album review: 'cocoa sugar' by young fathers

I'm genuinely surprised it's taken me this long to talk about Young Fathers at all. It's not like I wasn't aware the group existed, but they always seemed a little adjacent to the music that's normally on my radar, so this review was going to be a learning experience for me.

So okay, Young Fathers: a trio from Scotland that started on the indie label Anticon with a particularly off-kilter brand of hip-hop to which I couldn't really trace a clear sonic lineage. The melodies were cavernous and droning, the beats were blocky but still carried an impressive amount of groove, and the two MCs presented a brand of unsettled melancholy that used blunt but heavy language to convey increasingly bleak ideas, along with harmonies that were surprisingly stirring. I'm not really certain it was my thing - I do think the songwriting took a dip for the full-length debut Dead along with a weird synth-rock pivot with a smattering of alternative R&B, but it was compelling in a curious way, not quite with the level of propulsive power I'd see in a group like Algiers or Injury Reserve or Death Grips, but I got the appeal. But then they shifted again towards a lo-fi, indie pop rock sound a year later for a record with the loaded title White Men Are Black Men Too, and... honestly, while I think it's a solid enough record, I think I might like it more for some of the ideas the trio was trying to explore conceptually than the sound itself, as the pop or rock-leaning elements could feel a tad hit-or-miss against their production style. But hey, who knows what direction they could be taking with this project, now on the Ninja Tune label proper, so what did we get on Cocoa Sugar?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 17, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we go - took a lot of processing power to get it out the door, but it turned out pretty well as I still keep tweaking my camera.

Next up, looks like Young Fathers - stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 17, 2018

...so I said last week that most of my general predictions surrounding the week came true about the expected activity, and while I also did say that I expected Meghan Trainor to break through this week, I also made the statement that I didn't expect much else to happen. And boy, was I wrong in the worst possible way, as despite a few very select gems, XXXTENTACION and Chris Brown of all people showed up to remind me that the charts might just be at their most intolerable since 2016, and there's far from enough good songs to save them!

video review: 'american utopia' by david byrne

So this review isn't quite getting pilloried just yet... okay, I'll roll with that, and just expect the mass subscriber exodus to come later.

Anyway, next up is Billboard BREAKDOWN and Young Fathers, so stay tuned!

album review: 'american utopia' by david byrne

So I've talked a little before about legacy acts, artists who were a fundamental part of the evolution of a specific genre or sound and who have won a certain amount of popular and critical acclaim for whatever they choose to do next, often with a measure of clout and collaborative pull that few could approach. But let's ask an uncomfortable question: what do you do with said acts when the legacy starts to get reexamined, and you come to the realization that while the emperor probably still has some clothes, it's a fair bit less than one might expect?

And yes, I get that by me making that statement even in connection with David Byrne I've set myself up for backlash... but it's hard not to feel like in recent years the narrative has shifted. His reputation as the mastermind behind The Talking Heads has shown more than a few holes in the past couple of years - a reputation many have suspected he achieved by stifling other voices in his group - and while his work with Brian Eno won critical acclaim, many have questioned how influential those pieces were. Even his film scores, one of which netted him an Academy Awards, while the quality is often appreciated in the 80s it gets a lot less listenable when you head into the and parts of the 2000s.

And look, as a fiercely intelligent personality in modern culture and music, I like David Byrne, but the more I delved into his content and themes the more I found myself questioning how much perceptive depth has really been on the table this whole time. I mean, I like self-obsessed deconstructions and wry observations as much as any critic, but just being more clever than everyone else doesn't always add up to more, with the most glaring instance of this being his collaboration with St. Vincent Love This Giant, a stiff and absolutely frustrating affair where two artists who have enough similarities to challenge each other but are instead content with mirrored stiffness. And thus when I say I was skeptical about his newest project American Utopia, a project that Byrne admits was searching more for some abstract uplifting feeling and possibilities than engage with reality, to offer a shred of hope. To me... well, it wasn't a bad idea, and he brought onboard Brian Eno, Sampha, and Oneohtrix Point Never to help, so I had some faith this could be at least interesting over ten tracks running less than forty minutes, so okay, what did he give us on American Utopia?

video review: 'khrysis & elzhi are jericho jackson' by jericho jackson

Man, I really wished I could call this great... but I just can't. It's on the cusp, but there are problems I can't quite ignore. Meh, it happens.

