spectrum pulse

video review: 'the dead light' by fen

2019-12-11T19:42:00.000-05:00

Okay, pretty great album, late in the year so absolutely worth hearing, and now I've got something in my backlog recommended by a friend that I'm covering next - stay tuned!

album review: 'the dead light' by fen

2019-12-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

I'll admit there's a part of me that's still surprised to look back on 2017 and how much I really dug the fifth album Winter from English black metal band Fen. On the surface it made sense - atmospheric black metal with a bit of a progressive stripe, that's not too far afield - but they were also willing to get a little more grisly and swampy, push beyond flirtations with post-rock into something darker and murkier while not sliding straight into doom or death metal. And yet the textural choices they picked were so rich, the melodies so striking, and so much of the lyrical poetry so potent that I found myself really appreciating Winter, so much so that it made my list of my top albums of that year.

But now we're late into 2019, and not only have I had a chance to hear a bit more black metal over the year - still haven't reviewed as much as I'd prefer but again, I've got a plan for that in 2020, stay tuned - I took the opportunity to go back over their output this decade to see if any of it might be worth maybe including on a larger decade list that might be coming next year, especially given the critical acclaim surrounding their 2014 project Carrion Skies. And... well, putting aside how the clean singing thankfully improved from their rather sloppily produced 2009 debut, I remember liking Epoch for some striking compositions and good ideas but thinking the atmosphere, production, and writing had yet to pick up the refinement and groove I found so engrossing. And while Carrion Skies did get closer and is a pretty great album to boot, it never quite got there as dynamically as I was hoping. But hey, that just left me with the hope that The Dead Light would be as visceral and potent as its predecessor, so what did Fen deliver?

Well... okay, this is a tougher album to discuss than I expected, because if you're coming to this project expecting more of Winter, this is not really that, taking a slightly cleaner, more effervescent and progressive tone than the guttural wallow that was the last album. And on the one hand, that's pretty great: Fen has a measured taste for melodic complexity, they integrate other genre flourishes well, and this is certainly an easier album to digest than Winter was, if only on length and song structure. That said, it's an album that feels a little closer to Carrion Skies but with that increased diversity and higher production values, so while I don't think it hits as strongly as Winter did for me, it's still pretty great and may even satisfy Fen's fans more.

But I want to start with the element that always goes underserved when talking about black metal: the lyrics and themes. I've gone on record saying that Fen are phenomenal descriptive writers coming off of Winter, and it's just as true here: especially given the scale they're working with now has gone cosmic; just like Tomb Mold, they've gone to space, but their approach is very different. Indeed, I'd probably place Fen closer in line with an act like Alrakis or maybe even that 2016 In The Woods... album Pure where there are a surprising amount of sonic and thematic parallels. Unsurprisingly, the album is punishingly bleak: facing down the inevitability of not just death, but the ending of all life through the passage of time, with the devastating impact across the cosmos painted in pretty visceral language. But what I find fascinating is how Fen don't just wallow in despair but show a persistent curiosity, both outwards towards the unknowable origin of such life on 'Nebula', where like on Winter the attempt to discover such truths result in shaking them to the core, but also inwards on a song like 'Labyrinthine Echoes', where questions are raised how much we really know, and how much of our lives and sense are potentially just lies we tell ourselves to stay sane. How very postmodern of them to engage in this sort of deconstruction, but Fen goes further for the final two tracks to highlight the bloodsucking, half-formed rituals of faith to which people willingly subjugate themselves because they can't face the truth of inevitable nonexistence; and while that's not framed as good, you can tell Fen at least understands, especially when they've tried to stare into the void and find greater truth and have not found answers yet, where even the suicidal hope to embrace the darkness isn't enough, because said darkness doesn't care! And I ultimately like how The Dead Light approaches the relative lack of answers they receive, where at least some modicum of peace has been found in the search, if nothing else.

So okay, the writing's as great as ever - and seriously, there's some beautifully descriptive but not overly verbose poetry that Fen brings to the table here - how about the sound? Well, I'll be blunt: if you're looking for the stylistic variation and sheer guttural weight that came from Winter, again, this is not that - you're not going to get a change-up as grisly and potent as midway through 'Pathway' from the last album, and I'd also argue there isn't quite the same diversity when it comes to the more ethereal moments, at least on a textural level. Oh, the melodies themselves are as vibrant and remarkably catchy as ever, and shorter song structures only give those moments more of a chance to shine, and Fen can stick a phenomenal slow-build crescendo, like how the gungy bass and liquid guitars fully explode across 'Witness', or how on part two of the title track, even just as an instrumental coda I'd argue it handles its time and build-up of the groove even better than part one! A big part of this is how Fen is very willing to let their bass stand alone and have prominent interweaving passages with the more progressive lead work, which thanks to the pseudo-thrash moments on cuts like 'Labyrinthine Echoes' is more developed than ever. And there are some striking, quieter moments where the darker tolls of the bass pick up great simmer like on 'Nebula' and 'Breath Of Void', the latter of which is probably the most frenetic with blast-beats you'll hear on the album, although the flatter grind on 'Exsanguination' that gets crazy dynamic and multiple groove change-ups on 'Rendered In Onyx' are pretty damn great too. Hell, on a compositional level I'd say Fen is only getting more intricate and progressive, taking their looping passages and interweaving them tighter with great grooves...

But these are compositional observations - where I think Fen stumbles a little in comparison with Winter is textural in terms of tonal diversity. Yes, songs like 'Labyrinthine Echoes' get more spacious and there's some great liquid switch-ups that are pretty close to post-rock in a good way, but if you can't latch onto the lead melody - which can occasionally not rise through the tremolo riffs as strongly as I'd like - and you don't have that distinctive texture from song to song, the album can start to run together a bit. There's certainly an emotional arc and vibe to the album - and it really does get strikingly beautiful by the final song with the brighter chord progressions and more defined melodies, especially during the outro - but if you're taking a project like this to space, I feel there was a missed opportunity to explore more alien tones and weirdness that doesn't translate. And while I'm here, while I don't mind the clean vocals as they've improved considerably over the years, if there was an album to get more layers of symphonic bombast behind him it was this one, especially given the apocalyptic scale of it all. Some critics have cited a choice to embrace more progressive metal elements - again, the modern In The Woods... comparison doesn't feel out of place - but I'd argue that should be the excuse to expand the sonic palette, not just add complexity to the compositions.

But again, it's hard to criticize an album like The Dead Light because it does so much right and I can see a lot of fans hearing a return to form similar to Carrion Skies - it's likely more on me that others. That said, as much as I will praise this as excellently written, beautifully played, and genuinely impressive in places, I'm not going to say it truly grabbed or stirred me the same way as Winter. It's still pretty great, netting an 8/10 from me and absolutely a recommendation if you're a fan of the more progressive side of atmospheric black metal that can absolutely get visceral and huge, that embraces depressive melancholy without drowning in it. Again, not quite as gripped as I was in 2017, but for a slice of black metal to end out of the year, this is pretty excellent - check it out.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 14, 2019 (VIDEO)

2019-12-10T22:38:00.000-05:00

Alright, Fen review is coming, plus one from my backlog that I've long been curious to get through before the last two 'must-cover' projects of the year. Then we're going to have some fun, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 14, 2019

2019-12-10T22:25:00.000-05:00

I've described weeks on the Hot 100 as 'deceptively busy', where it seems like there's a lot of shuffling around but not a lot has really happened in the long-term. Just as common, though, are the weeks where I'd argue there's a little more going on a deceptively quiet week - just because there weren't many new arrivals which'll thankfully keep this shorter doesn't mean there aren't things worth watching, especially for the implications to come.

Case in point, the top 10, where we've got another new #1 and a song that I frankly did not expect to seize the top spot so quickly: 'Heartless' by The Weeknd! And while there are questions of how long it'll hold the top spot that we'll get to, it's got the most robust trajectory I've seen a while: top spot on sales and on-demand streaming, a well-performing video, and real radio traction, which in the holiday season is pretty meaningful! This places 'Circles' by Post Malone at #2 and in a bit of an awkward position - elbowed off the top in sales, muscled back on streaming, and wavering near the top of radio... look, it was always a mostly weak #1, but I predict that it's not likely to regain the top spot. And the reason for that has to do with our #3 in its big return to the top 10: 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' by Mariah Carey. And make no mistake, if there's a year to fight for that #1, it's this one: dominant on streaming, a sales revival, holiday radio spins... yeah, if it wasn't for The Weeknd securing an early position, she'd have a much better shot at the top, and even then she's got momentum on her side. All of this is leaving 'Someone You Loved' by Lewis Capaldi out in the cold at #4, with shrinking sales and radio that's slipped into freefall - good. Unfortunately, it's likely that 'Memories' by Maroon 5 will probably replace it from #5 - a good radio run and strong sales will unfortunately do that, and it's exactly the sort of saccharine gunk that'll do well around the holidays. Then we have 'Good As Hell' by Lizzo knocked back a step to #6 - she'll probably recover thanks to the new video, but radio dominance can't quite ignore the sudden sales weakness... not a good sign. Also pushed back we have 'ROXANNE' by Arizona Zervas at #7 - yes, it's making a radio run, but it's a little softer on streaming than I expected, which might not be a good sign in the weeks ahead. Next we have a breakthrough into the top 10 I did not expect at all: 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree' by Brenda Lee at #8, because streaming and the radio is giving holiday music the sort of push that's pretty robust and hard to break, which if you're an artist looking to drop an album around this time... yeah, not promising. And to round things out, we've got 'Lose You To Love Me' by Selena Gomez at #9 - a bad streaming week, but the sales are okay and her radio push is massive, and along the same logic we have '10,000 Hours' by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber at #10 - slightly better sales, but way more inconsistent radio, which is a sign of weakness.

And while we're there, our losers and dropouts! A couple really big and long-running ones here too: 'Goodbyes' by Post Malone ft. Young Thug, 'Suge' by DaBaby', 'Tip Of My Tongue' by Kenny Chesney, 'Hot Girl Summer' by Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, and Ty Dolla $ign, 'Good Vibes' by Chris Janson, and finally 'One Thing Right' by Marshmello and Kane Brown. But more predictably, since the mass return of holiday music, we saw systemic losses across the board that'll likely be entrenched in the coming weeks - because again, this impacts both streaming and radio hits. So sure, we get the expected continued dips for 'Jerry Sprunger' by Tory Lanez and T-Pain to 97 and 'Follow God' from Kanye West at 91, along with the expected debut losses for 'Suicidal' by YNW Melly at 86, 'Vete' by Bad Bunny at 63, and Trippie Redd with 'Who Needs Love' at 82 and '6 Kiss' with YNW Melly and the now passed Juice WRLD at 80. And here's where there is an elephant in the room: yes, holiday music is entrenching itself and you can make the argument that Juice WRLD's career was flailing in a way XXXTENTACION's wasn't when he died, but I do expect a chart revival of some kind next week... but I would not put much stock in how big it'll be, just saying. So even though 'Bandit' by him and YoungBoy Never Broke Again fell to 40 this week, while I expect it to rebound, I don't see it making the top 10 or anything. And that's the thing about this time of year: even songs that might have momentum get short-circuited by the season, which is why 'Lover' by Taylor Swift fell to 32 and 'Even Though I'm Leaving' by Luke Combs slid to 38 and 'Take What You Want' by Post Malone ft. Travis Scott and Ozzy is at 60. Granted, the bigger impact is on old 2019 hits getting pushed out, like 'Truth Hurts' by Lizzo at 22, 'Only Human' by the Jonas Brothers at 34, 'Ran$om' by Lil Tecca at 37, 'Graveyard' by Halsey at 45, 'Talk' by Khalid at 49, 'I Don't Care' by Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber at 50, 'Baby' by Lil Baby and DaBaby at 51, 'How Do You Sleep?' by Sam Smith at 54, and 'Old Town Road' by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus slipping to 31. Also, we have a few stragglers that have never taken off properly like 'Heat' by Chris Brown and Gunna at 55, '223's' by YNW Melly and 9LOKKNINE at 74... but they suck, so I'm not complaining.

And you see the cause of all of this just by looking at our returns and gains, for which outside of some odd stragglers that won't last like 'F.N' by Lil Tjay at 93, 'Tusa' by Karol G and Nicki Minaj at 95, and 'RITMO' by The Black Eyed Peas and J Balvin at 98, the rest is holiday music. Dean Martin brings 'Let It Snow' back at 28, 'The Christmas Song' by Nat King Cole returns at 33, 'Feliz Navidad' by Jose Feliciano is at 39, 'Sleigh Ride' by The Ronettes is at 43, and Gene Autry has both 'Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer' and 'Here Comes Santa Claus' at 44 and 48 respectively. And this also impacts the majority of our gains as well: we've already talked about Brenda Lee and Mariah Carey, but we've also got 'A Holly Jolly Christmas' by Burl Ives at 18, 'Jingle Bell Rock' by Bobby Helms at 23, 'It's The Most Wonderful Time' by Andy Williams at 24, and 'Last Christmas' by Wham! at 27. Outside of that and The Weeknd taking the #1... our gains are pretty scant, with a boost for 'Homesick' by Kane Brown to 88 - kind of makes sense around this time of year - and 'Show Yourself' by Idina Menzel and Evan Rachel Wood at 70... because it's from Frozen 2 and fitting this time of year.

Anyway, we've got a short list of new arrivals, so I hope you excuse me for keeping this brief if only because I've got a massive pileup of work around this time of year and just sticking with this list, starting with...

83. 'Tip Toe' by Roddy Ricch ft. A Boogie wit da Hoodie - so apparently Roddy Ricch dropped his debut album not too long ago... and I'll be honest, I've been kind of on the fence of whether to delve deeper into what he's put out, given that his content just hasn't impressed me much. And going through this... yeah, I'm still hesitant to hear more, because I'm not really impressed by this. A big problem is Roddy Ricch seemingly trying for an off-beat double-time to start up his chorus and verse that sounds painfully awkward against admittedly some great production with the layers of acoustic guitars, flutes, and crooning... which he doesn't need to do because otherwise he rides the beat pretty damn well! Of course, the other problem is the content, which is the same by-the-numbers flexing and gunplay and treating women as disposable that we always get, with the only thing interesting about A Boogie's verse is the Spongebob reference and how he seems to have a passing relationship with any sort of consistent flow. I dunno, the feeling I get these were elements that were added to make this song seem more interesting because the content isn't, but they all serve to detract from what could have been a better song - not bad, but this should be better.

72. 'Like It's Christmas' by the Jonas Brothers - so I don't think I've honed in on this enough in 2019, so let me get it on the record: even as someone who never really cared about the Jonas Brothers, their 'comeback' has been one of the most lazy and artistically-bankrupt non-events of this year - so why not end things off with a quick Christmas song cash-in? And let's start off with the obvious: you made the effort to get a horns section and produce it well, which you couldn't do on your own damn album, so why are all your handclaps obviously synthetic? Or was that a part of the shameless recycling of the DNCE you're interpolating or the blatant notes cribbed from Mariah's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' in cadence and build-up? And that's about where I run out of things to say about this because this might be one of the most rote and flagrantly bland Christmas songs I've heard in a while, with zero pathos, warmth, or anything in terms of unique writing. Look, if you're trying to add something to the holiday canon, you have to try harder than this, because otherwise it's going to sound corporate, plastic, and inessential. You know, like this - next!

68. 'No Idea' by Don Toliver - it's not a good sign when I look at an artist, see that apparently he was responsible for a guest appearance on an album I covered, and then have no memory of him whatsoever. But here is Don Toliver, who was featured on Astroworld and now has a hit of his own thanks to TikTok, and... oh look, another guy who's riffing on Young Thug's sound and delivery but with less texture and a more annoying falsetto against a pileup of flutes and autotune. In other words, it's lyrically inert, sloppily produced, and trying for a seductive hookup where apparently they're on the road to self-destruction, which is a weird detail to include in any sort of love song, especially this one where the outro seems to lose any sort of coherence or direction in who it's talking to. So yeah, I can't really call this good either - let's move on.

47. 'Happy Holiday / The Holiday Song' by Andy Williams - okay, I'm normally familiar with the old canon of vintage Christmas songs, and I did not recognize this one from Andy Williams in comparison with 'It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year'. So let me walk you through this one: it actually predates the more well-known song by about twenty years, originally written in 1942 and cut first by Bing Crosby. And it's been covered a number of times since then - bundled into a medley first by Kay Thompson who mentored Williams, and then covered by acts as varied as Johnny Mathis and The Carpenters to She & Him - but it's not one you see covered often. Mostly because it's not good - yeah, the production is as bright and bouncy as ever with rich backing vocals and Williams' liquid baritone, but it plays to slightly more dated ragtime elements with its wonky cadence and a bunch of nonsense writing that feel weirdly kitschy, even for the time. It's just a weirdly awkward song that doesn't play to any of the strengths of the time or Williams, and I'm a little baffled why this of all things came back. I mean, it could be worse - it could be 'Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer' or something - but nah, I'm not a fan of this.

