A ‘TSUNAMI’ AGAINST THE CONCEPT OF GENRE: “HOW I DO” BY RES ALBUM REVIEW

Every Sunday, milk crate revisits an iconic piece of music history—artist, album, or otherwise—as a part of our weekly crate digging series.

Design by Sophie Parrish

BY: GABRIELLE FINUCAN 

I find myself with an earworm carrying its way through my body on a consistent basis. At my part-time job, I hum to myself a snippet of a melody from a song lodged in my brain—while cashing customers out. My fingers find themselves snapping against each other waiting for a bus to carry me home. These sound-germs tend to slip away as quickly as they come, with the exception of a few beats that have dug themselves deep into the sound garden of my cranium. One morning, an unfamiliar song, “They-Say Vision,” materialized on my shuffle on my way to work. The album cover featured a black-and-white photo of a mysterious woman looking over her shoulder, with a smile that seemed to beg me to indulge my ears and let the song play for just a little bit longer. Another hole in my mental sound garden seemed to open up. And this woman was holding the shovel. 

Released in 2001, Philadelphia-based artist Res (pronounced “Reese”) debut studio album How I Do follows suit with its title. While the album consistently blends elements of trip-hop, neo-soul, R & B, and indie rock all into one melting pot of rhythm, every song is so distinctly unique from one another. I couldn’t find one label or genre to try and restrict this album to. Its malleability and vivacity is part of the How I Do charm. Res refuses to stay dormant in one genre for too long. I’m sure this nature of How I Do is not alluring to listeners who value consistent and linear production or thematic components in an album. Me personally? I can’t get enough of how each song stands like a unique fingerprint on the album’s figurative hand.  

“They-Say Vision” hits your ears with an illusive and dreamy rock-adjacent sound. The bass of this song is entirely guttural and grounded, with the beat of the drums pounding like a heartbeat. Paired with Res’s sultry, low-register vocals, the instrumentals center your body with the rhythm. Yet there is a hazy, immersive quality to the vocals that juxtaposes the rooted quality. The lyrics focus heavily on noncompliance and conformity within the industry, which is incredibly fitting for an album centered around its unpredictability and inability to generalize. Res reveals her perspective within the chorus, “So take my hand and lead me where you wanna/ Pay no more mind to what you think you’ve seen/ It’s as they do only.” Her vocals spin in the air, and lure the audience to follow this authoritative figure of the music industry that restricts and bounds the speaker. The lyrics progress to reveal that even when Res is attempting to follow her individuality, her lines and messages have been regurgitated—and when you think you know where you orient yourself, you’re really only centered where that authoritative voice wants you positioned. The end of the song follows Res’s layered, angelic vocals before she tells the audience to, “Take the back road.” Res’s sentiment resonates under a similar vein as the notorious final lines of Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” “I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” beckons—to return back to the unordained and arcane path authentic to oneself. 

Res oozes integrity on every track in this album, and the smooth tone of “Golden Boys” only further demonstrates her rejuvenating honesty as an artist. She discusses the illusory  performance of artists adored by the media, plastered in the digital world. She criticizes the “golden,” nature of these artists, the inherent fraudulence that comes at the price of fame. Almost as if these artists’s personas are coated in a Midas Touch-esque gold,“We know the truth about you/ Now you’re the prince of all the magazines/ That is a dangerous thing,” and, “Now would they love you if they knew all the things that we know?” Res sings, only further emphasizing this artificial nature she is disgusted by. In a softer refrain, Res solidifies where she stands in retrospect to the “golden boys,” pulling the audience in with, “Girls like me don’t need no/ Bubbling mind-state thrown up in my face.” Her voice sparks against the R & Band-rock fusion that is as lively as her defiance against a “bubbling mindstate.” Even if you dissociate from her lyrics and focus solely on the emotive blend of instrumentals, the nature of the rhythm charms you to dance. 

Out of all the tracks on this album, the final track, “Tsunami,” renders me as breathless as the title suggests. The song begins with an acoustic jazz blend, featuring soft, romantic lyrics of adoration expressed in Res’s vocals. The tracks before this song like “Let Love,” have a gentler soulful tone that centers the album back in Res’s innerworld, rather than the expansive focus of external forces surrounding her at the beginning of the album. The smooth twang of the guitar paired with a feathery bass flows similar to that of a wave, languidly pulling in and out making your head sway. 

And in true Res fashion, just as the sound slowly fizzes out into a dull silence, just when you think the album closes on a sweet, sensual tone, a voice counts down to three and BOOM—heavy guitar and drums pound against your ears in a deliciously cacophonous ruckus. She contradicts her previous statements of holding it out with this romantic partner and hits the audience with a stronger, alternative sound growling, “Say, say it anyway, if you want to/ ‘Cause I don’t care anymore if they hear you,” atop background vocals whispering, “Say what you want, you suck.” Res entirely changes the tide of her song with as much depth and resonance as the ocean itself. The final notes of this track are messy; they crash an amalgamation of strings and drums into your ear as if a literal tsunami is hitting a sandy shore. 

I finished her album with salt water and sand still covering my skin and sitting on my tongue. How I Do has clung to me in every sense of the word, as an album so unique in composition that I have been engulfed by the memory of her tidal wave voice. Bask in the salt stained sun and experience Res’s elemental powers wash over you.