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#jamesbaldwin #america #williamffuckley #buckleyjams #jimmyjams

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Or:la — Trusting Theta (Fabric Originals)

Orlagh Dooley’s debut full-length has been a long time coming for understandable reasons. The Irish-born Liverpudlian has been staying busy as long as she’s been active, whether working to further the cause of her Deep Sea Frequency label and erstwhile NTS radio show, promoting the work of her more recent Céad (and Céad Damhsa) offshoot imprints, or simply DJing out to keep sharp. The results of that work are plain for all to see, a nine-strong suite of siren songs for the heads. That’s the easy read of it, anyway.

Dig just a scratch deeper and you’ll find a record that’s political and pointed, if not necessarily insular. Or:la’s motives behind the music are meant to capture “sapphic love, friendship and defiance against the still-neverending injustices against the feminine.” Much is also made of her attraction to Greek (in addition to being the eighth letter of that alphabet, the theta referred to here is of theta brain waves, which occur in states of “autopilot” or deep relaxation) and Celtic (which favorably views women for being healers, mothers and leaders) mythology. Other than the 3D-printed bust of Or:la on the album cover, however, the mythologies play into things little beyond spirit compared with the feminine nods she offers in titles like “Cooking Up Pepper Spray With Mary Lake” and, most definitively, “Patriarchy Purge.” This is not one for the boys.

It is, rather, a record for anyone in support of evening out the odds. For Or:la, that means drawing from her community, the people immediately around her — and in addition to the recipe discussion with DJing compatriot Lake, the features from fellow Derry native Bridie Monds-Watson, aka Rough Trade veteran SOAK, as well as Rinse FM staple and Rosebud Recordings head Eliza Rose help flesh out her vision, help channel the percolating anger and frustration.

Carefully deployed, these features keep listeners locked in throughout what’s actually a pretty lean record — despite the suggestion of a label name like Deep Sea Frequency and the proof of concept that many of her sets turn out to be, the nine songs fly by at less than 35 minutes. She covers a lot of ground, too, which shouldn’t come as a surprise; her sets have long eschewed any one style in favor of rhythmic crosspollination, and Trusting Theta is no different. Whether it be the slow-mo first-wave dubstep influence of opener “Milky Way of Glitter” or nigh-EBM machinations of “Cooking Up Pepper Spray With Mary Lake” or big synth plinks of first single “Fired Up,” listening for what’s happening in the production is a full-time affair.

Which is what this record is really about. The party line might say Trusting Theta is a debut album of defiance, but she’s also saying it’s about women’s “quiet conversations, intimate moments and mournful prayers, projecting them out into the world.” For all the girls who get it, this one’s dedicated to you; for all the girls (and anyone else) who don’t, stop what you’re doing and listen, focus, understand. Then trust.

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Fontaines D.C. — Romance (XL)

Until now, being a fan of Fontaines D.C. was pretty easy. The exhilarating way in which they burst to life with 2019’s Dogrel helped galvanize a renewed broader cultural interest in post-punk, exacting as it was in its marriage of youthful observation and acrimony alike. Their turn to the significantly moodier A Hero’s Death was timely in both fortunate and unfortunate ways, musical growth as a mile marker for the darkness that was 2020. The powerfully dense Skinty Fia was another signpost indicating they were on a steady but stable path despite the Glastonbury and Fallon and CNN appearances, despite the Grammy nominations, despite the skyrocketing success. You didn’t have to squint to see the band of “Nabokov” was still the band of “Big.”

The “constant process” of songwriting the group lives by has continued apace right from the off; they’ve been doing a career speed run from beautifully wayward Rob Doyle characters on Dogrel to probing the depths of the Irish soul and expatriatism on A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia (to say nothing of frontman Grian Chatten’s solo full-length as more than just a personal aside). The through-line of their homeland was always there regardless of whether they lived in Dublin or London or on the road or anyplace else — just as James Joyce left only to spend his whole life writing about Ireland, so, too, did his apostles a century removed leave only to end up singing of the very Dublin City their name wouldn’t let them forget.

