a forgery; the rest of us will happily pass it along to the convenience-store clerk in exchange for another brightly-wrapped packet of empty calories.
Obscene, infectious threat-rhyme from Jeezy's replacement in Boyz N Da Hood. Gorilla Zoe's menacing performance turns on the mid-song punchline: "you don't wanna take a ride in that long black hearse". He's right, I don't. The beat is a sleek Atlanta assembly-line production, but "Hood Nigga" is probably best known for the emcee's closing-verse declaration of sexual interest in Beyoncé Knowles and Keyshia Cole. Then he descends into rambling, horndog incoherence, and not a moment too soon.
Grand National -- "By The Time I Get Home There Won't Be Much Of A Place For Me"
So it's four o'clock in the morning, and dreary, and your lips are dry and rough. Not kissing lips, no way, not these. Pairs of red lights blink against the clouds above Newark Airport, and you wonder which one of the planes is hers. The last few conversations, you admit to yourself, haven't gone well. You sounded anxious, and she sounded convivial, yet there was something absent, diminished, about her voice. Each time you hung up the telephone, you felt a little further away from her. And then there were those strange sounds in the background -- goddamn, where was she, exactly? Had she misreported her coordinates; had the mission changed? So you decided you weren't going to take the last call, you'd be out; you'd let the machine handle it. When you stumbled home, a little drunk from a party you shouldn't have attended, you raced to the answering machine with eyes shut, certain the light wouldn't be flashing, that she was gone for good. But there she was -- or there her voice was, anyway, strained and dispassionate, with a time and a flight number. And now the plane is down, and you can see the flash of her hair, and her teeth, as she steps through the sliding glass door. You help her load her luggage in the trunk. Air rushes between you; you feel dislocated, dream-stuck. It is as if she has been replaced with a precisely-drawn simulation of herself. Without speaking, she slides into the passenger's seat, extracts a CD from her handbag, and slips it into the car stereo. This is the song that plays.
Not for a second did I think he'd be back, certainly not after he'd turned himself into the cops for shooting first and asking questions later in the well-policed banlieues of Decatur. But here he is, folks, clinging gamely to the beat just as he did on "So Icy", fronting like Rick James over a snare, a ghostly kalimba, eerie synthesized strings, and not much else. "Oh, youse a college girl?", Gucci smirks at his target, and you can practically hear the smile-lines crinkling behind his shades. Bemused at her reticence, he tries again: "jumping out the phantom/ don't you think I'm handsome?" Well, no, no she doesn't, but he's got bigger fish to fry. Gucci is here to testify to the great matrilineal spirit; the motor animating endless generations of inherited ass. The emcee glibly inverts "Superfreak" by insisting that the very freaky gurl has gotten "it" from her momma, and of course she has. When the chords change in the chorus, it's troublingly effective. When the beat drops out and leaves the kalimba to clatter along on its lonesome, it slices the track with the precision of a sushi chef deboning a salmon. I could listen to this song ten thousand times and never tire of it. Before I hammer out my last goodbye to you, I probably will.
Gwen Stefani -- "The Sweet Escape" (with Akon)
True indie rock stories, Volume MMCVIII: on the hottest, muggiest day of the summer, Japan Seoul gathered at the lead singer's flat to take publicity photos for the upcoming release. The photographer asked for individual shots, so one at a time, we left the air-conditioning to stand under the midday sun in an alley between tenements. After an hour of this, we were all utterly drained; slumped in chairs and on benches, or on the lead singer's bed. Jesse Blockton lazily strummed a guitar, and without even really recognizing what he was doing, he began plucking out the progression to "The Sweet Escape". Five nerdy Jewish musicians and one nerdy Jewish wanna-be instantly reanimated, and sang, as one: "whoo hoo! whee hee!". The epiphany lasted no more than a moment, but it took the sun out of our heads, and reminded us all who we were and what we were doing with instruments in our hands. No breeze, canned or otherwise, blows cooler than a pop chorus.
