album review: 'the incredible true story' by logic

So here's a quandary: you're an up-and-coming rapper who is riding a ton of buzz and you've just dropped your debut album. And while you're getting critical acclaim from some outlets, there are some critics who have come down hard about your flow's resemblance to another more acclaimed MC. And even despite the fact that your production is accessible, even mainstream friendly and your album is selling well, you're not getting radio with any recognizable hits. What do you do next?

Well, there's no easy answer to that question, and for as much as I liked Under Pressure when I reviewed it last year, I was definitely worried about this. I still think the album holds up even despite the easy Kendrick Lamar comparison in his flow, mostly because Logic's brand of smoothness and internally focused introspection does lead to a distinctive personality that I find appealing. But outside of a few songs like 'Nikki' and the criminally underrated 'Metropolis', it's not an album I've found the time to revisit, and I found myself concerned that the 'style-over-substance' criticisms that had been levelled at Logic might have some validity if it wasn't gripping me longer.

So when it came to a sophomore record, when I started hearing the buzz that it would a be a sci-fi narrative-driven concept record... well, if he was looking for a way to stand out and away from Kendrick, this would be the way to do it! Hell, this could be new territory for hip-hop as a genre - I did some research and the closest we'd get here is Deltron 3030, and even with that it hit deeply diminishing returns with the long-awaited sequel Event 2 in 2013. Sure, Big K.R.I.T. took stabs at it with Cadillactica, but not to this narrative level. But at the same time, considering that Logic was going to be handling most of the production himself, this had the feel of an overreach, the sort of ambitious project that could be make or break for a guy like Logic. But hey, I'm a sci-fi nerd and a fan of Logic, so I prayed for the best - did The Incredible True Story deliver?

video review: 'made in the a.m.' by one direction

I'd hate to say 'I told you so'... but truth be told I wasn't even going to do this record until you asked for it, so keep that in mind.

Next up, Logic - stay tuned!

album review: 'made in the a.m.' by one direction

This will be the third time I've reviewed One Direction. It will also probably be the last.

And no, that's not because of any vendetta or grudge I have - I've accepted that their years of teen girl-baiting crap are behind them, mostly left on 2013's Midnight Memories as the guys have grown up and taken more of a role in songwriting. They've gotten older, presumably more mature... and along the way, Zayn left the group. 

And look, I've seen this road before. Having one of your more unique and talented singers of the group exit is never a good sign for boy bands, and the news that One Direction would be going on 'hiatus' after this album sealed it for me. In other words, One Direction were entering the Unbreakable-era of their career, the album made to convince fans that they can still hold things together even minus one member, and it almost always signifies real trouble. Now for the Backstreet Boys that eventually resulted in a more modern pop effort with This Is Us before Kevin rejoined... and yet somehow I don't see that happening. Hell, I can imagine Simon Cowell was probably planning for it too - sales figures have been dropping for each One Direction release, and with an album dropped every year he had know they were approaching burnout. So instead of giving them time off or a little more space to really refine their music, it looks like he's decided to milk the cash cow until she drops.

To put it another way, I was under no expectations this record would be anything close to good. Not only were there less writing credits from the group, but none of the lead-off singles had really impressed me the same way songs like the excellent 'Night Changes' had, so I expected trouble. So how did Made In The A.M. turn out?

video review: 'mr. misunderstood' by eric church

Well damn, I didn't expect this to be nearly as good as it was. Not complaining at all - it's a nice feeling for Eric Church to be on track again, and it's good to put one of my most contentious reviews to the back of my mind for now.

But next up... oh boy, that Logic album is tempting. So let's go for it, stay tuned!

album review: 'mr. misunderstood' by eric church

You know, I've been asked a few times what I think are my worst reviews, or any that I regret. And here's the thing: over the course of nearly doing 500 of these things, you're going to encounter reviews where you look back and just wince a bit - maybe a bad turn of phrase, maybe a slip of the tongue or error in song interpretation, or maybe just an album that has grown or cooled on you over time that makes your review not reflect your feelings now. Now here's the thing: that happens. It's only human for opinions to evolve over time with more information or with changing emotions or even just the passage of time, and reviews being a snapshot of how one feels at a specific moments only further highlights how subjective they really are.

