The Killers, Bodega, and 6 New Producer-Led Hip-Hop Records to Spin
Although we are a group of straight, middle-aged white guys, we pride ourselves on musical diversity (to some degree anyway). And in this edition, we cover some of that varied ground. From a range of current hip-hop (with a focus on the producers) to anti-capitalist but plenty catchy indie pop to (an attempt at) straightahead rock and roll inspired by a family trip to Vegas. Hope you enjoy, and if you disagree, let us know in the comments: we do sign our reviews here.
New album(s): Though we are past the 1/3 mark of 2024, we don’t have a massive rap record on our hands yet. Of course, we have Beyonce and entertaining-if-stupid diss (and then apology?) tracks among J. Cole, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar, but the year has yet to have any of the major MCs take over.
In the off-the-mainstream rap grid, however, the year has been stronger than ever and, at least for me, defined by producers. (And, curiously, by lyrics about food). Mainly in my case, by producers who are channeling the current crop of incredible underground MCs whose lyrics and flow range from old school boom-bap to lower key and longer-winded. I’ll give a slightly longer review to the first 3 below and then a more cursory name-check to the other 3, so we keep this post under 10,000 words, but trust me when I tell you that all 6 deserve your attention.
Lafandar by Heems & Lapgan. This is my favorite record of the year so far, by far. On the first 20 or so listens, it was almost entirely for the lyrics. It is hard for me to begin to compare any album to “Paul’s Boutique,” but it’s also hard for me to think of another comparison point. Heems (whose real name is Himanshu Kumar Suri and is Hindu-American) was half of the provocative hiphop duo Das Racist and known for deft wordplay, but this is no “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” stuff. From the silly (“I’m not Janet Jackson/I got no control” or “Your bars elementary like Abbott/you can’t see me, I’m in the next tax bracket”) to the sublime (“I spin your man like a Sufi”) to the racial (“I’m lost and found/I’m lost and brown” or “I look like I drive an Uber”) to the political (“how does my accent sound when I’m crying/how does my accent sound when I’m drying” or “Yo, Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects”), Heems and his guests (from the incredible Your Old Droog to Kool Keith to Quelle Chris to Open Mike Eagle to Blu, who you’ll hear about below) deliver memorable, wait-what-did-he-just-say lyrical moments verse after verse, track after track. And on food, you’ll hear about carne asada, kielbasa, curry goat, baba ghanoush, to name just a few, and some Orange Julius, Glen Fidych, and Glen Livet to wash it all down.
But the star of the show as you dive in more, just like the Dust Brothers on Paul’s Boutique, is producer Lapgan. The beats range from booming (“Obi Toppin”) to more languid and orchestral (“Yo Momma”). And just like the lyrics, the samples and layered sounds, many of them rooted in South Asian and Middle Eastern music and culture, will have you rewinding and asking wait-what-did-he-just-play. Beats and samples are always essential to the best hip-hop tracks but rarely do they work so seamlessly to elevate lyrics in a way that Lapgan does hear. If a picture is worth 1000 words, the samples and sounds on Lafandar are worth 1000 verses. Like Paul’s Boutique, Lafandar is an album you need to just play over and over to experience, and each time through, a different track will be your favorite.
Regular Henry Sessions by Regular Henry, Moses Rockwell, and Plain Old Mike. When you need a quick break from Heems, check out producer Plain Old Mike’s collaboration with MCs Regular Henry and Moses Rockwell. The lyrics don’t quite get to Heems’ level, but they’re stunningly close. On the track “Wet Cement,” Regular Henry raps, “I took a bath and smell worse than before/I only observe and report.” Observing and reporting on so much of the mundane and daily is the core of the lyrical content, and it’s consistently refreshing and fascinating. On the Bandcamp page, the artists declare that the album is essentially an homage to De La Soul, and we get name-checks of each De La member. On “Raise Hell,” we get gems like “I got a new job where I nod slow” and “I’m at dollar bin if I’m not home/I never heard a song by Pop Smoke.” The food references are throughout, but tracks called “Gas Station Sushi” and “Duck Sauce” weave them together with real life moments that will have you rewinding constantly. The beats are infectious, the tempos and tones vary, and the samples and cuts are intricately layered. And how could I not recommend a record that has a track called “Kruk Mullet” rife with old school baseball references and quoting the Big Lebowski?
