video review: 'for you' by frankmusik

So yeah, fun review. Damn shame I couldn't film another one tonight, thanks to the celebratory noise (and me living in downtown Toronto - GO JAYS!). But rest assured, that Uncommon Nasa review is on the way, plus something you guys have been requesting - stay tuned!

album review: 'for you' by frankmusik

Oh, I've been looking forward to this one.

See, I think it was more coincidence than anything that I decided to pick up Frankmusik's 2014 album By Nicole, figuring there was bound to be quality given his work with Colette Carr. What I didn't expect was tightly written, explosive synthpop backed by the impressively raw vocals of Vincent Frank, where as pop music was getting more polished and reserved he was doubling down on intense passion... which could get a little awkward considering it was, for all intents and purposes, a breakup album. Because believe me, when By Nicole worked we got killer songs like 'Misdemeanor' and 'Uh Oh' and 'These Streets' and 'Call To Arms' and 'Conclusions', the last two being some my favourite songs of 2014... but as a whole, it felt a little too overwrought for the material it was trying to tackle and could have afforded a little more subtlety to undercut the bitterness.

But that said, even despite its flaws By Nicole hit enough high points that when I heard Frankmusik's new album For You was grounded in more contentment, pitching the bitterness and grief to the winds, I was definitely interested. After all, 'Call To Arms' was probably the simplest song on By Nicole in terms of being a raw, straightforward pump-up track, but it was also the best - if he could throw together a pop album of tracks like that, he could have a smash hit on his hands. So I had high hopes for this album, and pretty high expectations too - did For You deliver?

video review: 'new bermuda' by deafheaven

Well, this was outside of my usual comfort zone! Can't say I'm complaining, I really had a ton of fun filming and making this review.

Next up... well, I've got a few options ready and waiting, let's go for something a bit more obscure. Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 24, 2015 (VIDEO)

Well, that was easier than usual! It's nice being able to complete an episode without completely losing your entire project.

But moving on from that, I've got another review coming tonight, so stay tuned!

album review: 'new bermuda' by deafheaven

I can imagine there are a whole load of people who are looking at me doing this review right now and rolling their eyes. "Of course he's doing this review - some pasty white guy who spends most of his time talking about every other genre besides metal now is going to talk about Deafheaven? What does this Toronto hipster who spends more time listening to hip-hop and country know about black metal, so of course he talks about the least kvlt black metal act, the type that gets all the Pitchfork brats squealing that they're redefining the sound when frankly Burzum was blending in post-rock as early as '94 and Alcest was doing it in the mid-2000s and Wolves In The Throne Room were doing for nearly their entire career until they went experimental towards drone on Celestite...

So yeah, I did some of my homework here, but here's the funny thing: for the most part none of it is wrong, and one of the reasons I've been so hesitant to cover this record. Of the genres that I've delved into this year, black metal is one that remains tough for me to appreciate - partially because I've a fan of lyrics and between the screaming and production they can be hard to parse out, partially because, as I've said in the past, nihilistic subject matter only goes so far with me, and partially because I wanted to make sure I grasped the history of the genre before covering this record. And while I will whole-heartedly admit I've still got a ways to go, I think I can speak to why the hipster set went insane for an act like Deafheaven when they dropped the critically acclaimed Sunbather in 2013: melodies, transitions, and production. Yeah, they weren't as brutal or evil-sounding in comparison with some of the heaviest black metal I've heard, and the lyrics tended towards poetic abstraction instead of bone-crunching Satanism, but when the melodies were this good, the transitions this smooth, the atmosphere this potent, and the marketing of the band this accessible, it's no surprise people jumped on board. Now admittedly I wasn't really one of them - I've always been more of a progressive metal guy - but I could see why people liked Deafheaven; they weren't reinventing the wheel, but it's hard to deny the compositional skill.

