album review: 'what we live for' by american authors

So let's talk about surprises.

It's a sad fact of being a critic is that it's rare that you get surprised by an album. Sure, sometimes you'll get something insane coming out of the woodwork that blows your mind - which is why critics tend to shower praise on oddball records that are unlike anything they've ever heard before, and I'll admit I can succumb to this as well. But more often than not, it can be tough to go into every single record with the expectation that every album is someone's first, to try and capture that emotion of genuine awe.

And that's probably why I've got a fond spot in my heart for American Authors, something that'll probably surprise most of you if you only remember them for their sort-of hit 'Best Day Of My Life' that rapidly became a commercial product more than an actual song. And from that single it was widely thought that they were just another soulless rip-off of Imagine Dragons before that band fell off the deep end. Hell, that's what I expected when I covered their debut album Oh, What A Life - and it wasn't anything close to what I got. They were far closer to the power pop of acts like Semisonic or Fountains Of Wayne, just pressed through modern genre sounds of the time. It all lead to a weirdly likable record that didn't quite manage to work all the way through, mostly courtesy of some by-the-numbers songwriting and a frustrating inability for anyone to know what they were doing behind the production boards, but was still better than most would expect. And thus I had an interest in digging into their sophomore follow-up, which promised to continue and expand upon many of the same sounds - and hell, it's been a while since anyone cared about Imagine Dragons, so maybe American Authors might sound more fresh. So how did What We Live For turn out?

video review: 'freetown sound' by blood orange

I'm genuinely curious to see how fans of this guy respond to this review. I'm expecting it to be inflammatory, but hey, who knows. In the mean time, the lead-up to the third year anniversary has begun, so get your votes in!

Beyond that, Billboard BREAKDOWN, Weval, and American Authors coming up soon, so stay tuned!

album review: 'freetown sound' by blood orange

Let's talk about sex.

Specifically, what one would consider 'sexy' within the context of music - and unsurprisingly, there's a range when it comes to this sort of thing - what one person might consider sexy or racy or even kinky another might tedious or overdone or even offensive. And of course such ideas tend to evolve over time, but if you want to flip to an instantly recognizable period where 'sexy' music was dominant, an easy place to start would be 80s pop and R&B. This was the era of Prince and Madonna, artists testing the limits of explicit content and good taste, but doing it with enough sensuality and tightness to make some killer music out of it before most the 90s hammered much of it into a brick wall - I might like grunge, adult alternative, punk, and gangsta rap, but most of it wouldn't fall into what the popular conscious considers 'sexy music'.

As such, if you're on the fringe of R&B in the modern era, it tends to be an easy instrumental shorthand to call back to the 80s, which was the first big impression I got from Blood Orange, the stage name for Devonte Hynes. Now he's been around the indie scene for well over a decade, starting with a few indie folk records under the ridiculous name Lightspeed Champion, but in 2011 he'd reinvent himself into a smooth crooner trying to blend liquid indie guitar tones with the tight beats you'd remember from Prince. And yet I've never quite been impressed with him - instrumentally he gets most of the way there, even if I do think the tones aren't quite as tight as they could be, but Hynes himself never impressed me as a singer. Hate to say it but he's nowhere close to matching his instrumentation when it comes to personality, less Prince than El DeBarge or maybe even Eddie Murphy. And that's a problem when the writing isn't particularly interesting either, especially on that first album. So for his follow-up he called in all his indie connections for an even more lavish slice of 80s revival music on Cupid Deluxe... and yet somehow it was even worse. Maybe it's my fault for relistening to Prince after he passed away a few months ago and then coming to this expecting something with tightness or greater punch in the melodies to build to a real hook, or a vocal performance that can make any impact at all, or guest performances that remotely fit with this style of music, but this record fell incredibly flat for me. And yeah, I can appreciate the exploration of queer themes, but they sure as hell deserved better presentation than this - I might have issues when The Weeknd pulls from this era, but he at least can get the groove and atmosphere of this material a lot better.

