album review: 'froot' by marina and the diamonds

This might be my most requested record ever. Not the new Kendrick Lamar, not the new Modest Mouse or Of Montreal or AWOLNATION, this album. And I want to make this clear: I've been getting requests to cover Marina and the Diamonds since 2013 back when I started this channel. This has been a pop act I have been so inundated with requests that I talk about that it's been a struggle for me not to immediately drop into backlash mode. Because let's be blunt: when I get this many requests for an album, it's either massively popular - in this case it's not - it's incredibly good - that needed to be seen - or it's massively overrated with a diehard fanbase that won't stop even when I've said I'll cover it multiple times.

So now that time has come: Marina and the Diamonds, not a band but the solo project of Marina Diamandis, English pop singer-songwriter who made her big debut in 2010 with The Family Jewels. And as a debut in an era where UK pop was finally starting to make a splash stateside, it was a wildly varied, genuinely interesting pop album that crossed a lot of styles, featured Marina's unique vocal range, and had some genuinely intelligent lyrics. A lot of critics made comparisons of her as a cross between Lady Gaga and Kesha, but I'd argue there's a much easier comparison point in sound and style: Natalia Kills, but while Kills was more driven by icy hip-hop styles, Marina was more inspired by the garish, more theatrical indie baroque pop scene of the late-2000s from acts like mid-period Sia and Lily Allen. But the Natalia Kills comparison works - they're both playing a similar blend of rough-edged glam, they both have a theatrical presence in lyrics and delivery, and they both were better writers than your average pop starlet.

But here's the thing: Natalia Kills stuck to her guns, and even though her sophomore album Trouble sold terribly it was still an improvement across the board and probably an album I underrated when I first reviewed it. Marina and the Diamonds, on the other hand, got on board with Dr. Luke, Cirkut, Diplo, and Greg Kurstin and suddenly all of the personality and lyrical flavor I liked about her seemed to evaporate. Sure, the femme fatale persona could have worked, she's got the voice for it, but the self-awareness in the songwriting and the painfully generic electropop production did nothing for it. Yeah, there were moments that clawed back some of that personality, but not enough to save Electra Heart from being painfully generic for me.

So I'll admit to being a little interested when I heard that her newest album FROOT was going to be pitching all of the big name producers for something much more self-controlled with only a single producer besides Marina working on it. Would this mean more of her unique personality and songwriting skill returning to the forefront?

video review: 'complicated game' by james mcmurtry

Man, I was expecting this album to be good, but this was a welcome punch. Damn great record, I find more to love about it with every listen.

Next up... you know, I think it's time I finally cover that album. Not that one, the other one. Stay tuned!

album review: 'complicated game' by james mcmurtry

It's rare that country music gets angry these days. You know, get the blood pumping for a righteous cause, something that might cause someone to load up a shotgun, grab a bottle of hard bourbon, and roll out to kick some ass. The part of me that loves outlaw country has a certain fondness for this brand of music, but it's gotten increasingly rare in the modern day, especially when the causes behind said songs tend to develop an isolationist streak that doesn't wear well. Like it or not, most of country is a conservative genre, and considering most country songwriters don't tell dark stories any more, it means that anger can come across as reactionary, and that rarely works out well, especially when the cause can be less than just.

And let's be clear, this has been an issue for decades now, but a particularly ugly side of it reared in the mid-2000s, because country was a genre that got increasingly torn on political lines. As much as I don't like the Dixie Chicks, there was a certain righteous rage to 'Not Ready To Make Nice' at getting tarred and feathered by the country establishment for being anti-Bush on the War on Terror. Now history has vindicated The Dixie Chicks years too late for it to matter, but the issue I always took with their statements, musical or otherwise, was that their framing could come across as a little preachy. Which, really, is a classic example of the biggest and most accurate criticism hurled at liberals these days, in that they're not populist and consider themselves above the discourse. If liberals are so smart and want to help everyone, why do we talk down to the audience or not show real empathy?

You want to know who did this approach a lot better? Singer-songwriter James McMurtry, born in Texas, originally a country singer in the 90s, but it wasn't until 2005 and his critically acclaimed album Childish Things that he really struck gold with songs like 'We Can't Make It Here Anymore' that struck the perfect balance and was named by acclaimed music critic Robert Christgau as the best song of the decade. Nuanced, harshly critical and pointing the finger at the right people, framed as speaking with the people and not down to them, and with a real simmering undercurrent of rage that underscored every brutal detail of his material. It also helped matters he was a great songwriter who had excellent production, a ton of texture, and solid hooks - the man didn't just write great music, he wrote great stories with detail and humanity that you could easily imagine. Throw in thematic cohesion and a solid as hell performance and you can bet he won me over.