11. 'Blinding Lights' by The Weeknd - and once again I'm stuck relying on The Weeknd to save a rough week on the Hot 100, this time with the more pop-leaning cut from the two singles he released with apparently an interpolation from 'Take On Me' by a-ha... and holy shit, this is great! Let's blow through the obvious criticisms first: between the buzzy analog synths, the groove jacked pretty directly from a-ha, and production that only seems to amplify that cascading retro vibe, you can absolutely tell The Weeknd is wallowing in his influences. But like with his darkwave flourishes on 'False Alarm', 'Blinding Lights' leans into what makes that sound work: enough genuine swell to feel immense, an insane catchy lead synth melody that actually has body and flair in comparison with how the sound would get cut to ribbons and gutted in the latter half of the 80s - or today - and while I wish the guitars would pick up a little more sizzle and go full new wave or post-punk, the fact that gurgling foundation does come through is a huge positive. More importantly, The Weeknd seems to get why the best a-ha songs work: they were melodramatic romantics who went big and operatic, which is why so much of the content is longing within a dramatic, frigid cityscape, and he's got the pipes and control of his range to make that work. Yes, I do think the song could have used more of an edge or darker growl - and the fact this song was melded first with a Mercedes ad that I didn't see is regrettable - but yeah, I needed The Weeknd to deliver a great song, and I easily like this more than 'Heartless', already a good song!

So yeah, obvious best of the week by a comfortable margin, but the worst... yeah, Jonas Brothers are getting this for as canned and disposable as 'Like It's Christmas' is, no question. Next week... tough to tell, as holiday music will solidify its grip and we'll have to see if a Juice WRLD tribute or a sophomore slump from Camila Cabello will break through, so stay tuned!

video review: 'romance' by camila cabello

2019-12-08T21:25:00.002-05:00

Yeah, before I get to Fen I might as well talk about this - stay tuned!

album review: 'romance' by camila cabello

2019-12-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

The popularity of Camila Cabello seems to have to do with everything except the music itself.

And that's a loaded statement, but let's run through it: the widely-publicized split from Fifth Harmony, a well-managed Instagram glam presence when a lot of mainstream pop acts don't really play that game conventionally, and the increasingly cringe-worthy back-and-forth she has with Shawn Mendes with seems to be trying a little too hard to be believable or likable. And in the 2019 mainstream pop market, that might be enough to stand out... even as I can't help but see a faint whiff of similar marketing that Jennifer Lopez used over fifteen years ago in the early 2000s.

And like that era of J.Lo, Camila Cabello's music is bad and riding way more on a faint approximation of style than vocal talent or quality. By far the worst vocalist from Fifth Harmony thanks to her breathy, chewy delivery and weak shrillness, her debut Camila was an exercise in amateurish production that provided more texture than her by-the-numbers forgettable material deserved. And like J.Lo ahead of her, her popularity translating to success lives and dies on the hits, and when you look at her solo output that's not a sterling record. Yes, 'Senorita' was massive, but let's be real: swap out Camila for Becky G or Karol G and doesn't the song get immediately better, maybe because the song is more reliant on brand and marketing? Because when Camila has been required to carry hits by herself, 'Shameless' was a flop because it was a flagrant attempt to co-opt the darker pop edge, and even with the benefit of the crossover Latin market 'Liar' has underperformed. So to hear that her label was dumping this album in early December - I mean, it's not January like last time, but to me that screams like Epic and Syco - the latter of which, I should remind you, is run by Simon Cowell - dumping a turd that doesn't even have a 'Havana' for crossover, especially given the messy recording process that was Camila in 2018. So yeah, this likely wasn't any good - what did we get?

Sadly, exactly what I expected - but what alarms me is the niggling feeling that this could have been a lot better, with the fixes honestly pretty straightforward to cobble together something passable, albeit not great. And then you remember that Camila Cabello is signed to Syco and remember their reputation for bottom-of-the-barrel production and then you might be left with the feeling that she's being set up to fail... but I'm not even sure it's that. To me, Romance screams of incompetence and mismanagement, where in the absence of artist development we have a sophomore slump for an artist that can't afford one, and that's a bad sign.

Because - and there's no way around this - Camila Cabello is not a good singer. Beyond what I've already described - sloppy diction, a breathiness that becomes increasingly shrill and messy, and only barely on-key at the best of times - I get the unnerving feeling nobody's told her what range best flatters her. Let's be blunt, you can be a bad or limited singer and still make good music - look at Britney Spears or Selena Gomez - but if you don't understand your own limits or how to best express your presence on record, your good songs slide to mediocrity and your bad songs become excruciating. This is one reason why I brought up artist development because vocal training and developing poise can help in this case, especially with the attempt at sultriness that seems to be Cabello's default affectation - it's rare that she brings forward any sense of subtlety or languid texture or tightness or restraint, instead often oversinging or reaching into her somewhat pitiful falsetto which compromises any sort of vibe - the painful hooks of 'Living Proof', 'Bad Kind Of Butterflies' and 'Dream Of You' spring to mind here. I was never really convinced of any chemistry with Shawn Mendes on 'Senorita', but that's about as it good as it gets with her in this lane, and that's not that good! But that also highlights an open question surrounding what sort of singer that she even wants to be, which impacts your vocal production or layering or even choice of songs, and this album doesn't seem to have any clear direction - you'd think that it'd be an easy worldwide crossover to throw in the generic reggaeton beat which might come close to matching her voice and style, but the closest this album gets is 'Liar' thanks to the mariachi horns, a miss on an obvious lay-up! And then later on we get cuts like 'This Love', which wants to be a retro-soul song, and whoever thought Cabello's limited voice could have handled that should have been fired from their job months ago!

Of course, on a project with obvious missteps, we might as well tackle the production - which is a disaster. The only songs that come close to being competently mixed are the final two ballads, where Billie Eilish's brother FINNEAS steps in as pretty much the only person who knows how to produce for a limited vocal range with any sense of subtlety and detailed production, like the subtle Zedd-like clock he slides into 'Used To This' to amplify her nerves. But most of the rest of the album has been handed over to Louis Bell - arguably the most competent here so much as he's going to smother it all in reverb and autotune - alsoran production duos Mattman & Robin and The Monsters & Strangerz, and perennial annoyance for me Frank Dukes. And I think at some point everyone realized that Cabello's voice was not being coaxed or pushed in the right direction compositionally, so instead they took the slapdash approach of washing out the mixes with autotune, overloading the percussion lines, and leaving whatever melodies to suffocate and die on the floor. Can someone tell me which of three different percussion grooves were working on 'Living Proof', or why the electric guitars sound like absolute ass on 'Should've Said It' and 'Cry For Me', or why there's nothing here that's allowed to sound warm and organic to support her rougher vocal tone? More alarming, again, is the lack of direction beyond the bad production - 'Shameless' sounds a cheap imitation of Halsey trying to rip off Billie Eilish's atmosphere, 'Easy' sounds like it was trying to be a Lover-era Taylor Swift song with bargain-barrel mixing, and even if I think the bass line isn't bad on 'My Oh My' in a blatant attempt to recapture the success of 'Havana', DaBaby somehow has even less chemistry with her than Young Thug did on that song! But what's more alarming is that as a whole, the album just sounds really cheaply produced, especially around Cabello's vocals which are rarely given any sort of desperately needed support or foundation before getting shoved to the front of the mix, with drum machine patterns sounding stiff and clunky, and with an attempt to drown things in smoky reverb to disguise bad choices with no sonic direction! If I have to say anything positive... I dunno, I might actively dislike the vocal layering on 'Dream Of You', but at least there's a coherent tune beneath the hook, and the groove on 'Cry For Me' is decent.

But now we have to go to the lyrics... and I'll be blunt, there's not a lot here. Which is odd because if Camila Cabello is trying to be sultry and romantic, the writing should be getting a little more steamy and interesting than this - granted, the romantic chemistry we're relying on is with Shawn Mendes, so I'm not surprised it's kind of lukewarm, but your production and vocals are a mess you need to have something better here! The most tension this album gets comes in some lingering feelings that she might have towards her ex before Mendes, which slip through on the teasing of 'Should've Said It' and the questioning regret of 'Feel It Twice' and 'Bad Kind Of Butterflies' - which even she's admitted the last song is a little uncomfortable to revisit, so why this wasn't cut as one of the worst songs on the album I have no idea! That being said, there are decent lines and ideas here - 'Easy' is a riff on Lauv's 'I Like Me Better' and I might actually tolerate this song more, and I like how 'Cry For Me' is a kiss off that wants him to be worse off or at least fake that he is - it's petulant and melodramatic, but it's pop and I can tolerate that. And look, I don't get the Shawn Mendes chemistry - it certainly isn't sold very well, and the presence of DaBaby's explicit collaboration right before 'Senorita' is questionable - but the obvious lyrical references on 'Dream Of You' and 'Used To This' are cute enough, and for a while I actually liked the more grounded detail that comes on the conversational 'First Man'. Unfortunately, that song faded on me when you realize it's directed at Cabello's father emphasizing how much he loved her first and... look, it's weird and backwards-looking when guys write these sorts of songs about their daughters, and Cabello's not a good enough songwriter to not make this sound offputting!

But as a whole... look, it's obvious I'm not a fan and this album is not for me, but that doesn't mean I can't assess quality and when things go off the rails. The fact this album's promotion has floundered the way it has for an out-of-nowhere release in early December with no coherent instrumental direction and some of the most slapdash production I've heard in the mainstream this year - even if I don't like Camila Cabello as a singer, the failures go beyond her here! And while you can blame a lot of this on Syco - their track record is a mess, and this is not surprising to me - the mismanagement of her career development is an astounding waste; this should be better than it is, and it does not bode well for her long-term career, especially given the rest of this album. As such, while I'm giving this a very light 4/10 and I can't recommend it, I do hope her fans support her; she's on a label run by Simon Cowell, and after this, she might need all the help she can get.

video review: '2020' by richard dawson

2019-12-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

So I'm thinking I might skirt controversy by being late on this one... we'll have to see. Anyway, tomorrow seems a little overstuffed with things for me to get done, but I still do want to get this Camila Cabello review done (sigh), so stay tuned!

album review: '2020' by richard dawson

2019-12-06T23:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, this one has been long in coming.

Okay, some context: I first became aware of Richard Dawson in 2017 for his album Peasant, which got the sort of critical acclaim that prompted me to take a look at his back catalog - hell, at some point I'm fairly certain he was added to my schedule and I just ran out of time to cover him, because 2017 was like that. But I checked out his early albums and... well, I've always been a little uncomfortable with the term 'outsider artist', but especially on those early projects full of half-formed, ramshackle folk music with oblique lyrics and awkward singing, it did feel appropriate. And it wasn't my thing - not helped by the fact that his songs and albums ran long - but I got the impression that if things tightened up I could get into it. And going back to Peasant now, it has the feel of pastoral folk music from the middle ages run through warped contortions both in the writing and composition, taking the odd romanticism to which some treat that particular era of history and making it as realistically grotesque as possible across its fables. Which... okay, I appreciate deconstruction and satire and even this era of history, but I struggled to see what deeper point he was trying to make about that era, and despite slightly more conventional structures, I wasn't really loving the music enough to go for the deep dive.

So when his newest album 2020 was proclaimed his most accessible project to date and one moving its satire to the modern age to a lot of critical acclaim... look, I've seen a ton of people love this album and I do like some folk weirdness, so what did we get on 2020?

So this is exactly the the sort of album that I'm not at all surprised that we got from Richard Dawson, because it basically bumps up his deconstructive social commentary to the modern era for the shuddering, synth-accented, quaking folk music that's unmistakably British in its reference points but just as potent and relevant worldwide. It's literate, it's textured, it's fiercely political... and even though I'd argue in broad strokes I agree with the majority of its arc, it's not an album that I found myself wanting to revisit. In a way I'm reminded of albums like Pure Comedy by Father John Misty, or the longer and less tolerable work from Mark Kozelek: smart writing that's making a poignant point, but even if I'd argue this is easily Richard Dawson's most accessible and approachable project to date, there's something about the framing and execution that just hits me in an odd way that I'm not sure I like.

So let's start with the content and say this: I get it. To keep in simple, Richard Dawson is taking many of the ideas built from Peasant and adjusting the framing to the uncomfortably near-future: grounding everything in vividly humanistic and borderline grotesque detail to highlight the human toll of the modern age for the people at the very bottom. But where much of the framing on Peasant was from the third person, a little more pastoral and quaint to manufacture distance from the messy scenes on display, 2020 is almost entirely told from observations in the first person, on a project that with every song emphasizes smallness and how little power you really have. And I'll give Dawson a lot of credit for his attention to detail in showing exactly how people shudder, show real weakness, and break in these cases, be it the omnipresent strain of late capitalism and breaking bureaucracy to very flawed relationships that show people trying - and mostly failing - to trust and be good to each other. And while the socially charged songs are the most immediately striking - the opening track 'Civil Servant' is a scathing indictment at the hapless staffer who has to take the calls from folks who have lost their Disability Allowance, and 'Fulfillment Center' doesn't pull any punches thrashing Amazon's exploitative work practices in their distribution centers, what's more revealing are cuts like 'The Queen's Head', a more subtle picture showing a community's pub flooded by slowly rising sea levels and how civil order fractures, a similar picture sliding into the background neuroses of 'Jogging'. And that's not to ignore the more personal stakes of songs like 'Two Halves', where a child's shame at a football loss is shown opposite an over-competitive father struggling to manage his emotions, or on 'Heart Emoji' showing the messy collapse of a relationship where cheating was exposed amidst a craven mess of distrust and deeply buried anger.

But it's hard not to feel like there's more of a focus on the small-scale human ugliness than the shifting or breaking systems that likely should bear the brunt of the blame - this is not an album that comes close to inspirational or galvanizing, where the break point for said civil servant is a desire to stay home and play Call Of Duty, which is sold as though it means the world... but likely never will. And that's the fatalistic side of the album's subtext that really rubs me the wrong way, a lot of creeping dread and defense mechanisms but the running implication they're never quite enough - the most quietly optimistic song in text and subtext is 'Fresher's Ball', as a father drops his daughter off at university and must now grapple with newfound loneliness, but he's confident she'll be alright. And then after a brief interlude of unsettled ambient sound, the final track... is 'Dead Dog in an Alleyway', where a homeless man is beaten to death by football hooligans and his body is left to bleed out until the police arrive too late, a return to barbarism to which it seems like Dawson believes we won't escape, given the parallels to cuts like 'Beggar' on Peasant. And yes, that's an evocative, brutal image, but I question what that deep-seated pessimism adds, because when you pair that with detail so precise, it can start to feel voyeuristic and I start feeling like I'm watching a Larry Clark movie like Ken Park. At least when Father John Misty made Pure Comedy, there was a fragment of desperate romanticism to aim for something more, and you could tell Kozelek at least tried to cherish the smallest moments amidst his nihilistic pettiness on songs like 'I Love Portugal' and 'Ben's My Friend'. Dawson seems like more of a realist in stripping away any chance of aspiration, but a nihilistic wallow in despair is not something I want to revisit with any frequency.

