John Wizards is one of those bright, restlessly creative albums that transitions from one idea to the next the way a kid reels off details of a made-up story without ever considering how it might end. The music-- which with the exception of some vocal lines by a Rwandan singer named Emmanuel Nzaramba was recorded entirely by 25-year-old Cape Town, South Africa resident John Withers-- is a bird's eye view of styles that are not only pan-African but, as goes the great promise of cultural consumption in the internet age, pan-global. Click down on one section of John Wizards and you'll hear the peppy end of Ghanaian highlife or the crisp optimism of Withers' native mbaqanga; click down on another and you'll hear 80s disco or swing-heavy instrumental hip-hop not all that far removed from Clams Casino, executed in compact, synthetic sounds that pop in the mix like foil-covered candy from a crystal dish.
A self-diagnosed daydreamer who makes his living writing ad jingles, Withers breaks down music into short, catchy bursts. Most of the songs on John Wizards are under three minutes long, and even those rarely hold onto a single melody or idea for more than 30 seconds. There are high points-- all of the kaleidoscopic opener "Tet Lek Schrempf", most of "Lushoto", the sweet, Auto-Tuned vocal of "I'm Still a Serious Guy", or "iYongwe"'s guitar line, which once heard required active mental scrubbing to forget-- but the album's strength is ultimately in its breadth, not depth. Look too close and its songs crumble, but take them as pieces of a whole and the music takes on the playful energy of a mixtape: sweeping its diversity, charming in its curiosity, and generally more geared to the pleasure of the listener than the self-expression of the artist.
All of which can sometimes make John Wizards feel slight or disposable-- a Tumblr-era album made by an artist who functions more as a shrewd organizer of style than a composer of indelible music. Toward the end of an interview he did with Pitchfork in June, Withers was asked two questions: One was if his employers in the ad business ever asked him to imitate other bands; the other was how he might feel if someone ever asked him to imitate John Wizards. The second question struck me as funny, because Withers still basically sounds like an imitative musician. What sets him apart is the range and fluidity of his imitations, and the unifying cheerfulness with which he executes them.
Obviously African but easily fit into a conversation about contemporary American indie-pop, released on the mostly-techno label Planet Mu despite not being a techno album, satisfying an imagined ideal of post-internet globalism while remaining a personal and localized experience, arriving at a time when hot colors and wild geometric patterns remain fashionable, John Wizards is, to paraphrase the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss' opinion on animals, "good to think with." But that won't make people want to listen to it. What will is its hip diversity, sunny disposition, and the fact that Withers never asks more of his audience than he's willing to give: A man of contract, he puts his clients first.
