Weekly Roundup - Week 1

NOTE: This was supposed to be a script for a video for my YouTube channel that was supposed to come out on Friday, but combine technology failing me with my complete inability to back any footage up, and unfortunately I have to be content with having this in text form. That will be changing in the coming weeks (hopefully) so stay tuned.

Okay, episode one of weekly web show where I go through the albums and movies I watched during the week, along with singles and trailers every other week. I am going to try and get these out on Fridays from next week onward, but no guarantees. For now, I kept my workload pretty small. Two movies that released on Netflix during the week, and three albums. We’ll start with movies and What Happened To Mr. Cha? which released on New Years Day, stars Cha In-pyo, Cho Dal-hwan and Song Jae-ryong and is Kim Dong-kyu’s directorial debut.

What Happened To Mr. Cha? is a Korean satire about an actor who gets himself in an improbable and awkward situation while on a hike that leads to him being buried under a building after it explodes. It’s as bizarre as it sounds, and I’m not sure it really works. While the movie is somewhat impressive technically, the lighting and use of shadows in certain scenes are pretty fantastic, those are also scenes where the editing feels incredibly overdone, relying more on short snappy takes that create a sense of desperate panic pretty well, but fail to foreground the claustrophobia of the situation he’s got himself into all that effectively.

And while I get this is going for satire, the shouty, consistently obnoxious dialogue rubbed me the wrong way real fast. A shame, because the foundation is certainly there for a decent movie that satirizes celebrity culture, with the film simply being about the extent to which someone might go to preserve and maintain their perfect celebrity image, even if it means compromising everything else. I will stress that that is a compelling topic for a satire that could work if it was handled with at least some sensitivity.

The movie might be constantly a half step away from total ridiculousness at all times (and I get why that is, satire and all that), but the third act tested my patience to the limit. You can make satire while maintaining some subtlety and it tends to be what I prefer. This movie goes for the total opposite hoping its sincerity will keep its head above water, but instead it ends up a movie that devolves into blaring noise the longer I tried to focus on it. It’s frustrating because the film has a strong narrative hook that grabbed me initially, and the few characters in the movie that don’t feel totally disposable are pretty likable, but the movie ultimately ends up a situation where the foundations might be strong, but without enough going on on top of it to keep my attention, it’s not a movie I will be going back to anytime soon. 5/10, only check it out if you’re curious.

Now onto Asphalt Burning starring Anders Baasmo Chri, Katherine Thorborg Johansen and Ida Husøy. It is Hallvard Bræin’s third narrative feature.

Nothing about Asphalt Burning made me want to continue watching, but I soldiered on, nevertheless. After losing his would-be wife moments before they were supposed to get married, Roy is challenged to a race on Europe’s most iconic racetrack, the Nürburgring, in a last-ditch attempt to win her back. The best place to start would probably with how contrived the screenplay feels, the conflict feeling engineered and constructed rather than coming about naturally. When the screenplay isn’t feeling contrived, it meanders with a disgusting grandiloquence that I find detestable. It’s not like the characters are any better, though. Robyn is the key one who sets all of this into motion by letting the bride (Sylvia) know that Roy kissed her, but she remains an enigma throughout the whole movie whose motivations for setting the whole thing off are never properly addressed because that’s how much this movie cares about its characters. The movie also makes a habit of flirting with bisexuality (Robyn and Sylvia’s relationship) without having the balls to address it in an interesting and concrete way, especially as Sylvia ends up in a comfortable and conventional heterosexual relationship by the end anyway.

But perhaps that’s too harsh a criticism to level against a movie as shallow as this one is. I touched upon it before, but there are seriously some points in Asphalt Burning where you could mistake it for a Bollywood production, it’s that ridiculous, overblown and contrived. Add that to the mechanically assembled story and you have a movie that feels more like it was commissioned rather than born out of any kind of artistic ambition. And given that the movie is the third in a series, it makes all too much sense. 

That being said, this is not bottom of the barrel terrible. The racing scenes might not produce any interesting or original action, but at least the editing is intense, and the cinematography dynamic enough to keep it mostly compelling despite feeling void of heart. The movie is more frustrating and miserable than downright awful. Not enough for me to be offended, but still enough for me to look at it with a combination of disinterest and disgust. 4/10, Netflix has much better to offer.

Okay, that’s enough on the movies I saw during the week, now onto albums starting off with the alt rock band The Dirty Nill’s who’s third studio album came out on New Year’s Day and is called Fuck Art.