Headlights -- "TV"
This is fun, isn't it? I always forget how much fun it is. I take a look at the singles list after Thanksgiving and wonder to myself how in the name of Tina Turner I'm going to write single-paragraph entries for two hundred pop songs. What a grind it's going to be!, why bother with this silly tradition anyway? Don't I have any good computer games to play? Then I get started, and the next thing I know, I've passed the ten thousand word mark, and I'm grinning myself to sleep. The trick, as I've written before, is to put your head down and let God handle the delete key, give yourself a chance to vent uncensored, let 'er rip. I'm sure I'm overusing the semicolon this time out, but hell, that's the herky-jerky mood I'm in this December. It's just an end-of-year letter, really, from me to you with love, friend: like the ones you get from your aunt Patricia, telling you that little Joey has gotten his first communion, and Madison has been waitlisted at Swarthmore. I don't have any children to baptize or to ram through college, so my days are marked by the steady rhythm of the release schedule. Write all day, listen to albums; take a ride and catch some Hot-97; have dinner in front of MTV Jams. I received the Headlights album in January, and have been listening to it ever since; in a way, the story of 2007, for me, could be told through my engagement with it, experiences I've had to it, reflections I've had after listening to it. I could tell you that it's the perfect middle ground between Mates Of State and Camera Obscura, or that the singer sounds a wee bit like the great Eleanor Friedberger, or that you might be surprised to learn that the very Scottish-sounding Kill Them With Kindness rolled in from the heaths and glens of Urbana-Champaign. But instead I'll point out that it's sitting next to the laptop on the little wooden table to my right -- the one my mom rescued from our basement, lacquered, and gave back to us on the day we bought this apartment. Beyond that is the baby blue of the bedroom wall; after that, crisp air and streetlamps, and the dull amber windows of Jersey City after dark.
Another dance number, but beware, kids: this is no chicken noodle soup with a soda on the side. Instead, it's one man's instructions on how to twerk it like a stripper. Huey wants to see the fanny scrape against the ground, and in order to make sure his dream comes true, he's decided to capitalize on the homemade choreography craze. He's even got his rejoinders ready for potential party poopers (like me): "pop lockin' cock blockers get up out the way/ let little mami get low!" Hey, it's her life.
Hurricane Chris -- "A Bay Bay", "The Hand Clap" (with Big Poppa)
And on higher (and dryer) ground, Louisiana kept right on rocking. Up in Shreveport, they call this stuff "ratchet"; if it's indistinguishable from Memphis proto-crunk, remember that it all flows into the same Mississippi delta. Contrary to popular belief, "A Bay Bay" is not something you holler at a good-looking girl. No, Hollywood Bay Bay is the key man in the Ratchet City movement; and this old codger is pleased to see a tyro emcee giving a veteran deejay and scene cornerstone his propers. Old-school NYC rappers used to send songs out to Red Alert just to brownnose and wheedle some pity airplay; Hurricane Chris has the same idea. "Ay, Bay Bay", he's yelling, "that's my song! Turn it up!" He's a little further in front of the beat than what we've become accustomed to -- at times, his phrasing is practically cold-weather -- but as an introduction to the Shreveport sound, this'll do fine. Now, about that insensitive handle…
I'm From Barcelona -- "We're From Barcelona"
I may look a spring chicken in my television appearances, but trust me, I've got some miles on the ol' odometer. Just to give you a for instance, I can remember when the C86 came out in the NME, and I also recall the circumstances well. The cassette that, theoretically, launched tweepop was meant as an intervention in the so-called "hip-hop wars"; half the magazine's staff didn't want to write about the funky stuff, and the legendary cassette was part of Operation Shutdown. Funny, then, that indiepop and hip-hop are, and have always been, my two favorite genres. Many long-time readers forcefully argue that I cut violent, misogynist, by-the-numbers Southern g-rap an unconscionable amount of slack. Nobody ever complains about the free passes I hand out to equally generic twee music -- and this strikes me as strange, especially as the form wilts under the glare of widespread public acceptance. I don't hate I'm From Barcelona, but I understand why I should, and I am willing to concede that the many spins I've given Let Me Introduce My Friends are the true indication of my moral weakness. See, back when indiepop started, there was nothing trendy about it. It was wimpy, and twee, and people only became involved in it because they loved pop music and wanted to be good songwriters. Now that indiepop has become a Pitchfork-approved "in thing", it's started to attract the same kind of opportunistic schmucks who would have joined grunge bands in 1994. It's easy to make a brain-dead indiepop song: just gather a bunch of friends around a microphone and do an inane three-chord cheer about something you experienced as a kid. The IRCE goes crazy for this stuff. Because I am me, I blame Sufjan Stevens: in future years, I think we're going to look back at the critical salivation over Illinois as the moment when the charlatans, plagiarists, and hucksters took over the form. My fey tweepop fellows find battle-rhyming distasteful, but there's a good argument to be made for quality control. Indiepop needs to develop a similar mechanism; otherwise, accountants with toy xylophones are going to hijack the entire subgenre.
