billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 31, 2018

You know, given how the past week has been it's been very tempting of me to just step up in here, say the Billboard Hot 100 shit itself inside out like most of the rest of this year - and let's not mince words, it's about as bad as I've seen it in the past few years - but hey, it could have been worse, right? We didn't get a full album bomb from XXXTENTACION, and while I sure as hell don't think our replacements are anything close to good, I have to keep reassuring myself with the thoughts that this could be a much more miserable experience than it is.

video review: 'boarding house reach' by jack white

And here is round two - and I imagine this'll be the contentious one, with nobody being all that satisfied with the conclusions I draw. Eh, it happens.

Next up, the living hell that's going to be tomorrow's Billboard BREAKDOWN - stay tuned!

album review: 'boarding house reach' by jack white

So here's something paradoxical I've noticed with Jack White: for as much as his presence and influence seems to loom over so much modern rock music, I don't think about him that much these days. You'd think I would, given his work with The White Stripes or The Raconteurs or even solo, but for as much as I really liked Blunderbuss, there was a certain distance I still have towards Lazaretto even despite liking it a fair bit. And this is coming from someone who has seen White live in concert and who generally likes his southern gothic, jagged, almost hermetic approach to his sound, spiraling down into twisted rabbit holes that might stumble towards blues rock lyrical cliches but nearly always had the tunes to back it up.

But here's the thing: not counting that overstuffed release of b-sides two years ago, this is the first proper Jack White record in four years, and I was genuinely curious how it would stick out in comparison to so many artists trying to chase some brand of his sound... or hell, even outright surpass it in the vein of artists like Ron Gallo or Kyle Craft. And I'll admit a certain amount of concern about this one: I won't deny that it was likely a natural step for White to step away from conventional blues rock in favour of a more diverse or eclectic sound, but he's never been a great lyricist and if he was refocusing there at the expense of good riffs, with even reportedly a rap-inspired song on this project... yeah, I had room to worry. But what the hell: how was Boarding House Reach?

video review: 'staying at tamara's' by george ezra

Okay, this was pretty decent, but it's not the only thing we're getting tonight - stay tuned!

album review: 'staying at tamara's' by george ezra

And now we've arrived at the second primarily acoustic singer-songwriter who has somehow sold over a million copies around the world based off a single hit that seemed to peak a fair bit later than the actual album did... and yet the more I think about it, George Ezra is a very different sort of artist than Vance Joy, even despite playing with what might seem like a similar genre and sound. For one, George Ezra actually had some rich baritone in his vocal timbre and knew his way around lyrics that could back up their metaphors and loose sense of imagery, but that actually ties to something peculiar about Ezra's presentation: roughness. And I'm not talking about the sort of edge you typically got out of adult-alternative acts that trended in the 90s - with some of the touches of blues, firmer low-end grooves, and slightly more earthy, haggard feel overall, many pinpointed Ezra's influences as much older, calling back to the folk singer-songwriters of the 60s or early 70s that were just adjacent to the mainstream in production if not the songwriting. And yes, some of this affection is linked to how much 'Budapest' has become a karaoke staple for me, but even if the writing hadn't quite gotten there yet George Ezra was at least a more compelling presence behind the microphone...

But like the singer-songwriters of the day, the music media would aim to frame the conversation as competitive, and I've seen a lot of comparisons to Ed Sheeran in the buzz leading up to this release, a sophomore record four years later... and not one that I found had much merit, at least coming off of Ezra's debut. As much as I might hope for otherwise, Ed Sheeran trends more towards pop and R&B than blues or soul or rock, which looked like a more natural landing point for George Ezra - although I did have the twinge of worry that given how well Ed Sheeran and those seeking to rip him off have done, it wouldn't be a far stretch to nudge George Ezra in that direction, regardless of whether that'd fit his style or presentation. So okay, what did we get on Staying At Tamara's?

video review: 'we beefin?' by wendy's (MEME REVIEW)

I feel I might owe some of you an explanation for this.

and I don't feel like giving one - someone paid for it, they got it. Jack White and George Ezra next, enjoy!

movie review: 'love, simon' (VIDEO)

Yeah, a little late to this one, but pretty happy with it overall. 

Next up... whoo boy, Jack White - enjoy!

video review: 'punk' by eric taxxon

Wow, this went... long. Really damn long, but I think I got to the right point.

Next up, something to knock out of my backlog, so stay tuned!

album review: 'punk' by eric taxxon

The last few projects from Eric Taxxon I've put on the Trailing Edge. Not entirely by choice - I ran out of time with The Art State at the end of 2017, I really did want to give that one a full review given the richer set of ideas and more abrasive experimentation, but One Pop didn't give me a lot to say, and while 'Guns' is a damn great song, the rest hasn't quite stuck with me in the same way as, say, Paul did.

