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: 'virtue' by the voidz

Yes, I know it took way too long to get to this, but honestly I could say more that was interesting here... sadly not.

Next up, something more current - stay tuned!

album review: 'virtue' by the voidz

Let's talk briefly about being weird in music. 

And this is actually a topic I don't think gets enough attention, mostly because for something to be called out as 'strange' or 'weird' there's at least some element of surprise, and in the era of 'nothing surprises anybody anymore' thanks to the Internet, the bar for weird gets pretty high. And for a critic it gets even higher, and not just because of the insanity you can dredge up out of /mu/ or Bandcamp, but because there is a grand tradition of outsider artists that have existed outside the mainstream where their brand of oddity might be just as catchy, but also brings with it elements that the public majority just are not willing to process. And yet again, in the Internet era where it's so easy for influences to crossbreed and mutate or become memes, the public might seem more willing to embrace these outsider acts... but it becomes a balancing act, both for the artists and the fans, because for as much as you want your favourites to do well, you know that artistic eccentricity can get eaten alive by the industry.

And then bridging between artist and fan you have someone like Julian Casablancas, frontman of The Strokes and his own defiantly odd band The Voidz. And I'll freely admit that he didn't flip that 'weird' alarm for me with records like The Voidz' debut Tyranny in 2014 - offkilter and paranoid and scattershot, absolutely, but it was also overlong and not quite as challenging as it thought it was. But it wasn't that record that compelled any interest from me so much as a series of manic interviews before this record that revealed Casablacas was a huge fan of Ariel Pink - which made sense, especially when you start digging into certain thematic parallels, but it was also telling that while Pink might be the genuine article and an act like MGMT be the studied devotee, Casablancas was the fan that didn't always grasp the intricacies but adored the aesthetic. Now reviews of Virtue were suggesting this could be changing, at the very least in terms of sonic fidelity and tone, but given this record also came with signing to RCA and producers most well-known for working with The War On Drugs, Weezer, and Beyonce, I had my doubts about this. But hey, it's nearly an hour long, surely they could have gotten things working, right?

video review: 'SR3MM / swaecation / JXMTRO' by rae sremmurd

You know, I need to get back into the habit of using flames in my title cards for records this bad... but honestly, it's more that it improved and is just an overlong mess than anything else.

Anyway, next up is me tackling some much older business, so stay tuned!

album review: 'SR3MM / swaecation / JXMTRO' by rae sremmurd

I know what all of you want me to do in this review. You're all waiting for the seething anger, the extended rant on the vapid nonsense that this duo passes off as party bangers, how both of their previous records have been among some of the worst hip-hop to be released in the 2010s...

And yet I can't do it this time. Look, I don't regret anything I said for either SremmLife 1 or 2 - they're both bad records crippled by grating lead performances, awful lyrics, and production that wants to substitute overweight murky lumps courtesy of Mike Will Made It for anything fun or with significant force - I've got nothing against party bangers, but when you can't match even mid-tier crunk from the 2000s, you have serious problems! But then 'Black Beatles' - unquestionably the best song Rae Sremmurd ever made - became a #1 hit, and then I started hearing Swae Lee refine his cracking, nasal delivery into something a little smoother, and Slim Jxmmi add a little more structure to his bars, and I came to the realization that I may have actually been a shade too hard on SremmLife 2 - it's still pretty bad, but there were improvements there that deserved more attention.

So okay, maybe the follow-up could rise to being passable, I told myself, maybe these kids had something in them... and instead of doubling down on a tight record of bangers, they decided a good idea was a triple album! Now I've said in the past that even double albums can be a dicey proposition, but three records from this duo - one from them together, and one each from them solo, called Swaecation and Jxmtro respectively - is the sort of overstuffed choice where I can count the number of times it's worked in the history of recorded music - outside of live albums and greatest hits collections - on two hands! Seriously, we've got Joanna Newsom, Smashing Pumpkins, Kamasi Washington, maybe the Magnetic Fields or Swans or Prince - it screams of overplaying their hand or at the very least misunderstanding their appeal for Rae Sremmurd to try this. And yet my Patrons wanted to put me through this, so fine: what did we get on SR3MM?

