on the pulse - 2024 - #10 - luke combs, shaboozey, kaytranada, tems, saidan, carly pearce, black dresses, nemecek
Nemeček - Prokletije II - This has been on my Patreon backlog for sometime, a relatively obscure post-rock/drone act out of Croatia - albums in 2018 and 2021, generally agreeable but I wasn’t wowed. But this third album leans much more heavily on analog synths and it’s more melodically interesting - a bit of moody 80s krautrock, but with the more centered theatrical vocals, rattling acoustics, and gradual crescendos, a lot of Swans and Nick Cave-circa-Tender Prey worship. And it’s not far removed from the dystopian scope of the writing I translated, locked in a distinctly Balkan bleakness, where between those looking to an old revolution or blood spilt from modern conflict, damnation feels inevitable. I’ll freely admit I’m likely missing nuances of the folklore, and the influences run pretty deep without the bass grooves to truly pay them off, but for a fascinating and atmospheric release, this was pretty cool - worth a shot!
Black Dresses - LAUGHINGFISH - I’ve learned to take words like ‘final album’ with a grain of salt these days - a lot of acts retire and then unretire, or there’s a surprise reunion, or for some reason the band continues on in a weird state that’s purposefully less defined in order to confuse those who might harass them for bullshit bigoted reasons. But for a while I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that Ada Rook and Devi McCallion have been looking to do other things - outside of their creaking, twisted brand of industrial metal, they’ve been collaborating frequently with other acts behind the boards and in front of the mic, to say nothing of Ada Rook’s ridiculously fun Angel Electronics - so if this is intended as a sendoff, I’ll be a little more forgiving of a 22-song, nearly eighty minute runtime. After a lot of repeated listens, however… well, they certainly want to test the limits of any forgiveness, because thematically this seems to be capturing the duo’s frustrated implosion in real time, where the runtime becomes a borderline endurance test for how much grinding discomfort and tension the audience can endure, in both members going at each other with the sort of messy codependence that’s destined to get ugly, their own tortured self-loathing and burnout to exist as trans in a hostile world - ‘BAD VEGGIES’ is punishingly visceral here, and following it with the softer look back on nearly a decade of living in this space on ‘WOUNDED ANIMAL’ is heartbreaking - and continued antipathy at a music industry and scene that seems to expect creativity of a schedule or a consistent formula to be commodified; it feels like watching a slow motion car crash and outside of a few of the longer songs that meander, I intend that as a compliment. As such the sound feels like a shambling culmination of ideas across Black Dresses’ career: glitter-smeared late 2000s pop rap, quaking glitch pop, creaking post-industrial and nu-metal grooves, claustrophobic bedroom pop with slimy synths and offkilter guitars, even some more polished jangling compositions leaning towards happy hardcore or alternative rock. And the moments where it all comes together are spotty, intentionally so - like with Forget Your Own Face some of these songs rely on the squealing clash of textures or an instrumental element feeling a little unsupported to draw attention to what should be working… and isn’t, a lesson that can get exhausting to hear over and over again. That’s not saying there aren’t new ideas or tones being explored: ‘FEEL SOMETHING’ is a pummeling claustrophobic nightmare of poverty and the inability to escape drama within a chosen family, ‘PURE REALITY’ has what sounds like horns behind the shambling late 90s riffs, I really love those deep quaking synths on ‘1-800-THE-MOON’, and I like how they explore feeling more comfortable in instability and chaos than routine or even peace - when you’re denied that space for so long, it forces you to confront parts of your identity where trauma is what held it together, which can be just as frightening. And it also isn’t just a wallow: multiple songs here look back on moments of creativity and connection where you can tell they wish they cherished it within each other at the time, and if it is all to end, the more accessible one-two punch of ‘ZERO FANTASY’ and ‘SILENCE’ shows how they can look forward and move on, acknowledge what was given, and for a moment understand each other. So as a whole… the odd thing is that while I’d struggle to call this great all the way through - it’s overlong, scattered, and often intentionally frustrating in its repetition, the back half of the project can drag, and this duo is more than happy to vivisect any straightforward pop construction whenever it materializes - I’d also say that as a finale to this era of Black Dresses, I couldn’t imagine anything else as a send-off. Probably works best piecemeal - a fan of any era of their sound will find at least a few songs that’ll go off - and as someone who usually has found a lot to like if not love, I can recognize a seminal underground act who can end things on a high note; absolutely worth the deep dive if you haven’t, but in the mean time, this is worth checking out!
Carly Pearce - hummingbird - One of the biggest surprises in 2021 was Carly Pearce delivering one of the most effective divorce albums in mainstream country in years, fracturing prim refinement and tapping into heartbreak, rage, and the hard road to recovery. So with a more involved hand in the writing and production, leaning deeper into neotraditional tones heavier on the fiddle and dobro, it’s a natural extension of the themes of 29/Written In Stone, less visceral and more focused on healing and exploring the nuance and moral complexities across these breakups, whether there’s an obvious person to blame or not. As such it feels a bit more diffuse and reliant on country ‘scorned woman’ breakup cliches, a similar formula but a lighter touch with less immediacy, which means the best songs tend to be the slow-burns. Coupled with the vocal mix feeling a bit uneven against a more organic palette… a shade weaker than her last, but still really damn good, give it a shot!
