video review: 'leaving meaning.' by swans

So this was... odd to talk about? Kind of wish I liked it a lot more, but it happens...

Next up is Miranda Lambert, so stay tuned!

album review: 'leaving meaning.' by swans

So what constitutes an artist's finale?

Because you can tell that's a question that's hung heavy on a lot of people, from an artist close to his deathbed to an act realizing they've got no more stories left to tell and must dissolve. Of course, in both cases if the artist goes on living or the band finds another burst of inspiration, said 'finale' can hit an odd note - not everyone can do what David Bowie did with Blackstar, after all, and you can tell with the themes and arcs of the last several Willie Nelson albums that he's expected his passing long before now. And I bring this up because the last time I reviewed Swans in 2016 with their massive album The Glowing Man, I was operating with the information that it would be their last album, especially given the thematic heft given to massive questions of God and the purpose of humanity. Turns out there was some truth to that, as mastermind Michael Gira said that it was their last album with anything close to a stable lineup, with the only returning and consistent member this time being lap steel guitar player Kristof Hahn and other former members and guests only brought on to realize specific moments on certain songs. And while with a title like leaving meaning. you can make the argument they are once again going for a finale vibe - which was what some of the hype was indicating - I was curious to put in the hours of time and really absorb this Swans album - so what did we get?

resonators 2019 - episode #022 - 'labor days' by aesop rock (VIDEO)

And this kicks all amounts of ass too - yay!

Next up, I think I'm about ready for Swans, so stay tuned!

resonators 2019 - episode #022 - 'labor days' by aesop rock

So one observation I've made about Resonators this year is that I've wound up covering a lot of acts I would otherwise review on a regular basis, and this has led to a few notable observations for me. For one, it's a sign that underground hip-hop, despite its numerous flirtations with the mainstream, has maintained considerable longevity - and more to the point, most of the acts have been able to ride their careers into their second or even third decade of success while still maintaining a consistent or even fresh audience. Hell, in some cases the sound is consistent and timeless enough that to a predominantly older demo who gets into a more thorny, lyrical style, so long as the quality is consistent they'll stick around. And when you consider it's often not with major label support or "icon" status to build the huge cult following, that's extremely impressive.

And today we're going to be talking about one of the most respected names in this scene and one who has actually made a few of my year-end lists: New York MC Aesop Rock. Known for his phenomenal vocabulary and eclectic sense of storytelling, he got his start with university friend and producer in his own right Blockhead, and in the late 90s he self-financed a limited project Music For Earthworms, primarily promoted online through his own website and MP3.com, avenues for underground hip-hop that were in their infancy of being tapped. And after a quick EP, he won over enough traction to get signed to predominantly electronic music label Mush Records for 2000's album Float, which featured production both from him and Blockhead and a few notable guest stars, like Vast Aire of Cannibal Ox and Slug of Atmosphere. And yet I'm not discussing that project specifically, mostly because you can tell Aesop Rock was still refining his style, with his manic-depressive nasal delivery and content that still reflected some rough edges - still really damn good album, especially given its melodic focus and how damn quotable he's always been, but the hooks weren't all the way there, the vocal layering could feel a bit slapdash, and there's an overwritten sense of anxious panic that really can't sustain its hour-plus runtime, even if it did match the sharp criticisms of the system that left an entire class of people struggling to stay alive at the bottom; smart enough to know it, but seeing no easy way out. And thus when I discovered in 2001 he had a nervous breakdown... well, sad to say it didn't surprise me.

But regardless, he had also signed to El-P's label Def Jux, and on his next album he was looking to expand upon many of the themes he had introduced on Float, which would become to many his breakthrough: so yeah, it's here, today we're going to be talking about Aesop Rock's 2002 album Labor Days, and this is Resonators!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 2, 2019 (VIDEO)

Short, but workable... I've had to deal with worse.

Next up is Resonators, and ooh boy, I'm excited about this one - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 2, 2019

...okay, look, they can't all be good weeks. And what's frustrating is that in a week with new cuts from both Frank Ocean and Selena Gomez, the larger story is our new #1, but at least it's short enough to go down quickly and the album bomb coming next week will probably disrupt enough to render this week irrelevant quickly - good riddance.

video review: 'FIBS' by anna meredith

Well, this was concentrated wonderful - Billboard BREAKDOWN up later tonight, enjoy!

album review: 'FIBS' by anna meredith

When I first covered Anna Meredith back in 2016, I had no idea what to expect. I had been in a bit of a dry spell when it came to album releases at that point in the year, and here comes a classical composer with a few associations with James Blake but rapidly making a strident name of her own with a project that seemed to win over every critic that heard it... and yeah, I was one of them. I still hold that project Varmints as damn near ground-breaking in its usage of morphing syncopation and groove with classical bombast and twisted electronics, and when you paired it with solid writing, it wound up as one of the best albums of that year.

