JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's time for New Music Friday. And this week we've got mixtapes, grunge music and a legendary aviatrix. We'll pass it off now to Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Ann Powers from NPR Music for a sample of the best new music out today, starting with the third mixtape from the rapper Doechii called "Alligator Bites Never Heal."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAIT")
DOECHII: (Rapping) What do you think would happen? You wait on it like a laxative. Life is just like a settlement, waiting for you to cash on it. Life is just like a bike. It don't move unless you pedaling - less about who is better and more about who blessing them.
DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN, BYLINE: So Doechii is a Florida rapper. She's part of the Top Dawg Entertainment roster that gave us the careers of Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q and SZA. We've got storytelling. We've got multiple characters. We've got multiple flows. She is - I don't know. She's kind of just showing off now.
ANN POWERS, BYLINE: It's killer. It's killer. And I love that you point out that it's all in the service of her characters, too. In that way, she reminds me of early Nicki Minaj. You know, in the early days of Nicki, when we were like, oh, wow. She's Roman. She's herself. Who is she? That's what attracted me to Nicki. And I feel like Doechii even takes that a step further.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAIT")
DOECHII: (Singing) No need to bring fall back in August, September. You should just fall back and wait.
TYLER-AMEEN: There is some self-reflection here, too. I mean, this mixtape starts with the line, if I died today, and it gives us this sobering look at somebody who is, you know, looking over what she's done with her life so far. She's still very young, but she's taken her time a little bit. She's got these three tapes and two EPs. And, you know, she kind of says to herself, like, if it was all over today, like, what would I amount to?
(SOUNDBITE OF DOECHII SONG, "SLIDE" )
POWERS: I do have a question, though. Why do you think they're still calling these releases mixtapes? Like, maybe I'm missing something, but why not just say this is an album?
TYLER-AMEEN: I can't claim to know what Doechii is thinking, but I do sort of feel like with the track record that she's had so far and the kind of fun that she's had doing what she's doing, if she decided to say, OK, now it's time to get serious, there would...
POWERS: I see.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...Be so much pressure that there just isn't for her right now. And it allows her, I think, to get away with doing a lot of fun stuff without every single pair of eyes and ears being on her, expecting her to just, you know, nail it.
POWERS: Well, get your ears on this mixtape, at any rate, because it's really something.
TYLER-AMEEN: That's "Alligator Bites Never Heal" by Doechii. Where do you want to go next?
POWERS: Well, let's go all the way across the country from Florida to my home state, Washington state. It's a band from Tacoma, Wash. They're called Enumclaw, and it is a full-on '90s-style, rock 'n' roll, fuzz guitar kind of band, you know? This is Enumclaw's second album. The first was the one that grabbed my attention. It was called "Save The Baby," and this one is called "Home In Another Life."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOT JUST YET")
ENUMCLAW: (Singing) My aunt lost control of my uncle, the only father he'll ever know. Who would've thought Uncle Mike could get old if life could always stay golden? This can't be true. This can't be true.
POWERS: Aramis Johnson, who's the singer and the main songwriter - he has a beautiful vulnerability to his songwriting. He also has a really wonderful, imperfect voice. And I mean a singing voice, not just a writing voice...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
POWERS: ...But both. Johnson has said that this album - he really wanted it to be about not the negative aspects of his life but just - he said in an interview, you know, someone came up to me at a party or something and said, you're always so happy. Do you ever not feel happy? And he said, to himself, I'm not a robot. And that drove him to write these songs, which actually really make some risky leaps.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. Youthful shame is a really common yarn on this thing. But youthful feels like the important part because he as a writer seems especially fixated, at least on this record, on the kinds of shame that you only realize years or maybe decades later wasn't really your fault.
POWERS: That's said so well. And, you know, I hesitate to raise this, but I do think that Aramis Johnson and this band have a different perspective on some of these stories maybe because they're also a mostly Black band in a scene that's still mostly white...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
POWERS: ...And that was historically mostly white.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
POWERS: And, you know, it comes up - he hasn't written, like, an anthem about racial equality, as far as I know yet. But it's just part of the outsider perspective, I think, a little bit, you know?
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. I think those things wind up being sort of baked into the cake. If you're somebody...
POWERS: Yeah, well-said.
TYLER-AMEEN: If you have that only-one-in-the-room experience, then you're sort of constantly watching your angles and, you know, thinking about how you present yourself to people and the kinds of projections that they can make onto you and whether sharing your pain is a noble and honest and vulnerable act or whether it's - you know, you're putting yourself forward to be sort of exploited and sensationalized. It's - yeah. I think that's all there, even if it's not.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENUMCLAW SONG, "NOT JUST YET")
POWERS: All right. We have one more album to talk about, and it is from the great multidisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson. It's called "Amelia," and you can probably figure out from the title what this is about.
TYLER-AMEEN: I'm going to guess it's the world's most famous Amelia.
POWERS: (Laughter) You're absolutely right. It's inspired by the last flight of the aviator Amelia Earhart, where she was lost at sea.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
POWERS: This is a really absorbing album. She just uses the audio space so beautifully to put us on the plane with Earhart.
TYLER-AMEEN: It's immersive right away. It's almost like, you know, a radio play.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TO CIRCLE THE WORLD")
LAURIE ANDERSON: It was the sound of the motor I remember the most. Takeoff - May 20, 1937.
POWERS: I talked to Laurie Anderson, actually, and she was finishing up this record. And she just cut to the quick and said, you know, I just was really interested in the science and the mechanics and what was going on inside the plane. And that might be my favorite thing about this record. There are songs that kind of contemplate gender, contemplate, you know, exotica, exoticism.
TYLER-AMEEN: For sure, yeah.
POWERS: Big themes. But the best moments for me are the ones where she really, really gets into, like, what was going on in that plane.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WAVES OF SAND")
ANDERSON: The instruments quiver, all the meters burning out.
TYLER-AMEEN: Laurie Anderson also does, I mean, what I would call akin to acting on this.
POWERS: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: There's a moment where she's talking about being in the desert, and the way she says, it's so hot, is...
POWERS: I know.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...As if she's getting weak herself.
POWERS: Yes.
TYLER-AMEEN: This blurring of sort of a transcendent state and maybe, you know, crossing over into oblivion.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAURIE ANDERSON SONG, "ALOFT (FEAT. ANOHNI)")
TYLER-AMEEN: There's a lot of sort of majesty and possibility near the top of this recording, and it's only over time that there are hints of something more menacing afoot.
POWERS: Yes.
TYLER-AMEEN: Even if it's not imminent danger, you sort of feel the hero coming to terms with the magnitude of the task, just sort of looking at the Earth laid out before them.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALOFT (FEAT. ANOHNI)")
LAURIE ANDERSON AND ANONHI: (Singing) Waves of air, waves of air.
SUMMERS: That was Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Ann Powers from NPR Music. And you can hear more in their full episode of New Music Friday from the podcast All Songs Considered. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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