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'
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.
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.
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'
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'
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.
Indie country can be a bit of a daunting genre to explore. I came from the mainstream crowd where the music is hooky and radio ready, so any deviation from that formula is a huge step out of my comfort zone, or at least it was a couple of years ago. Since then, I've become infinity more accepting of more contemplative, oftentimes political country music from the indie scene where any thought of radio play would get laughed out of the room. The latest songwriter to toss their hat into the ring is Virginia's Juliet McConkey with a sensitively written, deeply layered and thoughtful debut album titled 'Disappearing Girl'.
McConkey isn't afraid to make some very powerful feminist tinged observations about the world and how ultimately imperfect it feels to her right now. But instead of pointing fingers looking for answers, she almost seems more interested in looking in the mirror and wondering why she doesn't have all the answers. 'I've Got A Dollar' might be the most tragic example of this, where she's walking past all the beggars in the street and wonders to herself why on earth she couldn't pluck up the courage to give them some of the money that she clearly had, contemplating the excuses that we all make when we're in that position. In her own words: 'I feel guilty cause I know / It ain't fair and it ain't right / Well we'd all like to change the world / We can't seem to find the time'. She's very aware she's just as guilty as anyone.
On the topic of guilt, the gut wrenching album standout 'The Deep End' falls into similar territory. She spend the song talking to an ex musician (who may or may not be dead) who's career flamed out when they started doing drugs and drinking heavily, but by the second verse the song turns into a plea for forgiveness, as she's all too aware that she didn't do enough at the time to help him out of the hole he got himself into. She puts it very bluntly: 'If I failed would you please forgive me?'. A powerful line, especially when you consider that whether or not she actually was forgiven by this person in the end is left to hang in eerie subtext.
It's all the more evidence that this is a songwriter who is all too aware that the world is engulfed by injustice. 'Good Times On The Horizon' is yet more proof of that, a song that highlights how easy it is to delude yourself into thinking that things will get better in the end and it's only a matter of time before things start to go your way and how achieving that American Dream is still possible, even as your whole life seems to be collapsing in on itself around you, leaving you with no one to talk to no one to talk to except God Himself. Who knows if he's even listening to you at that point, though.
But don't worry, the album's not entirely miserable. The album centrepiece 'River Run' is an upbeat song about the unpredictability of life that has a ton of galloping texture that will no doubt sound really good live, but after that you are plunged straight back into tragedy with a song like 'Tempered Hands', where McConkey describes a mother figure who had been driven to numbness by life, so much so that she struggles a lot emotionally. The closest she gets to feeling anything in the song is when she's staring out of the window thinking about her impending and hopefully soon death. Yikes.
There is an emotional maturity and intelligence that shades the songwriting across these nine tracks that I'm in awe of, and at no point on the album is there more evidence of that than on the opening title track where it would be so easy to paint the men in the story as manipulative and enabling the patriarchy, but instead she's more empathetic than I would have ever expected. She insists that men are just as shaped by social pressures as women are, or, as she puts it herself on 'I've Got A Dollar': 'ain't flesh and blood what we're all made of?'. We're all the same really.
Unfortunately, for however great the songwriting is on this album, there is a part of me that wishes I loved Scott Davis' production a little bit more. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what he's doing, especially with his bass lines which give all of these songs a grounded organic foundation to work off of, and his integration of more keyboard instruments into songs like 'River Run' sound fantastic, but plenty of the songs here sound distinctly middle of the road or lacking bite or a distinctive hook to make them stand out beyond the excellent songwriting. I've already mentioned 'River Run', but 'The Deep End' is probably the one other exception to that rule. This is an album that could have desperately done with more interesting and well developed hooks to give the songs more replay value, particularly if you don't care as much about the writing. If you fall into that category you might find this a ponderous listen.
But as it is, this is a remarkably accomplished debut album from a songwriter I thoroughly expect to see more of in the future. Hear this.