And when I'm still lukewarm on Richard Dawson's sound at best, that doesn't really help either. Part of this is still his voice: herky jerky, cracking and barely on-key at the best of times and with a falsetto I just do not like that sounds both too thin and loud simultaneously, even if he's become a better singer it still feels like he's not particularly comfortable as a singer, which of course is part of the point on an album like this but his refusal to play into his deeper register consistently or use more multi-tracking is exasperating. And that might as well play to the song structures as well, because the majority of these cuts are over five minutes and often spend more time shuffling through wonky grooves patterns further intended to discomfort the audience rather than play to some of his best ever hooks. And of course I get why he's doing it - the entire album is about an oppressive dystopia, and this only amplifies that feeling, driven home the most on 'Fulfillment Center' clocking over ten minutes. But I'm going to bring back my three P's for great political art, and while Dawson has a lot of precision and can occasionally bring real power on the best moments like the synth foundation that explodes effectively through the fractured acoustics on 'The Queen's Head', his populist streak is hit-and-miss, in the right place lyrically but in execution still very much in his freak folk comfort zone. And how much this is augmented by the synths and some of the percussion choices is also kind of hit-and-miss - I'm not wild about how programmed the oily, clicking backdrop of 'Civil Servant' can feel, the hollowed flutters of synth don't compliment the pseudo-noir groove of 'Heart Emoji' at all, and as much as I like the surprisingly heavy and pummeling grind of the guitar grooves of 'Jogging' and 'Dead Dog in an Alleyway', dropping in a gummy film with wonky synthesized vocals that flattens the bombast in the former and shuddering warbles behind the latter just never allows the deeper darkness to take off - a shame, the hook and especially the basswork on that song is great. Similar case for 'Black Triangle', already the most out of place song on the album thanks to its UFO paranoia disguising deeper angst but then a lingering implication that there might be some true to it all, but factor in what could have been a great synth-backed groove that changes up multiple times before it can coalesce well and I'm left hearing a lot of misspent potential. Hell, when Richard Dawson gets out of his own way, we get cuts like 'Two Halves' has a surprisingly bouncy hook that sticks remarkably well, or the slight beauty of 'Fresher's Ball', that's just gentle elegant acoustics and the barest of keyboard touches around the warm percussion that builds its organic swell really effectively.

But as a whole... look, I've been sitting on this reviews for weeks now trying to best contextualize 2020, because it's absolutely a project I can respect and will pick up an audience for which the off-kilter sound and cutting lyrics will resonate more. But between the interminable length, the frustrating miasma of its thematic arc, and how I'm still not confident Dawson is playing to his compositional strengths, it's an album I respect more than I like, which is why I'm giving it a solid 7/10 and a recommendation, but a cautious one. It's certainly Dawson's most accessible album in terms of sound and subject matter so if you're looking for a point to get onboard this is probably it... but don't be precisely surprised if it rubs you in an odd way - just saying.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 7, 2019 (VIDEO)

2019-12-04T00:42:00.000-05:00

So it might not be obvious, but I've had a fucking miserable night trying to get all of this put together. Jesus Fucking CHRIST, YouTube can fellate several shotgun barrels, their horrible UI design and worthless back-end deserves all the scorn in the world and every developer and QA tester should be fired into the goddamn sun.

ANYWAY, I have no idea what I'm going to review next, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - december 7, 2019

2019-12-03T23:49:00.001-05:00

So regardless of any scattered tidbits of information we might get the next week or two, I'm at least confident that this week is in the 2020 Billboard year - a pretty busy week too, mostly thanks to the abortive mini-album bomb of Trippie Redd and the return of Christmas music, but I guess I'll take what I can get here as the charts continue to slow down as we head deeper into the holidays?

Anyway, the top ten, where for a second week 'Circles' by Post Malone secures its hold on the #1 - it's not on top on the radio or streaming, but it has narrowed its margin considerably in both category and it is dominant on sales, which means that while it's a pretty weak #1 overall, it's more robust in multiple channels than its competition. Compare this to 'Someone You Loved' by Lewis Capaldi still at #2, where the radio and streaming are actively fading - an only okay sales week can only prop this up for so long. Again, I would not be surprised to see this eclipsed by 'Good As Hell' by Lizzo at #3 - better sales, dominant on radio... but those streaming numbers are not promising, and are more revealing than I think her label would want to admit. And I'd like to say the same thing for 'Memories' by Maroon 5 at #4 given its radio run and even better sales... but it actually has better streaming - not good streaming, but it is there. Compare this to 'ROXANNE' by Arizona Zervas breaking into the top ten at #5 thanks to monster streaming and even a modest push on radio and sales... the question whether it'll be too little, too late, especially given the onslaught of what's coming, but we'll get to that. Hell, it blew right past 'Lose You To Love Me' by Selena Gomez at #6, which I said last week might have potential to stick around more... until the majority of its streaming evaporated this week, which is a worrying sign. Still keeps it above 'Senorita' by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello at #7, which clung to its spot thanks to a good sales week despite losing in all channels, even though I expect it's going to be eclipsed by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber's '10,000 Hours' at #8 pretty soon, which blew past it on the radio and sales, but is lagging in streaming... again, there are a lot of these, and that's not promising. Then we have the slight rebound to #9 by 'Truth Hurts' by Lizzo - don't be fooled, this is still bleeding everywhere - and finally taking a hit, we've got 'No Guidance' by Chris Brown and Drake down to #10, where both streaming and radio losses finally took their toll - good riddance.

Of course, where things get a little more interesting here comes in the losers and dropouts, mostly with a pretty robust list of new arrivals and the expected Christmas returns - which we will get to - it did do an effective job pruning away some long-running songs, most of which handily clinched a 2019 year-end list spot like 'Sucker' by the Jonas Brothers, 'Money In The Grave' by Drake ft. Rick Ross, and especially 'Dancing With A Stranger' by Sam Smith & Normani, alongside the ones that fell pretty short like 'Liar' by Camila Cabello and 'Every Little Thing' by Russell Dickerson. And as such we saw a fair few losers as well, from the expected drops off debuts like 'Reply' by A Boogie wit da Hoodie and Lil Uzi Vert to 85, 'Watermelon Sugar' by Harry Styles at 77, and 'None Of Your Concern' by Jhene Aiko and Big Sean to 89, to the expected collapse as hype evaporates for songs like 'everything i wanted' by Billie Eilish down to 26, 'What If I Never Get Over You' by Lady Antebellum to 61, and 'Jerry Sprunger' by Tory Lanez and T-Pain to 80. Beyond that, we've got the expected continued collapse of 'Follow God' by Kanye West to 79, a slight drooping for 'Nice To Meet Ya' by Niall Horan at 82, the twin collapses for YoungBoy Never Broke Again with 'Make No Sense' at 91 and 'Lonely Child' at 97, and the expected falloff for 'Hot Girl Summer' by Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla $ign at 96 because it's months away from the summer months. And then there's 'Tip Of My Tongue' by Kenny Chesney at 86, which racked up a solid number of weeks and will probably make its graceful twenty week exit without having achieved much of anything - unsurprising.

Of course, the majority of this was triggered by our expected return of Christmas music, so let's go through that quickly: 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree' by Brenda Lee at 29, 'Last Christmas' by Wham! at 46, 'Jingle Bell Rock' by Bobby Helms at 47, 'A Holly Jolly Christmas' by Burl Ives at 48, and 'It's The Most Wonderful Time' by Andy Williams at 49 - along with 'Love Me More' by Trippie Redd back at 81, but that's not associated with Christmas, that would be silly. And on that note, 'Death' with DaBaby also saw a considerable boost off the album to 59, a similar phenomenon I can also attribute 'We Back' by Jason Aldean getting a lift to 78. And then outside of the expected mild surge for 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' by Mariah Carey at 18 - it'll be in the top 10 soon, just wait - the only other gain was 'Falling' by Trevor Daniel at 42, and if Post Malone ripoffs like him are getting that much TikTok success... yeah, I'm not going to say I'm not a bit concerned.

But we did get a pretty stacked list of new arrivals, starting with...

99. 'Show Yourself'' by Idina Menzel & Evan Rachel Wood - so look, I haven't seen Frozen 2 - back when I was growing up, the Disney sequels that weren't about to take a major or interesting chance with their characters got sent to home video, so I don't have a ton of interest in seeing it either? Anyway, we've got two-ish songs from the movie hitting the Hot 100, here's the first, and... look, from the original soundtracks of RENT and Wicked I've liked Idina Menzel's delivery especially as she leans into her more operatic side, and the piano work on this cut is genuinely impressive for as frenetic as it is. I will say that at some point Disney might as well move some of the queer subtext of songs like this straight into the text, because it's goddamn blatant here, but I think my larger issue is tied into my consistent issue with Frozen songs to date: they don't pace themselves well or show off a lot of dynamics. For as many change-ups as this song has, it could easily run another minute or two and I'd be fine, and tacking on the acoustics at the front of the mix feels like texture that doesn't match the symphonic swell a song like this could properly command. I dunno, the minor key pivots are good, but until Frozen remembers transitional passages are a thing, I'm going to be lukewarm on these songs at best.

98. 'Into The Unknown' by Panic! At The Disco - see, the reason I said 'two-ish' is because the version of this song that was actually in the movie debuted considerably higher, and I'd prefer covers like this just not exist. Frankly, I have no idea why Disney continues to pay for pop covers of movie songs when the vast majority of their fans will just prefer what is in the movie, but here Brendon Urie is up for hire and... look, Urie's got the theatricality to make a song like this work, and the fact that we've got a pretty potent chugging riff behind him makes me question where the hell this has been in Panic!'s sound for years. Sadly, this song isn't allowed to become a full symphonic rock song as the riffs collide with the garish horns, and along with Urie's increasingly shrill falsetto, the song just sounds messy, especially with those compositional issues I already mentioned. Suffice to say, this isn't good, and about as irrelevant as covers like these always are, it'll be forgotten in record time - for good reason.

95. 'Cuban Links' by Rod Wave ft. Kevin Gates - so 'Heart Of Ice' is becoming a bit of a minor hit for Rod Wave, and thus I was intrigued how he'd push follow-ups, especially given this one has his mentor Kevin Gates hopping onboard - and there was a time I remembered liking Kevin Gates so I was interested in this. And honestly, this might be two in a row Rod Wave has landed, fleshing out the background texture with the sax and slight sizzle of guitar - the bassy groove might feel a little more clunky, but there's enough here that I can appreciate, and he's got a voice with the sort of power to match and mirror the meatier instrumentation. And this is the sort of come-up story that both men can sell credibly as well, from the real focus on poverty and past due bills from Rod Wave that has him cling to his success so tightly, to Kevin Gates' bitterness at being left behind by his girl when he went to jail, especially when it seemed like they were hustling together. So yeah, two for two across the board... this Rod Wave guy looks to have a lot of promise, because this is really damn solid - maybe have to keep a closer eye on him, there's something real here.

87. 'Candy' by Doja Cat - so I noticed that there are some Doja Cat fans who are frustrated that this is getting pushed as the next single instead of other cuts from the new album - that's what you get when you sign to Kemosabe, folks, hate to call it like I see it. But anyway, this song... huh, someone saw the run that Summer Walker was making and wants to cut in! Now of course Doja Cat is a lot less subtle, from her coo that's passing through more filters to the sharper synths and whirring trap hi-hat, to how he;r lyrics are a lot more focused on calling out some other girl as fake and shallow compared to her - which I'm not sure you can convincingly deliver with this sound and references comparing herself to candy as well, which feels weirdly incoherent the more you think about it. I dunno folks, nothing I've heard from Doja Cat has really wowed me and this isn't getting there either - not terrible, but really kind of forgettable. Next!

84. 'Hate Me' by Trippie Redd ft. YoungBoy Never Broke Again - so we got three new songs from Trippie Redd this week, and I had no idea how to feel going in. Yes, that 'Death' song with DaBaby was cool and teaming up with YoungBoy Never Broke Again had potential given his direction in the last few months, but I was still skeptical here... and that was mostly for good reason, because this is another case where Trippie Redd is thoroughly outclassed in both singing and rapping off the keening warp of the mix and spare trap beat. I'm not going to say YoungBoy is much better - especially as a whole the song is tonally incoherent in splitting between shallow flexes and insecurity that this girl is lying about how much she really likes him, and his third verse tries to blow it off rather unconvincingly, but he's at least better than the leaden, clumsy shouts that Trippie Redd tries on his verse. As a whole... the indictment here is that this is just more forgettable than outright bad, but if this was the most I was hoping for from Trippie Redd... yeah, not good.

64. 'Suicidal' by YNW Melly - so am I the only one that's a little shocked we're actually getting an album from YNW Melly, given that he's in jail and yet somehow this dropped a few weeks back... and that there's been zero hype for it? Yeah, '223's' has stuck around and was tacked onto the album, but I immediately had the bad feeling this was going to be cobbled together from dated leftovers that 300 was releasing for a quick buck. And sure enough, all we got is a single verse bordered by a few extended prechoruses... and after listening through this, I get why this hasn't gotten hype, because it's not good. The flow is painfully basic and clunky no matter how much melody YNW Melly tries to squawk through in trying to wring out melodramatic self-pity in this breakup moment... which he kneecaps by calling her a stupid bitch at the end, charming. And that's not even getting into how he squeaks through elongating the word 'Hennessey' against a mix that's all swelling strings and muddy guitars, all of which draws attention to how shallow and juvenile the writing feels, especially with saying how she took his soul and how they were supposed to be for 'eternity'. If anything, this feels more like an undercooked cash-grab as relevance fades and YNW Melly sits behind bars - 'Murder On My Mind' might be the murder hit, but this'll likely be what kills his long term career, just saying.

63. 'Loyal' by PARTYNEXTDOOR ft. Drake - okay, help me out here: besides Joe Budden, who the hell was looking for a new single from PARTYNEXTDOOR any time soon? I've never thought his writing or delivery was remotely interesting and thus coming into this years after I thought his star had faded... and nothing about this proves me wrong. Let's run through the obvious: PARTYNEXTDOOR has always been an underwhelming, mumbling presence cribbing from Young Thug and Future only further swamped out in autotune, and when melody is generally ignored for a mostly empty mix with a shuddering tropical beat that feels overweight in its bassline, you're left with a song that would have felt played out in 2016, let alone the end of 2019! Drake is the only presence who is remotely interesting on this, and even he sounds checked out, mostly because PARTY's pleas seem more rooted in a weird clingy desperation that he's loyal - he's got money! But frankly, even that observation is giving this nonentity more attention than it deserves - pass!

60. '6 Kiss' by Trippie Redd ft. Juice WRLD & YNW Melly - granted, when the follow-up is pairing Trippie Redd with two embodiments of mismanaged careers in 2019, you might find yourself wishing for Drake to come back. The weird thing is that I have no clue what atmosphere this song is trying to cultivate - peppered with what sounds like video game power-up sound effects off the dreary keys and a few odd cartoon and movie references - Transformers, Harry Potter, Coraline - you'd think it'd be targeting a younger audience. Probably is, given the overheated melodrama of all their whinging, but then Juice WRLD is droning through taking your wife and calling you pussy despite never being inside one - which doesn't make any sense because presumably you've been with the girl he's trying to take even as he calls people virgins and dear god this guy is one step away from going full manosphere - to the point where YNW Melly's shallow flexing and still taking your girl is more tolerable! And then Trippie Redd is talking more about killing people than anything else here, proving that once again he's the least interesting person on any track and he still struggles badly with tonal coherence. So yeah, this is pretty lousy - next!

58. 'Who Needs Love' by Trippie Redd - okay, last song from Trippie Redd, maybe he'll have something interesting to say... and seriously, we're going with the clunky, XXXTENTACION-esque guitar pickup off the cheap trap beat before he starts shouting about nothing remotely interesting, and that's before the chipmunk squeals slide in? Honestly, it just sounds so cheap and unpolished you can hardly notice that Trippie is going full blackbear in telling every scrap of love to fuck off because he's going to flex - and look, I'm not against this sort of song in principle, but the way this kissoff works for me is if the emotionality has some complexity, or the bragging has some flair or creativity, instead of Trippie Redd croon-croaking through basic flows with none of that. So yeah, still pretty crappy here, and still questioning what the hell he really brings to the table that's all that special or potent; let's just move on.

55. 'Into The Unknown' by Idina Menzel & AURORA - okay wait, so the song that Brendon Urie tried to inflate into this symphonic rock cut, where the original is more reliant on strings and creepy atmosphere - and hiring AURORA to deliver that is almost cheating - it was this? Yeah, talk about missing the damn point... but yeah, this is better, mostly thanks to the bouncy but slightly off-kilter minor progressions that build into the hook. It's not the second coming of 'Let It Go' as you can clearly tell some people want it to be - and I do think the lyrics being a little bland doesn't help - but Idina Menzel can sell paranoia and self-doubt effectively and leaning into the recklessness that made her delivery on the Wicked soundtrack work so effective is good for her. I still think a song like this could have a little more room to breathe and I'm not wowed by it... but yeah, this is pretty good. Still lukewarm, though.

