album review: 'antisocialities' by alvvays

I'm not sure anybody was expecting Alvvays' self-titled debut to blow up the way it did - including the band themselves.

Granted, there's context required here: it was critically well-received, some of this was inevitably skewed by them being a Canadian band and we tend to over-promote Canadian acts, and they had a crossover single in 'Marry Me, Archie'. But considering I wouldn't even describe that as one of the better songs from the record, it's still a little bit amazing to me that an act I picked on a whim from Pitchfork turned out to be one of the most textured and layered and yet ridiculously tight indie acts to break out of the 2010s. I'm not kidding about that, either: amazingly sharp melodic hooks, writing that was emotionally balanced and yet colourful and witty enough to back up its storytelling, and a wonderfully expressive frontwoman in Molly Rankin, it led to that debut making my year end list of the best records of 2014 - and if anything, it's only gotten better in my eyes.

That said, there was pause for concern surrounding their upcoming sophomore record Antisocialities, mostly as buzz was suggesting it was pivoting in more of a dream pop direction. Now there were hints of this on the debut, but I was never a fan of the band's choice of synths and if they chose to neglect some of the tighter, guitar-driven melodic grooves this could lead to a serious misstep. And the inclusion of John Congleton on production didn't exactly raise my spirits - he's a smart enough producer to get out of the way when necessary, but I wasn't sure how the shift from Chad VanGaalen would connect in capturing that atmosphere. That said, it's not like Temples suffered by a pop-leaning pivot on their second record three years after their first, so maybe Alvvays would stick the landing?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 23, 2017 (VIDEO)

I really need to find an automated way to mass-post these... eh, anyway, pretty decent short week, got some good stuff coming, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 23, 2017

So comedown weeks are weird. Sometimes they lead to a massive chart rebalance that drives an entire paradigm shift as the album smash leaves a few scattered recoveries and a whole lot of damage. Other weeks... well, they're like this, where we get a few recoveries, a couple new arrivals peeking through, but overall a quiet week where the fallout seems to be slowly ebbing back rather than outright falling away... and given that said album bombs were from Lil Uzi Vert and XXXTENTACION, I think I might have preferred the former case.

video review: 'broken machine' by nothing but thieves

Ooh, I know I'm not going to make any fans for this one, especially after a particularly bad day of subscriber growth...

Eh, hopefully things will recover with Alvvays and The National hopefully coming up soon, but first, Billboard BREAKDOWN! Stay tuned!

album review: 'broken machine' by nothing but thieves

Of all of the albums that have landed on my schedule this year, this is among the more perplexing additions. And the funny thing is that you wouldn't think that if you knew anything about the group, but I'm perplexed all the same... mostly surrounding why anyone would want me to cover this. Let's get real here, I may have gone off on a rant on Twitter how modern hard rock frustrates me with its embrace of distorted blocky tuneless masses instead of actual melodic hooks, but the truth is that all of modern rock radio frustrates me these days, because on the flipside of the breakdown-obsessed chunks of riff we have the sleeper hold of reverb-soaked indie rock with lyrics that in a better era would be laughed off stage. And while of course there are exceptions - hell, I can't stop listening to that last Deaf Havana album which in retrospect defied entirely too many expectations and deserves a lot more attention - the rule is that once we tread into what's now defined by major labels as 'alternative rock', I have a hard time staying awake, especially if I spot the acts who obviously inspired them.

Enter Nothing But Thieves, another British alt-rock group that has toured with your trendy staples on rock radio that are hard to describe as rock, like AWOLNATION and twenty one pilots. Yes, they toured with Muse - their most blatant inspiration, especially for frontman Conor Mason - but they are a poor man's Muse at best, with nowhere near the progressive compositional chops and a penchant for theatricality that didn't always stick the landing. I don't think they're a bad group - good guitar and bass interplay can redeem a lot, and in terms of ballads they stuck the landing - but that self-titled debut in 2015 just didn't resonate much with me - not bad but not particularly remarkable. But apparently their sophomore album is a lot better and is even picking up a bit of critical acclaim, and my Patreon supporters wanted me to cover this before The National or Alvvays - indie rock groups I was very much interested in exploring - so what the hell: how is Broken Machine?

movie review: 'detroit' (2017) (VIDEO)

Man, I wish I dug this more. I mean, I get the intent, but it was the sort of flick where you wonder why it was made and it just doesn't turn out well. Meh...

And on that note...

video review: 'perfection is' by brazy da bo$$

You know, it's not all the way there yet... but man, he's getting close, and that's really encouraging.

And now for things significantly LESS encouraging...

album review: 'perfection is' by brazy da bo$$

I found myself a bit surprised how much I was looking forward to covering this record.

And I say that because I've been watching Brazy Da Bo$$'s artistic evolution for a couple years now, from 2015 where I covered two of his projects to 2017 with an album that looked to be more experimental than ever before. For those of you who don't know, he's a Baltimore rapper that has a fine enough ear for beats but occasionally could struggle technically with content and delivery, although not to the point where I was going to outright ignore a project. What caught more of my attention was that in the era of mixtape culture he had taken his time to refine a new full-length record and from lead-off singles looked to have pushed both his flow and production into very different territory than the spacier bangers that he used to favour. Granted, I wasn't exactly crazy about his singing voice which he looked to be employing a little more, but again, I approve of experimentation and I wanted to see what he could pull together. So what did I find on Perfection Is?

video review: 'bravado' by kirin j. callinan

And there we go, something I probably should have covered months ago, but overall turned out really fun, definitely recommended.

