on the pulse - 2021 - #12 - polo g, emotional oranges, marina, thomas rhett, wolf alice

I think the lesson to take from this week is that expectations did not help me in either direction - some albums overachieved, some did the opposite, and some were exactly what I expected but didn’t give me more to work with so I wound up disappointed. Well, strap in, this is going to be another long one: this is On The Pulse!

Thomas Rhett - Country Again Side A - I could be really snarky about this album, starting with the question of whether Thomas Rhett was ever making the sort of neotraditional material for which he’s aspiring now instead of flitting between pop country, bro-country, and the offense to human dignity that was Tangled Up. But if Thomas Rhett was using this opportunity to make something with a little more organic warmth and more diverse songwriting, I wasn’t against the idea in principle. And now months late talking about it.. well, to be very blunt, it sounds less like Luke Combs and more like Thomas Rhett adding the faintest dash of neotraditional country to his pop-leaning sound, which does on average make it better but not nearly as interesting as it could be. And that’s a little surprising to me - Thomas Rhett’s father was an artist active in the mid-90s, he knows what this sound is, but his ‘return to roots’ is not especially convincing when the other artist he references most frequently is Eric Church, who across the majority of his career I would describe as country-adjacent, at best! It’s hard to escape the feeling that this ‘return to roots’ is more about the fact that this sound is rising in popularity in Nashville rather than something for which Rhett has an affinity, and that makes the attempts to match with his own thinner sound full of obviously programmed percussion and fake handclaps kind of awkward, especially with the super-in-front vocal blending that is distractingly inorganic, especially with the higher backing vocals - honestly, despite feeling more pop I’d argue Life Changes feels like the album that’s more authentic to who he is, especially as he already had the settled family man songs on that project! Because it really is the content that feels most frustrating, because like on previous albums it’s way too easy for Rhett to default to list-driven tracks that aren’t far removed from his bro-country days - and ‘Put It On Ice’ is pretty much that - swapping in neotraditional signifiers along with mildly embarrassing moments like ‘To The Guys That Date My Girls’ which he just can’t sell. Which is frustrating because ‘Heaven Right Now’ is a storytelling moment with more pathos and proves, once again, he can make songs with more of an organic narrative punch, and after the success of ‘Marry Me’, you’d hope he would double down… but no. And yes, I’m not going to complain about pedal steel or how good the fiddle sounds on ‘Blame It On A Backroad’ or the harmonica on ‘Ya Heard’… but let’s not make this more than what it is, and in the snippets where this album shows how it could be more, I wind up disappointed. 6/10, Thomas Rhett fans will have fun with it, but if you’re expecting a smarter or more country pivot, you only get traces of it, hate to say.

Liz Phair - Soberish - Hey kids, want to have Liz Phair discourse in 2021? Because honestly, I don’t - Exile In Guyville is a transgressive and forward-thinking 90s classic … but it was a breakthrough where she could never quite recapture the biting, jagged magic again, mostly an issue of the writing being emulated to the point of cliche but also because the album feels very timelocked to that specific, acrid moment of early 90s feminist indie rock and punk. The problem with her 2000s output and pop pivot on the self-titled and Somebody’s Miracle weren’t that they were bad for what they were trying to do, they just never stood out from the crowd in the way her best material did. And given that Funstyle alternated between tedious and utterly misguided, I had no clue where an eleven year-hiatus would leave Liz Phair, given just how far she was away from her best work - I’ll admit I had rock bottom expectations. And that was probably the best way to approach this, because while it’s nowhere close to her peak, this is actually pretty decent, even if you can tell that there’s enough misguided clunkiness to the instrumentation to hold it back from getting any better. I don’t know how much of this was due to budget constraints or Phair’s lingering and questionable fondness for synthetic elements she’s never been able to integrate all that well - I imagine the latter because she brought back Brad Wood, the original producer from Exile In Guyville and who has had a storied run for decades now, the biggest standout being his work on Stage Four by Touché Amoré - but the touches of gauzy, warbling synth, underweight drum machines, and questionably synthetic vocal layering do nobody any favours, especially against the ramshackle acoustics and touches of jagged electric guitar. It leaves the feeling of Phair trying to strike the balance between her indie roots and a poppier side for which she’s still very comfortable - and sure, the majority of audiences have absolutely caught up to accepting it, but the integration feels more beholden to an awkward quirkiness than flattering the song, which is also very true of Phair’s writing where she still has a taste for jokes that might feel more funny to her than anyone else. But I’m inclined to be charitable here because a.) this has been true for decades, b.) it’s more of a stylistic choice rather than a failing and this is absolutely a matter of taste because I know this brand of intentional weirdness will work for some, and c.) the rest of the compositions and writing feel pretty damn good! Not kidding about that - the one benefit to Phair keeping her pop instincts is that she’s got some of her best hooks since the self-titled, and this time she effectively marries it with the lived-in maturity that’s always had a ton of wry charm. It reminds me of Alanis Morissette’s criminally overlooked album from last year in that Phair has nothing left to prove and that gives her more flexibility as she sketches out the complicated stories of existential angst, relationship implosions, substance abuse, and the ramshackle human ugliness where her remarkably even-handed framing has always been her strongest asset, where the guys are still dicks but she observes more dimensions to them even as she holds up the harshest mirror to herself, be it imagining a commiseration with Lou Reed or the sardonic exit of ‘Good Side’ or the deflective angst and stumbling moderation of the title track and ‘Dosage’. And outside of the album running a little shy on momentum by the very end… yeah, I enjoyed this a decent bit. 7/10 - maybe it’s got the benefit of low expectations, but I had fun with this one, and if this is the Liz Phair we have back… I’m happy to have her.

