on the pulse - 2021 - #1 - why don't we, ashnikko, jazmine sullivan, r.a.p. ferreira

Alright, first episode of the new year - bizarrely it feels like I’ve got a lot to say, but 2021 is starting off slow, and I’m very much on top of my schedule. And I’m not about to complain about that, let’s get On The Pulse!

YOASOBI - THE BOOK- So this is an odd debut from a pairing in j-pop that’s a bit tough to describe: vocaloid producer Ayase who is not using vocaloids but instead singer Ikura, both of whom had some solo groundswell before they teamed up here and saw a lot of success with their initial run of singles. I was aware of them courtesy of my song reviews on IGTV - @SpectrumPulse, it’s your loss if you’re not watching - and thus I was mostly curious to cover a pretty short debut… and I have to be honest, while it’s certainly got the lush prettiness that contributes to a very likable and well-balanced j-pop album with detours into city pop with hints of modern, rickety percussion, I’m not sure it really rises beyond that. YOASOBI is known for self-contained narratives within their previous singles and that somewhat translates to the writing here, with the album structured as reading the titular book backwards, and the album gets kind of intriguing when they play with that temporal element playing in the relationships, be it coming in reflecting on the past or potentially knowing the expected future, or really how much we can know outside of a specific instant in time. And that even leaps into a song where the protagonist is trying to be super-upbeat and save their partner from killing themselves, which is certainly with way more cutesy energy than I would expect! But that might be the root of my problem with this project: it’s got a lot of that jaunty bounce that’s primed for so many romantic anime theme songs, but over the course of a project without much modulation it can start feeling one-note, no matter how much they’ll jump into key changes or throw some surprisingly tight basslines into the mix. Which makes sense for an album all about seizing those moments of love and passion - but when you smash all of those high-energy moments together, it can start feeling a bit airless and exhausting. Light 6/10, I feel like folks who can vibe with this aesthetic will appreciate this way more than I do, and I do think conceptually it’s pretty good… just not all the way my thing.

Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz - …you know, with that name, you feel like you’re setting yourself up for a joke act - where in reality you might be getting something a little more questionable. This is a Swedish post-punk band with members pulled from a few other notable acts and are trying to split the difference between bellicose humor and pointed social commentary. I heard their debut and thought it was okay, but going into this sophomore follow-up… look, I have to be blunt, this became a chore to listen through every time I heard it. Part of this is that the group is doing some of the ‘ironic macho asshole’ thing that you’d hear from Alex Cameron, but with a mix of the howling hardcore delivery and chunky grooves you’d hear from IDLES or late-80s NIck Cave when he was shifting across post-punk and vintage rock. Now I’m the sort of guy who tends to like this sort of subversion - I’ve praised artists like Alex Cameron and Kirin J. Callinan for hitting that sweet spot - but they often got there by being deceptively sharp songwriters who could marshall great hooks. Whereas between the gargled vocal pickups, the cruddy drum mixing, the shambling basslines, and how often the synths and horns will fart over the mix - and given the tempo and horns, I’m surprised more folks aren’t making a ska connection along with the wonky 80s dance pivots - this reminds me of a brand of post-punk art rock trying way too hard to make a point with unflattering ugliness and then succeeding in spite of itself. Because if I felt this came to more, that’d be one thing, but the arc of the album feels warped, with said toxic macho asshole winding up alone of his own free will, but he figures out he wants to be with this girl again and the album ends with a squonky John Prine cover that highlights just how strange and quirky they are but they’re making it work. And that’s a bizarrely chipper ending after ‘To The Country’ where it seems like there’s a lot of willful denial going on about how much any of this will last and how there’s been very little real change, but maybe I’m taking this all too seriously, that everyone here especially the dumbass protagonist with his preening and posturing on cuts like ‘I Feel Alive’ are caricatures on purpose, which given some of the absurd animal metaphors would make sense. But it’s still not really that refined or witty or funny to play into it, especially with that revealing undercurrent of nihilism through ‘Girls & Boys’ - honestly, when the album gets out of its own way for where the post-punk becomes more straightforward, hardscrabble, and danceable, leaning on the textured grooves like on ‘Creatures’ and ‘6 Shooter’ outside of that wonky sample breakdown, it’s at least a bit likable. But otherwise… this album feels like it was trying to be a parody, wound up a half-measure, missed the point to drill deeper, and I didn’t find it that fun at all. It’s got enough okay moments that I’m giving it a 5/10, but by the end I just wanted another Alex Cameron album, that’s all.