2021 is a year where I hope to become more acquainted with rock music than ever. It won’t really be saying much given that it’s far from my area of expertise, and with that in mind all my opinions on the genre are probably worth taking with a pinch of salt. That being said, I mostly enjoyed Fuck Art, but only as a pretty decent in one ear out the other experience. It’s a rock album that borrows hard from accessible pop punk with how polished and filmy the vocal production often is and how disposable the lyrics are, but the hooks mostly connect so I’m not complaining that much. In fact, the songwriting almost has a ‘disposable by design’ quality to it that makes for an album that is frequently amusing without being all that funny. Even in context, lines like “let me be your doom boy” test my tolerance for the ridiculous to the extreme. There is still a certain bluntness to the songwriting that makes for some interesting moments like ‘Done With Drugs’ which is a song where Luke Bentham sings about quitting drugs and then proceeds to list off things he wants to do instead that includes origami, jujitsu and walking around Ikea. Certainly amusing, but without any strong punchlines to drive any of the songs home, the entire album feels like a light-hearted exercise of futility, especially when ‘One More And The Bill’ is going to undercut the drama by describing how he wants to drink away all his problems. So much for quitting drugs and moving on with your life, I guess.

It’s a problem that comes up again on ‘To The Guy Who Stole My Bike’ which, beyond insisting that they will settle their dispute when they’re both dead, has nothing dramatic or interesting to say to the thief in question. It’s certainly not resentful but borders on complacency. I don’t think either song is worse than ‘Hello Jealousy’, though, which is a pretty damn entitled track where Bentham meditates on the frustration of always thinking he deserves more than he has despite conceding that he can have all that he both wants and needs in the opening lines, rendering the entire song mindless and pointless. Again, there’s no creative or witty punchline to this.

I suppose you could argue that the year 2020 is supposed to be the punchline to all of this, with this album’s upbeat but frustrated complacency and occasional jealousy acting as a subversion of the misery that filled 2020. And given the band’s Apple Music interview, I think that justification might actually redeem Fuck Art, albeit barely. That and the hooks are consistently pretty strong, especially on the more shimmery pop punk-inspired tracks like ‘Blunt Force Concussion’, the killer guitar solos that rips through ‘Doom Boy’ and ‘To The Guy Who Stole My Bike’, and the solid bass lines on ‘Hang Yer Moon’ and ‘Damage Control’ that do a lot of heavy lifting on those songs. It’s a shame they’re not more developed. It is mostly enough to distract from the questionable vocal mixing, though.

There is enough here that works for me, but Fuck Art still leaves me frustratingly cold and is an album that I can bet will not resonate with people, perhaps not even rock fans, outside of the very transitional time we’re living in. I’m glad that I’m off the mark with my attempts to get into more rock music this year, I just hope that I’ll find better than this down the road. This is a 6/10 and only recommended for rock fans.

Now onto the debut album by hip-hop group Fax Gang that also dropped on New Year’s Day, Aethernet. 

At best, Aethernet is an underwhelming experiment gone wrong. At worst, it’s pretty damn infuriating. It’s a bizarre blend of hyperpop with experimental hip hop, if all you mean by ‘experimental’ is that everything is lathered in distortion and the vocals are overproduced into incomprehensibility. There are hardly any interesting melodies that stick out across the album that don’t just feel like they’re just contributing to the cacophonous soundscape. ‘Goodbye’ is probably the exception where the group probably stumbled upon a decent melody by accident. Other than that, the only melodic flourishes we get are pitched up gurgles on ‘Fallen’ and ‘Shotgun’ and that horrible overpowering synth on the overlong ‘Implosion’. The rest just sinks into the distorted mush. 

There is a part of me that is willing to acknowledge that what I don’t like about Aethernet is more rooted in its style rather than anything that it ‘does wrong’. But even if that might be true, I fail to understand how anyone who isn’t already into this style could use this album as a platform to engage with it on a deeper level.

Also, if anyone cares, the songwriting isn’t that good either. It’s a lot of emo whining dressed up in hyperpop in an attempt to gaslight listeners into thinking there’s any more to it than that. But I guess the fusion does kind of make sense. For an album as manic and frenetic as this is, the lyrics are surprisingly frustrated and tired, with the intentionally discordant production supposed to highlight how much the world is crushing around them in such a way that their voices can’t be heard. It’s a cool concept, but the writing is so flimsy and conventional that it’s not doing much to really sell it. The only song any interest whatsoever here is ‘Shotgun’ which describes a toxic relationship that ends in disaster where the guy shoots his partner after getting drunk on a car ride, and, after the resulting crash, is helped out of his car by a passer-by who he will then proceed to shoot himself in front of. Heavy stuff, as is a lot of the suicidal subtext that looms large over the entire album, but just don’t expect any unique lyrical detail to flesh out the scene outside of the bare essentials.

That’s probably the most frustrating thing about Aethernet: it might be intricately produced, but it does not have the detailed or intricate writing in order to match it. Also, it gave me a headache, so 5/10, not worth your time.

