Whokill

Musical style

The album covers a "formidable range of genres and styles" including acoustic folk, rock, R&B, punk rock, funk, free jazz and Afrobeat. As on her first album, Bird-Brains, Whokill relies on heavily layering looped sounds – notably vocals, drums and ukulele – which multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/composer Garbus uses to create her sound.

Unlike the lo-fi Bird-Brains, which was self-recorded on a handheld voice recorder, Whokill was recorded in studio, resulting in a fuller and clearer sound. It was produced by Garbus and engineered by Eli Crews at New, Improved Studios in Oakland, California. Tune-Yards also fleshed out the line-up to reflect the live shows, adding bass player Nate Brenner, who co-wrote some of the album's songs, and using horns on several tracks.

Themes

Thematically, Whokill is concerned with "power struggles that arise from inequity and lead to further cruelty and injustice," rooted in issues of privilege around race, gender and class. The album opens with "My Country," "a love-hate anthem" about America, which subverts the patriotic song "My Country, 'Tis of Thee."

The lyrics of Whokill are concerned with violence in different forms, including police brutality ("Doorstep", "Riotriot"), neighborhood violence ("Gangsta"), and more figurative forms of violence, as on "Powa," where Garbus tells a mirror, "you bomb me with life's humiliations every day / you bomb me so many times I never find my way." Garbus is both repelled and fascinated by violence: in "Riotriot," Garbus secretly fantasizes about the police officer who arrests her brother, before announcing "there is a freedom in violence that I don't understand / and like I've never felt before"; and on the final track, "Killa," Garbus declares, "All my violence is here in the sound."

Garbus changed the album's original working title (Women Who Kill) to its final released version as an expression of modern dissonance. The irregular spelling and spacing represents, in her words, "what we get from texting and e-mailing all the time, when nothing is ever exactly right."

Reception

Upon release, the album was met with critical acclaim and very positive reviews. It holds a current score of 86/100 on review-aggregator Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim," and was ranked as the number four album of 2011 on Metacritic's Music Critics Top 10 Lists. It was ranked as the number one album of 2011 on The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critic's poll, showing up on 135 top ten lists, making it likely the lowest-selling and lowest-charting winner in the poll's history.

Uncut placed it at number 44 on its list of the "Top 50 Albums of 2011". Pitchfork put it as number 7 on its Top 50 while Mojo placed the album at number 45.

The song "Gangsta" was featured in the TV shows Weeds, Orange is the New Black, and The Good Wife.

Track listing

All tracks written by Merrill Garbus, except where noted.