Oddjobs Albums (5)
'The Shopkeeper's Wife'
Release Date 4/8/2003
Tracks 6
Label Third Earth
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
As consummate an album as Drums was (and is), The Shopkeeper's Wife is nothing less than Oddjobs plunging into the deep end. The deep end of abstract lyricism. The deep end of exploratory music-making. The deep end, even, of its own enlarging psyche. This six-song EP is the vanguard of hip-hop, rap as brain food. Rap as soul extension. Five years earlier, DJ Shadow had pointedly posed the challenge "What Does Your Soul Look Like?" Whether intended rhetorically or not, The Shopkeeper's Wife is a brilliant reply to the question. And it is a rather definitive example of why hip-hop most certainly did not suck in 2003. Deetalx and Anatomy, as a start, raised the bar several notches with their remarkable production work. The degree of layering and juxtaposition on the opening song ("Hypnotized") alone -- a bass foundation draped in lovely duskiness, smears of turntable scratching, jazz cymbals drifting around the beat, the intermittent punctuation of vibraphone and Hammond organ, sax moans massing against the song's horizon like clouds -- is exceptionally sophisticated. Virtuoso, in fact. Painterly. And that's before even touching on the deep intelligence of the traded verses of Advizer, Crescent Moon, and Nomi, which, above and beyond their verbal dexterity, dance through the shifting rhythms like navigators of the immaterial. The pattern holds for the rest of the EP, through the darting, gem-like radiance of the title track, the sole holdover from Drums, through the superb collaboration with Eyedea on "Tricked," through the Spanish guitar and lugubrious confessional aphorisms of "Burden Streak" and the midnight shimmer of "Transparent." This is extraordinary music. Must listening. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
At the time Oddjobs settled into recording its first mature full-length, the members of the newly reformulated quintet (with the official addition of longtime colleague Nomi) were still but a few years removed from being teenagers. Nevertheless, they had carried their lunch pails to the daily hip-hop grind for more than half a decade, and Drums proved that they had learned a great deal during the extended gestation phase. Having finally relocated in total to New York, the group nicely split the difference and closed the gap between Minnesota and Brooklyn with the album. The three MCs retained their relaxed Twin Cities flows, and many of the lyrical concerns are tied to their original terrain, yet much of the music has a decidedly blue smoke, basement vibe and is built around a core of deeply percussive urban rhythms. The latter quality no doubt partly derives from the seepage of the sounds and sensations of their adopted home into Deetalx and Anatomy's beats. (The production duo, anyway, had always owed something of a debt to the aesthetics of the golden era Big Apple rap records of the early '90s.) In any event, they crafted an exceptional backdrop of liquid tracks that fluidly fuse live musicianship and nimble sampler experimentation. That skill landed "Blue Collar Holler" on the alternative radio charts, and the single was a hit for good reason. It is a masterpiece of shifting textures and tonalities, and its roll call of working-class livelihoods plays like a funky Midwestern manifesto. From there, Drums brilliantly roams through a broad range of styles, from cunning metaphysical puzzles ("Time Flies") and dark, speculative meditations ("Dry Bones," "Naked City," the magnificent bonus track "Gospel (Encore)") to regatta de blanc ("Shore") and sweaty street-corner odes ("The Backstroke," "Hit Em With a High"). The centerpiece of the record, however, is the three-part aural delirium of "Dream for Molle." With its vistas of somber psychedelia, it is a gorgeous extension of DJ Shadow's astral explorations, and it sends the album out into previously unmapped territory. Drums is one of the freshest, most impressive rap releases of 2002. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide
'Live at the Bryant Lake Bowl'
Release Date 1/1/2001
Tracks 15
Label CMI Productions
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What The Critics Say
Released in a limited edition of 1,000 copies on its own CMI Productions label, Live at the Bryant Lake Bowl is Oddjobs' live collaboration with Chicago quartet Typical Cats (who would go on to release a self-titled debut the following year on Galapagos4) and the live band Heiruspecs, longtime friends and an occasional support group. Obviously not as tight in execution as the studio sets, what the music lacks in precision and depth it makes up for with energy and punch. The spoken word efforts by Denizen Kane and Nomi and the a cappella "Brick Walls," while interesting, don't come off quite as well on record as they seem to have (if the audience response is any measure) as live performances. But there are fine versions of "Time Flies," "Oscillations at 40 Hz," the Cats' Native Tongues-like "Reinventing the Wheel" and exclusive "Any Day," and a choice freestyle session near the end. Great as the rhyming is, though, the star of the show is Heiruspecs, which displays an elastic versatility (check the surprising trumpet flourishes on "Absorbing Playtime," for example), a deep vein of funkiness (Sean McPherson's basslines are superb throughout), and a laid-back way with a groove. In many respects, appreciating live hip-hop is purely a you-had-to-be-there situation, yet Live at the Bryant Lake Bowl is definitely worth tracking down. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide
'Absorbing Playtime'
Release Date 1/1/2000
Tracks 10
Label CIM Productions
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What The Critics Say
Absorbing Playtime is a long-distance relationship bottled on wax. The four members of Oddjobs literally recorded the album via telephone calls, e-mail attachments, and tapes sent back and forth to each other between Minnesota, where half the group lived at the time, and New York, where the other half had ensconced for school. Well, apparently absence makes the music grow stronger, or at least it did in this case. Despite its fragmentary genesis, the generous-length EP was hands-down one of the most exciting creations to hit the hip-hop world in 2000, a veritable playground of innovative beats and equally exceptional lyrical dispatches from the progressive side of the prairie. The whole story is spun into gold on the record's finest track. How often are you able to describe a rap song as either beautiful or poignant? The mystical, longing "The Distance Song" is precisely both of those things. Speculative and soulful, with an undertow of sorrow, it encapsulates everything that is exciting about Oddjobs, and serves as a handy autobiographical summation of the psychic head space in which the group found itself at the time. It transforms life into art. And the song does, indeed, deserve such an elevated classification. But it's not the only flat-out great song on Absorbing Playtime -- "Oscillations at 40 Hz," "Liberal Arts," the title track, and "Fusebox" ("our resumé"), to take the most evident examples, all demand concentrated examination. There's something special going on here. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide
