on the pulse - 2023 - #4 - 100 gecs, miley cyrus, slowthai, TWICE, meet me @ the altar, xiu xiu, model/actriz, manchester orchestra
Manchester Orchestra - The Valley Of Vision - One of the biggest surprises for me in 2021 was Manchester Orchestra bringing emotive and genuinely terrific indie rock with The Million Masks Of God, so with this EP as a stripped down, more optimistic coda… well, there’s even less jagged rock sizzle and more focus on muffled percussion, haunted atmospherics, and hushed pianos, where every moment that Andy Hull rips forth a layered Mumford-esque vocal harmony they shine all the brighter. There are a few nifty melodic reprises, and the introspective arc of trying to find healing in the wake of painful but expected loss and the family for whom he’s doing it is abstract but potent, but considering the blocky mixing lacks a certain polish, it feels like they’ve reached a limit here. Very low-key, not essential listening without those bigger swings, but if you liked the last album, you’ll like this - it’s good.
Model/Actriz - Dogsbody - Man, it’s nice when a debut hyped out of Bandcamp is exactly as great as everyone says! Hence Dogsbody, which has the percussive, sweaty industrial swagger of early Liars, the demented no wave of early Swans, and the melodramatic emotive vocals of Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart - the influences hang over this thick, but for a debut album and this sort of unbelievably horny and very queer dancefloor vamping, I’m not complaining! And it’s so viscerally tactile from the lyrics to the coursing grooves and production that feels contemporary, winding through a night of New York City gay clubs blurring pain, ecstasy, and angst, especially in the final hookup, where the sun at dawn stings your eyes as you stumble home with newfound truth. Can feel a shade one-note and momentum does sputter, but it’s a terrific statement of purpose breaking through - excellent stuff, check it out!
Xiu Xiu - Ignore Grief - I’m not surprised Xiu Xiu followed one of their most accessible albums with one of their most challenging, a blur of clanking, post-industrial ambience and cacophonous, contorted neoclassical nightmare fuel, where vocals are barely heard and if you look them up, the gruesome narratives within make you wish you didn’t. Forget song structure, forget hooks, forget coherent melody, this is about forcing you to confront the ghastly horrors in plain sight you’ve ignored and organize the unkempt, mind-breaking trauma, less catharsis and more an attempt at understanding… if you even can. And while it’s effective - fans of experimental acts like Coil will love this - the replay value feels limited; a deliberate choice to shun catharsis and structure and neglect any melodic strengths will only get you so far. Haunted, grisly, uncomfortably real, check it out… but from Xiu Xiu, not among my favourites.
Meet Me @ The Altar - past. // present. // future. - Look, if I want the 2020s pop punk revival to have legs, why not review an act debuting on Fueled By Ramen, produced by scene veteran John Fields with credible backing in the writer’s room, a trio who could be new faces of the scene while pulling heavily from Paramore and Avril Lavigne’s bratty swagger? Well, there’s promise - grooves are decent, there are a few solid hooks, and while the production is overpolished with really underweight drum pickups for my taste, drop this band in the mid-2000s and they make sense. But that’s the problem - it’s 2023, they don’t even sound contemporary to the pop punk revival, and when the lyrics are a lot of self-conscious, underwritten melodrama, I struggle to hear what makes them distinct from the forgotten acts twenty years ago. Nostalgia and a few good songs gives this a pass from me… but you’ve heard this before.
TWICE - Ready To Be - So this is long-overdue! I’ve been talking about how much I like TWICE for a while, but I’ve never done a proper deep-dive or reviewed a project; to sum it up, I actually found their Japanese releases surprisingly uneven in production compared to their k-pop - Eyes Wide Open, Taste Of Love and Formula Of Love are legit great! So with this new EP… I wouldn’t say it reaches the heights of TWICE’s best, but for six cuts of slick, groovy, genre-bending but harmony-rich k-pop, it’s solid. I don’t love the swerves towards blockier, late 2010s trap pop, but bringing in more forceful guitar textures for ‘GOT THE THRILLS’, ‘CRAZY STUPID LOVE’ and especially the swaggering ‘BLAME IT ON ME’ remind me a lot of when Little Mix used to bring a bit more muscle. Sure, when translated it’s kind of shallow, but it’s effective - a good taster EP that leaves me intrigued for more, check it out!
slowthai - UGLY - What frustrates me so much about slowthai is that he has intensity and emotive content, scrabbling for some form of hope to fill the void within, against his self-destructive, encouraged vices and a society running on dismissive cruelty, and with a more organic dance punk sound recruiting both shygirl and Fontaines DC, there’s some experimentation, even if the genre mashup feels very beholden to turn-of-the-millennium rap rock. But then he’ll go into self-serious or self-serving nihilism, which feels like a weak payoff to limited, despondent introspection, backed by a sardonic clenched smile he doesn’t even seem to buy, amplified by sour production full of dated, filmy alt-rock with underpowered grooves that have none of the old fire, not helped by painfully weak singing. I get emotive, confessional angst, but the weird, flattened rawness in execution didn’t translate - feels like a big step back, at least for me.
Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation - look, I know we’re at the point of the Miley release cycle where we get the cynical but will-sell-on-name-alone album that takes no chances - and boy, has it worked now that she’s on Columbia. I know this is now the breakup/recovery album instead of the far better Plastic Hearts even if years of distance leaves the thematic arc feeling weirdly detached, or maybe that’s Miley sounding checked out or the writing flitting between shallow, and weirdly awkward. Or maybe it’s how the listless, existential emptiness feels palpable because she got some well-produced but watery, offkey vaporwave synth knockoffs and the compositions have a weird sourness where ‘endless’ feels like a threat, this is Miley at her most ‘chill’, and by far her most forgettable - I think that is more damning. It’s not trying hard enough to be her worst, but may be her most disappointing.
100 gecs - 10,000 gecs - it’s obvious why I shouldn’t like 100 gecs; the blown out brostep, all the chipmunked vocals, the demented genre-eating Gen Z irony. And 1000 gecs is uneven as hell, even if the best hooks are undeniable in hyperpop. But four years later… this feels like a lateral move. For one, it’s a deliberate late 90s “ironic” throwback swapping a lot of hyperpop for crunchy nu-metal, pop rock, early Beck and Chili Peppers, and ska, with a major label budget that goes to Josh Freese hammering on drums, pisstake sampling and understated social commentary on how Hollywood will commodify Laura Les’ trans narrative while missing the poignancy of her claiming her voice - there’s less chipmunking, that’s a big plus for me! That said, the melodic hooks don’t quite have the same magic; it’s an ironic dumb “fun” in rock I’ve heard before, more consistent but less special. I’d call it good… just at a distance.