The Purge 2024: Femininomenological reduction

“A B+ is a good grade,” I cry, as my class tears me limb from limb

The concept, if you weren’t around last year: here are albums social pressure requires me to review that I’ve been procrastinating on, written up in a looser style than in the flagship Semipop Life column (Tris McCall instead of Xgau.) Grades are afterthoughts unless you agree with them.

¥$: Vultures 1

After his final pioneering act—becoming the first of many rap Trumpists—Kanye hasn’t innovated musically or otherwise, revisiting past glories instead. From almost any other all-timer this would be an honorable way to decline; in Ye’s case, however, innovation has long been all he’s had to offer: even if you somehow still care about what he or his ghosts have had to say post-2010, or Yeezus help you, how he says it, you’re better off listening to even The Life of Pablo again. Somehow he’s the stronger principal. Grade: C PLUS (“Keys to My Life”)

21 Savage: American Dream

While Atlanta will continue to rack up astronomical stream counts for the foreseeable Future, the YSL prosecutions have shattered the scene, for interpersonal reasons as much as the chilling effects of lyrics-as-evidence. American Dream has some of the year’s better megarap beats, including a now-rare full-assed effort from London on Da Track on the single. The only great verses are on “Letter to My Brudda”, which is the most empathetic 21 Savage has ever been and on which he appears to take Young Thug’s side vis-a-vis Gunna. There are a ton of jokes I could make, all of which have Drake as the punchline, but seriously 21: as the most sensible rapper in ATL, make peace. Grade: WHATEVER, JUST DON’T SHOOT EACH OTHER PLEASE (“Redrum”, “Letter to My Brudda”)

Teddy Swims: I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1)

“Lose Control”, a lock for number one on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 (sorry Shaboozey, BB says 2024 ended in October, and don’t we wish it did) and an overblown performance not justified by its stakes has been an annoyance on radio all year. So this is the most surprising Actually Good in this column. Swims is a strong singer, a regrettable falsetto aside, and he has no trouble powering through the fast ones and giving appropriate-sized feeling to most of the slower ones. I don’t know what “Lost Communion” is about, other than that someone or something is dead (perhaps his theism), but it’s clear Teddy’s sad about it. He could use a chief song doctor as much as a therapist, yet so far he’s done well with what he has. Grade: B PLUS (“Goodbye’s Been Good to You”, “Last Communion”)

The Smile: Wall of Eyes

Fine band, if a bit proggy. The guitarist/bassist is clearly adept and the singer/lyricist could be major if he curbs his excesses: what’s with the car crash stuff, dude, is this the Nineties? Grade: B PLUS (“Read the Room”, “Under Our Pillows”)

Nia Archives: Silence Is Loud

These are the breaks, as are these, and these. With cheeseball Brazilians marooned on the EP, the variation in the production is limited to things like “sometimes the kick drum is syncopated and sometimes it isn’t”, and with Ms. Archives’s vocals in service to her material, the operative question becomes whether the songwriting is interesting and varied enough. My answer: sort of. Most songs have a straightforward, meaningful hook phrase—”nightmares don’t just happen when you’re sleeping” or “I feel so lonely in crowded rooms”—which more often are embellished melodically rather than thematically. Since this is pop music, that’s the correct move, but I await the phase of her career when this is no longer an either/or. Grade: B PLUS (“Crowded Roomz”, “So Tell Me”, “Nightmares”)

MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks

This season’s indie it-guy has a musicianship that goes beyond his considerable slacker-guitar chops. He and co-producer Alex Farrar get decent variation within the very limited indiealtcountry template (though even a bass clarinet can’t save the ten-minute one) and he has a Malkmus-like way with non-melodic melodies that stick in the mind. What’s missing? Strictly speaking, good songs-qua-songs: he doesn’t stick to themes as doggedly as Malkmus—save for when there’s semen for glue—but I have no doubt these’ll come once he can distinguish between amusing ideas and “Guess I’ll call you Rip Torn/The way you got tore up”. As for good singing, he has his ex’s band for that. Grade: B PLUS (“Rudolph”, “On My Knees”, “Joker Lips”)

Maggie Rogers: Don’t Forget Me

I know it’s been a while since the last Haim album, but I find strict limits on my use for this: it’s not consistently hooky enough for pop and not novel enough for singer-songwriterdom, and the singing’s a bit too mushy to split the difference. Still, and despite what her sans-Zach Bryan streaming numbers say, she’s closer to putting the package together than before. Her tunes are distinct, “The Kill” makes more fruitful use of Kacey Musgraves’s producer than Kacey did this year, and “Don’t Forget Me” has some feeling and even some novelty, inasmuch showing up to your friends’ weddings and being kind of jealous and resentful is a new subject to singer-songwrite about. Grade: B PLUS (“The Kill”, “Don’t Forget Me”)

LL Cool J: The Force

Look, apart from the fact that it was to an authoritarian who tried to overturn democracy four years ago, 2024 was a normal narrow loss: to win hypothetical future free and fair elections, I think Democrats should promise to ban hamburgers over ten dollars and wait for Trump to do unpopular things, and that they’ve no need to Sister Souljah anyone. Instead, I think the benefit of pointing out something is the dumbest shit you’ve heard is spiritual rather than electoral. Most of the comeback album by popular TV cop and possibly no-longer-lapsed Republican LL Cool J is accomplished Seniors Tour rap: Q-Tip weaves together samples and Sona Jobarteh with his usual deftness, and LL’s flow can just about hang with superhuman fiftysomethings Busta, Nas, and Eminem. For that to be worth more than a few plays, he’d have to try to say something. On his primary attempt, he draws from the manifesto of his lookalike Christopher Dorner, who, you may recall, took action on his plausible allegations of LAPD racism by murdering four people, none of whom were LAPD officers and one of whom was a women’s basketball coach. Only the stupidity of “Spirit of Cyrus” saves it from being vile. The generous could argue, I suppose, that LL’s merely illustrating the tragic dissonance between Dorner’s motivations and his actions. Come on, though: after “Accidental Racist”, there’s no reason for benefit of the doubt. Grade: B (“Proclivities”, “Praise Him”)

Linkin Park: Papercuts (Singles Collection 2000–2023)

Finally, the century’s most successful American band compiles a set I don’t have to hit skip on more than a quarter of the time. While they didn’t invent the good nü-metal song, Hybrid Theory showed you could make a lot of money if you put four of them on one album, and Meteora topped that by almost being a coherent artistic statement. After Minutes to Midnight, things went downhill: they tried to grow as artists but only Chester Bennington, the era’s definitive popular rock vocalist, managed this, in part by growing as a person as well. There’ll always be a place in music for young suburban discontent; if there’s no guarantee this leads to empathy, it’s enough that sometimes it does. Grade: A MINUS (“In the End”, “Numb/Encore”, “One More Light”)

The Last Dinner Party: Prelude to Ecstasy

Though the Britpress praise is a tell that this is nothing original, its merits keep it on top of the landfill. There’s some explicit feminism and loads of the feminine urge, illustrated with enjoyable florid Gothicisms (nearly every body part gets violently attacked through the course of the record, leaving the narrator like Monty Python’s Black Knight), and bombastic rent-an-orchestra intro aside, the band have the proficiency to execute their ambitious arrangements. Breakout single “Nothing Matters” is the sole great song, but if ecstasy is a lot to ask for, they might at least get as funny as peak My Chemical Romance. Grade: B PLUS (“Nothing Matters”, “The Feminine Urge”, “My Lady of Mercy”)

Ice Spice: Y2K!

Greil Marcus’s infamous “What is this shit?” review, but literally. Grade: B (“TTYL”, “Bitch I’m Packin’”)

Fuerza Regida: Pas Las Baby’s y Belikeada

Released last fall, this has become one of the biggest regional Mexican hits of the current breakout (a subsequent “Jersey corrido” album this summer hasn’t done the same numbers.) The band is built around José “Pelón” García’s oompahing sousaphone and singer/storyteller Jesús Ortíz Paz, whose lyrical interests are doing crimes and doing pornstars, though at least the former’s just a means to the latter. The base form is very competent, so it’s the exceptions that stand out: inept stab at drill “Dafuk” on the minus side, “Puro MQueen”, on which vets Dareyes de la Sierra bring an accordion and a silly bass sound, on the plus. Unseemly, sure; mostly harmless fun nevertheless. Grade: B PLUS (“Puro MQueen”, “F’s”, “Desgraciada”)

Eminem: The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)

