Man, it's been a while since I've had such mixed feelings going into a review. And to explain why, we need to go back to 2012 - the pop charts are being overrun with out-of-nowhere indie breakthroughs, and 'Somebody That I Used To Know' is becoming one of the biggest sleeper hits of the 2010s. But Kimbra had gotten her start earlier with an off-kilter brand of indie pop that took old school glamour and spent an album driving noisy spikes into it. Occasionally unsettling but frequently compelling, Vows was a really damn potent indie debut, and her collaboration with Gotye seemed to give Kimbra the opening she needed... And then in 2014 we got The Golden Echo. Now I'll freely admit my review of that record is not one of my best, but the record as a whole didn't hold up then and four years haven't improved it. Critical and commercial momentum hit a brick wall as her characteristically unstable and overwrought production collided with R&B and 90s pop-inspired tones, muddying her usually sharp satirical edge, and her choice to stick almost entirely with her cooing upper register made an already overlong record a chore to get through. Now don't get me wrong, there were some high points that made it compelling, but it's a little understandable it's been four years since that release, and there were major shakeups in the production staff, bringing on John Congleton as a major co-producer and also nabbing credits from Natasha Bedingfield and Skrillex. And considering how often this record had been pushed back, I didn't really have high expectations but I at least hoped Kimbra could make a return to form, especially as Vows has held up to this day. So alright, what did we get with Primal Heart?
Well, this was a mess - and yeah, I may have gone a little too deep with this, but I'm genuinely surprised that there wasn't a huge negative response to this... Eh, whatever, next up something better - stay tuned!
Let's talk satire in hip-hop for a bit. See, since near the genre's inception there have always been artists that have twisted stereotypical tropes of the genre into nastier shapes to comment upon the culture, that take the hedonism and violence and co-opt the production and language with a veneer of irony to comment upon the genre to make a deeper statement about it. And this is always a dicey line to walk, because this sort of satire can very easily fall into the blurry territory where those who get the intentions will get the point but the audience that can't see past the aesthetic will simply embrace everything on display without deeper questions or self-reflection. And what's exasperating is that so much of this is subjective - there is no clear line delineating when and where the satire connects, and that tends to mean these records tend to be pretty divisive among critics and audiences alike. And thus when J. Cole came out of nowhere to release KOD - an acronym intended to simultaneously mean Kids On Drugs, King Overdose and Kill Our Demons - I started to get worried when I saw comparisons being made with These Days, the 2014 record made by hip-hop's resident satirist troll Ab-Soul and one of the shakiest records in his discography. And what tends to get overlooked is that parody and satire were pretty well represented in hip-hop in 2014, from the neo-gothic opera of and then you shoot your cousin by The Roots to the abrasive nightmare of clipping's self-titled release, and thus when J. Cole is getting comparisons to the weakest of that satirical trio... well, it sparks concerns, especially when you consider how uneven J. Cole's stabs into message-driven hip-hop have been in the past. Granted, if you're placing J. Cole on more aggressive and interesting production he might be able to avoid the frustrating slog that was 4 Your Eyez Only, but again, I had concerns how effectively he'd be able to address this, especially as this is easily his shortest record to date. So fine, what did we get on KOD?
You know, it's only in the streaming album bomb era where the cool down week gets any sort of appreciation. I can't even say it was a great week here - honestly, doesn't really look like it, especially in comparison with my mostly positive feelings about Cardi B and 'Nice For What' last week - but considering we have J Cole coming in from around the corner for next week and then whatever the hell Post Malone unleashes the week right after... yeah, I'll take whatever slower moments I can get.
Okay, not as great as I was hoping... but overall, still solid, definitely recommended. Next up, Billboard BREAKDOWN, and we'll see what comes next - stay tuned!
