Head-land

You never wanted
to be the type
to be immobilised.

Now they ask you
why you always
seem to let
yourself wash away.

I think, like me,
you find it hard
to hear the sea
keep knocking
so you let it in.
You know that, while it's great,
to say
"I will be strong"
you know you're only there
to be engulfed
so why
not play along?

You know that you're supposed to hate
that sensation of letting yourself rot
but
there's something so sexy
about being stripped
to the bone.
Something so thrilling
about self-destruction
as you tumble down
bit by bit.

I think the world was never made
with us in mind
so, still, we sit.
And gorge ourselves on vertigo
and tumble down
bit by bit.

empty

empty

Running

I knew from the start you were running.
You’ve got those runner’s eyes
that say “I’m here
now, but in my mind
I’m far away.”

Too far away to face
that paperwork that you know
was due in yesterday, but
you didn’t get round to.
"Gravity," you think.
"Anything that ties me down
isn’t worth staying still for.”

You told me “it’s a shame
the world is round, because
everything always catches up.”
I knew that running was
your nature not by choice
but because you’d not yet learned
to float away.

I knew, as I’m a runner too.
I was stretching at the table 
just in case you reached out
and tried to grab a hold.
I wondered where you were
as we snacked on our hors d’oeuvres:

Probably back at home
watching TV and forgetting
that awful date you just went on.

It’s hard to feel free
when everything catches up
eventually. I hope that
you’re still running.
Accountable to nothing
but the wind in your face
as you sweat off each droplet
of responsibility.

I think that we’re perfect for each other:
let’s stay away forever.
I’ll run one way
and you the other
that way
we’ll never catch up.

Insufficiently shambolic.

Sequel to the Prequel
by Babyshambles
(Parlophone, 2013)

I don’t like British indie rock. I resent the cacophony of the leaden guitar playing, the pick vituperatively assaulting the strings as if the indie’ers haven’t worked out that amplifiers are actually rather useful for, well, amplifying one’s playing. More so than the sans funk unconscious imitation of chicken-scratch rhythm guitar, I loathe consummately prosaic Brit-Rock hacks like Alex Turner who believe you should write only about what you know, as opposed to what you feel . Pete Doherty, however, is an exception; iconoclastic enough as a performer, a writer and – of late – a Parisian bohemian expatriate to still hold a certain superiority over the multitude of groups spawned in The Libertines’ wake who are, at best, as “this’ll do” adequately uninspiring as Beady Eye. Sequel to the Prequel is his first album in four years and its perfunctory sensibility suggests that, although Doherty is certainly a functioning addict, the joys implied by Babyshambles’ rollicking music might even be actualised were their centric singer-songwriter slightly more than just functioning.

At this stage, what can be said about Doherty’s heroin addiction that doesn't lend succour to the tabloid press’ relentless and sadistic campaign to make everyone forget that he’s, at least in essence, a musician? I would love to – as with his fantastic 2009 solo album Grace/Wastelands – be able to use Sequel to the Prequel as a riposte to these facile voyeurs, but it feels as superficial a manifestation of the familiar Doherty persona as a late-period Rolling Stones record. “Rollicking” was an adjective I used in the previous paragraph to describe the joie de vivre-imbued Babyshambles sound, and what music is more rollicking than freshly electric Bob Dylan, circa 1965? Doherty seems to agree with me, as he plagiarises passages of I Want You and Maggie’s Farm in a couple of the record’s uniformly derivative melodies.

Doherty has made a trade of haphazardness, but whilst Babyshambles’ début Down in Albion was charmingly strung-out – its evident seams lending it an enjoyable quality of spontaneity – the relatively polished production of Sequel to the Prequel bears the feel of an effort to dress the artist’s latest set of ramblings up as “proper” songs, this newly-found sartorial elegance a futile and distracting embellishment. Again and again Doherty, who seems better suited to a solo career as a sort of scattershot troubadour, resorts to the same old bag of melodic tricks; a pinch of Waterloo Sunset here, an almost wholesale borrowing of the chorus from Where Angels Play by the Stone Roses there; “there” being on the LP’s true nadir, Maybelline, a tedious amalgam of the usual thrashed riffs and ubiquitous major-to-minor chord changes. Picture Me in a Hospital does not deviate much from these over-prevalent re-treads of his earlier music, but heart-on-sleeve lyrics and, atypically, a violin (substituting for the jangly guitars one expects to propel its riff) serve to elevate it beyond said functionality.

