(Liv).e - 'Couldn't Wait To Tell You...'

By Phillipe Roberts

The name of this game is misdirection. Forget the crafty intro, where, soothed by celestial organ sounds and bantering with herself, she appears to crack open a clear “love story” for you. Forget the frantic suggestion of the title. Forget the rough edges of her previous solo output, the foggy lo-fi layers of reverb that clouded her bewitching vocals. One album into what’s shaping up to be a groundbreaking career, (Liv).e pulls off a stunning magic act on Couldn’t Wait To Tell You…, welcoming you into a psychedelic hall of mirrors where emotional states and sonic vignettes warp and distort in the blink of an ear. With unwavering confidence, she slowly paints a romantic map and dances through the brushstrokes. 

(Liv).e comes at you fast. For all the sticky humidity of her vocal hooks, the Texas singer has too much to say to keep any one idea in play for more than two minutes. Apart from album centerpiece “I Been Livin”, which traps her ghostly serenade within an icy piano sample cold enough to slow her thoughts to a near four minute trickle, and the bed-creaking bounce of “Stories with Aunt Liv”, you’ll have to keep your ears ready, thumbs locked and loaded to bookmark your favorite memories for later. But even when the floodgates burst open completely on the frantic “Bout These Pipedreams,” her portraits (“Gentle brown skin, soft as sugar / Bittersweet life like a cocoa bean / Dark eyes that eat the past”) come through clear as day, keeping pace with the surge of an unhinged hi-hat, all clocking in at a hardore punk minute-and-a-half. 

At every point and speed on the record, she flexes a lyrical cleverness and poised playfulness, matching the fantastic arsenal of beats at her disposal (all due respect to producers mejiwahn, Daoud, and Shungu for the pillow-soft landing zone for her vocal talents) while maintaining a poised playfulness. She plays up a big sigh for laughs on “Lessons from My Mistakes...but I Lost Your Number”’s false-ending gag. She floats against the clobbering beat to devastating effect (“How many portals will you jump through for my attention?” is one hell of a wake-up call) on the sobering “You’re Wasted Let’s Go Home”. She balances between “making room for myself” and giving herself over to one last one night stand on “How She Stay Conflicted...I Hope She Understands”. (Liv).e portrays her emotional fluidity with a winking, lucid clarity that’s positively infectious.

If anything, it’s that total lack of emotional defensiveness, this commitment to breathing life into the reflective pauses of romance, that makes Couldn’t Wait to Tell You... one of the most psychedelic listening experiences of the year. Just try to listen to (Liv).e gently curve through a lyric like “I've got a brand new crush today” or “Placed a bet with myself that you'd come and find me” and not melt into a puddle of your own well-earned goofy bliss. 

Way back in March, (Liv).e opened a livestream by saying “my name is (Liv).e and you’re under quarantine with me”; having experienced the sublime relaxation of this album, I sorely wish I’d been in the know back then. Praise has been rightfully heaped on Couldn’t Wait to Tell You... for its journal-entry candidness. As someone for whom journal-keeping is a daily act of quiet resilience, it’s impossible to listen to this album, with its fragmented urgency and dreamy wistfulness, and not feel seen with a blinding spotlight. But no record in recent memory carries this feeling, this purposeful urgency to knock you off of your bullshit, with so much self-affirming joy. A blizzard of thoughts, feelings, dreams, and ideas worth venturing out into, Couldn’t Wait to Tell You... plays mind games that only leave you smiling.

MIKE - 'weight of the world'

By Phillipe Roberts

Lockdown has been good to me and my damaged hearing. Miss me with the cranked sound systems, the clumsy stumbling through the crowd, the anxious routine of smoke breaks between sets. Catch me on the couch with a mug of tea, speakers loud enough to carry a little bit of bass across the room. Find me jamming over a hot stove, cooking dinner in headphones as the fireworks start to heat up the street outside. Away from the noise, away from the crowds, my ears are thriving.

Leave it to a livestream to kill the dream. A virtual concert of all things.

