#it’s a bit wonky but I just call that whimsy | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thedumpsterqueen · 4 years ago

Text

Standards of Performance, Chapter 6: Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5

AO3 Link

Finally, I write most of the chapter before the day I’m supposed to post it. This was mostly done on my laptop (which I’m not used to) as we just moved and my PC is barely set up, so forgive anything that looks weird or wonky. As always, I hope you enjoy. I love getting all your kind messages <3 (Also message me if you want to be on the taglist - I suppose I should be better about that!)

Summary: You’re the BAU’s newest intern, desperate to prove yourself amongst an established team of much more experienced profilers. Agent Hotchner, the seemingly infallible team leader, sets strict expectations for your performance. He commands your respect without even trying, but is there something more to your relationship than a simple desire to impress your stony-faced boss?

Chapter: 6, Buckshot and Tequila

Chapter Summary: Events during a new case test your ability to keep your feelings hidden, and a night out takes an unforeseen turn.

Words: 3736

Rating: Explicit, 18+. Warnings on AO3.

Pairings: Hotch x Reader, Hotch x You

Turns out, lying to Hotch was easier than you thought.

It helped that you were lying to yourself too, of course - that you pretended your gaze didn't linger on his form whenever he was in your vicinity, that the swell of pride in your chest when he agreed with something you said was purely professional. There were times, though, that the facade was much harder to maintain. The most recent case had been one of those times.

You had been tracking down an unsub abducting children in a rural Iowa town. Three kids had gone missing in the span of two weeks, and after Garcia matched the victimology and MO with neighboring states, it looked to be close to a dozen in the years before that. The case started off rough enough - locals refused to believe it could be one of their own, police resisted the BAU’s guidance, the usual - but it came to a head when a fourth child went missing during the investigation.

Thankfully, the team figured out the identity of the unsub relatively quickly. Reid did a geographical profile of all the locations where victims were taken and found a public health clinic that had branches in each area. Garcia cross-checked the employee records to find that only one doctor had done travel shifts at each clinic during the time the children were taken, and within minutes, you were rushing to his address.

The SUV carrying Hotch, Rossi, and Prentiss arrived long enough before yours that by the time you pulled up, they were already kicking down the door and entering the home. The first thing you heard after you flung the car door open was the deafening crack of a weapon firing, and despite your lack of training with firearms, it was apparent that it was not an FBI-issue pistol.

You would never describe yourself as fragile - you couldn't be, not in this line of work. But when you registered the implications of that sound, your knees buckled, instantly bringing you down onto the dusty ground outside the farmhouse. The rest of the team sprinted in, guns drawn. You faintly registered Prentiss yelling inside, then more gunshots, but your head was ringing so loudly from the visceral panic that you couldn’t make out anything specific.

When Hotch burst back out onto the porch, you thought you might honestly sob with relief. That is, until you caught the glint of the sun in the slick, dark blood dripping down the sleeve of his suit.

That was when you puked.

Something about the sight of Aaron Hotchner bleeding felt so wrong that even as you struggled to your feet and stepped over the pile of sick you left in the dirt, even as you got closer and saw the rivulets of blood drip down to his fingertips and dot the wooden floors of the porch, you felt like you were in a dream. Your mind couldn’t grasp the sudden shock of his mortality, that he could bleed, that he could die, even, and he very well might, depending on what vessels were hit. You made it up the steps, only managing to call out his name - his first name - your throat still burning from bile. Despite the chaos of the current moment, he still whipped his head around at the sound of that, as if hearing the name Aaron desperately falling from your lips was more attention-grabbing than the rest of the team gathering around him trying to stem the bleeding.

“It looks worse than it is,” said Rossi, peering through the holes in Hotch’s mangled sleeve. “It was just buckshot, and he barely hit you. Nothing a few stitches won’t fix.”

He turned out to be right, thank god, and later that afternoon, Hotch was freshly bandaged and sitting across from you on the return flight to Quantico.

So, yeah, the “lying to yourself” thing wasn’t going so well at that moment. Hotch was absorbed in paperwork while the rest of the team napped - because of course he was; even being shot didn’t sway his apparently relentless refusal to relax - and each time he winced at the movement of his arm, your vice grip around your chest tightened a little more.

He must have sensed you staring, because he looked up, frown softening slightly as he saw the concern on your face.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he assured you with a half smile.

Teetering on an emotional precipice, too scared to respond for fear of falling over the edge, you went back to your reading. After a few minutes of listening to him write while not turning a single page in your book, he set his pen down and took a breath.

“You were screaming my name,” he said, quietly, despite you two being the only ones awake.

“What?”

“Earlier,” he clarified, “when we went into the house. I could hear you outside, yelling my name.”

You looked at him, incredulous. “Of course I did. I heard the shotgun go off. Clearly,” you gestured at his arm, “I had a reason to be worried.”

He shook his head and cleared his throat, as if you didn’t understand the question. “Dave and Emily were with me. Any of us could have gotten hit. You only yelled for me.”

Oh.

You shrugged. “You’re the team leader. It’s my instinct to call for you when something goes wrong."

