Just checking out Jerk Ribs for the first time. Wow!
― how's life, Tuesday, 28 January 2014 12:59 (ten years ago) link
it's apparently on itunes now - i'd wondered why it had been scrubbed from the internet at the end of last year
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 28 January 2014 13:05 (ten years ago) link
tempted by the brighton gig myselfsits nicely between two weddings for me
― nathey, Tuesday, 28 January 2014 13:05 (ten years ago) link
https://soundcloud.com/iamkelis/rumble/s-HQ0ni
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Sunday, 16 February 2014 10:30 (ten years ago) link
http://pitchfork.com/news/54013-kelis-will-host-a-show-on-the-cooking-channel/
― sent as gassed to onto rt dominance (DJP), Tuesday, 18 February 2014 15:37 (ten years ago) link
damn good album on one listen
― lex pretend, Monday, 24 February 2014 15:41 (ten years ago) link
this album is bizarre
― johnny crunch, Monday, 3 March 2014 00:39 (ten years ago) link
good weekend morning album
there's something about the production that feels super urban (in the dictionary definition sense of the word, not the colloquial) to me, and i really like that about it
― le goon (J0rdan S.), Monday, 3 March 2014 01:23 (ten years ago) link
Not sure what to make of this yet, it really is quite a strange album. I think I like it but definitely need to spend a lot more time with it. Floyd was the standout after one play, beautiful chorus.
Not sure she's going to have big hits from it. Think Jerk Ribs would be her best bet but she already gave that away for free last year.
― Kitchen Person, Monday, 3 March 2014 02:31 (ten years ago) link
"She needs ice cold water"
― Kitchen Person, Monday, 3 March 2014 02:32 (ten years ago) link
huh, they've switched "breakfast" and "jerk ribs" in the running order from the press copy - minor alteration but i liked the way the album opening with her kid's voice talking about food made it feel like a segue from tasty ending with kelis's voice saying "ok: now, swallow"
― lex pretend, Monday, 3 March 2014 09:17 (ten years ago) link
I don't get strange or bizarre from this. I think it's brilliant.
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Monday, 3 March 2014 09:53 (ten years ago) link
yeah i don't hear what's strange about it at all, it's comforting (but also kind of enlivening) at the same time, like some sort of platonic ideal of homecoming
― lex pretend, Monday, 3 March 2014 10:20 (ten years ago) link
and the more i listen the more fantastic i think it is
excited to hear it!
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Monday, 3 March 2014 10:39 (ten years ago) link
I can't keep up with 2014, people please slow down!
― Bipolar Sumner (Branwell Bell), Monday, 3 March 2014 14:37 (ten years ago) link
If you can, catching her live this year would be ADVISABLE for real
― lex pretend, Monday, 3 March 2014 23:41 (ten years ago) link
It's a strange album in the sense that it's an about face for her. Prior to this her most recent output is an LP with David Guetta spearheading production, along with a feature on a Calvin Harris single. And yes, I know we've had since May last year to get used to the idea of an album with Sitek, but a quaint interlude like "Bless The Telephone", which is almost a Laura Marling song if you squint hard enough(though Marling would likely never deign to reference something so modern as a telephone; in her world missives appear to be the only natural form of communication), is kinda wtf for Kelis. If Flesh Tone was a change up from her Neptunes days, this is a full blown metamorphosis.
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:11 (ten years ago) link
this sounds pretty good. is there a link to her cooking show that's viewable in the UK?
― cerealbar, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:17 (ten years ago) link
i feel like this album really follows on from tasty - not just all the food/drink connections, but it's like a ~proper soul~ continuation of the reflective, city heatwave aesthetic of that album's final stretch. it's not any more of a shock than flesh tone itself was (which is to say, it is a metamorphosis, but by now that's kinda expected of her)
i was discussing this with DL after the gig last night, it's weird how kelis never actually codes as a pop shape-shifter like madonna or whoever because she never shifts - her persona/character remains constant - what she does is completely and totally inhabit whatever style she's committed to at any given point. (this was reinforced last night when she recasted "4th of july" and "acapella" in the style of the new album omgggggg so good)
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:24 (ten years ago) link
also would like to point out that despite being universally dismissed as a mere neptunes muse on her emergence, kelis's creative powers have far outlasted theirs
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:25 (ten years ago) link
also yeah we've had half a year of "jerk ribs" knocking around - THAT was the "wow, didn't expect this sound" moment, surely no one's surprised by the album after that!
