special comment: 'pop 101' (in defense of the genre: pop)

On August 4 of this year, the Canadian pop rock band Marianas Trench released their music video for a new song titled 'Pop 101', a song that sought to satirize pop music tropes and sounds throughout the past decade, from 2006 Justin Timberlake to 2013 Miley Cyrus. And like Maddie & Tae's 'Girls In A Country Song', The Roots' most recent album ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, and any number of self-aware punk records released since the dawn of the genre, Marianas Trench are commenting upon and satirizing the trends in their own genre of music, and they made a pretty damn solid song along the way.

But the release of that song and the usual slew of comments I get saying, 'Dude, you clearly just don't like pop music, so why bother reviewing it' finally spurred me to put some serious thought into a discussion that's worth having. And this discussion will be centered around three questions: what is pop music? Why do I like it? And is it worth defending? And to answer that question, I'm going to use the example of a Canadian pop rock band who wrote 'Pop 101' and who definitely deserves more attention on both sides of the border.

video review: 'welcome to the jungle' by neon jungle

Well that was... surprisingly anticlimatic. Sheesh, not really a lot to say about the newest girl group arriving, that's for damn sure.

Okay next up... once again, I've got no idea. That debut album from The #1s looks interesting, but then again, I'll need to cover Spoon, Dilated Peoples, and plenty of others up ahead, so stay tuned!

album review: 'welcome to the jungle' by neon jungle

It's been a while since I've talked about pop girl groups, so let's revisit those again.

As I've said in the past, most girl groups don't tend to be my thing - I'm not saying I don't have a certain amount of appreciation for the roles acts like TLC or the Spice Girls played in modern pop, but they aren't usually my thing. Hell, the reason I like Girls Aloud as much as I do is more for pretty solid songwriting and great production courtesy of Xenomania more than their actual performances themselves. 

But one thing I've noticed over the past fifteen or so years is that girls groups don't so much define the pop landscape as they adapt to what is popular, especially if we're looking at groups originating in the UK. The Spice Girls rode the high-energy plastic dance pop trend throughout the 90s, Destiny's Child coasted on the path TLC already created and throughout the R&B boom of the early 2000s, and the Pussycat Dolls were the concoction of a marketing team that focused on image above all else, looked at the sleazier music of the mid-to-late 2000s and thought, "Hey, how can we make it that much worse?"

And it looks like similar trends are continuing with our current crop of British girl groups. Little Mix moved more towards R&B with their album Salute and while they haven't really gotten the chart success they deserve in the US, it's only a matter of time before the current neo-soul shift snags some of their material. Fifth Harmony, on the other hand, seems to be going for the percussion-heavy hip-hop-inspired pop with their recent single 'Bo$$', a song that I'll deal with whenever they drop that next album, because there's definitely a lot to talk about there.

The third group is Neon Jungle, the newest and arguably the girl group with the least buzz on this side of the Atlantic, one that I discovered by accident on iTunes when buying that self-titled Jungle record that I covered last week. And unlike their competition, Neon Jungle seemed to be going more along the lines of the Spice Girls by appropriating modern EDM trends for their debut album, Welcome To The Jungle. So out of curiosity, I bought the album and gave it a couple of listens: how is it?

video review: 'lese majesty' by shabazz palaces

Yeah, I know it's late, but I needed more listens to fully digest this record, it just took a lot of time.

Also, I'm quite happy with how my new lighting setup turned out. Probably will have to get used to staring into such an illuminated set, but that's an easy enough adjustment.

Next up, Neon Jungle, because it'll take a bit of time before I'm ready to tackle Spoon, so stay tuned!

album review: 'lese majesty' by shabazz palaces

Let's talk a little about Sub Pop. Most prominently known for jumpstarting the grunge movement thanks to signing Soundgarden and Nirvana, they've also signed Sonic Youth, The Postal Service, Beach House, Fleet Foxes, Sleater-Kinney, The Shins, and all manner of indie rock bands that have earned considerable critical acclaim over the past few years. In other words, like Top Dawg Entertainment, they're a label that critics tend to keep an eye on.

But over the past few years, Sub Pop has started doing something a little unusual - signing hip-hop groups, mostly on the experimental, noisy, abrasive side of the genre. One of these groups I've talked about before, Clipping, who dropped one of my favourite hip-hop records of this year in terms of its noisy yet very accessible sound and thought-provoking lyrics. The other group, however, I have a slightly more complicated relationship with, and it's also an act I have a very hard time making heads or tails of every time I listen to their records.

