Music Reviews, 6/20/22

 The new release faucet finally got unclogged, and now we're playing a bit of catch-up (in case you couldn't tell from the EP-stravaganza last time).  Strap yourselves in, because we've got ten reviews, starting off with:

Florence + The Machine "Dance Fever"

Right away when her voice comes in on "King", it's ambrosia.  It's mana from Heaven.  Lather, rinse repeat for the rest of the album.  One of my favorite singers of all time.  The lyrics on this set are possibly her best.  It's Florence's most laid back project, which makes the title feel a bit ironic and/or sarcastic, but it's not without its moments of fireworks.

"Free" is easily one of the best songs of the year, but it's been so entrenched in my head for the last two weeks that I'm worried I'll burn it out.  And when I say it's stuck up there, that chorus "Picks me up, puts me down" is looping over and over incessantly, with very little to dislodge it (re-listening to it for the review didn't help).  But it's a great song so I don't mind so much yet.

Dance Fever drags a little in the middle, in spite of every songs being good to great.  From "Back In Town" though to the verse of "Cassandra" things slow down to a crawl, but "Dream Girl Evil" has the energy to keep it from getting boring.  That one swells.  And like I said, each song has a feeling to it, whether it be tenderness, intimacy, sadness, nostalgia, there's always something to grab onto even if it's really laid back.  Just fair warning, they're not all gonna be the uplifting maelstrom "Free" was.

"Cassandra" is pretty awesome in it's own right; that chorus really sells the scope of kingdoms falling at the feet of the attacks within and without (the parallel between ancient Greece where the myth of "Cassandra" the seer came from and modern society as a whole laid out by Covid and its own bigotry and greed tearing it asunder is an apt one).  It's fittingly mournful and apocalyptic.

"My Love" took me awhile to get used to, partially because my car stereo made me think it was a lot more stock dance music production.  When I heard it in context, yeah, this has the same warm, lived in, rustic yet vibrant aesthetic as the rest of the album; it clicked right into place.  Helps that it's a banger too, that chorus rules.

"Restraint" is the only track on the album I don't like, but it's only 48 seconds, so whatev.  "The Bomb" is a breezy, flowery acoustic, brushes on the snare number to start with a moment that pulls the listener in tight by the lapels and makes them pay attention with the pre-chorus.

The closer "Morning Elvis" is almost religious in how the verses are about reverence for the idea of Elvis (read: rock stardom), feeling like quitting drinking would be letting down the spirit of rock and roll.  But by Florence's own admission, if she hadn't stopped, she would've died, and this was a period where we lost Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston to their ghosts.  Unlike Jim Morrison, Ms. Welch didn't want to be number three, so here we are.

This album is pretty magnificent.  Even when it's melancholic, it feels so vervant, so alive.  I can't say enough about this woman's voice and though her lyrics have always been good, she brought it that much harder this time.

Envy Of None

Wasn't expecting a woman vocalist, but I'm with it; Maiah Wynne fits in perfectly.  This is Alex Lifeson's first post-Rush project, and for anyone expecting that, don't.  It's in the indie-tronica vein, trying to resurrect the commercial ideal of what late 90's trip hop should have sounded like (but not what it actually sounded like).

Thing is, that stuff always sort of worked on me, if not bringing direct enjoyment then opening me up to give it a pass.  Track 3 really tried me in that department because of how slow and lifeless it was.  "Look Inside" was what made me realize this is trying to be the halfway point between Sarah McLaughlin and Rob Halford's indistrial band Two.  (Sarah McGothlin, if you will.)

It took until the end of track 4 for Envy Of None to get back on my good side, but I warmed up to it again.  "Spy House" even has some cool guitar shit, imagine that!  "Dog's Life" reminds me of a tame Snake River Conspiracy (Toby's vocals were unreal; I wish that band were bigger).

"Kabul Blues" starts out with some real Sarah McGothlin (and make no mistake, that's not a diss; that concept could work), counter-pointed by some blues rhythm and an "eastern" flaire.  (The music is a little vague on purpose, so every element is...y'know.)  

But man this album drags when its pulse drops below a certain level ("Look Inside" and "Old Strings" in particular).   When it slows down, it feels flimsy and aimless.  ("La dee dah" as my folks would call it.)  And the songs after suffer because it takes me half their length to feel anything after those anesthetic slogs.  And really, I generally feel "This is all right" and nothing much else.