Romance is a conscious divorce from that, an attempt to think and write from a less Irish perspective. There’s nary an “In ár gCroíthe go deo” to be found; the closest you’ll get is “Horseness Is the Whatness” lifted from (where else) Ulysses. In the run up to Romance’s release, the band made a point of saying they took inspiration this time around from Italian cinema like The Great Beauty and Japanese manga like Akira. There was American nü-metal and English trip-hop afoot. The “Starburster” video offered a visual makeover straight out of a prime-era Prodigy performance. The influences are far-reaching, the ambitions greater (or at least more diverse) than ever.

The craic here is that the results are Fontaines’ Achtung Baby (or, later, Absolution and Holy Fire) moment, a star turn or a shark jump so divisive and egregious, it couldn’t be ignored by longtime fans. Call it a clean, empty room worthy of mere morbid curiosity and little more; call the “spiritual form” Chatten has espoused a gleaming, gormless, soul-sapped skyscraper that uncouples the quintet from its past; call the songwriting dumb and deprived of the depths The Lotts allowed for; call it a misstep; call it a failure.

… Or call it the band’s capstone on its ascendancy of capital-R Rock. It’s true, you’ll have to squint a lot harder to see the studied studio effort of “Starburster” in the raw live band of “Big,” but if you’re gonna be big, you gotta shoot for the rafters. Say what you will about the emotional reaches of A Hero’s Death and Skinty Fia, but neither possessed the immediacy of Dogrel and its singles, though strong, belied a more texture-forward approach. Less individual tracks were capable of standing out.

No such problems exist with Romance. The Metallica-aping opening riff and punching electronics-assisted kick of the title-track tell of new territory setting you up for something much larger-sounding than any of the previous three records, but that’s aided by a refined, popcentric approach. Some of this is down to Fontaines’ desire to do more in the studio that may not necessarily have translated live, but switching to producer James Ford (originally half of Simian Mobile Disco but now probably best known for his work with Arctic Monkeys, Blur, Florence and the Machine, Haim and others) is more indicative of the expectations — the band is leaning all the way into Wembley-size grandiosity here. It’s called Romance, for God’s sake.

How you feel about that, and about this record, will be directly attributable to your tolerance for bold moves and grand gestures. Whether it’s the short, muscular radio rock of “Here’s the Thing” or the soaring, string-assisted “Desire” or the amniotic Mellotron of “Sundowner,” the album has something for everyone in a relatively tight timespan. There’s something to be said for pacing here, too: What could have been a messy tracklist ends up flowing naturally from crashing to composed and back again, which does much to further the record’s cause despite Chatten’s admittedly more anonymous, universal lyrical efforts.

Perhaps nothing epitomizes this more than the instant classic “Favourite.” Frankly, it struck me as an idiotic decision to release the closer as a second single, especially one like this that's destined to become a setlist staple; who does that, and why the fuck would you spoil the ending before we’ve had a chance to take the full ride? But hearing Romance in full, the decision now comes across as a calculated power move, a nod of supreme confidence as the record spends its duration turning from dark to light: Yes, we know exactly what we’re doing and where we’re headed, and though you may be reluctant, you really should come with us. To drive it home amid a Smithsian strum and the most gorgeously open-hearted love song they’ve yet written, right at the end of the album’s final bridge, an auld turn of phrase slips in worthy of Grian’s best: But if there was lightning in me / you’d know who it was for. Color me a romantic, but I know who he means — and if you’ve ever loved this band, you do, too.

Patrick Masterson

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During Game 7 of this year’s Stanley Cup Final, I went around the corner to a burger and beer place that I knew had alternatives for both: a necessity for a wheat (a what?) a wheat (a what?) a wheat intolerance (oh no!) BUT not an allergy (okay, that’s good).

I met a technician about my age - a Patrick, actually, who lives a block north from me - whom I don’t think was all the way up on the game, hockey or otherwise, but he seemed to enjoy having had to move from Philadelphia to New York as a blue collar guy.

I also met a university professor of some stripe; I would assume Columbia or CCNY, but he didn’t say where he taught. He kept complimenting me on various counterpoints I brought up; I’m sure whatever I think is a righteous way to approach things will be obsolete soon enough if it isn’t already, but I wasn’t all the way here for his repeated mentions of

To wit: I thought it telling that older, alleged professor gentleman at the bar (TV’s still out at home) that his self-proclaimed large nose was not enough for Dolly Parton to have propositioned him at some hotel in LA in 1975.