But it didn't look like Blood Orange was done yet, so out of nowhere he dropped a surprise album called Freetown Sound, which in following the grand 80s tradition of R&B goes straight into politics. And immediately I had justifiable concerns - I can point to a string of bad political albums and songs out of the mid-to-late 80s and a lot fewer success stories - and also because of his guest stars to help define his black queer vision, he pulls on icons of that community like Carly Rae Jepsen, lead singer of Blonde Debbie Harry, and Nelly Furtado. Okay, yeah, that's not fair - he's worked with Carly Rae Jepsen before and he also got Zuri Marley, spoken word artist Ta-Nehisi Coates, slam poet Ashlee Hayes - but as someone who hasn't really liked the last two Blood Orange records or their attempts at sensuality, I didn't have high expectations here. But that means it can only get better, so what did we get with Freetown Sound?

the top albums/songs of the midyear - 2016 (VIDEO)

Well, this video was a ton of fun to make. Took me less time than I expected too, but it's always one of my favourites every year.

Next up... look, I've never had any interest in Blink-182, so I kind of want to cover the Weval record or Blood Orange... but we are coming up to my third year anniversary, and you all should remember what that means, so stay tuned!

the top albums/songs of the midyear - 2016

There will be a lot of headlines that suggest that 2016 has not been a good year for music - and if you follow the mainstream between the losses of several legends and a haphazard set of releases that slide between underwhelming and disappointing, that's easy to believe.

Of course, that view is not really reflective of reality, because if you look away from the Billboard Hot 100 - which I would advise, it's been a rough six months there - there is quality here. I think the big issue comes in that there have been fewer than normal outright smashes and instant classics as there were at the midyear of 2015, which was really frontloaded with incredible records. 2016 has been more scattershot, with a lot of great records that don't quite rise to the level of immediate classics, and also a fair bit more diverse. Country and folk, for one, have been a great year across subgenres, underground hip-hop has been pretty solid, and there's some great R&B, metal, and rock music that I've liked a fair bit. And that's before you get the genre-bending stuff that sticks the landing incredibly well, and I'd argue we've seen a lot of that thus far.

What this means is that it's been excruciating trying to narrow this down to my usual top twelve, in that the top half was very straightforward but the bottom half is a lot harder to cut. So while I almost chose to open things up to a top fifteen albums of the mid year, I figured I might as well stick with tradition and keep it at twelve, which meant some painful cuts - some of which I think will surprise you. So without further ado, let's start with...

video review: 'case/lang/veirs' by case/lang/veirs

My only real complaint about this album is that I'd like to see a little more lyrical interplay, a more defined fusion of styles perhaps. As it is, it's ridiculously great and an easy favourite - I swear I've gone through the album a dozen times for this review, SO GOOD.

Next up... well, it's the midyear review. Brace yourselves, folks, and stay tuned!

album review: 'case/lang/veirs' by case/lang/veirs

I've talked before about team-up records and the very delicate balance that so many have to take. Ideally you want a synthesis, where everything comes together into one glorious whole that leverages the strengths of all three acts while minimizing the weaknesses. And let me stress how rare it is this actually works - more often than not one artist overshadows the other or they don't have chemistry or the entire experiment ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

That's when you have two artists - it gets even more complex when you have three, and yet enter case/lang/veirs. For those who are confused, case/lang/veirs is a concatenation of three artists' last names, all three female singer-songwriters who have amassed a pretty amount of critical acclaim: k.d. lang, Neko Case, and Laura Veirs. If you're only familiar with the mainstream, the name you probably recognize the most is k.d. lang and her signature song 'Constant Craving' as a part of the mini-wave of Canadian female singer-songwriters that got big in the 90s like Alanis Morrissette. Now if your frame of reference for female Canadian indie songwriters skews a little later, you probably recognize Neko Case, member of the New Pornographers and critically acclaimed in her own right. The last artist you probably don't know as well unless you know your underground indie folk, but Laura Veirs has actually worked with Neko Case in the past, and she also put out a stream of well-received singer-songwriter records in the 2000s. Now keep in mind that all of these women come from very different sides of indie rock and folk: Neko Case has always been on the rougher side of alternative country and Americana, k.d. lang started in a similar area but has also made pop and even collaborated with Tony Bennett, and Laura Veirs plays more to the ramshackle, smoked out ethereal side of folk rock that guarantees I'll be digging through her discography with rabid abandon the second I get some spare time. With all of that in mind, though, I can see the intersection point and why they'd want to work together, so what does this collaboration give us?

video review: 'peach panther' by riff raff

Well, this album sucked. I know, should have expected it, but still, this was a miserable listen.