Temple Needs Water. Village Needs Peace by Real Bad Man & Lukah. Real Bad Man has been one of the most exciting producer collectives in recent years, but to me, they never had the complete lyrical experience to match the style and sound. On this new record, the LA-based producer crew joins forces with Memphis-based MC Lukah (with guests like billy woods and Sypha), and they’ve now found the right match. The record is an epic journey, starting with the lyric “Rehabilitation is the first step to rebuild a nation” in the opening track “The Facilitator,” and from there, Lukah takes us through different forms and phases of life in search of community, peace, and healing. Each song title starts with “The,” and there is a throughline in the arc of the storyline and theme. The production from Real Bad Man also goes on a journey, from chill and laid back (“The Cleansing”) to mysterious (“The Shadow Dancer”) to louder and more in your face (“The Poets Pour Libations”). This is a layered and nuanced record, where you can hear producer and MC drawing each other out on each track.
Out of the Blue by Blu & Shafiq Husayn. This album starts with gunfire and the voice of Tom Brokaw introducing a news documentary from the 1980s in LA where he declares “it is a war” and then repeats all of the same, usual, tired tropes of life in LA, the scourge of gangs, and the “war on drugs.” This jaw-dropping record then spends the rest of the time both playing up and fighting against those tropes, with plenty of news and TV clips from the era woven in. Producer Shafiq Husayn is known for using sounds and samples from around the world, but here his work with MC Blu stays focused in LA and it works (the two have collaborated on several projects before with different sound palates). Another mega-list of guest MCs work with these samples and hard-driving beats to produce a record that somehow makes these well-worn themes and scenes feel fresh.
Audio EDibles by Tone Spliff and Edo.G. LA producer Tone Spliff churns out multiple projects per year, but this collaboration with Edo.G encapsulates all he’s been trying to do for years. There are name checks and samples from the Golden Age, from De La Soul to Slick Rick, and at one point, Edo.G says “the truest rap is the boom and bap,” and most of the record is spent trying to prove just that. The food references litter the whole record, but maybe none better than “you’re salty in a jar/like gefilte fish.”
74: Out of Time by Ol’ Burger Beats. This is the most chill record of the bunch, with producer Ol’ Burger Beats serving up a true lounge classic. Guest MCs include billy woods, Pink Siifu, Lil B, Quelle Chris, and Tha God Fahim. (Brad)
Album from an upcoming/recent live show: Our Brand Could be Your Life by Bodega. “What’s the difference between an artist and an advertiser?” So asks the Brooklyn band (trust me when I tell you that this band could not be from anywhere else) Bodega, or at least an automated voice of some kind asks, on the opening to “Bodega Bait” (a sort of play on the band’s former name, Bodega Bay). As the music kicks in, singer and rhythm guitarist Ben Hozie announces, “this is the Bodega song/it’s not going to be very long/we have so many things to sell you/but there’s no time left to sing along.“
That the world has so many things to sell you is more or less the core mantra of Bodega’s music, and they are tapping into a long and well-worn line of musicians and artists calling out the hypocrisy of big business, the blurred line between art and commerce, and the collective numbness of the population who go along with it all. From Warhol (who the band made a song about on a previous record) to “The Who Sell Out” to Radiohead and beyond, striking back and shaking your fist at the fact that we’re living in a world constructed by big business has, well, sold a lot of records and merch.