Despondent Moon - Enshrouded In Eternal Moonlight - Okay, this one is less driven off of Bandcamp deep-diving and more of the fact I’ve seen Myke C-Town recommend this blend of raw black metal and dungeon synth, which is an offshoot of ambient synth music originating in the late 80s and early 90s that in recent years has seen a bit of a popular revival. Despondent Moon is actually the black metal side project of dungeon synth producer Deorc Weg - ironic that the black metal material has attracted more attention - and this is his third project with this sound. And… well, with the disclaimer that I couldn’t make heads or tails of any vocals on this album given how suffocated they are within the mix, I’d probably say this is Despondent Moon’s most elaborately arranged and yet furious album to date - the keys have picked up hints of symphonic swell, the blast beats hit with more impact than ever, and the tremolo riffs crash across the mix with even more furious abandon. And while it makes for one hell of a visceral texture and it desperately makes me wish for live shows that would create this same sort of pummelling, suffocating vibe… it’s hard to ignore that there isn’t much contrast within the black metal focused cuts, and that this production can smother strong melodies or a truly aggressive low-end groove. There are cuts like ‘Apparition of the Countess Descending The Spiral Staircase’ that can channel and focus the chaotic nightmare a bit more effectively and I dug how ‘Visions of Candelit Exhumation’ was to balance itself midway through, but outside of the more melodic dungeon synth moments which were some nice contrast, this album’s most frustrating element might be its own consistency, in that I just couldn’t find those moments that really leapt off the page for me. Really damn solid and getting a 7/10 as a result, and I imagine folks who really vibe with either raw black metal or dungeon synth will love it, but for me… not quite there yet.

Hospital Bracelet - South Loop Summer - Okay, this is the debut project from a Chicago emo act with a lead singer who fits somewhere between the 90s revival artists like Soccer Mommy and Vagabon and the more immediately striking delivery of a Jetty Bones, where the guitars have a sharper rattling tone off the sinuous bass and a compositional structure that probably owes a bit more to post-hardcore than anything else - hell, just how often the lead vocal line will bend the meter and slide in off-rhythm adds to the fractured intensity of a lot of these pieces. Unfortunately, some of that 90s emo influence means the vocals are shoved a little deep into the mix where they’ve fighting to bounce off the sparking fuzz of the lead melody and the cymbals - which makes sense given how much this album is isolated and yearning without fully exploding or being realized, not the first album in this episode to do so - but a lot of the writing is sharp and incisive enough that I wouldn’t have minded more focus on it, especially when they really start tearing into people who use and exploit others… or have the privilege to treat everyone as expendable. And one dimension I really appreciate about the storytelling is that a lot of the escape they need is compounded by not really having the money to enable it, which only intensifies the fractured pain of an abusive relationship across the midsection of the album and the heartbreaking conclusion where even if you find a season of release, it’s going to fade even if you’ve bought in more deeply. And yet, when placed in contrast with the excited, extended D&D metaphor for seeking love on ‘Sour OG RPG’, it accentuates the homegrown charm of this framing and it becomes an emotional rollercoaster detailed enough to really pull you in. In short… it took a bit to really sink into this album, but I think it’s the first legit great one of 2021. Light 8/10, highly recommended.

Pearl Charles - Magic Mirror - Alright, so fun story: I actually found this artist randomly on Bandcamp and I liked her sweet vocals balanced against some alternative country that flirted with dreamier tones in the song I heard, so I put her on my list to cover in the near future if I caught a moment… and then a friend of mine started raving about the album and that convinced me we might have something really special here. So I checked out her debut EP and album and they were pleasant enough - compositions and writing were good, the production didn’t quite do much to elevate them - but okay, how’s the sophomore album? Well, if anything it reminds me of the countrypolitan sound that slid towards campy, poppier tones in the mid-to-late 70s, with maybe touches of soft rock along the way. And once you slip into that vibe, it’s indeed very well-produced and arranged to pull off that retro feel, almost to the point where it could feel like a throwback - the supple basslines, the gentle analog keyboards and guitars, the blissed out tones that are becoming increasingly popular and given the other retro rock stylings Pearl Charles has gone after has me wonder whether she’s trend-chasing a bit. And I bring that up because once you’re immersed in that atmosphere and ask for more… well, there’s not much to go with, or at least that might seem to be the case. Dig even a little deeper and you notice just how much of this album surroundings itself in misty deflection and glamour in every sense of the word, where even our protagonist might get a little lost in knowing who she really is amidst a lot of listless loneliness either in her relationships or in her art. And that’s an interesting and subtle arc for a dreamy album… until the second half, where it slips pretty damn close to lovestruck hippie platitudes, where the final song is damn near apocalyptic and I’m half reminded of the ending of Lana Del Rey’s Lust For Life. And if it’s trying to be escapist… fine, I get it, but it leaves the album feelings a little more shallow than I was hoping, even if the overall tone and sound is plenty agreeable. If you have a fondness for the most chintzy parts of the 70s - and I do - this is a solid enough pastiche, albeit not much more; very light 7/10, give it a shot.