Now he followed Childish Things with Just Us Kids in 2008, which kept the sharp writing but cranked up the anger a little hotter with harsher, more aggressive grooves - all positives, I might add - but then for nearly seven years, he seemed to disappear, with only a live album holding us over. And yet now one of the best songwriters in the industry is back with a brand new record - does the fire hold now that Bush and Cheney are long gone?

video review: 'levon vincent' by levon vincent

So yeah, this is late. My plan was for it to be out midway through last week, but real life decided to really kick me in the balls. It does that on occasion.

Next up, another artist you probably haven't heard of, and then one you guys haven't stopped requesting for YEARS now. Stay tuned!

album review: 'levon vincent' by levon vincent

So here's one of the frustrating things about being an album critic covering electronic music: if you're not careful, you'll end up missing a lot of music. To some extent, electronic music has always been somewhat driven by singles that are then chopped and remixed into dozens of different forms, but with the rise of the Internet, there's been even less of an incentive to put together complete albums. As such, it's a lot more likely for an electronic producer to have built up a considerable following or even some brand of critical acclaim without ever dropping an album.

This seems to be the case for Levon Vincent. Originally from New York before moving to Berlin, he's been steadily building a following in the electronic underground thanks to a selection of very well-received EPs and 12'' singles throughout the past decade. And thanks to the sudden growth in interest in deep house and darker, more challenging brands of electronic music, it doesn't surprise me that Levon Vincent might choose this time to drop his debut, self-titled album. And for me, it's a good chance to continue my exploration into electronic music and check out the meticulous work of a veteran I might never have had the chance to hear - so what did we get?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 21, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this was another struggle to get online. Damn, this took too long...

Okay, next up, schedule as usual, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 21, 2015

Sometimes on Billboard BREAKDOWN, we can get some pretty rough weeks... but sometimes you the weeks where it all just clicks in some of the best ways possible. The good songs win, the bad songs lose, the new songs kick ass, and even the returning tracks aren't bad. I don't think it's quite possible to ever have a perfect week - simply based on the law of averages I reckon it's impossible to a Hot 100 that's all great music - but you can have great weeks. And folks, we came pretty close here - yeah, we got some rough songs, but we also got a bonafide classic, and I couldn't be happier about that.

video review: 'blade of the ronin' by cannibal ox

I don't know if it was fair to hope that this would be as great as The Cold Vein, but it could have been better than this.

Next up, I'm going to do someone that I'm shocked nobody hasn't covered yet. No, it's not Madonna - I have no intentions of covering her desperate attempts to keep with the timese, it's just getting sad at this point. Instead... well, stay tuned!

album review: 'blade of the ronin' by cannibal ox

So here's one of the joys of discovering a great artist, at least for me: I now have an easy excuse to go through their entire back catalog and listen to anything they might have done in the past. Which, sure, it adds to my backlog but often times it's more than worth it as I often get the chance to pick up albums that I would never have otherwise heard if I had just stuck to the mainstream.

So when I heard the collaboration between Killer Mike and El-P with Run The Jewels back in 2013, not being as familiar with either artist as I wanted to be, I tore through their back catalogs with gusto. With Killer Mike it was easier - I already knew a bunch of his stuff through familiarity with Dungeon Family so finally listening to those solo albums was a welcome treat, especially PL3DGE and R.A.P. Music. But El-P was different - he might have had a slightly smaller back catalog of albums, but a record like Cancer 4 Cure demanded multiple in-depth listens to decode and fully take in. El-P was not a rapper who made simple music, in his bars or his productions, and that meant to really appreciate it, it simply took more time.

And as such, it took me a while to finally branch out and start digging into the artists for whom El-P had producer credits, and while I was already familiar with Cage and The Weathermen and really enjoyed what I heard from Company Flow, one release that really caught my ear was The Cold Vein by New York hip-hop duo Cannibal Ox, entirely produced by El-P. And for good reason, it's a killer underground hip-hop record that's damn close to a classic featuring some stellar production and both MCs Vordul and Vast Aire dropping bar after bar of hard-edged and insightful wordplay. It's not precisely an easy album to take in - it's pretty icy and bleak, especially when you dig into the subject matter - but it's definitely worth it.