Okay, next up... David Byrne. Whoo boy, that'll be a doozy, stay tuned!

album review: 'khrysis & elzhi are jericho jackson' by jericho jackson

Man, I wanted to get this review out earlier. 

And that's the problem with certain indie hip-hop projects: you might see the duo name and shrug unless you know who it is, and when I heard it was actually the Detroit MC Elzhi teaming up with veteran indie producer Khrysis to assemble a project, I definitely wanted to get in front of it... but it fell back on my schedule and I just never got the chance to push it up before now. Not ideal by any means, but considering how this seems to have flown under the radar for a lot of critics, both on and off YouTube, better late than never!

And while most of you should know Elzhi from his work in Slum Village or his mid-2000s breakthrough The Preface, newer listeners might have caught his 2016 release Lead Poison, the sort of layered hip-hop overflowing with great storytelling that hooked me very quickly, even if I wouldn't quite call it a personal favourite of mine that year. Now with Khrysis... hell, dig into the liner notes of Justus League, Little Brother, Rapsody and Jean Grae and you'll see a list of credits going back to the early 2000s, infused with the sort of textured, jazz-influenced samples that'd be a natural backdrop for Elzhi to dominate. So with them teaming up for a tight collection of songs just under forty minutes, I had a lot of high hopes for this, so what did we get from Khrysis & Elzhi Are Jericho Jackson?

video review: 'superorganism' by superorganism

I'm not sure how many people will care about this review - or hell, how many people even give a shit about this group, I might be seriously misreading the buzz they have - but really, I think more folks should give them a look, if only because the BROCKHAMPTON comparison is bound to turn a few heads in the right direction.

Anyway, next up is some old business - stay tuned!

album review: 'superorganism' by superorganism

So I make reference all the time to how in the modern age there has been an explosion of music for audiences to find and access over the internet, more than I'll likely ever be able to cover. But there is a second side to this, and it comes in the creative side - namely that the Internet makes meeting and collaborating with fellow musicians so much easier, especially if you're not all in the same place. 

And while there are some cases where the members send in their parts remotely and only come together to tour, in recent years the DIY collectivist side of many acts eventually draws them together - we saw this with BROCKHAMPTON and now it seems like we're seeing it again with Superorganism. Now originally this was more of a conventional band, a four-piece New Zealand group called The Eversons that put out a few records in the early 2010s, but when they connected with future frontwoman Orono Noguchi, they made plans to emigrate to London and all live together, eventually bringing on board two other singers from New Zealand named Ruby and B and a South Korean singer named Soul, who has not yet joined the collective in London. From there, it seemed like an indie pop version of what BROCKHAMPTON had done halfway across the world, just this time focused more on indie pop and dance - and they've had a surprising amount of success, including a single on the FIFA 18 video game and a minor charting hit on the alternative charts. So there was certainly buzz with their self-titled debut and I'll admit I was curious, so what did we get from Superorganism?

video review: 'no news is good news' by phonte

Well, this was pretty excellent - honestly, I think I like it more than his solo debut, it's tighter and the rhymes click way more effectively.

But now I think it's time for something weird... how about some Superorganism, so stay tuned!

album review: 'no news is good news' by phonte

So I've never really talked much about Phonte in any of my work - and unlike cases where I just haven't had the chance to delve into an MC's back catalog, this is more a case of timing rather than ignorance - the last full Phonte record dropped in 2011, before I started even writing these reviews, and while he did put out a collaborative record with Eric Robertson in 2016, I honestly didn't hear much buzz around it, critical or otherwise, it never came up on my radar. 

Which is kind of a shame, really - Phonte has gotten flagged by critics as a 'rapper's rapper', more known by MCs who can appreciate his hard-hitting wordplay but not moving significant units, and this is a reputation that goes all the way back to his work with Little Brother in the mid-2000s on records like The Minstrel Show. Critically acclaimed - and going back to that record, deservedly so - but bad promotion by Atlantic meant it didn't sell nearly as well as projected, so Phonte went back independent for his future projects.