33. 'Vete' by Bad Bunny - I really wish that there was a part of me that could work up any sort of excitement for a new Bad Bunny song. Maybe it's the fact I don't speak Spanish and haven't been impressed with his delivery or any of his content, or the fact that I'm fairly certain he's just going to hop on another by-the-numbers reggaeton groove and I'm going to wind up underwhelmed... and yeah, that kind of happened again. Yes, there's a few more trap touches to his percussion - seemingly that came at the expense of any interesting tune in this reverb-touched emptiness before something tries to resolve for the final hook - and he's certainly singing more to command the mix; his flow is fine enough, I guess. But for this sort of angry kiss-off, I'm left thinking there's got to be a little more beyond passive-aggressiveness, miserable mixed feelings, and an attempt at being a little better that he gives up midway through. I dunno, I've yet to be sold on Bad Bunny convincingly, and I expect that without much of a tune, I'll forget this in record time - sorry.

32. 'Heartless' by The Weeknd - it feels like it's been longer since the last Weeknd songs than it's actually been - he had those bad songs with Gesaffelstein near the beginning of the year, let's not forget how he comfortably put expectations right back at rock bottom! But really, after another lackluster week, I had to hope that 'Heartless' would be at least somewhat good... and I'm not going to say this is among his best by any means, but I don't mind this. For one, the more dense trap swell that Metro Boomin delivers actually captures some brittle, smoked out atmosphere off that warping gurgle of bass, and while I prefer The Weeknd in his lower register, the twisted layering of his crooning does work, even if a lot of the content is just the nihilistic debauchery we always get and he refers to his stomach curdling off amphetamines as his 'stummy'. That said, if there's a guy who can sell miserable hedonism and make it convincingly hit while still sounding just dangerous enough to know you should avoid it, 'Heartless' gets there. No, it's not among his best - he's yet to take a risk as potent as 'False Alarm', but for mid-tier Weeknd this week, I'll take it.

In fact, for me 'Heartless' is going to snag the Honourable Mention behind Rod Wave and Kevin Gates handily taking the best of the week for 'Cuban Links'. But worst... yeah, to the surprise of nobody Trippie Redd is getting both of them, with '6 Kiss' with YNW Melly and Juice WRLD getting the worst and 'Who Needs Love' as the Dishonourable Mention - I know none of the kids who like this guy watch my content, but can I get an update when his fifteenth minute is up? Anyway, with so few releases I can see the charts getting overrun even further by Christmas music in the next week or two, so that's coming... probably for the better.

resonators 2019 - episode #023 - 'internal affairs' by pharoahe monch (VIDEO)

2019-12-03T18:05:00.000-05:00

Oh, this is going to piss people off... eh, I stand by it. Billboard BREAKDOWN is up next, so stay tuned!

resonators 2019 - episode #023 - 'internal affairs' by pharoahe monch

2019-12-03T17:30:00.000-05:00

I think I'm in the quarter of Resonators entries where I'm just going to be reviewing acts that I otherwise know and and like a great deal already - a little different than the discovery and research that came from last year's genre, but when the albums are pretty consistently great, am I supposed to complain?

Anyway, the story of this artist begins in the late 80s with the duo with the very timely name Simply II Positive MCs - in a desire to remain more marketable in changing times they'd rename themselves to Organized Konfusion and begin releasing critically acclaimed cult albums throughout the the 90s. And while the critics adored them for forward-thinking content and a unique sound in the era of gangsta rap, their eclectic and varied delivery and lyricism meant they never really saw mainstream success - kind of a damn shame because they didn't skimp on hooks or catchiness either, but that happens more than it should in the underground even today. But three albums in and after a particularly ambitious but mostly failed 1997 project The Equinox, the duo decided to split amicably and go their separate ways to chase solo crossover - and when you consider both had been rapping and producing their own projects through the entire decade, it's not surprising they wanted to thin out their workload and narrow their focus. It would take a relatively long time for member Prince Po to land his solo debut with The Slickness in 2004 to generally positive coverage, but the other rapper would receive immediate acclaim with his release in 1999 on Rawkus, featuring a murder's row of collaborators and later highlighted as one of the best hip-hop debuts of all time. And given that I've talked about this artist before and it's near the twentieth anniversary of its release - and the long-awaited re-release on streaming platforms long thought impossible thanks to sample clearance issues - it's time we go back to the source: this is Internal Affairs by Pharoahe Monch, and this is Resonators!

So you'd think that given my familiarity with Pharoahe Monch and this album in specific that it'd a pretty easy project to discuss - it's a classic debut that Pharoahe hasn't quite topped, a landmark in the underground in 1999, it holds up to this day, let's just be happy it's reissued and available on streaming and go home happy. And that was what I was planning to say... until I gave Internal Affairs a few more relistens, and came to the abrupt realization that the context for this album and why certain elements haven't really aged as well as you might think do demand some explanation, both relating to the album and in the era in which it came. Or to put it another way, Internal Affairs is in a bit of a different lane in comparison with many of the underground projects that I've covered this year, and the sort of album I'm not sure would get the same reception should it be released today - very much of its time and era in the late 90s, and I think with twenty years of separation, while I still think it's pretty great, parts of it might not have held up as strongly as many want to admit.

And a huge part of this has to do with context in the last years of the twentieth century, namely that for as much as I described the pronounced split between the decadence of the shiny suit era and the grubby underground, even in the mainstream it was never just that simple, because for as much as the 'jiggy' era was a thing on the charts, it wasn't precisely dominant. And I'm not so much talking about the similar flash of No Limit but the darker, nastier, more outwardly nihilistic acts that erupted in backlash, all politically incorrect and violent and in your face as a reaction to the perceived shallowness of culture at the time, especially in male-dominated media. It happened in rock with nu-metal, and while it would slide into the underground through subgenres like horrorcore, it did get mainstream success thanks to acts like DMX and Eminem. Gruff but angry, hypermasculine almost to the point of parody, it became the antithesis of the shiny suits or the more thoughtful and conscious alternative rap of the time from acts like Common or The Roots or Lauryn Hill.

So where does this place Pharoahe Monch and Internal Affairs? Well, it gets a little complicated, because you tell he's plenty comfortable shouting opposite M.O.P. and Canibus and other artists emblematic of that era, but he's also a much sharper technical lyricist and he does have a bit more of a conscious, thoughtful edge, which is why Common and labelmate Talib Kweli show up too, albeit for a much smaller chunk of the project. It's more likely that they were trying to cross a few different audiences within the underground, because in comparison with many of the acts that I've covered on Resonators, Internal Affairs could have easily gotten big with the right marketing push, and 'Simon Says' even was a very minor single that hit the Hot 100 - it's shorter than the average underground behemoth unconcerned with radio, it's a little more melodic both in production and within Pharoahe's flows, and there are actual hooks, a real skill he kept from Organized Konfusion. As such, for as layered and clever as Pharoahe can be, this is an album that goes down much more easily and quickly than many coming out of the underground, both then and now, helped along by a more theatrical bark that bent across flows and cadences that still managed to connect his internal rhymes - it's not at all surprising that Eminem shouted him out on 'Rap God', as there are absolutely parallels to the technical craftsmanship. And yet it's also hard not to consider Eminem when you hear a song like 'Rape' on this album, which yes, is not talking about an actual woman and more about hip-hop who Pharoahe Monch fantasizes taking in hyperbolic and yet specific details, where the line that leads off the second verse is 'she had the nerve to take the case to court / knowing I rape for sport' and in comparison to other MCs, they're just 'not fuckin' it right' - where 'right' is framed as rape. Even anthropomorphized, that's still all kinds of disgusting and even in this era wasn't okay!

But that song and its placement is also emblematic of the weird, quasi-detached, very late-90s dichotomy I've already described on this album - right before that song we get 'Queens', a relatively sober tale of a gang shootout that's so human and detailed you almost don't notice the homophobic slur tossed in, and right after it we get the big single 'Simon Says', which plays to hype anthem territory where he's trying to get girls to rub on their titties, but on his second verse tries to lampshade it by saying people will call the song sexist - nah, it's the song called 'Rape' I'd put in that territory, this is just perpetually horny and almost feels a little too juvenile and immature to take seriously. And that's really the attitude towards sex that's sprayed all over this project, as later on we get the track 'The Ass', where after his graphic escapades we get Apani in full Gangsta Boo mold throwing it right back at him, placing this closer to Run The Jewels-level ridiculousness than anything played seriously... except for where this album does get more restrained and serious, which is on the very next song 'The Light' which is a completely convincing and genuinely romantic love song! Hell, outside of the tacked on remix of 'Simon Says' - which in my opinion is better than the original as most songs get better when you add Method Man, Redman, and Busta Rhymes - the last two songs are the Organized Konfusion reunion 'God Send' focusing on the desperate street-level nightmare within Queens, and the latter is the conscious moment of self-discovery 'The Truth' with Common and Talib Kweli. And for as convincing as Pharoahe is on cuts like these, place him on sheer, straightforward, grisly bruisers like 'Hell' with Canibus, 'No Mercy' with M.O.P., 'The Next Shit' with Busta, and then 'Right Here', 'Behind Closed Doors', 'Official' and even the 'Intro', and he's just as potent, from the alliteration of 'Hell' to the sports metaphors of 'Official'. I have to give him credit for the sheer variety on display across the majority of these songs... even if I'd argue that the whiplash tonal shifts and missteps absolutely date the project and have not aged well at all.

Of course, the production is the sort of thing that could easily elevate Internal Affairs... and yet I'd argue it's very much in the same vein of the rapping and content here: colourful, varied, accessible, but very much rooted in a sound that would feel most at place in the late 90s and can feel a little dated to that time. I mean, 'Hell' literally opens with a dial-up modem effect that's stretched into its guttural bass and stuttering mix, but that's just the obvious. You have bangers that rely on squonking, heavier melody lines like the intro, The Alchemist flipping the Jerry Goldsmith sample into a huge banger on 'No Mercy', the tinny guitar pickup amplified into 'Right There', and most notoriously, an uncleared sample of Godzilla on 'Simon Says' that wound up placing Rawkus in court and stalling the reissue and distribution of this album for years to come. And from there, it's hard not to feel like the production was chosen more to flatter the guests than Pharoahe directly, from the more jittery percussion off the bouncy plucks for 'The Next Shit' with Busta to the much more elegant strings on 'The Truth' for Common. Certainly these were chosen better than any tones that were trying to sound more eerie or hellish to match the album art or more grisly subject matter in the verses, which even for the time don't always nail the atmosphere, with the most jarring case coming for 'Rape' with the twinkling Quincy Jones sample off the scratching that doesn't match any of the mood at all. But beyond that... outside of me nitpicking some questionable vocal mastering on 'Queens' and 'God Send' that doesn't quite match the fidelity of the rest of the album, this is a project that does go down pretty easy, and I daresay the melodic focus has only helped this last.

But as a whole... going back to Internal Affairs, I've found myself wanting to like it as much as I did five or six years ago the first time I heard it, but through the process of putting together this series, you begin to understand why it might have slipped out of the limelight. Ironically it's a project that has seen backlash from different avenues over the years - ten years ago people were annoyed with the concessions to blunt anthemic moments instead of sheer wordplay, whereas I'd take more issue with the deeper implications of that some of that wordplay now in comparison with finding the bangers workable - but in both cases, you can chalk both up to where this streak of mainstream-adjacent rap was at the time; not really excusable, but understandable. And as such... while there are real missteps, I'm giving this a light 8/10 and a recommendation, but with the heavy qualifier that if you don't have a taste for the sounds of the time, I can see you being much colder on it. From here, Pharoahe Monch would go on to having a scattered but acclaimed career, and if you want to trace his origin and a fascinating time capsule to boot, Internal Affairs is worth the investigation.

video review: 'ghetto cowboy' by yelawolf

2019-12-02T21:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, so Resonators is going to be dropping at some point tomorrow evening along with Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

album review: 'ghetto cowboy' by yelawolf

2019-12-02T21:31:00.000-05:00

So when I reviewed Yelawolf's Trunk Muzik III earlier this year, I made the observation that you could tell he wasn't happy with his label Shady, under the purview of Eminem. Actually, that's probably an understatement, because with every listen I gave that album I got the unpleasant impression that not only did it feel like a slapdash rush to get something out that would get him away from Shady, he did it by getting a verse from Machine Gun Kelly to boot as a final middle finger to them. And on some level I couldn't really blame Yelawolf - at this point Shady's inability to promote any artist who is not named Eminem towards mainstream success is becoming common knowledge, and given that he could have easily made a killing in a year where hip-hop and country crossovers were surging in the mainstream, it's more than a little depressing that didn't happen.

But at the time I also said that I was worried Trunk Muzik III didn't leave Yelawolf in the best place going forward if he wanted to hop to another label - but that was assuming he was going to chase another major label at all. Instead, less than a year later we have Ghetto Cowboy, where Yelawolf has trimmed down his features for a leaner project on his own label Slumerican for a pretty quick rebound, and while I tend to be skeptical of artists releasing more than one album in a year, given what he was leaving I was inclined to be supportive. And hey, I'm a Yelawolf fan and I was pleased to see this sell a bit better than I was expecting, so maybe there was something worthwhile here, so what did we get on Ghetto Cowboy?

So talking about this project places me in a bit of an awkward position, because again, I am a Yelawolf fan... but I also really like Love Story and Trial By Fire, two projects released under Shady where I can't deny that some of the more obvious 'label moves' did help in terms of song construction and dimensionality. So coming into Ghetto Cowboy, it's a project that certainly carries more of an edge and is absolutely stronger than Trunk Muzik III, but I do think it suffers a bit for not being able to effectively translate all of those compositional strengths consistently. Again, this is a pretty damn good album and if he's looking to win back his diehard fanbase this'll get him there, but it's also transitional and it leaves me a little more intrigued with where he's going from here, if that makes any sense.

And a huge part of this has to come with Yelawolf himself and his subject matter, and a strange comparison that's going to sound nuts when I bring it up but the more I thought about it there was a strange sort of sense to it: Yelawolf at certain points on this album reminds me a little of Rick Ross. Now obviously for me Yelawolf's a better rapper - better command of flows, more naturally melodic, considerably more introspective and not afraid to highlight the hardscrabble upbringing and failures he's faced - but when I hear Ross' strengths in terms of his flexing, his consistent sound, his command of atmosphere, and the level of fine detail to the scenes he paints, and then I shift across genres to what Yelawolf delivers, it's not hard to see a parallel, especially with the newest entry to the Box Chevy series and cuts like 'Country Rich', 'Renegades' and 'Still Ridin'. And to me that can be a bit of a mixed blessing, because in the aftermath of his likely contentious relationship with Shady, you'd think there'd be more than just a few passing subliminals across 'Still Ridin' and the stormy ballad of 'You and Me' angled to win back fans, which probably has the strongest hook on the album but I do wish it was willing to punch a little harder. Partially because there are people Yelawolf is not holding back again: 'Unnatural Born Killer' calls out racists pretty bluntly in the first verse with him in violent mode, and 'Here I Am' is the sort of ass-whooping song that targets frat boys, yuppie conservatives, and Mark Zuckerberg - and it's awesome!

And that's one thing I've always appreciated about Yelawolf: he doesn't shy away from highlighting that rural America can be just as much of a dreary, drug-addicted, poverty-stricken trap, and his self-loathing and alcohol abuse shows exactly how quickly he can stumble back into that territory by 'coming home'. And you can tell between the lines that his time on a major label and away from that place has led to some disconnect, if only in his own mind, but it's also led to him coming home shrewder and wiser, from the mature realization of the failed love he still wants back on 'So Long' where his own demons got the best of him, to how 'Keep On Rollin' highlights how he might have ridden some type of unique wave to achieve success, but said path has now diverged, and he doesn't have kind words for mainstream Nashville country cribbing hip-hop style with no knowledge of the history, even as he knows those artists riding that wave will fizzle out when the industry's done with them. Again, some of my longing for more might be a factor of me wishing Yelawolf would go scorched earth on the unique failures of both country and hip-hop - I remember his verse on Angaleena Presley's album in 2017 - but it's clear his focus is has moved on to be a bit more aspirational... well, as least as much as he can be, as the title track implies the ride could well be hellish too. That said, none of this is unfamiliar territory for Yelawolf fans - we've heard a lot of this quite a few times before - and I do wish he had leveraged more of his storytelling instincts he'd been developing the past few years beyond just background texture; there's not a 'Sabrina' here, and that's a bit disappointing.