This is because, like any formula, the Doherty songwriting blueprint occasionally works, with the eponymous track a touching Music Hall bit of frivolity that is all Doherty. Dr No is altogether less archetypal, a slice of dark reggae concerning the purchase of some drugs that suggests that – in a shocking turn of events – perhaps Alex Turner is right, I'm wrong, and it is better to write about what you know. Whilst these highlights are certainly vital and thrilling – and the record does get better as it progresses – Sequel to the Prequel is the most disappointing record its focal point has made to date. It’s not embarrassingly smacked-out, nor is it pathetically polished and mainstream-adulating, but the middle-ground on which it firmly places itself renders it an uninspiring addition to the canon of an artist who knows better, and is – surely – capable of being the purveyor of honest and incandescent rock music he’s always promised to be, and has, on occasion, shown himself to be. 

I'm not sure what to call this yet, probably 'I Kept My Last Name'

I kept my last name
And told you that
I think
There are some parts of a person
That should be kept,
And not be thrown away.

Your family didn't understand
That I refused
To simply be bent and worn
Like the ring on this 'ring finger'
Of my left hand.

But the truth is I'm already worn
By so many people I no longer know
Like a hoody left behind after a one-night-stand.

As hard as I've tried
To keep myself contained
In each escape
I've spilled over
And given parts of me away.
And I resent
That someone somewhere
Has my virginity screwed up
In a pile of dirty washing on his floor.
And someone somewhere
Has my favourite place by the river
Pushed back amongst the rubbish in his chest of drawers.
And someone somewhere
Wears my favourite song so smugly
Every time
I see his fucking face
Contort that fucking grin that says
"I know you"
In a way
I can't displace.

So when you asked to take my name
I told you no
As it would only be
Another part of me I can't reclaim.

I've learned to hold on tight
To who I am
Because so much of her
Is in places I can't reach
Or doors I can no longer open.

Broken Record

You were the sixties smash
That swept me off my feet.
I was so young and
Oh how we were young! You were
The anthem of my march
Out of my teenage years.

If I were down
You’d cheer me up.
If I were lost
You’d show me home.
If I were stronger
Then I would have learned
To do this on my own.

Instead you just assured me it
"Will be alright" for thirty years.
And I am glad that you were there
But with each grey hair that appears
I think that I’ve played you too long;
Your sound has gone, you just remind me
Of a time that won’t come back.

And when you stand and beg me
"It will be alright" I only hear
The scratchings of a broken record
Back from yesteryear.

Kanye heads into the ditch.

Yeezus
by Kanye West
(Def Jam, 2013)

In the liner notes for his 1977 career retrospective Decade, Neil Young wrote of Heart of Gold, his biggest hit single, that “this song put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there."

The three albums that followed – 1973’s Time Fades Away, 1974’s On the Beach, and 1975’s Tonight’s the Night –  were tough going indeed; rough-hewn ruminations on death and dissatisfaction that possessed few of the wistful qualities of the brilliant yet somewhat saccharine Harvest. They would also prove to be the greatest work of an artist dedicated to the encapsulation of raw emotion. Today, Young is revered, but his departure from the foreground of country rock lost him many fans; he was certainly a better songwriter than Harvest guests James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, and if he was to stick with the commercial country sound, not only would it have made great financial sense, but it would have been to the scene’s ultimate credit.

