Whether you’re working in an essential service, stuck at home with a spouse and/or children or completely isolated from the outside world, there’s an incredible amount of frustration building in the United States. It’s natural to feel tension during a global crisis, and while self-care is important, sometimes you just need to punch a fucking wall. Here’s music to keep you company during that.
What Are Their Names
David Crosby, 1971
Crosby got his start as a member of the 1960s counterculture, founding both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and Young). He sang onstage at Woodstock and co-wrote “Ohio,” one of the most notable protest songs of the Vietnam War period. He’s no stranger to angst and rage at large structures of power. “What Are Their Names” starts with sparse, improvised guitar picking and builds to an angry peak. The only verse of the song, sung by a defiant and demanding Crosby, opens with “Who are the men who really run this land? And why do they run it with such an awful hand?” If that doesn’t resonate today, nothing does.
LIFE
Saba, 2018
The Chicago-based rapper’s 2018 album “CARE FOR ME” was written in the months following his cousin’s death. Saba’s cousin and collaborator Walter Long Jr. was stabbed by an unknown attacker while exiting the L train in Chicago in 2017. The tragedy marked a shift in Saba’s career, dropping his youthful and carefree persona from previous albums for a darker and more meditative approach to hip hop. On “LIFE,” Saba condemns a system that would “auction off the kids that don’t fit their description of a utopia (black)” and rather see him dead than succeed. The problems of living under quarantine can never match the trauma of Chicago life that Saba documents, but any listener can grab onto the loneliness that Saba feels.
1937 State Park
Car Seat Headrest, 2016
Car Seat Headrest is the stage name of Will Toledo, who gained his fame recording Bandcamp albums in the back of his parent’s car in Virginia. His discography is a testament to teen angst. Toledo’s songs often focus on the loneliness of being a gay teenager unable to come to terms with his identity, as on “Beach Life-in-Death” when Toledo sings, “I pretended I was drunk when I came out to my friends. I never came out to my friends.” On “1937 State Park,” Toledo struggles with an unhealthy relationship that provokes his own self-loathing. Anyone stuck in quarantine with a long-overdue breakup can relate.
II B.S. – Edit
Charles Mingus, 1963
Mingus remains one of the most inscrutable figures of the post-bop jazz heyday. He wrote an autobiography that is mostly fictional. He composed a four-movement jazz ballet with the liner notes written by his psychotherapist. It was never choreographed. His music is at times self-reflective and at other times entirely projective. “II B.S.” pulses with energy, starting with Mingus solo on bass and adding band members one-by-one, building to a cacophony of sound and color. The track is a re-recording of the 1958 “Haitian Fight Song,” about which Mingus wrote “I can’t play it right unless I’m thinking about prejudice and hate and persecution, and how unfair it is.” Though there are no lyrics, Mingus’s anger shines clear through.
Kill Your Masters
Run the Jewels, 2016
Since joining forces under the name Run the Jewels in 2013, El-P and Killer Mike have become some of the most critical voices in rap. Killer Mike in particular is known for his long-standing activism against systemic racism and in favor of progressive politics and collective activism. This bent shines through on “Kill Your Masters,” which features Rage Against The Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha with a guest verse. The lyricism is poignant and precise, attacking police shootings, corporate media and the entire system of exploitation the musicians see in the world. The message of “Kill Your Masters” is self-evident.
Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Fionna Apple, 2020
It’s been out for less than two weeks, but “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is already being heralded as one the best albums of the year. Fionna Apple’s fifth album is her first release in eight years, and was recorded almost entirely in her home studio. There’s really nothing to say about “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” that hasn’t been said by every music critic in the industry, but the timing of its release, during the coronavirus pandemic, has only amplified the album’s themes of isolation, confinement and yearning for freedom and self-determination. Apple said it best in a Genius annotation, writing “The message in the whole record is just: Fetch the fucking bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you’re in—whatever it is that you don’t like.”