Local Albums

from Little Village magazine issue 278: Feb. 5-18, 2020

Local Books

The All Souls’ Day EP Nadalands NADALANDS.BANDCAMP.COM

The All Soul’s Day EP, the newest release by Nadalands, is, apparently, firmly in the post-songwriter (poso?) tradition. This may mean that John Lindenbaum, Nadalands’ heart and soul and only official member, is engaged in employing the trappings of the singer-songwriter tradition to consider topics and ideas that are not generally the stuff of, say, James Taylor or Joni Mitchell or Neil Young songs. Or it may mean something else entirely. Either way, The All Soul’s Day EP is comprised of five quirkily lovely and frequently disturbing songs driven by unusual imagery and Lindenbaum’s thick-honeyed, often angelic voice. It is brief, but it is rich, and like a particularly rich meal, it may well benefit from moderation.

Lindenbaum, who hails from Colorado, has a deep relationship with the Iowa City music scene. Along with this record, which (like other Nadalands releases) features beautiful harmony vocals by Iowa City’s Alexis Stevens and Brian Johannesen, Lindenbaum is also in the Lonelyhearts and Rust Belt Music with Iowa City arts executive and essayist Andre Perry.

The EP opens with “We’re All Slaves in a Capitalistic System, Aren’t We?” in which, we learn immediately, a man finds his own corpse in the trunk of his Corvette. The song continues as the critique of capitalism its title suggests, but the oddest, most oddly beautiful moments in the song are found in its chorus: “Oh, man, I don’t know how he got there but / He’s got my face and my clothes and even my haircut / After our co-workers go / Would you care to help me dump this body?”

There’s something about “even my haircut” that lends pathos to the strange, disorienting moment of discovery. And the formal shaping of the request for aid— “Would you care to help…?”—is, delivered in Lindenbaum’s plaintive voice, courtly and romantic. Which is, of course, weird.

The corpse in the Corvette is immediately followed by a bag of 54 human hands at the top of the next number, “The Amur River.” Despite the grisly opening, it’s something of a love song, set in Siberia. “Plagues,” the EP’s third track, convincingly introduces synesthesia into its storytelling. It’s followed by “Red Light Runners,” which opens with the lines “I am the last terrestrial hermit crab / Kept as a pet / In the American Southwest” and ends with the gut punch of “Admit if you can that all of us are Abrahams / More than willing to sacrifice our sons.”

The EP closes with “Deep Thoughts From Arizona’s Most Affordable Mental Health Community,” which turns out to be the Grand Canyon. The song features an image both predictable and powerful that Lindenbaum fully sells with the ache inherent in his voice: “They told me the natural beauty / Would help me forget all the shooting / But I just see the far side of the canyon / So close I can almost reach / So close I might just leap.”

Throughout these songs, Lindenbaum allows the musical lines to shape how and when he delivers various words and phrases. The technique adds to the EP’s off-kilter beauty and rewards repeated listening. —Rob Cline

Aubs Sensei of Syllables

The first time I heard Aubs. perform the titular “Sensei of Syllables,” he was on the Rozz-Tox stage with one of his writing students. Abdur, 12, had just made his debut at Roaring Rhetoric, the spoken word event series Aubs. founded.

Aubs. is Aubrey Barnes, known to the QC lit community as a performative poet with a steady, rhythmic delivery and experimental style. He’s one of the most ambitious working writers in the region. His dual album Sensei of Syllables I and II is an experiment in poetic lyricism.

“It was a challenge of combination of the arts that I value,” Barnes writes in our texts about the project. “Part I was much more experimenting, trying out … what worked and what didn’t. Or better yet, what was me and what wasn’t.”

Barnes is a lot of things. In addition to the work that falls under the umbrella of Aubs., he teaches and maintains an academic career with a focus on writing. He’s teaching When Battle Rap and Poetry Meet: A Writing Workshop with Aubs. at Midwest Writing Center on Friday, Feb. 7 at RozzTox in Rock Island, Illinois. His experience as a teacher appears in his lyrics. Por ejemplo, the end of “Dat Skonk” seems to include part of a rant I’ve heard many a writing instructor recite in so many words (“… but your resume sucks when I see it on paper / most of y’all write like you were first graders …”).

But for a lyric more indicative of his style—teaching, writing, being, etc.—look to the opening of “Black Samurai (Jabez Da Sorrow)”: “They said, ‘black boy, be more wise’ / there’s no such thing as a black samurai / imagination’s not for guys / you cannot be a black samurai …”

The song goes on to describe the social oppression of a cerebral youth who finds strength in imagination. It’s a theme at the core of Barnes’ lessons: Use knowledge and creativity as a power for good. His choice to exchange “wiser” for the less grammatically correct “more wise”—with emphasis on the first half of “wise”—is a sample of the playfully sardonic sensibilities that make him so accessible. He alludes to expectations, which he then subverts, to give the listener a window into that experience of our aforementioned cerebral youth—of the “outsider,” so to speak—through active listening. In other words, we have little choice but to engage with the lyric, which itself is composed of mental breadcrumbs designed to lead us to form a conclusion. Funnily enough, Aubs. considers Sensei of Syllables, Part I—which includes “Black Samurai”—to be almost frivolous in comparison to Part II. If Part I was an experiment to explore his identity as a poet and rapper, is Part II a confirmation of that identity?

How does he know when he’s found what’s him and what isn’t? “As corny as it sounds, by Feel,” he writes. “Whenever I create something, I have a gut feeling that affirms I wrote a certain bar or verse from a place of authenticity, or just because it was convenient and easy, if that makes sense.”

“From a practical place, I know it’s me when I have a balance of writing something that is dope as fuck lyrically, and also says something … whether thought provoking or truth-telling.”

—Melanie Hanson

BAWDY BAWDY HA HA’S