But this was one of the projects I wanted to review in full, mostly because Eric Taxxon was going into a territory few producers or artists dare anymore: plunderphonics, taking a plethora samples and musical fragments to vividly recontextualize them for his own work. Now this is not unfamiliar territory to him - I distinctly remember his project Copy from 2016 that actually sampled me from one of my videos - but Punk seemed more ambitious, more driven by Taxxon's acrid distaste for modern copyright law and a desire to make a pointed and layered statement about it. Now keep in mind sampling for free mixtapes has not gone away, but the fact that one could pay for Punk - this project is available on Bandcamp, not DatPiff - means this was definitely in questionable territory, because I'd put money on none of these samples being cleared. And that's always a murky legal territory even if it is free given authorial consent - that's always been one of the big grey areas with fanfiction - but on the other hand I've just had a week where I've had multiple videos either stripped of their monetization or blocked outright by copyright bots without any proper third-party arbitration and despite Fair Use and Fair Dealing conditions on YouTube, so I'm just about in the proper mood to enjoy the hell out of this! So okay, what did I find on Punk?

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 24, 2018 (VIDEO)

My God, this was a weird week... honestly not a terrible week, but overall, I'm going to cherish what I have here before XXXTENTACION next week.

Next up... ooh boy, this is going to be crazy, so stay tuned!

billboard BREAKDOWN - hot 100 - march 24, 2018

You know, there's a part of me that's really getting sick of the streaming album bombs, mostly because it feels like it makes covering the albums in a full review kind of redundant... even though by covering them at some point on my schedule I'd probably get more traffic overall, which is all the more exasperating. But why get one album when you can get two, because this week, the big competition comes between Logic and Lil Yachty, the latter who I literally forgot dropped a mixtape a week or so back even despite some critics giving it praise. Eh, given that it's less of an album bomb than a scattering of songs in between Logic, we'll see what we get there.

video review: '?' by xxxtentacion

None of you should be surprised by this. Fuck, I'm just waiting for the backlash train to roll in, especially considering some of the comments I made about relatability.

Whatever - I've got better hip-hop on the horizon to care about than this dreck, but before that, Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

album review: '?' by xxxtentacion

The key word of this review is enablement - because while I've gone off a number of times on Billboard BREAKDOWN how given the changing times and cultural norms it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that a rapper like XXXTENTACION would have a career, much less flourish the way he has. You'd think given the domestic abuse charges and how so much of his art has not just referenced it but coaxed it through a blurry haze of malformed self-loathing to seemingly justify or excuse his actions that he would have thrown to the curb... and yet he accumulates hip-hop cosigns from artists you'd think would know better and ever-increasing chart success.

But I know the answer - and even if you're not a fan and you're just here to see me rip this record to shreds, you're probably not going to like my answer, because it's the sort of uncomfortable indictment of our relationship to artists that especially younger audiences probably aren't ready to address and why their defense of said acts in the face of critics like me seem so much angrier - just like it was with nu-metal nearly twenty years ago, just purified down by a social media environment that gives us the feeling that we are closer to the artist than ever before. But with certain Soundcloud rappers like XXXTENTACION it runs deeper - you don't aspire to be XXXTENTACION so much as you relate to him, reinforced by the homegrown, amateurish style that lets you imagine and project yourself onto him as the artist using the excuse of deeply held art to excuse your own acts. And it becomes personal, a siege mentality when critics or the rest of the world calls it out because by extension they're calling out a part of you out, a part you feel you already have to repress in the larger world, especially against a rising tide of culture that speaks against it. And thus come the blind eyes and the free passes en masse and as the success grows with the culture it nearly always becomes toxic for the artist with any self-awareness given the groundswell of enablement, and thus you see one of three cases: they turn on their audience outright, they acquire the means to ascend past their audience and sacrifice some of their relatability, or they burrow into that niche, an ever-shrinking ouroboros that will eventually consume itself. And if you think this hasn't happened before in artists that haven't trafficked in relatability, especially trending towards darker impulses, the stream of examples can seem endless with the benefit of history. Eminem. J. Cole. So much of nu-metal and pop punk and emo. Taylor Swift. 

Of course, there are cultural consequences to all of this, and the list of artists that realize it is slim indeed - hell, Eminem got it as early as the first Marshall Mathers LP and has been making self-conscious reference to it ever since. But for XXXTENTACION, he has nothing to pull him out of that spiral of enablement except when his audience gets bored and moves on when the music doesn't engage further - the fickle price of maturity and a refusal to evolve artistically in favor of doubling down, which is dangerous but expected when riding the subtle tides of cultural backlash... unless, of course, XXXTENTACION pulls a fast one and surprises his audience. Unfortunately, we're still in the midst of that wave's ascent and my role here is the critic who must smack this down as the amateurish dumpster fire that it's likely to be... but in theory I get the appeal of a record like this, and if it provides me the constructive context to address it properly, we might be able to address this properly. So fine, what did we get on ? ?

video review: 'seasons change' by scotty mccreery

And I'm happy I got to knock this off my list, you'll definitely enjoy it too!

Next up... not nearly as enjoyable, so stay tuned?

album review: 'seasons change' by scotty mccreery

So here's the ugly truth about not being an a-lister in mainstream country: you have no room for error. It doesn't matter if you have one bad song that strikes in the middle of a trend that would otherwise be excused, if that flops then your career is pretty much toast. A-listers in country... well, depending on their clout they've got a little more wiggle room, especially if they manage to correct their course and deliver another hit. But even if you have a grassroots following, if you're not a major star in an already oversaturated market, a flop single likely will consign you to the dustbin of history.

