video review: 'crickets' by joe nichols

And now I'm finally caught up with last week... phew. Next up is Pearl Jam and Icon For Hire, so stay tuned!

album review: 'crickets' by joe nichols

We return to our country story already in progress, as more and more artists drift to the sides of the widening divide between those who are concerned about the pop and rap tendencies in country music as it drifts towards the mainstream - this would be your Zac Brown, your Gary Allan, your Alan Jackson, your Kacey Musgraves - and those who are riding the trend out as long as they can - your Jason Aldean, your Luke Bryan, your Tyler Farr, your Justin Moore. Recently, there's been a surprising addition to the former category: Jake Owen. For those of you who don't know who this guy is, he's a mainstream country star whose most recent single sticks so closely to the 'tailgates, booze, and girls' template that it's kind of astounding. 

And while those hunting for hypocrisy could get whiplash at this most recent development, it's raising an interesting question all the same for those who love traditional country music: where does one draw the line? Jake Owen has freely admitted that he doesn't write the deepest music in the world, but is this a genuine move or just the savvy calculation of a smart businessman knowing the trend has reached its peak? And even if it is rooted in genuine feeling - which to me, it kind of seems like it is - will the traditional country music scene be willing to accept the guy who performed 'Barefoot Blue Jeans Night'? That's one of the funny things about country music: there's always going to be some room for good time party music, and to some extent, defining a hard line on 'authenticity' to exclude that group could prove detrimental. Hell, even the Zac Brown Band wrote their fair share of gulf & western-inspired music with songs like 'Toes', 'Knee Deep', and 'Jump Right In'. 

Of course, the majority of country acts aren't protesting the concept of the good time party tune - no, their targets are the small group of songwriters behind this material who churn out song after interchangeable song that only seem to sink to lower and lower points of leering debauchery. And if we're looking for an act that might seem to be an obvious target, Joe Nichols would be near the front of the line. Over the course of his eight album career thus far, he has writing credits on seven songs, and none on this album which we'll be talking about today, titled Crickets. Don't know who this guy is? Well, he's the charming fellow who sung 'Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off' - charming.

But hey, as I've said before, there's room for good music both in traditional country and the stuff that's being written for the mainstream. With that in mind, how does Crickets turn out?

video review: 'my name is my name' by pusha t

Well, it took longer than i would have liked to get out, but here it is, my review of Pusha T's solo debut. Now I can go back to never having to care about this guy for a good year or so (judging by how much legwork it took to get this album out, I've probably got some time).

This week... well, damn, I've got no clue. I probably should cover Joe Nichols, but man that album looks bland as all hell, and here's a case where not a single song on the album was touched by Nichols himself - lovely. 

On the other hand, we've got Pearl Jam.

...okay, I think I know what I'm going to be talking about tomorrow, so stay tuned!

album review: 'my name is my name' by pusha t

I've got to be honest, it took a lot for me to get remotely excited about this album.

Hell, if I'm going to be completely honest, it's taken a lot for me to get excited about Pusha T as an artist altogether - which is really frustrating because everything I've heard about the guy suggests that I would actually like him as a rapper. According to the majority of the critical press, he's one of the few artists Kanye West signed to G.O.O.D. Music who was actually any good, and from what I remember from Cruel Summer last year, I think I liked what he put on the table. I remember thinking he was better than Big Sean and 2 Chainz, but then again, that's not hard by any stretch of the mind, and it brings to light a big problem I've had with rap music recently: it appears that everybody's critical standards for technical rhyming abilities have just plummeted while mine haven't moved. I look at rappers who have been laughed out of the rap game in the 90s or even the 2000s for sloppy flow or bad lyrics somehow gaining critical acclaim when their subject matter doesn't back it up. 

So thus when I'm confronted with a rapper like Pusha T, who gets critical acclaim because he's got a good flow and interconnected, well-written lyrics, I'm left a little unmoved because that's my standard for good rap music - if you can't do that, I have a hard time understanding why you were given a career (looking at you, 2 Chainz)! If you just deliver that without adequate subject matter behind it or anything interesting to say, I don't really have much to praise besides basic competence.

