on the pulse - 2020 - week 42 - visions of knives in strange timez

This is a week where I’m covering two albums on my schedule that have a version of the title ‘Strange Days’ - I really wish that didn’t quite feel as portentous as it does. Well, might as well lean into it - this is On The Pulse!

The Struts - Strange Days - …seriously, a week after I highlighted my frustration with retro-leaning acts who have achieved more success on nostalgia than the unique firepower of their own work, someone requests the goddamn poster childs of this? Again, it’s not saying The Struts are bad: if you want music midway between flagrant Queen and Aerosmith worship - both 70s and late 90s Aerosmith - The Struts will deliver that and they’re great live, but what else is there to say about them? They’re too sanitized to take many real chances in the content or compositions or instrumental texture, but outside of their frontman I don’t find them particularly dynamic musicians, and man, I wish they had the hooks! They did a song with Kesha I liked two years ago - in fact, I think their sophomore album is generally fine and at least tried a few pop touches that weren’t bad - but outside of that, it’s not like Kyle Craft doesn’t do this sound even at his worst better in damn near every way. That said, I do think Strange Days is a pivot for The Struts… but I’m not sure it’s a good one, because the band tamped back their rougher rock edge considerably across the board for smoother tones and pop collaborations - seriously, they got Robbie Williams on the lead-off title track. And while it might fit their cleaner production, it also kind of strips away the strongest, explosive core of their sound, especially in comparison with Luke Spiller’s vocals that are best suited for raw arena rock - and hell, it’s not like their content really left this territory either. Really, the fact that they covered ‘Do You Love Me’ by KISS might be the most telling thing, because you can spot the parallel especially in their late 70s period pivot towards pop grooves and utterly formulaic rock posturing… except KISS could at least go over the top more consistently, where this album feels weirdly tepid. Maybe it’s a factor of the one consistent lyrical element being stuck inside in lockdown and desperately craving some sense of escape - but you’d think that’d drive thing more unique or interesting than this. strong 5/10, glam rock should be way more fun and distinctive.

Seventeen - ; - Alright, this is one of those cases where I think it would help y’all if you watch more of my song reviews on Instagram - @SpectrumPulse, in case you’re having trouble finding them - because I talked about a j-pop idol group that had an absurd number of members where it felt like a show choir than anything else and I didn’t quite find the same connection to their material. To their credit, Seventeen at least seems to segment their work - they have a vocal unit, a hip-hop unit, and a ‘performance’ unit within their thirteen-person group - and in comparison with many of their peers, they actually keep all their instrumentals and production within the group, and even despite the expected genre messiness and trend-chasing, it looks to be paying dividends with pretty solid music all around. Now this is their second EP of 2020, and… it’s solid? It feels a bit less eclectic and bouncy than Heng:garae was - their first EP from this year - and as such you can tell it’s going for a slightly smoother, more accessible vibe… but I’m saying that while they open the EP with a swing number that slaps way more than it should and threw a salsa R&B groove at the halfway point! Coupled with some really good horn production and consistently good production, Seventeen continues to be a cut above when they’re doing their own odd thing - if anything, I’d say the project loses some of my interest when it trends towards more conventional mainstream trap-leaning sounds, or when it just feels a bit filmy and insubstantial like on ‘AH! LOVE’. Granted, insubstantial is a pretty telling description of a lot of the content I was able to translate on the album - generally framed as upbeat and hopeful material that’s intended for a light break in a tough year, which translates to the pretty underweight content I expect in k-pop, but also not in a way that’s obtrusive or tasteless. In other words, for a brief pause, this was pretty pleasant and likable, easy to like. light 7/10, check it out.