Left at London - t.i.a.p.f.y.h. - So when I covered Left At London last year, it was one of those cases where I quite liked what I had heard, but I was also aware of how hit-and-miss it could feel in its choice of tones and production, which means that with time and refinement I was probably going to have more luck finding something I’d like. What we got instead was a project that Nat Puff created in two months as a part of an artist residency program, where even more rough edges were left in along the way in the process of getting a workable album released. And there’s a part of me that would accept some of them regardless - thematically this is a project exploring the messy and deeply complicated hell of battling mental illness, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation when it feels like both people and coping mechanisms just aren’t working, where the album’s creation process feels just as harrowing in order to drive towards some vestige of relief. As such, when it gets raw and uncomfortably bleak it’s part of the point, where creating the album is as much of its own reward, where even if she acknowledges it might not mean all that much on a greater scale in the end, there’s a raw moment of triumph to claw towards the end still breathing - even if she doesn’t want to live, she doesn’t want to miss these moments which wind up their own reward. Just a shame the production is kind of a mess - yes, I get that she had limited time and that the mess is at least part of the point, but ‘rough around the edges’ doesn’t have to translate to painfully underweight and inconsistent bass mixing, breakbeat-esque trap drums and vocals that clip the mix even before the pitch-shifting, and electric guitars that are more undercooked fuzz than fire. And it’s a shame because the melodies are more robust and theatrical than ever, with the shining high point early of ‘The Ballad of Marion Zioncheck’ which tells the story of a labour lawyer and Congressman from the 1930s who likely committed suicide as a result of mental illness in a time where the systems were just not equipped to handle it - and in some cases not that far removed from today - and I almost wish Nat had doubled down on this. But the production does remind me of the frustrating shortcomings that you often get with off-Broadway albums - you appreciate the rawness and attempts at grandeur, but too often it feels restrained from exploding as much as it could. I dunno, there’s always been a ramshackle side to Left At London that I would describe as very hit-and-miss, and this is probably the roughest it’s sounded to date - and I include some of the increasingly scattered writing in that - but there’s a raw potency I can’t deny, and when the polish does materialize, it really shines. And with a thankfully restrained runtime… yeah, light 7/10, definitely an acquired taste but one that despite all odds, I think i’ll defend.

Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend - …I mean, on some level give them credit for beating people to the sound? But this is now the third time I’ve reviewed Wolf Alice and their brand of 90s revivalism which I found underwhelming in 2015, slightly more workable in 2017 courtesy of a change in producers, but as a whole a band that’s too beholden to its collision of influences to produce songs with impact for me, especially given that I’ve never been impressed by Ellie Rowsell’s vocals or hooks - and I went back to both of their last albums before this review, and if anything I’m left feeling there’s even less here. Well, this time they’ve swapped producers again for Markus Dravs, who is most well-known for his work with Arcade Fire, Coldplay, early Mumford & Sons, and Hozier’s second album, and… well, it’s tricky. I said before Wolf Alice is an act too beholden to their influences and more than ever, even as this album tries to keep going bigger for more theatrical bombast and some of their better hooks, it can become glaringly obvious when and where they’re pulling from certain sections of alt-rock from the 90s and 2000s, and for those of us who know that era, simply pumping the sound with reverb and some oddly bass-heavy unbalanced mixes doesn’t always obscure the fact that on a compositional level, some of these tracks can feel really underwhelming, which in Wolf Alice tradition is mostly courtesy of underpowered guitars that when they have any loudness are more fuzz than tune. Now I’ll admit this is me again cracking down on retro fetishism, but with Wolf Alice it’s a bit different, mostly because this has always been a band that has relied way more on production texture than actual hooks, so while I appreciate more variety - it certainly sounds like Wolf Alice’s most expensive album to date - it doesn’t get away from the underlying problems that this time around will be ignored by too man on the sheer cinematic ‘bigness’ of the sound; to make a very late 90s reference, look at the history of projects like Be Here Now for the depressing trend that equates scale with quality! Part of this is, again, Rowsell’s vocals: I’ve never thought she was a gripping or interesting presence, and while the heavier overdubs definitely help more, whenever she bends her tone to sound more like her influences it doesn’t help her stick out, and whoever told her that rapping was a good idea or that fits with anything was wrong to a criminal extent - even if it might have been a thing in certain stripes of late 90s alt rock doesn’t mean it was a good idea then or that she needed to replicate it! Now this would be the area where great writing could potentially set this above… and again, it’s really spotty. Do I like the jaded L.A. ennui of ‘Delicious Things’ because it captures that glamorous depression effectively, or because it’s one of the best songs Lana Del Rey never cut? Do I like ‘Safe From Heartbreak (if you never fall in love)’ because of its ironic juxtaposition with jaunty 60s folk or because it’s actually poignant? Does the back-and-forth cycle of these relationships coaxed through depression and melodrama have enough distinctive flavour to ride on ironic stylism or does it all just feel underweight like so much of the 90s detachment could at its worst moments? The frustrating thing is that by the end with the breakup and moment of healing with the girls, I get on paper the pathos they’re trying to capture… but at its core, it still winds up feeling way more thin and derivative than it should, even in its best moments. Now I don’t think it’s precisely bad as a result - in fact this album has some of Wolf Alice’s best moments, and arguably it’s their most memorable album… but not for the right reasons, which is why it’s a 6/10 and only a slight recommendation from me; if you haven’t heard these tones before, it might serve as a good introduction… but if you have, this might not impress you much.

Slayyyter - Troubled Paradise - I’ll admit there was a part of me that was curious about Slayyyter - take the modern, plastic but forward-thinking flair of hyperpop, but clean up some of the mixing issues, refine the hooks, make it more palatable to an audience that’s not always onboard with it… which I’ll admit includes me on occasion. And yet her 2019 mixtape didn’t quite get there - the comparison I saw a lot was Britney Spears by way of bubblegum bass, but it reminded me of the era where Spears’ production was overworked and didn’t always flatter the hooks, and the shallow materialism of the content remains the one part of hyperpop that has never gelled for me, even if they’re approaching it ironically. But now for a full-length album… well, one of the underlying gimmicks to Slayyyter’s sound is she aims to strike a balance between making all of the implied sexual subtext of early 2000s pop outright in-your-face text, alongside more raw and confessional moments, but what seems to have gone missed is that when the pop divas of that era had gold, it came courtesy of killer melodic hooks to back up the slick grooves, and if there’s something that holds Troubled Paradise, it’s just how undercooked it can feel in that department. Don’t get me wrong, it’s got the same overproduced sultriness and a lot of the punch you’d expect from hyperpop, but it’s low on subtlety or innovation in comparison with the scene, and without a stronger sense of tune, at least on a musical level it doesn’t seem to show a ton of variation. Kind of a shame, because when you shift towards the content, there is a bit more nuance than Slayyyter will likely get credit for between the lines. For one, you can tell the raunchier elements are just as much of an empowering escape than anything, maybe in therapeutic because on slower moments of melancholy reflection on exes, she realizes on ‘Clouds’ that despite reaching unexpected heights of success, she’s not really happy. So when Slayyyter embraces her fantasies with more graphic detail, she’s no villain so much as someone finding and claiming their own release, in the same territory as Britney and especially Kesha did. So again, even if this brand of hyperpop isn’t quite for me - Charli XCX is still in the lead in that department, there’s a part of me that does respect this, for both ‘Clouds‘ and ‘Villain as well as ‘Throatzillaaa‘ and ‘Cowboys’ - it’s nice to have both. Solid 6/10, not bad at all.

