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William Parker, I Plan to Stay a Believer: The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield: Avant-jazzbos, the New Tabernacle Generation of Praise, Parisian schoolkids, and Fuck Yeah Amiri Baraka party like it’s no longer 1953. Mayfield is dead, but he will survive in America.
Das Racist, Relax: Primarily a triumph of tone: the best lines (alleging the unholiness of Rap Genius and Urban Dictionary) and catchiest hooks (the falsetto “pretty sure that you do too”) are memorable mostly for their wryness.
Wussy, Strawberry: Avant-gardes subverted “I learned something today” art by refusing to learn and undermining the “I”. But there’s still plenty of value in autobiographical art that uses concrete detail not as synecdoche but as stuff that may or may not have happened. Wussy forces you into the reality of one carpark of an Indiana pizza chain that cuts its pies into squares, and dares you to try out different values for the song’s “we”: you and your friends, the band, the Jackson 5.
St. Vincent, Strange Mercy: It’s fine to define yourself through negations like “I don’t wanna be your cheerleader no more” if you repeatedly hammer the “I” so as to affirm that you do have an identity.
Peter Stampfel, Dook of the Beatniks: I only read Hitchens very occasionally, felt queasy when I did, and never saw a line as good as “Holy terror’s gonna blow you up for Jesus.”
Laura Marling, A Creature I Don’t Know: The sweep of her imagination disarms demographic quibbles about its inhabitants: why not relocate Salinas to Hampshire? Musically she hasn’t transcended her roots, but the limpid arrangements aren’t a dealbreaker. And her vocal on “Sophia”, which Gillian Welch wouldn’t be embarrassed by, shows she wouldn’t be better off writing novels.
Class Actress, Rapproacher: If Elizabeth Harper is honest enough ask “Do you think that I care what we talk about when we talk about love?”, she’s honest enough to admit the old sinusoidal vocals over square presets trick isn’t going to ship platinum. Putting a donk on it would help; being British would help more.