And yet if I'm being honest, I'm not sure Phonte couldn't flourish in the mainstream - his bars were tight, sure, but he knew his way around great hooks and accessible production, and when you factor in how he had a pretty damn solid voice to sing his own hooks, which he has proven time and time again with his work in The Foreign Exchange, he really should have been bigger, especially considering the veterans he surrounded himself with like Elzhi, Evidence, Pharoahe Monch, and even follow-artist-who-really-should-have-crossed-over-to-the-mainstream-but-for-label-bullshit Big K.R.I.T.. So when I heard he was dropping a new solo project at a lean thirty-three minutes, I muscled this up my schedule and prepared to dig in deep: what did we get from No News Is Good News?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 10, 2018 (VIDEO)

And here we are - I'm actually a little surprised with as many debuts as we got this is actually out on time.

Okay, Phonte is up next, stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 10, 2018

So it's pretty rare I get surprised on the Hot 100 - I've been doing this for three and a half years and I have chart records going back to the 2000s, I generally have an expectation what'll land here and be successful, and I've been long conditioned by disappointment to not expect the best. But it seems like this week we got a few welcome surprises that not only met my low expectations for this week, but might have even exceeded them. I'm not saying it was precisely a great week or that any of these new arrivals will last, but some of these are encouraging.

video review: 'nation of two' by vance joy

And this sucked. Look, it was a low-key kind of suck, the sort you have to think about a bit, but yeah, I'm not excusing this.

But next up... well, Billboard BREAKDOWN, and then either Phonte or Oceans Of Slumber, so stay tuned!

movie review: 'annihilation' (VIDEO)

Huh, this was fascinating. Not really a great movie, but definitely one worth thinking and talking about.

But on the opposite note... well, stay tuned!

album review: 'nation of two' by vance joy

Okay, so if you've been following my schedule, you'd realize that this isn't quite what I was looking to cover today. I was looking to give Oceans Of Slumber this slot, but a few listens in made it clear it was either going to wind up on the Trailing Edge or that I was going to need at a few more listens to really process its weight - and when it's over an hour and embraces a lot of doom tones and textures to compliment its progressive and melodic death metal side, that's not something I approach lightly. And given that Phonte was going to demand some serious, lengthy consideration too for his long-awaited sophomore project, I looked to the elevated tiers, and once I moved past the sort of absolutely weird, quasi-insane bandcamp project that I'm not sure my mind is fully fit to process, and a top ten list that's going to take some time to rework, I wound up with this - and I had the sinking feeling that all of that deliberating would wind up more interesting or listenable than Vance Joy.

But that's the thing with silent majority acts like this Australian singer-songwriter - critics are often left bewildered or shrugging with albums like his 2014 debut, maybe able to highlight one song that stands out - usually the big single - while the others are left high and dry. And with Vance Joy, while he released seven singles from Dream Your Life Away, the one that caught everyone's attention was 'Riptide', which peaked at #30 and somehow got enough points to wind up on the year-end list in 2015. And while the strength of that song got Vance Joy to move two million copies of his debut record... I couldn't stand it. Seriously, it was the last song to get cut from my worst hit songs of 2015, the sloppy brittleness, weak vocals, utterly wimpy or misconstrued lyrics, gutless skitters backing up a tempo shift that never paid off, the pop culture references that made less and less sense with every listen, the only thing I could respect about it was how it laid the foundation for Ed Sheeran to take a similar cadence and sound to success with 'Shape Of You'. And if that was considered the strong point of his debut, and even sympathetic critics weren't finding that same magic on the follow-up, we could have something pretty bad on our plate here. But again, there's more people listening to this than every record I would have otherwise covered in its stead, and I've been surprised in this lane before - hell, Niall Horan came out of nowhere last year with Flicker and there's at least similar creative DNA with Vance Joy, so what did I find on Nation Of Two?

video review: 'you're not alone' by andrew w.k.

Huh, I was expecting this review to be way more controversial than it is... guess most people are lukewarm on it too.

