on the pulse - 2021 - #24 - summer walker, walk the moon, aesop rock x blockhead, idles, snail mail, brandi carlile

This week feels a bit odd - a lot is getting overshadowed by a massive release that I’ll probably have to cover solo at some point, but even then it feels like we’re speeding towards a year-end that might wind up quieter that I was expecting. Not complaining, as that’ll allow me to empty out my own personal backlog, but before we get there, let’s get On The Pulse!

Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days - Well, this one is long overdue. I knew I would have to make the time to do the full deep dive on Brandi Carlile’s hefty back catalog the first time I heard her contributions on The Highwomen, especially given how much critical acclaim and respect she had accumulated in the meantime. And now having done so… she didn’t click immediately for me, as I think it took until 2009’s Give Up The Ghost that she sounded like she had grown into her uniquely powerful voice and finally got production that could flatter it, and from there… well, the best way to describe the projects that follow is that even as the writing and vocals got consistently stronger, the production remained a product of its time. Bear Creek is very reminiscent of a early 2010s folk project, The Firewatcher’s Daughter sounds imported from mid-2010s indie rock especially in the guitars and egregious vocal mixing, and By The Way, I Forgive You has her with Dave Cobb and it feels like a culmination across the board, easily one of her best. Now this time around… it’s honestly a little tricky to contextualize this one. Again working with Dave Cobb but with Shooter Jennings co-producing, it’s an album taking stock of the world, with multiple songs attempting to impart advice to her children but also grappling with people she’s close to making bad decisions or being more fallible than she’d want to admit - and that includes herself, where for as much as she wants to embody a maternal figure, she’s acutely aware that she can be a mama wolf with fangs; hell, there’s a song called ‘Mama Werewolf’ that literally plays into that tempestuous territory. And that contributes to the balancing act of this album: half tender, soft-spoken moments which can lead to a few absolute tear-jerkers but also might run to the tepid side on a song or two; but also half picking up more rollicking intensity or raw fury where Brandi Carlile’s incredible firepower can come to bear, but how well she’s supported in the mix can feel a little inconsistent, although there’s almost something borderline prog to the melodies and percussion arrangement on ‘Broken Horses’ that really surprised me and reminded me of what Jason Isbell did on Reunions last year. In fact, there is a tonal inconsistency with this album, because while she’ll hit peaks within both sides of the balance, they’re peaks that overshadow an album that can’t quite consistently land that gutpunch. Now to be fair, she hits those high points so effectively that it’s hard to complain, and I’m not sure there’s a bad song here - it opens strongly with the ballad ‘Right On Time’, ‘Broken Horses’ and ‘Mama Werewolf’ kick a lot of ass, ‘When You’re Wrong’ is absolutely devastating, and the one-two punch of the story calling out American Christian hypocrisy about immigration on ‘Sinners, Saints & Fools’ - along with Cobb’s best in the industry strings production - balanced with the tired mature heartbreak of ‘Throwing Good After Bad’ might be one of the best closers on any album this year, but I’m just not sure there’s enough meat to the other songs, especially given this feels weirdly short at only ten tracks and under forty minutes. That said, while I’m not sure this is her best, the best moments on this album yank it up to a light 8/10, if only because Brandi Carlile is insanely talented and enough songs are either pulse-pounding or legit tearjerkers. Respect where it’s due, glad to finally be properly on board.