You can definitely skip this album if you’re trans or Christopher Reeve’s ghost and you get enough shit in your day-to-day life or afterlife, as the case may be. If you’re still here, two key postulates. First, Marshall knows that for him and Morgan Wallen, cancellation is fake: there’s nothing the woke mob can do to de-platform a rich White man in the long run unless Merrick Garland does his fucking job. Second, Em knows the shit Slim says is hurtful and maybe harmful; he’s aware he’s gone too far in the past—this time he hastens to clarify that when he uses “gay” as a pejorative, it’s “not the good kind of gay”—and if he didn’t know that deadnaming puts him on very thin ice (even if it’s Caitlyn Jenner) then I’m sure his genderfluid kid told him. Given this, what’s the point? The weak reason is the free speech bullshit: yes, there’s value in challenging taboos; jokes about little people would not seem to be the most fruitful avenue for this. The better reason is that it’s part of who he is. He knows his fellow denizens of Mt. Rapmore aren’t saints either (except maybe the flute guy), so why not keep making rich as well as personally enriching works of art and leave it to posterity to sort out the contradictions? It’s less clear that any of this requires Jelly Roll, however. Grade: B PLUS (“Evil”, “Guilty Conscience 2”, “Antichrist”)

Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee

“Universally praised” according to the PR, universally disdained by my crony group, and since this is a year where there are more important things to hate than music, believe that I tried hard to side with the former. Best I can say is the Geocities thing was a wry piece of conceptual art about the way nostalgia distorts our memories and about HTML. Unfortunately it’s on vinyl now, which requires that one ask questions like “are there any good songs”, and then once it’s clear there’s no reason for the words not to be obscured, “are there any good sounds”. And there are: the guitar can sometimes distract me from the vocals, and on “Flesh and Blood” there’s even an active groove. But if this is what you got out of the radio growing up, maybe you just needed your ears cleaned out. Grade: B MINUS (“Flesh and Blood”, “If You Hear Me Crying”)

Charli XCX: Brat But It Has the Better Versions of the Good Songs and None of the Bad Ones

A medium-term Team XCXer, I tried the original recipe, the three more songs, and the completely different, and each time was stymied by my lack of affection for the music played in the clubs that it seems every Brit music journo went to in the mid-2000s. It took a frankly heroic feat of gerrymandering on my part to get this to A-list. The twelve survivors either have a song’s worth of melody or a durable concept; both are present and reinforce each other on and only on the Sophie tribute. The guest spots are limited to Sivan-Lorde-Eilish so that we can overlook that an Auto-Tuned 2024 Julian Casablancas is a match for her singing. Even in this dose, I doubt I’ll ever love this the way I did her flop era How I’m Feeling Now, but there’s warmth in huddling under the same roof this long brat winter. Grade: A MINUS, BUT A CHUNK OF THAT IS FOR ME (“Guess featuring Billie Eilish”, “So I”, “Girl, So Confusing featuring Lorde”)

Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

When I first played this back in a different era (January 9th), I was annoyed right away by Dan Nigro not telling her “feminomenon” was more elegant and soon concluded she wasn’t as natural or accomplished a singer and songwriter as O-Rod, not that anyone under 30 besides maybe Baby Queen is. For me to understand she wasn’t aiming for “singer-songwriter” but for “pop star”, she had to become a pop star. (Then again, she became a pop star in large part because “Good Luck, Babe!” was as natural and accomplished as any Olivia single, life’s a kaleidoscope and all.) There’s a surfeit of hooks and catchphrases, and if not much tends to happen structurally or narratively after the first chorus, that’s inessential if your goal is to get everyone in Springfield, MO to sing along. Maybe there are too many slow ones not about cunnilingus for a non-singer-songwriter, but this doesn’t stop her world, nor her feeling. Grade: A MINUS (“Red Wine Supernova”, “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, “Femininomenon”)

Benson Boone: Fireworks & Rollerblades

In contrast to Teddy Swims, I suspected this could be Actually Good based on “Beautiful Things”, which has the wailing dynamics of a believer reading Job and suddenly realizing how messed up it is. Instead, no, he sings like that all the time: satisfactory love, mediocre love, death, an imaginary Santa Barbara, it all gets his shout-&-falsetto. Jeff Buckley as a wavering Mormon could be intriguing. Adam Lambert dead straight and without quite the voice for it is not something worth putting up with for 54 minutes. Grade: B MINUS (“Beautiful Things”)

África Negra: Anthologia Vol. 2

If you’re constitutionally obligated to nitpick, as I am, this isn’t as magical as the João Seria-dominated Vol. 1, in large part because the correlation between sound quality and performance quality is negative. The pre-debut album tracks, mostly in the São Toméan puxa style, hold up quite well, but the recordings from 1989–90 are a bit, uh, loud? If you’re not a nitpicker, you can instead marvel at the quantity of beauty that one band on one small island produced. “Lentlada cachelo” and the uncharacteristically wistful “Lourença”, both from their mid-Eighties peak, are highlights, from-cassette sonics be damned.

Grade: B PLUS, BUT GRADES ARE FAKE (“Lourença”, “Numigo iami ê”, “Lentlada cachelo (San Lena)”)