Things Listened To Vol. 1
Body Farm & Dry Socket, Boldy James & Conductor Williams, JIALING, Mei Semones, Trophy Wife, Zelienople
Music writing has taken a bit of a backseat for me lately. For one, In Review Online has sadly ceased covering music entirely. For another, I have not been in touch with Slant Magazine’s music editor in a while and now no longer receive the music blast emails which, I suppose, means my days of cranking out album reviews for them are numbered. (Just as well — I can hardly stand to read the stuff I wrote over there and I’m sure there are more than enough poptimism loyalists eager to take my place.) For still another, I find staying on top of new releases to be a bit of a hassle, especially when I’m already trying (and usually failing) to wrap my head around the abstruse workings of the theatrical release schedule.
Anyway — to quote the Minutemen: “Blah, blah, blah” — I’m inaugurating yet another column in the form of Things Listened To where I’ll occasionally be looking at a handful of releases from (roughly) the last three months that I enjoyed in order to scratch this music itch I’ve been feeling ever since my avenues for writing about it have dried up. I hope you enjoy and as always, thanks for reading.
Body Farm & Dry Socket - BODY // SOCKET Split
What would D.C. hardcore punks the Faith’s legacy be were it not for the fact that the bulk of their recorded music music happens to form side A to fellow Washingtonians and crossover thrash pioneers Void’s devilish side B on the Faith/Void Split LP? The Faith is by no means a bad band, quite the opposite, but next to the weirdo punk metal propelled by John Weiffenbach’s unhinged, he-was-on-our-radar poetry (“I’ll bury your body deep in the woods/Your feet are over here, your hands over there/I never got caught so I don’t care”) and Jon “Bubba” Dupree beehive guitar splatter, their songs can’t help but pale. Doomed to be remembered as inferiors but remembered nonetheless. So it goes.
On the BODY // SOCKET Split, it is Dry Socket’s ripper of an A-side that blows Body Farm’s slightly lead-footed didacti-punk out of the water. The riffs, the vocals, the lyrics, the attitude, the production, the grit — it’s clear who got to ride on whose coattails here. Front Socket Dani vents a lot of frustration while pulling off some powerful lines (“If your god doesn’t make mistakes/Then the only abomination is you”) and the fact that her band manages to meet her words with a savagery that matches that of acts like Tørsö and Punch is just icing on the hXcake.
As for Body Farm, their fury is certainly righteous and anyone who can grit their teeth and ignore clunkers like “They try to steal our joy/Their hatred we’ll destroy” and vocalist Ocean’s generally more restrained (read: less forceful) delivery will get to enjoy a B-side that still has some hard-hitting pleasures on offer. Squint your eyes and you might even pick up on traces of Krimewatch’s 2016 demo (or, during weaker moments, their 2018 LP) and the retro punk stomp of Exit Order. Even so, Dry Socket is where it’s at but the power of their aural assault is enough to earn Body Farm a spot here — I’m sure they’re relieved. As I said, so it goes.
Boldy James & Conductor Williams - Across the Tracks
Detroit rapper and human hip hop machine Boldy James has to be one of the most generous artists in the world today. Though he’s been releasing music at a steady clip since Trappers Alley: Pros & Cons, his debut mixtape released in 2011, 2020 ushered in an era of unbridled creativity for the MC. His output ballooned to several releases a year, all of them joint projects with single producers such as Real Bad Man, Nicholas Craven, and The Alchemist. But even as the production sensibilities around him shifted, Boldy’s hard-nosed street chronicles remained introspective and haunting.
On Across the Tracks, Boldy teams up with producer Conductor Williams for the first time and the Missouri beatmaker’s hazy tracks compliment the rapper’s philosophical musings and chill delivery beautifully. The latter also creates an interesting tension with the regret-filled rhymes that touch on the ghosts in Boldy’s life, dead friends and the traces of a vivid yet distant-seeming past. The brisk, 26-minute album does find time to look at his new reality too, however: on “All Madden,” the 41-year-old reflects on fatherhood and the responsibilities that come with it (“I know they throw dirt on my name, kick me when I’m down/My fam’ need me more than ever, gotta stick around”). It makes sense, then, that Boldy’s son Bo Jack is one of only two guest features on the LP — the other one is his sister, Double Dee.
