The Optical Files #152: Deltron 3030 - The Instrumentals (2001)

Gather 'round & let me tell you of a time before Youtube. A time before you could type "earl sweatshirt type beat" into a search bar & have a few thousand quality instrumentals at your fingertips. File sharing was unreliable & there were lots of fakes & mislabeled MP3s floating around. If you wanted beats, your options were limited, & they all involved spending money, time, or both. The instrumental rap CD is a dying (dead?) form, but it once served a vital purpose. It was always a good idea to have a few on hand to write to, freestyle on, vibe with in the background, or if you just wanted to hear the intricacies of production without an emcee's voice getting in the way. I used Deltron 3030 - The Instrumentals for all 4 of these purposes, but I was mainly interested in the latter. Deltron 3030 (the one with the vocals) was an important record for me for a lot of reasons. I'm pretty sure it was the first hiphop concept album I encountered--certainly the first I fully bought into because at the time (early high school) I was discovering cyberpunk & enamored with dystopian science fiction all while my rap obsession was deepening. It was also the first rap album I can remember where I was absolutely floored by the production. I mean, I was already a fan of guys like RZA, Preemo, DJ Shadow & Pete Rock (the first Petestrumentals was my other instrumental rap CD of choice) but Dan the Automator's work as part of Deltron 3030 was something special. The cinematic scope, the left-field weirdness, the genre-blending, the seamless blend of samples with organic instruments, & the overall musicality made it stand out from the pack, & it's those elements that make it a worthwhile listen even today, after its original purpose is no longer strictly necessary.

I'll admit that part of what motivated me to buy this CD was that, though I appreciate Del & think he is a great lyricist, I've never been a fan of his voice. The production on Deltron 3030 is so magnificent that I sometimes felt like his oddball warbling was getting in the way. The album opener "3030" (the instrumental album shuffles the song order but the opener is the same on both versions) is as good an example as any. After beginning its verses with guitar glissandos & flutes over a wandering bass, it adds wordless choirs into an unusually-timed 12-bar buildup before the orchestral brass explodes into the chorus. There's epic openers, & then there's this shit. Although the structure isn't avant-garde (like all the tracks on here it's pretty much verse-chorus-verse), it has a lot more harmonic movement & variety than your run-of-the-mill rap beat. That's the beauty of the Automator's vision here: the musical sophistication strains at the bounds of genre while the dusty drum loops & funky grooves keep it 100% hiphop.

(On a side note, I think that was my beef with the followup project Gorillaz, which grew out of Damon Albarn's collaborations with Del & Dan on this album. Gorillaz's huge commercial success had a lot to do with the distance it seemed to put between itself & hiphop. It was the kind of thing that white girls in high school praised because it was "more sophisticated than just rap" without realizing how racist that sounded.)

In fairness, not every track here stands on its own. A few of the more unadorned rap throwdowns like "Positive Contact" sound a bit empty without an emcee. That's the trap of listening to rap instrumentals: savvy producers always leave sonic space for a rapper's voice, & sometimes you can't help but think about how much better this would sound with somebody flowing on it. This isn't a problem on tracks like "Madness," a showcase for the album's other VIP whom I haven't talked about yet: turntablist Kid Koala, who turns in a scratched horn solo of the type he showed a brilliance for on his solo album Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. "Things You Can Do" is another beat that stands strong without a rapper, thanks to its reedy melodica (Albarn's contribution as well as on "Time Keeps On Slipping") & the rhythmic contrast of the sped-up Poppy Family sample with the thumping drum loop. The sinister decaying synths of "Upgrade" & "Virus" capture the nocturnal cyberpunk atmosphere that "Mastermind" balances with more conventional movie-score ambitions.

This CD was a joy to revisit, in large part because it's outlived its original purpose. This listen made me want to revisit the original album, & also check out their long-delayed 2013 followup Event 2. Like a past-its-prime android retrofitted for a new task, it's proved itself surprisingly useful in this uncertain future. I can't help but notice that, unlike a lot of SF authors who thought things would happen way too quickly (flying cars & moon colonies by 1997!) Del & co. seem to be about a millennium too generous--at this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if all the things they predicted for 3030 came to pass by 2030. Hiphop ahead of the curve once again.

Relevant Quote for the Day - Sartre

 

The Optical Files #151: Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (2001)

I was excited in 2001 to hear Radiohead's live album. I had never seen them in concert (that wouldn't happen until the Hail To the Thief tour 2 summers later), & having exhausted their first 5 studio albums, I was craving new Radiohead material. Once I got my hands on it, I was a bit baffled by what I had heard, but today I think I understand that I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings was never meant to be a comprehensive live album, but rather a document of what their show was like at this stage (like how Rush used to do it). As Radiohead's music grew beyond the limitations of the 5-piece rock band, it became more difficult to translate to live performance. How could they do justice to songs built on EDM & ambient elements without losing their rock-band essence? I Might Be Wrong, a selection of live performances of songs from Kid A & Amnesiac (the band's least guitar-driven records), shows how they threaded that needle, while reminding us of the essential roles played by some of the less celebrated band members.

For instance, bassist Colin Greenwood proves how valuable he is as the driving force of songs like "The National Anthem," "I Might Be Wrong," & "Dollars and Cents." He is also responsible for the lovely counter-melody of "Morning Bell" while Jonny & Ed (whose backing vocals are at the same level as Thom's leads) play competing angular guitar chords in a throwback to the band's old 3-guitar days.

It's also interesting to hear how hard the live engineers had to work to capture the sounds of the records, from Thom's reverb-drenched vocal mic on "I Might Be Wrong" (where he sways back & forth so the lyrics seem to drift in & out of comprehensibility), to the various filters applied to Phil Selway's drumkit to approximate the drum machines on the studio versions of "Idioteque" & "Everything In Its Right Place." That latter song is the most impressive achievement on the record, with the live sampling & manipulation of the vocals (I think by Jonny?) that turns into an extended outro vamp, all while Colin's solid bassline holds down the fort.

It's worth noting that there are songs from the duo of studio albums this selection pulls from that would be rather easy to recreate in concert--like "How to Disappear Completely" or "Knives Out"--that have been left off in favor of totally novel arrangements like the pulsing synths & sound effects of "Like Spinning Plates" transformed into a "Pyramid Song"-esque piano ballad. The emphasis here is on hypnotic grooves reminiscent of minimalist music, like the band is challenging themselves to make these moods fit with their live presentation. On the whole, it works stunningly well.

There was one brand new (at the time) song here: "True Love Waits," which was a live staple that finally got the studio treatment a full 15 years later on A Moon Shaped Pool in an electric piano arrangement rather than the solo acoustic guitar version heard here. As far as I'm concerned, the studio version completely supplants the live one, thanks to Thom's awful habit of singing sharp, which seems more egregious when there are fewer instruments to cover it (see the live acoustic version of "Creep" from the My Iron Lung EP).