But to be fair to the guy, I'll admit I haven't had much of a chance to peruse a lot of Pusha T's material outside of guest verses, so I figured now would be a good time as any to take a look at his big solo debut, overloaded with guest stars as it is (which I'll co-opt Nathan Rabin and coin 'The Master P effect'). If he's looking for an opportunity to establish his presence and cred in the industry, this long-delayed album titled My Name Is My Name should be worth something, right?

video review: 'old' by danny brown

Man, I'm happy I got a chance to get this out. Think it's one of my better ones (despite the terrible screencap).

Next will be Pusha T and probably that'll be it until Sunday (going to visit extended family for Canadian Thanksgiving), where I'll probably cover Joe Nichols. Think I'm going to skip on Of Montreal, though - I just don't have the time to get through their discography right now to deliver a review with the right context.

Stay tuned!

album review: 'old' by danny brown

Let's talk about artistic dichotomies.

This is a bit of an odd topic, but it's one that does require an examination, particularly considering its rise within music, particularly hip-hop and rap. The principle is simple: holding two exclusive thoughts in your music simultaneously. Or, in simpler terms, the whole concept of the 'thug lover' or the 'gangsta with a sensitive side'. It doesn't really seem to make sense when you start thinking about it, but I'm not surprised at all why so many rappers try it out, because you're nailing two very different markets.

The issue becomes whether or not that separation of exclusive ideas can actually be believable, which is the biggest problem I find with most of these acts. For instance, Ja Rule very much wanted to emulate 2Pac, but he also appeared on duets with female singers and tried to come across as a sensitive dude, and it completely backfired on him because the image didn't hold up under deeper scrutiny. For a more recent example, take a look at Drake - it's clear he's much more comfortable in the sensitive R&B vein, but he still plays the thug and it's rarely believable. It requires an extremely talented artist who can hold multiple personas successfully, and it takes an even better one to make them come across as remotely cohesive on the same album.

Enter Danny Brown, a rapper from the underground who made major waves in 2011 with XXX, a album where Danny Brown pushed that dichotomy between thug and conscientious rapper to the absolute limit, splitting his album into two segments: the sleazy, often grossly explicit thug; and the more street-wise, down-to-earth rapper who was able to provide context for such behaviour. It helped matters that Danny Brown seems smarter than the average girl/riches/car-obsessed rapper, and his meta-commentary strewn throughout both sides of the album did wonders for bringing it all together. Plus, from an instrumentation/production/technical rapping standpoint, the majority of the album was damn near flawless. Going into XXX, I was expecting just another mixtape, and I left with my mind blown because this guy was legit, both as an extremely convincing gangsta presence and as a rapper who could intelligently speak to the grimier, more depressing lifestyles that cultivated that gangsta image. 

So with that in mind, I was intrigued by the fact that Danny Brown's newest album Old would be exploring that dichotomy yet again, but I was also a bit worried - the album was clearly being marketed as 'bigger' and more aimed at the mainstream hip-hop community, and with more writers on board every track, I was worried that some of the more incisive commentary or risky subject matter would get sanded down. Was I right?

video review: 'frame by frame' by cassadee pope

Ugh, I hate giving mixed-to-negative reviews to debut acts. Sorry about missing the update yesterday, mostly because I felt ill as all hell. Next will be either Pusha T or Danny Brown - not sure which one, we'll see.

album review: 'frame by frame' by cassadee pope

Let's talk about The Voice.

Formed in the waning years of American Idol, The Voice was a desperate move by NBC to regain some market share given that several of their mainstream programs were getting crushed by Fox and CBS. They made the gamble that if they brought in several recognizable (and bankable) music stars who were desperate to regain the spotlight and had them 'overcome' the image-based discrimination of the pop scene, they'd capitalize on the degeneration of American Idol. So recruiting Christina Aguliera, who hasn't done anything worth mentioning on the charts in years, Adam Levine, who had just come out of a failed album and was hit with writer's block, Cee-Lo Green, who had just had a massive hit and was looking to coast on it as long as he could, and Blake Shelton, who hadn't had chart success in almost a decade, NBC put the show out and it was a massive hit and proved instrumental in reviving the careers of the majority of the hosts as well.