Yep, I'm talking about Shabazz Palaces, who first burst onto the scene with a pair of critically acclaimed EPs before dropping the absolutely fascinating record Black Up, an album I think I appreciate a lot more than I like. The album is layered, excellently produced, and features some thought-provoking and intelligent lyrics and themes about a different paradigm in which to approach rap music. At the same time, I couldn't really call myself a fan of the record: while I loved the jazz-fusion with noisy, off-kilter rhythms and psychedelia across the album, MC Ishmael Butler aka Palaceer Lazaro didn't really impress me with his flow or energy, and I found the free-association lyrics didn't always stick the landing as effectively as they could, no matter how much desperate extrapolation was pulled from RapGenius. 

So I was curious to take a look at their newest album, Lese Majesty, especially given that there's is little-to-no critical consensus on this record across the Internet. How did it turn out?

video review: 'nobody's smiling by common'

The video went up late last night, but it's here now, and honestly, I'm pretty pleased with how it came out. Just wish the record had been a little better.

Next up, Shabazz Palaces... but it'll be a review that'll come on either Friday or Saturday, because I'm seeing Jack White tonight in concert! Either way, stay tuned!

album review: 'nobody's smiling' by common

It's hard to tackle legends - especially when those legends easily made at least four albums I would consider bonafide classics. Especially when those legends aren't just significant to the music, but the culture that surrounds the music. Artists responsible for making some powerfully gripping and intelligent conscious hip-hop that also managed to be accessible to any audience willing to take the time to listen.

Yeah, I'm talking about Common, Chicago rapper known for his collaborations with No ID, The Roots, Erykah Badu, and Kanye West, who has earned a ton of critical acclaim for a succession of albums in the 90s and one in the mid 2000s that are damn close to masterpieces. The man is witty, intelligent, has a solid flow, and is incredibly charismatic, and he had the imagination and creativity to make some socially conscious and challenging records. Hell, while I won't say his 2002 effort Electric Circus works all the way through - it doesn't, mostly due to a broad lack of lyrical focus - it's certainly a fascinating listen with some genuinely inspired musical ideas.

But after his brilliant 2005 soulful success in Be, Common has struggled. Finding Forever felt like a less-inspired sequel to his last record and Universal Mind Control showed Common dumbing it down to disastrous results. And by the time Common released The Dreamer/The Believer in 2011, I was a little uncertain where Common seemed to be looking to go, especially as that album tried to toe the line between easy-going partying and the conscious rap for which he's most known. Granted, the album was pretty decent, but it was nowhere near his greats and did feel a little uninspired at points.

But with the escalating gang violence in Chicago which has only intensified over the past few years and the growing number of Chicago MCs either speaking against it or reveling in it, I knew it was only a matter of time before Common returned to his roots and spoke on this directly. And frankly, I was really interested: not only was one of the strongest MCs from Chicago going to address the critically ignored issue, he was going to speak to it with familiarity and a serious grit that was bound to draw serious interest. So I checked out Nobody's Smiling by Common - how was it?

video review: 'in technicolor' by jesse mccartney

I kind of wish this record was better than it was. Not a bad record by any stretch, but still...

Okay, Common next. Stay tuned!

album review: 'in technicolor' by jesse mccartney

So about a year ago, I went to see The Backstreet Boys live in concert, and surprise surprise, it was a great show. All five of them sound fantastic, they're still stellar dancers, and the multi-part harmonies were paired with some killer pop hits that have allowed them to sell out some pretty sizable venues. Even if you're not a fan of the group or you think that the 90s boy bands should have stayed in that decade and be rightly forgotten, it'd be hard to deny that the Backstreet Boys' longevity and stage production was pretty damn solid.

But what surprised me about the show was their opening act: Jesse McCartney, an act of which the majority of you probably forgot existed but who was briefly relevant in the spotlight in the confused pop charts of the late 2000s with his two major singles 'Leavin'' and 'How Do You Sleep'. And honestly, I really liked 'Leavin' and a few relistens reminded me why - the electronic elements were tasteful, it was confident and sincere without being insufferable, and the abuse of autotune that plagued R&B-inspired pop songs of the era was mostly muted. It was the definition of the sort of slick pop song Justin Timberlake could knock out of the park in his sleep - and unsurprisingly, the comparisons started immediately and were mostly unfair, because the two acts were in different lanes. Timberlake was gunning for Michael Jackson's throne, where Jesse McCartney had his eyes more on the blue-eyed soul of the past.