It was a lie, and a bad one at that, but Hotch gave you an unreadable look and let the subject drop.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and when you finally made it back to your apartment, you had no plans other than to sleep off the stress of the case and the embarrassment of Hotch calling your actions into question. Garcia, however, wasn't about to let that happen.

BAU-tiful People Group Chat

Garcia: *added You to the conversation*

Garcia: Ok, my lovely children, I know you’re all tired, but I miss your faces, so I’ll see u at Whimsy tonight at 9! Notice I didn’t use a question mark bc it is NOT a question!

You knew from overhearing the team talk that Whimsy was a bar downtown they liked to frequent, but you’d never been invited before. Despite your overwhelming exhaustion, the idea of going out with the team, of finally feeling accepted by them, was enough to make you amenable to the concept. It may have seemed insignificant on the surface, but Garcia adding you to their group chat was the biggest welcome gesture you’d received yet.

Morgan: Only if you wear that dress you know I like ;)

You lived for the day they would realize they were actually flirting with each other instead of just pretending to.

Prentiss: Garcia… you’re killing me… but you know I’ll be there.

JJ: Contacting the babysitter as we speak.

Morgan: Fuck yeah!!! Pretty Boy, you in?

Reid: Can’t we ever go somewhere quiet?

As the group chimed in with various iterations of, “Shut up, Reid,” you hesitantly typed out a text to confirm your attendance. You were excited, of course, but nervous to be the new kid at their favorite hangout. After today's events, though, the desire not to be sober won out over nerves.

You: I’ll be there! Thanks for the invite!

Rossi: Hope you kids are ready for me to drink you under the table, as usual.

Morgan: Eyyy, you KNOW we party hard! See y’all tonight.

____________

Turns out, Morgan was not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. By the time you arrived, 15 minutes late, everyone looked to be at least 3 shots deep. Garcia ran over to greet you, squealing, and wrapped you in a suffocating hug.

“I’m so glad you came! What do you drink? Tequila? I’ll grab the next round!”

You laughed and confirmed that tequila sounded great, and as she scurried off to the bar with Morgan on her heels, you had a chance to look around.

The atmosphere of the club surprised you - it was all glass and steel and modernity, packed with people dancing to something with intense bass - not the low-key joint you’d pictured the team wanting to unwind at. But as you watched JJ, Prentiss, and Rossi cheer on Reid as he threw back a shot, doubling over in hysterics as he coughed and sputtered at the taste, you realized that this place was just loud and energetic enough to keep them from thinking about anything other than work. In that way, you definitely saw the appeal.

“I come bearing shots!” Garcia yelled as her and Morgan made it back to the table. “Grab yours… here we go- whoops! Alright, everyone got theirs?”

She turned to you, grinning behind a pair of hot pink spectacles. “Cheers not ONLY to rescuing four kidnapped children alive, but also to our lovely intern and her first Whimsy outing!”

The team erupted in cheers and you smiled back, downing the tequila. You chatted with the group while Garcia ordered more drinks, and then more drinks, and soon you felt a pleasant buzz filling your head.

“Morgan, you better ask me to dance right now before I go find another man to do the job,” Garcia said with a wink in his direction.

Morgan grinned and mock-bowed, holding out a hand for her to take, and led her off to the dancefloor.

“Should we join them?” JJ asked around the table.

“Someone’s gotta make sure they don’t do anything worth getting kicked out for,” Prentiss shot back. You giggled and followed the girls, leaving Rossi and Reid behind at the table in the midst of a heated debate about childhood brain development that you couldn’t even hope to comprehend.

Not long after you started dancing, you felt a gentle tap on your shoulder and turned around, looking up into the stunning green eyes of a man who looked to be about your age. It was hard to really tell what he looked like in the dim lighting, but by the way Prentiss was giving you a thumbs up and mouthing, “Go for it,” from your side, he was good enough for you.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked above the music. You smiled and nodded in confirmation, letting him wrap his arms around your waist and pull you to his hips.

He knew how to move, that was for certain. He ground against your backside lightly, snaking his hands around your stomach. You weren’t used to this kind of thing - dancing with random men at bars, letting them touch you like this - but the combination of the music and the booze and the relief at the last case being over was making you feel more free than you had in recent memory.

You exchanged grins with Morgan, who was dancing a few feet away in a much more R-rated manner with Garcia. The man behind you (whose name you didn’t know, but who cared?) leaned down to kiss your neck and you arched against him in response, reaching up to run your hand through his hair.

Throughout the song, you had rotated back to facing the table where the rest of your team was sitting. You glanced over, saw Reid and Rossi still deep in discussion, along with another man in a black button-up with a very familiar side profile and-

Hotch.

Hotch was here, and as if the powers that be were insistent upon proving to you that the opposite of serendipity existed, at the exact moment you had that realization, he turned and made direct eye contact with you. Drunk, wearing a skintight dress, a random man grinding on your ass, and staring right back at your Unit Chief at the motherfucking Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Your heart dropped to your stomach, and if you had been drunker, you might have hurled tequila all over the dancefloor. Instead, you pulled away from the mystery man behind you, ignoring his shocked, “Wait!” and beelined to the bar.

