This is prob­a­bly per­fect for those frozen morn­ing hang­overs we all have from time to time, or at least it sounds like one of those frozen morn­ing hang­overs. Black­mail Is My Life eager­ly antic­i­pates new Psy­chic Para­mount material.

Wel­come to 2007, right? Sor­ry for my extend­ed absence, but lets say that a New Year’s Day rain­storm com­bined with a post­poned Mum­mer’s Day Parade for an impromp­tu move to the new place that’s just about ended.

A few admin­is­tra­tive things:

• Over the course of the extend­ed absence, I’d hoped to post my Idol­a­tor Jackin’ Pop bal­lot. Due to a tech glitch, mine and sev­er­al oth­ers were lost. How much would Scott Walk­er have ben­e­fit­ed from the hang­ing chads we may nev­er know.
• The much talked about, lit­tle seen doc­u­men­tary The Shame of a City is more than a lit­tle ten­den­tious. Sure, May­or Street isn’t warm, cud­dly or eth­i­cal, but Sam Katz looks like such a doo­fus that you can see why he lost twice con­sec­u­tive­ly [see “strut­ting” down Two Street as evi­dence.] The tedious slow-motion mon­tages don’t help much either.
• Last­ly, this is com­plete­ly amazing.

Lis­ten: Ken­ny Rogers — Ken­tucky Home­made Christmas

I’m def­i­nite­ly start­ing to feel the hol­i­day spir­it, just not for Imaad Wasif. I pre­fer my hol­i­day favorites schmaltzy and loud. If you’re going to be sen­ti­men­tal, make them drunk­en, mawk­ish affairs. But then again, I grew up lis­ten­ing to this, John­ny Math­is and Anne Mur­ray on a crack­ly cas­settes, more or less non­stop dur­ing Decem­ber. Keep in mind that I still regret not being invit­ed to the Rogers & Mur­ray Christ­mas con­cert that proved the Val­ley Forge Music Fair’s swan song.

[Inci­den­tal­ly, Ken­ny’s spo­ken word on “When a Child is Born” is a com­plete­ly amaz­ing arti­fact of Rea­gan era race relations.]

Lis­ten: Spank Rock - Lind­say Lohan’s Revenge [via Goril­la vs. Bear]

It was dur­ing the trag­ic third act of this doc­u­men­tary about Vil­lanova’s nation­al bas­ket­ball title that it I was remind­ed of anoth­er of 2006 short-lived neol­o­gisms: gallery rap. Ear­ly this year, Spank Rock’s YoY­oY­oY­oYo revived the mid-eight­ies hiphop poly­glot. A com­bi­na­tion of old school fash­ion and sen­si­bil­i­ties, they embody the fren­zied social and polit­i­cal con­fu­sion of the Rea­gan years, a time of coke-fueled toast­ing, soundsys­tem blar­ing in the street.

Even the majors tried to get a piece. Some­time Kanye col­lab­o­ra­tor and Phar­rell protégé Lupe Fias­co entered the pic­ture with his skater rap anthem “Kick, Push.” But like Phar­rel­l’s solo debut, In My Mind, noth­ing real­ly stuck, and “Kick, Push” fell short of becom­ing the sum­mer’s rap anthem.

Some­how Spank Rock “suc­ceed­ed” where oth­ers failed, yet anoth­er exam­ple of cachet out­do­ing cash. YoY­oY­oY­oYo was well-received, but not crit­i­cal­ly overblown — mak­ing it one of 2006’s cult hits and a par­ty album that rivals Paul’s Bou­tique for quirky, kinky fun — and yet anoth­er rea­son to keep an eye on Bal­ti­more’s bur­geon­ing music scene.

Lis­ten: Demo­nolo­gists — Unhealthy Cul­ture

Lis­ten: Scott Walk­er — Clara

Lis­ten: Clipse — Ride around Shining

As quick­ly as hauntol­ogy arrived, it got bust­ed. Every­one laughed at last year’s EMP top­ic in whig­gish­ness as it applies to music and cul­tur­al crit, but Reynolds’ attempt at mak­ing spu­ri­ous link­ages sexy, if not plau­si­ble, is de rigeur. As inter­est­ing and well-researched as it is, Greil Mar­cus’ acad­e­mo-punk touch­stone Lip­stick Traces is still based as much on hard evi­dence and estab­lished dis­cur­sive com­mu­ni­ties as it is coin­ci­dences and serendipity.On that score, Pen­man’s scathing, hilar­i­ous rejoin­der is per­haps unnec­es­sar­i­ly the­o­ret­i­cal — it’s not hard to demon­strate how a vague cat­e­go­ry like hauntol­ogy is impos­si­bly bank­rupt pri­ma facie, right?

What might’ve been more inter­est­ing is some dis­cus­sion of how this haunt­ed music con­nects with present day pol­i­tics and soci­ol­o­gy, and how those things might inform the way crit­ics are hear­ing music these days. What makes so-called “haunt­ings” so inter­est­ing to us right now? What do bands like Excepter have in com­mon with Scott Walk­er? How do eerie beats con­nect Clipse and Bur­ial to the fright­en­ing hiss of Nacht­mys­tium and Xasthur?

For me, it’s the sense that vio­lence is once again Amer­i­ca’s cause célèbre. What was once over­shad­owed by Amer­i­ca’s mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq is the nihilis­tic sec­tar­i­an vio­lence of a bud­ding civ­il war. Domes­ti­cal­ly, Clipse’s chill­ing coke tales cap­ture the mat­ter-of-fact ele­gance with which Chris and Snoop func­tion as mur­der­ous Mar­lo Stan­field­’s angels of death in the recent­ly con­clud­ed sea­son of The Wire. In both cas­es, it’s just busi­ness, amoral and asym­met­ri­cal, with uncer­tain­ty and fear lurk­ing in the col­lec­tive consciousness.