Atrocity Exhibition
DANNY BROWN Warp
This album confirms what I’ve always suspected about Danny Brown, which is that his voice is insufferable. But I like plenty of artists who aren’t pleasing that way, as do you. If the album’s title sounds familiar, that’s because it was a Joy Division song. You might think that’s a grab, but no, I can hear it. Danny drops references here and there to keep you abreast of his inspiration — “This is the way, step inside,” “rolling stone,” “downward spiral” — but the meat of it, the spirit of the music, is where it really shows. Where-I’ve-come-from cuts like “Tell Me What I Don’t Know” that are gratuitous in hip-hop gain new life from such production, which should be obvious. At one time, it was, but folks don’t like gloom like they used to. The jokes have an edge to them, too (“The rocks ’bout the size/As the teeth in Chris Rock’s mouth”), resulting in a nervous miasma that never seems to lift.
The features are generous, not overwhelming — a mostly seamless incorporation of Petite Noir, Earl Sweatshirt, et al. As always, the presence of King Kendrick takes you out of it a little, but not so much that it eclipses the album’s general prolix catalepsy. That only happens on the jarring commercial nonsense of “Dance in the Water” and “When It Rain.” By the time you get back into it, you notice Brown’s moved on to Miles and smiles. Good for him. Does that invalidate his rhapsodies of abuse and existential dread? No, it merely frames them in terms of what’s past — and that’s as great a message to take from a work in modern hip-hop as I’ve heard.
22, A Million
BON IVER Jagjaguwar
I’m always up for a little pagan symbolism, but I have a problem with aimless pagan symbolism. You can make that argument against “Led Zeppelin IV,” but that was great music. The latest Bon Iver is very different music than that — heck, it’s a far cry from “For Emma, Forever Ago.” The last time I listened to them, it gave me a really bad feeling, like the worst, most bland kind of indie folk imaginable. So knowing that they’ve changed their game was pleasing to me (in reference to what, I don’t know). Of course, even the worst folk excursions are usually good for a few accidental lines of inspired melody — you pick enough at those six strings and it’s bound to happen.
The only problem is then you have to build around it, which these guys just don’t. I think they figured they could simulate substance with fitful distortions and obscurantism. That might work if the distortions were musical (i.e. dissonant) rather than affectatious, but as it stands my preclusion that this band doesn’t understand a lick of theory appears correct. My favorite, “29 #Strafford APTS,” is the least experimental cut. There’s a few like that, but most of them are marred by the awful voice — I don’t know what Kanye sees in him, but what else is new — or some kind of intentional clipping or what have you. So we can conclude that not only is their music bad, so is their non-music. Impressive, but I’m still gonna have to pass.
Travis Johnson lives in New London. He has a music blog that can be found at theoldnoise. blogspot.com. Follow him @ThisOldNoise or contact him at thisoldnoise@gmail.com.