Historically, EPs have been good to Atmosphere. The Minneapolis indie-rap titans had their breakthrough with 2001's Lucy Ford*: The Atmosphere EPs*, a collection of previously released EPs that still somehow stands as their best and most cohesive album by far. Lucy Ford put all the group's pieces together; it's an eloquent, charismatic piece of work that helped "emo-rap" come into existence. For all its self-deprecating introspection, though, it never sacrificed humor or swagger, and its beats banged. Atmosphere followed it with a couple of truly impressive rap records. But about five years ago, the group started recording and touring with a live band that, despite its best efforts, has always come off sounding way too session-musiciany. And with all those watery blues guitar lines and rapper Slug's increasing reliance on singsong, the group has pushed ever closer to G. Love territory on recent albums.
And that leads us to To All My Friends, Blood Makes the Blade Holy, the best thing the group has done in years. The new record is 12 songs in 41 minutes-- an album then, basically-- but Atmosphere is still selling this one as a "double EP" for some reason. If that's what they needed to do to edge just a little bit closer to that Lucy Ford frame of mind, fair enough. To All My Friends isn't a classic record or anything. That live band makes its presence known on every track, and sometimes that brings truly regrettable results, like the irritatingly flinty pseudo-reggae of "Americareful". And Slug hasn't quite reached the levels of slippery arrogance he displayed on something like Lucy Ford's "Guns & Cigarettes". Still, it's a big step in the right direction.
For one thing, there are a couple of honest-to-god battle-raps here, and Slug's always at his sharpest when he allows himself a few moments of straight-up shit-talk. "Until the Nipples Gone" and "Shotgun" come with terse, hard tracks. Laser-precise guitar lines weave in and out of each other, while Slug brings breathless urgency for the first time in a minute. Slug's brag-rap lyrics don't always make sense, but they avoid sense in fun, inventive ways: "You can call me Sean like nothing's wrong/ I'm the early dawn/ I'm the dirty bomb."
For most of To All My Friends, though, Slug doesn't talk shit; he tells stories. And he's a good storyteller. On recent records, he's faltered a bit by talking about generic concepts and other people instead of his own specific, detailed experiences. He spends a lot of time here talking about others, but he brings back that old sense of storytelling focus. When Slug attempts to de-glamorize the act of coke-dealing, for instance, he doesn't attack the entire genre of coke rap; he tells the story of some kid he knew in high school who started doing that and fucked his whole life up. He doesn't moralize; he just talks, and it turns out much more effective. "The Number None" is just an embarrassing story about an old girlfriend who dumped him and fucked his friend; I can't believe he hasn't already used that story for a song. "Scalp" is an expertly rendered shaggy-dog tale and a fitting sequel to God Loves Ugly's "Hair". These tracks don't make big sweeping points, and that's why they work.
Not everything on the record works so well. There's also "Commodities", a somewhat embarrassing rant about the deadening effects of social networking websites. There's "The Loser Wins", a generic thing about fake friends. There's "Freefallin'", a great indication of why Slug is not the guy you want dispensing wise truisms. But even with those tracks, To All My Friends hits its mark more often than not, and it shows a group starting to remember what made it great in the first place.
