video review: 'trench' by twenty one pilots

It's strange that it feels like I'm the one who somehow wound up being the most cool on this album of the YouTube critics. I mean, it's not bad - it's a good, thematically rich listen, but I'm not convinced the hooks are there and the songs are as gripping, and the sonic palette got really draining after a while. Just not really feeling it, I guess.

But next up... so much Lil Wayne, folks, it's a big album bomb coming, so stay tuned?

album review: 'trench' by twenty one pilots

Well, it's been a bit of a journey getting to this point... and I'm not even sure I can say that with a straight face, because I think what people think about my opinions around twenty-one pilots are very different than the actual reality, so I think it might help to bring folks up to speed.

So, twenty-one pilots. They started off the late 2000s and very early 2010s with two independent albums that fans in the Clique adore a fair bit more than they deserve - not that there wasn't good ideas but both records are desperately unpolished, leaving twenty-one pilots as one of the few groups that actually got better through signing to Fueled By Ramen in the early 2010s. This led to them putting out their major label debut Vessel in 2013, a genre-blurring mess of an album that I still wound up considering pretty great because the compositions and songwriting contributed to sharp hooks, a keen sense of self-awareness, and a few genuinely brilliant tracks. In 2015 they followed it with Blurryface, delivered even more polished compositions and then ascended right up their own asses with a blistering self-aware dissection of their newfound fame... and it's also their best album to date and one of the best albums of 2015. And if it sounds like these comments are phrased to intentionally annoy the Clique... well, they are, but it's all in good fun and with the realization that I'm a pretty big fan of this group too - I'm just also very much aware of when a band starts taking the piss out of themselves - which may have been the entire damn arc of Blurryface, for the record.

But I'll admit I was worried about Trench. Yes, the actual guitar on 'Jumpsuit' was exciting to me and the hope that this group was finally going to get some rock muscle was only encouraging... but I'll freely admit that there were warning signs about this project that made me wary. Because even going back two years later I did not like 'Heathens', and the less said about that butchering of My Chemical Romance's 'Cancer' the better, but both were signs that the band was starting to drown in their own veneer, and I wasn't sure a dystopian concept record was the way out of that, especially given that in my circles the hype seemed oddly muted. But hey, I still think this band is talented and having heard their blatant copycats and wannabes chase their fanbase, I was curious where they'd take their sound next, so what did we get with Trench?

video review: 'lamp lit prose' by dirty projectors

Okay, so this was a mess... but again, I haven't seen much of a backlash yet, so this'll be interesting...

Next up... well, the record I was looking to cover I'm saving for a possible collab, and then there's a top ten list to work on, so maybe it's time to go into the backlog for what's next... stay tuned!

album review: 'lamp lit prose' by dirty projectors

So stop me if you've heard this one: a rock band breaks out in the mid-2000s, releases a critically acclaimed record in the last few years of the decade... and then abruptly, everything seems to go awry, as what many critics perceive as the greatest draw of the group depart, leaving a solo frontman who decides to double down on his own ego and talents under the band name for an increasingly pronounced pop pivot with questionable returns...

But enough about Panic! At The Disco, we're here to review Dirty Projectors, right? And the parallels aren't that exact - Dirty Projectors managed to get a second well-received record off of Bitte Orca with Swing Lo Magellan before a sizable chunk of the band quit, even if my opinions on the band remain pretty mixed to this day - but the more I thought about it the more it kind of fit in a twisted way. Hell, delve into the songwriting and it's not hard to see similarities between David Longstreth and Brendon Urie in wildly overwritten ego-driven posturing, especially in the face of Urie losing his entire band and Longstreth facing the departure of both Angel Deradoorian and Amber Coffman, whose unique harmonies would probably be highlighted as the most distinctive facet of the band to any casual fan. And then you have to look at them both doubling down on long-standing influences, with Urie focusing on musical theater and vintage pop and Longstreth stepping into a weird R&B/indie pop blend on a self-titled project that may have been passable but felt way more awkward and uncomfortable than it should have, especially in the content. But hey, now Longstreth is looking in a more positive, upbeat direction with an album cover that seems to be openly aping Bitte Orca - a loaded callback if there is one - so hopefully this would connect more strongly, right?

video review: 'i'm all ears' by let's eat grandma

So apparently the general response here is that nobody really gives a shit about this album and me covering it. /sigh

Anyway, next up... hmm, we might have a surprise coming, stay tuned!

album review: 'i'm all ears' by let's eat grandma

So this is going to be a strange one - and this time, I don't have any excuses, I put this on my schedule myself when I started seeing the critical acclaim rolling in. And I'll freely admit that when I discovered this was an indie pop duo from the UK who met as children and starting writing reportedly these strange, off-kilter songs, I thought I had a firm idea what I was getting into.