Finally, country star Steve Earle is back with his band The Dukes, the album came out on the fourth of January, it’s called J.T..

It is a little bit out of character for me reviewing what is basically an album full of covers, but I’m wanting to take any excuse to highlight rock-solid country music. There is a lot to unpack with this one, though. Steve Earle & The Dukes rattle through ten songs written by Earle’s late son who died in mid-2020 in what is a fitting tribute, but also one where the songwriting and production can fall into easy-breezy territory super-fast. It’s not an album that I think I will go back to as a whole, but more for the little snippets where the album strikes gold. But when the writing hits, man it hits. ‘I Don’t Care’ might be a painfully disposable opener, but ‘Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving’ tells of the outlaw traveller who loses his girl and empathises with her decision to leave because he’s all too aware that his lifestyle has and will negatively affect the relationship down the road.

The same emotionally intelligent songwriting comes up again on ‘Maria’ where he’s facing a breakup and it’s up to him to remove himself from the situation before things get too heavy even as his feelings still linger. If there’s any thematic arc to this album, that would be it. The album kind of is about finding the emotional strength to do the right thing for however tough it might be. From the aforementioned breakups on ‘Ain’t Glad I’m Leaving’ and ‘Maria’ to the utterly miserable breakup for all the right reasons on ‘Far Away In Another Town’, to the celebration of the memory of a person post breakup on ‘Turn Out My Lights’. You could even include the suicide song ‘Harlem River Blues’ in that narrative too if you wanted. 

In fact, the songs that don’t fit into that narrative might end up the worse ones here. ‘Champagne Corolla’ is just some dumb song about a girl driving a car, but following that with ‘The Saint Of Lost Causes’, which has some pretty cold and unfeeling lyrics about succumbing to the pain in the world that don’t have the personality as other songs on the album, might not have been the best idea, especially as Earle’s croakier vocals can’t quite command the more atmospheric production as well as he thinks. The same problem comes up again against the smoky guitars on ‘Lone Pine Hill’.

Despite all that, it might be the music itself that might be the biggest barrier to me fully embracing this album. The playing might be impeccable, but the music itself feels very comfortable. The organ that soaks its way through on ‘Far Away In Another Town’ is about as musically adventurous as the album gets. ‘Turn Out My Lights’, ‘They Killed John Henry’ and ‘Champagne Corolla’ slip into the background real fast. Combine that with the fact that Earle isn’t great as a singer on the more atmospheric cuts, and you have an album that’s very solid, but never really strikes transcendence. ‘Maria’ might be the only exception to that rule with the wild, galloping bass line and percussion putting that song over the edge. 

Overall, as I said before, this is an album best enjoyed in small doses and not as a whole. Take the good songs and get out. 7/10, definitely check it out, it’s worth it. The album certainly proves that Justin Townes Earle was a great songwriter taken from us too soon.

Okay, that just about does it. Tune in next week, hopefully on Friday for my thoughts on whatever I hear that week, as well as my thoughts on some trailers and singles that have released recently.

Album Review: Shawn Mendes - Wonder

Oh dear. I didn’t know Shawn Mendes had another Illuminate in him, but I guess I was wrong.

Wonder is the fourth studio album by Canadian Vine star turned singing sensation Shawn Mendes, and it’s a fucking train wreck. If there’s any evidence that it’s possible to give a star too much creative control, this would be it. Atrociously written, horrifically performed in parts, and all produced with the subtlety of a cannonball straight to the fucking eardrums, I would say Wonder is a once in a career disaster, but given Mendes already made the equally incompetent Illuminate back in 2016, I guess Shawn Mendes is just shit and I’m just late to catch up with everyone

Do I start with his horrendous and frequently unconvincing over singing? Maybe his God-awful writing that’s so convinced of its own romantic power but yet has nothing of the sort. Or perhaps I should start with the grating production that makes it seem as if Mendes just discovered the distortion plugin on his digital audio workstation and is using that as an excuse to lather it onto every melodic tone. I really am spoiled for choice.

The fact that Mendes can’t sell these songs to save his life is probably the most fundamental problem, so let’s start there. He’s at his best when he’s underplaying like on ’24 Hours’, but he’s at his worst on ‘Wonder’, where his aforementioned over singing is at its most spine-tingling. Then there’s ‘Teach Me How To Love You’: NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR A SEX SONG COMING FROM SHAWN FUCKING MENDES. I swear, didn’t he already embarrass himself enough with ‘Señorita’? Great, now I’ve got that Instagram video of Mendes and Cabello kissing each other like fish going through my head, and NOW I WANT TO PUKE.