Kanye West’s triumphant victory-lap of the last three years has included three albums, starting with 2010’s grandiose masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, before seeing him touring the world to rapturous responses alongside Jay-Z in support of their collaboration Watch The Throne, and winding down slightly with his label-showcase Cruel Summer. The latter is somewhat of an outlier due to West’s reduced presence on many of the tracks, but thematically it sits well alongside its predecessors as a celebration of excess, and the singles – Mercy, Clique, New God Flow – speak for themselves. It is difficult to classify these projects within any preconceived umbrella-terms for the genre; are they conscious hip-hop? They’re certainly intelligent enough, and have their flirtations with experimentation. Yet they unashamedly pander to the mainstream; filled with famous voices, slamming beats, and inane, zeitgeist-y platitudes that jump out amidst the general lyrical brilliance. I think My Beautiful Dark Fantasy is a truly great album; a fantastically conflicted look at what it means to be a rich black man in America, and Watch The Throne exceeds expectations as its celebratory contraposition. But if Kanye West spent the last few years building an amazingly lucrative musical empire, then  Yeezus is the sound of him rebelling against himself in a blood-soaked artistic coup.

Another quote that the anti-commercial din of Yeezus brings sharply to mind comes early in the pages of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain – “Great heroic Achilles who...isolates himself, positions himself defiantly outside the very society whose glorious protector he is and whose need of him is enormous.” My question is – does Kanye West need mainstream culture, and vice versa?

Judging by the dearth of listenable music amidst the masses of pop singles professing to be hip-hop, I would suggest that Kanye is an extremely positive figure to be sat atop the genre’s Olympus – which, by the way, is a simile he – never one to resist glorifying himself – has embraced in the past. Judging by the quality of Yeezus, I am not sure Kanye needs to cater to the tastes of anybody but his own. Which, indeed, is how an artist should work. On his incandescent verse at the centre of I Am A God, he declares his intentions; “Soon as they like you, make ‘em unlike you/’cause kissing people’s ass is so unlike you.” Any artist with integrity should, he says, pay scant regard to criticism, and keep moving on creatively as the muse dictates. In the same verse, ‘Ye pours scorn on his erstwhile fashion choices of “pink-ass polos with a fucking backpack” – the venom of the expletive is remarkable, and an avid listener of his music knows exactly what he’s getting at; in 2010’s Gorgeous, he said “as long as I’m in polos, smiling, they think they got me” – he is throwing off the fashionista shackles that bonded him to white America.

In the middle of opener On Sight, with its nasty buzz-saw synths, the thrillingly rudimentary beat drops out, and the listener is briefly regaled with a pitch-shifted gospel sample. “Look,” it implores, “this is the Kanye West you used to like.” He could make retro-fitted rap albums like Late Registration and The College Dropout again. But he’s not going to rap over this sample. No sooner has it arrived, it is unceremoniously ripped from the mix, similar sounds resurfacing again only on the great album closer Bound 2. It is interesting (to me) to compare Yeezus sonically to a contemporaneous album by a partnership whose deft production touches are all over On Sight, Black Skinhead, I Am A God and Send It Up; Random Access Memories by Daft Punk. There is a great disparity between Yeezus’ head-fucking production and the lush, organic sounds of Random Access Memories.  If anything, this proves that Daft Punk share his passion for musical exploration, and they fit right into Kanye’s “muthafucking clique” alongside such luminaries as Mike Deen and Hudson Mohawke, whose names may not be so familiar to you, but whose beats will certainly have reverberated through your eardrums at some point.

Blood on the Leaves is a track so potentially divisive that its key detractors and its most avid defenders are more than likely the same person. Anybody who has followed the Yeezus saga will be aware that it has drawn criticism from some for its juxtaposition of Nina Simone’s Strange Fruit, a track that still simmers with political potency, with the rapper-singer’s autotuned lamentations of relationship woes. It is an audacious and possibly insensitive move and at first, I admit, a contrast that made me somewhat uncomfortable. Its ugly synthesized horns, however, drive home a greater truth about this music; that Kanye West has no interest in masking the ugliness of some of his thoughts and desires. Furthermore, it is indicative of a kind of black empowerment rarely seen in mainstream culture; West can take an iconic sample inextricably linked to his race’s social history and make it as personal as any whiney white music. Why should an artist be bound by history? It is wholly in keeping with Yeezus’, and in general with West’s, desire to disregard the past.

