{"id":205,"date":"2003-11-07T21:21:30","date_gmt":"2003-11-08T01:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=205"},"modified":"2003-11-07T21:21:30","modified_gmt":"2003-11-08T01:21:30","slug":"comfort-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"Comfort Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past, I’ve liked Meshell Ndegeocello<\/a>‘s more visceral yet outgoing, angry, and political albums – like Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape<\/em><\/a> – better than I have her more inward-looking, personal albums – such as Bitter<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/em> than I like to think I am). But her new album, Comfort Woman<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/em> was not. Yet despite my resistance to music in such a mode, Comfort Woman<\/em> 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<\/em>. The album is deeply funky, albeit without the hard edge of Cookie<\/em> 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past, I’ve liked Meshell Ndegeocello<\/a>‘s more visceral yet outgoing, angry, and political albums – like Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape<\/em><\/a> – better than I have her more inward-looking, personal albums – such as Bitter<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/em> than I like to think I am). But her new album, Comfort Woman<\/em><\/a>, 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<\/em> was not. Yet despite my resistance to music in such a mode, Comfort Woman<\/em> 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<\/em>. The album is deeply funky, albeit without the hard edge of Cookie<\/em> 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaviro.com\/Blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}