Music Reviews, 4/22/19
The pile of new releases reached critical mass sometime in March and kept going well into April. I've listened to 75 albums that came out this year. That's more than all but two of my year end lists, and it's only Earth Day. But I've finally hit New Music Inbox Zero, so here's my thoughts on some of the new shit that's dropped:
G Flip "Drink Too Much" ** and 3/4
Aside from the magical, melancholy bounce of the title track, the rest of this EP is inexpertly executed bland pop. If G Flip focuses more on things like "Drink Too Much" (which has a personality) and less like the rest (which, guess what), then they might have something. (But I definitely recommend the title track. Odds are good it will do well on my year end song list.)
Stella Donnely "Beware Of The Dogs" ***
This album is twee, it's cutesy, it's way too sleepy...but Stella Donnely's personality and lyrical prowess go so far that I'm able to look past the things that scream "NOT YOUR JAM". To a point.
After track five, I think there's one upbeat song, and that's stretching the definition. The cutesiness is charming however because Donnely's delivery and subject matter ground it in a real person; I feel like there's another human on the other side of the speakers. I would probably drop a few tracks, maybe pair it down to ten to cut down on the soporific nature, but overall I didn't feel like I had my time wasted. Even if you're not willing to commit to the full 45 minutes, "Old Man", "Mosquito", "Tricks" and "Boys Will Be Boys" are must hears.
Emily King "Scenery" ***
I somehow like this more and less than Stella Donnely, yet feel like it's in-between the highs and lows of "Beware Of The Dogs" in quality. It's definitely a more even-tempered record, full of soft soul with meatier bass lines and 80's tinges; the slight sting of a synth or the splash of compressed digital drums you know came from one of those hexagonal pads from back in the day.
This is wildly different from the last time I checked in with Emily King, but since that was 2007 I would hope she evolved and grew as an artist. And she has. Soul is still the base of her music but it's definitely got its own flavor (whereas 2006's "East Side Story" ('07 in the U.S.) was a little more of its time).
The albums is a bit indistinct in its smoothness, and though it has personality it only makes up for so much. ("Blue Light" made me sit up and take notice (I was fucking around on Twitter) and then made me melt like butter.) It also has another similarity to Stella Donnely's latest: around half way it's all slow songs with no going back. The difference is here it morphs into some blander pop tropes and I kinda don't feel so bad for fucking around on Twitter after all. (Which is nice, since I fuck around on there way too much as it is @nicholasnutter takethattakethattakethat.)
Solange "When I Get Home" [NEGATIVE ONE STAR]
Not gonna make too many friends on this one, but I have to say it.
If the melody of this project wasn't so on point, I would have given this negative two stars. Solange's cooing mixed with the slurred pronunciation just digs the deepest of nails into the noisiest of chalkboards for me. I can't stand how she sings. And it's frustrating that I can't figure out why. I've heard similar vocalists that didn't drive me up the wall like this, but for some reason this just twists all the screws.
The worst part however is the lyrics. When she said "Candy paint down to the floor", I rolled my eyes so hard I legitimately tweaked my neck and spent the rest of the day in pain. Then the next song starts with "Down, down, down to the floor". The album's approach is sloganeering in the place of lyrics, but the slogans don't mean a goddam thing. And I'm not kidding about this: The word down is featured...prominently doesn't do it justice: UBIQUITOUSLY throughout the first three songs on the album (I don't count the intro or the skit; that's her warming up by saying the same phrase over and over again). Read the lyrics to "Down With The Clique". There's 181 words in the song and 81 of them are "Down". Then there's "Beltway", where the lyrics are, no joke: Verse 1: "Don't (x12)" Chorus: "You love me (x4)", Verse 2: "Lone (x12)" Repeat chorus two more times. (What does that have to do with a beltway?)
The most galling aspect is the music is really good. If there was even banal lyrics on this album, I might have given it a three and a half. But most of the songs, even when they have a point, repeat words so often I can't deal with it. I've never heard anything like it.
