With the pay-per-play system of streaming, there’s a clear incentive to make albums longer or release them more frequently. Josh Davis’s sixth long-player as DJ Shadow feels absurdly generous at 26 tracks. However, it’s a confusing one for the listener to navigate, alighting on and abandoning a wide range of styles, and it’s a pretty long wait before he hits on something with maximum appeal.
Roughly, Our Pathetic Age comes in two halves. It’s from track 12 onwards that a battalion of guest rappers arrives, including big names such as Nas, De La Soul, Run the Jewels and members of Wu-Tang Clan. Their voices give focus, the producer’s beats are at their punchiest and melodies come to the fore.
Kings & Queens is based around a warm string sample, while De La Soul’s Rocket Fuel is a riotous party starter, zany and immediate. The album’s themes become more obvious, with Urgent Important Please Read dealing with fake news, while the title track, a soulful disco number sung by Sam Herring of Future Islands, takes a melancholy view of the world today.
First, though, we must negotiate an instrumental opening half which is all over the place. Beauty, Power, Motion, Life, Work, Chaos, Law covers almost as much ground as its title, jazzy and awkward. Juggernaut is a particular struggle, with its stuttering samples and industrial bass. There’s plenty of great stuff here, but, as is the way these days, it’s worth taking the time to make your own playlist of the good bits.
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