Archive for the What We’re Into – Recent Interest Category

The New Yorker once called the Mountain Goats’ frontman John Darnielle “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist”. Here, the 50-year-old sometime novelist is in masterly form, reappraising his teenage goth years. The hints of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds in opener Rain in Soho aside, piano, woozy sax and sumptuous Prefab Sprout AOR combine with lyrics about Portuguese goth metal, an unlikely juxtaposition that emphasises the songs’ mix of wry insight and black humour.

Jim Avett is a natural-born storyteller. You shouldn’t expect to have a seat at the dining room table with the man and have a conversation relegated to small talk and light commenting on current events. It’s more probable (by a long shot) that between loading forkfuls of green beans, you’ll seamlessly find yourself learning about a World War II submarine battle and the subsequent shark attack. Or a Victorian era train conductor. Or the little known backstory about the real life of the DiCaprio-played character in The Revenant.

He may appear to be a thick-bearded Seventies outlaw-country throwback, but make no mistake: Chris Stapleton is a soul singer, with a preternaturally creaky voice that can turn wizened or brawny, full of pained howls and distended vowels. His 2015 solo debut, Traveller, transformed him from an eclectically accomplished Nashville songwriter (for acts from Alison Krauss and Ashley Monroe to Adele; those are just the A’s) into an icon of artistic cred in a town starved for one.

Robert Cray has been bridging the lines between blues, soul and R&B for the past four decades, with five Grammy wins and over 20 acclaimed albums. For his latest project, Robert Cray & Hi Rhythm, the Blues Hall of Famer traveled to Memphis with his friend, renowned Grammy Award winning producer Steve Jordan, to make a classic soul album with Hi Rhythm, the band that helped create that sound.

Less obviously haunted by the influence of George Clinton than its predecessor, Damn still sounds rooted in early-70s soul. There are nods towards the luscious, harmony-laden mellowness of the Stylistics and the Chi-Lites (opener Blood even features a warped version of the kind of spoken-word monologue found on the latter’s single Have You Seen Her?), to the stentorian bellow that opens Curtis Mayfield’s If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go and to the dense sound of psychedelic soul – by way of Outkast – on Pride. If it seems a more straightforward listen than To Pimp a Butterfly, there’s a cheering sense that this doesn’t equate to a lessening of musical ambition. There’s none of that album’s wilfully jarring quality – its sudden, anxious musical lurches and abrupt, short-circuiting leaps between genres – but the tracks on Damn still feel episodic and expansive: XXX alone goes from massed harmony vocals to a downbeat rap over glitching, stuttering samples, to a thrilling moment where it explodes in a mass of sirens, screeching tyres and heaving basslines, to a dramatic drop in tempo and an understated guest vocal from Bono in the space of four minutes. Rather than angsty disruptions, there’s a more subtle sense of disquiet here. The heavy-lidded drift of Yah would sound relaxed were it not for the presence of two grating bass notes that fit with the lyrics’ prickly unease, where images of contented family life rub up against “theories and suspicions”. Meanwhile, on the brilliant Pride, troubled lyrical shifts from modesty and confusion to self-belief – “I can’t fake humble because your ass is insecure” – are mirrored by a rap electronically treated so that its pitch gradually speeds up and slows down amid the woozy atmospherics and falsetto vocals. Elsewhere, there’s brilliant, dexterous storytelling on Duckworth – the saga of how Lamar’s father narrowly avoided being murdered by a criminal called Anthony, complete with an eye-popping, no-spoilers twist – and another demonstration of Lamar’s nonpareil ability to write songs about the pressures of wealth and success that somehow manage to elicit the listener’s sympathy rather than a roll of the eyes.

Towards the end of Pure Comedy’s 13-minute centrepiece track, Josh Tillman offers a glum assessment of the album’s commercial chances. His career’s current status, he claims, is under threat. “I’m beginning to begin to see the end of how it all goes down between them and me / Some 10-verse chorus-less diatribe plays as they all jump ship,” he sings, eight verses into the 10-verse chorus-less diatribe of Leaving LA. “‘I used to really like this guy / This new shit really kinda makes me wanna die.’” Even if it seems unlikely that Pure Comedy is actually going to end Tillman’s career – numerous excitable reviews certainly suggest the opposite – you can see still why he might have had some trepidation about releasing it. On the surface, it doesn’t sound that different from his 2015 breakthrough album, I Love You, Honeybear. A little starker and more subtle, perhaps – the wilfully cluttered Phil Spector-isms of its predecessor are largely confined to one track, Things It Would Have Been Helpful to Know Before the Revolution – but the main musical influence audibly remains the records Elton John made in his first flush of superstardom.

The title of Aimee Mann’s latest solo effort, her ninth, registers like a punch to the gut. In a world full of self-consciously clever and willfully obtuse album titles, Mental Illness is the equivalent of washing someone’s mouth out with soap. It’s not something you mull over or analyze in search of some hidden subtext or meaning. Instead, it smacks of cold reality. Mental Illness lays its hurt and sadness out so effectively that it’s hard to completely accept it as pure fiction. But even if we’re to take Mann’s word for it that these songs were created with some personal distance,

Oddisee, a Maryland native and Brooklyn transplant, has been one of the country’s top independent hip-hop producers for more than half a decade, amassing a sizeable fan base out of the rap nostalgists and beatheads attracted to his mellow, expansive instrumentals. But his new record marks a first; the rapping on The Iceberg—fluid, dynamic and above all, thoughtful—finally matches the pull and urgency of his production. In the past, a solemn chorus of horns and bass, like the one on Iceberg opener “Digging Deep,” may have outstripped the lyrical overlay. Here, though, the music provides a backdrop for Oddisee to explain the album’s premise: Our actions are only comprehensible once you understand the circumstances that have shaped our respective characters. The Iceberg zeroes in on those circumstances, while serving up another selection of near-perfect beats. On the clear standout, “You Grew Up,” one verse traces the divergent paths of Oddisee and a white friend who grows up to become a murderous police officer; another examines a man whose self-loathing leads him to radical Islam. Oddisee offers a complex portrait of both men, and his storytelling is complemented by sharp lyrical asides. The Iceberg uses dynamic narratives to avoid the sanctimony that has stained the genre, pairing Odd’s always-reliable board work with a new commitment to lyrical exploration.

The Shins’ freaky fifth album, Heartworms, teems with psychedelia that’ll please the lava-lamp-and-incense crowd. From Magical Mystery Tour-styled sound effects (“Painting a Hole”) to hypnotic island vibes (“The Fear”), the project contains some of the band’s most adventurous music yet. And songs like “Name For You” and “Cherry Hearts” prove Mercer still pens some of indie-rock’s most addictive pop melodies.Mercer’s lyrical luster has diminished somewhat since the band’s halcyon days, but he still flashes poetic brilliance often on Heartworms.