JPEGMafia – I Lay Down My Life For You [AWAL 2024]
Black Ben Carson, Black AOC, Black Marjorie Taylorie Greene…really he’s running out of comparisons. And with enough built in pop culture references to make Dan Harmon cream himself. Always the scarer of hoes and never the hoe, eh? 3.2/5
Big Thief – Two Hands [4AD 2019]
The reason everyone wraps their arms around “Not” is the same reason I sense a lot of other great songs gather their fandoms on not so great albums; the lyricist needs to get some load of doubt/pleasure/anxiety/anger – some facet of emotion – off their chest and they need a band to help conjure a musical background undulating enough to convey it. That tension rings truer to most people than the staid but pleasant folk instrumentals and lyrics that are god tier on paper but not particularly engrossing on this record. Objectively there’s quality to the craftsmanship in these 10 songs, and being able to pump out two good albums in a year is always worth congratulating. But compared to the pleasant scrappiness of Capacity or nuclear level euphoria that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’s kaleidoscope of songcraft grants, Two Hands serves more of a perfunctory role. 3.5/5
Charly Bliss – Forever [Lucky Number Music 2024]
I’ve seen mixed reactions from the deluded sections of indiedom full of folks – mostly men I’m guessing – who take the trade publications’ reviews as gospel without forming their own critical opinions. “We miss Guppy!” they proclaim between arguing that American Slang was the best Gaslight Anthem record or trying to convince anyone that Foxing is a band who matters. Leaving aside that record’s own underbaked Blue Album shredding, Eva Hendricks just wasn’t as good a singer or songwriter yet to be considered moving up from the minors. Then came Young Enough when they won not just my heart but my full-throated support and grew into the kind of underdog to root for that I’ve always been a sucker for. I’m not sure if anyone since The Wonder Years wrapped up their golden age a decade ago has there been this potent of a Band to Believe In and I’m sure as hell hoping they don’t run out of steam. Jettisoning tales of trauma for tales of the kind of emotional and personal conflicts that make up everyday partnerships full of love, respect, and neuroses Eva Hendricks & Co are appreciative, reflective, and sometimes downright incorrect – a lament about having wasted your life when you’re only 29? Get the fuck outta here. But on this melodic tour de force what she gets correct is to start off with a “love so good its tragic” and ends with him being her “last first kiss”. Because rarely are our delusions of grandeur and destruction so accurate. P.S. There’s a trick to listening to their best song here; after every chorus on “Calling You Out” raise your volume, then when the music cuts out during the bridge it’ll hit like the ton of bricks all good rock music should. 4.2/5
Shaboozey – Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going [American Dogwood 2024]
Given all the racial hullabaloo in country music at the moment it’s to his credit that the songs with white people are the most annoying – means he’s doing real well. Where he falls down is assuming alcoholism equals depth. 3.2/5
Chappell Roan – The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess [Universal 2023]
Failing to make good on her cult-status ambitions by instead blowing up to a level of stardom she probably never considered after her producer semi-dropped her for a budding Disney starlet and her label fully dropped her for not meeting its metrics, Kayleigh Amstutz’s reality isn’t that she met the moment – since these songs are years old – but that *ahem* the moment met her. A consummate performer whose drag influences delight and agile voice astounds, this 26-year-old from central Missouri inhabits a persona who kisses boys and girls but prefers the latter in coastal cities far away from the Great Plains that she claims to miss, and that’s just the abstract. How about hearing an enthusiastic “baby I will ‘cause I really want to” after being propositioned for sex? Or getting coffee with an ex because she doesn’t trust either of them? How about Robyn? Lady Gaga? The subtle sadness in the synths underlying “Pink Pony Club” to represent the loss of foundational principals pushed on youth by conservative parents…asshole!? So many people will rain down that vague and usually inaccurate term “fun” as the key to her appeal instead of a facet of it. She’s fun sure, but more than that she’s petty, sad, horny, and yearnful – for a twentysomething trying to make her mark in a culture she worships, it’s a great amount of latitude she’s left for others in her wake. 4.3/5
Cosmic Hero 