on the pulse - 2020 - week 22 - splintering shrines of god

This was a strange week - a lot of what I wound up covering left me fighting to be thoughtful and delve into weird corners to tease out opinions - and here’s the results, so let’s get On The Pulse!

Run The Jewels - RTJ4 - So I already had plenty to say in my lengthy review of the album, most of which was a tangled dissection why I thought this was one of the best projects of the year, but didn’t quite win me over to the same extent as their last two albums. It’s still fantastic and bangs like you wouldn’t believe in its enflamed downward spiral, and it’s worth running through the flames to get there. light 9/10, y’all need to hear it as soon as possible.

Hailey Whitters - The Dream - so this dropped much earlier in the year and I was sold it with the profession that it’d be the sort of dream country of which I’ve been an avid evangelist… and it’s where I have to say this is not quite that. This second album from Hailey Whitters might be a little closer to pop country - an interesting diversion given some of her primary cowriters behind the scenes are Lori McKenna and Brandy Clark - and once I recalibrated my expectations off of that and remembered that the first half of this album was included on an EP from last year, I found this to be good, but not really great. Part of this is not really loving her vocal delivery: it’s strident, a little piercing, a little oversung with a timbre kind of reminiscent of Lori McKenna at in more acoustic and subtle songs… but this album is going for a broader, slightly poppier tone, and we don’t really get the subtlety to flatter it - and while I’m on broader, I found the backing blend of more jagged electric guitars to be pretty hit-and-miss, and the feeling that they were going a little overboard on the effects and flourishes in ways that don’t flatter the compositions nor atmosphere. It has the feel of stretching for uniqueness - not helped by the fact that when I dig into the writing credits, it’s pretty obvious when Brandy Clark or Lori McKenna or Brent Cobb are cowriting. And that can lead to some great songs - ‘Janice At The Hotel Bar’, ‘Loose Strings’, ‘Living The Dream', ‘Red, Wine & Blue’ - but this is a dreamer’s album that can feel scattered in its searching for greater identity, which has pathos when she’s questioning Nashville on ‘Ten Year Town’, but a little less so on ‘All The Cool Girls’, which might have felt less bitter if written from the first person. Plus we got another version of ‘Happy People’ - I was lukewarm on this song when Whitters and McKenna gave it to Little Big Town, and this is probably its weakest version to date. As it is… I’ve been on the record saying country has been great this year, but it’s hard for me to explicitly put Whitters in that category with this - it’s more hit-and-miss and it has the same problem as Karly Driftwood’s album from last year, with mostly strong writing kind of let down by haphazard execution. So very light 7/10 - again, the great cuts are doing heavy lifting - I just wish I liked this more.

Sweet Whirl - How Much Works - …yes, I went Bandcamp diving again, how can you tell? So, Sweet Whirl, stagename for Esther Edquist, Australian singer-songwriter previously as a member of Superstar, with this as her debut album, who I’d argue plays to a very reserved but likable and well-performed slice of adult-alternative / singer-songwriter material - less poppy and more rootsy than a Sara Bareilles, but maybe not as as esoteric or experimental as a Fiona Apple or Neko Case. And what immediately grabbed me about her was her voice: impeccably placed in the mix, rich, throaty, carrying the sort of quiet gravitas with enough wry charm that there’s a real magnetism that draws me in, especially if she happens to be a good songwriter. And I happen to think she really is: what I like about her writing is a very specific emotional tension that comes through in fighting inertia, both within a relationship or after one, that comes in bucking against the paralysis of wanting to say more against those who would use or abuse you, but genuine love or too many shared experiences hold you back, only enriched by a sense of weary maturity that gives these songs a lot of subtle texture; wish a little more detail would have slipped through in the writing to paint the scene, but what we do get is great. Unfortunately, the production is not that great - Edquist went on the record saying she wanted to strip away a lot of the reverb that surrounded her previous recordings for something more spare and intimate - which is great when it comes to her vocals, but considerably less so when it comes to some really thin drum machines, some questionable therevox integration that can sound a little chintzy, and more slipshod mixing and mastering - reverb could have helped the blend, that’s all I’m saying. It’s also an album that if you’re not engaged with her storytelling - a loose arc of the breakup, watching the guy in the picture cheat, and her steps to try and move on - it runs out of momentum pretty fast, and it can get sleepy and lacking momentum by the end. But as a whole… it’s certainly good, a little more polish could have made it great, and I see the potential to get there. light 7/10