“Tequila. Shot. Please, I’m sorry, just saw someone I didn’t expect to,” you blurted out to the bartender, swearing you could feel Hotch’s eyes on your back from across the club.

The bartender, probably having seen much worse, nodded in understanding and poured your drink. You gulped it down, wiped your mouth, and leaned on the bar to get your bearings.

It’s not weird. It’s not. It’s a bar, it’s outside of work hours, it’s perfectly fine that you’re buzzed and dancing and having fun. Everyone else is!

Really, it wasn’t that you were worried about your job, or even that he would judge you (he probably would, but that was unavoidable regardless of the setting), it was just that you hadn’t mentally prepared yourself for the possibility that he would come. He was in the group chat - obviously, if he had seen Garcia’s invite - but had never struck you as the social type, the kind of boss that would interact with his team outside of work.

“Did you see that Hotch is here?” Prentiss asked breathlessly, appearing at the bar beside you.

Apparently, you weren’t the only one surprised.

“I did,” you whispered back, despite the thumping music and the rowdy patrons making it logically impossible for your words to reach the table 20 feet away. “Does he usually join you guys?”

“Never,” she said, before thinking and correcting herself, “Not in years, anyways. When Haley… we used to drag him out, but we stopped after a while.”

“Why do you think he came tonight?"

She shrugged. “Who knows? Far be it from me to explain why Hotch does anything.” An idea seemed to pop in her head, and she grinned. “Maybe it’s because of you!”

“M-me?” Your reaction to the suggestion wasn’t nearly as nonchalant as you’d tried for, but Prentiss was too drunk to notice.

“Yeah, gotta help initiate the intern on her first night out, right?” She grinned and clapped you on the shoulder, then turned away to head back to the dancefloor, leaving you alone. You sighed, gathered yourself as much as you could considering the effects of the tequila, and turned around to go greet him.

“Hey, Agent Hotchner. Didn’t expect to see you tonight!”

“Yes, well. Thought I’d show up for a bit; it’s been a while.” He gave you a tight lipped smile then looked back down at his glass of whisky, the awkward energy palpable.

Probably because he just saw you basically dry-humping some random dude.

“Well, I’m glad you came! Feel free to, uh, come dance if you want! Morgan and Garcia are showing us all up,” you said, gesturing to where Morgan and Garcia were in fact drawing the attention of several onlookers.

He chuckled at that. “They’re certainly a sight to behold, aren’t they?”

You nodded in agreement and headed back to the bar, the brief conversation pointing you towards yet another drink. Talking to him was so easy , sometimes, and others it was like pulling teeth to get a human response out of him. Could you blame him, though? Your last one-on-one interaction was you basically inviting yourself over to his apartment with takeout and listening to him spill his guts about his dead wife and kid, and he probably felt uncomfortable with you after that, and then you went right to this case without any chance for things to go back to normal, and then he got shot, and oh my god, you didn’t even ask him how his arm was doing, how fucking rude can you be, dumbass? and-

“Whoops! Shit, I’m sorry!”

You looked at the person you’d just bumped into in the midst of your internal crisis.

“Hey, it’s you!”

The man you’d been dancing with earlier, now much more obviously handsome in the brighter lights of the bar area, grinned in recognition.

“Hey, I thought I’d scared you off there!”

You laughed and shook your head. “No, I’m sorry. Just saw my boss and freaked out a little bit.”

“Oh shit, your boss is here?” he asked. “That’s uncomfortable, damn. I’m sorry.”

“No worries, it’s just… yeah. Anyways. Wanna pick up where we left off?” you asked, more desperate than ever to get Hotch out of your head. If he didn’t want to see you having a wild night, he shouldn’t have come to the club.

He took your hand, looking pleased. “Lead the way.”

It really was so much easier, you thought, to let yourself feel attraction for guys like this. Uncomplicated, willing to take what you give them, no backstory to speak of. They weren’t riddled with tragic history, unattainable in both position and personality, not to mention impossible to even imagine ever returning your feelings. Guys like Cooper (you’d finally learned his name somewhere amid the grinding and groping) were easy and fun and they didn’t keep you up at night agonizing over whether that thing you said at work was impressive enough.

But then again, they didn’t give you the roller-coaster feeling in your stomach that Aaron Hotchner did every time you locked eyes.

And lock eyes you did - an increasingly frequent number of times, actually. It seemed like whenever you turned to face his direction, he was staring you down. He always went back to his conversation with Rossi and Reid, but you noticed that he seemed to get more and more pissed off with every song that played. His frown was deepened, his expression dark, and you could tell even from a distance that his knuckles were white from gripping his glass.

You shrugged it off as Hotch being Hotch - who knew what that man was thinking? And besides, you were trying to forget him, damn it. At least, that was until a particularly raunchy song came on and you were in the middle of getting your ass felt up, when you felt a hand squeeze your shoulder and whip you around, bringing you face-to-face with your boss himself.

“Hey, what’s going on? Is something wrong?” you asked, utterly bewildered as to why he was interrupting you.

He ignored you, instead staring down Cooper, who very quickly decided Hotch wasn’t one to fuck with and walked away.

“Hotch! Is there a case? Should I grab the others?”