So when I heard their newest record New Bermuda was going to be more aggressive and heavy, it really seemed like the best of two worlds - win back the metal elitists who dismissed them as hipster bait, and scare away the popular crowd who only jumped on board for that reason in the first place. And given that I've never really loved a Deafheaven record - Wolves In The Throne Room and In The Woods... both hit me a little harder, although the latter is more on the prog side - I still wanted to talk about this. So how did New Bermuda turn out?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 24, 2015

Don't be deceived by this week. Those were the words that were running through my head across this week as the initial sense of relief flooded through me. Yes, no more Drake and Future songs to cover, yes, we actually got more returning songs than new tracks on a reasonably short week, and hell, a song from one of your favourite albums of 2015 came back to the charts. But the more I pored over the charts, the more I got the feeling that the current rising 'stars' aren't exactly on the good side, and we could be in for a world of problems across the rest of the fall.

video review: 'revival' by selena gomez

Well, this record took way too long to cover. That's the problem with albums that are just tepid and bland to cover, they just stall you out and put you even further behind schedule.

But next up, I've got Billboard BREAKDOWN, but let's pray I can crank out another review in the mean time. Stay tuned!

album review: 'revival' by selena gomez

The last time I talked about Selena Gomez at length, it didn't go well.

Now to be fair, it was one of the first ever video reviews I ever did, still extremely new to the format. And I went it with a lengthy digression discussing cultural appropriation coming off of the lead-off single 'Come & Get It'. Believe it or not, I thought it might be indicative of Selena Gomez's new direction... and yet it turned out that I really didn't have to go into that much depth, because the record was atrocious. Granted, most would say expecting anything of quality out of Selena Gomez was probably asking too much, especially considering she didn't write any of it, but considering how much I did like some of the work she did with her band The Scene, Stars Dance was a shockingly big drop in quality across the board. From her phoned-in vocals to the cheap, by-the-numbers production that tried and failed to position her as a electronic diva to the lyrics that alternated between bland and asinine, there was nothing to recommend about the record, and for once the majority of critics agreed. But I think the largest problem that went unnoticed even by me at that time about Stars Dance was how anonymous is felt. Say what you will about Demi Lovato or especially Miley Cyrus, they at least have a distinctive persona to their music that has only been more honed with age, yet Selena has always seemed a little lost in what she wants to be, defaulting to a pale Rihanna imitation almost on default.

And yet believe it or not, I had hope for her sophomore album Revival. Not was 'Good For You' a surprisingly strong song with A$AP Rocky, she has the majority of writing credits on her new record and has said this record is more personal, mostly tied to the highly publicized ugly breakup with Justin Bieber, a stint in rehab, and the falling out she had with Demi Lovato. At the very least, I didn't expect her to nuke her career like Miley did with that ninety minute disaster that has already been forgotten, so what do we get with Revival?

video review: 'stories' by avicii

Well this was a surprisingly fun review to put together. Surprisingly easy too, but that can happen.

Next up... hmm, not really sure. Long weekend up ahead, and I want to make sure I make the best of it. So probably Julia Holter and The Dead Weather, but then there's The Game and Frankmusik and I should probably talk about Deafheaven if only to get it out of the way... eh, we'll see. Stay tuned!

album review: 'stories' by avicii

Of all the electronic producers I've covered in the mainstream, both in full-length reviews and on Billboard BREAKDOWN, Avicii is one that continues to frustrate me.

See, those of you who have followed me for a long time know that I wasn't too kind to his debut album TRUE, not a bad record but ultimately an experiment that landed steadily decreasing dividends throughout its runtime in attempting to fuse folk with accessible EDM. And yet many of you probably know that two Avicii songs have landed on my year-end lists for my favourite hit songs of 2013 and 2014 with 'Wake Me Up!' and 'Hey Brother'. And the stranger thing is that I'll stand behind both of those choices even though I'd still argue that TRUE was only ever a decent album.

And here the crux of that argument: Avicii is the sort of artist who has a great grasp on the fundamentals and the broad strokes of his experimentation, but can get stuck on the details, which is why the folk sections of that debut album ended up working better than any of the electronic segments. Sure, he's a strong melodic composer in putting together dynamic, surging progressions and marrying them with well-textured guitars and banjos and solid acoustic grooves... but the second he starts adding in thicker beats or percussion, things kind of go off the rails. Hell, he's not even a bad lyricist - all of which makes me think Avicii might be a better songwriter than producer and performer - but I can't help but see the irony in an electronic producer who blended folk in and made it work, except in the underlying electronic production itself!

