on the pulse - 2020 - week 15 - blame everything on going out
Full disclosure, I did not expect that I’d be getting this out anywhere close to on-time - between the madness surrounding my best hits of the decade list and having to prep a full review for another project all amidst my birthday, this week was wild and overstuffed. But hey, I’m nothing if not mostly consistent, so welcome back On the Pulse!
Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters - I already spoke at length about this one; an absolutely great and layered album that can find remarkable emotional balance and nuance in its rawness… but married to a compositional structure that by design will be more hit and miss, and that lead to some moments that can’t quite strike true. Imperfection may have been part of the point, but how that’ll hit can be a tricky nut to crack - or in this case, bolt to cut. Very solid 8/10, absolutely worth hearing.
Uncommon Nasa - Ornate - So this was an EP dropped a few weeks ago but now that it’s available on all streaming platforms and have a bit of breathing room in my schedule, I figured I’d discuss this newest quick outing from Nasa, all produced by Lyle Horowitz. And it’s really good, mostly because opposite cleaner production with firmer grooves Nasa’s sharp personality and wordplay pops a lot more, and there’s some okay hooks here too! Of course, I do prefer his work with a little more texture so I liked the darker guitar gurgle on ‘Words Sung’ and the almost gothic twinkles and texture on ‘A Walk on East 11th Street', but I’ll also say right now that the writing is the real star of the show here, from highlighting the increasingly forced smiles to preserve jobs under strained capitalism to the bizarre ramp-up of intensity creators feel when you’re stuck inside and feel you should be making something. ‘A Walk On East 11th Street’ is probably his best, though, as it juxtaposes how unnerving that intensity can be as an older guy in a young man’s game even further boxed in, as he makes the choice to live and accept the tough reality as he sees the projections and positivity of ‘influencers’ he can’t fake, and there’s a line about YouTube here that struck me as almost too real, these days or otherwise. Again, as I’ve said before Uncommon Nasa can be very niche - blunt, wordy, complicated New York hip-hop rich with symbolism but immediate enough that you think you should get it more easily - and I’m not sure how much resonance this’ll have once this lockdown ends, but I did really like it all the same. extremely solid 7/10, check it out!
Dryjacket - Going Out Of Business - I’ll be blunt, I should have vetoed this project, but I’m including it on the schedule to make a point: just because there’s a genre or subgenre or trend within a genre that I might have a preference towards does not mean I’m going to like everything I hear within it. Case in point, Dryjacket, who on their sophomore album decided their way of making their fusion of midwestern emo and pop punk was forgetting anything close to an interesting hook, getting lead singers with no edge and a distinctly sanitized, mid-2000s pop punk voice, and injecting a bunch of fidgety math rock noodling and trumpets into the verses instead of competent drum mixing or a groove. I can’t even put it in the American Football camp of being more atmospheric and thoughtful because there’s no attempt to create atmosphere - and it’s genuinely alarming how tepid and boring it all is, sounding more like the act in this genre that’ll actually get the occasional commercial because it’s so anonymous! This would be where I’d go to the writing to find something to redeem them - and somehow it made me like them even less. I get trying to juxtapose cheery, upbeat melodies and clean bouncy production with sullen introspection, underweight anxiety, curdled anger, and at one point an outright suicide wish - trying to make an obvious point about how people disguise their true angst in normal suburbia - but where the best of the emo revival is populist and at least trying to see beyond a bleak future, there’s a mean-spirited pettiness to many of these tracks that is far less likable and far more dissonant with any sense of tone. So somehow you wind up with the worst of both worlds: emo that wallows in stasis and insufferability, backed up by the sort of anonymous but chipper tones that don’t have the hooks nor texture to be interesting. In other words, not good. Extremely light 4/10, and that’s being really generous.
