C76 Blog Home

After years of half-assing his way into a cliched rapper/actor reputation and all the unfulfilled expectations therein, Mos Def locked himself in a room and memorized all the lyrics from MFDoom’s Madvillian. When he finally emerged, he understood that no rap song needs third and fourth verses, and often not even two. Though the middle sags in places as Mos lapses into experimentation, the overall shortened and focused bursts of crazy-good flows—along with Rick The Ruler’s mind-blowing guest spot—made for a great album. FInally, he deserves the title of Mighty Mos.

Although the full album (Till the Casket Drops) felt a bit flat after a year of delays, this mixtape—released in January ‘09 as a teaser—knocked it outta the park. Aside from the most awkward title in history, Road To… was a permanent fixture in many hip-hop heads’ rotations for the first half of the year. Freshly-jacked beats and knowingly blinged-out, “what recession?” rhymes were the perfect soundtrack to ride around (pretending to be) shining. I wondered at one point in Q2 if any legal hip-hop release would be able to top this free download.

Taking the Sex Pistol’s side in the punk wars, Gallows couldn’t be further from the pop-punk that’s risen to prominence in the last decade. Hell, they got into a fistfight—onstage—with their opening band here in Chicago a few months back. Their last album, “Orchestra of Wolves” was intense as hell but didn’t capture the ferocity of their Bonus Discs’ Live BBC recordings. Album two, problem solved. The production feels a bit more raw but the hooks somehow shine stronger.

The Lips have been treading dangerously close to the hippy-dippy side of psychadelica ever since the follow-up to Yoshimi. Embryonic is their attempt to sucker-punch that style with the dark, bad-acid side of experimentation. Extended jammming has resulted an album among their best. A raw, edgy, and vaguely sinister feel permeates the album as the songs wash in and out in waves, building from whispers to cresendos, quiet to cacophony. By the time closer “Watching The Planets” is in full swing, it feels like the comedown from a crazy trip.

Wearing their influences on their sleeve, Baroness put together a technical display informed by hard rock and metal’s best, flashing moments harkening back to Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Pantera, and current people’s champ Mastodon. Sporting a gutteral bark as well as harmonized vocals, the result is a richly varied record that gallops at breakneck speeds but turns on a dime into dreamy and atmospheric numbers. While metal purists might scoff at the moments of beauty as “weak,” anyone who appreciates diversity will see that the shifts in dynamics help make the heavy moments that much heavier.

No two words are more dreaded in combination than “Rock Opera” (hmm, I guess “Mission Accomplished” and “Sarah Palin” would also qualify, but I digress). Guitars, piano, three vocalists and untold violins add to the spectacle throughout. While the fillers and plot connector tracks were undoubtedly awful, the meat and potatoes of Hazards more than compensate with straight-up honest-to-god Zeppelinesque rock and roll. And rock they did, to the story of a demon philanderer that gets with the women, then kills the resulting kids. Macabre but awesome.

The dudes in Mastodon may not yet have the vocal skills to recreate this album’s demanding harmonies live. But on disc, Crack The Skye is easily on par with their masterpiece and previous high-water mark, Leviathan. The same sludgy funk is there, but the guitars are light and match the airy feel that concludes their four-pack Elemental concept (previous efforts were based around water, earth, and fire). Just when you think they can’t possibly squeeze in another riff, album closer “The Last Baron,” a 13-minute epic, crushes everything.

Most fans didn’t think Wu-Tang had another album like Ghostface Killah’s excellent Fishscale left in them. But Raekwon was in the lab, quietly putting this criminal masterpiece together like a robber plotting one last job in a heist film. Very few lyricists in hip-hop can paint a picture like The Chef (and those who can are guesting on Cuban Linx 2). “Gritty” doesn’t begin to do justice to the beats and lyrics, as Rae describes in vivid detail the ins and outs of late 80s crack-infested NYC. The transition from head-nodder “House of Flying Daggers” to the violent criminal tale “Sonny’s Missing” into the barely-whispered crack cooking nightmare of “Pyrex Visions” shows Raekwon in possession of a dynamic range few can match.

Karen O had a moment at Lollapalooza this year where she realized the gravity of not only filling in for the Beastie Boys, but actually equaling their status as crowd-owning Icons of Pop. She took a moment to soak that in, and allowed the crowd to share it with her band. That moment would have been much harder (or harder to believe) if the YYYs didn’t have It’s Blitz in their back pockets, adding to an already solid catalog. From the fist-in-the-air opener “Zero” through hook-dripping “Heads Will Roll” and “Dull Life” to the parting shot “Little Shadow,” the album is full of great songs, period. One of the rare albums that slowly grows on you throughout the year.

Overflowing with black humor and a mean streak a mile wide, two-thirds of Mclusky returned with a taller bassist (Kelson Mathias) and nearly identical attitude to their glory days of …Do Dallas. A year’s worth of financial and industrial meltdowns are perfectly summed up in “The Hope That House Built”: “In the end, everybody wins/ As long as we remember/ There’s a reason for incredible wealth,” then inviting us like lemmings into the gleefully morbid chorus: “Come join! Come join our Hopeless Cause/ Come join our Lost Cause!” FOTL also lash out at materialism (“Drink Nike”), tell a tale about terrorism in the 1800s (“Throwing Bricks At Trains”) and note the banality of true evil (“You Need Satan More Than He Needs You”). Though Travels is FOTL’s second album, it will be remembered as the one where singer/guitarist Andrew Falkous and drummer Jack Egglestone rediscovered their guitar attack and true calling as the Andy Rooneys of Rock: All piss and vinegar, but with their hearts in the right place. That is, if they have hearts.