There's a part of me that finds it really weird how big Ghost are becoming as a band. That's not to disparage the talent behind the group, of course - in terms of metal they've hit the increasingly rare sweet spot of being able to merge progressive and heavy tendencies with actual melodies and hooks and a commitment to a gimmick that I respect a great deal. A little over-the-top and theatrical, sure, but if the music remains kick-ass like it did on the self-titled debut and Meliora, I wasn't going to complain. But that sort of theatricality tends to ostracize bands, especially with Ghost tilting so heavily into blatantly Satanic material - say what you will about Black Sabbath and classic metal bands, if you dug into their content they tended to avoid that, and even for an act like KISS that leaned even harder into their image, the content rarely backed up the spectacle. And yet Ghost has doggedly remained committed to the content and the gimmick, and with their rising fame and in the age of the internet, that's genuinely impressive... although I had to question how much longer it would last, especially as the frontman's identity was leaked and all his former bandmates quit and then sued him for treating Ghost like a glorified solo project. And yet after a tumultuous few years for the group - including winning a Grammy - Ghost has recruited a new set of musicians and have a new record, one that was reportedly aiming to be their most accessible to date... which can be a loaded qualifier when it comes to any metal act looking to make a pivot towards mainstream rock radio, but I was curious where the hell this could be going, especially given how awesome their last record was, so how is Prequelle?
So there comes two distinctive times in every singer-songwriter's life, especially if they've got a theatrical slant and even more especially if they've had any degree of crossover success. The first is the concept record: the overblown, overwrought 'statement of the human condition' record that often proves to be the point where even diehard fans start looking for the exits. These are the records that end careers, full stop... but if they don't, you get the second case: the inevitable comedown release, the one that might try to win back the fanbase but crystallizes more on the wide-eyed, panicked feeling that you have nothing else to say and thus are going to collapse inwards in spectacular fashion. They're often just as pretentious but considerably more uncomfortable, the artist ripping away any veneer in grotesque, self-destructive fashion to expose the humanity within, when the artist holes up in a mansion or hotel and truly starts to fly off the rails - and sometimes more rails than you might realize. And I'm not remotely surprised that Josh Tillman aka Father John Misty took both of these steps, especially considering the narrow line he walks between biting self-aware satire and genuine earnestness which manifested most strongly on the breakthrough record I Love You Honeybear in 2015. And thus with Pure Comedy we got the overblown concept record and now... look, the seeds have been planted for years, Tillman knew he'd have to go down this rabbit hole in the same way Dylan and Beck and Berninger and Cave have, for as much as he has deconstructed his ego and artistic persona, it's still one he has yet to truly set on fire, and God's Favorite Customer looked like it would be that moment. And I'll admit records with these themes really get under my skin in a great way - beyond just the artistic deconstruction and raw humanity exposed, for an artist with such intense self-awareness of the artifice of his image and the crowd that has embraced it, ironically or otherwise, as Josh Tillman, he would know exactly what buttons to push, a You're The Worst-episode made flesh. In other words, this could be a total trainwreck and I'd be here for it, so what did we get on God's Favorite Customer?
This is one of those reviews where I'm actually incredibly grateful I didn't jump the gun and review this early, if only because it feels like this week for Pusha-T might be one of the most tumultuous for hip-hop in 2018, and even now it feels like we're only joining the story in progress. And indeed, there's a part of me that just wants to focus on the beef with Drake, how Drake seemed to think he could put away Pusha-T's career with 'Duppy Freestyle' like he had Meek Mill, only to put Pusha-T's fiancee on wax and for Pusha-T to declare all bets are off with 'The Story Of Adidon', which might just join Jay-Z's 'Super Ugly' in the realm of diss tracks that seemed to step over the line. And yet for me... there's a part of me that feels Drake brought this on himself and has been pushing this line with too many people for too long, and not only did Pusha-T seem fully aware of the gravity of his references, the framing of all of it was highlighting the twisted cycle of abandonment that Drake was perpetuating from his father, be it his closest producer or his previously unrevealed son. For someone of principles - even the warped code of bleak, nihilistic pragmatism that Pusha-T adheres to - this is a much higher crime. And yet it already seems like some are forgetting how the release of DAYTONA had been mired in some controversy of its own, with Kanye West operating as sole producer yanking the album art to replace it with a photograph of Whitney Houston's bathroom for a sum of $85,000, and that's before you got the lingering questions whether just seven songs from Pusha-T would be enough. Granted, I did just cover Minor Threat's Out Of Step less than a week ago, and that was about as long with nine tracks, but seven songs meant Pusha-T had no room for error or dead weight, and while the critical acclaim was really damn encouraging, I was cautious, especially as it seems like this might be the abortive substitution for the long-delayed KING PUSH - but hey, that didn't mean it wouldn't be good, right?
