The Week in Rotation
Voodoo is the kind of record that lodges somewhere below the ribcage and stays. D’Angelo released it in 2000 and then essentially vanished for fifteen years—which gives the whole thing a weight it already didn’t need more of. The mix of funk, soul, and hip-hop moves like something alive, something warm, and his voice does things to the space around it. His debut Brown Sugar deserves its own hour of attention. But Voodoo is the one that doesn’t let go. Timeless is a word people use too freely. This one earned it.
Chilly Gonzales—real name James Charles Beck—is a Canadian pianist who decided that rap over a chamber orchestra was a reasonable idea, and on The Unspeakable he turned out to be completely right. Strings instead of beats. Actual dramatic structure instead of the verse-chorus loop you could set a watch to. He announced the album with the line You’re about to be ear-fucked,
which remains the most accurate piece of press copy I’ve ever read about anything.
Portishead put together a two-hour mixtape for London’s "I’ll Be Your Mirror" festival, and like most things they touch it turned out to be a sustained argument for a particular kind of listening. They pulled from The Books, Caribou, PJ Harvey—people who understand that discomfort and pleasure aren’t opposites. The British have always grasped that the best curated playlists feel like a single unbroken thought.
Häzel’s Playground EP sits somewhere in the same territory as early Weeknd and Frank Ocean—late-night R&B where the production does as much emotional work as the vocals. Before going solo he’d been making beats for Drake and Onra, and that background shows in the best way; the EP has a self-possession that most debut releases spend years faking. Worth following closely.
Songs for the Deaf is one of those records I keep reaching for when I need something that just commits. Queens of the Stone Age in 2002, Dave Grohl behind the kit, Josh Homme at his most focused—it clatters and detonates for forty-seven minutes and leaves nothing unresolved. Even the radio DJ interludes between songs enhance the thing rather than interrupt it, which is nearly impossible to pull off. Soundtrack to a night that starts too late and ends badly in the best possible way.
And then the Jackie Brown soundtrack, because Tarantino understood early that a film’s music doesn’t need to comment on the action—it can simply be the action. Randy Crawford’s "Street Life" and Bobby Womack’s "Across 110th Street" are two of the most perfectly placed pieces of music in any film from that decade. Disco, soul, groove. The kind of album you don’t so much listen to as get inside.