Sounds From The Ground - Thru The Ages II - I think I would complain a bit more about getting these out-of-nowhere veteran electronic acts that show up on my schedule if I wasn’t convinced this is a covert operation to educate and expand my horizons, so Sounds From The Ground. They’re a UK duo who broke out in the 90s in the downtempo/psyambient/dub subgenres and there’s been some debate whether they were ahead of the curve in their construction of bubbly, bassy grooves opposite more textured percussion, integrating elements of techo, and slightly offbeat weirdness - although not quite weird enough to miss some good TV placements. Now from my perspective… ehh, it’s tough to evaluate impact decades removed for a group that otherwise didn’t get a ton of attention outside of their niche, but while there’s a robust sense of melody and thick groove to some great chilll vibes that we get, I’d struggle to call this material all that distinctive; generally good, but not often great or super memorable. I will say in recent years their material has gotten more glitchy and fractured while still maintaining a melodic foundation, and coming off of last year’s Binary… man, I really do wish this was more interesting. For one, a lot of their old dub texture has faded, leaving a lot of spare, fractured ambience that can carry some impressive atmosphere, and what percussion we get is very sharp, clipped and metallic or rounded beats that don’t quite have the same rollick… which would be okay if said grainy touches didn’t constantly feel like they were cribbed from Objekt’s chittering playbook or if the gurgling synth melodies we got coalesced more frequently. More frustrating are points where they’ll pull back the ambience for passages like the odd, Anoyo-esque flute on ‘Lemon Sky’ or grainy minimalism on ‘Bag a’ Moon’ or ‘Tomorrow’s World Today’, which if these points actively built to the main tune when coming back or brought a potent crescendo I’d be onboard… but more often they sound like disconnected diversions, as much as any of the washed out guitar warps do. Also, unlike the last Thru The Ages, this album definitely can drag - which is less of an issue when these’ll play live, but it also shows on a number of pieces where they just don’t end all that well - kind of jarring when the closer cuts off rather abruptly. But in the end… I wouldn’t put this among Sounds From The Ground’s best - you can tell they’ve locked back into their comfort zone, even with the added glitch that’s hit-or-miss - but it’s mostly well-produced and atmospheric and it doesn’t really slip up, so I can’t be that annoyed with it. 6/10, if you’re into this sort of thing.

END - Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face - …hey, do you like metalcore that’s less about tune or structure and more just about demented, crushing aggro punches to the face, that reinvents no wheels or ventures outside of the overdone formula but will absolutely satisfy the target demo? Well, here’s END with their debut album, picking up some obvious Full of Hell influences and then dropping a pile of suffocating breakdowns with little in the way of groove or hooks but purpose-built for the pit. And even compared to the metalcore and post-hardcore I’ve praised the past few months, this sort of material doesn’t grip me whatsoever, but I guess I can appreciate the sheer chaotic intensity and there are a few breakdowns I appreciated, especially when the mix gets a little more cavernous and crushing. And one thing for which I will give this album some credit is the writing, not only for how viscerally detailed the poetry is but in juxtaposing how someone might be consumed with self-destructive nihlism and rampaging despair and rage with the knowledge they’ll be damned and liars will take their place in paradise… all around the framing of samples that begs the question how much of this is self-delusion versus an untrustworthy system, particularly coaxed through religion. That’s potent stuff, and the more this album embraces that gothic framing, the more I can hear the appeal… but that’s before it starts actively running together without much in the way of hooks or tune or stable groove, even in the content. In other words… look, I know this isn’t my thing and I don’t want to call it bad because on some level, it’s doing exactly what its audience is looking to get… but outside of content, I’m not sure this’ll wind up even being memorable in the scene, and without great production or grooves or hooks to really put it over the top, it doesn’t stick. strong 5/10… but if you want something in an adjacent mold that does work for me…

