Penance

Artists occasionally evolve more quickly than my perspectives about their music.  I failed to stay up to speed with Post Malone and Mac Miller.  In continuing to judge each man by his early output, I mistakenly held on to my first impressions more than a year past their respective artistic maturations.

I was infuriated by the popularity of Post Malone’s wretched initial work, yet his appearance at the Sprint Center earlier this month is one of my favorite performances of recent months.  Stoney hasn’t merely come a long way.  I belatedly realized he’s a pivotal figure in the history of popular music.

Just as Post renders genre distinctions meaningless, Miller’s posthumous album Circles is an intoxicating cocktail of hip-hop, jazz, R&B and pop.  The inviting sound makes his confessional songs about addiction and exhaustion all the more painful.  Worlds removed from the moronic juvenilia that characterized his first recordings, the profound Circles acts as a weary farewell. 

I’ve written positively about Post for a couple years.  He knows I’ve come around.  Sadly, my mea culpa is too late for Miller.  He was just 26 when he died 17 months ago.  I’m so sorry.


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I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

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I reviewed the essential new Charlie Parker box set The Savoy 10-Inch LP Collection at Plastic Sax.

(Original image captured at the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by There Stands the Glass.)