on the pulse - 2020 - week 39 - ascension of savage machines

This is another week that’s both shorter… and not. Fewer albums than usual because I made a big move and am still in the process of getting things in gear, but I also have a lot to say about the projects I’m covering this week, so no wasting time - let’s get On The Pulse!

Deftones - Ohms - Okay, we’re doing this… I’ve gone on at length that I never had an ‘angry white boy’ phase, which meant in my teenage years I kind of missed the whole nu-metal thing and had to come back later… mostly to find a lot of stuff I don’t like. Now I’ve always been told that Deftones is the band that’s okay to like coming out of that scene, even if they tilted towards alternative metal on later projects, and my observation has always been… well, I get the appeal, but they just might not be for me. I can appreciate trying to hit the balance between serenity and pummelling heaviness as much as anyone - it’s one of the big reasons I love black metal - but I’ve never found Deftones’ tuneful side or any of Chino’s all that engrossing, which means I’ve got odd tastes when it comes to the Deftones I mostly like - funnily enough, I’m not crazy about White Pony in comparison with Saturday Night Wrist or Koi No Yokan. So after Gore’s adventures with questionable groove patterns and terrible mixing, I was curious to see what Ohms would deliver… and here’s the thing, I’ve seen a lot of polarized opinions on this Deftones project both from those who really like it and who really don’t. But as someone who doesn’t feel strongly on this act… I’d argue it’s not bad, but it’s absolutely flawed from being a better version of itself, and feels a bit backwards-looking. For one, Chino’s vocal pickups sound awkwardly compressed at best and canned at worse, and make the smooth/raw balancing approach the band tries feel even more forced than usual - again, my preferences in this balance lie more towards black metal or at least Rolo Tomassi, and Deftones have never really got there for me in tone or scale. And while I don’t mind the choice of 80s-inspired analog synths or a few tones borrowed from 90s prog and maybe even the Smashing Pumpkins, I’m not sure they compliment the increasingly colourless and compressed alternative metal approach the band has, especially with groove patterns leaning towards djent that feel like the sole concession to modernity.. Ultimately it loops around to the larger problem that none of it really helps the melodies or hooks stick with me, and the content… really doesn’t either. Thematically, Deftones have always been kind of diffuse in their themes and it’s just as true here - vague aspirations towards self-improvement with a quasi-psychedelic angle towards finding some sort of inner balance and going one’s own way in a hostile or apocalyptic world, but more often it leads to a diffuse experience with cosmic imagery surrounding an implied relationship where the discomforted mood is captured more in tone than direct words. Shame that a lot of it circles a very 90s-inspired sense of nihilism where my natural inclination falls more towards disinterest - which is awkward, because the album seems pretty convinced it’s very much captivating in its quest. Sorry, but at the end of the day, I’m neither wowed nor all that interested - 5/10, it’s for a different audience, not me.

Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension - This is going to sound bad, but I might as well lay it out there: there was something about the lead-up to this project from Sufjan Stevens that was giving me ‘political music circa fall 2016’ vibes where Stevens clearly wanted to make some sort of statement, but was never going to commit to the true firepower to call out bad actors or spur real controversy, especially if the album was going to wind up spiraling towards depression and nihilism along the way. Coupled with rumors that this album had more parallels with The Age Of Adz than MIchigan or Illinoise or Carrie & Lowell… look, I said last week I needed to give Stevens’ back catalog a quick relisten to make sure I was up to speed, and after doing so, it set my expectations pretty low for this, not gonna lie. And thus while I did find this a little better than I expected, I would not put this among Sufjan’s best. And let’s get the criticisms that nearly everyone has out of the way first, because initially I was finding myself sinking into the dreary electronics and shuddering grooves - the synths sound pretty rich, Sufjan’s hushed, quivering delivery did convey credible despair, but there’s real melody and hooks - some cribbed openly from older projects - some pretty potent percussion, and a decent amount of bombast; at the very least he sounds more comfortable than the hit-and-miss experimentation of Age Of Adz. That was before I noticed individual songs dragging hard and a long album started to feel painfully bloated, often past the point of making a good point and into ‘why didn’t someone stop him’ indulgence. Yes, I get why these pieces are this long, to accentuate the crushing despair and bleakness underscoring the content, but that’s a risk that can backfire if the writing or compositions stop holding up. And… well, if you remember my review of Carrie & Lowell where I talked about how the thematic arc was not so much about dealing with death so much as a hard conflict with God and open questions of faith? The Ascension almost feels like an explicit continuation of that arc, this times with an even more confrontational and deeply rooted pessimism, the sort that seems to come right before a complete loss of faith. Now a lot of this is coaxed through glistening abstract love songs that could easily represent the back-and-forth between him and his half-formed vision of a higher power - which does hit the Christian music stumbling point in the metaphor where he describes the affection as more physical and it just gets weird - but it exposes a larger issue in how the writing feels oddly bare this time around - intentional, as Sufjan was intending this album to be much more direct, but coupled with even more spare arrangements it leads to songs that are more attempts at a meditative mantra than fully composed ideas. And if you saw my Sevdaliza review, that doesn’t always stick the landing for me, especially considering on the songs where he gets a bit more detailed, he talks about taking anti-anxiety medication and shitting his pants - I wish I was kidding. Yes, ‘Gilgamesh’ takes the very on-the-nose references of ancient legends looking for immortality and failing, and there are some high concept moments, especially by the time we get to the title track and Sufjan felt like he could change the world and yet then nothing worked so his faith sputtered out. Now let me make this clear, this is tough, existential stuff - most of Kendrick Lamar’s catalog is about the struggle to be a good person when all the systems are set up never to reward it, and Sufjan’s angst is in the same territory… but the longer and more repetitive it feels, the more petulance creeps in; he finds fragile comfort in buzzwords and old axioms, but it doesn’t penetrate to some more real. And that makes for a frustrating and not a listen I want to revisit much - it has the feel of a desperate journey to climb a mountain that just circles halfway up, never taking the leap of faith to get to the top. As a whole, it’s got potent moments and is more gripping in its subtleties than I initially thought - I think I like it more than Age Of Adz - but it’s a project that gets in its own way too often, and thus it does fall short of greatness. strong 6/10… I know that’ll come across harsh, but I really wanted to like this more than I do.

Anaal Nathrakh - Endarkenment - …this is one of those acts I look at and I kind of wonder why folks want me to cover them. What Anaal Nathrakh have done over their lengthy catalog is try to diversify a raw black metal sound with some grindcore and industrial grooves, which in theory would make for a cool experiment to see how guttural and brutal they could push their sound. The problem is that Anaal Nathrakh have a formula - they’ll have an album that tries to add some greater tunefulness or expand their sound with consistently mixed results, before reverting back to the sort of one-dimensional extreme metal that ultimately runs together and is nowhere near as visceral and gripping as it thinks it is, made all the more ridiculous by any of the clean vocals passages that completely kill any sense of atmosphere. And thus after going through a back catalog that really ran together in terms of bricked out production and especially content, I didn’t have expectations for this… and honestly, that might have been the right approach. For one, at this point Anaal Nathrakh has stripped out so much of the wild or texturally interesting grindcore and industrial side to go for more straightforward chugging extreme metal with the clean-sung hooks that remain as borderline-goofy as ever… which maybe could have worked if the drums and bass weren’t produced like ass! Slappy kickdrums, horribly formless cymbals, and with no commitment to subtlety or atmosphere or dynamics given the howling gurgling of vocals and guitars rammed right to the front, we have an album that can rarely built a potent or truly punishing groove, made all the more jarring given how major key and bright more of the melodies are. Sadly, none of those melodies really jump out that much, which means I’d have to go to the content, where Anaal Nathrakh are actually trying to get a bit more thoughtful - yes, you heard that right - specifically in highlighting how we’re moving away from expertise and enlightenment values toward an era of ‘endarkenment’. And I’ll admit, for a band that used to try so hard to be nihilistic edgelords it’s weird to see them trying to be more earnest in their condemnation of ignorance and totalitarianism on multiple levels and even try to deconstruct and subvert fascist philosophy on ‘Create Art, Though The World May Perish’, especially when they also have a song like ‘Libidinous (A Pig With Cocks In Its Eyes)’ midway through the album that tries to boil everything down to pure ravenous lust… and it might wind up as one of the better songs here, not gonna lie. But that’s the root of the problem with this project: I can admire attempts at lyrical nuance, but if the delivery can’t at least reflect a flavour of it, I’m not sure it resonates, so… 5/10, it might work for someone else, not me though.

