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$12.99 CD
$15.99 LP+MP3
$9.99 MP3
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TUNE-YARDS
W H O K I L L
(4AD)
 "Gangsta"
"Bizness"
tUnE-yArDs, the one-woman project of one Merrill Garbus, justifiably caught a lot of attention with her debut Bird-Brains a couple of years ago. Famously made entirely on a decidedly low-tech digital voice-recorder and shareware recording software, she constructed a compelling set of songs on a frail skeleton of ukulele, percussion loops, field recordings, and vocals. Sometimes hushed, sometimes fierce, it was a wonderfully hard-to-define blend of folk, lo-fi indie, and some powerful weirdness, and it brought Garbus before an ever-increasing audience; beginning as a self-released digital-only album, eventually Bird-Brains was re-issued on mega-indie 4AD. After an aborted attempt to make another record alone via similar methods, Garbus enlisted some friends and took to a real studio for her much-anticipated follow-up, whokill -- certainly a new modus operandi for a performer who made a name for herself as a one-woman, bedroom recording artist. And, surprise, she has succeeded brilliantly, keeping many of the best sonic elements of her quirky solo setup, while adding so much, including Nate Brenner's soulful, groove-heavy bass playing, and some pretty funky horn arrangements too.
What's striking is how the songs here unfold so unpredictably without disintegrating into chaos. Her influences are numerous but fit into a complex, nearly seamless whole: indie, hip-hop, folk, dub, Afro-funk, jazz, avant -- why not? She can insert a chaotic breakdown into the center of a delicate number like "Riotriot" without knocking it off its axis. She can start "Wooly Wooly Gong" with an eerie ukulele figure and eventually drift near Tin Pan Alley territory. She can taunt "I'm a new kind of woman" like Beyonce over a funky bass line as guitars throw spikes and threaten to puncture "Killa." And that voice -- Garbus wails, coos, bellows, croons, yodels, and often sounds like she thinks she'll die if she doesn't get the song out now. She is a powerhouse, and despite a penchant for weird vocal loops and offbeat phrasing, she lets go with the raw emotion of a blues belter.
Working in the studio seems to have opened things up for tUnE-yArDs, enhancing the tunes without smothering them in trickery. Listen to the arrangement of "Bizness," which starts with a tangle of fluttering vocal samples and is pushed ever higher by the introduction of clattering drums, then booming bass, then a panicked guitar, then a horn section of all things. The wide-open tonal range of whokill and its higher fidelity necessarily result in a record that's less intimate than the debut; Garbus certainly appears to be getting out of her own head a bit more on songs like "My Country," "Gangsta" and "Doorstep." That doesn't mean this work isn't any less personal. "Baby bring me home to bed/ I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me," Garbus moans in "Powa," tunneling through the track's theme of violence and embodying in a single couplet the full range of moods that constantly roll over each other: urgent, playful, disturbing, lustful, insecure, desperate, transcendent. After weeks of listening to this, there are still layers to peel back. Dance floors can shake to whokill as easily as lonely teens can weep in their bedrooms to it. The avant-pop mountain has been moved. Take notice. [JB]
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