on the pulse - 2020 - week 17 - good glue for silent doors

I can see this week being a little messy - I had frankly more than I thought I’d say about a fair number of albums, so prepare for this to get complicated On The Pulse!

Drearia - BLOODTHIRSTY- I wish I could come here and say more about what this is, but former member of Alterity known as Drearia is back with some flagrantly vampire-inspired instrumental music and… I wish I could say I was even close to liking this. Putting aside my argument that if you’re going for vampire subject matter it might make sense to induldge in consistently dark tones or ominous atmosphere building or play off the dark contrast between sinster seducer and outright monster, what this is instead is a bombastic, oversold symphonic-tinged synth project that can barely capture a stable groove and really does not have any sense of subtlety whatsoever. It’s clearly trying really damn hard to capture an epic sense of ‘cool’, but it’s just like what I described in my Nightwish review a few weeks ago - you need contrast, you need a sense of instrumental dynamics, and if you’re making instrumental rock, you should have a central melodic motif that sticks out amidst a half hour of synth-heavy preening. It doesn’t help that for all of the opulent choral vocals mashed against the blaring, filmy and often tinny synths right at the front of the mix it becomes cloying to hear, opulence but with no foundation. If I’m looking for a defining progression and without a consistent low end presence or well-modulated highs or any strong melodic hook it doesn’t materialize consistently, which leads all the songs to run together; it might sound expensive and grand in patches, but if there’s no root to latch onto, it’s a lot of splash with no impact. I blame the overlayered excess of synths as a whole, which are nearly always placed on top of anything else and never have the body they should, and that’s assuming they carry more tone than texture, but the underlying problem is a lack of restraint and sound compositional progression - more often than not it just winds up a mess with some of the flattest horn pickups I’ve heard in recent memory. strong 4/10

Ghostpoet - I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep - Okay, I’ve called out ‘critic-bait’ artists and albums before, but I think there’s a subcategory to that: the acts that make respectable, tasteful, middle-of-the-road music that’s just stepping a little out of pocket to atract critical interest, but rarely more than that. These acts are normally very consistent, can wring together very good albums and often make an okay living - hell, they’re often more marketable than their more experimental contemporaries - but their material only rarely hits that ‘spark’ of creativity that challenge or really stick with people. Ghostpoet to me falls in that camp: a British artist at the intersection between Radiohead-esque electronic and alternative rock with a healthy dose of nervy trip hop for increasingly melancholic and anxious projects, I’d argue his albums are pretty good, especially when he pulls together guest stars to contrast him like on Some Say I So I Say Light in 2013 and Shredding Skin in 2015… but I’ve never quite been wowed by him. And here… well, again, I don’t dislike it, but it doesn’t really grip me as much as I’d like. Part of this is that Ghostpoet doesn’t have much in the way of interplay with anyone this time, which makes a dreary, brooding affair all the more solitary, but another thought is that this has an odd feel of a throwback: the smoky, husky vocals, the darker guitar and bass timbres, the splashes of keyboards and more tasteful strings, the push towards abstraction, if this had dropped in the mid-90s I reckon it would have had more punch than it does now… mostly because there’s not much experimentation. That’s the other thing: when I go for brooding, meditative music, I normally wind up in atmospheric black metal or ambient music where the texture sucks you in, or more thoughtful downtempo hip-hop or country - there might be a generational gap here, at least for me. Now for the most part, I can still appreciate the tones: Ghostpoet’s vocals have enough subtle charisma to pull you in, and outside of some very questionable synth touches, even without much in the way of strong hooks the mix sounds really well balanced in its smolder… and this where we go to the content. I’ve said for years that nihilism can get really boring for me, and having listened to all of Ghostpoet’s albums… it’s sadly kind of true across a lot of this project. And while it can make the more relationship-focused songs have some complex intensity - and the female interplay on ‘This Train Wreck of a Life’ is essential to why that song works - and I appreciate the unstable political undercurrents… but like always, the anti-social media stuff gets exhausting and I wish I found more clever turns of phrase or transgressive punch in the writing beyond a depressing wallow; can’t deny like with Nicolas Jaar this was a really unfortunate time to drop a project like this. But if I’m being brutally honest, outside of a few moments even in better times I’m not sure there’s enough to pull me back to this. strong 5/10, just not for me, I think.

