Down The Wire: Japanese Breakfast, Dawn Richard, Black Midi, Dean Blunt
by Soundrot
Japanese Breakfast - Jubilee
by Minimal
Judging by what's generated the most attention, indie rock has been gassed for the past six years. That's not merely a statement about musical creativity—ever since its commercial eruption in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the genre's main sonic preoccupation has been with keeping it strictly laid back and chilled out, as if still trying to recover from its dizzying peak. Real Estate, Mac DeMarco, and Kurt Vile are perhaps the most notable architects of this "...yeah, dude..." aesthetic, and we're unfortunate enough to have our most recent crop of publicized indie musicians continuing this terrible, sad sonic shrug. Mitski, Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, and Phoebe Bridgers are differentiated from the former group only by gender and narrative. This new guard has received their plaudits and plays, but just how different or interesting are any of these musicians when compared to each other?
Japanese Breakfast, Michelle Zauner's musical vehicle, could easily be considered part of this blob based off of the group's last two releases. Their newest album, Jubilee, shows a desire to break out of the indie rock ghetto, but never fully commits to the escape; what's more, the effort that's actually put forth is—questionable. Jubilee is at its most memorable in the album's first half, where more emphasis is placed on elements previously hinted at in the band's music. Opener "Paprika" evolves the touches of brass and woodwind from Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet into a full blown twee marching band, complete with pseudo-magical lyrics and Zauner's squeaky high notes. Combined with the album's broader, cleaner sonic palette, it's a refreshing change from their usually soupy, dour tunes. "Kokomo, IN" is similarly cutesy with its sun-dappled Beach Boys affectations and orchestral sweep. The true standout moment, however, comes at the end of this half with "Posing in Bondage". Like most things written by Zauner, it's a plainly aching tune that plays on the thirst for romantic "bondage", but surprisingly dressed up with warm guitar and synth washes, pitch-shifted vocals, and sequenced sounds that almost seem lifted from Daniel Lopatin's toolbox. It's such a unique slice of pop that sits astride the two worlds of Jubilee and ought to be a more explored direction in Japanese Breakfast's future.
What ultimately dooms Zauner's ambition to transcend her sphere is the abandoning of one oversaturated style for another. The album's debut single, "Be Sweet", is one more casualty of pop music's current obsession with retreading the ‘80s. Michelle Zauner's melody and hooks aren't performed too badly, but the production is completely sterile. Besides giving more evidence that drum production is a lost art in pop music today, the song merely gestures at the well-known musical tropes of that decade without any actual energy or heart. The same issues reappear on "Slide Tackle", where we're treated to another tired rendition of "indie plays R&B/funk", complete with an obvious smooth jazz sax solo. I wonder if Zauner also saw these issues and felt discouraged, as the back half of Jubilee totally gives up on attempting anything new and reverts back to the modest, bland indie rock that filled Japanese Breakfast's old work. These last five tracks are almost indistinguishable from each other or those of her peers. Of special note is the single "Savage Good Boy", which sets the mood with chipmunked vocals and doesn't improve from there. Meant to be a tongue-in-cheek burn on billionaires, it instead comes across as a bad twitter thread from an irony poisoned poster—the music is also noticeably similar to labelmate Phoebe Bridger's "Kyoto", telling you how hard Zauner retreats back into the comfort of the great indie blob.
Jubilee isn't about delivering interesting music or propositions—it's about listening to another indie personality try on the styles allotted to them. Don’t worry if Michelle Zauner's personal narrative and background don't pique your interest. There’s plenty of other bands and musicians performing the same moves with other stories to choose from. Nothing here is unforgivable, but neither will anyone remember this album in three months.
Who Are You: Dawn Richard in the 2010s
by Howard Cressi-Stallworth
Dawn Richard just released a new album called Second Line. This won’t mean much to many people, but that is out of her control. To the small, yet knowing public at large, she is best known for being in semi-forgotten RnB girl group Dainty Kane, and the Puff Daddy overseen duo Diddy Dirty Money. It feels strange to say that DK is semi-forgotten, but for an act that quickly went platinum and had two number one albums, her star went just as fast as it ignited. Diddy Dirty Money is the largest success Dawn has been in since her smash success in Dainty Kane and even that was a success of sorts. Since then Dawn has rode in the strange sidecar that is “former member of group attempts to be a star” passing through a few scattered generations of pop fans that still follow her, and a smattering of generational turns of critical followers.