And ever since then, it seemed like Meredith's trajectory accelerated: she provided the score for Bo Burnham's feature film Eighth Grade - which rightly deserved all the critical acclaim it got - and that same year she also released the project Anno, an extended interpolation of Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons suite that may have felt a little too beholden to the original composition to truly take off, but still wound up being pretty damn potent all the same. But with a new project of original material - and with the expectation that I'd probably be the only one covering her on this platform yet again - I really wanted to get ahead of this, so how was FIBS?

album review: 'JESUS IS KING' by kanye west (VIDEO)

I feel I should explain this.

I also feel I don't have to and that makes it more rewarding for those who know. Anyway, Anna Meredith and Billboard BREAKDOWN up next, stay tuned!

video review: 'there existed an addiction to blood' by clipping.

Well, this was a nasty, but pretty damn great listen. Hope you all enjoy the analysis - enjoy!

album review: 'there existed an addiction to blood' by clipping.

I've had the suspicion for a long time that there's a subsection of critics that just don't 'get' clipping. And on some level I do include myself, in that with every listen I've given to a clipping. album I'm almost positive that I'm missing some sort of larger detail that demands deeper examination, either in the noisy, experimental glitch of the production or Daveed Diggs' snarled, endlessly charismatic wordplay. More to the point, clipping. has not really stuck with any clear tradition or arc in hip-hop: their self-titled debut was as much of a ruthless parody of the brutality of the streets as its production still managed to generate some of the most experimental but accessible bangers of the decade. And yet after Daveed Diggs starred in Hamilton, you'd think the easy path would be to slightly more conventional hip-hop to capitalize on that success... so let's make Splendor & Misery, an even more convoluted and thorny hip-hop space opera in the tradition of Deltron 3030 that brought in elements of spoken word, icier textures, and even blues and southern gospel. 

And thus when I've seen the mixed critical reception to There Existed An Addiction To Blood, characterizing the album as horrorcore thanks to its title reference to the 1970s experimental horror film Ganja & Hess, which is a project exploring black vampirism as an extended metaphor for addiction, cultural assimilation, white imperialism, and religion, and considering in some cases you don't see any of those added depths even being discussed, you get the impression that a lot of folks have missed the point. Hell, you can make the argument that most haven't even bothered doing the research to articulate any point to begin with, but you should all know that's not how I make reviews, so here we go: what did we get from There Existed An Addiction To Blood?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 26, 2019 (VIDEO)

Well, this was... actually pretty enjoyable to assemble, not a bad week and I expecting WAY worse.

Next up, clipping - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 26, 2019

You know, it's probably good that I didn't predict this, it would have made the past week all the more dispiriting going into the last sort of album bomb I'd want to cover. And yet since he's barely on my radar, I'm not even sure I could have probably predicted the baffling success of a Youngboy Never Broke Again album release, and at this point I should really stop being surprised. And yet since he's one song short of my qualifications of an album bomb... yeah, talking about all of it, folks, strap in.

video reviews: 'after the fire' & 'the wanting' by cody jinks

Well this was... mildly disappointing? I wanted to be more over the moon for both of these albums, but I did see it coming, tbh.

Next up, what looks to be a rough Billboard BREAKDOWN and then clipping. - stay tuned!

album reviews: 'after the fire' & 'the wanting' by cody jinks

So I've gone back and forth so often on whether it's a good idea for artists to release more than one album a year, especially in relative close proximity. And normally the conclusion I've reached is, 'well, if they sound wildly different or they're aiming to do different things, then why the hell not'... but that let's be real, in today's streaming economy that is rarely the case so much as saturating the market, and even then it can be a dicey proposition.

