Another month, another 10 albums, another blog I should've done a week ago. Life's busy, yanno? Mainly good busy, but busy nonetheless. I've gone days and days on end in April not listening to music, which is mad for me because I usually spin 5 or 6 albums a day at least. So it's taken me forever to listen to everything I wanted, and I still have stuff left over I want to try. I'm determined to get April's in on time. Hopefully.
Anyway.
March was interesting, wasn't it? Some steady releases by established artists, pleasant surprises by virtual-unknowns and one big hitter dropping a mixtape on us without warning. It's all here. One album I loved and was all ready to give a super thumbs-up and a big shiny "A" to was Thao and The Get Down Stay Down's 2013 release We The Common, which I had downloaded accidentally while trying to find their latest album A Man Down. It's really good though, and would have come 2nd in my top 5. Chalk that one down to me getting old (or being drunk when I downloaded it at 3am.) Without any further ado:
The Rest:
3 Doors Down - Us And The Night - C
Rock
Denzel Curry - Imperial - C
Hardcore Hip hop
Hælos - Full Circle - C
Electronic/Pop
Matt Corby - Telluric - B
R 'n B/Soul
Nada Surf - You Know Who You Are - B
Indie/Rock
The Best:
01: Kendrick Lamar - untitled unmastered. - A
Alternative Hip hop/Experimental Hip hop
Kendrick Lamar's status as the golden boy of Hip hop was cemented with last year's ubiquitous list-topper To Pimp A Butterfly, and he's been rocketing upwards ever since. It's a testament to how vital Lamar is when he drops an unmastered mixtape of out-takes and studio jams from the Butterfly sessions with no prior official promotion and it goes straight in at number one on the billboard charts, selling 200,000+ units in under 2 months. King Kunta.
The music itself, as one would expect from such eclectic sessions is a kaleidoscope of themes and moods. Lamar is as much at home with his socio-political remonstrations as with his hood rhetoric. As always, his flow is urgent and direct, and yet at times verging on surreal. The clear radio play choices are the start of Untitled 07, (released as a single titled Levitate) and the final track Untitled 08, the latter dubbed Blue Faces by fans. I'm also totally enamoured with Untitled 03's superb mix of cerebral synth stabs and horn trills mixed with female vocal hooks.
Untitled 06 is a summery happy tune with Cee Loo Green's distinctive voice leading the way before Lamar drops in. You can tell he's got a smile on his face as he cruises through his lyrics like he's reciting his ABCs. This song, like the rest, is effortless. The bulk of the tracks feature a welcome continuation of the collaboration between Lamar and Thundercat, whose wandering basslines and soulful voice are a signature element of Lamar's music. In truth, I could keep going for a while. I don't want to pick out all the bits I like here, because it'd be all of it.
If Butterfly was the arena show, with an adoring crowd of thousands following every move and screaming back the lyrics to the band as they play through a tightly wound, well-versed setlist, then untitled... is the chilled out blunts and beers jam at the after party. Everything's more relaxed, and that's why it's so much more accessible than Butterfly. untitled... asks nothing, assumes nothing, and just gives. It's a representation of an artist at the peak of his game, in the rawest form possible. It's my favourite record of the year so far.
I can't find a proper video for anything from the album but this performance on US TV is AMAZING:
02: Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression - B
Alternative Rock
Iggy Pop has been around since the dawn of recorded time, and even though I've never been much of a fan, he's one of those artists that I feel compelled to listen to whenever I get the chance. Post Pop Depression is billed as an Iggy solo record, but it would be fairer to label this as a supergroup, as Iggy's band contains members from some of the great princes (and future kings) of this generation's rock royalty.
The result of a collaboration between such artists is as you'd expect - Effective simplistic drum patterns from Matt Helders, triple-decade matured riffs and into-the-hollow weird trippyness from Josh Homme and Dean Fertita, all sitting comfortably underneath Iggy's American poet polemica. Post... is a textbook walk along the path most trodden, using the tried and tested rock four piece method, with almost a century of professional experience between them to give it that cask-aged, instant vintage quality.
Homme will have grown up with Iggy Pop and The Stooges as idols, and I can only imagine the feeling it is to perform with such a legend of your younger years. He steps back and gives Iggy the space his elder-statesmanlike level of rock stardom demands, so the usual ego nonsense that often afflicts such super-pairings is not present. This is definitely Iggy's project, but Homme is always in the passenger seat, pushing harmonised vocals and his signature guitar style in wherever he can.
The lads aren't pulling up any trees with Post...; every single member of this project has bigger fish to fry, and I suspect the A material has been put on ice for their respective main projects. (Come on, Matt, when's the next Monkeys album out?) While Post... doesn't advance any of it's creator's careers much, it certainly hasn't pushed them back, and the high quality of musicianship and songwriting on this record is well worth the 42 minutes. They certainly had a lot of fun doing this, and that's always a good thing. Post... is an extremely listenable and accessible record, and I think it will appear on many end of year best-of lists.
03: The Body - No One Deserves Happiness - B
Experimental Rock/Post-Metal
04: Underworld - Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future - B
Electronic/House/Ambient
05: The Joy Formidable - Hitch - B
Indie/Rock
The Welsh soundwall churners return after a 3 year break with the suitably epic Hitch. This is a good record that would be great if the fat were trimmed. At well over an hour, and with most of its songs in excess of 5 minutes, Hitch keeps on going and going and going. And then it goes some more. The compositions are huge, and there's plenty of room for reverb-laden guitar and pounding drums while the band are at full stretch.
Singer Ritzy Bryan does well to float strong vocal melodies over the noise, and the overall catchy and friendly qualities that abound on Hitch are pleasant to behold. The band are a perfectly balanced 3 piece; the sound is simultaneously uncluttered yet full.
Songs such as The Last Thing On My Mind and A Second In White are nice enough, but there's just too much to chew on, and the later acoustic tracks come too late to stave off the musical equivalent of eating an entire chocolate cake to yourself. They have a good, original sound, but it's not worth every minute of Hitch.
So that's March. There's about a million things I want to listen to from April, which I have already begun doing. You might even get a top 6. How about that. Tell me what you think, anyway. Should Kendrick be so lauded? Is Denzel Curry actually the king of Hip hop? When is the next Arctic Monkeys album gonna drop, eh? See you in a few weeks.
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