Janelle Monae is a chameleon of the finest form. She has been leveled comparisons to James Brown, Prince, David Bowie, and Jack White, and trekking through the monolithic The Archandroid, each one of them stands up to scrutiny.
Monae sets her feet firmly in funk and soul and gropes wildly in all directions grabbing a bit of hip hop, a bit of garage rock, a bit of disco, a bit of MPB, all dashed with a healthy dose of afro-futurism.
And the most telling of Monae’s talents is that such a disparate sounding record not only works, but excels, even with such a goofy premise behind it. Because let’s be honest: a genre-spanning concept album about a robot who is also the Messiah who falls in love with her maker in a city where dancing and love are outlawed should be ridiculous to the point of being unlistenable. But it’s actually one of the best records to come out of the last ten years.
r&b
Record #224: James Blake – James Blake (2011)
It is my understanding that the term “dubstep” means different things depending on what side of the Atlantic you’re on. Stateside, it means the sort of bro-friendly, attention deficient, robot-sex music that’s made its way into car commercials and cheap summer movie soundtracks. In Britian, however, dubstep is a little more subtle–shifting textures over time, setting grooves and resting in them, forming a subset of electronic music much more suited for a late night drive than a trailer for the new Transformers movie.
Record #223: Jackson 5 – ABC (1970)
It is not difficult to argue that the Jackson 5 were a novelty act. But it’s almost impossible to dismiss them as a such. Sure, the lead single’s target audience doesn’t seem to be much older than Michael’s own twelve years, and yeah, all of their originals (four of the twelve tracks) were written by a Motown Records production team dubbed The Corporation (not very punk rock) that was tailor made to write songs for the Jackson 5, but I defy anyone to tell me that they weren’t some of the best performers the world has ever seen.
Record #4: Al Jarreau – Breakin' Away (1981)
Here’s another record from that free stack taken from my in-laws’ house, but this one is quite a bit better than the last (Air Supply…ughhh…). Admittedly, this genre (R&B/jazz crossover) is a little out of my familiarity, but most of these songs just remind me of 80s sitcoms*, or post-break up montages from 80s rom-coms (My Old Friend, especially, could be played to shots of forlorn lovers staring out windows before fading out into a rain-soaked reconciliatory plea). Filled with jazz tinged love songs, this album has probably been put on by many a daddy after the kids had been laid to sleep.
The one thing that makes Jarreau stand out among the vaguely “funk” landscape of 80s R&B is his tendency towards scat solos, which makes for a much more entertaining listen on the more upbeat tracks. And while the first half is rather ballad heavy (but with much more success than my last entry), the B-side is filled with less mainstream offerings, all of which do a great job of showcasing Jarreau’s vocal acrobatics (see: Blue Rondo a la Turk) His mastery of his voice as an instrument is the largest contributor to the album’s success, but it also strongly benefits from the composition of the songs, which is littered with jazz-style chord changes. These two factors keep the slow songs from being boring, and the fast songs from being inane.
Allmusic’s review states that the record was “the standard bearer of the L.A. pop and R&B sound” of its time, which is what makes this record sound so dated in 2012–the album’s most prominent flaw. But what can you do?
All in all, it’s a fun record and significant cultural and historical piece, but it’s not something I’ll throw on to unwind.
*I found out after writing this bit that he wrote the theme song to the 80s dramedy Moonlighting.