It’s the return of the Lightning Round! There’s no gravity in the decision, I just thought it was time to start covering little things I really want to talk about instead of worrying about wrapping them into a portentous feature piece. I’ll try to put these out every week or two, and it’ll be just anything that comes to mind, music or otherwise. No pressure, y’all. No pressure.

Trash Sound Conglomerate – “So Over Summer”

When I was interviewing Jordan Brawner for the piece I did on Hurry Up, Snufkin, she mentioned one particular band she was crushing on hard. That band is Trash Sound Conglomerate, a three-piece garage rock band whose name couldn’t be any more accurate (but in a really good way). I got the chance to listen to a new single they were planning on putting out – it comes out today, actually – called “So Over Summer,” and it was my first taste of what the trio does. I was blown away, and I imagine if I were in front of their actual amps I might have been literally blown away. It’s a super simple pop song that’s kind of surf-y, but there’s this caked-on layer of fuzz and noise that arrives like a punch to the face.

When I saw “raw” here, I don’t mean it in regards to emotionality or in a way that might signify they’re unpolished. They clearly know what they’re doing, and here they come across like a band of gremlins eager to push just a little bit harder than what we might assume they’re capable of. It’s garage that, as opposed to a lot of other “garage” bands, doesn’t feel like a put-on. I would love nothing more than for them to lean into that chaotic spirit, and that’s why I’m excited to see what they do next.

Billy Woods – Aethiopes

I’m not new to this record, and neither is this record all that new. It dropped sometime in May this year, and it’s already been making the rounds between people who give a shit – really give a shit – about the prospects of hip-hop. If you’re one of those people, you already know that Billy Woods is one of the most exciting voices in that field, although to call him a rapper, or even a hip-hop artist, would feel reductive. He’s really more of a spoken-word poet whose poetry occasionally assumes the form of hip-hop. Previous works of his (including his stellar collaboration with Moor Mother, Brass) see him layering vivid imagery over a cadence that flows and crashes and erodes like a dirty waterfall.

I really liked Brass, but Aethiopes is on a different level altogether. I hesitate to use any typical descriptors, like “dense” or “bleak,” because they also feel like understatements. The moment “Asylum” kicks in you hear the brittle treble of guitar and piano crackle like it was recorded off of cheap vinyl. That’s the record’s first wild success, the visceral effect of its samples. On “No Hard Feelings,” jazz horns and skronking pipes bleat in emergency, the dirty laundry machines and piss-soaked room corners coming into hopeless focus. Disembodied voices punctuate the din and mourn as if in some great tragedy papered over by time. Resonant bells clash on “Wharves” like buoys at sea; an open piano reveals closed hearts throughout “The Doldrums.” It’s a sick pleasure to experience, but a pleasure nonetheless.

As a lyricist, Woods is incredible here. Across Aethiopes, he paints a dire portrait of Black suffering that’s so layered it’ll probably take all year to comb through its intricacies. The record’s best songs, like “No Hard Feelings,” are pristine short stories that land like fucked-up koans. Other tracks, like “Sauvage,” are coated in sickening, dispassionate violence. Without diving too deep for now, there’s a temporal distortion between now and the Africa of thousands of years ago that he weaves between effortlessly, in effect sewing the connection on a subconscious level. That might take time to parse, but there’s no denying that Aethiopes exudes self-evident greatness on every perceivable level.

Pool Kids – Pool Kids

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when I really paid attention to Twitter for my music recommendations. Maybe I’m a bad journalist now, but I’ve been paying less attention to Twitter as a form of mental self-preservation. Can’t blame me, right?

All last week I was getting nothing but retweets from people on my feed insinuating that I had to check out the debut record from Pool Kids, a Tallahassee emo/math-rock band who apparently put a lot of time and energy into this release. It sounds like it. Produced by Mike Vernon Davis, who was also partially responsible for Great Grandpa’s glow-up Four of Arrows, Pool Kids bears a similar element of discovery and surprise at every turn. Christine Goodwyne is an excellent singer, and she and guitarist Andrew Anaya make a great pair of songwriters. At a baseline, the record is as passionate as any good emo, but all its little details feel properly cared for too. Those details take a keen, attentive ear to catch, but then math rock is not necessarily meant to be background music.

One thing I’ll say is that, for its lush sound and complex arrangements, this is not music I haven’t heard before. In fact, one particular grumble I tend to levy against the math-rock/emo combo is that it occasionally forms less than the sum of its parts. Traditional emo chord progressions can oversimplify something as seemingly boundless as math-rock, and that’s also true for the way uncommon time signatures and start-stop arrangements can overcomplicate the simplicity that the best emo approaches.

That being said, there’s also a reverse of that argument. When I hear a song like “That’s Physics, Baby,” I also hear sugary sentiment amplified in the torrent of tapped guitar notes, like the way acids bring out the sweetness in a dish. The brooding “Swallow,” I don’t think, would work as well without the way Goodwyne stays in the center of Anaya’s off-kilter arpeggios like a weathervane in a storm. Pool Kids consistently makes exceptions to the rule I’ve developed for myself, and that’s a testament to the care that went into it.

Al Jarreau – Breakin’ Away

I used to joke that Al Jarreau was an uncle of mine, given that he’s really the first person I ever fell for as an artist. People would give me an odd look, so I stopped saying it, but it’s still kind of true to me! His music – especially the trio of records he did for Warner in the early 80s – bounces with a joyousness that’s easy for anybody of any age to understand. I remember being five years old and hearing This Time for the first time: I distinctly recall the way his fiery interpretation of Chick Corea’s “Spain” kicks off Side-B, except I didn’t know how vinyl records worked so I assumed it was the start of the record.

To me, Jarreau feels like one of those once-iconic singers that’s just been lost to time. Unlike plenty of other artists from that time period, he nor his estate (he passed away last decade) has spent any time attempting to preserve his legacy. His albums haven’t been remastered save for their CD releases, and legacy projects or reissues have been few and far between since the start of the century. Yet every time I show friends or acquaintances his music, they’re all blown away. I think that’s because it’s both incredibly easy listening (the kind that used to bloat the airwaves but now comes across as nostalgic) and occasionally very melodically complex. Internally I now lump Jarreau’s music in with something like city pop: ultra-accessible music that serves as a vivid reminder of an unlived past.

My twin brother and I recently spent some time in San Fransisco just chilling, and considering the role of his music in the California pop/R&B scenes during his heyday, I thought it was the perfect time to pull out the music while we were there. It’s hard now for me to hear the title track and not think about Castro Street, or hear “Roof Garden” and not imagine the tamping down of inhibition, the joie de vivre inherent in the simple act of dancing. I prefer This Time for nostalgic reasons, but I think Breakin’ Away might be Jarreau’s best record because it formed a successful, difficult-to-execute transition from jazz to pop. The A-side is sick, the B-side is also sick but relatively more experimental. If you haven’t checked out his music, you’d be doing yourself a favor by diving in.