on the pulse - 2020 - week 13: never pray for sunshine

I think this might be the last completely overstuffed list of releases for a bit - granted, it just felt like that given I put out another review and I’ve got a decade list I’m currently in the process of drafting, but hey, this time we’re all over the map, but still On The Pulse!

Sam Hunt - SOUTHSIDE - I already went about this album for twenty minutes, full of aghast horror, disgust, and lamentation. It’s likely the worst album that’ll be released this year, if we can even call this extended debasement of entitlement a release. In a just world, every executive at MCA Nashville would be fired on the spot for criminal mismanagement - in the mean time, this is a 1/10 and the sort of lazy atrocity that isn’t even worth this attention. Let’s move onto something better.

Gabe Lee - Honky Tonk Hell - So yeah, among indie country critics I’m late to the party with Gabe Lee, who broke out in 2018 with the lean but impressively well written farmland and who released this project to a lot of acclaim about a month back… and deservingly so! Quietly it’s been a really strong year for country and Honky Tonk Hell belongs near the top of the conversation, across the board - hell, just on production alone I love how varied, textured, and warm this album feels, spanning across neotraditional honkytonks to more careful acoustics to some barn-burning southern rock, with Gabe Lee’s nasal but expressive and potent singing to back them up. His vocal timbre reminds me a little of Bob Dylan, but he’s a better singer overall and the well-placed female backing vocals are a great touch to augment his considerable charisma. But it’s the writing that puts Gabe Lee in a different camp, mostly because there’s a swagger and eye for detail in coaxing pretty compelling stories out of the standard indie potshots at Nashville and hard-loving relationships. I think the biggest factor is the framing, mostly in how he holds himself to account about as much as any woman, so even if he’s dumping her or getting dumped or just making bad decisions in the relationship, he’s very much aware of how it all will look and yet still have enough rakish charm to let you sympathize regardless. I was actually surprised when reading between the lines how much of a hellraiser he seems to be and revelling in it - indeed, that greater sense of fun has made this album a real treat to revisit the past few weeks - which makes his more sober, observational cuts like the fantastic ‘30 Seconds At A Time’ or the questioning moment of escape on ‘Imogene’, highlighting the longterm costs of running away. It’s just a phenomenally well-balanced project, but one that’s so straightforward I’m not sure I’d have enough material for a full video review anyway - not that it’d get much traffic anyway, so this winds up the best possible option: 9/10, a big recommendation, it’s going to slip a lot of folks by, check it out!

Olhava - Ladoga - Okay, Russian atmospheric black metal project, I first heard their 2019 album that really was just two extended songs and generally felt pretty impressive in terms of texture, but I will admit I was underwhelmed when it came to the melodies and structure - suffocating cacophony is one thing, but this is a project that trends towards drone and that can lead to a lack of dynamics. Now this… honestly, a lot more of the same, where the howled vocals are all in Russian and drowned midway back but once the lyrics were translated it did paint a pretty visceral and graphic picture of humanity sliding back to feral, animalistic behavior in the vast, savage world, of which I’d argue I’d argue at this album’s best, it can really drill into the overwhelming, sweeping bleakness of it all. The problem is that without a lot of melodic development and little in the way of transitions or dynamics, Olhava tends to default to long, repetitive passages with messy and underweight drums - especially the cymbals - and when you get an interesting bassline makes you wish that this album didn’t slide towards drone compositions as much as it does - it becomes easier to hear the fractures in the tidal wave of sound when they’re overexposed and run long. Now that’s not saying the atmosphere isn’t potent, and if I just want the blurry waves of thunderous black metal to sit the background, meditative amidst savagery, which is enhanced by the ambient field records, so it does work for that… but unfortunately not much else. Still pretty decent, though - very strong 6/10

Yves Tumor - Heaven To A Tortured Mind - I’d argue it’s not really a good sign when I brought this album up with a few friends and they said they liked it, but that it had a whiff of ‘critic bait’ around it, the sort of material that might seem challenging or thought-provoking on the surface given the pretensions and the genre-blending, especially in the grab-bag approach to electronics pulling from alternative rock… until you realize that the individual elements mashed together don’t really click and lead to something less impactful than the sum of its parts. So I wasn’t really surprised to hear that Yves Tumor was doubling down on the bombastic rock side to even more critical acclaim… and man, I wish I was remotely impressed by this. The first obvious parallel might be to some of the thicker, psychedelic soul cuts from the Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!”, but the roots of this sound is much older, linked to the swampier experimentation that exploded out the late 60s and early 70s, as well as some obvious Prince inspirations in its integration of more sultry rock touches, and I do remember saying that the cleaner production and mixing of “Awaken, My Love!” did hold it back from nailing the atmosphere. Yves Tumor seems to have drilled into that bassy murk and piled on the blaring synth phasers, echoing effects, and faded mono pickups to spiral around the wiry guitar pickups in a way that reminds me more of Ariel Pink than Sly & The Family Stone. All of which I’d have no problem with… if the album had remembered to grab some of Pink’s underrated melodies and hooks or had found a way to make Yves Tumor’s voice work at all. I hate to say it, but it remains by far the most grating part of his work: creaking, nasal, trying to project presence but positioned too far back in the mix to command the song and possessing limited expressive range or visceral presence… which if it wasn’t for the occasional blast of noisier fuzz I’d say was true about the guitars as well. There are points on this album where he almost sounds like Lenny Kravitz or another import from mid-90s alt-rock… but that might be more because of the swaggering bravado in the subject matter, which certainly fits into the hornier side of late 60s psychedelia but as such can feel weirdly undercooked and awkward in its loverboy preening. Tack on too much compression and a weird lack of dynamics and… look, if this brand of vamping is up your alley, I can understand the appeal and hear some quality… but it’s not for me. 5/10

