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'

Album Review: Juliet McConkey - Disappearing Girl

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'

Worst Songs: 'Hung The Moon'

Album Review: Ava Max - Heaven & Hell

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'

Worst Songs: 'OMG What's Happening', 'Belladonna'