On the new Bodega record (we’ll come back to the live show), the fact that this is not the newest of themes leads to an inconsistent result. As a number of reviews have pointed out, the band went back to old material for this album, revisiting a number of songs they had originally crafted in their previous iteration. Going back to the well to revisit old material is also not a new idea (it’s sold some records for Taylor Swift of late), but it can lead to a jumble of styles and approaches that make the whole less the sum of its parts, especially if what the band is saying hasn’t really changed.
Don’t get me wrong: the highs on the record are super high. “Tarkovski” is an earworm-y banger with a blistering riff, driving drum line, lyrics that don’t beat you over the head about consumer culture, a straightahead chorus (“take me to the zone”), and an extended bridge that the band made great use of during the live show by mixing in an older tune (“Pillar on the Bridge of You”). “Protean” is a sweet and catchy song that takes military themes to love (“we’re an island in a military campaign/colonel taking orders from champagne”) and wrestles more honestly withthe challenge the band wrestles with throughout the record: if art is all commerce, how do you distinguish good from bad?
“Stain Gaze” slows the pace but not the intensity. The drums are bigger and lead the track, and the lyrics guide you rather than create a neon sign (“we played and prayed to stain glass/with our colored wax”). But like too many tracks, the song ends with some random recording and the band being too clever for its own good, with an automated voice reminding you to curate a personal brand that works seamlessly with a corporate brand. On “Cultural Consumer III” (yes, there is a 3-part song cycle called “Cultural Consumer;” I didn’t say there were being subtle about this), a few Television-y notes lead into another driving riff, nice vocal interplay and sound effects by secondary singer and percussionist Nikki Belfiglio, and lyrics weaving in Brooklyn (multiple references to the Barclays Center and Park Slope) and some of the most famous rock critiques of fame and commerce (“Anthology, real love/And he’s got news for you all/The cult consumer was Paul”).
There are plenty of misses, generally coming when the band slows things down. “Born Into by What Consumes” is a dirge of some kind about art and taste (“art is artifice” and references to Van Gogh and punctuation). “Cultural consumer I” goes on about a guy who’s a “Barnes and Noble member bibliophile” consuming “tomes about Rome” and more “33 1/3” volumes than they can churn out. “Webster Hall” is getting buzz, but it’s honestly a fairly boring song about seeing shows at the NYC venue and getting bummed out by the annoying crowd (“you think that you are dancing/but you are just beating me up”). In the end, Bodega just aren’t great writers, and when the music can’t give the words a jolt of catchy and jumpy energy, there isn’t enough there to keep you connected.
But, as I wrote in the last post, sometimes you just need to see a band live to understand. In the case of Ratboys, it was that I needed a great show to unlock the brilliance of the album. With Bodega, I will stand by my opinion that this is not a great record, but wow, do they put on a show. And even if it can’t salvage the record upon further listen, it does bring their aesthetic and flare to the fore in a way that connects, even when the songs don’t totally work on their own.
“ATM” is the best example. On the record, it opens with the automated recording babbling on: “Act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should be the only exception to the universal law.” It’s a wonder anyone keeps listening after that, and the song turns into an anthemic effort to take down the artifice of the ATM (a stylized ATM graces the album cover, shown below). The music is big and bold, but the silliness of the lyrics makes it hard to do much besides roll your eyes as the chorus builds.
But this is what the show opened with, and it felt like a true burst of joy. The energy was infectious, and the overdone attempts at irony faded into pure fun. Belfiglio had a high hat that she played throughout the show, and at times, she even went back to the full set and played along with drummer Adam Shumski (who stood for the show, something I always love). She added “I was definitely a theater kid” flare to every chorus and backing vocal, and it finally made you feel like we are all just in on the joke, rather than bored at the put-on-feeling cultural criticism.
Besides ATM and the Tarkovski/Pillar combination, the best songs for me during the night came from the older material, especially from 2022’s excellent Broken Equipment, including “Doers,” “Statuette on the Console,” and “How Can I Help Ya?” On the last record, the writing felt fresher and less obvious, and the live set seemed to get an extra dash of energy from these tracks; the same was true for even older songs like “Shiny New Model” and “Warhol.” Lead guitar player Dan Ryan especially seemed to step out and flex during these songs.