He shook his head. “Can you come with me, please?”

Perplexed, you acquiesced (not that you had much of a choice, with the way he was gripping your elbow) and followed him through the crowd, out the back door, and into an alley. He let go of you then, sighing and crossing his arms.

Your mind was wild with questions - did you do something you shouldn’t have? Get too drunk? Everyone was drunk, though, and you weren’t even half as wasted as some of the others. Did Reid or Rossi tell him something bad about you? Were you about to somehow get yourself fired off the clock?

“The boy you were dancing with was bad news,” he said, after an uncomfortably long period of silence.

What the fuck?

“What the fuck?” you repeated, this time out loud, and you knew you shouldn’t be talking to him like this, but you were too caught off guard to conduct yourself more appropriately.

“He was a drug user,” Hotch said, as if that would explain everything.

“A drug user,” you repeated back, no less confused.

“Cocaine,” he continued. “He was high - his pupils were dilated, he was rubbing his nose, and he's been to the bathroom several times.”

“So… you’re going to arrest him? For doing cocaine?” you asked, still baffled as to what he was insinuating.

“What? No,” he said, “I’m trying to warn you not to get involved.”

You had entered some parallel universe, you decided. There was no other explanation for your boss, a man you’d known all of four months, dragging you outside a bar on a Friday night and telling you not to dance with a hot stranger because he was on cocaine.

You took a deep breath, trying to calm yourself before you really did get yourself fired. “Sir, I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think it’s really any of your business.”

His face hardened at that. “It is exactly my business,” he said, eyes boring a hole through your skull, “to watch out for things that may compromise my team.”

“Compromise your team?” you repeated his words again. “I was dancing, not getting engaged to the guy.”

“Should I allow you to dance with a sexual sadist if it’s just dancing?” he pressed, using the stern voice that usually caused any sort of dissent to whither and die right in your throat.

It didn’t work this time, probably because he was acting fucking insane. “Are you seriously comparing a sexual sadist to a guy who does cocaine while he’s out partying?”

“It’s not just while he’s out partying, by the way he conducted himself, he was a chronic-”

“It doesn’t matter!” you said, nearly yelling now. “You had no right! I'm sorry, what are you, my dad?!”

His eyes flashed at that. “If I hadn’t already had to sit through an 8 hour surgery not knowing if Garcia was going to make it out alive because her date shot her, then perhaps I would have no right. But as it stands, I do. Please be more careful with who you associate with, even if it’s just dancing.”

He spat that last part out, more vitriolic than you’d ever seen him, and stalked back inside. You were left outside in the alley, alone, reeling from confusion surrounding the entire interaction and shock at the emotional charge he’d leveled at you.

Reentering the bar, you saw that Hotch’s seat had been vacated and his jacket was gone. You rolled your eyes, and on your way to the bathroom, nearly ran into Cooper again.

“Hey!” he said. “What was that all about? You good?”

You looked up at his face and for the first time, noticed faint traces of white dust around his nose. He looked keyed up, jumpy - his pulse racing and visible on his carotid. You sighed.

“I’m good. Just not in the mood right now, sorry,” and pushed past him into the bathroom.

Hotch was an emotionally stunted asshole with a control complex, but he was also never fucking wrong.

201 notes · View notes

dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

Text

Dust Volume 6, Number 8

Angel Olsen

Now half a year in the pandemic, we’re starting to see the emergence of quarantine records, whether in the trove of reissues hastily assembled to stand in for new product or home recorded projects made with extremely close friends and family or albums that are conceived and written around the concept of isolation. Music isn’t real life, exactly, but it lives nearby. And in any case, it’s still music and can be good or bad whether it’s been unearthed from a forgotten box of tapes, recorded at home without collaboration or side people or technologically gerry-rigged so that distanced partners can work together. So, as long as you all are making music, we will continue to listen and find records that move us, as the world burns all around. This edition’s contributors included Patrick Masterson, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake and Ray Garraty. Enjoy.

+ — #playboy (Deluxe Edition) (self-released)

#playboy (deluxe edition) by +

One of the most genuinely confounding records I’ve heard this year comes courtesy SEO-unfriendly artist + aka Plus Sign fka Emanuel James Vinson, a Chicago rapper, city planner and all-around community activist who spends his time helping with the city’s Let’s Build Garden City initiative when he’s not making music (which is frequent, by the way — take a look at the breadth of that Bandcamp discography). The concept with #playboy, originally released in April but deluxed in late May, is simple: Two kids find a music machine called #playboy in their basement and start tinkering with it. Its childlike whimsy is conveyed in the song titles (“Getting the Hang of It,” “Wake Up Jam (Waking Up)”) every bit as much as it is in the music, with occasionally grating indulgences, the odd earworm and a brief appearance by borderless internet hip-hop hero Lil B that makes perfect sense in context; the kindred spirit of that community-building cult auteur is strong here. You may wind up loving this record or you may wind up hating it, but I can promise you this: You’ll be thinking about it and the artist behind it long after it’s over.

