Madlib “Road of the Lonely Ones”

When I first heard about Sound Ancestors I was under the impression that it was a Madlib/Four Tet record, in the sense that Madlib has made collaboritive records in the past with MF Doom, J Dilla, Freddie Gibbs, and Talib Kweli. But no, this is a different sort of collaboration. It’s a body of work created by Madlib, but curated and crafted into an album by Four Tet. This is tremendously interesting to me, mainly because it strikes me as a very humble thing for someone as accomplished as Madlib to do, and a tremendous show of faith and trust in Four Tet. I figure the process here was probably similar to how an editor works with a writer on a big project, and pretty much everyone can benefit from a good editor.

“Road of the Lonely Ones” is essentially a rework of The Ethics’ deep cut “Lost In A Lonely World.” Madlib presents the song in full with all its major elements intact but he layers in percussion and additional textures, bringing a solid groove and more dramatic dynamics to the composition without sacrificing any of the delicate beauty of the original recording. The original seems flat and monochromatic in comparison, like something waiting to eventually be finished. Madlib’s arrangement frames the song’s best qualities for maximum effect, particularly the refrain in which the lead singer sings questions like “Did I ever treat you bad?” and “Where did I go wrong?” over gently plucked guitar chords. The beat drops out to put a spotlight on this moment, accentuating its vulnerability and raw beauty.

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Emanative & Liz Elensky featuring Bed Hadwen “Fall In To Me”

“Fall In To Me” has an intriguing dynamic in which Liz Elensky’s vocal and Ben Hadwen’s tenor sax sound like they’re both attempting to break out of the tense rhythm laid down by Emanative. They move around the stiff groove in different ways. Elensky’s approach is more soulful and zen, like a passive resistance to the oppressive force. Hadwen’s sax is more loose and emotive, at first sneaking around the beat before more obviously reacting against it. I like the way the drama plays out, like the rhythm is trying to capture something about the human spirit that simply cannot be held for long.

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The Far East “NYC Dream”

The Far East’s music is a remarkable fascismile of 1970s and early 1980s Jamaican music, to the point that if you can filter out textural and tonal nuances that mark it as contemporary recordings, you could be convinced it’s the real deal. This band appears to be entirely comprised of white Americans, and I suppose you can make that a case for being problematic, but I think that is more of an issue if they sucked at this and their approximation was purely a cringey surface-level thing. A song like “NYC Dream” comes from love and admiration, and more importantly, a collective skill set capable of producing such a warm and generous melody and playing the rhythm with just the right feel. It helps that “NYC Dream” is grounded in the band’s own setting too, so it’s just as connected to Blondie’s version of rocksteady as the authentic Jamaican source material as Maddie Ruthless sings a romantic love song that’s simultaneously for her partner and the city around them.

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Wax Tailor “Never Forget”

“Never Forget” has the sample-happy aesthetics and playful bounce of Prince Paul and The Avalanches in their prime – very warm and groovy, but also delightfully kitschy. But even with the light-hearted tone there’s some dark currents in the mix, particularly in the repeated “I never…” vocal clip that I think may be Nina Simone though I’m not certain of it. There’s a lot of regret and sorrow in the delivery of those three syllables, and it works as a counterpart to the silliness of a lot of the other samples and compliments the downward curve of the bass part.

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Moor Mother & Billy Woods “Rapunzel”

Child Actor’s track for “Rapunzel” has an eerie vibe but a relaxed feeling, like you’re getting hypnotized into some kind of zombie state but it turns out to be a relief to give up control. A lot of that effect comes from the central sample, which blurs a few sung notes into a siren call that’s simultaneously lovely and unnerving. Moor Mother and Billy Woods are both well-suited to the feel of this track but approach it differently – Woods putting his own spin on the more cerebral Wu-Tang styles of Inspectah Deck and Masta Killa, while Moor Mother leans into the low end of her register so her gravelly tone melts in with the bass a bit.

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Glass “Mosie’s Mood”

“Mosie’s Mood” sounds as though the music is somehow backlit, like we’re just getting a dull haze of light off the back of its alt-rock groove and surfy lead guitar parts. The darkness of the music feels imposed on the form, like this really ought to have a bright and crisp sound but there’s something blocking out all light and joy. It’s a good tonal match for the lyrics, which seem to grapple with a lack of motivation and a surplus of anxiety in a time when possibilities are limited and mostly are bleak. There’s a sense in the music and the words that there’s an attempt to get out of a feeling of hopelessness, but there’s only so much that can be done.