Bruce Hornsby "Absolute Zero" *** and 7/16
Most people only know Bruce Hornsby from "The Way It Is", the song Tupac sampled for "Changes". I know more of his catalogue because my dad had three or four of his albums when I was a kid. I always liked some of his stuff, but the only full album I could sit through was Hot House; most of his others were too sleepy with one or two stabs at pep. But when I saw there were guest spots from Jack Dejohnette (jazz fusion drummer extraordinaire) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), I had to hear what the hell was going on.
The record paints a picture that matches the cover: life as an abandoned amusement park, frozen over but the games are still rigged and the prizes still suck. It even talks about how music is basically auditory wallpaper now on "White Noise" (a stance I'm not necessarily for or against anymore; it's too broad a generalization to make, yet too widespread a phenomenon to ignore). But "Take You There" seems to end on a positive note, and eh, maybe it'll all open back up in spring.
The two Justin Vernon tracks are the low point, but they aren't terrible. They mess up the flow of the record a bit, but they don't ruin it. They're the main reason I couldn't quite give this three and a half. It's a moody record, but one you really have to be in the mood to listen to so...I like it, but I'd have to be in the right mindset to even think about loving it. Still, I managed to sit through the whole thing and would do so again.
Norah Jones "Begin Again" ** and 1/2
Title track slaps, but most of it puts me to sleep. The opener is nice and menacing, and I was with it through track 2, but man does the momentum hit a brick wall. I liked the closer as well, but there's a lot of whispy nothing on this. I mean it's a Norah Jones album, go figure, but I would have thought with a title like "Begin Again" we would've got some fresh ideas. Still, there's the kernel of something interesting here, so maybe the next one will bear better fruit.
Band Of Skulls "Love Is All You Love" **
Wow, this is the hardest I've heard a band get "just another band"-ed in a long, long time. Everything that made them distinct, interesting or, y'know, rock has been completely stripped away. I started doing chores halfway through the album, and three tracks later, I'd forgotten I was listening to Band Of Skulls. Their previous album was number four on my 2016 year end list, but if this competently made, 36-minute dose of boring reaches the top 50 this year it'll be a miracle. How am I so disappointed by an album I didn't even know was coming out?
Andrew Bird "My Finest Work Yet" ***
Even though I have a couple Andrew Bird albums and I've always wanted to "get into" him, the leadoff single "Sisyphus" is the first song of his I can pick out of a lineup, mostly because of the whistle. "Bloodless" has a feel to it like old wood in the walls of an empty dance hall; not abandoned, but it's seen better days. There's a lacquer on everything so people don't get splinters, but it's made everything so soft it feels like the room is breathing with every step you take through it. The violin on that song is reminiscent in tone of Jerry Goodman's work with the Dixie Dregs. "Olympians" has a triumphant chorus about "turning it around" that kept me going, but "Cracking Codes" made me check out.
The next few songs had their moments, but the spell was kinda broken. And it's not that it's bad; I feel like I need to give this album a few more chances and that one of them will stick. But that's just it. I rarely listen to an album more than twice. Ever. Unless it really compels me to, because...look. Since December 1st, there have been 75 albums on my list to "check out". That's four more than the entire 2017 list. A handful I re-listened to to write reviews, but that's the only reason. (And I liked Dream Theater, Mark Morton and Offset.) This Andrew Bird is going to get lost in the shuffle just like the rest of his work, but maybe, maybe "Sisyphus" and one other song from this album (which I find well put-together, has decent songs and a defined atmosphere) will even stick with me beyond 2019. You know how depressed that makes me as a musician? No wonder I joined a kind of jokey band with less stakes. At least I'm having fun on the way to complete historical obliteration.
