Album Reviews
Thair
You Deserve It
Thair Thompson
Once again striking out on his own, Afro Samurai vocalist Thair delivers an epic second EP. Leaving behind the funk/soul hybrid of his band, the dance floor beckons with some pure pop gems on You Deserve It. However, as is often the case the beats belie the personal stories laid bare in each of these songs, and Thair’s smooth tenor flows over and through them with ease. Exploring past trauma and experience is nothing new in songwriting but with spoken samples from himself and what sounds like family members or friends, he drives the points home with a precision that just can’t be reached with metaphor alone. Laying bare one’s private emotions is no easy task, yet this fantastic artist has gifted us with a work of beauty on a profound level.
Video Dave
Week 1560
AutoReverse
A hundred years from now, when history is looking for a snapshot of existence in the early twenty-first century, all they have to do is plug into Week 1560. Conceptually wrapped around a week in the narrator's life, Video Dave’s latest effort and first on collaborator Open Mike Eagle’s AutoReverse imprint, is a study in the mundane, wrapped in a sleek, danceable package. The native Chicago rapper and filmmaker takes us through “Sunday” funday, through the “Monday” hangover, into the grind and annoyances and pleasures of his day job and electronic age dating, each track named after a day of the week. By “Thursday”, his latest conquest turns into payday “Friday” and evolves into a drunken night out, turning into a pounding “Saturday” hangover that eases as the pattern repeats itself and you can flow right back into “Sunday” once again. Those that can’t identify with Week 1560, simply don’t live this way, but to those that find a portion of themselves in this portrait of humanity in the digital age, Video Dave has captured something special in the day-to-day. When our existence is perpetually singular (especially the last four months) it’s comforting to find solace in someone else's everyday.
Paddlefish
Flyer
Planetary
Chicago indie rock/alt country outfit, Paddlefish, have been active for about five years and previously self-released 2 albums; 2018’s Spill Me and 2017’s Refrigerator. Being home recordings, these releases were fairly raw but still demonstrated the immense potential of the young band and frontman Owen Misterovich’s songwriting abilities. Flyer is the band’s first album recorded in a proper studio setting and elevates the band’s blend of ‘90s college rock and alt-country to the next level.
Flyer was recorded at the Pieholden Suite Sound studio in Chicago. Founded by the late Jay Bennett of Wilco, the studio gives this album some instant alt-country cred. The lyrical content was primarily inspired by Misterovich’s move from his hometown of Springfield, MO to Chicago to attend Columbia College to study radio. Flyer is a coming of age album that details the many hardships we have all experienced in our late teens and early twenties as we gradually transition to adulthood. Misterovich struggled during his first year in Chicago, but he fortunately found his stride and we are all better for it.
Paddlefish’s sound is largely a blend of alt-country reminiscent of artists like Ryan Adams, Lucero, and Wilco with ‘90s slacker-driven college rock like Pavement and The Replacements. This is best exemplified on the jangly, yet rootsy, opening track, “Good as Dead,” which sounds like the perfect lovechild of Wilco and The Replacements. The following track, “Drain All”, makes great use of repurposing ‘90s Pavement riffs in an alt-country context while adding a little classic rock flavoring. “Built a Glider” is a pure blast of college rock with Misterovich nearly sounding like Steve Malkmus. The second half of Flyer is more experimental and features several tracks incorporating some psychedelic elements such as “The Web” and the dreamy, keyboard-driven “Turnpike.” The closer “Oh Doctor” essentially combines all the band’s influences throughout the album into a single song ending the record on a high note.
Overall, Paddlefish’s first studio album is a solid effort that will help ensure that Chicago remains the alt-country mecca it has been since the early ‘90s. Both the songwriting and musicianship on Flyer are top notch which is especially impressive considering the band’s young age. Fans of Wilco and fellow Chicago up and comers, Rookie, will dig this!