Patrick Masterson

Actress — Mad Voyage Mixtape (self-released)

I once suggested Darren Cunningham mucks about with his music because he can’t help himself. That was about six years ago on the occasion of his purported “final” album Untitled; with the benefit of hindsight, we can see he was (like so many others, to greater or lesser consequence) just pulling our leg with that PR. Hell, he’s released two albums worth of music in July alone: The first was the mid-month surprise LP 88, which follows in the vein of his acclaimed high period as an often brilliant, occasionally frustrating patchwork of submersible beats best played at high volume with a low end. The second came at the end of the month in an m4a file shared the old fashioned way on a forum via Mediafire link, nearly an hour and a half long, and per the man himself, “All SP-303, sketchbook beats, recorded this past week [the first week of July] straight to recorder or cassette.” It feels very much like a homespun Actress mixtape and is probably best thought of as livelier accompaniment to 88 but, even still, there’s no noticeable drop in quality — once Actress, always Actress. If headier lo-fi beat tapes are your beat, this will slot comfortably in line.

Patrick Masterson

bdrmm - Bedroom (Sonic Cathedral)

youtube

Hull five-piece bdrmm play a satisfyingly crepuscular version of shoegaze on their debut album Bedroom. Ryan Smith, his brother Jordan on bass, guitarist Joe Vickers, Danny Hull on synths and drummer Luke Irvin combine the widescreen sound of Ride with a cloak of gothic post-punk. Like the late, lamented Girls Names, bdrmm find a sweet spot where atmosphere and dynamics either build to euphoric crescendos or bask in bleak funereal splendor. Bedroom seems deliberately sequenced from celebration to lament. “A Reason To Celebrate” evokes Ride at their most anthemic, the tripping staccato driven “Happy” summons the spirit of The Cure of Seventeen Seconds before the pace drops for the second half, the songs become quieter and darker as the band finds a more personal voice. “(The Silence)” is an ambient whispered wraith of a thing, “Forget The Credits” impressively mopey slowcore. bdrmm don’t always transcend their influences, but this debut is an atmospheric treat if your taste runs to the darker end of the musical buffet.

Andrew Forell

Circulatory System — Circulatory System (Elephant 6 Recording Co.)

Circulatory System by Circulatory System

Nearly 20 years after its initial release, the excellent eponymous debut album by Will Cullen Hart’s psychedelic chamber-pop band Circulatory System gets a long overdue vinyl reissue. While his previous project, the undeniably great Olivia Tremor Control, tended to lean more towards classic psych-pop’s traditional tropes — hard-panned drums, loads of disorientating tape effects, wonky harmonized vocals — Circulatory System taps into something utterly uncanny. Both Signal Morning (2009) and Mosaics Within Mosaics (2014) have their moments, but this is front-to-back brilliant, conjuring a sublime atmosphere of reflective estrangement. The music is a thick, grainy soup of shimmering instrumentation, from the eerie (“Joy,” “Now,” “Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?”) to the joyful (“Yesterday’s World,” “The Lovely Universe,” “Waves of Bark and Light”), but part of the album’s magic is the way everything flows into a seamless whole. As is vinyl’s tendency, the rhythm section really comes alive here, the fuzz bass and tom-heavy drum parts booming out, with plenty of vivid details in the mix swimming into view. A worthy reissue of an essential album.

Tim Clarke

Cloud Factory — #1 (Howlin’ Banana)

Cloud Factory #1 by Cloud Factory

Cloud Factory, from Toulouse, France, overlays the serrated edges of garage pop with a serene dream-pop drift. It’s an appealing mix of hard and soft, like being pummeled to death by pillows or threatened gunpoint by a teddy bear. “Amnesia,” for instance, erupts in a vicious, sawed off, trouble-making bass line, then soars from there in untroubled female vocals. Later, “No Data,” punches hard with raw percussion, then lays on a liquid, lucid guitar line that encourages middle-distance staring. None of these songs really up the ante with memorable melodies, sharp words or that intangible R’NR energy that distinguishes great punk rock from the so so. Not loud, not soft, not great, not bad. Cloud Factory resides in the indeterminant middle.

Jennifer Kelly

Entry — Detriment (Southern Lord)

Detriment by Entry

Nuthin fancy here, folks. Just eight songs — plus a flexing, fuzzing intro — of American hardcore punk. Entry has been grinding away for a few years now, and Detriment doesn’t advance much past the musical terrain the band marked off on the No Relief 7-inch (2016). That’s OK. The essential formula is time tested: d-beat rhythms, overdriven amps and Sara G.’s ferocious vocals delivering the necessary affect. That would be: pissed off, just this side of hopeless. Detriment sounds like what might happen if Poison Idea (c. 1988) stumbled into a seminar on Riot Grrrl; after everyone got tired of beating the living shit out of one another, they’d make some songs. “Selective Empathy” is pretty representative. Big riffs, a breakdown, and more than enough throaty yelling to let you know that you’re in some trouble. You might recognize the sound of Clayton Stevens’ guitar from his work with Touché Amoré — but maybe it’s better if you don’t. This isn’t music for mopery. Watch out for the spit, snot and blood, and flip the record.

