2023: A purge

Carrot and stick season

There are records that, given the remit of this blog, I’m kind of obligated to review because of their commercial or critical notability, either within my circle of people still mad at New Times gutting the Village Voice or amongst normal people. There are many of these that I haven’t published on, usually because I tried writing and the writing was bad. The backlog has become unwieldy, so let’s rip off the Band-Aid and clear it. Except Drake; I’m not doing Drake.

Anohni and the Johnsons: My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross

After two decades of her doing her thing, I have to admire her integrity for persisting in singing the same “annoying” way until changes in fashion (for the worse) made it seem not worth complaining about. I’m still ten years out from consistently admiring her songwriting, though she remains reliable on environmental catastrophe and “Sliver of Ice” is a lovely tribute to Lou Reed, and getting the band back together prevents her from wandering too far out. Grade: B PLUS (“Sliver of Ice”, “Why Am I Alive Now?”, “Can’t”)

Asake: Work of Art

Popularizing amapiano with Afrobeat(s) characteristics, he’s become the hottest hitmaker on the Nigerian charts. At album length, it becomes more apparent that the songwriting per se barely exists (poor Joshua Minsoo Kim, Pitchfork’s best critic this year, was reduced to making claims about Asake’s “intimate storytelling” to justify an 8.0; should’ve reserved that for NewJeans), though his pidgin can sound Biblical to speakers of other dialects: “heavily, we are getting lit”. But he’s a skilled vocalist, handling varied rhythms and code-switching at will, and he has no shortage of newish-to-pop sonics. Standout “2:30” is the start of a run that tunes the donk into funk almost as avant as DJ Black Low’s, a trick hard to overuse, like the all-too-brief snippets of store-brand highlife and unlike the massed chorales. The closing “Yoga” samples Mauritian(-Australian) singer-percussionist Jason Heerah and suggests a way forward for Asake that involves more engagement with African traditions. Honestly, though, there’s still much room, if little incentive, for him to improve on what he does now. Grade: B (“2:30”, “Yoga”, “Great Guy”)

Ashley McBryde: The Devil I Know

Her intentions are unimpeachable, and if her aesthetic preferences about, say, bars differ from mine, I’m sure she has a richer time mingling with the sots at her haunts than I do waiting for $15 cocktails at Attaboy Nashville. Divergence in aesthetic preferences in music is a bigger issue: much of this is anonymous mid-sized arena rock, a sound for which her non-anonymous mid-sized voice is all wrong, and Jay Joyce’s vocal production on the title track only increases distance. Fortunately, there are also country songs, many tragic in some sense, some soused, the closing “6th of October” both in its demonstration of what can be learned from dive bar patrons, at some cost to the liver. Grade: B PLUS (“Single at the Same Time”, “Learned to Lie”, “Light on in the Kitchen”)

Bonus rant, as if I didn’t have seventeen more albums to get through: There’s a prescriptive streak that shows up in quite a bit of home-scale country, and while not the worst thing in the world, it’s an annoyance. In the chorus of “Light on in the Kitchen”, there’s the couplet “Honey, boys are dumb/But you gonna find you on”, and like, there are unprecedented opportunities now for women not to have to settle for one dumb boy! “Follow Your Arrow” was ten years ago now; one might’ve hoped it would’ve led to a radical restructuring of advice songs from artists known to be open-minded, but nope.

Bad Bunny: Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana

Though I’m not quite sick of Benito yet, whiny six minute opener notwithstanding, I am sick of writing the same review every time. Despite reliable production and his still extant charisma, he isn’t consistent enough to sustain 80+ minutes of attention from anyone who isn’t a superfan, and as irrelevant as my complaint is to his business model, you think one could appeal to his artistic pride or something. Highlights, besides curating appearances from hungrier trap-reggaeton prospects like Young Miko, include deconstructed club single “Where She Goes” (get Arca to do some beats for the next one) and the one about bringing all the horny ladies to the Vatican (I think they’d enjoy the Pio-Clementino.) Still, at times he seems bored for somebody dating Kendall Jenner—I mean, I can kind of see why, but he’s in a position to do something about it. Grade: B (“Where She Goes”, “Fina”, “Baticano”)

