The 1st Quarter 2019 Playlust Playlist: My (Weird) Top 75 from the First Three Months of 2019

My joke about a second take back-fired.

[Ed. – I actually held onto a few posts from A Project of Self-Indulgence, the first several artist profiles of 2019 among them. Because the 1st Quarter Playlist that I’m putting up includes a fair number of artists on this list, I thought I’d repost these summaries to give people an intro to the artists they hear on the playlist. Just the good ones, mind you. And, now, without preamble…]

Masego
“Anytime I’ve tried to make this recipe for dopeness, it just doesn’t work.”

That doesn’t so much sum up Masego, the stage-name for the fairly-recently launched Micah Davis, as embody him. He describes his influences – jazz-era legend Cab Calloway and Jamie Foxx, of all people, not to mention Pharrell, and OutKast’s Andre 3000 – while also talking about how much he relies on improvisation when making music. He trips when he tries to too-consciously follow his idols.

Masego is a fairly recent act, someone I found when the Portland Mercury named his Lady Lady as one of their top albums of 2018. Personally, the connection came slowly and through inaction: every time I came close to skipping a song, I’d inevitably counsel myself to give it “just a couple more seconds.” I only noticed I’d stopped saying that when Spotify started playing another artist. Lady Lady is the kind of magnetic, low-upon-first-listen kind of albums, but it’s something I sank into, and without noticing it much. I pulled “Lavish Lullaby,” “Old Age” and “Just A Little” to the playlist and, the more I listen to them, and read up on him, the more all that feels like a toe-hold onto something bigger. Judging by the fact he was scheduled to headline a European/North American tour shortly after this interview, says that The Mercury and me aren’t the only people who can’t quite find the skip button.

Born in Jamaica, raised in Newport News, Virginia, by an entrepreneur and a guy in the U.S Air Force, both of them pastors, Masego comes from Soundcloud, and the internet in general. He calls what he does “TrapHouseJazz” (and…I’ll accept it), and, from one interview to the next – whether in a WAMU 85 Bandwidth.fm interview (source for the quote up top), or one with Billboard (link above) – understanding what that means requires some long-form reading. To give an example, he neither reads nor writes music, but, in a testament to his drive and/or compulsion, he created his own musical notation that he understands well enough to translate for others. Most often, though, he just sits down and lets it happen – and, after that, he invites in more people (something about 100 people being “in TrapHouseJazz”). Call it hyper-, open-source collaboration with all kinds of anyone he can find. The man (age 25) even created an app called Network, in order to enable the kind of collaboration that works for him – and probably people of his generation.

Masego talks about comedy a lot, which could explain his deft description of Lady Lady:

“It feels like silk pajamas, straight from overseas.”

That captures the smoothness, but, if you check that Billboard article, you’ll see women, writ large, as his inspiration for the album. And it’s the good kind of inspiration. This dude is interesting, open and deep, full-stop. And it comes out in what he does.

Rilo Kiley

“Sun, Sun, Sun is not without its negative moments, however. ‘The Bank And Trust,’ for example, contains a thinly veiled account of Sennett and Lewis’s dysfunctional personal and working relationship. In it, the singer croons, ‘She said, “The only way you got as far as you did is ’cause of me / Your songs suck.”’”

Now, that is how you break up a band. Here, “Sennett” refers to Blake Sennett and “Lewis” refers to Jenny Lewis, the two talents who anchored the Los Angeles-based band, Rilo Kiley, and if there’s an indie rock band who could top the Trogg Tapes – maybe even dunk on them – this is your band. If I had to call any place on the internet a safe space, I’d go with Wikipedia (God bless ‘em!), but even they couldn’t avoid the acrimony of the band’s breakup. With an eye to getting a taste of that fetid pit of recrimination, I sat through all five parts (pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, pt 5) of an interview with Sennett and Lewis – which, to note it, felt like a guided tour through their public sore spots with a sadist at the wheel. Even though I tuned in for the five-car pile-up, pt 4 had an interesting, and telling moment…and keep in mind this is right after one them (Lewis, I think) says, “Coldplay really knows how to play to that many people”:

“Question: Like, do you really want to get big, or…you know, does the band have that ambition, or…?”