MIKE, the dazzling emcee whose rhymes caught my ear in my frantic first year in New York, was set to perform at 9:50pm, but I settled in early. The Twitch stream was goofy at first; glitching in and out consistently, hemmed in by a scrolling text chat of dozens of excited fans. But the lineup, an ensemble cast of producers, DJs, and rappers curated by Satellite Syndicate, hit heavy and refused to let up. Escee, AKAI SOLO, maassai, JWords, KeiyaA, Nappy Nina, Stas THEE Boss–each swerving the conversation in exciting directions, leaving the fans alternatively begging for more and praying that the stream would stay up. I was glued to the screen.

Day turned to night. A single floodlight, held up by one of the organizers, was brought in to keep the cozy backyard at least partially illuminated. By the time MIKE rolled in, right around 11:30, the couch-locked digital crowd had ballooned to well over 150. Heavy on the gratitude, with shout outs to the acts that had hypnotized us all day, he beamed, danced, and slid gracefully through a short set, leaving just enough time before midnight for an adorable group picture with the other acts. And leaving me, sitting on the couch, warm and fuzzy in disbelief, wishing for the first time in a long time that I could be there, in the yard, basking in the absurdity of live music.

Weight of the World might be best heard live–with a slight yet hilarious audio delay–at the tail end of a stunning lineup of Black musicians on a perfect summer night. But MIKE’s latest and absolutely greatest project to date is a towering achievement in intimate storytelling, with the muscle to lift you into his world from wherever you might be. Still haunted by inescapable grief, he rains his sorrows down on this cruel world with a fierce allegiance to the love that has carried him for so long.

MIKE’s pen is near-legendary at this point. After all, it’s not many who can go bar-for-bar with, and influence, Earl Sweatshirt at the same time. But on Weight of the World, MIKE’s production work as dj blackpower shines almost as bright as his lyrical chops. The atmosphere is as slippery as his spiraling moods, and loaded with clever details. The lethargic drag of “alert*” summons up those lurking demons with somber keys and melting bass, before gradually spilling into the torrential downpour of “coat of many colors", where harsh R&B chops and a brief but thrilling moment of total silence collide in a mournful soundscape that threatens to collapse at any moment. “Weight of the Word*” might be his masterpiece, a convoluted but fruitful journey through downbeat horns and pitchy soul, and a cartoonish funk interlude on the way to a deep and hungry final groove. He’s always worked well in tangling miniatures together, but here MIKE becomes a master of the sprawl, commanding it with authority and grace.

Don’t think that last year’s tears of joy was the beginning and end of MIKE’s struggle to process his mother’s death. Like all grieving, MIKE’s comes in stages, and Weight of the World still grapples–constructively, destructively, and exhaustively–with a pain that knows no bounds and the turmoil that has only tightened its grip. This is a document of pain, even at its lightest.

Some of the hardest moments come when MIKE hands off the beats to a friend. KeiyaA sets up a perfect double whammy on “get rich quick scheme” and “trail of tears”, putting MIKE face to face with a legacy of self-neglect (“the only thing I inherited was blockin’ help”) and setting up a heartbreaking send-off for his mother (“Keep swimming my beloved spirit, you know your son is near”). Throughout the record, he’s digging through fragments and memories, deflecting them with self-effacing humor: “Scribble off the sad shit, cause it’s all the same shit,” he sputters on “what’s home ½”. Seconds later, he ages himself up into cold maturity, taking stock of failed escapism: “When I rolled, I was feelin' for something that heal / But I know every bit of it harsh.” MIKE, still only 21 years old, raps like he’s lived a lifetime between records.

Those lost years constantly reflect back to the loss of his mother, unearthing an unease with himself that he remembers as a constant (“Remember cringin' at the mirror, I was not myself,” he reflects gravely on “trail of tears”). Nursing those wounds, he slowly pushes for acceptance and begins to relieve himself of that pain. “Weight of the Word*” finds MIKE achieving stark clarity, seeing that his mother prepared him for her absence: “I know my mama sing that song so I'll never forget,” he rhymes in the album’s catchiest chorus, lonely but warm to know that his memory–his pain and his patience–honors her too.

Watching MIKE shuffle and dance his way through Weight of the World’s harsh and beautiful revelations through the grainy webcam darkness of a livestream, you couldn’t help but latch on to the joy radiating through that backyard, the shared happiness of being as present as possible to witness the release of sorrow. Maybe our damaged ears needed this break, this opportunity to reflect with longing on how urgent and decisive our presence with each other can and should be. Winding back and forth through this divinely miserable miracle of a lockdown album, I’m only grateful to have briefly glimpsed that better world, even from a distance.