I almost never throw I Might Be Wrong into the player anymore. It's a fine representation of their live sound, but with the possible exception of "Like Spinning Plates," there's not really anything here you can't get from the studio versions of these songs. But as a historical document & exemplar of their fealty to their music's thornier elements in a concert context--especially since it's the only live album they ever officially released--it is nothing short of essential.

The Optical Files #150: Talib Kweli - Quality (2002)

I thought I'd be able to get through the rest of this series without having to write about Kanye--especially at a time when seemingly every day another domino falls in his public collapse into fascist pawn, & lots of otherwise well-meaning folx are seduced into apologizing for/validating his baldfaced white supremacist talking points, acting like he has some grand plan because "a genius"--but here we are again. It's hard to talk about Quality without talking about Kanye on a musical level, because his 3 contributions are standouts on an album with a very high overall standard of production. Not to mention 1 of them, "Get By," is among the top 100 or so hiphop songs of all time, a transcendent epic of hard-nosed hope over a wailing Nina Simone sample. But it's also hard to talk about Quality without talking about Kanye because it represents a time when my musical world was exploding, my political consciousness was expanding, & it all seemed to be meshing together, with Talib Kweli & Kanye West as 2 key figures. Seeing where they are now reminds me of what Uncle Mu said which I referenced in a previous Kweli writeup: in order to stay on the right side of history, you need to evolve politically, & so many conscious rappers from the '80s-'00s failed to do that. Artists whom we venerated for their sociopolitical sharpness had their blades dulled when the times changed & they failed to change with them. Maybe the lesson is to be cautious about falling into that same trap as I age, stop venerating entertainers, & just appreciate the work without expecting too much of them. Sadly, I find that last part is getting harder & harder.

Setting aside the meta-context for a moment--this is clearly in the top 3 albums Kweli has ever made. Nothing will ever topple Black Star, but Reflection Eternal & Quality are forever squabbling over that #2 spot. Beyond Ye, we get excellent beats by Megahertz, who laces "Rush" with propulsive rock guitars & "Gun Music" with dancehall synths; & a pair of vocal-heavy J. Dilla beats with the moody "Where Do We Go" & "Stand To the Side." Lyrically Kweli is in his bag like never before--the confidence of the punchlines on the ego-trip songs like "Shock Body" collide with his trademark flights of multisyllabic wizardry, his reedy voice straining at the limits of the beat like a free jazz horn player. Ayatollah shows up with the ebullient "Joy," about the births of Kweli's children with Yasiin featured on the chorus, & the militant march of "The Proud," one of the most interesting topical songs on the album, where Kweli describes current events leading up to 9/11/2001 that describe the simmering tension in the U.S. that laid the groundwork for the Bush administration's opportunistic response to the attacks. Back to Kanye, "Guerilla Monsoon Rap" is simply a jawdropping beat, with no fewer than 3 key changes in the intro before it settles into a sinister violin groove for 2 of the greatest lyricists of all time, Black Thought & Pharoahe Monch, to get extra-busy over. Kanye's final offering, "Good To You" mixes his classic chipmunk soul Al Green sample with an aggressive but boppable MPC chop sound. "Put It In the Air" is a classic DJ Quik beat with rubbery bass & pitched agogo bells, but his & Kweli's styles just don't mesh at all. Kweli comes off ridiculous every time he tries to sound pimpish, but for some reason he just keeps trying.

"Put It In the Air" & the similarly-themed misfire "Waitin' For the DJ" are the only real letdowns on this album though. Going into this listen, I thought I remembered Quality being pretty frontloaded. The benefit of age has helped me appreciate the cautious optimism of tracks like "Where Do We Go" & "Stand to the Side," but it's hard for me to hear Res on the former track, knowing what went down between her & Kweli that resulted in her becoming one of the major targets of what seems to be his ongoing social media war on Black women.

I wish I could sit down with the musical heroes of my youth & talk this shit out. I know I'm not the only one for whom the world feels cold & scary right now, & I would love to chop it up with guys like Talib & Kanye, let them hear where I'm coming from. I don't know if I could talk them out of the bullshit they've been on, but it would be comforting to hear them assure me that we're still on the same side in the fights happening now & the ones yet to come. I certainly don't get that feeling from their music anymore--even with the nostalgia goggles.

The Optical Files #149: Rancid - ...And Out Come the Wolves (1995)

Rancid is one of those bands that everybody likes but is just a little hesitant to admit it. I would use the term "guilty pleasure," but there's nothing really guilty about it. Rancid was the only band to emerge from the '90s pop punk revival with their dignity intact--in large part due to their decision to never sign to a major label. They managed to avoid being branded as mainstream sellouts (like Green Day) or aligning themselves with the trendier grunge scene (like The Offspring). The band continued to honor their authentic streetpunk & ska roots musically, never releasing anything that could properly be called hardcore but coming pretty damn close with their 2nd self-titled album (2000). Their biggest commercial success, ...And Out Come the Wolves, demonstrates the band at their hookiest, most anthemic, & most electric. When they're firing on all cylinders, the spilled beer arms-around-your-friend singalong in the pit energy they generate is pretty much unmatched. 

Musically, Rancid have 2 rock-solid guitarists who share both rhythm & lead duties, & a perfectly competent no-frills drummer in Brett Reed. But the main attraction, of course, is Matt Freeman, a.k.a. punk rock's Geddy Lee, a.k.a. the best bassist in the genre & it's not even close. When he's cranked up, his bass never sits still. He throws out arpeggios, scales, & reaches up the neck for little countermelodies he just slips in there for fun. His bass bobs & weaves & zigs & zags, & producer Jerry Finn wisely creates lots of space in the mix for it. It's sometimes downright comical how athletic the bass is on songs like "Maxell Murder," "Old Friend" & "Lock, Step & Gone" (just to name a few) meanwhile the guitars are playing basic 16th-note power chords that you absolutely don't need 2 of them for.

The '90s punk revival came at a price: in anything approaching the mainstream (with the exception of Bad Religion), the leftist politics that united punk as a subculture rather than just a genre of music disappeared. I'm positive this is MTV's fault. Popular culture, in the '90s the same as today, privileges non-specific defiance; generalized anger at systems rather than, like, why you should dumpster dive & steal office supplies from your temp job & sell them to fund Marxist guerillas in South America. You know, actual punk shit. It's a shame because Rancid are heavily influenced by The Clash (who readers of this series know are one of my favorite bands ever), both in big ways like how they incorporate reggae into their sound & details like the siren-like guitar lead of "The 11th Hour." But aside from some vague gesturing in "The Wars End" & the colorblind punk unity message of the Oi tribute "Avenues & Alleyways," the politics that gave The Clash their raison d'etre are very scarce here. It's hard to be the only band that matters if you don't sing about much that matters.