Of course, the big concern I had coming off of Shady is that Yelawolf's production might backslide with a more limited production budget, but that's not the case, mostly because he's always kept a pretty tight circle even while on a major label and most of said crew reprise their roles here... and yet the production seems considerably better this time around! For one, the blending of Yelawolf's vocals has improved considerably, returning to the Trial By Fire approach of placing him a shade deeper within the mix and not just slathering his nasal tones on top of the mix - even his singing on cuts like 'So Long' and 'You and Me', often the most questionable part of any Yelawolf album, sounds better! But you also tell the tones he's picked this time around are rougher and nastier as a whole and a more naturalistic fit for his nasal bark, from the scuzzy synth gurgle driving 'Unnatural Born Killer', the brittle acoustics that warp against the crushing swing of the beat on 'Here I Am', the layered tangle of guitars around 'Keep On Rollin', and the more faded bassy smolder of the title track. I'm still very much on the fence about Yelawolf anywhere near a trap progression, with the biggest examples being the brighter synths of 'Box Chevy 7' and the clearer guitars coasting across 'Country Rich' - the snares and cymbals could afford to crack a little sharper - but I think the larger problem comes whenever Yelawolf flips to a brighter major key hook that doesn't always match the tone of the song, from the wheedling electric guitar that pulls out of the stormy tones of 'Lightning', all of the hook on 'So Long', and to a lesser extent the ugly vocal filters on 'Renegades'. Yes, they're less overmixed and muddy than the last album, but I found myself missing the fiery grit we got on Trial By Fire, or at least hooks that had the same melodic kick as the best on Love Story. Never outright bad - the song I probably like least is 'Renegades' and I wouldn't say it was outright awful - but only great in patches.

But when you consider this project is transitional - it's far better paced than any Yelawolf project in recent memory and there are no outright embarrassing passages or songs - I will say that this feels more like Yelawolf settling back into the atmosphere and grooves in the underground with which he's comfortable, and I can hear him embracing the richer country textures he likes more on future projects. As it is, Ghetto Cowboy is a step back in the right direction, with a couple great standouts and a consistent level of quality that avoids the questionable Shady-pushed sounds where talent in execution outshone bad ideas. And thus for me, it's a solid 7/10 - not quite back to greatness, but on the path to getting there, and as such gets a recommendation. And if you're looking for country rap that's a lot more than just novelty as 'Old Town Road' fades away... yeah, Yelawolf's been here the whole time, and now he's got the freedom to do it right.

the top ten best hit songs of 2011 (VIDEO)

2019-11-30T21:51:00.000-05:00

And here we are - great list to put together, really happy y'all seemed to enjoy watching it, and it's the last of the retro lists finished for the 2010s!

Next up, I've got an episode of Resonators coming so stay tuned!

the top ten best hit songs of 2011

2019-11-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

You know, I've said a number of times that my favourite lists to make are the top ten hits of any respective year, mostly because I have peculiar taste when it comes to my favourites and any chance to compliment songs people have actually heard... well, it's a nice boost. And once this is done - and with the exception of 2019 - I will have created these top tens for every year in the 2010s, and given that seemingly everyone is doing a retrospective, it does feel nice to place everything back in context.

But really, if you're examining 2011 in any way, shape, or form, it's a year that defies easy contextualization. Generally a really good year - although I still give a slight edge to the best of 2012 and 2015 - but not one that seemed to fit with any specific trends or sounds. If anything, it felt more like a year dominated by personalities, from the dueling pop divas to the rise of Adele's thunderous 21, an album that seemingly defied all expectations with its success. Yeah, rock was kind of non-existent on the Hot 100 - and you could argue hip-hop was kind of a mixed bag sliding through transition from the club boom - but between pop, soul, R&B, and a surprisingly bright year for country, there was a lot to like about 2011. More importantly, it was a year where the great songs were consistently great, where I didn't even have much difficulty filling out a solid - albeit surprising - list of Honourable Mentions. As always, the songs had to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end list in 2011 to qualify, so let's get things started with...

10. So I've said before that I'm not really a fan of the pop self-esteem anthem. Not that I actively dislike them - although there have been some real duds in this department in the 2010s - but more that I've heard this formula hammered into the ground time and time again. And in the pop diva competition in 2011, this would become a default template to assert dominance - but that being said, there are certain pop acts where the self-esteem anthem doesn't make sense, if only because their image and brand don't quite align. And yet when you give that template to America's trashiest party girl...

So let's get the controversy out of the way first: when Kesha said 'We R Who We R' was inspired by a recent swathe of gay suicides across the summer of 2010, which later prompted Dan Savage's 'It Gets Better' campaign, she got some backlash for presuming to speak for that audience, especially when the text didn't have any explicit references. Which always kind of left a sour note for me in a similar way to the backlash against Macklemore for 'Same Love', because not only is Kesha openly bisexual, she repeatedly clarified that the song was more driven out of empathy even though she wasn't in that same situation explicitly, especially for someone who at that point of her career was getting openly derided - don't try to deny it, I was there and actively engaged in music criticism at that point, folks, it was ugly, frequently disingenuous, and more than a little sexist. Hell, this song sure as hell has aged better than Lady Gaga's overproduced clusterfuck of 'Born This Way' - sharp buzzing synthwork, a strong build-up, a hook that had some anthemic impact while leaning into the scuzzy, rough-edged dance scene Kesha was embracing in earnest on her phenomenal EP Cannibal, and it was a wallop that for a club-boom staple has held up remarkably well! Furthermore, while Kesha has made songs that are basically an extended pisstake, 'We R Who We R' proved she could hold her own with the rest of the scene - and deliver a kickass song to boot!

9. And while we're on the topic of Kesha...

'We R Who We R' might have had greater aspirational ambitions, but at this point in her career, Kesha was ripping away the layers of glam to reveal something more feral and dangerous beneath it, and while the Cannibal EP's title track probably remains my favourite, 'Blow' operates in the same territory, a buzzed out battering ram of a banger where the danger moves into the text and the intensity kicks up a notch. Kesha's aesthetic and significant chunks of her inspiration are rooted in punk, and this song shows it - snide, obnoxious, a little more raw in her delivery, emphasizing the real danger of this party to come and not the first time she'd toy with occult iconography either, maybe not quite picking up the groove of 'Take It Off' but absolutely the impact and attitude, amplified by a hook that even off that lockstep beat still sounds massive! This is the song I'd argue sets the table for what was to come for Kesha on Warrior, in stylism if not sound, and considering it remains one hell of a banger to this day, you all should understand why it's here.

8. So one thing I've noticed as a critic who covers both hits and albums is that when you get an act who is more defiantly underground crossing over with maybe a lesser song, you're stuck dealing with two sets of standards. That yes, this song is probably kickass for the mainstream pop charts... but in comparison with their larger back catalog it might be middling at best, and that's tough context to balance, which can lead you to not to overrate songs because they're from an artist you like, but also underrate them because you know they can do better. So with all that mind...

Look, I've reviewed Lupe Fiasco three times and he's made my year-end list multiple times, you know where I stand on him. You also should know that while I'm more charitable to LASERS than most, it is absolutely watered-down Lupe Fiasco and it wouldn't be until DROGAS Light that he'd sink to that level again, especially because for as great of a wordsmith as he is, he's also incredibly skilled at making songs with hooks and not so blatantly playing the pop game. But acknowledging that, 'The Show Goes On' is still an absolutely terrific song, a highlight on LASERS that plays the warped optimism of 'Float On' by Modest Mouse straight for an aspirational moment that feels earned! The guitar line and synth horns are slick as hell, Lupe sounds great on the beat without giving up an inch of flow, and his pure reckless confidence in his label clapback even as he gave them one of his biggest ever hits is the sort of balancing act that showed exactly why he got signed in the first place. And while I could sit here and say it doesn't go toe-to-toe with his best songs - it's not a 'Kick Push' or 'Prisoner 1 & 2' - it's the sort of pop concession that I'm still delighted to see win, even if today it's a bit of a relic. Shame we don't see more of Lupe getting success, but since he's charting his own path, everything turned out okay - and we still have this.

7. The big problem with making retroactive best lists is that you inevitably face hindsight, for better but also for worse, and what might have sparked an nervous frown a decade ago might feel a lot more foreboding now. And while it is important to understand the context of the era, added history does change how we view art, and it's pushed back or elevated songs on my lists before. Granted, when I first created a draft of this list, this song was not that far removed from this position, and I did struggle with whether this would fall of the list entirely. But at the end of the day...

So in my 'worst hits of 2011' list, I made the controversial statement that a lot of Kanye West's verses off of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy weren't all that great, which is another reason I've never been crazy about that album; it's uneven, it's got deeper low points than you remember, it drags in awkward spots, the guest appearances are inconsistent, and the entire project is being carried on the dichotomy between Kanye's artistic hubris and raging insecurity, more on personality that actual content. Hell, that's basically true with 'All Of The Lights' , because the story Kanye sketches out is more flashes of panic and desperate emotion than anything coherent, now all overexposed in blazing hot lights. But I'll also admit that's the reason the song works so well in capturing that emotion, from the hook carried on Rihanna's dead-eyed delivery and a blur of vocal samples to the frenetic percussion, enormous horns, and increasingly fractured groove. And more than all of that, it's a focal point of tension, Kanye trying to capture the moment of being at an epicenter of accountability to which he's not accustomed, which amplifies that sense of danger and pushes this song into greatness... even despite how you can tell it's basically holding together on personality, and only barely at that. No, it's not better than 'POWER' or 'So Appalled' or 'Hell Of A Life' - the latter being my favourite song from that album - but in terms of one of Kanye's last charting hits this decade that earned its hype... especially considering where he is now, I'll take what I can get.

6. I can imagine just by the placement of this song ahead of Kanye I'm going to get backlash - but to be perfectly frank, I'm a little shocked this grew on me as much as it did, because this was a duet that nobody really was asking for nor saw coming, and it's not one I've seen get a lot of praise. But really, sometimes, you have just have to let the song...

Bit of background here: in the wake of the success of Lady Antebellum's 'Need You Now', you could tell some country labels were wondering if they could leverage their existing stars to capture that sort of interplay without having to form a supergroup. And in 2011 it was tried more than a few times, because not only did you see the short-lived breakthrough of Thompson Square, you also got duets like 'Me And Tequila' between Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter, and 'Don't You Wanna Stay' between Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson, who had the raw sexual chemistry of an oatmeal raisin muffin. And then there was 'Remind Me' pairing Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley - and I'll be honest, the chemistry is not perfect here, but that kind of makes sense in the context of the song: it's post-breakup and wistful, trying to lean into the little memories of their old connection, now clearly good friends who are getting caught up and maybe some of that spark lingers - but even if it doesn't, the good memories were still worth it. It helps a lot that the instrumentation is very country with its warm electric guitar, rich fiddles and pedal steel, and the sort of go-for-broke big swing that caters to both artist's flair for the dramatic, and the interplay clicks way better than you'd ever expect! Again, maybe this just hits a little different for me - I'm a little older, and I've actually maintained a really good friendship with an 'ex' who has gone on to get married and have a baby, so the wistfulness and maturity hits a different timbre for me, but when you factor in the lived-in details, a good guitar solo, and two artists who can amplify a pretty damn good song into greatness... yeah, it works.

5. On the angrier flip side, however, I don't think anyone needed to be told that this song kicks all amounts of ass and basically blew 2011 apart...

I'm still a little shocked 'Rolling In The Deep' was as big as it was in 2011, because for as catchy as it is, it's way more soul and blues than pop, and it's a dark song too, the sort of utterly pissed off breakup song that I'm still not sure Adele has ever completely replicated. And it doesn't have an obvious sonic influence either - you can point to the vintage soul and R&B acts that persisted just below the radar in decades previous, especially some of the retro jazz revival driven by artists like the late Amy Winehouse, but outside of the bridge this song doesn't swing or have a ton of groove: it's more jagged and percussive and borderline gospel in its swell, with the huge kickdrum, bass strumming, staccato pianos and careening spikes of guitar. And that's not to outshine Adele, who has the pipes, presence, and expressiveness of a singer who has lived a lot more life than her, and yet she's entirely convincing! And while the lyrics might be abstract, there's enough smoldering emotionality to make the anger, bitterness and regret almost feel primeval - there's barely anything like 'Rolling In The Deep' even to this day and it casts a long, dark shadow; in a decade where Adele put out some damn near classic hits, this is one of them.

4. You know, I think even at the time people were coming to realize that Lady Gaga's Born This Way era was a mess - not terrible or even mediocre, but incredibly inconsistent and yanked in a half-dozen directions by Gaga's desire to pay homage to her creative influences while ripping pop music inside out. And with the benefit of hindsight and the mixed reception of both ARTPOP and Joanne, it's hard looking back on the huge public spectacle that was Lady Gaga around the club boom and question just how much was really there. Hell, there were a lot of skeptics who thought it was all artificial flash and little substance even then. Since then... I don't want to say Lady Gaga has gotten more respectable as she's always been a classicist and music nerd at heart, but it feels like especially after A Star Is Born there are deeper roots. And yet if we go back to 2011... really, we all should have seen it coming.

I've seen 'You And I' as a polarizing song within Gaga's discography - it was a later single, it didn't really have the cultural impact of 'Born This Way' or even 'The Edge Of Glory', I even saw some try to brand it as country to further push it into a corner as an odd genre experiment on an album full of them. But let's be blunt: if there's a legit rock song that makes this top ten, it's Lady Gaga singing with the most fire she had on the entire album and featuring a guitar solo from Brian May of Queen! Hell, it's exactly the sort of trashy hard rocker that Kesha was already on the path to making, and in a certain roundabout way Gaga was going in the same direction that flattered her just as much, only with less obvious punk influence and more heartland arena rock that allowed her to accentuate her theatricality. Now on that alone it caused some to say this was just another affection, but I've never thought that - the writing is more blunt and hard-edged, calling to mind any dive across the United States, and even if they would switch out the state name in different parts of the country, how is that much different than any middle-of-the-road bar band who does the same, and Gaga leans into that hardscrabble sound with enough rawness to be convincing! And eight years later and after it's been proven just how deep Gaga's traditionalist streak runs, from the majority of Joanne to A Star Is Born, to me the reality of this song just solidifies. Also, it still kicks all amounts of ass as it revels shamelessly in ribald bravado, and if we're not going to get rock that even tries for any sort of sex appeal, goddamn it I'll get it here!

3. This song has always been on my list in some permutation - and yet if there was a year that tested how much it would last, it was this one, given that for one reason or another I wound up listening to a lot of this artist and by the end of things I was questioning whether or not the songs would have the same resonance; hell, at points it's made the album released by this artist this year a little harder to revisit than I'd like. But then I gave this a few more listens and it came together: this is Taylor Swift's best single, and I'm not losing this.

What always kind of surprises me about 'Back To December' is how utterly unlike so many Taylor Swift songs it is, both then and now. Sure, there's some swell of strings which is different in and of itself for her, but the echoing spikes of guitar are rougher and more contemporary, more jagged, puncturing the otherwise pristine beauty of the mix, with hints of deeper bells to ramp up the weight - compared to the girlish framing of previous Taylor Swift singles, this song has the weight of adulthood that you'd expect from an act like Lady Antebellum, and Swift can sell it. But the power of this song has always come in the writing - even beyond the rumours that Taylor Swift wrote this song about Taylor Lautner in a desperate attempt to win him back after she dumped him with careless disinterest. And what's so damn potent is that deep down, she knows it's futile - none of it is going to work, she gets it if he's too hurt or has moved on to truly let it all come together, and by the time you get the bridge that brings it all together with the subtle downward key change to emphasize that moment of sad realization... look, for an artist who built so much of her reputation on a shattered string of relationships, it's potent to realize that on her best album she was able to wring out real pathos and humility, and one reason why Lover connected so deeply was returning to this core. For me, Taylor Swift has always been at her best when she's found the detail and humanity in her writing, and on 'Back To December'... yeah, she got back there. Again, her best single, I stand by it.

2. I mean, sometimes it's not even fair. Sometimes the artist comes in, strips it all down for a song that today is hailed as a modern classic, and while I wouldn't call it my favourite of her singles, it's a song so emotionally resonant and balanced that it deserves all the credit in the book. And by now, you know what it is.

Something I always like to highlight when I discuss 'Someone Like You' is the cowriter and producer: Dan Wilson, frontman of Semisonic and a man who has an uncanny knack for sharpening the human element in any song. But you'd be forgiven for not noticing him: Adele's tremendous performance over the bare keys is one of her best and most heartbreaking, the closing track on 21 where after burning every bridge on an angry album, she encounters this ex directly and the mingled flurry of shame, anger, and genuine regret blowing through the song is almost too much to grapple with, especially as it rings so real. And what I love is how Adele knows exactly how universal this experience is - this could have been any love sparked of coincidence before falling apart - but it's still deeply personal to her experience. Hell, I'm not sure anyone could sell the bleeding edge of sarcasm in her delivery juxtaposed sharply with the unforced break in her delivery on the hook after the bridge, where she's clearly on the verge of breaking down but has to hold some sort of composure - how very British of her, but not in a way where it's obtrusive. In short, you don't need me to sing this song's praises any further - many have called it a modern classic and only the first ever pure piano ballad to top the Hot 100 - and yet it doesn't top my list. But before we get to that, I've got Honourable Mentions...

