Review Summary: ba dum tsss
Born of jazzian loins and weaned on a philosophy of music as a reflection of (actual offline) culture (by names that nevertheless spawned Wikipedia pages), Makaya McCraven's musical genesis brings to mind images of Lurtz spilling out of his sac and straight up murdering the nearest orc to hand, except in McCraven's case it's more likely that he twanged out his first composition on an unbroken umbilical cord while stomping his lil baby feet in polytemporal glee, ordering the perplexed doctor to spank him on the third beat, but drag it a little, make it drunk.
39 years after that categorically didn't happen, Makaya McCraven now plays the drums in broad, challenging, and appealing styles.
In These Times successfully functions as both a backdrop to McCraven's prodigious talent in all things percussional, and an affective and timbrally diverse set of compositions that'll have you tapping your steering wheel with great enthusiasm as you miscount every other bar.
Following the drumkit one piece at a time, you'll note that one (or, uh, more) piece(s) will likely be holding time accurately while everything else swings like Dilla at a Key Party. Problem is, even the parts keeping “real” time have a tendency to play complex patterns and subdivisions, and the bedrock of many of these tunes is an odd meter. Things become all the more fun to (attempt to) follow when parts shift their interpretation of The Groove to keep you on your toes. Big theory, big jazz, big green tick, A+, your arts degree was not a waste of time.
All this might suggest that
In These Times is an album for mouthbreathing music theory maniacs, but this couldn't be further from the truth. For all of its suave technicality, each dose of left-brained smartboi shit is fully tailored to the spirit of the composition, and that spirit is one that would probably appeal to the kind of heathen that requests that you put on something as “background music” [is this why I have no friends?]. Of course, there are sprinkles of the kind of uptempo rhythmic carnage that would slot right into a Tigran Hamasyan record, but for each instance of this you're just as likely to get an emotive solo, a transportive string section, or the kind of jazzy hip-hopisms that Yussef Dayes will often be found tapping away behind.
And that's really the spice in the rice:
In These Times is an alluring listen because it is multi-faceted and fun. Makaya McCraven is just as impressive driving a straight 4/4 track that an MC could comfortably spit over as he is at misleading attentive listeners over unusual time signatures. But it doesn't end there; he also composed and produced everything here, had a hand in engineering and mixing, and is credited on 11 different instruments to boot. Admittedly, four of these are drums, percussion, tambourine, and handclaps, but guess what? Even those handclaps fuckin' slap.