I wish the production was any better, but it isn’t. That grinding distorted tone that turns up on ‘Higher’ and crushes the end of that song into sludge that turns up again in the overmixed bass line on ‘Piece Of You’ and always seems to be lingering somewhere in the background of most of these songs is a mood killer. I’d probably prefer those songs over the oversold melodrama of ‘Wonder’ or ‘Song For No One’, the blaring clattering cacophony that is ‘Call My Friends’ complete with that thunderous synth tone, or the basic beyond belief cookie-cutter duet with Justin Bieber, ‘Monster’.

But it was at that song during my first listen when I realised a whole new problem: The album is underwritten as fuck and might be one of the limpest pop albums in recent memory. It’s inconsistent too. On ‘24 Hours’ Mendes claims he’s not one to overthink his relationships, but him overthinking and over fantasising about his relationships was the very premise of the title track that came two songs before. I’ve already mentioned how thuddingly unconvincing ‘Teach Me How To Love You’ is, but the poundingly obnoxious love song like ‘Higher’ and ‘Always Been You’ are not far behind.

Then there’s ‘Song For No One’ which is a song about no one. A song about nothing. IT ACTIVELY GOES OUT OF ITS OWN FUCKING WAY TO REINFORCE ITS OWN FUCKING POINTLESSNESS WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS SHAWN WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY??????? The oversold sincerity at the song’s core when the instrumental shifts into those lumbering horns imply that Mendes actually believes what he’s selling, which just makes the whole album read a hell of a lot worse.

But here’s my overarching point: why do we need Shawn Mendes when we’ve got Niall Horan? Seriously. Listen to Niall’s latest album Heartbreak Weather and tell me that Wonder isn’t just a worse version of it. As for me, I’m sticking with the original article, and if this album made me wonder anything, it would be why on earth we gave Shawn Mendes a career in the first place.

1.5 / 5

Best Songs: '24 Hours'

Worst Songs: 'Call My Friends', 'Song For No One', 'Monster', 'Always Been You'

Quick Thoughts on Some New Releases

Some quick thoughts on some films I saw over the past months.

Colour Out Of Space

Richard Stanley's latest film is certainly a feast for the eyes, but it's an open question what it ultimately achieves beyond that. Colour Out Of Space stars Nic Cage and Joley Richardson as a husband and wife grappling with extraterrestrial forces, all while trying to protect their kids Lavinia and Benny (Madeline Arthur and Brendan Meyer respectively). After what appears to be a meteorite lands in their garden, a series of unexplainable events wreak havoc on the family, as it becomes clear that the aliens mysteriously mutate everything they come into contact with.

In terms of plot, to say the movie is 'thin' would be an understatement. This is a sci-fi/horror hybrid that coasts through more on disturbing ambiguities and vague imagery than anything all that substantive. This would usually be a tough thing for me to look past, but when the production design is this hypnotic and engaging, a compromised screenplay becomes much easier to excuse. Even though the movie is cribbing more than a little bit from Ari Aster's Hereditary, especially thematically, the movie still manages to feel remarkably distinct thanks to the polished but no less misty lighting effects, the wince-inducing body horror sequences that will have even those most attuned to the genre looking away from their screens briefly, and the editing which throws the audience around recklessly, never providing the audience with a moment to breath.

It's the key reason why this movie worked for me: the horror is effectively sustained throughout the movie's runtime. The film may be wacky and chaotic and lacking in a foundational narrative (not to mention the CGI's pretty awful), but there is a legitimately compelling horror movie somewhere in the madness. It's style over substance horror done well, and given how rare that is with horror movies today, I can at least respect it for that much. Colour Out Of Space was released on 28 February 2020 and is currently available to buy on all digital channels and is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video and Shudder.

Host

I guess we should have all seen this coming. After going viral on social media with a dumb video he made with some friends, someone managed to convince Rob Savage that the world needed a jumpscare horror movie set on Zoom during the pandemic, thus giving birth to an entirely new genre: pandemic horror. Host begins with a group of friends getting together over Zoom to perform a séance, but things take a dark turn when the spirit starts to invade their homes.

Comparing this movie to something like The Blair Witch Project seems almost to easy on the surface, but in truth, I can't see history being anywhere near as kind to this movie as it was to that particular cult classic, mainly because this is a generic slice of mindless jumpscare horror nonsense that doesn't feel at all revolutionary. Every scare might be effective, but also feels familiar, making this a film where the closest I can get to appreciating it is acknowledging the amount of work that must have gone into coordinating all of this during a period of lockdown. Just because a movie feels realistic doesn't make it a good movie, especially if that's the only appeal I can glean from it.

