Weekly Music Roundup: Public Enemy, Yemi Alade, and Phoebe Bridgers

Week of June 22: This week, new music from Beyoncé, Bob Dylan, and Public Enemy, and a stunning return from Phoebe Bridgers

Thanks Donald Trump – Public Enemy Is Back!

On Juneteenth, Public Enemy released a raw, angry song called “State of the Union (STFU).” Rapper Chuck D has been vocal about getting Donald Trump out of the White House, but things have taken such a dark turn that he and Flavor Flav felt it was time to get the band back together to sound the alarm – in uncompromising language set to a classic hip hop sound. How classic? The track was produced by DJ Premier, who also appears in the video, as dexterous and cool as ever. The chorus of the song is kind of a blunt instrument, but Chuck D’s verses brim with fire and fury, shot through with dark humor. “Take over, come over/Orange hair, fear the combover” he raps at one point.

But this is serious business – serious enough that Public Enemy are giving the song away on their website.   

A Juneteenth Surprise From Beyonce

Late on Juneteenth, Beyoncé “pulled a Beyoncé,” as they now say in the music biz.  By which they mean that she surprised everyone with an unexpected new song.  It’s called “Black Parade” and was co-written with Jay Z, and has a richly textured production that makes no concessions to quarantine or isolation.  The new track continues Beyoncé’s long string of songs that celebrate blackness and the strength of African roots, even at a remove, in America.  Early in the song she references the baobob tree, which can survive harsh conditions in sub-Saharan Africa and live for over two thousand years, and the Yoruba deities Oshun and Yamaya.  By the end, she’s connecting those threads to Curtis Mayfield, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Tina Turner.  But she is also clearly thinking about very recent events, mentioning the pandemic at one point and at another practically spitting out the line “rubber bullets bouncin’ off me.”  But the real point of the song is to call for African-American pride and action: “Now here we come on our thrones, sittin' high,” she sings in the chorus (actually, first she sings “here I come on my throne,” but then they don’t call her Queen Bey for nothing); “follow my parade, oh, black parade.” 

A New Song From Nigerian Superstar Yemi Alade

Here in the States, Yemi Alade is probably best known as one of the women who contributed songs to the Lion King companion album that Beyoncé curated. But in Africa, she has been a continent-wide phenomenon since releasing “Johnny,” her single that is now the most viewed video ever made by an African female artist. Alade is one of the leading figures in the Afrobeats scene – a recent confection made by mixing Jamaican dancehall, American hip hop, and pop, and not to be confused with the earlier Nigerian style known as Afrobeat (no “s”), which was a trancey funk style associated with the 20^th century bandleader Fela Kuti. Alade has just released a single called “Boys,” a flip-of-the-script song where for once it’s the girl who is treating the boys like one big meat parade. Hey, I’m not saying it’s right – but she does seem to be having fun in the video. Meanwhile the lyrics are in a mix of Nigerian pidgin English and what seems to be bits of Yoruba and Igbo. Alade’s ability to sing in numerous languages, including French and Swahili, has helped make her successful far beyond her home country. It’ll be interesting to see if this next LP, her fifth, catapults her to success here too. 

Bob Dylan Waltzes Into Your Heart, And Liver and Limbs

Bob Dylan’s new album is called Rough And Rowdy Ways, but it is mostly a reflective, even philosophical effort. Every song – almost every line, in fact – is an allusion, a reference, to something else; poets, rock bands, literature, fast food… it’s all grist for the lyrical mill. This all culminates in the previously released “single,” if you can call a 17-minute epic a single, titled “Murder Most Foul,” but along the way there are moments that leap out and grab the ear. For me, that happened as soon as “My Own Version Of You” began, and Dylan began singing about visiting morgues and monasteries, searching for the “necessary body parts/limbs and livers and brains and hearts.” It’s not just the delightfully Gorey imagery that makes the song so arresting, it’s the way it waltzes in, as charming as you like, over a descending four-note pattern that, in a more rock-oriented context, might remind you of Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” or Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4” or The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (this list could go on for a while – I’ll stop now). Naturally, Dylan is not writing a song about another Dr. Frankenstein – at least, I don’t think he is – but the imagery of how we construct our own versions of the people around us, and by extension the world, is pretty potent stuff, and allows Dylan to indulge in more poetic musings about Julius Caesar, Judgment Day, the Great American Songbook and a dizzying array of other detours and footnotes. 

