on the pulse - 2020 - week 50 - sapphire cape, red shore

So yeah, this is a little late - it’s been a little insane to observe the past forty-eight hours and expect that you were going to get regularly scheduled album reviews, but truthfully I was planning for this to drop in 2020 or at the very least before my top albums of 2020, and at least half of that is now true. So to close off album reviews for the last year, this is On The Pulse!

Allie X - Cape God - So this album near the end of 2020 began stacking up the sort of praise that you’d think for a pop act would have exploded when Allie X dropped this in mid-February, so I’ll admit I was kind of curious whether this would be the turning point from when I also covered her stupid late a few years ago. And… honestly, it’s kind of tough to quantify why Allie X is still not working for me, especially on an album where some have said this is full of bangers and I’m struggling to hear them, Part of it is the feel that she’s not a particularly dynamic singer - and going for an even more formless and ethereal approach to the production and vocal mixing doesn’t help her stand out even further - but honestly the sound reminds me a lot more of the soft-focus “indie” pop acts that came out in the latter half of the 2010s who were trying to imitate Lorde’s minimalism in her production but without her intensity or writing chops - a lot of songs default to wistful musings where it seems like she’s chasing the impulses that would embody her muse - love, underweight introspection, moody whinging, drug abuse - rather than embodying them with any unique flavour. And you can clearly tell that Allie X is trying to lean into a vaguely gothic glamour vibe with a lot of her lyrical reference points and how often she tries to sound sultry, but her production and delivery not only has none of that edge, most of her sound is rooted in depressingly desaturated guitars and the occasional bit of washed out synth or reverb-saturated arranged elements to support the bass thrums that make me wonder just how much of a playbook was stolen from Billie Eilish, very early Charli XCX, and Troye Sivan - which in the last case given how often they’ve worked together on his albums, makes way too much sense, especially on the groovier cuts. Yeah, ‘Rings A Bell’ and ‘Susie Save Your Love’ had nice bouncy vibes, as did the one anthem to blacking out hardcore ‘Life Of The Party’ - doesn’t make up for the awkward squonking of ‘June Bloom’ or how ‘Super Duper Party People’ has such thoroughly embarrassing lyrics they squander the synth groove, though. Overall… it’s got its moments and feels decently balanced in its grooves, and I can see why people consider this catchy, but there’s not a lot of distinctive colour across the board and it just winds up feeling decent but derivative. 6/10, give it a chance if you like the pop I’ve referenced, but don’t be surprised if you’ve heard this done better before.

Corb Lund - Agricultural Tragic - Oh, you thought we were done with indie country? Nah, we’re moving up to the big guns with Corb Lund, an Albertan singer-songwriter who has been active since the 90s and is a bit of an eclectic figure on the indie country scene. A comparison that sprung to mind was a more offbeat and Canadian Dierks Bentley, in that he’s a deceptively smart writer, decent enough singer, and he’s going to go off on wild tangents you won’t see coming and that will often find him at his best. His album Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier! probably remains his best for its innovative instrumental choices and its remarkably nuanced take on war, and his 2012 album Cabin Fever handled its grit really effectively, even as I have a surprising soft spot for his 2009 album Losin’ Lately Gambler, mostly on the strength of great writing. Now I will say some of his experiments have faltered - I wasn’t quite impressed by his Dave Cobb team up on 2015’s Things That Can’t Be Undone, even if it’s one of the few Cobb-produced albums where the bass sounded good - but it’s been a long five years since we got original material from Lund and… this is an odd album to talk about, because it feels like it’s trying to do two very different things at once. On the one hand, it’s a pretty straightforward, loose honky tonk indie country project that’s playing with very traditional song structures and Corb Lund’s natural gift for humour - he’s funny, and he’s going to make the most of it, with a lot of animal misadventure stories. But he’s also keenly self-aware so the other angle is just how much he tries to celebrate the past and vintage country life in an era where a lot of those older stories might feel less relevant, and that can be a very tough balancing act for the best of country acts. I do appreciate that Lund is generally more thoughtful and good-humoured, more focusing on his tastes and not one to project on anyone else, and there is a real sense of tragedy to someone who's trying to maintain her horse range but they’re as old and creaky as she is, or on a much more sober note, how all the old western stories and mythmaking can’t fix a small-town meth addiction. I was reminded a bit of Ian Noe in both the detail-rich writing and the blend of past and present, but Lund has a much lighter touch and the tone can get kind of wonky balancing everything out. Granted, the overall tone and texture of the album is so generally agreeable it’s hard to complain - the bass grooves are well balanced, the guitars are bright with nice interplay, and while I might struggle to find many standout tunes or melodies, it’s so uniformly solid it’s hard to care, and it’s also a pretty quick listen all things considered. It’s odd, because I’d say this is an ideal album for country purists, but a distinctly Canadian flavour may throw some… but not me. Solid 7/10, pretty enjoyable, check it out!