Immaculate Machine -- "Jarhand"
Beautiful little Kathryn Calder arrived too late to play the bleeding heart show, but uncle Carl gave her her very own lead on "Adventures In Solitude", the penultimate track on Challengers. She killed the mic, of course; blood relation or not, you don't get to be Neko Case's understudy unless you've got mad skills. Back home in Vancouver, she brought her college band back together for another run, and, unwisely, the trio leads with a poorly-veiled Twin Cinema rewrite. The rest of Immaculate Machine's Fables escapes the long shadow of the New Pornographers, and really catches fire when Calder and guitarist Brooke Gallupe turn their voices against anxiety and small-town boredom. They're still as liable as not to make like overenthusiastic camp councilors, but they no longer believe they can defeat consumer capitalism by themselves. I mourn for their young-activist spirits, but the dash of disillusionment has made for sharper writing.
Interpol -- "The Heinrich Maneuver"
Crafty, upbeat power-pop; easily the equal of anything on Antics. Still, 2001 is now far enough in the rear-view mirror that it's fair to ask: exactly what made this band abandon the art-rock template they worked so effectively on their initial EPs and Turn On The Bright Lights? Back then, Interpol seemed to realize that Carlos Dengler and (especially) Sam Fogarino were the stars of the show, and that the two guitar players upfront were there for accenting, humorous sound FX, and clever asides. Their ferocious rhythm section made them distinct from the rest of the aspirants working the LES; if you got Paul Banks sufficiently inebriated, he'd probably admit that the pivotal moment in Interpol history was Fogarino's unlikely decision to ditch The Ton-Ups and pound the skins for this NYU youth gang. We're not in possession of our powers forever, and it's possible that neither Fogarino nor Dengler are capable of recapturing the imaginative fire they had in '01. But it could also be that they're getting crummy arrangement advice. It would be one thing if they'd decided they wanted to be a ska band or something. Since Bright Lights, all their adaptations have been far too conservative. Interpol, leave the safe musical gestures for the bands that can't play.
Iron & Wine -- "Boy With A Coin"
After Simon and Garfunkel gave you a few verses and choruses, and coo-coo-ca-chooed a bit, they often liked to settle into a somnolent acoustic groove for the fade. Sam Beam's songs always sound like S&G outros -- as if he'd sampled a bit of the release of a song from Bookends and tried to make an entire track out of it. I do not believe that this is a cynical attempt to cheaply conjure that S&G feeling. It's just all he knows how to do. Drones, repetitive acoustic guitar patterns, and whispered vox: that's his bag in full.
Jamie T -- "Calm Down Dearest", "Sheila"
Moneyed London kid talks street-tough over computer beats. His stories are patent fiction, but the details have the ring of truth: Jamie Treays knows he can't be a badass, so he's chosen to chronicle rude-boy (and girl) exploits instead. He's watched crime drama, so he's got a flimsy framework for his fiction. More importantly, he's ridden the buses and trains past the satellite-towns, and he's seen enough aimless teenage faces to invent elaborate yarns about their lives. Fools will compare Jamie T to Mike Skinner; really, they've got nothing in common beyond their software packages. Skinner spits rhymes about his disappointment in himself, rages, cautions, curses, pulls up his shirt to show off his injuries. Treays is a fabulist with a taste for violence; he has no scars on his face, and it's that very innocence that makes his project so frightening.