Boston Manor - GLUE - I find it a little odd to say that my entry point for Boston Manor was seeing them live at Sonic Temple last year - I was roughly familiar with a few songs, but the first time the band really impressed me was their aggressive live performance and what seemed like some pretty strong hooks and delivery… and man, I wish the albums came close to delivering that same level of intensity. Now I’m absolutely a fan of the band getting darker, slower, a little nastier, and taking more stabs towards post-hardcore or even alternative rock or grunge on Welcome To The Neighbourhood, but the more listens I gave it the more the overproduction stood out in a really unflattering way - a lot of blurry atmospherics, keyboard touches and vocal layering that that didn’t flatter the attempts at heavier darkness. But I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, call it more of a transitional moment… and yet GLUE isn’t so much a landing so much as a faster amplification of many of the little frustrations I had with the last album. For one, the egregious overproduction of the guitars, integration of drum machines and blown out mix has only gotten worse - it almost reminds me a little of the same gummy power electronics-touches that Code Orange uses on occasion, only flatter, clunkier, and without the gravity or expansive mix to sound nearly as menacing as they’re trying, especially when the drum mixing is so damn muddy across this project in comparison with the basslines that have actual crunch. Which is a shame because this album has some strong hooks and chugging basslines and Henry Cox is one hell of a frontman, which makes me think the electronics are more a feature driven to emulate similar grey, downtuned dystopian rock, which if you look at the lyrics make sense… but there’s a weird self-consuming tension in the writing that kind of undercuts it. I get the moments of second-guessing and genuine angst and depression where they grapple with their own vices, especially how giving into that system can fly at cross-purposes to any revolution but might be easier - the late 90s throwback in ‘Plasticine Dreams’ is a great example of this - but as a whole the rage feels directionless and unfocused, more about satiating personal demons rather than attacking that monolithic system. Which can seem like the point at spots, but when combined with the songs obviously speaking from the anti-revolutionary, ‘fall in line’ POV, it just becomes a swirling morass that undercuts itself and doesn’t quite hold together. Ironically, this album might set out to test its glue but paradoxically might succeed a little too well across the board… shame the music kind of suffered as a result. strong 6/10

American Aquarium - Lamentations - Well, it’s about time I got to this group at length. For those of you who don’t know, American Aquarium are a long-running alternative country band… except at this point they’re really not, more the name of a rotating cast of bandmates around singer-songwriter BJ Barham. They started breaking out in the late 2000s before nearly self-destructing, with the expectation 2012’s Jason-Isbell-produced Burn. Flicker. Die was going to be their last album… and yet that garnered them enough critical acclaim and popularity to keep on producing work to even more popular attention. And yet I’d struggle to say they’re among my favourites in indie country, mostly because of broad inconsistencies across the board and the band not always playing to their strengths, both in the embrace of more elaborate studio arrangements and writing that can go for broad platitudes and just not hit as powerfully as it should, mostly because Barham’s greatest strength is his confessional, unflinching self-awareness and honesty about his failures. I’m reminded of a proto-Ruston Kelly, but Kelly would never make albums as uncomfortably detailed and questionable as 2008’s post-breakup The Bible & The Bottle or my personal favourite, 2009’s Dances For The Lonely. And that’s worth noting because this album Lamentations seems to be trying to hit both the politically charged anthemic moments and the more confessional patches, very reminiscent of Jason Isbell’s recent work and expanding on territory from their last album Things Change. Granted, they’ve done so by also trying to split the difference from the more straightforward, ramshackle country that’s always been their strong suit and the slightly stiffer, keyboard-and-synth accented arranged bombast that doesn’t quite hit as strongly, so again we’ve got a project that’s somewhat divided against itself. That being said, it’s still pretty great - BJ Barham has been forced to grow up, take responsibility beyond himself, and take a longer view, and he’s still headstrong despite hitting rock bottom so often that spanning personal demons to societal upheaval, he’s going to keep charging forward, and it leads to some raw moments like the reconciliation with a drunk driving incident on ‘Six Years Come September’, or relationships mid-collapse on ‘The Day I Learned To Lie To You’ and ‘How Wicked I Was’. And while the politics can feel a bit scattered on the pro-marijuana song ‘Brightleaf & Burley’ - it’s trying to show weed as a way to rejuvenate American farms instead of opioids and it only partially connects - as well as the ‘both-sides’ of ‘Me + Mine’, the deep cut ‘A Better South’ is one of the most stridently anthemic and forward-thinking cuts Barham has ever made, and when this album leans into the richer country timbres of pedal steel, organ, and smoldering guitar, it can be pretty damn great. I’d struggle to call it their best, but in terms of recording and writing, it’s probably their strongest since Burn. Flicker Die. - in other words, absolutely worth hearing. 8/10, and on the topic of great country…

