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Browse: Home / CD Reviews, Music / Brzowski

Brzowski

September 4, 2017

Brzowski
Enmityville
Milled Pavement Records 

Rap has always been an effective divining rod for feelings of isolation and frustration. On his third solo album, the Portland rapper Brzowski tests the boundaries to find out how much bleakness the genre can contain. Enmityville envelops us in a murky world of hopelessly corrupt social structures and broken-down factory workers. Its uniformly slate-gray mood is melodramatic, for sure, but it’s also appropriate for the year we’ve had. At its best, this record is a bracing look in the mirror, a manifestation of our darkest fears set to striking, adventurous beats. Take “Surplus Humanity,” which pairs a relentlessly pessimistic account of overpopulation with a life-preserver of an organ loop. Problem is, Brzowski’s verses can be as overpopulated as his subject matter. I’m compelled to compare his SAT-worksheet lyrics with those of Aesop Rock, whose plight-of-the-working-class masterpiece Labor Days is deeply embedded in Enmityville’s DNA. But unlike Aesop, Brzowski isn’t all that concerned with writing rhymes. His lyrics are more like spoken-word screeds. And as a result, listening can feel like work. (I don’t want to have to pause a track because I have to look up what “palimpsest” means.) Even so, after another long day of horrifying news alerts, this music gives us no place to hide, nothing to hold onto but this rapper’s steady, sandpaper rasp. Things are going to get worse before they get better, people. Until then, we could do worse than playing this one loud.

— Joe Sweeney

Categories: CD Reviews, Music

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