Genres

Following the US election on Nov 8, 2016, we asked Dowsers contributors to discuss the moods and music the results inspired. We collected their responses in a series, After the Election.In the early ‘80s, just as I was starting high school, starting to think for myself for the first time, and developing semi-informed opinions about the world around me, that world took a turn toward the troubling. With Maggie Thatcher in power in England and Ronald Reagan assuming the U.S. presidency, the Western world suddenly made a treacherous shift toward the right, and the neocon movement was on the rise.Fortunately for me, right around the same time, I discovered the joys of college radio, opening up the burgeoning world of post-punk and new wave to my eager, impressionable ears. As luck would have it, a number of artists from that realm in both the U.K. and U.S. were turning out tunes that expressed their frustration at the state of things. Naturally, punk was perfect for crafting urgent, aural agitprop fueled by righteous anger, and the likes of Black Flag, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys, and The Bad Brains were right on the money in that regard. But from the politically conscious synth funk of Heaven 17’s “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” to The Specials’ spooky reggae noir portrait of Thatcher’s England on “Ghost Town,” there were plenty of ways to turn sociopolitical angst into affecting music that could both inform and inspire.That remained true throughout the ‘80s, and history shows that the evil these songs decried was eventually unseated. Three decades later, both sides of the big pond are beset by even darker political demons, and music remains a natural place to turn for solace and motivation. Soon, we will undoubtedly see a whole new crop of songs that speak to this disturbing moment in our history, but in the meantime, the ones that worked for us back in the ‘80s can still do the trick. Some of them are directed specifically to Thatcher and/or Reagan, but their targets are nevertheless timeless, and others provide just the kind of sympathetic sigh or rallying cry we need right now.

These days, Christian music and pop culture are so deeply intertwined, it’s easy to assume that it’s a marriage tested by time. In fact, it’s a relatively new phenomenon, and like many things that are now a part of our society’s status quo—the internet, meditation, health food—it reaches back to the hippie revolution. As scholar and writer Erik Davis points out in the liner notes to the Wanted: Jesus Christ compilation, “Many acidheads had ‘Christ trips’ in the sixties. Some went on to become Jesus People: hippie born-agains whose faith offered ‘One Way’ out of the chaos of the times. While rejecting the hedonism of the hippies, these long-haired converts also epitomized the countercultural dream of personal transformation through ecstatic and collective spiritual encounters.”Jesus People—or Jesus Freaks, as they proudly called themselves—initially were a California-based movement. As a result, their formative sounds are rooted in the Golden State’s utopian mix of wispy folk-pop and psychedelia. Larry Norman’s 1971 anthem “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” is a fragile meditation laced with strings and the singer/songwriter’s Neil Young-like cry. On the other hand, Agape’s “Wouldn’t It Be A Drag/Change Of Heart” is fiery, funky acid rock packed with soul-jarring organ and smoking guitars. Especially sublime is Azitis’ “Judgement Day,” which boasts Byrds-style harmonies, jazzy flute, and a freak-out middle section drenched in wah-wah.America’s older Evangelicals were perplexed, troubled, and often hostile to far-out hippie preachers like Lonnie Frisbee and their shaggy followers, who tended to eschew traditional worship and living for natural settings and communal homes (this issue is covered in great depth in Larry Eskridge’s engrossing tome, God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America). Nevertheless, over the course of the ’70s, the two groups did become one. This evolution is mirrored in how Jesus music gradually became less eccentric and weird and more professional and mainstream. By the decade’s end, the movement was churning out polished hits like “You Put This Love In My Heart,” a deliciously infectious tune from soft-rock tunesmith Keith Green, and “At The Cross,” from Maranatha! Music—slick, blue-eyed praise featuring the voices of Harlan Rogers and future solo star Kelly Willard.Nowadays, a good deal of the early Jesus music is only known to those older converts who were a part of the movement or to hardcore record collectors who specialize in hippie obscurities. But it has to be noted that the massive, global industry now labeled contemporary Christian music—or CCM—certainly wouldn’t exist were it not for the long-haired visionaries found on this playlist.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

