on the pulse - 2022 - #3 - mitski, black country, new road, rolo tomassi, anais mitchell, 2nd in command, foxtails

You know, I keep saying I’m going to get back on schedule… well, I’ve got a better shot after this, given that this particular episode got delayed thanks to that blasted Bastille album - honestly thought that review would attract more attention. Anyway, this may have been late regardless thanks to a collection of pretty complicated projects, so let’s get On The Pulse!

Foxtails - fawn - Well, folks kind of went wild for this one, didn’t they? Not gonna lie, Foxtails was on my radar given that their post-hardcore-inflected brand of screamo on previous projects showed a decent amount of flair and experimentation; not quite exceptional, but I certainly found more to like than I expected with this side of screamo. So with the acclaim going this way, I was excited to get to it properly… and you know, it’s kind of funny how just the smallest change or augmentation can help an act differentiate itself from the crowd: opposite the seething guitars that pick up some compositional cues from post-rock, and a sinuous bass simmer alongside some great drumwork - seriously, I love how crisp and well-micced this kit is, especially the snares - they added a ragged violin, and it’s perfectly placed to flesh out the melody! So as Megan Cadena-Fernandez splits between softer, sultry singing, something closer to La Dispute-esque spoken word that either feels soaked in bitterness or on the cusp of sobs, and some truly visceral screams, that sawing violin adds a little more fractured beauty as the songs quake and shudder, and given that this is the sort of emo content that leans more towards free verse instead of defined melodic hooks, that added melody is essential, especially as the lead guitar rarely picks up the roar you’d expect. But on some level that makes sense, as this is an album where its protagonist feels profoundly trapped: growing older but feeling increasingly lacking in agency as future prospects look bleak, acutely aware that feminine expectations of innocence and purity only further hem her in, be it from onlookers or in a relationship, where her boundaries are half self-preservation but also confining to a corporeal existence where she wants to rend herself free, as there’s no shortage of self-sabotage in the depression and lonely angst holding her back, most of which she’s built herself as a defense mechanism. It’s where I’ll give a lot of credit to poetry that feels more literate, albeit not always as personal, which if you’re not always gripped by the performance can leave you a bit at a distance from this - which can be a little frustrating because there’s a genuine yearning for sincere love and connection and trying to divorce from a trauma response to placate and restrict oneself leads to some of the most complex and resonant moments. What it reminds me the most of conceptually is Svalbard’s 2020 album, but where that album had a little more driving direction and swell, this album feels closer to a claustrophobic wallow… and while that can definitely run together without much in the way of hooks and a pretty uniform sound, the production and writing is so damn sharp that it’s hard not to get pulled in, especially if the violin catches your ear. Overall… I might be a little cooler on it because I still feel like I’m developing my ear for screamo and post-hardcore, but I know quality when I hear it - great stuff!

2nd In Command - Rainbow Road! - You know, for as much as 2nd In Command works in hip-hop, in recent years they’ve been dabbling within hyperpop with some success - they’ve got some good melodic impulses, the production has steadily been getting better, and so a short side venture that’s nearly all in this territory did catch my interest, even if I’ve getting the lingering feeling that there does need to be a leap taken in performance to really get to that next level. And if there is something that holds this project back, it’s projection and presence in the mix: consistently a bit quieter than they should be even if the melodic overdubs absolutely help, and while as a rapper they have more flair and confidence, when they’re singing especially in their lower range it feels like 2nd retreats back. Which can work with more spare hip-hop production to draw emphasis, but hyperpop kind of demands a presence to go opposite the brighter, metallic melodies, where the contrast with avah on the title track is glaring - or hell, on the back half of the album with the production from SOGIMURA, the vocal mixing is more forward and the inconsistency is exasperating. And considering 2nd has compared this project to Amine’s TWOPOINTFIVE - which you can kind of hear in the breezier tone, the greater sense of humour, the chirpy production - you want to ramp up that performance to at least match your production’s colour and energy. And I’m putting so much emphasis on this because otherwise… this is pretty solid! Definitely shorter - it’s effectively seven tracks with an instrumental intro and outro from Grim Grieves, who has improved in terms of ambient melodic composition and mixing - and the chiptune-adjacent Lil Uzi Vert-esque instrumentals still aren’t always my thing. But 2nd’s writing does a solid job compensating, mostly because this is them embracing more of a lovestruck, playful side, be in the queer romantic moments that add a distinctive slant to the flexing or just blowing off online drama; it sets a tone that doesn’t feel nearly as downbeat as their previous work, and even if some of the nerdier references stray close to old YouTube rap territory for me, overall it’s probably one of their most straightforward and accessible projects, including their best ending to date. And honestly, what’s both encouraging and frustrating is that 2nd is so close to that breakthrough - give them a little more production focus, and I could see them making a serious play beyond just this niche. Probably their easiest album to check out, especially given its length - and I’d say it’s worth doing, good stuff.