I get the feeling I like this more than I should - Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera have limited chemistry at best, it's a blatant pop pivot that isn't nearly as sexy or interesting as it thinks it is, and it's not as loose and trashy as it should be if its trying to emulate the Rolling Stones - one reason why I remember really liking the Glee mashup of this song with 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' which actually brought some of that trashy blues edge. But at the end of the day, it's a good pop pivot that doesn't compromise its groove, it's ridiculously catchy, it's better than damn near any of the Stones' disco attempts, and compared to what Maroon 5 would become this decade... look, if we could have more this and less of 'Memories', we'd all be better off.

Yeah, this is one of the questionable picks... and look, you don't need to tell me this is lower-tier Avril. The hook is over-compressed buzzy flash, I'm fairly certain the keyboard pickup they use was pulled from a budget sports arena, and Avril was never great playing the capricious brat, especially with the flattened electronic effects around her instead of, you know, any sort of rock edge. But I don't know what to tell you, the hook is potent, Avril still has boatloads of personality, and I can't be the only one who feels like this song kind of gets how toxic it is, especially as the guy seems to be kind of a distant douche anyway. I dunno, if you spend any time on Tinder and trying to date in the modern age where connections can blow apart off of a bad text message and the commitments are more flimsy than ever, there's a place for a song like this to cut loose. Not precisely a good or healthy place, and a more self-aware song would get that, but a place nonetheless.

Hey look, Adam Levine made this list twice - somehow! But it's for good reason, because Travie McCoy just assembled a sharply written, bouncy pop song that has arguably one of Levine's best performances this decade, a well-developed music tech metaphor that's kind of corny but in the right way, and the production balances the gleaming synths off the sharper guitar rollick and slight grain of the groove and scratching. It's a surprisingly textured song if you dig into the details of the mix, and the fact that the strings actually mesh within it pretty effectively is kind of remarkable. And look, the Gym Class Heroes have never been a particularly great act in their abortive run, but for one shining moment, they caught a great one.

Oh, I bet a lot of folks are going to be shocked that this isn't on the list proper - and for the longest time it was, as there's a lot to like about it: the retro soul groove off the piano, organ, horns and watery guitar, along with the precisely placed backing vocals, how well the kiss-off balances the comedy inherent to some of the lyrics with enough punchy charisma driven off of Cee-Lo's great delivery. And while I've always found the bridge a little oversold - which is why it's never topped my list - I will admit the song has cooled on me in the 2010s for other reasons. Part of it is how certain retro throwbacks have lost a little luster through over-exposure, but I remember seeing someone describe this as an 'incel anthem' and while I disagree, there is some of that pettiness that has never really sat right for me. And yeah, it's not really helped by some of the allegations that came out about Cee-Lo this decade and some of his asinine tweets about rape around the situation - saying that 'it isn't rape if the victim is unconscious' kind of taints how this song goes down, at least to me. Don't get me wrong, I still hear the appeal of this song and they didn't pursue sexual battery charges, but follow it with Cee-Lo's antics the rest of this decade... yeah, 'Fuck You!' doesn't hit the same way, just saying.

Hey, when Lil Wayne is on, he's on. In comparison with Jason Derulo's disastrous flip of 'The Banana Boat Song', Lil Wayne warps it into a banger where he'll sound sharper than he would for the majority of the 2010s. It's also insanely quotable but in the right way for Lil Wayne, where cleverness bounces off outright absurdity and delivered with just enough charisma to make you believe some of these lines aren't as stupid as they actually are. And then Cory Gunz swings in for a great verse of his own - a shame his career never went anywhere after this verse, he had a lot of potential, but for his brief impact on the Hot 100, this is a solid note to land - good stuff.

Katy Perry recruits Kenny G for a retro pastiche that's goofy as all hell, features rhymes that barely connect, dated pop culture references, and a video that's half-Glee stars, half 80s references - including Corey Feldman a full five years before he'd shake the music world with Angelic 2 The Core - and then Rebecca Black and Hanson to boot. No, it's not supposed to make much sense and watch or listen with any closer detail and it's hard not to cringe deeply - especially given that Katy Perry herself might be the worst part of her own song, especially given her delivery on the verses - but the big guitars, punchy groove, insanely catchy hook slathered with candy-coated synths, and the odd feeling that this has had more staying power than I think anyone expected for a late-album Katy Perry song... yeah, for a shot of pop party adrenaline, this still works, I dig it.

Yeah, it's Britney bitch. Again - kind of kills that narrative that I 'hate' her that some people said after I had to cover Britney Jean and Glory, doesn't it? And yet even I'm a little surprised going back to the dubstep throwback with the shameless double-entendre on the hook that it's this Britney Spears song that works for me in 2011, in comparison with the Kesha-cowritten 'Till The World Ends' or the surprisingly propulsive 'I Wanna Go'. But 'Hold It Against Me' takes its warping punch, immaculately crisp production, and a ridiculously tight melodic hook to accentuate what always makes a great Britney song: tight construction, a crisp balance between sweetness and sensuality, and production that amplifies her presence without suffocating her. Hell, I even like the dubstep breakdown here that predates its mainstream ubiquity by a solid year, especially how it builds into the crescendo on the final hook. So yeah, Britney Spears delivered again - arguably one of her last good songs for years to come, but I'll take it.

And finally...

1. This is one of those picks that if you know me, you won't be surprised at the choice, as it's exactly the sort of song I'd praise to hell and back and taps all the right elements to connect. But if you don't... hell, providing you're not shocked this made the year-end Hot 100 at all, if you've only seen recent reviews you might be surprised this is topping my list. But that's one of the reasons I got so angry when I reviewed their last album: to fall down to one of the worst albums of 2019 from heights the band hadn't even achieved with this song, that says a lot about their prowess and what they truly delivered. And thus...

Let's not mince words: the Zac Brown Band struck gold with 'Colder Weather' - so much so they've taken the exact same chord progressions and repeated them exactly for later songs, they knew they hit something special here. But what's so fascinating about this song is how unlike it is in comparison with their broader discography - for a band not far removed from Kenny Chesney in aping Jimmy Buffett, the tropical climate is swapped for the frigid nights of Colorado and the lonely but understanding woman frozen in hundreds of miles away, a relationship that has the strength to span the lonely roads and the blizzard he'll have to cut through to reunite, if he even can. So the lead guitar is swapped out for cooler pianos in a windswept mix that features terrifically placed harmonies, with perfectly placed fiddle that interweaves with the few bars of guitar solo beautifully. And Zac Brown... this man used to be one of the best emotive belters in this era of country, and he can sell it all, even as the outro has the courage to strip it all away and only leave the slightest of accents to drive the tragic ending home. It's a stunning synthesis of perfectly chosen instrumentation, impeccable but organic command of atmosphere, and a beautifully crafted song that stands as one of a kind within country, even if the Zac Brown Band and other acts have tried to imitate its progression in the decade to come.Best hit song of 2011 - it was when I made this list and it remains so to this day, and while it's a damn shame that I don't think the Zac Brown Band will ever quite return to this again, but if they do... I can wait till then.

video review: 'desert dove' by michaela anne

2019-11-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

Well, about time I got to this... genuinely great album, so happy I can finally cover it.

Next up... whoo boy, I've got a top ten list, Resonators, and a review that's probably long-overdue... stay tuned!

album review: 'desert dove' by michaela anne

2019-11-28T21:10:00.000-05:00

So here's the problem with discussing trends in an independent or underground scene: they're much tougher to contextualize. Some of this comes from the inability to hear all the acts that might be creating or shifting the sound - there are always more than you might think - some of it is rooted in the uneven speed in which such trends evolve, as some sounds will stick for years while others are gone before you know it. And in some cases just classifying the sounds as a 'trend' might be painting with too broad of a brush - there is such a thing as coincidence, after all, and sometimes a bunch of acts land in the same territory all at once; it can happen.

Of course, the success of one act relative to the mainstream can kick all of this into high gear and spread the influence further... so let's talk about the current wave of more 'atmospheric' country music, which I'm going to coin as 'dream country' in the vein of dream pop because I feel like it. And it's not far afield either: while the mainstream might have touched against some of the reverb-touched swell and spare sweep of it all in passing before hopping on the next snap beat, the indie scene has been delving deeper into the sounds with increasingly regularity, especially among the women who have been carving into this niche alongside jazzier tones and rockabilly. Often bringing in a lot of folk tones or a splash of psychedelia, you could point to crossover acts like Casualties of Cool or First Aid Kit, the sound has picked up more traction in recent years thanks to crossover projects like The Weight Of These Wings by Miranda Lambert and especially Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves, and that's not to snub fantastic indie acts like Courtney Marie Andrews, Angeleena Presley, or even the last country artist I covered here Caroline Spence who have delved into these tones with some regularity. And while similar tones have suffocated indie folk and indie rock in recent years, what I like about 'dream country' is how acts don't just suffocate themselves in a blissed-out 'vibe' - the tones only accentuate huge voices, jagged touches of texture, and a lonely vibe that gives space to dig into the details. It's also a sound many have highlighted has its roots in California or the folk-leaning 'canyon' sound... which finally takes us to Michaela Anne. She's another artist who slid onto my backlog early thanks to how I liked her pretty straightforward 2014 album Ease My Mind, but I'll admit my interest cooled a bit with her followup Bright Lights and the Fame from 2016, which embraced more dream country textures on some of the deep cuts but also felt weirdly messy at points and trying for more neotraditional country jauntiness that it could convincingly land, at least for me. Unfortunately, her label started going through financial trouble, which stymied the album's promotion and left her in trouble, so she took the risk to move to California, sign to another indie label, and take a major financial risk to write and create Desert Dove. And given the buzz was some of the best she'd seen to date, what did we get here?

Well, I'll say this: not only is Desert Dove easily the most lush, textured, and interesting project that Michaela Anne has put out thus far, it's pretty damn great overall, hitting her stylistic balance between dream country atmosphere and more grounded, rough-edged texture. And while the Caroline Spence comparison was on my mind given the proximity of their reviews, I'd argue Michaela Anne is playing in similar but not identical territory: she's not as husky or reserved, she seems to take bigger chances with richer delivery and more developed compositions, but not always delivering the same degree of nuance or depth, although I do get the impression she's heading in the right direction.

In fact, let's start with the writing, because if there's one point on this album that keeps this project from among the best indie country I've heard in 2019, it's probably here. And it's not even that the writing is bad so much as it can feel a bit inconsistent or slight at points, which is what can happen when you're playing in broader strokes. The song that immediately springs to mind is the fiddle-driven rollick of 'If I Wanted Your Opinion', which is playing in the same vein as a cut like Sara Bareilles 'King Of Anything' or 'Buy My Own Drinks' by Runaway June in its kissoff of an arrogant blowhard, but outside of a nice key-change it's pretty by-the-numbers. And that's not always a problem when the production does more - we'll touch on this in a bit - but it reflects a level of deeper detail and nuance that doesn't always come through like on 'I'm Not The Fire', which tries to play for sympathy for a guy trying way too hard, but lines like 'you can be happy if you choose' just hits an odd note, especially when the album ends with the acoustic ballad 'Be Easy' that hits that compassionate note way better. But it does highlight the breezy vibe of most of this album as a whole, where there's an emphasis on passion but not really a ton of deeper satisfaction to anchor it, which might give a lot of exuberance and potency to 'Child Of The Wind' and 'Run Away With Me' - and a lot of weight to how she might commit too strongly on 'One Heart' - but does make me question some of the naivete that seems to come through 'Tattered, Torn, and Blue (And Crazy)'. Well, 'naivete' isn't the right word, because one of the great assets of this album is how self-aware she is in the big chances she's taking, but that does strike a bit of an odd note against the more sober relationship moments, like the deep-seated regret on 'Somebody New' where she's not sure how or why she fell in love, but is now trying to break things off even if there's still real feelings there - which is tough to do when you have a song like 'Two Fools' that highlight how they might be holding things together in public but have just never mustered the nerve to truly end it. And then there's the title track, where she's watching a hookup from the sidelines where both partners are trying to salve their loneliness, having lived too long and too hard - hell, the subtext might as well highlight how quickly she could wind up in the same place, and if this album is coming at any sort of theme or arc, it's finding that emotional balance, the right give and take.

Now for as much as I spent the first chunk of this review discussing dream country, it obviously must take center stage on this album, right? Well, yes and no, which is my other minor issue with this project: for as burnished and warm and organic as this album feels, like her last project we once again get a few of the more neotraditional-leaning songs like 'Two Fools' that just don't quite feel as interesting as the sweeping atmosphere and deeper smolder of a dream country sound that not only flatters her voice, but helps her album feel more unique. Now granted, in those more conventional songs the pedal steel and strings are warm - I love the strings embellishments against the flattened guitar on 'Child Of The Wind' - and the acoustic pickup is extremely well-placed and I really do like how she gives her band the space to cut loose for more guitar solos than I otherwise expected, and even poppier moments like 'Run Away With Me' are a natural fit for her expressive timbre... but when this album opens up we get some truly stunning moments. On the one hand you get the incredibly lush elegance of 'Tattered, Torn and Blue (and Crazy)', but on the flipside for as well balanced as the rounded bass touches ride beneath the acoustic guitar of the regretful 'Somebody New' and the darker, ominous build of 'One Heart', they're really in a different ballpark. The title track is great for that as well, with the faint touches of bells against the shimmer and smolder of the guitar layers - it's territory for which Michaela Anna's strident delivery is amplified, especially when the backing vocals are well-placed, and for even simpler cuts like the 'partners on the road' song of 'By Our Design' the smoky rollick is excellent! Couple it with phenomenal blending but enough of an edge creeping through, and enough attention paid to atmosphere and mood... I'm not going to say it's as intricate as what Emily Scott Robinson brought this year, but I can hear the same meticulous attention to detail, but delivered so smoothly you could almost miss it!

But to pull this all together, Desert Dove is a great project from an indie country talent where the risk is amplified through every note of yearning swell. Easily her best work to date, while artists like Courtney Marie Andrews and Caroline Spence are more worldweary and lean on mature gravitas, Michaela Anne puts me closer in mind to the brighter tones and hooks on the most recent Kacey Musgraves album, but leaning more heavily on pronounced country timbres for that anchor point. And while there's a part of me that can't help but think the project could be a little tighter and punch a little harder, I wouldn't want that to come at the expense of that passionate core, which is why for me I'm giving this a solid 8/10 and absolutely a recommendation. Yeah, I'm a little late to this one too, but if Michaela Anne is going to put the 'dream' in dream country, I'm happy I'm onboard for the ride.

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 30, 2019 (VIDEO)

2019-11-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

Oh boy, this was a total mess... and about the last time I'm properly rendering a video in 4K, because I'm not entirely pleased with how this turned out when it came to this timeline. Anyway, next up... not sure, as the schedule gets messy, but we'll see how it turns - enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 30, 2019

2019-11-27T01:19:00.000-05:00

You know, normally Billboard is a bit more organized when they delineate when their tracking year begins and ends - not this year. A lot of this is tied into some of the messiness that came when they adjusted their tracking week to be closer to current activity instead being so far post-dated, but since the calendar doesn't exactly correlate, this could well be counted as a 53rd week in this year... or the first next year. It's annoying, to say the least, but I'll adjust my records and thumbnail as we get new information.

