Ever since De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising popularized sketch comedy in hip-hop, rap albums have routinely run over an hour in length, with more than half of that time devoted to intros, cutups and guest appearances. Ugly Duckling, an underground rap trio from Long Beach, don’t buck that trend on their second LP Taste the Secret (Emperor Norton), but their nonsense is actually funny. Throughout Taste the Secret, Ugly Duckling break for a series of skits about an all-meat fast food joint called MeatShake and its spirited rivalry with a health food restaurant, The Veggie-Hut. It’s not cutting-edge satire, but unlike the mumbled improv that makes up interludes on most hip-hop albums, Taste the Secret sports sparkling dialogues that spoof both the corporate-level cheeriness with which the fast food industry pushes its artery-cloggers and the minimum wage-level indifference with which the meat hits the plate.
The songs between the skits are just as crafty, as lead MCs Andycat and Dizzy trot out laid-back, self-deprecating rhymes about being the white-faced clowns of West Coast rap. Their DJ, Young Einstein, spins upbeat, poppy tracks that draw from the same alterna-funk well as the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets and, again, De La Soul did a decade ago. In fact, the biggest knock against Ugly Duckling is that they may be too stuck in the past; whenever they get away from jokes about greasy spoons, they lack a distinct personality. But they at least have an ethos, best expressed on “Energy Drink,” which explains how music should be a shot of adrenaline—a happy drug.
—Noel Murray
A lovely mess
In his semantic study Birth of the Cool, Lewis MacAdams describes Jackson Pollock’s paintings as “Infinitely intricate webs of color, rhythm and line so far beyond the realm of language that in some cases, Pollock could only give them numbers, like 'Number 28, 1949.’ ” Likewise, to describe Boston’s Consonant as a “pop group” is to call Pollock’s work “paint-by-numbers.” Led by former Mission of Burma bassist Clint Conley—and borrowing elements from the germinal group—Consonant create 'pop’ in its most unrestricted form. On the group’s second LP, Love and Affliction (Fenway), Conley stretches the confines of a pop song, again collaborating with poet Holly Anderson, using her Scrabble-game phrasing to construct his own fractured verse. On “Hell-Blonde,” he manages to sum up his work with the observation, “These images trapped inside my head, a lovely mess.”
Love and Affliction is a lovely mess. While the group’s debut was more straightforward and frequently driving (with a few Burma-inspired twists), here Conley’s narrative is subverted by delicate layers of feedback and disjointed drum rhythms. Like out-jazzmen masquerading as a rock band, lead guitarist Chris Brokaw follows Conley closely, knowing when to assert himself within the jarring quiet-loud-quiet-quiet formation. Conley’s vocals crest and falter with a broken meter, most prominently within “She’s Driving Fast” and the closer, “Blue Story,” which sounds like Sonic Youth covering Chet Baker. While there are pockets of giddy melody—notably the sing-along chorus of “Are You Done?”—Love and Affliction is defined by Consonant’s emphasis on lyricism over hooks. Had MacAdams included a chapter on the punk movement, he’d undoubtedly be impressed with Conley’s tact at blending genres, creating a lovely mess.
—Kate Silver