PUP - This Place Sucks Ass - I’m a little conflicted on how to feel about PUP dropping a pretty abortive vent session of extras as an EP - it makes all the sense in the world, but coming after the leap forward the band made in terms of structure and sound, I can see some seeing this as a backslide, or at the very least inessential. And to some extent that’s true - if you know PUP, these are absolutely a more sour, angry side of them that sees them confronting success with the frustrated, self-destructive instincts that comes with flagrant imposter syndrome and lingering depression… and then taking the steps to puncture them as much as they can given the messy times we’re facing, even as they try to push past the guilt of finding success on tour while they wound up missing a friend’s funeral, a pain that absolutely lingers. They do manage to ram some experimenting in with more jagged, spiky guitar progressions and compositions that feel a bit more chaotic, a pretty decent cover of an old Grandaddy song, and like with Morbid Stuff, it ends on another sour note… which might be the theme of this year, but is starting become a lingering issue for PUP, and it does hold this back from truly sticking the landing. Otherwise… it’s a b-side EP, pretty much just for fans, not a bad companion piece, just set expectations appropriately. 7/10

Josh A - You’re Not Alone - this feels like the culmination of a bunch of song reviews I’ve done of this guy on Instagram, where I’ve been trying to grasp his beyond-derivative content, delivery, and production for months now… and I think on some level I get it? I went back and listened to a fair number of his projects in full and again, he’s aggressively competent, but he makes the sort of emo trap that’s more reliant on the raw basics and vibes rather than anything with a ton of flair or overreach in any direction. He won’t swing for the fences in terms of content or sound or texture or wordplay, but if you’re looking for a certain basic, universal, ‘great value’ appeal, this might do it? Again, it doesn’t work for me because I came up on the stuff that was more visceral, but everyone needs a starting point… the problem is that Josh A has been at that starting point for entirely too many abbreviated projects and I think his work as Lil Revive more often than not slips into outright bad, so I did not have expectations for this. And that might have been wise, because while this does show a bit more introspection and overall an increase in quality across the board - the production and mixing is better, the hooks are a little sharper in his brand of emo trap - that only serves to elevate ‘forgettable bad’ into ‘forgettable mediocre’ or decent at best, and a lot of this is on Josh A. Yes, he’s a sharp technical MC, but his tone is so flat and lacking expressiveness so that even if he’s telling a fresh story, he doesn’t lend it any flair - at least NF has the vague religious trappings around his swells of bombast and fast flows, where Josh A’s insight on drug abuse or depression or his success in the music industry just feel incredibly thin - he talks about getting specific but remains frustratingly surface, which leads to fast flows feeling like filler, and thus you get songs like the title track or ‘Lost’ standing out a bit more despite being pretty par-for-the-course in the field. But then once you get up to about ‘Omens’, Josh A tries to flip into his more braggadocious complaining about the industry and critics, I tune out - I’ve heard this whinging before, and I’ve heard it done better - and considering he idolizes acts like Logic and NF where their biggest criticisms are being derivative, it feels like a copy of a copy… and no, ending the album with trap crooning doesn’t save it. At the end of the day, it doesn’t annoy me as much as the Lil Revive detour, but I just find this exceedingly bland and derivative, with this album feeling frontloaded and just not having enough unique ideas to push it further. He’s got his audience, it’s just not me. light 5/10

I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME - RAZZMATAZZ - You know, I could probably open this piece by saying, ‘ex-member of Panic! At The Disco paired with a drummer from Falling In Reverse, making modern pastiches of late 70s Bowie and Prince’ and just walk away, right? Seriously, that description covers pretty much everything to a surprising degree, so I almost don’t even have to add that the project feels overmixed with a few too many blocky electronic elements and that more than a few songs are circling disillusionment with fame and being insiders in a corrupt music industry, right? Note that none of this is precisely bad - for the most part the grooves are good, Dallon Weekes can vamp pretty effectively, and so long as the album stays with more organic percussion, this is at least drawing from influences I respect… but it’s not nearly as fun as it should be, and it’s kind of tough to pin down why. Part of this is just the overworked nature of the thing - it doesn’t really back up your ‘subversion bucking against the system’ when you’re pulling from very similar palettes and sounds that have ruled pop rock for the past five years without much in the way of evolution or deconstruction - but man, this can feel like a cynical listen and only a few cuts really capture some of the magic anyway beyond the self-awareness like the early piano ballad ‘Nobody Likes The Opening Band’, the wonky vaudeville touch of the title track, or the twisted spookhouse nightmare just out of frame on ‘Lights Go Down’ - though that might have been thanks to the sax solos on the last two. Then there are the cuts that are a bit more traditional in a very ‘love me like the world is ending’ vibe where everything is already broken so why not chase the romance… and I wish this felt at least somewhat unique or distinctive in the writing. Yeah, ‘Kiss Goodnight’ is a pretty good love song, but the saccharine production behind ‘Need You Here’ felt painfully cloying - but honestly, some of this might just circle back to a similar frustration I had with the aesthetic from the Will Wood album earlier this year, because that stylism can be very hit-and-miss for me. It’s better here thanks to the grooves and slightly better hooks… but not by much. 5/10, just not really for me.