Anyway, let's get to the elephant in the room. This is possibly the most flagrantly frontloaded album I have ever listened to. The front half is full of classics like "Lock, Step & Gone," "Listed M.I.A." & the Jim Carroll feature "Junkie Man," not to mention the album's trio of hit singles ("Roots Radicals," "Time Bomb" & "Ruby Soho"). The pickings are much slimmer later on, though--beyond the aforementioned "Avenues & Alleyways" & the singalong hook of "As Wicked" (which features another gobsmacking Freeman bass performance), there isn't a single song on the album's back half that has much replay value. Not to mention the band pounds a few ideas into the ground: "Time Bomb," "Daly City Train" & "Old Friend" all sound suspiciously similar, tremolo leads & all, like the band loved the 2 Tone Records style enough for 3 songs but only had enough ideas for 1.

I've never been the kind of fan who turns up their nose at pop punk & insists only hardcore is real. Pop punk is absolutely a valid flavor of punk, & when it's done right, the big hooks & gang shouts can convey just as much anarchic energy as blast beats & screams. With the benefit of a budget sufficient to let Freeman's brilliant bass shine through the razoring guitars, ...And Out Come the Wolves is about as good as this style gets. At least, for the first 25 or so minutes.

The Optical Files #148: Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life (1976)

To explain what Songs in the Key of Life means to me, I think it's best to start at the end. I have a vivid memory of cruising the nighted streets of New Orleans with my parents as the album's closing track, "Easy Goin' Evening (My Mama's Call)" played on the car stereo. Watching the lights & street life of that magical town float by as Stevie's layered harmonicas drifted through the speakers, I concluded that "Easy Goin' Evening" was the most perfect 4 minutes of music I had ever heard. (When I was a teenager, so many of those revelatory musical epiphanies seemed to happen in cars.) I had already been a Stevie Wonder fan for a year or so, but that was the moment I became a Stevie believer. Since then I've heard some to equal it, but I still think the 4 minutes of "Easy Goin' Evening" is absolute perfection. Not a note is out of place--even Stevie's lazy harmonica phrasing helps to convey the mood. But despite the fact that me from 20 years ago would have said this is blasphemy--in 2022 I do not believe that Songs in the Key of Life is a perfect album. But it is still the greatest album in the history of recorded music. 

The album's imperfections pale into insignificance compared to its scope, ambition & sheer energy. Disc 1 contains the strongest & most stylistically diverse 6-song sequence ever, starting with the chamber music experiment of "Village Ghetto Land," diving breathlessly into the spiky jazz fusion & fiery Michael Sembello guitar work of "Contusion," the irresistibly danceable "Sir Duke," the walking-bass sophisticated funk of "I Wish," the buoyant love ballad "Knocks Me Off My Feet," & finishing with the searching, saturated bass, apocalyptic minor key strings & building choirs of "Pastime Paradise." After the rueful reprieve of "Summer Soft," we get what appears to be the album's simplest electric piano AM radio soul ballad in "Ordinary Pain," before the 2nd half explodes into an aggressive synthfunk "reply" to the A section's conventionalism.

Stevie's quiver is full of brilliant arrows, but I want to focus on 2 of them here. The songs are hills crowned by castles in the form of huge choruses. The verses often crescendo into the chorus, usually joined by backing choirs. Sometimes their magnificence seems to come out of nowhere (similar to another genre's master songwriter, Guy Clark). Stevie's writing gives the lie to the conventional wisdom that a great song needs a bridge. Although most of the songs have fairly conventional structures, there is not a bridge to be found on this album. Stevie turns verses into hooks & choruses into mood-shifting transitions, packing enough chord changes into both to eliminate the need for a bridge. I would call this a master-class in bravura, intuitive songwriting, except it's not a class because this kind of thing can't be taught. You can study all you want, but you can't learn to write songs like these. This isn't skill; this is genius.

As a performer, Stevie's musicianship is easy to overlook in favor of his vocal prowess. He knows exactly where to be smooth, where to be rough, where to hang back, Billie Holiday style, & when to charge ahead, with careful phrasing derived from the greatest vocalists in jazz, blues, rock & soul. Speaking of tone & phrasing, don't sleep on Stevie's harmonica playing either! The best demonstrations are in the aforementioned "Easy Goin' Evening" as well as "Isn't She Lovely," but it shows up on "Have a Talk With God" as well. I had the pleasure of seeing Stevie live on the Songs in the Key of Life tour back in 2015, & I got to see Stevie perform the most jaw-dropping improvised harmonica solo I've ever witnessed.

And now for the imperfections: just as the midsection of disc 1 brings a tidal wave of brilliance, disc 2 correspondingly sags in the middle. "Black Man"'s heart is in the right place but it is politically squishy--not to mention overlong, riding a rather bland funk groove through its meandering outro. The similarly well-intentioned but somnolent "Ngiculela – Es Una Historia – I Am Singing" & "If It's Magic" follow. Thankfully, this 3-song section is the closest thing the album has to a slump, as disk 2 comes roaring back to life with a pair of back-to-back epics driven by grand gospel choirs: "As" & "Another Star." The choral ecstasy on the former balances with Stevie's tasteful keyboard solos, & this is the only song where Stevie's secondary singing voice, the throaty growl, shows up for an entire verse.

Songs in the Key of Life is a good-natured, entertaining album on a surface level, but underneath there is a powerful statement being made about Blackness. The string quartet of "Village Ghetto Land" leverages the stereotype of chamber music as being the domain of rich white people, as Stevie describes the desperate conditions of poverty & forces the listener to contemplate how they can coexist with such beauty. He concludes with "Some folks say that we should be glad for what we have/Tell me, would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?", reaching down to the lowest end of his range for a sarcastic phrasing of the word "glad." Later in the album, we get a gorgeous utopian answer to that song's despair in the form of "Saturn." Over a yearning electric bass & synthesized horns buoying the chemical chorus, Stevie tells of an idealized planet where peace & environmental sustainability reign: "We put back all the things we use." It's worth mentioning in the context of this song as a companion piece to "Village Ghetto Land" that prior to making this album, Stevie was seriously considering retiring from music & moving to Africa. Another celebration of Blackness comes near the end of the album with the stomping talk-box R&B of "Ebony Eyes," which makes a point of declaring that its beautiful subject was "born & raised on ghetto streets," again emphasizing the inner strength that comes from surviving adversity. "When she smiles it seems the stars all know, 'cuz 1 by 1 they start to light up the sky."

This is an album of contradictions, like the Twilight Zone intro: despair & hope, shadow & substance. It simultaneously can't wait to show you what's next, but also takes its time getting there. Songs in the Key of Life was the culmination of a 5-year period of sustained brilliance (most people say it starts with Music of My Mind & his new Motown contract, but I think it begins at the songwriting clinic that is Where I'm Coming From). Very few flames can burn that bright, that intensely, for that long. Stevie Wonder is a heavenly body, a cosmic entity with its own gravity. He is as old as the universe itself. His output starting in 1971 is a shooting star, a fiery stone erupting from the surface & screaming its way through the vacuum, headed for Earth. Songs in the Key of Life is where it landed.