Perhaps nothing sums up this dynamic between a miss on record and hit live better than “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Drum.” Trying to cleverly riff on the title of the classic Pink Floyd track, the lyrics tell the story of a minor car wreck (and also murder?) in Denver. The music highlights what is a truly excellent rhythm section, but again, the lyrics just fall flat. But live, the song came together in an “oh, that’s what they’re trying to do” kind of way, and it felt invigorating. The drumming interplay between Belfiglio up front (and going back to the kit) and Shumski took off, and we even got a real live drum solo, arena rock style.
In a world so completely consumed and dominated by corporate culture and branding, shaking your fist at the man and the machine doesn’t really feel that exciting anymore. With most artists struggling to get by, who even talks about “selling out” anymore? Sadly, The Man seems to have won, and to answer the band’s opening question, there may not be much difference anymore between artist and advertiser. But there is a difference between advertiser and performer, and in its live set, Bodega proved we always need more of the latter. (Brad)
Album being rediscovered (at least 10 years old): Sam’s Town by The Killers. For spring break ’24, we took our youngest, age 12, to Las Vegas (his college-age brothers are already planning a trip after turning 21). It wasn’t just his first visit to Vegas, but mine as well, surprising since I enjoy a good (low-stakes) wager. But in my ‘20s, I was low on funds to support such a trip from the east coast, and as I got older, work never sent me there. Anyway, the trip was fun – great food, a good day on the golf course, a relaxing trip to the spa (for my wife, sans me and the boy), a dip in the pool, and fun (child appropriate, for the most part) entertainment options. The music? Eh, not so much. Going out we’d hear the same mindless techno beats. Inside the casinos? Cheesy cover bands. At the pool, the soundtrack bounced from multi-era pop to bro-country. And of course, there are the ads for the many residencies in town, some of which were high-end, even if they didn’t match my interests (Mariah Carey, Garth Brooks) and others, uh, less so (Scorpions, Foreigner). My musical highlight of the trip was listening to Sinatra while the Bellagio fountains danced along.
This all got me thinking about bands that came out of Vegas, and a quick Google search yielded a ton of names I had never heard of, along with familiar acts Panic! At The Disco, Imagine Dragons (a favorite of my older kids when they were in third grade), Five Finger Death Punch, The Crystal Method, and, of course, The Killers (Vegas also likes to claim Jenny Lewis, but Rilo Kiley started up in Los Angeles, not her hometown, so I say no).
While this might be subjective and a bit generationally influenced, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say The Killers are the biggest band ever to originate in Vegas. And yet, they are a huge blind spot for me. Of course I know the mega-hit “Mr. Brightside” and I’m generally familiar with its corresponding 2004 album Hot Fuss, but I wasn’t very into it when it was released. The band continued to release albums, and I continued to, well, not really pay attention, even though their last two albums – 2020’s Imploding the Mirage and 2021’s Pressure Machine – received mostly positive reviews from critics. So in honor of a successful family vacation (and to celebrate coming home from the casino in the black), I decided to address one of my blind spots and revisit 2006’s Sam’s Town, The Killers’ follow-up to Hot Fuss.
I resolved to revisit (or, in my case, visit) Sam’s Town with fresh ears, because my prior knowledge of the album as a pop culture discussion point was as a disappointment on its initial release and a later reappraisal as an underappreciated semi-masterpiece. The former, because The Killers – in particular, lead singer and songwriter Brandon Flowers - shifted away from the “21st Century Duran Duran” sound of Hot Fuss and openly declared the band’s admiration for, and influence by, Bruce Springsteen. The latter, because as the internet grew, music fans decided that most critics were a bunch of old men who didn’t know squat (probably best to move on from this…).