I think with less period-specifc production (seriously, this sounds like it came out in a window between 1997 and 2003; no sooner, no later), this could've shined more brightly.  If they do another one, I think Envy Of None could fail to live up to their name.  For now?  Eh, sorta.

Harry Styles "Harry's House"

This album flows pretty sedately from point A to point Z, so this one's gonna be more stream of consciousness:

"Music For A Sushi Restaurant" is the intersection of Paul Simon and Bill Wurtz.

"Late Night Talking" is like a 2010's indie pop song trying to jack Super Nintendo aesthetics via Undertale, but winds up being merely decent for all the effort.  But pretty dang decent at that; there's definitely some flavor here.

"As It Was" feels kind of dropped in at track 4.  It could have been put anywhere really, which is weird with the intro of the kids talking and it being the big hit and all.  

"Little Freak" is the first time where I got bored on this album; before that it was a pleasant, breezy vibe.  The precise moment was Harry Styles talking about spilling beer, because it was an awkward enough moment to make me pay attention to the rest of the lyrics, and they sucked.  Not terrible, but impossible to care about and the rest of the song is too spare to save it.

And boy was that not the last time I was bored by Harry's House.  "Matilda" sounds heartfelt or whatever but after "Little Freak", it's enervating.  Double that for "Cinema", at least until the bridge at the end; the switch at least has a pulse.  The lyrics are meaningless drivel about "You got the Cinema", but at least there's something happening.  I was worried this whole thing had fallen into a coma and off a cliff.

"Daydreaming" kicks back in with a lively scat chorus.  It's still melancholy, but the harmony is giving it the shot in the arm it needs to pick things back up.  The chorus at the end really brings it to life.

"Satellite" almost gets there for me; it's definitely trying to exist.  Maybe on other listens I'll be more into it (read: the only other time I'm listening to this full album: aka: ranking season at the end of the year).  "Keep Driving" was so unremarkable I literally didn't know it'd happened until I checked the track listing and saw it'd past already.  Hmm.  I heard it, but I don't know what it sounds like.

"Boyfriends" is an acoustic ballad about how boyfriends kinda suck.  As a song, it's pretty meh.  And "Love Of My Life" actually stinks.  Not a great last impression to leave.  

This album just sort of...happens, doesn't it?

I think Harry Styles's whole deal is he wants to be artsier than he is.  Usually whatever he tries is more interesting than what it would be if he was trying to just make pop music, so hey.  It could be worse: just look at the other members of One Direction and how they ended up.  But he never really lives up to his implied goals.

Fine Line swings for the fences out the gate but after track 3 settles into a rut and stays there.  This one I thought was a decent vibe through track 5, but after that, "Daydreaming" is the only one that really worked.  And even then, I can only tell you something about tracks 1,2, and 4 (proof positive above; I skipped talking about "Grapefruit" and "Daylight").  There's something to Harry Styles, but I wish there was more.  He needs to work with the right collaborator to kick his game into the next gear.

Then again, this is the biggest album of the year so far, almost doubling Kendrick Lamar's opening week total, so what do I know?

The Chainsmokers "So Far So Good"

You know when there's a nasty pile of dirty clothes and somebody jokes "Wow, you could stand those up!" ?  This album is that, but it's all the worst pop music tropes of the 2010's.

At least that WOULD have been my review if this album hadn't had the fucking TEMERITY...

From track four onward, this album had the audacity to fail to suck.  Sure, there was one song which you could've subtitled "Even Closer" cuz it ripped off their big hit (from six years ago aaaaagh), but the rest of the album was a nice, breezy set of late 10's pop vibez.  It turns out they're...well, they're not good at this, that's too much credit, but somehow The Chainsmokers have picked up how to be passable via osmosis.  Shit, I even liked this better than the Harry Styles album, and that is weird, whacky stuff.

Home "Home 12" "

No, for the first truly crap album of 2022, we have to go Home.  I liked 2016's Falling Into Place well enough, but this is a bunch of noisey bullshit that never takes the shape of a song.  I like certain types of messy music, but it either has to have cool noises, an overarching purpose I can grab onto or the mess has to speak to me in some way.  This is just a bunch of dated, badly recorded slop.  Still not sure it would've made my bottom 20 last year (hell, I don't think this will fall below "Meh" this year to be honest), but right now, this is at the bottom of my list.

Soft Cell "*Happiness Not Included"

Okay, never mind.  This is the worst album I've heard this year.  The music is an 80's band trying to sound modern in 1992 using 1991's sounds, but doing it now, thinking that makes them sound modern now.  That's how dated this is.  The lyrics are whack, inane and banal.  And the vocals...they're all off key.  Not enough to be jazzy or even outsider-y, just bad.