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:26 (ten years ago) link
Well, "Jerk Ribs" wasn't necessarily going to be synecdoche for the whole record. (And I don't think it is, tbh, though I have only heard it once).
It's a surprising move for Kelis - and I don't mean a bad move, just to clarify - because none of this will be on radio, it's far more languid, measured, and removed from the dancefloor than anything I can recall from her in the past. In any event it's certainly the most interesting thing I've heard from Ninja Tune since, like, forever.
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:53 (ten years ago) link
Last night Bless the Telephone sounded like very early 70s, like Clifford T Ward or someone like that. You wouldn't want a whole record in that vein but it was a beautiful interlude.
Horn arrangements sounded spectacular - shades of Isaac Hayes, Charles Stepney and other prog-soul masters, even Fela on Jerk Ribs, plus a colossal version of Nina Simone's Feeling Good. Hard to do 70s soul horns without slipping into Later with Jools Holland "feel the quality" smugness but her arranger managed it.
It's no doubt wishful thinking but I'd like to see this get even a fraction of the adoration of Back to Black because I think it's the first album since that one to pull off the retro-not-retro vibe. Seeing her perform it in its entirety underlines that there are no weak links here. Every song adds something valuable to the whole.
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 10:59 (ten years ago) link
Just realised this is her first album without an intro. That was fast becoming my most played Kelis track on LastFM.
― Kitchen Person, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 14:49 (ten years ago) link
The word "universally" is doing an awful lot of work here. When 'Caught Out There' first came out all the talk was about this awesome screaming lady, at a time where people barely knew who the Neps were.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 15:08 (ten years ago) link
when the album came out every review i read was like "oh no, it was written by men". this was an era when the idea of Writing Your Oen Songs still had a ton of currency
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 15:16 (ten years ago) link
I don't remember that much handwringing about it but most of the reviews I read were overwhelmingly positive. The point being she was never seen as exclusively a Neptunes muse, and I accept that eg Aaliyah got a load of condescending reductive press along similar lines. Kelis was always too in-your-face.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 16:12 (ten years ago) link
In the UK press Kelis was definitely a bigger deal than the Neptunes circa Kaleidoscope. I don't remember any of the reviews Lex refers to.
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Tuesday, 4 March 2014 16:23 (ten years ago) link
i don't hate this but the production sounds too much like tv on the radio from 10 yrs ago, can't really get past that
(this was reinforced last night when she recasted "4th of july" and "acapella" in the style of the new album omgggggg so good)
see this sounds horrible but maybe ill seek out a youtube of it
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 4 March 2014 17:53 (ten years ago) link
http://youtu.be/FirBvR1HmKI So "Bless The Telephone" is actually a cover! Ha.
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Wednesday, 5 March 2014 12:44 (ten years ago) link
which is almost a Laura Marling song if you squint hard enough(though Marling would likely never deign to reference something so modern as a telephone; in her world missives appear to be the only natural form of communication)
i don't know where you're getting this from but just so you know, it is bullshit
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/lauramarling/masterhunter.html
― j., Wednesday, 5 March 2014 12:53 (ten years ago) link
It was kind of meant to be in jest - I had goodbye england in mind when I wrote it. But, yeah, caught out!
― pearly-dewdrops' bops (monotony), Wednesday, 5 March 2014 19:50 (ten years ago) link
This is so damn great, "Fish Fry," "Runner" and "Cobbler" in particular.