Melanie C - Melanie C - I’ve gone on the record before that spin-off and side projects often get requested but don’t usually grab my attention that often, even from a lot of artists I like. And while I think The Spice Girls were fine in their time - Girls Aloud were better but that’s a different conversation - I was shocked someone actually requested I talk about Melanie C, the former Sporty Spice who actually has built a pretty sizable collection of solo albums. And going through them… this is going to sound harsh, but she would not have been a pop star with the longevity she’s had without being a member of the Spice Girls, because I’m not hearing much at all that sets her above the crowd. For one, her husky and not particularly strong delivery is really dependent on good production and arrangements that she hasn’t always had, and for another, it’s easy to go through her catalog and see a lot of trend-chasing, where she’s been putting out solo albums for over twenty years and I can’t define a unique sound from her. Now to her credit, she seems to have okay taste, which translates to the occasional scattered good song - think ‘Stupid Game’ on The Sea or ‘Better Alone’ on Beautiful Intentions - and that means I’d rarely call her work bad so much as unremarkable… so when she goes into one of her most straightforward dance-pop projects in years, I’m left once again with the feeling that this is serviceable, but rarely more than that. There’s a song on this project called ‘Here I Am’ where Melanie C tries to highlight how long she’s lasted and how some called her too old, but if I’m being brutally honest, I’m not sure her longevity is because of the strength of these songs - take her name off and we have some flagrant late-2010s mainstream textures and percussion and too much Dua Lipa worship. But I’m not sure it gets around how flat of a presence Melanie C is trying to convey any emotion - which means when she gets a cowriter like Shura on songs like ‘Good Enough’, I’m stuck wondering why I’m not listening to her instead. What’s odd is that an album like this is set up to drive at least tension: beyond the bargain-barrel empowerment cliches, the defining emotions of the writing on this album seem to be frustration, panic, and dissatisfaction, and while that can lead to a few good songs, it never quite matches the emotions in the smoother grooves. Again, if you’ve stuck around long enough to be a fan, it’ll probably satisfy, but in a pretty strong year for pop, this doesn’t stand out. strong 5/10, just not much here.