Similarly, on one of the album’s more crudely scatological lyrics, Kanye states of an unnamed woman, that he will “put (his) fist in her like a civil rights sign.” Sex is everything on Yeezus; not merely as an enduring provider of pleasure and fascination that informs some part of almost every verse on here, but as a means of revenge. The sharp, hilarious social critique of New Slaves (which, in time, I will address) is eventually brought around to the image of West cruising the Hamptons, having sex with the wives of the white oligarchs who have so wronged his people. This is just one instance of many. Ultimately, the sexual insensitivity of the lyrics makes me remember what I liked so much about the Kanye West of Gorgeous, railing against media sexism like a flip-side of On Sight; compare “she told the director she try’na get into school/he said take them glasses off and get in the pool” to “black Timbs all on your couch again/black dick all in your spouse again.” Both songs positively radiate fury, but the difference is that this time around the anger feels misplaced, which is a conceit at the heart of Yeezus’ schizophrenic outrage. The album – and not just the music therein, but also the no-singles-no-videos-no-artwork-no-press(except for the New York Times)-no-tour(just yet) marketing campaign – is so nakedly antagonistic, it is as if West is defying the listener to like it.

The lyrics’ virtue lies not necessarily in what is being said, but in how it sounds. Consequently, I think that Lou Reed’s dictum that “if you like sound” one should “listen to what he’s giving you” one of the more pertinent statements concerning Yeezus. For all the talk of Kanye’s status as a musical visionary, it would be criminal to overlook that he is a brilliant MC, whose multisyllabic phrasing is seldom less than perfect regardless of lyrical meaning; whilst he does not often speak-rap, Andre 3000-style, there is a consummate musicality to his vocal delivery. In fact, ‘Ye’s delivery is remarkably contained a lot of the time. I hear the behemoth beats, such as Black Skinhead’s raucous glitter stomp, and want to scream what lyrics I’ve memorised. Yet, for all his egomania, he resists imbuing his recorded performances with superfluous force.

Rick Rubin, one of the many producers who worked seemingly tirelessly in order to realise Kanye’s vision, has stated in the press that there was a rush to complete Yeezus  in time for release date, with many of its star’s verses incomplete or completely absent on the eve of their deadline. Consequently, lines that seem to reflect inconsequentiality may actually be displays of spontaneity, which don’t necessarily make a record more refined, but certainly make it more honest; much, in fact, like the one-take aesthetic Neil Young has preferred to employ throughout his career. One feels, however, that some preparation was put into the creation of New Slaves.

To reapply an adjective I used to describe On Sight (and that is, in fact, appropriate for several of the songs on the album), New Slaves is driven by a beat that is so rudimentary, there is no drum track either synthesized or live. At times, the lyrics are penetrative, such as “meanwhile the DEA teamed up with the CCA/They’re try’na lock niggas up – they’re try’na make New Slaves/See that’s that privately-owned prison, get your piece today!” – a very erudite and very funny attack on the US’ barbaric prison-industrial system; a by-effect of the War on Drugs, arguably the single biggest project dedicated to subjugating and criminalising the poor (particularly, incidentally, of black America) since the feudal system. At other times, his bars, if well-intentioned in context, are questionable; “you see, it’s leaders and it’s followers/but I’d rather be a dick than a swallower.”The song as a whole is a terrific indictment of the racist attitudes West sees everywhere, be it the prison system or the world of fashion that he perceives as having mistreated him,  giving birth to the hilariously pointed crack “doing clothes you would’ve thought I had help/but they wasn’t satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself.”

