on the pulse - 2022 - #7 - maren morris, rosalia, GAYLE, lil durk, hurray for the riff raff, alex cameron
Yeah, a little later than I wanted to be - the MGK review derailed a lot of plans - but this was a tough selection full of a lot of albums that gave me very mixed opinions… and sadly a lot of disappointment. Well, might as well put this out of the way for good, let’s get On The Pulse!
Alex Cameron - Oxy Music - Okay, so one of the elements that I liked about Alex Cameron’s Forced Witness in 2017 is that it was able to take the schmaltzy, 80s-MOR/soft rock tones and pair it with terrific compositional and lyrical instincts; a deconstruction of overblown masculinity that also could make it legit fun, an absolute winner. But Miami Memory highlighted how that was a formula that could have a shelf life if you added a little too much polish, and while I still dug the writing, I was concerned about how he might follow it, especially with the… let’s say mixed reviews I’d seen for this project, not helped by how Cameron was the only producer here instead of keeping Jonathan Rado’s veteran influence around. And… yeah, I hate to start here, but the thin line between sounding charmingly seedy and just outright cheap was getting crossed before but that added gloss on Oxy Music pushes this straight into late 80s / early 90s infomercial territory: everything sounds weedy and lacking body, from the saxophones to every watery synth to the guitars to even Cameron’s vocal lead. And that’s exasperating because overall the bass grooves are solid and the live drums sound pretty decent - the drum machines sound like ass but that happens - and Cameron’s solid compositional instincts help these hooks pop, but if you’re hoping for any real punch or swagger, the album feels too frail to deliver. Hell, Cameron himself doesn’t feel like as much of a presence, where the backing vocals can sometimes overpower him - if he’s attempting to sound like he’s woozy and stumbling through an oxycontin high… well, it’s accurate, but I can’t say it helps many of these songs. Speaking of which, if we go back to Forced Witness one of the sharpest characteristics of Alex Cameron’s writing was how clever, self-assured, but also self-aware of the scene, which made the over-the-top machismo easier to satirize. But Oxy Music has Cameron sounding the least sure of anything in his career, be it drug use / abuse and how people contextualize it, an increasingly hostile online environment, and a numbness he can’t quite shake, which makes most of the lurid details and over-the-top humour lose its punch and feel a bit stale. And that’s odd because you’d think given the last two albums and last few years that Cameron would have plenty of material to lampoon or satirize - ‘Best Life’ in the loneliness in trying to cultivate an online following, of which I certainly feel, ‘Sara Jo’ in seeing one’s family swayed by misinformation, they’re probably the most targeted - but as a project it seems to shrink away, lost in a haze and so many layers of irony that it can’t make much a coherent point, and nowhere is that more obvious than ‘Cancel Culture’, which seems to be trying to walk the line between showing some empathy for those unwittingly ‘canceled’ and mocking those who bitch about cancel culture. And you know, the one credit I’ll give Cameron’s writing is his sense of empathy, which despite the bravado persists even here to the addicts and people caught within systems and vices of which they’re losing control, but there’s such an individualized focus and a lingering bleakness - especially in the closing title track - that shows an unwillingness to go bigger, and it leaves the album feeling small and painfully underwhelming - and with songs like ‘Hold The Line’ it just gets painfully dumb. Yeah, this was a really big disappointment for me - maybe a better mix might help some of these melodies pop a bit more, but this showed a limit on Alex Cameron’s knack for satire that I wish he’d been able to push, a few steps behind he was once cutting an edge; not terrible and it has its moments, but it should have been way better.