Roisin Murphy - Roisin Machine - Now here’s an artist who has been in my backlog for a while - a name I saw crop up a lot on year-end lists in the 2000s and occasionally the 2010s but someone I never got around to discussing. Now if you recognize Roisin Murphy it either comes from her tenure with trip-hop group Moloko or her critically beloved first two albums in the mid-2000s, but then label troubles at EMI derailed her career hard and she went indie for two albums in 2015 and 2016. And to be fair, that probably was inevitable - her approach to pop leans towards the more understated but playful side that interjects jazzy chord structures, eclectic instrument choices, and touches of glitch into her sound that once you wrap your head around its tones can be really damn intriguing. She got more electronic and amazingly catchy on 2007’s Overpowered, and without the career detour she probably could have landed real hits in the club boom… but we wouldn’t hear from her again until the mid-2010s where her material got more lengthy and dance-focused, full of fractured gloss and darker edges tempering some of her old whimsy. So now four years after those, what do we have? Well, a retro-leaning hazy slice of nu-disco… in other words, if you were one of those people over ten years ago who got overly annoyed by Overpowered’s accessibility, be prepared to be annoyed… and what’s all the more frustrating is that I might find myself closer to that group than I’d like. I’ve already seen some comparisons to recent Robyn and Jessie Ware, which I’m sure will satisfy a target audience, but it’s hard to ignore how Murphy might just fall in the middle between her older, jazzy quirkiness and the current nu-disco scene… and I’m not sure that’s a compliment, because she brings some of the flattened grind and darker edge of her 2010s work, but with a much more conventional compositional structure and restraint that doesn’t quite have the same flair. It’s all understated and tasteful in a sweeping, 80s-inflected way - which has been one of her hallmarks throughout her career, true, but there was a sly quirky flair I used to love that doesn’t quite disrupt what we get here. In a way it reminds me of what one of her artistic descendants Lady Gaga released with Chromatica, a return to form that feels safer than it should - and like with Gaga, there’s a slight undercurrent of darkness that helps it hold traction a little more than you’d expect, specifically coming in the lyrics. But where Gaga was confronting her own instabilities and weaknesses, Murphy is casting a broader net - there’s a hunger that drives more of this album, where she projects a command of the scene but the intriguing moments come when her own emotional response kicks in, either from the reemergence of old flames or her own newfound interest she didn’t expect. It adds the cracks to the slick stylism that runs across this project, and ultimately why I wound up liking this a fair bit, although I am cooler on it overall in comparison with her older projects. And thus… solid 7/10, if you like this brand of nu-disco, you’ll have fun with this.

21 Savage & Metro Boomin - Savage Mode 2 - I didn’t review the first Savage Mode in 2016… and can any of you blame me that much? I can make the argument that 21 Savage took a pretty substantial leap between that project and now - hell, he literally titled an album I Am > I Was - and going back to the first one, it’s not particularly good. Extremely spare production from Metro Boomin which might work if 21 was trying to be menacing or murderous, but his flows were painfully basic and more than a few were just focused on bargain-barrel mainstream rap material. That said, 21 Savage did make that leap and Metro Boomin has had more consistent success with me recently, so I did want to check this out. And I’ll say this: even if it’s exactly what you’d expect from 21 Savage in terms of a lot of content - and honestly a bit less forward-thinking than he was on I Am > I Was, but this is clearly going for a more base, style-over-substance vibe - I thought this turned out alright, and not just because somehow they got Morgan Freeman to provide narration for the entire album to ramp up the bombast! Paradoxically it’s a project that tries to take advantage of 21 Savage’s more expressive and diverse flow… but winds up highlighting his limitations, because the softer the production gets, the less he fits on it - yes, I put ‘Mr. Right Now’ in that category with that Drake verse that’s all types of questionable, but the odd old-school bounce with the horns of ‘Steppin On’ falls close to that too. The more spare, haunted trap crackles of ‘Runnin’, ‘Glock In My Lap’, ‘Snitches & Rats’, ‘Many Men’, ‘Brand New Draco’ - even though the 50 Cent interpolation isn’t as good as the late Pop Smoke’s - I think in following what worked on Without Warning we get solid, creepy vibes. Again, this is one of those projects where not all the experiments quite connect - ‘My Dawg’ takes a while to stabilize its flow and 21 Savage is one of those guys where it’s weird to see him address haters in his bars - but what I found interesting was how the mood shifts by the final few songs: the bleak tones get more melancholic and fractured, and on cuts like ‘RIP Luv’ and ‘Said N Done’ we get a glimpse behind the blood mask to something heartfelt that cuts through the numbness - even with the glittery R&B samples at the end, there’s enough hard foundation to make it work. So at the end of it all… I find it hard to call this great, as I just wish there was a little more to it, and I’m still not all the way onboard with 21 Savage as he does have real limitations as a rapper, but it is certainly solid. 7/10, you can check this out.