Release Date: May 19, 2015
Label: XL
If you pay attention to the sort of media that reasonably expects its audience to scroll through a list of 300 albums, you already know the fetching story of Shamir Bailey. A 20-year-old, male-pronoun-approving, gender-fluid African-American who grew up in Vegas and played country music until enough bizzers told him they didnât know how to market it, Bailey found disco-house a more salable fit for his electric-fence falsetto, signed to professional game-changers XL and, in his un-minced words, made a scene.
Last yearâs Northtown EP was centered primarily on the wonderful opener âIf It Wasnât True,â already a relatively low-key banger in the Shamir catalog, which this week expands to nearly an hour’s length with Ratchet, a ten-track LP that’s wonderful throughout. Bailey is such a folk hero for DIY musicians and underprivileged LGBT youths of color that heâs copped to feeling guilty about not having a worse experience growing up, that at worst he was dismissed as the weird guy with the guitar â which is more or less as fair as epithets ever get. Itâs impossible to not root for him (though he should take âskinny fat assâ out of his Twitter bio).
But an inspirational story running alongside Baileyâs is that of 32-year-old Nick Sylvester, his producer and manager, who was once a clever, misanthropic record reviewer that drastically underestimated the staying power of âHollaback Girl,â before getting canned from Village Voice for failing to include a disclaimer that a piece which took liberties with real-life acquaintancesâ names was fiction. He later took up sour-candy grunge in his own band, Mr. Dream, before starting the Brooklyn-based Godmode label that fated a certain 19-year-old to reach out to him via email. Itâs not that Sylvesterâs no-bullshit electro is Shamirâs secret weapon or anything â the mononymous host has enough personality to fill an eggplant emoji-shaped parade float â itâs that he found a more direct route for sharing his idea of great music with the rest of the world.
Accustomed to covering Miranda Lambert and playing in a punk band called Anorexia, Shamir wears his differences out front (âThis is me on the regular, so you know,â goes one of his best hooks, from the atypical hopscotch rap of âOn the Regularâ) and downplays his shrewdness; at just under 40 minutes, Ratchet is proof that the kid can self-edit his surprisingly traditional, if expert-level dance tunes. The bloody-sleeved show-stopper âIâll Never Be Able to Loveâ from Northtown (and that impressive Lambert cover itself) proved he could belt a ballad, but even early supporters couldnât have prepared for the threadbare âDarker,â which could be a coming-out anthem if heâll let it: âYou canât contain the truth,â he croons to the end. Only Sylvester wouldâve snuck a Scratch Acid sample into that one.
Matter-of-fact honesty is part of his charm â itâs nice to have a pro-breakup anthem like âCall It Offâ invoke the words âmental health” â though itâs-over-when-itâs-over is another favorite Shamir technique. James Murphy himself could learn from the three straight highlights on Side A that barely brush the three-minute mark, and when Bailey goes on longer, he makes it count. The slow-motion bounce of the opening âVegasâ introduces elements like shaker and horn, block by block, before the familiar-yet-streamlined one-note funk of âMake a Sceneâ struts in. Cowbell-crazy closer âHead in the Cloudsâ breaks from the advice and scene-setting to do what five minutes of synths resembling 303-simulated farts and unraveling car alarms should: dancing out into the Nevada sunset with no more idea of Whatâs Next than any other 20-year-old.
Whatâs assured is that he knows what he wants in 2015 really damn well, whether heâs keening an indie-pop ballad about falling from grace gracefully (âDemonâ) or leading a jazzy-mirrorball stomp (âIn for the Killâ) to its bouquet of strings finish. âNo more basic ratchet guys,â he chants on âOn the Regular,â and he makes it sound like everyone can afford the choice.
More telling is the grand-slammed âWish we left in it our youthâ finale of âYouth,â an acknowledgment of shame that remains unspecified, and maybe the high-haired, huge-grinned wunderkind will come to wince at parts of Ratchet when heâs 32 as well, like the title perhaps. He shouldnât; itâs an incredible album strewn with highlights obvious and sneaky, the rare debut that holds up the weight of its backstory, with the added brassiness of assuring us thatâs just him on the regular. Now we know.