video review: 'beyondless' by iceage

Well, this was pretty damn great - shame about what's after it on the schedule, though, but might as well get it over with... stay tuned!

album review: 'beyondless' by iceage

I'll freely admit I had no idea what to expect with the newest Iceage project - and a huge part of that is directly linked to what happened with their third record Plowing Into The Field Of Love in 2014. Originally they had put out some post-punk that was explosive and twisted but didn't really have a lot of internal direction or consistency, but that changed in a big way with this record, pulling upon more elaborate arrangements that expanded their sound while still maintaining that nervy, unstable edge and killer melodic grooves. More than ever the comparison was less Bauhaus and more Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and given that the writing had stepped up considerably to match, I was onboard for this sonic progression.

And thus maybe I shouldn't have been that surprised when I heard that Iceage might be slowing things down a bit for this record, expanding their instrumental palette, even recruiting Sky Ferreira to play the P.J. Harvey to Elias Ronnenfelt's Nick Cave. Now granted, any more predictions would be almost certain to fail - I certainly don't think I could have called the progression for other post-punk acts like Ought and Preoccupations this year into more melodic territory, with one not sticking the landing and the other producing one of the best of their career thus far - but that doesn't mean I wasn't curious, given how long it took for us to get this record. So alright, how was Beyondless?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 12, 2018 (VIDEO)

So I thought I was going to be ahead of schedule getting this up last night... and then goddamn WMG claimed a clip and blocked it in all countries, so I had to rerender this shit and do it all again.

Anyway, it's Iceage next - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 12, 2018

And now we have round two, the second record-breaking album bomb in as many weeks and one from an arguably worse record... and yet somehow it doesn't quite feel as big, at least to me. It's still sizable - we have eighteen new arrivals this week - but since the majority of it is Post Malone and I already reviewed the record and likely will have even less to say, it feels less noticeable overall. Or maybe I just feel better because at the end of June Billboard will be releasing new streaming rules that'll likely curtail some of this mess, but that's a story for another day.

video review: 'be more kind' by frank turner

I really do admire how damn hard this record is trying - really, I do - but man, I wish I liked this so much more...

Still, I'll savor what I've got here in comparison to this next episode of Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned...

album review: 'be more kind' by frank turner

At this point, I literally have no idea what to expect from Frank Turner.

Well okay, that's not quite true, but from his departure from post-hardcore towards indie folk and indie rock - and given that I didn't hear any of his singles going in - I literally had no expectations where this was going to go. Granted, there is a certain earnest sonic palette in his music that's familiar - surging guitars, big hooks, generally in the realms of indie folk rock - but beyond that, they were shades of a recognizable formula. So, even while I consider Love, Ire & Song his best work - and one of the best albums of the 2000s - it's not even that far removed from his last record Positive Songs For Negative People, arguably his biggest play for mainstream-adjacent attention courtesy of production from Butch Walker and even rumors of a Taylor Swift collaboration that didn't materialize - and while given what has happened to her in the past few years we'd probably consider that a blessing, there is a part of me that wishes that maybe some of Frank Turner could have rubbed off on her, that could have been really cool.

Instead, I started hearing odd things about this release, with influences spanning from Gang Of Four and Wire to mid-period records from The Cure, maybe even a pivot into 80s pop. This would unquestionably be a departure for him, and this has led to some of the most polarized reviews I've seen surrounding this project, especially when you hear there's a pretty stark political element to it. Now here's the thing: Frank Turner's political writing has always been complicated - go back to the title track of Love, Ire & Song and you'll realize he's never been some hard-line punk or leftist. And while my own tendencies have pushed me more in that direction, I'm up for the nuanced, difficult conversation, especially when you remember that Frank Turner is not American and even if a stylistic departure like this might wind up being an outlier for him long-term. So alright, what did we get on Be More Kind?

trailing edge - episode 005 - april 2018 (VIDEO)

So yeah, tons of mediocre crap here... eh, let's just move on. Got some interesting records on the docket and that top ten list I need to finish - stay tuned!

video review: 'beerbongs & bentleys' by post malone

Honestly, I'm not even angry at this record... just kind of tired overall. Eh, it happens.

