Brick Body Kids Still Daydream
About this Album
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is Open Mike Eagle's 2017 concept album about the Robert Taylor Homes, the Chicago public housing complex on the South Side where his aunt and cousins lived. Released on September 15, 2017 through Mello Music Group, it was his fifth solo LP.[1][3]
The idea began when Eagle watched documentaries about the Homes while traveling, then returned to Chicago to see the site for himself.[1][2] He calls the record an audio version of a mural, a commemoration that is impressionistic rather than documentary, and he cites the video game Dark Souls and its ruins-and-lore storytelling as an influence.[2] Producer Jordan Katz supplies live instrumentation over heavy beats, and Sammus appears on "Hymnal."[3]
Critics were warm. Loud and Quiet gave it 9/10 and called it a defiant sci-fi elegy for the collapse of American social housing.[4] Its central song, "Brick Body Complex," makes the album's metaphor of a person as a building explicit.[1]