ESHOVO - ok u mad

By Phillipe Roberts

Anger doesn’t need to be righteous to be real or worth hearing. As the oppressive foundations of the good old USA crumble beneath us a bit more visibly these days, sharing our deepest, most visceral emotions shouldn’t require justification. Sometimes, “u mad” is all the recognition you need, and who better to unpack the boundlessness of anger than PG County label-dodger ESHOVO? 

A frequent collaborator of ThrdCoast favorite Tony Kill, ESHOVO makes space in the cracks between genres, blending noise, cinematic atmosphere, and off-the-wall sampling across a universe of albums and singles that stretch back to 2013. He truly takes off on his 2018 project Listening or Of Empathy and Echo, where his sprawling sensibilities collide for an expedition into a loud mind that’s tired of existing in silence.

“Ok u mad,” the album’s second track, evolved gradually from a rant over a hastily-assembled instrumental, to the self-assured verbal sparring that rumbles out of your speakers. “Before actually writing to it, I layered a recording of myself speaking for a few minutes on the track,” ESHOVO explained, “I was saying something about perceptions, self and external. After writing it, I didn’t touch it for a few months, and when I got in the studio it was like I was right back in the shit, in a good way. That's where everything else came out.” 

That refined stream-of-consciousness, punctuated by waves of twinkling synth delays and an arsenal of clattering percussion, throws punches against being misread and misrepresented, and keeps the focus on observation. “Watch my words and keep ya eye open,” he says, bobbing and weaving through the beat with glee.

The song’s video, which arrives today on ThrdCoast, follows ESHOVO as he dances, plays basketball, and wanders through tall fields on grainy video. Directed by fellow PG County artist R. Treshawn Williamson, the video’s sketch-like quality brings out the track’s not-so-hidden vulnerability incredibly well, capturing both the isolation and joy that comes from feeling that anger deeply and fully. The video’s treatment of lyrics about staying cool and validating aggressive emotions is particularly effective, juxtaposing these lines against two people slap-boxing from a skewed angle, just out of frame. 

Playing with that tension between emotion and expression is key to their collaboration. “Emotions are really complex, and letting out your aggression is even more so. It’s just something really sublime about feeling what you need to feel,” Williamson says, “I feel like, for us, coming from where we come from, slap boxing is the most controlled form of aggression I’ve ever seen. But at the same time, you can only slap box so long before it gets actually real. That teetering point with aggression, that’s exactly what getting mad is about. When you juxtapose things together, like the slap box does, there’s only a certain window of time before it becomes something entirely different."

Check out the song’s video now and dip into ESHOVO’s discography at his Bandcamp page.

REVIEW: Jon Bap - Yesterday's Homily

Phillipe Roberts

Yesterday’s Homily, the latest from soul-infused experimentalist Jon Bap, begins almost imperceptibly: a high-pitched drone, sounding like half-filled wine glasses played in reverse, hovers in, hanging overhead in stasis like a U.F.O. The sci-fi whine builds to a peak before suddenly shape shifting into a radio jingle. “Hey you, what are you doing today? / This is your life story.” For the next 43 minutes, Bap takes the listener on a tour of his mental airwaves, sifting through channels of cerebral future funk, delicate lo-fi balladry, free jazz soundscapes, and weird hip-hop. At times, the barrage of styles can feel alien in its methodology, but Bap’s steady hand on the dial and his highly expressive melodic voice filter out the noise to a (mostly) soothing hush. Be warned: your neck may snap from the sudden shock of his incessant genre-hopping, but Yesterday’s Homily swings with a fragile, unvarnished humanity that cuts through its chaotic musical clutter.

“Today, with Vigor,” the first “proper” tune on the album, functions as a drum kit warm-up, both for the audience and, as the exasperated, glitched-out “fuck” at the end suggests, Bap himself. The playing on the record is all his, but percussion is the primary prism through which Bap draws Yesterday’s Homily into existence—and it shows. The record is dense with fluttering rhythms in a constant state of flux, battling the encroaching confusion of saxophones, guitars, bass, and voice memo samples. The array of styles at his disposal is staggering. “Today, with Vigor” sees him flailing furiously against the kind of prog-rock noodling that might crop up as a sample on an MF Doom release. A chopped-up funk strut powers “My House” into the top spot for the album’s most danceable moment, while a dizzying flourish of hi-hats gives “My Machine (Digs a Hole)” its wavy, neo-soul backbone.

