From my latest Sheep & Goats, over at Burnside Writers Collective:
You don’t look to the Managing Editor of Entertainment Weekly for music tips, but it was still jaw-dropping to read this in his post-Grammy editorial: “Mumford & Sons’ victory established folk rock as the most exciting and artful movement in music right now.” Do people really think that? Apparently so — EW ran a cover story on the “movement” the following week, and worship music has started biting the Mumfords’ style like they’re a new U2. Nothing against the Mumfords, who basically resemble what you’d get if Coldplay replaced ZZ Top in Back to the Future III, but surely folk rock is only the most exciting and artful music played by acoustic instruments, covered byEntertainment Weekly (a Time Warner company), and directed at English-speaking brains — if that. (I’d still take jazz, fwiw.)
Where I live, in the northern suburbs of Chicago, the winner of Most Exciting And Artful Musical Movement is currently banda from the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. Like English folk music, banda’s been around for a long time and is enjoying one of its periodic resurgences. If you’re seeking acoustic radio hits, the big swinging horn sections of Roberto Tapia, La Arrolladora Banda El Limón, and Banda El Recodo get as much radio play as the Mumfords, the Lumineers, and their ilk. One of our seven (!) Spanish-language FM stations recently changed its slogan from “Más Y Más Música” to “Banda Y Más,” which seems significant, though several other Latino genres are hot on banda’s heels. This is the cultural bounty of demographic shift, of course; the suburbs where I live and work are both younger and more Hispanic than the country at large. But if the last presidential election taught us anything, it’s that diversificación is sweeping the nation, so with any luck your radio waves and public library will soon carry some of the following, if they don’t already. (Or you can click on most of the titles below to stream them.)
(... and then you get reviews of the astounding Torres, the suave Felicianos, the dreamy Veronica Falls who don't really fit, the Dovells-like Los Caporales de Chihuahua, and more...)
Back in August I gave myself a birthday present: 26 songs from my birth year*, one for each letter of the alphabet, only one of which I'd heard before that month, and they all had to be good or at least indelible in some way. They also had to be streamable -- I wanted to hear them. Turns out I didn't find a Q or an X (I can't do Rush's "Xanadu" every year), so I supplemented with some others and wound up with 27. They make for a pretty good playlist -- so here's the list with Youtube links, rescued from my Facebook page. *The Year of Impact Rule applies. 1977 IN NIGERIAN POP: "Arabade" by Sir Victor Uwaifo and the Titibitis. This is probably a minor work (reminds me of Sly's "Dance to the Music") but I dig the rhythm, horns, and brutal shrieking keyboard layered on top of each other -- plus, it's hard to resist a song where the singer tells you, "The song goes like this." First big hit was in 1965, and Ronnie Graham sez: "By the 1980s Victor had established his own TV studio with his weekly half-hour show going out to all corners of Nigeria." 1977 IN LATIN DISCO: "Black Pot" by Santa Esmerelda. This is the B-side of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" -- which you know, you've seen Kill Bill! -- and it chronicles Leroy Gomez's swirling mystical trip into a "land of make believe". The swirls are portrayed by Gomez's sax and somebody else's electric guitar darting around a bunch of horns. 1977 IN SHOCK ROCK: "Child Eaters" by Rubber City Rebels. This song is about exactly what you think it's about, though it's very tastefully done. Before the Black Keys were born, Akron had these guys and the Bizarros, who I'll get to later. "Child Eaters" stands in the proud pro-cannibalism tradition of the Buoys' "Timothy", and its fake Brit accent and creepy spoken interlude foreshadow Kix's "Yeah Yeah Yeah". 1977 IN GLAM METAL: "Delirious" by Heavy Metal Kids. This performance kicked off an episode of the German TV show DISCO, which started airing in 1971, which should give some idea of the omnivorous reach and breadth of the term "disco". (Wiki assures us, "The name of the show was devised before disco as a musical style existed.") Other performers on this particular episode included: * Howard Carpendale - Nimm den nächsten Zug * Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Anything that's Rock 'n' Roll * Bonnie Tyler - Heaven * Peter Maffay - Andy, Träume sterben jung * Graham Bonnet - It's all over now Baby Blue * Didi Zill - Rock 'n' Roll made in Germany * Uriah Heep - Lady in black 1977 IN POMP ROCK: "Down To You" by the Strapps. I guess it's pomp rock, because it seems to fall halfway between glam and prog -- keyboard solo that sounds like Keith Emerson with an editor, multiple instrumental textures but still concise, even at six and a half minutes, and very very loud. (Martin Popoff says, "The new sound is unlike any other act I can think of," and then he lists, like, six other bands.) 