The Optical Files #147: Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (Compilation) (1967)

I remember when my dad brought home Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, because it was my first exposure to Dylan. I wish I could precisely articulate what it was that captivated me back then. I think at age 11 I was in the right headspace for a new obsession. I imagine on some level, thought not a conscious one, Dylan's vocals appealed to me as someone who had lately been kicked out of the church choir & was disillusioned with the idea of having a conventionally good voice. Like most people, Dylan's lyrics were the main draw for me. From that moment onward, Bob Dylan was the benchmark I judged all song lyrics against.

I've written my thoughts on best-ofs before in this series, & I don't want to go any further without acknowledging that, by any objective standard, this is a terribly-sequenced compilation. It opens, absurdly, with "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" before jumping all the way back to "Blowin' In the Wind" & proceeding chronologically for a few songs thereafter. There is 1 song each from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', Another Side of Bob Dylan & Highway 61 Revisited; 2 songs from Bringing It All Back Home, & 3 from Blonde on Blonde, which at the time was his most recent LP. The sequencing isn't strictly chronological, & a lot of it just feels haphazard--"Like a Rolling Stone" makes no sense following "It Ain't Me Babe," either sonically or thematically. The sequencing did create some interesting impressions in my brain though. The Bringing It All Back Home CD was a relatively late acquisition for me, so with this CD as my only exposure to "Mr. Tambourine Man" & "Subterranean Homesick Blues," I became used to hearing them out of context. They both work way better on the album, as openers for their respective sides, than they do in reverse order here, stuck between 2 songs that they both predate.

Because I've covered all the albums before (except Blonde on Blonde, which I'm sure I'll get to soon), there's not really any point in writing about specific songs. The 1 exception is "Positively 4th Street," which never appeared on any of Dylan's LPs. For me nowadays, providing a home for "Positively 4th Street" is really the only justification for this CD's existence. The song is one of Dylan's masterpieces of invective, targeting an unnamed addressee (probably a composite) that has irritated him by declaring that they feel betrayed. Meanwhile, the songwriter insists that he owes nobody anything. It was recorded during the Highway 61 Revisited section & rides a triumphant Al Kooper organ riff every bit as iconic as the one in "Like a Rolling Stone." Although it's more bitter in tone, it has a basically healthy approach to boundary-setting similar to "It Ain't Me Babe," with Dylan refusing to be made responsible for other people's emotions: "I know you're dissatisfied with your position & your place/Don't you understand it's not my problem?"

I think the biggest problem with this is that Dylan's career had not yet been long enough to justify a greatest hits compilation. The real reason for its publication is that Dylan was laid up after a motorcycle accident & Columbia was worried about too much time passing without releasing a record by their cash cow. At the time, Dylan had only been active as a recording artist for 5 years, & the 1st one isn't even covered by the compilation. It's kind of amazing to see the progression Dylan managed & everything that he achieved over those 5 years, but it does all but 1 of the songs a disservice to present them out of context of their albums. Because this CD was so important for me, I can't be too mad at it, but on any level other than the sentimental it's difficult to argue against its ultimate pointlessness.

The Optical Files #146: Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

As far as the mainstream is concerned, this is Bob Dylan's debut album. His actual debut, the previous year's self-titled record, is a mostly forgettable traditional folk record with only 2 original compositions (including the admittedly lovely "Song for Woody"). The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan signals that it is absolutely not fucking around by opening with arguably Dylan's most iconic song ever, "Blowin' In the Wind," which went on to be an anthem for the 1960s anti-war movement. When I was a kid, "Blowin' In the Wind" was one of those songs that everybody just knew, & if you didn't think about it too hard you wouldn't realize that it was actually written, like somebody sat down & wrote it on a piece of paper. It had become "Trad." I'm sure Dylan is elated by this outcome. Now it's transitioned into yet another stage. I don't think kids nowadays know "Blowin' In the Wind" or any other Bob Dylan song. They only know Dylan by the tendrils of his influence that still shape popular music today.

Dylan gets a lot of flak for his voice, but a close listen to Freewheelin' makes it clear that he landed on the best option available to him. He tries out a softer croon on the electrified, full-band "Corrina Corrina," & you can even hear a version of it in his gentle "Blowin' In the Wind" delivery. He does some cartoonish whooping on "Bob Dylan's Blues" & "Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance." The rest of the songs are delivered in the gritty nasal bluesman tone he'd use for most of the next decade. 

People generally think of this album (& Dylan's acoustic period generally) as protest song-heavy, but he actually experiments with lots of different modes here. There are only 4 honest-to-goodness topical protest songs on the album. (There's also "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," which plants the seeds for the oblique poetic songs on sociopolitical topics that dominated Bringing It All Back Home & Highway 61 Revisited, though a lot of the symbolism is a bit too on-the-nose: "I saw a white man who walked a black dog.") There are a few traditional blues numbers, including humorous talking blues. The most out-of-place number, I think, is "Bob Dylan's Dream," where he yearns for the simplicity of his younger days with the maudlin sentimentality that only a prematurely fulsome 22-year-old can muster. 

"I Shall Be Free" is a bizarre way to close the album. It's sometimes easy to forget that his album is the work of a 22-year-old after all, but this song--which seemingly exists only for Bob to talk about how much he likes to drink & the boners he has for various movie stars--reminds us. In fact, on this Dylan album more than any other, women are objects--either of desire, admiration, or humor. Consider that when the bomb goes off in "Talking World War III Blues," Dylan is saved from the blast thanks to being "down in the sewer with some little lover." The lover immediately disappears from the narrative & Dylan wanders around alone, although he later meets another woman whom he immediately invites to "go play Adam & Eve." The only exceptions to the marginal treatment of women here are the exquisite, pragmatic breakup song "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "Corrina Corrina" & the good-natured traditional adaptation "Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance." Dylan would spend the next few decades working through his troubles writing about women, but you can trace a lot of it back to this very album.

The Optical Files #145: Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)

When I think about Radiohead in the context of this project, I feel the need to distinguish the reasons I loved them as a teenager from what I thought being a Radiohead fan said about me. I wanted to be perceived as a sophisticated music fan, with discerning tastes that couldn't be satisfied by just any band. I remember in particular turning up my nose at Coldplay, whom I accused of dumbing down Radiohead's sound & streamlining it for a pop audience. Today, I think the truth is a lot simpler. Sure, I had a slightly better musical vocabulary than the average 15 year-old, but at the end of the day--just like a Coldplay fan or a Hoobastank fan or any other fan I disdained--I liked Radiohead because I liked the songs. As "art rock" bands go, Radiohead is one of the most instantly accessible to the casual listener. OK Computer is generally regarded as their masterpiece, but in all the ink that gets spilled about it, sometimes the obvious gets overlooked. It feels silly to even need to point this out, but I will: if people didn't like the songs, they wouldn't listen.