In the mid-90s, RZA negotiated the famous "Wu-Tang deal," where the Clan as a group were signed to Steve Rifkinds trailblazing Loud Records, but all of their solo albums would be spread out across multiple major labels, ensuring that the industry would be working for the crew, not the other way around.Raekwon was approached by Puff Daddy about signing to Bad Boy, but he chose to stay in-house with Loud Records to drop his landmark debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…. Puffy saw Raekwon as the perfect weapon: smooth enough to glide on R&B features—as he and Ghostface did on Jodecis "Freek‘n You" remix—and rugged enough to stomp beats like he did on Mobb Deeps "Eye for a Eye." Puffy had perfected this formula with The Notorious B.I.G., and Raekwon was a worthy choice to follow (this was before they became rivals on the infamous “Shark Biters” skit). Instead, Raekwon made the best drug-dealer album of all time, but never found the breakthrough mainstream success of Biggie or Puffy.Twenty years later, you can hear hints of Puffys vision on Raekwon’s recently released seventh solo album, The Wild. G-Eazy, Lil Wayne, CeeLo Green, Andra Day, and J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League all pop up on the record, instead of Method Man, GZA, RZA, and crew, to make sizeable waves with newer audiences. Raekwon can thrive outside of the beloved Wu-Tang sound—his freestyle over Drakes "Pound Cake" is a perfect example—and his work on recent R&B tracks by Mack Wilds, Ryan Leslie, and Faith Evans proves hes still a capable voice on lighter fare. His radical slang therapy on albums by Ghostface, Prodigy, and Statik Selektah continues to keep his razor tongue sharp.The Wild has moments like "Cant You See," “Nothing,” and "This Is What It Comes Too" that can hang with anything from Raes past work, but a stronger plan of attack mightve made the album bulletproof instead of a mixed bag. Rick Ross is a good example of a contemporary street rapper who mixes mafia-flick visuals with sax-laden R&B, all while cranking out gothic bangers. And he’s even done a thing or two with Puffy over the years.Nonetheless, Raekwon is the most active and beloved member of Wu-Tang in the industry, popping up on albums from Kanye West, French Montana, ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Mob, 2 Chainz, and Action Bronson. The Wild fails to match up to his contemporaries, but the abilities that Puffy and RZA saw twenty years ago are still evident when other people call on the Chef. This playlist pulls together the sleek and sinister works of Raekwon: R&B sprinkled with Snow Beach pullovers, crack and weed, Staten Island killers who love Gladys Knight, crushed velour tracksuits, and Moët.

My father passed away on May 4, 2017, in Milwaukee, where he’d been living with my older brother Zac. I got out of work late that night, and after I returned my brother’s call and heard the news, I felt a little numb, too far physically removed from the personal significance of what had just happened 800 miles away. Driving home, I put on Little Feat’s “Easy to Slip,” a song I’d heard in Dad’s car a thousand times, and it helped me feel something that night when it was all almost too slippery and abstract to grasp.Three weeks later, Zac and his family flew out to Baltimore, with our father in an urn, to hold a memorial in his hometown. Richard David Shipley was born in Baltimore and lived most of his life there, selling his house of 25 years a month before his death. He wasn’t a religious man, so we celebrated his life in a secular fashion that seemed fitting, enjoying the earthly pleasures of music, food, and good company. We took over the upstairs of his favorite Fells Point bar, Kisling’s, for a few hours, and enjoyed some beer and the best bar food in Baltimore while a playlist I assembled of his favorite music blared in the background. “I can’t believe I’m listening to Michael McDonald,” my brother told me after I sent him a link to the playlist.Dad, like many other baby boomers, loved rock’n’roll ever since he saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan as a teenager, and he sang in a band in college. One night when his group was performing in Baltimore County, Dad met a musician who was in town recording an album. Lowell George invited my dad to come by the studio, where he saw the eccentric California band Little Feat run through songs for their fourth album, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, a chance meeting with one of the great cult bands of the ‘70s.I grew up with my mom and saw Dad on weekends, when we’d spend hours in the backseat of his car listening to him sing along with the radio and tapes of The Eagles and Tori Amos. He loved Tears For Fears’ ‘80s records, but it was their last U.S. hit, 1993’s “Break It Down,” that uniquely stuck with both him and me as a masterpiece. As a teenager, I got my first turntable and started to pore through the boxes of vinyl that Dad hadn’t touched since he got a CD player—all his Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac records. (I always thought it was unusual that he seemed to prefer Tusk to Rumours.)Dad and I continued to bond over music in his later years, and we’d go together to see Little Feat, Michael McDonald, and Jackson Browne. (He met my mother at a Jackson Browne concert in 1978.) But he remained open-minded to all sorts of music in ways that sometimes surprised me. When I was 17, I needed a ride to go see Boredoms and Scarnella at the 9:30 Club, and in retrospect it’s pretty remarkable that a 50-year-old dad actually really enjoyed Vision Creation Newsun-era Boredoms. I invited the Baltimore post-rock duo The Water to perform at my 30th birthday party, and Dad became a fan, buying their album and returning to see them live again.So much of the music here is “dad rock” in every sense of the word, but it’s never felt like a pejorative to me. I never loved everything Dad loved, and certainly I didn’t agree with him that Sting was as good solo as with The Police. But I learned how to love music partly through him, and I’ll never hear any of these songs, or a hundred other songs, without thinking of him.