And after listening to their debut... well, I still think I do, but that's more because the weird kaleidoscope of sounds that Let's Eat Grandma incorporates does make a strange sort of sense. Yes, the obvious comparisons can be made to the dream pop scene with the spacey textures and extended song structures that all go on way too long, but the more obvious comparison was a subgenre I haven't touched on in a long time: anti-folk. You know the types, the ones that take the more earnest songwriting tropes of folk music and bend them until they snap, and considering how much of the debut read like an extended, slightly twisted subversion of fairy tales - and how much pop has disappeared up its own ass in the 2010s, even in the mainstream - Let's Eat Grandma was intriguing but not particularly gripping, at least for me.

But that debut, mostly comprised of songs the girls had written in their younger years, got a lot of attention, including from experimental pop producer SOPHIE who keeps showing up in my reviews this past month. And given that she was stepping in alongside David Wrench on production made me think I'm All Ears might be a sonic departure, heading towards more glittery synthpop than the anti-folk that gave Let's Eat Grandma such a distinctive presence in the scene. But hey, considering all of the critical acclaim I was certainly curious, so what did we find on I'm All Ears?

video review: 'high as hope' by florence + the machine

So, uh, yeah, this was surprisingly great. Definitely recommend you all check this out, it's certainly worth it.

But now for something... huh, this'll be interesting. Stay tuned!

album review: 'high as hope' by florence + the machine

I'm a little stunned that I haven't heard more about this record.

See, I remember in 2015 when Florence + The Machine unleashed How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful with 'What Kind Of Man', arguably one of the band's best ever songs and one of my favourite songs of that year... and yet I was lukewarm to the record itself. Unlike that song, more of the album couldn't sustain the oversold bombast from the production or Florence's heavily multi-tracked delivery, which was a damn shame because the writing had never been better. And yes, I know I'm very much in the minority when it comes to opinions on that record, but returning to it I was continuously struck by how damn uneven it felt. 

And thus I was interested to hear how much High As Hope was pivoting out of this territory, instead reportedly going for a brand of minimalism that seemed almost antithetical to Florence + The Machine's approach across their career, and that's before you note how they had switched producers to Emile Haynie, who primarily got his start in hip-hop before racking up credits across the mainstream for the past decade, from Kid Cudi to Eminem, from Kanye to Lana Del Rey. So yeah, while critics have been pretty receptive, I wasn't sure what we could be getting with this, especially as it's Florence + The Machine's shortest record to date. So okay, how is High As Hope?

video review: 'the future and the past' by natalie prass

Yeah, really took me way too long to get to this one... and I really do wish it was better, but it's got its merits.

On a slightly more dispiriting note... look, just stay tuned?

album review: 'the future and the past' by natalie prass

So I remember a few years back I described a certain brand of indie pop and folk that I tended not to like, that I and other critics have branded as 'twee'... and in retrospect, I think my opinions have evolved on this subject. Because give the aesthetic style even a bit more thought and you'd think that parts of it would be right up my alley: earnestness, a songwriterly attention to detail, organic texture that rewards patience and nuance in the listener, you'd think this would resonate...

And in truth that's all probably true, so maybe 'twee' is the wrong designation... but I also can't deny that there's a certain delicate, overly arranged and yet very accessible, borderline 'basic' aesthetic that doesn't resonate as strongly if that core of strength doesn't come through. And for a prime example of this, let's talk about Natalie Prass, an indie pop singer-songwriter most recognizable for her thin, fluttery vocal delivery and very polished, borderline baroque pop arrangements who won buckets of critical acclaim for her self-titled debut in 2015. And yeah, I can see the quality: she's a wry and clever songwriter, the arrangements are certainly lush and pretty with their strings and horns, and there's a theatricality to her presentation I can usually appreciate... but it just never gripped me more deeply, a record I can appreciate more than actually enjoy. And thus I was wary when I saw her follow-up show up on my schedule, but I was certainly intrigued by the buzz - reportedly that core of strength had finally materialized, along with her taking a stridently political direction after having to junk an entire record of songs that she felt just didn't fit with the current climate. And while this album hasn't quite been getting the rave reviews of her debut, I thought there was a chance this album could click for me more than her last, so how is The Future And The Past?

video review: 'oil of every pearl's un-insides' by SOPHIE

Yeah, I kind of expected the backlash here... eh, it happens.

Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN and then 5 Seconds Of Summer, so stay tuned!

album review: 'oil of every pearl's un-insides' by SOPHIE

So I tend to find it interesting what people's threshold for 'weird' is in electronica, mostly because I'm fairly certain mine is pretty skewed. Most of this I can attribute to when I started getting into electronic music in the first place a couple of years back, which found me delving into the critically acclaimed experimental electronic music that seriously challenged the art form rather than the foundational artists in house, techno, and other associated subgenres, most of which I found later. But what this means is that it set a strange baseline for what I would consider 'challenging' electronica, one that's probably not common with anybody else.

So for an easy example, let's talk about SOPHIE - known to work with Charli XCX and the PC Music group with chipper, burbling synths, lumpy, overblown and distorted progressions, and a sensibility somewhere between late 90s bubblegum pop and k-pop for synthesizing maddeningly catchy music, I had been aware of SOPHIE going back at least as far as her 2015 project Product, but I hadn't been thrown off-guard as so many were. Yeah, the mixes could feel slapdash and unbalanced, and the frequented pitched-up vocals could grate on my nerves, but beyond that... well, she at least had a pop sensibility in comparison to a producer like Arca, but that gave me the impression that this was considered so mindblowing and genre-pushing only with respect to modern electro-pop. And yeah, while it felt undercooked lyrically and I wasn't remotely convinced this was that experimental, I enjoyed it for what it was, and as such I wasn't nearly as surprised when she notched credits on Vince Staples' newest project, or that she'd have a larger release following up on the compilation Product waiting in the wings that's getting the bandwagon critical acclaim. So did SOPHIE manage to live up to all of those expectations with Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides?

video review: '7' by beach house

Man, I knew this record was getting critical acclaim... it's nice to come into that mold on my own, though, I really did think this was pretty great. Definitely recommended if you want to get back on the Beach House train, it's worth it.

Next up... whoo, this'll be an obscure one, stay tuned!

album review: '7' by beach house

So I'll admit the last time I talked about Beach House three years ago - the first time I ever had on my channel - it didn't precisely go well. Part of that was inescapable - while I do love Teen Dream and Bloom I appreciate those records most because they expand and heighten the mantra-like dreamy melodies at the core of the duo's sound, compensating for poetic and well-considered but occasionally underweight lyrics. But on the flipside you get records like Depression Cherry which served to strip away so much of that atmosphere where it became much harder to get lost in the mist, and elements that could prove playfully eccentric on one record could feel undercooked or even pretentious when stripped of their packaging. It was hard to ignore the feeling that both Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars in 2015 felt like a regression, albeit for different reasons - I didn't formally review Thank Your Lucky Stars, so here goes: I appreciate the return of more atmosphere and more layered production, but the melodies and songwriting felt even more threadbare and like a retread of past records. Not bad, but not exactly a project I'd revisit over their best work.

So I can't tell you how excited I was to cover 7, Beach House's newest record and one that buzz was suggesting was their most dark and experimental in some time. Departing from longtime producer Chris Coady, Beach House acknowledged that when they worked with an outside producer at all it was Peter Kember, known for his work with Spacemen 3, MGMT and Panda Bear as well as for electronic records under the alias Sonic Boom. And while I expected Beach House to continue with their typical sound - this is not a band that takes dramatic sonic risks - I did hope that they were heading towards the heavier direction pushed on Bloom, which I'd probably consider my favourite of their projects to date. So alright, what did I find on 7?

video review: 'tranquility base hotel + casino' by arctic monkeys

So here's the first review of the night, bound to be the most controversial... but we're not done yet, so stay tuned!

album review: 'tranquility base hotel & casino' by arctic monkeys

Most of you probably don't remember the last time I reviewed the Arctic Monkeys. It was nearly five years ago, I didn't have a proper camera yet, but I was mostly positive towards the record and I did think it had some moments that worked for me...

