13&God- Own Your Ghost

If you thought you'd live forever, 13&God would like to remind you otherwise. On their second record together, and their first as 13&God in six years, the first thing you notice is how much Own Your Ghost dwells on the ticking clock. The whole album (which is still streaming for free here) covers a wide stance sonically, owing equally to The Notwist's multi-intrumentalism and Themselves' gritty sampling, but these sounds all revolve around recurrent tropes on death and old age that read like proverbs, from Marcus Acher's "These are troubled times, and so dip your scarves in armor.", to Adam 'Doseone" Drucker's "Fools like us will go nameless to death, bet.". But if Own Your Ghost is a reminder that we're all bound to a short timeline, it also shows us a group of people who recognize this, and answer it by living, exploring shamelessly while they are here.

Both bands can still sound familiar, but they benefit from each others' influence, and it's when their styles meet in the middle that makes this collaboration more than it's parts' sum. The Notwist can lean a little darker in front of Jel's MPC work and Doseone's nervous rapping, and Dose gets to stretch his singing voice out more in the context of a full band. "Armored Scarves" shows off the range afforded by this personnel bump, but Own Your Ghost constantly reaches into odd new places, shifting momentum and mood both between and within songs like fast standout tracks "Sure As Debt" and "Beat On Us".

Since 13&God's self-titled debut, Themselves released a fantastic mixtape, LP, and remix album. The Notwist has kept busy too, with their own LP The Devil, You + Me, a film soundtrack, and other side projects' releases. Despite this considerable output of energy from all it's component members, Own Your Ghost shows that there's plenty left. To call 13&God anyone's side project betrays how unique it is.

Own Your Ghost is out May 17th on Anticon records.

Yoni and Josiah Wolf (of Why?) at St. David's Episcopal Church

So Yoni Wolf sits at a grand piano and starts dryly rapping, his brother Josiah backing him up on a bass drum made of a guitar case with a tambourine taped to it. They start things out with a verse from their yet-to-be-recorded Why? album.

"Oh, to be born as anything but this...

...fruitless in the holster...

...it's scary how we always end up...

...it yields only drops like an unripe lemon...

...is your love but a ploy, like Bugs Bunny in drag?"

Soon the song veers from kick and rhyme into piano and croon, and a cozy group of a couple hundred people settled in for the last show from the Wolf brothers before they and the rest of the band that's a question go into the studio to record the follow up to 2009's Eskimo Snow.

"And he will always thirst like that. Yeah, he will thirst like that always."

New material was all over the hour-long set, but songs showed up from as early as 2005's Sanddollars EP, all performed in stripped down piano and homemade percussion arrangements, with Josiah picking up bass or guitar from song to song. The new stuff sounds new, but still fits into the Why? canon, equal parts dry wit and personal revelation (or narrative fiction), hip-hop cadence over acoustic guitar and beatboxing over piano making strange but intimate bedfellows.

It's got to be mentioned that the space at St. David's was visually and acoustically gorgeous, so definite thanks go to them for offering up their room for the evening. Also, the biggest ups to Transmission Austin, for putting the whole thing together. And of course thanks to the brothers Wolf, and the rest of the Why? clan. Thanks for a beautiful evening, and best of luck in the studio. Now I can't wait.