Saidan - Visual Kill: The Blossoming Of Psychotic Depravity - So this Nashville black metal act has a pretty great formula: brilliantly tuneful, punk and thrash influenced in the gorgeous melodies, juxtaposed with visceral lyrics and cacophonous blast beats, which translated to a great album in 2022. This is their follow-up… and while it absolutely fits to formula, some of the tweaks are mixed blessings. More polished than ever, the blazing lead guitarwork and shrieks still scythe through, but the low-end and basslines could use more muscle to amplify the blast beats instead of the cymbals smothering the melodies. And while the lyrics are single-minded and ridiculously edgy in the splatter-painting of gore and defilement, the attempted ‘narrative’ could use more dramatic contrast and coherence to take it more seriously. So while the killer spectacle is enough for me to call this great and you should hear it, if this blossom could develop deeper roots, there’s more potential.
Tems - Born In The Wild - This is a debut I’ve been curious about for a while - Tems racked up a lot of critical acclaim thanks to her EPs and guest appearances, even she’s admitted this project is overdue. And it’s a very agreeable debut: soft-focus alte with gentle acoustics, pulsing bass, and textured percussion blending organic alternative R&B and afrobeats and letting Tems’ expressive, aching delivery saturate the mix. The floor of quality is high, it’s a pleasant if sprawling listen as Tems winds through her journey of self-commitment in her career and relationships, but the vibe can become very uniform outside of touches of 90s R&B or rap or amapiano. And while J. Cole’s verse makes up for an awkwardly positioned Asake feature, the album relies more on Tems’ melancholic meditations on empowerment in the groove and performance than much lyrical detail. Absolutely a slow burn, I appreciate its quality… didn’t fully click for me, but I respect it, good stuff.
Kaytranada - TIMELESS - The weird thing about Kaytranada’s collab album KAYTRAMINE last year was the lingering feeling that not only did the production let Amine down, but it might be revealing of issues that I had been overlooking with Kaytranada’s production on previous albums. So in preparation for his upcoming project this year, I went back and relistened to both 99.9% and Bubba, and… well, I was half right, and it reflects observations I made when I reviewed Bubba in late 2019. The odd thing with Kaytranada’s production is that in his self-contained context, the eccentricities in synth tone and percussion pop and show more variance, they can set up really potent vibes, but if the immersion of said vibes fractures at all, be they on overlong projects or placed in contrast with expectations of greater colour, you might wind up feeling deflated. But hey, it wasn’t his fault that Bubba’s run of dance grooves was short-circuited by lockdowns the following year, and given the stacked list of collaborators this time, I really wanted TIMELESS to click… and the odd thing is that while it does for the most part, it feels less than ever like it’s because of Kaytranada’s production directly and more because of the stacked array of guest stars on display. And what’s odd is that you can tell Kaytranada sets up the album with the 70s strings sample and watery keyboards and rickety cymbal against the roiling bass, where it seems like he’s trying to set up a more layered throwback to opulent disco and R&B, pay off the album’s title, but as we get deeper into the album it feels like a patchy, awkwardly sequenced feint before he’s back to the spare wavy bass grooves, brittle chalky percussion, and offkilter keys, which aren’t bad but feel increasingly cool, colourless, and oddly mixed, like how on ‘Dance Dance Dance’ and ‘Seemingly’ I really like the samples but the huge bass swallows the mix and the drums feel weirdly canned. And since the lyrics once again barely feel like they matter - a blur between tentative and largely missed dance floor connections and a distinctly catty edge - the guests provide the majority of the flair, and that’s not how 99.9% felt so effective and colourful, Phonte excluded. I can give Kaytranada a lot of points for calling up a stacked roster of R&B acts you should know better - I like the two Rochelle Jordan and two Channel Tres features here, even if the fragmented compression on ‘Drip Sweat’ feels egregious, and the sandy groove of ‘More Than A Little Bit’ with Tinashe eventually grew on me - but are they really flattered or pushed into more interesting or textured spaces, or just given something that feels increasingly stock from a producer who can do this in his sleep? I like that hazy blues guitar behind Don Toliver on ‘Feel A Way’, the woodwinds and textured percussion with Dawn Richard on ‘Hold On’, or the cascading pianos around the glassy cymbals around Charlotte Day Wilson on ‘Still’ even if the song feels like a fragment, but they feel like exceptions, not the rule. And of course it’s cool when Durand Bernarr brings in the funk on ‘Weird’ and the one-two punch of SiR with Anderson .Paak and Childish Gambino steal the show with the kooky synth-driven ‘Do 2 Me’ and hazy disco of ‘Witchy’, but the latter two are buried so deeply on a tracklist that was already running long before we get a four song second disk tacked on which might have Channel Tres’ swagger on ‘Stuntin’ and Mariah The Scientist truly trying on the closer, a repackaged song from her project last year with a mix doing her no favours, but also can’t flatter PinkPantheress’ unique fluttery strengths and gives us a Thundercat feature that’s a lot less funny than it thinks it is. It’s exasperating that I can appreciate the metacontext of this album constantly flirting with more intriguing ideas or diversions, but the execution of it should feel more interesting than it is, where length and slapdash sequencing don’t help the formula to the point it feels like a compilation, even if on groove alone I like a lot of this as a whole. And that’s the sticking point: Kaytranada has locked down a formula in dance-ready R&B that works, you could call it timeless… it just feels less colourful and fun than it should be, where some of the old magic just isn’t there. Pick your favourites - I probably have enough to make a killer EP from this, there is tangible quality here - but this is a late night vibe that might not live up to its title.