Anaïs Mitchell - Anaïs Mitchell - Well, this is somewhat long-in-coming… or maybe it’s just me placing more weight on a discography where I’ve been aware of Anaïs Mitchell for some time due to her collaborations and connections, but have never had the proper chance to sit with anything in full just yet. But for those who don’t know, she’s a Vermont folk singer-songwriter, had some well-received if not critically acclaimed albums in the 2000s, but likely became known to most as the composer and mastermind behind Hadestown in 2010, the star-studded collaboration album adapting the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice that would become a Broadway musical and win a ridiculous number of Tonys. Now for me… the easy thing for me to say is that the writing has been better than the execution, where it took her some time to grow into her voice and at best the arrangements were tastefully minimal - at worst it all can sound undercooked where for as political as Mitchell can be, it’s both dated and clunky to the point of kneecapping itself, and that’s not even getting into how she interprets vintage jazz, blues and country on Hadestown; I have a lot of complicated and not always complimentary opinions on that musical, I’ll leave it there. Anyway, this is her first proper solo album of original material in ten years… and I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s generally fine, but strip out the majority of the politically charged content and replace it with the sort of piano-backed, quasi-theatrical earnest indie folk with touches of woodwinds and strings and horns that’s only a half step from adult-alternative that caught a few moments a decade ago, reminding me of Sara Bareilles and the Once soundtrack that just can’t get enough of the mystique of New York City… I mean, from what I’ve just described, you’ve probably heard this album. And while Mitchell’s voice has certainly gotten better with age, and the arrangements are well-structured and tastefully produced, I kept waiting for a gut-punch moment or something in the writing to deepen the picture beyond the cheery idyllic optimism that for some reason never goes for broke or embraces an arrangement to amplify that wonderment… and it doesn’t really happen. The closest you’ll get is the commemoration to her late friend with ‘On Your Way (Felix Song)’, or maybe the references to growing up and feminine vulnerability on ‘Little Big Girl’, but then you get the out of nowhere reference to racial profiling on the ‘slice of life’ small town romance of ‘Backroads’ and it becomes impossible to escape how none of this effectively conveys gravitas; at least when Emily Scott Robinson has her more precious moments, there’s a rootsy heft and mature reckoning with darkness that Mitchell just won’t touch. And I’m not saying you need that for great music - there’s an idyllic yearning charm that I can see working for some - but it doesn’t quite have a foundation, and I’m left lukewarm on it. Not bad, but not precisely potent or remarkable either.