And as such, when you pair all of those factors with an album designed to court controversy with a major shift in artistic direction... well, those are the reviews that tend to spark the most vitriolic reactions... which takes us to Eric Church. I'll wholeheartedly admit my review of his 2014 album The Outsiders is not my best, and when combined with an album that showed Eric Church trying to bend country music in so many different directions, you got a mess all around. It didn't help matters that Eric Church is a contentious artist, drawing on tropes of outlaw country and some interesting songwriting ideas but playing them with little subtlety in the writing or instrumentation. Granted, if I were to reflect on the biggest miscalculation of The Outsiders, it'd be the overwrought, leaden production, courtesy of perennial frustrating producer Jay Joyce.

And as such, when I heard the two had teamed up again to deliver a surprise album of all things, delivered first to registered members of his fan club with ten new tracks not even cracking forty minutes... well, I wasn't sure what to expect. When you consider the record was cut just a few months back and slipped out as a complete surprise, you could either view this is Eric Church satiating his fans with something quick, or him attempting to pull a Beyonce, which he might have been able to do if it wasn't for Chris Stapleton's huge CMA success launching his sales into the stratosphere. But I already reviewed Stapleton's Traveller months ago, so what do we get with Mr. Misunderstood?

video review: 'art angels' by grimes

Well, this was a hard one to crack. Lot of listens, but I think I finally got it.

Next up, it's about time I revisit Eric Church. Brace yourself, folks, and stay tuned!

album review: 'art angels' by grimes

You ever encounter one of those artists that seems to operate so much on their own wavelength that it's difficult to get a clear inroad to how to perceive or understand their art? As a critic, these are always some of the most frustrating acts to discuss - and for the longest time, Canadian electronic artist Grimes seemed to fall into that lane for me. 

Now I've been aware of her existence for years now - I first heard fragments of her music in university when I was going through my darkwave phase, and I've made several attempts over the past five years to try and untangle her artistic persona. On the surface, it might be easy to slot her into the spacious, airy side of dream pop with sparse beats and lots of dark misty atmosphere, somewhere between Enya with a splash of the more eclectic electronic percussion that some have compared to Bjork. But Grimes was more lo-fi and ragged in her presentation, the sort of Garageband-produced material that seemed so fresh online in the late 2000s before everyone started doing it, and the half-heard nature of her vocals and lyrics made things even tougher. I still find her debut record Geidi Primes perversely fascinating, mostly because the deeper reference points to Dune feel simultaneously incomprehensible and yet perfect all the same, the sort of deeply eccentric passion project that you can tell she had zero expectations would catch on. And I'm still trying to make heads or tails out of Halfaxa, which felt less esoteric and alien than her debut but no less impenetrable. I could sketch out reference points to the weirder edges of synthpop, electronica, and indie R&B, but Grimes seemed to exist in her own universe and my grip on it felt tenuous at best. I mean, I liked it, but I had the feeling if I understood it more, I'd like it that much more.

So did things get better with Visions, the first album she released under indie label 4AD? Well, while it might have cleared away some of the lo-fi blur to focus more on the distinctive ghostly electronic scratch paired with more textured percussion, but it seemed like some of the sense of alien mystique was missing. I'm not going to deny that Grimes could handle electro-pop, but the atmosphere wasn't quite as potent. Don't get me wrong, the mid-section of that record comes close to recapturing that feel, but it couldn't help but feel a little individuality had been lost - especially considering that it didn't translate into more of her work being comprehensible! So when I heard things had been cleaned up even more for her newest release after she had scrapped an album that was too dark and negative, I was curious to see where she'd take Art Angels - what did we find?

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

And just think of it, the day after I try to edit a video down just below fifteen minutes, the copyright strike is retracted. GAH.

Anyway, next up is Grimes, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - november 21, 2015

No time for introductions this week - busy week, we'll get to more details surrounding the influx of new country when we get to it, if I want to keep this episode under fifteen minutes because of this goddamn copyright strike, gonna have to go fast!

video review: 'delirium' by ellie goulding

Man, this was a drag. I really wanted this album to be better... but no. No.

Next up, probably Grimes, but if I'm in the mood for a bit of black metal, I might tackle Vallendusk or Panopticon. Stay tuned!

album review: 'delirium' by ellie goulding

Let's go back to 2012 for a second. The pop charts are in a state of upheaval as throughout the majority of the year they've been dominated by indie rock and pop that flagrantly dodged the club material that had been dominating for the past few years. Sure, established stars still have hits, but it's a time where anything can happen, and it leads to one of the most musically fertile years for the pop charts of the decade. And into this time comes a little unassuming song from an indie pop unknown from the UK that seems to be too stripped back and restrained to become huge... and yet rises up to #2.