Yours Truly - Self Care - Alright, quick explanation here: I had a patron who joined a day or two after I closed the schedule for the year and messaged asking about my thoughts on this - they said that this debut album was a shot of fresh air in pop punk given just how many interchangeable projects I had covered in 2020. And having now heard it a few times… I really wish I was anywhere close to impressed. For one, it’s been a while since I’ve heard a groove and percussion section this utterly gutless - the bass has little texture or defined punch - no bassist is credited in the liner notes, and I have questions - the drums feel inconsistent at best and painfully thin and sterile at worst, and as much as frontwoman Mikaila Delgado bringing her best Hayley Williams presence to bear, if she’s stuck with no real foundation to work with, she’s going to sound unsupported and the mix is going to sound like it’s a half-step removed from the increasingly sterile pop rock that flooded the mid-to-late 2000s. And without that foundation of groove and most of the melodies sticking to traditional pop punk structures, it feels increasingly forgettable for me, not helped by the writing which circles around struggles of confidence and composure in the face of breakups or relationship drama - where it’s clear she’s not over any of it - or the initial run of success the band has had. There’s one decent song about people finding a moment of odd solace at funerals I thought was alright - although it feels like the less interesting version of similar themes Sløtface explored earlier this year - but otherwise, this really did not stick with me whatsoever. Decent energy, but production and underwhelming writing really holds this back from being interesting, so 5/10, just doesn’t stand out.

Fleet Foxes - Shore - I said this back when I covered Crack-Up three years ago, but I always find myself a bit startled how quickly Fleet Foxes seem to slip my mind. The sound is generally agreeable and well-produced, and while the content can be a messy conversation, I did hope that the band would stabilize a bit after Crack-Up wound up a bit of a myopic experiment; it’s got its defenders, but by accident I think my lukewarm reception of it wound up on the side of history, which I did not expect by any means! And thus it feels weird that when I’ve been going back to Shore as often as I have, while I think I like this a little more in terms of more defined and approachable compositions, I’m not as moved by this as I want to be. A part of this is that you can tell Fleet Foxes is treating this in a similar way to a ‘back to basics’ project, or at the very least settling into a comfort zone - the song structures are more approachable and flow a bit better, there are actually some decent grooves, and while I do think the project’s momentum can feel haphazard especially by the final third, the sound is as warm and rich as it was on their better albums. And you can tell that was intentional - Robin Pecknold may have had to jettison his entire band for recording and producing this, which unfortunately seems like it paid off the unintentional foreshadowing of Crack-Up as he’s now relying heavily on session musicians and guest collaborators, but he wanted to provide an oasis of comfort, a brighter moment for his audience, purposefully look outside of himself… and I’m not convinced he pulled it off consistently. I referenced this when I reviewed the more “conscious” cuts on Crack-Up and I don’t think I did the best job explaining my frustration, but this album crystallizes it: this is an album that - somewhat - wants to engage more directly in societal commentary, but has no commitment to any degree of intensity or serious discomfort. I’m bringing back my three Ps for great political art, and where Pecknold falls glaringly short is in power and precision - he seems to grasp that his previous privileged observational approach didn’t quite work, and while he puts lipservice to wanting to move towards change or understanding the gravity of the situation, a lot of his language is still very much coaxed through his own circular musings and self-care and his own personal angst. All of which can be valuable in that context, and probably feels very relatable especially to his very specific affluent hipster demo in 2020, but when neither the poetry or delivery has much impact and the production feels as whitebread and pastoral as ever, especially with all the horns, which feel more big band than soulful, it’s very easy to observe how much actual skin he has in the game, where I can’t even say this feels all that populist - on ‘Jara’ he references the Chilean folk singer of the same name to try and call out everyone who fled New York City for their out-of-town estates during the pandemic, and it feels like he’s trying to take the mantle of his impact without any hard references to his actual leftist politics that got him killed, and it feels kind of gross. Granted, this doesn’t surprise me - he ditched his entire band to get this out, which tells me a lot about his focus - but it does mean that when he’s more focusing on his own angst without explicit political allusion like off the faster groove on ‘Maestranza’ or confronting his own depression on ‘Can I Believe You’, or even the self-aware pisstake of ‘Young Man’s Game’, this album is considerably more likable. But even there, in a song trying to console a friend struggling with depression and addiction that has a good slow-burn melody, it’s still called ‘I’m Not My Season’ and the focus is nearly all internal, which effectively becomes the primary point of focus for the final third which for as lush as the arrangement feels, just rings really damn hollow, especially from where Pecknold said he was starting. I dunno, I can’t deny that when this album is just solidly introspective Fleet Foxes it does deliver, and if that’s all it set out to be, that would have been fine, but when it tries to frame itself as more, especially early on… well, on ‘Featherweight’ Pecknold said he wanted to explore his privilege a bit more, where in execution he just wound up revealing it. For me, strong 6/10, but hey, all the critics liked it way more, take it as you will.