But that was 2013, and let's face it, the EDM world has changed significantly in even just the past two years. The leftovers of the folk boom that Avicii was riding is now long dead and most modern EDM has gone to the deep house or R&B/neo-soul route - that'd be your Calvin Harris - or suffered badly for it, like Zedd. Where does Avicii fall with his sophomore release Stories?

video review: 'evermore: the art of duality' by the underachievers

Damn great record that took me way too long to get to - stupid overloaded schedule (really just overloaded October, to be honest). 

Next up, I need a little more time for Julia Holter, so I'm probably going to go with Avicii next. Stay tuned!

album review: 'evermore: the art of duality' by the underachievers

Goddamn it, I'm kicking myself for this one.

See, I've actually heard about this duo before when I started getting requests last year, and given the fall is always an overloaded time for album releases, I skipped over them. And given their debut album was getting solid but not exceptional reviews, I figured I'd put them on the backburner and eventually I just never got around to covering them. So when they announced their sophomore album this year, I figured I might as well check in on that debut...

And wow. As I said, I'm exasperated with myself that I let AK and Issa Gold get past me, because this is the sort of smart, articulate, hard-hitting hip-hop I really enjoy. Breakneck, multisyllabic flows that remind more than a bit of Bone Thugz-N-Harmony, great chemistry, solid psychedelic leanings in the wordplay that have only become better articulated, they broke through with the star-making Indigoism mixtape in 2013 and the better written and tighter but slightly less refined Cellar Door: Terminus Ut Exordium in 2014. I'm not sure whether it would have been enough to knock either into my favourites list, but they definitely would have been contenders.

And as such, I definitely had some interest in their sophomore release Evermore: The Art Of Duality - even though at fifteen tracks this looked to be an exhaustingly dense listen. Which I think even they realized, because from the album art to the track listening, they looked to be segregating this record into two distinctive parts, one light, one dark. But regardless, how did the album turn out?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 17, 2015 (VIDEO)

Wow, I'm amazed I got this out at all. Multiple crashes, editing was absolute hell, but here it is. 

Next up... I want to cover something I'm actually going to like, so how about The Underachievers? Stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - october 17, 2015

Okay, normally what happens on a week full of new arrivals from a big release, you can normally expect a bunch of them to fall off the week after or at least take a sizeable dip after the hype fades. What you don't normally expect is nearly all of them to gain traction and for the charts to pick up all of the remaining tracks from that album you didn't cover and add them too! Such was the apparent magnetism of Drake & Future that not only did they not go away, they got bigger and even brought more along for the ride. Joy.

video review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

God, I'm not a fan of this review. It's a mess, my hair looks terrible, and the bitterness really does sour me on it - even though it was like the fifteenth take and I really wasn't feeling pretty well. It's me pushing myself too hard in one night - all the more evidence I need to better manage my time.

Okay, Billboard BREAKDOWN next - stay tuned!

album review: 'tangled up' by thomas rhett

There's no easy way to do this review.

See, this is the problem with being one of the few critics who covers country on YouTube and one of the only ones who covers mainstream country. I feel I've got an obligation to show off the best stuff, mostly because I want to see it get more traction, but for the bad stuff... well, who wants this review? Certainly not me because as I've said in the past, negative reviews aren't often that fun, and you guys mostly come for recommendations. I know there's a certain visceral catharsis watching someone tear into a terrible record, but there's a hollowness to it for me - if there was ill intent, I could feel righteous, but this is just taking out the trash.

Now some of you have realized this is all predicated on the album being bad, which is not an assumption you ever want to enter into when it comes to art. The big problem was that almost every factor going into this record screamed of outright disaster. I covered Thomas Rhett's debut album back in 2013 when bro-country was near its peak, and that album sucked. And it did so in perhaps one of the worst possible ways: by being so forgettably sterile and limp its production and melodies that the only things that stood out were Thomas Rhett's obnoxious voice and even more obnoxious personality. Let me put it like this: when you owe your industry career to your dad being an average-at-best songwriter and you make songs like the cheating song 'Take You Home' and 'All-American Middle Class White Boy', and frame them both as glorification rather than commentary, there's nothing I can remotely respect about it. 

