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Lana Del Rey: Ultraviolence

23 Jun

I enjoyed Lana Del Rey’s 2012 album Born to Die. It was over-stylized and a little too easy to digest, but nevertheless good, intriguing music. Even if it painted in cliché, the album itself made an interesting whole and the pictures it drew were unique, if not wholly novel. Additionally, it was highly consistent and coherent, both of which are necessary for something that tries to be new. Ultimately though, the album failed to live up to its breakout single “Video Games” and similarly her second album Ultraviolence fails to live up to Born to Die.

The album starts well. The title track is a wonderful trip into her world. There is all of the theater that defines her work, the sounds and imagery writ large for none to miss. When she does well, she can do very well. Her voice drifts languorously through exquisite soundscapes. It’s hard to find music quite as evocative as her best.

Sadly, that doesn’t sustain long enough and the album collapses a little on itself. Her pose starts to feel tired and the album devolves in places to mere emotional hooks instead of actual statements. Additionally, the lyrics are bad enough to break the mood in places. I don’t really need her crooning that she’s a bad girl and the ending of “Brooklyn Baby” is so painfully obvious that actually saying it is just crude.

The album does sound quite different than Born to Die. This is slower and less catchy, but more rich and atmospheric, more theatrical. This is still very clearly a Lana Del Rey album though and there are not enough of those around. No one else makes pop that sounds like hers. All told, this is a quite reasonable album and she does get points for uniqueness, but this is still nothing more than reasonable.

– @murthynikhil

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Push the Sky Away

15 Jun

Push the Sky Away is one of the most consistent albums of recent memory. It does an amazing job of setting a tone and a quality bar and sticking to both. Mildly disconcerting and quite ominous, this is the aural equivalent of walking at night in a strange forest.

The enunciated, almost groaned, vocals make for a potent atmosphere and the bass and drums push it far into the sinister. It is rare to get an album this coherent and it is quite the pleasure to listen to. The music itself is very solid. Despite a lack of true hooks or accessible entry points, it is quite easy to sink into the depths this album affords you. The songs unfold at their own leisurely pace, but carry you along the entire way. These are songs capable of grabbing you early and never letting go.

Save for lyrics that are never as clever as they seem to believe, this is an excellent album and well worth a listen.

– @murthynikhil

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Kendrick Lamar: Section.80

2 Jun

Section.80 is the work of a very talented kid. This is Kendrick Lamar’s album before good kid, m.A.A.d city and before “Control.” This is back when he was just a guy with talent and not one of the biggest names in the rap industry. The inexperience shows, there some degree of searching for who exactly he is, but there is also enough identity to make a very good, very individual album.

There are some stellar cuts on this album. “A.D.H.D.” is an excellent tale of life in the poorer parts of L.A. “No Make-Up” is a positive track in the vein of Goodie Mob. “HiiiPower” is K.Dot’s take on “So Appalled” and “Keisha’s Song” is “Brenda’s Got A Baby” and both are exceptional themselves. However, the album has its share of weak points and lacks the consistency of a more experienced rapper. His flow is a pleasure to listen to, but his lyrics have moments of weakness amongst all the cleverness.

In summary, Section.80 is a little bit rough but well worth a listen, even three years and a sequel into its history.

– @murthynikhil

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Diana: Perpetual Surrender

22 May

Perpetual Surrender is now inextricably linked to the video game Hearthstone for me. The nice thing about Hearthstone is that it is a game that you can play with whatever music you like and I have had Perpetual Surrender on hand for a while now. This is good, solid music. I could listen to this album indefinitely. I just doubt that I will remember any of it later.

This is a glossy, 80’s revivalist pop album that is fun to listen to. That statement is neither praise nor damnation, merely fact. It is the kind of album where soft saxophone solos play over synths. “Perpetual Surrender” is often intriguing. “That Feeling” is an excellent song with undeniable catchiness. Yet, for all of the album’s many strengths, it is a little too bland to truly champion.

This album is a person at a party, a person who is dressed nicely and seems to have everything together. A person with whom you have an interesting chat and share some laughs. A person with whom you enjoy the time you spend. At some point though, you have to leave the party and you leave unchanged. I needed something more.