But here's the element that gets interesting; most of the 'winners' from The Voice did not really succeed in the same vein as Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood or even Adam Lambert or Phillip Phillips. The albums were delayed, the hits didn't really materialize, and the show didn't turn into the massive chart-defining money spinner that American Idol had been. In short, it's hard for me to look at this show and any of the winning contestants as just props to reinvigorate the careers of established artists. That's not denigrating any of their talent, but it's worth noting that Zac Brown might have actually been wrong when he slammed Blake Shelton and how his influence had led to success for his chosen stars - because it hasn't.

But perhaps this is going to change now with the arrival of Miss Cassadee Pope, the winner from the third season of The Voice (under Shelton's tutelage) and who has just released her new pop-country album Frame By Frame. Now to be completely honest, I never watched The Voice, half because I didn't care and half because, well, I don't have cable. So with that in mind, I took a look at Cassadee Pope's major label debut - did she rise above her reality show roots like Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood ahead of her?

video review: 'too weird to live, too rare to die!' by panic! at the disco

Once again, it took longer than I wanted to get this up, but I'm happy with the review. First of many for this week - Danny Brown, Pusha T, Cassadee Pope, of Montreal (which I'm delaying for as long as I can) and Austin Mahone. And I'm going to visit extended family this weekend - joy of joys.

Stay tuned for tomorrow!

album review: 'too weird to live, too rare to die!' by panic! at the disco

It's common knowledge in the music industry that the last groups to jump on a trending bandwagon are often the worst. These are the acts that can only get success via peripheral engagement with the big stars, the desperate acts shoved out by the label to wring every last penny out the dying trend. And if the genre is already facing some critical malign, you can bet the worst of it will be dumped on the groups at the end. And today, we're going to be talking about one of those groups from the dying embers of the pop rock genre in the mid-to-late 2000s, which somehow managed to carry on and even prosper.

Yes, folks, we're talking about Panic! At The Disco, one of the most interesting - and frustrating - stories of the pop rock genre, complete with critical and audience polarization. Simply mentioning this band often gets you wildly differing opinions - and the sad fact is that most of those opinions aren't particularly well informed, or were shaped by the blowback against the 'emo genre' (and really, it's hard to say how much of that backlash was deserved).

I should explain. Panic! At The Disco released their first album in 2005, titled A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, and it immediately polarized critics and audiences. The musical style took the vaudeville-esque showmanship of My Chemical Romance and paired it with the bitingly acerbic and surprisingly insightful lyrics of Fall Out Boy, and combined, the album is more than a bit of a wordy, pretentious, surprisingly listenable mess. Critics either loved it or hated it with a passion, and the audience was divided along similar lines, the fans loving it for the great hooks and attempts at complexity (about half of which paid dividends), the others hating it for being pretentious, too sarcastic for their own good, or for being astoundingly flamboyant and theatrical (often dumped under the pejorative of 'it's gay'). And really, all of that is true to some extent, and how much you could like A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is more linked to how much you could tolerate all of it.

But the band weren't interested in repeating themselves, so when they came back in 2008 with Pretty Odd, they threw a massive curveball by releasing an album that sounded like a modernized version of the baroque psychedelic pop of the Beatles and especially the Beach Boys from the late 60s. The majority of the fans and critics were thrown off-guard and while the band won some measure of critical acclaim (mostly because the album is really goddamn great), most of their teenage fanbase deserted them in confusion. Which is a damn shame, because the album is really something special, almost reaching the point of earning the label of the 'modern day Brian Wilson'.

However, a few critics pointed out that the band would have likely maintained more relevance if they had stuck with speaking to today's generation instead of aping that of the past - and Panic! At The Disco chose to do just that in 2011 with Vices & Virtues. It was a creative direction that split the band in two, leaving them without their primary songwriter Ryan Ross. Thus, the album does feel transitional - and, like all albums from Panic! At The Disco, a bit of a mess - but at the same time, it was probably my favourite album from them. Yes, it's not quite as complex as their previous works, but it nailed the elements that cemented Panic! At The Disco as the spiritual successors to Brian Wilson in my mind: incredibly catchy hooks, a wide diversity of instrumentation, surprisingly insightful lyrics, and way more heartfelt emotion than you'd expect from a bunch of leftovers from emo pop rock. I highly recommend the album and for me it was one of the highlights of 2011...