Barbie: The Album

Better than the pretty good movie, not least because this doesn’t have Will Ferrell incessantly reminding you all content has been approved by Mattel Inc., though getting the jokes does require seeing the movie, plus the album has a rough start: turns out Lizzo isn’t the person you want winking irony from, and somehow Nicki and Ice Spice fail to do justice to the artistic rectitude of Aqua. While things aren’t perfect after that—there are flat spots and too many Australians—Mark Ronson and Warnermoth’s suits do a fine job of integrating the comedy with artists who play the concept dead straight. Foremost among these are the Eilishes, who construct a deeper statement of existential longing than Morrissey ever wrote, and do so from the point of view of a reactionary product for the underage. Well, I suppose Morrissey was under the same constraint. There’s also who-he Dominic Fike (oh, another zillion-stream Australian) which starts off as mid-tempo objectification and turns into an impossibly charming attempt to empathize with the object. By the time Fifty Fifty do justice to the artistic rectitude of Janet Jackson, winking irony isn’t even a possibility. Grade: A MINUS (“What Was I Made For?”, “Hey Blondie”, “Barbie Dreams”)

Dan Ex Machina: Ex’s Sexts

He’s ramped up the aggression in both music and attitude relative to All Is Ours, Nothing Is Theirs. Even outside of the pretty credible hardcore section, the riffs shred or jangle-shred with the audacity of the analog era, and I’m glad Machina’s found a rhythm section (mostly Justin Niemiec) capable of sustaining his momentum. The truculence extends to his singing, too: if he sometimes sounds like someone with an irritable bowel, that incorporates an understanding of the genuine anguish an irritable bowel can bring. That he can turn a phrase is never in doubt. His sickest burns are reserved for the “Oldest Prick in the Book” (“rage-quit the regime you stole”, etc.), but he doesn’t spare himself from excoriation, although sampling Norman Mailer can only make himself look good by comparison. Grade: B PLUS (“Oldest Prick in the Book”, “Then-Wife”, “Infantilized”)

Additional consumer news: Certain editions of the album append a 10-minute title track, about which boy, I really don’t know. It requires virtue to describe behavior (in grotesque detail) that he admits was despicable regardless of context or whether he was more sinned against than sinning, but I don’t know that it was of non-negative public value when Lennon did it, and I think it’s fair to say that Lennon had better music. Grade for “Ex’s Sexts” the song: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN B AND E PLUS

Emperor X: Suggested Improvements to Transportation Infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor EP

I don’t expect your criteria for evaluating this to include both correct identification of transit problems and feasibility of solutions, but hey, that’s his title, and on that basis it falls short. He has the chops for technical analysis, yet seems to disdain it. In almost any other policy area it might be forgivable to bemoan “lack of funds, lack of planning, and general lack of will” and then focus on the lack of will. With blue state transit, however, the lack of will isn’t the limiting problem. California wants high speed rail! They’re just so bad at building it! And I don’t know how to fully explain how to fix procurement problems while avoiding overbuilding in a capsule review. Again though, not my title. Grade: B MINUS (“DMT/JMZ”)

Jessie Ware: That! Feels Good!

I confess my initial inclination was to write a review beginning “Shut! The”. That was much too strong, however, for a product that has mild aims and achieves them. Not an exceptional pop singer, as long as Ware’s not required to express any emotion that would require punctuation more subtle than the title’s, she fulfills the task of allowing the elderly to assert “Disco’s! Not Dead!” as least as well as the Vines did for Rock’s! Not Dead! people in 2002. Artists of reputation from the pop, dance, jazz, and Afrobeat worlds are roped in and instructed to leave desire for self-expression at home. If the result seems formulaic next to, say, this year’s brand-name K-pop releases, at least she probably had more humane working conditions. Grade: B (“These Lips”, “Hello Love”)

Lori McKenna: 1988

Not that different from her last three Dave Cobb records, and pace my earlier rant, I don’t have a problem with “I hope you have happy children” inasmuch as adding “should you choose to have them” would turn the scansion into Lisa Simpson writing for a Malibu Stacy competitor, but that one is a symptom of a narrowness that’s crept into her writing. Little Big Town needs to order another “Girl Crush” to get her to allow some ambiguity again. Grade: B (“Growing Up”, “Killing Me”)

