Lucy Dacus – Home Video [Matador 2021]
These reflections of Christian youth in the South show Dacus to be more of a clear-eyed memoirist than Julian Baker’s self-loathing diarist or Phoebe Bridger’s wan documentarian. That she’s also the one who isn’t afraid to increase her bpm to the point that it induces a groove is also a major plus, after all she is the Rocker of the three. Naturally the faster ones do it more for me than the slower ones but that doesn’t stop the intensity of “Thumbs” or “Christine” from hitting as hard as they do. 4.0/5
Faye Webster – I Know I’m Funny, haha [Secretly Canadian 2021]
Music for getting high to. Or sleeping. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive though. 2.7/5
Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever [Darkroom/Interscope 2021]
Like she said, she’s older now. And subject matter-wise it’s a song cycle about reaction to meteoric fame (hence “Things I once enjoyed/Just keep me employed now”), a dissolved relationship, and an attack on the monstrous men she’s been exposed to in the industry. As these songs are mostly inward facing Finneas’s always compelling instrumentals are now a bit more claustrophobic, there’s no more industrial crunches and a Catholic hymn through line in more than a few. The biggest surprise is the power ballad title track that explodes into heavy metal I had assumed pop music left in 2004 and would never embrace again, but TikTok seems to absolutely adore it. 4.5/5
Bfb da Packman – Fat Niggas Need Love too [The Lunch Crew Company 2021]
Harnessing class clown-grade yuks, man seeks to escape poverty. 3.2/5
Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury [Re-Up/Star Trak/Jive 2006]
It’s been said a million times at this point – and no offense to Pusha T, the younger deeper voiced coke-rap prodigy, or (No) Malice the higher voiced rueful older brother – but it’s The Neptune’s production work, not to mention Pharrell’s chameleonic features, that make the tall tales, brags, and direct confrontations these brothers claim is fueled by coke and its money so lucid. That said, the brothers posture as former crack dealers who used what little rap money they managed to get together to fund their new enterprise, “sellin’ it pure”, and they go hard. How hard? Try on “See I was 16, eyes full of hope/Bagging up grams at the Hyatt though/The news call it crack I call it Diet Coke” which is why “They coming for me, they runnin’ up/I’m on the balcony seeing through the eyes of Tony/They say we homies but I see hatred/Do they not know brotherly love is sacred?” 4.6/5
Cosmic Hero 