That song was 'Lights', the artist was Ellie Goulding, and like most hits from the UK, the song had dropped over a year earlier from her reasonably well-received debut album. It was one of those songs that seemed to come from a different universe than mainstream pop, all restraint and atmosphere and esoteric lyricism... and yet it didn't seem to take long for Ellie to jettison most of that for her second album Halcyon, which was bigger, broader, and showed she was just as comfortable playing in more conventional pop too. On the one hand, I can see why some people would take issue with her ditching her more acoustic touches for heavier, more symphonic electropop, especially considering singles like 'I Need Your Love' had her working with Calvin Harris who could run against David Guetta for the least interesting producer working in EDM. On the other hand, though, 'Lights' has always been one of those songs I respect more than I actually like, whereas 'Burn' remains one of my favourite songs of 2014, with Ellie's willowy tones and the bells show exactly how to make a simple pop tune so much more. 

That said, when I heard that Delirium was going to be even more of a pop-centric record, recruiting songwriters like Max Martin, I was a bit uneasy. One of the reasons that I thought Ellie was a good fit for airy, more sweeping electropop or even EDM is her ethereal vocal tone and her more abstract writing - getting her to make more modern pop tracks just struck me as an awkward experiment. That said, 'On My Mind' has grown on me a fair bit, and I figured I might as well give this a chance. How did it go?

video review: 'get weird' by little mix

Well, you all wanted it, you got it.

Next up we've got a fair amount of pop with Ellie Goulding and Grimes, but also country with Eric Church's surprise record and Tim McGraw's new album and holy god this week is going to be so damn busy - so stay tuned!

album review: 'get weird' by little mix

Let's return to the subject of competition.

Now those of you who've been watching since earlier this year know that I opened up my review of Fifth Harmony with the same topic - and that's not a coincidence, because if we're looking for a classic example of Simon Cowell playing labelmates against each other in order to spark up lucrative controversy, it's here. After all, it's a proven formula: the younger, more American-accessible group going against the older, more refined group that's achieved worldwide success. It's N'Sync vs. The Backstreet Boys all over again... and as such, it shouldn't be a surprise which one I'd consider as the better one.

And this shouldn't be that much of a surprise: when I covered Little Mix's Salute early last year, I was startled how much I ended up liking it, with the girls having solid chemistry, pretty decent vocal arrangements and real talent and working with good writers while having a solid writing presence themselves. Hell, their song 'Competition' was exceptionally close to landing on my year-end list for my favourite songs of 2014 - why it wasn't a single, I have absolutely no idea, especially considering that it would have wiped the floor with Fifth Harmony's 'Worth It', a song that for some ungodly reason became a hit playing in a more derivative template. Now I don't want to oversell Salute, because it had its fair share of problems, most notably in production and instrumentation, which tried to retrace 90s pop R&B with mixed results. It really could have benefited from a real budget or a cohesive production team like Girls Aloud had with Xenomania - which might as well be the tagline reviewing any album from Syco Music, so thanks for that, Simon Cowell.

As such, I had slightly mixed emotions going into Get Weird, Little Mix's third album. On the one hand, giving them a guest appearance from Jason Derulo smacked of desperation for a US crossover, and I had no faith whatsoever Simon Cowell was going to give them production to be really stand out; as much as the album title promised that they'd Get Weird, I didn't buy it for a second. On the other hand, I found some writers when digging through the liner notes that were promising, and there still was a core of real talent behind this group. So I gave Get Weird a chance - how does it hold up?

video review: 'bad neighbor' by med, blu & madlib

Man, this record was disappointing, especially given the real talent behind it. Eh, you can't win them all.

Okay, as I said at the end of the video, next up is Little Mix, so stay tuned!

album review: 'bad neighbor' by med, blu & madlib

You ever hear about projects that sound like easy wins in theory but don't end up sticking the landing quite as well as you'd like in reality, perhaps tripped up by their own ambition or artistic choices? Well, if we're looking for two rappers where that might well be the case, M.E.D. and Blu are two examples. Now I've talked about Blu in the past when I reviewed his pretty damn great record Good To Be Home last year, and there's been rumours he had put something together with Madlib as early as 2012, when Blu released the project UCLA for a short time before pulling it when Madlib denied any involvement. But putting that aside, Blu's brand of pseudo-conscious and layered bars would probably be a solid as hell fit against Madlib's more soulful and eccentric production. 