Anyway, that's just bureaucratic info surrounding our top ten, where as I predicted, 'Circles' by Post Malone finally seized the #1 spot. Now keep in mind it's not exactly dominant here - strong in all categories but not on top in any of them, but thanks to slicing that airplay margin down and maintaining its strength on sales and streaming, it's on top over 'Someone You Loved' by Lewis Capaldi falling to #2 - although given how it's bleeding in all channels, that might be inevitable. Hell, it could well get eclipsed by 'Good As Hell' by Lizzo up to #3, taking the top spot on radio with consistently better sales... but that streaming is just not there where it needs to be. Then we have 'Memories' by Maroon 5 rising to #4 with even better sales and a consistent radio push - streaming is still slow to get onboard, though, and that might hold it back. Then we have 'Lose You To Love Me' by Selena Gomez rising to #5 - and honestly, if I'm putting money on a song that'll have more longevity, it's this one, especially given its strength in all channels. It's certainly holding over 'Senorita' by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello stumbling to #6 as it loses in all categories... which takes us to the bizarre survival for 'No Guidance' by Chris Brown ft. Drake still at #7 - yeah, its radio decline has been painfully slow and it still has streaming, but you'd think it'd collapse a little by now! Granted, it could face real competition from the newest entry to the top ten: 'everything i wanted' by Billie Eilish smashing at #8, riding huge sales gains and a ton of streaming... but as expected, the radio will be slow to catch up, so while it might fall back a little next week, it's still an impressive boost. Hell, it blew right past '10,000 Hours' by Dan + Shay and Justin Bieber, which was still up to #9 because the radio loves it... albeit the softer sales and collapsing streaming do raise some questions about the long-term viability I expected. Finally, clinging onto #10 we have 'Truth Hurts' by Lizzo, which despite a tiny recovery on sales took a serious blow across the board - I'd expect this to be out of the top ten sooner rather than later.

And while we're on that, let's talk about losers and dropouts... and there's not really much worth talking about in the latter category beyond the expected exit for 'My Type' by Saweetie nabbing its year-end spot and 'What Happens In A Small Town' by Brantley Gilbert and Lindsay Ell along with 'Living' by Dierks Bentley falling short. But our list of losers was a bit more scattered than I was expecting, so let's go through the expected ones first: 'Hot Shower' by Chance The Rapper, MadeInTYO and DaBaby kept sliding to 96, 'Hot Girl Summer' by Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj and Ty Dolla $ign hit 79, and off the debut last week 'Tusa' by Karol G and Nicki Minaj fell to 92 and 'Yellow Hearts' by Ant Saunders tumbled to 98 - good. And while I'm not really pleased about it, I'm not surprised that 'Even Though I'm Leaving' by Luke Combs stepped back to 25 - it's going to be short of 2019's year-end list, but given how consistent its radio is, I can see it making next year's, maybe? The rest of losers fall out pretty quickly: 'Money In The Grave' by Drake ft. Rick Ross making its expected exit down to 46, 'Follow God' by Kanye West continuing to fall to 52, '223's' by YNW Melly & 9LOKKNINE at 56, 'Liar' by Camila Cabello getting its radio pulled to fall to 72, 'Stuck In A Dream' by Lil Mosey and Gunna tumbling back to 82, and in the category of mediocre quasi-country, 'Every Little Thing' by Russell Dickerson sliding to 73 and 'Good Vibes' by Chris Janson at 84 - good.

Now that being said, it doesn't precisely mean our gains and returns are all that good - yes, it's nice that in the continued build for his album 'Lights Up' by Harry Styles is back at 77, but did it have to bring back Diplo and Morgan Wallen to 90 with 'Heartless'? And when we look at the gains proper... man, this list is frustrating. I've already mentioned Billie Eilish surging to the top 10, but what worries me is 'Roxanne' by Arizona Zervas surging up to 12 on his Post Malone riff, along with 'Jerry Sprunger' by Tory Lanez and T-Pain riding the album boost to 44. What caught me a little by surprise was the continued sales success for 'Lover' by Taylor Swift, which picked up considerably to 15 to seemingly seal its year-end list spot - what didn't was the massive video success for 'BOP' by DaBaby to vault him all the way to 18 - this is going to stick around, for better or worse.

Anyway, we've got a pretty loaded list of new arrivals this week, unfortunately starting with...

100. 'RITMO (Bad Boys For Life)' by The Black Eyed Peas & J Balvin - ...seriously, we're doing this? The Black Eyed Peas put out an album last year that might not have been great but was the sort of comeback that was frankly better than it had any right to be - so obviously the next step is make a single with J Balvin tied into the new Bad Boys movie that might be some of the most transparent trend hopping I've heard all year! Granted, if you want generic, heavy-handed samples we've got two of those too, interweaving the glassy and already mostly forgotten 'You Know You Like It' from AlunaGeorge and DJ Snake with 'Rhythm Of The Night' of all things, and yet somehow this fusion sucks all the energy from J Balvin to leave him sounding increasingly rote and uninteresting. Granted, when you have will.i.am trying to bring back hashtag rap and failing - 'I am on top of the pedestal (flu shot)', what is that even trying to say - and plans to party to the 'extremo', I'm just left faintly embarrassed for everyone involved, especially with trying to make the 'RITMO' drop a thing. And look, at the end of the day it's hard to get too angry at a song so heavily reliant on 'Rhythm Of The Night', which I've always liked... but when you turn it into this? What a waste - but on that topic...

99. 'Hell Right' by Blake Shelton ft. Trace Adkins - by the Nine Hells, Blake Shelton, 'God's Country' is one of the best singles of your career, and you think the obvious follow-up is this? I don't care if it's only here because you're pushing a late-period Greatest Hits compilation, there's a good reason country radio was reticent to this dreck - it's lousy! Blake Shelton is trying to rap as if it's 2013 again anchored less in Trace Adkin's bass and more in the heavy overdubs and an incredibly clunky attempt at a groove, which is what you get when you have a song that's frankensteined together like this! And I'd even be somewhat forgiving of this if the instrumentation had smolder or swagger, but the hook is a big oversold bro-country thing all in major chords that has no real atmosphere. And when the content is this meat-headed - you could basically drop it into any checklist song circa six years ago - is there any reason at all to give it a pass? Yeah, no, this is lousy - next!

97. 'Death' by Trippie Redd ft. DaBaby - I've said before that I have a hard time gauging Trippie Redd's stardom and popularity, but I will say that it's very telling that to nab more charting hits this time around he needed DaBaby, which to meet seemed weird given that the two of them seemed to come up in very different spaces and I'd argue DaBaby already handily eclipsed him. That being said, even if I'd argue this sort of song exposed that outside of his croon-rapping Trippie Redd is an incredibly limited rapper, I actually dug this song a lot more than I thought I would. A big factor to this is the production, which is relying heavily on the chopped up Three 6 Mafia sample between the sharper trap beat and darker synths, but the song is also more focused as a whole in its killer mold, and DaBaby can easily slide into this mold, even if I'd argue he's considerably more interesting than Trippie Redd and completely outshines him here. But yeah, for as blunt and single-minded as a song like this is... I kind of like it. Not bad at all.

95. 'Homesick' by Kane Brown - so I've recently observed some writers coining the newest wave of pop-adjacent country as 'boyfriend-country', coming from the saccharine side of lightweight grooves and oversold, sentimental love songs primarily targeting women - Thomas Rhett runs this sort of sound, and make no mistake, it's been working for a few years now. But Kane Brown isn't that far behind, and this song is a prime example: fake snap beat off of very gentle acoustics, fizzy effects layered over the hook, and content that focuses just how much he misses his girl over a beyond-basic melody. And look, Kane Brown can sell this material and between the pedal steel and generally warm pickups means that this'll sound more country than a lot in this lane... but beyond that, this is pretty by-the-numbers, and instead of emphasizing his loneliness this song takes the weirdly self-aggrandizing route of highlighting his headlining status, which feels a little misplaced to me. I dunno, I'm obviously not the target audience for this, but I'm still not really feeling it either - just saying.

93. 'We Back' by Jason Aldean - hey everyone, did you know that Jason Aldean put out a new album? Better question, did you care? Has there been any real reason to care about new Jason Aldean music for the past couple of years now, anything all that unique or potent that would make me want to check out his ninth album, with the descriptive title of 9? Well, here's the single, and immediately the exasperation clicks in because the cheap drum machine doesn't match the heavier sizzle of the guitar layering at all, and even when the limp live drums slide in in we're still stuck with no significant groove because the the bass is considered an afterthought! If you're making country rock, this is the sort of choice that'll cripple a song, especially when the bridge tries to be a little offkilter and just sounds messy in its transition, even with all the guitar wankery. More bizarre is that for as much as this song is trying to oversell rockstar posturing, it just feels utterly gutless and rote - Jason Aldean is back, but so what? What does this add, and what makes this any different than any other obvious 'opening set' song, especially when it's just not better than 'Lights Come On'? So yeah, this is pretty crappy too - next!

89. 'Up All Night' by Khalid - at this point I've stopped trying to guess how Khalid is going to push his singles, mostly because I'm not sure there's a point - most of the songs are pretty tepid and low-key as a whole, you're not going to get much differentiation, especially if the groove doesn't materialize. And with this new single for an album I didn't know was coming, it's... okay, I guess? Yeah, the groove actually has some decently smooth rollick to it with the acoustic accents and that fits Khalid's languid delivery pretty well, but it's absolutely a slide towards pop conventionality that's reflected in writing that feels increasingly bland. It's not like for all the vocal overdubs we're getting much in the way of backing melody or tune, and with Khalid, it's a song where he's contemplating everything good for him and how the tour keeps him going forward... but there's no change or implied drama or even conflict. Not so much self-satisfied as it feels kind of limp and complacent, which for this sort of groove seems like an odd pick. Normally with songs in this vein - the big one from this year that springs to mind is 'Sight Of You' by Sigrid - they're a little more propulsive and joyous, but this... yeah, it's not getting there. Better than 'Talk', but not by much.

87. 'Beauty In The Benz' by Tory Lanez ft. Snoop Dogg - so I'll admit I'm genuinely surprised that we only got two new Chixtape 5 songs this week, both courtesy of some big guest stars, the first here with Snoop Dogg and a choppy interpolation of his song 'Beautiful' from 2003 along with the blocky percussion from Jay-Z's 'I Just Wanna Love You'. And if that sounds like a wonky fusion of samples... yeah, that's pretty much exactly my response to how leaden and clunky the groove is on this song, which doesn't compliment Snoop's delivery whatsoever! Seriously, the more I listened to this I was convinced my speakers were dying whenever the groove just dropped out, at least the original 'Beautiful' held together and had Charlie Wilson despite being weedy as hell. Yeah, the strings flesh out the song by the final hook, but to get to that we're stuck with the verses trying to ride the non-groove, and while Snoop can make it work, Tory Lanez doesn't really impress me, especially as he's saying he's going to 'sink his teeth in it like Dracula'. So ladies, if you're into that on a song with no coherent flow, give this a try, but otherwise, skip it!

75. 'Falling' by Trevor Daniel - another week, another relatively unknown artist blowing up off of TikTok - and apparently pretty insecure about it given how he was spouting off on Twitter about it just today. And to his credit, he's got a point that in today's streaming economy you take whatever platform you can get in order to attract attention... but on the flipside, the reason why I've come down so sharply on acts who blow up off of Vine or TikTok is that the abbreviated songs often sound cheaply produced and bereft of fully developed ideas, especially when you only have a single verse to your song and are clearly trying to rip off Post Malone's cadence and delivery circa eighteen months ago. Now in this case, the heavier low-end synth did give this some decent atmosphere off the watery guitar pickup, but when you have a hook that doesn't even try to rhyme, a verse that isn't much better, and a pretty basic concept - he was hurt before but is now falling hard again - with no other details, I'm just left without much to say. I've certainly heard worse off this platform, but I'm left feeling about this similar to Arizona Zervas' 'Roxanne' - an obvious copycat, and not one with the flavour to last. Next!

66. 'The Take' by Tory Lanez ft. Chris Brown - second Tory Lanez cut, and one sampling a Chris Brown song that I actually remember liking from arguably his best project, 2007's Exclusive. Now granted, upon revisiting it the entire song is way more oversold than it should be, especially with that leaden percussion and squealing wails of synth and guitar, but it's still decent enough - so clearly what's best to do is smother the distinctive sample behind pitch-shifting, shove it into the background, and then emphasize the bassy knock instead, which without the more melodic blending only serves to highlight just how much of Chris Brown and Tory Lanez's delivery today is dependent on tinny autotune! It's genuinely alarming how much this song can't match the original and somehow feels just as lacking in dynamics, and that's before you get to the lyrics where Tory Lanez goes full sexually explicit, talking about 'splitting legs like dividends' and that she's gobbling, gobbling, gobbling like it's Thanksgiving! Ladies, again, how in the Nine Hells does any of this sound appealing, where somehow Chris Brown comes across less embarrassing? So yeah, somehow Tory Lanez whiffs it again, because this is pretty bad too - next!

60. 'Watermelon Sugar' by Harry Styles - so okay, I was a little underwhelmed by Harry Styles' lead-off single for that album dropping in mid-December - some decent acoustic-driven swell but it never quite felt like it paid off as strongly as it could. But hey, he managed to notch a second single here and I hoped it'd click better... and I'm not sure it really gets there. First off, am I the only one who feels like the live pickup of the vocals and blending, especially whenever that horn slides in, can sound really tinny and compressed? None of it feels all that organic, which you'd think would be the obvious palette to embrace for a song that relies so heavily on fruit-as-sex metaphors, instead of sounding like a Michael McDonald riff but with less tightness or fleshed out groove. What's frustrating is that you can tell the ingredients are here to make this work - yeah, I'd prefer more consistently organic drums, but the bass and guitar lines are good and the mix is appropriately lush - if they could only be mixed so they're not clipping the mix, you'd have something pretty special here! As it is, though... maybe the live cut will sound better, but as it is I wish I liked this a lot more.

55. 'None Of Your Concern' by Jhene Aiko ft. Big Sean - I'll admit I was worried about this one - as much as I've still been behind Jhene Aiko in her recent singles run, it's hard to avoid how they're just not delivering the punch or presence the best cuts from Souled Out or Trip did, and retracing the Big Sean drama for a glorified TWENTY88 retread isn't the way to do it. Now I'll say this, these two do have good chemistry - although why Ty Dolla $ign is here for adlibs is an odd choice - and I like the sentiment of this song, where both are actively cussing each other out through lingering feelings in the perpetual awkwardness of watching an old flame move on when it was clear they were not good for each other. And neither looks good here, from Jhene's third verse where she wants him to mind his own damn business when he tries to reconnect, to leaving Big Sean the last word where he's just about as petty in exposing all of it, especially in how her rebound doesn't remotely flatter her spiritual vibe the way he did. And I'd buy more into that if I felt that his verse was nearly as well constructed over this sort of production as hers were - the gentle pianos, warped guitar pickup, and deeper percussion flatter her husky, expressive cadence, but with every syllable he tries to force he sounds increasingly awkward, and you need a song like this to be evenly balanced to connect. So yeah, both have done better here, but compared to most of the rest this week... I guess I'll take it.

49. 'Reply' by A Boogie wit da Hoodie ft. Lil Uzi Vert - not gonna lie, the second I saw the Lil Uzi Vert credit I got to wondering where the hell that long-overdue second album is. Apparently it's been done for months now with no release date in sight and Uzi's retired from music multiple times over, so I guess the fans have to rely on this... and wow, with him demanding this girl 'follow his commands' against an increasingly sloppy flow, on a song where he's demanding this girl reply to his DM - and the second verse demand she cry for him and seems to imply he's fucking her as she tries to run away and puts his foot into her until she's numb, and then later says she's going to be raising his toddler; even charitably interpreted this is all kinds of abusive! A Boogie only winds up looking better because he's less of a presence here and seems a bit more sympathetic, but he still doesn't sound good over this misshapen guitar and blocky tap. But unfortunately Lil Uzi Vert is the most dominant presence and makes it abundantly clear that his career is failing for a very good reason: he sucks, and this song is fucking dreadful.

So yeah, out of nowhere this easily is the worst of a pretty terrible week, but the Dishonourable Mention could easily go to half of these songs... but I'm settling on 'We Back' by Jason Aldean tying with 'The Take' from Tory Lanez and Chris Brown, as both utterly misunderstand their strengths with terrible production and are utterly tired retreads of better ideas they themselves created. And for the best... man, this is rough, but Honourable Mention will go to 'None Of Your Concern' from Jhene Aiko and Big Sean for at least being decently written even if it doesn't quite come together, with the best going to 'Death' by Trippie Redd and DaBaby for being the only song that actually felt decently produced with groove and focus - believe me, I'm as shocked as anyone! Next week... well, either we're continuing down into 2020 or starting it proper, so let's pray for better.

video review: 'hyperspace' by beck

2019-11-25T21:42:00.000-05:00

And here we go - I think some folks might be a little surprised by this one, but still a decent project. Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN and then maybe something out of my backlog a bit overdue, so stay tuned!

album review: 'hyperspace' by beck

2019-11-25T21:24:00.002-05:00

I didn't even do a full review of Beck's last album.