Sa-Roc - The Sharecropper’s Daughter - So this is one of those cases where I’ve been very much aware of Sa-Roc but I haven’t really had a chance to talk about her in recent years. In the first half of the 2010s, she was extremely prolific - a lot of forward-thinking and dense wordplay, pretty okay production, and a lot of charisma that contributed to a bunch of albums that occasionally ran long but on average are really damn solid - paradoxically I think when she trims her projects down like Babylon and Gift of the Magi, she knocks them out of the park. And then she signed to Rhymesayers… and we didn’t hear a full project from her until 2020. Yeah, there’s been scattered singles, but it adds to the unfortunate list of questions prompted about that label that I uncovered when I covered Psalm One earlier this year - looks like indie rap’s problems with women aren’t going away. Anyway, we did get an album that the grapevine was telling me was pretty damn special… and here’s the odd thing: this is a great album that’s features consistently well-structured grooves, sharp bars, and Sa-Roc sharper than ever, and yet while it’s an album I can return to easily, it’s not one that truly grips me as much as I want it to. And I’m not sure it’s any one thing that holds me back from embracing this as deeply as I’d like - I thought at first it was Sa-Roc’s flow that reminds me of a fusion of Kendrick Lamar and Yugen Blakrok in both cadence and delivery with a splash of Dessa in her singing, but these are all artists I really like or outright love, that shouldn’t be a problem, especially as I’d argue Sa-Roc has an earthier, more soulful tone than everyone I just listed, and that’s something I generally like! Granted, this album isn’t consistently in that territory - some of the splashes of gauzy synth and chipmunk vocals don’t always blend as well as they could, and I get the feeling the album starts meandering on its back half and tries to conclude two or three times. But I think my frustration with this album might run a bit deeper, because Sa-Roc is framing this project like a reintroduction, a reassertion of identity and the fact that she’s a fantastic rapper claiming her voice and turf… and I wish she went a little further. It reminds a lot of my problems with Elzhi in wanting greater conceptual diversity, and while I understand here it’s more justifiable given her absence and how by her distinct presence she stands for more in rap, it’s also a throughline that I’ve heard many times before, and it’s odd when I can clearly track her influences. Frankly, the best moments come when she’s getting more personal and describing the past demons she has to excise, be they old family vices or a music industry that never got on board with her more esoteric content; one reason ‘Forever’ is one of her best songs. I do have other niggling frustrations, though - she talks about wanting to elevating more black women to the artform but the majority of her features are men, which coming out of 2020 feels kind of odd especially as she emphasizes she’s not the typical rap chick who raps about sex - Noname proved you could have both, and while we’re in this territory black capitalism will never feel as revolutionary as it’s framed, even if I understand its importance to her and the culture. For me… again, I like this a lot, and I absolutely recognize I’m not the target audience, but after the past solid 2-3 months of listens, I can call it great but it doesn’t quite resonate beyond that. light 8/10, this got slept on by a lot of folks who’ll really enjoy it - I just wanted to like it a little more.

