Sidewalk Chalk – Shoulder Season
Reviewed By: Daniel Daldus
Rating:8/10
Enormous jazz-hop collective Sidewalk Chalk is one of Chicago’s best kept secrets; a hip-hop band with striking live instrumentation, sultry soulful singing, and an upbeat MC with a strong eye for introspection. The combination of rootsy lyricism and brass bravado earned their previous effort, Leaves, a great deal of respect among the criminally small group of people who heard it. It was a heartfelt record bearing a few unfortunate scars that prevented its rise to the A-tier; Some weak bars here and there, a handful of songs that stuck too closely to the standard pop formula, an underwhelming instrumental title track, and a feeling of ‘sameyness’ around the halfway mark were all symptoms of a band that hadn’t fully fleshed out its sound yet. Well, consider that sound officially fleshed out: If Leaves was the blueprint for something great, Shoulder Season is the execution of that greatness. It directly targets many of the weaknesses Sidewalk Chalk exhibited on Leaves and eliminates them at their source.
The first concern Shoulder Season charges headlong into is that of rapping; MC Rico Sisney’s lightweight voice and snappy cadence fits snugly into the speedy-yet-emotional style of spitting he displayed on previous tracks like “Luggage”, but all too often on Leaves his bars failed to provide an excess of technical ability or emotion. He blows these concerns away the second he begins rapping on the opening cut “Thin Line”, coming forward with a much more energized persona than the Rico Sisney of the past. He drops a few electrifying bars here, showcasing his new affinity for high-quality multisyllabic rhymes. This display of both technical and emotional proficiency continues throughout the album, particularly on the emotional gut-puncher of “FiveTWELVE” or the racially contemplative “Them, Us”. Rico Sisney has stepped his game up dramatically; he is no longer the passive, thin-sounding rapper painting Leaves with abstract poetry. He is now an active combatant in the mix, pulling punches with lyrical fidelity and keeping the songs grounded on a particular topic. Simply put, his rapping here is exceptional.
It’s a good thing that his beats have picked up the slack to compensate, too. One of the major weaknesses of Leaves was the sameness that was sometimes brought about by its restrictions to physical instrumentation. There were many instances of playful inventiveness with physical sounds in the beginning (A particular beat constructed out of tap dancing steps comes to mind), but these cool tricks had a tendency to fade away towards the latter half of the album. Shoulder Season does away with this concern by accepting electronic instrumentation more openly, particularly on the gorgeous synth ballad “Blue”. That small taste of the infinite possibilities of the synthesizer is enough to keep the proceedings from becoming too stale; hearing the same instruments over and over again isn’t nearly as noticeable here as it was on Leaves. These beats carry some serious weight, too; There are no emotionally mellow tracks here, every song finds a way to be significantly sentimental somewhere on the scale. It’s a relief to hear something as genuinely uplifting as FiveTWELVE.
Shoulder Season might be a great refining of the Sidewalk Chalk sound, but it isn’t yet a perfection; it too has a few flaws that could always be patched up in the next record. While the live recording style lends a great deal of genuine authenticity to the playing of the instruments here, the inclusion of crowd chants and noises at the beginnings or ends of songs has a tendency to break up the flow of the album. There are extremely deep concepts waiting under the surface of this record, but no one concept is ever honed enough to become a central theme of the record. This, combined with the crowd noises, sets up Shoulder Season as a great collection of ideas that is difficult to be fully immersed within. If Sidewalk Chalk were to sit down and write a deeply conceptual record with a clear focus and aesthetic, they could end up producing one of the greatest jazz-rap records to date. Some of that potential still aches here; the closer “Vibration” is a solid song by itself, but nowhere near the level of epic bravado needed to match some of the solid gold that precedes it.
Shoulder Season is a cut-and-dried example of a band pushing their sound forward in every way they can. By sharpening their vocal deliveries, introducing new instrumentation, and placing a heavy focus on emotionally powerful tracks, Sidewalk Chalk has successfully dug themselves out of the “passive jazz-rap” rut so many artists in this genre find themselves trapped within. If they continue this speed of progression, it will soon be very difficult for the music world to continue ignoring them.
Recommended Tracks: 2, 6
FCC Violations: 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (A lot of difficult-to-discern rap lyrics that we don’t want to risk with the FCC)
Recommended if you like: Ab-Soul, Nujabes, SEENMR, Glow Mechanics
