Assembled earlier this year by Anna Devine, Ryan Kemp, and Jonny Fuller, the mutual-aid benefit compilation Melt ICE is a beyond-worthy effort that offers a sweeping cross-section of local music. But at 110 songs, arranged alphabetically by artist name, I was a bit daunted and kept putting off a close listen till later. Let me say that again: ONE HUNDRED AND TEN songs.
Once I had time to dig in, I was pleased to hear artists on their A-game. While plenty of contributors have found their way to past playlists, I also learned more about several musicians that I know only by name.
This month I've selected five tracks that I really dug from the comp. There’s plenty more where this came from—as you can tell, I only made it up to the letter “I.”
Local Picks
Full playlist here
Bad Bad Hats sure know how to write Bad Bad Hats songs, and that’s a compliment—some bands never figure out how to sound like themselves. Here Kerry Alexander allows herself a little joke about the song’s structure by falling for a guy who’s “all hook and no chorus.” We know what she means, don’t we ladies?
How do you deal with lies? Well, throwing loud guitars at the problem is one time-honored method. After all, we're never gonna survive unless we get a little Crazy Horse.
The Chicago-raised rapper has been sparing with new tracks since moving to the Twin Cities. Here he launches into a righteous, rat-a-tat flow over a throwback track laden with strings and piano.
Gramma, “Pearl”
Gramma don’t miss. At first the guitars reach out and smack you around, then they drop out so the bass can have its say, then they rush back in to finish you off.
“Maybe it’s not what I wanted and maybe it was,” observes Rosie Castano. “Two things can be true at the same time.” You may recall her from last year’s Poised to Pop; she's since rebranded as IAMJOY.
Non-Local Picks
Full playlist here
Downtown Boys, “You’re a Ghost”
These bilingual Providence-spawned (I mean the Rhode Island town, but sure, pun intended) lefties have been mostly out of action for nearly a decade now. With widespread ethnic cleansing back in style, you could be tempted to say this is their moment, but honestly, when hasn't it been the moment for bilingual lefties to strike back? Regardless, the anti-ICE video with which this single comes packaged certainly meets said moment. Their new album, Public Luxury, is due in late June.
Massive Attack feat. Tom Waits, “Boots on the Ground”
This unlikely teamup is only 4:21 in length but it feels longer, which I mean as a compliment. Where Waits’s ragged old man groan was once a deliberate stylization, now he’s maturing into the real thing, and he's fully credible as the voice of an eternal, universal, unknown soldier who has marched through millennia of mud and blood. And not to be a jerk, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it does remind me a little of this.
Ashley McBryde, “Bottle Tells Me So”
Rev this litany of a drunk’s regrets up to full honkytonk speed and it would sound like a recollection of a Saturday night you look back on with fond regret. But McBryde sings with such cool moment-of-clarity deliberation you can almost see sobriety on the horizon. Songs! They’re versatile that way.
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon, “Let Me Reflect/Uber From O’Hare”
Love the way this Charlotte rapper integrates not just female voices but women’s perspectives into the conversational tracks on his most recent album, As of Now. “We had our moment, it was cute, huh?” he keeps pestering a baddie who's moving on to greener pastures. She does her best to let him down easy till she says "see ya" with a “Stay blessed, keep ya head up.” On the second half, the Lord just spits. Sample boast and/or admission: “I took a trip to Tennessee, all I brought with me was Crocs.”
What I love about Liv as a performer and a writer is she always observes herself rather than merely expressing herself—she understands a silly, gushy infatuation as just that without robbing herself of the delight of rushing into it. And there are just so many wonderful little details here, like the double “in” of “fe-mi-nine in-tu-i-shun.” Incidentally, online astrologers tell me that the Gemini referred to here is Rodrigo ex (and onetime TV Sid Vicious) Louis Partridge, not that Geese boy who I hope learns a thing or two about tunes and enunciation before Olivia drops dead for someone new.
Worst New Song
I haven’t been this annoyed by a young new band in a while—good to know I’ve still got it in me. Granted, Niko Kapetan’s earnest Win Butler yelping throughout Something Worth Waiting For is mostly just what you'd expect with a 26-year-old with Big Feelings. But on the band’s most irritating track—coincidentally, also their catchiest, nothing like a hook to really make you feel the pain—he approximates the quaver Conor Oberst left behind in his teens while jabbering semi-coherently about the connections we make in life and so on and so forth. Oh, the dread I felt just knowing it was going to modulate to the climax.
