BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - November 2016

NxWorries,
YES LAWD!
John K Samson,
Winter Wheat
Pale Lips,
Wanna Be Bad
Peeling,
Rats In Paradise EP
Solange,
A Seat At The Table
of New Jersey native Glen Boothe,
otherwise known as producer
Knxwledge, who himself is no stranger
to the hustle (you don’t get to 64
releases on Bandcamp without serious
dedication, after all). The two started
working together as NxWorries,
releasing an EP in 2015 called Link
Up & Suede. The latter track would
make it’s way to none other than Dr.
Dre, landing .Paak a contract with
Aftermath Records and a total of
eight(!) guest spots on the Dre’s 2015
comeback album, Compton.
Yet, as amazing as 2015 was for
.Paak, 2016 has somehow been even
better. In January he released the
album of the year in Malibu, all the
while working with Boothe on a followup
to that 2015 EP, the full-length YES
LAWD! for Stones Throw Records.
YES LAWD! is a fitting victory
lap for .Paak, even when it doesn’t
work all that well. It’s a dank and
dusty beat-tape, filled with subthree-minute
throwback jams, that
sounds like a ‘70s R&B Madvillainy.
In a few ways it mirrors that 2004
classic from Madlib and Doom, most
notably that it features two of the
game’s most outlandish outsiders
flexing on the game with an infectious
unfuckwittability. The album finds
.Paak adopting a Superfly-era Curtis
Mayfield persona. He’s a shit-talking
amalgamation of Shaft and Sade,
torn between being a lover and a
player, often in the same line. On
the late-album cut “Sidepiece,” he
contemplates his place as a rap game
Don Juan, protesting his love for a
woman is strong enough to relinquish
his other sexual escapades, even
though “one won’t do, and two is not
enough for me, no!”
It’s soundtracked by swelling,
sampled strings and slowly rolling
toms and tams straight out of the ‘70s.
On opener “Livvin’,” and the stunted
jam “Kutless,” the dust in the grooves
of the record is as audible as any of the
sampled instruments.
There are brief moments that
take away some enjoyment from
YES LAWD!, but it still leaves the
impression that when they’re on,
NxWorries are the smoothest duo
since Rob Thomas and Santana.
Pale Lips
Wanna Be Bad
Hosehead Records
Montreal garage-punks Pale Lips have
a ripping time of a first LP on their
hands with the release of Wanna Be
Bad. Just a few chords, vocals that run
from sweet harmonies to raw yowls
and a healthy heap of sass keep these
12 nuggets of brittle but bright power
pop a riot from start to finish.
Tongue-in-cheek opener “Doo
Wah Diddy Shim Sham (Bama Lama
Loo)” makes playful use of vintage
garage-pop scatting while maintaining
the genre’s reverence for earnest vocal
melody. If that sounds a bit innocent
for a record called Wanna Be Bad,
fear not: “Queen of Spades” is
an ode to the thrill of gambling,
“Mary-Lou Sniffin’ Glue” (sounding
not unlike an Exploding Hearts
song) preaches the joys of inhaling
that you should not, and “Run Boy
Run” is about taking vengeance on
a cheater.
Like much punk and garagerock,
the album doesn’t exactly
swell with variety throughout.
Rather, it takes something fun and
unfussy and injects it with snark, snarl
and a sense of humour that makes
the tracks endlessly personable. It’s a
saccharine and venomous concoction,
perhaps described best a big, bright
lollipop coated in a lethal dose of speed
and arsenic.
Peeling
Rats In Paradise EP
Buzz Records
Toronto DIY punk “supergroup”
Peeling features members of
Mexican Slang, Odonis Odonis,
Dilly Dally, and Golden Dogs. Their
first EP as a group, Rats In Paradise,
combines aspects of garage rock,
punk, noise and pop into one album.
In the song “Magic Eye,” lead
singer Annabelle Lee’s rasp and
growl is paired with hard hitting
drum beats to create a sultry song
focusing simply on body positivity and
sex. Another song off of the record,
“Leisure Life,” condemns apathy, greed
and those who are “making money off
of war and institutional oppression.”
