Ruin’s big thrills
Badbadnotgood featuring Kaytranada “Lavender” (Innovative Leisure)
The new record from Kathleen Hanna’s long-running dance-punk band finds the Bikini Kill founder and feminist activist spilling out buoyant tracks dense with lyrics about both internal and external politics.
Hanna, the subject of the terrific documentary “The Punk Singer,” helped define a movement with her writings and work as part of the Riot Grrrl movement, and she’s sharpened her pencil for “Hit Reset.”
Featuring 13 tracks perfect for scream-along basement dance parties or beatcrazy disco-theques, “Hit Reset” is built around Hanna’s throat and longtime collaborator Kathi Wilcox’s rolling bass lines.
At its best, as on “I Decide,” the band trampolines its singer into the stratosphere while she preaches on self-determination and the power of thought and action. The spastic “Record Breaker” rides on the back of a guitar riff that recalls new wave heroes the B-52s. “We’ll go viral, just wait and see,” she sings with typical gusto.
“Roses More Than Water” pops like a lost gem from Motown’s heyday as Hanna sings a pair of rhyming couplets about “pauses, places, causes, houses / Tigers, plants and bow-tied blouses / Billie Jean’s outrageous choices / Silver linings without voices.” She closes the verse with a prognostication: “It’s true — I’m due,” she sings. It’s hard to disagree. which formed as a jazz band before moving into the neutral zone connecting it with hip-hop, has become a kind of younger, whiter version of the Roots: a hot for-hire unit that understands the vibe of hip-hop and is eager to prove that human instrumentalists can swing it harder than beat machines. A recent fullalbum collaboration with the great Wu-Tang Clan lyricist Ghostface Killah proved they could pull it off.
“Lavender” is taken from the group’s new album, “IV,” which features collaborations with artists including Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands, saxophonist Colin Stetson (Arcade Fire) and beguiling young singer Charlottte Day Wilson. For “Lavender,” the group teamed with the Haitian Canadian producer and DJ Kaytranada, whose work on synthesizer helps transform the instrumental into a rubbery, pliable piece of futuristic funk.
The artist who records as BJ the Chicago Kid has yet to earn the attention he deserves for his stellar soul album, “In My Mind,” but hopefully his record label, Motown, is committed to treating him like the career artist he seems to be.
A dynamic singer who’s been pushing against the charts since the late ’00s, BJ is best known for his appearances on tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Dr. Dre, Chance the Rapper and Jill Scott. For “In My Mind,” his much-delayed 2016 album, the singer stepped confidently up to the microphone to deliver ballads and burners about love and life.
One of the best is “Jeremiah / World Needs More Love,” which BJ recently performed during a closed live session at Capitol Studios in Hollywood. In concert, the artist is a magnetic presence who needs no computerized help to hit his notes and possesses a keen sense of phrasing that injects emotion into each line. The singer maneuvers across octaves with naturalborn skill, his performance here picking up given added heft via a spot-on solo by guitarist Jairus Mozee.