Hurray For The Riff Raff - LIFE ON EARTH - Let’s not mince words, after Hurray For The Riff Raff dropped their excellent 2017 album The Navigator, the buzz for this new album has been… weird. Forget the last album being a tough act to follow - and given that it’s one of the best of 2017, that was going to be the case five years later - but between some positive but oddly mixed reviews and lukewarm buzz and the brand of ‘nature punk’ for an artist who has danced across indie country, folk, singer-songwriter, and more, I didn’t have a clue what to expect with this. And… alright, full disclosure, this was an album I was planning on tackling a few weeks back, but I’ve struggled to get a proper handle on it for a while, mostly because like The Navigator it’s sprawling and trying to do a lot, but where that album was able to wrangle a focused emotional core and some of the band’s hooks, this album has neither. Part of this I blame on a shift in producer to Brad Cook, who previously worked with Bon Iver and Waxahatchee but absolutely strips out any sense of rattling punk edge or momentum on an album that winds up listless, but I’m also reminded of a bit of Amanda Shires’ last album, or maybe Billy Nomates of all people, in a choice to lean on more flattened, glittery synths and obviously programmed drum machines to play off more live percussion that doesn’t have anything close to organic texture and winds up feeling stiffer than it should. That’s not saying there aren’t touches of organic texture that are appreciated, especially in the acoustic guitars on cuts like ‘RHODODENDRON’ and ‘SAGA’, but they often feel lacking in groove, oddly muffled, and poorly layered to pick up any fire - and unlike Nomates, I’m not convinced the sociopolitical content has the teeth to back it up. Going back to The Navigator, the power of that album came from Alynda Segarra being able to marry some very personal stakes to the scenes of gentrification and their messy relationship with their roots and culture, and they’re attempting something similar here but on a bigger scale, feeling targeted and harried post-breakup as they return to their roots in community and the natural world, trying to work towards progressive change from the ground up. But minus any sense of narrative, the scenes feel fractured and abstracted at best to build that personal connection that was the anchor point of that last album, especially as Segarra remains an impactful singer who can pull you in. And thus I wound up wishing they had just stayed with the personal wistful framing rather than trying for social commentary, because then you get the immigration detention story of ‘PRECIOUS CARGO’ that Segarra tries to deliver through a M.I.A-esque pseudo-rap that doesn’t work at all; good intentions mired in flows that sound detached, clumsy, and reminiscent of the 2000s new age scene that got ruthlessly commodified and landed no punches; ask Lorde how that went last year when she tried it. And look, that’s not saying this album is bad - if the more ethereal touches work for you, Segarra’s personality and a smattering of good songs will hold your attention - but even after five years you can’t put this alongside ‘Pa’lante’ and ‘Hungry Ghost’ and tell me it’s on the same level of textural refinement or intensity. It’s a tough listen to get your head around, and it may work better for other audiences… but man, this was frustrating, and it should be better than it is.
Lil Durk - 7220 - The good thing about album bombs on Billboard BREAKDOWN that pretty much encompass the entire project is that it effectively makes covering them here a lot easier… and man, I really wish I dug it more. The general frustration I’ve had with Lil Durk for years now is that for expressive as he can be as a vocalist in both autotuned crooning or rapping, it’s been tough to find a throughline in his content that feels coherent; kind of like his flow on a lot of songs, he’s got these offkilter, slapdash moments where you’re left wondering whether it was trying to draw attention to his fragile, overloaded experience trying to balance street level violence with newfound success… or just sloppiness alongside the bargain barrel flexing and fucking that we’ve heard so many times before; and in Durk’s case whenever he’s writing about women he’s pretty woefully bad at it - yes, I include ‘Difference Is’ with Summer Walker in this - especially compared to his street-level commentary that feels sharper and more lived in. I’m guessing it’s a little of both, made all the more frustrating because the production is arguably the best Durk has ever had - yeah, the piano-and-guitar backed approach to trap and drill is overexposed, but the percussion is incredibly crisp, the electric guitars are a nice touch, the mixes are well-balanced - although what the hell happened with the vocal mixing on ‘Federal Nightmares’ - and Durk’s got the presence to command most of these songs… and it’s a shame that more of these don’t feel like fleshed out songs rather than two verses stitched together without a tangible hook, or maybe one that doesn’t stick. Again, there’s a lot of slapdash roughness around the edges, where you have to wonder whether Durk’s assembly line process of churning out albums and mixtapes so fast that it’s flooding the market and preventing more distinct, refined moments from rising out - or you get badly conceived experiments like ‘Broadway Girls’ with Morgan Wallen that deserve no attention - but the flipside to that is for as much as Durk can speak well about street level activity, it drags you into the YoungBoy Never Broke Again beef, which has made all of this feel way too real where it feels uncomfortably voyeuristic to watch the real carnage appropriated for entertainment, especially as it increasingly raises the question of whether Durk will ever escape it despite his aspirations. And when you place Lil Durk in comparison with his peers… he doesn’t have the sharply defined stylism of 21 Savage, the aspirational focus of Lil Baby, the shallow escapism of Gunna, the knack for structure and pop crossover of Polo G, or even the storytelling focus of the late King Von - he’s a sharper presence than Kodak Black, Moneybagg Yo or YoungBoy, but is that really saying much? If anything, this album is not bad, but it’s coasting on production and Lil Durk as a voice rather than showing more to raise his ceiling, which by the end of this project felt very defined - and even saying that is worrisome, because that could push extremes of violence to keep his hype moving. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but after this album… I do wonder.