As dazzling as these feats of percussive ingenuity might be, the way he presents them lends the album much of its organic feel. Whether sloshing up against odd-metered lo-fi samples or careening to a halt as a take goes off the rails, Bap’s playing doesn’t so much hem in those wackier elements within restrictive structures as provide a homing beacon to eventually guide him back to Earth. His samples—the grains of reality that he allows to seep into this extra-dimensional world he’s created—perform a similar function. “Voice Memo from 2013,” a clattering of percussive chimes with a soulful groaning underneath, is entirely one fuzzy recording until “_Stuck_” loops it into skeletal disco. And the soft ballad “Come Back Home” sounds all the more devastating as a cell phone-quality recording, its electric guitar strums de-tuning and deforming before they have a chance to harden against pretty post-production.

These wrinkles, and a smirking sense of humor (we see you, “Free Trap Etudes”), lend Yesterday’s Homily a relaxed, sentimental mood that becomes its greatest asset. “This wouldn’t all exist without empty space,” a disembodied voice muses at the end of the record, and it’s a truism that carries weight for the album in question. Because the empty spaces—the vantage points of reality from which Jon Bap carefully considers his sermon on love, fear, and anxiety—are what make Yesterday’s Homily work. It’s a rush to hear such a bright voice consider so many ideas, but a treasure to see them combed over so thoroughly.

REVIEW: BADBADNOTGOOD - IV

Laura Kerry

Jazz has high barriers to entry, it seems; it has a reputation for requiring a refined palate, a degree of knowledge, and an upturned nose. In school for jazz in Toronto, that reputation was confirmed for Matthew Tavares, Alexander Sowinski, and Chester Hansen, when their professors criticized the trio’s covers of Odd Future as musically worthless. Others haven’t been so quick to dismiss it, including Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, and Ghostface Killah. 

Since coming together in 2010 as BADBADNOTGOOD, the trio has released several albums—starting with covers that ranged from A Tribe Called Quest to Joy Division and James Blake, and moving to original tunes. Even when moving away from explicit pop music covers, BBNG has continued to explore the fruitful crossover between jazz and more contemporary musical modes, incorporating electronic samples, hip hop beats, and other elements that make a seemingly esoteric genre accessible. 

In IV, BBNG continues that exploration but with one major added feature: a fourth member, Leland Whitty, and his saxophone. Often following the structures of jazz instead of those of pop, the album builds on melodic themes instead of easier to grasp verse-chorus patterns. Amid the improvisatory, expressive meanderings, the sax lends focus, sometimes functioning as the main melody in place of human vocals. In the opener, “And This One, Too,” this comes in the form of a loud, euphoric solo midway through that cuts clearly through a mischievous change in the time signature before dissolving into a frenzy (BBNG are nothing if not expectation-defying). In “Chompy’s Paradise,” the sax is quiet and soulful in its straightforward melody, sounding a bit like the warm voice of Charlotte Day Wilson that arrives later in “In Your Eyes.” 

Oddly enough—or perhaps not—it’s the songs with Wilson and one other with a vocalist, Sam Herring on “Time Moves Slow,” that feel the most traditional. The traditional jazz instruments, a smattering of bass, keys, guitar, and gentle percussion, are softer on these, and the singers, both with robust, smooth voices with just a hint of grain, adhere to the bluesy origins of jazz singing. The third human voice on IV is less conventional (though more conventional for BBNG). On “Hyssop of Love,” Mick Jenkins raps melodiously, hovering over a woozy synth with fluid flow and satisfying the hints of hip hop—the deep, electronic bass in “Lavender,” the percussion in “Speaking Gently.”

In IV, BBNG has honed their unique voice into something sharp, rich, and colorful. On the cover of IV, the young quartet stands together wearing white towels around their waists. It’s goofy; they squint in the bright sunlight with their arms around each other, one smiling and the others acting unconvincingly stoic. Above all, though, it is confident. A long way from their panel of disparaging professors, they have proven that you don’t need to be too serious to be, well, seriously good.