KennyHoopla & Travis Barker - SURVIVOR’S GUILT: THE MIXTAPE - Alright, easy joke about Travis Barker being on everything aside, KennyHoopla has been a name I’ve been looking to dig into for a while - his breakthrough EP dropped last year was a glossy fusion of early Bloc Party-esque post-punk and modern emo rap, and while there might be some parallels in vocal delivery, content, and sheer commitment to the expansive vibe to that last Trippie Redd album that also had Travis Barker all over it, KennyHoopla had a level of refinement in composition and production that made me intensely curious about this tape. And… well, you can certainly hear Travis Barker’s influence in the increasingly crisp and compressed drumwork and mixing - not quite a full pop punk pivot but if you were a fan of that smoky post-punk atmosphere there’s much less of it this time, and I’m not convinced that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s just me, but it has the feel of pushing KennyHoopla to a more accessible lane - at least until he tries sharper screams and growls and not only do they sound pretty unconvincing, the mix has nowhere near the guitar crunch or coursing groove to support him well there, which frustratingly was a very similar issue to what happened on that Trippie Redd project, only now it’s in the service of making a unique sound less interesting! Maybe if the bass had any presence or Barker could harness the twisted alchemy that managed to coalesce once for Machine Gun Kelly - because I’d argue some of the hooks here are as good and ‘silence is also an answer//’ is probably the closest thing to the 2020 sound - I’d be more supportive of this. But between the abbreviated runtime at twenty minutes and how the content feels oddly more basic as well in its clingy relationship angst / ‘I hate LA’ sentiments - although there are fragments of darker sentiments across ‘survivor’s guilt//’ and I actually like the more goofy sense of melodrama on ‘smoke break//’ - I’m left feeling that this feels more Travis Barker’s project and it’s not better for it. Let’s keep this as just a mixtape, and I really hope KennyHoopla can get back to his own sound fast. 6/10, should be better.

Sleater-Kinney - Path Of Wellness - You know, I was one of those people who defended that last Sleater-Kinney album, the last that Janet Weiss played on before a messy exit from the band and one that reflected as much of St. Vincent’s influence as their own… but even then, I could hear the cracks forming. And that definitely had me worried about their new project here, which was self-produced, the first time since co-producing their early 90s debut… and yeah, if it feels like there are some things missing, it’s exactly where you think they are. Not saying the session drummers are bad, but their playing is nothing special and given how underwhelming and inconsistent the progressions and fills are, you can tell that the duo weren’t all that interested in giving the percussion much cracking presence… or really giving the album much punch as a whole. Normally on a Sleater-Kinney album there’s some sense of urgency, but with the bass feeling increasingly formless but also leaden and overemphasized, and the electric guitar having more fuzz and squeal than muscle opposite the goopy keyboards, you can tell just how much they’re missing production to make the hooks pop. Or maybe it’s an issue of tempo - this is the most languid Sleater-Kinney has ever sounded, closer to mid-2010s Lydia Loveless in mid-tempo alternative or indie rock, albeit with nothing close to her hooks or with the vocals punching up anything, and I guess that’s understandable given that punks get older and slow down. But normally they do that to accentuate lyrics or atmosphere and with the production so uninspired and the compositions so listless, the writing… also feels r underwhelming. And beyond how the lyrics feel a bit more basic and hamfisted in their poetry all around, I can pinpoint what’s missing: tension. The best Sleater-Kinney songs wound so things so tightly that the catharsis of release produced so much exhilaration, whereas this album never comes close to it - the title track highlights how they’re on a path of wellness; left unspoken is that those that pester them aren’t on it, where even the love songs feel held at a distance. And sure, ‘No Knives’ and ‘Complex Female Characters’ are all about that subversion of unfair expectations on women, but it becomes metatext trying to justify making the album less interesting for everyone, and it’s a toothless deconstruction when the album swings around to try and make you care about their healing in the face of the pandemic or the violence in Portland, where by the final song they go to ‘love will bring us together’ message that feels depressingly naive for a band that came out riot grrl . But the line that’s most revealing to me is on ‘Down The Line’: ‘It’s not the summer we were promised / It’s the summer we deserved’, which in the wake of last year and especially the exit of Janet Weiss just feels so self-centered and detached from reality that it’s a little gross. So yeah, I guess I can respect the mood of giving us nothing, but the flipside to that is I have no reason to care. 5/10, comfortably their worst and most boring album to date, you can skip it.