Shaboozey - Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going - I never would have expected that of the acts getting prominent features on Beyonce’s COWBOY CARTER that the first who’d strike for mainstream crossover would be the country rapper Shaboozey, nabbing a mainstream hit on the Hot 100 that’s looking to be among the songs of the summer with more momentum than anything else Beyonce has released since! That only happens when an act has all the connections and promo ready for the moment and just needs the door to be opened - which shouldn’t be surprising if you remember he was also featured on the Into The Spiderverse soundtrack six years ago and was actually signed to Republic for his debut that year… but going back to that debut, I can tell the sound hadn’t quite coalesced, a blur of leaden trap and R&B with only traces of pop-folk, country, and even Afrobeats which was pleasant and well-produced but lacked a certain punch, I’m not surprised he soon left that label and wound up on EMPIRE for his next album in 2022, which hit the bluesy country trap side much harder. Indeed, with its rougher, more bruising production I can see why folks might prefer the more ramshackle Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die - which includes a RMR feature that makes me long for a proper follow-up album - but by bringing Nevin Sastry back in the fold for production on the new album, it has the feel of bringing back the polish now that the sound and formula had crystallized. And it leads to a really consistent and strong project as a whole: the stomping blend of rap, country, blues, and pop folk is solidly balanced and robust, the guitars are suitably warm, and to my pleasant surprise the pedal steel and fiddle sound excellent - it’s the rare album that sounds expensively produced and refined, especially in the drum machines which is something mainstream Nashville so often fumbles - though I wasn’t crazy about the leaden percussion on ‘Drink Don’t Need No Mix’ with BigXThaPlug - but not in a way that’s flashy or oversold, and had me wondering why Beyonce didn’t embrace more of those neotraditional tones for COWBOY CARTER this year. And I really like Shaboozey’s vocal presence here, not just in how he cribs from southern trap vocal patterns in his husky baritone, but he nails the shaggy, world-weariness that comes with actually living hard on the road, where he has the presence to get louder and tougher, but has the restraint to know when it’s appropriate; if you’re looking for a genre-blurring act leaning into pop and modern country, compared to someone like Post Malone where there are parallels in groove and vocal inflection, it feels more organically produced and soulful, the stylism consistently lands, and with bangers like ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ and ‘Let It Burn’, he can go toe for toe on a big stage! Now if I were to highlight a slight weakness of this album, it might be the writing - not that it’s bad, but it is a little inconsistent and two-dimensional; I tend to appreciate his hangdog relationship misadventures like the exasperated and lightly toxic breakup on ‘Anabelle’, the exhausted heartbreak of ‘My Fault’ where he has tangible chemistry with Noah Cyrus, or the cycle of a relationship born out of ‘stealing’ a girl that’s coming back around on ‘Steal Her From Me’; I prefer that heavier irony to any aggro outlaw posturing. And there’s often depth where you might not expect: echoes of the history of the Great Migration drift behind ‘East of the Massanutten’, or how the closer ‘Finally Over’ is a pretty stark reckoning with his struggles to get a career off the ground and not having to create ‘another viral moment’, which adds a nice bit of relieved metatext that the landing stuck this time. In short, I think this is a really damn good, frequently great album - Shaboozey’s blend of sounds is familiar, but polished and ready for primetime, and with a tight album and a few strong, obvious singles ready to go, it feels almost old-school to prime for the big leagues. I have to hope EMPIRE doesn’t screw this up, but in the mean time, this guy isn’t just a cosign and a great party song - there’s more to hear, make the time to check this out!
Luke Combs - Fathers & Sons - …the funny thing about Luke Combs cutting his most neotraditional country to date entirely focused on relationships between fathers and sons, be it his with his dad or with his new kids, specifically for a release close to Father’s Day, in a different time this would just be a critically acclaimed niche side project instead of likely having chart impact! But while it is exactly what you’d expect in terms of homespun, midtempo, organic cuts - a bit too uniform in tone but man I love that fiddle - the best moments go beyond life lessons to poignant layers within family and masculinity, the cycles of fathers together of ‘Huntin’ By Yourself’, acceptance on ‘Whoever You Turn Out To Be’, insecurities of fatherhood on ‘The Man He Sees In Me’, even divorce from the son’s POV on ‘Take Me Out To The Ball Game’. This is a man’s album, and I mean that with the highest praise possible; a bit too samey to be his best, but still really damn good - check it out!