Charli XCX – brat but it’s completely different but also still brat

19 Oct

This is the best victory lap that I’ve ever seen. brat was the success that Charli has chased for years while also being her best and most personal album yet. She had the frontrunner for the US presidential election channel her. She deserves the celebration of her success but she didn’t need to be so generous with it.

Every song gets a full rework in this album. She gets everyone in pop to come on to one song or another and they all get a brand new take on the material. We get some really fun moments like Yung Lean taking a spin on the chorus in “360” and Ari getting a little space to sing in “sympathy is a knife”.

Some of the guest spots stand out less simply because, while it’s nice to see so many of the pop girls in one spot, they can start to sound the same. Nevertheless, Addison Rae does well in the “von dutch” remix, but a lot of that is just how good the original is. This issue also plagues the album; the originals are just very good music.

That’s what makes this album so interesting though. Charli doesn’t settle for obvious remixes. “von dutch” is still recognizably “von dutch” but the transformation is thorough. These songs all get totally reworked and it demonstrates just how much space is left in this sound. It’s particularly good to see A. G. Cook get the space on a couple of songs to stretch out the production.

Even the songs that hew closer to the originals do well for the guest spots. Tinashe brings out a very fun double entendre for “b2b” and Troye Sivan gets to be burlier than I’ve ever seen him before. in “talk talk.” It’s a good look for him.

Julian Casablancas gets a complete reimagination of “mean girls” though and it’s a good pick for him. The Lorde remix works much better in the context of the album than as a single, as does the Billie song which provides a welcome aggressive horniness. The bon iver remix of “i think about it all the time” is an interesting change, but one that makes you wish for the old Kanye, who would have been very welcome here.

I’m just glad for Charli that she got to a place where she can break out her rolodex and throw herself a party like this and it’s not every artist that would choose to make something so innovative with it.

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Milton Nascimento, Esperanza Spalding – Milton + esperanza

8 Oct

An Esperanza Spalding album is always going to have some truly fantastic vocal work and it’s a pleasure to see her work with a legend like Milton Nascimento. The atonality in her singing is incredible in “Get It By Now” and she concludes the song on an excellent note. She also uses it well to challenge the listener in “When You Dream.”

It’s an album that could use a little more of interest, but Milton and Esperanza are both likable enough to make it immaterial and there’s enough energy to carry them through with aplomb.

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Nilufer Yanya – My Method Actor

28 Sep

My Method Actor is a consistently solid album that desperately needs something more. I don’t think there’s a single song here that doesn’t hold up to a fairly high standard. Everything here is good music to a fault and that fault is monotony.

She’s got a good groove in “Call It Love” for instance. She has a stellar voice that she doesn’t overuse and it’s very easy to let the song carry you. The same can be said of the gentleness of “Faith’s Late” or the excellent fuzz of “Like I Say” and “Method Actor” but they all fade very easily into the background. My Method Actor ends up very competent and very listenable but unfortunately also very forgettable.

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Sabrina Carpenter – Short n’ Sweet

18 Sep

Sabrina Carpenter has charisma that can only be measured in gigawatts. You expect a pop star to be likable, Carpenter is exceptional. There are few flaws that such tremendous personality cannot paper over and Short n’ Sweet does nothing to really test that.

I didn’t like “Espresso” the first time I heard it. It’s not the most interesting pop nor is it the most well done. It’s a decent KPop song done by a white singer, but the current crop of KPop is exceptional and it’s hard to put “Espresso” best to “Super Shy” and not have it suffer.

It’s just so easy to like Sabrina though. She always looks like she’s having fun. She plays very well with the camera. I really enjoy the “Death Becomes Her”-styled video for the quite fun “Taste”.

The music does let her down a bit though. She tries a lot of things and does none of them well. “Bad Chem” also tries KPop but doesn’t even manage the standard of “Espresso.” “Good Graces” takes from some of the better Grimes, “Dumb and Poetic” is a bad Taylor song, “Slim Pickins” is weak country and “Nonsense” is a weak Ari song and a terrible rap showcase.

Sabrina Carpenter clearly has the DNA for superstardom and is always worth watching. Her music needs to catch up with her though and until she picks a lane, it’s hard to see how it will.

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Heems – Veena

14 Sep

We’re getting more Heems exposure than anyone could have expected. It’s not too surprising that it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

He has some fascinating pieces in this album. Trying NY Drill in “RAKHI” is great. The old school NY rap in “DAME” is fun. That could be a Biggie beat. “MANTO” doesn’t have the best flow but Vijay Iyer is top notch in it and the jazz and rap intermingling is excellent.

However, the interludes are terrible. The rolodex stunting is gauche. “RIGHTEOUS” cannot end fast enough. His Juhi Chawla bit is terrible. Firstly, it’s over-explained for a white audience. Secondly, it’s absolutely baby’s first Bollywood movie. Put it together and it’s painfully shallow.

When an album’s music is largely forgettable, the bits that stand out need to sparkle. There are some songs well worth the listen but there’s too much that grates as well.

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Ice Spice – Y2K!

11 Aug

Ice Spice appears to be on the way down and Y2K! is not going to change that, even if it is a better album than the moment. It’s just that she doesn’t seem to have enough interest in wanting to stay at the top. The second move is the hardest one, the one that proves that you have legs beyond being a momentary sensation and Ice Spice had clips of her looking bored while twerking and ads at her concert as the run-up. Y2K! is not the album to overcome that.

There’s some stuff here that I really like. “Gimme A Light” has her working well in her comfort zone. Ice Spice was a revelation when she came out. We all feared that New York drill’s crossover moment had died with Pop Smoke and Ice Spice delivering the breakout while evolving the form was huge.