Lewis: “I think sometimes, but I don’t know if we…plot it out like that…”

Sennett: “I think our ambition is more to make…and to write, hopefully, and record good songs, you know, and to make…that’s where our…and to make ourselves happy first, you know, and if people want to buy our records and come to our shows, we’re certainly not going to stop them. I mean, that’s a nice thing to feel rewarded by touching people, you know, and the more people you touch, maybe sometimes the more gratifying it is.”

Some bands, maybe a lot of them, just don’t have it in them to level up. For instance, I went to see Colter Wall (Saskatchewan scene; check it out) at the Crystal Ballroom, and he’d play a song like “The Trains Are Gone” (made the playlist!), and well, but the room just sort of swallowed it. The same goes for the two tracks by Rilo Kiley included on the playlist: “A Better Son/Daughter” and “With Arms Outstretched.” Play either on the festival circuit and watch the people evaporate looking for drinks, or bottled water, or…do they still sell drugs in the parking lots? They’re also both great, subtle songs, well-constructed, thoughtfully executed and just pretty to listen to. Both songs came off of the band’s second album, The Execution of All Things, aka, the good old days. I totally missed them, but they built a devoted enough fan-base to where music publications feel like a Top 10 song retrospective will draw some eyeballs. The AV Club had one, but Stereogum’s Top 10 included a summary of how Rilo Kiley works that I’d never get into as few words:

“Lewis is a singular talent capable of incisive lyrics and fierce vocal stylings; Sennett’s deft guitar playing is stirring; Pierre de Reeder’s bass playing is melodic and unobtrusive; and Jason Boesel’s drumming is alternately understated and thunderous.”

That is the long, perfectly-punctuated sentence I wish I’d written about the first Rilo Kiley I knew until this week, “It’s a Hit.” Both of those Top 10’s give great histories about the band; The AV Club even included the song “Bank and Trust” by Sennett’s solo project, The Elected. And, as everyone seems to point out in everything I read, Sennett and Lewis made one another better in Rilo Kiley. To end on a happier note, I think both of them realize this. Pt 1 of that 2007 interview feels like sitting in the car at age 8 when your parents are fighting, but they’re complimenting one another by the end, Lewis for Sennett’s guitar playing/arrangements, Sennett for her (honestly) incredible lyrics. And that’s not bad for a couple former child actors from LA. This might be the only time I’ll feature Rilo Kiley, but I’m going to get through those albums one by one, because they really do seem like a special act.

Jean Grae

“Del F. Cowie of Exclaim! found her ‘cast-offs’ to be better than most other rappers’ ‘Grade A material’ and asserted that ‘Grae has not only maintained her profile but has a made a strong case to be considered one of the most versatile MCs around.’”

I will never, in my whole goddamn life, presume to tell anyone that anyone is the “[_____] artist you’ve never heard of,” because that’s just about everyone I hear all the time. For instance, I heard Jean Grae for the first time last year…15 years after the album (probably; does it matter?), Bootleg of the Bootleg, the one I chose as the musical focus for this post, but, if you’ve never heard her, and you like a certain of New York hip hop (Native Tongues root), you’ve got at least two weeks of happiness ahead of you, maybe even a month. Her resume tips you off a little:

“Throughout her career she has also recorded tracks with numerous major hip-hop artists, Atmosphere, The Roots, Talib Kweli, The Herbaliser, Da Beatminerz, Phonte, Mr. Len, Masta Ace, Vordul Mega, C-Rayz Walz, Mos Def, Styles P, Pharoahe Monch and Immortal Technique among them.”

I know three of those artists well, two or three more by name, so don’t take that quote any further than what you know, but, on Bootleg, etc. you hear how she found a niche in New York City and a…complicated future in music. To stick with Bootleg, etc. for now (sorry, not typing that title everytime), it have enough facets to send you back for another look. Her sense of humor comes through (personal favorite, intro to “Excuse Me Sir”), but she swings a ton of sound palettes at your ears and, whether she’s rapping over the flow-funk of “Take Me,” the 70s-piano-rock loops of “Keep Livin',” or flowing over more traditional hip hop samples in “Swing Blades” (ft. Cannibal Ox!), or even “A Little Story”), her vocals dance on the beat, the melody, and everywhere else she sees fit to plant them. I thought this line (from Wikipedia, not always bad) does her vocals justice:

“Her rapping on the album was described by Robert Christgau as ‘remarkable for its rapidity, clarity and idiomatic cadence. The writing has a good-humored polysyllabic literacy.’”