Unlike something like Colour Out Of Space, in Host, any attempt at sustained horror is clunkily handled at best, mainly because half the time the editing doesn't know what it wants to focus on. During moments that would otherwise be pretty tense, the editing can't make up its mind whether to focus on the intense moment itself or other people's reactions to it. This constant juggling of the focus effectively leads to a movie that constantly cannibalizes its own tension for no good reason. It's a shame because the core fundamentals are there: good performances, great production aesthetic, just no substance whatsoever to elevate it beyond mediocrity. Its abbreviated running time makes this an easy movie to recommend if you want to get scared with some friends, but outside that very particular setting, this is an utterly disposable horror film. Nothing more, nothing less. Host was released on 30 July 2020 and is currently available to stream on Shudder.

Saint Maud

This is the quintessential Halloween movie this year and maybe the best horror movie of the year full stop. Rose Glass's feature-length directorial debut follows a care worker who recently converted to Christianity, who becomes absorbed in the idea that the purpose that God has assigned to her is to save the soul of her client. This movie has everything. Given that her character is slowly being driven to religious insanity, Morfydd Clark gives a remarkably grounded and meditative performance that both compliments and elevates Glass's sensitive direction. You might be excused for thinking I'm weird for praising a horror movie for its sensitive approach, but when you realise Saint Maud borders on coming-of-age horror in the same vein as Ari Aster's Midsommar, those comments make a lot more sense.

But if you're considering purely the horror elements of this film, the comparisons that came to mind more for me was a fusion of Aster's debut Hereditary with Robert Eggers's debut The Witch, the pure insanity of the former with the intense, weathered, gripping tone of the latter. Other than the direction and performances, the screenplay is also phenomenal, as everyone from the outside looking in at Maud sees her as just another troubled character they can invite to have a drink with, entirely oblivious to how much darker what is going on inside her world really is. The screenplay constantly feels on the brink of total emotional collapse, and when it eventually does, it burns (😉) out in spectacular fashion.

On that note, we have to talk about that ending (no spoilers don't worry). That is an image I don't think I'm ever going to forget. The final second or so of this movie is the most cathartic experience I’ve ever had in a movie theatre. Nothing comes close. Even seeing the movie for a second time the film was no easier to comprehend and take in.

A mingled corpse of a movie, every single shot expertly engineered to evoke a nervous uncertainty from the audience that will never get a clear answer until the movie's dying moments as to whether or not the voice in Maud's head posing as God was actually God Himself, or just a manifestation of the apprehension that she faces in death. After all, it is established very early on in the movie that, as a care worker, Maud has seen death many times, and the whole experience that she undertakes in the movie might just be her way of understanding it, even as the consequences ended up being costly.

This is a top ten of the year contender for me, if not higher (and I've seen 125+ new releases this year so you can trust me that it's good). For horror fans, this is a must. For everyone else... approach it at your own risk, but prepare to get blown away.

Weathering With You

If you're in need of something a little more 'feel-good', don't worry, Makoto Shinkai has you covered. The follow up to his 2016 genre-defining classic Your Name, Weathering With You tells the story of a kid who runs away from home to live in the heart of Tokyo (where it's constantly raining) who, after getting himself a job working for a publishing company, stumbles upon a girl who appears to have a mysterious power to stop the rain and clear the skies. This movie shares plenty of thematic similarities to Shinkai's previous work (Your Name in particular), to the extent that I can see many people finding Weathering With You a little formulaic and tiresome, but my counterpoint is thus: why fix a perfectly working formula?

This is one of those movies where the appeal to me is purely emotional, which can make it challenging to properly contextualise in a critical way, but needless to say, this movie resonated with me on an incredibly profound level. The plot might fall into typical teen romance melodrama territory that some will no doubt find insufferable, but for me, it lends the film a universality that worked for me straight away. Not to mention the film is straight-up gorgeous, with Shinkai using his signature fusion of hand-drawn animation with CGI that somehow manages to work without coming across as overly polished or compromising the natural charm of the anime style.

The chemistry between our central trio is simply irresistible, the film is a visual spectacle without comparison (seriously, I think every shot in this movie could make a serviceable phone wallpaper or desktop background), and the movie once again proves that Makoto Shinkai is one of the most underrated editors working in film. You might argue that this movie doesn't quite have the same emotive pathos as something like Your Name despite the thematic parallels (nothing here rivals the iconic 'pen drop' scene), but so few movies do, and this movie makes itself just distinct enough in Shinkai's filmography that it deserves to be considered on the same level as that particular masterpiece.

It might not be as immediately emotional as Your Name, but that doesn't mean this movie lacks heart, quite the opposite in fact. Despite feeling a tad familiar, this movie still managed to grab me by the heart, not least thanks to how a lot of the subtext revolving around mental health really materialised throughout the film. Above all, that's what I'd say the movie is about. Everyone in the movie is a total emotional trainwreck in their own way, but, by the end, they all find closure one way or another. This is a love story for the ages. Essential viewing. Weathering With You was released on 17 January 2020 and is available to buy and rent on all digital channels.