MARINA - Ancient Dreams In A Modern Land - So listening to this album, especially after how downbeat and forgettable MARINA’s last project was… I want to describe that experience, because it was something! Keep in mind I still hold The Family Jewels as nearly one of the best pop records of the 2010s, so to hear her back pushing towards a more upbeat, colourful brand of electro-pop rock with some of the sharpest hooks she’s had since FROOT was an immediate pleasant surprise and makes sense as a return to her roots, especially given she had a much stronger hand on songwriting and production! And considering mainstream pop producers have always struggled a bit to flatter her unique throatier voice and theatricality, to hear this pivot was legit exciting, and it has some of her best hooks and most consistent production to date, especially on the piano ballads where she can flex more of that ‘theatre girl’ side for which I may have a weakness… as if that’s not flagrantly obvious. So okay, a return to the bombast and flair that made The Family Jewels incredible, obviously this is the pop surprise of the year, right? Well, this is where we have to go to the lyrics… and let me start by saying that she specifically intended to get more political and socially conscious on this album, give her material a different sort of edge than what you typically see in this sound, and she does not hold back on songs like ‘Man’s World’ and ‘Purge The Poison’ and ‘New America’, the last of which is weird because she’s Welsh and there’s no shortage of analogous topics in the UK! And to be clear, for the most part, the eco-feminist, left-leaning material is my wheelhouse, and I didn’t even mind the bluntness that much… but if I’m going through my three P’s of political art, this might have the power and some of the populism, but it’s not exactly precise, or well executed with much nuance - if you’re going to complain about capitalism, maybe don’t brag about being a millionairess on ‘Venus Fly Trap’… especially if it’s the best banger you have on the album! The comparison I’ve seen made is very 2014-Tumblr, where you can respect the exuberance but it can come across tryhard and lacking nuance… all the more frustrating when the more straightforward ballad material and relationship melodrama is considerably better executed. And I know how that might come across, so let me stress this: easily her best album since The Family Jewels, on sound and delivery alone it’s legit great and I’ll actually defend the slower moments that seem to lose people, because I’d argue ‘Flowers’ and ‘Goodbye’ are terrific closing songs. And again, I like the political direction, and even the inelegant moments don’t detract enough from me to give this a light 8/10… but a bit more refinement in the details could have made this on par with her best. Frankly, I’m just happy we got this, she’s back on the right path.