1977 IN NAZARETH: "Expect No Mercy" by Nazareth. I wonder if Paul Ryan rocks out to this when he formulates budget proposals OH SNAP 1977 IN VINTAGE COUNTRY DISCO: "The Feelin's Right" by Narvel Felts. This #19 hit from his album The Touch of Felts - eek! - floats and flutters with erotic expectation, and I hear more than a hint of anxiety too. Felts sounds thrilled by his own vibrato, even as it makes him nervous. 1977 IN GERMAN ITALO DISCO IF THAT'S A THING: "Get on the Funk Train" by Munich Machine. Basically this is a '77 Donna Summer album without Donna Summer -- Moroder & Bellotte produced, personnel looks the same, and the Midnite Ladies sing "Love to Love You Baby" twice. Not much singing on this song, though -- a 15 minute disco suite with three or four memorable themes, the precursor to Quad City DJs big hit and heir to... some old-timey song where people dance on trains, I guess. There must be at least one of those. 1977 IN LATIN FUNK: "Happy as a Fat Rat in a Cheese Factory" by Mongo Santamaria. If you liked that big Fania salsa compilation back in 2011, here's the least Fania-salsa-ish person on it. There's a wild guitar solo halfway through, harmonically and sonically at odds with the surrounding horns. 1977 IN COUNTRY WEEPERS: "If You See Me Getting Smaller" by Waylon Jennings. This is a beautiful Jimmy Webb song that I've posted before, although now it occurs to me that it might just be Waylon explaining the principle of linear perspective to an incredulous Willie Nelson. 1977 IN INEXPLICABLE CHART POP: "Jeans On" by David Dundas. Or should I say LORD David Dundas? Wiki sez #3 in England, #17 here, #1 in Germany, originally a jingle for Brutus Jeans, sampled by Fatboy Slim, and can't we all relate to its sentiment? 1977 IN EASY LISTENING: "Kyrila" by Demis Roussos. So the ex-singer of Greek prog band Aphrodite's Child records this song in German, and its parent EP scrapes the bottom of the British singles charts. And from Wiki I learn this: "In 1993, he released Insight to general acclaim, although his attempt at a rap song, 'Spleen', which appeared on the album, was generally seen as a regrettable idea." 1977 IN COUNTRYPOLITAN: "Love's Explosion" by Margo Smith. This has a big winding melody that allows her yodeler's voice to swoop all over the place, though there's no actual yodeling here. Produced by Norro Wilson, who -- fun fact! -- would also work on Kenny Chesney's early stuff. 1977 IN BRAZILIAN FUNK: "Melo de Lula" by Banda Uniao Black. Atmospheric! 1977 IN PUNK (oh yeah, that happened then): "No Heart" by the Vibrators. A poor millworker comes home every day to find his wife neglecting him for the TV. If this was Gene Watson, he'd turn to drink. But since the guy's a punk, he shoots her. (At least I think that's what happens.) (I can't believe I'd never heard these guys before.) 1977 IN TV SOUNDTRACKS: "O.K.?" by Julie Covington, Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Sue Jones-Davies of ROCK FOLLIES OF '77. Plot summary: "Anna and Dee both write songs, but Dee's pop/rock song 'O.K.'" -- sort of a proto- "I Do Not Hook Up" -- "is chosen over Anna's more literary effort. Thus begins a growing rivalry between the two friends." Has anyone ever seen this show? The song's really good, and it hit #10 on the British chart. 1977 IN DOWNTOWN CLASSICAL: "Piano" by Morton Feldman. This might misstate their compositional strategies completely, but for me Feldman's music is like a slowed down, quieted down Cecil Taylor. Both are compelling for their harmonic language, which is dissonant but not haphazardly so (you hear things repeat and themes emerge), and for their rhythms, which are extremely precise but do their best to hide it. If Taylor's found ways to give improv the integrity of composition, Feldman developed techniques to give his composition the character of improv. Anyway, a palate cleanser. Part 2/3 is actually my favorite, but I'm sure you can find it if you're as compelled as I am. 1977 IN CHRISTIAN GUITAR HEROISM: "Rejoice" by Phil Keaggy. It's just an OK song until the extremely fluid guitar solo starts around 3 or 4 minutes. Mark Allan Powell calls him "probably the most versatile guitarist who has ever lived, having taken on a wide variety of styles, mastering them all, and putting his own identifying stamp on them. It is easy to imagine both Jimi Hendrix and Andre Segovia smiling down on him, nodding their heads in approval, albeit with reference to completely different projects." 1977 IN JAZZ: "Song of Songs" by Woody Shaw and Anthony Braxton. After a swoony introduction with Shaw's trumpet, Braxton's clarinet, Arthur Blythe's alto, and Muhal Richard Abrams's piano smearing all over the place, the band launches into a waltz full of fine solos and cheek. The interval between the third and the flat six features prominently; nice changes in the second half of the head. Cecil McBee's bass sometimes sounds like a foghorn. 1977 IN SOUTHERN METAL: "Shame" by Hydra. Speedy! 