As an artist, Jean Grae leans toward free and independent – and in more senses of both words than you can count. She proved her independence by going indie in or around 2008 – and with offers on the table (apparently, just not ones she liked). From the pre-interview notes of an Okayplayer interview (uh..lost it):

“She had been producing albums with bigger labels, but she grew disenchanted with the way the industry treated her specifically and women in general. She announced her retirement in 2008, but then decided instead to keep working, just on her own terms.”

That “her own terms” thing becomes very apparent when you try to get through, for example, The State of Eh, or That’s Not How You Do That Either. When you’re a reviewer writing about music, and you hear skits, you’re only about a minute into first track when you think “I don’t have time for skits.” (I should, but I don’t.) That has become an increasing interest to her, though (see her web series), and I wouldn’t say she’s bad at any of it.

Speaking, I backed into Jean Grae by way of “Gold Purple Orange” and, probably Quelle Chris (via “Buddies”). That came off 2018’s Everything’s Fine, the album those two put out either as a couple, or on their way to being a couple. The point is, if you watch the video for “Gold, Purple, Orange,” you will see that “art” sensibility coming through. I’ve since learned that she records on Talib Kweli’s label (or was, swear to god), a stamp of approval with real currency in the right circles. If you listen to the song, though, you’ll hear an update on what Jean Grae has done for nearly two decades: tone-/beat-perfect lyrics that give you at least two different puzzles to solve in every line. Bootleg of the Bootleg comes from a totally different time, place, and mental space, but she brings the same qualities through all the way back to the beginning.

Gorjia, Magma

“There’s a few tunas, I think they’re still alive in the ocean. Stop eating that please, right now.”

- Joe Duplantier, Metal Insider Interview (2017)

That’s not what people expect to hear from a heavy metal artist, and I’m not sure whether that’s sharper commentary on people who love metal, or the people who judge them. It’s not remotely out of place, however, for France’s Gojira, who have worked with the Sea Shepherd Preservation Society; Wikipedia’s thumbnail description for the band’s 2005 album, From Mars to Sirius, states that it “tackles environmental issues, and broader themes of life, death, and rebirth.” Another knock on metal lurks in there as well – the idea that it’s expressively, even emotionally stunted, just a bunch of dudes wailing in rage and on instruments with heads banging along in time. Or maybe that’s just some bullshit I laid on the genre. Fortunately, I asked people to suggest new artists to me at the beginning of the month, and a guy suggested Gojira. Holy shit, am I glad I put the question out there.

If you look into Gojira, few things stand out more than how…just incredibly down-to-earth and fucking nice they are. They use their success to as leverage to lift up other bands, for one – e.g., Car Bomb, whose album Joe Duplantier produced in Gojira’s Brooklyn studio (his graceful comment on Car Bomb: “I can’t listen to their record two times in a row though, you have to listen to it one time but it’s so intense and challenging but for every metal head out there.”). Among fascinating stray thoughts about how they’ll never play an entire album live and a casual approach to their own catalog, I caught something in everything I read or watched that that cuts still harder against the grain of metal stereotypes: these are remarkably thoughtful and sensitive people. The making 2016’s Magma coincided with the death of the mother of the two brothers and founding members of Gojira, Joe and Mario Duplantier (drums, incidentally). Joe Duplantier’s reflection on that loss sums up this thought better than anything I can offer:

“It's life and we all go through similar things eventually, but when it happens to you it's so unique and total.”