the Mountain Goats - Getting Into Knives - Am I the only one a little thrown by the title to this album? Yes, the Mountain Goats have made some pretty damn dark music if you can read between the lines - or hell, just read the lines - but this almost seemed to prompt something far more imposing or unsettling, and given that the buzz was implying their sound was remaining indie folk and singer-songwriter with a smattering of smooth Memphis horns, that could make for a bit of dissonance! But I’d argue the darkness is more ‘incidental’ in terms of framing the stories here - John Darnielle has described these stories as circling around arcs of personal fulfillment rather than a unified concept, and the darkness slips in surrounding both an increasingly bleak and dilapidated world around the characters and the egocentric drive of someone to find that personal fulfillment at any expense - or how they can have the privilege to chase those dreams without consequence until the worms eat them by the end. Not that it’s a bad thing, per se, so much as there’s consequences lurking around the frame that might seem strange or unsettling to folks watching from alongside, and even then a hard journey can weigh heavier on the soul than even the traveller might want to admit to themselves, even if there are more than a few moments that just seem like kids at play… until it very much isn’t. The title track is a great example, a quest for the simple conclusion that comes with vengeance that consumes him, and I like how it’s never quite determined if peace is achieved now that he’s reached his target but seems ignored. But it’s not an album that feels bleak or heavy - hell, with the warm acoustics , supple bass, and how Darnielle seems to have softened his more abrasive barking delivery, you can argue that this album is the most open and inviting the Mountain Goats have been in years… until at the midway point they drop ‘The Last Place I Saw You Alive’, which goes into the annals of their best ever songs and is that moment where the individualistic insulation gets punctured- so damn plainspoken, but so damn powerful all the same. It’s a similar playbook that the Mountain Goats used with Goths, in shaping the relative normalcy of the world to accentuate the oddness of those on their quest - shame there’s no obvious ‘Rain In Soho’ to marry atmosphere and content, but a few songs get close - I love the supple warm acoustics of ‘Picture Of My Dress’ with just a hint of melancholy in the keys, the crunchy rumble and Hammond organ adding to the feral feel of ‘As Many Candles As Possible’, the warbling damp groove of ‘Bell Swamp Connection’, the bass cycling around the seed of choppy acoustics on ‘The Great Gold Sheep’ that has a fantastic piano line, or the interesting focus on more textured percussion on the final two songs of the project. That said, this is an album that feels more scattered by design, full of little wild rabbit holes to dive into - I would struggle to put this among their best, but on the sheer strength of songs alone, I can call this pretty great in its own right. 8/10, probably a more accessible Mountain Goats than most, absolutely worth hearing.