After bragging about his Hollywood contacts for half an hour while talking about how much he didn’t know hockey anymore, he went on a diatribe about how much he hates it. No doubt! And yet: to proclaim Chicago White Sox fandom in order to get that baseball game on the TV over GAME 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals? That’s for another day, friend. Take a look at my life: I’m a lot like you, but not enough to cede to horrid affairs such as yours.

Anyway, you know what happened. The (fully vegan, courtesy of a current stomach situation) burger was great, and the Florida Panthers won a Cup. Here’s to a half-decade of teams that will soon be under water!

Bitter? No. Harsh, maybe. Butter! Smooth. LGR.

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2022: Patrick Masterson

Photos by Patrick Masterson

I.

We filter in slowly. Given Sleeping Village is a stroll down the block, it’s inevitable I’m on the early side, but the place is already humming with anticipation by the time I walk in. I order a beer and head to an open booth tucked away in back, where I’m greeted one after the other by guys I call friends and co-workers, an agreeable mix of dudes from two generations. We do some bridge-building as they appear, figure out a couple of us have been to the same shows over the decades and not realized it, y’know, the usual time-killing.

As if this table weren’t proof enough, I look up at one point and note who’s loitering around the bar area: Though a modest youthfulish contingent exists, tonight’s a veritable Post-Punk Dads’ Prom, which in March of 2022 indicates one of two things — and since Wet Leg already came through at the beginning of the month, it could only mean we’re here to see Yard Act play the final date of their first U.S. tour.

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Who cares what I think? Nobody, I think.

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I don’t exactly know where I stand on anything going into something like God’s 2023rd birthday, and it pains me to again start like this. But I *must* start like this: if God exists, and They were checking out the millennium from a distance for Their own amusement, I have to think the time during which Trey Anastasio decided Phish would play “Sand” was among the favorites. This is probably the peak of cow funk insofar as it existed on its own as a genre, and maybe the all-time peak of Phish as a tightly controlled, undeterred band. It might’ve undone them, at least initially; that’s not strictly attributable to “Sand,” but the subsequent and, to date, only official performance of “Quadrophonic Toppling” could leave awe-struck minds scrambling. Rarely has anyone approached this level of sophistication, moxie and talent combined: we’re talking Messi at the World Cup (already); we’re talking Jimi with the Band of Gypsies, or Coltrane in Miles’ band, or Earl The Pearl with the ‘72-73 Knicks: the perfect fit. I’d said during the final on Sunday that I hadn’t seen God’s face, that I knew of, but I’d seen His left foot: it belonged to Messi. The rest of the angels sang in unison. That very feeling from last Sunday strikes Trey from 23 years ago; you can(‘t) see it in his eyes. Maybe Messi listens to funk; I doubt it, but maybe he does. In any case, the man knows how to dance. Trey has trampolines for that. He also has his guitar.

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Lil B – Thugged Out Pissed Off (BasedWorld)

The prospect of Lil B in 2015 is an interesting one. Arguably one of hip-hop’s two most influential figures in the last decade (Lil Wayne is the other), we have Brandon McCartney to thank for much of the free-for-all aesthetic and Internet savvy that the genre has harnessed since The Pack went viral with “Vans” in 2006. The 75 MySpace pages turned to dozens of mixtapes turned to fierce debates over his style turned to irrepressible memes turned to an odd, cult-like online fanbase turned to questions of authenticity turned to NYU and MIT lectures, a book, television appearances, cultural weight. 

The more his personality blossomed, the more his music became an accessory to his message. Based World started as a vision, became a club, and evolved into an all-consuming landscape where we all — willingly or not — participate. But with Thugged Out Pissed Off, Lil B returns with a 63-track mixtape as a reminder that he can still do the thing that made him into the celebrity he is. 

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Not like it’s a new concept to me - not wanting to be anywhere near a disaster zone is a common enough human trait, and yet one people tend to forget in a digital forum - but lately it does seem that everything is drying up. It’s as much apart of getting older as realizing you are your parents is, but actually feeling it in real time is deafening, mentally. The chasm between “are they talking about me or something I did” and “I’m not nearly important enough to be on their minds, up to and including the initial invite” is smaller than you think, but a lack of evidence does not imply lack of event. Not that I would’ve wanted to go to any more weddings than has been necessary in the vaccination age, nor that I was expected to be invited to any of them, but some of the recent ones are tougher to witness in retrospect than I would’ve imagined, making me all the more assured in a solitude that has become loneliness. “But,” you say, “she’s right there,” like I don’t know, as I stare down the hallway as you stare into an electronic device. Even worse, sometimes, is to be seen.

