album review: 'i am easy to find' by the national

You know, when a band you really love is on a hot streak, you do feel a little nervous before opening up any new album, with the high hopes they'll continue it but the niggling feeling in your gut they're going to slip up. And that possibility of the slip-up does have more weight in terms of expectations than I'd like to admit, because it can blow a big hole in how much you might care about a new project, especially if it hasn't quite received the avalanche of critical acclaim the band might have used to get.

And can you tell I'm talking about The National here? But let's back up, because after 2013's potent Trouble Will Find Me, I've noticed my opinions on the indie rock veterans tend to diverge from the popular consensus, from my passionate love of frontman Matt Berninger's side project EL VY and its release Return To The Moon in 2015, to my much more lukewarm at best reception to the band's 2017 release Sleep Well Beast, which took philosophically questionable ideas and married them to underwhelming production compromised in groove and overall tone. To me it stood as their worst album to date, but being in the minority of that opinion, I had no earthly clue if The National would double down on those tones and get even worse, or whether they'd pull a sharp face turn and recover... and frankly, I wasn't sure I was all that enthused to hear them fumble a response, especially given how ponderous their albums could be. But hey, who knows, maybe divorced from some of the questionable political reaction that contorted too many albums in 2017, this would be a return to form, so how was I Am Easy To Find?

video review: 'IGOR' by tyler, the creator

Yeah, guess it just wasn't for me...? It happens, folks.

Next up... see, it might be Megan Thee Stallion, it might be The National, we'll have to see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'IGOR' by tyler, the creator

At this point, what can you even expect from Tyler, The Creator anymore?

And I say this as someone who can admit to being more tolerant of the guy at his most foul and abrasive, but also someone who never quite celebrated him at his various peaks either, at least not in comparison to the diehard fans. Don't get me wrong, at his most shocking I've always been convinced there was more damaged pathology than even he would admit, but as much as I really dug Flower Boy, damn near the polar opposite of those early albums, it wasn't a project that stuck with me longer as much as others, or one that in this era I quite found as revolutionary as most in its content, which at points could feel underwritten. Hell, what I found most striking was the production, which had its off-kilter edge and clear influence of Pharrell, but also attracted a peculiar, homegrown beauty that Tyler could make his own. So when I heard that more than ever this project IGOR, dropped with little warning or promotion, was even further away from conventional hip-hop in his delivery and had reportedly picked up even some production elements from the messy, much-maligned but fascinating Cherry Bomb for a bittersweet breakup album... well, it was sure to be unique. So okay, how is IGOR?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 25, 2019 (VIDEO)

Another pretty lightweight week overall (thank GOD for that), but now it'll be fascinating to see how Tyler hits next week.

And perhaps on that topic...

video review: 'dedicated' by carly rae jepsen

Okay, so this is actually better received than I would expect... huh, interesting...

Anyway, I think it's Tyler coming next, but before that...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 25, 2019

So I'll be honest, I'm so happy this week is a slower one: I just got back from Sonic Temple in Columbus, Ohio - I'll have a recap/review video dropping in a few days and there'll be plenty of other videos I'll pop up in - and when you consider last Friday was one of the biggest release weeks of this month, I've got a lot to catch up on, so the relative lack of stories is encouraging.

album review: 'dedicated' by carly rae jepsen

I'll admit to being surprised it took this long to get this album.

And sure, some of this comes of a question of momentum, which for a cult act like Carly Rae Jepsen might not matter - and I'll admit it's strange to refer to her as a cult act when in 2012 'Call Me Maybe' was nearly the biggest song of the year but seems to have mostly vanished from even a more nostalgic conversation. But I remember actually being ahead of the curve when it came to E.MO.TION, where I covered it as a fan who was fond of her earliest stuff and then saw the hipster crowd embrace her in spades, which carried into her short follow-up the next year on Side B. And then... well, the singles kept coming and the hype was there, but the reception felt increasingly lukewarm, and it wasn't like mainstream pop was in the best of places for the sort of crossover she probably deserved earlier. So when I started hearing the mixed reception for this album, I'll admit to being worried, especially with no credits from Josh Ramsay or Devonte Hynes. Still, I'm still a fan and I wanted to believe she could stick the landing, so what did we get from Dedicated?

video review: 'the juice: vol. 1' by emotional oranges

So yeah, this was concentrated wonderful - absolutely killer project, definitely a debut with a ton of potential, you all need to hear this!