– @murthynikhil

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Speedy Ortiz: Real Hair

6 Apr

Speedy Ortiz’s debut album released just about half a year ago, and we loved it, as did many others. Their latest EP, Real Hair continues their style of lo-fi 90’s inspired alternative rock and their trend of making amazing music.

This album is wish fulfillment of everyday dreams. “Shine Theory” speaks of leaving neighbors scary notes while they’re away at work. That’s the first step. That’s a throwaway dream. A common, fondly held kind of dream, but still to be discarded in a moment as is, quite correctly, that lyric. This is the setting, this is how you begin to understand that she is you and that I am you and that none of us are very nice. Still, I have dreams and you have dreams and she has dreams and this album is the satisfaction of them all.

Like its predecessor, Real Hair is a love letter to the early 90’s. Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. are unabashedly drawn from, but form a support, not a straightjacket. “Oxygal” for instance makes creative use of form to create a sound that would be dissonant were Speedy Ortiz not so good at their music. The guitars are excellent and Sadie Dupuis’ vocals amaze. The music itself is rough, defying the shininess endemic to modern alternative rock and leaving in its stead an honest commitment to the sound. Hero worship is a desire, not to be the person worshiped, but to have accomplished what that person has done. Speedy Ortiz here have written the perfect kind of love letter, a letter from one peer to another.

The lyrics cover standards of everyman life. Self-loathing and toxic relationships have never been far from the indie songwriter’s pen, but Sadie Dupuis is brutally honest and human as she goes over them. Additionally, the lyrics are nothing short of poetic. Self-deception and raw desires and all of the pettiness and glories of personal lives are mixed in the whirlwind that is this EP. Every time that you have felt hurt and trapped not only by the world, but by yourself, and was unable to communicate even to yourself why you hurt and just wished you could talk so that maybe you could begin to understand, Real Hair is the fulfillment of those wishes.

Real Hair is a wonderful four songs, and I highly recommend that you listen to it.If you’ve ever wished for another 90’s alternative rock album with excellent music and whip-smart lyrics, it turns out that Real Hair can satisfy that wish as well.

– @murthynikhil

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Chick Corea: The Vigil

31 Mar

Chick Corea is one of the few giants still left in jazz, and The Vigil shows no signs of him slowing down. It’s been quite a while since his time on In A Silent Way or Bitches’ Brew or his time with Return to Forever, but even at 72, he can still put out an exceptional jazz album.

The Vigil is his first recorded album with his new group after years of performing live together, and their time together shows. Intricate solos intertwine effortlessly, especially in the live “Hot House”. The music remains clever after many listens and manages to maintain that intelligence over an eclectic and varied track list. Fusion, modal and Latin and Spanish tinged jazz all find their place and mesh excellently over the course of the album. The entire album benefits greatly from the touches of Spain. “Pledge For Peace” in particular is very Olé Coltrane-esque.

A few missteps keep this from truly being a masterpiece. The vocals in Outside of Space mar an otherwise excellent song and the album is a touch predictable in places. Nevertheless, this is an excellent jazz album and showcases a highly talented group from whom I hope more is soon to come.

– @murthynikhil

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The National: Trouble Will Find Me

3 Feb

You always know what you are going to get with a National album. As ever, Trouble Will Find Me is a technically skilled yet highly accessible alternative rock album. They remain evocative and emotional. They maintain their darkness and their humor. They are still very personal. The only issue is that their sound has also stayed constant.

It often feels that every single song by The National is the same. This is blatantly untrue, even when brought down to the scale of just this album. “Don’t Swallow The Cap”, for instance, pushes you forward with its plays while songs like “Fireproof” lounge in their melancholy. Also, quality shifts. The two aforementioned songs are excellent, while songs like “Sea of Love” and “Slipped” are fine, but instantly forgettable.

This is an album to listen to while staring out at a gray sky. Occasionally, phrases or tunes will reach your mind and draw a smile. They are after all a clever band. Lines like “I am secretly in love with everyone I grew up with” from “Demons” are too human not to relate to. However, like the rain outside, the album is too familiar and too uniform to ever interrupt your inner dialogue, and an album needs to do more to impress.

