Last month at the ChiTown Movies drive-in, Chicago art-pop musician Sen Morimoto hosted a listening party for his new third album, Diagnosis (City Slang/Sooper), that included a screening of Brian De Palma’s 1974 florid horror-comedy rock opera, Phantom of the Paradise. De Palma’s sui generis skewering of the music industry—of how its financial imperatives corrode rock’s soul and flatten musicians into marketability—overlaps in its themes with Morimoto’s album. Morimoto and local music-video producers New Trash have drawn from Phantom of the Paradise to make videos for the title track of Diagnosis and for “Pressure on the Pulse,” both of which cast Chicago actor Alex Grelle (creator of The Grelley Duvall Show) as a pernicious industry executive. (Grelle also appeared as an angel in the 2020 video for Dehd’s “Loner,” opposite Sarah Squirm’s devil.)
The core emotions of De Palma’s movie—the joyful embrace of music, the aversion to the business that surrounds it—course throughout Diagnosis. The sorry state of the pop industry is one of many problems that Morimoto connects to capitalism’s rapacious pursuit of profit, which ignores the destruction of cultures, the immiseration of peoples and ecosystems, and the loss of hope for the future. He lists some of the calamities that capitalism either causes or permits—misinformation, political unrest, COVID-19, climate change—in a manifesto printed on the face of the CD of Diagnosis. (He also posted it in the comments of an Instagram photo of the disc.) It’s no wonder, he writes, that so many of us are bereft and scrambling for something to hold onto. Popular music is one of the languages we use to express to ourselves and to one another what there is to love in the world. How do we find equilibrium, let alone a path forward, when the most powerful human forces in the world have stripped it of any meaning beyond its ability to sell something? Its cynical diminishment impoverishes all of us.
Morimoto’s album suggests that the power to reverse these declines lives within us. He’s certainly found his own power: Diagnosis simmers with precisely controlled rage that sustains its heat without boiling over. Morimoto’s soft, inviting voice and easygoing charm smooth out his most nakedly aggressive moments without blunting their sting. He corrals jazz, hip-hop, indie rock, and R&B into an ever-shifting style, and this kaleidoscopic approach works well thematically too: the friction among the elements he brings together suggests the discord of contemporary life, even as he directs them all toward euphonious coexistence. The restless drums on “Diagnosis” burn through a proggy thicket of simmering synths, delicate acoustic guitar, gusty saxophone blasts, and several different vocal modes—in one moment, Morimoto piles up his overdubbed voice in relaxed, honeyed harmonies, and in the next he busts out a frenzied rapped verse.
The music industry keeps providing us with bleak news. To pick just one depressing example, Spotify has found a new way to nickel-and-dime smaller artists to death: next year, songs on the platform will have to be streamed 1,000 times (about three dollars’ worth) before Spotify pays out a penny, yet another insult to the unsung people whose work fills most of the platform’s catalog. But I find relief and cause for optimism in the fact that Morimoto has stayed true to his vision and his star has continued to rise.
Sen Morimoto Angélica Garcia and Neptune’s Core open. Sat 11/25, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $22, $90 opera box (seats two), all ages