Category: Music

In the past, I’ve liked Meshell Ndegeocello‘s more visceral yet outgoing, angry, and political albums – like Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape – better than I have her more inward-looking, personal albums – such as Bitter, which was, I guess, not funky enough and too Lilith Fair-like for my taste (OK, so perhaps I’m more of a stereotypical guy than I like to think I am). But her new album, Comfort Woman, seems to me the best of both worlds. It’s a quiet album, made mostly of love songs. It’s even happy, optimistic, and upbeat for the most part – as Bitter was not. Yet despite my resistance to music in such a mode, Comfort Woman entirely wins me over. The album performs the rare feat of conveying a (non-ecstatic, or non-orgasmic) joy without being lulling. And this is all on account of the way it moves. The album is deeply funky, albeit without the hard edge of Cookie and some of Meshell’s other records. (I’d like to just call it “deep funk,” by analogy with “deep house”). Under the melodies, which are mostly gentle, there is a lot of roiling and seething rhythm. Not harsh or aggressive, but deeply – alive. Cross-rhythms percolate in some songs, an off-center beat pulls you along in others, a potent dub energizes others. Not to mention the best song on the album, “Liliquoi Moon,” which introduces the one note of negativity in the album – “death’ll come fast, I want to be free, closer to the sky” – but even this negativity is lyrical and strangely hopeful – “I want to fly” – and then the song concludes with an intense hendrixesque raveup guitar solo by Doyle Bramhall II. All in all, Comfort Woman is riveting; all the more so, perhaps, for the way it sneaks up on you, delivering on promises you didn’t even realize it had made.

I find that I like Erykah Badu‘s new album, Worldwide Underground, better than anything she has previously done; though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many (most?) of her past fans like it less. This (both why I like it better, and why others might like it less) is because it’s really groove music: that is to say, it deemphasizes melodies, or at least strong melodic profiles, and relies instead (or much more) on repeated grooves and riffs, giving the songs, and the album as a whole, a kind of warmly propulsive feel – except “propulsive” isn’t quite right, in that it implies progression, whereas Worldwide Underground eschews any sense of forward motion almost entirely. Also, it’s not even “propulsive” in the James Brown sense of funk that really makes you MOVE, even if in fact you aren’t going anywhere (i.e. you are vibrating in place, rather than going in a particular direction) – it’s way too laid back to be doing anything like that. Most remarkably, the album sustains this sense for 50 minutes or so even at the expense of de-emphasizing Ms. Badu’s rather formidable voice, which here blends into the mix rather than dominating it as it did on her previous albums.
I’m not sure where to go with this observation, aside from saying that I like the results. It seems too obvious and cliched, and thereby saying far too little, to classify this music in gendered, sexual terms, e.g. by identifying Badu’s “feminine” pre-orgasmic rhythms in opposition to “cock rock” (I’m not quite sure what the equivalent term would be for hip hop or r&b); nor am I quite able to classify it in drug terms in the way one can often do with music (I mean, in the sense that certain dance music is clearly linked to Ecstasy, or that D’Angelo’s Voodoo, to my mind the greatest-of-all-time example of laid-back groove music, is so clearly stoned-out). So I’ll just have to go with the flow on this one (can’t believe I actually wrote that).

Since I’m stuck with Windows for the time being (when I can afford it, I intend to go back to the MacOS, which I abandoned some years ago), I was very happy that Apple released iTunes for Windows last week. It’s a better tool for managing my iPod than ephpod was (not to mention infinitely better than the horrible Music Match Jukebox, which was the software Apple previously officially provided to Windows iPod owners). Plus, now I can buy from the Apple Music Store: though I don’t like copying restrictions in general, Apple’s seem less onerous than those that come with most of the other legal online music sites, so I suppose I can live with them.
Anyway, the first songs I bought from the Apple Music Store were a few cuts from Bubba Sparxxx‘s new album, produced by Timbaland: remarakble stuff, especially “Comin’ Round”, which somehow melds the razor-sharp hiphop beats Timbaland is famous for with Appalachian fiddling, a genius culture-meld I’ve never heard anything like before.
Among recent listens, I also like the latest from the always brilliant Go Home Productions, “Sly Beyonce Walks Like A Nerd,” a clever (and highly illegal) track that (as the title suggests) mixes Beyonce and N.E.R.D. (The Neptunes), with a little Sly and the Family Stone thrown in for good measure, to produce the ultimate neurotic love song.