1977 IN SPACE DISCO: "Tango in Space" by Space A French outfit headed by classical musician and early synth adopter Didier Marouani, Space got very popular in the USSR, in part because (according to this interview) the state TV channel would play stuff like the "Tango" underneath all their space footage. Space got to play Russia in the early '80s and did very well, and in 1992 (can this be true?) performed the first major concert in Red Square. "Tango" is not a tango at all, but one of those clean, sparse jams whose pleasure comes from hearing every instrument interact. You can practically see the different musical lines intertwining. 1977 IN REGULAR DISCO: "Tattoo Man" by Denise McCann. In the RS Record Guide, Dave Marsh gave this album one star and declared McCann "in no danger of being mistaken for Donna Summer" (who, let's face it, basically owned 1977 along with her producers). But this song is really good! It's a tightly wound portrait of a pimp, made scarier because it doesn't overstate its scariness. Horns, background singers, occasional synths, burbling beat, and and a great guitar riff -- it could be any high-flying minor key disco strut, until you notice that it can't escape the minor key. Whenever the "Tattoo Man!" chorus comes around, I expect it to resolve major, but it doesn't, and the mood of tension is inescapable until the fadeout, with McCann babbling "Gotta get away from the Tattoo Man" with increasing desperation. 1977 IN COUNTRY GOSPEL: "Uncloudy Day" by Willie Nelson. A #4 country hit, voice and guitar inhabiting the song like comfortable cotton, the opening guitar solo just a little bit off-kilter.
1977 IN CROSSOVER MINIMALISM: "Victor's Lament" by Philip Glass. Christgau gave the North Star album an A- and said Glass achieved his rhythms "through mechanical repetitions cunningly modified." Which you can hear here -- built over the same ostinato Sonny and Cher used in "The Beat Goes On", this is basically a rondo that keeps returning to the high keyboard theme after it modifies the midrange keyboard theme, I think just by adding a note each time and letting the rhythmic chips fall. 1977 IN POST-VELVETS PROTO-PUNK: "White Screen Movies" by the Bizarros. A raver, from their split album From Akron with the cannibalistic Rubber City Rebels (see above). 1977 IN EXPLICABLE CHART POP: "You've Got Me Runnin'" by Gene Cotton. Like a big shiny hug from your dentist. 1977 IN ZIGLIBITHY: "Zibote" by Ernesto Dje-Dje. From the Ivory Coast; Ronnie Graham says, "This is a Bete dance rhythm which [Dje-Dje] sought to modernise, thus demonstrating to fellow Ivorians that they should make increasing commercial use of their indigenous musical heritage. Ziglibithy was a highly rhythmic dance which Dje-Dje mastered completely. He would stop and dance sideways, shaking his shoulders to an irresistible sound which found appreciative audiences around the country." Bibliography: The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll, Chuck Eddy, Da Capo 1997. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, Joel Whitburn, Billboard 2010. British Hit Singles 8th Edition, Paul Gambaccini, Jonathan Rice, Tim Rice, Guinness 1991. The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal Volume 1: the Seventies, Martin Popoff, Collector's Guide 2003. The Da Capo Guide to Contemporary African Music, Ronnie Graham, Da Capo 1988. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, Mark Allan Powell, Hendrickson 2002. Joel Whitburn's Hot Dance/Disco 1974-2003, Joel Whitburn, Record Research 2004. Plus Discogs, ILX, Wikipedia, and robertchristgau.com.
Given the choice between traditional gospel and the modern, R&B-flavored variety, I’ll choose the modern stuff nearly every time. And Damita does the future really well, lacing her odes to resilience and faith with stuttering electro-snare fillips and synths that signal a freestyle revival. But the real revival comes four songs in, on the more traditional throwback “Amazing God”, where Damita turns hurricane -- whipping the song's opulent cheer into such an unpredictable force that I’m never sure whether to laugh, cry, or pull off the road for safety.
It wouldn't surprise me if a superior gospel compilation was released under the radar this year -- maybe something like Mike McGonigal's rarities collections for Tompkins Square -- but the truth is, 2011 was a very good year for modern gospel, at least on a song-by-song basis. Here's what I wrote at Sheep & Goats:
These comps can be exhausting, and while I still wouldn’t wanna listen to both discs all the way through — too much joy! (also too many ballads) — this edition is far less exhausting than others. It cherrypicks from albums worth owning (Israel Houghton, Mary Mary) and rescues great songs from overlong indulgences (Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond). It wisely includes “Well Done”, Deitrick Haddon’s homage to Prince’s “Purple Rain”, and “Heaven”, Forever Jones’s homage to Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven”. Wailing electric guitars are everywhere; stellar musicianship appears to be the price of admission. Well, that and delight in the presence of the Lord — and who couldn’t use more of that in their playlist, even if you can’t abide on that particular mountaintop for 30 songs 2.2 hours straight?