Oh, I was looking forward to this one - and for a nice change of pace, it didn't look like it was just me this time around and that's thrilling to see. And there's really no mincing words about it: in the face of other country duos Brothers Osborne have surged to the forefront in critical acclaim and presence over the past few years ever since they released Pawn Shop in very early 2016 - and what's more exciting is that they seemed to be doing it the right way. Sure, that debut was uneven and had rough patches both in production and songwriting, but you wouldn't really know it given that Brothers Osborne had a canny eye for releasing great singles like '21 Summer' and especially 'It Ain't My Fault', which might just have one of the best music videos of the decade. It was one of those projects where the sheer talent, wit, and swagger was hard to deny, and while the larger mainstream never quite got onboard the way they should have - especially considering it wasn't like their labelmate Eric Church had many singles in circulation to compete - this upcoming record starting getting a lot of attention, to see how they'd follow up and expand their southern rock style while keeping that idiosyncratic flair and firepower. Or to put it another way, even though I've been a fan of these guys for a few years now, I was excited to see how much everyone else wanted to get on-board: so what did we get on Port Saint Joe?
So I have to admit, I'm a little surprised to realize that Lindi Ortega wound up blocking me on Twitter... shame, I thought this album was pretty damn good and she may never see it. Anyway, next up is some more country (albeit of a slightly different stripe), so stay tuned!
So I've talked before about narrative-driven concept records in country music, and while you'd think they'd be more common given the genre's penchant for telling stories... look, I can barely say that with a straight face anymore, especially in the checklist-driven mainstream scene. But even outside of that, for a country artist to take a real risk and build a coherent, multi-part narrative over an entire project... that requires a level of ambition, forethought, and oftentimes budget that can be daunting for any act, especially in the indie scene. But that wasn't going to stop Lindi Ortega this time. After she broke out in 2012 with the excellent Cigarettes & Truckstops that won her a ton of justifiable critical acclaim, most of which carried into her 2013 follow-up Tin Star, I had the feeling that she was on the cusp of really taking at least the indie scene by storm, if not more. And yet while I mostly liked2015's Faded Gloryville, it was also clear that her vintage, rockabilly-infused country lane was starting to lose its luster in the face of an increasingly oversaturated scene and songs that just didn't rise to her best... and beyond all of that, there's just not a lot of money in that brand of indie country, and Nashville is an expensive city. So she left it altogether, came back to Canada, and set out to make her most ambitious project to date, putting aside the rockabilly tones for something grander and rougher, pulling on spaghetti western bombast like that of Ennio Morricone for the gritty melodrama to come. Three acts, fifteen tracks, with songs in Spanish and English blending mariachi with her smoky blend of noir and country rock, I've been wanting to cover this for weeks... and now that it's up the schedule, let's dig in: what did we get on Liberty?
You know, I rarely cover acts who blow up in this vein... but I'm kind of curious to see if this review takes off, it's intriguing. Next up... whoo boy, this'll be interesting, one of the most ambitious country records of the year, so stay tuned!
I'm not going to deny how weird it feels when a record like this winds up on my schedule. See, it's been very well-documented that I was no big fan of the Vine dance crazes that dominated entirely too much of the Hot 100 in the mid-2010s, and while there were a fair few Vine stars that found careers after the platform collapsed - some of which I like a fair bit, such the David Dobrik vlog squad or Gabbie Hanna - the only one associated primarily with music I came close to liking was Shawn Mendes, and even he has had some gross low points. But Bazzi's meteoric rise might be even stranger - he also started on Vine, but the breakthrough of his song 'Mine' was linked to a Snapchat lens going viral. Now considering Snapchat is in its own dire straits right now, I couldn't help but feel surprised to discover that not only did Bazzi have a record ready to capitalize on his sudden success - seemingly backed by Warner and Atlantic to boot - but that it looked like a fully fleshed out project: sixteen tracks, self-produced with only a assist from duo Rice 'N' Peas, and getting a surprising amount of buzz to get up my schedule remarkably quickly. And considering 'Mine' was a pretty good song, I was inclined to see if this guy was truly ready for the big time, so what did we get with COSMIC?
Well, this was... actually better than I expected. A few really choice cuts keeps this in interesting territory, definitely worth the listen if you're curious. Next up, let's go with this Bazzi project - stay tuned!