Jay-Z -- "Minority Report", "Blue Magic"
Whatever his merits as an emcee might be, Jay-Z's status as America's leading economic indicator ought to be unchallenged by now. It was therefore terrifying to watch the internationally-solvent superstar flossing in the "Blue Magic" clip with a roll of Euros. Jay was only making official what the federal government doesn't have the balls to say (though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was more than happy to volunteer it): the U.S. dollar is now barely worth the paper it's printed on. You'll no doubt remember that in Clinton-era videos it was obligatory for rappers to flash wads of greenbacks at the camera. That may still fly for Tum Tum, who seems to have never crossed the Dallas city limits. But Jay-Z is a jetsetter who hangs with Barbara Walters, and surely he caught the scent in the wind after paying seventy-five bucks for a cup of coffee in London. The Bush administration wants to assure you that the currency crash has nothing to do with the hundreds of billions dollars we've borrowed from China in order to finance our armed misadventures abroad. Never mind that the pace of military spending is unsustainable: you'd have to be a 2008 presidential candidate not to recognize that. We're now so far in hock to Asian governments that our entire economy only exists through their willingness to continue to purchase our debt. Now, it isn't in China's interest to pull the rug out from under us, because they're still finding their economic footing, and they need the export market. If our money collapses completely, they're going to be out a hefty sum, and that prospect can't please them. Every day the dollar slides, we wipe more real value off of their balance sheets. But those who take solace in China's predicament are missing the bigger picture: as long as our fate rests in the hands of foreign central bankers, it's no longer accurate for us to think of ourselves as an independent nation. If Hu Jintao woke up one morning and decided to call in the U.S. debt, we'd be totally screwed. All that money in your pocket, all your assets, everything you've saved, your mortgage, your stocks, whatever small shred of capital you've managed to get your hands on -- all of that would evaporate in an instant. And at that moment, the American dollar would cease to function as the world's currency of last resort: it would effectively be replaced by the much more powerful and valuable yuan. Hu doesn't even have to make that decision actively -- he can just patiently wait for allow international exchange rates to drift to the point where nobody in the world would want to hold an American dollar. That's the direction we're headed in, and if we continue to act like there is no price tag attached to bomb-manufacturing and empire-building -- if we continue to insist that we will spend "whatever it takes" to do battle with an abstract concept that cannot be defeated -- our debt is going to become so gigantic that default will become inevitable. Perhaps Jay-Z has already come to this conclusion. His team of economic advisers has likely encouraged him to diversify his currency portfolio, and he's got his share of precious metals salted away in a Zurich bank. The rest of us, whether patriotic or not, will live or die by the greenback. One more thing, and then we'll pick this up in four entries or so when we do John Mayer: with another national election knocking at our doors, it's worth recalling why we've destabilized our currency so dramatically. Not to educate ourselves, or to promote science or health, or to rebuild our roads or re-plant our farms, or to protect our seas or our airspace, or even to put a silly man on a silly moon; no, none of that. We took on this debt so we could quarter armies of occupation in foreign countries, wreck their cities, kill their soldiers and civilians, and line the pockets of the usual war profiteers. You'll be paying for it for the rest of your life, which will, in all likelihood, last years longer than Mr. Cheney's, Mr. Rumsfeld's, Mr. Wolfowitz's, and even the indestructible Mr. Bush's.
Jennifer Hudson -- "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going"
Is this even music? It was bad enough when Kelis was screaming on the track; at least that had some novelty appeal. Hudson yells her head off in a purely conventional manner: she thinks she's testifying, but mostly she's just hamming it up for the cheap seats. Recommended only to those who believe Carol Burnett's performance in Annie was the epitome of soul.
Jens Lekman -- "Sipping On The Sweet Nectar"
The Puff Daddy of Stockholm continues his wholesale pillaging of Sixties and Seventies AM radio staples -- this time out, he's sitting in the torn fusillage of "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and pretending to soar. Like Puffy, Lekman gets points for taste, and for presentation; also like Puffy, he's not much of a vocalist, and gets by on charm and understated enthusiasm. Other songs on Night Falls On Kortedala are better: much has been made about the letter to his lesbian friend's father, but I prefer the quiet studies of small-town Scandinavia and the one about the drive-in bingo. "Tonight's jackpot is a pig, hey, that's criminal/ G-42, ooh, I'm going diagonal": words worthy of that other famous Jens. I give him props for losing his mySpace page, too; that was courageous, even if a solitary Swede striking a blow versus technoconformity doesn't amount to much. Hey, what if they threw a social-networking site and nobody came?
J. Holiday -- "Bed"
Rappers and R&B singers are never going to cease referring to themselves as soldiers until the troops are home, martial law is lifted, and the Military Commissions Act is a distant memory. I don't like it, but I'm resigned to it. Still, some metaphors are more gruesome than others. Warrior language is to be expected when g-rappers rhyme about spraying the enemy crew with AK fire; when lover-men conflate battle-talk with pillow-talk, I draw the line. J. Holiday's invitation to the sack sounds so warm and sweet that you might think you're getting milk and cookies and a nice tuck-in. Until he croons the inadvertently-psychotic chorus, that is: "Love you till your eyes roll back/ Then I'm a rock your body/ Turn you over/ Love is war/ I'm your soldier/ I'm a put you to bed, bed, bed". Uh, no thanks, J., I'll just be over by the night-light with my body armor on.
