February's music made for interesting listening to me, mainly because I hardly had anything I was looking forward to. This made me listen to some stuff I wouldn't usually consider, and some of it was a pleasant surprise. Other bits, not so good. Once again, I'm really happy with my top 3, as all of them were artists I had never heard of or had thought would not be to my taste. That's the beauty of this practice; forcing yourself to listen opens you up to music you'd not usually consider. This one's a little late, and for that I apologise. Had a bit of real world stuff (drinking and job searching, mainly) to go through.
The Rest:
Anchor And Braille - Songs For The Late Night Drive Home - C
Pop/Electronic
Animal Collective - Painting With - C
Electronic/Experimental
This is one I was surprised by, mainly because I expected so much more. Animal Collective have a solid reputation for musical irreverence amongst the Indie/Experimental/We Like Weird Shit community, and I was all ready to give this one an A and a big pat on the back. Then I listened to it.
The issue I have with Painting With is that it's constant noise. There's very little let-up in terms of sonic dynamics, and it all sounds the same. Once you've heard the first 2 minutes of Floridada, the loop is complete and there is no more ground left to cover.
This is hard to listen to, not because it's odd music or because it's complex. It's because it all moulds into one lump of goo. Sparkly, interesting goo. But goo nonetheless. I had put the far superior Panda Bear record from last year in my top 20. He's on this record, as with all the Collective's output. That's a better example of the sound Animal Collective are going for here.
DIIV - Is The Is Are - C
Alternative Rock/Shoegaze/Garage Rock
The Best
01: The 1975 - I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It - A
Pop/Electronic/Funk/Ambient
This is hands down the winner of the Most Pretentious Album Title 2K16 and it's only February. That's the only criticism I can push on this album. It's exceptional.
It's difficult to put so many different styles, forms and moods on a record without stretching it out too much and making it incomplete, but with When You Sleep, The 1975 have achieved the impossible. The breadth of this album is monumental, tracks like Please Be Naked are virtually at the level of ambient field recordings, while on the other end of the scale, Love Me, She's American and UGH! bring a mix of quirky, lucid Pop/Funk that will be ringing out across the street from countless student house parties across the UK this summer.
I usually hate anything that's over an hour, or anything with more than 12 tracks. When You Sleep gleefully surpasses both of these thresholds and never gets boring. There's an overall youthful optimistic feel from the bulk of radio-friendly hits on here, punctuated by musical curveballs that push out the longevity of the album, and it never gets cynical or jaded. Shoegaze, Acoustic, Ambient, Pop, Funk, Rock. It's all here, and it's all straight from the heart. This will sit comfortably in many end-of-year top lists, and rightfully so.
02: Trixie Whitely - Porta Bohemica - A
Alternative Rock/Pop/Blues/Soul
03: Textures - Phenotype - B
Metal/Progressive Metal
04: Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo - B
Hip Hop/Soul/Pop/Electronic
Kanye's one of those artists you absolutely have to listen to. Not because he's that great or innovative, but because he's so ubiquitous. Kanye West is a global brand. In that way, he transcends musical artistry and becomes a form of culture in his own right. That's what gives him his persona, his cult following and what makes a million balding dads tut and shake their heads at him headlining Glastonbury. It's worth listening to his music based entirely on his super-celebrity status.
Pablo is a puzzling work. Read the list of contributors and producers, and it's exhaustive. It promises a grand, sprawling epic, but in reality, Pablo is an intimate portrait. It sounds like Kanye did it over a rainy weekend in his front room, just him, a mic and some Protools. Inevitably, this leaves the sound lacking.
There are a few choice cuts on here, but all come with a caveat. No More Parties In L.A is far and away the best track on Pablo, though the guest spot from Kendrick Lamar is washed away by the 6 minutes of West's musical dalliances. Even the rare and tender 30 Hours gets soiled by 2 minutes of messing around that passes for an outro, a section West himself describes on a staged phone call near the finish, as an "ad-lib track." So it stands for the rest of the album. Pablo is frustrating to listen to, because there's a real person trying to get out underneath all the braggadocio, but they're lost to the winds of pop culture personification and a need to satisfy the media strawman.