Next up, though... case/lang/veirs and then the midyear review, so stay tuned!

album review: 'peach panther' by riff raff

Okay, originally I was expecting this weekend to be a lot worse in terms of releases. I think I mentioned it on Billboard BREAKDOWN that there were also new albums from Rae Sremmurd and Iggy Azalea, which promised to be two records of continuous migraine, but since their lead-off singles have flopped, they've both delayed into later in the summer. And this leaves us with only the most courageous hip-hop artist to drop a record this past weekend... and I can't even finish that sentence.

Hell, I don't even know why I'm reviewing this. In the pantheon of joke rappers, I don't tend to have a lot of respect for Riff Raff, who basically has one joke in being an over-the-top caricature/parody of modern hip-hop, which becomes less of a joke when you realize that most of modern hip-hop is already there! And let's be honest, thanks to the Internet we've got no short supply of rappers who have better bars, production, and jokes than Riff Raff does, from The Lonely Island to Epic Rap Battles. That is unless you're taking Riff Raff seriously in a Lil B vein, but if we're going by 'so weird/bad it's good', Riff Raff isn't that far away from conventional hip-hop that I can use that excuse. As to whether Riff Raff takes himself seriously... well, there's a part of me that thinks he does with zero self-awareness and that's more sad than anything, but at the end of the day the music has to deliver, and it rarely does.

So why talk about this? Well, call it morbid curiosity more than anything. Somehow Riff Raff keeps getting guest stars that you wouldn't expect a rapper of his status to bring on, and I do hold that when it comes to stupid-as-hell bangers 'Kokayne' is ridiculously fun. In other words, even if he's on the edge of pop culture, he keeps popping up. So I figured what the hell and I checked out Peach Panther - was it any good?

video review: 'the glowing man' by swans

An absolutely punishing listen, but so worth it for the absolutely killer thematic resonance and some incredible moments.

But on the topic of punishing... well, stay tuned.

album review: 'the glowing man' by swans

This will reportedly be Swans' final album.

Or at least this incarnation of the group, which reformed after their first breakup in 1997 in 2010, working to push out some of the most massive and primeval music created in experimental rock. Because while there are very few groups I cover that I would consider impossible for mainstream listeners to appreciate, Swans is daunting even for me, known less for sane song structures than mammoth ten minute plus compositions that pile on layers of instrumentation to create thunderous crescendos and grooves. There are very few groups that dare to approach their scope and power, and while they might have been a tad more accessible in the late-80s and 90s thanks to a stronger melodic presence, which led to masterpieces like Children Of God and The Great Annihilator, in recent years the scale of their focus has led to behemoths of sound. This culminated in 2014 with To Be Kind, their largest ever work and was critically acclaimed by many - including myself - as one of the best records of that year, which further brought in a thematic focus on how a child might experience the huge emotions of the world. Swans mastermind Michael Gira has described the record's goal as ecstasy, but when engorged to such colossal scale, it's easy to see how unsettling the huge emotions might seem to anyone else.

But where do you go after such an effort? To Be Kind was the sort of high water mark that Swans had already hit twice before, but there has to be a limit to that sort of scale, you can only push crushing instrumental layers and growth so far. And as such, while I heard that Swans were - necessarily - going to be dialing the insane crescendos back a bit for The Glowing Man, how would they hit the same impact?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 9, 2016 (VIDEO)

Yeah, I know, I've been a tad late on videos over the past few days. Part of that is getting into the groove of vacation, part of it is deciphering this Swans record. And speaking of which... well, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 9, 2016

So last week was one of the worst I'd seen on the Billboard Hot 100 in a long time - it was genuinely disheartening trying to put that episode together, pretty painful all things considered. But the good thing about hitting rock bottom is that you can always recover, and while I wouldn't say everything clicked on the Hot 100 here, I do see signs of improvement that should definitely be called out.

video review: 'california sunrise' by jon pardi

Eh, you need guys like Jon Pardi making music, even if I wasn't really wild about this. Someone give this guy a sharper pen or a drive to experiment a little more, he's got the right textures, all he needs are the melodies.

