Andrew Listens to New Music (2024): Session Nine

“Conditions” byTemper Trap, “Graceland” by Paul Simon, “The Mouse & The Mask” by Dangermouse & MF Doom and “The Horror and the Wild” by The Amazing Devil

If you’ve known me, you know that the first few months of the year are incredibly hard for me. Maybe it’s the S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Maybe it’s lingering trauma from my mental health hospitalization in 2013. Maybe it’s a funky temporal loop in my bipolar disorder. Maybe the moon is just a little too close for those months. But regardless, I’m not my best self. And when I feel trapped in my own skin, I start looking for some wayto escape the pressure. One of my methods, courtesy of “The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook”’s Big List of Pleasurable Activities (pg. 15) is listening to music. Now maybe it’s my own circumstances blending into my listening, but the theme of escape feels like it keeps coming up. Some artists, like Temper Trap, sound like escapism to me, and the album does focus on dreams, which are often a method of escape. Paul Simon’s masterpiece “Graceland'' is described as his way to escape from the grief he felt after the collapse of his marriage to Carrie Fisher. MF Doom’s whole persona seems like an escapist fantasy from his lowest points and “The Mouse & The Mask '' roots itself into escapist and surrealist adult cartoons. And The Amazing Devil take the mundane relations and feelings of everyday life and reflect it through the epic, which is a classic form of escapism (see The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). When everyday life is too difficult, it becomes necessary to dream of escape. And these four artists reflect 4 different ways to do just that. 

I first encountered  “Conditions”' by Temper Trap in a burned copy of the soundtrack for “500 Days of Summer” while I was in High School. Appropriately, that movie is about the realities of relationships and how we escape from needing to do real emotional labor by creating a fantasy. This same theme of dreams and escape is seen throughout Temper Trap’s album. More than just thematically, Temper Trap, for me, evokes the hazy impossibilities of being a teenager and struggling to figure out how to be a person because that’s when I was introduced to them. The dreamlikeness of the lyrics reminds me of some of the more accessible Radiohead albums, while the actual sound of the backing music is much more akin to the more lowkey U2 albums (think “Joshua Tree”). My favorite song is obviously the massive hit off of the album, “Sweet Disposition” for Dougy Mandagi’s soaring falsetto and the rolling drums. This is an album for reminiscing… but only for millennials. Let us have our cheugy moments, Gen Z. 

 I confess I had a real chip in my shoulder when it came to Paul Simon’s “Graceland”. I’m a bit of a dickish iconoclast when it comes to the major masterpieces. There was a reason I took so long to fall in love with Taylor Swift. But also there’s something that tickled my social justice senses on the first listen about a white man singing across the music created by Black people. I’ve really tried to become more critical of cultural appropriation. But I am persistent and really dug into the album and into the production of the album. Turns out that Paul Simon has been very interested in nonWestern music since the beginning, but in the 60s, the music that took off was his folk singing with Art Garfunkle. And when Paul Simon first heard mbaqanga, a street music from the Soweto township of Johannesburg, while producing an album for Heidi Berg, he searched everywhere to find the artist. Enamored with the sound, he broke a UN cultural boycott of the apartheid South African government and recorded with Black South African artists to bring this sound to American audiences, highlighting the artists he worked with and helping to establish their international reputation. It is debatable whether this was ethical given the cultural boycott… though the artists themselves said that the cultural boycott tended to harm the Black artists of South Africa and not the white government. Having made my peace with the cultural complexity of the album, I really gave myself over to the listening. Paul Simon is an incredible lyricist, capturing the little emotional beats that make up the process of working through a bad break up, from the anger to the forlorn loss to the moving on. Musically, this album is so summery and bubbly that one could be forgiven for missing the darker aspects. It’s an album that makes you want to move, to dance, to run, to jump. My favorite song off of the album is the album opener, “The Boy in the Bubble”, an ironic juxtaposition of sunny optimism (“these are the days of miracles and wonder”) and dire forecast of the impact of technology on people (“the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio”). There are a hundred articles about the legacy of “Graceland”, but as Jim Alrutz assures me, I don’t need to cover all of that, just my thoughts and feelings. 

The third album comes from a giant in the underground rap ecosystem, the lyrically imposing and physically intimidating MF Doom.  “The Mouse & The Mask” is actually a collaboration between prolific producer Dangermouse and Doom (DANGERDOOM). Since Doom’s passing in 2020, I’ve been eager to dive into his discography. There’s something so enticing about a mysterious masked figure (based on the Marvel character Dr.Doom) who is described as “the rapper your favorite rapper listens to”. My favorite rappers include Kendrick Lamar, Dessa, Eminem, Janelle Monae, and Kanye West, and these artists are all known for for their clear flows and razor sharp bars. MF Doom has the intricate wordplay, but his lyrics are delivered with an intentional sluggishness. His words fall just behind the beats, muffled through mumbling lips. But all of that is intentional. MF Doom doesn’t care about being accessible or popular. Instead he looms over his songs, like a mastermind villain. This menace works perfectly against Dangermouse’s dense and funky production. What really makes this album unique though is the dedication to the bit. Characters and clips from Adult Swim’s shows show up all over this album, from inter-song skits from Mastershake and Meatwad from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” to references to Harvey Birdman Attorney-at-Large and the fictional talk show “Space Ghost Coast to Coast”. Sometimes this really works (“Space Hos”) and sometimes this falls flat (“Sofa King” with the worst punchline imaginable), but I am always here for commitment to the bit. (The subplot of Meatwad learning to rap is so good). This is an album to listen to stoned, or barring that, a solid two drinks in. My favorite song off of the album is “Benzi Box”, which REALLY solidifies MF Doom’s villain persona, set against just the sexiest hook. 

Finally, I was so excited to listen to The Amazing Devil’s “The Horror and the Wild”. Alex and I have very similar music tastes, and I know that when she recommends me an album, I’m sure to love it. And besides, Joey Batey as Jaskier in The Witcher series is peak bisexual desire and he’s one half of The Amazing Devil alongside Madeleine Hyland. Batey and Hyland met working for The Royal Shakespeare Company, which just makes sense because “The Horror and the Wild” feels like a work of epic Bardic literature with lyrics that punch you in the gut while slingshotting back and forth between our mundane world and a fantastical world of literal monsters and demons. If I describe this album as Folk, I would amend that I don’t mean the folk tradition of the Americas, but rather something older, more medieval, which sits against very jazzy and rocky guitars and drums. Batey and Hyland bounce off each other in such marvelous ways, sometimes in relationship, sometimes as the same person, sometimes at each other’s throats. They have marvelous chemistry that never comes across as simply romantic; they are actors and they are having a ball playing the many parts in this epic story. The songs themselves are grounded in the real, from feeling young and raging at the old (“The Horror and the Wild”) to being old and in love (“Marbles”) to the impulse to be your most feral self (“That Unwanted Animal” and “Farewell Wanderlust”) to just wanting to sit with your person forever (“Fair”). My favorite song from the album is “Farewell Wanderlust” but I warn you that you will not like it on first listen. It’s crowded and dense and over the top and melodramatic, but if you give it time, it will unfurl its meaning like a Venus Flytrap, ready to devour you. This is an album to listen to staring out into a gale.  

Thank you for going along this journey with me.

Next time: “In the Meantime” by Alessia Cara, “Kansas” by Kansas, “Play” by Moby and “Mettavolution” by Rodrigo y Gabriela