Yikes, that got dark. Let's make it less dark, because I found an album that has the opposite problem: I didn't want to listen to it a second time for this review because my first impression was to give it five stars. I haven't done that on this blog since Metallica's "Death Magnetic" in 2008, and not for any other album since then besides Neil Cicierega's "Mouth Moods" in 2017. Neither of those (nor The Duhks' album "Fast Paced World") lived up to the five stars I gave them on second, third, fourth or fifth listen (which I still haven't hit with "Mouth Moods"). Even though I still loved them, that shine wasn't there on listen two.
But this one held up to scrutiny.
Devin Townsend "Empath" *****
Complain all you want about the length. It is daunting. Most albums top out at 45 minutes because anything more starts to overstay its welcome, and Empath is a full half hour beyond (most of which is the 23 minute, six part "Singularity" (which is broken up into separate tracks on the CD, but not on streaming)). But why should an album like this stop at 45 minutes? That's ordinary. Why be ordinary when you long for something extraordinary? This album has an orchestra! It has a choir! It has synthesizers! It has three drummers! It has blast beats, symphonic passages and electronic doodley-doos, sometimes living harmoniously in the same song. It has Steve Vai doing a kickass solo at the end! It even has Chad Kroger, for fuck sake! I...HEY! Where you going??? He only does backing vocals on one song!
Devin Townsend went into serious debt for this one. He plunked down $170,000 of his own money to make this happen. He broke up the Devin Townsend Project, which had been a successful thing for him for a decade and started fresh to create this new thing. He poured every ounce of compositional, musical and production skill he had in to bringing it to life and he put himself in a position where if the album doesn't recoup his career is over.
Because there's no such thing as a meritocracy, that's a very real prospect. This album is out there. It's long. It has lengthy stretches of choral and classical flourishes that most listeners won't have the patience for. It switches genres at the drop of a hat, and thought it does so masterfully, I can understand if that causes whiplash. But if you can find time, sit down and pay attention to this album. You will be rewarded handsomely.
A work of art. A masterpiece. An unwieldy, bizarre, genre-hopping slab of music that it takes you multiple listens to get into? It's all of these things, for better and worse. But unlike Andrew Bird, it does so much so well you have no choice but to respect it. It is noteworthy. It will stick with you. And to me, because I made a connection with it, Empath damn well deserves its five stars. Listen for yourselves and be the judge.
Aside from the magical, melancholy bounce of the title track, the rest of this EP is inexpertly executed bland pop. If G Flip focuses more on things like "Drink Too Much" (which has a personality) and less like the rest (which, guess what), then they might have something. (But I definitely recommend the title track. Odds are good it will do well on my year end song list.)
Stella Donnely "Beware Of The Dogs" ***
This album is twee, it's cutesy, it's way too sleepy...but Stella Donnely's personality and lyrical prowess go so far that I'm able to look past the things that scream "NOT YOUR JAM". To a point.
After track five, I think there's one upbeat song, and that's stretching the definition. The cutesiness is charming however because Donnely's delivery and subject matter ground it in a real person; I feel like there's another human on the other side of the speakers. I would probably drop a few tracks, maybe pair it down to ten to cut down on the soporific nature, but overall I didn't feel like I had my time wasted. Even if you're not willing to commit to the full 45 minutes, "Old Man", "Mosquito", "Tricks" and "Boys Will Be Boys" are must hears.
Emily King "Scenery" ***
I somehow like this more and less than Stella Donnely, yet feel like it's in-between the highs and lows of "Beware Of The Dogs" in quality. It's definitely a more even-tempered record, full of soft soul with meatier bass lines and 80's tinges; the slight sting of a synth or the splash of compressed digital drums you know came from one of those hexagonal pads from back in the day.
This is wildly different from the last time I checked in with Emily King, but since that was 2007 I would hope she evolved and grew as an artist. And she has. Soul is still the base of her music but it's definitely got its own flavor (whereas 2006's "East Side Story" ('07 in the U.S.) was a little more of its time).