Now for the next couple of days I'll be at Sonic Temple, so uploads might be a little more sporadic, but stay tuned all the same!

album review: 'the juice: vol. 1' by emotional oranges

So we're venturing back into the muted, murky R&B rabbit hole and let me pose to you a somewhat unique prospect: a duo, comprising of both a guy and girl working together on vocals, picking up slick elements of 80s funk, some of Janet Jackson's sultriness, but a lower timbre overall to play to a more sultry and "mature" vibe. Would you bet on a group like that?

Hell, you probably would have sold me based on the R&B duo dynamics alone - I've long held the private belief that mixed gender groups with effective balance can rarely be matched and it's been decades since you've had one with consistent success. Hell, the surprisingly long running success of Little Big Town and Lady Antebellum in country have proven there's a lucrative market, but if you look at R&B or hip-hop, you typically get the 'token' girl who winds up having as much talent as everyone else combined, like with City High and arguably The Fugees. The closest I can think of to making that balance work is Doomtree with Dessa holding up her end with the rest of the crew, but again, that's hip-hop, not R&B. So when I started hearing underground buzz for Emotional Oranges - and when I say underground buzz I mean the measurable promotion through the Joe Budden Podcast and a certain manager who will go unnamed - I figured like with Asiahn I'd give them some airtime. So, eight songs, just under a half hour, what did we get from The Juice: Vol. 1?

video review: 'confessions of a dangerous mind' by logic

Yeah, this was bad... but really, was that a surprise to anyone?

Anyway, I've got this Emotional Oranges review I'd like to finish up before tomorrow and I leave for Sonic Temple, so stay tuned!

album review: 'confessions of a dangerous mind' by logic

I can pinpoint the exact time when I stopped actively looking forward to new Logic projects.

And believe it or not, it was actually earlier than Everybody, his famously polarizing 2017 release that took its concept and angst into messy territory across the board. No, for me it was the first Bobby Tarantino tape in 2016, a trap-leaning project that seemed unlike the high-concept textured hip-hop that had been his bread-and-butter... but it snagged chart success. And indeed, outside of the suicide hotline pop crossover riding the misspent star of Alessia Cara and the genuine rising tide of Khalid, the songs from Logic that have attained success have arguably been him at his least interesting or potent, mostly on trap production where he'll flow his ass off and say so little along the way. And while discussions of what caused that switch in sound and approach have been interesting, spanning from allegations of being an industry plant to just the wrong industry influences pushing him away from his organic following to even just Logic having bad creative instincts... at the end of the day the music has stopped being good or interesting enough for me to care all that much.

So yeah, I skipped over his reportedly terrible alt-rock soundtrack dalliance with Supermarket earlier this year and I was seriously considering skipping over this too - it's not like he wouldn't have chart success with it, and I did know coming after the conclusion of his Young Sinatra series that he'd probably skip away from that old fanbase forever, so there wasn't that much incentive to cover this... but I figured why not. Even on most of his worst projects he's delivered at least a few songs that are decent, so what did we get from Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 18, 2019 (VIDEO)

Okay, here we go - pretty bad week, but at least the Bazzi song was good, right? Right?

Anyway, I've got Logic or Emotional Oranges to be covered next, we'll see - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - may 18, 2019

...so yeah, there are weeks where I'm wrong, and then there's this week, where I might have been expecting a slowdown - which in some categories we did get - only for a few big singles to disrupt the top 10 from out of nowhere and force me to re-evaluate where the chart could be going in the next few weeks. Now granted, one of those singles is coming from an album that's also out of nowhere - and boy oh boy, I can't tell you how much I don't want to cover it - but still, this is one of those cases where I feel I should have seen this coming, and I'm kicking myself that I didn't.

video review: 'divided by darkness' by spirit adrift

So yeah, this was pretty great and pretty much out of nowhere for me - definitely worth a lot of attention, check this out!

Next up... you know, Logic can wait a bit, I've got something else that might be fun after Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

album review: 'divided by darkness' by spirit adrift

So over the past couple months I've seen more than a few heated arguments surrounding the concept of genre and if how in the era of streaming and blurring boundaries whether it even matters. And while I've been a staunch force for arguing that there's still a place for it at least in terms of adequate classifications of certain music, I'm amicable to the idea of subgenres and blurring lines... but if you wanted to come to me and say that genre was always more of a marketing scheme than clear demarcations of sound, I'd be willing to hear that argument.