Jonathan Shaw

Equiknoxx — VF Live: Equiknoxx (The Vinyl Factory)

youtube

There’s nothing like a little roots music to get you through the sweltering summer heat, and this early July mix by Gavin “Gavsborg” Blair (half of forward-thinking Kingston dancehall unit Equiknoxx) was a personal favorite of the past month for hitting that spot. The group tends to throw curveballs at the genres it tinkers with, and Blair’s mix highlights why they’re so good at it: The crates run deep. Spanning everything from legendary producer and DJ Prince Jazzbo to in-house music fresh out the box (e.g., “Did Not Make This For Jah_9” was released in late May), Blair sets the mood and educates you along the way. Like everything else these cats do (and that includes the NTS show — support your independent radio station!), it’s hard not to give the highest recommendation.

Patrick Masterson

Ezra Feinberg — Recumbent Speech (Related States)

Recumbent Speech by Ezra Feinberg

Knowing that Ezra Feinberg is a practicing psychoanalyst, it’s tempting to read meaning into the name of his second solo album. But be careful to think twice about the meaning you perceive and ask yourself, is it the product of Feinberg on the couch or your own projection? His choice to name one of the record’s six instrumentals (there are voices, but no words) “Letter To My Mind” certainly suggests that there’s an internal dialogue at work, but the music feels most like a layered deployment of good ideas than an exchange of intrapsychic forces. The synthesizers shimmer and cycle like something from a mid-1970s Cluster record, resting upon a pillow of vibraphone and electric piano tones, which in turn billow under the influence of undulating layers of drums. Feinberg’s guitar leads are bright and pithy, like something Pat Metheny might come up with if he knew he was going to have to pay a steep price for every note he played. Ah, but there I go, projecting an implication of adversary process where there may be none. Might it be that Feinberg, having spent a full work week immersed in the psychic conflicts of others, wants to lay back on the couch and exhale? If so, this album is an apt companion.

Bill Meyer

Honey Radar — Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years (Chunklet)

Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years by Honey Radar

Jason Henn of Honey Radar has a solid claim at being his generation’s Bob Pollard, a prolific, absurdist songwriter, who tosses off hooky melodies as if channeling them from the spirit world. His least polished material glints with melody hidden beneath banks of fuzz, whispery and fragile on records, but surprisingly muscular in his rocking live shows. This 28-song compilation assembles the singles, splits, EPs and bonus tracks Henn recorded for Chunklet between 2015 and the present; it would be a daunting amount of material except that it goes down like cotton candy, sweet, airy, colorful and gone before you know it. Like the Kinks, Henn has a way of making strident rock and roll hooks sound wistful and dreamy. In “Lilac Pharmacy,” guitar lines rip and buck and roar, but from a distance, hardly disrupting Henn’s placid murmur. “Medium Mary Todd” ratchets up the tension a bit, with a tangled snarl of lick and swagger, but the vocals edge towards quiet whimsy a la Sic Alps; a second version runs a bit hotter, rougher and more electric, while a third, recorded at WFMU, gives an inkling of the Honey Radar concert experience. A couple of fine covers — of the Fall’s early rant “Middle Class Revolt” and of the Monkees rarity “Wind-Up Man”— suggest the fine, loamy soil that Henn’s art grows out of, while alternate versions of half a dozen tracks hint at the various forms his ideas can take. It’s a wonderful overview of Honey Radar so far, though let’s hope it’s not a career retrospective. Henn has a bunch of records left to make yet if he wants to edge out Pollard.

Jennifer Kelly

Iron Wigs — Your Birthday’s Cancelled (Mello Music Group)

Your Birthday's Cancelled by IRON WIGS

As an adjective, “goofy” had gotten a bad rep in hip hop. Anything that is unusual, inventive and not in line with “keeping it real” is immediately stigmatized as goofy, weird, nerdy and bad. Iron Wigs is goofy but hold the pejorative connotations. Chicago representatives Vic Spencer and Verbal Kent team up here with Sonnyjim from the UK to do some wild rhyming. They collaborated before, but Your Birthday’s Cancelled is a complete, fully fleshed project, masterfully executed from start to finish. Instead of the usual gun busting you get a fist in the ribs. Instead of drug slinging, a blunt to activate your rhymes. Each member of the group has a distinctive delivery which makes you to listen carefully for every verse, no skipping. It’s a relief to listen to rap artists who don’t pretend they’re out in the streets while they’re at home enjoying a favorite TV series. The standout track here is “Bally Animals & Rugbys” with Roc Marciano dropping by for a verse.

Ray Garraty

Levinson / Mahlmeister — Shores (Trouble In Mind)

Shores by levinson / mahlmeister

Jamie Levinson and Donny Mahlmeister’s Bandcamp page indicates that they’re based in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. This goes further towards explaining their association with Trouble in Mind Records, which is located in the same county, than their music, which brings to mind something much further north. The duo’s music is mostly electronic, with modular synthesizers setting the pulse and sweeping the pitch spectrum while lap steel guitar adds flourishes and a shruti box thickens the textures. The album is split into two, with each track — one is named “Ascend,” the other “Release” — taking up one side of a 50-minute cassette. The first side trundles steadily onwards, and the second seems to bask in a glow to that never totally fades. Since there’s no “Descend,” it’s easy to imagine this music sound tracking a drive into the Canadian north, the journey unspooling under a sky that never darkens, its progress towards Hudson Bay unhindered by other traffic or turns in the road. Perhaps that’s just one listener’s fantasy of easy social distancing and escape from the present’s grim digital glare into a retro-futurist, analog dream. But in dreams we’re free to fly without being seated next to some knucklehead with his mask over his eyes instead of his mouth, so dream on, dreamers. This tape is volume one of the Explorers Series, Trouble in Mind’s projected program of limited edition cassette releases.