Okay, next up, the movie review of Annihilation, stay tuned!

album review: 'you're not alone' by andrew w.k.

I remember when saying you liked Andrew W.K. as a critic was a much more polarizing statement than it is today.

And let's not mince words: when I Get Wet first came out, there was a vast gulf between the critics that adored it and those that hated it with a passion. And a lot of that was a factor of the time: it was late 2001, hard rock was making a hard pivot to the dark and serious, and here comes an artist with the simplest of lyrics, the most obviously overblown sound and production, all driven by strident piano compositions that seemed deceptively simple. For a set of cynical critics coming out of the 90s, it had to be a corporate calculation gone wrong, or a parody years out of date, all of it so damn stupid that nobody in their right mind could ever take this seriously!

In retrospect, time has been way kinder to Andrew W.K. and I Get Wet specifically because of the gradual revelation that it wasn't a gimmick. Yeah, it was broad and goofy and ridiculous, but there was a method to that deceptive simplicity that cut across critical faculties into something damn near transcendent, rooted in sharp melodic songwriting and the real earnestness and optimism that Andrew W.K. brought to the table. Sure, it was a little one-note in terms of content - although the sound would eventually dive towards mainstream rock before going for outright piano rock on later records - but like with Lil Jon in hip-hop, as a collective society we've decided to keep Andrew W.K. around, if only because that good-hearted earnestness is only a net positive, be it on the multiple J-pop cover records or his motivational speaking tours! 

That said, when Andrew W.K. announced his first full-length record in nine years, I won't deny that I was skeptical, mostly because I Get Wet still looms above so much of his musical career, and even if he had found a way to remake that party magic seventeen years later, the album was still going to run fifty-two minutes and sixteen tracks - you can only hit one note so many times. But hell, I wanted a good time, so how is You're Not Alone?

video review: 'all at once' by screaming females

I can imagine given how much critical acclaim this record has gotten that my slightly cooler take might be divisive... folks, I still like it, just not as much as everyone else, it happens.

Next up... hmm, probably Annihilation, but we'll see what shows up on the schedule come tomorrow, so stay tuned!

album review: 'all at once' by screaming females

So here's a hidden truth about being a music critic: in the age of the internet, you haven't heard everything, and you will never hear everything. And learning to reconcile that on some level is pretty much the only reason I haven't burned out nearly five years into this, and one reason I am so grateful Patreon provides some structure in my schedule. It doesn't mean I'm any less curious about everything that's out there or that I'm not kicking myself at the end of every year when I miss some record that's notched critical acclaim that I just didn't get a chance to cover, but it softens the blow a bit, especially considering my Patrons have a nice habit of pushing me outside my comfort zone, which is definitely healthy. That being said, since it's my policy to try and hear a band's entire discography before reviewing them in depth, it gets a tad exhausting when you see yet another indie rock band with considerable critical acclaim and a discography close to double digits wind up on my schedule. And it's not even that the bands are bad - it's typically got enough of a punk edge to stay exciting, the writing is often passable to pretty strong, the riffing is usually pretty well-developed, and at some point they typically get Steve Albini behind the production boards - but I also won't lie and say that unless the sound shifts significantly these records can start to run together a bit. 

Fortunately, it seems like five records in, Screaming Females realized this and started shifting up their formula after four pretty damn solid releases - my personal favourite favourite of those being Power Trip. For their fifth record in 2012 called Ugly, they brought in Steve Albini, tightened up the production and riffs, and crystallized their sound... only to swivel on their next full-length towards a crunchy brand of metal in 2015 on Rose Mountain that while was pretty likable didn't always flatter their more melodic guitar digressions or Marissa Paternoster's incensed, throaty vibrato. So when I heard they were heading closer towards mainstream rock radio on their newest collection... well, I had mixed expectations, given that they had kept Matt Bayles on production - and he's most well known for working with Mastodon on their pre-Crack The Skye years - and a swivel towards power-pop or pop punk seemed like uncharted territory, even if the critical consensus has generally been unsurprised by the pivot. Granted, said critics have also been giving this album the most praise Screaming Females have gotten since Ugly, so what the hell: how was All At Once?