Rolo Tomassi - Where Myth Becomes Memory - So here’s a funny thing: I’m not sure what switch in my mind flipped initially in 2018 that caused me to love Rolo Tomassi’s album Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It that year, which if I had been making top 50 lists instead of a top 25 would have easily been among my albums of that year. But to be fair, it wasn’t exactly an album I revisited much in the previous few months, so I wanted to make the time to go back to it… and I have no idea why I don’t go back to it more, given that I’ve picked up more of an ear for this brand of metal and I’d argue the album has aged amazingly well in terms of production, epic swell, and compositional refinement. So four years later, can the follow-up match it? Well… not exactly, but this is one of those cases where the issues crop up in the fine details that you might not notice if you’re not paying attention, but serve to make an album that was set up to continue down their dreamy, post-rock / progressive fusion into something that isn’t anything close to as satisfying. Some of this are the compositions just feeling less complex and a little slower as a whole, with considerably more clean singing and way less impressive patterns from their new drummer - where the male clean singing doesn’t remotely fit at all on cuts like ‘Closer’ and ‘To Resist Forgetting’ but in fairness makes for smoother transitions and arguably more accessible moments, even if I’m no fan of the occasional djent progression. But I’d argue the issue runs deeper into the production, where outside of a weirdly micced drumkit, especially with the snares and kickdrum, it seems like the loud-soft dynamics and sense of swell doesn’t have anything close to the sense of scope, where between the guitar feedback, gauzy synth layers, and even vocals everything feels far closer and hemmed in, which leads to more texture than tone and not especially good textures at that; all the more bizarre because they’re working with the same producer, what the hell happened? Maybe it’s trying to ramp up the immediacy to the hooks, go for something a little more conventional, but who the hell wants that from Rolo Tomassi, especially given their earliest work in mathcore - the last album felt like a happy medium to balance the complexity and bring fantastic production, whereas this time it feels like they’ve lost a lot of both! And it’s frustrating because I do like the lyrical themes on this album - focusing on how one processes trauma, be it personal or ossifying structures of ritual and myth, and how they’ve chosen to embrace those darker elements of their own personality alongside the pain to embrace change and barrel through all of it for a brighter future, and it leads to a really solid ending. But this does feel like a step back, and for an album I was hoping to be great to slide back to being decent… yeah, kind of disappointing.

Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There - Have to be honest, this is not how I wanted to approach this album or this band in 2022 - Black Country, New Road were one of the biggest breakouts in experimental rock with a genuinely terrific debut that was one of my favourites of 2021, and I was thrilled to see another album already waiting in the wings… and then days before this album dropped, frontman Isaac Wood leaves the band. It seemed amicable, but it leave the act high and dry heading into their follow-up project, and while given some of the subject matter and subtext of For the first time I wasn’t altogether surprised, it was dispiriting to hear about. But hey, maybe this would be a great parting gift, at least for now? Well, let me say this: I was really damn close to making this a solo review and if it wasn’t for a tight schedule right now and the likelihood the majority of folks wouldn’t watch it, it would be one, because this album is legitimate excellent! The pivot made with this project reminds me a decent bit of how black midi went for a bit more restraint and refined composition on Cavalcade, but where that project seemed to build distance in its cooler layers, Black Country, New Road are doing it to amplify the emotional core, leaning on borderline vintage Broadway drama and classic jazz to weave tighter songs that bring even more hooks to bear. The band claims they were inspired more by early Arcade Fire and 2000s Sufjan Steven and I can hear it: the guitars are a little smoother with the occasional Spanish flutter even the sizzle will roar back when it’s precisely needed to pay off the crescendos, the horns are more lush and lean a little heavier on the saxophone, the violin is gorgeous on ‘Haldern’, Isaac Wood brings less of a raw shout and more crooning… except on ‘Good Will Hunting’, with its waves of synth and Wood howling his lungs out by the very end, for a song that just absolutely fucking rules - maybe not as immediately as quotable or impressive as ‘Sunglasses’, but it’s up there! And yet the band still has that experimental flavour, from bending time signatures to where they just abandon rhythmic tempo altogether on the first hook of ‘Bread Crumbs’ to let the song ebb naturally into a groove where that same hook locks in and sounds just as potent, how the melodies are forced to react to the utterly wild drum solo on ‘Snow Globes’, the improvisational build of ‘Haldern’, how much ‘Basketball Shoes' blends elements from across the entire album in its extended runtime… although that’s generally true with the entire album, especially when you start peeling into the lyrics. Keep in mind that a lot of the relationship drama on For the first time was rooted in metatext, as much about the band’s relationship with the audience as it was about failing to live up to expectations and imploding relationships; well, this time the relationship is there and more settled - seriously, there’s a glorious sense of romance on this project that’s just nerdy enough to really resonate if you catch the references - but the anxiety around how it’s slowly coming apart at the seams is palpable, especially when he knows there’s very little he can do when that distance manifests and the decline is inevitable, made all the worse when he can tell there’s some codependency. And while there’ll be plenty of trinkets and memories and atomized moments, he knows he has to be the one to end it - the references to the band explicitly and Isaac Wood’s angst at failing that yearning audience are more present than ever, from looking forward to when those’ll look back on the relationship as ‘oh, it was cool’ to the fear too much was exposed, from the banal moments that have him wanting to bridge that gap when it’s not working, to having died like fifteen times, once for every song cut to their full-length albums before the last medley with that lyric. Now is it a stretch to say it all interconnects, absolutely yes - if I have complaints about this album, it’s how the sprawl absolutely gets away from them in the final third of the album, where the rewrites on ‘Basketball Shoes’ can’t quite get away from the questionable early drafts that came out and it’s not as powerful of a closer as it could be, and the momentum definitely flags. And yeah, some of this is me trying to place passing metatextual references in context with Wood’s departure; the album has the aching tragedy of departure and endings all over it. But on some level it amplifies the emotional experience of the album, and it winds up pretty damn special as a result. I’d love to see Isaac Wood rejoin the band in his own time, but if not, I’ll cherish what we got - this is special, check it out!