And it flopped. Not critically - while most critics have never been the biggest fans of Panic! At The Disco, there was probably the most positive critical consensus with Vices & Virtues - but it certainly didn't sell well. Of course, that was to be expected, because it was released in 2011, with the club boom that wasn't nearly dead yet. On top of that, the label's choice of singles was pretty lousy (they should have led with 'Memories' and pivoted to 'Sarah Smiles'), and to be honest, Panic! At the Disco had lost a ton of fans over their career with their wildly shifting artistic direction. Plus, most former fans had long ago branded them as one of those 'emo acts' that we're all supposed to hate now, along with Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.

But with Fall Out Boy's return this year with Save Rock And Roll, I wasn't surprised to see Panic! At The Disco preparing to release an album, one that was reportedly supposed to be about Vegas and the darker, seedier side of that town in the modern age, partially inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. At this point, I threw up my hands helplessly and went into this album expecting a deranged, cacophonous mess, but hopefully one with some great songs and interesting ideas. Did Panic! At The Disco's Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! succeed?

video review: 'bad blood' by bastille

Really not sure how this retro review will go down, to be honest. I'm pretty pleased with it, but you never know.

This week will promise to be absolutely goddamn insane, and I'm going to try to cover as much as I can, but with family coming down on Friday and a full work schedule as it is... this could be a tough week. Stay tuned!

album review: 'bad blood' by bastille (RETRO REVIEW)

Here's something that you might not know about me: I'm a huge follower of the Billboard Hot 100 charts. I find them surprisingly fascinating in a perverse sort of way, watching what gets airplay and mainstream success thanks to a nebulous ranking which is plagued by changes in policy, odd editorial direction, or outright mistakes. The funny thing is that the music industry has had something of a love/hate relationship with Billboard throughout the decades, particularly in the mid-to-late 90s, where the record industry manipulated the charts through carefully timed single releases (to abuse the policy where a single had to be released to chart, neglecting album cuts, so the label would wait until a song had peak radio airplay then release the single to maximize chart position). And then you have cases like earlier this year, where Billboard finally decided to include YouTube streams in response to 'Gangnam Style' being blocked for weeks by a lousy Maroon 5 song ('One More Night') - and then the goddamn Harlem Shake went to #1 for five weeks.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that every week, I make a point of going through the Hot 100 and checking out what I've been missing - as I've said, I've got a populist streak, and it makes sense to be engaged. And in the course of doing so, I've noticed a few anomalies on the charts, songs that sound a little out-of-place - intriguingly so, in a way. And one of those songs comes from the act I'm going to talk about today: Bastille.

Bastille is a band that falls into an intriguing category for me: indie rock bands that most music critics don't want to cover and yet are widely liked by the mainstream, otherwise known as 'silent majority' acts. This year, the acts that fit the bill are bands like The 1975, or Bastille, or The Neighborhood (who I'll be covering a little later) - and it often seems like music critics only review these bands with the strongest of trepidation. And to be fair, it's not hard to see why: these are acts that are being pushed towards the mainstream by the label, and with the right single or Glee cover, they can rapidly become massive hits. This happened in 2011 with Foster The People, it happened in 2012 with fun., and now it's clear the labels are looking to recreate that success this year - and some critics resent this because they feel these bands are shallow facsimiles of what 'authentic' indie music is. Now the whole argument regarding what is artistically 'authentic' or 'underground' these days with the rise of the internet has gotten insanely convoluted and more than a little stupid, so let me drop my solitary opinion here: I'm going to be making my authenticity judgement based on the music and the lyrics, not some hypothetical indie criteria or whether or not Pitchfork slobbers all over them. And I since I've got a stronger pop sensibility than some - and because I still need more time to get through Dream Theater's discography - I'm going to take a look at Bastille's debut album Bad Blood. Does it rise above its 'silent majority' status?

video review: 'bangerz' by miley cyrus

This review took a bit longer than I expected, but it's out. Finally.

Next week will be insane - five or six new albums dropping, plus I'm going to try and knock off a few retrospectives. A life, what's that? Stay tuned!

album review: 'bangerz' by miley cyrus

I'm sick of people talking about Miley Cyrus.