And thus it's always been a little surprising that Cannibal Ox didn't follow up The Cold Vein immediately. Instead the duo split and dropped a few solo albums apiece and parted ways with El-P, but it wouldn't be until 2013 where they would drop a new EP with new material, songs that would eventually end up on their newest album, Blade Of The Ronin. And look, I had mixed expectations going into this - sure, they might not have El-P's beats, but it's not like they would have become worse wordsmiths, so the album was probably pretty damn good, right?

video review: 'another eternity' by purity ring

Well, it sure as hell was pretty, I'll give them that, and mostly soothing against the monster headache I had today (it hasn't gotten better). 

Next up, Cannibal Ox - and please god, don't disappoint me that hard...

album review: 'another eternity' by purity ring

It's a weird experience listening to Purity Ring.

See, when they finally released their debut album Shrines in 2012 after drip-feeding a number of singles, it immediately attracted a lot of attention for the plethora of bizarre contradictions on display. Gleaming, shimmering keyboards that were reminiscent of the cleanest dream pop and synthpop paired with roiling waves of wobbling heavy synth and hi-hats that reminded me of trap-favoured hip-hop. The ghostly vocals of Megan James paired with the cavernous oily moans of pitch-shifting, her sweet delivery paired with lyrics both intricate and innocent and yet shockingly graphic. The band was layers of impenetrability paired with a certain visceral sound that didn't need layers of deconstruction to understand - and when you did eventually parse out the lyrics, they did very much match that feel.

So why have I never been a huge fan of Purity Ring? Well, some of the reasons are pretty basic - I'm just not a fan of pitch-shifted vocals in any capacity, the sound turns me off, even though down-tuning is preferable to the chipmunk voice. But for me as visceral and borderline primal as the emotions Purity Ring struck up could be, it always felt they were blunting it through being needlessly obtuse. Don't get me wrong, I like intricate poetry, but the writing style didn't connect as well as I liked, almost being overwritten for their own sake. The dichotomies of Purity Ring reminded me a lot of St. Vincent's mid-period work on Actor and Strange Mercy, but St. Vincent always felt more grounded, mature and human in her writing instead of Purity Ring's approach of spiraling away into twee abstractions to take away from the plentiful gore if you thought about it literally.

So when I heard that Purity Ring was opting to go for more of a modern pop style, I was both optimistic and a little concerned. On the one hand, a stronger pop approach could lead to a more succinct and direct style of writing, but would the poetry be as interesting without the flowery language? And what would it mean for the instrumentation? So I took a look at Purity Ring's sophomore record another eternity - what did we get?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 14, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, this took longer to get up than I was hoping. Worth it, though.

Next up, got a whole list of artists. Purity Ring, Cannibal Ox, and more - stay tuned

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 14, 2015

So here's an interesting hypothetical for all of you - presume you're an artist who has scheduled to release his album - and then out of nowhere, one of your competition drops a critically acclaimed mixtape/album that gains him a ton of buzz. You're angry, you're annoyed - without warning, he seems to have stolen your thunder - do you delay your record? It's an interesting question - but it appears by staying the course, Big Sean got an interesting results on the charts. Simply put, Drake was riding a wave of hype that managed to lodge ten songs off of his new album on the charts, and when they inevitably faded, something had to replace them. Now sure, Big Sean could have impacted the chart with his album anyway, but I'd argue he wouldn't have lodged as many tracks - and unlike Drake, the songs Big Sean got charting were his best ones. I might not like the guy, but I have to give him props here, even if some of it was pure luck.

video review: 'citizen zombie' by the pop group

Man, I wish I loved this as much as some critics did, but in the end, it didn't quite connect as powerfully as I was hoping. Eh, it happens.

Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN, and then Cannibal Ox or Purity Ring - stay tuned!

album review: 'citizen zombie' by the pop group

So when I talked about The Mavericks' comeback and reviewed Mono, it was at least a comeback that could be explained relatively easily - the group had split apart amicably, it had only been a decade, there was a growing market for old-fashioned country in the wake of bro-country's ascendance, it made sense why they'd take a shot at it.

