MUSIC REVIEWS, 6/8/19
New jobs, new bands, lots of new things delaying my review schedule, but we back in this blog, so let's dive in and play a little catchup:
The Damned Things "High Crimes" ** and 3/4
This is almost good, to the point it's frustrating. Keith Buckley is almost tolerable, but he's juuuust over the line of "too whiny to take seriously". That's the frustrating part, because most of these songs are solid; not reinventing the wheel, but in a lane that I don't hear a lot of anymore so it winds up scratching an itch I forgot I had, but...I dunno. Rock and metal records that don't suck are few and far between and will only continue to get more scarce. This doesn't suck, (aside from track two; seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?) but it might take some getting used to, which is a problem in a climate where everything is pulling for your attention all the time. It's a little too unassuming to want to come back to.
Oh wait. I forgot to describe what it sounds like: Clutch with slightly emo vocals, unremarkable lyrics and the production sterility of something like Royal Blood or even The Black Keys. Except for "Something Good", which is the direct opposite of its title and "The Fire Is Cold", which actually gets thrashy. I warmed up to it by the end, but that start was so rough it took most of the run time to get back into it. If this sounds like your jam, go nuts.
Still Woozy "Lately" ** and 1/2
Not often I hear a swanky R&B jam with white guy falsetto that's reminiscent of "Band On The Run" on one or two of its vocal trills that makes me go "Yeah. I think I'm into this", but here we are. And that mess of a sentence really goes a long way to describe the feeling I get cracking into this brief, not even 13 minute five song EP and finding what I find. There's more going on in such a laid back framework than I could have expected. Speaking of unexpected, dude starts singing in Spanish on track two. (Also, how do you have two guys feature on a two minute song? Where do you find the room? But they did it.)
It's a good thing this EP is so short however, becasue...it doesn't really ever suck, but I lost interest halfway through track 3 and it never really got me back. I can't explain it at all. If I heard tracks 3, 4 and/or 5 in isolation, they would probably pique my interest; they create a decent ambience. But maybe not enough is going on in the back half and I just...tuned out. I dunno; this is really weird.
On second listen, okay I admit "Habit" and "Foolsong" are kinda mushy. They're not bad, I'm just not feelin' 'em. "Maybe She" is better; kinda brings back some of the Wings-inspired vocal stabs but I'm still left a little cold. Still gonna keep checking for Still Woozy, though; I think there's plenty of potential here.
311 "Crossfire" [Single] *** and 7/8
The hardest song I've ever heard from them. I've always been an arms-length casual fan of 311, but they usually manage to do okay. This made me sit up and take notice. It's beefy, it has groove...shit, if the lyrics in the rap verse were any better, this would have clocked a four-star rating. I'm suddenly anticipating a 311 album for the first time since Transistor.
Lowly "Hifalutin" *
Aside from "Go For A Walk" and "Children", this album is 50 minutes of unfinished Bon Iver fangirl bullshit. I'd include "Stephen" in there as well, but by the end of that song it meandered off into the weeds and managed to make a four minute song feel too long by half.
I was with this album for a good six minutes or so; "Go For A Walk" had me from jump and "Stephen" continued the experience; those songs have a certain beauty to them that, in theory, the rest of the album should have as well, being that it's largely the same sonic palette. But man does it start stumbling about three minutes into track two and not recover until the powerful "Children" at halfway. It never attains anything approaching that again and I found myself really wishing "Wonder" would stop (it's six minutes and should be three, if it should be at all), but when it did, I was left with "That's it?" because the album was done.
I wanted them to course correct at some point and find a focus but holy fuck does everything veer off. There's two singers and they're different enough that it doesn't even sound like the same album when they switch, in spite of all the songs blurring together in an indistinct mess. This isn't helped by seemingly random inclusions of vocoder that just make it sound annoying instead of atmospheric. All in all an unpleasant listening experience, with the exception of tracks 1, 2 and 8.
Employed To Serve "Eternal Forward Motion" *** and 3/4
Finally an honest to God METAL record. This is the kind of metal I grew up on, except tuned lower and a bit more compressed. The vocals are an extremely acquired taste, but if you're in the mood to fuck shit up, get it out of your system to this.
Tyler, The Creator "IGOR" ****
It took awhile to get used to, but this album fucking slaps. Early Top 5 contender for album of the year. This is the first full Tyler project I've listened to and man was I not expecting the depth.
