2018 – The Noise Made By People

“Working Class Woman” is a Complex and Funny Self-Portrait

When I put myself in the shoes of an artist who has some level of popularity, I always think the most awkward part of it would be realizing that some of your fans are idiots. Marie Davidson explores that idea on “Your Biggest Fan,” the lead track on her new album, Working Class Woman, and it’s probably the funniest song of the year. In a mocking voice, she impersonates the dumb questions she gets after shows and the sexist assumptions people make about her: “Why are you so strange? Do you play in a band? Do you really need to carry all that gear with you? Is this album about taking risks?”

Davidson’s dark industrial electronic sound, which she’s developed over the last few years, adds some dread and horror to the comedy. Eventually, the funniness of “Your Biggest Fan” gives way to a sense of anxiety and despair as the annoying voices turn into paranoid whispers. It’s an ideal tone-setter for this album, which feels like a complete dive into Davidson’s psyche as an artist. At the end, I possibly knew too much about her sense of humor, her anxieties, and how she feels about her life as a traveling musician.

This dancey electronic music isn’t something I listen to much, but Davidson puts a spin on it that is compelling. The second track, “Work It,” is a good example: taken at face value, it resembles a typical electronic song with a pulsing club beat that someone might use to motivate them while working out. Taking on the voice of a deranged fitness coach, she uses the familiar language of empowerment, talking about working to be a winner and working until you sweat. Read another way, it’s a satire of her musical genre, her workaholic nature, and the values our society has that makes someone define themselves by work.

The ambiguity in tone is very intentional and part of what makes the album captivating. The protagonist of Working Class Woman is complex and difficult, which stands out among one-dimensional portrayals of women in other media, which are often either misogynistic or purely fantasy wish fulfillment with little in between. Davidson isn’t necessarily brave or heroic for working hard and dealing with weird fans — it’s just a part of her life that is portrayed, like everything else on this album, with brutal honesty.

Afrirampo Return to Make Wonderful Noise on “Afriverse”

Creepily dedicated readers of the blog may remember Afrirampo from some posts I made a few years ago where I celebrated their crazy and enthusiastic brand of rock music, especially as it contrasted to the increasingly dour state of indie rock. In 2010, the duo of Pika and Oni broke up after the release of their masterpiece, We Are Uchu No Ko, but they left the door open for a reunion by leaving their English-speaking fans with this very normal message: “If our mother of monster say ‘PLAY!PLAY!together!!’, then we will play.”

Fortunately, that (whatever it was) seems to have happened, as Afrirampo reunited this year and in September released a new album, Afriverse, which I then spent days trying to find a download of in dark corners of the internet because it wasn’t remotely accessible to Americans. I’m happy to say that I have the album, my laptop hasn’t melted yet, and Afrirampo are still the same delightful band they always were, even after eight years of not playing together.

It’s a little pointless to try to analyze Afriverse, because I can’t understand the lyrics (and I suspect a lot are nonsense anyway) and there aren’t really songs on it. Instead, what you get with Afrirampo is a certain energy that no other band has. I feel the state of music and music appreciation has become even more dull since Afrirampo were last together. A lot of artists make very self-consciously serious music and it’s treated with a boring sort of solemn respect by writers, to the point that people forget that music is supposed to be a fun thing to enjoy and talk about.

Amid this landscape, Afrirampo’s music is once again a much-needed burst of color and joy. It’s rock music that has a really simple elemental appeal, where it sounds like two artists who love making music together that are having a blast. It doesn’t really need to be more than that for me. I just enjoy hearing Oni’s bursts of guitar noise, Pika’s thunderous, technically sound drumming, and all of the silly call-and-response vocals.

It’d be easy to write off this music as just two weird people making random noise. It would also be correct, mostly. What makes it listenable is that they have a sense of dynamics and are capable of some semblance of restraint in the form of quieter passages, which adds to the impact of their noisy freakouts. There are also a lot of sneaky melodies and pleasant sounds within all of the chaos they’re creating. More than maybe any other band, Afrirampo can go from zero to ten at any second, which makes listening to them kind of like being on a rollercoaster with a blindfold on.