Way better than the Joyful Noise soundtrack. Like, WAY better. I'm still not ready for Christian interpolations of Chris Brown songs.
She's still got it! Some lines from my PopMatters review of How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? that I enjoyed writing:
Good Lord, there are moments here as bloodcurdling as anything she’s ever done.
But O’Connor doesn’t settle for [Tori] Amos’s quiet creepiness—she embodies the avenging Spirit, building and building in intensity, multitracking the different timbres of her voice into a caterwaul that combines the best elements of an air raid siren and a slap in the face.
What’s happening is that O’Connor the lyricist is getting better and better at apparent artlessness. Much like John Lennon on Double Fantasy or Lou Reed on New Sensations, O’Connor writes songs that seem like simple conduits for her personality. Her lyrics don’t put on airs and they invite derision. She writes lines that nobody aiming for the Great Irish Songbook would ever allow themselves. So, you know, her Holy Spirit really digs Energizer commercials.
But the more desperately she clings to the promise of eternal bliss, the more poignant her songs become.
Fortunately for Sinéad the songwriter, she’s working with Sinéad the vocalist, who possesses a divine gift: on any given note, she can choose from four or five different voices, all unmistakably Sinéad. Multitudes of multitudes! She moves from whispers to bleats and back again, sometimes within the same syllable.
There’s hardly anything in the way of riffs or solos, nothing to distract from the tumbling cascades of Sinéads.
Every once in a while I listen to -- rarely see -- a new musical, and it's often a great experience. The Drowsy Chaperone soundtrack was my favorite album of whichever year, and Urinetown always makes me avoid flushing the toilet for a couple days. Add another one to the list!
#7 Original Cast The Book of Mormon (Sh-K-Boom)
From Burnside and PopMatters, here's an article that stirred up little controversy, except in the "why's he keep going on about U2?" department. BECAUSE IF YOU SEE A U2 SHOW YOU HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT IT, that's why. They spare no expense!
THE BOOK OF MORMON: CCM ALBUM OF 2011
If you’re not familiar with the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, beware: what follows contains heresy and spoilers, and I’m not sure which is worse.
As a straight white 30-something Christian, I’m required by law to be a U2 fan. Over the summer my wife and I cheerfully paid a large sum of money to see U2’s impressive stadium show. From our seats on the roof of the stadium, we had a great view of that famous U2 contraption that served as the stage’s centerpiece, a gigantic spaceship/TV that magnified the band and broadcast all sorts of Important Messages about Social Issues. And God bless ‘em — did you know U2 sprung Burmese dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi out of prision? At least I think that’s how it went down. There she was on the spaceship’s screen, wishing us well and thanking us for raising our voices for justice, while Bono stretched his arms wide and sang “Walk On”. True, “Walk On” has zero cool guitar parts, but in that moment we were all citizens of the world.
I know, I know, it’s counterproductive to make fun of U2 for being huge and using their power for good. So I’ve come to an important conclusion: U2 are not vainglorious idolaters who deserve to be burned at the stake, but they could use a good poke in the eye with a stick. (Metaphorically.) And Christians should be doing the poking! After all, we have to put up with U2’s most annoying and hilarious baggage. You know how many times I’ve heard good-hearted brothers and sisters favorably compare U2’s stadium shows, attended almost exclusively by white people who paid large admission fees, to worship services?* Or how for 20 years we’ve been bombarded by Contemporary Christian Music that rips off the boys’ chiming guitars and soaring vocals? Much as I enjoy seeing Bono serenade seas of white faces with the MLK anthem “Pride (In the Name of Love)”, I bristle at how he equates acts of charity with grand gestures, as though he won’t settle for anything less than freeing Nobel laureates or saving Africa. Bono’s good works do not inspire me to dream bigger; they make me feel like I’m out on the stadium roof, looking in. But since we Christians are too nice to call him on this, leave it to Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon:
“Just like Bono, I am Africa! I flew in here and became one with this land.”
Later in the song comes this stirring group affirmation, sung by a bunch of white people:
“Africans are African, but we are Africa!”
“I Am Africa” is just one of the many Mormon songs that skewers mainstream Christian hangups. Right off the bat in “Hello!”, as young Latter Day Saints practice their evangelizing (while sounding like the telephone kids in Bye Bye Birdie), Cunningham (Josh Gad) spazzes through his own improvised sales pitch — “I’ve got a free book written by JESUS!” — only to receive the reprimand, “No, no, Elder Cunningham! That is NOT how we do it! Just stick to the approved dialogue.” For anyone who’s ever sat through an evangelism seminar or applied Best Practices to develop their church’s Mission Statement, this uncomfortable corporate-ese should hit close to home.
