#wordjunkie

The Brothers Comatose

“City Painted Gold” from the album City Painted Gold

Fat Beats, 2016

[submitted by Wordjunkie]

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The Brothers Comatose, from Petaluma, California, are solidly founded in blue grass tradition, but they touch heavily on folk and pop. I gravitate towards their more poppy songs because they write great pop songs and those songs have enough of a blue grass vibe to set them apart. This song and Morning Time, from their first album Respect the Van, are good examples of that talent. They are also a great live band. It’s clear from seeing them a few times that they love playing music and love playing music with each other.

This album and song are another piece in the ongoing gentrification conversation happening in the Bay Area and beyond. I touched on this with my first post on the NRVS LVRS album The Golden West. Another great example of this conversation happening in the music community is on Courtney Barnett’s super excellent 2015 album Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. Her song Depreston tells the increasingly common story of economic compromises associated with city living set in Preston, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne. Cities are expensive places to live comfortably and in a time where the income gap between wealthy and poor people is growing rapidly this phenomenon raises both philosophical and practical questions. What are people entitled to? How do we organize cities so that we promote growth in a way that doesn’t sacrifice cultural identities?

For another interesting take on this conversation, especially as it relates to San Francisco, check out Season of the Witch by David Talbot. The book is about the build up to, and fallout from, the summer of love in San Francisco. It was interesting to learn from the book that the same gentrification debate that’s happening now in San Francisco was happening in the 60s and 70s, just with different heroes and villains.

Kayne West

“Waves” from the album The Life of Pablo

EMI, 2016

[submitted by Wordjunkie]

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Kanye West is a controversial figure. He’s famous for making popular music. He’s also famous for making an ass of himself in public. But, who is Kanye West really and why does it matter when we listen to his music?

Is Kanye West the sum of his actions?

He’s put out seven solo studio albums in the last 12 years. He’s collaborated with hundreds of other artists, including Paul McCartney. Sir Paul for God's sake. Over his whole career he’s rarely had a musical misstep. He has, however, made many public relations missteps. He's interrupted multiple award acceptance speeches (Justice, Taylor Swift), he bagged on George W. at a fundraiser (sometimes his outbursts are on point), he’s gone on countless self congratulatory tirades in the press and on social media, and he generally responds to criticism of this behavior with blame and more narcissistic braggadocio.

Is Kanye West how he feels on the inside?

His music has been self-referential and far more self-aware than his public persona since All Falls Down, the lead single on his first album, College Dropout. The only mea culpas he seems to be comfortable with are on his records. While his public persona has become more confrontational and bombastic, his music still contains a thread of the sentimental and spiritual Kanye that wrote everything from Family Business to Only One. His music has certainly become darker and the lyrical content more jaded over time, but if Kanye’s description of Kanye is to be believed, he’s a misunderstood genius trying to navigate fame and fortune with grace and sometimes he freaks out when people don’t appreciate that enough.

Who is the real Kanye?

Anybody who has ever been truly misunderstood knows that it can be a painful experience. People aren't always great at accurately representing themselves, especially in the spotlight. On the other hand, the only way we can evaluate other people, is through their actions over time. If those actions are consistently unreasonable then excuses about being misunderstood eventually loose their strength.

Why does it matter?

The run up to his latest album, The Life of Pablo, contained some of the most absurd public outbursts of his career. See his Twitter fight with Wiz Khalifa and Amber Rose’s Twitter commentary on that fight for some serious WTF. I’ve had more conversations about that Twitter fight than I have about the album itself. Those conversations distract from what is an excellent album. The Life of Pablo boasts some of the best beats of Kanye's career. It's packed with the emotional complexity that has become one of his hallmarks, with exhortations of faith, friendship, love, violence, raw sexuality, and of course self aggrandizement interwoven throughout. It has a standout performance from Chance the Rapper. It even has a song where Kanye raps about the old Kanye versus the new Kanye. How’s that for self-referential?!