1. Nouveau Depart 02:10
2. Escaping Arkham" 02:47
3. Brasso
4. Slow Down Moses
5. The Picture Of My DeLorean Gray (feat Sabzi)
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The Winter’s End, continues with the metaphorical seasonal themes of the agro-centric Tobacco Road. It stems from the seed of belief in a direct connection between depression, suicide and the notoriously long, wet winters of the Pacific Northwest. Intentionally timed for a Spring release, the album, in its 5-track entirety, represents triumph over the gloomy clutches of the dark season, setting the tone, both sonically and emotionally, for Common Market’s new beginning (or, Nouveau Depart, as track one is appropriately titled, in French).
Within seconds of the album’s opening track it becomes blatantly obvious that the duo has deliberately stepped outside the box, as RA Scion raps over a jazz funeral dirge played in 3⁄4 time. True to lyrical form, the emcee is verbose and on the offensive, but it’s with a renewed vigor drawn from the musical reference to a post-Katrina New Orleans that he calls into question the Old-World adages of The Church: “…in the wind a wish blows, what kind of men are content to live with those? I dig rows of holes for seeds, who I’mma feed with fishes and loaves?” The track swells into an awesome crescendo with the assistance of heart-wrenching synthesized horns; then suddenly it dies, as does the song’s narrator, in a disturbingly sweet peace.
RA continues to explore the intersection of life and lifelessness throughout The Winter’s End, uniquely so in Escaping Arkham, the EP’s second track for which the group filmed a video in the cemetery of New York’s famed Trinity Church. In the song, the emcee suspends time to ponder the thoughts racing through the mind of a suicide victim as he hovers over death. Singing falsetto on the chorus, RA explains he has effectively “run away chasing the sun.” The big horns return on Brasso, but with the gritty spirit of raw braggadocio facilitated by the emcee who raps aggressively about cheating death, whether by luck or cunning willfulness: “Breathin’ life into the brass, slide into an ‘A’ and play to raise the dead, work with that serrated when they make it hard to break the bread.”
On Slow Down Moses, RA brings the listener inside an intimate conversation with a psychotherapist, to whom he has presumably been referred for the purpose of discussing the impact of his own father’s suicide. The rapper is as cool, calm and collected as ever while openly challenging the effectiveness of counseling: “It’s possible there’s not a proper answer to ‘what’s wrong,’ so what’s wrong with me wanting to cut through the customs?”
Lyrically, RA delivers a solid performance on each track, fulfilling the ever-increasing expectations of an audience growing to national proportions by the minute (Common Market plays two high-profile showcases at this year’s SXSW Festival in Austin, TX before departing for a tour of the entire Eastern Seaboard with rap legends Digable Planets).
In addition to RA’s willingness to really sing,what makes this project unlike any other effort by Seattle’s sans-Sonics-era rap mainstays is the sample-free production. The group has made its name on a foundation of classic R&B, funk and soul-infused loops reminiscent of John Starks-era NY rap. Not this time. Sabzi has foregone the crates vinyl in favor of digging through a catalog of soft-synths, and the results are refreshing, begging the listener to rediscover the generous offerings of Common Market. The album’s final track, a 4-minute original instrumental, may be Sabzi’s boldest composition to-date.