The whole thing sounds cheap, too.  It's a step above stock keyboard presets, but this is 90's midi with vocals just sitting on top; no effort to blend them in at all.  The songwriting is pretty flat as well; even if this band knew what they were doing, it wouldn't sound great.  The best they could've hoped for is fine, but they missed even that by quite a lot.  Woof.

John Scofield

I'll cop to it: I bookmarked this one to listen to strictly because I didn't have any truly shit albums yet, and I wanted to populate the field.  I clicked through a couple of songs the night it came out and heard a few out of context parts that sounded pretty woeful, and decided to force myself to muscle through it.

It's just John Scofield, no band behind him and no other ambience.  Occasional overdubs, but otherwise, just a clean tone jazz guitar plucking away.  The first song is fine, if unremarkable.  The second one has this bizarre sounding lead over it that you really could make fun of if you wanted.  I could point and laugh, but I'm gonna put it in my back pocket for now.  This album could end up not sucking after all, and that weirdo noise could wind up endearing.

It's hard to land on this one really: He's playing a bunch of stuff that needs more sustain to work, but he's using the traditional, close, clipped, soft, cool jazz tone and nothing else.  If he had distortion or some other effects on, some of these licks wouldn't just die flailing after less than a full second.  John Scofield is a great player, and the playing on this album is not in question, it's up to snuff, but the choice of having practically zero sustain makes what he's playing sound awkward as fuck in places.

It also doesn't help that as songs these are all very much background music.

It's kind of the opposite problem to Soft Cell: Lots of skill behind the writing and playing, but to the end of making indistinguishable zone out music.  Not as laughably bad as I was expecting, but still not my cup of tea.  (This cup is oddly shaped and a little to malleable for my hot liquid needs.) 

Then I wandered away from the computer after writing all that to do something else, but didn't hit stop and you know what?  This album grew on me a bit.  It really does work as background music, because I didn't realize I'd listened to the whole thing but I had and...it was kinda nice?  There's also a very very subtle character to this album that you only get if you get through all 54 minutes.  You have to be in the right frame of mind, you have to find the right frequency, and it's not easy to catch the vibe...but this might actually be okay.  Whata ya know?

Kurt Vile "(watch my moves)"

Really nice, vibey time for precisely 50 minutes, then the last 23 feel like a whole different EP tacked on to the end.  If this was the 90's, they could have said these were bonus tracks and got away with it, but nowadays, it feels like these should have been two distinct releases.

Kurt Vile is still in his stoned out, offspring of Neil Young & Joe Walsh childlike wonder zone and I'm still here for it.  The stakes might not be very high, but since Kurt lost the War On Drugs (literally since he quit the band of the same name and figuratively because listen to this shit), he's been making some fun tunes and I dig it.

Zeal & Ardor

I remember hearing Ghost's first album and feeling like it was too cheesy for its own good.  Not for the camp, but because of how it was Christian Music about the Devil instead of Jesus.  Zeal & Ardor is the opposite: Gospel Music out to kill priests and overthrow the Church in violent rebellion.  And the song that puts me most in mind of that is "Death To The Holy".  That's the perfect blend of the handclap, soul-singer laying down my problems at the riverside and the murderous thrash metal bounce out to snap necks.

"Emersion" follows it up with a very nice, new agey synth pad thing with digital percussion, cut into by some black metal that keeps the soaring, positive blanket as a guitar melody.  I don't even like black metal and I thought this worked really well.

Really like the drum sound on this album.  It helps sell the impact and groove of every hit (especially on "Erase").  The sound of this record is kinda strange all around: the combination shouldn't work.  Sure, the hook is gospel mixed with black and groove metal (two metals that shouldn't work together but do here somehow), but it's all forced through a production reminiscent of bands like The Heavy.  Mid-2010's Car Commercial Core.  It's a sound that should be repellent, but somehow helps to give it more backbone (which is one of my biggest problems with Black Metal: the lack of muscle).

An odd bird no matter how you slice it, but if you're into metal of any stripe, I'd recommend this one.  Even if you don't like it, it's at least novel.

Drake "Honestly, Nevermind"

Oh, hey.  Exactly how I feel.  The title is the review.  Thanks for making it easy on us!  

And that'll do it.  Next time?  Who knows, but it'll be a thing we do together.

Love Over Fear.