Milwaukee expat Milo is having a career year, which is saying something. The now-Maine rapper kicked off 2018 with a sensational album under his Scallops Hotel alias, then kept the momentum going with a collab project with New York rapper Euclid under the moniker Nostrum Grocers. Those were both great records, ones worth returning to for years to come, but they can't help but feel like teasers for today's main event, his new Milo album budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies, which features some of the most pleasurable, approachable music he's ever recorded.
His last two Milo albums were abstracted treatises on Black Lives Matter, brilliant defenses of people of color's basic right to exist and be heard. Those themes haven't completely disappeared (he opens the record thinking about Amadou Diallo, and there are reminders of Trump's America throughout), but by and large this is a lighter, freer record than its predecessors, a little less fraught, a good deal funnier. But it's heady and substantial, and musically it may be the most inviting thing he's ever done, all dreamy vibes and jazzy flourishes. Where his previous albums were exercises in disruption, here he usually lets the beats ride out undisturbed. You can really get lost in this thing.
Here's how Milo's describes the record:
this album doesn’t have an arc or a point or a moral to preach. it’s a contemporary rhythm and poetry album made by someone who loves the form and enjoys creating what they want to hear in the world. all of my songs become spells. i go out into the world, corralling small groups together and we yell and cry and howl and laugh around these words, some being gorgeous lies that come true. with 7 years of urban shamanism under my belt i no longer seek the story of the adventurer, i seek the experience. i cannot tell you all about it as that would commodify, as that would turn what is decidedly non fractal into SEO keyword. i refuse. so what you hear in this album is simply a pamphlet. little aphorisms and landmines to burst your mind out of the mundane a moment, broken myth and hopes and torments, riddled out of myself as they came, very little editing.
this record is on the other side of time and guarded from the avantgarde and their cynicisms as well as the mainstream and their perpetual boredom tropes. my collaborators and i got funky and we dared to share that feeling with you, we allowed ourselves to feel ourselves and what followed was exhilarating. a long time coming been coming a long time.
budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies.
charlie parker was a great electrician who went around wiring people.
i want to be a great electrician.
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And it looks like Milo hasn't forgotten his Milwaukee ties. The record features a couple killer production cameos from Randal Bravery and Q The Sun, and a guest lecture from Milwaukee artist Reggie Baylor, who shares Milo's views on the commodification of art.
You can stream budding ornithologists are weary of tired analogies below. I've only listened to it once so far, so I'll avoid sweeping declarations. I can't say it's the best thing he's ever recorded yet, though it just might be. So I'll just leave it as this for now: It's a masterpiece.
