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Short Cuts: Common’s “Dreamer, Believer”

Jeff Laughlin, January 9, 2012 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

From guest lecturer Laurence Bass, this morsel on Common:

If we’re talking production over lyrics, this album would be the new benchmark of what it means to create a masterpiece. The boom-bap is resurrected and wears the garb of this generation’s sonics. However, a smarter listener judges on the inverse. Most of the songs are hook heavy, watering down the potency of his lyrics (keeping with the tread of every album since the 2002’s “Electric Circus,” a mixed bag of unnerving genius).

“In The Sky” and “Celebrate” offer more gristle than meat. The former speaks to the ever-changing definition of blackness under God’s eye and the latter is party anthem with the token dine at his side. Besides that, Common plays his own publicist—killing the Hollywood persona, evoking the dusty pen from his Chicago days. He falls short on attaining that lofty goal. “So Sweet” and “Raw” depict him bitchifying a naysayer and taking a bottle to the side of a drunk patron’s head. Carnage’s not your thing? Don’t worry, the romantic warrior cometh. “Lovin’ I Lost” is another song that gives him the leeway to supplant LL COOL J as the ladies’ MC. If there is a gleaming summit to this unlit valley, it’s “Gold”. The man is streamline with his verses and calculated with his theme. Songs like these are annoying because it offers a glimpse into Common’s effortless skill—but you have to sit through a sea of filler. For all you fiends of collaborations, Nas helps to make “Ghetto Dreams” a banger. Dark and vengeful, its Cottage Grove meets Queensbridge with no inkling of Madison Avenue or the Sunset Strip in the prose. The only knock against this track is that is follows the album’s opening, “The Dreamer,” which showcases Maya Angelou’s poem of people in bondage and dire straits surviving in the country. It’s tough hearing Common call a woman a ‘bitch’ in the next verse.

Though he makes up for shortcoming with a track like the over-orchestrated, John Legend-crooned “The Believer,” his album isn’t horrible, but the good shit is few and far between.

Jennie Arnau: Chasing Giants

Will, May 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

The title should be a tip-off: South Carolinian (by way of New York City) Jennie Arnau seems to understand that being a young woman playing country-tinged folk music will inevitably draw comparisons to other titans in the genre. Chasing Giants is a perfect title for a record full of humility that also showcases a songwriter full of ambition, and one who is working with her burgeoning talent to carve some sort of space for her music.

Is it possible for someone to sound  like both Gillian Welch and Taylor Swift? The two are considerably different artists, but similar in their standing as icons in their respective fields (traditional folk and country-pop, respectively). Throughout Chasing Giants, Arnau manages to split the difference between the two disparate singers with her vocals, and often within the span of a single line. Arnau certainly evokes Welch’s husky tone, and “Safe Tonight” is the kind of stately hymnal that Welch can churn out in her sleep. Though it lacks the kind of narrative momentum common in Welch’s songs for a more standard repetition of ambiance and the phrase “Lord, keep him safe tonight,” it’s a fitting tone for a song that comes off more as a prayer than an actual tune. And like Swift, Arnau takes an extended metaphor in “Bouncing Ball” to describe a relationship and manages to enliven the song with a hooky, heart-swellingly optimistic chorus full of lilting, girlish charm that overrides her vocal limitations.

Those vocal limitations don’t stop her from nicely letting loose on many tracks (not unlike Neko Case, though without her pipes), delightfully avoiding the post-Elliott Smith/Cat Power mumblings of much of indie-ish folk music. Arnau manages to better evoke Case in one more crucial respect, which becomes her biggest strength throughout the record—she has a gift for creating a casually tossed-off lyric that seems full of both wisdom (”Their broken hearts must someday mend, but that won’t guarantee they will ever love again” from “The Sparrow & The Gods”) and indelible beauty (”She glows in the sun till nothing is left but some mascara on” from “For The Winter”).

If only her lyrical prowess reared its head more often, or influenced her melodic sensibility. Because while Chasing Giants begins strong with the aforementioned songs (as well as the wonderful “Beautiful Life,” full of bluesy intonation as well as a breakdown featuring honest-to-God hand-claps substituting the drums), much of the second half sags with uninspired melodies and too-samey production. “Jack B. Nimble” starts with some nice sliding guitar work before settling into something far more soporific, only rousing slightly with a haphazard sing-along towards the end. Arnau trots out her open-throated bellowing in “Savior,” but for a song so seemingly declarative it sounds unconvincing—a whole lotta sound signifying nothing.