Believe it or not, I was more worried about M.E.D., who had actually worked with Madlib on previous albums as a fellow member of Stones Throw Records, but had run into diminishing returns when his bars didn't quite rise to the level of the excellent production he was getting from producers like Oh No, Just Blaze, and even Dilla. And it wasn't like his monotone was bad - I listen to LMNO and Evidence, that sort of flow and delivery can work - but his rhymes could just feel more awkward than they should against that production, and his content wasn't anything all that special to me.

So when I heard that M.E.D., Blu, and Madlib were teaming up for a collaborative record, with features from MF Doom, Anderson .Paak, Aloe Blacc, Hodgy Beats, Oh No, and even Mayer Hawthorne of all people, I was interested but a little concerned. I expected Blu to fit right at home against Madlib's production - providing, of course, he didn't get lazy, and brought the lyricism that worked so well on Good To Be Home - but had M.E.D. improved enough as an MC to stand out? And would it even matter if he had - most collaboration albums like this feel more like an excuse to sit back, chill, and trade bars, so with the understanding the content was probably going to be nothing groundbreaking, what did we get?

video review: 'ambrosia' by illusive realm

Promised I'd cover it, glad I finally got the chance to get this out. Not a lot to say, but I wanted to say it anyway.

Next up... goddamn it, this MED, Blu and Madlib tape gives me a headache every time I listen through it, so I have no idea what's coming next. Either way, stay tuned!

album review: 'ambrosia' by illusive realms

So we're reaching the time of year when I get a little more time in my schedule, where I can dig into records that I might have missed and venture outside my comfort zone. And inevitably, just like last year, that means there's going to be some electronica records that passed me by and that I'm going to delve into to increase my growing knowledge of the format. 

And like with last year, this time we're going to be venturing deep into the indie set to Illusive Realms, an artist that actually approached me back in the early months of this year. We connected on Twitter, I took a listen to some of the stuff that he created, and after liking most of it and passing on my commentary, I made the promise that when he got a full-length record together, I'd sit down and give him a full review. And after some unfortunate delays, that record was finally released on Bandcamp and Soundcloud... right in the middle of the busiest two months of my year. Yeah, September and October have been absolutely bonkers in 2015, and this album unfortunately slipped past my notice. But I did make a promise and the snippets I had heard were promising, and considering that the album was pretty short, I figured I'd make the time and dig in - what did we get?

video review: 'divers' by joanna newsom

Man, this album took a lot to untangle, but it was definitely worth it. Highly recommended.

Next up... you know, that M.E.D., Blu, and Madlib record looks interesting, but I still have a bit of old business I want to handle... well, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'divers' by joanna newsom

I've been hesitant to cover this record.

Hell, I've been hesitant to cover Joanna Newsom in general, who I knew more by reputation than anything else before I started doing my research for this review. I knew she had one of the most idiosyncratic voices in folk music - a bit like a cross between Bjork and Sia but more rounded and warm - and I knew she had amassed a lot of critical acclaim for her vibrantly detailed, excellently witty songwriting that probably runs as close to twee as I'd ever tolerate... except for the fact that she also happens to be an incredibly gifted composer utilizing her harp and a lot of gorgeously rich instrumentation to compose layered, gorgeously polyrhythmic songs drenched in English and Celtic folk.

Now the majority of this is right up my alley, and thus when I finally started listening through The Milk-Eyed Mender, I did find a lot to like, even despite a few minor missteps when it came to instrumental tones that clashes Newsom's unique vocals. Then came Ys... and on the one hand, I liked the more opulent orchestration for how well it could match the dramatic swell of the writing and Newsom's more strident tones, but there was a part of me that missed the quieter, funnier witticisms that ran through her more stripped back material. The album started to pick up the feel of meandering pastoral indulgence, focusing more on intricate detail instead of the overall whole, which seemed to reach critical mass on the triple album Have One On Me that she released in 2010. And here's the thing: yes, over two hours of music can be long, but it's one of those releases that really works better considering each disc as an individual release with its own musical motifs and underlying themes, and really, they don't feel as long as you'd think, especially if you're poring through the lyrics at the same time. That said, I do understand why some think the quieter second disc can drag a bit, especially compared to the more elaborate instrumentation of the first and the slightly brighter tones of the third. And when I heard that Joanna Newsom was pursuing even more elaborate, layered instrumentation on her newest album this year... well, I was interested. At the very least, it'd probably sound beautiful and be a rewarding exercise in poetry, so I dove into Divers - what did I find?

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

Well, this was late, but eh, it happens.

Okay, we've got a lot coming, let's see if I can handle some old business quickly. Stay tuned!