And I wanted to, believe me - I've been a fan of Beck for years, his genre-blending combined with an uncanny knack for hooks and some ridiculously sharp songwriting has made him one of those artists emblematic of the mid-90s alternative scene, and often praised as an innovator... and yet time has not been all that kind to him. There hasn't been a serious critical reexamination of Beck's legacy by mainstream rock critics and I think I understand why: if they did, they might come to the abrupt realization that his motley pile-up of genres was more novelty and streamlined craftsmanship than genre-pushing experimentation. To quote music critic Steven Hyden, part of his charm was that he was a jack of all trades and a master of none, but that can be a curse years later when the genre fusions become routine and folks are no longer impressed - or in the age of broader music distribution and access to a broader array of underground albums that might not have been heard widely at the time, you realize even the genre fusions aren't that innovative.

Granted, some of this wouldn't matter if Beck's music had aged a little better or kept up consistent quality. Yeah, Sea Change is heartbreaking and he always tends to wring out a solid single, but I'm not at all surprised that people were underwhelmed by Morning Phase, even if I still think it's a pretty great album with some phenomenally warm, well-blended textures. But it was also signifying that a guy who had once been framed as breaking from the establishment was very much becoming a part of it simply by getting older, and Colors was sadly a glaring example of this, not helped by Greg Kurstin giving him a sound that was paradoxically colourless - hell, even leaving it on the Trailing Edge I probably overrated it. Yes, I still like 'Wow' despite myself for being just kooky enough to connect, but if you want the biggest example of how Beck is in a very different space now than he was twenty years ago? I'll tell you: when I saw U2 a few years back, he was the opening act - yeah.

And thus, again, I had rock bottom expectations when it came to this new album. Yes, the fact that it was being co-produced with Pharrell of all people intrigued me - especially as I can see some real common ground between their brands of weirdness - but the last time Pharrell strayed into oddball production outside of hip-hop proper, we got sweetener from Ariana Grande, Wanderlust from Little Big Town, and Man Of The Woods from Justin Timberlake. So with all of that in mind, how is Hyperspace?

Honestly, it's better than Colors, but not by much, and at this point Beck will likely wind up in the category of acts that are long past their prime but can occasionally hit on a decent idea or a great song every once and a while. If you're expecting wild innovation or the ramshackle creativity that we got in the 90s or even chunks of the 2000s... yeah, this is not really that, but it's pleasant enough to go down easy, and at least in comparison with that last Coldplay album, there are broad ideas that feel more developed, and I'll take that at least - ironic because Chris Martin actually supplied backing vocals to a song here, and which ultimately became one of the keys to giving this album a surprisingly rich organic core.

Granted, it's also one of Beck's easiest albums to describe: atmospheric psychedelic folk Beck made his vaporwave album with the occasional splash of noisy, trap-adjacent percussion you'd expect from Pharrell. And what's kind of sad is how that description makes the album seem a lot more lively or 'out there' than it actually is - in truth, there's nothing as strangely alien and magnetic as 'Wow' on this project, or indeed any abrasive or offkilter tone that would compromise the blissed-out haze most of this album inhabits. And yet I also wouldn't describe this album as explicitly psychedelic - the larger sweep of the mix and cushion of reverb across many of these tracks emphasize just how isolated and lonely Beck sounds across many of these mixes; if Colors was the dance party where Beck felt ever so slightly out of place, Hyperspace is the soundtrack for the lonely walk home. And on some level, this isn't a bad place for Beck to be either: a fusion of more acoustic elements with the normally analog, synth-heavy palette of vaporwave and Pharrell's anxious percussion choices is, at the very least, kind of distinctive, even if you wind up thinking that many of these songs don't really transcend the atmosphere they create. Granted, I can also imagine that many people will hear Beck take this direction with Pharrell in fusing acoustic strumming with skittering trap percussion and think Man Of The Woods, but the tones here seem way more reminiscent of vintage psychedelia, with a splash of The Flaming Lips and some of Beck's nervy, 90s side, the latter absolutely evident in the piano melody on 'Saw Lightning' or the reversed melodic fragments on 'Die Waiting', or whenever he tries to rap. And that's not to ignore the blatant Steven Wilson parallels in the minor key acoustic lines on 'Chemical' and 'Stratosphere', but I should stress that's a positive, especially when the richer analog synths flush the mix and the album is given the space to really breathe, which comes through the best on the excellent closing track 'Everlasting Nothing'. On the flip side, when the tones don't mesh into the atmosphere or the track doesn't evolve, you get a clunker like 'See Through', or the quasi-chiptune tones of 'Dark Places', or the muddy but awkwardly chintzy 'Star'.

But here's where things get a little strange: dive into the lyrics, full of oblique references to space and disconnection, and you get the impression the discomfort and unease is almost intentional, how there seems to be a little more going on in how frequently Beck questions his own senses and experiences... and it's about this time where I should mention that in the lead-up to his album this year, Beck filed for divorce from his wife over a decade and denounced Scientology, saying that he was never really a proper member despite years of rumours otherwise. And that's when it snaps into focus: where Sea Change might have been a breakup album with Morning Phase framed as its musical sequel, Hyperspace is very much its spiritual successor, with Beck's newfound loneliness and critical reexamination of his past relationship now in much sharper focus. When there is wistful longing like on 'Die Waiting', you can tell even then he's questioning why the hell he's even bothering to wait for her and whether it's worth it, and following that with 'Chemical' where he flips the love-as-drug metaphor to question just how much his judgement was impaired. And as his focus sharpens on songs like 'See Through', as much as he might long for her the song is punctured with lines like 'I feel so ugly when you see through me', and on the title track he seeks dissociation from reality where Terrell Hines contributes the second half of the verse and the telling line 'user needs to be intimidated, they won't know when they're invalidated'. If this doesn't sound like someone who is breaking out of cult conditioning reinforced by a relationship that might well have been emotionally abusive, I don't know what is! It's why Chris Martin's vocal contributions to 'Stratosphere' make sense given what I remember of Ghost Stories and his split with Gwyneth Paltrow, it's why the next few songs of admiration for his ex are framed as her dragging him back towards a darker place that he's nevertheless drawn towards - literally referring to her as having the coin of the realm and the hounds of hell on 'Star' - and it's also why 'Everlasting Nothing' is so oddly exuberant and the best song here. The writing is more oblique but more comfortable in its natural psychedelia, referring to his life as a movie from which he's only now snapped awake, and with the veiled reference to Sea Change under its prospective title once referenced by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, we hear a moment of respite found. Yeah, it's a bit bleak amidst the vast, unknowable, everlasting nothing with no clear answers ahead, but there's a comfort in knowing he'll find something worthwhile out there, and it's a great closer.

Now here's the problem: for as much as I can argue that this album effectively succeeds in what it's trying to do, I can't really call this a great album. Yes, the arc makes sense and there's a genuine emotional core I'd argue Beck lands... but it's also across an album that's listless, lacking in standout hooks, and features a genre combination I'm left thinking has more potential for greatness than what we get here - a lot of good songs, but few great ones. I do think that Pharrell and Beck could deliver the sort of insane genre-pileup of weirdness that'd be like nothing else released, but this also feels like something Beck had to release to properly break free of those heavy emotions, scattering him to the void so he could have the creative freedom to go further. But as it is, while I will say Hyperspace grew on me, I'm giving it a very strong 6/10 and a recommendation, but a cautious one. In terms of the Beck albums that work in this emotional space, it's no Sea Change or Morning Phase, but it does play in that orbit, and right now I only want to see where Beck will fly from here.

video review: 'everyday life' by coldplay

2019-11-24T23:56:00.001-05:00

Anyone who thinks critics enjoy making these kinds of reviews... yeah, no, this wasn't fun. I wanted to like this WAY more than I did.

And while I'm on that subject, I've got Beck up next - stay tuned!

album review: 'everyday life' by coldplay

2019-11-24T23:43:00.000-05:00

It feels like it's been longer than it's actually been since I talked about Coldplay.

Now for you all that has more to do with Warner Music Group throwing a copyright block on my review of the last album to take it down worldwide only days after it was posted - because spineless violations of journalistic fair use are fun for the family - but the larger truth is that I just haven't had much incentive to seek or discuss Coldplay in the 2010s. Sure, they had a single pop up on my year-end list of the best hits of 2016 - that being 'Hymn For The Weekend' with Beyonce - but to be perfectly candid, it was more of a factor of the Hot 100 in 2016 being an absolute garbage fire rather than the song being a credible standout.

And yet this isn't coming from someone who as a critic dislikes this band, even if they've given me plenty of credible reasons - for the most part I like Coldplay, and they're incredible live. But if I were to compare the cyclical melodic progressions, strident crescendos, and willowy wistfulness of their best material across the 2000s, the 2010s have seen them flailing with pop and electronic pivots that don't fully play to those strengths, rarely bad but frequently underweight and bland. Granted, it didn't help the production quality took a nose dive when they ditched Brian Eno, but I'd argue the bigger problem was a collapse in dynamic range - at their best, Coldplay could take their broad abstractions to soar, feel like so much more than was present explicitly in the text, but with every layer of stiff percussion and underweight electronics, I just got no emotional impact.

And thus I was worried about Everyday Life, because at this point, Coldplay's pop pivot wasn't going to stop, especially given Max Martin cowriting with them. And yet while this album was being advertised as a double album, in reality each disc was pretty short so this project still clocked under an hour - thank god. But hey, rock bottom expectations, there's nowhere to go but up, right, so how is Everyday Life?

So I'm going to be very blunt right out of the gate: even for my low expectations, I can argue convincingly this is Coldplay's worst album to date, and while I said something similar for A Head Full Of Dreams, this time it's for very different - and more contentious - reasons. And yet I completely understand why there's a whole lot of critics who are calling this Coldplay's 'best and most important album in years', mostly because there's a formula that'll appeal to a certain brand of middlebrow critic that even Coldplay can pull off, and yet it doesn't precisely nothing for me. And yes, I know it makes me look like the bad guy or 'hater' to come down on a project that's otherwise 'pleasant' or 'inoffensive', but when I can say that nothing here even rises to the best of Coldplay this decade, let alone the last, there's a serious goddamn problem afoot.

So let's start with the sound and production, and I'll give the first big pass to Coldplay: I'm not expecting a rock album. Even though that was the band's sound at its most propulsive and dynamic and interesting, I'd be able to tolerate the band going pop. And hell, most of the badly placed electronics and synthetic vocal filters are gone, that has to be a positive step, right? Well, that's the thing: you can't place this album within mainstream pop: in fact, I'd argue the most apt sonic comparison is the late 80s-early 90s easy listening scene, with the faint hints of world music in the percussion that are mostly embarrassing and some of the heavy-handed sample choices that comprise the weird genre-hopping all over this thing. It's being praised as 'diverse' for cribbing elements of overly pristine Christian music and a slightly better developed rhythm section, as well as all the quasi-choppy acoustic guitars from the most recent lifeless version of Maroon 5, but none of it has texture or punch or gravitas or any sort of potent crescendo - you know, what used to be Coldplay's greatest compositional asset! For God's sakes, Vampire Weekend is less whitebread than this - on their most recent album! Instead most of the electric guitars are shoved midway to the back to spark unconvincingly or cycle through an underwhelming passage, and the pianos are pushed behind a film that muffles any sparkle or flair - and look, Coldplay has always been kind of saccharine and innocent and middlebrow, but songs like 'Daddy' are damn near childlike, featuring an AJR-esque regressive Peter Pan complex that's just distracting! And normally you could argue that Chris Martin's voice would cut through, add something - but across the vast majority of this album he sounds utterly checked out, occasionally overpowered by his backing vocalists, and even when he sounds like he cares like on 'Church' or parts of the title track, there's so little to work with! That's the other alarming thing: for a wait of four years between albums, the fact that so many of these songs sound unfinished or fragmented or lacking a proper hook or mix depth is genuinely alarming - you could at least tell that Myxo Xyloto or A Head Full Of Dreams were trying or had a little more ambition, but Everyday Life barely breaks out of park, let alone get into a higher gear. And I'm thoroughly sick of passing off and excusing unfinished pieces of songs jumbled together as 'experimental' - The 1975 did something just as milquetoast last year, Kanye already tried it with his "gospel" mistake this year, and I'm not buying it - this is not post-structural or post-modern, it's undercooked and lazy!

And here's what drives me crazy: in today's age where 'vibe' and 'low-key' are treasured among playlists and the unfinished mix gets mainstream airplay, I'm under no illusions that this'll do well, and even why some critics will praise it; it's the same damn reason why I'm consistently unimpressed by so many of the baroque pop set are trying to emulate the mid-60s and aren't sticking the landing, it's branding itself as 'different' and 'experimental' while just dredging up a sound that was limp and lousy thirty years ago, now with less structure! And since people don't remember the history of sounds like this - because most of its charting success was roundly forgotten and for good reason - people are simply praising as it as new, at least for Coldplay, as if it doesn't reflect a total regression across the board. And that's not saying that there aren't moments where Coldplay's approach comes close to working either: both 'Arabesque' and 'Orphans' have a little low-end groove, with the former probably the best song here thanks to its thicker acoustic riff and horns section and something of an abortive crescendo, and I can even say that songs like 'Everyday Life' has some elegant shimmer and 'Old Friends' is a passable acoustic ballad. But on the flipside, especially with the higher backing vocals clumsily blended into a retro pickup, 'Cry Cry Cry' sounds like it belongs in an overdone holiday commercial because the advertising agency couldn't get the rights to any Christmas songs!

And here's the thing: if Coldplay was using this slapdash, scattered approach to surround a poignant or powerful theme, that'd be one thing... but we now have to talk about lyrics, which have consistently been Coldplay's giant weak point when the broad swings for the fences don't work. And I'm bringing back my three P's for good political art - power, precision, populism - because between the marketing and the overarching themes and choice of samples on this project, Coldplay is clearly trying to make this a 'message' album; you'd think since Mylo Xyloto they'd have learned Chris Martin does not have the chops to pull that off, but hey, if Coldplay wants to make a big 'give worldwide peace a chance' album... it serves an audience, I guess? But said message begins falling apart at the seams pretty quickly as songs like 'Church' and 'Old Friends' seem to be framed a lot more intimately, and that before you factor in a song as cloying as 'Daddy', which is about exactly what you think it is. More alarmingly is the failure of any consistent tone: 'Trouble In Town' actually gets pretty real with its live sample of a violent police encounter, but if you're expecting any deeper criticism of systemic racism beyond platitudes, you're not getting it. And it rapidly gets hard to buy into Chris Martin having any coherent political point when you get a cut like 'Guns', which with its prominent Bob Dylan reference and choppy folk construction is trying to make a sardonic point emphasizing gun control, but the hook is emphasizing how everyone's crazy, maybe even him, and on the first verse mentions how said revolution might need guns... and I'm left thinking this is totally half-assed in trying to say anything that might disrupt the system. Hell, on 'Orphans' Martin's trying to speak from the perspective of a Syrian refugee, and between the weirdly upbeat tone, the increasingly childlike language, and a hook emphasizing going drinking with friends - later mirrored on the title track - there's no sense of understanding any sense of gravitas or urgency in that region! And sure, Coldplay is not trying to untangle geopolitics, but if you travel around the world and the most you pull is this shallow and terrified of stirring any real controversy, your political convictions are not that convincing! But most galling is 'Champion of the World', a song dedicated to Scott Hutchinson, the late singer of Frightened Rabbit, and while this track interpolates one of his songs, it couldn't feel like it missed the point harder, trying for this broadly sketched triumphalism that primarily uses personal pronouns and it doesn't feel like a tribute at all!

What it feels like is utterly disconnected from emotional reality, of both the situation and the times at large, and thus the more listens I gave to Everyday Life, the more I wondered what purpose a project like this even serves beyond cheap, feel-good pablum - and not even well-constructed pablum at that! I'm not against sentimentality - and let's be blunt, any power this album has in its message comes entirely from that, and Coldplay is great at triggering those feels - but it needs to have some sort of heavier payoff in the music, or a grounding force that's aware systemic change will likely be necessary to achieve those utopian dreams. And Coldplay will never go there, which makes their fleeting attempts at 'revolution' or 'experimentation' utterly toothless; or to put it another way, it's 'thoughts & prayers'. So yeah, 4/10, no recommendation... and I don't even know what I can say to Coldplay anymore, because I expect to be in the minority with this opinion and I don't expect them to change. Instead, they remain the quintessential silent majority act, with this album cementing it - take that as you will.

video review: 'mint condition' by caroline spence

2019-11-21T22:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, extremely late for this one, but considering how many of my friends have recommended this time and time again, I figured I'd tackle it.

Next up... hmm, not sure yet, stay tuned!