And thus, I really shouldn't be surprised that he finally managed to get his fourth album released when with the success of classier acts like Sam Smith, neo-soul acts seemed primed for chart success. And since I really did like his opening act and was curious to see more, I took a look at that album: how is it?

video review: 'jungle' by jungle

Ugh, this was a dud. You hope indie projects in this vein would turn out better than this.

Okay, I need a little more time for Shabazz Palaces and Common, so next up will be someone you normally haven't seen and might not expect. Stay tuned!

album review: 'jungle' by jungle

Let's talk a little about disco.

As a genre, it tends to have a much worse reputation than it really deserves for a lot of wrong reasons. It was scorned because it was dance music made primarily by producers instead of songwriters... but then again, we now live in an era where EDM has become one of the hottest selling genres worldwide. It was hated because it was synthetic and electronic and felt plastic... in other words, like every other genre that touches pop music in the mainstream for the past twenty years. It was loathed because it emerged from the gay dance club scene and thus the backlash that had been seething against that music and much of the black culture that had supported the jazz, funk, and soul of its roots finally had an outlet to explode, and I shouldn't even have to tell you why that backlash was at best misguided and at worst moronic. If we're looking for a more legitimate reason why disco died in the late 70s, it was the same reasons any music trend dies: musical evolution in sound and style; and sheer overexposure.

But given the current musical and political climate and especially the resurgence of soul, dance music and even reggae-inspired tracks on the charts, it wasn't a surprise that acts began jumping towards a new incarnation of disco, even in the underground where with the rise of the internet it has never been easier for unknown acts to snag chart smashes. So with that comes Jungle, a band that began as a viral sensation in 2013 before signing to XL and dropping a debut album they described as 'midtempo 70s-inspired funk'. That, if anything, was enough to attract my interest, so I gave that self-titled debut a few listens: how did it go?

video review: 'never hungover again' by joyce manor

Man, I have to stop forgetting to post these....

Okay, next up... honestly, not sure. Got some crazy ideas in the can, so we'll see what happens, so stay tuned!

album review: 'never hungover again' by joyce manor

So here's the problem with being a video reviewer that covers punk records in any capacity: if you're not careful, you might end up taking longer than the album itself. So much of punk - especially hardcore punk - worked best by distilling their formula down to a razor sharp, precisely timed slice of music, which operated as something of a double-edged sword. If you do it right, you can create something with blisteringly sharp, potent impact, but if you don't hit the right spot at precisely the right time, your album could come across as ephemeral.

Enter Joyce Manor, a California-based punk act that crashed onto the indie scene with their self-titled record in 2011 and followed it with Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired in 2012, both of which are records that are pretty damn solid across the board for the ten to fifteen minutes you get them. Initially, I was pretty impressed by the songwriting - it bites hard from the broadly sketched metaphors of teenage angst, but then again, so did Green Day - but what hooked me was the more experimental side on that second album, experimenting with dirty lo-fi records more reminiscent of Beck balanced against the decidedly poppier songs, all brought together by Barry Johnson's honestly cynical, too-smart-for-the-room delivery. The contrast immediately drew comparisons to the Smiths, because music critics make hyperbolic comparisons way too quickly when they spot obvious talent - and they weren't the only ones, as Joyce Manor signed to Epitaph Records for their new record Never Hungover Again, their longest album at ten songs and just under twenty minutes! So I checked it out - what did I get?

video review: 'more than any other day' by ought (RETRO REVIEW)

Well, glad to finally get THIS off my plate. Took way too long - and filming this one was a real pain in the ass - but I'm glad it's done.

No idea what to cover next, but you can bet I'm not covering fucking Jason Mraz. Either way, stay tuned!

album review: 'more than any other day' by ought (RETRO REVIEW)

First, a brief history lesson: two years ago in the spring of 2012 the Liberal government of the Canadian province of Quebec aimed to raise university tuition rates approximately 75% from about $2100 per year to just under $3800. To the rest of Canada, this particular act was greeted with a mixed response. On the one hand, speaking as a guy just out of university, it sucks when your university tuition is raised by any amount, as it makes it harder for students to afford an education, which was originally the purpose of the tuition freeze in the first place. On the other hand, Quebec has had the lowest tuition in the country by thousands of dollars for Quebec residents, and their universities were starting to feel the pinch in maintaining or upgrading facilities, so breaking the tuition freeze did make a certain amount of sense. 