So let's talk about the songs. They are dark. Radiohead was never exactly a happy-go-lucky band, but OK Computer reaches a new level of discontent. Even songs with superficially cheerful or tranquil vibes like "Let Down" or "No Surprises" are deeply cynical lyrically, a corruption that peeks through the cracks in the uplifting arrangements. Thom Yorke's narrators are terrified of middle-class soul-death, othered alienation, general human egotism & technology superseding humanity. If you think too hard about it, you remember that artists have been sounding the alarm about modern technology gutting human communalism for hundreds of years & the particular concerns on this album lose a bit of teeth, but damned if Thom & the boys don't sound convincing.

The production is another major factor that contributes to OK Computer's overall mood. This is neither the frigid murk of Kid A nor the garage grit of The Bends. Instead, it feels like a cramped server room in the charge of an overworked technician, humming & buzzing with unruly electrical energy, warm despite never being touched by sunlight. On several songs producer Nigel Godrich cranks up the saturation on a particular instrument, & some of the most memorable sounds come from these: the overcompressed drums on "Airbag," vocals on "Climbing Up the Walls" or especially the bass on "Exit Music (For a Film)." Nigel did something to Colin's bass on that song (similar to the later "Myxomatosis") to make it sound downright apocalyptic, especially with the choral accompaniment. On the whole, the sound of OK Computer is too big for the CD, it spills from its containment & warps its surroundings like the narrator of "The Tourist": "Sometimes I get overcharged/That's when you see sparks."

I acknowledge this album's greatness but I no longer worship at its feet. In fact, the last time I revisited my Radiohead CDs I found them borderline unlistenable thanks to Thom's voice. For some reason, I never noticed back then how sharp he sings. It's especially grating on the aforementioned "The Tourist" (not to mention the live album, but we'll get to that soon). I totally get that the offkey warbling is a stylistic choice, & it usually works, but it was still jarring to hear after I was no longer used to it.

I went from wanting everybody to know I listened to Radiohead to being kind of shy about it. I guess I don't want to be thought of as one of those Radiohead fans (i.e. the kind I used to be). I suppose both approaches are equally self-conscious. I'm working on just being able to like what I like without having to work through multiple layers of how those things make me perceived by other people. I guess I'm just trying to stay one step ahead of the karma police.

The Optical Files #144: Haystak - Portrait of a White Boy (2004)

Since this is the last Haystak album that will appear in this series, I want to clarify that while I like to clown the dude--trust & believe there is plenty about him that is clownable--there was a time when Haystak's music meant a lot to me & I'll never deny that he is hugely talented. When everything goes right, his music can be uniquely captivating & convincing. Portrait of a White Boy is the album where pretty much everything went right. I always appreciated Stak 1st & foremost as a lyricist, & this album is his most consistently lyrical from front to back, even as he tackles a diverse bunch of topics like shooting craps ("Hustle & Flow") & recovering from drug addiction ("My First Day") in addition to his usual lot of street shit, with a few plain old emcee ego trip tracks along the way.

Unlike some other records where Haystak sounds like he's describing the plot of a hood movie he just rented, his ambivalence about the street life feels utterly credible on songs like "Dadgummit" & "Red Light," the latter of which is an absolute lyrical workout, Kool G Rap style: "We'll get to beefin', machines'll be beepin' & bleepin'/Them straps'll get to clackin' & clickin', don't get caught sleepin', we creepin' & sneakin'/We let our actions do the speakin', when you leakin' on the cement you gon' see what we meant, I tried to prevent/This sequence of events..." Stak cagily named "Hustle & Flow" after the 2005 film he appeared in (still his biggest brush with the mainstream), probably in a failed attempt to get a placement on the soundtrack. He takes the topic of craps (a game he elegantly describes in 2 spoken sentences at the start) & expands on it to paint a picture of the desperation of living on the margins--selling fake dope at the club, gambling with the money you need to pay the bills--& all along keeping hope alive. On "My First Day" he raps from the perspective of a drug addict trying to get clean, & unlike most songs of this type, he continues the story through the 1st 2 years, acknowledging that recovery is a long road with no shortcuts. "Safety Off" is a regular degular "check out how good I am at rapping" song, but Stak absolutely kills it with his alternately melodic & gritty flow, plus his trademark wit that is as sharp as ever: "I'm the 45 holder that's bipolar, the mic stroller/The drug dealer, the weed grower, the dice thrower/I go through grass like a mower with a Ford motor/If this was chess I woulda made you flip the board over." Then there's "Strangest Dreams," another mortality-obsessed song where he uses a beautiful metaphor to describe death to his daughter, which is chillingly resonant after the earlier song "Red Light": "In case I'm not there when you turn 13/We all come to red lights we won't see turn green."

The problems that often plague Haystak's music are present on this album, but unlike other records where they spread like dry rot to threaten the integrity of the whole, they are mostly confined here. "Big" has a gross message that shames sex workers & hinges on the double standard about a woman with a large body count being undesirable. He makes that same ugly generalization 2Pac did, trying to divide women up into good girls & bad girls: "I dig women, but it's the fucking hoes I can't stand." There's also a gay slur that shows up in "Stak's World," but it's the only one on the album. Also on "Stak's World," on a less troubling but really just cringe level, he tries to make a new slang term out of "shabbed" ("when being shot & stabbed are 1 & the same"). For some reason I don't think that one ever took off. Of course, he occasionally still sounds like Cartman from South Park, especially on the chorus of "Still You Doubted Me," which is an otherwise great entry in the grand rap tradition of "proved them all wrong when they said I wouldn't be shit" songs.

Of course, Haystak's most pervasive problematic pattern is his insistence on treating white rappers like an oppressed minority. I am willing to acknowledge that the early '90s was a different time for aspiring white emcees, who didn't have many credible role models. Still (speaking as a white rapper myself) the amount that whiteness benefits us in the larger society far outweighs any extra difficulties we might have proving ourselves in hiphop communities. Any pushback or skepticism we receive from Black hiphoppers is entirely justified, given the colonization & vulturization that hiphop has been subjected to. Thankfully, there's only 1 song on the album that plays this card, aptly titled "First White Boy." Additionally, Haystak includes a bit in the liner notes encouraging his listeners to vote in the 2004 presidential election, declaring "No more George, no more war. Yeah it's that simple." Especially considering a lot of his Southern white boy audience might have been Bush fans, that's a bold move. So politically speaking, it's a wash.

I've written before about Sonny Paradise & his incredibly cheap MIDI beats. It's a constant issue with Haystak's music, especially in the early 2000s. We don't get off to a great start production-wise with the budget strings of "Fight, Write, Die," but when "Dadgummit" comes in with the eerily reverbed pizzicato picking, Sonny somewhat redeems himself. "Safety Off" is another production highlight--the strings are still cheap but the piano makes up for them. Generally speaking, the album's production is on the right side of the "too-cheesy" line, & when it does cross it, the bars are its saving grace.

