Camp Cope, How To Socialise & Make Friends
[Run For Cover]
Grade: B
It’s only been a few years since Australia’s Camp Cope put its first song to tape, but the trio has hit upon a winning formula, and it has everything to do with the powerhouse voice of guitarist Georgia “Maq” McDonald. Musically, the songs on sophomore album How To Socialise & Make Friends largely run together: simple, repetitive chord progressions gently rocking in the tradition of early TeenBeat Records bands, sprightly and ambling, but given distinction by Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich’s cool meandering bass lines. There are minor musical digressions—the country-esque “Sagan-Indiana”; the splashy, start-stop rhythm of “Animal & Real”; and the old-school acoustic folk of closer “I’ve Got You”—but overall the tracks struggle to stand apart from one another. Still, with such a dynamic and singular voice holding court over it all, the record is never less than passionate and affecting. From excoriating snide men talking down to women in music, to a harrowing struggle with assault, to deeply personal explorations of love and friendship, McDonald’s strong vocal range makes stirring manifestos of even the more ambiguous lyrical journeys.
RIYL: Unrest. Imagining Juliana Hatfield as a riot grrrl. A bitingly personal Billy Bragg.
Start here: The opening track—aptly called “The Opener”—is a withering takedown of shitty men both in and out of the music scene, and smartly evocative of the album as a whole. [Alex McLevy]
DJ Taye, Still Trippin’
[Hyperdub]
Grade: B+
The Chicago-based dance-music subgenre of footwork can be intimidating to newcomers, with its reliance on insistent polyrhythmic beats and vocal repetition. Fortunately, DJ Taye’s Still Trippin’ is one of the most tuneful and accessible examples of the genre. He modifies its more abrasive tendencies by using a rotating cast of rappers and singers (including himself) and cloudy, melodic synthesizer patterns. “The Matrixx” features virtuosic scratching from DJ Manny, while Fabi Reyna contributes live guitar and bass to “I Don’t Know.” There’s a sense of responsible hedonism on the album that seems grounded in the fatal overdose of Taye’s mentor, Teklife founder DJ Rashad, in 2014: DJ Taye endorses weed and mushrooms while celebrating sex but warns against abusing Xanax and synthetic hallucinogenic “research chemicals” on songs like “Trippin’,” “Anotha4,” and “Smokeout.” Still Trippin’ showcases Taye’s ability to structure an album so that it has a genuine sense of dynamics, even if individual songs mainly consist of stuttering beats and vocals.
RIYL: Jlin. DJ Rashad. Footwork compilations like Bangs & Works.
Start here: “Get It Jukin’,” a collaboration with Cool Kids rapper Chuck Inglish, serves up DJ Taye’s most melodic production, as he lays back and creates a hazy electronic backdrop for his guest. [Steve Erickson]
The Men, Drift
[Sacred Bones]
Grade: C-
The Men have always been creative thieves, taking Ramones album titles and Spacemen 3 riffs and reclaiming them as their own. But for the bulk of the past decade, they’ve been playacting as Neil Young. They framed their seventh album, Drift, as a dramatic shift, led by the goth-tinged electro single “Maybe I’m Crazy.” But while Drift sounds ambitious on paper, it rarely is in practice. For the bulk of the album, The Men pick up acoustic guitars and do their best approximation of Lou Reed fronting The Band. There are charming moments, such as “Rose On Top Of The World” or the instrumental track “Sleep,” but the album never fully congeals. Where other records by The Men showed they could pull from someone else’s playbook and make something their own, Drift’s hodgepodge of styles ultimately makes The Men sound like they couldn’t settle on what they wanted to do.
RIYL: Neil Young. Lou Reed fronting the Eagles.
Start here: The instrumental pieces work a little better, with both “Sleep” and “Come To Me” making bolder statements than most anything else. [David Anthony]
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Black Times
[Strut]
Grade: B
Femi and Seun Kuti, sons of the legendary activist and Afrobeat originator Fela Kuti, just released albums with their respective bands one week apart from one another. But where Femi built a mellower, more optimistic album, his younger brother’s latest quakes with political outrage and confrontation. Leading the surviving members of his father’s band, Seun rails against government corruption and rallies revolutionaries past, present, and future. It’s a message that resonates beyond Nigeria’s borders, but erasing that point of origin would rob it of its identity and fly in the face of songs like “African Dreams,” Seun’s impassioned lament over the brain drain looting his country. For the most part, the music backs up his mood. It’s faster, tougher, and more blood-boiling than usual, but it’s still malleable, growing to a furious peak on “Corporate Public Control Department” or slowing to a mournful groove on “African Dreams.” Fittingly, the only time it really lets him down is when Carlos Santana’s unmistakable guitar tramples all over “Black Times,” dragging the arrangement too far from the roots Seun so righteously upholds.
RIYL: Afrobeat. Trumpet solos. Political furor.
Start here: “Corporate Public Control Department,” a reworked version of “Gimme My Vote Back” from the Struggle Sounds EP, is the album’s most viscerally thrilling protest jam, with Seun attacking Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari (and lying politicians everywhere) as the band careens toward a gloriously aggrieved finale. [Matt Gerardi]
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