on the pulse - 2020 - week 16 - divine country for angels

So for once we have a legitimately slow week - major releases seem to be drying up, and that means I had to go digging for the majority of what we’re covering here. Luckily, we’ve got some real gems, so let’s get On The Pulse!

Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin Kynsi - So full disclosure, this is a side of black metal I haven’t often touched: psychedelic black metal, where the screams and tremolo shredding is more discordant and offkilter and weird, taking their dissonance into even stranger territory. Into this comes Oranssi Pazuzu, who has been on my radar for a bit so I listened through their entire discography and… it’s odd, as despite probably their most enveloping and potent work being 2013’s Valonielu, with everything since they’ve pulled further away from black metal towards wonkier psychedelic contortions, and that furious tension has felt increasingly hit-and-miss, no more so than on Mestarin Kynsi. Hell, I’d argue this project is the furthest from black metal I’ve heard yet, as it’ll twist into more abrasive psychedelic and even drone passages with synth layering and some distorted female vocals, at least until the end of the project where they have to bring back some traditional raw and chaotic black metal. And truth be told, I’m not sure they needed the hard pivot, because the heaviness coming from the sludge and even thrash side on a few cuts was just as credible, and when you have an project as alien and unpredictably suffocating as this is, you don’t really need to default to what we know. Now when you have albums that get by on nightmare fuel, what actually hits the unholy sweet spot between unsettlingly weird and just obtuse can be a blurry one, and Oranssi Pazuzu don’t always hit it - some of the keyboard passages run long and repetitive, while the transitions tend to be great the dynamics and atmosphere don’t always give the heavier passages room to breathe, and like most psychedelic-tinged albums in the modern age the compression and jarring tonal pivots can feel overused. And once I translated the lyrics from Finnish they felt a little boiler plate for metal, pushing on Lovecraftian, unknowable nightmares, although I’m sure some of the poetry got lost in translation. And as such, while it’s experimental and winning a lot of folks over on how alien and weird it is, I’ve heard more implacable and shocking extreme metal albums, and while this is good, I’m not sure it’s going to suck me back into the maw all that often. The more kinetic midsection tracks are excellent, though, so strong 7/10

ShrapKnel - ShrapKnel - You know, whenever I start complaining that I haven’t heard enough good hip-hop in the course of the year, someone just needs to kick me and remind me there’s more I just haven’t heard that’s right under my damn nose. Case in point, ShrapKnel, a collaboration between PremRock and Curly Castro and put out through Backwoodz Studios - if you’ve been listening to underground hip-hop you probably recognize at least one of those names; for me it was Curly Castro, who I recognized from Armand Hammer and Uncommon Nasa projects, which when you factor in Elucid on production for the majority of the album, that should give you an idea of the sound. It should also give you an idea of how great this is - grimy, distorted, with clattering percussion and discordant guitars and keys that always seems on the cusp of falling apart, and the ominous atmosphere damn-near omnipresent as Curly Castro and Premrock go bar for bar, the former more nasal, animated, and immediate, the latter more gruff but subtly imposing. It’s a good balance and when you want to stack up bars full of comic book, movie, sports, and underground hip-hop references full of braggadocious flair with more hooks than you’d otherwise expect - juxtaposed with retrospective moments to childhood on cuts like ‘86 to 96 Probably’ that grounds the points of reference for both good and ill - it makes for a well-paced, layered but potent as hell listen. And for establishing our two MCs with well-placed guest stars and the occasional political potshot, this is a potent starting point… but I do think there were opportunities for a bit more diversity in content, or the feel that individual cuts built up to more; it’s one reason I like ‘Beset’ as a moment of post-breakup brooding or ‘Estranged Fruit’ with billy woods in highlighting different brands of bitter isolation. In a way the album does live up its title: fractured, cutting, wild, strewn amidst the ruins and more dangerous than you’d realize, but implying a greater whole rather than comprising it directly. And if you’ve listened to a lot of underground hip-hop, this will absolutely feel familiar, and I wouldn’t quite call it ground-breaking, but in a year short of great hip-hop thus far, this fills the bill really well. Light 8/10