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Apifera “Four Green Yellows”

Apifera sound like they’re going for a mid-’70s Herbie Hancock aesthetic here, though the loose swing in his classic recordings is just beyond their collective reach. But the tightness of their playing isn’t necessarily a problem as it nudges them a little closer to electronic music, particularly the sort of approximations of jazz fusion artists like Luke Vibert and Squarepusher were playing with around 20 years ago. “Four Green Yellows” has a nice relaxed groove, but the best bits aren’t exactly chill – a high keyboard part with a staccato attack that makes it sound like it’s blinking in the shape of a square, the way the bass seems to suddenly start fluttering around the two minute mark.

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Jazmine Sullivan featuring Ari Lennox “On It”

Jazmine Sullivan plays a supporting role in the first third of this song, giving a lot of space for Ari Lennox to set the tone for this very lusty slow jam. It’s generous, but it’s also sorta like having a very good opening act – once Sullivan takes the lead on the second verse she raises the stakes with a performance that’s twice as filthy, more emotionally raw, and impressively nuanced in terms of phrasing. I love the way she delivers the line “cause baby it’s not that easy to please me, yeah I’m needy,” stressing the internal rhyme of the “y” sound with notes that flatter the high end of her range while also conveying a bit of eagerness and desperation. As the song reaches its climax the two singers support one another beautifully, with each showing off and emoting without getting in the other’s way. They don’t sound like they’re competing, they sound like they’re comparing notes.

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Black Country, New Road “Track X”

Every aspect of “Track X” comes across as deliberate and refined, but not so much that it ever seems stiff or precious. It wouldn’t be too hard for this song to tip in those directions, particularly as it’s essentially a solemn spoken word piece set to an arrangement that includes strings and woodwinds. It’s careful where it counts – there’s no clutter to the track despite how many instruments are on it, and as much as the music is lovely and cinematic it never gets sappy or sentimental. Isaac Wood’s vocal performance resembles the style and tone of The National’s Matt Berninger, but he’s not quite as stoic and ponderous, not even when he’s ruminating on a complicated relationship with his father. The song feels like a minor miracle for the way this young band sets themselves up to make something that ought to be a bit unwieldly and overbearing but end up with something that’s rather light and elegant.

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Middle America”

I hear echoes of the Pavement song “Greenlander” in “Middle America” – not enough that they’re extremely similar on a structural level, but close enough in tone that they share a particular shade of melancholy and evoke a frigid and empty landscape. In lyrical terms they’re from very different ends of a lifespan. “Greenlander” confronts a very youthful sort of awkwardness and regret, with the line “everything I did was right, everything I said was wrong / now I’m waiting for the night to bring me dawn” standing out as one of the young Malkmus’ more straightforward and poignant moments. “Middle America” is more like a collection of wise thoughts and observations, but presented in a humble and low-key way. There’s some good advice in the song but the emotional power of it lies more in the bits where he seems far less certain of himself or anything else. There’s something in the way he sings the “in the winter time” hook that conveys a sweet vulnerability and vague doubt that actually makes him come across as a stronger and more reliable person.

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Surreal Teenagers”

You go into a Malkmus song expecting some degree of evocative wordplay, but even with that expectation, “Surreal Teenagers” is especially rich with odd and interesting images. (I feel like there’s at least three or four very strong band names up for grabs in this one.) Malkmus is extra playful on this one too, to the point of singing the last two verses in a fanciful lilt as he takes on the character of some dandy dreaming of moving to Micronesia with his manservant John.

“Surreal Teenagers” circles back to the English folk and prog rock influences that went into much of Pig Lib, but it’s also informed by the dramatic flair that came from Janet Weiss’ presence in the band – basically, it’s like “1% of One” as a rollercoaster ride rather than an extended jam. This is from Jake Morris’ first record as The Jicks’ drummer, and the song showcases his strength as someone who can shift from an expressive jam band looseness to a more straight-ahead post-punk style on a dime.

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Share the Red”

The part I always remember from “Share the Red” is the one little part of the song that breaks from its slack, easygoing sway to tighten up and get dramatic as Malkmus sings “I’ll be watching all the time” three times with an unguarded passion. That’s the moment of clarity, the rest of the song is all mixed emotions as he sings about raising his children and taking note of the ways they’re wild and unformed before fully absorbing the rules of society. It’s not a sentimental song, but it is an empathetic one. He’s appreciating their lack of perspective while doing what he can to expand it in his role as a father. I love the nuance of this song – you can tell he cares about his kids and enjoys being a parent, but also how challenged he is by it and how exhausting it can feel. But I wouldn’t characterize this as expressing ambivalence about the situation, just an acknowledgement of the complexity of the situation.

