Review Summary: "She's tearing it up."
Who’s ready for summer? I’ll tell you at least one person who’s got you covered: Xenia Rubinos. The Brooklyn-via-Boston-via-Hartford singer-songwriter/multi-instrumentalist is back with her second album,
Black Terry Cat, and by all intents and purposes, it is an expansion and improvement on her already-great debut,
Magic Trix. Where her debut treaded in homespun arrangements of mostly keyboards and drums (which were courtesy of excellent drummer and producer Marco Buccelli, who returns here) that rocked out gently, weirdly, and cleverly. On her second album, Rubinos has amped up the stakes, and this is her strangest, smartest, biggest, and best work yet. Not to mention it’s often just plain fun.
Kicking off with a bit of a tease in the super-short “Romeo,” Rubinos then steps back and delivers the album’s slinkiest track right off the bat. “Don’t Wanna Be,” which is thankfully not a Gavin DeGraw cover, skirts on by like a sexy walk in the moonlight. Rubinos spits instantly catchy lines like, “I’ve got things to make your love grow thicker,” while strutting her stuff over some accessible but intricate drum, keyboard, and bass work. Actually, that last ingredient is this new record’s secret weapon. The bass pops up all over this thing, filling a void that would previously be filled with a low-end keyboard or synthetic horn. “Mexican Chef” has a deeply groovy bass lick, while the instrument drives the hilarious and grandiose “Just Like I.” On “Lonely Lover,” it plays lead instrument like a guitar normally would, swaggering along. Time and again, you slowly start realizing that the bass is what’s really making you dance here.
R&B and funk were definite inspirations to this record, and it furthers something that was vaguely impressed via her debut: there aren’t really any other people that sound like Xenia Rubinos. tUnE-YaRdS is maybe her closest analogue, in the way both women like to spin multiple sounds and styles together, often in a single song, with little to no warning, or any need for one. “See Them” comes closest to making that connection obvious. It’s a whirlwind of a track, shifting relentlessly, including the great refrain, “How do you spell – Angry – Brown – Girl?” with a palpable pause between those last four words.
Speaking of which, it must be noted that this album is largely unafraid to broach politics or issues of race that were occupying Rubinos’ mind while writing. “Black Stars” was inspired by all the police brutality cases of the past few years, and “Mexican Chef” details her stroll through Brooklyn watching all the restaurants open for the night, one racial or ethnic group in the front and the usually-Latino staff in the back. But one thing that makes this album so effective is that Rubinos talks about these issues without even coming close to ramming them down your throat. She doesn’t hide them or shy away from tough stuff, but she presents it in a personal, poetic way. It’s political, but not inaccessible or preachy.
Which is good, because as I said before, this album is so damn fun: the swinging-my-head-around grooves of “Don’t Wanna Be” and “I Won’t Say"; the crunchy, energetic “Right?”; the kiss sound in “Just Like I.” Not every song is a complete winner – “Laugh Clown” feels a little messy as it searches for its goal – but it is, by and large, a summer smash. Rubinos’ writing and singing has never been better, and it manages the tricky feat of being both an important and fun record.
Final Rating: 9.1
Key tracks: Don’t Wanna Be, Mexican Chef, Just Like I, Right?, Lonely Lover, See Them