But you wouldn't have heard those discussions in Quebec, because throughout the spring of 2012, thousands of students took to the streets in protest, with several riots breaking out that the provincial government promptly overreacted to and the whole thing turned into a gigantic, politically ruinous mess. So why bring it up? Well, from that tumultuous incident came Ought, a Montreal based band blending the artier side of punk music with indie rock that seemed to be directly inspired by that event, along with Richard Hell and especially the Talking Heads. Now I originally planned on reviewing this record when it came out several months ago, but I figured now is as good of a time as ever to delve into the band and continue my foray into Canadian indie rock. So, what did I find?

album review: 'alvvays' by alvvays

Well, this was a damn great surprise. I might have to do this sort of Pitchfork diving more often.

And you know, I think I'm going to stick on the side of Canadian indie rock for a bit longer and handle some old business I should have talked about months ago. Stay tuned!

album review: 'alvvays' by alvvays

For those of you who weren't watching my series a good year ago or those who perused my back catalog back before I had a decent camera or any presence in front of it, you might remember that I didn't exactly have a lot of material to cover in the middle of the summer. There's a reason for that: like early January, the mid-summer tends to be a dead zone for album releases under the assumption that the radio has already locked in their 'songs of the summer' and people will have already picked up the albums they want if they're going to the beach or cottage or the backyard barbeque. And in a year where the pop charts have been fairly stagnant in terms of turnover or are populated by singles from albums released last year, it leaves album critics like myself in a bit of a tight spot. It's gotten to the point where the albums battling out for the top spot this week are Jason Mraz and Weird Al Yankovic, neither of which are acts you would ever expect to get a #1 hit!

And since I already covered Weird Al and you couldn't pay me to cover Jason Mraz, I thought I might hop into my backlog of critically acclaimed records that I may have passed over - but the problem with that is I already covered most of those records too, and the ones I might have missed have discographies that require a bit more time to peel through before I feel confident in talking about them. So in sheer desperation, I went that wretched hive of scum and villainy - Pitchfork - and grabbed the first record that looked somewhat interesting, a debut album from a Canadian band called Alvvays. Based out of Toronto, they're an indie pop quintet that is advertised as pairing 'millennial social anxiety with breezy effortlessly cool surf rock'. In other words, the perfect act to drop an album in the middle of summer. So I picked up that self-titled debut album and gave it a listen: how was it?

video review: 'trouble in paradise' by la roux

Yeah, that Sadistik review isn't happening, I don't think. Every draft of it did not work, so I'm probably not going to cover it unless I get really desperate.

But then again, we're now entering the point of the year where nothing is coming out. So expect some odd shit over the next few days, so stay tuned!

album review: 'trouble in paradise' by la roux

Someday when pop culture historians sit down to write about the rise of EDM in the United States, they'd be wise to keep in mind two very important factors. The first is an admission that despite some of the genres roots coming from the discos and club scenes in Detroit and Chicago, it wasn't the US that was responsible for turning EDM into the worldwide phenomenon it is today. For that, you need to give the majority of the credit to Europe, who had been engaging in fluorescent explosions of pounding bass and gleaming synth lines for decades before rave and festival culture reappeared the Atlantic. For me, the years that always jump out as the 'peak' of said scene was the very late 80s and early 90s, especially in England with the moves to fuse the baroque weirdness of synthpop of all stripes with dance music. 

The other factor, of course, is the club boom, an era from approximately 2009 to 2012 where mainstream culture gravitated towards nightclubs thanks to a resurgence in synthpop and the success of mainstream hip-hop in pushing that lifestyle and sound. What tends to get glossed over in this story is that after several years of mainstream radio generally ignoring European music, several synthpop acts from other markets broke through around this time. These are acts like Robyn, Ellie Goulding, and the artist we're going to be talking about today, La Roux, who smashed onto mainstream radio with 'Bulletproof', a song all hard-edged synths and a fiercely dynamic vocal performances by Elly Jackson. What made the album stand out for me was the razor-edged balance between raw vulnerability and confidence, and much sharper lyrics than you normally see in this brand of synthpop - in other words, La Roux for me was the proto-CHVRCHES.

And yet after 'Bulletproof' and world-wide tours, La Roux dropped off the face of the earth. Elly Jackson admitted she wasn't ready for the insane fame that comes with such a hit and took a step back, eventually parting ways with her longtime producer partner Ben Langmaid, but not before writing a few songs for the new album Trouble In Paradise, an album coming five years after their self-titled debut and into a very different pop and dance music climate. So, how does it hold up?

video review: 'strange desire' by bleachers

Holy shit, completely forgot to post this. Yeah, the album's awesome and getting better every time I listen through it. But yet it's one of those records that will not click with everyone and I get why.

Okay, I need to get this Sadistik review out of my system. Stay tuned!