Polskie Tango

The tango rhythm is there — barely, underneath everything, more felt than heard, like a pulse that the song keeps almost forgetting. "Polskie Tango" is sardonic in a way that takes a few listens to fully register: the production is almost cheerful on the surface, a certain jauntiness in the drums and the melodic fragments that drift through the mix, but it's the jauntiness of someone whistling past a very specific kind of ruin. Taco's delivery here has more edge than usual, a slight acceleration in the syllables, the rhythm of someone recounting absurdities to someone who will understand without needing explanation. The song is a portrait of a social type, or perhaps several overlapping types — the particular flavor of Polish self-contradiction, the gap between aspiration and reality, the exhaustion of a country perpetually in the middle of becoming something. Lyrically it's sharper and more outwardly directed than his most introspective work, almost satirical in places, but the satire is affectionate in the way that only insiders can manage without it becoming contemptuous. It belongs in the tradition of Polish cultural self-examination — Miron Białoszewski's Warsaw, Hłasko's disillusionment — filtered through contemporary hip-hop. You put it on when you need someone to articulate, with black humor and some style, the precise texture of living in a place that is your own and drives you absolutely insane.