Next up will be my top 25 movies of the year list that will be up (hopefully) by the end of the year.

Album Review: BLACKPINK - The Album

BLACKPINK makes utterly disposable pop music which serves no purpose whatsoever other than to feed the industry.

Good. Now all the K-pop stans have clicked away hopefully I’m left with the smart ones. Either the K-pop fans who enjoy the music even for how disposable it ultimately is (I include myself in this category), or those who are just curious to know whether or not this new album from BLACKPINK is worth checking out. And, in answer to that question, while ‘The Album’ is slightly better than I expected, I still had problems divorcing it from the pop machine in which it was constructed. The scary thing is that if it didn’t start with two of the most detestable pop songs of recent memory, it might have actually ended up being pretty good.

And we might as well start with those songs. ‘How You Like That’ is an utterly embarrassing attempt at an ‘empowerment’ anthem that accomplishes nothing other than showcasing the band's uncanny ability to talk down to their audience. Then there’s ‘Ice Cream’, with its droning bassline and overwritten ice cream as sex metaphor that hardly makes a lick (pun intended) of sense the more you think about it, that might go down as one of the most annoying pop songs of the year. Also, the charisma vacuum that is Selena Gomez is the song, and she predictably contributes nothing of value.

But as I mentioned before, apart from those two obvious duds, there is at least something to this album that I do admire somewhat. The huge throbbing bass anchoring the really strong hook on ‘Lovesick Girls’ (it’s a shame that the production sounds as washed out as it does on that hook, though; I blame David Guetta), the staccato blasts of strings on the closing song ‘You Never Know’, and ‘Bet You Wanna’ where Cardi B shows up and, apart from referencing her Bruno Mars collab from last year that I’m fairly certain everyone forgot existed until now, doesn’t really drop a bad line on her verse. On the other end of the spectrum, the buzzy squawks of synth of ‘How You Like That’ and ‘Pretty Savage’ are headache-inducing, as is the oddly rickety drop on the otherwise pretty likable ‘Love To Hate Me’.

As for the songwriting, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. A whole lot of bragging on the vapid ‘How Do You Like That’ and ‘Pretty Savage’, some slightly more sensitive writing that turns up on the lovestruck ‘Crazy Over You’ and ‘Bet You Wanna’, but nothing really revolutionary and interesting. Then there’s ‘Lovesick Girls’ where Jennie and Lisa share an opening verse that frames them both as hopeless romantics, only for them both to betray that idea on the very next verse and take on the ‘strong woman who don’t need no man’ role that feels so played out at this point. The only song that truly feels like it’s punching above its weight in terms of songwriting is the closing track ‘You Never Know’, easily the most self-aware song here as the group goes

some way to acknowledge how far they’ve come as a group, as well as giving the fans the reassurance that the best is yet to come.

But overall, this is a completely inessential listen. There’s only so angry I will get at a pop album that’s not even thirty minutes and goes down pretty easy, but it ends up mediocre. There are good songs here, but you have to get through some really terrible ones to get to them. This is only for the fans.

2.5 / 5

Best Songs: ‘Lovesick Girls’, ‘You Never Know’

Worst Songs: ‘How You Like That’, ‘Ice Cream’

Album Review: Lil Tecca - Virgo World

I'll say it: I liked 'Ransom' when it came out. Sure, it was a dumb song that defined the term 'watered-down', but it had a unique bubbly energy to it that I found pretty infectious. Unfortunately, Lil Tecca's career since then has been built on trying to recreate the magic of his previous hit, a formula that didn't prove sustainable. I bring this up because it sums my opinion up on his debut album 'Virgo World' pretty well. Sure, Tecca might occasionally stumble upon a catchy flow (I can only imagine by accident) that might have you vibing along with the clunky but lush hip hop beats for a few moments, but that's all these songs are: moments, fragments, insubstantial slop. Virgo World is a nineteen track album, and I don't think anyone will remember a single song from it in a month or two, fans or otherwise.

The biggest contributing factor to this is the production. I can certainly excuse the 'cheapness' of the overall sound of an album like this to an extent given that this mainstream hip-hop that isn't trying to be profound, but the tropical flare in a lot of the synth tones on this project remind me of pop music circa 2016 in the worst possible way. That's before you realize the bass lines are often way too thick and clunky, swamping out everything in these mixes. The total clusterfuck that is 'True To The Game' is the best example of this. This might be somewhat tolerable if Lil Tecca was an interesting, expressive, or dynamic presence behind the microphone, which of course he's not. He spends most of these tracks pounding certain phrases into oblivion on his hooks before letting the production run for a couple of extra bars before the song ends. It's such a repetitive and formulaic approach to constructing songs that it only goes to emphasize how Tecca has been engulfed by the major label machine. You put on top of this how Tecca is such a limited rapper, and you have an album that runs dangerously close to the line of intolerability. If I'm going to praise anything in terms of the production, the guitar that adds a bit of unique flavor to 'Last Call' was a nice touch, as was the rougher groove on 'Royal Rumble'. The ghostly pianos behind 'No Answers' also give that song a dreamy atmospheric swell that I thought was pretty decent.

