Subtle - For Hero For Fool (Lex / EMI)
4/5
By: Chris Pratt
If you're new to Subtle, then you might like to know that Adam "doseone" Drucker, of the Bay Area hip-hop maverick community Anticon, is their mouthpiece. Also to be found amongst their number are: Drucker's accomplice in the much-revered themselves Jeffrey "jel" Logan on beats; cellist/bassist Alexander Kort; Jordan Dalrymple on drums, guitar, keyboards and vocals; Marty Kalani Dowers on woodwinds and saxophone and Dax Pierson on voice and harmonica. After forming in 2001 they issued a series of EPs based around each of the four seasons before releasing their fantastic debut album 'A New White' in 2004. The Oakland, California-based sextet toured that record heavily and were starting work on another when a horrific crash involving their tour van tragically left Dax quadriplegic in early 2005.
In spite of their bad luck, Subtle have fearlessly forged on with their masterplan - a concept trilogy of which 'For Hero For Fool' is the second instalment. Here Drucker continues with the skewed yet partly autobiographical tale of Hour Hero Yes, a middle-class poet-rapper, and his hallucinatory visions and bizarre exploits. Take 'Midas Gutz,' the charming tale of a bunch of battle-rappers competing not with words but by slitting open their stomachs in order to measure the length of their entrails. Brilliantly Drucker plays all the characters in the scene, using this vocal carte-blanche to experiment with a truckload of styles, from Chali 2na-esque baritone to gruff redneck drawl to breathless spoken-word.
Drucker's jaw-droppingly nimble vocal chords and ceaseless knack for off-beat, hilarious and perpetually provocative lyrical imagery are undoubtedly the golden threads which hold these songs together but this is by no means a one-man project. Musically Subtle can be, and often are, flawless: from the skittering block party hip-hop of 'A Tale of Apes I' (which switches to dazed, ambient musings for its sequel) to the falsetto-enriched, floor-filling electro-pop of 'The Mercury Craze,' to the stop-start guitar and stately cello of 'Middleclass Stomp' to the nine minute long, epic schizophrenia of 'The Ends,' their addictively cavalier attitude to traditional song structures is evident throughout.
The beautifully weaved tapestries of classical and synthetic instrumentation and the seamless amalgamation of hip-hop, pop, post-rock and electronica puts Subtle light years ahead of pretty much any contemporary band you could care to name thanks to their unique imagination and rampant creativity, and trying to place all the sounds you can hear is almost as much fun as deciphering Drucker's spitfire surrealism.
Although still not quite as toweringly mesmeric on record as they are on stage (they're getting close though), 'For Hero For Fool' is easily their most accomplished and enjoyable work to date, and if you've yet to be exposed to the singular visions of Adam "doseone" Drucker in any of his guises then this is as good a point as any to dip your toe in the idiosyncratic water.
Artists in this article: Subtle
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