The choice of word, “help”, is very interesting. It suggests that West thought he could win in white, capitalist America on his own terms, perhaps becoming  the oligarch he so despises, a little like his sometime colleague and noted entrepreneur Jay-Z. But once he was almost there, he came to a realisation that a) he will never gain the same respect in high society as his oppressors, simply due to centuries of skewed opportunity and b) that he truly fucking hated these people. His final line is the rhetorical question, “now what the fuck you goin’ say now?” It’s a challenge to his peers in hip-hop as much as it is to the establishment he’s decrying, or the gaping-mouthed listener. Is anybody going to top this album in 2013? In New Slaves, Kanye “see(s) the blood on the leaves,” and this time it is 100% serious with few, comparatively trivial, personal connotations. The track’s beautiful epilogue is a crescendo of histrionic guitars, like the overblown  musical aesthetic of 1980s hard rock being flipped on its ear, with Kanye’s autotuned singing contrasting gorgeously with Frank Ocean’s crystalline vocalisations. Ocean’s presence implies that the “swallower” credo  was firmly tongue-in-cheek, and reminds us that West was one of the first figures in mainstream hip-hop to endorse LGBTQ rights. There is an suggestion that whilst he is incredibly mature as an artist, he still has some way to go as a person. Which is the case for many of us.

Speaking of which, to make an oversight of West’s self-applied apotheosis I Am a God (aside from its masterful centric verse, which I have already mentioned) would be to ignore the delusions-of-grandeur-that-maybe-aren’t-really-delusions that lie at the heart of the Kanye West oeuvre. Initially I read the title as I Am God, in the singular, and was rather disappointed that he chose to not-quite elevate himself over every single other being in the universe. It supposes the interesting conceit that West is a pantheist of sorts, worshipping both the Judeo-Christian God and that messianic figure of white-collar splendour; himself. Often the album’s lyrics are comically awful, and not in the sense that they are badly written, but rather morally repugnant. A promotional video directed by West was a short, near-verbatim parody in which the rapper/director/polymath inserts his own name into American Psycho’s famous Huey Lewis & the News scene. American Psycho concerns a hideously amoral, psychopathic Yuppie whose emotional vacuum is masked by the superficialities of the Reaganite ‘80s, and American God would have been a worthy alternate title for Yeezus. It intrigues me that he associates Godlike stature with wealth, rattling off lines concerning such trappings of corpulence as Porches, ménage-a-trois and, now infamously, croissants. Much like the quantified anguish of Guilt Trip, it drips with dread, descending into guttural screams.

His appearance on Saturday Night Live, on which he premiered New Slaves and Black Skinhead, introduced by a rather unenthused-seeming Ben Affleck, was incredibly exciting to watch, with his on-stage demeanour respectively statuesque and hyperactive, as would befit the divergent styles of both tracks. Nevertheless, it did not prove as prescient to the finished album as it might have seemed, promising something altogether more political, and rather more rooted in EDM than the criss-crossing beats of Yeezus. Yet again, he confounded expectations. I am exhausted from writing about the record; fragments of information that I wished to include somewhere herein keep belated occurring to me. The RZA, who has worked with ‘Ye before on songs including Dark Fantasy and White Dress, and considers him to be upholding the spirit of the Wu-Tang Clan despite their very different approaches to the rap genre, contributes to the production of I’m In It, likely the most radio-friendly track on here (and one of the most sex-crazed, as the title would suggest), which ends with a magnificent drum/vocal breakdown in which West explains that he’s “got the kids and the wife life/but can’t wake up from the nightlife.” Perhaps this is an indication that this is a belated primal roar from Kanye the artist, before Kanye the man settles down to fatherhood, although I doubt he will ever do so in his music. Furthermore, Mike Deen’s cascading guitars on Hold My Liquor are a wonder to behold. And, at 10 tracks, it brings to mind Illmatic in its brevity, if nothing else.

I saw Neil Young (backed by his wonderfully creaky band Crazy Horse) on the day Yeezus came out. He is 67, and attendees were still complaining that he spent too much time exploring the tonal possibilities afforded by his electric guitar, and not enough time playing “the classics.” I don’t imagine that 67-year-old Kanye West will be too dissimilar.