The most tolerable moments on this album are probably where Tecca steps back and gives some time to his guests. On 'When You Down' Polo G delivers a killer verse about how the death of his uncle impacted him on his come up. It might not match with the Tecca's incoherent blabberings about how everyone wants to be around him now he's famous, an idea which he will later repeat on 'No Answers', but I'll take what I can get. In fact, when Tecca isn't being the least interesting thing about his own songs he's downright embarrassing himself, like when he describes his girl as setting his vibe like an 'angelic Darth Vader' on 'Take 10'. Then there's 'Dolly' where Tecca somehow gets outclassed by Lil Uzi Vert (mainly because he's at least on the beat) despite him rapping the most basic flow through a layer of ugly, gurgly autotune.

Then you have the songs that are just mindless. 'Tic Toc' is an extended flex on his expensive watch with no substance beyond that whatsoever, 'Royal Rumble' tries to celebrate his come up by using a wrestling metaphor (if anyone even still cares about WWE) with him already referencing his previous hit just confirming that he has nothing new to say. 'Insecurities' might be a little better with him discussing how his girl might be insecure and how he loves her regardless, but it's one of many songs on this album that sound borderline unfinished with Tecca only dropping the one verse and the song only just stretching above two minutes. For an album trying to coast by on catchy hooks and flows alone, you'd think the songs would at least sound a little more developed to allow the melodies to thrive a little more. Then you realize that nowhere close to that level of thought went into the writing or production of this project, and I wonder why I'm even bothering.

And on that note, I think I've given this disposable nonsense a fair few more brain cells than it deserves. If you're looking for hip-hop with charm, unique personality, substance, or just something that doesn't sound like it was made by a machine, I'm sorry, but you'll have to look elsewhere.

1.5 / 5

Best Songs: 'When You Down', 'No Answers'

Worst Songs: 'True To The Game', 'Dolly', 'Tic Toc'

Album Review: IDLES - Ultra Mono

I can't imagine anyone less qualified to discuss this album. Promising start to a review, I know, but IDLES are a band I've always been a little hesitant to approach. Bursting onto the scene in 2017 with the critically acclaimed 'Brutalism' before following it up in 2018 with the equally adored 'Joy As An Act Of Resistance', the British punk-rockers have amassed a reasonable following. The reason I've only been on the periphery of this group is that I've always had certain reservations about punk as a genre. I've liked pop-punk in the past that's less viscerally intense, but more flowery and melodic. IDLES, on the other hands, seemed to me to be the embodiment of the total opposite. Then again, this is a group so well liked in their genre that I thought their latest album 'Ultra Mono' could be a decent entry point for me in terms of getting into the genre a little more. After all, Spanish Love Songs released some of my favourite music of the year so far, and that bordered on punk. There's no reason IDLES couldn't do the same, right?

As it turns out, however much 'Ultra Mono' is a good album, what it isn't is a consistent or even one, not quite living up to the hype whilst still being very solid. And the reasons for this are almost too easy to explain and it has to do with the production and the bands tendency to default to these tired, drudging grooves that are not interesting at best and headache educing at worst on 'Kill Them With Kindness' and 'The Lover', two songs that hardly have any hook to them at all. It can kind of work when the tempo is amped up and the drum work is a little faster and more developed like on 'Model Village', song with a killer hook. When the melodies actually coalesce into something beyond meandering punk nonsense a majority of these songs do work. Take the killer bass lines on 'Mr Motivator' and especially 'Carcinogenic' which lend these songs a pounding energy whist persevering the melody. The manic fury of the two openers 'War' and 'Grounds' also elevates them above most of what else is here, but on the other end of the spectrum you've got 'A Hymn', a simmering slow-burn ballad where I was waiting for the moment where it would explode into life with some kind of crescendo which unfortunately never came. When this album works, it really works. When it doesn't, it just makes my head hurt.

And I could say a lot of the same about the songwriting here too. IDLES certainly have a way with words when it comes to their political cuts. There's a ruthless, aggressive, declarative tone to the lyrics, both in how the band expresses their politics on 'Grounds', 'Model Village' and 'Carcinogenic', and how they address the haters, with Joe Talbot straight up telling the haters to eat shit on 'The Lover'. In other words, there's nothing close to subtlety in the writing here, and, in many ways, that can work, especially for the more political tracks here. 'Grounds' is a furious call to arms for people to stop bitching about what offends them and actually strive for things to get better in the future, a song that rings eerily true in today's cultural climate where social media has enabled 'cancel culture'. On 'Model Village' the titular setting is painted with uncompromising honesty and rage as it's revealed that what might initially appear to be an ideal place to live has a much darker side shrouded in a far right political agenda, with 'Carcinogenic' highlighting how if we let these ideas continue to affect society in the coming years, nothing is likely to change for the better.