And everyone hated it! Yeah, I'll admit I was still very much in the learning curve for making album reviews, but the backlash I got to being mostly ambivalent on this indie darling was pretty pronounced, mostly because my review consisted of some... let's call them mixed opinions on their back catalog. Suffice to say, Arctic Monkeys broke around the same time as a lot of other bands in a similar noisy, post-punk revival brand of indie rock, and when you paired it with observational songwriting that might have had moments of self-awareness but was often way too sour and acerbic to really resonate with me, as a group they just never clicked more deeply with me. Yes, you can make the argument that Alex Turner was one of the wittiest and smartest guys in the room, but if you know it and want everyone else to know it, any amount of self-deprecation doesn't make you any less of a dick! It's absolutely no surprise the band became a Gen X critical darling in the mid-2000s - and also no surprise that as they got older and arguably more mature and their fury curdled into detached, snide bitterness, said fans mostly stuck around... provided, of course, they could get behind the shifts in sound. Yeah, that was the other thing - Arctic Monkeys may have started in some furious, borderline punk territory, but they got way slower and more indebted to a conventional rock canon with every record, especially as they started embracing stoner rock elements on Humbug and psychedelic elements on Suck It And See and AM. And that was the frustrating thing for me: this band is clearly talented and had the capacity to take sonic risks and write some damn catchy songs... but the content and a lot of Alex Turner's delivery left a bad taste in my mouth.

Still, when I heard the band was taking a stark departure in their sound for lounge-inspired smooth jazz and spacey pop tones... yeah, you might have seen traces of that coming on previous records, but this sounded like something far out, and a record that has proven quite polarizing for a lot of fans. And hell, I was intrigued - maybe if Alex Turner could get out of his own head in terms of content, he could write something interesting, so what did we get with Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino?

video review: 'primal heart' by kimbra

Well, this was a pretty damn good record, definitely enjoyable and recommended!

And hopefully on a similar note to handle some long-overdue business... stay tuned!

album review: 'primal heart' by kimbra

Man, it's been a while since I've had such mixed feelings going into a review.

And to explain why, we need to go back to 2012 - the pop charts are being overrun with out-of-nowhere indie breakthroughs, and 'Somebody That I Used To Know' is becoming one of the biggest sleeper hits of the 2010s. But Kimbra had gotten her start earlier with an off-kilter brand of indie pop that took old school glamour and spent an album driving noisy spikes into it. Occasionally unsettling but frequently compelling, Vows was a really damn potent indie debut, and her collaboration with Gotye seemed to give Kimbra the opening she needed...

And then in 2014 we got The Golden Echo. Now I'll freely admit my review of that record is not one of my best, but the record as a whole didn't hold up then and four years haven't improved it. Critical and commercial momentum hit a brick wall as her characteristically unstable and overwrought production collided with R&B and 90s pop-inspired tones, muddying her usually sharp satirical edge, and her choice to stick almost entirely with her cooing upper register made an already overlong record a chore to get through. Now don't get me wrong, there were some high points that made it compelling, but it's a little understandable it's been four years since that release, and there were major shakeups in the production staff, bringing on John Congleton as a major co-producer and also nabbing credits from Natasha Bedingfield and Skrillex. And considering how often this record had been pushed back, I didn't really have high expectations but I at least hoped Kimbra could make a return to form, especially as Vows has held up to this day. So alright, what did we get with Primal Heart?

video review: 'superorganism' by superorganism

I'm not sure how many people will care about this review - or hell, how many people even give a shit about this group, I might be seriously misreading the buzz they have - but really, I think more folks should give them a look, if only because the BROCKHAMPTON comparison is bound to turn a few heads in the right direction.

Anyway, next up is some old business - stay tuned!

album review: 'superorganism' by superorganism

So I make reference all the time to how in the modern age there has been an explosion of music for audiences to find and access over the internet, more than I'll likely ever be able to cover. But there is a second side to this, and it comes in the creative side - namely that the Internet makes meeting and collaborating with fellow musicians so much easier, especially if you're not all in the same place. 

And while there are some cases where the members send in their parts remotely and only come together to tour, in recent years the DIY collectivist side of many acts eventually draws them together - we saw this with BROCKHAMPTON and now it seems like we're seeing it again with Superorganism. Now originally this was more of a conventional band, a four-piece New Zealand group called The Eversons that put out a few records in the early 2010s, but when they connected with future frontwoman Orono Noguchi, they made plans to emigrate to London and all live together, eventually bringing on board two other singers from New Zealand named Ruby and B and a South Korean singer named Soul, who has not yet joined the collective in London. From there, it seemed like an indie pop version of what BROCKHAMPTON had done halfway across the world, just this time focused more on indie pop and dance - and they've had a surprising amount of success, including a single on the FIFA 18 video game and a minor charting hit on the alternative charts. So there was certainly buzz with their self-titled debut and I'll admit I was curious, so what did we get from Superorganism?