Okay, Brazy Da Bo$$ next, and then... hmm, this could be interesting... stay tuned!

video review: 'american dream' by lcd soundsystem

Yes, I know the vast majority of critics revered this, but as I've always been pretty ambivalent on LCD Soundsystem... yeah, pretty much the same here, go figure.

For something I'm not so ambivalent on...

album review: 'bravado' by kirin j. callinan

Okay, one thing that I've enjoyed a great deal in the Internet era is that it's started to break down the first boundaries of what pop 'should' be, at least outside of what's defined by the mainstream. And while of course I'll have an appetite for that sort of thing, I like hearing voices or tones that might use the pop framework but would fly in the face of what's traditionally acceptable in the genre, even though that definition has evolved with time.

But no matter what era of pop it is, I don't think an act like Kirin J. Callinan would have had an obvious place, especially if there was going to be any radio crossover. And sure, a big factor is how he fused ramshackle guitar and piano together or the lyrics that leaned explicitly political and more nakedly sexual that pushed more into punk or freak folk, but the bigger factor was his voice. The most obvious comparison, both given his Australian lineage and his low, guttural howls is Birthday Party-era Nick Cave, but instead of gothic trappings Callinan pushed towards a brawny, wild eyed but sharply incisive brand of synth and guitar driven pop that wouldn't be far removed from textures you'd find in the mid-80s, at least on his first record. That was three years ago, and this time for Bravado he brought in an even bigger cast of players, recruiting from the underground for acts like Weyes Blood in order to flesh out his sound. So, what spectacle did we get this time?

album review: 'american dream' by lcd soundsystem

Okay, I've talked a little bit in the past about artists that even fellow critics acknowledge are 'critic-bait' - acts that pay tribute to the past while expanding their sound into interesting genre fusions that are experimental but not incredibly challenging, often overloaded with easter egg references and frontmen who are as much music nerds as we are, you get the idea. Now I'm not immune to this - hell, one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of Eric Church's Mr. Misunderstood is that he transplanted that vinyl-collecting, Wilco-referencing archetype into country music, and it was a phenomenal fit for me - but I think one of the reasons where I'm more tolerant of that is because in country Church's subject matter did make him feel like a genuine outcast and the self-mythologizing rang through stronger, whereas in indie rock it's a lot more common and...

Okay, there's no way around this, I've been bracing myself for this LCD Soundsystem review ever since they were first referenced on Season 2 of You're The Worst. The project of frontman James Murphy that won a tidal wave of critical acclaim in the 2000s for fusing ridiculously tight electronic grooves with guitar-driven indie rock and lyrics intensely knowledgeable of music history and yet focused most on the inevitable wistful melancholy of growing older, it was laser-focused to hit a certain demographic of music critic... and yet I'll be the first to say I've always held them a bit at arm's length. Don't get me wrong, the grooves are pretty damn great, even if I find some of the melodies lacking and James Murphy's navel gazing pretty pretentious - I know, coming from me, I get it - and frequently right on the edge of insufferable. But considering the group effectively broke apart after This Is Happening in 2010, I figured I'd never need to discuss them further... until the retirement myth ended, they got back together for an encore record called American Dream this year that as everyone could have predicted has won buckets of critical acclaim... although among critics I like and respect a little less than you'd otherwise expect. Okay, my interest was piqued, what did I find on American Dream?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 16, 2017 (VIDEO)

This week took entirely too long to edit... and it sucked. Go figure.

Next up, LCD Soundsystem momentarily, so stay tuned...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 16, 2017

Because this is what I want to deal with on my first few days back from vacation, a double album bomb from records that I had no reason to expect were anything close to good or interesting, just goddamn perfect. And of course there is more news than that, but at this point, if I want to keep this episode at a sane length for the twenty new arrivals we have, we're going to have to keep this moving...

album review: 'saturation ii' by BROCKHAMPTON/'fifth harmony' by fifth harmony/'landmark' by hippo campus/'neva left' by snoop dogg/'all blue' by g perico (VACATION SERIES!)

And that's the vacation series covered. Twenty five records in two weeks... whew.

Okay, now it's time for Billboard BREAKDOWN, stay tuned!

album review: 'a deeper understanding' by the war on drugs/'bedouine' by bedouine/'brett eldredge' by brett eldredge/'lukas nelson & promise of the real' (S/T) (VACATION SERIES!)

I keep forgetting to post these here... okay, one more from vacation, and then Billboard BREAKDOWN for this week...

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - september 9, 2017 (VIDEO)

Well, this was a rough week... but overall, pretty pleased with how it turned out. Enjoy!

album review: 'villains' by queens of the stone age / 'god's problem child' by willie nelson / 'any night in texas' by jon wolfe / '27861' by parmalee (VACATION SERIES)

I always fall behind with vlog updates, but here we go - enjoy!

album review: 'science fiction' by brand new / 'in•ter a•li•a' by at the drive-in / 'always lose' by the gospel youth / 'our pleasure' by single mothers (VACATION SERIES!)

So that's a lot of punk rock... gee, I guess while I'm in Nashville I might as well cover some country music... stay tuned!

album review: 'painted ruins' by grizzly bear / 'how did we get so dark' by royal blood / 'visuals' by mew / 'no culture' by mother mother (VACATION SERIES)

So here is our second vlog, this time from Lexington (and a few days late posting - I am on vacation, promotion takes time). In any case, next up I'm now in Nashville, so stay tuned for more!