Delighted to have been asked to write a short guest post on 2009 in review for the BookNet Canada blog.
This year’s absurdly ambitious (as ever) vacation reading stack:
In preparation for my upcoming contribution to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, I’ve been rereading everything I’ve read—and written—related to the mid-90s British downtempo scene.
I came across an unpublished piece I wrote in 2004 about Stephanie McKay’s debut album, McKay, which was produced by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow and Earthling’s Tim Saul. Because much of what I wrote still stands—because the album still sounds fresh and new, because permanently holds a place on the iPod—I thought I’d post it here. McKay was one of those astonishingly good UK-produced R&B albums which, sinfully, never found the audience it deserved. It sits alongside Lewis Taylor’s debut album as one of those magnificent albums that will turn heads whenever you put it on. Highly recommended. Sadly not available on iTunes (though her new album is) but it looks like the Amazon UK MP3 store has it.
For all the eclecticism that distinguishes R&B as a musical style, the ‘mature’ end of the genre can be surprisingly staid. While relentless competition for pop success pulls in sounds from UK garage and Jamaican dancehall, the more upmarket neo-soul sound is rather more conservative. Artists like Alicia Keys and India Arie establish their credentials by nostalgic invocation of Stevie Wonder, while others—Jill Scott, Angie Stone—appear stuck in the 1998 Atlanta production template.
That is one reason why Stephanie McKay’s self-titled debut album is refreshing. The production is handled by two outsiders to the US R&B scene, Geoff Barrow and Tim Saul. Both of these men—as the producers behind Portishead and Earthling respectively—were closely involved in the ‘Bristol sound’ that was at the core of the short-lived trip-hop genre.
There is a freshness about McKay from the outset: vinyl cracks and pops announce an analogue sensibility missing in the post-Atlanta sound of Timbaland and The Neptunes, and somewhat bypassed by the acoustic mannerisms of Keys, Badu and Arie.
There is also a distinct difference in tempo. The songs which sound most like Portishead – “Tell Him”, “Sadder Day”, “Five Days Of Faith”, “Thadius Star”—join precisely-arranged minor-key chord stabs to soundtrack-esque strings. But above all they display an awareness of space that outlines trip-hop’s debt to dub, fore-grounding thunderous bass figures and Barrow’s crisp drum programming. The production on songs like “Sadder Day” is meticulous and strident: a sparse acoustic guitar loop opens, before breaking into ruptured bass tones, dramatic string arrangements, a rattling mandolin and a backing vocal racked up to sound like Portishead’s trademark theremin.
McKay, formerly of The Brooklyn Funk Essentials—and a sometime associate of Kelis and Talib Kweli—is certainly up to the challenge. In “Sadder Day” her vocal gradually builds from the throwaway breathiness of the opening lines—“I ain’t got no money / and I don’t care / I been sitt-in’ down in this well I swear”. She accelerates through the following line—“Now I ain’t gettin’ nothin’ but the same old shit every day”—before strutting behind the beat to haul the song into the chorus. Later she displays a tempered command of melisma, and enough wit to tease out the emotional implications of the song.
The match between the vocals and production is often flawless. “How Long” works around a moody altered piano chord that recalls Wu-Tang. But the lush strings at the back of the mix and the delicate chord changes suggest instead the 1970s Gamble & Huff Philadelphia soul sound. The vocal works its way between the two extremes before building to such intensity that it seems ready to puncture the mix. There’s a gorgeous middle eight, too, in which a thickly harmonized vocal—“What time is it? What time is it?”—syncopates against the same bass-piano loop and makes it seem to lilt and buck in its moorings.
Elsewhere, Mckay’s impressive vibrato on “Rising Tide” finds all the angles in a rather harsh, unnerving song—from hip-hop vocal ticks through nursery-rhyme chant and molasses-slow behind-the-beat blues.
The lyrics are mostly devoid of the sentimentally and cliche that mark much songwriting of this type. The more earnest tracks, which flirt with a kind of Five Percenter spiritualism, are less interesting. But in general, the lyrics are well-married to the production. “Echo”, a hypnotically-underproduced protest song, recalls Nina Simone’s ability to marry uncompromising politics to charming simplicity.
There is certainly a retro feel to the album, even animating the more lightweight songs. The dancefloor bubblegum of “Thinking Of You” brings to mind the sound of London’s pre-trip-hop Soul II Soul crew. “Take Me Over” is an unironic and unassuming faux-reggae piece, based on the Dave and Ansel Collins’ “Double Barrel”. It comes dangerously close to pastiche.
This shouldn’t suggest that the album lacks any flavor of contemporary R&B. “Bluesin’ It” has a distinct Timbaland feel: discreet parcels of sounds push the beat forwards. The tightly-coiled vocal wraps itself around the taut guitar and organ licks, before breaking into a coy and playful lilt. “Loving You” opens with a lean, sparse digital beat that recalls some of Jay Dee’s production, although the chorus—with its gentle string line and breathy high-range vocal—sounds eerily like Minnie Ripperton.
As with the much of the mid-nineties Bristol sound, it’s hard to distinguish McKay‘s fond regard for its influences from a general feeling of nostalgic loss. In either event, the hand-on-heart retro aesthetic causes a strangely weightless feeling of freedom from context. It is this weightlessness that animates and buoys this refreshingly individual album.
