Aesop Rock - Skelethon
This one's a doozy. I feel impelled to note that I did pick two Caucasian rapper solo efforts as AoTY for my forty year-old and forty-five year-old albums in a genre started by, curated by, advocated for, and cemented in culture by blacks. There's no way to sugarcoat it, down to the identifying term of those that are responsible for this music. As Kanye would say "This is black music." Maybe my choices say something about my own internal biases, maybe they don't. I can assure readers that blacks would have made this list but for year constraints (Talib Kweli's "Get By" was easily my 29 year-old song, released in 2002, Clipse's
Lord Willin' was my album of 2002, Wylcef Jean's
The Carnival was my 1998 jam, second only to the Norman Cook album pick, Dangermouse and Kanye win 2004 with the
Grey Album and
College Dropout, Kanye wins albums of the year uncontested in 2005 and 2007/8 with
Late Registration and
Graduation). But enough of that self-exoneration. This album deserves special mention, as it stands tall among the greatest hip hop I've ever heard, on rotation for two straight years in my household.
But some background: Nobody has really known what to do with Aesop Rock, he of the dense vocabulary, in the rap game. He's, to paraphrase Earl Sweatshirt's diagnosis of himself, too abstract for the heads, too much of a head for the abstract. He's never gotten any real play on any radio left or right of ninety-two on the FM dial. Yes, that means HOT 92.5 and college stations don't even know what to do with him. Universally respected, he can't get airplay. Is he too dense? Too abstract? A white kid thing? Too much of a white kid thing for even the white kids? Maybe yes to all of these. I don't know. I'm unqualified and will sound even more ignorant than I might have possibly done already. I do know that If airplay were his measure and nourishment, he'd better hope for ham radio and crusts like me.
What I do know is that he cut a solo album in 2012 that went critically acclaimed but largely unheralded, a weird album about what exactly people did not know. His internal struggles? Mummifying cats? Racing stripe haircuts? Terrorism and the State? Who knew? What people did know is that his side choices and collaborations, often used by an artist to build a groundswell of pop cred, were best summarized by his work with Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches in Hail Mary Mallon (a typhoid Mary reference for the epidemiological heads among us, for sure), a collabo that earned him not airplay on the radio, but instead served to make him more inaccessible than ever to a scene that demands inventory and accounting at some point.
So this album. Skelethon. A front-to-back banger, served by Aesop's own production. Side A begins with the eeire “Leisureforce,” moves to the ode to musical heroes that begin with the letter "Z" seen through a differing protagonist's eyes for each group in “ZZZ Top,” and then kicks its way to his love of motorbikes in “Cycles To Gehenna.”
And that would be enough to make most albums. The dense wordplay and thoughtfulness of the lyrics is savant-like. See "Cycles":
Baseheads locally approach all spark plugs
Total disregard for a dying man's shark jump
Post-meridiem pretty tungsten attracts any once—pale horse painted gunmetal black
Face masking, hard-shelled ebony propeller hat
Clubmans, gloved rakes grappling the clutch span
Tuck go the steel toe, metal gate spreading
For the dead-alive that rented parking space 37
2000 out the weekly under "Cycles to Gehenna" gets him floating over 20 busses
Fireproof and festive
Corners like a two-tired tiger so a too-tired rider can accumulate a few excited fibers to assign
Knows no zen in the art of maintenance
Only as the orchestrated patron saint of changing lanes baby
Here is how a great escape goes when you can't take your dead friends names out your phone
Flip to Side B. Aesop gets downright braggadocio-like with "Zero Dark Thirty," a warning to any and all comers that also serves as a warning about government and laments the commodification of the rap game. He then moves to a song about a donut shop, "Fryerstarter," and through a skit about a dog saving a baby's life in "Ruby '81" and onto a collaboration with the aforementioned Dawson in the utterly haunting "Crows 1" and "Crows 2" which cements the choice of his partner as a wise one, artistically considered.
Side C and Side D are also considered. I discovered Side D late, only coming to it after repeated listens sometime around 2018 or so, which puts this album at forty-five. "Gopher Guts," probably his most confessional song on the album, addresses his own shortcomings and problems with family and friends (Aesop was raised in a religious household and is notoriously hermit-like, moving from city to city. He now resides in Portland, OR.)
Introspective, humbled lyrics that close out a very intense album. Not really delivered as self-flagellation or whining, but as a reminder and confession and then redemption in the penultimate two lines before he lets it all go:
I have been completely unable to maintain any semblance of relationship on any level
I have been a ******* to the people who have actively attempted to deliver me from peril
I have been acutely undeserving of the ear that listen up and lip that kissed me on the temple
I have been accustomed to a stubborn disposition that admits it wish it's history disassembled
I have been a hypocrite in sermonizing tolerance while skimming for a ministry to pretzel
I have been unfairly resentful of those I wish that acted different when the bidding was essential
I have been a terrible communicator prone to isolation over sympathy for devils
I have been my own worst enemy since the very genesis of rebels
Today I pulled three ghost crabs out of rock and sand, where the low tide showcased a promised land.
I told them "you will grow to be something dynamic and impressive; you are patient you are gallant you are festive."
Then I let them go
45 Year-Old Album - Television - Marquee Moon
Most people are on their 45 year-old album today, so I'll close it out and leave supplemental picks Monday and/or Tuesday. This is a Dreaded Marco and others special, people whose taste I trust enough to give a long-standing curiosity a shot. I was technically on the side of 44 when I did, maybe 45, but the past three years feel like yesterday and everything is running together, so I'll take this album as a runner-up.
Television. This album. Wow. Despite their billing as CBGB's house band, I wouldn't have liked this when I liked punk. Back when I liked punk, I thought that all music should be gotten in and out of, that a point needed to be made within three or so minutes or what was the point? Boy, was that kid ever wrong. Wronger than young Red in the Shawshank Redemption ("I wanna take that kid..."). From the famously great album cover shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, who was dating Patti Smith at the time, to the ten minute jam-fuzz freakouts, there's nothing this album doesn't do. The hype sticker on Rhino Vinyl announces it as "Jazz For The Punk Rock Set," and it proceeds to not disappoint the merger-avoiding writer. Anyway, I won't write a critical review of the album, but the standout tracks to me are...all of them. I'd try
Venus and
Marquee Moon for introductory listening.
If you're a music fan and haven't heard it, give it a shot. I did and it became a favorite.
Album Of The Decade - Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires Of The City
Quite simply, this is my favorite album of the decade. There's not much to say that hasn't been said about it other than even my mother loves it. I actually know all the lyrics to "
Step" and generally consider it the crowning achievement of the decade as far as albums go.
simey? You don't mean that...lol
I'll share it with you.