GAYLE - a study of the human experience volume one - Why do I get the weird impression that this is just getting completely ignored? I mean, GAYLE has a top five hit, her debut EP should be attracting some attention, right? Well, I was at least curious to hear what the hell is here… and it’s one of those cases where there’s both more and a little less than you might be hoping, where I get the impression that GAYLE and her label aren’t sure how to best position her sound, and the EP feels compromised as a result. Kind of a shame because there’s a pretty solid baseline of talent here - GAYLE isn’t a powerhouse vocalist in pop rock and her huskier delivery definitely has a lot of obvious comparisons, but her writing style leans on the snide, frustrated, and at moments deeply earnest, and a low-key, rougher style can work for that, especially as her vocal arrangements tend to pick up some swell. It certainly works in the writing, which is where I find a lot to like: a teenager yearning for real connections and mostly fumbling the execution, either through guys who are horny and take advantage of her loneliness or assumptions that platonic relationships mean more, or all manner of ironic deflection that isn’t satisfying her deeper longings - ‘e-z’ with Blu DeTiger and UPSAHL is a great example of how that self-aware deflection isn’t helping them; yeah, it’s teenage melodrama, but it gets the emotional power of that, which has its moments. The problem is that the production feels too polished and compromised to lean into the mess effectively or give this project any sort of teeth - it’s exasperating that while ‘abcdefu’ probably has the best hook on the album, the writing is probably the weakest and the multiple remixes expose how they’re still searching for the right sound to pair with her voice, which is the same compromise for the rest of the EP when the ‘angrier’ rock mix is right there and would work fine! So you have a pop rock mix where the bass grooves and percussion are criminally underpowered - outside of when they just use drum machines - and the guitars can pick up some distortion, but are never allowed to properly explode with real firepower; unfortunately like a lot of modern pop rock, they tend to have more texture than actual tone. All of this gives me the impression that while Atlantic was able to get GAYLE some momentum, they have no clue on the followthrough, and for a teenager with some promise, that kind of sucks, especially as this didn’t seem to attract any attention. I’m not going to call this great - for me it’s mostly decent - but I reckon her potential deserves a little more, and if you like this brand of 2000s pop rock, you might enjoy it.
ROSALIA - MOTOMAMI - Well, this has been long in coming! So full disclosure, I’m not normally the most comfortable covering foreign language albums in On The Pulse, mostly because of the deep concern that I’m going to miss something in translation when I’m discussing the content and themes. But at this point given ROSALIA’s explosion of popularity, propelled most by her starmaking 2018 album El mal querer, I figured I needed to check out her material properly. And… well, after a more traditionally grounded flamenco debut that nevertheless did showcase some impressive, borderline freak folk intensity, El mal querer did reflect a more expansive and varied sound that I wound up enjoying a solid bit - not sure it would have worked properly for me in 2018 knowing myself and some of the more restrained melodic tendencies and iffy production keeps me from loving it, but I can say for a sharp half hour runtime it’s a great little album. And thus for MOTOMAMI… let me start with the qualification that my lack of Spanish does hold me back from embracing the content as directly as I’d like - given how much lyrics matter to my experience with art, it does dampen the emotional response to the album, even if I’m able to get English translations. But even with that understanding, I still think MOTOMAMI is a bit of a downgrade, especially for ROSALIA herself as she tamps back on the fiery passion that used to charge her work so effectively. I’ve said before that I’ve never quite loved her voice, but leaning towards more restrained sultriness or these odd splashes of Autotune and chirpy pitch shifting feels like a step away from the intensity that made presence so potent, even if the ballads like ‘COMO UN G’ and ‘HENTAI’ can still sound genuinely beautiful, even if in that last case the percussion stutters and ramps up almost reminding me of a modern Arca song even if it came from The Neptunes - not surprising given their collaborations. It’s also hard to ignore how the production feels like more concessions have been made towards blocky mainstream reggaeton with the drum machines and very restrained samples passing for melodies, another factor of her own sound that persisted from El mal querer that doesn’t quite click for me; it’s way more percussive than emphasizing flow, and even if that’s part of the point