I was actually casting around for a fourth hardcover to round out the weekend’s 4-for-3 offering at World’s Biggest Bookstore when I picked this up. I think I’d noted it after the National Book Award win, but something about the cover—perhaps a similarity to Richard Ford’s Lay of the Land?—made me think it was some rather severe contemporary fiction. In fact, it’s a re-edited/retold version of Peter Matthiessen’s acclaimed historical trilogy, about which I knew, shamefully, nothing.
One of those situations in which a cover that feels fairly anonymous when viewed online in reduced dimensions turns into quite an event when it sits face-out on the shelf, robust in its deluxe Modern Library production values. It’s a gorgeous book and it pretty much sells itself in the physical form. Which raises some interesting questions about all that a cover must do in today’s bookselling environment.
So anyway I’m now looking forward to some lush historical fiction. Here’s the breath-taking opening paragraph:
Sea birds are aloft again, a tattered few. The white terns look dirtied in the somber light and they fly stiffly, feeling out an element they no longer trust. Unable to locate the storm-lost minnows, they wander the thick waters with sad muted cries, hunting seamarks that might return them to the order of the world.
I’m a fan of McSweeney’s ability to crank out gorgeous low-priced well-made hardcover books, and issue #29 is no exception:
There’s always a nice level of detail, right down to the price sticker.
However, I really would like to be able to peel this off without leaving a messy patch of adhesive on the back of the book. Why can’t I? Why, indeed, as a subscriber, do I need the price sticker at all? The gag isn’t that great.
Don’t make me come down there…
Adding my voice to the chorus of praise for Penguin’s Gothic Reds series. Interviews with talented designer Coralie Bickford-Smith can be found here and here.
I’m a big fan of the Red Classics editions: affordable, well-produced mass markets. Their Gatsby is the most pleasant reading edition I’ve had since the mid-90s lime spine edition with it’s Tony Tanner introduction and gorgeous automotive cover. And I recently read their A Confederacy of Dunces, having turned my nose up at the ubiquitous Grove/Atlantic edition.
(Note to Grove/Atlantic: please discontinue your disreputable but presumably lucrative backhander with whichever glue supplier insists on adding an extra 50 per cent to the weight of every book. Books should not tip over backwards on the shelf, international glue surpluses notwithstanding.)
The Modern Library trade paperbacks are still my edition of choice, but I have a lot of admiration for the Red Classics project. They seem to be trying to find the perfect balance between accessible, browser-friendly editions—at a low price point—with a measure of respectability for the book snob. Like me. Anyone can trash up classics in an attempt to court a mass market (movie tie-ins, I’m looking in your direction), and anyone can produce a lacksidasical in-house series in pursuit of high margin. But it takes quite a lot of imagination to make classics interesting enough they will actually move off ‘staff picks’ displays at bookstores. Bravo.
Anyway, these editions look great on their own or together; the design is—in a word—spectral.
So I am loving—loving—reading these beautiful RSC Modern Library trade Shakespeares.
Here’s what they have going for them:
In short, they do everything possible to remove obstacles between you and the plays. That sounds easy, but I’ve never found another edition or series that does it—all of it—satisfactorily. I swear, they didn’t even call me up to ask what I’ve been griping about all these years.
Plus there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you probably don’t care about:
In short, as far as I’m concerned they are the definitive stand-alone editions for the adult reader. Highly recommended. And there are more coming.
DaCapo’s Best Music Writing 2006 collection is now available. It looks to be rather an improvement on last year’s rather slim volume, not least because it includes the extended profile of M.I.A. that I wrote for PopMatters.
You know what to do.
Coverage of NXNE over at PopMatters, edited by yours truly. Includes a piece on the festival’s film content:
Nostalgia is the dominant emotion in much filmmaking about music. The primary impulse of many biopics, musicals, and documentaries is to memorialize music or musicians who have had a significant impact on the filmmaker’s life. Too often this has its own dangers: the rare biopic that does not sag with pacing problems suffers because it cannot establish any critical distance from its subject. But the mode can be uncannily beautiful — from the elegiac rhythms of, say, Clint Eastwood’s Bird, or the smoke-filled purism of Robert Altman’s Kansas City.
And a trawl of various music acts. Highlights were BC’s No Luck Club and Toronto’s Holy Fuck:
Holy Fuck are reductionists, intent on marshaling the squeals and protests of equipment designed for other purposes. At the Reverb, the audience comprised the would-be-hip and the professionally curious. It was a brilliant set, but only a few people got it. Much of the audience seemed more concerned with impressing the other people there. It was an elitist crowd, brought by the Now magazine showcase, of which Holy Fuck were the fourth act. Downstairs from the intimacy of Holy Joe’s, the Reverb has something of the church about it, and something of the thoroughfare. Its high ceilings produce great sound, showering shards of noise back to the audience along with drips of condensation from the air conditioning, a venue in which a dropped glass produces a shatter rather than a smothered crunch. But the utilitarian design — the traffic to the bar and the washrooms and the exits runs along the back — means that until an act is truly engrossing, it feels contingent. There is little to keep you there; you could be listening to another act upstairs (or downstairs, at the Kathedral) within moments, or out on the street. It does not ask anything of audience. It does not require you to commit. You have to want to be there, and you have to want to stay.