Overall, Haystak never sounded so inspired & energized before Portrait of a White Boy, & he never would again. I might not bump it very often anymore, but this record & I have a lot of history. When I put it on this time, I was prepared for disappointment but to my surprise it mostly holds up. It's certainly the only album I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anybody wondering what the big ol' Tennessee white boy is all about. 

The Optical Files #143: R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (1992)

When I was 13, I thought R.E.M. was just about the coolest band in existence. (That should give you an idea of the kind of 14-year-old I was.) Michael Stipe wrote exactly the kind of "deep" lyrics that appealed to my self-conscious intellectualism even if I seldom had any idea what he was talking about. They had an air of esotericism & sophistication about them while never forgetting that they were supposed to be a rock & roll band. I listened to them a lot in high school, so it's a little surprising that I never paid money for an R.E.M. album. They were one of the 1st bands that I stocked up on when the file sharing & CD burning era came around; I pirated & burned all of their LPs up until the then-current Reveal. All except Automatic for the People, which I stole from my sister. Since it's the only R.E.M. album to appear in this series, I'm going to take this opportunity to add a few overarching remarks about their career in general.

Automatic for the People is a moody, serious album, saturated in the kind of darkness we hadn't heard from the band since Fables of the Reconstruction. But rather than themes of folklore & the pain & beauty that coexist in the American south, Automatic is mostly about just plain old death. Still, it lives on the pop side of their discography, post-Document when they allowed themselves to be rock stars (a trajectory that peaked with Monster). The production is cleaned up; the vocals no longer sound like somebody threw a blanket over the microphone; Mike Mills's backing vocals are still present but mostly stay out of the leads' way; the lyrics are no less inscrutable but they occasionally throw in a more straightforward song. This album particularly showcases Bill Berry's big, booming arena-sized drums, thanks to producer Scott Litt. The drums are so huge they almost come as a shock in opening track "Drive," & they're followed by a bombastic string section arranged by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Between the strings, which show up again on "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," "Everybody Hurts" & "Nightswimming," the dusty late-night organ & Mike Mills's accordion, the instrumentation weaves a shroud of ethereal mystery that covers the whole album.

This atmosphere sometimes manifests in downright spookiness, like the fingerpicked licks that open "Drive" & "Monty Got a Raw Deal" (this time in bouzouki). Then there's the art rock of the squealing atonal guitar leads that complicate the life & death reflection "Sweetness Follows." The doo-wop shuffle & wordless backing vocals of "Star Me Kitten" evoke another kind of mystery, this time somewhat Mazzy Star-esque. I know I said at the top that R.E.M. never forgot to be a rock band, but "Ignoreland" is the only real rocker here, with its driving power chords, gang shouts & bloozy harmonica. The only real tonal outlier is "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite," whose execution is a bit too cheerful. Even "Everybody Hurts" with its positive message feels more like an exhausted reminder than a cheesy affirmation.

For a while I pretended to understand Michael Stipe's lyrics, & for a while after that I pretended they were all nonsense. Today I think I understand that his artistry depends on the interplay between what he sings & how he sings it. With one of the most emotive voices in rock, Stipe could sing entirely wordlessly & you would still get what he was communicating. He often chooses words for sound rather than meaning, & the heart of a song lies at the intersection of what the words are giving & what his delivery is giving. Every once in a while, though, he decides to let you in on exactly what he's thinking about. "Try Not to Breathe," whose vaguely folk-inspired melody & 6/8 pulse are reminiscent of the band's earlier "Swan Swan H," is a sensitively-written song from the perspective of a dying elder. The speaker wants to die with dignity, on their own terms, & implicitly critiques the Western culture's comprehensive fear & avoidance of death at all costs. Then there's the gorgeous, piano-driven "Nightswimming," which along with Smashing Pumpkins's "1979" is one of the iconic '90s songs about longing for the simpler days of childhood. I've written before about double nostalgia, that curious feeling where somebody else's nostalgia for a time you never experienced triggers your own. I remember being on a family beach vacation in summer 2000, lying in bed after everybody else had gone to sleep listening to Michael Stipe singing about his childhood in the late 1960s. Maybe that's why if I had to choose, I'd say Automatic for the People is my favorite R.E.M. album. I could make a case for Reckoning or Life's Rich Pageant, but neither of those got me through a family vacation, & that's got to count for something.

The Optical Files #142: GZA - Beneath the Surface (1999)

As Wu-Tang expanded in the latter half of the '90s from the (relatively) tight-knit group of 9 to the many-tendriled collective of affiliates, side projects, global cosigns & other assorted killa beez that it became, RZA began to step away from production duties out of both inclination & necessity. Never before had RZA had so little production input on a solo Wu member's album; even on Tical 2000 the previous year, he produced 4 beats, but on Beneath the Surface he only produces 1. That's not to say that RZA's fingerprints are not on this album, though. His proteges Mathematics & Arabian Knight, who between them produce 10 out of the album's 13 proper songs, have drunk deeply of the water from the Abbot's well. I don't say that like it's necessarily a good thing. Arabian Knight's sinister staccato strings are engrossing the 1st time you hear them on "Breaker, Breaker" (maybe the album's finest beat), but feel old by the time you get to "Stringplay." Ditto for Mathematics's short MPC chops on "Amplified Sample" compared to "Mic Trippin." The producers are best when they bring something a little different to the table, like Math's echoing piano chords on "High Price, Small Reward" or Knight's eerie picked guitar loop on "Victim." Knight also scores with the delay-drenched atonal string ensemble stabs of the "Intro" beat that return in the outro, & Math's best achievement here is the dusty orchestral movie score flip on "Publicity." Of course, RZA sounds more like himself than ever on the coldhearted "1112," & Wu-brother Inspectah Deck flips an epic triumphant orchestra on the title track. The most unexpected beat, though, comes courtesy of John the Baptist, whose drunken militant horns on "Crash Your Crew" perfectly complement ODB's unhinged chorus.

Long story short, the Wu production formula was starting to wear a little thin, & you can tell RZA knew it. This album also suffers from another common malady of late '90s rap records: too many guests. GZA only appears solo on 4 of the 13 proper songs, as compared to a more balanced ratio on Liquid Swords (which is still for my money the best Wu solo record). Wu-Tang is a collective, so you always expect more features than on an average solo rapper's LP. I think 50/50 is a sweet spot. Beneath the Surface just feels too crowded, & there are more affiliates & hangers-on than Wu-Tang heavy hitters. I have nothing against Hell Razah, Dreddy Krueger or Prodigal Sunn, but there are tantalizingly few appearances by emcees of the caliber of Killah Priest or Njeri (whose 2 features are the album's best).

Speaking of Njeri, she takes an already-brilliant song like "Victim" & elevates it to a stone-cold classic with her compassionate, delicately observed verse. After a chilling Angela Yee-penned intro about gun violence, GZA & Njeri use their novelistic eyes for detail to paint a vivid picture of the struggle of desperate "victims of the ghetto." Another highlight is "Publicity," one in GZA's series of thematic double-entendre focused lyrical workouts in the tradition of "Labels," "Animal Planet," "0% Finance" & "Queen's Gambit." GZA inserts as many names of rap journalism outlets as he can while ostensibly just spitting a standard ego trip song. I'm a junkie for shit like this, & the fact that he does it over the album's grimiest beat makes it even more of a winner.