But if you want records more deserving of tired discontent...

album review: 'beerbongs & bentleys' by post malone

I've made it no secret that I have issues with Post Malone. Hell, most of you probably have seen my review of Stoney where I panned the record for being flaccid, sloppily produced, excruciatingly performed, awfully written, and generally a complete chore to get through, or you've seen how he's wound up on multiple year-end lists for the worst hit songs of various years. And that's before we get to his comments surrounding hip-hop as an artform and how if you're looking for emotional, evocative music, don't listen to hip-hop, which reveals far more about the mercenary attitude beneath the good-natured, doofy demeanor that makes all the posturing look utterly transparent. And frankly I didn't know how he can walk away from that - for Post Malone to be within the culture and not aware of artists who can deliver a poignant, powerful message, he'd have to be impressively ignorant, utterly callous, or a complete moron - possibly all three.

But the unfortunate truth is that he has been enabled and allowed to walk away from it, because his massive audience of white kids just looking for something to vibe to don't give a shit about hip-hop culture that inspires the art form and aren't going to stop listening to him on Spotify, which is why this album is breaking streaming records. But I do care about hip-hop culture and history: yes, I know I'm not really a part of it but I can sure as hell respect it, and when I look at my long-standing qualifiers for artistic culture exchange - know and respect the foundation points and history, work with those in the community, and then deliver something of quality - Post Malone at most gets one out of three. And thus while I knew for this channel's viability that I had to cover this record - yeah, 'Candy Paint' is on it, but so is 'rockstar', a song I genuinely despise, and the damn thing is over an hour long - I cannot say I was looking forward to it. But hey, Post Malone has made songs that are tolerable, maybe this won't be that bad?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 5, 2018 (VIDEO)

Man, this week was rough, and from the looks of things is going to get even worse next week.

But on that topic...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 5, 2018

I'm going to pose a question that's been on my mind ever since we started getting stream-trolling album bombs on the Hot 100 and one that became glaring with KOD by J. Cole: is anybody thinking about the long-term impacts of any of this? Sure, it's an indictment on streaming platforms who take label payola to dump entire records on their playlists, and an even more scathing indictment on the public who won't bother to build their own damn playlist or find new things, but really, who does this benefit long-term? Do you even remember anything from Logic's middling album bomb a few months back, or do you remember a single that's been properly promoted and managed, where precision growth can lead to even greater success. We'll get to more of this in our top ten, but if you want the most prescient example of how the album bomb might hurt an album's public lifespan long-term, look at Drake and More Life last year, and compare it to his current singles rollout in 2018.

resonators 2018 - episode #004 - 'bad brains' by bad brains (VIDEO)

And WOW, this was a fun listen. So glad this wound up on Resonators, it was a TON of fun.

Next up... okay, Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

video review: 'dirty computer' by janelle monae

Yeah, this project kicked ass... I'm a tad disappointed it seems like it's being dismissed as being too blunt and mainstream friendly (seemed like Kendrick got away with that with DAMN....), especially when there's a lot more insight lurking beneath the surface. Definitely worth your time, check this out!

resonators 2018 - episode #004 - 'bad brains' by bad brains

I think it's time we talk about race in punk music.

Now this is not a comfortable topic, and there are layers and nuance that I'll freely admit that I'm probably not the best guy to talk about beyond looking for the history. And with the history of punk... well, it gets even dicier, especially coming out of the late 70s and how genres were co-mingling and mutating. Of course punk has some of its deepest roots in black music - at its core much of punk utilized traditional rock and roll song structures invented by black musicians - but throughout the 1970s traditionally black musical genres were going in very different directions, from the growth of soul, funk and R&B to the mutation of disco to the very early days of hip-hop. And while black music was getting more opulent and smooth, punk seemed to be heading in the exact opposite direction - although one can make the argument that the sharp political subtext that underlined a lot of soul music and funk music would have had common cause with the punks of the time.