At this point it's hard not to feel like Tinashe should be bigger. And believe it or not, this has absolutely nothing to do with my opinion on her music - I didn't really like Aquarius, and while I found Nightride a modest improvement, there was R&B I liked more that year - hell, more R&B I liked both years. And in a sense it's hard to escape the feeling that Tinashe might have fallen victim to a peculiar phenomenon I've observed with rising R&B starlets: they get one big mainstream-crossover hit, their breakthrough album gets critical acclaim and hits a bunch of year-end lists... and then if they don't have the guaranteed follow-up smash on the next project, the interest dries up in record time, even if it might turn out those later projects are better or more interesting. But even then, Tinashe is on a major label, you would think there'd be more of a marketing push to break her into the spotlight... but her sales have not been great, and it would be a damn tragedy if she releases her strongest project to the weakest public response yet. Granted, I did have concerns given how much Joyride was delayed and that it had the guest stars that she hadn't needed on Nightride, and it's not like Offset, Future, Ty Dolla $ign and French Montana are known for consistent quality, but given the years of development time, there had to be something potent here, right?
There are a lot of narratives that need to be considered going into this week, most of which I predicted and those that I didn't I'm not sure I wanted to entertain. Of course the biggest story is the Cardi B album bomb, but like last week the Hot 100 would have been plenty busy without her.
So here's something as a music critic I'm very conscious of, but I doubt is noticed by anyone else: the 'token' album. And even if you're not a critic you've probably seen evidence of this in "I don't like x genre but I like this". Now on the one hand the records that typically fall into this narrow category can hit universal appeal that even those who might not be fond of the genre can't deny the greatness, but when you have musical subgenres that don't tend to get critical respect, there's an air of condescension that comes with these picks that can be pretty obnoxious. Now I've already mentioned this can happen with artists like Kacey Musgraves, but she was making an obvious play for crossover appeal - what we're going to be talking about today are artists who are damn great within their own genre and yet get picked up as critical darlings as the 'token band' by folks and critics who'll never deign to go deeper. And yet with a band like The Wonder Years, you'd think critics would have learned. Coming from the fertile intersection of pop punk and the 2010s emo revival, their early work may have been slagged as formulaic, but by 2011 they had hit a serious stride with Suburbia I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing, tapping into the decay of American suburbia and existential teenage angst on a much broader, more universal scale. This is a group that fused the layered, personal detail of emo with the huge hooks of pop punk, and it was a synthesis that won over fans of the genre very quickly, especially on their follow-ups The Greatest Generation and No Closer To Heaven, records that are pretty damn great even if I personally prefer Suburbia. But those records started to get picked up by some critics as their 'token' pop punk or emo act on year end lists, and as much as that could feel galling from the outside, it did mean their newest record Sister Cities was starting to pick up a lot more attention... which might have come a rough time, as many of the longtime fans were saying this record didn't quite hold up to earlier releases. But hey, I still wanted to cover it given that I've been criminally late to the party with this group before, so how is Sister Cities?
I was genuinely surprised with how many people were requesting I cover this record. Well, okay, maybe not that surprised - many people know her most for her Grammy-nominated collaboration with Daniel Caesar, but I was familiar with her name going a little further back, mostly through her connections to Tyler, the Creator. And dig a little deeper into the featuring credits and I've seen her name come up a fair bit associated with Gorillaz and Miguel and I don't recall saying anything bad about her. And going back to those collaborations, the weakest might have been 'Caramelo Duro' with Miguel, but she did a great job on 'She's My Collar' with Gorillaz and even better opposite Tyler on 'See You Again'. And that was enough to at least get me intrigued to do a little more research into where she was taking this debut. Reportedly her mixtapes pulled on a broader cross-section of sounds, spanning doo-wop, jazz, bossa nova, and of course reggaeton given her Columbian heritage. And considering the massive amount of critical acclaim she's received for this breakout project - and if you dig through the liner notes, you'll see names ranging from Thundercat and BADBADNOTGOOD to Damon Albarn and Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, and that's before you get the who's who of big name producers from Greg Kurstin to Sounwave. Alright, I'm intrigued, what did we get on Isolation?