Like so many great record companies, Greensleeves was a record shop before it was a label. Founded in the London neighborhood of Shepherd’s Bush by former accountant Chris Cracknell and a DJ from Norfolk named Chris Sedgwick, the shop spent two years building up a reputation as the place to find the tastiest island imports. Then in 1977, its owners made the shift to producing music in the UK themselves. The Greensleeves label made its debut with a 7-inch by Dr. Alimantado, a singer and toaster who was already finding favor with the city’s safety-pinned tastemakers thanks to DJ Don Letts and his punk-reggae parties at The Roxy. The arrival of Alimantado’s album The Best Dressed Chicken in Town—a high watermark for producer Lee “Scratch” Perry and for reggae in general—established Greensleeves as the real deal.Of the British labels that were instrumental in building a global audience for Jamaican music, Island and Trojan arguably retain greater name-brand cachet, partially because they arrived on the scene earlier than Cracknell and Sedgwick did. But Greensleeves may be the most influential due to the sheer gravity and diversity of its releases, as well as its ability to spread the hottest trends far and wide. Even before the label began, the store had a predilection for emergent sounds that had yet to enter the mainstream, its clientele largely turning up their noses at Bob Marley’s big sellers in favor of Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown. Greensleeves’ quest for freshness would reap the greatest dividends when Cracknell and Sedgwick made a fortuitous alliance with Henry “Junjo” Lawes, the producer and label owner who became the standard-bearer for dancehall in the 1980s. The ensuing cavalcade of new stars—Eek-A-Mouse, Barrington Levy, Yellowman, Beenie Man, Ninjaman—would all become part of the Greensleeves story.Whereas the rock audiences that Island cultivated with Marley were wary of Jamaica’s increasingly electronic sounds, Greensleeves devotees developed an insatiable appetite for the new riddims that arrived in the wake of landmark releases like Wayne Smith’s “Under Me Sleng Teng” in 1986, Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” in 1993, and Wayne Wonder’s “No Letting Go” in 2003. Another spin on producer Steven “Lenky” Marsden’s ubiquitous Diwali riddim—which yielded hits for Wonder, Elephant Man, and Bounty Killer too—Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” was another monster hit for the label.Acquired by New York’s VP Records in 2008 but still prominent and prolific, Greensleeves hits the big 40 this summer, celebrating with anniversary concerts in Paris, New York, and London. Given that their back catalog contains over 500 albums (with an impressively high ratio of winners), any salute to Greensleeves is bound to be a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of gesture. But surely a taste of riddim is better than no riddim at all.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Rihanna has become one of the most successful singles artists of our time thanks to her singular voice and charisma, as well as a small army of producers and songwriters that are itching to work on her next chart-topper. But she’s become an increasingly discriminating artist, turning down a number of surefire hits to pursue a more unique and personal sound. In the process, dozens of artists have wound up releasing the Rihjects that were pitched to Rihanna. Some were massive hits anyway, like Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” and Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop,” while some songs never found their way to a voice that could occupy Rihanna’s unique combination of dancehall, hip-hop, and EDM.

Ornette Colemans passing on June 12 at the age of 85 reminded us what a rare bird he truly was. He innovated a dissonant, harmolodic-based version of bop that he coined "free jazz," only to distance himself from the term for the rest of his life. He inspired controversy, intellectual debates and rebukes. He seemed distant from the pop marketplace, yet regularly collaborated with rock musicians in the second half of his career, including fellow iconoclast Lou Reed and guitarist Pat Metheny. Seth Colter Walls Rhapsody playlist does a good job of surveying Colemans memorable career.

Some think that Young Thugs elastic, start-stop flow and roaming, stream-of-conscious lyrics make him future of rap, while others question hes merely a Lil Wayne clone given way too much hype. Make up your mind via this excellent overview from Beats Neil Martinez-Belkin, which features early hits and guest appearances.