Backxwash - God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It - I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get to this immediately when I first heard Backxwash on Bandcamp a few weeks back - yes, I heard this album before Fantano’s review, and it’s only my insane schedule that prevented me from getting to her sooner! So, Backxwash’s brand of experimental and horrorcore hip-hop she has described as being driven off of ‘productive rage’ - which going back to her short but punishing debut Deviancy in 2019, you could hear the groundwork in the crushing pileup of bars, her visceral delivery, and the warped production. And expanding off of that into this… yeah, it’s pretty great! Part of my appreciation of this comes in taking the blown out, bass-heavy and trap-inflected bangers and giving them a haunted, visceral edge and a real sense of deeper humanity - she’s confronting a church and societal structure that would cast her aside, so in balancing self-hate and depression she embraces the “black magic” stigmatized for both its heady, addictive elixir but also a cry of protest. And not only does that feel rooted in an expansive but unstable sense of danger, there’s a core of longing to be better and accepted - she’s the trans black sheep of her family but she still cares, which adds a lot of subtle dimensionality especially on this project’s back half… but there’s still the gutwrenching horror that comes with a song like ‘Into The Void’. And while I always have some trepidation surrounding ‘horrorcore’ as a genre label, it fits not just in aesthetic but theme, where Backxwash shows through sample choices like on ‘Black Sheep’ how traditionally black or pagan culture was branded as demonic by such a church, and this becomes as much about reclaiming culture identity as it is self-identity; and it also has a core of melody, strong hooks, and bangs like you would not believe! Now I do think there are places where she can grow from here - it’s still very short and I’d love to see some of these songs developed with thicker atmosphere and poetry that could feel a bit more robust - but this is absolutely the right step and Backxwash has made herself a force to be reckoned with - 8/10, you need to hear this.

Armand Hammer - Shrines - I’ll be honest: this was not the tone I was expecting from Armand Hammer, especially coming after the apocalyptic ROME and the thorny labrynthe of Paraffin - because the last thing I thought would happen would be the duo getting lighter. Well, that might be a mischaracterization, but in comparison with how damn apocalyptic and dystopian their last two albums were - and once you decoded them, pretty explicit in that - Shrines feels like a detour into more imagery and abstract symbolism than the hardbitten lessons and harrowing stories that I found so compelling coming from billy woods’ Hiding Places or indeed the last two Armand Hammer albums. Now I’d always argue there’s been a sly sense of dark humour to underscore a lot of their work, but here it feels a bit more obvious, not just because of slightly brighter production but also the sense of real exasperation in the audience getting half the message of change and aspiring for more… but not following through. So instead you get small, scrappy half-victories that wind up getting you through the day, but at what cost, especially when they wind up feeling undeserved - which is what you get in confronting systemic racism and broader societal inequality, because instead of making the big fix you get drifting half measures that don’t fuel the soul, and while you can find some small tokens to moments of success - shrines, if you will - what have they really driven beyond continuing a cycle of violence? But I like how the album ends on a tentative note of optimism, first showing a requirement for a subtle, internal growth and self-actualization, but then followed with where and how to enact real change that will get there beyond the moment while staying wary of those who’d betray the cause, which is the big reason I don’t find this album nearly as apocalyptic or forbidding as the last two Armand Hammer projects. But by that same standard, it’s more diffuse, and without that gripping intensity it’s a little easier to lose track of the narrative, partially because where billy woods is slowly exposing more humanity Elucid seems to still dwell in a lot of abstraction - outside of his final verse on ‘Ramesses II’ - but also especially when the guest stars don’t show up to the same degree, which I felt was the case for Quelle Chris, R.A.P. Ferreira and Earl Sweatshirt - not the case for FIELDED, though, she sounded excellent. And on a similar note, I wouldn’t quite say it’s as melodically gripping - the production is still textured and fractured and sample-rich, but I’d like to think some of the brighter moments would come with a stronger tune or groove, but it can feel a little distracting how much the fidelity shifts from some of the cleanest tones the group has touched in years to the unstable, choppy murk that’s been their standby… and I’ll admit I probably found more to like in the latter category, if only for how it matches their wordplay a bit better, from the fractured melody off the dusty but heavy percussion on ‘Pommelhorse’ and ‘Slew Foot’ to the snarled growl of the guitar off the clanking percussion and cloud of cymbals on ‘Leopards’, from the slight keyboard flutters on ‘Ramesses II’ to the stuttered guitar playing off the flattened warps on ‘Flavor Flav’ and the even more spare electronics on ‘Dead Cars’ - although I will say the brighter horns off the bass on ‘War Stories’ really worked for me. Overall… look, I think this is a great album, but I don’t think it’s quite as strong as ROME or Paraffin, although I’ll fully admit that’s more on me looking for a little more direct focus and not always clicking with its abstract diversions. And like with every Backwoodz Studio project, I fully expect to have my opinion oscillate a half dozen times before the end of the year, but for now… light 8/10, it’s great rap music, I’m happy I’ve got it.