― Simon H., Wednesday, 5 March 2014 19:55 (ten years ago) link
putting this on now, will be annoyed if 'floyd' isnt about keith
― r|t|c, Wednesday, 5 March 2014 20:00 (ten years ago) link
is it called Friday Fish Fry or just Fish Fry? i'm seeing both
― cerealbar, Wednesday, 5 March 2014 21:04 (ten years ago) link
didn't mean to come overhard at you, monotony, actually i was just listening for the first time then and getting a gross feeling from sitek's production, very backing-tracky, and in the percussion a bit crisper but kind of reminiscent of what i thought about the indie-default rhythm section on st. vincent's new one, although given the more pronounced throwback vibe on 'food' the effect seems more like the 'we can get down too' vibe you could get from 60s pop records who dared to plop some rock/soul rhythms under their arrangements. both this and the marling record seem to aim at roughly the same era so what you said about modernity really rubbed me wrong, if anything i think kelis' record sounds more dated because its attitude toward the intervening years of stylistic changes is so after-the-fact conservative ('we incorporate the best of everything that's happened in tasteful music of the last 40 years!'). say, -because- it treats them like style markers.
(and i think a big part of my reaction must be a production/writing thing, because although nothing else has grabbed me i really did love 'dear science', so i think the elements of the sound can work given the right settings.)
― j., Wednesday, 5 March 2014 21:56 (ten years ago) link
I quite enjoyed this in a superior quality retro soul way but I feel that Kelis gets less, not more, interesting with each subsequent reinvention.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 6 March 2014 11:09 (ten years ago) link
she's getting old and has clearly been all about the domesticity for some time, this feels like the "right" album to have made at this point in her career. whether the styles she goes for at any point interest you or not i think what becomes increasingly clear is how thorough and non-obvious each reinvention is. over 15 years five of her six albums have worked incredibly well and distinctly in terms of mining a particular aesthetic (with record label fuckery responsible for the one that didn't, and even that had enough great material in its random grab-bag to be satisfying)...feel like her absences in between might prevent her from getting the credit she deserves as a career artist/reinventer (as opposed to a purveyor of lots of great singles)
― lex pretend, Thursday, 6 March 2014 12:06 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, I remember it being later that the Neptunes were recognized as producer-auteurs. Kelis was used in the list of artists they had worked with to support that narrative (along with Noreaga, Old Dirty Bastard, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Mystikal), but that wasn't until around late 2000, early 2001. At least in terms of my knowledge.
I always liked this story from S/FJ's 2004 piece on both Timbo and the Neps coming up at the same time from Virginia Beach:
The studio was called Mastersound in the 90's, when Timbaland and the Neptunes sometimes worked simultaneously in the adjacent rooms. ''There was a great moment here,'' Andrew Coleman, the Neptunes' longtime chief engineer, recalled not long ago. ''It was 1999, and Missy and Tim were working on Missy's 'Da Real World.' Chad and Pharrell were working on Kelis, and they were doing 'Caught Out There.' '' They especially liked the song's chorus, Coleman said. ''Tim and Missy could hear Kelis screaming, 'I hate you so much right now!' They had their ears right up to the door. They loved that song. Tim was like, 'That's crazy.' Then they went right back to work.''
― MikoMcha, Thursday, 6 March 2014 12:12 (ten years ago) link
Making filter disco Guetta-pop in 2010 and indie-friendly retro-soul in 2014 feel like the most obvious moves possible for their respective years. She's got a vastly superior take on both sounds but records were totally on-trend.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 6 March 2014 12:48 (ten years ago) link
Making filter disco Guetta-pop in 2010 and indie-friendly retro-soul in 2014 feel like the most obvious moves possible for their respective years.
Funnily enough if she'd done this in reverse it might have seemed sightly belated in each case.
― Tim F, Thursday, 6 March 2014 12:56 (ten years ago) link
Is indie-friendly retro-soul on trend right now? Who are you thinking of?
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Thursday, 6 March 2014 14:07 (ten years ago) link
she was def ahead of the curve w/ flesh tone
― le goon (J0rdan S.), Thursday, 6 March 2014 15:08 (ten years ago) link
Indie-friendly retro-soul - this is something that's always around, always "slightly belated", isn't it?
btw enjoying this record on the morning tip!
― MikoMcha, Thursday, 6 March 2014 15:51 (ten years ago) link
That's kind of what I meant, yeah. It's just the specifics of what it would be compared to that change.
― Tim F, Thursday, 6 March 2014 20:41 (ten years ago) link
It's definitely more forgiving to be competing with Adele than Amy.
