on the pulse - 2020 - week 4: treat myself to your funeral

This is the sort of week that wound up feeling busier because I wound up covering more and doing a lot of prep for the weeks ahead… but hey, got some rhythm going even with one of the best of the week already highlighted, let’s get to On The Pulse!

Kesha - High Road - So I actually already reviewed this album over on ARTV with Jon, where to both of our surprises we came to the same middling conclusion, albeit for different reasons. I’ll say that the lack of label support seems flagrant in production budget… but also that I’m not sure how much of a budget would save this. But apparently Kesha says this is her last real pop album, so if this was just dropped to satiate label obligations and move forward… who knows. Anyway, 6/10

We Are The City - RIP - okay, this is another weird one - Canadian indie rock band... although I’d be more inclined to throw them into experimental or progressive rock for their usage of weird electronics, offkey melodies, and peculiar structures and time signatures where you’re almost surprised how visceral some of the songs wind up being off of Cayne McKenzie’s reedy, shifting but powerful voice. My most immediate observation going through their back catalog is that they should be a lot more boringly conventional than they are given the pretty obvious influences - Bon Iver, Mew, a little Ramona Falls and Ought - and the generally muted, almost calculated vibe and abstract writing style in most of their songs, especially their fractured, abortive 2018 experiment AT NIGHT. But RIP is a shift back to more immediate experimentation… and look, I’d recommend this project simply for the opening track ‘Killer B-Side Music’, which is easily one of the best songs I’ve heard this year thus far for sheer explosive dynamic power, but it’s not really representative of the album as a whole, which dials into the warping, slightly off-kilter jagged guitar bounce, shuddering grooves, and synth atmospherics that are their general purview. But it is a return to form for as fractured as it is: an album working to contextualize grief at the loss of a close friend where the band drills into the deconstructive therapy of both untangling his emotions and yet in a twisted way immortalizing them, especially when you can tell they shared a messy relationship and their memories of this friend are not altogether pleasant. Now this exposes two flaws, the first how much this album struggles to maintain a consistent tone in its sound whipping through returns to normalcy and raw, confessional snippets… which might be the reality, but also shows the second issue of how this passing circles our frontman’s scattered angst rather than showing focus- which again, is understandable but without a more focused thematic core blunts some of the larger emotional impact. That said, the jumble of sounds in indie rock We Are The City deliver along with some of their best hooks does work well and I do appreciate when a deconstructive project has a real emotional core, certainly less calculated than We Are The City has been in the past which is very much appreciated. And as such… yeah, I’ll err on the side of positive, light 8/10

Dune Rats - Hurry Up And Wait - …Yeah, that’s some burned-out Aussie garage punk, alright. And look, if that comes across condescending, that’s not my intention, but Dune Rats is not an act that gives me a lot to say thanks to its blatant 90s retro worship, its frontman’s fried and breaking vocals, and perpetually stoned delivery and content; spend long enough on Bandcamp and you’ll hear hundreds of these acts without even trying. Now their second album was more brawny and eclectic, showing a little more wit and self-awareness creeping between the lines, but their third album… honestly, I haven’t heard such a blunt clean-up job on a punk record in years, they barely sound like the same band! All that grungy texture and distortion, one of their most prominent distinguishing factors, was sandblasted away for a cleaner, bouncy pop-punk sound with the shouty backing vocals and a little more focus on hooks, which if you’re into the blunt power chord basics, you’ll probably dig this. But for a band where the perpetual 90s burnout vibe can lose its satirical lustre, especially when the influences Blink-182, Weezer, and maybe a smattering of Sublime and The Offspring are so blatant, they traded texture for a guaranteed, unquestioning audience and I’m just not as interested or impressed. Also, K.Flay is on this album - if that’s a name you haven’t heard in years, join the club. But if you like what I’ve described, you’ll probably dig this because it is decent… but unless the Aussie flavour wins you over hardcore, you’ll probably just go back to the original article. 6/10

Squarepusher - Be Up A Hello - So in preparation for covering this new release from a near-legend in electronic music, a pioneer in experimental drum and bass and IDM, I did the deep dive of going through as many of his classics and stretches of weirdness as possible… and I won’t deny that his free jazz influenced-sputters of blurry breakbeats, blaring synth, and remarkably textured percussion can sound intriguing and potent. Unfortunately, it’s a potency that rarely clicks for me as deeply as a peer like Aphex Twin outside of specific projects like Music Is Rotted One Note and especially Ultravisitor - part of it is a lack of structured melodic progression to really grapple with, part of it is the fidgety desire to drill into freeform virtuoso playing that can drag, and part of it comes with the feeling that once you know Squarepusher’s tricks, the frenetic warping just doesn’t impress you in the same way. Granted, he can still surprise me - that EDM-adjacent experiment in 2015 springs to mind - but surprise doesn’t always translate to quality. And thus this new solo release five years later… well, credit to Squarepusher for embracing more melodies opposite the synth gurgle and breakbeats, but along the way a lot of free jazz flair, funk, and sense of atmosphere seems to have been ditched… and even then, it just feels like a Squarepusher album that’s not all that enthralling. Kind of flashy, and ‘Terminal Slam’ is a late album surprise in a great way, especially when the glitch piles up… but eventually you’ll start asking what all that overexposed colour adds up to as the sequencing falters and you get the dreary ambient pieces, which is frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I hear the appeal and in scattered moments I hear where Squarepusher clicks… but less than you might think - 5/10

