Stuff Pve Been Listening To Luke Simcoe, OP Trendsetter Downloaded: Lupe Fiasco — Food ¢ Liquor Grizzly Bear — Yellow House Listened To: Elliott Smith — From a Basement on the Hill Thunderbirds are Now! — Make History (Advance copy) Lupe Fiasco — Food & Liquor “Kick, Push,” Fiasco’s hip-hop ode to skateboarding comes about six years too late and begs comparison’s to OPM’s gimmicky “Heaven is a Half-Pipe.” “I Gotcha,” with lines like “I'd like to welcome y’all to my dark recesses; it’s where I keep the bars like bathtub edges,” reeks too strongly of Kanye’s jock, and I haven’t really listened to the rest of the record. However, all trespasses are forgiven whenever I behold the album cover. Have you seen how frickin’ rad it is, with Lupe all floating in space with laser beams, a ghetto, and some nice retro kicks? It’s like Back to the Future. Yn fact, it’s so Back to the Future that it’s Back to the Future 2\ All hail Lupe! Grizzly Bear — Yellow House Someone please sell me on Grizzly Bear. I saw them open for TV on the Radio the other night, and they sounded like a bunch of interpretive bird-calls over beats by DJ In-D Rock. It’s like they’te a “Sounds of the Forest” cover band or something, Anyway, Kyp Malone of TVOTR could not stop singing their praises, so maybe I’m missing something. é Elliott Smith — From a Basement on the Hill You probably already know this, but Elliott Smith killed himself back in 2003 by stabbing him- self in the chest twice with a steak knife or something [Editors Note: the anniversary of Smith’s death is coming up, October 21, and I for one will be lighting a Roman Candle that day]. Now pause... I don’t think people get the magnitude of Elliott’s apparent suicide. It means that after Mr. Smith drove a knife through his ribs the first time, he had to think to himself “no... that’s not gonna cut it,” pull the knife out and repeat the process. That’s crazy. Anyway, I had never been a big Elliott Smith fan. XO and Either/Or certainly had their moments, but they Chaucer's Got Grillz: Baba Brinkman Makes Lit Hip. And Hop. Chelsea Mushaluk, Resident OP Beat Scholar English literature is cool. It sounds incongruous, I know, but it’s true. I don’t mean Douglas Coupland-style pop culture literature, or anything of that sort. No, I mean Shakespeare. Spenser. Milton. Chaucer. Yes, that’s right: Chaucer! Long seen as the least cool figure in litera- ture, he’s back. And he’s cool. At least that’s what Baba Brinkman is trying to teach the youth of today. Baba Brinkman is a guy who genuinely loves literature. He has an M.A. in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature, and has found a new way to teach people about literature: through rap music.-Since 1998, Brinkman has been writing arid performing original rap/poetry. He has travelled England performing in schools, and on October 3 performed at the Media Club here in Vancouver. So where does Chaucer fit in to all of this? You see, Baba Brinkman has written “The Rap Canterbury Tales.” He’s rewritten the Canterbury Tales in rap form, and that’s what he performed at the Media Club. The show was a book launch, as he has recently published a written version of “The Rap Canterbury Tales” with illustrations done by his brother Erik Brinkman. He performed The Miller’s Tale and The Pardoner’s Tale last week, and they were both excellent. I’d never heard_ of the Miller being described as looking “like Busta Rhymes,” nor had I heard the Pardoner’s wenches compared to Ludacris’ “hoes in different area codes,” but such is the genius of Baba Brinkman. I have no idea how he managed to rewrite (and remember!) the Canterbury. Tales, but he did. And his rapping was pretty good too. It was just like any other hip-hop show I’ve 1 2 THE OTHER PRESS OCTOBER 12 2006 were quite frankly depressing. So, I had stayed particularly clear of Basement, fearing that it would contain Elliott’s version of Cobain’s tortured, barrel-in-mouth, finger on the trigger howls that laced “You Know You’re Right.” I finally did borrow the album from the library where I work, thanks in part to the stubborn insistence of my girlfriend, and something abor it has just hooked me. Maybe it’s the whole posthumous factor allowing me to see Elliott’s work in a new light, but I’m enthralled. Basement is a record of blunt, introspective songs mac beautiful through the brute force application of Smith’s honesty, and tracks like “A Fond Farewell,” and “A Distorted Reality is now a Necessity To Be Free,” rank among the finest in his canon. Thunderbirds Are Now! — Make History I downloaded the un-mastered copy of Make History that leaked a few months ago, and whei the official album was released on October 3, I actually boxght it on iTunes. I was enamored with the rough cuts, but the fully produced tracks on the official release take it up another notch. The vocals are cleaner, the synths are more noticeable and catchier, and most impor- tantly, the guitars are brought back up front and made crisper. Singer/guitarist Ryan Allen claims that the band “just write[s] a bunch of disco-punk,” but Make History is actually some thing of a mature record courtesy of a band that finally sounds comfortable in its own shoe; It’s not a big departure from the band’s break-out LP, Justamustache, but TAN! seem more wil ing to indulge their pop sensibilities this time around, and the result is a more cohesive, if slightly less frenetic album. Don’t get me wrong though, the whole thing is catchy as fuck, at I’m willing to bet that the band will be able to get Vancouver to take its hands out of its poc ets. when it hits Richards on October 7 with fellow exclamation point-bearers You Say Party! We Say Die! I’ll be there with camera in hand, but I’ll probably be too busy spazzing out on the dance floor to get any good shots. Finally, if you’re in need of a good chuckle, I suggest that you check out Ryan Adams’. new Battlestar Gallactica-themed website, www.tyan-adams.com, and listen to him try and rap ab New York, himself, and ancient Sumeria. If that fails, and you need a reminder why Pitchfas is still cooler than you, go check out their review of the latest Jet record, Shine On. Trust me ever been to, except that the audience was full of academic types and he was rapping Chaucer. Brinkman has released an actual hip-hop album, and the after-party for the book launch included performances by Moka Only and Josh Martinez. Brinkman not only likes literature, but he also really likes hip-hop. Check out www.babasword.com if you’re interested; here you can find out more on Baba, infor- mation on his albums and, in the tradition of Renaissance “court poetry,’ commission Brinkman to write a rap about the event of your choosing. Even if you don’t dig. litera- ture, have a listen to any of the “lit-hop” songs on the website. As if you needed more convincing that Chaucer was cool.