The albums is a bit indistinct in its smoothness, and though it has personality it only makes up for so much. ("Blue Light" made me sit up and take notice (I was fucking around on Twitter) and then made me melt like butter.) It also has another similarity to Stella Donnely's latest: around half way it's all slow songs with no going back. The difference is here it morphs into some blander pop tropes and I kinda don't feel so bad for fucking around on Twitter after all. (Which is nice, since I fuck around on there way too much as it is @nicholasnutter takethattakethattakethat.)
Solange "When I Get Home" [NEGATIVE ONE STAR]
Not gonna make too many friends on this one, but I have to say it.
If the melody of this project wasn't so on point, I would have given this negative two stars. Solange's cooing mixed with the slurred pronunciation just digs the deepest of nails into the noisiest of chalkboards for me. I can't stand how she sings. And it's frustrating that I can't figure out why. I've heard similar vocalists that didn't drive me up the wall like this, but for some reason this just twists all the screws.
The worst part however is the lyrics. When she said "Candy paint down to the floor", I rolled my eyes so hard I legitimately tweaked my neck and spent the rest of the day in pain. Then the next song starts with "Down, down, down to the floor". The album's approach is sloganeering in the place of lyrics, but the slogans don't mean a goddam thing. And I'm not kidding about this: The word down is featured...prominently doesn't do it justice: UBIQUITOUSLY throughout the first three songs on the album (I don't count the intro or the skit; that's her warming up by saying the same phrase over and over again). Read the lyrics to "Down With The Clique". There's 181 words in the song and 81 of them are "Down". Then there's "Beltway", where the lyrics are, no joke: Verse 1: "Don't (x12)" Chorus: "You love me (x4)", Verse 2: "Lone (x12)" Repeat chorus two more times. (What does that have to do with a beltway?)
The most galling aspect is the music is really good. If there was even banal lyrics on this album, I might have given it a three and a half. But most of the songs, even when they have a point, repeat words so often I can't deal with it. I've never heard anything like it.
Bruce Hornsby "Absolute Zero" *** and 7/16
Most people only know Bruce Hornsby from "The Way It Is", the song Tupac sampled for "Changes". I know more of his catalogue because my dad had three or four of his albums when I was a kid. I always liked some of his stuff, but the only full album I could sit through was Hot House; most of his others were too sleepy with one or two stabs at pep. But when I saw there were guest spots from Jack Dejohnette (jazz fusion drummer extraordinaire) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), I had to hear what the hell was going on.
The record paints a picture that matches the cover: life as an abandoned amusement park, frozen over but the games are still rigged and the prizes still suck. It even talks about how music is basically auditory wallpaper now on "White Noise" (a stance I'm not necessarily for or against anymore; it's too broad a generalization to make, yet too widespread a phenomenon to ignore). But "Take You There" seems to end on a positive note, and eh, maybe it'll all open back up in spring.
The two Justin Vernon tracks are the low point, but they aren't terrible. They mess up the flow of the record a bit, but they don't ruin it. They're the main reason I couldn't quite give this three and a half. It's a moody record, but one you really have to be in the mood to listen to so...I like it, but I'd have to be in the right mindset to even think about loving it. Still, I managed to sit through the whole thing and would do so again.
Norah Jones "Begin Again" ** and 1/2
Title track slaps, but most of it puts me to sleep. The opener is nice and menacing, and I was with it through track 2, but man does the momentum hit a brick wall. I liked the closer as well, but there's a lot of whispy nothing on this. I mean it's a Norah Jones album, go figure, but I would have thought with a title like "Begin Again" we would've got some fresh ideas. Still, there's the kernel of something interesting here, so maybe the next one will bear better fruit.
Band Of Skulls "Love Is All You Love" **
Wow, this is the hardest I've heard a band get "just another band"-ed in a long, long time. Everything that made them distinct, interesting or, y'know, rock has been completely stripped away. I started doing chores halfway through the album, and three tracks later, I'd forgotten I was listening to Band Of Skulls. Their previous album was number four on my 2016 year end list, but if this competently made, 36-minute dose of boring reaches the top 50 this year it'll be a miracle. How am I so disappointed by an album I didn't even know was coming out?