Snail Mail - Valentine - Am I the only one who feels like we’re getting another one of those vaguely 90s-inspired indie rock acts where the majority of the appeal is locked in a pretty rote formula with rarely enough tunes, writing, or punch to rise above? Like, I listened to her 2018 debut, which I remember getting some hype, and it was fine - pretty well-produced and decently performed for what it was, but there was very little that stood out for me. And while there’s a little more to this one… I’m still not all that impressed? Part of it is frontwoman Lindsey Jordan’s voice - a flattened, not particularly strong husky tone that audibly cracks all across the album that certainly has texture and expressiveness, but can lack a greater sense of control, which I guess might fit the intended flawed romanticism of the album but occasionally can hit a weird timbre for me. It ties into the tension at the core of the album between how all-encompassing the feelings of love can be versus the reality that can come with buying in that much, not just putting a partner on a pedestal, but also relationships that might run their course or just the reality of the passion cooling… but it’s not really a tension I feel materializes all that well. Part of this is the poetry from Jordan which can feel pretty barebones and direct overall, but it also doesn’t really lean into any giddiness or pleasure that would come with these romantic moments - the love connection feels draining and on a few cuts oddly sour in its compulsion, and while that might be the reality of the situation, it’s not one that has much larger appeal, unless you’re a submissive who is into that emotional engulfing feeling that in its own way feels undercut by all the self-aware commentary on it. Granted, the production and instrumentation doesn’t help, with a bit more orchestrated gloss with some strings and slightly brighter guitars - along with some oily synths that really don’t add any sparkle to the title track or ‘Forever (Sailing)’ - but minus grooves with any fluid definition - on cuts like ‘Ben Franklin’ they can feel really blocky, ‘Madonna’ winds up considerably stronger in contrast - or really potent hooks, a lot of these compositions default to a very 90s / early 2000s brand of indie pop rock that, to be frank, can’t match anything Charli Adams did with Bullseye earlier this year. And that’s not the fault of Snail Mail - I blame the larger critical establishment that can overhype the hell out of projects like this seemingly without digging much deeper - but I also know a part of this is how my own emotional dynamics with relationships is in very different territory, so I’m more lukewarm than outright negative towards this. 6/10, it’s got moments, but I’m not going to return to it.

IDLES - Crawler - At some point in the past two years, the discourse around IDLES got completely stupid. I want to say it was last year around Ultra Mono, where a combination of questionable scene backlash, some really disingenuous criticism, and an unfortunately weaker album left the band in an oddly exposed place, where the band only seemed to be getting more popular but the writing was losing its pathos for a weird sourness, and the grooves were feeling stiffer, and you could tell the band seemed to be in an uncertain place. It gave me the feeling that Crawler was either going to be a return to form or go off the rails, let the band showcase more dimensionality and flair… so why am I left with the feeling that this album is both less fun and interesting than it should be? Let’s get this out of the way, this is probably IDLES’ most diverse project in terms of tones and frontman Joe Talbot trying to sing more, with a mix that feels more expansive and searching… and that’s the nice way of saying this is going right down the by-the-numbers retro post-punk rabbit hole when it comes to faded, greyscale progressions with ugly tones and more texture than melody because the band is trying to take themselves more seriously and overcorrect from everyone calling lyrics near-parody on Ultra Mono. And I think this missed the point of that criticism - it wasn’t that the band was funny or incapable of taking on serious subject matter, as their worst critics often conveniently ignored, it was that the social commentary interwoven with the humour felt increasingly shallow and broad and playing for mass appeal at the expense of smarter barbs, and going more serious with blunt lyricism gives you a much narrower margin for error, almost calling back to Brutalism. But also going for slower tempos, more faded production, weaker hooks, pushing Talbot deeper into the mix on a longer album with the seriousness and sourness more at the forefront and way more reliance on heavy percussion, where all the consequences of their reckless abandon are hitting them in the face, the balance is off even if there are moments where the guitars and basslines embrace some clanking, distorted noise rock sizzle and their knack for heaviness and groove is as potent as ever. And look, I’m not denying that there’s something therapeutic about an album like this - where you’re confronted with the cycles of addiction and vice and have to crawl out of it, probably all the more harrowing coming from an act like IDLES, and the moments where they can accept their fragile humanity are the most potent here in terms of triumphant energy with a good ending that makes up for a lot… but part of this has me feeling that IDLES aren’t playing to their own strengths and if anything are playing against them, especially when there’s nothing close to even a ‘Model Village’ here. There’s something cruelly ironic on an album confronting its protagonists where the band’s limitations are all the more sharply defined… just wish it was better. 6/10

