“Awaken, My Love!” is the 2016 studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. A modern take on 70’s psychedelic funk and somewhat of a Prince tribute, it manages to combine crowd pleasing melodies with some quite messy left-field experimentation making it one of the more interesting records of the last few years.
I was introduced to AWL by my 15 year old son. I’m almost completely unaware of modern rap and R&B music, which I mostly find very hard to connect with. I’m sure there’s some excellent stuff out there, but mostly it’s not really my thing. I doubt that I would have stumbled across AWL if left to my own devices, so thanks Leo! It just helps to reinforce my belief that there’s probably huge amounts of great music out there that I’d really love if only I knew where to find it, and that the main challenge for the music industry in the 2010’s is discovery. In an ideal world there would be someone on the internet with musical taste identical to my own, but who spends 12 hours a day listening to music and discovering all the wonderful things I might like. Alas I’ve yet to find them - another discovery problem.
Donald Glover is the cultural king of 2018. Actor, rapper, TV star and comedian. He took a leading role in the latest Star Wars universe film as Lando Calrissian and had the internet breaking release of his number one rap single, This is America, and its era defining video. But when AWL was released he was known mainly as a TV actor and a decidedly second division rapper. This was his breakthrough record, the first to get generally positive reviews and the first to get him taken seriously as a musician, which is odd considering that it’s quite a departure from his mainly rap based output.
Donald Glover wrote, played and produced AWL in collaboration with his long-time collaborator, Swedish film music composer and producer Ludwig Göransson. There’s a great YouTube video where Göransson explains how the single Redbone was put together. He says that Glover plays the drums and obviously sings the lead vocals, but that he played most of the other instruments including a wonderful collection of vintage guitars and keyboards. Either way there’s an almost embarrassing richness of musical ideas. Much of the music is anchored by a lazy bass and drum groove with plenty of space for other instruments to drift through the mix in a cascade of bubbling monosynths and filtered guitars. Glover’s high, somewhat Prince-a-like vocals perfectly complement the laid back vibe. The whole thing is a feast for the ears, and a rare groove based recording that rewards sitting back and listening through headphones.
The stand out track is of course Redbone, based around a series of super catchy hooks over a slow funk groove. My other favourites are Zombies, a decidedly silly mock-horror soundtrack that’s the perfect vehicle for Göransson’s instrumental hooks and Glover’s lazy drum groove; and Boogieman which is driven by an excellent guitar riff and the most complex rhythms on the album.
With expectations around Glover now sky high, it must be quite unlikely that he’ll have the critical space to make another album as risky and left-field as this, which is a shame. Still it stands as an artifact of one of the great creative figures of our time.
Here’s the excellent video I mentioned above where Ludwig Göransson walks through the making of Rebone: