Milo – Cavalcade

Milo – Cavalcade
Hellfyre Club: 2013

In the 24 hours before starting this review, I did Google searches for Richard Dedekind (evidently a German mathematician), Abimelech (a Philistine king from the book of Genesis), and pyrite (the proper name for fool’s gold). I discovered that a chiliagon is a geometric shape with 1,000 sides, and learned (or, more accurately, re-learned) that Emperor Palpatine is not a figure from ancient history, as I initially suspected, but a Sith lord from the Star Wars universe. I watched parts of a Big Think interview with Cornel West and a clip from a 1993 film about Wittgenstein. And I reacquainted myself with the work of the 1970s folk rock band America—probably the first time I listened to them since a middle school classic rock phase that left me with far too many greatest hits collections. I did not do all this simply because I’m a glutton for information with a wireless connection and a splash of ADHD. Instead, I did it in pursuit of a better understanding of Milo’s newest mixtape.

Cavalcade, out this week from Hellfyre Club, is a hyper-referential tour through the world of Rory Ferreira—a rapper, student of philosophy at Wisconsin’s St. Norbert College, and undoubted child of the Internet age. The list above is just a small sampling of the kinds of things that pop up in Milo’s songs—like the reader of a William Gaddis novel or a Shakespeare play, the listener of Cavalcade would benefit greatly from an extensive set of footnotes, but until some energetic Milo fan picks up this gauntlet, Wikipedia will have to do.

Cavalcade is Milo’s fifth release, coming close on the heels of his very fine pair of EPs, Things That Happen at Night and Things That Happen at Day (recently included on our list of the best albums of 2013 so far). Milo’s progression as a writer is easy enough to identify: with successive projects his lyrics have grown more obscure and more challenging. On his first tape, I Wish My Brother Rob Was Here, he wove complex and funny rhymes into fairly self-contained and accessible songs. On Cavalcade, it feels as though he has abandoned weaving in favor of willful knotting—many of these songs hit like Gordian blasts of disquisition. This can cause an awesome head rush in the listener (see album opener “Geometry & Theology”), but it also means that most of these tracks lack the immediate impact of, say, “One Lonely Owl” from Rob, or “The Mumblings of Mr. Wav” from Milo Takes Baths. At their worst, Milo’s lyrics come across as random and lazy—one wonders if his compositional process is all that different from the spate of Googling I undertook to try to figure out some of his references. But for the most part, his breathless mix of the arcane and the mundane—of the personal and the professorial—is a pleasure, and he remains supremely quotable.

Like Things That Happen at Day, Cavalcade is produced entirely by Riley Lake, who proves himself to be Milo’s ideal second; the sample-heavy beats perfectly mirror Milo’s eclectic, allusive style. Much of the music comes from the aforementioned America (Cavalcade was inspired by Ferreira’s grandfather, who recently went through a health scare; America is his favorite band), but Riley Lake also repurposes tunes by James Blake, Suzanne Vega, and Dirty Projectors. And the tape is peppered with sampled spoken interludes from sources as varied as the deceased philosopher Richard Rorty, and the deceased WWF wrestler Mr. Perfect.

Cavalcade also features a few choice guest appearances: Busdriver shows up to sing on “Red Oleanders”, and Nocando and New York rapper YC the Cynic deliver verses on “Sophistry & Illusion” and “Ba’al, Chiliagon, Swords”. (It’s particularly fun to hear Nocando and YC frolicking in Milo’s world, where both sound quite comfortable.) But make no mistake: Cavalcade is Milo’s show. It’s a messy, esoteric, and deeply subjective display by one of the most interesting people making music right now.

4 out of 5