This was a weird week. A pretty busy one, to be sure, and some things did turn out as I had predicted, but overall... it's not often you can say that our new arrivals span between k-pop, Lil Baby, Kevin Gates, and the Backstreet Boys - yeah, we'll be getting to that one, I did not see that coming at all! And that's very telling of the Hot 100 right now: there doesn't seem to be any one musical movement that's driving the pop culture conversation with any sustainability, and we're ripe to see everything blow apart.
So this night turned out to be way crazier than I thought it would be... and it's a shame that this middling review of a middling record will get lost in the shuffle. But hey, Billboard BREAKDOWN is up next, so stay tuned!
I was worried about this record. Actually, 'worried' isn't quite the right terminology there, because that implies a level of uncertainty that something wouldn't turn out to the standards that we all expect and hope from CHVRCHES, who at least for me have hit two line drives out of the park with their first two albums. Many cite The Bones Of What You Believe as the stronger release with its sharp, garish early-80s synths, but I actually stand behind their follow-up Every Open Eye as the better record: the gloss has been buffed to a mirror shine, the lyrics focused the abstract narrative into a more emotionally nuanced package, and the hooks were easily among the best in synthpop. Both records would wind up making year-end lists for me, but it was Every Open Eye that broke my top ten, and for damn good reason. But I did have a concern coming out of that sophomore record, and that was, in essence, CHVRCHES had just copied their own formula, including much of the thematic arc from their debut, and I at least had a concern they could fall into that same trap yet again... until I saw the production credits for this record. A switch in labels put them with producer Greg Kurstin, the first time any of their records had not been produced entirely in-house... which sure, could net them a very different sound, but Kurstin has had a bad habit of suffocating his mixes in reverb and even if CHVRCHES was acknowledging they were heading towards conventionality, it would require a very delicate balance to do so without compromising their sound and style. But hey, if this was their big pop swing, they had been primed for this off of Every Open Eye, so Love Is Dead might just work, right?
So I sincerely doubt this video will be dislike-bombed in the same way the last Shawn Mendes review was... but hey, you never know? Anyway, I've got Billboard BREAKDOWN and a lot of other reviews to get through this week - stay tuned!
You know, I was kind of expecting this Resonators episode to feel longer... but when you have hardcore punk records this incredible and direct, you really don't need to say much at all! But it's not the only video coming out tonight, so stay tuned!
Yep, let's do this again. So if you all remember the last time I talked about Shawn Mendes in a full review, it didn't go well by any stretch of the imagination, mostly because he had taken the promising upbeat Ed Sheeran-knockoff tones into the most blandly-produced, insufferably written and performed acoustic pop I've heard this decade. Let me reiterate that for those in the back: Illuminate by Shawn Mendes is a bad record, and 'Treat You Better' is one of the worst hits of the 2010s, by far the worst hit song of 2016. And yes, I'll freely admit my disappointment bled into that review, because Shawn Mendes had potential coming out of Handwritten - hell, so long as he had consistent momentum on his songs he could deliver quality - but doubling down on the 'nice guy with acoustic guitar' template was about the worst potential direction he could take. And while a fair amount to blame lands on Teddy Geiger, ultimately it was Mendes who stuck with this direction. And then something happened. Maybe it was the success of the tacked-on bonus track 'There's Nothing Holding Me Back' that actually restored a glimmer of hope Mendes could deliver again, maybe it was a renewed focus on expanding his sound instead of doubling down on the worst tropes of his genre, but Mendes' newest singles were heading in a slicker, more groove-centric direction and I couldn't complain. Yeah, I wasn't pleased to see a collaborating credit with Julia Michaels on this self-titled release, but if Mendes was going the way of Charlie Puth in tightening up his sound and writing, I was willing to give him another chance. So Shawn Mendes fans, I'm burying the hatchet and going in with some optimism - he's got nowhere to go but up with me, so what did we get from Shawn Mendes?
