Everyone is sick of hearing about how DJ Shadow will never top Endtroducing…, most of all Shadow himself. But what about those of us still holding the torch for Psyence Fiction, his insanely hyped, tragically flawed, and surprisingly enduring collaboration with James Lavelle as UNKLE? With hindsight, the buzz surrounding that release seems quaint, but it came along during a time when CD storage towers were still proudly manicured physical manifestations of their owner's listening habits. Meaning it was worth sitting through all 13 false endings of "Lonely Soul" and the wackest Beastie Boys verses ever put to wax because you certainly weren't getting peak performances from Kool G Rap, Badly Drawn Boy, and Thom Yorke on a single disc anywhere else. The good news then is that the bullishly titled The Less You Know, the Better finds Shadow back in that same mode of crowd-pleasing genre consumption. Problem is, you'll think it's even better news if you've still got that same exact CD collection from 1998.
The Less You Know isn't really a record that has you asking "What was he thinking?" out of exasperation so much as genuine and concerned curiosity. After all, it's not like Shadow releases new music for any old reason. He puts out records sporadically and titles his albums like manifestos. And his collaborators seem to know they're not part of some tossed-off project-- even the singer-songwriter contributions here sound like they're deferentially acknowledging the boss. Like every DJ Shadow album, it's a statement of some sort.
But whether The Less You Know was intended to reestablish Shadow as a musician, as a producer, or even as someone with decent taste, he misfires on all counts. Judging from this year's I Gotta Rokk EP, you could assume he had traded his turntables in for guitars and then decided to buy the turntables back. But as deep as his understanding of beat-driven music is, he's got a total tin ear for rock proper, and as such, and The Less You Know plays like a DJ-Kicks curated by a particularly unadventurous KROQ jock. Bad enough that the palm-muted guitar chug of "Border Crossing" finds Shadow trying to recreate "She Watch Channel Zero!?" by getting his fingers dusty digging in crates of Godsmack records. But as worrying as the conceptual aspect is, the execution is inexcusably half-assed for someone of Shadow's sample-chopping acumen. It's simply a weak guitar sound, the sort of RAT Distortion lick you can hear at the nearest Sam Ash, and like many of the cuts here, there's a perfectly decent 20-second intro that gets looped into becoming the entire track.
But as an instrumental, I suppose it's worlds better than the acoustic-slappin' folk-n-beats combo "I've Been Trying"-- I envy those who hear it and can't immediately identify the Incubus song that sounds exactly like it (spoiler: "Drive"). You can call "Sad and Lonely" feminized blues haunted by CGI ghosts or whatever you choose; just know that Moby tired of it nearly a decade ago. All of which is just a long way to say that The Less You Know is the kind of forward-thinking excursion that inevitably donates its sole hip-hop track to Talib Kweli. Credit where it's due: at least he and Posdnuos resist the temptation to turn in "Why Hip-Hop Sucks in 2011", but over papery jazz-rap that could've been the softest track on any Soundbombing comp, the two kick the sort of polite, earnest, and flair-free 16s that come to them as effortlessly as college student union checks. The name of the track? "Stay the Course", of course.
Mind you, that's just the first half and before Shadow starts throwing out bleeding chum ostensibly meant to distract you from The Less You Know's deep-seated and fundamental problems. Take the 28-second pit stop of "Going Nowhere" ("slowly we are getting nowhere, and that is a pleasure") or the four minutes of Beat poetry that simply had to be included for comic relief or at least a preapproved mocking point for critics, a track called "Give Me Back the Nights". Funny thing about "Nights" is that it's actually the best thing here, a brief and haunted dub workout that earns a pretty cheap accolade of "cinematic," but at least achieves its intended purpose. It works far better than "Enemy Lines", five interminable minutes of watery flange guitars and a vague awareness of witch house, or "I Gotta Rokk", whose glammed-up monotony actually has less to do with T. Rex than it does with the likes of Propellerheads, Freestylers, Wiseguys, or any other big-beat late adapter who owes their ad royalties to the invention of the word "electronica."
He at least hasn't lost his ear for drums-- the actual sound of the percussion on The Less You Know is often fantastic, all kinds of crisp snares and satisfying crackle giving you the hope that some intrepid beatmaker might be able to salvage some of this for his own devices. But outside of a good drumbreak, what is Shadow actually bringing to the table here? Featuring Yukimi Nagano, "Scale It Back" is the kind of cosmopolitan electro-pop that could just as easily have been a B-side on the latest Little Dragon album. Unfortunately, the same applies to the Aqua Net stiffness of Tom Vek's Flock of Seagulls rip "Warning Call", which could've just as easily have been an A-side on his last album. Which raises the question: Why does he care about these songs, when they deign to say so little? Better yet, why does he think you should?
Perhaps you've noticed that the word "hyphy" hasn't been used up until now, which some might take as a sign that The Less You Know simply has to be better than The Outsider, his widely disliked excursion into Bay Area hip-hop that's aged about as well as, um, hyphy itself. But at least that showed some sort of interest in the contemporary, not to mention the balls to say he's moved on from Endtroducing.... And whether or not he's made one of the most influential electronic albums ever, I think Shadow has the right to be a working producer who doesn't have to show us how he feels about dubstep or Brainfeeder. After all, dude's on Verve, a label that certainly allows an artist the freedom to not give a shit about what the kids are into. But The Less You Know can't even be staunchly retro, or staunchly anything. Its only commitment is to a subtle antagonism, and it ignores pretty much any worthwhile development in pop, rock, electronic, or hip-hop music since the turn of the century.