One thing I'd like to bring up that's confounding me though: I've heard more than one reviewer compare this album to Solange's. That's not the confounding part; the comparison is pretty easy to make sonically and stylistically, but that makes my intense distaste for When I Get Home all the more baffling. Especially since she's the vocalist on "I Think" from IGOR. I heard a random song from Solange's album last night on Brave New Faves and I couldn't get through a full minute of it. I actively hated it, and that doesn't happen very often in music anymore. "I Think", for what it's worth, is my least favorite song on IGOR and on first listen was the point where I was wondering if the album was gonna be worth finishing, but that was before I knew who the guest vocalists were (they're not listed on Google Play). In fact, I didn't know that second listen either, and that's when I'd come all the way around on the project, including "I Think".
How can one be this thing that grates on my nerves every second I listen to it and the other be a Top 5 contender? I don't get it. I wish I loved the Solange album, but I can't even listen to it and it's driving me nuts.
Since I brought up the guest list, I had no idea Kanye West was on "Puppet" at all, and I just heard it again last night. I had no idea Lil Uzi Vert was on the opener. Voices are kind of warped all over this album, and blended in ways that obfuscate the real sound of the performer, but it works so well in the tapestry that everything clicks into place. IGOR is a really great collage. British pop group La Roux makes an appearance, and I didn't know they were still recording! There's even a sample from a late 60's psych-rock band called Czar that I stumbled across once trying to find the 2000's metal band of the same name. I never suspected anyone else on Earth would bring that band up, much less that it would be sampled on something that debuted #1 on Billboard in 2019. (There's also a credit on Wikipedia for Jack White, but it doesn't say what he did. The attribution in the article is based solely on a tweet Tyler sent out of a vest with buttons on it, the biggest of which says "Igor's Helping Hands".)
And I haven't even gotten to the fact this is a concept album based on the tumult of a relationship that just doesn't work out. It's quite introspective in a way that would have been unthinkable for a hip hop album ten years ago, especially coming from the artist that put out Goblin. People might bag on rap for being emo now, but it's more like the genre is finding ways to make itself capable of expressing new emotions in a way the public is ready to hear. Underground rap has been making stabs at this for a long time, but even the form, the sonic template of rap is changing. Whether you like the results or not, this growth is the next step in the innovation of music as a whole which will allow it to continue. If you don't...look what happened to rock over the last 20 years. Dead as a doornail with very little room left to evolve. This sound has a future.
And that'll do it. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to review (new or old) or what your opinions are in the comments, or talk to me about it @NicholasNutter on Twitter. Catch you on the flip.
The Damned Things "High Crimes" ** and 3/4
This is almost good, to the point it's frustrating. Keith Buckley is almost tolerable, but he's juuuust over the line of "too whiny to take seriously". That's the frustrating part, because most of these songs are solid; not reinventing the wheel, but in a lane that I don't hear a lot of anymore so it winds up scratching an itch I forgot I had, but...I dunno. Rock and metal records that don't suck are few and far between and will only continue to get more scarce. This doesn't suck, (aside from track two; seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?) but it might take some getting used to, which is a problem in a climate where everything is pulling for your attention all the time. It's a little too unassuming to want to come back to.
Oh wait. I forgot to describe what it sounds like: Clutch with slightly emo vocals, unremarkable lyrics and the production sterility of something like Royal Blood or even The Black Keys. Except for "Something Good", which is the direct opposite of its title and "The Fire Is Cold", which actually gets thrashy. I warmed up to it by the end, but that start was so rough it took most of the run time to get back into it. If this sounds like your jam, go nuts.
Not often I hear a swanky R&B jam with white guy falsetto that's reminiscent of "Band On The Run" on one or two of its vocal trills that makes me go "Yeah. I think I'm into this", but here we are. And that mess of a sentence really goes a long way to describe the feeling I get cracking into this brief, not even 13 minute five song EP and finding what I find. There's more going on in such a laid back framework than I could have expected. Speaking of unexpected, dude starts singing in Spanish on track two. (Also, how do you have two guys feature on a two minute song? Where do you find the room? But they did it.)
It's a good thing this EP is so short however, becasue...it doesn't really ever suck, but I lost interest halfway through track 3 and it never really got me back. I can't explain it at all. If I heard tracks 3, 4 and/or 5 in isolation, they would probably pique my interest; they create a decent ambience. But maybe not enough is going on in the back half and I just...tuned out. I dunno; this is really weird.
On second listen, okay I admit "Habit" and "Foolsong" are kinda mushy. They're not bad, I'm just not feelin' 'em. "Maybe She" is better; kinda brings back some of the Wings-inspired vocal stabs but I'm still left a little cold. Still gonna keep checking for Still Woozy, though; I think there's plenty of potential here.