Well, we're finally here: the topic that I've danced around a fair bit with hardcore punk but one that really is quintessential for understanding the scene - and like with most things hardcore punk it got chronically misunderstood and stigmatized by organizations and systems not willing to see nuance, and partially consumed from within by complications at its core. Yes folks, we're getting political here again, because it's time we talk about straight edge. And with this comes a huge disclaimer: I'm not straight edge, and I probably never will be. I don't smoke because lung cancer and heart disease killed my grandfather and I don't do drugs mostly because I'm not really interested or have the time or money to get into it, but I do like craft beer and good wine and entirely too much bourbon. I know folks who are both edge and ex-edge, and I've got no room for judgement for either group - not only is it emphatically not my place, the choice to go edge is an individual one, and one for the record I do respect. Also keep in mind that in the early 80s when straight edge began as a true grassroots movement, it was on some level reactionary but that does not diminish its power or relevance - coming out of the late 70s and very early 80s, a lot of punks died from drug and alcohol abuse, and when you factor in that most of the hardcore punk scene was in their very early twenties, it's completely understandable if broad action was taken without a lot of consideration for what straight edge would become throughout the rest of the decade and into the 90s. If we ever talk about Earth Crisis on Resonators I'll weigh in more significantly on the more complicated activist side of the movement, but the early 80s, it was a movement to help protect a lot of kids from substance abuse that most weren't prepared to handle and provide them a space where they weren't marginalized for not partaking, both in the bands and outside of them. And as such, when edge advocates say that straight edge probably saved a lot of punks' lives, I tend to agree with that. So today we're going to talk about the artist that coined the phrase 'straight edge' in a 1981 song of that title: Washington D.C. native Ian MacKaye, and his band Minor Threat. Now I do not have enough time to go into a full history of Ian MacKaye - again, if we get to Fugazi I'll speak more on him - but in 1981 he was gaining traction with the second of his bands Minor Threat. Also worth keeping in mind he was nineteen at the time and was running his own DIY label Dischord Records, where Minor Threat released two EPs in 1981 and almost by accident started the straight edge movement. He also racked up some negative publicity for a song called 'Guilty Of Being White', and if you remember some of the conversation about race from the Bad Brains episode, you might understand why this might have been controversial. To MacKaye's credit, I do buy that it's not intended to be read as racist, but man it has not aged well, and when you factor in how straight edge was already starting to become more of an activist movement, it's no surprise Minor Threat went on hiatus while founding guitarist Lyle Preslar went to college. But the band reformed after one semester and started recording the record we'll be talking about today - the only full-length record released by Minor Threat, and nowadays widely touted as one of the most influential records in hardcore punk. That's right, we're talking about Out Of Step by Minor Threat, and this is Resonators!
I honestly don't know how many people will get down on me for this one, given how little hype the movie as a whole seems to have... eh, you never know. Next up, Resonators and Shawn Mendes - enjoy!
I feel like I've opened up a lot of my reviews in recent weeks with, 'when I covered this artist last time, it didn't go well'... and yet while I'll definitely question my presentation in those older reviews, the more I've gone back to the actual points I was making, the more I'm convinced that my opinions haven't really changed. And yet if we're talking about one of my most contentious reviews, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit by Courtney Barnett stands as one of the big ones - and what was all the more exasperating is that I definitely understood the appeal. The flat disaffection masking deeper wells of depression, the jagged garage rock tones, the well-framed self-deprecating passive aggression, it had a very stark mid-90s indie rock veneer that I could respect... to a point. And that was the frustrating thing - I kept expecting this project to actually cut more deeply in its content and production, but that would require a greater amount of investment and focus that it didn't seem like Barnett brought to the table in comparison with her sharper peers, and while she provided a firm rationale why caring wasn't on her menu, it also meant I didn't really have the same interest either. And that disaffection couldn't help but feed into her collaboration with Kurt Vile last year Lotta Sea Lice, which I may have liked more if it had felt like a cohesive or engaging project than an extended workshopping session. And thus I had some serious concerns about the critical reception to this record, nearly all of which was pointing a finger at those Kurt Vile sessions as an indicator of what was to come in neutering any sense of direction or edge or deeper punch... most of which I'd question was on there in the first place, but hey, it's not like my expectations were going to get any lower: what did I find on Tell Me How You Really Feel?
So this was genuinely great - not quite 'best of the year' material, but I'm generally happy with it regardless. Next up, though... well, it'll be interesting - stay tuned!
Can't believe I nearly forgot to post this... but still, it was a pretty rough week overall, and I really have no idea what's coming next. Thankfully, what's up next...
So I'll freely admit that Parquet Courts can be an obtuse band to talk about. Drenched in tones half pulled from the Velvet Underground and Wire but also contorting into weird spaces with lyrics that feel socially resonant but making sense of any of them can be a real effort, the group has always skirted being a personal favourite of mine in comparison to acts pulling on similar material - think Preoccupations or Ought or even Iceage. Granted, that's not to dismiss their records - their last album Human Performance landed its title track on my top fifty favourite songs of 2016 - but I've been waiting for that moment where they really deliver. So could Wide Awake! be that moment? Reportedly the band was looking to make this a 'punk record you could put on at parties', and for production they brought in Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse, a producer with whom I have a very complicated relationship from his work with The Black Keys and Broken Bells to production he's provided The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Portugal. The Man. Suffice to say in recent years I've found his material increasingly desaturated and dreary - about the last thing I'd want to hear paired with a 'punk record you could put on at parties', but hey, this could still be pretty fun, right?