R.A.P. Ferreira - Bob's Son: R.A.P. Ferreira in the Garden Level Cafe of the Scallops Hotel - alright, arguably the first album released in 2020, one that had a bit of hype already built in for me given how much I loved the moody introspection and density of purple moonlight pages, I had some expectations for this. And that was probably not for the best, because this is R.A.P. Ferreira in one of his most deflective and abstract projects to date, and as such it becomes tough to analyze. The ‘Bob’ in question is referring to the beatnik, surrealist, and jazz poet Bob Kaufmann, who lived one hell of a fascinating and hardscrabble life and where I can absolutely see why R.A.P. Ferreira might find a kinship with him, especially in his impressionistic style and downbeat bleakness creeping between the lines. And thus like purple moonlight pages, this album builds more on existential questions of what drives the creation of that sort of surreal, borderline-anarchistic poetry, and the observational and confrontational role that jazz poetry and later rap has created. And the answer… well, ‘deflective’ is once again the ideal word, because R.A.P. Ferreira is not particularly interested in explaining the roots of his art, or even whether it’s the long term answer to any question, and the tension between that self-restraint and feeling compelled to deliver anyway is the closest thing to an answer we’re going to get… and the power captured in those words in hitting that unique vulnerability to expose his experience or even simply to hit the balance of peace of mind in a nice callback to who told you to think??!!?!?!?!, that is something he prizes deeply. He would never demean himself with definition, which is why the playfully cool hedonism of ‘Abomunist manifesto’ actually works pretty well in capturing that thematic arc. And I wish I felt like I hadn’t seen this multiple times before, especially from R.A.P. Ferreira - I can point to 2018’s budding ornithologists as a close parallel, but circling self-justification is territory he’s been around before, and for as post-modern as he likes to be, this is an album that loves to sidestep hierarchies until he can place himself on the top of one, and the self-awareness doesn’t go that far. It feels weirdly airless here, and given he produced the entire project until his Scallops Hotel alias, it absolutely has the feel of writing a concept into a corner with hooks, song-structure, or even consistent mix quality be damned - as such the compositions feel more free-flowing and fragmented and there are fewer striking moments of revelation or transcendent wordplay or brilliant production - certainly textured and the poet samples are genuinely compelling, but I wish they added to more. And look, I’m a sucker for art about making art, and this brand of postmodernism works for me, but the ouroboros in the hall of self-justified mirrors is starting to starve a bit, that’s all I’m saying. solid 7/10, pretty good stuff, will not be everyone even those in the abstract lane, but it’ll keep you curious.

Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales - talking about Jazmine Sullivan can be kind of complicated, mostly because she feels like an artist I want to like more than I do. She reminds me a lot of K. Michelle in her huge raw vocals, obvious influence from R&B of the past, songwriting that plays comfortably in messy melodrama without much subtlety, and questionable production and compositions that rarely highlight a unique sound to make her own. I’ve listened to her previous three albums and they’re fine, but especially in production I’ve struggled to find elements that best compliment or elevate her delivery. And now on this EP… well, for a self-contained experiment where Sullivan and her collaborators muse through various relationships in the throes of passion or going awry, where some songs lean on indulgent fantasy or a reclamation of power, and others are a bit more vulnerable and introspective, it’s probably one of her most consistent works to date at least in terms of writing and themes. And I like that the project takes a wide angle to these scenes and avoids moralistic framing about sex or relationships - outside of recognizing one’s self and worth, it gives our feminine protagonists moments of triumph but also where their sexual appetites have compromised relationships or where their bad decisions are more complicated to explore. That said, of course this album is not for me. where even the sex songs are less about satisfying an audience and more about these black women finding their own ecstasy, and that’s fine enough on the sex jams that still sound pretty damn good. But then you get ‘Pricetags’ and ‘The Other Side’, and the whole materialistic tricking thing just doesn’t appeal to me whatsoever, even with Anderson .Paak gamely playing along - it’s tying into the commodification of romance and sex that is present in a lot of scenes, so I get its reality and its appeal, but I’m not sure it goes beyond indulgence in ways that other moments here do. I have other quibbles - I still think Jazmine Sullivan can be an unsubtle singer who can overplay quieter moments, but I sure as hell like her raw tones in comparison with the few moments they try to slip autotune or questionable vocal production with the trap elements. And while we’re talking production, it’s certainly more consistent in quality, but Sullivan has struggled to find a unique tone in R&B or soul to really support her compositions, and between the trap and acoustic tones, I’m not hearing what makes these tones uniquely hers, especially when I’d argue H.E.R. and Ari Lennox project more vibes that are uniquely theirs. Look, this is getting a lot of early acclaim in 2021 and I get why - it’s probably Sullivan’s most distinct and refined work to date, and even with that I appreciate she wants to call this an EP, more of a self-indulgent lark that’s just fine for her - but it feels a bit thin, and even if it’s not for me, there’s art in this lane from artists like Jhene Aiko that execute these euphoric drama with a little more resonance. very light 7/10, again, I think this is pretty damn good, but I did want to like it more. Maybe being a bit generous here too.

