| Someone the other day on Instagram called me a token for only playing with white bands. And I was like, 'I'm doing this so that you can be here.' I might be the only one today, but who are you going to tour with in two years? Hopefully me!... I'm trying to create space for more people who look like me. | |  |  | | Vibing out: Bartees Strange's second album, "Farm to Table," is out today on 4AD. | | (Luke Piotrowski/Beggars Group) | | | | quote of the day | | "Someone the other day on Instagram called me a token for only playing with white bands. And I was like, 'I'm doing this so that you can be here.' I might be the only one today, but who are you going to tour with in two years? Hopefully me!... I'm trying to create space for more people who look like me." | | - Bartees Strange | |
| | rantnrave:// | It's Friday
In certain critical circles, BARTEES STRANGE's second album, FARM TO TABLE, is 2022's most anticipated rock album, if in fact you choose to think of it as a rock album, which you may or may not choose to do. The Ringer's IAN COHEN introduces him here as "a Black artist, a former football player and post-hardcore guitarist with a septum piercing... who, in a single song, can rap like DABABY, boogie like GEORGE STRAIT, reinvent the NATIONAL as fourth-wave emo sociopolitical text, and howl 'I'm going in!' like BONO." An Oklahoman by birth who currently calls Washington, D.C., home (there were stops in Brooklyn and LA), Strange has indie-rock co-signs from the likes of PHOEBE BRIDGERS, COURTNEY BARNETT and LUCY DACUS, all of whom he's opened for in the past year, and he may be, as Cohen notes, the first indie rock musician to release a song that catalogs all his co-signs while bragging about how he's "already friends" with BON IVER's JUSTIN IVER and is "grindin'" with BEGGARS GROUP boss MARTIN MILLS (Strange is signed to Beggars-owned 4AD). "I think Imma need the Benz," he adds, with what sounds like AUTO-TUNE exaggeration. "I'm the only person who can write that song," he told Rolling Stone, more matter-of-factly than braggingly. It's called—wait for it—"Cosigns." It's deliriously good. Two songs later, in a slow, smoldering, throwback soul ballad, Strange is channeling GEORGE FLOYD's daughter: "You've taken something of mine." The album has less of the DaBaby rap and George Strait boogie of the debut—he's allowing himself "to just vibe out," Stereogum's JAMES RETTIG suggests—and maybe a bit of an LA soft-rock breeze. It has surface and depth, both "farm" and "table" if you will, and it may well live up the anticipation it engendered... DRAKE's surprise-released seventh album, HONESTLY, NEVERMIND, is surprisingly short on rap and long on deep house. "Drake's been out raving, and this comedown sounds rough," opines the LA Times' AUGUST BROWN, labeling it "likely... the most divisive album of his career"... PINK DOLPHINS is the third album from ANTELOPER, the loop-y, improvisatory duo of trumpeter (plus voice and electronics) JAIMIE BRANCH and drummer (plus synths) JASON NAZARY, who feed jazz and electronics repeatedly through each other until they reach a kind of spacy singularity. I'm really feeling this right now. Branch and Nazary are joined on this album by guitarist/producer JEFF PARKER.
Also today: New albums from Yaya Bey, Zora, Logic, Foals, Perfume Genius, Hercules & Love Affair, Alanis Morissette (a meditation album), Brett Eldredge, Hank Williams Jr. (produced by Dan Auerbach), Aaron Watson, J. Rocc, Erica Banks, SoFaygo, Conway the Machine, Kevin Gates, Westside Boogie, Duke Deuce, Vadim Neselovskyi, Binker Golding, Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph, Pasquale Grasso, Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio, Wild Up, Robocobra Quartet, Nick Cave (psalms written by Cave set to music recorded with Warren Ellis), Ron Trent, Jessie Buckley & Bernard Butler, Sound of Ceres (with narration by Marina Abramović), Mt. Joy, Fresh Pepper, Nova Twins, Flasher, Grey Daze (new recordings from Chester Bennington's pre-Linkin Park band, including vocals recorded by Bennington shortly before he died), Revelators Sound System, Σtella, Calum Scott, Maverick City Music x Kirk Franklin, Lit, Black Uhuru, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, Pete Yorn, Ben Lee, Alice Merton, Pet Fox, Horse Jumper of Love, Pharis & Jason Romero, TV Priest, Vatican, Greg Puciato, Oni and Girlfriends.
Etc Etc Etc
Sunday's all-star JUNETEENTH concert at the HOLLYWOOD BOWL, with a lineup that includes the ROOTS, MICKEY GUYTON, ROBERT GLASPER, BILLY PORTER, KILLER MIKE, JHENÉ AIKO and EARTH, WIND & FIRE, will be broadcast live across CNN's platforms starting at 8pm ET... HULU will stream select sets from BONNAROO throughout the weekend, including J. COLE, MACHINE GUN KELLY, 21 SAVAGE, BILLY STRINGS, RODDY RICCH, FLUME and HERBIE HANCOCK... Happy 80th birthday, PAUL MCCARTNEY.
Retweet Not Endorsement
In the mix below, I'm sharing a novella-length longread about the post Jan. 6 downfall of ARIEL PINK, whose story is fascinating to read even if you fundamentally disagree with both Pink's and writer ARMIN ROSEN's points of view (and/or delusions). I do want to note, however, that in 10,000-ish words about the mechanics and the dispiriting effects of Pink's "cancellation," neither the writer nor the subject seems to have wrestled with the irony that the subject proudly attended a rally in support of canceling the votes of 81 million Americans, which leaves a gaping hole in the middle of all those words.
Rest in Peace
Hawaiian jazz saxophonist GABE BALTAZAR.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| |  | | The Ringer |
| | Let Bartees Strange Cook | | By Ian Cohen | | The hard-to-define, easy-to-love musician is back with 'Farm to Table,' a new album that can only be described as "Bartees Strange." | | | |  | | Black Music and Black Muses |
| | Three Women: How Miles Davis's Wives and Muses Guard His Music With Their Bodies | | By Harmony Holiday | | Jutting, sphinxed, like a limbless panther about to venture toward her kill and dress its phantom wounds, Cicely Tyson's sullen and intent profile on the cover of Miles Davis's "Sorcerer" (1967), possesses all of the duality of sorcery itself. Sorcery is magic so powerful it might fall victim to its own backlash, returning the spell to the one who casts it. | | | | | | | | |  | | Tablet Magazine |
| | Code Pink | | By Armin Rosen | | How Pitchfork darling Ariel Pink became a music industry untouchable. | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | The New York Times |
| | The Fall of Kidd Creole: Inside a Rap Pioneer's Tragic Descent | | By Jonah E. Bromwich and John Leland | | As a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, he helped invent hip-hop. He spent the rest of his life trying recapture that glory. Then, in seven minutes on a Manhattan street, it all came to an end. | | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "Cosigns" | | Bartees Strange | | From "Farm to Table." | | |
|  | | Video of the day | | "The Apollo" | | Roger Ross Williams | | Amazing footage of Ella, Billie, James Brown, Lauryn Hill and more, and a deeper story about the venerable theater's importance to Harlem, Black musicians and Black culture in general. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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