December 18, 2006

December: "Pyrex Stirs Turned into Cavali Furs"


"Read T.M. Wolf's review of More Fish then try and say something funny style about Okayplayer's reviews section."
- Dan p period

Much love to the okayplayer staff for the front page love (Dec. 18), and much holiday love to everyone out there reading the December update. While haters were getting tied up in knots in The Lesson (I know how this blog game works, you don't think I'm actually going to drop a link, do you? I know you see it), I was eating strombolis and canolis in fly gondolas and building with the Doctor of Plague on all subjects Venetian -- including lion-head mailboxes and mini-pistols in hollowed-out prayer books.

Up for this month are reviews of the latest Ghostface -- with some cribbing from the last update -- and Free Speech's audio screed, Laffy Taffy Rots Your Teeth. Follow that up with a short feature on Raekwon's classic video for "Incarcerated Scarfaces." And for a stocking stuffer? "White People," my recent non-hip hop picks.

2006 is drawing to a close and 2007 is fast on us. If you've stumbled across my little corner of the net, drop me a short line and let me know what you think. Otherwise... Happy Holidays, in the most multi-/non-sectarian and all-inclusive way possible.

Hip-Hop Review: Ghostface Killah, "More Fish"

Originally reviewed for okayplayer.com

The only thing more classically “Ghost” (read: perpetually intriguing, frequently counterintuitive, and occasionally non-sensical) than Def Jam releasing the second Ghostface album of the year was the brilliant (read: ridiculous) decision to title the follow-up to early-2006’s coke-cooking, soul-sampling rhymefest Fishscale… I pull your terry-cloth robe not... More Fish. Who other than Ghost would literalize a metaphor beyond all comprehension (Ghost as coke-slinger to Ghost as cod-monger)? While not exactly a proper solo successor to Fishscale, More Fish combines with its predecessor to suggest that the man once caught in Cancun eatin’ grouper is now serving up a significantly less exotic plate to a blissfully unaware listening public. (Read More...)

Hip-Hop Review: Free Speech, "Laffy Taffy Rots Your Teeth"

Originally reviewed for okayplayer.com

Laffy Taffy Rots Your Teeth? So does death. Just ask Steve Biko – he’s rolling in his grave as we speak. (Read More...)

White People

People often say to me:
"Tom..." (if they knew me between the ages of 0 and 14)
"T-Wolf" (if they knew me between 14 and 18)
"T-Dub," or "T" (18 - 22)
"T-Dash..." (22 - 23)
"T.M...." (present day)

... They say... "We know you like hip-hop. We know you like soul. But what else are you digging right now?" Here's what I tell them:

Sizzla, Black Woman and Child (VP Records, 2002)

Sizzla might be reggae's most prolific artist, flipping easily between roots-y chant and grimy dancehall. His insane level of productivity keeps his name out there, but it also works against his legacy: there are tons of Sizzla albums currently out on the market that should never have seen the light of the day. Black Woman and Child, however, is not one of them: from front to back, probably the strongest disc of this ilk since Buju Banton's Til Shiloh. Where Buju is gruff, Sizzla is smooth, skipping over his riddims with a truly unique vocal style. Check out the title cut, "Hard Ground," and for some straight wildin', "Mi Lord."


Ali Farka Toure, The Source (Hannibal, 1993)

An excellent recommendation from my good friend, ChinaDialogue writer Ross Perlin, Toure's The Source hooked me with a single song: the haunting "Inchana Massina." Based out of Mali, Toure has built a career off mixing elements of American blues with equally strong components of the African musical traditions. Metacritic recently ID'd his latest, Savane, as the most highly rated album of 2006 -- but The Source, with its slightly echoing vocals and haunting rhythms that seem to spiderweb out of the speakers, is as good a place as any to start for those curious in modern genius at work.


Charles Mingus, Oh Yeah (Atlantic, 1961)


Long a favorite of mine -- recommended by current NYTimes ad hustler and Nabokov scholar Dave Cohen -- Mingus' Oh Yeah catches the notoriously... um... fickle?... bassist at his most fickle. Some songs, like "Eat that Chicken" and "Oh, Lord, Don't Let them Drop that Atomic Bomb on Me," are zany enough at face value. Some of the more sedate, however, seem zanier once the backstory gets filled in. "Devil Woman"? Written while sitting butt-naked at the grand piano of a Hollywood madam, after a night spent passed out in her marble foyer from his first coke binge. I highly recommend listening to Oh Yeah, then reading his "autobiography" (a total postmodern spree of self-fictionalization), Beneath the Underdog, then taking another listen.


"But Tom/T-Wolf/T-Dub/T/T-Dash/T.M.," they say, their eyes widening a little, "We meant something other than, you know..."
"Oh, what you meant was, music by people who aren't black! Why didn't you just say so?!"


The Decemberists, Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars, 2005)

For a paragon of urban cool, the Decemberists, with their fanciful tales and slightly effete self-presentation, are about as un-street as you can get (this side of Sufjan Stevens). Their most recent album, The Crane Wife, has been receiving considerable buzz -- and rightly so, as it's sprawling compositions are both evocative and versatile. Honestly, as good as Crane Wife is, I prefer Picaresque, if only because Crane's polished sound seems so, well, un-Decemberists. Picaresque sounds like the soundtrack to treasure island, full of corsairs and sea chanties. Colin Melloy, with his fake British accent, cuts an awkwardly loveable leading man, while the album's closing tracks, like "The Engine Driver" (which almost brings a tear to my lupine eye) and "Angels and Angles," clearly pointed out what was coming down the pike, more than a year prior.


Jens Lekman, Oh You're So Silent Jens (Secretly Canadian, 2005)

Another Perlin pick that's wormed its way into my feral heart, Silent is one a string of recent releases from the vaguely mysterious, hugely awkward, and delightfully ironically detached Swedish vocalist Jens Lekman. Blessed with a deep voice, Lekman trips all over cliches, only to rebuild infinitely more touching songs around them: "I could say that you are pretty / But that would make me a liar / You turn my legs into spaghetti / And set my heart on fire"; "I had a friend, a girl, who looked sort of like a guy." Heartfelt, but distinctly un-singerly. My picks: "Pocketful of Money" and the strangely poignant "Black Cab."


Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians (choice version: ECM, 1994)

I had the pleasure of seeing Reich himself perform Pulses at London's Barbican Theater this past October -- there he was in all his baseball be-hatted glory, tinging away alongside his white-shirted ensemble. Pulses is good, but 18 Musicians is great: a cycle of minute variations on simple sounds, as expansive as it is simple. Also great writing music, the constant accompaniment to my own projects (big and small).

Video: Raekwon, "Incarcerated Scarfaces"

The video selection for this month is Raekwon's "Incarcerated Scarfaces" (circa 1995), off his classic debut album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx -- unarguably one of hip-hop's finest, most mind-bending journeys and a major template for all of today's considerably less intellectual coke rap. The song is vintage Rae -- full of his involuted, free-floating slang and razor-cut deliveries. The video is classic mid-90s NYC -- lots of shots of masses of people moving around menacingly, clad in decidedly less stylish gear than we've become used to as of late. People often ask what the deal with me and Wu Tang is. My answer: they embody a certain approach to the craft, one that emphasized the beauty of words and the potential for abstraction, without ever retreating from their reality. Concrete aesthetics .