Our Pathetic Age - DJ Shadow: Review
is a California based music producer who released his legendary debut record Endtroducing in 1996 to massive critical acclaim. Since then Shadow has failed to truly replicate his success on another record, arguably coming the closes on his most recent record The Mountain Will Fall in 2016 which featured one of the most popular tracks of his career in Nobody Speak. Now three years later he is dropping a massive record that comes in two halves, the first part instrumental sample based songs, and the second vocal collaborations with a myriad of artists.
Review By Lavender:
DJ Shadow's Endtroducing is an absolutely fantastic record that absolutely everyone should listen to, which is strange because since then I have been consistently let down by his output. Maybe as the world caught up with him some of the creativity on display on his debut record faded away. Of all the post Endtroducing records my favorite has to be the most recent The Mountain Will Fall which re-introduced Shadow to a new generation of hip hop fans. One of the more underrated factors surrounding the record was its companion EP The Mountain Has Fallen which saw some great features from Danny Brown and Nas. Given that so many hip hop fans had just discovered Shadow I thought it was weird that this record was half rapper features and half instrumental cuts, but I figured that Shadow had some creative approach on this record that would justify it. Unfortunately Our Pathetic Age is over an hour and a half long and one of the most bloated projects I've heard all year,
The first half of the record is made up of instrumental songs and no features and historically this is where I would be more excited for Shadow to flex his talents, but it is the weaker of the two halves. It takes about a quarter of this section before we stumble onto a track I really like, Slingblade is a smooth song that doesn't bring much of anything new to the table but is decent while its on. This is followed by Intersectionality a more house oriented tune that feels way too loose and doesn't have much of anything going for it outside of its core groove and a strange and unnecessary transition at the end. Beauty, Power Etc, is an incredibly lame and completely one dimensional tune with some flat synths that don't do much of anything for me. Juggernaut gets off to a great start with some catchy looped vocal samples that I dig, but it just gets worse and worse as time goes by and the track is far longer than it needs to be.
After that rough start it thankfully gets better, Firestorm is maybe my favorite song in the first half with a predominant piano lead that surprisingly is one of the most colorful tracks on the entire record with a rich sound that pays off big time. The compositional approach here is also much more thought out than the rest of the first half. Weightless is a slick track that I enjoy a bunch with its spacey beat and trap high hats that pair with some pulsating beats for a pretty solid experience. Rosie is built around some cool tribal chanting style samples around which DJ Shadow adds a big of clunky percussion and some wiggly key lines. It all works out into a pretty decent song overall.
If I Died Today is a shorter and more lowkey jazz centric track that is decent while its on. My Lonely Room is one of the longer songs here that I actually think does a pretty solid job of making the most of its sound as the different phases and renditions of its core refrain are pretty enjoyable. The first half of the record ends pretty unceremoniously with We Are Always Alone a decent spacey song that is an anti-climactic way to end the portion given the high energy nature of so many of the tracks before it. If I had to rate the first half on its own I would hover in the 4.5-5 range.
The second half is easier to get through with a little bit of a tighter and more consistent sound populated by a number of fresh voices, but they aren't all hits. Rain On Snow was a song I was excited for given that it features Deck, Ghostface and Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan but it is honestly one of the weakest instrumentals here and aside from some great Ghostface Killah bars it is pretty average on the rapping front by these guys standard. C.O.N.F.O.R.M is filled with forgettable bars and a wallpaper performance that I can't remember anything about no matter how many times I listen to it. Jojo's Word is one of the worst as the song revolves around one of the clunkiest percussion hits I've heard in all of 2019, and features one of the more forgettable performances despite some great lyrics. Finally Urgent, Important, Please Read is a posse cut with wild variance in the quality of the performances and almost no lyrical connections between their bars aside from them all being afraid of technology.
There are a collection of better tracks here which contains most of my favorite songs here. Drone Warfare starts this half of the record off and I think it may be an even better song than the last Nas and DJ Shadow collaboration, with tight verses and a bombastic late 90's style beat which stands out in a great way. Rocket Fuel is a great song that I loved as a single in the Madden Soundtrack this year and I enjoy it just as much here with a bouncy instrumental and a De La Soul feature that is as good as ever. Kings & Queens is a collaboration with Run The Jewels much like the song that became Shadow's biggest hit in years Nobody Speak. The track is really good and reminds me a ton of Thursdays In The Danger Room from Run The Jewels 3 and hearing El-P and Mike rap in that fashion again is a treat. The closer Our Pathetic Age is the only song with a non-rapper feature in Sam Herring of Future Islands and it features one of the brightest and prettiest instrumentals on the record. It is an all around good tune and an even better closer to the very long experience that is this album.
Mixed in are some decent tracks like Small Colleges with a dark rattling instrumental and a great Paul Banks hook paired with a Wiki verse I'm not too fond of. Taxin is a short verse from Dave East that is decent but far from the best on the record. And Dark Side Of The Heart is a tolerable track with one of the better hooks on the second half of the album.
There is a pretty decent record somewhere in Our Pathetic Age but in its current state there is just as much here that is forgettable or flat out bad that there is genuinely good tunes. Given how little coherency there is to the sounds of this record it is hard to even have any ideas on the record aside from its massive inconsistencies, 5/10