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “Wicked Wanda”

The lyrical content of Real Emotional Trash is split between playful imagery and thoughtful introspection, and in the case of “Wicked Wanda” it’s pretty much an even bisection. It’s two angles on psychedelia – the first half more fanciful and trippy, the second half much about ego-loss. This song, along with “Elmo Delmo,” confronts anxiety and fear in a way that was unusual for Malkmus up to this point in his career – or at least for him to be so direct about it. This part breaks into two verses, and the first is more tranquil and ideal as he lets go and allows himself some clarity and peace of mind in feeling small. The second verse is darker: “stories, not reality / I feel like a junk contraption / truth is I can’t shake this vile fear.” That last line always rattles me a bit, partly because Malkmus always presents as being so unflappable. But that image of him, the man who’s got so much style that it’s wasted? That’s a story, not reality.

“Wicked Wanda” attains some degree of grandeur and grace thanks in large part to the presence of Janet Weiss on drums and backing vocals. Weiss was a member of the Jicks for a little over five years after Sleater-Kinney dissolved after touring for The Woods, but she only plays on Real Emotional Trash and Mirror Traffic. She has a more heavy influence and obvious presence on the former, and it’s clear that working with a drummer as powerful and proficient in her emboldened Malkmus to aim for a dynamicism and drama that wouldn’t have ever worked with any of Pavement’s drummers. Weiss’ predecessor John Moen was similarly proficient but not quite as hard hitting or as flashy with fills. She does well with the songs on Mirror Traffic but that material doesn’t seem as tailor-made for her, and while that is probably just the natural drift of his songwriting muse it also seems like the novelty of having a drummer like that became less of a novelty and more of a day-to-day reality. Four albums down the line from her departure it feels like Weiss’ presence was a very good experience for Malkmus to have, but also something that was probably better as a phase than a permanent situation.

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Stephen Malkmus “Pencil Rot”

“Pencil Rot” nudges the ersatz new wave of the Pig Lib song “Dark Wave” a bit further into more demented territory, sharpening up every part that could be called “angular,” piling on scuzzy effects, and going hogwild with the bleep-y synthesizers. “Dark Wave” was basically just a genre goof but “Pencil Rot” firmly establishes the more wacky keyboard-centric end of the Jicks aesthetic, a sound that was eventually taken to a logical extreme on Groove Denied.

The lyrics of “Pencil Rot” start off by embracing the silliness of the music, with Malkmus telling us about a villain in his head named Leather McWhip – “he needs to be stopped!!” But as the song moves along Malkmus’ riff on villainy shifts from a celebration of the cartoonish to a rumination the insidiously mundane:

I’m here to sing a song, a song about privilege
the spikes you put on your feet
when you were crawling and dancing
to the top of the human shit pile, shit pile
somehow you managed to elucidate
something that was on all of their minds
and other people see themselves in you
and I can see them in you too

From the perspective of 2021 it’s easy to read this as a pretty good description of Donald Trump, though in context he may have actually been thinking of George W. Bush. But in either case I like that Malkmus focuses in on the utility of the privileged megalomaniac as someone who can distill negative impulses and allow for identification that crosses class divides. It’s the idealized self, the version that can do whatever they want with impunity and wield actual power in the world. It’s grasping power and privilege by proxy, and the proxy is nothing without this shared delusion.

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Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks “(Do Not Feed the) Oyster”

“Oyster” is a turning point for Stephen Malkmus as a songwriter. The majority of the first Jicks record could’ve been Pavement songs – in fact, a few of the songs had at least been rehearsed with that band. But “Oyster,” which was debuted on stage well before Pig Lib was released, could only be a Jicks song. This is the sound of the middle aged Malkmus, more winding and digressive in his guitar melodies and supported by a band more capable of pushing into more epic and bombastic territory. It’s not a world away from where he’d been, but it was an aesthetic breakthrough that gave the Jicks a character beyond “the guy from Pavement playing with people who weren’t in Pavement.”

The sound of “Oyster” feels vaguely nautical, like there’s some sea shanty mixed in with the tuneful English folk and prog rock in its DNA. The lyrics reflect this somewhat, but it’s very confusing – like, what would it mean to feed the oysters when they survive by extracting algae from water? It sounds cool, though, and that’s usually his goal. The most intriguing bit is when the song circles back to the second verse and it’s suddenly about the disappointing hassles of adult life. It’s an interesting contrast with the songs on Pavement’s Brighten the Corners, which often seemed to long for these mundane rituals. Malkmus was 30 when he wrote those songs and nearer to 40 when he wrote “Oyster” – certainly less intriguing when you’re not a guy constantly touring through his 20s and probably wondering from time to time what being a regular grown up might be like.