Dawn Richard best represents to me a certain type of reaching for the stars album inspired RnB that just won’t quit. The kind that continually releases records; that hangs on to whatever clout or popularity they had with critics or writers in the early part of the 2010s; that was coming out of RnB and Rap/Hip Hop as it was hitting a new wave of popularity in the late 00s, that digital shiny era. Dawn tries that once more on her new release Second Line.
After a short introductory track, her sultry and commanding speaking voice enters on the track Nostalgia amidst airy keyboards, and a steady pulsating synth backed by filtered hi hats, evoking an ambiance like standing outside the club steeped in one's feelings. Filtered auto-tuned vocals come in and out, digitally crooning about a past, longing to go back to an ambiguous before. Regarding her past and where she is now maybe the past would be the best to ruminate on. Perhaps this ambiguity is best seen as a tell on the repeated line “Do you love me anymore?” The song immediately following Nostalgia, Boomerang, couched in a modern RnB and nu-house groove, is very solid musically. The rest of the album follows a similar feeling. Bussifame, Mornin/Streetlights, and Perfect Storm are all very welcoming in their acceptance of modern electronic sounds as a base for her multi-showcased talents as an RnB artist. She is a peacock of her own lane, but how much does that matter now especially considering who she is?
Dawn has a good voice, not only with regards to her singing but her styles over the years. The audience and fan base that would best revel in Dawn’s existence would be those early 2010s critics and first wave of poptimists along with the 2nd wave of young, perpetually online pop stans. But when one wave of appeal shifts towards another, the audiences that would normally appeal to her would rather discuss Carly Rae Jepsen and Halsey, rather than someone of Dawn’s status. This could be because of a lack of what they really want to discuss—looks, tabloid fodder as it is woven into the artists “musical narrative” etc—but more often than not it’s simply because this music isn’t reaching them, and/or just isn’t what they truly want. This is always a trend with every wave of music, it’s not new. Dawn has no control over where she sits. If she started new she could net a new audience, but she’s in too deep. She appeals to so many groups yet reaches none of them. She is the claw in the prize machine and each plush is a different audience, yet her grip just isn’t tight enough. In all realities unless you’re looking for her, she effectively isn’t there and doesn’t exist. Her paper thin existence vaporizes into a digital mist.
Her work will get the requisite amount of acclaim, yet none of it ever charts despite her early connections to Diddy et al. Despite all her goodwill entering the 2010s, little has shown for it. It was a marketable move when the increasingly silver and digital sheen of RnB was reaching its peak, and Dawn was one of the new faces that could represent it. The early 2010s was a time of people seeping out of the 2000s, attempting to be auteurs and stars, your Lupe Fiascos and Theophilus Londons. It also included new stars who either didn’t want it fully or embrace to it at all, your Miguels and Earl Sweatshirts. However when compared to people like Miguel—another shiny auteur of the 2010s—to the general public and even music fans, his time came and went after his 2012 release. The music machine attempted to turn him into a D’angelo of sorts yet he was here and then gone, similar to industry lifer Bilal, but more so in the mid 2010s.
By the time the “shiny era” for lack of a better term dissipated, a new lane of black artistry was falling in love yet again with it’s own narrative of ‘70s albums, and being their own independent identities. Suddenly dry spare drums and tri-colors were in, and so was being as natural as possible. No more digital shine here. Bilal made a flurry of releases in the mid 2010s that fit into this yet found no real audience. A pitch for a certain audience went nowhere outside of a few mentions of Kendrick being a feature. Even his scenes infamous scion and mind reader, Raphael Saadiq, made a release on this very same template of African pride and throwback senses, and it came and went even for multiple eras of music fans. No matter what the style it faded into the background.