Ashley McBryde - Never Will - Oh, I was excited about this one. With her breakthrough in 2018 with Girl Going Nowhere, I was considerably impressed by how well she was able to step into the mainstream-adjacent scene, with enough tempered rough edges and hooks to stand out and really solid writing to boot, even with the questionable presence of Jay Joyce as a producer. So again, I was excited for Never Will… and I really wish I loved it more? Let’s get this out of the way now, in the push for greater variety that are absolutely some gimmicky cuts and production choices made here, with ‘Velvet Red’ basically sounding like a vintage 50s country cut down to its pickups to the utter dud that closes the album in ‘Styrofoam’ with its ugly, overprocessed groove and spoken verses - it’s a bad joke that doesn’t match the mood that McBryde didn’t even write, and a terrible way to end the album. And that’s frustrating because outside of those moments, while I can argue the album is a bit overproduced as a whole, it’s also one of those cases where Jay Joyce’s experimentation can strike gold: I like the slow-burning atmospheric smolder of ‘Shut Up Sheila’ that reflects the burned out tension that can erupt at family funerals, and ‘Voodoo Doll’ gets close to capturing the white-hot energy of her sultry hookup. And thankfully for the most part Joyce gets out of the way, lending a lot of warmth and focus to the pickups for Ashley McBryde’s terrific voice and eye for detail in her storytelling, most of which comes in regretful ballads and a slow burn smolder that indicates just how close she is to sliding off the rails and into dangerous territory, which makes her dogged country rock moments like the title track hit with some real punch. So at the end I’m left a bit torn - the high points like ‘One Night Standards’, ‘Sparrow’, ‘Stone’, the title track, they’re excellent, but the album doesn’t feel as consistently sharp as Girl Going Nowhere and there are real lowpoints this time, so… erring on the side of positive, extremely light 8/10, but still definitely worth your time. Great stuff.

All Time Low - Wake Up, Sunshine - Here’s a question: when I look at an new All Time Low album release on Fueled By Ramen, and see a featuring credit from blackbear, am I supposed to be excited? Look, in terms of pop punk this has never been a group that’s wowed me - most of the albums are okay but they absolutely run together - and given the resurgence of the subgenre in the past few years, I had to wonder how or if they could even match up… and that places this new album in a weird spot. Yes it’s more synthetic than I’d prefer but at least the band has returned to credible pop punk after the failures of Last Young Renegade and that disastrous attempt to remake a bunch of their older songs, and they’ve brought the hooks back in spades, even if the band is pretty far from their peak. Now here’s the problem: this is a course correction rather than an evolution, and just going back to the mid-2000s template with added overproduction is not going to put you on the same tier as the emo-tinged modern bands currently exploding… but I’m also not gonna lie and say that I didn’t mostly enjoy this. Yeah, the lyrics are still holding this band back from being more interesting - the relationship dynamics and any references to depression or angst remain pretty flimsy and undercooked - and I really wish the band could learn how to mix their drums and guitar consistently, but when they do take more of a compositional risk on cuts like ‘Melancholy Kaleidoscope’ and ‘Trouble Is’, they actually stand out a bit more! Hell, The Band Camino shows up for a song that’s pretty solid, and the title track has some riffs and vocal delivery that remind me of a midtier Green Day cut… but outside of a pretty nice closer in ‘Basement Noise’, this is an album that slides towards filler fast in its second half and will likely reside among the rest of All Time Low’s albums in an amorphous blob of likable, but not remarkable pop punk. 6/10