The show goes on to depict Cunningham and his higher-achieving counterpart, Elder Price (Andrew Rannells), departing on a mission trip to a cartoon Uganda. Because Mormon was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park) and Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), these Ugandans have a great ear for catchy tunes and English profanity. In words that modernize (let’s say) the Old Testament’s tradition of lament, the Ugandans hurl curses at God for condemning them to a world teeming with AIDS, warlords, baby rape, female genital mutilation, and maggots in their scrotums. Naturally, they sing their rage to a chipper faux-African tune straight from The Lion King.
In the softshoe shuffle “Turn It Off”, our nice Mormon boys celebrate the proud Christian tradition of repressing their problems and desires. (“Imagine that your brain is filled with tiny boxes / Then find the box that’s gay and CRUSH IT!”) During a whiplash Church history “All American Prophet”, the angel Moroni tells Joseph Smith to hide his famous golden plates, even if doing so causes people to question the plates’ existence. Recalling Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor parable, the angel explains, “This is sort of what God is going for.” Meanwhile, the butt rocker “Man Up” evokes neckless Mars Hill pastor and mixed martial arts fan Mark Driscoll — and, by extension, those Christians who fetishize the sufferings of Jesus (“He crawled up on that cross and he stuck it out…”). And that’s just Act One!
Here’s where I make two uncomfortable admissions. I haven’t actually seen the Broadway show ofMormon, Tony’s Best Musical 2011, because I’m a cheap Lutheran and I understand they make you pay to get in. Also, I don’t know much about Mormonism’s indigenous American take on Christianity. For thumbnail history, listening to “All American Prophet” and “I Believe” is way more entertaining than Wikipedizing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The songs make me want to read the actual Book of Mormon, just to see how all that crazy stuff about different planets is worded. (This should please Church leadership.) But for spiritual insight and prophetic discomfort, no 2011 album spoke to my faith like The Book of Mormon cast recording.
That wasn’t for lack of trying. The year’s Christian music was rich in spiritual insight, at least for those fortunate enough to find the good stuff:
The brutal Beautiful Monster, by St. Louis rapper and ex-hustler Thi’sl, wove gunshot noise and thug tropes into pinpoint social critique, and made me re-evaluate Gucci Mane.
And for all its beauty, Mary Mary’s Something Big was messy with the paradoxes that define Christian life.
Secular artists as diverse as Paul Simon, Brad Paisley, Alexi Murdoch, and David Banner contemplated the divine and asked their audiences to follow.
Richard Smallwood and the Blind Boys of Alabama turned out excellent gospel sets, while Cortni, the Ambassador, Deitrick Haddon, and Tedashii made exciting singles.
Somebody must have released a good worship music album. (Faith is the conviction of things not seen.)
But man, The Book of Mormon… In a sense, Lopez, Parker, and Stone have the same privileged relationship to Christianity that Jon Stewart has to journalism. They’ve carved out spaces where they can entertain masses by throwing stones at the “real” discourse. They have the freedom to cuss and break the rules. If they manage to slip in some excellent points that the mainstream won’t allow itself, that’s just icing on the cake that they’re having and eating. Also worth noting, their work is wildly successful — it’s not like these guys are wild-eyed prophets living in desert poverty. I don’t want to oversell the spiritual import of a show that’s essentially one hilarious provocation after another.
On the other hand, maybe that’s a clue to where more CCM should aim. Little of the year’s CCM provoked anyone, and only Thi’sl, Mary Mary, and some of the general market guys made me laugh at their audacity. While hilarity isn’t something I’d expect from the mystics of the bunch (BtoC, Gungor), if you’ve made it your job to describe how God is working in everyday life, which often sucks, you should try to communicate the comedy of our human predicament. If Depeche Mode have taught us anything, it’s that God’s got a sick sense of humor.
Act Two is where Mormon really gets audacious. Elder Price escapes Uganda for sunny Orlando, leaving the spazzy Cunningham to convert his jaded, baby-raping flock. And wouldn’t you know it? Cunningham succeeds by “Making Things Up Again” — essentially writing a whole new Book of Cunningham, in which Joseph Smith learns to rape frogs instead of babies, and evil genital mutilator Brigham Young gets his face turned into a clitoris. Ewoks and Boba Fett play important roles. You can debate the merits of improving Ugandans’ lives by lying to them; such a tactic would be more patronizing than anything Bono’s ever done.
But Mormon isn’t a prescription for real life. It’s more a thought experiment. Just after Cunningham starts lying to the Ugandans by adding Ewoks to his holy book, Price sings about his “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream”. He imagines himself consigned to eternal torment for lying about cookies and abandoning his mission. Price’s vision will ring true to anyone raised in a fundamentalist faith, but it’s no more Biblical than the Ewoks. Mormon makes the excellent point that believers constantly write our own books of faith, that we’re all “Making Things Up Again”, and that no orthodoxy will speak beyond its original audience without becoming perverted. Faith is about how you handle the perversions.
