on the pulse - 2023 - #10 - killer mike, gunna, king gizzard & the lizard wizard, squid, victory over the sun, jake owen, brandy clark, mesarthim
Mesarthim - Arrival - Going to Bandcamp with this one, into synth-inflected spacey black metal and one of the more prolific one-man acts in the space from Australia. For Mesarthim it’s been a steady process to expand and enhance production along with keeping the melodies vibrant amidst the pummeling riffs and drums. And while I don’t think this tops the sheer ear candy of 2020’s The Degenerate Era, the glossy melodic hooks and improved production balance helps it sound cosmic and immense without the electronic trance or even pop elements passages feeling too silly, even if good luck figuring out any lyrics in the howls. Some of the synths are a bit weedy for my tastes, and it feels more stop-and-start than I’d prefer - I like tighter song focus, but the flow within the ‘Arrival’ segments is a little jerky - but the closer ‘Type IV’ is so glorious it redeems everything. I had a ton of fun with this, potent stuff, give it a shot!
Brandy Clark - Brandy Clark - I’m late to this - Brandy Clark is one of the most underrated singer-songwriters working near mainstream country with a phenomenal voice and a great ear for composition, and even despite muted buzz, she’s got the track record to deserve attention. And this is a bit tough to gauge: well-produced, beautifully arranged slow-burn songs about love and loss that takes the strings and heartbreaking layered romance and drama of her last album and turns the volume down to near adult contemporary. Mature, tasteful to a fault - where the murder ballad ‘Ain’t Enough Rocks’ that opens the album almost feels out of place - by women, for women, about women loving women, be it platonic or erotic, a distinct feminine lens and framing. It is deliberately paced and ballad heavy - I get why folks may be cooler on it - but it also does exactly what it’s designed to do really damn well, it’s worth hearing.
Jake Owen - Loose Cannon - Look, if there’s someone I want to stay around past bro-country, it’s Jake Owen - he’s upbeat, he’s got a ridiculous amount of charisma, he doesn’t take himself that seriously, and Joey Moi tends to do shockingly good work with him. This is his first album in four years, and apart from being a little longer than it should be, it’s remarkably easy to like this for lightweight summer material. It helps that Owen is a bit more mature, with less trend-chasing to stick with warmer neotraditional tones, live drums, and pedal steel, and even if there are a few cuts that are impressively stupid - and Joey Moi can overproduce vocals more than I’d prefer - there’s some welcome self-awareness in getting older, dealing with the impacts of his lifestyle, and the women he’s left behind as a result. I wouldn’t call it great, but the deep cuts are strong and mainstream country is better with more Jake Owen - it’s worth hearing.
Squid - O Monolith - So Squid’s debut album got lost in the shuffle of 2021 for me - a lot of competition left its solid jittery experimentation and sharp writing missing some dramatic swell or personal touches, so I didn’t go back to it much. But for the critically acclaimed follow-up that pared things back significantly for leaner songs… it’s a much stranger listen, shedding many influences to feel like its own beast, a fusion of choppy, bass-heavy post-punk, modern synthetic glitch, and a very English brand of theatrical freak folk that reminds me of Richard Dawson. And that comes in the lyrics, where late capitalist nightmares intersect with a pastoral but more mystical olde England in a blur of animism and commodity fetishism, where dissociation towards objects of meaning is both questionable escapism and nightmare fuel, but humanity ever at a distance. I think I respect this weird plinth more than I like it - a cautious recommendation.
Victory Over The Sun - Dance You Monster To My Soft Song! - So we’re going to the dissonant, microtonal, complicated edges of black metal with this one woman project from Vivian Tylinska, where imagine a lot of Liturgy’s avant-garde compositional whiplash, but with more focused lyricism, sharper progressive elements, and actual basslines. There’ve been improvements in composition and production with each project, and now with this… it can still feel choppy, but it’s easily her best to date, between the tremolo shredding in both striking melodic swells and crushingly brutal passages that grind it into the noise, liquid prog accented by jazzy horn lines, accordion, and even synth breakdowns, to the lyrics full of agonized, ecstatic transformative desire and apocalyptic beauty where the trans subtext feels tangible. Took a while to click for me, but it’s unlike anything you’ll hear this year, and it’s worth it - great stuff!
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDraconic Apocalypse - I mostly stopped covering King Gizzard a few years ago, not because they made bad music, but a flood of solid but rarely great albums hitting the same themes just got tiresome. But this was pitched as following Infest The Rat’s Nest, back to vintage thrash and classic metal full of chunky Motorhead riffs, blazing solos, and underpowered grooves because the weirdly clean mastering and wonky drum mixing don’t have the punishing impact they should. And while it was nifty conflating desperately using modern tech to save humanity from environmental apocalypse with pagan ritualism and magic - blind faith in either won’t save us - once you know that they won’t ever expand on their apocalypse beyond increasingly goofy throwback fantasy, I took it a lot less seriously. Overall… if you’re in the cult, you’ll have fun with this, but I’ve heard this before done better.
Gunna - a Gift & a Curse - Look, my issue with Gunna was that for all of the liquid production and vibes, his content felt interchangeable and his performances felt emotionally inert - the albums ran together, I couldn’t care about anything he said. But now with his messy involvement in the YSL case hanging over him and leaving many of his name producers and all guest stars behind, Gunna has to rap to salvage a career - and I’ll be damned if this isn’t his best album. It’s far from great - it’s a tossup whether he sounds realistically burned out or just disengaged, when he goes back to stock flexing and stealing your girl it’s way less interesting - but the production and especially the mixing feels more refined and balanced, and when he raps to explain his messy situation, it’s the first time I remotely cared about Gunna as a rapper. Outside of his cases, I can argue Gunna saved his career with this album - I see his value, decent stuff.
Killer Mike - Michael - What folks forget about Run The Jewels is that they were always over-the-top firebrands - and if you read between the lines, their personal politics were always more moderate… but with the modern Overton window letting in more left-wing views closer to RTJ, it can make Michael’s centrer-right Black capitalism feel out of step with discourse, though much closer to offline Atlanta reality. Paired with the gospel and guest samples alongside Killer Mike’s deeply expressive storytelling, the reflexive conservatism feels authentic and personal - not revolutionary but there is drive here. But away from politics… it’s a swaggering, bass-heavy Atlanta rap album with some iffy production, a few insane verses, and tangible if blinkered empathy, especially around women; also overlong, a bit languid, and has some shaky hooks. You won’t always like the flawed character here… but there’s enough character to recommend.