Bill Meyer

Klara Lewis — Ingrid (Editions Mego)

Klara Lewis’s latest recording shows a narrowing of focus. Previously she seemed to be trying ideas and methods on for size, investigating ambient electronics or hinting at pop melody without completely committing. Given the approach to music modeled by her father, Graham Lewis of Wire and Dome, she probably does not feel the need to do just one thing, and that’s a healthy angle if one wants to stay interested and flexible. But there’s also something to be said for really digging into an idea, and that’s what she has done here. Ingrid is a one-track, one-sided 12.” Burrowing further into one-ness, it is made from one looped cello phrase, which gets filtered and distorted on each pass. The effect suggests decay, but not so much the gradual transformation of a William Basinski piece as the pitiless abrasion of a woodworker going over a plank with sander. The combination of repetition and coarsening hits a spot closer to one that Tony Conrad might reach, and that’s an itch worth scratching.

Bill Meyer

Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet — Believe, Believe (Clean Feed)

youtube

The cruel economics of contemporary creative music-making favor an ensemble like Humanization 4tet. At a minimum, the filial Texan rhythm section of Stefan and Aaron Gonzalez (drums and bass respectively) and Lisbon-based duo of Rodrigo Amado (tenor saxophone) and Luís Lopes can each count on having the other half of a band on the other side of the Atlantic. But any project that’s on its fourth record in a dozen years has more going for it than the chance to save on plane tickets. For the Portuguese musicians, it’s an opportunity to feel an unabashedly high-energy force at their backs, as well as a chance to drink from a deep well of harmolodic blues. And for the Gonzalez brothers, it’s the reward of being the absolute right guys for the job; it has to be a gas to know that the heft they put into their swing is so deeply appreciated. While Lopes’ name remains up front, everyone contributes compositions, and everyone gives their all on every tune.

Bill Meyer

Joanna Mattrey — Veiled (Relative Pitch)

Veiled by Joanna Mattrey

This solo CD, which closely follows a collaborative cassette on Astral Spirits, is only the second recording with Joanna Mattrey’s name on the spine. But Mattrey is no newcomer. The New England Conservatory-trained violist has been playing straight and pop gigs for a while. If you caught Chance the Rapper on Saturday Night Live, Cuddle Magic with strings or a host of classical gigs around New York City, you’ve seen her. But if black dress and heels gigs pay her bills, improvised music nourishes her heart. And if sounds raw enough to scrape the roof of the world nourish yours, this album is new food. The premise of Veiled is finding veins of concealed beauty concealed, and that search impels Mattrey to tune her viola to sound like a horse-haired Tuvan fiddle, clamp objects to the strings and blast her signal through some satisfyingly filthy amplification. And whether it’s a slender tune or a complex texture, the reward is always there.

Bill Meyer

Angel Olsen — “Whole New Mess” single (Jagjaguwar)

youtube

Everyone processes a breakup differently (though, to be fair, that’s probably less true now than ever). For Angel Olsen in 2018, it meant retreating to The Unknown, a century-old church in Anacortes, Washington, that Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum and producer Nicholas Wilbur made into a recording studio. What ultimately came from those sessions was All Mirrors, but Whole New Mess is a chance to revisit that album (fully nine of these 11 songs are ones you’ve heard before; only the title-track and “Waving, Smiling” are new) in a more intimate framework — just Angel, a guitar, a mic and her reverberant heartache. The most cynical view to be taken here is that it’s a stopgap capitalizing on people’s vulnerability amid a pandemic quarantine, but it could also be a corrective for the bloat of All Mirrors, a record I listened to once and haven’t thought about since. Late Björkian excess doesn’t suit her nearly as well as the light touch delivered herein, and your interest will similarly hinge on how much Whole New Mess sounds like the old one.

Patrick Masterson

Ono — Red Summer (American Dreams)

Red Summer by ONO

Ono, the long-running noise-punk-poetry-protest project headed by P Michael Grego and travis, tackles the Red Summer of 1919, evoking the brutal race riots that erupted as soldiers returned from World War I. During that summer, conflicts raged from Chicago to the deep south, as white supremacists rioted against newly empowered returning Black veterans and an increased number of Black factory workers employed in America’s northern factories. Ono captures the violence—and its links to contemporary race-based conflicts—in an abstract and visionary style, with travis declaiming against an agitated froth of avant garde sound. “A Dream of Sodomy” lurches and rolls in funk-punk bravado, as travis declaims all the nightmarish scenarios that haunt his nocturnal hours, while “Coon” natters rhythmically across a fever-lit foundation of hand-drums, mosquito buzz and flute. “26 June 1919” wanders through a blasted, rioting landscape, sounds buzzing and pinging and roaring around travis’ fractured poetry. “White men, red men, Manchester town, send ‘em home, Oklahoma, send ‘em home, in a Black man house, send ‘em home, send ‘em home,” he chants, ominously, vertiginously. The center isn’t holding, for sure. The disc closes with the uneasy truce of “Sycamore Trees,” where steam blasts of synthesizer sound rush up and around travis’ vibrating, basso verses about meeting under the sycamore trees, a metaphor like the blues and gospel and nearly all Black music is full of metaphor about reuniting in a better place. Powerful.