Emotional Oranges - The Juicebox - So those of you who remember the EPs I reviewed back in 2019 might remember how I thought Emotional Oranges made some of the sharpest and most emotionally layered R&B I’ve heard in recent years - hell, I’d argue The Juice Vol. 1 was one of the best projects of the 2010s, certainly one of the most underrated. So after seeing them kill it live, this was one of my hotly anticipated projects of 2021; yeah, it was overstuffed with guest features but maybe that would add more lyrical dimensionality to their storytelling, which was their greatest secret weapon. And… well, there’s a reason that this is showing up in On The Pulse than in a solo review where I can shout their praises, because I can’t say I’m nearly as impressed with this as I wanted to be, especially in comparison with their starmaking debut EPs. See, one of the issues some have cited with the duo is that their faceless nature doesn’t really help their material punch as strongly as it could, and while I would argue the writing and slinky grooves often made up for it in spades, when the duo is playing host to a guest on every single track, it’s hard not to feel like the duo is playing host to everyone else, providing a foundation where everyone can play with their formula but not elevate Emotional Oranges’ cuts to a higher level. Maybe it’s the very summery, tropical feel across the percussion and many of the grooves that still set impeccable vibes thanks to the great bass foundation, supple guitars, and the great chemistry between our duo - this is an exceptionally easy album to enjoy - but even this wasn’t really the vibe or tone they had previously cultivated across the best moments on the first two The Juice EPs, so it kind of places the duo a bit outside of their own established comfort zone and slight darker vibe as well, which doesn’t help the complaints of anonymity. And it’s also not helped by the content, which is where having a guest on every single song means you can’t really develop an arc - and in the case of Vince Staples, he just sticks out like a sore thumb on ‘Back & Forth’ - and the project feels more like a mixtape or summer sampler rather than engage with some of that moody complexity, especially when you realize it’s shorter than their last two EPs! Granted, some of that complexity is still there - there’s still interplay between the duo, you get the smoky hookups for the wrong reasons - but even as the album ends on a wistful note, it’s not like we don’t already have ‘Corners Of My Mind’ here. And overall… you know, it’s lightweight, it’s enjoyable, there’s still a high enough level of quality to convince me it is pretty great… but only just. Light 8/10… still looking for that next step to put this over the top.

Polo G - Hall Of Fame - So it’s been conspicuous, at least for me, that I haven’t covered a lot of the albums from the most recent crop of trap and drill artists - I’ve waited until we get the album bombs on Billboard BREAKDOWN and I go from there, and it tends to work, but with Polo G I wanted to make an exception - he’s arguably one of the better writers of the new school, his command of melody has only gotten more refined, and given how he’s been expanding and refining his sound I had some hopes that this would show an advancement from The GOAT… and what I got was a standard Polo G album. This is a problem I’ve observed with a fair number of the recent upstarts in that there is a standard of quality, especially when it comes to Polo G as a good rapper with some decent thematic complexity in showing how his newfound success has led to real emotional clashes with a bloody life in the streets he can’t escape, but few transcendent moments that elevate or vary the formula. Maybe that’s why there are so many guest appearances on this project to vary the guitar-backed mid-tempo trap melancholy with smatterings of piano, because once you get through the twenty songs on this thing, you wind up remembering more of them than unique moments from Polo G himself. Unfortunately it’s not always for the better - yes, the late Pop Smoke delivers a solid hook, G Herbo steps up well, and DaBaby has the most intensity on a verse I’ve heard in maybe over a year, but as I already said on Billboard BREAKDOWN Lil Wayne did not bring his A-game… and sadly, neither did Nicki Minaj or Young Thug who clearly phoned in their verses, and for some ungodly reason this is another example of where Rod Wave doesn’t click with him either - they should be a natural fit, why does this keep happening? But the larger issue is that with such uniform production of good but not stellar quality - which could also go for the content and hooks which start running together fast - you start getting the uneasy impression that Polo G’s ceiling might not be as high as one hopes - yeah, ‘RAPSTAR’ is an excellent song, but it’s an early high point that’s not really matched outside of maybe ‘Party Lyfe’. And you can tell he’s struggling for more variation - ‘Broken Guitars’ is a pretty underwhelming Juice WRLD impression, there’s a few drill moments that he can’t quite sell all that well, and yes, I know how that looks coming from the white boy from the city as he references on ‘Toxic’, but I’m not looking for him to go harder, but deeper - go into more specifics in the emotional drama, of which his introspection remains his greatest strength, more storytelling in the vein of ‘Bloody Canvas’ which winds up too late to make as much impact, or get into the messy systemic complexities that lead to scenes like this in the streets. But I also get the feeling that’d make a project like this, stuffed full of singles and clearly targeting a stream-trolling album bomb on the Hot 100, it’d make it all way too real, and it’s a shame he won’t push that next boundary. And while I’ve had questions about Polo G’s management for months now, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that they’re pushing him in a more accessible, but far less interesting and career-shortening direction, because as soon as this sound gets stale, this album will feel increasingly bloated and unfocused. Now even with that, there’s enough consistent quality here for me to give this a very light 7/10… but I feel like I’m being generous, and if Polo G doesn’t shift things up very soon, even a good standard will wind up forgotten; after all, a hall of fame is more likely to remember the great moments than consistency.