A week ago, while chatting with Why? frontman Yoni Wolf in advance of his band’s stop in Seattle (November 12, Neumos) on the 10-year anniversary tour of Alopecia, we got into a conversation about the current political climate and politics in music.
“I’ll say this: I like very little political music, but there are certain ways that someone can make an album that has political tones, that I like,” Wolf explained, and then he turned me onto a hiphop artist who had, up until that point, flown under my musical radar, and onto what has become one of my favorite records of 2018 so far: Open Mike Eagle, What Happens When I Try to Relax. “He’s saying some things on there that could be called political, but he has such a unique voice, and it’s done in such a unique way, it doesn’t feel like he’s preaching at all, it feels fresh, and it feels like it’s singularly from his own perspective.”
I didn’t have room in my piece to include his rec—but shortly after Wolf and I spoke, I discovered that Open Mike Eagle happened to be coming to Seattle, too.
And I couldn’t agree more with him about What Happens When I Try to Relax. Though it’s only an EP, in a mere six tracks, the Chicago art rap pusher manages to capture the hope and anxiety of our current times, the desire we all have to push our heads in the sand, the impossibility of doing that with so much shit hitting the fan on a daily basis, and the overall dark disillusionment/apathy/frustration that so many of us have been walking around feeling and that has only continued to grow since the current administration took office, with the added social layer of being Black in America. Somehow, it’s not preachy in the least and is dosed heavily in what I’ve discovered (after some more thorough listening to his catalog) is Open Mike’s trademark smart wit.
Particular stand-outs include stripped-down album opener “Relatable (peak OME),” which starts: “When I get nervous say something relatable / I’m hella relatable / That’s hella legit and not really debatable / I live in your neighborhood / That guy you shit talkin’ is right there in back of you / So try to act natural”—and seems to be about how he sees himself within society, feeling like he doesn’t belong, and how that affects his mindstate. “Single Ghosts” is a play on getting ghosted (“You post online, and you haunt with that / You both dead and alive, like a quantum cat”), vapid personalities that might as well be ghosts, and “real” ghosts (dead people). And, my favorite of them all, “Microfiche,” with its easy cruising, grooving production, stop-motion claymation video, references to Colin Kaepernick and his overarching social stress (“It’s about time people get set straight / They got my stomach upset, Kaopectate / And I was up all night, went to bed late / I had a big fat Frank Black head day”), and a chorus of breezy willful denial (“It can all go away / It can all go away, just shut yo eyes / It can all go away”).
Check out the tracks below. Open Mike Eagle plays the Crocodile tonight.. Tickets are $15.