Kanye leads the way in terms of how popular Hip Hop sounds. Everyone in the mainstream follows him, and he should get unlimited props for that. He is the pied piper, a Roman prince, followed by an adoring public. But when you strip away all of the bullshit, all of the "I made that bitch famous," all of the rambling nonsense, you get left with an average collection of songs. History will remember the legend, and not the music.
(Here's where I'd usually drop in a Youtube vid with the lead single but Kanye has been very "Kanye" about this album and has scorched the entirety of Youtube of any traces of The Life Of Pablo. Listen to No More Parties In L.A, it's a good tune.)
05: Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - This Unruly Mess I've Made - B
Hip Hop/Pop
Macklemore projects an image of a loutish frat boy that used to drink too much and cheat on his girlfriend, then suddenly woke up one day and thought - "Woah. Wait a second. I'm an asshole!" All of a sudden, he's attending Black Lives Matter rallies and holding his still-loutish frat bros to account for their homophobic micro aggressions on Facebook. "That's not cool brah! You can't say that, brah." And so on. While you can't really criticise the guy for wanting to project sincere feelings about the world, Macklemore can be gratingly twee at times.
There are a few songs on This Unruly Mess that are genuinely great, Downtown is the obvious single choice for the album, while the intro track Light Tunnels is a gripping epic opening story about winning a Grammy, which is a hard thing to write about without sounding smug or boastful, but Macklemore pulls it off in a nicely humble fashion. Buckshot, another highlight has an enviable turn from Hip Hop god KRS-One.
At the very least, This Unruly Mess's words and songs are genuinely heartfelt. A lot of the time it's corny, at one point Macklemore offers a song about how much he loves to eat unhealthy food and how that runs against his fitness regime, ("My girl's shaped like a bottle of Coke/And I'm shaped like a bottle of nope!") but every once in a while, a song crops up on This Unruly Mess that you cannot be cynical about. Even Growing Up, a letter to his young child, a song with Hallmark lyrics, a song that has Ed Sheeran singing on it, is too real and emotionally honest to criticise. There's some delightful piano riffs and musical ideas that make This Unruly Mess a nice, laid back listen. The overall feel is sincere, inclusive warmth, and who can say fairer than that?
The Dud
Wolfmother - Victorious - D
Rock/Alternative Rock
Wolfmother somehow broke the overpopulated guitar scene of the mid 00's, in spite of the fact they sounded like a rough mix of a poor Led Zeppelin covers band and At The Drive-In on a hangover. That was over a decade ago, and nothing has changed about their style. Victorious is their current attempt at defining banality.
One thing that sticks out so readily to me about this band is that although they have absolutely nothing new to say or to add to the pantheon of Rock music, they push every single note of their songs with the triumphant grandiosity usually reserved for the greatest talents of the genre. The immense amount of energy they put into being the soft play area of guitar music is exasperating.
Victorious contains every Rock cliché you can think of, and disappointingly adds no new ones. You have the hard intro track, the cut 'n paste single, the big anthemic ballad, and of course, the quiet acoustic one they play 3 songs from the end of the set at the main stage of Leeds Festival to 30,000 people. Arms in the air, girls sat on boyfriend's shoulders, mobile phones aloft.
All this would be fine, but - They have nothing to say. There is no statement on Victorious, aside from making the statement itself. To use a tired, old phrase, (but certainly relevant in the context) this is all style, no substance. There is no new music on this record. It's all been done before. Wolfmother are in an infantile 1970's cultural vacuum. Let's leave them right where they are.
So that's February. If you only listen to one thing out of this lot, give Porta Bohemica a chance. Trixie Whitely is hardly known out of her own fan base but is a very talented songwriter, and deserves more exposure. Tell me what you think anyway. Catch you laters!
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