And yeah, you can already tell that was my biggest concern going into these new albums from Cody Jinks, dropped a week apart and while had said that there were some incidental shifts in sound between the first and the second, I was still going in with the thought, 'if both discs aren't great, you probably could have just trimmed the fat and put out one of the best albums of your career'. And again, this is coming from a Cody Jinks fan who really loves Less Wise and 30 and really has come to love I'm Not The Devil as the melodic focus has only stuck with me more since 2016... but who also knew that Lifers felt more like a misstep with every listen, especially on production, and if those kinks hadn't been ironed out, throwing two albums of material could be a really big risk, especially as he's still independent and would be relying most on word-of-mouth and organic groundswell instead of label promotion. But hey, how did After The Fire and The Wanting turn out?

video review: 'in the morse code of brake lights' by the new pornographers

Well, this was... a little underwhelming and I wish it was better, but it happens. Next up, I've got a two part project from Cody Jinks, so stay tuned!

album review: 'in the morse code of brake lights' by the new pornographers

So here's a fun question: how much do people consider The New Pornographers these days?

I'd argue it's relevant, as past and present solo members like Neko Case and Dan Bejar as Destroyer have charted critically acclaimed territory in recent years that many could argue outstrips the band's original run of insane quality in the first half of the 2000s. And while I look back on projects like Brill Bruisers and Whiteout Conditions this decade with a lot of fondness, it's more for snippets of anthemic brilliance rather than a consistently strong but never quite transcendent whole. And it's not even that this supergroup feels like a 'hangout project' or anything like that for prodigious talents to bounce ideas off each other - especially in recent years, a lot of A.C. Newman's writing has a sense of urgency that keeps things driving with more momentum and outright anxiety than you normally see for acts twenty years into their careers. Maybe it's the political subtext lurking just out of frame, maybe it's middle age... either way, it has led to some phenomenal songs, and while Dan Bejar only contributes cowriting credits to a single song here, I've always thought The New Pornographers can knock at least a few songs out of the park, so what did we get from In The Morse Code Of Brake Lights?

video review: 'METAL GALAXY' by BABYMETAL

Yeah, this one is going to piss folks off... eh, such is life. Anyway, either Elbow or the New Pornographers next, stay tuned!

album review: 'METAL GALAXY' by BABYMETAL

So I'll be very honest: I find it really hard to gauge how much cultural weight BABYMETAL have. Part of this comes from the very real distance I have from j-pop as a genre, but part of it is also linked to the lingering feeling that despite BABYMETAL's easily recognized brand, I'm not sure how many people outside the cult fanbase have embraced more than just the meme of their existence.

And if all of that seems unfair... well, yeah, it completely is, and this is speaking as someone who liked both of BABYMETAL's previous albums beyond the meme. I've always been convinced that a metal sound can work with a pop-context, and on Metal Resistance the group might not have surprised audiences in the same way with a little more care and restraint in their genre fusion, but the songs were tighter and better composed, and while the project was transitional, it also reflected the core of a pretty decent power metal band at their core. And sure, all of it was a little ridiculous, but I hoped as the girls at the core grew up and stayed with the genre while maintaining enough of a pop touch, they could play in the same territory an act like Poppy is exploring so much now. So even with the departure of Yuimetal, one of their lead singers, I really wanted to like Metal Galaxy - did they deliver?

trailing edge - episode 015 - july-september 2019 (VIDEO)

Way too late, but it happens. Happy to have it out, all the same.

Anyway, next up is BABYMETAL - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 19, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, looks like things are back on path... busy episode too.

Next up, though - got some BABYMETAL coming, so stay tuned!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2011 (VIDEO)

Can't believe I nearly forgot to post this mess... enjoy!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 19, 2019

I did not expect this week to be that tumultuous. Granted, a major part of this comes from the minor album bomb courtesy of Summer Walker - which is just under the cutoff which means I'll be covering every entry in detail, which I don't mind given my curiosity into all the hype there - but there was a surprising amount of movement on the Hot 100, which makes for the sort of busy week that I'm actually intrigued to cover... so yeah, strap in, there's a lot here!

the top ten worst hit songs of 2011

So something every music critic loves to do is craft a 'narrative' surrounding the sound of a specific year, especially with the benefit of hindsight allowing one to track trends or make predictions of what was to come, write a little history along the way.