After the 1980 death of John Bonham brought Led Zeppelin to a crashing halt, Robert Plant honored his band’s legacy by letting go of it. After all, the ultimate way to respect what Zeppelin accomplished—and Bonham’s crucial, inimitable contributions to it—was to lay the band to rest, and make no attempts to recapture their uncommon alchemy and ungodly roar with some ringer. (And when you consider The Who’s middling post-Keith Moon albums from the early ‘80s, who could blame him.) So on his first couple of solo records, Plant remodeled himself for the ‘80s, the shirtless golden god of old reborn as a suave, tidily coiffed, synth-pop sophisticate, leaving the blooze-metal regurgitation to the Whitesnakes and Kingdom Comes of the world. But by 1987’s Now and Zen, the specter of Plant’s former band had become unavoidable—not only did Jimmy Page guest on the hot-rod-revving single “Tall Cool One,” the song climaxed with a barrage of Zeppelin samples. And through 1990’s Manic Nirvana and 1993’s Fate of Nations, Plant tried to put a modernist spin on Zeppelinesque bombast, before just saying “fuck it” and hooking up with Page for a reunion that yielded an MTV Unplugged special and an album of new originals, 1998’s Steve Albini-produced Walking Into Clarksdale.But while he spent the first two decades of his solo career running away from his musical legacy and then gradually inching back toward it, Plant has spent the 21st century establishing a new one. Starting with 2002’s Dreamland, Plant has seemed less like a solo artist fronting hired guns who are not Led Zeppelin, and more like a co-pilot taking direction from an amorphous cast of intriguing collaborators, including bluegrass queen Alison Krauss (his partner on 2007’s Grammy Award-winning Raising Sand) and folk-rock veteran Patti Griffin (with whom he communed—professionally and, for a time, romantically—on 2010’s Cajun-cooked Band of Joy). And then there’s his recurring backing band the Sensational Space Shifters (formerly Strange Sensation), an exploratory, stylistically dextrous ensemble centered around guitarists Justin Adams (who’s played with Jah Wobble and Brian Eno) and Liam Tyson (formerly of Britpop chancers Cast), bassist Bill Fuller (also of Geoff Barrow’s Krautrockin’ trio Beak), and a pair of Portishead associates, John Baggot (synths) and Clive Deamer (drums).Collectively, these musicians have encouraged Plant to dig deeper into Zeppelin’s roots—American blues, British folk, Middle Eastern textures—but instead of blowing them up to into a proto-metal pomp, they throw them into a frying pan and melt them down into a mercurial elixir that’s reformulated in fascinating ways. That’s not to say he doesn’t occasionally get the Led out—the 2005 track “Tin Pan Alley” may be steeped in eerie Radiohead-esque atmospherics, but it eventually explodes into a Viking wail that echoes back to “Immigrant Song.” However, for the most part, Plant is entirely at home in his lower register, turning in some of the most graceful, beautifully understated performances of his career on the piano ballad “A Stolen Kiss” and the jangle-pop gem “House of Love.” And we’ve seen greater evidence of the ravenous record collector who’s fond of chatting up his current musical obsessions in interviews. Plant’s post-millennial catalog is loaded with exceptional covers, from an apocalyptic interpretation of the traditional gospel spiritual “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” to the dreamy drift through Low’s “Silver Rider” to a reverential reading of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” that suggests Plant is well familiar with This Mortal Coil’s definitive version.The shadow of Led Zeppelin will forever loom large over Plant’s career, and so long as Plant, Page, and John Paul Jones are all still alive, murmurs of a reunion will refuse to die. But as Plant sets out for another voyage with the Sensational Space Shifters on his new album Carry Fire, let’s celebrate the 21st-century renaissance of an artist who should be regarded alongside Bowie, Peter Gabriel, and Neil Young as one of the most restlessly adventurous artists of his generation.

Once upon a time, Americana musicians dismissed synthesizers, drum machines, vocal processing, and programming as soulless products of our modern technological state. Where archaic, time-tested instruments like banjo, guitar, and drum kits express authentic human experience, these newfangled gizmos, with their myriad robotic zaps and pulsating repetitions, are cold and artificial. This was some deeply ingrained thinking, and let’s not forget: It was just over 50 years ago that, according to legend, hardline folk revivalist Pete Seeger attempted to take an axe to the cables amplifying Bob Dylan’s infamous electric set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. And that was over nothing more than some electricity!Times sure have changed. You can’t throw a rock these days without hitting an Americana, blues, or other roots-flavored artist who isn’t plucking a banjo over bubbling drum machines or weaving acoustic fingerpicking around club grooves. Currently, one of the biggest bands in the U.S. is Judah & the Lion, whose omnipresent mega-hit “Take It All Back” is high-energy bluegrass filtered through the digital production qualities of hip-hop. The same goes for The Avett Brothers’ “Ain’t No Man” off of True Sadness, which is laced with flickering synthesizers.Sonically speaking, some of this stuff ventures pretty far out. Where Judah & the Lion and The Avetts are fairly subtle in their digital flirtations, singer/songwriter Justin Vernon—a.k.a. Bon Iver—sounds like an Auto-Tune-drenched cyborg on his critically acclaimed 22, A Million, a full-length album that’s a million light years removed from the rustic indie folk that launched his career. Then there’s the Gazzo remix of American Authors’ “Best Day of My Life,” which turns the bouncing, folk-pop ditty into a bass-thumping banger perfect for sets at the Electric Daisy Carnival. Can you imagine what Pete Seeger would think of roots music mixed with EDM? We shudder to think.