Miley Cyrus: Endless Summer Vacation

Mostly okay-not-great as usual, often interestingly okay-not-great as usual, and even the “mostly” is only clinched when she slips in one called “Wonder Woman” at the end. She refuses to develop into any kind of interpretative singer, to the point that her two guests are fellow fjuck-subtlety steamrollers Brandi Carlile and Sia; Harmony Korine gets a co-write ffs. Yet the feelings she describes are sometimes proper adult emotions, and some of those get sophisticated pop arrangements from Harry’s Housekeepers Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. And while her singing lacks the intimacy for home use, she’s just larger-than-life enough for car radios and mall speakers. Easier to get tickets to her stadium shows than to Taylor’s, too. Grade: B (“Thousand Miles”, “Muddy Feet”)

Noah Kahan: Stick Season

Just when you thought we were a decade away from another folk-pop revival comes… well, any number of TikTok sadbois, among whom this Vermonter, rebranding after a failed attempt to be Lorde, is front-of-pack. And he’s more useful than the bezoar of beards and far-right banjo players the early 2010s folk-pop wave coughed up, for his abilities to evoke emotional states of some intensity and to write long melodic lines that can attract O-Rod for a cover that’s not obviously better than the original. (He’s returned the favor with a “Lacy” cover which, well, let’s decline to link to that.) It’s true that his lyrical talent is for matter-of-fact description—many songs boil down to a list of things that make him anxious, not least “Everywhere, Everything”—rather than imagery or analysis or any of that literary stuff that those of us old enough to have heard decades of these guys might prefer if we’re going to sit still for 55 minutes of this (or 83 minutes for the well-titled “We’ll All Be Here Forever” edition, which someone who doesn’t remember Y2K can review.) But we shouldn’t be surprised to find students at cold colleges singing along to every word of the title track this November. Grade: B PLUS (“Stick Season”, “New Perspective”, “Homesick”)

100 Gecs: 10,000 Gecs

Three excellent songs when they go over three minutes, and the rest is bummer of the year—if you’d told me after 1000 Gecs their next album would have a song called “Frog on the Floor” and it’d be not obnoxious enough and, moreover, too slow, I’d’ve thrown a hand crushed by a mallet at you. I continue to approve of taking the most despised millennial genres and rehabilitating them through postmodern irony and attitude; it’s just that it was more effective nine kilogecs ago when they were more consistent at song construction than Limp Bizkit. Grade: B (“I Got My Tooth Removed”, “Hollywood Baby”, “Doritos & Fritos”)

Peso Pluma: Génesis

The year’s breakout star outside of country (well, sort of outside of country) sings corridos with some hip-hop influence—less evident in his kind of neotrad sound than in his fashion sense, though who knows where he got that mullet from. Hair aside, to me he’s not more talented than predecessor and fellow featherweight Natanael Cano (who has a couple of guest spots here, including breakthrough “PRC”), but he’s amiable for someone singing about luxury purchases funded by presumably illicit activities and about influencers so into him they neglect their Instas. His pinched voice has a neutrality—haters, who include AMLO, might say a vacancy—that allows him to blend well with a variety of regional Mexican and Latin orchestrations, from precision rapid-fire trumpets to Grupo Frontera's wistful accordion cumbia. It’s all very professional, and if one gets the sense that a lot of people could’ve sung this, he’s the one who did. Grade: B PLUS (“Tulum”, “PRC”, “Gavilán II”)

SZA: SOS

Billboard’s third-most successful album of the year after Wallen and Swift, so I’ve got six billion streams against me when I say it’s a huge step down from CTRL. Megahit “Kill Bill”, catchy and very dumb, is atypical only in that radio played it so many times that the catchiness won out. Her previously fetching vocal idiosyncrasies turn annoying when subjected to the letter-munching of late 2022 non-country production. A now-old story: best when she raps, which isn’t often enough. Grade: B (“Smoking on My Ex Pack”, “Kill Bill”)

Taylor Swift: Midnights

I left this off last year’s Neithershoot because I couldn't muster a more sophisticated reaction than “Jack fjucking Antonoff.” A better reason, it turns out, would’ve been that “Neither” was too generous. While the few Antonoff-free tracks on the 3am edition show the primary fault is contemporary pop’s worst producer of vocals, the songs themselves aren’t up to previous standards, lacking completely the wit of Old Taylor and for the most part, the narrative clarity of New Taylor. She’s no anti-hero, but rooting for her is exhausting when she pretends to be. Grade: B MINUS (“Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”)