So I'll give Thomas Rhett the slightest bit of credit when he announced he was taking his new album Tangled Up in a different direction, more towards a metropolitan pop country sound. The problem was putting aside that he needed over twenty additional songwriters to do this, the lead-off single was 'Crash And Burn', a slice of bad pseudo-vintage pop that outright stole from Sam Cooke's 'Chain Gang', made Thomas Rhett look and sound like a braying asshole, and was cowritten by Chris Stapleton, which just makes me feel really, really sad. The presence of LunchMoney Lewis and Jordin Sparks on the features list only made me feel worse - more talented people completely wasting their time. That said, the ballad 'Die A Happy Man' actually seemed decent, and right now, this album has nowhere to go but up - is there anything that can save it?

video review: 'caracal' by disclosure

Ooh boy, I'm expecting a mixed response to this video. Not so much the next one - the next one might be pretty polarizing - but this for sure might raise eyebrows.

Next up... oh, fuck, you all know it is. Thomas Rhett, stay tuned!

album review: 'caracal' by disclosure

There's no easy way to do this review.

And to some extent that's my fault, because the more I think about it, the more I feel I got into electronic music in the weirdest way possible. Last year, when I decided I wanted to push my comfort zone beyond trance and some of the greats like The Chemical Brothers, I started covering weird, critically acclaimed acts that were getting that acclaim by pushing boundaries. Acts like Levon Vincent and Objekt and Jlin and Arca were building a reputation for off-kilter, difficult electronic music, and even the ones that had a closer mainstream connection like Ghost Culture or Todd Terje or Jamie xx were still well outside. 

So when I went back to dig into Disclosure's critically acclaimed debut record Settle from 2013, I found myself distinctly underwhelmed. Yeah, 'Latch' had been everywhere, but as someone who never really loved that song, finding a record that played very much to that formula didn't really engage me all that much. Yes, there was a certain tightness to the progressions I appreciated, yes, many of the guest performances were solid, and yes, I don't see anything wrong with calling back to the trends of the past - hell, I wouldn't say this album is bad. But I was definitely baffled why this became the electronic album that captivated so many people and crossed over - if it wasn't for the murderer's row of guest stars, the production was sparse and the melodies weren't particularly interesting, with production that didn't do much more to enhance it. But again, I'm coming from a weird perspective here - I do see the appeal in certain settings and 'Help Me Lose My Mind' was indeed awesome, especially as an album closer thanks to London Grammar, but I wasn't as blown away as I hoped.

And as such, when I started hearing the buzz that Caracal, the sophomore release from Disclosure with more expensive guest stars like The Weeknd and Lorde, was considered a step back from Settle, I prepared myself for the worst. Did it at least manage to be passable?

video review: 'b'lieve i'm goin down...' by kurt vile

Well, this was a surprisingly easy review. Glad I did it, though, pretty solid album.

Next up will either be The Underachievers or Disclosure, gotten plenty of requests for both. Stay tuned!

album review: 'b'lieve i'm goin down...' by kurt vile

I think I've been a bit unfair to Kurt Vile in the past. 

See, when I covered his album Wakin On A Pretty Daze in 2013, I was still very much in the learning curve when it came to album reviews, and finding an entry point into his woozy brand of half-stoned meandering rock music was tricky for me. I definitely found a lot to like about his knack for a solid hook, his fascination with smoky Americana, and his lyrics that knowingly walked the line of profound and asinine, depending on what level of irony you operated on. Where I initially took issue was how it seemed like with every record his textures were getting cleaner and more polished and losing some of the jangling momentum he had brought when he used to be a member of The War On Drugs - even though I'd agree with most that Childish Prodigy and Constant Hitmaker were uneven, I liked the rougher edges on those albums and they have some of my favourite cuts.

As such, by the time we reached the meandering and cleanest-to-date record Wakin On A Pretty Daze, I could appreciate the writing and a lot of the hazier melodies and hooks, but the cleaner production just didn't really gel as well as I liked, especially with some of the more tightly regimented electronic beats and pseudo-psychedelic textures. I missed the momentum and grit, and yet it seemed like with every record we were losing that, so when I heard that b'lieve i'm goin down was going to be even cleaner, I wasn't sure what I was going to get here, especially with buzz suggesting this album was emphasizing even a bit of a country sound. So okay, very different entry point than fuzzed-out psychedelia and lo-fi indie rock, I can work with this - so what did Kurt Vile deliver here?