Ashnikko - DEMIDEVIL - okay, this has been on my radar since at some point last year, when DEMIDEVIL got added to my schedule, but the tape got pushed back to the beginning of 2021 where this became my first real exposure to her. And how to best describe her sound… imagine Rico Nasty but with stylism rooted less in manic hyperpop and more in 2000s pop rock/R&B worship and a warped brand of Cherrytree-plastic theatricality, and given that I grew up in the 2000s, it’s distinctly uncanny to watch which sounds have persisted and proven influential across this project. Which is the nice way of me saying that opposite all the cheap-sounding trap beats, some of the oily and squonky synth choices can test my patience pretty quickly, especially Ashnikko isn’t quite as dynamic or striking compared to Rico Nasty or the increasing number of women who are using this technicolor approach - and like with Nightmare Vacation, the least interesting songs are the ‘party’ cuts. Now there’s also a massive influx of bratty feminist energy to this project that more often than not can be pretty funny when she gets creative in the punishments she metes out to hapless idiot guys around her - I’m a theater guy at heart and I thought ‘Clitoris! The Musical’ was just great - and songs like ‘Little Boy’, ‘Cry’, and ‘Good While It Lasted’ touch on the roots of her anger… but it’s not cutting more deeply for me and I’m not sure why. I thought part of it is because she doesn’t really convey much intensity with her vocals which can’t help but sound very young - which is a bit weird given that she’s 24 but sounds a decade younger - but this is pop, it doesn’t have to go super hard so long as it’s fun and colourful. And while these mixes certainly have some of that, the tape can’t help but feel underproduced in cultivating any sort of atmosphere, especially when you get the trap flip of ‘Sk8r Boi’ - no issues with the updated content, but you gutted the guitar line to do it! I dunno, this is a project where the presentation clearly wants to come across homegrown and scrappy especially with the underproduced trap elements and the attitude, but the obvious expenditure in the samples and the lack of overall edge feels like we’re getting a safer project than she might have intended with the content. And yes, I’m fully aware Avril Lavigne got a lot of similar criticisms on her debut album and they weren’t particularly fair then… but at least Avril had the tunes and could sell it? Ashnikko… at least for me, she’s just not there yet. light 6/10, there’s potential here, I want to hear more.

Why Don’t We - The Good TImes and The Bad Ones - Is it about that time where we’re getting another boy band revival? I feel like we’re not that far removed from the last one, but e-boys are all in on the hair… well anyway, Why Don’t Me is actually an American group that broke out in the past three or four years with a debut in 2018… and I completely understand why it didn’t make waves then, as even if the boys had okay vocal chemistry reminiscent of a late period N’Sync, they were let down by weak writing and pretty shoddy production that didn’t give them much in the way of good tunes to work with. I heard this album was more interesting… and to some extent it is, but if Why Don’t We was intending to use this project to define a unique sound for themselves, there are a lot of choices on this album that strike me as complete misfires, even if I think overall it’s more distinctive. The problem is that said distinctiveness comes through comparisons to other acts - maybe not the best idea to have your first two songs on your pretty short album sample ‘Black Skinhead’ and then ‘1979’ by the Smashing Pumpkins respectively, which are very recognizable moments that Why Don’t We can’t elevate or recontextualize to match the originals! But it goes deeper - I was astounded to discover how much the group tried to keep writing and production in house because there are multiple moments that feel like the group is trying to make Bazzi or Post Malone songs circa Hollywood’s Bleeding with a pop trap boy band twist, from their vocal cadence to especially their rhythm section, and that doesn’t help a group develop its members’ unique voices or presence; hell, Skrillex shows up to produce ‘For You’ and his production is more distinctive than anything these guys deliver. And look, I’m fully aware I’ve gone through multiple boy band eras at this point and it’s probably not that fair to compare these guys to their forebears, but I’m not hearing a ton of vocal differentiation that you even get in the better k-pop boy bands - outside of Daniel Seavey’s wheezy tones - and it’s not like they’re doing anything to make the content stand out here either. Love songs, breakup songs, questions of anxiety that can be soothed with the right companionship, a few raunchier songs I’m surprised they got away with and that they can’t really sell - especially ‘Look At Me’, which opens with a sample of The Joker from The Dark Knight which is deeply awkward in context - but none of it rises above the best in the genre. Yes, I’m happy to hear the occasional vocal harmonization creep back in and I’m sure to their young target audience this’ll play well, but as someone who has heard a lot of the best this genre has had to offer, the most distinctive moments here are sampled from other places. 5/10, I’ve heard much better.