At least some of my love for Afrirampo is contextual: I wouldn’t want every band to sound like this, but they are a great escape from “normal” rock music that is so concerned with structure and takes itself so seriously. Their joyous playing captures the true spirit of rock and roll in its spontaneity and freedom. No other band could really sound like Afrirampo, but many could learn from them.

Emma Ruth Rundle Delivers Another Masterpiece With “On Dark Horses”

My favorite album from 2016 was Emma Ruth Rundle’s Marked for Death. My favorite album from 2018 will be Emma Ruth Rundle’s On Dark Horses. I say this with confidence because it’s that good. It’s so heavy and beautiful, with emotion and intensity oozing out of every note. Nobody else I’ve heard is making music that is this immersive with such a balance of intimacy and raw power.

Rundle stands alone at the intersection of about 30 different musical genres. Sometimes she sounds like dream pop, other times she’s metal, or alternative rock, or post-rock. She often gets called folk, which I kind of get, but it just makes me think that it’s futile to try to describe her in simple genre buzzwords. It’s music that resists easy labels because nobody else has ever made it before. There are a lot of reference points and influences, clearly, but I consider her a true original with no real comparisons. She sounds like everything else and nothing else at the same time.

Rundle’s arrival at this distinct sound was one of my favorite parts of Marked for Death: more than any artist I’m a fan of, she naturally evolved her style from record to record until reaching what felt like a pinnacle. At the time, I was tempted to call it her masterpiece, and the only thing that stopped me was the thought that she was possibly capable of topping it. With On Dark Horses, she has.

Like her last album, On Dark Horses is all about the slow burn. The songs are methodically paced, which creates space for Rundle to do what she does best: create a mesmerizing atmosphere with her guitar. Her songs tend to simmer and then boil over, the quiet verses giving way to loud choruses and powerful dramatic climaxes. This is basic alternative rock quiet-loud stuff, but the way Rundle executes it feels very different. It never feels like a formula; it’s just the natural path the songs go down as Rundle expresses herself. She balances the quiet and loud aspects of her sound perfectly, creating maximum catharsis in every song.

As a singer, Rundle has the versatility to match her guitar. She and her instrument are always intertwined, and she is capable of singing lovely quiet songs, like “Races,” and also belting out some massive rock choruses like the radio-ready hook on “Dead Set Eyes.” It’s crazy that a few years ago, she was doing instrumental music or burying her voice under layers of guitar. Now she is singing with confidence and seems to know how good she is. That never quite manifests itself in conventional rock frontperson swagger, because that isn’t her style, but it’s a feeling that I get listening to it. If the non-music story of Marked for Death was her finding her sound, the story of On Dark Horses is her expanding on it with complete self-assuredness.

That confidence also translates to her lyrics, which may be the biggest shift from her last album. The words on On Dark Horses are more direct and tangible while retaining the poetic ambiguity that they’ve always had. They also play off some of the expectations formed by Marked for Death, which possibly led some to pigeonhole her as another in a line of tormented doom-and-gloom songwriters. “Light Song” is a love song about her husband (who sings and plays on this album) while “Darkhorse” is an encouraging song to her sister, with the lyric “in the wake of weak beginnings, we can still stand high.” Of course, this album still isn’t peppy or upbeat by any stretch of the imagination, but there is more nuance in it than it might get credit for.

But really, I’m not all that concerned with breaking down the lyrics and trying to figure out the “meaning,” because I think the power of Rundle’s music is in its gray areas and the way it washes over the listener without compelling them to feel a specific way. It fits Rundle’s whole style, which exists outside of all of these artificial borders that get ascribed to artists, where they’re expected to fit into certain invisible categorizable boxes. Over her last couple albums, she has created her own genre, and right now it’s my favorite.