Gojira started back in Bayonne, France, all the way back in 1996. Christian Andreu (other guitar, with/opposite Joe) and Jean-Michel Labadie (bass) round out the band’s line-up which has been perfectly stable over all that time (and sorry to rush the line-up). After bouncing around between a couple albums, I decided to focus on Magma. Gojira self-produced that same album in the same studio where they recorded Car Bomb, and they took a different, maybe more mature approach to the music. An interview in Metal Insider has good quotes on this (“a bit more open and maybe a bit less technical and further away from our death metal roots…we are older now”), but Aggressive Tendencies put up a video in which Joe Duplantier explains Gojira’s writing/composition process. Another video interview with both Duplantiers on Metal Hammer goes one step better – especially when they compare thoughts on the challenges of playing “Pray,” one of the three songs that made up their three-track guide to Magma.

That one didn’t make this month’s playlist, but I feel fortunate to have the sense and good taste to choose the other two, “The Shooting Star” and “Stranded” (#blessed). Both suit a metal wimp (for now) like me, in that they’re less unrelenting than full-blast metal, with plenty of changes in tempo and musical phrasing and, full disclosure, Joe Duplantier opts to sing on both of them; hung up, as I am, on lyrics, I’ll always struggle with the “metal growl” (that said, it cracks my shit up how every interview highlights Joe’s choice to sing on the album). The guilt/shame at my metal wimpiness led to some waffling on which album to choose, and that’s how “From the Sky” (from, uh, From Mars to Sirius) wound up on the playlist. “The Cell” made the final cut and, golly, I can’t say enough about how thoroughly fucking welcome a change from my usual musical diet felt. And feels. I’ve lined up Orange Goblin for the next playlist. Anyway, these dudes are incredible, give them your money.

Patto, Patto

I’ll start by getting something off my chest: if I’m hearing the lyrics right, “Hold Me Back” goes two years in the wrong direction from The Rolling Stones’ infamous “Stray Cat Blues.” If “13 summers” means what I think it does, it is beyond inappropriate. That song also scratches my 70s-rock itch like a motherfucker, so there it is on this playlist.

I’ve been sitting on Patto since sometime during 2017 (as evidenced by “The Man” in that year’s Top 100 playlist). Because they sound so clearly anchored in early 70s rock, I was shocked to see Spotify slap 2010 as the year for the band’s eponymous debut album. As it turns out, time swallowed Patto for a couple decades, with their entire catalog getting re-released after 2010. The band never hit it really big and more than a few people have made the case that they never really found their feet until after their recording contracts dried up. Having listened to Monkey’s Bum, the album referenced (and reverenced) by that argument…the rumors are totally true, and that’s why you’ll see a bunch more Patto on the next playlist [Ed. – in the works, but it should be up two Saturdays from now. Ed. to Ed. - Then I deleted the blog. Huh.]

Patto came together through a variety of paths, but most of the band came out of a predecessor act called Timebox (here’s a taste of them: “I Wish I Could Jerk Like My Uncle Cyril”). Two of that band’s original members – Ollie Halsall (vibraphone first, then guitar; hold that thought) and Clive Griffiths (bass) – would go on to form Patto with two later additions to Timebox: John Halsey (drums) and Mike Patto (vocals/frontman). The band picked up its name Mike Patto, obviously, presumably by way of his immediate influence on Timebox (per Wikipedia’s entry, Patto “took on a prominent role as vocalist and songwriter upon joining”), but Halsall might have been the defining, original talent that set them apart. Patto played with and at the same time as bands you’ve probably heard of (e.g., The Kinks and The Small Faces), and they built a reputation in their live shows that lead to recording contracts; that the people who managed them decided to put out a live album (Roll ‘Em and Smoke ‘Em Put Another Line Out) when Patto’s record sales sputtered sort of underscores the theory of what success they had.

Given their years in the pop culture wilderness, there isn’t much material available on Patto. Fortunately, one massive source – something like a tribute to Halsall – fills in some blanks (a great read, btw). Of most significance, the BBC might have played some role in their short history: England’s most famous (and ubiquitous) broadcast network banned them after they missed a recording session (that’s “A” recording session, as in one). That history of Halsall makes an impressive case that talent didn’t play much of a role – e.g., this note on his style:

“He was different He played faster. His notes choices were unusual. His phrasing was unique. He was fearless, reckless, impulsive, hysterical and listening to him was an adventure. The people who saw those shows still recall them with awe.”

