on the pulse - 2022 - #27 - rm, emotional oranges, fred again..., weyes blood, arctic monkeys, benjamin clementine, future sound of london

Future Sound Of London - Rituals E7.001 - This has been on my schedule for months, and if you know about this UK electronic duo you’ll know why: sprawling across IDM, goopy psychedelia, and ambient techno, starting with a trio of critically adored if a bit dated albums in the early 90s and then spent the next 25 years making textured, genre-bending weird shit. This is their first of a new trilogy, in the long-running Environments series… and look, I hear the appeal. It’s very tropical, eclectic in its instrumental choice, burbling ambient techno that’s well-balanced, atmospheric and alien but accessible in brighter and haunted moments. But this duo runs on quantity over quality, and while this starts strong, it loses its way in a wilderness you’ve heard before. Coupled with some shaky mixing and rather limited momentum and experimentation… call it a good if inessential album, best for the diehard fans.

Benjamin Clementine - And I Have Been - This is an odd one - English singer-songwriter, sitting between delicate piano jazz, soul, contemporary classical and experimental pop, it’s tasteful but dense in both themes and melody, where early albums took a white to click but ultimately impressed me. So five years later with this as the first part of a trilogy… bizarrely it’s his most accessible? In composition and structure for sure - his writing is his most direct, peeling through unexpected love and domesticity, which he expects to be doomed in present times; it feels like a pandemic record in the omnipresent dread, claustrophobia, and constraints of self-production, very conscious of being trapped in decaying cycles old and new. But while the shorter song focus makes for easier listens, the weighty, weirder theatricality just isn’t as potent. So… good with promising greatness, but ultimately scattered and underpowered.

Arctic Monkeys - The Car - …can you tell I’ve been avoiding this? But there were folks who still cared, and pushing past thinking that minus the concept of Tranquility Base it’s just trying to rip off Josh Tillman and Dan Bejar… I’m not impressed? Yes, it’s well produced for lush, strings-inflected late 70s/early 80s soft rock, funk, and David Bowie plagiarisms, but between Alex Turner’s mediocre falsetto and vamping, weak song structure, and a disturbing lack of hooks, it runs together fast, the songs just aren’t here. And yes, I know it’s all about the chintzy opulence, existential confusion and miscommuncations, self-references to their career pivot, a neo-noir attitude obscuring lonely, insecure angst… all around a sour, self-impressed character who’s way less clever than he thinks he is. So like a lot of the forgotten yacht rock of that era, it’s often pretty, but functionally vacant and obnoxious.

Weyes Blood - And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow - I got so much backlash for just being lukewarm on Titanic Rising; the album’s good, ‘Andromeda’ is excellent, I just wasn’t as impressed by the opulent fatalism and decidedly odd swerves. So with the reception still good but more muted this time… while I wouldn’t call any of this her best, it’s still quite good. The contemporary fatalism is here, occasionally a bit awkward in its radical vulnerability, but tempered with some tortured love songs that seem to at least yearn for better and she can sell it all. And while so much of this is lush, subtly textured, vintage baroque pop, it's closer to mid-70s soft rock, immaculately produced and performed… outside of having more sprawl than structure, some clunky pacing, and odd synth choices. I dunno, if I hadn’t heard this style done better or just overexposed in 2022 I'd be more impressed… but yeah, still good, it just doesn't quite wow me.

Fred Again… - Actual Life 3 - Let me make it clear: I get the fundamental appeal of Fred Again… and his blurry, diaristic approach to house music, full of yearning for that communal but fleeting dance floor, especially after the past two years. So it’s comfortable, and you can argue it’s got a similar fundamental appeal to Jamie xx’s In Colour - funny as The xx show up on this album, as well as production from Skrillex and Four Tet and vocals from Dermot Kennedy, 070 Shake, and BLEU. But In Colour had hooks and took wildly organic swings and felt huge, whereas this feels smaller, more reliant on sampled callbacks than strong tunes, and lacking those transcendent moments or any adventurous swell. Yes, small-scale heartbreak and yearning can be effective, but through half-formed, pitch-shifted fragments, it just doesn’t cut more deeply for me. A decent listen, just not all that memorable.

Emotional Oranges - The Juice Vol. 3 - The frustrating thing with this duo at this point is that they still make terrific liquid, organic, guitar-backed R&B with an increasingly diverse palette outside of some questionably mixed percussion, but have also set the bar so high with the first EP that it's hard not to wish for more. Once again the internal narrative isn't self-contained - they’ve admitted it’s more autobiographical around the male singer’s life - but the buried, complicated subtext created by our duo feels sensual and implies more interesting emotive melodrama in the lean writing, and the chemistry is still top notch. That said, their approach and writing feels a little less novel and it absolutely feels like they've gotten as much out of The Juice series as they can, so… yeah, this is absolutely my favourite flavour of R&B, they should have had a Tiktok hit years ago, it’s great stuff!

RM - Indigo - I’m gonna say it: the more I’ve heard the solo projects of BTS members, the more I’m annoyed with the obvious and bland English market pop crossovers - they’ve always had broader influences than they utilize, and when one of their rappers RM put out a project with features including Erykah Badu and Anderson .Paak, I wanted to hear it! And… well, it’s a loosely constructed, breezy bit of pop rap where you can tell corners were cut in production and the guests are more here for the cosign than delivering top material - not bad, as expected the pop song construction is rock solid, especially if you like chill acoustic j-pop influences and lightweight crossover hip-hop, but it’s not like alienation between fame, humanity and authentic artistry is that fresh, especially as RM’s perspective is mature but not exactly deep. Overall a very easy, generally likable listen… just measure your expectations.