Rjd2 "Have Mercy"

Wow. When I blathered earlier this month about the Bees as the band equivalent to RJD2’s record/laptop-based model of past-mining, I certainly didn’t expect The Deuce to come back and prove he could do the reverse. If you haven’t yet heard, The Third Hand is the album on which Columbus, Ohio’s own RJ Krohn does it all, um, by hand: playing the instruments, singing the vocals, and riding the studio faders with his toes all at the same time. But while our boy makes a giant leap for a Todd Rundgren-level of studio wizardry, he manages to land squarely in solo-Matthew Friedberger territory, which isn’t bad at all for a first try. He occasionally dabbles in Senor Furnace’s whoosh/glitch electro-scapes, but, as with his behind-deck work, most often subsumes experimentation to recontextualization; he’s still doing the neo-soul thing, in other words. RJ’s voice strongly resembles Friedberger’s higher-register raspy croon, but errs more toward Bobby Hebb than Bob Dylan. Which still, even though it shouldn’t, brings up that pesky notion of “authenticity,” especially on “Have Mercy” (mp3). You can’t sing a chorus like “lord have mercy on these poor fools” without conjuring notions of What’s Going On, and “Mercy” certainly does. RJ affiliates himself with the underclass, bemoaning things like waiting for the train to get to his downtown job, and “waitin’ for a check all mornin.’” But it’s the line after that one that sticks in my craw: “I got health care bills to get to.” I simply can’t get past the fact that RJ refers to them as “health care bills,” which seems to come from the same vocabulary wellspring as the new Democratic agenda to help the middle class—trying relating to them, often literally, on (with) “their own terms.” What’s wrong with calling them “doctor bills,” or “medical bills”? It’s a simple point, and perhaps an overly specific one, but I can’t get past the association of the term “health care” with newspaper headlines and political speeches—those that describe from a significant distance the plight of the working man. And after I heard that one line, my appreciation for Hand was tainted, only to be affirmed two tracks later on “Law of the Gods,” when he suggests that enlightenment comes through “putting down the TV,” although you can still “trust that (he) love(s) TV, too.” OY. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally hating on The Third Hand (for starters, it’s got some great instrumental tracks); RJ’s beatmaking abilities (and Ratatat-style guitar manipulations) are still pretty-top notch, and they translate well to his one-man-band methodology. But while it’s going to become predictable to smirk at his often condescending, sometimes elitist suburban soul lyrics over the next couple months, they are the point on this record where RJ shows his, er, hand (ugh, sorry).

The Third Hand sees release on XL 3/5.