Sadly, after Liquid Swords it was diminishing returns for GZA. But we can't really fault him for having trouble following up a masterpiece like his debut record. At the end of the day, this one is a short & sweet (46 minutes!) entertaining front-to-back listen with 4 undisputed classics. It's a shame the GZA (& overall Wu) grading curve is so tough, rendering albums like this marginal when they would be jewels in another artist's catalogue. Victims of their own success, I guess.

War and Weakness - reflections and observations

How have we not evolved beyond a society in which the littlest of people make the biggest of decisions, the weakest of us bear the greatest power?  This innate tendency within our systems to feed and advance sociopathy, egocentrism and arrested development.  We would be well concerned if our children, whom lack developed frontal lobes, made decisions so void of empathy and basic consideration.  Yet, people not only tolerate such underdeveloped behavior from our institutional and national leaders, they tend to reward and follow it.  The repetition of the horror in real time magnifies the absurdity, often lost in history books and tilted stories.  War is the weakest whimsy of the worst of us, condemning collective crisis on all of us, with sense that begs madness. 

The Optical Files #141: John Prine - Fair and Square (2005)

I first became exposed to John Prine because of the press that accompanied Fair & Square's release. Despite that, I started with the earliest records & didn't really get into this one until a bit later. Unlike some other Prine albums, which endeared themselves to me immediately, this one took a while to sink in. When it did, it happened song by song. Because this is not an album buoyed by the enthusiasm of youth, because it's made by an elder reflecting on a lifetime of love & loss, triumph & tragedy, regret & acceptance, each song revealed itself to me in its own time. 

The 1st song to get under my skin was "Long Monday," which immediately became one of my favorite Prine songs. Over a banjo-style circular picked guitar figure & gentle accordion, Prine sings about a lover who can only see his beloved on the weekends. He uses the symbol of car windows (a favorite symbol of his, see also "Summer's End") to frame a portrait of serene, cozy closeness & the vulnerability that comes with it: "The radio's on, the window's rolled up & my mind's rolled down." The next song that caught my ear was album opener "Glory of True Love," with its extravagant layers of guitars, accordion & mandolin. It's the kind of guileless song that I liked despite its cheesiness as a too-cool young adult; now I like it because of how unaffected it is.

The next song that clicked for me was "Crazy as a Loon," with its downhome country melody & corresponding steel guitar. Prine's speaker tries his luck in 3 American cities synonymous with success in show business: Hollywood, Nashville & New York. He soon realizes that all those cities do is "make you crazy," & he finds his peace in the north woods fishing. Another song about connecting with nature, although more obliquely, is "Taking a Walk." It wasn't until 2016 that the song finally sunk in for me: John encounters a series of sensitive & awkward social situations, with the pounding piano & tremolo mandolin enhancing the suspenseful ascending progression of the pre-chorus, before the tension is released by...taking a walk. Just going outside. Watching the birds. We all find coping strategies that work for us, & here John is graciously sharing one of his. On that same 2016 deep dive, I came to appreciate "The Moon Is Down" as well. One of the simplest Prine songs, it discusses what happens after the moon (referred to with she pronouns) disappears. We are assured that "the sun will be fine/It'll shine all the time" but there is an emptiness, a profound loss to be read between the lines. These are just some highlights of the album--I won't even touch on the brilliant Blaze Foley cover (that changes the line "Try to hide my sorrow from the people I meet" to "Sing this song for the people I meet," which is a minor change that eloquently limns the difference between Foley & Prine), or the song that's just plain about how much he loves his wife.

Although Prine's trademark homespun wit is still present, this isn't an album of good humor. It's an album full of hard-won lessons, & the easy pace with which it won me over is a testament to the honesty of its perspective. Some records grab you immediately, & some play the long game. I'm glad I kept this one around to pull out every few months, because it's a beautiful little testament & every bit as good as anything he ever did.

The Optical Files #140: Boogie Down Productions - Sex and Violence (1992)

I am very conflicted about Sex and Violence, the final LP from Boogie Down Productions before KRS-One rebranded & started releasing music under his own name the next year. On 1 hand, this album has some of the most problematic subject matter & messaging of any album KRS ever made. On the other, the music, energy & bars on this album are absolutely top-notch. Although some of the themes are hard to swallow today, this is an album I spent a lot of time listening to back in the day & I still uphold it, with reservations, as an overlooked classic from KRS.

I must acknowledge that when I mention problematic themes, I'm really only talking about 3 songs. Sure, I can take issue with a few others. "Drug Dealer" has some questionable sentiments about Black capitalism being what will save us, & "Who Are the Pimps" seems to be rooted in a rather naive understanding of how taxes work. Not to mention, Kris's critique of the tenets of the Nation of Gods & Earths might be well-reasoned, but it was pithily refuted that same year by Paris: "I ain't pro-human 'cuz all humans ain't pro-Black." But it's the sex trio of "13 and Good," "Say Gal" & "We In There" that makes it really hard for me to vouch for this album as a whole. "13 and Good" is a story song about accidentally having sex with a 13-year-old. As the song would have it, the part about the scenario that's most upsetting is not having taken advantage of a minor who legally cannot render consent, but instead the possibility of getting caught. Then the whole thing turns into a homophobic joke at the end when the girl's dad shows up & tries to blackmail the speaker into being his live-in concubine: "the price tag is your behind." More gay panic shows up in "We In There," which starts as a basic rap song dissing sucka emcees before it takes a 2nd-verse turn into a bizarrely elaborate prison fantasy involving the sucka emcee in question having his "ass [...] pumped by some f****t" while Kris masturbates to a picture of his sister. Finally, the entire point of "Say Gal," inspired by Mike Tyson's rape case, is to denigrate women who accuse high-profile men of sexual assault. He implies that there's no reason for a woman to go to a man's hotel room except for sex, & then declares "don't tell me you can wear what you want/'cuz nowadays most gal dress like a slut." You might be able to write off "13 and Good" & "We In There" as failed attempts at fanciful humor, but there is absolutely no defending the plainspoken bad messaging of "Say Gal." (Of course, all 3 of these songs are made even more troubling after KRS's comments defending Afrika Bambaataa against multiple men who accused him of molesting them when they were boys.)

