This album, the 2010 solo debut from Minneapolis native singer-songwriter Dessa, is incredibly close to my heart. And for that reason, it\u2019s taken me two years to write about it, trying to find the words to capture the ineffable, ephemeral quality of A Badly Broken Code <\/i>and of Dessa herself. I\u2019ve always found it difficult to try to describe these works that have made their way into my pantheon of greatness \u2013 Neutral Milk Hotel\u2019s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, <\/i>Bon Iver\u2019s For Emma, Forever Ago \u2013 <\/i>the albums that strike something so deep and true that it seems like you lose something by trying to fit the experience into concrete narrative. But if anyone understands this, it\u2019s the enlightened readers of the Vault, so here goes nothing!<\/p>\n
Dessa is part poet, part songstress, part rapper \u2013 but I hesitate to even separate these things into parts because she so wholly embodies all of them. She writes straight from the vein, raw and evocative, but with an incredible grace. She\u2019s a natural storyteller, a former spoken word artist who has also penned collections of poetry, short stories, and nonfiction. As part of the Minnesota hip-hop collective Doomtree, she brings her expressive flow to the songs on this disc, moving seamlessly from rapping to soulful singing \u2013 often even within the same song.<\/p>\n
A Badly Broken Code,<\/i> as its title implies, is something of a challenge for the listener; it\u2019s thorny and tangled, yet still lush and lovely. Each track is a jewel-box of song craft, requiring multiple listens to unfold and let the meaning seep in. It\u2019s a tough task for me as a reviewer to try and convey something coherent about these diverse, complicated songs. There\u2019s the cramped, dense opener \u201cChildren\u2019s Work,\u201d whose narrative unspools over a backdrop of ominously tinkling keys and Dessa\u2019s spoken word vocals, immediately followed by the gorgeous layered harmonies of the a cappella \u201cPoor Atlas,\u201d which is an English major\u2019s dream. Another standout, \u201cDixon\u2019s Girl\u201d finds Dessa spitfiring her rhymes over a smoky big band beat and a double-tracked chorus, establishing her as a confident hip-hop MC. <\/p>\n
My favorite song here \u2013 really, just one of my favorites of all time \u2013 is \u201cMineshaft II,\u201d which begins: \u201cFifteen years from tonight you\u2019ll have to make a decision \/ The greatest love of your life is going to call during dinner \/ From the home of the girl that he\u2019s living with now.\u201d Accompanied by militant drums and the cool weaving guitar line, it\u2019s a rich and haunting track in which Dessa imagines having to shed the bitter battle-scars of old love and inhabit herself as a young girl in order to forgive an ex lover (\u201cI used to sing outside the roof outside my windowsill \/ And I came hoping some ghost of me would be here still \/ And here you are a stick figure and a busted grin, still ignorant of all the trouble Imma get us in\u201d). It\u2019s a standout on all levels, packed with imagery and soaring on the cracked resilience of her vocals.<\/p>\n
Other standouts include \u201cMatches To Paper Dolls,\u201d which finds Dessa detailing an illicit love that just can\u2019t be quit: \u201cTried sweet talk, tried dynamite \/ But I sleepwalk back to the battle site \/ Fight fire with fire but the fire won\u2019t fight \/ We just fly these circles like tired kites.\u201d The cadence of her voice as she raps the stanzas captures the volatile energy of the relationship, but the sweetness of her singing on the chorus mirrors just how easy it is to fall back into the flame. Meanwhile, \u201cGo Home\u201d is the restrained counterpart to \u201cMatches,\u201d slowed down to molasses to capture the weight of having to disentangle from a man already in a relationship: \u201cI don\u2019t need to be good \/ I\u2019m just trying to stay blameless.\u201d <\/p>\n
The latter half of Code <\/i>finds Dessa inhabiting her role as a member of the Doomtree collective on songs like \u201cDutch,\u201d \u201cThe Bullpen,\u201d and \u201cCrew,\u201d which have more attitude and swagger to them than the rest of the material. They\u2019re great still, infusing the disc with a shot of energy, but I admittedly return to them less than some of the rest of the material here. I think it\u2019s because Dessa has such a depth and range to her storytelling that the more straightforward tracks don\u2019t give the listener as much of a challenge to work through \u2013 and for a music lover, the process of exploring the intricacies of a song brings immense joy. <\/p>\n
A Badly Broken Code <\/i>closes off with another pair of stunners: there\u2019s the brooding, ominous \u201cAlibi,\u201d which I\u2019ve always imagined as being from the perspective of a woman trying to protect her sister from a monstrous husband, and the resonant closer \u201cInto The Spin.\u201d It\u2019s spare and stripped down, just Dessa\u2019s voice layered so that it\u2019s somehow both crisp and hazy amid the quiet pluck of the guitar. <\/p>\n
Fierce and lovely, fractured and strong, A Badly Broken Code <\/i>demands to be listened to over and over. It\u2019s a rewarding journey to embark upon; Dessa is a singular talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":31967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[9404],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-43697","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dessa","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43697"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}