2011 is not one of those years where that comes easily. On the surface you could make the argument this is where the club boom hit over-saturation and began collapsing in upon itself, with the success stories this year telling what was to come. But while this year would foretell the success of some individual acts and trends - you can argue the popular seeds of bro-country were planted this year, as was Adele's decade-long run and a fondness for retro tones that would eventually be co-opted by artists looking for identity outside their own - hi, Bruno Mars, who got his major push this year - it also feels weirdly ossified in time. For one, 2011 was a year of massive pop diva competition, where most would see their careers fly in wildly different directions by the decade's end or implode entirely. You could argue that 2011 was also the year of Young Money as Lil Wayne, Drake, and Nicki Minaj began notching consistent crossover success... and many could argue that was a mixed blessing at best. And that's not even counting the string of acts that would achieve chart success in 2011 and little else - and what's bizarre is that they weren't part of any one consistent trend or level of quality, which means even in hindsight you can't really draw clear predictions on where anyone was going to go. And here's the strangest thing: for the most part that diversity played to the year's strengths, and wound up just having less bad hits than many years ahead - years like 2013 and 2017 might have hit greater heights, but they also had far deeper lows. Like with 2012, most of the bad stuff in 2011 was more annoying and badly made than offensive, but unlike that year it was a struggle for me to even pin down the worst of what we got... but I did pull something together anyway. You all know the rules, the songs had to debut on this year-end Hot 100 chart, so let's untangle the worst of this messy year, starting with...

video review: 'a boat on the sea' by moron police

And this was pretty damn special - huge thanks to Crash Thompson for pushing this out the door to me.

But now for a top ten on the docket... stay tuned!

album review: 'a boat on the sea' by moron police

I think the general reaction from everyone who has heard this has been, 'Where the hell did this come from' - closely followed by 'Wait, those guys? Are you serious?!'

And that's a fair reaction here - for those of you who recognize the name Moron Police at all, you probably know them more for some Norwegian progressive metal that was more in the comedy scene... a scene I don't normally touch as a rule, because comedy music is incredibly subjective and I have strange tastes in comedy. And going back to Moron Police's first two albums... well, their debut had promise and showed a band who could split progressive heaviness with real hooks and some wit, but it seemed to curdle on their second album Defenders of the Small Yard into something darker with an odd, unpleasant sourness to it - this is a band that released a single called 'T-Bag Your Grandma', that should give you a rough idea where the humour was going. Coupled with a math rock side that was very much not my thing, after going through those first two albums in preparation for this one, I seriously questioned would it all be worth it... but those people who have heard A Boat On The Sea have not stopped raving about it and the recommendations only stepped up after my Tool review where I professed I liked my progressive rock and metal to have more melody. So with all of that mind, what is A Boat On The Sea?

video review: 'all mirrors' by angel olsen

Yeah, this one was tough... really wanted to love this album too, I really did, but it just didn't pan out. Eh, it happens.

Anyway, next up is an album that absolutely panned out and that I'm really excited to talk about, so stay tuned!

album review: 'all mirrors' by angel olsen

It feels like I've been struggling to get onboard with Angel Olsen for years now.

And what's frustrating is that it always feels like there's just one or two elements that get in the way of things really clicking. She's a terrific singer, but sometimes she's stuck with production that doesn't flatter her unique timbre or style. The production can often swell with portentous presence and purpose... and wind up dragging if the climax doesn't connect. She's a strong songwriter, but I often run into quibbles of nuance and framing that just don't pay off as strongly as I hoped. And all of this is surrounded by the fact that in the lo-fi, alternative country-adjacent scene, she is surrounded by acts that might not have her unique pipes but can stick the landing a little more strongly.

But there were two things that prompted me to check this album out anyway, the first being that in 2017, she teamed up with Alex Cameron for the song 'Stranger's Kiss', which showed that with a potent groove beneath her and some punchy synths she could ride an absolutely terrific song, one of the best of that year. And I kept thinking about that song when for #2, I heard that her newest album All Mirrors was not just going to be a pivot towards baroque pop with huge, lush string arrangements, but also an embrace of synthesizers. Which... alright, I didn't love how she utilized them on MY WOMAN but maybe there'd be a little more focus and clarity this time, especially given how much the music press has slung critical acclaim at her this year - although given the recent avalanche of critical acclaim at baroque pop acts spanning from Lana Del Rey to Julia Holter to Weyes Blood in the past year, I do take that with a grain of salt. But fine, I still really wanted to like this, so what did we get with All Mirrors?

video review: 'uknowhatimsayin¿' by danny brown

Yeah, really wanted to love this one... shame I don't, but it's not bad all the same...

