Many of the critics reviewing this album compared band member Alexis Krauss’ singing to something like religious chanting and the comparison is appropriate. There is a hypnotic, meditative quality to the vocals, especially on stand-out tracks like “Rill Rill.” But for my money, the real star here is Derek Miller’s production, which, in a year of catchy and crunchy guitar riff pyrotechnics (see: Fang Island), is the undisputed King of the Mountain. Listen for the thrilling moment on “Infinity Guitars” around the 1:51 mark when the already loud song gets inexplicably louder. It is obvious throughout that their amps go to “11.”Grade: A-
My introduction to this album’s material was watching Kanye West perform “Runaway” on the MTV Music Awards. After a year of embarrassing outbursts, interviews, tweets and an involuntary cameo on South Park, calling himself a “douchebag” felt like too little and too late. It also felt appropriately tasteless. Hearing the word “douchebags” sung, no matter how deserving its target, no matter how pretty the accompanying melody, for any reason other than comedy just felt…silly. Watching that on TV, I really thought I was witnessing Kanye nuke the fridge. But then: a pair of revelations. The first was this album, which, for all its bombast, is nearly a masterpiece. The second was my realization that his personal life – even his frighteningly narcissistic insistence on living the majority of it in public – is kind of irrelevant to the art he’s creating. I don’t want to make a virtue out of vice, but he seems capable of an alchemy that turns shit into gold. After all, reasonable people can agree on all the available facts and still disagree on the conclusions one could reach from them. Is Kanye obnoxious? Garish? Self-involved? Arrogant? Yes. Is he also charismatic? Ambitious? Self-critical? Talented? Yes. As he rightly dares us on “Gorgeous,” “act like [he] ain’t had a belt in two classes.” In 1994, major league baseball went on strike. I was 15. Turned off by what seemed to me then to be the greed of players and owners alike, I stopped watching. I even stopped playing, so great was my disgust. But, after reaching adulthood, I came back to the sport, acknowledging that the game itself was better than the men who played it. So it is with Kanye. Grade: A-
An amazing debut from a great new band. I haven’t been this impressed by a “first try” since, well, since Vampire Weekend came out. If you’re not hooked by the opening power chord undertow of “Floating Vibes,” then don’t bother with the rest. But if you let yourself float a little further out, here be dragons: great harmonies, handclap percussion, reverberating guitars, jangly solos. And, if the REM influences haven’t crashed over your head by then, they will on “Twin Peaks.” Be sure to hang around for the flawed, stream-of-consciousness beauty of closer “Catholic Pagans” with its goofy allusions to bomb shelters and Barack Hussein Obama. Grade: A-
The conventional wisdom about Das Racist is that they are not so much a rap group as a group of guys who love rap. And that this love has led to a knowledge so encyclopedic and a sensibility so epicurean that they almost can’t help being great rappers themselves. This critique is codependent with the other standard line on this band: that if they are not exactly novelty musicians (think: “Weird Als” for the millennial generation), they are, at least some of the time, taking the piss. I am of the opinion that many reviewers have missed the mark here, that they have revealed the extent to which their ideas are trapped in a kind of hipster lockstep. If for most of your adult life you have only been amused by irony, then you run the risk of believing that every time you laugh it must be the result of something ironic. Now, don’t get me wrong. Das Racist are funny. And they are not above poking fun of rap’s clichés and excesses. But that, too, reveals their devotion to rap’s legacy of humor and authenticity (see: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.) as opposed to a tongue-in-cheek aesthetic mocking rappers who take themselves too seriously. Bottom line: if you love wordplay, classic hip-hop, pop culture, good beats, self-deprecation and social commentary, then these two excellentmixtapes are as real as it gets. Grade(s): A- / A-
Contra was released less than two weeks into 2010. Week after week I waited for someone to top it. Here I am, December 31st, still waiting. Nearly twelve months on, the songs sound as fresh and as expertly-produced as they did at first blush. To borrow a Sarah Palin-ism, this album may be the best refudiation of the sophomore slump since the curse was first diagnosed. The whole band – and lead singer Ezra Koenig in particular – sounds more assured than on the debut, which is something, considering they weren’t really the shrinking, shoegazer type to begin with. As Koenig sings on “Holiday,” “I got…a healthy sense of worth.” Indeed. Lately, this band’s high self-esteem is just good common sense. Grade: A
