An album of good musical consistency and creative storytelling, Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor gives the Midwest a new rapper to brag about. - by Louie Michaud
This year I’ve been caught up in the music of many familiar hip hop faces—DJ Shadow, Ghostface Killah, and Outkast to name a few. But with all this hype over the solo debut of Lupe Fiasco, a Chicago MC who spit a verse on Kanye West’s Late Registration, I was hoping that Food & Liquor would get me into a new face on the hip hop scene. People have been telling me that there’s been a ton of expectation for this guy—apparently Chi-town rappers need to fill Kanye’s shoes before anyone else. To make things worse, a stripped down versionof Food & Liquor was leaked before the official release last month. The bad news then is that Lupe sorta got screwed in giving his audience an unbiased listen to his debut; however the good news is that for some reason I didn’t know any of this.
I’ve had this album going in my room for the past few weeks, and here’s my one word description for it: solid. A friend of mine said that Lupe Fiasco is a “breath of fresh air,”—I’m gonna have to agree with that. He is a really good storyteller; songs like “Kick, Push” bring that out. His smooth, controlled flow is something to watch out for in the future as well. All of this comes together, in my opinion, on the song “Hurt Me Soul.” Even though the song might not reach single-status, it is easily the highlight of the album for me—a truly memorable beat filled with some really thought out verses. I’ll hold my official claims for the end of the year, but if I make some lists for you guys around late December, expect “Hurt Me Soul” to be way up there.
When an MC can control a song, and not the other way around, there is a lot more room for new and different music. I make that last point because Food & Liquor does have a flaw or two. The music is definitely interesting, there is no doubt to that (check out the song “I Gotcha, produced by the Neptunes). However it does become a bit repetitive at times, it falls off a bit at the end (especially with the Kanye-influenced 12 minute shoutout track “Outro”), and there is no real distinctness in the music—no more than one track really blows me away beat-wise.
You could say that the repetition in the music is not a bad thing, that it just shows how solid of an album Food & Liquor actually is. And while I agree, it is a solid debut by a creative mc with much potential, nevertheless this is no Black on Both Sides or any other album where the music is distinct from song to song, yet simultaneously consistent. Lupe Fiasco has done his job to keep hip hop solid, and luckily for all of us he has room for improvement.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
"By land, by sea, by dirigible..." Once again, The Decemberists have produced an album that, like any good hallucinogen, transcends the listener through space, time, and history. - by Will Levenson
I know this review is coming a bit late, but to be honest it's taken me some time to put words to the way I feel about the new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife. I mean, if you knew me you'd realize how huge it is that I'm speechless. A few albums have struck me like this one, and those are things like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, TV on the Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain, or pretty much any album released by Radiohead. There are just moments in music that are so difficult to define that it's almost a disservice to even try. But at the risk of perverting the brilliance of The Crane Wife, diminishing or misinterpreting it, I'm going to tell you about one of the best albums of 2006.
Unlike the Decemberists' previous LPs, The Crane Wife is most similar to their concept EP The Tain. By that, I mean that there are narrative themes running throughout the album, and it seems to reference itself constantly. The songs are all epics--it's not hard to believe when two of them are over 10 minutes long!--with incredible stories and even more incredible music. The new production value serves them well--it's their first album on a major label--and instead of downplaying their eccentricities and becoming more "pop", Colin Meloy and co. have found the happy medium between their unique form of musical expression and a more coherent sound traveling throughout the album.
This is the first time we have a full Decemberists EP without a sea shanty. This doesn't mean their material has changed--they are still writing about things like the Civil War and anti-Catholic serial murderers. Their style has changed though. But unlike some really horrific style changes--dare I invoke the name Plans?--the Decemberists have seemed to evolve, to adapt and grow and mature like truly legendary artists do.
So let's get down to specifics. The album starts with a beautiful piece called "The Crane Wife 3", which is the final piece of the 3-part Crane Wife "trilogy"--the first two parts come as the penultimate track. The second song on the album is a three-part epic that reads like a mini-Tain. This track introduces one of the Decemberists' newly evolved toys--the organ, which they utilize in fantastic ways. The rest of the album is filled with songs about doomed love affairs, criminal conspiracies, and, of course, a Japanese folktale called "The Crane Wife."
I don't know what else I can say about this album. Anything I can say is simply describing the basics of it, not the nuances and subtleties that enrich the album, filling it to the brim with a pulse and a life the likes of which I haven't seen in music for years. It's albums like this that can change genres, that can redefine what popular music can do and where it may go.
The last song on the album is a piece about hope, about the time when war is finally over and we can all find that place where the echoes of war can no longer reach us. It ends with a refrain of the line: "Hear all the bombs fade away..." Until that time comes, we can drown out the bleating sounds of rhetoric with the soothing, inspiring album The Crane Wife.