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Wyoming?

I watched it twice on two different planes recently. It’s worth a reconsideration damn near every day in the United States.

“The guy who kills me, I hope he does it because he hates my guts, not because it’s his job.”

“You’re dying. Do you know that you say that to me every day of your life? You’re not dying, you’re killing the people around you, is what you’re doing.”

Just like us: they’re doomed, and they know it.

The body is the temple of the LORD.

“When I get it, you’ll get it. That’s all.”

They’re my girls! I’m going back in there! –Girls! I was interviewed!

“What about non-union occupations?” They always ask.

“What’s wrong with this guy? What do you make a week? You ever been to prison? No? Well, let’s talk about something you know about: how much you make a week?”

I’m willing to assert that most people who watch DOG DAY AFTERNOON, Americans anyway, miss the point.

Five minutes. Quit while you’re ahead.

Manic, Sonny answers the phone, saying, “WNEW, plays all the hits.” He then threatens to start throwing bodies out the bank’s front door. Confused and threatened is how he got here, and it’s how he’ll leave. Of course, his partner in the robbery, Sal, is all the way in on this because he doesn’t have any plans, any future, any remorse, and he doesn’t know where Wyoming is. “You could just…go ahead and cook whatever’s there.” We’re all trying. In over our heads, the plans have to shift. Police don’t like it in the papers, but they somehow always end up there anyway. Attica! An isolated incident, obviously. Sal is ready, but he isn’t. Sonny spins the chair, which falls: equal parts unexpected and anticipated. Desperation makes the most of us – we call that innovation, for some reason lost on everybody after electricity.

We make the demands. They’re gonna give us anything we want.

His wife wants/NEEDS to be a woman.

This death business: it’s too much.

Sonny’s mom shows up: how beautiful you were when you were a baby.

“You tell me you got nothing but women, and you throw out a girl! A guy!”

You needed money; I got you money. That’s it.

Til we are joined in the hereafter.

It’s perfect, isn’t it? The cry for help is taken as an unnecessarily dramatic display. We’re all here.

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Do you want to know what peaking feels like? As much as I and so many - including Trey Anastasio, who was an attendee - want to believe, I’m not sold on it being any of the Darkness tour in 1978.

I think Bruce hit it in 1975, on the nose. His abandonment of the solo-piano “Thunder Road” has been disappointing in the years since. Otherwise, that show is perfect.

To have nothing to lose but with the world at your feet, given the dual national magazine covers of the week. Bruce is out here fronting a band of Jersey Shore renegades, and the UK press is on him like Dylan because they thought they didn’t have anything better going on, despite there being a front merging shortly thereafter.

At one point, he loses his hat; Springsteen may very well end up our last Vaudevillian performer, some NBA players perhaps excepted. He may be the last perfectionist of the form, anyway.

With a handful of possible exceptions, nobody has ever felt more of their place than Bruce Springsteen - he creates the alleys and prefab apartments and lakes that you want to figure out a way to get to, simply by being around.

You end up looking for a specific bakery’s sponge cake on the way back from a town that had never heard of you, and that you wish you’d never been to in the first place, but the sponge cake…well, anyway, you’ll tell your mother about it, and maybe she remembers a family entity going there once.

Bruce loses it - his mind, not his hat this time - during an absolutely monstrous performance of “Jungleland.” You’d be foolish not to, of course.

The one and only time I saw an actual, classic-era E-Street Band performance was in Charlotte in 2009, and that even excepts Danny Federici; they performed “Born To Run” in its entirety. Anybody would be mad not to lose their mind at Clarence Clemons’ sax solo. I surely did. I can’t imagine a band managing that capably in 2022, let alone in 1975. That’s why he’s the Boss.

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While I’m yelling into the thing that used to be the void, and as long as this remains a place where you can demonstrably *get away*, it just seems fitting that Novak Djokovic won his eighteenth career Grand Slam title, leaving him only one short in counting stats by identified male totals. He’s specifically designed to do things that nobody else can, in exactly the same way as Rafael Nadal repurposes bricks and Roger Federer owns your front lawn.

