The Roots have been pumping their brand of instrumental, intellectual and independent hip-hop for more than two decades now. Over that time they have released 10 albums, been nominated for six Grammy awards and been named one of the top 20 live bands in the world by Rolling Stone.
A band with a resume this impressive carries with it extremely high expectations. But on How I Got Over, their eleventh album, The Roots live up to their reputation.
A Peace of Light is the album’s quiet opener, on which a vocal a capella of harmonizing “dos” and “daps” create a sonically arresting progression that quickly evolves into a head-bobbing jam.
After setting the right mood, the first flows drop on the second track, Walk Alone, a hip-hop treatise on the virtues of being independent, on which Black Thought raps: “Forced to face the music like a graduate of Juilliard/Walk alone, talk alone, get my Charlie Parker on.” It isn’t the sort of verse you’d ever expect to hear blasting in a club, and it’s a good example of what sets The Roots apart from many of their hip-hop contemporaries: They’ve never been in the business of crafting commercial hits.
The Roots have also never shied away from collaborations with a diverse range of artists, so it should come as no surprise that they’d choose to rework folk songstress Joanna Newsom’s song, The Book of Right-on. The Roots’ version of Right On preserves Newsom’s original bassline and features her nasally delivery of its chorus hook, “We should shine a light on/a light on/And the book of right on is right on/it was right on.”
The instrumentation and production on the record is as tasteful as it gets, inviting reviewers to use all the words we fall back on to describe sounds like these: “natural,” “warm,” “enveloping,” “organic.” But ultimately the quality of a rap record comes down to its flows, and this record has stellar ones in spades. For anyone who is a fan of hip-hop, it’s a must-listen.
A riel Pink was discovered by indie-rock heroes Animal Collective in 2003, and became the first artist (outside of members of the band themselves) to be released on their label, Paw Tracks. In the years that followed, he developed a reputation akin to that of lo-fi DIY legend R. Stevie Moore: an odd lonely genius quietly toiling away at audio experiments and selectively releasing them to the world.
In 2008, Ariel Pink formed a legitimate band for the first time, called Haunted Graffiti, which did a lot to shore up his hit-or-miss live shows and lend a greater sense of cohesion to his releases, which had previously felt a bit like completely random collections of tracks.
Before Today is Ariel Pink’s best album to date. It sounds like the sort of music you pick up on the AM dial during a long road trip and find yourself helplessly jamming to against your better judgment — hits buried in the refuse of years long gone. The band is self-conscious of this link, it seems, as the record includes several samples of engines revving and cars passing by.
Highlights include a faithful rendition of Bright Lit Blue Skies, a song penned by the Rockin’ Ramrods in 1966, on which lovely organ synths mesh with a rollicking bassline and a singalong 60s-style chorus.
The band unleashes the funk on Beverly Kills, with Pink singing in a hilarious falsetto atop a bassline dripping 70s groove.
The album’s star track, however, might be Menopause Man, which juxtaposes light and dark to great effect. “Break me, castrate me, make me gay,” Pink sings in a deadpan before the track erupts into a rich falsetto explosion of a chorus, eventually devolving into a noise jam replete with crashing cymbals and goofy sound effects.
This is easily both Ariel Pink’s most accessible and his most accomplished release, bursting at the seams with pop nuggets that finally deliver on the promise of his prior work. If you have an urge to recall forgotten sounds, give it a spin.
Sharon Jones’ career is a study in perseverance. The diva first began performing in the 1970s, during the glory days of R ’n’ B. But despite those early efforts to break into a career as a professional musician, she remained undiscovered until 1996, when she got work as a backing singer for legend Lee Fields. That became just the spark she needed for her solo career.
Now Jones and her backing band, the Dap-Kings, stand together at the head of a new movement to reclaim retro R ’n’ B sounds for the next generation. That movement gained significant steam with the rise of Amy Winehouse following her Back in Black release, an album which the Dap-Kings made a hefty musical contribution to before touring as Winehouse’s backing band.
Comparisons to Winehouse are, therefore, inevitable. But their vocal styles actually bear little resemblance to one another. Winehouse’s voice is a true original, while Sharon Jones sounds familiar, like an old leather couch you keep in the basement because you can’t bear to let go of something so comfortable.
I Learned the Hard Way is Jones’ fourth release with the band, and its central theme seems to be that of relationships gone wrong. On Better Things to Do, atop some funky guitar and a simple repetitive bass riff that persists for virtually the entire song, she sings: “I’ve got better things to do/better things to do than remember you.” The track lacks a slamming chorus, instead building up a simple jam in stages, relying on Jones’ voice to carry it through to the end.
If You Call is an old-style R ’n’ B ballad, with arpeggiated guitars giving it a sense of sullen, quiet desperation. Jones belts out its lines like they were bullets. “Am I dead or am I living?/I feel no blood in these veins.”
The album’s closer, Mama Don’t Like My Man, might be its greatest track. It is simple, charming and beautifully rendered, with only a springy guitar riff and a couple of chorus girls backing Jones up as she pleads for her Mama to reconsider the virtues of her man.
Although Sharon Jones has not “endeared” herself to the press in the same way Winehouse has, she has been quietly growing a base of fans who appreciate her efforts. To top it off, she’s not addicted to crack, which, when taking a long view, may ultimately give her a leg up.
J ulian Lynch is graduate student of ethnomusicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and this makes an excellent starting point when talking about his music. His new record, Mare, sounds like the work of a man who has been hitting the music books.
The album opens with the sound of shakers atop a synthesized drone. A guitar riff that is bendy in all the right places is then layered on top, sounding vaguely like an Indian raga. Vocals drift in soon after, in the form of a woozy psychedelic mumbling of indistinguishable lyrics. The song then fades and listeners are left with the job of piecing together exactly what it was they just heard. Just Enough seems like an apt title for it, because it seems to have just enough music to qualify as a song.
And that is exactly what makes this record so engaging. Lynch juggles numerous musical references with extreme ease, brimming with a confidence that reverberates throughout Mare’s tracks. There is no need here to conform with stylistic expectations. This is, first and foremost, an album of sounds and textures. Verses? Choruses? Lyrics? Who really needs them?
On the exquisite Travelers, guitars and voices bubble in and out of a quiet soundscape grounded in a simple groove created by bass and hand drums.
On Ears, Lynch pairs an energetic drum beat with mangled falsetto vocals to create an atmosphere pregnant with possibilities before the track tumbles into a searing fuzz guitar solo. The effect this creates is hard to put into words and completely defies attempts to classify it — it’s that weird.
Despite its eclecticism, Mare does not suffer from any lack of cohesion — on the contrary, it feels quite smooth throughout. While certainly not for everyone, Mare is likely to generate some interest among music aficionados looking for something different.
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