8 / 10
Best Songs: 'Disappearing Girl', 'The Deep End', 'I've Got A Dollar', 'River Run', 'Tempered Hands'
Ava Max’s long awaited debut album is an exercise of futility. Fifteen tracks, many of which don’t even run to three minutes, of tightly produced pop bangers, but if there’s an album that could desperately have done with a second draft, it’s probably this one, the songwriting frequently being the weak link that compromises an otherwise decent album. That being said, Ava Max and her many collaborating songwriters and producers certainly didn't make a boring pop album, and Ava Max certainly has the charisma and attitude to sell these songs with considerable ease. As for her unique style, think something like Zara Larsson by way of Dua Lipa and you've pretty much got it - just more frequently obnoxious than the former and devoid of the consistently strong songwriting of the latter.
On the topic of both of those things, however much I like Ava Max as a vocal presence on this album, there are moments on this album where the attitude Max presents rides right up to the line of obnoxious. The most obvious of these moments being the bratty spoken word bridge on the aggressively unlikeable 'OMG What's Happening', a song where Ava Max admits to lying to her partner on the first verse before spending the rest of the song flailing to try and win them back, where her blatant emotional insecurity and overall clinginess is probably a fair reason why her ex might be hesitant to approach her again. But another song that falls into this category is 'Who's Laughing Now'. I feel like it's trying to be empowering, but Ava Max's playing the mindless bitchy pretty girl pointing and laughing at some ex she left behind is not an interesting lane for her.
But they're the minority of songs here, so I won't hold it against the album too much. What I will hold against this album is the frequently underwhelming songwriting on songs I otherwise like. Whether it's the repetitive hook and underdeveloped central metaphor on 'Belladonna' or the declarative and obvious pandering of 'So Am I' (a song I liked until I realised it was a copy paste of Jess Glynne's 'All I Am'), flimsy songwriting plagues this album, with by far the biggest example being 'Kings & Queens'. I love the pounding synths and Ava Max sells the hell out of the song, but the clunky chess metaphor that she tries to crowbar into working on the third verse makes less and less sense the more you think about it, especially with how celebratory the line is both phrased and delivered.
Putting those moments aside, when this album works, it really works, either by playing into relationship melodrama against blaring but melodic production ('Tattoo', 'Sweet But Psycho'), or with lyrics that play in broader empowerment territory like 'Born To The Night', a song I like until that disgusting filmy vocal effect is lathered over Ava Max's voice on the third verse. Then there's 'Torn' which might as well be a more fun version of 'OMG What's Happening' with Ava Max even saying on the second verse that she kinda secretly loves the drama - charming in a slightly weird way. But if you're looking for the album standout, that would be 'Naked', a straightforward song about opening up to someone who you know you want to get closer to, but might not have the confidence to take the next step with. It might might be most rewarding song here as, by the third verse, she does learn to let go of her insecurities and just surrender to this person. Probably the sole moment of emotional vulnerability on this album.
If you like pop music, you'll probably find at least something to like on this album. Sure, it's underdeveloped, doofy, inconsistently written, but there are enough good songs here that remind me why I fell in love with 'Sweet But Psycho' when I heard it on the radio for the first time. Take those and get out.
3 / 5
Best Songs: 'Naked', 'Tattoo', 'Born To The Night', 'Torn', 'Sweet But Psycho'
Here we go. One of my most anticipated films of the year, and it’s being released in the dumping ground of the middle of January. It almost seems too perfect. We have a film that looks like it’s going to generate some real buzz from UK audiences out in cinemas at a time where there is nothing to compete with it. Of course, as a cinema goer it’s annoying that there’s nothing else new coming out, but, if the hype is to be believed, this film is something special. And to explain why I’m looking forward to this film so much, I will need to discuss a war film that came out a few years ago.
In July 2017, Christopher Nolan brought us Dunkirk, a furiously raw and bleak take on one of the key turning points in World War II, and ended up being a film I admired rather than loved. It fell in a wired middle ground for me between being too colourless and bleak to be able to get properly invested in, but also the narrative required us to have some kind of feeling towards the characters for it to properly work, and when Tom Hardy spends pretty much his whole role struggling to emote from behind a constrictive mask, connecting with those characters can be difficult. The narrative is certainly satisfying and it’s glorious from a structural standpoint, but it didn’t quite work for me for reasons I struggled to articulate at the time.