Patricia Taxxon - Sapphire Apts - Okay look, she put it out on the last day of the year, she wanted me to talk about it, and I don’t think she knows that I decided to slip it onto the schedule out of my own curiosity, especially as I missed covering Fresh Tapes 2 - if you want my quick impression of that, it once again proves that Taxxon is a sharper and more intricate and refined producer than most in hyperpop, and while that pays huge dividends with Backxwash, she may have overthought the experiment as a whole and it winds up kind of uneven, especially on the back half. Anyway, this one… she’s been teasing this for a while as something that’s trying more for an accessible pop sound, and I only half-agree with that assessment. It’s more pop in the content - in balancing between the party and hard love/heartbreak that yearns for more that reminds me in a funny way of Tove Lo and where the ‘Fireflies’ cover makes way too much sense - than many of the compositions or the album’s structure, where it opens with multiple instrumental cuts which pepper the album and there’s a song here that runs seven minutes! Granted, I do think the album isn’t quite as tight or hook centric as it could be to fit with mainstream pop, which in 2020 is very retro-disco driven or feels a little more rough around the edges to match with how Taxxon will methodically construct her compositions, which fall into a similar vibe as Fresh Tapes 2, but less abrasive. And this is something I’ve been observing around Taxxon’s compositions for a while now, particularly around pop: she’s taken leaps in composition that are rapidly outgrowing her instrumental palette and production, so when she’s not making avant-garde electronic music or sampling heavy for plunderphonics, you can hear the strain to reach a more organic, “accessible” sound in balancing her distinctive keyboard melodies with much sharper percussion - which worries me considerably for as often as she’s teased making a hip-hop album. Now for the record I like a lot of the live strings she’s brought onto this album, and I really loved the theatricality of both Emad Alaeddin and Trevor Laake on their cuts, but on the other hand, she also tried to put together a yearning trap/R&B cut in ‘You’re Welcome’, and the guest brought on for the cooing vocals… yeah, she’s no Ariana Grande, especially for as frail as her upper register sounded. But outside of that… the shuddering bass of ‘Boom’ made up for how much ‘The Horse’ felt like an overarranged misfire when it comes to the instrumental cuts, and overall I think this is pretty damn good… but this is an album that doesn’t quite hit the pop magnetism she was targeting nor the expanse of yearning emotion and complexity that’s been at her best. Ergo… 7/10, definitely a worthy entry in her catalog, but it’s not her best.

Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red - …so, let’s be brutally honest here: was it all worth the hype? Forget the obvious ‘whole lotta mid’ jokes I saw the night this dropped, to me this just feels like the next coming of Eternal Atake, where the meme about a sugary, overlong trap album low on content but high on personality set expectations way higher than they probably should have been. And as someone for whom Playboi Carti has always felt like more adlibbing, squeaky meme than credible MC and who never really dug Die Lit two years ago, watching the backlash to this was kind of fascinating. But fine, it’s here: how is it? Honestly, the majority of things I could say about Die Lit are just as true this time around - except the project is nowhere near as consistent and you can tell that Playboi Carti was trying to evolve… emphasis on trying. The first change is the production: it’s rougher, more jagged, the synths buzz and spark against the once-again overweight trap beats with some of the most undercooked attempts as ‘gothic’ elements I’ve heard in recent memory, but for as much as he wants to emphasize how ‘punk’ or ‘vamp’ this album is, it still has shockingly little impact, especially as the tunes can feel undercooked and minus Pi’erre’s consistent presence, the mix quality is all over the damn place. Even more questionable is Playboi Carti himself, who is trying to show more diversity beyond the husky, faux-baby voice he was using, often going for a harsher or lower register… and wow, he can’t sell it at all with any power, which is painfully ironic given the attempts at machismo that run rampant in the content. Again, I’ll repeat myself from when I covered Die Lit, he’s got more texture than intensity in his delivery, only this time it’s worse because he’s trying to convey intensity and edginess and is flailing with painfully sloppy flows. And when the album is twenty-four tracks and over an hour, the broad stretches of tryhard emptiness feels even more hollow. It has the painful feel of someone on their fifteenth minute, and while Kanye, Kid Cudi, and Future at least sound a little more invested than Die Lit’s guest stars, it still can’t escape the feel of a meme stretched past its fifteenth minute. I’ve seen a lot of rappers who are built for short-term bursts or are powered by the meme get through one overpraised album before falling off a cliff, and it looks like it happened again. At least the song with Cudi was legit good and I was surprised how well the more soulful touches on the closer worked to, so… very light 4/10.