While the themes of the album
seem a bit heavy handed, what’s
produced is an enjoyable, almost
pop-influenced, punk album. In just
four songs, Peeling tackle broad
concepts such as sexuality, death,
consumerism, religion and mental
illness, but - like much of Buzz
Records catalogue – Rats In Paradise
is still a hazy, fuzzy and fun album.
Protest the Hero
Pacific Myth
Sony Music
There’s no middle ground when it
comes to discussing Canadian progrockers
Protest the Hero. Four strong
albums in, PTH has developed a
love-‘em-or-can’t-fucking-stand-‘em
reputation that stems primarily
from frontman Rody Walkers
divisive vocal delivery which shifts
from crystal-clear highs to vicious
gutturals on a dime. However, Pacific
Myth, their latest EP of voracious
fret-burners, is a prime example of
a band that knows their place so
well that they’re unable to escape the
territory of self-parody that comes
from musicians that *literally* grew
up playing the same music they’re still
putting out 15 years on.
To remedy this situation, Protest
has started implementing unique
marketing strategies to produce
their work, beginning with 2013’s
Volition (which was crowdfunded
via Indiegogo), and continuing with
Pacific Myth, which was released over
a 12-month span to paying subscribers
via Bandcamp.
The result is 12 tracks (well, six,
with accompanying instrumentals)
that essentially sound like rejected
cuts that didn’t quite make it onto
their last full-length. In fact, any
song on Pacific Myth could be
slipped into any other post-Fortress
release and the listener would be
none the wiser.
While the guys in Protest are
undoubtedly talented, Pacific Myth
has made it clear that being really,
really good at what you do doesn’t
necessarily make it interesting.
John K. Samson
Winter Wheat
Anti-Records
As if John K. Samson needed
to prove to us that he is among
Canada’s best songwriters, Winter
Wheat is the lyrically ambitious, clean
and clever, release that we weren’t
sure we were going to get this late in
his illustrious career.
With the Weakerthans now
permanently defunct, and his
Propaghandi days a distant memory,
Samson began settling into singersongwriter
mode on Provincial (2012).
It’s a beautiful record, but also small and
reserved. Armed with the knowledge
that Samson writes fitfully, this year’s 15
track, sprawling, Winter Wheat, comes
as a most pleasant surprise.
Close listens do not go
unrewarded. The record is packed with
extremely compelling narratives, such
as the charming and fun first-person
account of a Cambridge spy about
to be caught on “Fellow Traveler,”
but it also maintains the many
quotable one-liners that made
Weakerthans’ blue-collar anthems
so memorable. “The payday lonely
pray in parking lots, a one bar wifi
kinda town,” Samson whispers on
“Capital.”
The record is fairly sparse
in its production, and this helps
highlight Samson’s lyricism. This is
most true of “Alpha Adept,” which
balances its delusional narrator
with some slinky bass guitar, wirey
synths, and a beautifully sci-fi
keyboard breakdown. “17th Street
Treatment Centre” sounds like a
first take recording, just electric
guitar and wavering vocals, it feels
deliberately unpolished, like it was
recorded from the hospital bed of the
protagonist. Among the most energetic
and fun songs on the record is ‘Fellow
Traveler,’ but with its soft percussion,
and widely spaced doo-wop vocal
harmony, the track never peaks quite as
highly as it could.
Winter Wheat is a fantastic record,
a sprawling collection of short stories
with a clean, but soft, coat of paint.
Solange
A Seat At The Table
Saint/Columbia
On her first album in eight years, A
Seat At The Table, Solange Knowles
considerably raises her creative
ante, while providing a strong
female perspective concerning race
and gender issues in 21st century
America. In co-writing, producing,
and arranging the album, Knowles
proves not only a deft-yet-sensitive
hand at vocalizing the strength and
struggles of today’s women, but her
skills as a composer and producer
serve as an example of the highest
degree of musical imagination and
taste currently in pop music.
From the cascading intro
harmonies of “Rise,” there’s an inkling
that A Seat At The Table might be a
more run-of-the-mill pop exercise, but
the notion is quickly disregarded, as
the opening cut never drops the beat,
settling on vocals and Wurlitzer with a
subtle high-hat/kick on the off beat to
November 2016 REVIEWS
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