Sam’s Town is neither a failure nor a masterpiece. It’s good, not great. It certainly has its flaws. And it is definitely sounds like The Killers making their first attempt at becoming a heartland rock band. I’ll start with a positive – some of the songs are catchy as hell. Lead single “When You Were Young” is an FM radio jam that is thoroughly Boss-inspired. But I have to mix in a negative – the lyrics make absolutely no fucking sense. “We’re burning down the highway skyline / On the back of a hurricane that started turning / When you were young.” I have no clue what this means, even in the context of the rest of the song. “Bones” has the… well… bones of a really good song (sorry), something that The Gaslight Anthem would have released post-’59 Sound. I’m willing to ignore the five seconds of choir that open the song – there are some seriously pretentious and bombastic moments on this album, and I’ll highlight a few more later – and the keyboards fit well with the rock guitar riff, but both are overshadowed by the backing horns. It worked on “Can’t Hardly Wait,” but it doesn’t work here. And the less said about the awkward, obvious, icky lyrics, the better (“Don’t you wanna come with me? / Don’t you wanna feel my bones on your bones? / It’s only natural”).
“Uncle Jonny” opens with guitar chords reminiscent of R.E.M.’s “Finest Worksong” and a pounding beat, words I would not have expected to use to describe a Killers song. It sounds great, and on first listen I had high hopes. But then the lyrics kick in, and the opening lines sound like an excerpt from an elementary school anti-drug book (“When everybody else refrained / My Uncle Jonny did cocaine / He’s convinced himself right in his brain / That it helps take away the pain”). Don’t focus too much on the lyrics, and it’s a really good listen. Similarly, “This River is Wild” is a fun, straight-up rocker made for an arena show. It’s a little bombastic, but it slaps. Like a lot of songs on this album, the lyrics don’t make a ton of sense, but it works in a “shut off your brain and enjoy” kind of way.
The title track, which opens the album, is another one of their heartland rock musical highlights. It’s a true banger. And for the most part, the lyrics keep up, diving into real Springsteen territory (“Nobody ever had a dream ‘round here / But I don’t really mind that it’s starting to get to me”). By George, they’ve got it! As with several other tracks on Sam’s Town, the band falls short of churning out a truly good or even great song. The title track could have done without the 30 seconds of soaring keyboards at the start – again, note the sprinkle of pretention – and they can’t help but dropping in some nonsense in the lyrics (“I took a shuttle on a shockwave ride / Where people on the pen pull the trigger for accolades / I took a bullet and looked inside it / Running through my veins, an American masquerade”). Huh? And speaking of pretentious, the second track, “Enterlude,” is roughly 50 seconds of slow piano chords and Brandon Flowers singing lyrics like “We hope you enjoy your stay, it’s good to have you with us,” while the closing track, “Exitlude” (ugh) is a longer, full-band, Beatles-aping version of the same thing (“It’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day”).
While some of the tracks I’ve mentioned have had their positives and negatives, a few of the songs on Sam’s Town are just straight misses. “For Reasons Unknown” comes off as bland pop rock with lyrics that are just dumb (“I caught my stride / I flew and I flied / I know if destiny’s kind / I’ve got the rest of my mind”). “Read My Mind” is another song that leans hard into the heartland rock lyrics (“I never really gave up on / Breakin’ out of this two-star town”), but does so in a song that’s synth-heavy until a guitar solo pops up in the final minute, making for an odd mix. “My List” is a somber, stalker-ish misfire.
Sam’s Town has some of the elements of a good album, but it doesn’t fully come together. The Killers deserve credit for trying to move beyond “Mr. Brightside,” and even if it didn’t always work, Sam’s Town certainly had its enjoyable moments. Do I expect to go back to Sam’s Town or dive further into The Killers’ post-Hot Fuss discography? Probably not. Am I glad I finally gave Sam’s Town a listen? Absolutely. If nothing else, it gave me a better perspective on The Killers. Previously, with the Grammy appearances and big arena concerts, to me they were akin to performers in a Vegas spectacle. Now, after listening to Sam’s Town, The Killers are a band. (Brian)