clipping. - Visions Of Bodies Being Burned - In a way, I’m surprised that clipping. released a ‘sequel’ as it is to the album from last year. Not because I think they were running out of material - the last album’s blend of horrorcore, ruthless criticism of systemic racism, and metacommentary on their art’s role in all of it showed there were more twisted dimensions than many thought to explore - but I also thought it ended really powerfully with the thematic destruction of the instrument, and I wasn’t sure how adding a second act to that would play out. Well, turns out clipping. had more than enough material, because while there are a lot of similar thematic parallels, clipping is peeling into different territory than the chilly, vampire symbolism that ran through their last album - the feel is more primal and spectral and unknowable, an advancement from gothic decay to societal collapse, with more lingering spectres and cannibalistic figures. And that plays out in the sound as well - clipping’s production has always been experimental and weird but here the wildness manifests in increasingly spare, distorted grooves that don’t so much lean on the cooler textures of their last album but something more fractured, with blasts of static we haven’t heard this loud since midcity. And more often than not it works - I’m not going to say clipping tops their most insane crescendos or grooves with this album, but between the spare pitch-shifted sample and stalking grooves of ‘Say The Name’ and ‘Check The Lock’, the shuddering gallop of ‘Something Underneath’, the squealing shudder of ‘Make Them Dead’, ‘Looking Like Meat’ and ‘Body For The Pile’, the creeping, haunted creaking of ‘She Bad’ that builds even even more gurgling groove on ‘Pain Everyday’, and what might just be a transcendent banger on ‘Enlacing’, it sure as hell gets close. But back to the content - more than once you see figures that might have been crushed under heel by systemic racism or brutality now rise for revenge that has a much more naturalistic feel, both in terms of renewal and disturbingly feral consequences, from the Candyman on ‘Say The Name’ to the onslaught of lynching victims surging back as ghosts on ‘Pain Everyday’ - appreciate the Algiers parallel here to ‘Cleveland’ - to the dismantling of corrupt enforcement systems on ‘Body For The Pile’ and ‘Make Them Dead’ - even the earth herself sending forth undead to set things right on ‘Something Underneath’. And it’s of no coincidence so many of these corrective forces are coded as female, from the old witch of ‘She Bad’ to the final survivor on ‘96 Neve Campbell’ - which feeds into the existing metacommentary of the art itself, where women are providing newfound balance and quality to a scene where the successful masculine forces fall prey to their own paranoid appetites, with ‘Check The Lock’ as not just one of the best examples but with a killer groove to boot. And the album ends back in this territory too - where the project last year was near suicidal in its dismantling of art, this one is a renewal in the face of a larger cosmic reality that is far bigger than them all… where the album will end with another abstract piece, this time adapted from Yoko Ono, where at the scene of a murder, dawn has broken with the fresh call of birds, with each contributor to the album casting their field recording to what that newfound sound - that newfound world - could be. Terrifyingly potent is the best way to describe this album, and while like with the last one I’m not sure it hits the insane alchemy of the self-titled project in balancing experimentation with accessibility, I can’t deny how damn intense the experiments remain. strong 8/10, this is about the perfect time of year for this album, you should hear it.

Gorillaz - Song Machine, Season 1: Strange Timez - It feels like before I even can start talking about this album I have to lay out the qualifying statements - it’s not really intended as a full album so much as a compilation of all the collaborations they had with their animated Song Machine series, or maybe not even that, just a really good cohesive playlist, and it’s not like Gorillaz albums have much of a cohesive unifying theme anyway, they’re supposed to be hazy and scattershot and only barely make sense when you’re high anyway - unless of course you talk to the diehard fans who have extensively chronicled a narrative that feels even more piecemeal than usual. But there’s a part of me that listens to this and just feels like it has a lot of the same issues as the last two projects in the Gorillaz revival and I’m just not vibing nearly as strongly as I want to with this - generally fine and more interesting than The Now Now, but that’s not a high bar and this doesn’t approach the best moments of Humanz for me, let alone the self-titled or Demon Days. A big part of this has been a consistent issue since The Fall - the more synthetic production just doesn’t have the same organic grit and texture that gave the unnerving textures their foundation, gave the bass its growl, gave the synth choices and especially the percussion a bit more body in the low end. Whereas across Song Machine, it all feels thinner and weedier - there’s less blending, the atmosphere is less thick, the percussion especially doesn’t have the same impact or texture, and thus the attempts to cultivate any sense of smolder feels muted - and that’s relevant because atmosphere does a lot of heavy lifting on Gorillaz albums, because the content rarely if ever gets there in its meandering discontent and Californicated alienation, and Damon Albarn is even less of a presence this time around! It doesn’t help that despite Damon Albarn pulling more name guest stars, they don’t always click - yes, despite Beck getting back into electronic territory and both Peter Hook and ScHoolboy Q being obvious fits for these low-key grooves, and I’d argue by ‘Desole’ being the most organic cut here that Fatoumata Diawara probably delivers my favourite guest performance - and I’ll even stick up for putting 6LACK opposite Elton John for a splashy late 70s synth pastiche - I won’t say I was all that impressed by Robert Smith of The Cure or with the synth-heavy girl-group gloss opposite St. Vincent, . Look, if you’ve gotten onboard with this production style for Gorillaz, you’ll likely like this way more than I will, but even solidly balanced grooves can’t elevate a lot of pretty damn good songs to greatness, at least for me. strong 6/10, wish I liked it more.