Dawn has fallen prey to these ideas and trends and so have her various peers. If the 2010’s has taught us anything, it’s that there are no clear lines anymore to anything or anyone. Her initial pop audience and that machine left the station so long ago the train isn’t running, and has left Dawn to hoof it on her own, but maybe that’s what she wanted. She may still have connections and tubes tied into the machine but she doesn’t have its pull or overall gravity. Dawn followed her own path but as we saw with new stars, also-rans and has-beens Miguel, Bilal, and Theophilus, to what cost?
Comedian Patrice O’Neal once said about Colin Quinn “Colin knows so much about black people, white audiences have no idea about why he knows so much about black culture and still talks about it with whites, thus, he is in purgatory. Black people don’t like him and white people don’t understand him.” Purgatory is where Dawn will sit for the rest of her career. She is her worlds’ Roisin Murphy or Rufus Wainwright. Her music gets continually released every few years with a new style and design, yet only the most casually interested and those who still look for her will see her. She is no better or worse than her peers, be they Janelle Monet or The Dream. An artist who will wear the clothes and assume the position, yet can’t break out of the mold toward another clasp of the brass ring one more time. She will always have fans in her court, but she will be willfully obscure to the pop public, the underground fans, the aging near dead poptimists, and the scattered and indifferent online music fans subscribed to no one magazine or voice.
She simply hides between the lines of each of these worlds whether critically alive or dead. She belongs to no world anymore. Her original teen base from the late 2000’s has been fully grown for years—her world, the world of the hyper online “from record store counter to blog”-verse of the 2010’s is gone; the original wave of poptimists have grown up, and the generation of newly hyper online listeners won’t go near her. Dawn exists in the worst kind of internet music fan critical limbo. Luckily she has herself and her exuberance. Second Line is just that, the ability to have a second chance. She is purely making music for herself, ready to put on the mask once again at the world's smallest theaters ready to shake her body in her mid 30s for a few more fans still sitting near rows of empty seats. It’s not her fault.
Black Midi - Cavalcade
by Donald Gorinchem
Debut albums often generate excitement, not purely because of the content of those records, but for what they represent: a proposition. This was true for me and black midi’s 2019 debut “Schlagenheim.” While it’s a good album with some truly standout moments, I was more excited by the prospect of where black midi, and guitar music generally, could go from here. These young’uns were clearly very talented instrumentalists who were trying to bring a level of musicianship to modern art punk. The album also pointed a spotlight at the nascent Speedy Wunderground/Windmill scene that was beginning to emerge. By 2021, each of the breakout bands from this scene have delivered a debut album, and now black midi have delivered their sophomore effort, “Cavalcade.”
“Cavalcade” shows the band living up to the proposition put forth by its predecessor, being an improvement in every way. “Schlagenheim” hinted at the band’s prog rock ambitions, mostly in the technical abilities on display, but Cavalcade goes all-in on this direction. When one thinks of modern progressive rock, the mind often paints a picture of a band slavishly recreating ‘70’s prog rock, in terms of the tropes of the genre. Being a huge prog rock fan, I find enjoyment in some of these bands, but even I can admit the genre has been stale for a long time. This is why Cavalcade is such a breath of fresh air for the genre. Clearly the band loves prog rock. There are little sonic references that catch my ear, such as the drum and bass performances at beginning of Chondromalacia Patella resembling a section of Genesis’ The Fountain of Salmacis. But they aren’t trying to recreate old school prog rock wholesale, instead using it more as an attitude or approach. To this, they incorporate the angular art punk present on Schlagenheim, bringing them closer to the avant-garde ends of prog rock. This Heat and Rock In Opposition, groups like Henry Cow and Samla Mammas Manna are easy points of reference, although black midi sounds modern by comparison simply due to the presence of these art punk sounds. In effect, they have breathed life into two genres that are rote and codified by bolstering them with aspects of each other. But it’s not as though the band is simply slapping these two genres together, as is common in a lot of modern “genre combo” music. They weave the two genres seamlessly into one sound, so that you couldn't just subtract the aspects of one genre.