Andrew Bird "My Finest Work Yet" ***
Even though I have a couple Andrew Bird albums and I've always wanted to "get into" him, the leadoff single "Sisyphus" is the first song of his I can pick out of a lineup, mostly because of the whistle. "Bloodless" has a feel to it like old wood in the walls of an empty dance hall; not abandoned, but it's seen better days. There's a lacquer on everything so people don't get splinters, but it's made everything so soft it feels like the room is breathing with every step you take through it. The violin on that song is reminiscent in tone of Jerry Goodman's work with the Dixie Dregs. "Olympians" has a triumphant chorus about "turning it around" that kept me going, but "Cracking Codes" made me check out.
The next few songs had their moments, but the spell was kinda broken. And it's not that it's bad; I feel like I need to give this album a few more chances and that one of them will stick. But that's just it. I rarely listen to an album more than twice. Ever. Unless it really compels me to, because...look. Since December 1st, there have been 75 albums on my list to "check out". That's four more than the entire 2017 list. A handful I re-listened to to write reviews, but that's the only reason. (And I liked Dream Theater, Mark Morton and Offset.) This Andrew Bird is going to get lost in the shuffle just like the rest of his work, but maybe, maybe "Sisyphus" and one other song from this album (which I find well put-together, has decent songs and a defined atmosphere) will even stick with me beyond 2019. You know how depressed that makes me as a musician? No wonder I joined a kind of jokey band with less stakes. At least I'm having fun on the way to complete historical obliteration.
Yikes, that got dark. Let's make it less dark, because I found an album that has the opposite problem: I didn't want to listen to it a second time for this review because my first impression was to give it five stars. I haven't done that on this blog since Metallica's "Death Magnetic" in 2008, and not for any other album since then besides Neil Cicierega's "Mouth Moods" in 2017. Neither of those (nor The Duhks' album "Fast Paced World") lived up to the five stars I gave them on second, third, fourth or fifth listen (which I still haven't hit with "Mouth Moods"). Even though I still loved them, that shine wasn't there on listen two.
But this one held up to scrutiny.
Devin Townsend "Empath" *****
Complain all you want about the length. It is daunting. Most albums top out at 45 minutes because anything more starts to overstay its welcome, and Empath is a full half hour beyond (most of which is the 23 minute, six part "Singularity" (which is broken up into separate tracks on the CD, but not on streaming)). But why should an album like this stop at 45 minutes? That's ordinary. Why be ordinary when you long for something extraordinary? This album has an orchestra! It has a choir! It has synthesizers! It has three drummers! It has blast beats, symphonic passages and electronic doodley-doos, sometimes living harmoniously in the same song. It has Steve Vai doing a kickass solo at the end! It even has Chad Kroger, for fuck sake! I...HEY! Where you going??? He only does backing vocals on one song!
Devin Townsend went into serious debt for this one. He plunked down $170,000 of his own money to make this happen. He broke up the Devin Townsend Project, which had been a successful thing for him for a decade and started fresh to create this new thing. He poured every ounce of compositional, musical and production skill he had in to bringing it to life and he put himself in a position where if the album doesn't recoup his career is over.
Because there's no such thing as a meritocracy, that's a very real prospect. This album is out there. It's long. It has lengthy stretches of choral and classical flourishes that most listeners won't have the patience for. It switches genres at the drop of a hat, and thought it does so masterfully, I can understand if that causes whiplash. But if you can find time, sit down and pay attention to this album. You will be rewarded handsomely.
A work of art. A masterpiece. An unwieldy, bizarre, genre-hopping slab of music that it takes you multiple listens to get into? It's all of these things, for better and worse. But unlike Andrew Bird, it does so much so well you have no choice but to respect it. It is noteworthy. It will stick with you. And to me, because I made a connection with it, Empath damn well deserves its five stars. Listen for yourselves and be the judge.
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