Unfortunately, not every song has that same cutting power. 'Mr Motivator' and 'Anxiety' might have decent hooks, but the lyrics of either song feel completely indistinct. Then you have the songs that just feel like underwritten fragments like 'Ne Touche Pas Moi' and 'Reigns', where the music alone is not enough to carry them. They are the minority of songs here, but there is enough of them to make the album feel like a compromised experience overall.

'Ultra Mono' is an easy album to like, but a hard one to love. A few standout songs compromised by others that feel sluggishly produced or too underwritten to connect fully. Do check it out because, for the good songs alone, I think you'd find it a worthwhile experience.

3.5 / 5

Best Songs: 'War', 'Grounds', 'Model Village', 'Carcinogenic', 'Danke'

Worst Songs: 'Kill Them With Kindness'

Album Review: RaeLynn - Baytown

 

I remember there was a time I used to like RaeLynn. I remember getting weirdly attached to her 2017 album 'WildHorse', which is weird to think about seeing as that was coming from the songwriter who a few years prior wrote 'God Made Girls', one of the worst country songs I've ever heard (also it was co-written by Liz Rose and Lori McKenna which just makes me really sad). But it was clear that RaeLynn had matured considerably, with songs like 'Love Triangle' and 'Lonely Call' proving their is a talented songwriter hiding somewhere in there, and after a label change to Florida Georgia Line's imprint I was hoping to see her improve once again.

Let's just say that didn't happen on this new EP 'Baytown'. In fact, 'Baytown' is a backslide for RaeLynn in every way: production, songwriting, everything. I get I'm clearly not in the target audience for this kind of girlish party album, but I wasn't in the target audience for 'WildHorse' and I liked that album, mainly because the songwriting was more introspective and interesting. What 'Baytown' represents is a watering down of an already tired formula, only made worse by bad production and RaeLynn's vocal delivery, clearly convinced she has a lot more charisma than she actually does, why else would she try the horrible talk/rap delivery on 'Judgin To Jesus', the same song where she calls herself a 'little Cardi B'. Uhhhh… NO!

And that's not the only cringe inducing song lyrically on this album. 'Bra Off' is trying to be a female empowerment break up anthem, but without any unique lyrical detail about how it all fell apart, I find it hard to get invested in the song. We find out that she doesn't like being called 'babe' by this guy, and they don't like kissing, but that's it. There's no evidence that he was 'suffocating' her in the way that she describes on the hook of the track, especially when RaeLynn says herself on the second verse that she thinks he's a nice guy.

It's unfortunate that while so many of these songs seem fine enough on the surface, the moment you dig into the lyrics that smug attitude that has never shown itself in RaeLynn's work before begins to rear its ugly head. 'Keep Up' is another example of this. It's fine until you realise that it's just another bro-country song that we've all heard dozens of times if we're familiar with the genre, apart from it's shine through a feminine perspective that adds nothing. Also the whole bro-country trend died years ago so the song already sounds dated as hell with the overproduced racket passing as music.

In fact, that might as well be the story of the production on an overwhelming majority of the songs here. A lot of twangy pop country production with just enough texture and melody to almost distract you from how thin, fake and flimsy the percussion sounds. Take a track like 'Still Smokin', a song clearly going for a smokey slow burn vibe, but it doesn't come close to working. The production is far to plastic for it to effectively vibe to.

There are two songs that do come close to working. The first of which is the ghostly and atmospheric 'Fake Girl Town', where she's wondering where all the 'real girls' are as she's surrounded by people who seem fake, as if implying that she's somehow one of the 'real ones', which considering how fake, corporate and overproduced your EP sounds, I kind of doubt that. But the other one is the genuinely good song 'Me About Me', where she can answer any question about her boyfriend, but he can't do the same for her because he never gave herself an opportunity to express herself. And, by the end of the song, she does take charge of the situation and walk out the door. I find that way more empowering than anything of the dumb party tracks RaeLynn brings to the table across the rest of this EP.

'Baytown' is an EP where you get glimpses of the talented songwriter that I liked on 'WildHorse', but little more than that. I get that this is just pop country with a very limited purpose, but there is better pop country out there than this. Skip it.

2 / 5

Best Songs: 'Fake Girl Town', 'Me About Me'

Worst Songs: 'Judgin To Jesus'