“Iraq ain’t lookin’ so good-but the mothafuckin’ club is crunk!” (from atheist jihad)
And so sole reemerges roughly two years after the aestheic and critical breakthrough of his second album, Selling Live Water, having moved to Spain, married, and continued to refine his inimitable blurring of sarcasm and bone-dry honesty. The lion’s share of the music is, like Selling Live Water, laid down by odd nosdam and alias, but sole has noticeably changed: the enflamed and verbose jeremiads of Selling Live Water have cooled slightly into a more reflective-and effortlessly funny- simmer.

Live from Rome, recorded and produced both in Oakland, California and Barcelona, Spain, has heavier hooks and a noticeably broader palette, moving from upbeat, half-serious vegan anthems to the half-kidding faux Eminem at the tail end of i’msotired: “Still getting punched for shit I said in my last life;/ it wasn’t me, it was Vanilla Ice./ Haven’t slept since god made mics-/Nah, I haven’t slept since god gave me the mic.”

Though sole still isn’t going to peddle a million records to the red states, his effort to place the person- al and self-critical in the big and political helps him avoid singing to the choir; Alternative Press has noted that his “willingness to lyrically bust caps in the asses of the left as well as the right make him a fairly revo- lutionary revolutionary.”

Live from Rome is a lyric volley of shots taken, but it’s thankfully lightened by his humor and ultimately made compelling by the beats - a rare mixture of the dynamic and the raw. Taken altogether, this very well may be one album worth surviving the future ruins of the new and improved Rome.

TRACK LISTING
1. cheap entertainment 2. self inflicted wounds 3. predictions 4. sin carne 5. entalude 6. locust farm 7. every single one of us 8. a typical 9. crisis 10. manifesto 232 11. banks of marble 12. atheist jihad (feat. bleubird) 13. dumb this down 14. imsotired 15. on martyrdom 16. theme 17. drive by detournment