Anyway, next up I think I'm going to tackle Angel Olsen next - stay tuned!

album review: 'uknowhatimsayin¿' by danny brown

In his series Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation, music critic Steven Hyden once identified Alice In Chains' sophomore album Dirt as a 'unrelentingly grim collection of songs about how people should never, ever shoot heroin' - and he's not wrong. That album, for as potent as it is, might be one of the most nightmarish grunge albums ever made that describes that form of drug addiction in utterly harrowing terms... and in 2016, Danny Brown followed in that tradition with Atrocity Exhibition. His previous two projects may have reinforced the garish juxtaposition between how much escapist fun drugs could be opposite the grimy, poverty-stricken life he was trying to escape, but Atrocity Exhibition went further, embracing a howling nightmare of experimental production and wild delivery that was looking to drag you into the roots of how horrifying addiction and the underlying depression could be. It's not an album I precisely love - tonally it's all over the place and not all the experimentation in production sticks the landing - but there hasn't really been anything like it in the 2010s in hip-hop, and it absolutely set a new high water mark for Danny Brown as a rapper and artist - I'd never really been a huge fan before, but Atrocity Exhibition definitely brought me on-board in a big way.

Flash forward to 2019, and Danny Brown seems to be in a very different place: he's older, a little more restrained and cleaned-up, he's got a pretty good show on VICELAND that might have its weird moments but isn't really embracing the shock in the same way his albums have. And thus I didn't really expect him to go further down the rabbit hole for his new project uknowhatimsayin¿ - sure, names like JPEGMAFIA and Run The Jewels and Thundercat and Blood Orange attached to production did suggest this was going to be weird, but likely a more controlled, focused brand of weird. Still, I was fascinated to see where Danny Brown would land, and it was hard to not be excited about that set of collaborators, so what did we get with uknowhatimsayin¿?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 12, 2019 (VIDEO)

Well, that was a bit quicker to get online than I otherwise expected. Short week, y'all.

Anyway, next up is Danny Brown, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 12, 2019

So last week I said that I expected an album bomb from DaBaby - I did not expect one of this size, I'll admit that! Yeah, while the majority of it fell below the top 40, all of DaBaby's KIRK hit the Hot 100 this week, and given that's comfortably over eight new songs, the album bomb rules are in effect. Shame it's about the only thing interesting to happen to the Hot 100 this week, but since I wasn't really planning to review the album at length, this'll give me a good opportunity to get caught up, I guess.

video review: 'ghosteen' by nick cave & the bad seeds

And here we are. First big review of the week, and man, this was a beauty to get through...

Anyway, up next is Billboard BREAKDOWN, and then Danny Brown - stay tuned!

album review: 'ghosteen' by nick cave & the bad seeds

I had a surprising amount of trepidation approaching this album.

And I feel it's important to admit that before going in because if you know my history surrounding Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, you might find that surprising. This is an act I can convincingly argue has made some of the best albums of the past forty years spanning a half dozen different genres, fiercely literate but not at the expense of striking melodies and dynamic performances. I still hold they have at least two bonafide 10/10 classic albums, the first being 1990's The Good Son, the latter you all should know as 2016's Skeleton Tree, which very nearly was my top album of that year if it wasn't for Dave Cobb's country compilation masterpiece Southern Family. But for a project that wracked with grief, both in the passing of his son and an exploration of the failure of narrative and art to encapsulate it... how in the Nine Hells do you follow it?

Well, this takes us to Ghosteen, the new double album that was promising to lean even further into the fractured electronic and ambient textures that have coloured his work in the 2010s, and could very well be even more touched by grief - many people forget that much of his work on Skeleton Tree was written before his son's tragic passing in 2015. And thus I was preparing for the sort of overwhelming emotional experience that was listening to Skeleton Tree, an album I can rarely listen to in public... but I also knew the odds of replicating such an experience was impossibly steep, so I was preparing for a project just a little less than what we got in 2016, especially across a double album that many were saying was even more spare and abstract in its poetry. So okay, what did Ghosteen bring?

video review: 'hey, i'm just like you' by tegan and sara

Really welcome surprise with this one - really happy it came together, definitely check this out!

Next up... hmm, I want to knock something off my backlog that I've been liking for some time, so stay tuned!

album review: 'hey, i'm just like you' by tegan and sara

So I'll admit this was a swerve I didn't expect from Tegan and Sara. When this duo went outright synthpop on Heartthrob in 2013 and followed it up with Love You To Death three years later, I assumed their path had been set, especially given how much crossover success they found in the mean time. Sure, some of the diehard rock set were a little alienated by the pivot, but it seemed like a lot of them were more forgiving in the end, especially if they remembered how they started very early in their career with songs that flirted with pop structures.