JIALING - FREAKY HORNS EP
“If she a baddie, she get the addy but if she chatty, she get no addy” — “ADDY,” track number two off JIALING’s FREAKY HORNS EP, repeats variations of this phrase ad absurdum while a 303 spits out goopy basslines. The tune encapsulates a lot of what makes the raucous, acid-drenched club music the Baltimore-born Janie Shih has gathered on her second release under the JIALING moniker so irresistible: vocal samples (by turn sped up and slowed down) you suddenly find yourself repeating out loud, sticky breakbeats, and an undeniable swagger to tie it all together. Shih also pays tribute to the historic sound of her hometown clubs on the über-catchy “GET OFF MY JOGWHEEL” while expertly contorting it into her own thing on the sample pad-laden second half. This right here might just be the sound of the summer.
Mei Semones - Kabutomushi EP
There’s a nerdiness to Mei Semones’ music that, in lesser hands, would banish her to the aesthetic realm occupied by the likes of Jacob Collier or many a Berklee graduate before her: confused genre mish-mashing, platitudinous lyricism, and worst of all, a total absence of tunes. Semones doesn’t exactly have the weight of the world resting on her shoulders either as far as lyrics are concerned but letting her half-english, half-japanese post-relationship therapy vignettes be cradled by nippy, jazz-softened indie does land them somewhere between the journal-entry nakedness of bedroom pop — “Miss you, I miss you/Sorry, I’m sorry” ends the title track and album closer — and the laid-back math rock sugar fix of Clever Girl.
Trophy Wife - “Keep It” Single
Originally from the Allston neighborhood in Boston, Brooklyn-based indie rockers Trophy Wife have released a string of singles and EPs since 2019’s mini-EP The People’s Sweater. Ahead of their upcoming debut LP Spit, the brainchild of singer-guitarist-songwriter McKenzie Iazzetta — hilariously, the project is included on Iazzeta’s slender LinkedIn CV as one of the four jobs the musician has had in her life — has released the lead single “Keep It,” an infectious bit of grunge pop bolstered by the bandleader’s evocative lyrics (“I think I saw my teeth meeting with the concrete in the window…I’ll stand naked in the mirror ‘til it feels alright”) and vulnerable vocals.
The contemplative mood of the clean-guitar verses is contrasted with the raw accusatory tone of the crunchy choruses, Iazzetta grilling an old flame about what it is they want from her exactly. “Do you want someone else to make it better?/Do you want me to keep it all the same?” she warbles, moaning desperately between syllables before allowing herself to play some psychosexual mind games: “Do you want someone else to fuck me better?” It’s a climax of remarkable emotional rawness that still manages to maintain a dimension of mystery that many of the group’s “confessional” peers either can’t or won’t meaningfully work within.
Zelienople - Everything Is Simple
It’s a rare but beautiful thing to get a Zelienople release. It’s been four years since their last LP (2020’s Hold You Up) and on their latest, Everything Is Simple, the group once again gets to creating haunted, jazzy, and doom-sullied ambient blues soundscapes that channel Bohren & der Club of Gore, Lustmord, as well as Ryuichi Sakamoto’s moodier moments. The group, consisting of singer-guitarist Matt Christensen, bassist and occasional guitarist Brian Harding, and percussionist Mike Weis, added another layer to their quietly apocalyptic Americana by introducing vibraphone, Rhodes piano, and synthesizers courtesy of P.M. Tummala and Eric Eleazer. These offset the gloomy vibes with a breath of the dreamy but the overall vision remains one of frightening, unknowable darkness and Zelienople’s latest is all the better for it.
The Boldy/Conductor project is right up there this year far as hip-hop goes