on the pulse - 2023 - #8 - sleep token, bailey zimmerman, wednesday, kaytranada & amine, billy woods & kenny segal, rory, hot mulligan, tim hecker
Tim Hecker - No Highs - So Tim Hecker is reportedly annoyed with folks hopping into soothing, streaming-ready, background ambient music for a quick buck. That’s not how he works, and after the film scores and his albums exploring Japanese gagaku music, he has this… which is his best album since Virgins, making his point through discomforting rhythms, swells of staccato, discordant synths in minor chords, and Colin Stetson layering in anguished, menacing saxophone to match the creaking strings, uneasy organs, and creeping growls of distortion. This is built to alienate and unnerve, regardless if you want relaxation or crushing climax - you’re getting neither, and it’s a testament to great compositions that I still found it really compelling! It doesn’t reach the epic power of Ravedeath or the expansive introspection of Virgins, but this is still Tim Hecker’s best work in a decade - excellent stuff!
Hot Mulligan - Why Would I Watch - I’m later to the party on Hot Mulligan than I should be. I wasn’t all that impressed by their early work - solid emo writing let down by compositions and production too beholden to 2000s pop punk and not quite as sticky as I was hoping, but 2020’s you’ll be fine was a step in diversifying their sound and was pretty solid. This doesn’t quite have that theatrical diversity and opts for more throwback 2000s pop punk - not bad given their gift for melody, and when you look at lyrics and themes, it’s a stark, and visceral examination of nostalgia, both its comfort and the anxious pain of how past traumas and assumed mistakes drive into their current miseries. It’s not better than you’ll be fine - the scattershot maturity, awkward sequencing, and abortive tendency to end before their best hooks explode - but if you want a throwback with some teeth, this is pretty damn good - check it out!
Rory - I Thought It’d Be Different - So this is odd - an R&B compilation from Rory Farrell, previously known as a cohost of the Joe Budden Podcast, manager of Emotional Oranges, and most relevantly, behind the scenes at Sony and D’usse Palooza, which forged relationships to get Conway, Ari Lennox, James Fauntleroy, DRAM, Phonte, Reason, Jay Electronica and more here! So it’s like an old DJ Khaled compilation, but for R&B, with Rory as curator, co-producer, cowriter… and it’s really solid! It fosters liquid but textured, organic guitar-driven R&B to create moody but sensual, dramatic but balanced relationship scenes that are colourful, complicated and mature… just up until they’re not, it’s a versatile vibe. Don’t love all the synth tones and guitar tunings, it’s languid to a fault, melodic hooks could be a bit tighter, but I see the vision and it brushes up to greatness - will be slept on this year, and it shouldn’t be, check it out!
billy woods & Kenny Segal - Maps - I’m not surprised with this as billy woods’ most critically acclaimed album to date, especially with shorter song structure and the most accessible, airy production he’s ever had, as beats shamble across glitch, ramshackle elegance, and even jazz. And when every guest from Quelle Chris to ShrapKnel to Danny Brown to even ELUCID deliver, it’s overflowing with the textured detail and character that makes billy woods’ anonymous, paranoid misadventures endlessly fascinating, where his knowing, downbeat paranoia in the face of gentrification, surveillance, and bad weed is tempered by flickers of enjoyment, wry humour, and a longing, emotional core back home, a welcome personal glimpse. It is a winding, structurally fragmented album - ideas can feel a bit abbreviated - which is why it’s not his peak for me, but it’s absolutely his easiest album to revisit and showcase. Still great stuff.
Kaytranada & Amine - KAYTRAMINE - The second I heard about this collab, I was really excited: Kaytranada has bubbly, bouncy production that was sure to compliment Amine’s quirk and humour, and when you stack the album with Freddie Gibbs, Pharrell, Amaarae, Big Sean, and Snoop Dogg, you’re set up for a killer summer album. And yet, it feels like less than the sum of its parts, because I don’t think the duo brought their A-game. Kaytranada’s production is the main issue - moving away from house for more conventional, desaturated rap beats where interludes showcase more melody, texture, and colour than the proper songs! Amine is fine - lightweight, occasionally funny and quotable, but the hooks are underwhelming, and the project winds up really patchy and insubstantial. It’s a vibe, it has moments, the guests all show up - and often show up Amine - but it should be way better than it is, I’d call it a disappointment.
Wednesday - Rat Saw God - This is one of the most critically hyped indie rock albums of 2023, blending noise rock, 90s alternative, even country… and yet like with many throwbacks to 90s indie, between the disaffected or underwhelming vocals to the shaggy, unkempt compositions, I don’t hear what makes this so special or unique outside of Gen X nostalgia. It’s better produced than many Bandcamp acts strip-mining this sound, but added polish without compositional tightness blunts any edge, and the pedal steel is welcome but superfluous. The lyrics are the biggest draw, the brutal, detailed Southern decay full of poverty, drug abuse, and death shown with the wry, ironic distance to stay sane… but I dunno, where country or midwestern emo would empathize, this raw observational mythologizing of mundanity sidesteps an emotive punch for me. It’s fine, I get why this could work, but it ran together fast and didn’t stick for me.
Bailey Zimmerman - Religiously. The Album - You know, for as much as Bailey Zimmerman has been painted as chasing Morgan Wallen, with his breakthrough EP and this album it’s clear the parallel is superficial at best, more in his nasal drawl, some vocal inflections, and the conflicted relationship melodrama. But on this project Zimmerman is casting a wider net, pulling on darker, bluesier Americana cribbing chord structures from 2000s post-grunge to amplify his angsty neotraditional country with a surprising amount of pedal steel and fiddle. That said, it’s telling they bucketed his best singles from the EP onto this album, because outside of them, a decent country rock Johnny Cash cover, and a few deep cuts, this feels like a shaggy debut that could use more focus, lyrical detail, production refinement and a trim to get rid of the one-dimensional filler. I like this guy more than most, there’s promise… he’s just not there yet.
Sleep Token - Take Me Back To Eden - Not gonna make fans here: for me by now, Sleep Token is a gateway pop / prog metal act spanning the most dreary of modern prog metal, djent, and post-rock with the most gentrified R&B and trap since 2015, touching many sounds but not executing them with distinction, for which apparently many give them a pass. And since it’s longer, leaning on more multi-part compositions, you get even fewer melodic hooks and more painfully stiff grooves. So with the frontman’s processed, throaty caterwauling, and lyrics where even if you’ve bought into the lore, the cloying romantic melodrama feels both oversold and thematically underweight - conflating bad relationships with occult worship is a note Sleep Token has driven into the ground by now - it feels like a drippy, faux-edgy slog that’s less interesting than it thinks it is. I mostly get the appeal - just really not at all for me.