Whitney Rose - We Still Go To Rodeos - I’m kind of kicking myself for letting Whitney Rose fall of my radar - she’s Canadian working in indie country, I really liked her 2015 album Heartbreaker of the Year and yet she put out two projects in 2017 that I missed! Part of this was me struggling to get a handle on my schedule that year, but I will admit that outside of a few great moments I wasn’t quite wowed by South Texas Suite or Rule 62; her sound was picking up a lot of elements of Texas honky tonk and that was an odd fit for her more subtle, smoldering delivery. So I really wanted to cover her newest project and get a handle on where she was going next… and the answer is something close to late 80s and early 90s neotraditional country, with a lot more rock elements, which is a fit I wish worked better. And I lay the majority of the blame on her producer Paul Kolderie, who if you know that era of late 80s and 90s indie rock might a familiar name thanks to his work with The Lemonheads, Hole, the Pixies, and oh yes, Radiohead - this is the guy who produced Pablo Honey and while he’s been less active in recent years, you’d think him producing a country project might be intriguing. Sadly, it’s another case of a producer who’s slightly misaligned with the artist in question, because while the guitars have a lot of warm and interplay and texture on this project, the grooves unfortunately don’t, and it gets even more frustrating opposite Rose’s voice; the one thing I didn’t need to come back from early 90s rock was putting the vocals further back in the mix, especially when Rose is such a subtle, understated performer! This would be where I’d go to the lyrics… and sadly, while Rose’s relationship storytelling might be mature and frank in discussing where things went awry, or where she wishes they could have worked, but the framing feels oddly passive; even the most detailed storytelling on the opener ‘Just Circumstance’ doesn’t assign any blame beyond calling it ‘just circumstance’, which is more appropriate than blaming her but in the larger context of the album distances you from the story a bit. It just doesn’t build much in the way of emotive tension, not helped by some wonky sequencing driven by shifts in tonal balance track to track, and when the writing can already feel a little undercooked, there’s just not much that pulls me back here. Not a bad album, but like her last few projects they’re not really playing to her strengths. strong 6/10, it’s good, not great.

Alina Baraz - It Was Divine - So I’ve covered Alina Baraz before back when I was still making the Trailing Edge, and I made the observation even then that she was pulling a lot from Jhene Aiko for her sound, albeit with a stronger pop tinge; generally agreeable, but not a lot that stood out. In retrospect, I should have given her more credit, because over the past two years the trend in R&B has been towards Jhene’s sound, and following onto this album, Alina Baraz wound up a step ahead in continuing down that path! But I feel like this project is another example of albums that embrace a lot of textures and tones I really like, but struggle in the compositional department to assemble a good hook or production that feels as warm or potent as it could be, which was an issue on Alina Baraz’s previous work as well, and is just as true here… just spread over a much longer project. And again, this is one of those cases where I might like the tone and approach of this album - Alina Baraz is a great subtle singer, she’s amazingly expressive, she’s got great chemistry with her guests especially Khalid, and the balance of gentle, textured acoustics with more hip-hop adjacent production is solid - but when you dig into the compositions and writing more deeply, the issues start cropping up. For one, as inspired by Jhene as this album is, there was a lyrical and tonal arc even across Chilombo that was lovestruck but complicated - read between the lines and there’s a lot more going on besides straightforward bedroom jams, which is the vast majority of Alina Baraz has. Yes, ‘Say You Know’ is a confrontation during the relationship’s collapse there are moments where you can tell she’s intending the love song more to herself, but the introspection is pretty thin, and without that slight bit of complexity, this album starts to run together. On top of that, she tries to integrate some beat switches into more downtempo moments and interludes, and they feel a lot more clumsy than they should, often a factor of the weedy keyboards and guitars that slide offkey and leaden beats that make me wish there were live drums. Still, this is absolutely a project that does its ‘one thing’ really damn well, Nas shows up for a really solid verse, and even if this album runs long, I really do like that smooth kick to the guitar on ‘Take It Home’, so… very light 7/10, still worth hearing though.