And to support that argument, you only need to look at heavy metal, a genre that's well-known for fiercely entrenching its lines and barriers... until you take a look at the list of tags tacked onto every Bandcamp release, which are less about defining the sound and more about hitting as many search results as possible. So I'll admit I found it a bit rich when I checked out Spirit Adrift, one-man project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nate Garrett, this time paired with drummer Marcus Bryant, and how in their own marketing they said they were often pigeonholed as doom metal - and then saw 'doom metal' in their tags - but upon reflection, I could see why that connection might have been drawn. While they had faster passages, you could sketch some loose parallels to how Black Sabbath was touching that sound in the late 70s or the very earliest progenitors of the genre in the early 80s - and yet like with Sabbath, I'd argue if you were looking for that sound proper, I wouldn't go to Spirit Adrift. To me their sound was at its best rooted in the hook-driven, more conventionally structured and melodic heavy metal that showed a clear lineage to the past, but brought the chunky, grimy muscle that characterizes a more modern scene and acts like Baroness or Mastodon, and in going back to their first two albums, I heard a lot in which I found really damn promising! So yeah, it's been a while since I've given a proper metal review - what did we get out of Divided By Darkness?

video review: 'fishing for fishies' by king gizzard and the lizard wizard

So yeah, this wasn't good... eh, it happens?

Anyway, I think I might need a better rock project as a pick me up (and hopefully I can put off the Logic project for a bit too), so stay tuned!

album review: 'fishing for fishies' by king gizzard and the lizard wizard

So I'll be honest, I'm always a little tentative to tell any sort of artist that what they're looking to pursue is a bad idea. Because you never know, right - I've been surprised time and time again by acts who are willing to make wild pivots and stick the landing with their experimentation, and who the hell am I to say otherwise?

And I say this because... well, when I heard the buzz that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard were going to make a shuffling blues rock project with an emphasis on 'boogie', I had concerns. Not that it was inherently a bad idea or something that the band couldn't pull off - they've jumped across genres with aplomb and going back to the roots of the groovy garage rock tones where they've pulled inspiration has promise, especially if they took a year off in between this and the five albums they put out in 2017. Granted, the critical reception has been more mixed than normal, but again, no guarantee of what could connect - and while several critics were highlighting the increased environmental themes as a point of contention, that's been in the lyrics going back a few albums anyway especially on Gumboot Soup, so I was ready for that. So what did we get on Fishing For Fishies?

video review: 'hellbent' by randy rogers band

Hmm, this was probably a project I could have put on the Trailing Edge, but I figured a quick review was worth it for an act I like, especially if Hold My Beer Vol. 2 drops some time soon.

Next up... see, I've got King Gizzard on the docket, but I've got a top 10 I'd like to finish too - stay tuned!

album review: 'hellbent' by randy rogers band

So speaking about acts that nearly got lost in the shuffle...

Yeah, this is somewhat inevitable when we look at the bands with less traction in the mainstream or even less natural groundswell outside of a strong local scene - and while I wouldn't usually want to slot the Randy Rogers Band into the latter category, it's a little hard avoiding it nowadays. Just to catch you all up, the Randy Rogers Band was a Texas country act who landed a major label deal in the mid-2000s and yet never really saw the momentum on the singles charts... mostly because the Nashville industry can't stand Texas country and they were playing a much more neotraditional stripe of it. But the band was willing to try and cross over, even working with Jay Joyce in 2013 for their album Trouble... and when that went nowhere because of the bro-country wave, the band split for their own label and returned to a sound that was more comfortable. And let me stress while I was hard on their 2016 album Nothing Shines Like Neon, it was more because of the comparison to Randy Rogers' excellent collaboration with Wade Bowen a year earlier called Hold My Beer Vol. 1, which was one of the best albums of 2015 and featured one of my favourite songs of that year in 'El Dorado'. So while the rumor mill hasn't really given me any dates surrounding when their follow-up compilation might drop - and Wade Bowen is content to make great solo albums like Solid Ground from last year - we got this project Hellbent, so how did it turn out?

video review: 'hurts 2b human' by p!nk

Yeah, this was a disappointment...

But hopefully this new Randy Rogers Band album will hold up? We'll see, stay tuned!