Ohmme
Fantasize Your Ghost
Joyful Noise
Ohmme has the kind of clarity of identity and sound that most bands spend a lifetime looking for. At the core of that sound is experimentation. This duo of mad scientists are ever-evolving. Their vocal harmonies are the likes usually only heard when siblings sing together. They coax sounds out of their instruments that are chilling and enticing. For their second full length album, Fantasize Your Ghost, not only have they fine tuned their sound for your listening pleasure, Sima Cunnningham and Macie Stewart are taking us on a deep dive into their minds. They spent most of 2019 on the road and used their time in the van to have long discussions about what they have, and what they want out of their lives. Pressing each other to dig deeper, much like they have challenged each other musically. When they write songs, they want to see how many ways it could evolve before deciding the path they take. This album explores lyrical ponderings of the same topic. We have the power to change our lives. When we are at a crossroads we look back to what made us who we are, and forward to see how our decision now will determine who we are in the future. Whatever the change we enact, we must live with. Expressing the only constant of life is change. It is a confluence of musical and lyrical philosophy I revel in as I listen.
“Flood Your Gut” is a dark start to the album. Angst-laden grunge guitar melody turns to off-kilter strikes, and angular harmonies as they sing the refrain, “Your whole visions not enough.” I feel the challenge, condemnation, and judgement. Who is this tall person? Are they speaking to each other? To us, the listeners? No matter who it is, we can take the lesson, Ohmme will not allow them/us to dream away our lives. “Have you found your stomach or your spine?” Ohmme demands you to take responsibility for what you do because your actions are what makes you who you are. They take on an epic Queen-level harmonic rock opera sound for “Selling Candy.” Repeating six lines recalling childhood memories. They could have all happened on one day, or could be spanning years. When you examine it, the combination seems so odd, but yet it works perfectly, making this track stick out from first listen. But then I hear “Ghost.” This is instantly and simply my favorite song on the album. That funky, fuzzy, blown out bass line struts away with my heart. The wailing guitar exemplifies their experimental style, their signature syncopated harmonies, and that ‘stop wasting time, get out there, and seize the day’ message. It all comes together in a way that makes me move. This trio of songs that start the album floors me, but Ohmme does not let up. Their experimental song structures urging me around the next corner with them, wanting to see what they will do next. As I listen to the album I can feel the human condition, the ways we change big and small stacking up as we live our lives. “Different today, but I’m the same,” “3 2 4 3” has striking lyrics that capture a feeling of jaded longing for something we can’t yet grasp. The impatience to become, what? We don’t know, but that doesn’t lessen the desire for metamorphosis. This is echoed in the final song, “After All,” which states “Lonely girl is ok, take a breath, get away, seek your cocoon, seek your cocoon.” It is the softest and most soothing song on the album. With it comes a final thought: you express yourself to the world with your actions, but you find who you are through intimacy, solitude, and self-nurturing introspection. It is scary to figure out who you are, to find your voice, to ask for what you need, but the result is worth the ongoing struggle. And they know, because they are sharing it with us on Fantasize Your Ghost with resounding clarity.
NNAMDÏ
Black Plight
NNAMDÏ
Digging into his extensive genre bag, Chicago’s ultimate utility man pulls out these three rage induced gems that raised over ten grand for charity on Bandcamp IN ONE DAY! Harkening back to his math punk period, in Black Plight NNAMDÏ delivers billboard sized messages in short snippets of cultural backlash that lay bare the struggle in which we are currently embroiled. “My Life” asks the question, are your material possessions and corporate big box stores more important than a human life, while “Rage” opens with “They kill us dead in the street!” and continues a scathing defamation of the system's lack of response except in the wake of destruction: “have to burn it all down just to be heard!” But the real highlight is closer “Heartless,” a complicated burner that would find a home on any punk compilation of the past thirty years. A true anthem of frustration and anger, railing at the political and social system’s lack of action and inequity. Black Plight is a revelatory EP, recorded in a matter of days, from an artist that has already put out one of the best records of the year in BRAT. This year is NNAMDÏ at the top of his game. We’ll say it first. NNAMDÏ for Mayor 2023!