Aesop Rock
Aesop Rock is the Ben Marcus of rap. Like the author of Notable American Women and several extremely strange essays for McSweeney’s and The Believer, Aesop Rock (nee Ian Bavitz) tosses words in strange contexts and weird rhythms, twisting their meanings and granting ordinary words power that they lost long ago. Sure, a lot of times you won’t catch his exact point on the first listen–or the twentieth, for that matter. But for Aesop, the environment and feeling that his lyrics impart has always been more important than individual lines. Not that he doesn’t craft stuff you can’t help thinking to yourself at strange points during the days, but it will be more to puzzle out what he means.
His 2003 effort, Bazooka Tooth, was sprawling, messy and unfocused at places; supposedly the exploration of an alter ego (named Bazooka Tooth, natch), the production fuzzed over his lyrics and overlaid them on top of each other. Running at the upper end of the CD’s capacity–over 70 minutes–Aesop’s explorations of the character were mixed with Definitive Jux boasting and the sudden expansion of the city at one minute in time. Though good, as a hip-hop concept album, it couldn’t hold a candle to Mr. Lif’s I, Phantom.
So Fast Cars, clocking in at just over thirty minutes, represents a focus that Aesop Rock hasn’t had in years–it feels like an album squashed into EP length. It’s chock full of goodness, and there’s a lot to like here. The fuzzy lyrics are gone, as well as some of the more avant-garde staccato rhythms that he experimented with on Bazooka Tooth. What’s left is the smooth flow from Labor Days, and a surpringly focused set of songs on militarism, religion and other bugaboos of life in America these days. On “Fast Cars,” the title track, he comments that he’s “live from the ultra-fly sham city bunker where cults multiply alarmingly / Hush little baby, timeout / The black market mockingbirds can sing not a lick but lean to peck your eyes out.” For Aes Rock, terror lies behind every corner of the city; it’s unavoidable. On “Zodiaccupuncture,” he reminds the listener that “the hand cannons won’t ask about your zodiac, boy.”
The production is hit or miss. Aesop Rock splits the production duty with Blockhead, while “Winner Takes All” is produced by Rob Sonic. Half the songs are standard Definitive Jux beats, with heavy bass and Vangelis-style synths in the background evoking a future dystopia here today, and these tracks kind of all run together (though Aesop does vary his flow enough to keep them distinct). But both “Holy Smokes” and “Rickety Rackety” stand out. Blockhead builds “Holy Smokes” around a glockenspiel sample and adding drum beats that vary in intensity as Aesop vents about the Catholic Church sex scandal and the commercialization of religion. “Rickety Rackety” runs on a bouncy bass beat that propels even El-P to throw out a good verse or two. Considering this is Definitive Jux, the fact that you can actually dance to it is mindblowing. “Rickety” is hands down the best song on the album, grabbing that beat and using it to contrast the style of Aesop Rock, El-P and Camu Tao. El-P’s slightly off-rhythm lyrics and Camu Tao’s fast delivery complement the more measured style that Aesop Rock has cultivated throughout the entire album.
The album may be short, but that’s not a bad thing. Aesop Rock takes time to sink into, thanks to the density of his images and weird playing with language. But as an added bonus, the album comes with a booklet of all his lyrics from the past five releases–including Float and theDaylight EP–so that you can finally sit down, and figure out what he says and apply some English major techniques to this stuff. Don’t let his absurdity throw you off–there’s a lot in Aesop Rock’s lyrics, and it’s worth it to sit down with him for some relaxation and some cathartic city terror.