Jibbs -- "King Kong"
Hmm, once again it's the holiday season, and I've misplaced my spirit of charity. Even after a year when I prayed to the hit radio more than I ever did -- and it delivered, as it always does -- I'm still crucifying its favorite sons. Oh, well, if you're looking for the "positive" Tris McCall, you might want to skip ahead to Say Anything and Shop Boyz. There's no use pretending that Jibbs is anything other than a temp to employ while Nelly is on ski vacation in Telluride, but he's already a sharper rhymer than Chingy, and this ode to his booming system is childishly effective. I didn't think he had another one in him after "Chain Hang Low"; good on him for proving me wrong.
John Mayer -- "Waiting On The World To Change"
In a sober moment, John Mayer might acknowledge that it's really irrelevant to him whether or not Ron Paul knows the Constitution. "One day our generation is going to rule the population", he (the pop star, not the Congressman) sings in "Waiting On The World To Change"; John, I remember thinking the same thing, and look what we've done with the responsibility. Mayer wants the war over but feels incapable of doing anything about it -- like many Americans, he's got a vague sense that demonstrations, petitions and angry weblog posts don't help; that the cards are already stacked against the peaceniks and will continue to be until there's a radical change in our governing philosophy. Yet he still believes that the game is worth playing -- that wresting control of the media from the corporations that "own the information" will raise our consciousness and protect us from further error. An optimist's proposition, to be sure, and a very American one, too. A cynic might point out that Aware Records is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Columbia Broadcasting/Sony BMG, a gigantic international conglomerate, and that we are only hearing Mayer's voice by the grace of the mainstream media. Still, it's safe to say that Mayer doesn't sit in at any board meetings, and the bigwigs are more than happy to bankroll some bestselling dissent. It's enough to drive a guilty young guitar player to drink, and then to confront his buddy from the Apple commercials -- another friendly face paid to front for an information-owning megacorporation -- with a radical-libertarian alternative. Never mind that Congressman Paul is about the last man on earth who'd ever slap a regulation on a broadcast entity: anybody who has watched the early debates now knows he's willing to stand up to bullies peddling crowd-pleasing conventional wisdom. His condemnation of U.S. interventionism has been unwavering, and if you had any misgivings about the Iraq War, some of his red-faced (but always even-keeled) denunciations had to hit you right in the sweet spot. Mayer is not the only young American to get excited by the paleoconservative -- his now-famous "money bomb" was essentially organized by political newbies. He's put his money where his mouth is, too, operating a decentralized and near-viral campaign: his most effective propaganda has been created, spread, and posted on YouTube and message-boards by volunteer enthusiasts with no formal relationship to Paul 2008 HQ. In interviews, the septuagenarian Congressman attributes his unlikely fundraising success to the notion that "freedom is popular", which is exactly what you'd expect the old fox to say. Me, I think it's more complicated than that; more elemental, too. In 2001, I was angry; in 2002, I was apprehensive; in 2003, I was reserving judgment. But for the past three years I have been ashamed to be American -- and I know I'm not alone. Ron Paul appeals to those who'd love to be able to wave Old Glory proudly, but who've been reticent about it ever since it became apparent that our international policy was bankrupting the treasury, killing and disenfranchising people with no stake in the conflict, and crippling the government's capacity to respond to natural disasters at home. He tells us what we desperately want to hear: that the precepts we were taught in kindergarten are not bullshit; that the flag we saluted does not stand for forcing our ideology on anybody at gunpoint; that the words we memorized in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution are alive and meaningful, and can still save us, if we really want them to. True guardians of the national spirit have, according to the Congressman, been alienated from power by a ruling class that has hijacked government, grown it to an untenable size, and disregarded its fundamental principles. In short, they're the unpatriotic jerks, not us. The Democratic Party has been trying to send that message for years now, but they're unable to; they're too compromised, they voted for the war before they voted against it, they didn't obstruct the passage of the Patriot Act, or the Military Commissions Act; they allowed the Bush Administration to read your e-mail, listen to your phone calls, and jail you indefinitely without trial; all in the name of counter-terrorism. They fiddled at the Reichstag Fire. It took a tiny beacon of consistency from Lake Jackson, Texas to convince us to stand up and take pride; that they stole that flag from us, and that we could take it back if we still felt it was worth anything. Like all successful political campaigns -- and Ron Paul 2008 has been successful