But After All That, The Album Of The Week Came From: Phoebe Bridgers

Yes, Beyoncé, Dylan and Public Enemy make a mighty trio of musical powerhouses. But the album that had the critics raving when it came out on Friday was Punisher, the second solo album by 25 year old California singer and guitarist Phoebe Bridgers. Her 2017 debut, Stranger In The Alps, was somehow both reminiscent of the late Elliott Smith and distinctively her own. We’ve also heard her as part of the trio boygenius (with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, both guests here) and as half of the Better Oblivion Community Center with Conor Oberst, so it hasn’t taken long for her star to rise. But Punisher is the sound of a still-young songwriter who has found her voice and realizes it’s many voices. Keen-eyed, sharp-tongued, empathetic, aware of wisdom but perhaps a little suspicious of it, with a sly, witty deadpan, Bridgers writes songs that seem to exist on several levels at once. The album’s stunning conclusion, “I Know The End,” could be about the end of a tour, or the end of a relationship, or the end of the world. It starts off as a ballad, but when the stomping drums come in, followed by a rumble of thunder (or at least, a thunder sheet), the song takes off, flying too high on horns, strings, and a chorus singing simply, “the end is near.” The end, when it comes, is Icarus-like – falling back to earth with a whispered, half-choked sigh. 

A New Song From The Mountain Goats Premiered On Our Soundcheck Podcast

Friday was the official release date for Songs for Pierre Chuvin, the solo album made in quarantine by John Darnielle, the singer/songwriter/novelist/musician who leads The Mountain Goats. While the band is a genuine band and has been for years, in its early years The Mountain Goats was just John and the cranky boombox that he recorded onto. So in April, he released a series of solo songs done on that same old boombox and offering a limited number of cassettes for pre-order. Well, those quickly sold out, so Friday’s release date was pretty much a non-event. But last week, John Darnielle unveiled a new song (which is also an old song that he’s been wrestling with for years) called “The Great Gold Sheep.” Inspired by a song his son was singing that no one could quite make out, and the biblical tale of Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar and the latter’s dream of a golden statue, John wrote a song ostensibly about idolatry but which, as so often seems to happen in his songwriting, takes a dark turn towards the end. The occasion was a remote edition of our Soundcheck podcast series, with John playing on his porch in North Carolina. The almost Spanish sounding guitar part is one headlong musical rush, with a capo on the 8^th fret, which for all you non-guitarists out there simply means the instrument sounds almost impossibly high. And you don’t need to be listening too closely to hear that he’s not the only vocalist on this recording: at least one insistent bird sings through much of the song as well.    

Japanese Folk Song Meets Colombian Dance Music.  It’s As Crazy As You’d Expect.

We’ve met Japan’s Minyo Crusaders before – they take old Japanese minyo songs and set them to a Latin beat. Their favorite rhythm is the cumbia, which has become a staple of Latin pop, but also of electronic dance music and a lot more. Now, though, the band has upped the ante by collaborating with the Colombian cumbia experimentalists Frente Cumbiero. Because, I guess, if one band mixing Japanese folk song and Colombian dance is good, then having two bands do it together is just plain nuts. Recorded in Bogota last summer, the EP Minyo Cumbiero is due on July 31, but they’ve just released the single “Cumbia Del Monte Fuji” – a clever title since the song is based on an early Colombian cumbia tune called “Cumbia Del Monte” (the cumbia of the mountain) and references Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji. Both bands have horn sections so there is plenty of brass firepower at work, and the video is an almost painfully nostalgic look at the days when over a dozen people would cheerfully pack themselves into a tiny studio. (Though the sight of one of The Crusaders entering with a facemask is a little unsettling now.)  Mostly though, this is the sound of a most unlikely pair of bands having a great time together.