But I won't deny that I was among the people who were both surprised and a little encouraged that the duo was going to bring back their electric guitars for their newest project Hey, I'm Just Like You. More to the point, it would be revisiting and tweaking many cuts they had written or cut as demos in their teenage years but given the benefit of twenty years in the industry, a little more refinement. And to me this seemed like a fascinating but smart choice: I've long held the opinion that their pop pivot did wonders for tightening up their writing and easing the strained stabs at indie rock obliqueness that left me more frustrated with their work in the 2000s than I'd normally like to admit. Now granted, I had no idea how this would translate to 2019 - going back to So Jealous and The Con, those are two records with structures and tones that are inextricably linked to the 2000s, and a quick relisten to both projects reminded me precisely how hit-and-miss they could be, especially on the more twee side - but I did see the potential, so what did we get on Hey, I'm Just Like You?

video review: 'heartache medication' by jon pardi

Huh, I honestly thought this would attract more interest... eh, makes my plans for 2020 all the more valid, I guess.

Anyway, I feel like some jaunty pop rock, so Tegan and Sara are next; stay tuned!

album review: 'heartache medication' by jon pardi

Okay, I'll just say it: in my reviews of Jon Pardi up to this point, the majority of the problem is me.

And this is one of those utterly exasperating issues as a music critic where yes, to the mainstream Nashville listener Pardi represents a sound that is entirely up my alley and should be getting all the praise in the world in the current subset of neotraditional revivalists we're seeing, especially in his choice of production. And I can see on the surface how Jon Pardi basically answers all of my major complaints about the corporate, pop-pandering side of Nashville by delivering a rich, vintage timbre that could have been imported straight from the early 90s... and yet I've been lukewarm on him at best, right from when I covered his debut in 2014. Don't get me wrong, I like that his success is nudging Nashville in that organic, neotraditional direction, but between never quite liking his vocal timbre and songwriting that just feels a bit underwhelming - plus the wealth of indie country acts that just do this sort of sound better - I know how it makes me come across like a country music hipster not getting onboard, even though I'd argue that just because you have a neotraditional sound doesn't mean the delivery or songs hold up. And while the country music hipster part is probably true, I actually did have some hope that with his mainstream niche firmly established he'd be able to double down and not have to rely on consistently his most generic songs as singles, so I really did want to like what he was going to deliver with Heartache Medication - it really did seem like Jon Pardi was going in the right direction, so did his album deliver?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 5, 2019 (VIDEO)

Bit of a slow episode, but it happens. Hope you all enjoy it, regardless!

video review: 'hot motion' by temples

And here we go - a little disappointed with this one as a whole, but we'll see if maybe a few moments linger.

Next up, I'm feeling like some country, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 5, 2019

The prediction I made last week was that this week would be relatively quiet - I was not expecting it to be this quiet. Sure, next week could well see a small album bomb from DaBaby or maybe a smattering of Kevin Gates, but this week? Yeah, one of the fewest numbers of new arrivals I've seen in 2019... and yet I'm not really all that thrilled about it, given that the current Hot 100 feels kind of shaky to mediocre on average, and I'm not seeing what's going to make it better.

album review: 'hot motion' by temples

You know, this is the third time I've reviewed a Temples album and had the feeling that either everyone else is missing something in the experience... or it's just me and I'm maybe putting a band on a pedestal that doesn't belong there.

And that's a pretty rare thing for me - normally I'm confident when I praise an album I can point to exactly everything that works so damn well, and I'd like to say the same thing about Temples... but it feels a little less tangible with this band, especially as I've come down pretty heavily on blatant retro throwbacks with oblique lyrics before. Normally my answer has been, 'well, the compositions are so remarkably catchy and hook-driven to match a well-produced mix and underrated songwriting, that has to be it'... but outside of specific songs I don't tend to revisit Temples albums in the same way I do other acts I've praised to hell and back... until I put together end of the year lists and enjoy them back to front all over again! And while a bunch of musicians tend to agree with assessments of this band, a lot of critics don't - pretty consistently too, especially coming on their pop pivot with Volcano in 2017 that I loved just as much as their 2014 debut. So yes, I was setting myself up to adore this album and probably make many of the same defenses, even if this time it looked like critical reception was harsher than ever, but screw that: how was Hot Motion?

video review: 'SOUND & FURY' by sturgill simpson

You know, I kept thinking I'd get more backlash to this one... eh, we'll have to see whether it firmly kills as much of Sturgill's career as he's clearly trying.

Anyway, next up is Temples, but probably first some Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

resonators 2019 - episode #021 - 'black on both sides' by mos def (VIDEO)

Honestly a bit surprised I managed to get this out on time... but hey, it's a great album, happy to talk about it. Enjoy!