whether he draws 1% of the vote in New Hampshire or not -- this is primarily an emotional appeal, rather than an intellectual one. I appreciate Congressman Paul's willingness to contextualize his claims, his sense of history, and his refusal to treat Americans as if we're economic idiots. But like John Mayer, I am a fan because any call to "restore our republic" will resonate deeply for me. Now, lest you think I've lost my marbles and abdicated my first responsibility to urban New Jersey, let me assure you that there's no way in hell I'm going to actually vote for Ron Paul. Just like you, I am prepared to hold my nose and pull the lever for Hillary Clinton. I owe my city and my county nothing less. But when I do, I'll be casting my lot with a Senator who beat the drum loudly for war, who will not repeal the Patriot Act, and who recently (and frighteningly) opted to designate the Iranian Republican Guard a terrorist organization. Moreover, I'll be voting for a candidate who has consistently misrepresented her initial position on intervention in Iraq -- unlike most allegedly-liberal Democrats, she did not support Senator Levin's attempt to limit the President's authority to wage war indiscriminately. So when she makes that campaign-trail claim that she advocated exploring diplomacy; friends, she's lying outright. She will say that she'll provide a better alternative to President Giuliani, President Romney, or (God forbid) President Thompson, and she is right about that. But when Paul worries that her election will occasion no meaningful shift in American foreign policy, I think it's hard to argue that he doesn't have a legitimate reason for his fears. Her latest quasi-plan keeps the armed forces in Iraq until 2013. As I wrote in the Jay-Z entry above, our treasury cannot sustain that kind of spending. You do not have to be a hard-money fundamentalist -- as the Congressman is -- to take a look at exchange rates and the current account deficit and recognize that we can't afford the War With Everybody anymore. And while it may have been the Austrian economist in him that convinced him to throw his three-cornered hat in the ring in the first place, the spirit that's seized him and animated his campaign didn't come from the Mises Institue. It's something very deep in the national consciousness, and it's armed him effectively against well-funded adversaries who will play neither fairly nor honestly. Ron Paul has already shown more guts than any politician in years, facing down hostile crowds and better-known opponents; speaking his mind and staying true to his principles. No, I won't vote for him. But I'll damned if I'm not going to cheer for him.
Joni Mitchell -- "Night Of The Iguana"Speaking of political music, Joni Mitchell returns from self-imposed exile with An Inconvenient Album. "We have poisoned everything", she croaks through her nicotine-tortured pipes, and that's just a warm-up for the rest of Shine. Mitchell even hauls "Big Yellow Taxi" out of mothballs -- which, to be fair, now seems eerily prescient -- and shows Adam Duritz and Amy Grant how to throw down on behalf of Mother Earth. Those who complain about her hectoring tone are missing the point: first, she remains funny as hell, and second, she's right. Sprawl-opponents in the Garden State will surely feel her when she asks the sun to "shine on fertile farmland buried under subdivisions". More problematic (some will surely say hypocritical) is her decision to enter into a partnership with the environmentally-questionable Starbucks Corporation. Commercial opportunities and distribution outlets for female singer-songwriters not that much younger than Congressman Paul are surely scanty. But I cannot help but think that the coffee company is getting more PR out of this co-branding arrangement than the living legend is.
Jose Gonzalez -- "Down The Line"
Solid, one-trick acoustic guitar player from Scandinavia; sings portentious doomsday stuff about trouble on the horizon. More spook than substance.
Junior Senior -- "Can I Get Get Get"
Starving artists in Williamsburg look enviously at countries whose federal budgets include provisions for rock 'n' roll tour support, video-making, and general coddling. During this year's CMJ Festival, you couldn't throw a rolling stone without hitting a foreign band adrift in Manhattan, gigbags stuffed with Ministry Of Culture money. Blowing government cash on publicity for Eskimo Joe is more constructive than using it to level Baghdad, but the recent output of prominent ministry-sponsored acts strikes me as a good argument against the welfare state. Junior Senior does the exact sort of music you'd expect the government to like: cutesy, hip, faux-multicultural junk, with melodies, beats, and arrangements so hokey and simplistic that even a department functionary can get down to them. Citizens of Copenhagen, this is what your tax money supports -- wretched, phony old-school R&B, delivered by a pair of Nordic goofbags with no discernable talent. Are you immigrant-bashing Danes really comfortable with that? Can a brotha get a "live free or die"?
Paris-based dance label Ed Banger isn't all that much more respectful to its U.S. sources than Junior Senior is, but at least they're not on the dole, so in my book they're at liberty to blow as many transatlantic raspberries as they want. The disposable but enjoyable "D.A.N.C.E."