Along with this, Cavalcade is evidence of a greater amount of care being taken compositionally. There is greater dynamic range, going from serene to cacophonous, sometimes in the same song, and in some cases at the drop of a hat. The songs are clearly more intricate and grand overall, but they never commit the cardinal sin some progressive rock bands often did: noodling for noodling’s sake. Songs like John L and Slow are built on intricate guitar lines, but they never noodle. They aren’t conventionally melodic, but this uniqueness makes them stand out. Repetition gives them a hypnotic rhythmic quality, and makes the unconventional into something, dare I say, catchy.
On Schlagenheim, vocals could be characterized as either quirky or annoying, with a fine line between the two. This time around, guitarist/vocalist Geordie Greep explores more melodic areas with his voice. He still keeps some of his trademark slurred barks, but tones down what made them border on annoying on Schlagenheim. Elsewhere, bassist/vocalist Cameron Picton offers an intimate and subtle performance on Slow, the type of vocal performance that was absent on the debut. Throughout it all, drummer Morgan Simpson remains the star of the show, demonstrating once again that he is one of the most talented young drummers in guitar music. With second guitarist Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin taking a break from the group to deal with mental health struggles, the band is reduced to a trio for Cavalcade. However, the band has rounded out their sound this time around with guests playing brass, piano and the occasional violin. This widened palette has allowed the band to further achieve their avant-prog ambitions, adding jazzy flourishes like with the skronky sax bleats on Chondromalacia Patella. Cavalcade is exactly the sophomore record I wanted from black midi. They dive further into what made Schlagenheim compelling, widened their palette, and came up with a stronger set of songs. Cavalcade moves them beyond a proposition for the future into an actualized idea. They have also created a way forward for progressive rock, a genre that has been in need of a new direction for a long time.
Dean Blunt - Black Metal 2
by Dave Johnson
Dean Blunt’s records have always maintained an air of calculated, cerebral mystique: combined with his bizarre live performances, “Dean Blunt” is more of a conceptual art project than an honest songwriter. However, Blunt is unlike some modern experimental artists whose recorded output is totally decentralized. Yes, his World Music pseudo-label has a Bandcamp page peppered with releases, and he’s been known to drop numerous singles in the form of mysterious YouTube videos, but every few years, Blunt always returns to Rough Trade (or Hyperdub for his “Babyfather” records) to release records that function as classical “studio albums”.
In the past year, Dean Blunt’s release stratagem has moved to perhaps the most conventional it has ever been. In 2020, he released “Roaches 2012-2019”, a compilation album, which, as far as I can tell, is devoid of any overarching joke. It’s his Dead Letter Office — an engaging, cohesive B-sides comp that is as enjoyable as any of his mainline releases. After “Roaches”, Blunt has given us the totally-unexpected sequel to his 2014 record “Black Metal”: “Black Metal 2”, released June 11th.
“Black Metal 2” seems to be tied to its predecessor mainly in instrumentation and vibe: the instrumental palette is made up of gorgeous orchestra samples, punchy-compressed drums, and crisp acoustic guitar, the mood of the songs is largely introspective, longing. The sound of the record is the most indicative of his apparent shift towards more “normal”, easily-categorized releases: it reads as a streamlined pop version of the classic Blunt aura. Brooding cuts like the opening “VIGIL” and the hazy “SKETAMINE” are downright catchy and easy to listen to, and Blunt’s lyricism is at its most clever and funny: the couplet “LSD, CBT, DDT — Daddy’s broke, what a joke” in “NIL BY MOUTH” is one example. The samples are less dusty and obviously-clipped than the first “Black Metal” — combined with Joanne Robertson’s hymnal vocals that are interlaced throughout, there were times on “Black Metal 2” where I could have been listening to loops of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”.
On “Black Metal 2”, the Bluntian formula appears to have become relaxed, settling into a perfected version of his spacey pop. It’s a classic stoned chill-out record in a way that none of his records have been before — yes, you could put some of these cuts on at a social gathering and not be looked at like you were insane. In a world where the most out-there experimental artist has readily-viewable selfies on their Instagram page, Dean Blunt is moving towards an older concept of mystique: an artist defined by sound and album art, with a semi-regular release schedule.