Aesop Rock & Blockhead - Garbology - This might surprise you: I was a lot more worried about this album than you might expect. Not because Aesop Rock can’t crank out consistent quality or that Blockhead wouldn’t work for him - they’ve been collaborating for decades - but because I’ve seen a lot of underground MCs on the conspiratorial fringe fall into some nasty shit during the past two years of quarantine, and given one of them - Homeboy Sandman - was on this album, I was concerned what could potentially happen. Thankfully my concerns were put to rest here because Garbology feels a lot more like a slightly more streamlined and twisted follow up Spirit World Field Guide than falling down any sort of internet rabbit hole of bullshit… mostly because Aesop Rock seems generally distrustful of the internet in general as he continues to become more of the underground’s wizened archmage amidst the ruins. When I reviewed his last project I highlighted how well-equipped Aesop Rock’s music and quasi-paranoid observational musings were for the time but for a project actually written within the throes of the pandemic this one feels both darker and more immediate, where it makes way too much sense for billy woods to come on and contribute backing vocals and once again there’s a lot of focus on the abandoned, decaying world in his midst; digging through the trash to see what can be salvaged. And while Aesop Rock remains top of his class in presenting this detail, and Blockhead’s production is appropriately hardscrabble in its percussion and warped balance of glittery synth and rougher organic samples while actually featuring some better vocal blending that Aesop Rock’s own production, I am left feeling that this does feel like familiar territory for everyone involved. Aesop Rock has been building on this subject matter for a few years now, especially in the face of all the unknowns to come, and while I appreciate he himself saying that it’s often less deep than it seems, as well as immediacy, I wish there was a little more personal detail like the best moments from The Impossible Kid, or a greater sense of storytelling or narrative to add more structure to the wordplay, with the best example here being the short conversations about death on ‘All The Smartest People’, or the consumptive ooze he seems to become on ‘Oh Fudge’ - the guy has a great sense of humour, I’ll give him that. I will say that the darker tone overall does give the weirdness a more pensive vibe - Aesop Rock is conscious of how the strange decay can become normalized and what that can do to the psyches of ordinary people, especially with a more aggressive police force cracking down on those looking to discover more or seek change, and even if the album has pretty solid hooks overall - ‘Difficult’ being one of his best in recent memory - it might wind up as a tougher listen, not quite having the same sense of wonder. That said, it’s really hard for me not to enjoy untangling an Aesop Rock album, and while it’s not his best, I enjoyed this a lot - light 8/10, not his best, but definitely worth hearing.

Walk The Moon - Heights - So it’s been four years since the last Walk The Moon album, and I’m not going to say their brand of indie rock has fallen out of favour or lost its lustre beyond the retro style getting driven into the ground by so many festival acts looking for a cash-in. But even back when I reviewed Talking Is Hard in 2014, while I appreciated their willingness to experiment within genres with a lot of colourful textures and a few great hooks, there was a weird hollowness to their approach where their influences were obvious and their writing never amounted to more, only reinforced further on What If Nothing in 2017. I found myself wondering if this band just got more credit than deserved because ‘Shut Up And Dance’ felt so much bigger than the slew of forgettable “indie” commercialcore that would follow it… but then I took a different tactic: call it playing to a lower standard, but maybe it made more sense to treat Walk The Moon more like a fun, splashy pop act that isn’t trying to make deeper statements; more style than substance, but that can work in this lane. And thus with this album… look, I may have already spoiled this in a recent episode of Rock Coliseum, but I have to call it like I see it: this album is split between some of the most shameless 80s pop rock pandering I’ve heard in recent memory - ‘Fire In Your House’ feels like a blatant riff of ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ by Michael Jackson, ‘What You Can’t Look Up’ is an obvious U2 pastiche, and ‘Someone Else’s Game’ has a heartland rock-tinged rollick that would have been pulled from the late 80s or very early 90s - and flagrantly ripping off The 1975 on cuts like ‘Giants’, ‘Don’t Make Me’, and then Bleachers for good measure with ‘Population of Two’. And yet I had fun with it - it goes back to what I said about Ed Sheeran a few weeks ago, when you’re calling back to retro sounds with colour and flair and can embrace many of the melodic subtleties well, it becomes hard for me to complain, especially when there are songs on this project that try to go for an overblown, percussion-heavy indie pop sound that owes more to the modern mainstream and they’re performed with nowhere close to the same enthusiasm or flair. And given that Walk The Moon still aren’t that lyrical, I can argue going for lower stakes with the careening, reckless love songs and breakup songs might be a better fit than a lot of The 1975’s overreaches on their last two albums! Now that being said, Nicholas Petricca is still a pretty anonymous singer and with thin lyrics this album lives and dies on how good the hooks are, which can be pretty spotty on an album that’s a few songs too long, but even though the album is pretty disposable, again, I had a bit of fun with this. Solid 6/10, I’m not sure how long it’ll stick, but not half bad.

