First, it was Think of One's Camping Shaabi (packaged with a really interesting "making of" video) and K'Naan's re-issue of his 2006 Juno Award-winning The Dusty Foot Philosopher, a pair of albums that hit me rhythmically and harmonically just right. Though the first is a pop album of sorts and the second a straight-up hip-hop joint, they're both multilingual affairs that originate, each in its own way, in Africa. They’re also incredibly ambitious, undeniably flawed works of art that I share with my kids and will return to for years and years.
Less simultaneously, I fell for Hilary Hahn’s Schoenberg Violin Concerto Op.36/Sibelius Violin Concerto Op.47 and Patricia Barber’s The Cole Porter Mix. Both women are among my favorite delvers into what were once referred to as the serious arts. Both women work hard to make musical connections that challenge conventions, the repertoire, and themselves, demanding twin leaps of imagination and faith. Both women came through with albums that I will stick with, and that will stick with me in return.
Next came a hip-hop pairing; first, Saul Williams and, soon after, the Mighty Underdogs, a.k.a. the MCs formerly known as Quannum: Gift of Gab (Blackalicious), Lateef the Truth Speaker, Lyrics Born, et al. All command respect as lyricists. And performers. And their albums deliver. If you strive for rhyme, listen up:
* Saul Williams, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
* The Mighty Underdogs, Droppin' Science Fiction
Now, this week, another revelation...
I’ve been paying a distant attention to Brooklyn's Parts & Labor for a couple years now. The band's Stay Afraid (2006) and Mapmaker (2007) immediately grabbed my sustained attention, which flared and then burned away in a few days. Enter Receivers, due out on October 21. Hopefully, at some point you’ve come across an incredible album by some musician you’ve only been loosely acquainted with, and you suddenly feel as if you’ve always known she had it in her. Few feelings equate. Check out Pitchfork's free, full steam of the noise-pop mini-epic “Nowheres Nigh."
Catch your breath yet? Now give it one more go.
Then, in what’s become typical one-two fashion this year, along came Censored Colors. The culprits are called Portugal. The Man, and they got to me in 2005, going 65 on the I-5 a few miles outside of Portland, en route from Seattle, with their song “Chicago.” An gutter-scraping, indie-rock geyser of a tune, it was the first of more than a dozen songs from their 2005 debut, Waiter: You Vultures!!, that left me speechless but for a few gasping hyperboles. I still pimp its praises to anyone who isn’t immediately turned off by volume and rough edges.
Point is, Portugal. The Man (based in Portland, via Alaska) now returns with a mountainous pile of harmonic songs I can't get enough of (except for Parts & Labor breaks). Censored Colors requires a listener who appreciates encountering the fertile accidents that result when a sub-virtuosic composer/performer quite simply can’t be stopped. This is frontman John Gourley. Far better in the studio than on stage, the guy's nevertheless a prolific fountain of song and one of my favorite perennial unsungs.
Oh right, lists.
So this morning I spent an eye-opening, over-caffeinated hour with Tom Moon, author of 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (podcast interview to follow; stay tuned and be patient). I’d picked at the book rather than properly read it, but this is how it goes with reference materials, right? Knowing nothing about Moon personally, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the guy who just published the Mt. Olympus of Music Lists.
Regardless, I was wrong to expect either an encyclopedic bully or someone who’d long since begun believing more in himself than in the music he wrote about. Instead, Tom Moon is unflinchingly approachable, a well-spoken, well-listened, humble guy who loves what he does and laughs reverently at having been blessed to nab a gig that amounts to every music writer’s wet dream, whether or not any of us would admit it.
--Jason Kirk
P.S. Everything in pairs: I also recently finished The World in Six Songs, by Daniel Levitin (of This is Your Brain on Music fame). The Onion’s A.V. Club gave it a C+. Such generosity inspires.
