068
Releases
07 04
08 08
Ibeyi Ash XL Recordings
Liam Gallagher As You Were Warner Bros.
REVIEWS
I don’t think that anyone really deserves harsher criticism for having once been successful. Least of all Liam Gallagher, who was arguably thrown into fame’s deep end by his brother’s zeitgeisty songwriting ability, and – let’s face it – simply behaved as many people would if they did that much coke. Liam’s first solo LP (let’s forget Beady Eye ever happened) is a mixed bag, but maybe that’s to be expected from this avowed non-songwriter, and it’s certainly no worse than any of Noel’s solo tripe. Wall of Glass is a plodding and overproduced opener – don’t listen to it. Chinatown sounds gratingly familiar due to the fact that it nabs its melody from Champagne Supernova; the extremely vague lyrics meanwhile offer little aside from their presumably unintentional paraphrasing of Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents. People should really stop rhyming “down” with “Chinatown”. Luckily for Our Kid, there are a few tracks here which are serviceable: Greedy Soul is all harmonica, handclaps and gruff bar-room stomping, whereas Paper Crown is a well-constructed T-Rexish ballad that allows Liam’s vocals the prominence they deserve. While As You Were is all a bit PrimalScream-do-the-Stones and forgotten-British-Invasion-psychtoffs-do-the-Beatles, it’s just about fine in a sort of XFM way. !
Jon Clark
The moniker Ibeyi, a musical project of Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz, is taken from the Yoruba word for the spirit shared by twins. On Ash, the luscious follow-up to their 2015 debut album, the French-Cuban sisters layer their voices with tight harmonies to channel this spirit. There is an element of prayer folded into Ash. Songs like Deathless and Transmission/ Michaelion centre around the call-and-response structure of a preacher and their congregation. A gospel choir joins triumphantly alongside an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s audiobook Citizen: An American Lyric to announce a shift of scenery to serene tranquility – “like underwater”. Elsewhere, the twins team up with Mala Rodriguez on Me Voy for a radio-friendly reggaeton-lite track sung in Spanish. I Wanna Be Like You finds its groove on a stomping adult-contemporary beat. Ibeyi don’t wander too far from their spiritual pulpit: the song’s middle eight is delivered like a sermon when the drums fall out and the lyrics return to metaphors of rivers and the sun. The album is ripe with samples, ranging from a Bulgarian choir on I Carried this for Years, to Michelle Obama on the album’s striking centrepiece No Man is Big Enough for my Arms. The song could be interpreted as a contemporary reimagining of It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World for the women of 2017. The sisters declare their independence: they won’t stand still; they won’t be shamed. The song ends with a tsunami of applause as Obama says what every young woman deserves to hear: “And I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them, and that they should make their voices heard in the world”. With Ash, Ibeyi’s voice is amplified. !
Nathan Ma
07 Queens Of The Stone Age Villains Matador
DJ Python Dulce Compaña (ncienso One of New York native Brian Piñeyro’s first releases was as DJ Wey on Ital’s Lovers Rock label, but he’s since released one-off 12”s as Deejay Xanax and Luis. Following an EP as DJ Python on Anthony Naples’ Proibito label last year, Dulce Comapña makes for Piñeyro’s fullest artistic statement to date. One of the points regularly driven home by any mention of DJ Python is the looming influence of reggaeton in his music, but it’s more of a subtle suggestion than an overbearing presence. Instead, the overall sound across this album deals in a smoky strain of house music with plenty of NYC grit rubbed into its muscles, and ambient romanticism swirling around its head. Todo Era Azul (Versión Afuera) is the definitive club track of the album, riding on a tough set of house drums that favour the offbeat bump of aforementioned reggaeton, but also teeter on the brink of breakbeat revivalism. Elsewhere the synths are more dominant, as on the hypnagogic Acostados with its heavy washes of pad and texture, strafing bleeps and sunken drum thud. The mood across Dulce Compaña rarely lifts out of this woozy state, but in the kinked cracks of these beats and the thick blankets of fog Python has expanded his repertoire in his own unique way, and it works beautifully. !
Oli Warwick
Kelela Take Me Apart Warp Halfway through Kelela Mizanekristos’ long-awaited debut album comes the strikingly minimal Better. The track finds the LA-based RnB artist considering a break-up in visceral, simple terms: “Didn’t it make you better? Aren’t we better now?” she sings in that sweet, powerful voice like liquid silk, trying to justify the decision to end the relationship. It’s a beautiful song, imbued with gospel warmth, but what’s especially notable is how it’s immediately followed by the album’s lead single LMK, an anthem calling for a no-strings hook-up: “No one’s tryin’ to settle down, all you gotta do is let me know”. The juxtaposition between falling out of love and chasing casual, insatiable sensuality (later on SOS she asks a lover to come help her touch herself) makes apparent the raw feelings and breadth of potent vulnerability within Kelela’s oeuvre – something exemplified in her bared skin on this album's cover. Kelela knows how to make her vocals resonate with a sound palette which feels uniquely hers. And while there’s nothing as abrasive as the beats on her acclaimed 2013 mixtape Cut 4 Me, Take Me Apart retains her proclivity for the left-field, bubbling with 90s and 00s-style futurism via delicate touches of sino-grime. Alongside producers Jam City and Arca, The xx’s Romy Madley-Croft, Kelsey Lu and Terror Danjah have all contributed to the album's creation, and there’s a real sense of considered curation throughout. The vision of Kelela’s earlier releases has been fully realised on Take Me Apart, albeit in a subtler, more nuanced, dreamlike way than you might have expected back on, say, a track like Guns & Synths. Take Me Apart isn’t always immediately gratifying, but in being loud in its vulnerability (and quietly radical for it), Kelela’s first album is a powerful addition to the feminist, futurist RnB canon. !
Tara Joshi
Over a 20-year career, Queens of the Stone Age’s trajectory has traced a gradual departure from their fuzzed-out, desert-dwelling, stoned-to-inertia roots. It’s an evolution that many die-hard fans have resisted at every turn. And for that hardcore, production credits for Mark Ronson – *spits on floor* – and lead single The Way You Used To Be’s horndog riffola and winkand-nod pelvic thrust may have been the final straw. Queens have gone pop. Nick Oliveri’s never coming back. What a shame that would be, because in the grand scheme of Villains, the hand-clap-pocked rawk of The Way... serves as little more than a distraction. It is the brash voice which shouts the loudest. But the sounds surrounding it, the eerie, melodic creaks explored in these nine winding, unfurling tracks are frequently exceptional. From the hulking, lurching lollop which heralds opener Feet Don’t Fail Me, to the gloriously gloomy, carnivalesque coda of closer Villains of Circumstance, this is a band at their most vital in years. Each track twists and turns, clutching any opportunity to fill a space with another idea, another noise. In paring back their sound, Ronson, the villain of the piece, has Queens sounding truly like a band, rather than a collection of talent. Josh Homme himself is thriving, segueing seamlessly from hyper-masculine hunk who can summon a hardon with a second’s notice, to vulnerable, emotive crooner, while the watertight Queens build deathly boogies and jagged, freaky patterns in his wake. Is it easy to pine for early QOTSA? Sure, they were great. But it would be a hell of a waste. !
Geraint Davies