If only the resurgence of The Pop Group made that much sense. Sure, post-punk has returned more to the spotlight in recent years, especially in the independent scene, but The Pop Group weren't exactly a traditional 'post-punk' group, at least however you can define that nebulous genre. While they might have kept the clear striking guitar textures and deep, washed out mix, it can easily be argued The Pop Group had more in common with funk crossed with free jazz, dub, avant-garde spoken word and noise that most post-punk. And as such, they were held as influential by no-wave acts like Swans to noise acts like Sonic Youth to other post-punk groups like The Birthday Party, which spawned Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. 

But The Pop Group always seemed to have a ramshackle approach that barely seemed sustainable for a few songs, let alone the two albums they managed to release in the end of the 70s - and I have to admit, of the post-punk of that era, The Pop Group is a band I appreciate more than like. Many of their songs had great elements that fired in all sorts of weird directions, but cohesion was always a problem - and it makes sense, considering the band was comprised by a group of teenagers who had more talent and imagination that cooperation. It certainly explained the lyrics, which had some evocative imagery but definitely uneven writing. Internal fighting eventually split the band apart, with the members eventually joining several other punk bands... until 2010, where talk of the band's reunion started. It took five years until Citizen Zombie was finally released - how was it?

video review: 'piece by piece' by kelly clarkson

Well, so much for covering Toby Keith today, which was my plan. Turns out the record was delayed indefinitely, so I have to cover this instead. Lovely.

Next up is The Pop Group, and then Purity Ring and Cannibal Ox - stay tuned!

album review: 'piece by piece' by kelly clarkson

I don't miss a lot about pop music in the mid-2000s, but one of the things I do miss is the relevance of Kelly Clarkson.

As with most reality TV show stars, nobody expected Kelly Clarkson to be huge. She might have been the first to come off of American Idol, but it wasn't like her early singles were all that interesting beyond just being pleasant enough. And speaking as one of those unfortunates who saw From Justin To Kelly and what became of future American Idols with very limited exceptions, nobody expected Kelly Clarkson to do well.

And then her second album Breakaway dropped, and with a gauntlet of songwriters that included her peer Avril Lavigne and Evanescence members Ben Moody and David Hodges, Kelly Clarkson went for pop rock in the best way possible. She took all of the powerhouse vocals that had made her a star and added a convincing rock edge that put her in the same category as artists like Pink, which was a huge positive for me - hell, I'd argue she made better music than Evanescence ever put on record in the mid-2000s! And when she decided to go even darker with My December, I had reason to be enthused, but also a little concerned. 

And for good reason, because looking back eight years later My December is a polarizing album among fans and critics alike. Mostly because it's a nasty little record with a lot of rough, exposed edges that don't exactly make it a comfortable listen. But in retrospect, I wish Kelly Clarkson had chosen to keep going in this direction, because I reckon with more time, she could have fashioned herself something just as potent as some of the Alanis Morissette she idolized.

That didn't happen. Instead, Kelly Clarkson went back to making finely tuned pop records with the guiding hands of Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, and Dr. Luke. And sure, she's made songs I like from All I Ever Wanted and Stronger, but they're nowhere near as emotionally intense as her mid-2000s material or as interesting as My December. As such, I was planning on skipping this album altogether until the requests started pouring in. But hey, she might have something here that's solid, right?

video review: 'mono' by the mavericks

And that's two for tonight. Whew.

Okay, next... either The Pop Group, Toby Keith, or (if I have to) Kelly Clarkson. Stay tuned!

video review: 'our own house' by misterwives

Damn, this was a welcome surprise. Glad to see this transferred in the studio from the live version.

Next up is The Mavericks, stay tuned!

album review: 'our own house' by misterwives

So here's an odd coincidence that I don't recall ever happening before when I've covered an act on this show - I actually saw them live before getting their album.

See, last year I managed to get tickets to go see Bleachers - spoiler alert, it was incredible - and their opening act was an indie pop group called MisterWives. The New York-based band had been getting traction through other tours, most notably with Twenty-One Pilots and American Authors and a hot EP and single release. Heavily inspired by 80s synthpop, they were a natural fit to open for Bleachers, and really, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed their set. Not only bringing a lot of energy, but with an eclectic sound incorporating horns with keyboards and jittery guitars and frontwoman Mandy Lee Duffy's potent vocals, I remembered thinking that I should really take the time to review the band's album if and when they drop it.

Flash forward six or seven months, and MisterWives have finally dropped that debut record and apparently have garnered enough buzz for me to actually get requests for it, even despite some mixed reviews. So I decided to check it out - what did we get?