Near the end of the show, the converted Ugandans create an endearing all-hands-on-deck Bible school program for the visiting Church leadership. You can imagine the leadership’s response to all this talk of frog sex and clit faces. (Seriously — I haven’t seen the show, so I have to imagine.)The Book of Mormon’s question is, how do we respond when someone adds to our orthodoxy, whatever it might be? If we worship traditional country music (for instance), can we welcome Taylor Swift or Lady Antebellum? If we’re lifelong Protestants, what do we say when Mormons want to join Christianity’s mainstream, or become President? And if we’re CCM fans, how do we handle a musical that speaks seriously to our faith while cracking profane jokes? CCM artists should challenge themselves to ask these kinds of questions way more often.
Chopped and screwed Christian rap exists! It's creepy for, like, a minute, and then it gets sort of tedious, but hey -- that's what you expect with chopped and screwed rap, right? Anyway, call me rockist, but Thi'sl's music sounds to me like the equivalent of "edgy" Christian metal back in the day -- just as bracing and calculated-to-offend-parents as its secular inspirations. (Which reminds me, my best music writing this year was probably this long take on three Christian metal albums from 1990 -- Holy Soldier, Stryper, and Extreme. If you read it, you'll be in very select company!)
(Way better than Talib Kweli's Gutter Rainbows, which, I'll admit, did feature some amazing rapping.)
Besides all the Jesus talk, there are two basic differences between Thi’sl’s stupendous slap of ghetto noise and comparable epics from Jeezy or Gucci: 1) no cussing, and 2)-count-’em-two Momma songs. Good call — Momma songs sound even better amid a bunch of music that Momma would HATE. There’s a lot of ugliness here, especially in the first half, more ugliness than the bigger-name Christian rappers on Reach Records allow themselves — beats built from gunshots and guttural “HUNH!”s, layers of synth screams offset by chimes and theremins and all sorts of melodramatic hokum. Even Thi’sl’s chorus hooks revel in his worldly trappings: “Let them guns go POW!” “Money! Money! Money! Mo’… / Trynna stack that paper from the ceiling to the flo’!” This is radical stuff for holy hip-hop, but it’s also loose and refreshing, not at all concerned with toeing somebody else’s imaginary line of acceptability.
Over all this noise, X-hustler Thi’sl rasps out gritty details, bloody bodies in the streets and babies searching through rubble for their Moms. His mission is letting brothers and sisters know he’s legit — a tactic that gets old pretty quickly when Rick Ross uses it — and then showing them that Jesus is the way out. And here’s the great thing: that contrast actually helps him aesthetically. It mixes up the light and shadow in his songs, lets them breathe. When the martyrs in his crime stories proclaim, “I signed up to DIE,” their freedom speaks louder than their bravado.
This is Christian music that comes out of the trenches, like Holy Soldier: “We born in the ghetto, we raised in the ghetto / They call us rock stars ‘cause we wave heavy metal.” Thi’sl speaks to the unchurched first, and if the choir wants to listen — well, he won’t wave his heavy metal at them, at least. He might even make them rethink the value of those nihilistic Jeezy and Gucci epics. Like, maybe those secular guys aren’t merely reveling in their hustler tales. Maybe they’re showing us how the hopelessness of the hustle is wrapped up with the revelry, depicting why it’s so easy to get sucked into the game. At its best, gangsta rap is nihilism that lays bare a nihilistic real-world system. It sounds exhilarating, and it can make you feel like some sort of amoral superhero. And Thi’sl’s music is ultimately different for one reason: he found a Way Out.
Well THIS is a little heartbreaking: an impressively virtuosic, catchy, and thoughtful band releases their first album in 13 years on a MAJOR LABEL, and it goes nowhere -- a couple weeks on the CCM chart and the folk chart (I didn't even know Billboard had one of those!) and that's it. I never once heard "Nehemiah (Build a Wall)" on my dadrock radio station! What on earth was Jive doing? Britney didn't need their help! Chris Brown is categorically evil, mostly because of that "Wet the Bed" song. I guess Hot Chelle Ray and Cage the Elephant are becoming omnipresent, so maybe that's where Jive's promotional lasers were trained. Anyway, not to get all Friday Night Lights on you, but of all the albums on this list, Burlap to Cashmere is the one I imagine would appeal to the largest cross-section of music fans. Meaning you!
(Way better than Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues.)