Hot Country Knights - The K Is Silent - This is the sort of project that I almost want to say you should check out before saying more, but at the same time, the reason I had so much fun with this is because it’s so obviously targeted to a certain demographic and niche that just so happens to include me, but it’s an extremely narrow niche. But let’s not beat around the bush here: Hot Country Knights is a parody side project of Dierks Bentley, the veteran who has always had the ambition to say he’s going to make flagrant career lefft-turns… and then the balls to actually do it; people forget right in the middle of his ascending popularity he decided to take a few years and make a bluegrass album that was way more credible than it had any right to be! Hot Country Knights feels like it was made in that spirit: a parody/homage to late 80s/early 90s neotraditional country by ramping all of its ridiculous tropes up to eleven. Now there’s an inherent risk to such targeted parody, namely that there were plenty of goofy and stupid country songs from that era and sound too, and indeed, there are moments where the lines get blurry and you just know that Brooks ‘n' Dunn or the late Joe Diffie or even Travis Tritt - who shows up on this album - would have just played them straight for cornball fun. Of course, the way you get around it is the Weird Al way - just sounding great enough as it is that you don’t really care - and that’s where the album really shines: unlike most parody albums, The K Is Silent features some of the most note-perfect neotraditional melodies, production, and structure I’ve heard in years, full of rich pedal steel and fiddle and saloon piano and vocal harmonies and the goofy key changes and the outro breakdowns that might as well serve as extended piss takes for the band! And that’s not to miss the more targeted parodies, the best probably being ‘Then It Rained’ for a very particular Garth Brooks song, or how Hot Country Knights just takes all the veiled horniness of that era’s more rambunctious cuts and moves it to the forefront like on ‘Asphalt’ and ‘You Make It Hard’ with Terri Clark. Pair all of that with puns galore and the ability to lean into its broad silliness and you wind up with some of the most fun I’ve had with an album all damn year, where my only criticism is that some of the songs could have afforded to lean into the broader jokes a little harder, or just pack more funny wordplay in, especially around the moments that are more just macho posturing and butt references - I mean, there are some great jokes here, but the underrated master of this sort of subtle joke still is Brad Paisley. Again, this is an incredibly niche project, and I reckon some of these jokes only work because this sound was that of my childhood, but Dierks Bentley likely made the best comedy album of 2020 with damn great country music to boot. In other words… 8/10