Bandaid Brigade - I’m Separate - Okay, how to describe this debut act… so the frontman of hardcore punk act PEARS teamed up with frontman of Gods of Mount Olympus for a project that’s trying to subvert rock genres altogether, and yet why do I feel like I’m hearing a slice of mid-80s yacht rock matched with 90s prog, with maybe a smattering of the goofier side of punk along the way with production that can sound like an off-Broadway musical or 90s TV infomercial? And if all of that sounds weird, trust me when I say it actually comes together better than you’d think at least on a compositional basis, with enough familiar tones that actually go down easy. The larger question becomes what you do with that genre pileup, because while this album can feel catchy, it’s not long before you notice how the vocals don’t have a ton of character with more energy than potency, or how flat the synth blending can be, or how much certain influences with a little more refinement deliver similar structures with more care and colour, or how the lyrical content falls into overwritten pitch-black nihilism and self-flagellating depression juxtaposed against the sort of relationship clinginess that might click if the overall sound wasn’t primarily major key yearning. In an odd way I can hear parallels thematically with Steven Wilson or even the last albums from Destroyer and Moron Police, but in all of those cases the self-pity didn’t feel as pronounced, or there was a little more melodic flair outside of an obvious comfort zone, whereas Bandaid Brigade finds its niche and only seems to leave it for questionable ideas, like the trap breakdown on ‘Losing Light’. Otherwise… I won’t deny that it’s relatively unique, but it has the feel of a cast-off side project, and not one I’m really inclined to revisit. 6/10

Meghan Trainor - TREAT MYSELF - You know, if there was a project where I’d have every good reason to skip it, it would be this. To put it bluntly, I think even a lot of pop fans are looking back on Meghan Trainor’s few brief years in the spotlight with mild embarrassment, and while there’s an inkling of truth to maybe picking up quality when you run out of relevance, that would require I liked Meghan Trainor as a songwriter or personality, or trusted any of her production team. So while I’m going to come here with the controversial opinion that this is probably her best album if only because it has nothing close to the awful of ‘Dear Future Husband’ or ‘Me Too’, it also has the tone of being in development hell the past three years and a real struggle to find any sort of unique sound, not all that surprising because her former executive producer Ricky Reed took a lot of that same vibe and gave it to Lizzo. As such, TREAT MYSELF feels really patchy and messy, and where Kesha could make that charming because of raw charisma and some sense of internal logic on her last album, this album has none of that consistency, mostly because for every song questioning self-esteem or self-worth in messy relationships, Meghan Trainor is trying to lean into clunky bad-bitch flexing which hits an absolute low-point with ‘Genetics’, a song with the Pussycat Dolls that goes all in on that implication. And when you consider the writing is just not unique or special enough to showcase a more complex personality - because this was also a persistent issue on Thank You - it feels like a stretch, but it also makes the moments that try a little harder and have a consistent groove like ‘Evil Twin’ and especially ‘Ashes’ stand out as some of her best. But that same mess translates to the production, where about a quarter of it wants to be in the late 90s and with cadences and grooves that actually flatter her… and the rest just has no clue, and when you consider she’s not really an expressive singer, she can’t flatter a funk bassline or work with anything all that hip-hop; I understand ditching the retro stuff, but at least it was consistent? But in the end… look, just because this is her best on number of good songs vs bad doesn’t mean this inconsistent mess is really worth your time, and the fact that it’s getting dumped now rather than when she had traction says a lot more. 5/10

Lil Wayne - Funeral - Am I the only one seeing a parallel between the new releases of Lil Wayne and Eminem this past month? Way too long, indulgent, questionable production choices and guest stars, where both rappers seem sharp and focused until you start digging into what they’re actually saying and find all the inexecusable corniness and cringe because nobody would say no to them? The larger problem with Wayne is that he douses himself in autotune to do it, which would be fine if it contributed to a unique aesthetic or showed himself innovating with the sound or production… but in reality Lil Wayne is playing in much of the same territory as many of his descendents, and while he tends to be a more interesting rapper than many of them in wordplay and flow alone - at least when he cares to be - over the course of two dozen songs without any real consideration for sequencing or storytelling, it gets really repetitive; flexing, drug abuse, and doing drugs off of women’s body parts in increasingly graphic fashion is par-for-the-course from Lil Wayne, so I just don’t get shocked in the same way anymore. At least on Tha Carter V there were songs like ‘Mona Lisa’ that told a story and had a lot of character that stood out - here, it sounds like mixtape Wayne on a full-length album, and it reminds me exactly why I stopped listening to Lil Wayne tapes and albums, they just started running together. Now I’ve heard this project gets better if you treat it like a playlist and just pick the songs you like the title track, ‘Harden’, and even ‘Dreams’ and ‘Never Mind’, but I’m stuck considering Funeral as a whole, and when you factor in some truly awful songs and how so many bad bars and questionable beats overshadow the good stuff… yeah, I can’t endorse this. strong 4/10