2008: Mia Doi Todd, Stephen Malkmus, Los Tigres Del Norte
And some others briefly dismissed
Mia Doi Todd. GEA.
United States, March 4
Had this remarkably rich and warm album been released forty years earlier in England, around the time of Fairport Convention’s Liege & Lief, Judy Collins’ Wildflowers, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, every knowledgeable listener would know it as a masterpiece of the era. Of course it wasn’t, and in some sense it exists on the backs of those albums’ achievements. Fine. But to attempt to reconcile the quality of the music on GEA (which is high enough that listening to it alongside the four aforementioned albums reveals primarily its superiority of recording quality) with its incredibly humble status as a basically unknown work (it has not, fifteen years later, warranted even the basic dignity of a Wikipedia entry) is fruitless. Simply put: this album deserves far, far more listeners than it has garnered, and one day they will come to it.
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks. Real Emotional Trash.
United States, March 4
If a friend, colleague or family member has ever sat down beside you, launched into a monologue about the three things that interest them the most, and carried on for half an hour, an hour, or more before abruptly rising again and walking off to an obligation professing to be late, then this album will feel familiar to you. If you have ever found the rhythms, the rising and falling rhetorical waves, of such an experience mesmerizing, or even interesting, then this is really the album for you (as it is for me). But if those preconditions are true for you and you also like to seek deeper meaning or broader arcs of significance in hours like these ones, the album will eventually frustrate you. It’s all about surface, energy, and presence among shifting phenomena – even when it sometimes seems to be more coherent than that.
Los Tigres Del Norte. Raices.
United States & Mexico, March 4
You’re sitting in a small cantina near the railroad station on a hot day in October. The street is dusty but inside the shade is nice and cool. You’re drinking a guava soda while, at the table next to you, a couple of men who arrived on the same train as you are talking, telling stories. Because you don’t understand the language, you are free to listen. You listen to one man’s voice tighten and strain. The other responds with a melodic cadence. For awhile the words sound like surf heard at a distance. You don’t understand a single word. And, after an hour, you have heard everything their words can’t say. They look at you sheepishly, almost embarrassed, as you pay your check and get up to leave.
Briefly Dismissed
John Boutte, Jambalaya — White New Orleanian sounding like he’s auditioning for gigs on Frenchmen Street outdoors.
Margot & The Nuclear So & So’s, Not Animal — Middling indie pop marred by the songwriter’s irritating-to-problematic perspective.
Jennifer Hudson, Jennifer Hudson — Pop music from America in 2008 means high volume, high production, lots of compression, and origins in talent contests. That can obscure a lot of singing pretty well.
Galaxy Hunter, We Came From Space — Among the apparently many disco/electronic/krautrock space-themed albums out there (no really, there are lots), this is the lengthiest.