– @murthynikhil

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Beyoncé: Beyoncé

21 Jan

Beyoncé, the album is Beyoncé the singer, not Beyoncé distilled or Beyoncé as an album. This is very simply Beyoncé the person. Skilled, varied, confident and astoundingly explicit, Beyoncé may not be for everyone, but she certainly rewards those who are willing to work for her.

This is an exceedingly personal album, with topics ranging from feminism to motherhood to her sex life and so you should expect your enjoyment to be tempered by who exactly you are. An identity message this strong can be alienating. However, it is rare to hear a voice as clear as Beyoncé’s and the album feels fresh in its unapologetic statement of self. Despite the freedom, the album never comes off as particularly deep but that was probably never its intention.

The music itself is highly impressive electro-R&B, even by Beyoncé’s standards. It feels clear, when listening to her, that many of her contemporaries simply do not have the voice to run half of her songs. The production is nothing novel but serves the purpose. The focus is as ever Beyoncé herself though. Even the guest spots, featuring no less than Jay-Z, Frank Ocean and Drake, firmly remain guest spots. She is at her best in the faster numbers, and the middle of the album feels mostly like filler, but the entirety is quite good.

It can be easy with this album to be distracted by the lack of hype before the album was dropped or the visual album experiment (incidentally, watching the album definitely improves it) or the debates around it. However, even when all of that fades, Beyoncé is still going to hold up as one of the career highlights of one of the few true pop superstars.

– @murthynikhil

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Kid Cudi: Indicud

12 Jan

Kid Cudi is his own person. You can’t judge his third album Indicud the way you would judge other rap albums because it doesn’t feel the need to play by the same rules. Seriousness and wordplay are no part of this picture. Freshness is always a good thing though, especially when the result is something like “Red Eye”, which is essentially Haim being Haim. However, it still needs substance. His earlier songs, like the exceptional “Day ‘N’ Nite” managed to feel novel in subject matter as well, but this album doesn’t quite hold up to the same standard.

This is a very listenable album, but the sort that neither expects nor rewards deep and sustained listening. It is filled with bright spots, especially when the guests show up. The aforementioned Haim song is excellent, the RZA shows up for a monstrous anthem with “Beez” and Kendrick Lamar is, as always, remarkable on Solo Dolo Pt. 2. Kid Cudi’s production is strong throughout, bringing out the best of both his guests and himself, as shown on “Unfuckwittable.”

This is, all told, an enjoyable album. It is an album with an expiry date though. Give it a spin though. As long as you don’t expect to go anywhere, it is an enjoyable ride.

– @murthynikhil

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Childish Gambino: because the internet

5 Jan

becausetheinternet

Childish Gambino’s second album because the internet is in parts brilliant. It is also in parts terrible. In that respect, it does bring to mind its namesake. It also comes with a 75 page script for a screenplay. That however, does not bring to mind its namesake. At least it wouldn’t were it not filled with emojis, internet-speak and embedded videos. You can read it here if you choose to. I did not.

Briefly, the screenplay is about “The Boy”, really Donald Glover, who lives off his wealthy father, really Rick Ross, and lives in the internet. The theme of the internet is sprinkled in impressively throughout the album. Interestingly, the sheer density of references to the immediate present give the album a slightly futuristic feel. These lyrics would not look out of place on reddit. On one hand, he sneaks ain’t nobody got time for that into a line, but on the other he makes a chant of GPOY into a chorus which, while not as bad as it seems on paper, is still pretty bad. This sort of inconsistency flows into the rest of the lyrics as well. Clever C-3PO lines and an excellent play on KKK sit next to Bangkok puns. Throwaway references to subjects like the Gaza strip don’t do much either. Still, he is the only person in rap who would make a line out of onomatopoeia.

He has all the technical skill he needs as a rapper and his production is excellent. The album comes in harder than Camp, he practically opens with the line “And I still put it down like the family dog.” He is actually quite a good singer as well, showing up well on “telegraph ave.” and the Weeknd-like “flight of the navigator.” I really like “3005” and the music video that goes with it and the entire final run from “flight of the navigator” to “life: the biggest troll.” I just don’t like having to skip past the other half of the album.

This is certainly an interesting album and it contains enough quality to deserve quite a few listens but is ultimately too unreliable to unreservedly recommend.

– @murthynikhil

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