Yes, I'm aware of the hypocrisy here with me making that statement and immediately jumping into my review of her recent album, but here's the big difference between me and what most of the non-thinking members of the entertainment press did in the aftermath of the VMAs: I'm going to talk about her music. I don't care about her image or her supposedly 'scandalous' behaviour, and as much as I'm annoyed she found a way to get twerking inserted in the cultural lexicon, I'm really not all that bothered by the fact she managed to drive up controversy at the VMAs and give the program another couple years of relevance. Frankly, the level of slut-shaming by too many correspondents 'commenting' on this issue has reached disgusting levels, particularly when you consider historical context - I mean, maybe I'm just looking at this from somebody who knows his country music, but do any of you remember Billy Ray Cyrus' early persona? He was the one who wore the sleeveless shirts and conducted his concerts like a Chip 'n Dale show and showed up in Dolly Parton's 'Romeo' where she and a gaggle of other female country singers mooned over how incredibly hot he was - in 1992, no less! And sure, he got flack for it, but when Miley does the same thing in a pop context, everyone loses their goddamn minds?

Ugh. No, if I'm going to take an issue from Miley's VMA performance, it'd be with the music - it sounded terrible, mostly because Miley Cyrus isn't very good live (she goes sharp and off-key more often than she should) and was working with a lousy song. If anything, that's been one of the big issues I've had with Miley Cyrus as an 'artist': she has been given a ton of really terrible material by her handlers who seem bewildered by the fact that Miley clearly wants to take her image in a much more provocative direction. If she's given good songs, she tends to be fairly decent on them, as evidenced by her presence on the excellent 'Ashtrays & Heartbreaks' by Snoop Lion - which, I should add, is still one of my favourite songs of the year. And thus, I think I was the only critic stepping away from the VMAs thinking, 'Well, she's got a new album coming out and she's apparently got songwriting credits on the majority of the songs - this could actually be interesting, all things considered!' And given that Miley at least seems invested in her material (in comparison with her fellow pop starlet Selena Gomez), it might come across as better than expected.

So I gave her new album Bangerz a listen - did Miley Cyrus manage to present something interesting?

video review: 'redneck crazy' by tyler farr

So yeah, another day, another mostly mediocre bro-country act. Man, this one was a chore to get through.

Next up is the big one: Miley Cyrus. Stay tuned, folks, this could get ugly.

album review: 'redneck crazy' by tyler farr

We return - again - to country music, where things have certainly escalated.

When I originally wrote my Special Comment on the state of modern country music, I did not expect the response I got. I expected maybe a bit of praise, a larger bit of hatred as a holdover from the Justin Moore review (keep the hatred coming, folks, I can take it), and then for it to sink like a stone. I did not expect to be pointed towards a growing contingent who are growing very angry about the state of modern country music, or to discover the country music feuds to be heating up in a big way with more and more stars taking sides, and then to be contacted directly by the country music correspondent from Entertainment Weekly! Suddenly, I was inundated by country music news and links to underground country acts that I'm excited to explore, and it appears my Special Comment may just be one of many from mainstream publications talking about and analyzing this issue. A feud within country music hasn't been this enflamed since the 2000s, and with the rise of social media and instant responses, I can see this blowing up in a big way.

But let me make this part absolutely clear: I'm still a music critic and not a gossip columnist, and my job is not to get involved in the drama of the stars or their various feuds. I definitely stand by my criticism of certain other online critics for their refusal to cover country music on narrow-minded genre classifications, but I've found good music in traditional and neotraditional country music, and I've even managed to find good stuff in the pop-country and bro-country subgenres as well. Admittedly, I've got more of a pop sensibility than most, but good music is good music, and as long as I can defend my critical opinions, I'm gong to be fair with my coverage regardless of genre.

So when I heard about the rumblings against Tyler Farr's debut bro-country album Redneck Crazy, I took a deep breath and kept my senses. Sure, the guy has basically come out of nowhere and had a criminally underwritten Wikipedia page, but maybe the hatred was overblown, right?

video review: 'days are gone' by haim

Wow, review number fifty, and only one of them have broken a thousand views. Eh, this sort of shit takes time, I've accepted that.