#12 Burlap to Cashmere Burlap to Cashmere (Jive/Essential)
If there’s room in your pop heaven for Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, the Indigo Girls, and Fleet Foxes, you oughta make room for Burlap to Cashmere, mostly-acoustic choogaloogers with a thing for lyrics both inscrutable and sincere. Their self-titled second album even OPENS by emulating the Foxes’ wide-eyed wonder: chiming guitars and tenor voices advise, “Keep your eyes on the new day / You and me, we are the same / Shout it out at the horizon / And don’t forget to change your name.” (No idea what that means, though it reminds me of the end of The NeverEnding Story, when Bastian shouts the Empress’s new name out the window.) From there the music gets fleeter and foxier, as the hard-strumming trio builds into a weird-time-signatured ode to… vacation? Singer/songwriter Steven Delopoulos is at ease, the ocean’s near, and the sun is sinking; he keeps telling his baby, “Don’t forget to write”, even though he keeps seeing said baby in the sun and the wind. Oh, and Delopoulos also tells us he’s the ocean, which might make him Neil Young. In any case he’s a hippie who’s one with nature. I keep trying to dislike him for this, but he and his band sound terrific.
If you were listening to Christian pop radio in the late ‘90s—AND WHO WASN’T?—you may remember Burlap to Cashmere as the guys who sounded like Jars of Clay, if Jars of Clay had just seen a kickass Gipsy Kings show. Flamenco and Greek flourishes and “lai lai lai” vocals made the Burlaps jump out of CCM’s morass, and they scored four hits and a Dove Award for best rock album. Anybody Out There? had some good songs, but the band’s ethnic folk elements came across as CCM novelties more than musical necessities, not unlike Jars of Clay’s tinwhistle or Chris Rice’s cartoon praise song. BTC also had some boring ballads awash in synths. And then they disappeared for more than a decade.
With the public’s expectations at a feverishly low pitch, the new Burlap to Cashmere could be anything, really—adult alternative dreck, four-to-the-floor dance pop, witch house, you name it. So, it’s sort of amazing that this album not only sounds like Clinton-era BTC, but it actually sounds better. And it’s on a major label. Adult alternative producer Mitchell Froom provides some keyboards and, presumably, direction, but aside from that it’s just the guitar-bass-drums folk rock band playing 11 fine songs. Even a relative snooze like “Love Reclaims the Atmosphere” has a memorable tune and an indelible sound. The band sings in harmony. You can hear the walls of Froom’s room. And if that’s not enough to get you excited, plenty of their songs are flat-out great.
You can divide Burlap to Cashmere songs into two rough groups: straightahead coffeehouse tunes, and totally bitchin’ odd-meter stuff that sounds really hard to play. The former category includes “Live In a Van”, a cheerful country ditty that reimagines Chris Farley’s most famous Saturday Night Live character as a Thomas Merton-style seeker. The rest of their coffeehouse tunes aren’t quite so happy-go-lucky. “Seasons” ominously equates its locomotive backbeat with time’s ever-rolling stream. “Hey Man” is a tough little rocker about being in a band, possibly Appalachian prog band Crack the Sky. “Closer to the Edge” sounds like the Indigos singing about a boxer, lai lai lai. These guys really cover all the acoustic bases. Most of these coffeehouse songs have mysterious minor-key melodies that are impossible to shake but fun to sing around the house.
Harder to sing are the bitchin’ songs, even though their melodies are no less catchy and memorable. In fact, their melodies sound even more natural floating over the top of weird roiling meters like 9/8 or 7/8 or whatever. They feel less composed, more like they’re drifting in from whatever ether produced this eternal music. Alternately, they feel like boats adrift on the irregular pulse of the ocean, which makes some sense—Delopoulos really likes singing about the ocean. He wants to live on a boat and sail away with his children, maybe to the Greek island of Santorini. Don’t forget to write! Thanks to the band and maybe Mr. Froom, these songs are constant wellsprings of motion and life, with abrupt dynamic shifts and subtle “diddidit dit dit” background vocals, even some gang shouts. Back on the band’s ‘98 hit “Basic Instructions”, such stuff sounded like it was tacked on to a message song. Now everything is integral to everything else—these new songs writhe around like organisms.
Which is to say, they’re not message songs. The Jive label isn’t marketing Burlap to Cashmere 2.0 as a Christian group—though CCM label Essential is taking care of that end—and I’m struggling to think of a Christian radio station that would play them. Religious themes are certainly there, notably in “Other Country” (“Draw near, the Lamb’s awaiting”) and the triple-A radio single “Build a Wall”, probably the only pop song about wealthy Hebrew purity fiend Nehemiah. But even that’s more a dark, Dylanesque tall tale.
Instead, Delopoulos is working the same semi-Christian lyrical turf as King’s X or the Indigo Girls: lots of Bible imagery, lots of openhearted reckoning with life and death, but not much overt confession. Now he sings stuff like, “Through the hills and valleys / Someone calls my name / Opens up the sky, takes me off my train.” Dude. That’s heavy stuff, but coupled with the Burlaps’ expert musicianship it sounds colorful, passionate, ambitious, and warm—just like the rest of this wonderful album.
