Apocalypse Honky Tonk

record reviews for Saturday, Fe.17, 2024

This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing from our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini

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Beyoncé

“Texas Hold Em”

In spite of its brusque Super Bowl roll-out duck-taped to Usher’s shins, it’s hard to argue against the clip-clop banjo, chip-chop groove, blurp-blip samples, and Beyoncé’s sly vocal, building to the tune’s glorious chorus, very nearly Song of the Summer quality even though it’s still the depths of February. If country music is our most traditional thing, it’s also our most reliable — a snuggie that warms the room to 22 degrees; a baseball hat that makes you look like Tom Seaver no matter what else you’re wearing — allowing the Queen to snap to form nicely, still rhythmically curvy despite the square corners. Nobody’s shooting for the stars here, and if it’s simply a costumed musical exercise, let’s not deprive ourselves of the fun embedded in the angled ten galloon, the tall boots and the Hollywood fly-by across a sun-parched Texas plain. Sometimes a cartoon is a cartoon until it’s not.

Little Simz

Drop 7

This new EP from the compelling British hiphop auteur is like finding a notebook on a subway bench, filled with scribbles and sketches and poems, and even though you’re left a little to your own devices to piece together a story, the look-around is fully absorbing. Every one of Simbi Ajikawo’s sound-models — the entire EP is no more than 14 minutes — possesses its own craft. “Mood Swings” echoes the work of Suicide, “Fever” is a Latinate work-out, the beats of “Torch” speed like clock hands gone awry. And, while slight in length, Drop 7’s tapas is rich enough to remind the listener of the musicians’ touch: busy, assured, reaching here, there and everywhere.

Vampire Weekend

“Capricorn” (from the forthcoming LP)

Vampire weekend, vampire world. It’s preposterous to consider nostalgia for things that happened in the late two-aughts, but when VW released their first record in 2008, the world was a simpler place, and Indie Rock bands were celebrated for hope in technology, liberalism in conservative radio spaces, art in prestige television, and joy in cynicism. With this week’s tragic death of Navalny and the relentless bombing of Raffah, one wonders how the tasty, if thin, broth of VW’s just-released advanced tracks might nourish a public looking for artists to articulate the dire complications of the world. The good news is that “Capricorn” waves goodbye to the old ways like a child standing at the end of a parade, the last feathery float rolling out to the end of the road. It’s a sad and weird track — the affected guitar/keyboard around the 2:30 mark takes their sonics to a new place — and if you feel the way I do — there’s no turning back; there’s no defeat — the campaign for VW as one of the fine chroniclers of our time can now be considered. No guarantee the rest of the album fulfills its promise. But early signs are positive, which is something we can’t say for most of the world.

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