But that doesn't mean there weren't punks of all races within the scene who found common cause with the righteous fury and rough edges of the genre... and this is where we hit another major roadblock and it has to do with a subgenre I referenced a few months back: the Oi! scene. Originally grounded in working class rebellion in the U.K, it was a sound that sadly got co-opted by second wave skinhead culture and hard right, frequently racist groups in the late 70s and early 80s. And while you could definitely make an argument how much of this was fair to the scene or the artists within it, many who could credibly make the argument to being misrepresented, the messy public perception led to ugly assumptions and branding that Oi! bands and even hardcore punks have had to fight to escape for years since, not helped by the street punk and skinhead explosion in the U.S. where the hard-right branding was harder to escape or deny. And with that popular connotation, it's no surprise why black artists might have shied away from the scene, especially in the face of friendlier, no less conscious or political spaces like in early hip-hop.

Of course, there's another side to this, and it leads to another genre that was organic, raw, and often sharply political: reggae. It was a looser subgenre than punk, but throughout the 70s it had flourished and had often received billing and airplay in punk venues. And thus the cross-pollination of genres between the newborn hardcore scene and reggae was only a matter of time, with one group originally making music as a jazz fusion act before amping up the tempos and bringing an distinctly black flavor to hardcore punk, now widely held as one of the most legendary bands of the genre. That's right, we're talking about the 1982 self-titled debut from Bad Brains, and this is Resonators!

album review: 'dirty computer' by janelle monae

I remember referencing Afrofuturism in brief while talking about Janelle Monae's past two records, the underlying Cindi Mayweather stories that have served as a time travelling narrative undercurrent to her stories, taking the tropes and aesthetics of 50s and 60s sci-fi and fusing it with modern language, taking the textures of R&B and soul of the 70s and 80s and bringing them into a swirling, neon genre fusion with rock and modern R&B, and its core was the swirling, magnetic charisma of Janelle Monae...

And there's a part of me that feels I owe her an apology. Now to some of you that might seem confusing - I've been openly a fan for years ever since her guest appearance on Idlewild, I'd put both The ArchAndroid and The Electric Lady on year-end lists, I wouldn't hesitate to put her on a list of one of the most defiantly unique and potent artists of the 2010s both in terms of raw talent and experimentation and that's even before you consider how she hasn't compromised her pop sensibility. And yet going back to my review of The Electric Lady five years ago, just when I was starting out... there's a part of me not proud of it, primarily because of how I treated the underlying metaphors and themes at the core of the work. Not that I didn't grasp it - the queer black femininity at its core was always apparent and Janelle Monae did a wonderful job exploring its nuances through the larger metaphors of her story - but I feel the language I chose was minimizing, especially given how deeply personal said narrative turned out to be. For me it was more paying attention to the mechanics of the story, looking for a weightier external payoff to the narrative rather than realizing the true thematic and emotional arc was internal... and while some of that could be explained due to the theatrical artificiality of the narrative, I should have realized the inward shift of the metaphor and presentation was likely far more representative of what explorations of queer black femininity and sexuality are. 

Fast forward to 2018 and it should surprise nobody that so much of the coded theatricality has slipped away: the institutional pressures have redoubled both internal and external strain, and flagrant urgency becomes a necessity. More than that, Janelle Monae has only grown into a more assured and confident artist, both from her forays into acting or even her steps into mainstream R&B with The Eephus EP in 2015 - yes, I personally preferred more of the fantastical sci-fi aesthetic and genre blending, but raw charisma can compensate for a lot. And thus for Dirty Computer, there was a part of me that knew this record wouldn't quite be the same sort of Afrofuturist affair as her previous work - especially with the lead-off singles, it looked to be, for lack of better words, more conventional and accessible. Granted, she still released an entire short film to flesh out the greater themes of the record that was very much linked to her conceptual framework, but we're here to focus on the album itself - so how is it?