1917 looks set to provide the counterpoint to Dunkirk that I’ve been looking for for the past two and a half years. And, make no mistake, the film looks amazing. I think we might have an early contender for film of the year. In other words, I was looking to see the film the day it finally gets that wide release and see whether it lives up to my sky-high expectations. So, is it as good as I’d hoped?
Yes. Not only did this film exceed my expectations, it might just go down as a genre defying classic. Every war movie made from this point is going to be compared to 1917(and maybe even some that came before), and it is a masterpiece without comparison. I almost feel bad for even comparing this film to Dunkirk in my preamble, because the comparison hardly seems fair. Sure, Christopher Nolan might have had a solid grasp of the fundamentals that make up a solid war movie when he made Dunkirk, but director of 1917 Sam Mendes understands the key thing that Nolan was missing. The understanding that to make a great war movie you don’t need to compromise the human core. Dunkirk was a good film, but it felt stone cold. 1917 on the other hand, despite its murky tones and just as heavy themes, still grounds its narrative in real humanity, that being the relationship between two brothers, the younger of whom has been tasked, along with a colleague, to rescue sixteen hundred soldiers, including his older brother, who are walking into a trap after an orchestrated retreat by the Germans. Not only is it a well written narrative, but there are real relationships here that elevate them further.
But the characters and how clearly and effectively they are both sketched out accounts to almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially in comparison to thetechnical achievement that this film is. Whoever had the one take idea is a genius. I don’t know if Sam Mendes himself had the idea to tell the story in that way, but whoever did deserve all the credit in the world. And it links into the central idea of the film. Everything about itis engineered to create a bleak atmosphere, and the one-shot approach is only half the story there. I am in awe of the team that worked on the set design and lighting for the shots when Schofield arrives in Ecoust, and the acting is second to none, with George MacKay acting like his life depended on it. I believed every moment of MacKay’s performance. It had me in tears both times I saw it by the end. There is a belief and a commitment and an understanding of war that, once again, is not so cold hearted to neglect the human element that comes through in MacKay’s performance that is damn near transcendent. There is blood, metal, brutal gunfire and a whole lot of fire in this movie, and the diegetic sound that beautifully compliments the framing of every moment draws attention to every little detail of the brutality of war so expertly that it’s hard to believe that this film was constructed by people rather than just existing independently of everything.
It’s nothing short of extraordinary, and I haven't even got to talking about the drop-deadgorgeous cinematography. The wide low-level tracking shots as Schofield and Blake negotiate their way though no man's land are chill inducing, the wide shot of Schofield entering Ecoust is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on a screen, and the camera movement is consistentlyseamless, especially in the few instances the camera pans. One of the most inspired choices in the cinematography in this film is the use of handheld camera. Sure, there are plenty of still shots, especially as Schofield is in a state of mourning his colleague in the film’s opening act, but the camera is never planted and properly still. Just when you thought the film wasn’t technically ambitious enough. And this unsettled choice of camera technique only elevates the film further, highlighting the uncertainty of the characters about their future, made all the more tragic by the circumstances in which Blake has his life ended after the pair negotiated the German front line. After a German plane crashes in front of them, Blake attempts to help the injured pilot, even as Schofield suggests putting him out of his misery. Blake’s efforts were cut short when he was stabbed to death by the enemy pilot he was trying to rescue. Again, there is a real humanity to the characters that this film is not afraid to foreground. It makes the moment where Schofield breaks the news to his deceased friend’s brother in the film’s closing moments all the more heartbreakingly beautiful. Again, the ending had me in tears both times I have watched it.
1917 is a film so well realised, so exceptionally crafted and so unfathomably and tremblingly raw that it’s challenging to express. Amazingly good acting, technical ambition and a story that leaves nothing to be desired. Without a doubt this is the film to beat in 2020, and I’d be surprised if anything does.