Brief notes on a few things I’ve been listening to lately:
–Missy Elliott’s new single “Pass That Dutch” is the best thing out there right now, aside from Outkast. I’m not sure it is quite as brilliant and innovative as her last two monster hit singles, “Get Your Freak On” and “Work It,” but the Timbaland rhythm is irresistible, the monster bass is intense, and I’m still in awe as to how Missy manages to be so ecstatic and so down-to-earth at the same time.
–I pretty much like the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love.” The sentiments, though noble, are too sappy; but it’s catchy and plaintive in a way I like. I’m not sure what I think about the rest of the album Elephunk, from which the single is drawn: it’s really catchy, beautifully produced pop, but I have the uneasy feeling that there’s something icky behind it all, as if Black Eyed Peas were saying that the answer to the negativity and nihilism of gangsta rap is upbeat party music for frat boys (not to deny that gangsta rap itself is all too often just party music for frat boys at this point).
–Hitman Sammy Sam’s “Step Daddy,” is hilarious in a sick sort of way; he’s yelling at his woman’s child to behave, and she isn’t listening; the chorus is a call-and-response, “you ain’t my daddy”–“shut up!”

Sometimes my tastes do coincide with popular opinion. I think that the new Outkast double CD is sensational. Outkast has always been eclectic in the best sense of the term: they mix hiphop with earlier strains of black music (soul, r&b) as well as with (both black and white) rock ‘n’ roll. Their last album before this one, Stankonia, was something of a peak – as close as popular music gets to a perfect rush. The new album doesn’t try to outdo Stankonia, but instead pushes onto new paths. Well, Big Boi’s disc, Speakerboxx, sounds to me like more of the same (not that there’s anything wrong with that – and the album is full of wonderful little details, like the female chorus of “Ghettomusick” that doesn’t come in until several verses into the song; and see clap clap blog for a fabulous discussion of “The Rooster” that really gets inside the song in the way a non-musician like myself never could). But Andre’s CD, The Love Below, is wildly experimental and strange – and yet, for all its risks, a complete success. Musically, it explodes in all sorts of directions – from lite jazz to hard rock to a sort of drum ‘n’ bass (!) stylization of Coltrane’s stylization of My Favorite Things. And it’s something of a concept album as well, being all about love. It moves from Dre’s conversation with God (who turns out to be a woman!) about how he just wants someone to love, through mounting excitement, and lust, the morning after, love, disappointment, terror at the prospect of giving one’s self away to another. Along the way, there are love songs, lust songs, seduction songs, out-of-love songs, hate songs, let’s-make-up-and-get-back-together-songs, masturbation songs, even sort of a rap confessional. I’m not sure what more to say… It’s one of those rare albums that escapes, or squirms outside of, all the categories that I am usually so ready to tag nearly anything I listen to with – and thereby reduces me to incoherent babbling.

Reading the “Terms of Use Agreement” on buymusic.com, which aspires to become the biggest digital music store on the Web, I find the following:
“All downloaded music, images, video, artwork, text, software and other copyrightable materials (“Content”) are sublicensed to End Users and not sold, notwithstanding use of the terms “sell,” “purchase,” “order,” or “buy” on the Site or this Agreement…End User may only download, transfer, copy and use the Digital Downloads as stated in the particular song, partial album or album’s Metadata Information, which is hereby incorporated by reference. No other downloads, transfers, copies or uses of Digital Downloads are permitted. ”
This is why I will not order anything from BuyMusic.com. Because, in short, you are not really able to buy any recordings there. You can always BUY CDs: I do it all the time, and usually I then rip the music from the CDs in order to play them on my iPod. But you can only “sublicense” the music on BuyMusic.com, not buy it, despite the site’s name. Welcome to the era of “digital rights management”, where corporations will have control of the use of their “intellectual property” in perpetuity.
I wonder: since you are allowed to burn the songs you download at BuyMusic.com to CDs, is it possible then to rip unprotected, unrestricted mp3s from those CDs? It seems like that would be too easy a way to circumvent these regulations.

I’ve been listening to a bunch of bands from Detroit, because I have been considering the possibility of moving to Detroit within the next year. (Nothing’s been settled, yet). Anyway, I kind of like Electric Six. It’s sort of like white guy (and girl) trash rockers go disco. Raucous, funny, and fun. Like most white rockers who try to emulate black rhythms, they can’t really do it well enough, and are too stiff and unfunky – which at great length becomes a bit tiresome, so I’m not really able to listen to their album Fire straight through. But listened to individually, in small doses, the songs are great: especially their hit single “Danger! High Voltage”, which is a total , hysterical scream, sort of like the chintzy monster-movie version of a neo-Gothic celebration of the power of Desire.