Djokovic enables something in his fans that, to me, is quite unlike fans of his contemporaries; he tried for a very long time - oh Lord, he tried - to get fans on his side, to little avail, and then he seemed to stop caring about that entirely, at least in bigger tournaments. “You don’t like me? Fuck you, then!” he could’ve said, with a trophy to showcase the effort.

It’s never struck me that Novak Djokovic thinks too hard about anything - his aversion to vaccination, his holding a tournament in passing, his ability to reel in the Nikola Jokićs and Sascha Zverevs of the world for parties - other than tennis, but it still blows my mind when he decides to lock in, mostly because you don’t know if he has.

Think about it: what are your most important Nole moments? As definitive a player as he is, he’s been at his best when someone challenges him stylistically, as Rafa on clay or Roger on grass traditionally do.

Even if he gets to 20, or 21, or 25, as he seems equipped to do: there seems to be something else that he wants. Kevin Durant, of the MVP and the titles and multiple superteams he himself has enabled, is eternally searching, and maybe Novak is, or maybe he hasn’t had a thought of that.

Djokovic spends a lot of his publicly-viewed time as an avatar, the create-a-player in a waiting room whose skills are exactly what you want, and also why he may never be on your team. We know he’s good; in fact, he’s too good. It’s unfair when you pick him. But when you do pick him, he smiles. He knows.

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For Those I Love — For Those I Love (September Recordings)

There’s the Ireland you know. Leprechauns and pan flutes and weathered Celtic crosses and Joyce and Beckett and U2 and Aer Lingus and wistful stories of Charles Parnell and corned beef and cabbage and Kerrygold butter and potatoes, endless potatoes except in the famine, and Guinness and Jameson and names like Sean and Brian and Roisin and Siobhan and hurling and faded IRA murals and St. Patrick driving all the snakes out and Grian Chatten’s fuckin’ diddly-diddly-aye and a great green sweeping countryside washing out to the ocean.

Then there’s the other Ireland, the real one the tourism board doesn’t touch.

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Dust Volume 6, Number 8

New Bomb Turks

Late summer in the oddest year in memory, and we are still, improbably, deluged by music. The world, it seems, will go out with a bang and a whimper and a steady four-on-the-floor, and we at Dusted expect to have headphones on when it all blows to smithereens. This month’s Dust covers the usual gamut, from milestone ambient reissues to several varieties of improvised jazz, from eerie folk to honest punk rock, from surprising debuts to unlooked for but welcome re-emergences. Two hurricanes, a hinged and unhinged convention, wildfires, confusing hybrid school plans and scorching days won’t stop us, and they shouldn’t stop you either. Some days music is the only thing that makes sense. Listen along with Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Nate Knaebel, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Forsythe and Patrick Masterson.

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Dust Volume 6, Number 7

Angel Olsen

Now half a year in the pandemic, we’re starting to see the emergence of quarantine records, whether in the trove of reissues hastily assembled to stand in for new product or home recorded projects made with extremely close friends and family or albums that are conceived and written around the concept of isolation. Music isn’t real life, exactly, but it lives nearby. And in any case, it’s still music and can be good or bad whether it’s been unearthed from a forgotten box of tapes, recorded at home without collaboration or side people or technologically gerry-rigged so that distanced partners can work together. So, as long as you all are making music, we will continue to listen and find records that move us, as the world burns all around. This edition’s contributors included Patrick Masterson, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake and Ray Garraty. Enjoy.

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Dusted Mid-Year Exchange, Part 3: Writers’ Lists

Joe McPhee 

We wrap up our mid-year feature with writers’ favorites from the first half of the year.  If you missed them, check out Parts One and Two from earlier this week.

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Dust Volume 6, Number 5

Courtney Marie Andrews

The lockdown continues, and live music has disappeared, replaced by a somewhat antiseptic and unsatisfying spate of live streamed shows mostly one person with a guitar on the couch in their living room.  We salute the courage and the effort but miss bands and audiences and even the chatter drifting in from the bar area.  In the meantime, at least for now, there are still lots of new records vying for our attention.  We present this Dust to catch up with some of them.  It’s an ecletic survey of contemporary classical, vengeful hip hop, psyche, jazz, folk and metal artists, all continuing to try to navigate a very difficult period.  Our writers this time include many of the usual suspects, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Jonathan Shaw, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Tobias Carroll and Patrick Masterson.  

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