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Kool Keith

Black Elvis/Lost in Space

(Ruffhouse/Columbia)

 Amazon

 Lala

Kool Keith was at an interesting crossroads in 1999. The success of his album Dr. Octagonecologyst endeared him to the burgeoning scene of “backpacker hip-hop”, an indie spin on the ‘90s hip-hop underground. Kool Keith was the funky sci-fi freak of the moment, successor in spirit to George Clinton—except it was the intellectuals, not the party people, who were celebrating. Never one to censor himself, Keith bluntly declared independence from Dr. Octagon by having his supervillain persona, Dr. Dooom, kill him on the first track of First Come, First Served. With that out of the way, Keith was free to drop his masterpiece of bouncy sci-funk.

Black Elvis/Lost in Space introduced us to the persona of the title, one who brought Keith’s neo-Clinton potential home. The album chronicles the life of an intergalactic eccentric celebrity over tweaked-out beats full of booming bass drums and synthesizers galore. At the time, it was thought that this would be the record to launch Keith to another level of popularity, and it’s easy to see why: Black Elvis/Lost in Space was filled with hooks, and buttressed by some of Keith’s best rhymes to date. “Master of the Game”, featuring one of the final recorded performances from talk box king Roger Troutman, sees Keith busting out a fast rap that evokes the old school and space girl titties, while singles “Livin’ Astro” and “I’m Seein’ Robots” are both infectious celebrations of Black Elvis’s neon-colored lifestyle.

Unfortunately, Black Elvis/Lost in Space failed to make Keith huge, and he’s spent the past decade back in the underground (save for a subpar “return” of Dr. Octagon, who was then promptly killed—again—by Dr. Dooom). On the other hand, maybe it’s better for Keith’s crazy genius to flow free of major-label expectations. Regardless, Black Elvis/Lost in Space remains the most accessible distillation of Keith’s obsessions with sex and sci-fi. David Abravanel

Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire

Oh! The Grandeur

(Rykodisc)

 Amazon

 Lala

Back in 1999, no one could have predicted that the man responsible for this 15-song excursion into American pop and jazz from the Roaring ‘20s would ultimately grow to be the public radio indie rock juggernaut that Andrew Bird is today. If you listen closely enough, Oh! The Grandeur reveals hints and clues to the high-wire act Bird would ultimately embrace, but mostly it sounds more like an especially adept Squirrel Nut Zippers side-project.

And in some senses, that’s what it is. It wasn’t until Bird’s next album, The Swimming Hour, that he began synthesizing the genre exercises that fascinated him, transforming a budding musicologist into a brilliant composer. Oh! The Grandeur is weighted down by songs that sound doubly dated. “Candy Shop” sounds like Django Reinhardt filtered through the swinging ‘90s. “Vidalia” is a nostalgic trip to a Yiddish Vaudeville stage, and many other tracks sound like studies in Weil and Brecht rather than the product of a matured singer and songwriter, more cabaret than chamber pop. Even “Tea and Thorazine” and “Wait”, which weave a playful web of words and thus recall Bird’s later work, are notably missing his trademark whistle.

A virtuoso on violin and guitar, Bird may be best known for his whistling prowess: he is able to emit a sound that evokes the Theremin in pitch and vibrato. But for all of his multi-tasking and warbling, Bird’s true talent lies in the ability to craft albums that are unrivaled in scope and depth, some of the most sophisticated music in contemporary pop. That said, Oh! The Grandeur sounds like an artist wading through an archive of musical history, and the album feels more like an artifact of interest to collectors than an engaging work of art.

Bird had an unconventional but auspicious beginning for a pop musician: he studied the Suzuki piano method at an early age. But if that method is notable for its formally rigid approach to music, Bird balanced it with a supple and adept ear for—in his words—“harvesting” the sounds around him. Ten years on, Oh! The Grandeur sounds like a collection of song styles, and might be more aptly titled Andrew Bird’s Anthology of American Music. Luke Fenchel