Odds & Ends 143
Occasional reminder: an honorable mention is honorable
An acoustic album, and since Lund doesn’t have the raconteur’s charisma of Hayes Carll let alone Todd Snider, the songs have to do all the work: it’s a credit to his writing that they invariably get some kind of job done, just like the aging MMA journeyman turned tomato can tasked with making the BJJ kids look good, yet who still has a lucky right left in him (“Out on a Win”, “Old Familiar Drunken Feeling”, “Girl with the Stratocaster”)
MC Lyte: 1 of 1
Accomplished Seniors Tour rap, as Lyte takes justified pride in her accomplishments over Y2K beats and only a little too much gospel; standouts are the Ghost/Lil Mama biz advice manual, the remembrance of makeouts past, and the one that correctly states “some of us is Shirley Chisholms” (“Lyte Ghost Lil Mama”, “All Day All Night”, “Change Your Ways”)
Morgan Wade: Obsessed
While this has nothing epochal like “Wilder Days” or “Phantom Feelings”, she remains a stirring singer despite sometimes being happy, and it shouldn’t be beyond her to write if not epochal big gay love songs, at least ones that look forward; small gay love song “Juliet” is facing the right way, fiction or not (“Walked on Water”, “Juliet”, “2AM in London”)
Mk.gee: Two Star and the Dream Police
After one cut I almost wrote this off as “another psychedelic guy who needs to get out of his bedroom, two stars is about right”, but it grew on me enough to earn a third: the guitar tone experimentation doesn’t get in their way of the fragments of melody that persist through the two or three minutes of a song, but does get in the way of the lyrics, all of which is for the best (“Candy”, “Are You Looking Up”, “Alesis”)
Tucker Zimmerman: Dance of Love
He has the best help available and image-rich, deeply felt songs, yet since it takes seconds to recognize why he’s a cult figure, if he’s not going to hand them all over to Lenker, he might as well do a few more with his wife for concept’s sake (“Lorelei”, “Leave It on the Porch Outside”, “Burial at Sea”)
The Lemon Twigs: A Dream Is All We Know
Their poppiest album, with dream harmonies and fancy orderings of old chords and a Lennon family member (not Julian, don’t worry), yet I can’t escape the feeling “How Can I Love Her More?” is sung to their record collection, which is a paraphilia no matter how relatable it is (“Sweet Vibration”, “My Golden Years”, “How Can I Love Her More?”)
Both their sellout-adjacent album (hooray) and their maturity album (uh oh), and it works as long as the pace isn’t glacial and nobody overtaxes their falsetto, which is to say about half the time: when the tempo suits, the Mellotron is a rewarding palette expansion, and the two best songs are a neatly commercial way to rub shards of the 21st century in people’s faces and a demonstration they aren’t half-bad singers in their grown-up voices (“Starburster”, “Favourite”, “Death Kink”)
Rosé: Rosie
Blackpink singer with the ambition to be number one girl in the pop world and the advantage of being much more convincing at having fun than the incumbent number one—say what you want about Bruno Mars, he’s a more useful partygoer than Ed Sheeran—and if the songcraft isn’t quite there, she might just need the right Swede, which even now probably means Max Martin (“Apt.”, “Toxic Till the End”, “Not the Same”)
I enjoyed this a hell of a lot more than that London Symphony Orchestra thing, and not just because you can dance to most of it… ah, who am I kidding, it’s because you can dance to most of it, however austerely (“Fast Forward”, “Del Oro”)
In the spirit of her musical not ethical mentor Kanye, this is pure maximalism, with tinkles, blurps, choirs, ominous chords (so many ominous chords), prog structures, doggerel poetry read by her celebrity girlfriend, guitar shredding, literal Courtney Love; sometimes it even sounds good (“Elephant”, “Song to the Siren”)
Tyler, the Creator: Chromakopia
Never a top tier rapper-qua-rapper let alone anything-qua-singer, he’s at his best here with an actual subject—maturity, but still—and his mom to watch over him and oblige him to stick to themes, allowing him to outshine if not Doechii or S. Redd then Childish Gambino, after ensuring Glover has as little to do as possible (“Balloon”, “Sticky”)
Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness
The crudeness of the opener saying haters are masturbators has power, and escalating the concept of “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to You” by inserting “you fucking dumb ass fucking dumb cunt” in various permutations is logical; still, whoever the target audience of half an hour of “here are my tits, are you triggered?” is, it isn’t me (“Jerkin’”, “U Should Not Be Doing That”)
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