Today's most divisive music isn't really all that contentious. For all the listeners and critics who deride Animal Collective as self-indulgent, Sufjan Stevens as pretentious or the Black Eyed Peas as base, there are few with genuinely strong feelings about any of those actsthey may feel mild annoyance, at most, but most likely their dominant feeling is just mere indifference.
I suspect that's not going to be the case for Salem, the Michigan trio whose new album King Night demands strong opinions. That's in part because it's an absolutely exhilarating record, a powerful mash-up of goth, dream-pop, house and (here's where the novelty comes in) Southern rap music. There are traces of The Knife, Crystal Castles and Three 6 Mafia here, but for all the familiar undertones, the record plays out unlike any from those acts. It's hard to overstate how massive it all sounds. When IMAX movie theaters tease their THX sound systems before screenings, they could easily play King Night's title track:
Tracks like that one aren't the ones that are going to alienate listeners, though. The ones that will are those that draw deeper from Three 6 Mafia screw-rap, with singer Jack Donoghue slowing his voice to a thuggish, Southern drawl:
The above track, "Trapdoor," is perhaps the album's boldest statement and yet also its most difficult to defendan homage to horror-rap that boarders on racial parody. It's hard to defend. At best, this is the terrain of Juggalos; at worst, this is a smug, perhaps even offensive send-up of rap culture.
Donoghue's raps are even less tasteful in video footage of the band's aloof (and purportedly awful) live show, which I suggest anybody curious about King Night avoid watching for the sake of their future enjoyment of the record, yet link to in the interest of full disclosure: These are the people who made this record. If that's a deal breaker for you, you won't be alone.
|
|