― imago draggin' (The Reverend), Thursday, 6 March 2014 21:15 (ten years ago) link
that this album has really not very much in common with either sorta proves my point that kelis is doing something non-obvious in a non-obvious way
― lex pretend, Thursday, 6 March 2014 21:30 (ten years ago) link
I haven't had a chance to listen but I assumed there was going to be more of an afrobeat bent based on "Jerk Ribs"/Dear Science.
― imago draggin' (The Reverend), Thursday, 6 March 2014 21:40 (ten years ago) link
Yeah I don't think Adele or Amy are particularly relevant to this discussion, their records were aiming right at the mainstream whereas this has a kind of domestic-bohemian thing going on. There's none of Adele's stadium slush here and none-of the hip-hop influence of Back In Black. Actually the audible influence of hip-hop is conspicuous by its absence here - it's all very 1970s in its arrangement and production choices (those horn sections!)
I feel like getting Sitek in to produce an R&B record and by extension aiming it at a very particular crowd is something that would have been considerably less likely pre-Weekend/Frank Ocean. Like there's something very second-hand store about this record's entire aesthetic but it's definitely a superior quality second-handness if that makes sense. I get the sense that all concerned were trying to make the kind of awesome psychedelic soul record that makes crate-digging worthwhile, with all the attendant baggage that comes with that.
Got to say, this is really working for me on a Sunday morning. The sound is really thick and rich in a way that suits Kelis's voice well (and it's a huskier voice these days). It's like really good quality comfort food.
― Matt DC, Sunday, 9 March 2014 11:17 (ten years ago) link
Ha, sorry. To both you and Des'ree.
― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Friday, 25 April 2014 15:35 (ten years ago) link
Why is Floyd so perfect. Such an amazing album.
― jay., Monday, 28 April 2014 15:12 (ten years ago) link
on spotify now
― kidd-gilchrist-douglas-roberts- (Spottie), Monday, 28 April 2014 15:24 (ten years ago) link
So this is really great.
― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Wednesday, 14 May 2014 14:18 (ten years ago) link
is this album getting some love by blogging circles/music critics? i have been addicted to this record for 3 days. Walking down the streets to Friday Fish Fry is one of the best feelings I had this summer.
― Van Horn Street, Thursday, 10 July 2014 04:11 (ten years ago) link
She played New York about a month ago - did anyone go? I thought about it but then didn't.
― Humorist (horse) (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, 10 July 2014 13:00 (ten years ago) link
I was just about to revive this thread. After giving the album a listen when it leaked and not really getting into it I've just gone back to it and found myself getting addicted to certain songs on here. Played it five times in the last day.
― Kitchen Person, Thursday, 10 July 2014 13:36 (ten years ago) link
The songs on this album are approximately 10000000000000x more enjoyable when heard live. Saw her show last night and she was a complete delight - I came out grinning from ear to ear.
― uxorious gazumping (monotony), Thursday, 24 July 2014 23:19 (ten years ago) link
I mean first of all this album still rules
second of all did you know Mount Kimbie did a remix of "Jerk Ribs"??? Holy shit!!! There's some echo on the vocal that really evokes some 80's pop R&B vibes imo!! V fresh and great!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUAY9X8CWjY
― y kant max read (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, 9 January 2015 14:02 (nine years ago) link
I'm surprised "Forever Be" wasn't released as a single
also "Floyd" still sounds like Spiritualized to my ears.
― y kant max read (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, 9 January 2015 14:04 (nine years ago) link
this album is still so underrated
― Fluffy Saint-Bernard (Stevie D(eux)), Saturday, 12 November 2016 21:43 (seven years ago) link
^ Agreed. "Floyd" is such a beautiful jam.
― Ross, Monday, 14 November 2016 17:16 (seven years ago) link
it always sounds beautiful in the summer gloaming
― art baengels (monotony), Monday, 14 November 2016 23:23 (seven years ago) link
kelis in 2021!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EJLxF0mElM
I haven't felt compelled to return to the rest of it, and my overall impression is that it's pretty dull.
Also wow I was SO wrong about Food back when it was first released. It's probably my favourite Kelis album now, or at the very least my most-played.
― monotony, Friday, 8 October 2021 07:03 (two years ago) link