I hate to be this guy, but it sucks extra hard because musically, "Say Gal" is a really good song. Kris delivers those awful lyrics in an aggressive dancehall toasting style over a sinuous self-produced beat. The reggae influence that was always present in BDP is probably most prominent on this album. He uses his dancehall style again on the title track, over a gritty beat by the great Prince Paul with a helplessly catchy bassline & about 5 different sample chops in the back end of the song. Album opener "The Original Way" starts by paying tribute to hiphop's roots in Jamaican sound system culture, before exploding into a grimy Kenny Parker beat with a reggae chorus from KRS and some take-no-prisoners rhyming by the criminally underrated Freddie Foxxx. The lo-fi production, muffled drums & mic clipping mimics the raw live sound of hiphop's early days, & the multi-part structure, culminating in a hype Kid Capri intro, makes this one of the best opening tracks to any rap album ever. 

In addition to the title track, Prince Paul brings his inimitable hardcore nursery rhyme production style to the aforementioned "Drug Dealer" as well as "How Not To Get Jerked," a companion piece to A Tribe Called Quest's “Show Business,” that contains the immortal lines: “Understand, rap is rebellious music/Therefore, only the rebel should use it.” Prince Paul might be the most recognizable name on this album‘s production roster, but there is simply not a bad or even lackluster beat on this entire disc. It’s all dry funky drums, dusty horn chops, midnight blue bass & gang chants, mixed to be dark and gritty yet warm and inviting, like the steam coming from the open soup kitchen door on a winter‘s night in the Bowery. On a purely sonic level it might be the best sounding album KRS-One was ever involved in, so it’s a shame that there are 3 tracks that completely spoil the mood. 

So is this BDP‘s lost masterpiece? That's where I'm conflicted. I do know that on a more mediocre album, 3 distasteful songs would not bother me so much. It’s only because of the lofty heights Sex and Violence reaches that the depths it stoops to are so disastrous. Take out those 3 tracks and you might have a 10/10 album, but it’s impossible to not know that they were ever there. So make of that what you will.

The Optical Files #139: KRS-One - Life (2006)

Life was the last KRS-One CD I ever bought after purchasing every one since The Sneak Attack in 2001. At 14 tracks & 43 minutes, it feels like a back-to-basics album after the comparatively sprawling Keep Right. Alas, it also sort of feels like a placeholder album, existing just to keep up his pace of a release every year or 2. The subject matter is pretty standard for Kris: antimaterialism, the lifegiving spirituality of hiphop & its richness as a culture, the sad state of mainstream rap, plain old emcee ego tripping, & a few songs about the pitfalls of living the street life. I've written before about how Kris's lyrical topics seem to vacillate between indicting the larger society & focusing on hiphop specifically. On Life he does more of the latter, which isn't my preferred mode, but it doesn't mean there aren't some gems to be found.

The album highlight is "Mr. Percy," where KRS & guest Triune speak plainly about poverty over a bluesy distorted bass. The emcees discuss rising unemployment & homelessness rates, economic despair, inflation & wage stagnation. It's real & gutsy, like when Triune asks how he can have a Masters degree & still only make 30K a year. The song's themes resonate even more deeply 16 years later, though I don't know whether to attribute that to prescience or just how little anything changes under capitalism. "Mr. Percy" demonstrates the kind of street-level humility that KRS brings to his best work. On the other side of the coin, "I Am There" is completely missing that humility. Kris describes himself in almost deific terms as a quasi-mystical being, even making the outrageous claim that those who truly understand his words will never need a psychiatrist (!). That's some cult leader shit to be honest, & it's an example of the furthest reaches of Kris's arrogance & blind spots. (More on that to come when I'm finally done with KRS for this series.)

Back on the topic of this album being streamlined compared to its predecessor: Keep Right showcased a dozen or so beatmakers, but on Life all the production is credited to "The Resistance," whoever that is. Liner note perusal would suggest that it's a production team made up of Donald Baker & Dax Reynosa. The single producer gives the album a cohesive feel, & the slamming drums on opener "Bling Blung" let you know that this record will be no less gritty--& thankfully a bit less brickwalled--than any KRS album that went before. Samples, though, are in short supply. It sounds like there is some live instrumentation combined with some really good MIDI, but the only songs that sound like they're built around samples are the final 2, "Still Slippin'" & "My Life." There are a few ambitious misfires like the frantic, uptempo rock-guitar "Gimmie Da Gun," & Kris's affinity for awkward sung hooks rears its head on "The Way We Live" & a few others, but overall this is pretty good production by the standards of 2000s MIDI-era indie rap.

Thankfully the album closes on a high note: the aforementioned "My Life." It's not new territory for Kris--he told autobiographical stories in "Hiphop Knowledge" from The Sneak Attack & "True Story" on The Kristyle--but I love hearing the details of those heady early days in the Bronx over a soulful sample-based beat that sounds like classic Kris. This is how you self-mythologize, man, not by claiming you can cure people of their mental illness.

So with this album we leave the era of front-to-back bangers & enter the era of KRS-One records that have a handful of dope songs to recommend them. But rather than bemoan the diminishing returns, it's probably a better approach to appreciate the longevity & the fact that he still had something to contribute 19 years deep in the game.

The Optical Files #138: John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)

Perhaps it's the color of sun cut flat & covering the crossroads I'm standing at, or maybe it's the weather or something like that, but I've been thinking a lot about my mother lately. She & I loved a lot of the same things, but not in the same ways. She loved movies, but she didn't want to watch anything with a downbeat ending. She loved books: potboiler mysteries & romance novels. Most importantly, she was a pious Christian & loved sacred music.

I don't think I ever played A Love Supreme for her. My guess is that it would have been a little challenging to her sensibilities--her appreciation for jazz began & ended with Dixieland. But once, when I was in a particularly dark place & she was telling me it would be okay, I told her "I wish I had your faith." I think she misunderstood what I meant. She responded that to wish for faith is to acknowledge that it exists, so wanting it is as good as having it. That's why I think of her when I listen to this album. Coltrane seems to feel the same way about his god, whom he fills the liner notes with all-caps devotions to, including a direct quote from the gospel of Matthew: "seek and ye shall find." In the sequence of the album, "Pursuance" comes after both "Acknowledgement" & "Resolution." The line between cause & effect feels blurred, with the track titled "Acknowledgement" filled with the tentative outreach of Trane's restless searching horn, trying out ideas in different keys, different combinations, whatever gets him closest to god, until finally resolving in the album title chant. Subsequent solo sections from each member of the combo (McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, & Elvin Jones on drums) have the same feeling of reaching & striving until it all culminates in the grand yet tearful serenity of the album closer, the timpani-accompanied "Psalm," played with full-hearted conviction but ending on an uncertain cadence, acknowledging that this love is too big to be contained or even described in one album.

Despite the mystical ambiguity of its execution, there is an underlying serenity on this album that belies the furious twists & turns his music would take in subsequent years. This is a serenity of the beautiful but mature variety, a serenity that admits the limits of human perspective, that allows for an expansive unknown. The album title lets us know: "supreme" is a superlative, & as imperfect humans we cannot create something supreme, only seek to describe it. Trane has made peace with the idea that the most any bit of art can achieve, sacred or secular, is an imperfect, grossly incomplete sketch of something inconceivably vast. If I had explained it that way, I bet my mom would have understood.