EoB - Earth - Okay, if you’re seeing this name for the first time and are confused, don’t be: this is the first solo side project from Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien, working with legendary producer Flood and a host of guest stars to assemble this, including his bandmate bassist Colin Greenwood, Glenn Kotche of Wilco, Adrian Utley of Portishead, and even Laura Marling back for a second week in a row here! And if you’re expecting this to sound like Radiohead… I’d say it’s not quite exact, but there’s a parallel of a certain strain of alternative and even progressive rock rooted in the late 90s/early 2000s in England - think Elbow or Travis or Porcupine Tree. Now let me stress, that’s an era of progressive rock I really like, full of interesting melodic structures in the acoustics balanced with good grooves and textured drums, and Flood’s mixing is top-notch to give these songs the contemplative, studied, tasteful air of that era, and if that’s all you need to get you in the door, you’ll likely dig this… but if you dig even a little deeper, you don’t find much to flesh this out beyond a pastiche. For one, it’s hard not to go to songs like ‘Long Time Coming’ and appreciate the obvious Lightbulb Sun parallel, but if you’re asking for this album to take any chances in its composition beyond the smoothest possible tones dragged through compositions lacking unique hooks, a few of which seem to be trying to go for what I presume is a dance groove, and that’s before you realize nearly all of these pieces are lacking any sort of distinctive lyrical flair beyond half-formed pleas to preserve some form of love and the world around us, outside of the vague anti-Wall Street sentiments of ‘Banksters’ that is about the closest thing this album gets to half-hearted rock intensity with one of the weakest ‘you fucks’ I’ve heard on record. And preservation is an apt sentiment here, because when you factor in Ed O’Brien sounding better as a Radiohead backing vocalist than a frontman, a few programmed drum patterns that don’t really match well, and pretty weak hooks, it feels like an facsimile of what might have been if Radiohead hadn’t bucked trends for electronica. And beyond nostalgia for what might have been… hate to say it, but there’s not much here. 6/10
The Smith Street Band - Don’t Waste Your Anger - I’ve been told by a lot of people that I’d really like this act, given my fondness for hardscrabble folk punk and Frank Turner specifically, and going through the Smith Street Band’s back catalog certainly shows a lot of that influence. But outside of that, I’ve actually liked a fair bit of what I’ve heard here: their albums can run together and can certainly feel shaggier in composition and production - especially recently, as they’ve made some questionable choices - but they’ll wrangle a good hook with some smart, detailed writing and I was curious where this Australian act would go next… and it’s a Smith Street Band album, alright? I guess my frustration comes in how there are some basic things the band could do to go to the next level and they aren’t happening, specifically in production: when you have a band with a potent singer like Will Wagner, why never center him well in the mix, and why is your mixing as a whole so muddy? It continues to do a big disservice to great hooks and makes potent and distinctive melodies start to run together, and that’s before the synths and glittery keyboards slide in to clutter a mix that badly needs focus, especially in the grooves on the final third of the album - if someone can explain that flattened drone all over the back half of ‘Big Smoke’, tell me! Now you’d think the content would be able to punch through it regardless, especially given its bloody, hangdog desperation that if he’s not already at rock bottom he’s certain he’ll wind up there… but as you get deeper in, it’s never a tailspin that’s reversed or even provided much unique context, and the lovesickness begins really curdling by the end. That’s a hidden downside to the self-loathing side of folk punk: not only can it start sounding discordantly whiny, the self-aggrandizing pity can run sour if not tempered or emphasized well. And this is a prime example of hitting a weaker note. Really wanted to love this one, folks, because it does have the hooks to get there… just little else. 6/10
Enter Shikari - Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible - Queue the usual monologue of how this genre is not really for me and I don’t have the greatest depth with it… but I feel like I’ve got a little more wiggle room with Enter Shikari here, who started in the oft-loathed electronicore subgenre before sliding into more accessible electronic rock. And having listened to all of their albums now… they aren’t my thing, mostly because in between the good hooks and hyperbolic politics they have a reputation for choosing some of the worst possible synths for contrast and embellishment I’ve heard in recent memory. Even 2017’s The Spark, easily their most accessible and probably best album beforehand had this problem, a frenetic mishmash of elements that have never fused properly. And thus it’s a little awkward for me to go to this album, by far their cleanest and most hook-ready and accessible project full of obvious glances at twenty one pilots, maybe even embracing more of the abrasive tones outside the vocals that could be so hit-and-miss in their past… and I’d argue it might just be their most likable to date. Now let me make this clear, it’s absolutely overproduced in its frenetic pileup of electronic layers and synthetic vocal filters, and unfortunately it’s also the sort of overproduction that winds up feeing wonky and uneven from track to track, which can make for an incredibly vibrant listen, but not one that’s remotely consistent. But the quality of the overproduction and bombast is considerably better, and when you pair it with overall stronger hooks and more cohesive compositions, it leads to a stronger album. And yet even as I’ll praise some of their best ever hooks and experimentation on ‘Crossing The Rubicon’ and ‘[ The Dreamer’s Hotel ]’ or ‘satellites* *’, where some of the warping passages almost sound adjacent to PC Music, I will say the content doesn’t quite get there, where about half the project wants to confront a collapsing world and snap puppet strings and spark larger charge, while the other half seems like it wants to take the piss out of it or play in gallows humour. The one inspired lyrical idea is the ‘apocaholics’ conceit, privileged folks obsessed with thinking about the world’s end but never do much about it, but by the end of the album in all the deconstruction it kind of winds up reinforcing how they might be just like it in a bizarrely upbeat way. Granted, Enter Shikari have never exactly been deep and I’m more inclined to take this at face value, which is oversold, overproduced, gloriously messy, but generally pretty fun for what it is. light 7/10, frankly better than I expected.
Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA - I should have been on the Rina Sawayama train years ago… which can be weird for someone to say about a relatively underground artist who only released a small EP back in 2017, but that EP was genuinely great, taking a flagrantly retro late 90s/early 2000s pop/R&B sound and fusing it with rock elements and lyrics that were ridiculously sharp. So after covering one of her cuts on IGTV a few weeks back - @SpectrumPulse, I post semi-regularly there - I was actually pretty damn excited for this… and it was worth it! Folks, this was everything I was hoping the Poppy album from earlier this year would be, a vibrant and colourful balance between pop, R&B, rock, and splashy metal textures that might have their most obvious reference point around the turn of the millennium and early 2000s, but to me feels much more rooted in modern j-pop and j-rock, especially with some of the splasher synth work and determination to drill into a huge crowd-pleasing hook on cuts like ‘Paradisin’ or the Christina Aguliera-esque ‘Who’s Gonna Save U Now?’ or the fantastic power ballad ‘Chosen Family’. Granted, her palette also dabbles in splashes of g-funk and new jack swing on ‘Love Me 4 Me’, trap on ‘Akasaka Sad’, nu-metal on ‘STFU!’ and even manages to make the obvious Evanescence influence on ‘Dynasty’ tolerable - and that’s a factor of content. What I find captivating about this project is how it might seem like she’s making otherwise conventionally structured pop songs that don’t shy away from big hooks and modern production but also capture both more nuance and a real arc of self-actualization… but not just your standard self-esteem anthems, as Sawayama is specifically focusing on complicated family legacy and generational wealth she doesn’t feel she deserves, and a lot of messy feelings about her Japan, a home she barely knows and doesn’t want to caricature - even as the industry is rushing to put her in a box and she has to grapple with it. But it’s not all dour, either - she knows how to walk the tightrope between emotive melancholy and making genuinely fun music, which as I’ve said can walk a blurry line on cuts like ‘XS’ but more often than not really work, especially in forcing the sharp juxtaposition while still sounding cohesive! And when you factor in an album that only gets better the deeper you get into it - seriously, ‘Bad Friend’ comes out of nowhere and somehow manages to crystallize all the nostalgia for that year I didn’t know I had - I’m thrilled to say the hype is real. 8/10, this is a special project, get onboard now!
DaBaby - BLAME IT ON BABY - Let’s keep this short: I understand why DaBaby rushed to drop a new album now - serve the fanbase with the knowledge he can’t really compete with the big releases likely delayed into later in the year, even without a major single push, I get it. But this is the textbook example of a rush job that makes DaBaby’s impressive charisma bleed away into really weak singing and a flow and content that he struggles to switch up. And when you have production this slapdash and undercooked - the leaden bass mixing and lack of strong melody has been an issue his entire run and it’s worse here - it smacks of bad management that told him he needed to release something now, actually refine those variations in his delivery and flow than deliver throwaway mixtape quality… which also applies to his bars and every guest appearance. It’s a bad sign where his sex references alongside taking your girl are repeatedly disgusting and there’s little of the same flair and wit that made previous projects have more character, and even when there are moments where he seems like he’s going to show more vulnerability, it’s nearly always a bait and switch, which cheapens any attempt at real emotion. The closest we get is ‘ROCKSTAR’ where he tries to croon-rap opposite Roddy Ricch to his daughter about his Wal-Mart shooting issue, but Roddy can’t stay on topic or match the attempted mood - and outside of ‘JUMP’ with YoungBoy Never Broke Again for just braggadocious gunplay and a remake of Ashanti’s ‘Baby’ on 'Nasty’ with Megan Thee Stallion which is a song I didn’t like in 2002, that’s about the best it gets! Look, I still think DaBaby has potential, but this was a rushed release that reflects very questionable management and production - none of this speaks to progression so much as a backslide. Not good, 4/10.