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Stephen Malkmus “Vague Space”

Stephen Malkmus went through a phase in the late 90s and early 00s in which he clearly felt a natural pull towards writing traditional romantic pop songs but felt weird and self conscious about it, so any time a melody suggested a sentimental cliché he wrote in something absurd or off-putting to subvert the listener’s expectations. You can hear this on “You Are A Light,” “Spit On A Stranger,” “Major Leagues,” and “Ann Don’t Cry” on Terror Twilight, and very obviously in “Vague Space” from the first Jicks record. This isn’t all conjecture – early versions of these songs have been in rotation for ages and the demo version of “Vague Space” featured on the “Phantasies” single features an early version of the chorus that goes “I love to turn you on” before it was revised to “I love to tear you off.” The editing process was pretty transparent.

There’s a part of me that sees this as a cop-out, a way of shrinking away from genuine emotions because you don’t want anyone to accuse you of being corny. But that impulse to shrink away from feelings, to put up a flimsy defense – that’s a very relatable feeling, and “Vague Space” is definitely a song about hedging emotional bets and playing it cool. The first verse is a dodge on a “define the relationship” conversation that includes a genuine compliment that’s also a neg – “I came to crave your spastic touch, the honest way you move’s too much,” and the second verse drifts into poetic nonsense, as if to say “haha, never mind.” As it goes along Malkmus tries to downplay everything – “this is no new romantic blitzkrieg” – but the sound of it all makes it obvious that he’s coming from a sweet place and just hates dealing with pressure. The “vague space” is a comfort zone, a way to enjoy feelings and moments without any particular responsibility. It’s not necessarily the most noble thing, but it’s an understandable position.

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Darkside “Liberty Bell”

The feeling of “Liberty Bell” is very easy to connect with but difficult to name – it’s numb but not too numb, bleak but not too bleak, cold but not frigid. It sounds like a journey into unknown territory with a lot of caution and fear, but also a dim hope that you may come upon something extraordinary. The arrangement is excellent, particularly the use of acoustic guitar as much for ambiance as rhythm and the lead guitar part that starts as a bit flamenco before devolving into an odd clatter.

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Playboi Carti “Slay3r”

Playboi Carti’s best songs feel like things that shouldn’t work – raps that don’t sound like raps, melodies that aren’t quite sung, chaotic energy that somehow coheres into pop forms. There’s an internal logic to what he does, enough that a lot of the tracks can sound basically the same, but when he really clicks it’s like magic. Every element of “Slay3r” sounds like it’s moving in nearly parallel circles, just off kilter enough to feel a little goofy and strange but not enough to distract from the bits that congeal into melodic hooks. The title is indeed a reference to the metal band – “I’m a rock star, I could’ve joined Slayer” – but as with everything this guy does, the rock of it all is mostly in his visual presentation, though there is an anarchic energy to his vocals that is kindred in spirit.

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Burial “Chemz”

“Chemz” is an elaborately constructed dance epic that’s built around the ambiguity of whether it’s a song about drugs or a song about love, and nudging you towards the question of whether there’s much of a difference given that either way it’s all chemical reactions in your brain. Burial’s track goes hard with chaotic rave breaks that bring on a heightened level of stimulation – a little bit of panic, a lot of rush. His vocal samples are very inspired, weaving together bits from Ne-Yo, Wolf Alice, and Allure to express a potent mix of joy and paranoia that the joy is about to end. All the lyrics that rise to the surface are about dependence, and worrying what you are without this thing that’s making you feel happy and whole. The feeling of the song doesn’t change but the music mutates quite a bit, shifting through stages of highs and plateaus before abruptly fizzling out, as if the song just passed out on the sidewalk at 4 AM.

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Four Tet “0000 871 0018”

I listened to Four Tet’s 871 before reading the fine print: “recorded between August 1995 and January 1997.” Well, that certainly explains it – the use of live instrumentation, the approximation of that particular Loveless/”To Here Knows When” glimmering sound, the proto-post rock drumming aesthetics. What had initially come off to me as an intriguing detour is in fact Kieran Hebden sharing his juvenilia, which turns out to be far better than many artists in their prime. “0000 871 0018” is the most inspired track in this collection, the one that displays Hebden’s exceptional taste in textures and tones, and is an early indication of his gift for composition. There’s a gentle drama to this one, like it ought to soundtrack a moment of sudden clarity upon encountering something just beyond comprehension.

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Four Tet “Parallel 4”

Parallel comes without caveats or context, so it seems safe to assume this is recent work by Hebden. “Parallel 4” reminds me a lot of the track I featured from the EP he had out under his wingdings name, which makes me think this may in fact be a more evolved version of that song. It doesn’t have the sort of pop bluntness of that song, which I appreciate but can imagine is sort of dull and obvious to him, but I appreciate the relative elegance of this track as it transitions from its beat-centric first part to a more ambient and lovely mid-section.

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