Purity Ring - WOMB - Now here’s a duo I have not thought about in a long time… and another group for which I’ve never really been impressed. Part of this was me coming to them a little late - I went back to 2012’s Shrines before I covered 2015’s another eternity, and while they were a band that helped shift and establish trends in the trap-inflected modern dream pop sound, they didn’t really grip me more deeply, half because of the overloaded vocal filters and half because they sacrificed some of their edge for more accessible but middling results. And yet now it’s five years later and… well, imagine if Purity Ring continued down their path of making their sound even more mainstream-accessible and along the way lost more personality and experimentation. I’m actually a little shocked by this - I’m not even really a fan of Purity Ring but this either sounds like smaller retreads of sounds they delivered with more punch years ago, or like a decent but overmixed indie pop album that could have been dropped and forgotten about two or three years ago, and for a band instrumental in establishing a sound, that’s a bit alarming! Now that’d be fine if they were still delivering great songs - they don’t have to be changing and redefining pop if the fundamentals are strong… but what this album revealed was once you strip so much of the abrasive gloss away, the melodic hooks don’t really wow me much here, even if you tack on the overdubs for Megan James’ vocals. Now to their credit, lyrically I think Purity Ring is trying to do a little more here in its subtext, exploring femininity and how its primal dramatic contrast between soft beauty and something more visceral but true can disrupt family units, traditional relationships, and even society on a larger level, where the greater swell can feel potent… if I was convinced this album wasn’t going to venture into water-based metaphors and swallow itself, or made the best use of its dynamics or any sense of dramatic subtlety, or that Megan James’ delivery didn’t feel as one-dimensional as it can here. Hell, that might be part of my long-running problem with this duo: for as experimental and graphic as the production and content could be, James’ delivery always operated in contrast to it. Now I’ll still argue there are more good songs than bad here - Purity Ring are colourful enough lyricists to hook me pretty consistently - but they’ve done better and when you factor in the wait, I understand if this was a disappointment. 6/10

Rod Wave - Pray 4 Love - So this was an album I wanted to cover specifically because in the new wave of trap croon-rappers, Rod Wave had a lot of promise - he embraced more guitars, he had a wider and more expressive vocal range, he seemed like he was a bit more thoughtful and was willing to cut a little deeper, and while his last project Ghetto Gospel did start to feel a bit one-note in wrenching from softer singing to shouting across overstuffed bars and occasionally percussion, I saw potential and I wanted to hear more… and unfortunately Pray 4 Love can feel a little one-note as well. It’s a good note: Rod Wave is expressive and his melancholic balance opposite the mournful guitars and watery pianos is consistently potent, but he doesn’t exactly have a lot of distinctive hooks, and this is still a subgenre in hip-hop that needs those, especially given how short and abbreviated many of the songs are - often just a short intro, a verse, and an outro. It almost feels more like a mixtape, and it doesn’t help that there are some pretty obvious mastering issues too - some songs are just abruptly quieter, or the bass is mixed to clip the edges of the mix, which is the last thing you want on a project so melodic, and it makes me question how much attention was paid to the fine details if this was rushed out to capitalize on momentum. Bizarrely, this album reminded me a little of Fetty Wap’s debut album: melodic, slightly off-kilter in its flow and transitions from rapping to crooning, questionable production, featuring rappers who tend to sound like nicer guys in the streets, and also could use a little more variation in the fine details. Thankfully, while there are fewer hooks Rod Wave is a more lyrical MC and there are some poignant moments amidst the gunplay and relationship angst, which at its best is when Rod Wave fleshes out the details and storytelling, which is where a little more structure absolutely helps… but even then, while he sells his painful come-up and how his hard life has left him mistrustful of friends and girls, he starts repeating himself pretty quickly, and he definitely can wear his influences pretty strongly. Again, of the modern trap artists, I see Rod Wave having a good ear for production and he tends to be a more interesting and likable presence, and this is good… but he’s capable of greatness. 6/10

Thundercat - It Is What It Is - It feels like I’ve always talked around Thundercat and his work rather than reviewing it directly, and that’s partially because it’s been a little tricky for me to get a handle on it. I like the jazzy funk of the bass and oddball synths, I like the persistent sense of humour, they’re definitely easy projects to appreciate and I completely see the synergy that’s come in Thundercat’s work with Flying Lotus… but I’ve yet to be completely wowed by a Thundercat album, mostly due to questions of structure where I’ve wished the fragmented ideas were explored with a little more depth and I’ve never been enamored with his vocals. And while Drunk was a good step in that direction by simply adding more interlocking pieces to the puzzle, I was encouraged that the new album was tightening things back up and… well, I’m a little conflicted on this. On the one hand, if you liked Thundercat’s trademark expert basswork with a little more comforting poise on more developed songs, this is another step in that direction, especially given how loose and fun a lot of his lyrics remain - a little less cohesive in the album’s concept, but there’s still a loose charm to its silliness. And while the percussion and bass mixing can absolutely be inconsistent and kind of muddy, there’s a lot of liquid charm to a lot of these cuts, especially when the album makes a pivot in its final third to a very sincere and well-handled suite paying tribute to the late Mac Miller, where Ty Dolla $ign just sounds fantastic. That’s not to say this album doesn’t have its moments that just don’t match with the vibe as well - I find the inclusion of ‘King Of The Hill’ from a previous Brainfeeder compilation kind of baffling given how its darker rejection of hedonism kind of flies in the face of the more upbeat moments here, not the first point where the subversion of that vibe feels awkward - but overall, there’s something comforting about slipping into the resigned but warm and likable tones and atmosphere here. It doesn’t quite feel as ambitious as Drunk, but it succeeds with lower stakes, and I wound up going back to this a fair bit. Really good stuff, very solid 7/10