If you listen to Patto at all – even just the links in this post – guitar feels like the right instrument to emphasize. Another source I found was a Louder Than War review of their first two albums, the debut and a follow up titled Hold Your Fire. That review is mildly merciless with Patto, in that it makes fun of everything down to the cover art, but it contains this absolutely gem on guitar gone too far:

“It could be somewhat of a ‘double-edge sword though: the improvised Jazz noodling that takes up a fair amount of ‘Money Bag’ and most of bonus track ‘Hanging Rope’ is ok in a sort of ‘look no hands’ sort of way, but it doesn’t make you want to listen to it again and did not add much to either song.”

The critic goes on to argue that Patto was finding its feet in its debut, and that it found them on Hold Your Fire. I haven’t listened to that one yet, but based on the gap in conception and arrangement between Patto and Monkey’s Bum, I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. The rest of the band’s history is a bit of a bummer: they recorded Monkey’s Bum post-contract in 1973, but that album wouldn’t be released until the mid-1990s. When the band broke up, Patto and Halsall went on to form Boxer, which started reasonably, but ended in a professional fireball that saw Halsall lose the guitar he’d played for years, along with everything else, to cover debts. Both men are dead now, Patto in 1979 from lymphatic leukemia, and Halsall, quietly and anonymously (in spite of still making a living as a musician) in Madrid.

Well, that went on a bit. Anyway, I confined my selections for this playlist to songs from Patto, including “Hold Me Back,” “Government Man,” and “Time to Die.” The last two are gentler tracks, and far less raunchy/squicky (e.g., “keep licking your lips, I’m gonna wind up in jail”) than “Hold Me Back,” with “Time to Die” feeling like the one pointing to where Patto would end up.

Tristen, Charlatans at the Garden Gate

“I’m always playing in that direction. Like, I have two pedals. If I get a third pedal, I stop using one. I’m always pushing to be as simple as possible.”

With Tristen, aka, Tristen Gasparadek, I’m back in this decade – and that quote (from this article) does decent service to capturing her sound. Born in Lansing, Illinois (now confirmed three times it’s not Michigan), Tristen now lives, records, and operates out of Nashville, TN (“It’s over,” as she said in a 2017 interview with Epiphone). Tristen also came to me in 2017, by way of “Baby Drugs,” a tidy little ode to co-dependence of the chemical kind. That track appeared on 2011’s Charlatans at the Garden Gate, Tristen’s break-through album. It definitely comes from a folk-rock angle – an interview with Guitarworld dubs it “the folk-tinged rock of Laurel Canyon, comparable to the Byrds or Linda Ronstadt, to modern alternative like Angel Olsen” - and it put her on the map in a place where she could attract attention and command resources. As it turns out, that’s not her gig – Tristen wears “fiercely independent” better than most - but it’s also possible that her middle album, Caves (2013), occupies a fair chunk of her universe.

It’s also possible that’s a preoccupation she carried with her in most of the interviews I read about her took place around the time 2017’s Sneaker Waves came out and, by the sheer weight of repetition, she clearly feels like that Caves got overlooked:

“There are a lot of reasons why Caves wasn’t as widely received and a lot of them are very boring reasons. They are business reasons and they are boring as hell. That record is a masterpiece. I don’t regret anything I did. I will never be able to make that record again. I fully believe in it.”

From what I gather, she complicated her sound on Caves (“which wove in some synths and clever loops”), but I haven’t listened to that album (yet), or Sneaker Waves. If one theme unifies all three albums, it would be Tristen’s approach to making them. After putting in time dealing with the business/promotional/production side of the industry after Charlatans, she moved all of her production work in-house - literally in her kitchen and living room, where she produced both Caves and Sneaker Wave; her husband, Buddy Hughen, actually learned how to produce music while making Caves. She fesses up to the challenges of going that fully independent in a 2017 interview with Epiphone, but it also gives her the time and freedom to make music in her on way and on her own time. That pacing gives her the freedom to, say, take a year to tour with Jenny Lewis, as she did for a strictly one-year period. Lewis plays on a bigger stage, and an article in American Songwriter (that you can read only once, so savor it) tells a great story about how not even “bawling like a child” watching Neil Young play could entice Tristen from the indie (or, from another interview “punked”) path she’s chosen to walk.