Reviewing Something Big for PopMatters, I underrated it by over-analyzing it -- or rather, by analyzing it in the wrong direction, focusing on the Christian R&B duo's lyrical contradictions instead of how great they make those contradictions sound. Sorry, Mary Mary! By the time we reviewed the perfect single "Walking" for the Jukebox, I'd sort of come around. (Way better than Kirk Franklin's Hello Fear, btw.)
After a couple months of grappling with their theology of winners and losers, their contradictions, their unwillingness to sound imperfect, their willingness to sing a song that sounds like “Hey, Soul Sister”, I had an abrupt revelation — I simply wanted to enjoy their voices, again and again, to luxuriate in their voluptuous glow and mix my metaphors with abandon. Was not my heart burning within me whenever they sang the words, “I see the haters standing around… Get ready for war”? Not that I can tell their voices apart, but they’re both rich and clear and I’d be happy to hear ‘em deliver lyrics a lot more problematic than anything here. Eventually all Mary Mary’s problematics are resolved in the album’s centerpiece, “Walking”. It’s an ode to the Christian Walk and to resisting the rush of the world, but it’s also a suitable accompaniment to actual walking — midtempo, four beautiful chords that never resolve, and cheerful encouragement that never slips into outlandish over-promising. Few pastimes are more pleasurable than the humble walk, and few singers are more enjoyable than these humble fans of Jesus.
#17 Mary Mary Something Big (Columbia)
As singles go, "Walking" is more perfect and "Something Bigger" more audacious, but "Sitting With Me" is the one I sing in my head.
#26 Paul Simon So Beautiful Or So What (Hear Music)
Sure signs that I am an old man, Rolling Stone edition:
1. Of all the Best of 2011 lists I've read so far, I have the most albums in common with Rolling Stone's, and that includes the PopMatters list to which I contributed. (This album was on both lists.)
2. I've started reading the music articles in Rolling Stone, not just the political screeds; and not just reading, I'm enjoying the music articles! Even the recent "100 Greatest Guitarists" nonsense has gone onto my bookshelf, because they offered just enough technical detail to pique my interest in those (almost exclusively) guys. For instance, someday soon I'll want to figure out what it means that Albert King "used an indecipherable secret tuning, hitting notes with his thumb", so I'll listen to a bunch of Albert King and see how he sounds different than all those other (almost exclusively) guys. Then I'll report back, and this'll turn into a blues blog read exclusively by old men. Lookee, there's Paul Simon at #95 on the list of best guitarists! Apparently he is better than Sonny Sharrock, who is NOT on the list. Should I listen to Bert Jansch? Simon sez Yes! He also sez "Dazzling Blue" off the new album is folk fingerpicking "on top of this rhythm with Indian musicians playing in 12/8". Beautiful song -- simple, in love with wife and existence, with as sure a sense of rhythm as anybody else on this list. In his somewhat soporific PBS special (pledge week!), he was impressive, but he limited his impressive displays to some virtuosic runs he had clearly worked out in advance. Not much in the way of extended improvisationals, in other words, but my, was he fluid.
3. Simon produced my favorite music quote of the year, also in RS: "I put the wildebeest in just to change the sound." (I should figure out which song he's talking about.) In addition to rhythm, the guy's obsessed with sounds -- wildebeest sounds, percussion sounds, sampled sounds, whatever different sounds he can pull out of his guitar and fit onto his records in subtle ways. More than almost any singer-songwriter his age (maybe excepting Neil Young?), Simon knows his game isn't just lyrics-melody-voice -- yet he EXCELS at lyrics-melody-voice. He just throws in all that other stuff, too.
4. (I fear we've veered from the original thesis.) Here's what I said at Sheep & Goats: “Most folks, they don’t get when I’m jokin’,” he tosses off in a deep Bing Crosby voice only his wife knew about. This occurs in the middle of “Love Is Eternal Sacred Light”, with lyrics linking the Big Bang to terrorist bombs, a beat best described as wood-flute hoedown, and a title like a Divine Styler outtake. This album is weird. It’s also effortless, a confident weirdo singing about whatever interests him — this time out, God and love. He hits on a dead lady while waiting in the line to heaven, for instance. But he also attributes his marriage to divine providence, kicks everything off with a preacher-sampling Christmas song, and teaches his kids to add to the world’s beauty like Sara Groves, so I’ll call it a CCM album until God and his only Son pay me a “courtesy call”. Admittedly, it’s groovier than most CCM (or most rap) — two meandering ballads aside, the rhythms subsume all, as is usually the case with prime Simon. How many songwriters would carefully construct a beat out of guitar tremolo, the way he does in “The Afterlife”? Yet he makes it all sound as careless as the album’s best line, “I am an empty house on Weed Street.”