Mitski - Laurel Hell - I’m kind of shocked I didn’t get more backlash to my Mitski review at the time. Maybe because I bundled my review of Be The Cowboy with a few other albums and shot it while I was on vacation, maybe it was how I was still quite positive on the project but not convinced of its greatness, maybe it was because more of my critiques were structural or around production rather than of the content or framing or even execution directly from Mitski herself, where I was confident that she could find that greatness but hadn’t quite gotten there yet. In any case, I did want to give Laurel Hell the proper room to sit with me - even if again, it’s barely over a half hour - and… you know, for an album I’d best describe as transitional, taking tentative steps towards goth-adjacent, 80s-inflected synthpop, it’s odd how weirdly static it feels. Now some of this has been a factor with Mitski’s earlier albums that reveals itself with a closer listen, how a lot of her albums build sound and volume without precisely groove or presence in the low-end, snapshots rather than pulling into motion as a factor as a factor to only having bass guitar on two tracks here and relying on programmed beats the rest of the way, and that makes an album with more obvious steps towards dance pop feel not quite as sinuous or punchy as I was hoping, not helped by her haphazard choice in synth tones and odd mastering decisions that’ve been an issue for a few albums now. Granted, some of this is a natural comedown from the bombast and excess of Be The Cowboy to something more restrained and tight, but when you still have songs that still feel like fragments that can’t quite take off in a sound that has been stripmined for damn near any remaining trace of nostalgia, where Mitski still has more of a passing relationship with structure, what we’re left with is a lot of pop promise that doesn’t always feel fulfilled. And that’s frustrating because the moments that do work are some of the most striking compositions in Mitski’s career: she’s still a terrific melodic composer, I’ve always liked her throatier delivery, and I’d argue the content once again gets there - yeah, sketching a romantic relationship parallel to her increasingly tenuous feelings towards the music industry and art in general is not revolutionary, but I like how she grounds the depressed mental hell of creation and the constant demands to invent and reinvent opposite the beauty in its tumultuous realization, where even if the connection was never meant to be, she’s managed to capture enough moments of transcendent connection to capture good memories. So while I think the album does end well and does feature some of the biggest highs of Mitski’s career thus far - how ‘Working For The Knife’ bends across clattering smolder, how I like the gentle ‘Maneater’ callbacks on ‘Should’ve Been Me’ that would be the brightest moment on the album until the great closer ‘That’s Our Lamp’, how ‘The Only Heartbreaker’ might be the best pop song she’s ever made and an easy standout for me this year, followed really well by the gleaming pileup of ‘Love Me More’, even the jittery buzzing glitter of ‘Stay Soft’ and the sandy atmospherics of ‘Heat Lightning’ mostly clicked for me - this is still not quite great, and the pop pivot seems to have exposed more of those fractures, intentional or otherwise. I’ll definitely take those high points, though, and this is still absolutely worth a listen, check it out.