She brings in a couple of interesting evolutions over the album. There’s great storytelling in “Plenty Sun” which is a nice development for her. Even more interesting is “Did It First” where she takes the role that I would expect to see from someone like PinkPantheress even to the extent of a Central Cee feature.

There’s not that much of interest here though and that’s made worse by her softening her music in what may be a misguided pop turn. Her voice just felt deeper in “Munch” and her beats were more submerged. It’s all toned down now and that loses the best part of her music.

Y2K! is not a great album but it’s not a bad one either. It’s just that at this point in her career, Ice Spice needed something more than ambivalence.

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Lupe Fiasco – Samurai

7 Aug

It feels like one of the big questions of the past few years is how can a rapper age? 3k decided to make a flute album rather than “rap about colonoscopies” and Em continued to fail at any kind of growth. Lupe just seems to have relaxed.

The complaint with Lupe was always that he had great flow but horrible beats. Samurai suits him though. These are airy, jazzy beats and he works well with them. They give him plenty of space to stretch out on his rapping and are never less than pleasant. That’s really all that I’ve ever asked for with his beats; that they don’t distract from his flows.

The flows are still great. His rapping isn’t going to turn heads the way it did in his prime and he doesn’t really have any of the storytelling her that marked his best work but he’s still a pleasure to listen to. Lupe’s old. He doesn’t need to set the world on fire with a new album. He can just relax a bit, have some fun and give us something to spend a little time with.

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Eminem – The Death of Slim Shady

22 Jul

Slim fooled me again. Over 20 years of substandard music should have taught me better but I fell for it again. “Houdini” was an exciting single and the idea of Em trying a concept album seemed like it might finally be the thing to get him to do something new. Instead, we have the same tired, pointless slop that Eminem has put out since his three classics, just slightly better.

“Houdini” just had him sounding energetic and revitalized. It mines a lot of nostalgia, but it sounds like he’s having fun and putting in effort for the first time in decades. It was the first single in a long time that crossed over from his core audience and deservedly so. Some of this even carries over to the album.

He opens the album with some of that same energy in “Renaissance.” “Brand New Dance” is fun in the way that classic fun Em songs were. There are pieces here that remind you of who Eminem was in his prime.

However, this is a lot of the Eminem problem. I would rather just listen to his old music than his current stuff. He hasn’t added anything of value to his discography in the entirety of The Death of Slim Shady and it has been a long time since the last time he did. With this album, he’s trying to evoke his great music without any of what made that music so great and while the illusion holds up for a song or two, it collapses quickly.

This is at its worst in “Temporary,” where he sings to Hailie about his imagined death. The thing is that Hailie is almost thirty now. She’s married. Audiotapes from her childhood aren’t going to change that. “Like Toy Soldiers” was almost 20 years ago. You can’t sell me on her as an innocent child anymore and trying to do so is dishonest.

He’s out of touch when he tries to recognize her as an adult too. Shilling her nepo-baby podcast on the album is embarrassing in a way that a young Em would have skewered. His references are equally out of touch. I don’t think about South Park anymore. I don’t think about Caitlyn Jenner. I didn’t even think about Christopher Reeves in the year 2000.

This is why the cancel culture conceit doesn’t work. He’s not relevant enough for anyone to care enough to cancel him anymore and he’s not plugged in enough for this album to make waves. His transphobia and whining aren’t transgressive, they’re just tired. I see too much of it and too much that’s much more hateful than Em for this album to do anything. Famous children’s book authors say things more shocking everyday.

Also, notice that Mr. “I say what they don’t want you to hear” doesn’t have a word to say about Gaza through the whole album. Macklemore had a whole song on it. How am I supposed to take any of this seriously when Eminem isn’t even the most controversial white rapper?

When you see someone jump on this bandwagon, it’s almost always a grift and I wish that I could be surprised at Eminem falling like this, but he’s tried to sell NFTs when that was hot and it’s clear now that this is who he is.

The result is that where “Guilty Conscience 2” should have been a synthesis, it’s just exhausting. He’s unconvincing in both voices and it’s because he doesn’t believe in either one. He’s just trying to find a way back into the conversation.

This is an album that desperately needed a real single too. His classic albums had a lot of filler when revisited but the best songs there are still some of the best that rap has ever had to offer. He’s living off technical ability but he’s lost fluidity in his flow and that damages his rap as much as the soullessness. Go back to “Superman” and you can clearly see that he just can’t rap like that anymore.

He litigates his GOAT status frequently here. It’s the entire focus of his second single, “Tobey.” It’s one of the better songs in the album despite an abysmal chorus and another song where you see two guests have decent verses just for Em to show that he is in a different tier altogether.

The thing he misses with this talk though is that he only ever looks at rappers. He should have aimed higher, he should have wanted to be the greatest music artist of all time. He never found the second act that musicians need to sustain. Great musicians reinvent themselves every few years. Em is still taking shots at his mother in his fifties. It’s pretty clear that he’ll never manage anything more.

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Camilla Cabello – C,XOXO

8 Jul

We have Charli XCX at home.

We have Drake at home.

We have Lana Del Rey at home.

We have Megan thee Stallion at home.

We have FKA Twigs at home.

We seem to be out of Camilla Cabello though. That’s a shame. I like her.

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Vijay Iyer Trio – Compassion

6 Jul
1.83.0-NPBPE7VMRP36V7QYBA5BG3AISE.0.2-6

There is no one in music more consistently excellent than the Vijay Iyer Trio. Compassion is more of the frenetic, highly intelligent jazz they excel at. “Maelstrom,” for instance, lives up to its name and throws you right in the middle of the swirl. These are three virtuosos at work as you can see in the incredible solos of “Tempest.” They’ll take a straightforward base like in “Arch” and layer so much on top of it that the return to the origin is breathtaking. This is spectacular jazz through and through and unmissable for any fan of the music.

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