Taylor Swift: 1989 (Taylor’s Version)

The original’s full A, in large part because of world-historical significance (apparent at the time) rather than consistency. While this may yet turn out to be a world-historically significant MBA case study, let’s start from A minus. Dock one notch for profiteering (re-recording fine, releasing a zillion editions to extort stans not so fine), one for falling into the old trap of becoming a stronger vocalist and singing with less character, one for general uselessness (including the mostly you-know-who produced vault tracks; way to make me appreciate the classicism of Diane Warren, Jack.) That gets us on a par with Chuck Berry's Golden Hits, which I bought without knowing it was remakes, played once, and sold back to the record store. Grade: B MINUS (“This Love”)

Travis Scott: Utopia

As far as monotrap—as in monolithic, monopolistic, a little monotonous—goes, this is a lot more professional than his marketing strategy requires. Paying off every producer of note from Metro Boomin and Ye to the Alchemist and Daft Punk Helmet Two (the political compass is an exercise for the reader), he gets designer beats with high- and low-ends optimized for speakers that can fill the Circus Maximus. (N.B.: Do not attend a Travis Scott concert at the Circus Maximus, or anywhere else.) His all-star lineup of guest vocalists gives more variable results: he lets them all do what they usually do, which pays off better with Beyoncé than it does with [don’t make fun of Drake again, get another joke] Yung Lean? Ah, fjuck it, Drake. As much as is necessary, Scott himself can rap, as long as your definition of “can rap” doesn’t include “has at least one memorable couplet on a 73 minute album” (well, I might remember him mispronouncing his “misogyny”/“monogamy” rhyme): he rattles along comprehensibly, and understanding what he’s saying does help with emotional clarity as well, who knew. He has the full range of feelings of a Greco-Roman god; I can’t empathize with him, but I can sympathize with the mortals whose ill-starred paths intersect with his. Grade: B PLUS (“Telekinesis”, “Circus Maximus”, “Delresto (Echoes)”)

Tyler Childers: Rustin’ in the Rain

As far as country breakouts of recent years go, Childers’s—this followed his gospel triple into the top ten—has been unexpected only because it’s happened despite radio shunning him for reasons less obvious than Zach Bryan’s ideological amateurism. Three solo originals and two co-writes (giving Luke the Evangelist half-credit for an intro he doesn’t improve on) here exhibit all the classical Nashville virtues, even showing the telephone song can still be relevant provided the existence of written electronic communications is acknowledged. His singing and band remain unpolished and expressive—not quite enough to change my mind about “Help Me Make It Through the Night” being the most overrated of country songs unless the Eagles count, but material from the (gay, in the video) ballad “In Your Love” to bluegrass hoedown “Percheron Mules”, the funnest song about gigantic asses since “Baby Got Back”, hits the right emotional notes while proclaiming the genre’s continued relevance to the actually-working class. If iHeartRadio doesn’t want to play a song about the ecological benefits of breeding enormous large draft animals, that’s their, and their audience’s, loss. Grade: A MINUS (“Percheron Mules”, “Phone Calls and Emails”, “In Your Love”)

Water from Your Eyes: Everyone’s Crushed

The songs—sorry, the “stories of personal and societal unease” (did you know money can be exchanged for goods and services)—barely exist, and the experimental stuff isn’t novel, so often all that’s there is a pile of oddball vocal and what-was-that hooks. They’re fortunate that “pile of oddball hooks” is my favorite thing. Grade: B PLUS (“Barley”, “True Life”, “Buy My Product”)

Withered Hand: How to Love

I don’t want to sound ungrateful for a very good album whose very existence is a miracle, given how little financial reward Dan Willson gets for pouring his fears and hopes into his music, and given how much more genuinely self-doubting he sounds compared to much more acclaimed artists whom I can’t prove are faking it, but you know, one suspects. So I’ll admire that while it takes longer than usual for his immense melodic gift to kick in, when it does kick in, it’ll kick your ass (in a polite Scottish way.) If I can only be company for “Misery & Company”, there are joys as well as burdens in that. Grade: B PLUS (“Misery & Company”, “Give Myself Away”, “Out There”)