With Charlatans, the tracks I selected for this playlist give a fair glimpse of what you’ll hear listening to it. The guitars generally jangle, but she stretches her vocals to keep up with the tempo and volume she chooses for each trick – call it the distance between the slow, strumming acoustic approach of “Battle of the Gods” and the faster, heavier, and wired “Heart and Hope to Die,” with “Matchstick Murder” (personal favorite) occupying a middle ground in between. (That said, the pre-chorus in “Heart and Hope to Die” “show me how your daddy and your mommy made you” makes for one hell of an ear-worm and on multiple levels.). While each of those songs comfortable share the same album with “Baby Drugs,” that one possesses its own sensibility; I didn’t know what to expect from the album with that track in mind, and I’m certainly not disappointed by any of it, but, no, I didn’t go where I was expected.

Noname, Room 25

“I researched youth poetry in Chicago and the program I used to be in, YOUmedia, that popped up. That’s how I ended up going there and meeting [Chance and] all those people – a Google search! A Google search changed my life, bruh.”

The “Chance” in there is Chance the Rapper, of course, and Noname first gained the name she has from her lines on “Lost” from Chance’s debut, Acid Rap. She even joined him when he performed on Saturday Night Live and, given that Chance blew all the way up to Kit Kat fame, those are massive first steps into the business. She didn’t quite blow up with him, and some part of that might have been by choice.

Noname, aka, Fatima Nyeema Warner, doesn’t like doing publicity – which could explain a phenomenon I’ve come across before; a bunch of the articles you find on her reference the same source, a 2018 interview with Fader magazine. Whether from Noisey or Complex, they drew quotes from that article, much like I did above (not to mention a lot of repetition; with everything else that’s going on, how many times do I need to read about when she lost her freakin’ virginity?). And she almost canceled the damn interview when conversation of a photo-shoot came up. (That said, she seems to trust Fader as an outlet, because she spoke to them in 2016 as well.) Noname came into her curious style of hip hop by way of Chicago’s spoken word/slam-poetry arts community, a time/place/space she shared with Chance and others; it didn’t take a lot of coordination, in other words, for that collaboration to come together.

She has only two albums – 2016’s Telefone (which I haven’t heard) and 2018’s Room 25, which I strongly recommend. Noname cites a number of people as influences – Nina Simone, Andre 3000, Kanye West, Missy Elliott and…Avril Lavigne (cool, but also cool?) – but she strips away some number of layers when making her sound. It’s fair to call it minimalist, but, more than that it’s quiet and sleepily subtle; her lyrics and phrasing spill out in quick, tight rhymes that slip past you before you catch on completely – which is one way to keep people coming back to your work. Noname self-produced both albums – if in collaboration with other people (Phoelix, in at least one case), including live musicians - and both on fairly tight timelines, but I have nothing about respect for what motivated the one-month turn-around on Room 25: she couldn’t stand the thought of performing the songs from Telefone one more time and, bluntly, she needed rent. That must have taken some lifting, and for a couple reasons. First, it’s fair to call Noname “accidentally indie,” in that she earns part of her artistic independence because she doesn’t like to ask for help. The other part goes back to the issue of process:

“But now I think that just might be the way I make art: I incubate for a long ass time.”

I first heard her through “Blaxploitation,” a mash-up of her quiet, staccato rapping and audio clips from old Blaxploitation movies. If you call that a gimmick (I don’t), she steps away from that on a pair of other tracks that made this month’s playlist, “Window” and (personal favorite) “Self.” (The lines about all the things her pussy does makes a fine introduction to her sensibility.) Some people might identify “Montago Bae,” as a gimmick, but that’s one hell of a pun, no matter how you slice it.

There’s an easy comic sensibility in Noname’s lyrics, which could explain a shift in the company she now keeps. After moving to Los Angeles around the time Room 25 came out, she found a more natural crowd with comedians, something she sees as a natural fit:

“With my rapper friends, I always end up at the club, and that’s not me. I’m more ‘getting drunk in the back of a shitty comedy club.’”

It’s on that precise note where I want wrap up Noname, and why I’m so excited to see what she does next. She’s already funny as hell, and I can only think that new environment will prove fertile.