311 "Crossfire" [Single] *** and 7/8
The hardest song I've ever heard from them. I've always been an arms-length casual fan of 311, but they usually manage to do okay. This made me sit up and take notice. It's beefy, it has groove...shit, if the lyrics in the rap verse were any better, this would have clocked a four-star rating. I'm suddenly anticipating a 311 album for the first time since Transistor.
Lowly "Hifalutin" *
Aside from "Go For A Walk" and "Children", this album is 50 minutes of unfinished Bon Iver fangirl bullshit. I'd include "Stephen" in there as well, but by the end of that song it meandered off into the weeds and managed to make a four minute song feel too long by half.
I was with this album for a good six minutes or so; "Go For A Walk" had me from jump and "Stephen" continued the experience; those songs have a certain beauty to them that, in theory, the rest of the album should have as well, being that it's largely the same sonic palette. But man does it start stumbling about three minutes into track two and not recover until the powerful "Children" at halfway. It never attains anything approaching that again and I found myself really wishing "Wonder" would stop (it's six minutes and should be three, if it should be at all), but when it did, I was left with "That's it?" because the album was done.
I wanted them to course correct at some point and find a focus but holy fuck does everything veer off. There's two singers and they're different enough that it doesn't even sound like the same album when they switch, in spite of all the songs blurring together in an indistinct mess. This isn't helped by seemingly random inclusions of vocoder that just make it sound annoying instead of atmospheric. All in all an unpleasant listening experience, with the exception of tracks 1, 2 and 8.
Employed To Serve "Eternal Forward Motion" *** and 3/4
Finally an honest to God METAL record. This is the kind of metal I grew up on, except tuned lower and a bit more compressed. The vocals are an extremely acquired taste, but if you're in the mood to fuck shit up, get it out of your system to this.
Tyler, The Creator "IGOR" ****
It took awhile to get used to, but this album fucking slaps. Early Top 5 contender for album of the year. This is the first full Tyler project I've listened to and man was I not expecting the depth.
One thing I'd like to bring up that's confounding me though: I've heard more than one reviewer compare this album to Solange's. That's not the confounding part; the comparison is pretty easy to make sonically and stylistically, but that makes my intense distaste for When I Get Home all the more baffling. Especially since she's the vocalist on "I Think" from IGOR. I heard a random song from Solange's album last night on Brave New Faves and I couldn't get through a full minute of it. I actively hated it, and that doesn't happen very often in music anymore. "I Think", for what it's worth, is my least favorite song on IGOR and on first listen was the point where I was wondering if the album was gonna be worth finishing, but that was before I knew who the guest vocalists were (they're not listed on Google Play). In fact, I didn't know that second listen either, and that's when I'd come all the way around on the project, including "I Think".
How can one be this thing that grates on my nerves every second I listen to it and the other be a Top 5 contender? I don't get it. I wish I loved the Solange album, but I can't even listen to it and it's driving me nuts.
Since I brought up the guest list, I had no idea Kanye West was on "Puppet" at all, and I just heard it again last night. I had no idea Lil Uzi Vert was on the opener. Voices are kind of warped all over this album, and blended in ways that obfuscate the real sound of the performer, but it works so well in the tapestry that everything clicks into place. IGOR is a really great collage. British pop group La Roux makes an appearance, and I didn't know they were still recording! There's even a sample from a late 60's psych-rock band called Czar that I stumbled across once trying to find the 2000's metal band of the same name. I never suspected anyone else on Earth would bring that band up, much less that it would be sampled on something that debuted #1 on Billboard in 2019. (There's also a credit on Wikipedia for Jack White, but it doesn't say what he did. The attribution in the article is based solely on a tweet Tyler sent out of a vest with buttons on it, the biggest of which says "Igor's Helping Hands".)
And I haven't even gotten to the fact this is a concept album based on the tumult of a relationship that just doesn't work out. It's quite introspective in a way that would have been unthinkable for a hip hop album ten years ago, especially coming from the artist that put out Goblin. People might bag on rap for being emo now, but it's more like the genre is finding ways to make itself capable of expressing new emotions in a way the public is ready to hear. Underground rap has been making stabs at this for a long time, but even the form, the sonic template of rap is changing. Whether you like the results or not, this growth is the next step in the innovation of music as a whole which will allow it to continue. If you don't...look what happened to rock over the last 20 years. Dead as a doornail with very little room left to evolve. This sound has a future.
And that'll do it. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to review (new or old) or what your opinions are in the comments, or talk to me about it @NicholasNutter on Twitter. Catch you on the flip.
Comments
Post a Comment