Jojo - good to know - Honest question: it’s 2020, and outside of 2000s nostalgia which is still odd to contemplate, why is anyone still checking for Jojo, especially as she’s outright embraced the same sort of cooing, trap-inflected pop/R&B that’s by the numbers across the industry right now? I covered one of her singles in my song review series on IGTV - @spectrumpulse, beat the rush - and at best it was forgettable. And spoilers, so this is this album, not even clocking a half hour but really showing how Jojo continues to struggle to find a distinctive lane that can flatter her vocal tone. I said this about Mad Love and it’s just as true here: Jojo can sound really flat and pitchy without vocal control or a sense of subtlety, but that can work where she’s allowed to belt and cut loose; a lot less so when she’s stuck playing for a Summer Walker retread, where the pitch correction not only makes her sound worse, but she just doesn’t have that sort of enunciation or control or sense of mood. And that would all assume she’s got production that can hold its own… but since she’s now off Atlantic and thus doesn’t have access to name-brand producers, we’re stuck with a lot of watery, tinny minimalism in offkey guitars, cheap-sounding percussion clicks, and questionable overdubs and multi-tracking that aren’t supported by the rest of the mix, with the closing track bringing on a bunch of strings for an okay ending ballad. This would be where the content would step up… and it falls into two categories: underwritten sex jams, and actually decent post-relationship tunes like ‘Think About You’ and the album highight ‘Small Things’. When she can play into the melodrama, Jojo can get some decent moments… on the other hand when she’s stuck opposite Tory Lanez or making a hangover song that’s as much of a headache, the results are a lot weaker. Really, the comparison that sprung most to mind with this is a lot of rejected Tinashe songs - a few okay moments but not all that distinct or flavourful, and while parts of this album keep it above a failure, it’s only barely. light 5/10

Car Seat Headrest - Making A Door Less Open - When I started hearing the singles and buzz for this project, what eventually coalesced in my mind where thoughts I had after the last time I reviewed Father John Misty: ‘Oh, Will Toledo is not taking fame and success well and he’s making his panicked and less accessible comedown release early, the project designed to alienate everyone and make even the diehards uncomfortable’. I’ve talked about this process before, and how it can lead to underappreciated greatness… which this isn’t. Look, I’ve given this around a dozen listens since its release and let me stress that I get what Toledo was looking to do with this, and again, this may be a case of him succeeding a bit too well, where the sound is intentionally trying to amplify the feverish discomfort and imposter syndrome that’s surging through Will Toledo as he struggles to maintain any sort of real connection with an ever-larger audience while seeing if it’s even possible to fix splintered relationships between friends and family, which unsurprisingly he’s also compromising. And what’s telling is that Will Toledo is a bit more of a realist when it comes to getting away from his demons - songs like ‘Weightlifers’ basically highlight how even if you think you have the motivation to chart your own course, it’s still shaped more than ever by the society and community around you. And that realization leads to some potent conflict - what will survive of his legacy and art in this torrent of warring motivation, especially with heavier obligations to his label and his audience, and then the rather inspired moment where Toledo strips everything back to ‘What’s With You Lately’, sung by one of his bandmates as a moment to reassert a real connection. And in concept I like the thematic core here: Toledo comes to cherish his better angels and realize how they help fill the emptiness within, and even when he goes home to confront bad family relationships and comes up empty, there’s an acceptance that comes with it and the open question whether or not any of his realizations will hold true, especially as by this point it’s as much to the audience’s support as it is himself. But all of this comes on a project that was built to alienate and disorient that audience, and while it was the point… it doesn’t make this project any less of a headache to get through. The synths are blaring, garish, and often offkey against a lot of blocky drums and drum machines, nearly all bringing a sickly, underweight feel that marginalizes the guitar lines, all to the point where you cling to whatever frail hooks you get in overlong, shuddering songs that can’t help but feel underwritten, especially compared to what Car Seat Headrest has previously delivered. More to the point, while Car Seat Headrest has always been somewhat meta, this is the first project that feels like an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, and while it can lead to some good observations, the framing is a lot shakier. Many people have highlighted ‘Hollywood’ as the worst track for sounding played out, obnoxious, and kind of gross, but my issue is how it’s an undercooked simplification of Toledo’s relationship with fame; you expect a more clever deconstruction that doesn’t happen. And while the details are different, that’s true about a lot of the album: Car Seat Headrest is not the first act to make their emptiness of fame project full of alienation and sour electronics, and outside of isolated moments, the detailed and human storytelling of the band at their best feels diminished. So while the band did succeed in making the door less open, they could have oiled the hinges instead of forcing the squeak. So yeah, strong 5/10