given how much this album swerves in its sound, if you struggle to connect to any of the bangers on their own or notice how short so many of these songs are, some of the experimentation might feel undercooked. But again, the balance between the synthesized bangers and the more intimate moments is part of the point when you look into the content, showcasing the balance between the divinely inspired but playful experimentation and the more confessional, vulnerable material, showcasing the capacity for both within a defiantly feminine experience… which gets exasperating when a lot of the former defaults to braggodocious brand name flexing, which isn’t remotely experimental, even within the context of this production. And sure, some of that flighty hedonism is the point, but if the vibe doesn’t click… well, that can leave you on the outside looking in, which has been my general experience with a lot of ROSALIA’s sound; hell, she cites M.I.A. on ‘BULERIAS’ as a major influence and there’s a lot of parallels to how their material doesn’t really resonate. That’s not saying this is bad - it’s certainly got its catchier moments and ROSALIA is a passionate enough performer to pull me in more than M.I.A. ever has, and the album is intriguing - but even acknowledging a lot of this isn’t for me, it’s hard to escape the feeling that for as much as the experimentation is being highlighted, it might work a little less than everyone thinks.
Maren Morris - Humble Quest - It’s odd that it feels like I have a history with Maren Morris, if only because my opinion has swerved so many times with her music. I thought ‘My Church’ was a great song, but most of the rest of HERO was mediocre at best, even if ‘80s Mercedes’ warmed on me throughout the years. From there, it became very easy not to care about Maren Morris, given her likely path out of country and how her second album GIRL was largely mediocre, but then came a remix of ‘The Bones’ with Hozier that was shockingly good, as well as a EP of re-recordings produced by Dave Cobb that was great, and on that topic, later that year she stayed in country, joined the Highwomen, and they put out one of the best albums of 2019! Then came ‘Chasing After You’ with her husband Ryan Hurd, a song I quite liked, and I was left thinking going into this album that for as confident and fully formed of a performer as Maren Morris has been, I really just wanted a consistently good solo project from her where her potential fully coalesced. And to her credit, this might be the closest she’s gotten to it - I don’t think it’s a great album, but it’s probably the most I’ve liked an album from her with a lot of that old potential on display. Granted, some of my lingering issues might just be characteristics of her sound that she’s choosing to stick with - I have no idea why she continues to stick with a live vocal mic where her sharper tones tend to cut through the most, where producer Greg Kurstin is going to rely on reverb to give her presence rather than smooth her edges, and speaking of Kurstin, he still has a bad habit of relying more on percussion than centering the instrumental melody. And while that can work for more slightly more blues rock and soul tones on a few tracks here like ‘Background Music’ and ‘Nervous’ - the latter an oily stab that really needed someone like Jay Joyce to give it some firepower to match Morris’ vocals - it can also prevent the songs from feeling warmer and more friendly, most glaring on ‘I Can’t Love You Anymore’ with its fake handclap and one of the most underpowered pedal steel tones I’ve heard in years; it’s a little better on the title track with the more driving groove or the warm acoustics of the lullaby ‘Hummingbird’, but gets really clunky with ‘Tall Guys’ that reminds me of the worst songs from Niall Horan’s debut, where she was on a song I might like more than the rest of this project. That’s another problem - I’m not sure there’s a song here that pops as strongly as ‘My Church’ or any of the Highwomen material, despite Natalie Hemby slipping in a few cowrites, but I think that’s more a compositional hang-up than with any lyrical issues, where I think the writing has measurably improved. More than ever across this album you can see the paradox of Morris being more settled, married and having a baby, but more openly questioning herself and her inspirations, which becomes a lot of metatext behind ‘Circles Around This Town’, the title track, ‘Background Music’, and especially the heartfelt tribute to her late producer busbee ‘What Would This World Do?’ But that juxtaposition also opts for stakes that feel smaller - which works for an album called Humble Quest, but that’s where that lack of warmth and clunkier tone can feel a bit misaligned, and this is not an album with much in the way of dramatic tension. Still, if this is the result of Maren Morris growing up and finding her comfort zone, the maturity translates to a pretty good album - I’ve liked other stuff she’s done more, but she’s on the right track.