Summer Walker - Still Over It - …so she got the entire damn album to chart, I might as well talk about it in brief here, it's going to get the traffic? Full disclosure, I’m not a Summer Walker fan - I’ve heard both of her albums and I found myself utterly unimpressed across the board, but I do get why she’s popular. Jhene Aiko’s vibe leans on more provocative and mature topics, SZA doesn’t release consistently enough, H.E.R. hasn’t quite had the consistent breakthrough and that’s to say nothing of Ari Lennox and Snoh Aalegra, so Summer Walker playing to the lowest common denominator of this slow-burn, moody, husky R&B makes a lot of sense, especially as she’s more willing to actually write hooks. But that’s about the most I’ll give her, because while this might be a little more refined, it’s still very much a Summer Walker album with many of the flaws carrying from Over It. For one, I’m not a fan of her as a singer: she conveys shockingly little organic presence and is really dependent on autotune and her multi-tracking, and thus placing her on the same tracks as SZA and Ari Lennox was a big mistake, but this time it’s obvious she’s trying to pull from Jhene Aiko’s playbook with more acoustic instrumentation and subtler percussion and… I’m sorry, she’s not remotely in the same ballpark. I think a big part of this is that her production is caught between the more ethereal acoustic-leaning sound and a much more conventional R&B sound with stiffer drum machines, heavier bass, and a more obvious influence from 90s and 2000s R&B - which again, is part of her appeal - but the production quality in terms of mixing and mastering is nowhere near as smooth or liquid; the percussion sounds inconsistent, the grooves often run into a slog thanks to surprisingly sloppy pacing, and especially the vocal mix sounds rougher, less consistent, and weirdly cheaper in ways it shouldn’t. But my big issue is in the content, and it’s funny for as much Jhene has been caricatured by some as making messy music for girls who get high in their cars, there’s a standard to doing that well, where Jhene can convey a level of introspection, maturity, spirituality, and emotional depth that Summer Walker just can’t approach, in themes or poetry. You can call it pretentious - I’d disagree, but I’d get where it’s coming from - but I’d take that over Summer Walker’s capricious but inconsistent back-and-forth over her relationship with producer, cowriter, and now ex-boyfriend London On Da Track. And if there was infidelity involved or awkward double standards or miscommunications, I get how that would be difficult to untangle, but when the poetry feels as blunt as it is, you don’t open up many lanes for subtlety or nuance, and Summer herself is less trustworthy as a focal point amidst the mess; there are moments within a song where there’ll be an acknowledgement that it didn’t work or there were failures on both sides or she wants to move on, but then she’ll throw out a stream of accusations that make you wonder what the hell she wants beyond controlling an ever-shifting narrative. Which is fine for a wallowing project like this where being capricious and lightly manipulative is part of the appeal, but it’s not framed to do anything more, let alone honestly critique what that might mean for her and her relationships - at least TWENTY88 tried to show both sides. And it becomes exhausting and melodramatic on a bloated album, but with the basic poetry and derivative delivery and presentation, it can’t even make the most of it. That said, I get why this album works for its target audience, which is absolutely not me… but I’ve heard better in this lane, and even if Summer Walker isn’t over it, I sure as hell am. 5/10, take it or leave it.