Next up is Tyler Farr and the newest update from bro-country. Spoilers, it doesn't end well.

album review: 'days are gone' by haim

You know, for as many solo female acts I've reviewed this year, I haven't actually covered that many girl groups, or at least in the traditional definition of a pop girl group. I mean, the closest would probably be Icona Pop, but that was a duo and after that? Savages and Echo Bench were girl 'bands', not precisely fitting the stereotypical definition of what would be considered a girl 'group' in the vein of, say, the Spice Girls or TLC. 

The truth of the matter is that girl groups haven't been nearly as successful in North America than internationally, where they continue to exist to this day, particularly in j-pop and k-pop. Of the international girl group acts, I probably like the UK-based girl group Girls Aloud the most, almost to the point where I'd consider them my favourite of the genre (although most of the credit must go to top-notch producing team Xenomania). Yes, seriously - as with boy bands, girl groups didn't quite go away in the UK, and while they didn't quite crossover, acts like Little Mix and Fifth Harmony have achieved some minor success stateside thanks to the influence of Simon Cowell. And really, it's only been a matter of time: as soon as boy bands starting coming back, I knew girl groups would be right around the corner.

So with that, let's talk about HAIM (I guarantee I'm pronouncing this wrong however I say it), a group that really toes the line between girl band and girl group, and which broke into public view last year. These three sisters all do play their own instruments, but they claim to draw a lot of their influence from mid-90s female R&B acts like TLC, which is why I stand by the 'girl group' mention. Strangely, though, many critics have drawn the much sharper comparison to not girl groups or girl bands, but to Fleetwood Mac of all things. That, plus the critical acclaim, was enough to catch some interest from me, and I gave their debut album 'Days Are Gone' a listen. What do I think?

video review: 'the bluegrass album' by alan jackson

Holy crap, this one came together fast. I don't know what it was, but I didn't really have a huge amount to say and this review came out surprisingly quick. Better for me - brevity is good - but still...

Next review is HAIM's 'Days Are Gone', and then maybe I might get a chance to tackle a few indie acts before Miley. And yes, I'm working on the Dream Theater review. Give it time, people.

album review: 'the bluegrass album' by alan jackson

When people ask me why I listen to country music, or how they can get into country music, I point at Alan Jackson.

It's kind of hard for me to fully articulate why Alan Jackson stands out for me in terms of country singers from the 90s in a way that few of his peers do. He's a superb musician with a gift for catchy, memorable melodies and lyrics with a superb flow. He is completely unafraid to write political songs and he's intelligent enough to work to capture many layers of nuance in those songs (signified in 'Where Were You', one of only two songs that managed to properly memorialize September 11 by any artist). He's not a man who actively seems to get angry in his material, but you can tell he is the kind of man you do not screw with, as evidenced by his legendary performance at the 1999 Country Music Awards, where he switched song mid-solo from one of his own to George Jones' 'Choices', in protest of how one of the legends of country music had been pressured to trim his performance for commercials and had bowed out of the ceremony. 

And as a neotraditionalist country singer - one of the most successful at that - Alan Jackson has been fighting for decades to preserve the historical spirit and culture of the medium. Besides releasing a ton of amazing music in this vein, he also recorded with George Strait a song called 'Murder On Music Row', where he directly criticized the slide of country music towards the mainstream courtesy of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. It was a controversial song on country radio in 2000, and arguably contributed in a big way for country receding from the mainsteam in the early years of that decade (besides just being a goddamn great song that nails commentary on the genre without getting preachy). 

So really, it was only a matter of time before the lead crusader of traditional country music came back, with the slide of country, yet again, towards the mainstream. And while Chris Young has accumulated some fame and critical success, he doesn't quite have the same pull within Nashville that Alan Jackson has. And thus, I wasn't surprised in the slightest when Alan Jackson announced his new album would be titled The Bluegrass Album, one that he has been 'threatening' the country music industry that he would make for years now. 

Now, I must confess, I'm not the most familiar with bluegrass as a genre, but I know enough to get by and if I'm looking for a way into the genre, I can't think of a better introduction than that of a country legend who has been preparing for this album for nearly a decade. And thus, I chose to take a listen to Alan Jackson's The Bluegrass Album - how did it turn out?