It's finally happened. I listened to a stone-cold, balls-to-the-wall classic album this month, and was able to give it my first non-retrospective A* rating. You know that feeling when you listen to an album on release, and you just know it's a god-tier release from the first listen? That happened this month. Take a bow, King Kenny. No one came anywhere near you in April.
The Rest:
Alvarez Kings - Somewhere Between - D
Czarface - First Weapon Drawn - B
J Dilla - Motor City - C
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Killing Tingle Lifted Retreats - B
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Solid State Mercenaries - C
OR-L's long list of releases on the Ipecac label is coming to a close, with only a few albums left to go. I'm gonna have to be honest, even as a big Omar/Mars Volta fan, I'm quite happy about that. I really don't think it's been worth it, on the whole. As a fan and a completist, I like listening to everything he puts out, even with this hugely prolific period. But aside from a clutch of genuinely great albums (Sworn Virgins, Arañas en la Sombra, A Lovejoy, Cell Phone Bikini) the series has been fairly average. There's only so many songs with him mumbling unintelligible lyrics that I can hear without it getting samey.
You know how your favourite artists often say they have a vault full of ideas, sketches and unreleased projects? Those off the cuff comments under their breath in interviews that leave tantalising images of albums not yet realised? You think about the great possibilities of what lies waiting to be discovered - What if it's the best thing they've ever done, what if it's like OK Computer or SGT Peppers, just sitting there, ready to be found. Yeah, well there's a reason why they don't get released. Omar seems to be fully clearing out his garage, and we get to watch the whole yard sale. Solid State Mercenaries is another formless, dull record from the box at the back of the room. Apart from Lightning Round. That's a nice song.
The King Blues - The Gospel Truth - D
The Best:
01: Kendrick Lamar - DAMN - A*
This is something very special. Kendrick Lamar has been one of the biggest stars of this current generation of bright prospects in the rap game, his 2015 release To Pimp A Butterfly was an ambitious, sprawling project that stormed the charts and topped many end-of-year lists. Following up on such a roaring success would usually be beyond most artists, but with DAMN, Lamar has surpassed the high water mark from any of his previous work. This is his best album yet.
Lamar's narrative string on DAMN is the best it's ever been. He weaves a highly detailed lyrical soundscape that takes in references from the bible, politics, music, racial tension and his own experience, forming an hour-long statement using a loose theme of the end of days to describe the socio-political turmoil in the USA. DAMN has those harsh vocal hooks and long, winding verses that Lamar has built his brand on. It's got the prophetic edge he touched on in earlier releases, but now it's right at the forefront. It's a dark, direct album that takes no prisoners.
There are catchy singles like Humble, Element and Loyalty that will be counted as huge hits from 2017 mixing with more progressive pieces like Yah, Lust and Fear. While there are several forms of music and style on the album, DAMN is different to Butterfly in that it's concentrated. Lamar has trimmed off the fat on his style to make a leaner, more effective record. I always thought that was a sticking point with Butterfly - Far too many ideas that didn't work. DAMN is different to that. It's short with no filler. It's far too consistent from front to back for me to begin listing any highlights, but the peak moments on DAMN are hair-tinglingly intense. It's a snapshot of a great artist at his zenith.
Lamar's style is hard to pin down, he's not strictly a mainstream Hip-hop artist other than by virtue of his success, but it would also be wrong to call him simply cult or cerebral. He has that righteousness and pomp that assists the finest rappers in delivering their message. His ability to mould pop-rap hooks with minutes-long introspective verses is the key to his ascendancy. His style evokes images of some of the greatest names in rap history - That direct, urgent flow you hear from rappers like Tupac, Kanye West, RZA and Nas.
DAMN will be remembered for years to come as the point Kendrick Lamar officially elevated from Crown Prince to the undisputed king of Hip-hop. DAMN will be ranked alongside the great classics of the genre, alongside the platinum standard releases from the legends Kendrick will have spent his childhood lip-syncing to in the mirror. More mature that Good Kid..., More accessible than Butterfly, More polished than untitled unmastered, and more angry, more vital and more relevant than any other rap record you'll hear for a long time. This is album of the year. We might as well pack up and go home, because it doesn't get any better than this.
02: Animal Collective - Meeting Of The Waters - B
Animal Collective is a fluid ensemble, with members interchanging and evolving with each release. It's a lottery of artistic vision - You'll never know what they're going to come up with from one release to the next. I was quietly disappointed with last year's mushy Painting With, and while I skipped its companion release The Painters, I was still well up for giving Meeting Of The Waters a few spins.
Animal Collective released Meeting for Record Store Day, after recording it live in a rainforest, of course. That's a canny summation of the album's sound. You can hear rain showers and wind rustling through the trees. The album is peaceful and calm on the surface, underpinned with an isolated psychological edge. Meeting is a solitary walk into the forest, it's about being totally alone and trapped with your thoughts. Merely 2 members of the collective are credited on this album, which underlines the disparate feel throughout.
I'm a total sucker for noise and drone on albums. When it's piqued by small islands of song structure, it's all the better. After the 13+ minute journey of the opening track, Meeting turns a corner into Man Of Oil, an acidy acoustic piece, and it's like you've wandered through the forest and stumbled across someone sat playing guitar. Meeting has a subtle playability, It's such a compact record, barely breaching past 30 minutes, but it feels long and involved. It's trippy, broody, dark and reflective. Its weirdness and bohemian sensuality define the sound of a band that repeatedly refuse to conform to categorisation.
The Collective don't have any kind of official video on Youtube for this release, but it's only 30 minutes long, so listen to the whole thing, why dontcha.
03: Feist - Pleasure - B
04: Gorillaz - Humanz - B
One of the bigger anticipated releases for 2017, Humanz was dropped as the usual art-and-music double whammy from Gorillaz, one of the finest and most unique pop bands of the last 25 years. With Blur being on recording hiatus for most of the last decade, Gorillaz is arguably Damon Albarn's most important project - Certainly the most popular, and since the post-Britpop era was heralded with one of it's biggest stars forming a virtual Pop/Hip-hop/Electronica/etc, group, we've enjoyed a swathe of high quality albums, with image, art and animation just as important as the galaxy of guest stars that feature on each one. Their self-titled 2001 debut was verging on revolutionary in terms of execution and ambition, and they've steadily improved since.
Humanz is a bit of a damp squib for me, though. It's too disjointed to stand up to the better Gorillaz albums like Demon Days and Plastic Beach. It's a collection of songs which all sound fairly good together, but they could be played in any order and still achieve the same effect. Most of the guest appearances don't uplift the album, and there's no real direction or point to any of it. There's an identity to Gorillaz that fails to come out properly on Humanz. They concede too much creative licence to their guest stars, rendering the album devoid of a cohesive theme. However while this is nowhere near their finest moment, Humanz is worth a few spins and the inevitable world tour that will follow. Gorillaz is a project that still has plenty of mileage left, and if one of their lesser releases is this good, that just goes to show how special Gorillaz is.
05: Talib Kweli - The Seven - B