The album does pick up again at its close. “No Guarantees” is an often lovely grappling with one’s own limitations, while “The Sharp Things” seems to encapsulate both the strengths and weaknesses of Chasing Giants as a whole. The song begins mournful and quiet, Arnau sing-whispering the lyrics over a plaintive acoustic strum, and then the drums kick in, as does a meaty electric guitar, and Arnau repeats the same lyrics only this time she’s really kicking some ass, caterwauling as if her entire life depends on singing these words in exactly this way. There is real drama and real pain in her voice at this part of the song, suggesting an artist far greater than the sweet, humble moments that have previously charmed and in comparison seem too restrained, too banal. The song is sadly undercut by its title; for all the catharsis on offer, the song deserves a better, sharper phrase to refer to her pain than “the sharp things.” But that lyrical foible doesn’t undercut the way she sings “I swear I can feel my heart breaking/Watch me break” towards the end. So even if she states “I don’t think I can take these giants on my own” in the title track, her phrasing on the final line of the album suggest that maybe, one day, she will.

Jonathan Mann: Barefoot in the Family Tree EP

Lora Enfield-Parker, March 24, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , .

You can’t fake talent. You are either born with the aptitude to learn a skill or not, but repetition is the mother of genius. This is a long-held belief of mine, so I was really excited to come across Jonathan Mann. (Watch him explain who he is here.) His creative career centers around his theory that if he writes a song a day some will suck, most will be in the ok to good category, and some will be great. He selected five of his best songs to include on his EP, “Barefoot in the Family Tree.” Intrigued, I jumped in to see if his EP would support his theory or if it would collapse under scrutiny.

After about five listens in, I was annoyed. This might just be personal preference, since the songs were incredibly diverse. I was pulled in one way, just to have the next track shove me in the opposite direction. If one is writing a song a day, I can see where playing with genre and style happens, if nothing else but to keep from being bored. I was jarred, however, and his style made me wonder what his true sound is. How does Jonathan Mann define himself as an artist? Does he know? The EP provides no clear picture. I understand, he has five songs to grab his audience. Most artists aren’t so stylistically fragmented.

Now that that is out of the way, each of these songs (with the exception of one) are pretty good. A couple I would describe as being great (true to his theory, he’ll be happy to hear). “Dance and Dance Again” is hands down the best song on the EP and the best one to open with. It’s really quirky. It starts out with handclaps, something that reminds me of 16 bit video game music played on guitar mixed with a Mexican/old-western theme. This interesting combination becomes infiltrated with a chorus of whoas and ohs and piano in the background. The more I listened to this song, the more I loved it. The breakdown was a great accent and bonus, the song mentions being caught in the rain, and upon my second listen, I was in my car, driving in the rain. Nature and music collided. It was cool. I was there.

“We Are Pattern Machines” has some interesting thoughts that are worth pondering. “I’m sick of seeing patterns everywhere” is a great lyric. Does the Universe have meaning, or is it just a collection of randomness? Either way, our brains are wired to make patterns to create meaning to help us understand the world around us. The song uses accordion, a marching drum beat, and vibraphone. Mann layers his own vocals on top of each other, and they are the highlight.

The third track, “Penguins Having a Party” was my least favorite song on the album. But, by listen seven? I was singing with it. Not sure if that was a reflection on the song itself, or more my being impressionable. The lyrics are nonsensical, the tune almost grating. This is the first track on the album where Mann utilizes other singers and it does add a nice layer to what would be a really annoying song otherwise. You go with it. You accept it. It’s a song about penguins. They are having a party. It’s a happy time. Stop thinking, unless you’re thinking about penguins having a party. Awwwww, wouldn’t that be cute?!

My second favorite song, “Bury Me Beneath the Ocean” is just a beautiful song. I couldn’t make out the lyrics, and I didn’t have to. The music spoke for itself. It is dominated by a female voice very heavy on the reverb. Mixed with surfer ballad style guitar, it transported me to an island surrounded by brilliant blue water. A tremolo effect on the guitar solo and Mann’s voice singing “bury me” over the female’s melodic phrasings lent to an underwater feel, which is what he was going for. Mission achieved.

The final song on the album gets credit for being the best lyrically. The style is typical folk music, just guitar and vocals for the majority of the song and harmonica added toward the end. The song has a nice melody, but were it not for the lyrics, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. “Baby, It All Led To You” is incredibly clever writing. Mann chronicles the process of evolution starting with primordial ooze, continuing through the dawn of mammals, and ending with “a horny teenage couple.” All these events created his lover. If any of these steps had been omitted, baby, it wouldn’t have led to you. It’s an odd subject matter, juxtaposed with folk music, but it’s endearing. A repeated lyric of “And not one died,” shows the frailty all of us faced in our journey to be born.

I will listen to this EP again in the future. Will it become a staple in my listening collection? That’s harder to predict. Two or three songs are definitely playlist worthy. I do think Mann is on the right track with his song-a-day project. If he ever cobbles together a theme or genre that he commits to for the duration of a full length album, I’ll be here.

You can download the complete EP here.