Jennifer Kelly

Julian Taylor — The Ridge (Howling Turtle, Inc.)

youtube

Singer-songwriter Julian Taylor does the little things well. That's not to say that he doesn't do the obvious things well, too, on his latest release The Ridge. His easy voice fits his songs, letting autobiography come with comfortable phrasing. As a writer, he tends toward the straightforward, avoiding extended metaphors or oblique references. The title track considers a particular form of life, and Taylor sticks to the tangible, singing about the stable, “Shovel manure, clean their beds, and prepare the feed for the day.” Taylor's songs make sense of the immediate world and relationships around him, but they avoid woolgathering. The album feels a bit removed from the current climate, but that's no complaint when Taylor's developed a welcoming place to visit. It isn't always easy here, but it's always companionable.

But back to those little things. Each song has carefully detailed orchestration and production. The record goes down easy whether tending toward James Taylor, Cat Stevens or something closer to country, and much of that easiness comes from the precise placement of every note. Burke Carroll's pedal steel, for instance, never exists for its own sake, but to serve the lyric that Taylor sings. The album contains enough space to feel like a rural Canadian ridge, with details drawn into to support Taylor's direct stories. The Ridge could easily go unnoticed (unobtrusiveness not being a highly rewarded trait), but its subtlety and care make it worth taking your boots off and sitting down for a minute.

Justin Cober-Lake

Various Artists — For a Better Tomorrow (Garden Portal)

For A Better Tomorrow by Various Artists

Compilation albums loom large in the American Primitive Guitar realm. Takoma, Tompkins Square and Locust all had larger ambitions than merely offering a sampling of wares, and to them, Garden Portal says, “hold my beer. I’ve got some collecting and playing to do.” For A Better Tomorrow started out as a Bernie Sanders fundraising endeavor. But when Bernie bailed and COVID-19 came on the scene, Garden Portal pivoted to support Athens Mutual Aid Network, an umbrella organization that coordinates aid to the underserved in this trying time. But in addition to good works, there’s some good work going on here. Not all of it is guitar-centric, but even the tracks that aren’t are close enough to the strings and heart template of the aforementioned parties to merit consideration under the same rubric. Joseph Allred’s been ultra-productive recently, so it’s actually helpful to be reminded of the spirit that infuses his playing by listening to it one track at a time. Rob Noyes’ “Diminished” takes the listener on a deep dive into the construction of sentiment and sound. And Will Csorba’s Pelt-like blast of fiddle drone, “Requiem for Ociel Guadalupe Martinez,” will put your hair up high enough to make that self-inflicted quarantine do a bit easier to execute.

Bill Meyer

Various Artists — The Storehouse Presents (The Storehouse)

The Storehouse Presents by The Storehouse

The coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on many things. You doubtless have your own list of loss, but for the proprietors of The Storehouse, the catalog of things kissed goodbye directly corresponds to their endeavor’s inventory of reasons to be. Over the past few years, the Storehouse has invited audiences out to a West Michigan farmhouse to enjoy a potluck meal and a concert played by some musicians of note. If there had been no lockdown, listeners could have enjoyed the Sun Ra Arkestra last April. Instead, no one’s playing, and no one’s getting paid, so the Storehouse has compiled this set of live and exclusive studio tracks to sell on Bandcamp in order to benefit the musicians and the Music Maker Relief Foundation. The cause, is good, but so are the tunes. Want to hear Steve Gunn and William Tyler in sympathetic orbit? Or Joan Shelley pledging her love? Or the first hints of Mind Over Mirrors’ new direction? Step right this way, preferably on one of 2020’s first Fridays.

Bill Meyer

Z-Ro — Rohammad Ali (1 Deep Entertainment / Empire)

youtube

On one of his previous tracks, Z-Ro admitted that he’s basically just writing the same song over and over again (that’s how meta he is now, writing songs on writing songs). While he exaggerated a bit, he was not that far from the truth. In the last half dozen years he’s been writing the same three or four songs in various combinations, reconfigurations and forms. Rohammad Ali follows the same template: haters hate him, but he’s OK and is counting his money. Multiply this by 17, and here is the album. Despite this self-cannibalizing (lots of poets did that), Z-Ro with every new album sounds fresh and far from tired. The self-repeats just fuel him. Rohammad Ali has only one rap guest, and it’s Shaquille O’Neal whose rap career didn’t jump off in the 1990s. A lack of guests only proves that Z-Ro can self-sustain without support from the outside. The only thing from the outside he needs is hate.

Ray Garraty

3 notes · View notes