And for the longest time, that's what everyone thought happened to Scotty McCreery - coming off of American Idol his major label debut moved over a million copies, and while his follow-up See You Tonight in 2013 was hedging his bets in the tide of bro-country, it still moved a lot of units... and on one of its deep cuts produced one of the best songs of the decade. Yeah, in case you're wondering why I'm bothering to cover this, 'Feel Good Summer Song' is the reason, a tremendously emotive and borderline subversive song that basically ripped the guts out of bro-country three years early! Why nobody bothered to release this as a single... well, if you take a look at Mercury Nashville's criminal failure to market any of their good artists worth a damn, I'm going to blame them. I'm also inclined to blame them for 'Southern Belle', that flop single that Scotty McCreery released in 2015 and for intents and purposes effectively killed his career, which led to him leaving the label and signing to Triple Tigers, a new country label built as a partnership between acclaimed indie distributors Thirty Tigers and Sony. And in comparison to his last effort, this looked to be a much more neotraditional affair, bolstered by the release of the pretty damn good 'Five More Minutes' and a much more streamlined production team. McCreery had writing credits on every song, he looked to be more in his comfort zone, and with 'Five More Minutes' suddenly becoming a hit, I had a fair amount going into this... so is Seasons Change the comeback story we've all been waiting for?

video review: 'season 1' by epic beard men (sage francis & b. dolan)

Yeah, I know I'm late to the punch with this one, but I'm thrilled to cover it all the same - definitely check this one out, you've got no excuse not to!

Next up, let's head towards a country return long in coming - stay tuned!

album review: 'season 1' by epic beard men

It's hard for me to get excited about a lot of mainstream hip-hop these days. Of course that's not saying that it's all bad or that we don't have artists who stand out, but when even Kendrick phones in his verses and the #1 song on the Hot 100 is a Drake song that I still don't think I could remember if I tried, it's not exactly a good situation. And then I see artists like XXXTENTACION and 6ix9ine who feel so damn one-dimensional and I'm left thinking about the artists who paved the lane for emo rap but who could still turn in with aggressive production and bruising wordplay...

And enter Sage Francis and B. Dolan, two Rhode Island MCs known for spoken word poetry, thorny, hard-hitting bars, and the sort of raw, vulnerable subject matter that most MCs would never dare put on wax. Both of these men have made my year-end lists - Sage Francis with Copper Gone and B. Dolan with Kill The Wolf - and considering their long-running friendship and mighty beards, I knew it'd only be a matter of time before we got a team-up of some variety. And yeah, it's just a free eight song EP, but considering it's not much shorter than that upcoming XXXTENTACION album with eighteen songs, I'd prefer to hear from the genuine article in this scene first, even if again I'm a little late to the punch covering it. So all right, what did we get on Season 1?

video review: 'firepower' by judas priest

So this was a lot of fun - not especially as heavy as the last one, but sometimes it doesn't need to be, definitely worth checking out!

Next up, let's knock something equally as fun off the list that's a little older - stay tuned!

album review: 'firepower' by judas priest

You know, I don't even I've ever mentioned my opinion on Judas Priest in any of my reviews before now. And for a band that's one of the foundational groups in the creation of heavy metal, it surprises even me that I haven't really weighed in on them... although if I'm being very honest, I can't really say my opinion is all that controversial this time. Even despite the fact that I'm not the biggest fan of straightforward thrash, revisiting the entire Judas Priest discography before this review reminded me why I still really like these guys. Granted, I am one of those fans that will call Stained Class as his favourite record from Judas Priest and will admit he's not quite as crazy about their synth-infused mainstream breakthrough in the 80s in comparison to their 70s work - although Painkiller was a pretty damn great return to form - but that's more because some of the glitzier 80s production choices haven't quite aged as well, especially around the drums and vocals, less about some pretty great compositions themselves. As for the 90s and 2000s records... look, are were very few if any bands that are consistent twenty or thirty years in, especially given the massive upheavals in metal around that time, and it's not like Judas Priest always had the most consistent discography even in their glory years.

So fast-forward to 2014, and despite having lost one of their founding guitarists K.K. Downing, Judas Priest releases Redeemer Of Souls, and for many it's cited as a big return to form, thanks to a welcome shot of energy from newcomer Richie Faulkner and Rob Halford remaining a powerhouse in front of the microphone. Granted, Judas Priest records have felt increasingly overlong in recent years and that project was no exception, but Firepower looked to be calling back to the past, slimming down under an hour and even bringing on their old producer Tom Allom to assist, along with Andy Sneap to add some modern touches. And like with when I covered Deep Purple's inFinite last year, I was preparing myself for this to be Judas Priest's last: Glenn Tipton had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and couldn't tour anymore, and as much as Rob Halford could still deliver, the band's debut came out in 1974, forty-four years ago - so okay, what did we get with Firepower?

video review: 'cocoa sugar' by young fathers

Yeah, I knew this review would be controversial... but hey, it happens, I've got to be honest.

Next up, Judas Priest - stay tuned!