Anyway, next is probably Swans, but that might take more time to fully process. Stay tuned!

album review: 'california sunrise' by jon pardi

You ever have one of those artists that on paper seems to check off every single box, seems to be the sort of artist you'd automatically support, who may have even come out in a time where he was a breath of fresh air and a welcome surprise to everything and everyone else around him... and you're just not a fan?

Well, for me and modern, 'mainstream' country, California artist Jon Pardi was that person - mostly because on the surface he was decidedly not mainstream! His debut album Write You A Song, released in early 2014 in the wave of interchangeable bro-country was actually very much a neotraditional country record in its composition and presentation. And yet, given that I wasn't all that won over by his voice or his songwriting, which had an odd presumptuous air to it that kind of made the romantic tracks feel a little hollow and shallow, I would only ever say the record was decent, far from the savior of the mainstream for which a few critics lauded him.

But I'll admit artists can evolve and grow over the course of a few records, and considering how much critical appraisal Pardi has received, I figured I might as well give him another chance. After all, with the increasing rise of sterile pop country, maybe getting a slice of rougher, more rustic tones would click more strongly. Who knows, I just saw a major improvement from YG from his debut two years ago that I found underwhelming, so maybe two times the charm?

video review: 'still brazy' by yg

Well, this was pretty interesting. Not a great release, but definitely a good one, recommended.

Still need more time for Swans, though, so let's handle Jon Pardi - stay tuned!

album review: 'still brazy' by yg

It's kind of amazing how much hip-hop has mutated over the past two years, isn't it?

Because if you look at the current hip-hop sound, it's in a weird place: a little more organic and melodic, drenched in autotune and trap hi-hats, and sitting in a weird place where any rapper with the slightest amount of buzz online or on Vine can blow up, especially in the mainstream. And yet if you go back just two years, while those trap trends were there, it was a very different sound that was dominant, minimalist and more touching a bass-heavy West Coast sound driven most by the LA producer DJ Mustard. 

Now let's be clear, his star has faded a lot, but if you want to find the rapper at the epicenter of his sound, look no further than YG, who released his debut album My Krazy Life that year. Before then he was most well-known for the oh-so-charming 'Toot It And Boot It' from back in 2010, but YG took his ground-level Compton gangsta rap to new heights working with DJ Mustard's stripped down synths and production. And I'll admit I was very hard on that record, but for good reason - he got shown up by a significant chunk of his big name guest stars, his own content was inconsistent and rarely treading new ground, and even if it was, doing the bare minimum in production didn't elevate the record to anything all that special for me. I can appreciate the street-level gangsta's view in Compton, but again, it really did feel like he was doing the bare minimum.

And then something happened. I'm not sure what it was, but the YG features I started hearing were getting measurably stronger in terms of flow, content, and even subtext. And given he ditched DJ Mustard completely for his sophomore album Still Brazy, I had to hope that maybe he could pull off a stronger release - was I right?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 2, 2016 (VIDEO)

So this week sucked on the Hot 100... thank god the album release schedule has improved and I've got YG and Swans next, or I'd just be flat-out miserable.

And speaking of which...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - july 2, 2016

So a week or so back I might have said that I was gearing up for one of the worst upcoming album release dates in recent memory... and yet just days after I said that, all of my concerns seemed to drop away. Both Iggy Azalea and Rae Sremmurd pushed back their albums and that just leaves me with Riff Raff, and I can handle him. But apparently the universe was unwilling to let me get off that easy, because from a quick look through the charts, we've got a really bad week ahead of us, folks.

video review: 'the getaway' by red hot chili peppers

I'm actually genuinely curious how people receive this record, given the stylistic departures in the production. Overall... eh, it's decent, but I do wish it was better.

Next up, probably YG or Swans, so stay tuned!