Sole and the Skyrider Band
(Fake Four)
Hello Cruel World is Tim Holland's third album as Sole and the Skyrider band, but his first after ending an 11 year association with Anticon, the label he founded in the early 1990s with Pedestrian (James Brandon Best). Artist-owned Anticon has been a mainstay of independent hip hop over its decade plus of existence, nurturing artists like Why?, Doseone, Odd Nosdam, Alias and Themselves and creating a platform for frequent collaboration among its members. Yet by 2010, Holland found himself "increasingly at odds with the business end of Anticon and began doing more DIY work via soleone.org." A digital age had made labels, however well-intentioned, obsolete, he maintained in a farewell statement. He was going "DIY ... the industry is D.I.E.," he proclaimed in "DIY."
Hello Cruel World tracks Holland's dissatisfaction with the business of music making in intensely literate, musically evocative style. In the first track alone, the jaw-dropping "Napoleon," he manages to reference George Orwell, Bob Dylan, Thomas Hobbes, the film High Noon, all the while making a desperate last stand for artistic integrity. "I'm a lawn mowing man, fighting astro-turf," he observes," and I don't mind at all, my blade don't dull, my name rings bells and burns bridges, the industry hates me cos I'm still eating." The instrumentation here is sparse but dramatic, minimal drum beats, echoing voices, blasts of synthetic keyboards, creating a cavernous space to surround Holland's words.
Roughly a quarter of the way through, the piece breaks for Xiu Xiu's instrumental hook, a lush, emotive complement to Sole's burnt-to-the-ground bitterness. It is here that we make the connection to Animal Farm's message, jumping from record-industry malfeasance to a more general observation that all revolutions are doomed. Napoleon, as you might remember, was the porcine stand-in for Stalin, the one who turned the animal uprising into a power grab and ended up not much better than the humans overthrown. The point is made subtly, and just in the hook, as Xiu Xiu croons, "Like a pig who can talk and say I am a fool, I can eat you, because you're just a pig."
"Napoleon" is the album's clear high point, but other tracks - "DIY", "We Will Not Be Moved" and the blistering "Possimism" - are nearly as good. Holland collaborates with a variety of artists, both expected (Sage Francis, Pedestrian, Fake Four co-head Ceschi) and unexpected (Pictureplane). Live playing by the Skyrider band, which includes Bud Berning, William Ryan Fritch, John Wagner, lends a density and excitement to the proceedings. Holland's intricate rhymes may be the initial point of entry, but you quickly realize that the musical arrangements are nearly as subtle and complex.
This is not a feel-good album. A palpable sense of anger - at the music industry, at politicians, at the war machine, at the lack of universal health care, at damned near everything - hangs over the proceedings like a dirty fog. Lyrical moments, the gentle, melodic observation that "I started as a cell/now I'm a planet losing planet status," from "Formal Designation 134340" are widely separated.
And yet, how sharply Holland expresses his rage, how clearly his disappointment reveals betrayed idealism. The world is a dark and greedy place, run by idiots and criminals, and Holland's just reporting what he sees when he says, "You say I'm pessimistic, as if I'm out of touch/take a look around/I ain't pessimistic enough." Strong stuff.
DOWNLOAD: "Napoleon (featuring Xiu Xiu)" "DIY" JENNIFER KELLY