AWOLNATION - Angel Miners & The Lightning Riders - This is the third AWOLNATION album I’ve reviewed - and at this point, I’m a little at a loss why their material isn’t sticking with me whatsoever. It’s bombastic, it careens across styles and usually winds up a total mess, frontman Aaron Bruno is clearly trying to make something stick… and yet when you are four albums in and I can barely recall a melody or an interesting turn of phrase from those albums, there’s a big problem: a band trying so hard to sound impactful should not be this forgettable. And it’s not just one thing here either - the most obvious culprit seems to be production where whenever you’d expect those revving anthemic guitars to kick up they’re always a little too far back in the mix, and pairing it with painfully underweight bass and drum patterns don’t help. Then there’s Aaron Bruno himself, who has some dynamic personality but never seems to grasp how to accentuate it… and given that he produced all AWOLNATION albums in-house you can probably blame him for how the band is consistently stuck two years behind the times with little real production crunch or flavour. That’s the other glaring flaw: for as the band especially here tries to emphasize their wild, radical, renegade credentials in their lyrics - when they’re not trying to “subvert” them to utterly neuter any power or bombast or atmosphere, which when you’re writing a song about the California wildfire that destroyed your home studio, you’d bring some sense of intensity - well, I’d say they were devoured by the Imagine Dragon, but that’s not even a thing anymore and when they were doing that sound originally, they were okay at it! What’s it’s more emblematic of is the same thing that happened to Purity Ring: they may have been at the forefront of a sound, but then it got beaten into the ground and compositionally they could never keep up as their identity became less distinct, so much so that when they collaborate with Rivers Cuomo on ‘Pacific Coast Highway In The Movies’, it sounds like a Pacific Daydream-era Weezer song, and not a good one! Look, maybe you can frame this as a ‘back-to-basics’ approach as they’re now on a new label, but the production and compositions are toothless, the mess has long stopped being interesting, the sequencing is incredibly sloppy, and again, a project trying this hard to be anthemic should never be this boring. 4/10, no recommendation

Quelle Chris & Chris Keys - Innocent Country 2 - And circling back to the topic of great underground hip-hop I needed to cover… yeah, this one I saw coming, but it was a follow-up to a project from Quelle Chris I didn’t really love. The original Innocent Country came out in 2015 and was solid enough, but it was overshadowed by Shotgun & Sleek Rifle and Ghost At The Finish Line beforehand and his considerably more ambitious projects that I’ve covered the past few years. In retrospect, I might have missed the point: as a whole it felt more subtle and low-key and introspective, in comparison with more straightforward bars or outright weirdness… which if you read Quelle Chris’ commentary on the album, was actually intentional. That project was more internal, amplifying the dualities and vices he’d later explore on Being You Is Great, whereas Innocent Country 2 is looking outwards, which after a hilarious recap and coda to the first album is not just about finding comfort and security in one’s self but also among communities, with the album making a very pointed turn towards black communities specifically about midway through. Which isn’t unfamiliar given his past few albums, but the more meditative focus as a whole reminded me more of Solange’s A Seat At The Table, which places me on the outside looking in - which is not a detraction to this album, but interesting given how in terms of language and structure, I’d argue this is easily one of his most accessible albums in recent years! What I noticed, though, is that for as much as he highlights black excellence, he’s smart enough to coax it through songs that’ll both question the systems that put forward that aspiration and will highlight those who play into those systems for validation, which can leave a hollow experience - but he doesn’t excuse himself and he’s so playful and funny in how he frames this introspection that it never feels accusatory, which might be the best way to go, especially when he’s so keenly self-aware of his struggles and humanity! And when you match it with production from Chris Keys that’s this warm and textured and jazzy but in a way that naturally compliments Quelle Chris’ slightly odd flow and his pretty stacked repetoire of guests - the big standouts for me being Homeboy Sandman, Earl Sweatshirt, and Denmark Vessey dropping one of his best verses in recent memory - it’s an extremely easy album to sink into and savour the little details; it rewards a lot of patience. At the same time, though, like most Quelle Chris projects it runs long, and a midtempo pace and fewer immediate hooks mean that if you’re not actively engaged it’ll slide into the background. I will say this is probably Quelle Chris’ most consistent album in a long time, but that can be a mixed blessing without a ton of standout moments - I’d argue they are still here, but more subtle. But like most Quelle Chris albums in recent years, the more listens I give the more they grow on me, so while I think this is great now, give it eight months and a summer where I’m sure it’ll play wonderfully and I can see this among the best of the year. Solid 8/10, I’ve needed hip-hop like this in 2020, you need to hear it.