The Front Bottoms – Talon of the Hawk [Bar/None 2013]
Second time out and they’re more refined. Funnier too, and it’s not just the accordion coming in when he mentions French on the he’s-a-condescending-prick opener. It’s to that point Brian Sella’s little repetitions he does while singing have become not just semi-annoying space fillers, but reassurances (“I’m gonna help you swim”), punchlines (“I have very strong bones”), and mantras (“Set me free”) while his and his friend’s understanding of instrumental hooks have led them to include earworm flourishes wherever they can around his constant quarter life crisis – a crisis whose tension is superficial girl problems vs. the deconstructed problems affecting girls in “his” life. It’s always been easy to write off a privileged twentysomething male sing/whining about his inability to connect with the object of his heterosexual desires, but when recognition of cynicism becomes a point of growth as on “Funny You Should Ask” or an unwanted pregnancy enters one’s life as on “Lone Star” his response is to include detail, not shy from it – a sign of acceptance as well as good storytelling. Such details are the coy breadcrumbs left in between the undergraduate level poetry of “Twin Sized Mattress”, a treatise on the opioid epidemic as experienced by North Jersey kids in the late 00’s-early 10’s that pulls off the incredible move of making a vitriol riddled climax into a gang vocal shout along of catharsis. At the risk of coming off too inaccessibly Garden State it should be noted that it’s their “Born to Run”. 4.3/5
The Weekend – Dawn FM [Republic Records 2022]
Often I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with my nipples having gotten so chafed by my bedtime outerwear that I’ve had to cut holes in my shirt to let them breathe under the blanket. Breath heavy and a glass of water having just been furiously downed it’s time to listen to something to settle in since my little puckeroos will stay solid enough to cut diamond unless I relax and sleep. I need Abel to tell me how it’ll all be okay over the kind of kitschy globs of synth that went out of style in the H.W. Bush administration, not that he’d know being a Canadian. I cry when Jim Carrey’s God tells me to settle in for the ride and void my bowels post haste. Whoops. But that’s tomorrow’s problem, tonight I am all about it baybee. Less than zero? That’s so fucking deep. Brain hurt. Sleep time. 2.1/5
Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up Here [Ninja Tune 2022]
Man who can’t sing makes music with band that isn’t catchy. Promptly leaves said band. What a Chad. 2.0/5
Pavement – Wowee Zowee [Matador 1995]
Having noted that I haven’t actually expounded on this band yet I figure I should here. Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, and Bob Nostanovich make up the core of a bunch of noise pop alt-rockers from all over the country, sometimes based in Memphis, sometimes in Hoboken, sometimes in California’s ample suburbs. Lyrically nothing they’ve written has ever been less than cryptic to the point that the Genius.com entries also don’t make sense, until now. Their art-punk noise posturing on Slanted and Enchanted having given way to what their interpretations of 70’s California sounded like through an alt filter on Crooked Rain Crocked Rain, they expected that last one to have finally yielded a hit and allowed them to cross over, which didn’t happen. As a result, they became reflexively more insular here, so indie and out of touch that their fanbase damn near rioted when they hear what they thought were joke songs no longer than 2 and a half minute all over this thing. Their loss I guess. This is in fact Pavement’s greatest melding of noise, melody and message for those of us who were brought up on their progeny like Modest Mouse and Parquet Courts. In the classic sense the 18-track record has usually been used as a statement of some kind of authenticity, here being “here’s all the styles we haven’t fucked with yet so let’s dip our toes in and hope mom and dad don’t get mad we aren’t wearing floaties”. The results are splendid. Acoustic guitar for what feels like the first time, lyrical narratives one can follow, and these little bits of melodicism that work their way in; the guitar chimes after the first verse of “AT&T”; the screech in the back of “Kennel District”, the absolute tension-release RIP that “Grounded” takes for a chorus. These sounds make sense to an audience that grew up after it, with many more groups to contextualize and make accessible what was once thought to be a fluke. But its genesis still holds the power to scratch a withholding itch if you have the patience for a band like this. 4.6/5
Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry [Good Music 2022]
For two decades of long player recording Terence Thornton’s focus on refined coca powder has been a source of the exploration between post Reagan era drug policy and the hustler mentality that it takes to rise above the streets, both qualities he found in his hero Jay-Z’s early dead-eyed tales. These and his other qualities make the supposed horrors of his previous life more digestible; for example, he’s charming but can snarl at a pin drop, he’s often rueful but never ashamed, never falls on the classic gansta tropes of dick-as-glock or murder-as-manhood. Not to mention outing Drake as a deadbeat dad is something that no one who lived through it and thought that the Canadian fuckboy deserved it will ever forget. So after the potency of his last masterpiece comes the comedown, looser and more uncharacteristically melodic, a split between his sadly megalomaniacal label owner’s beats and his boy Pharrell’s more experimental facets. He’s prone to more insular musings this time around that are always compelling at one moment or another, especially since his version of mailing it in is still 90th percentile or above, and his trust in the melodic features around him means that he may be warming up bit by bit as he enters his mid 40’s despite his voice still sounding like a twenty-something. Impressively and surprisingly, he gets his brother out of retirement for the second time in three years so that (previously No) Malice can tell us that he might sic The Lord on high against us if he wants to. 3.5/5
Cosmic Hero 