April 2016 Review

I listened to a lot of music this month. I'd anticipated some of the albums on this list for ages. Some lived up to the hype, others didn't. I was pleasantly surprised by my top 2 albums, as they came out of nowhere. I listened to them on a whim/the recommendation of others just to fill up space, but they turned out to be my favourite picks for April. It's always great when that happens.

There were several albums that let me down this month. The Rest is littered with records that I wanted to slap a well-deserved high rating on that turned out to be average. But this is why I try to listen without prejudice, because you never know which one is gonna be the dud, and which one is gonna be the bases-loaded home run. As always, the #1 album is a belter. I hope you agree.


The Rest:


Autolux - Pussy's Dead - B

Rock/Electronic


Brian Eno - The Ship - B

Ambient/Spoken Word


Explosions In The Sky - The Wilderness - C

Post-Rock


The Heavy - Hurt & The Merciless - C

Indie/Garage Rock/Funk Rock


J-Dilla - The Diary - C

Hip-hop


The Last Shadow Puppets - Everything You've Come To Expect - C

Alternative Pop/Indie

The Last Shadow Puppets are part of a wave of culture that rehashes older styles, be it through art, music or film. The music they make is an attempt to capture the vintage quality that classic 60's pop records had. My issue with this is that it's dated. It's been done before. Will people want to hear this sort of music from contemporary artists in a decade, or will times have moved on? I strongly suspect the latter.

Everything You've Come To Expect is an apt title, as the boys cover no new ground with this 2nd record. The debut album was good as a standalone project, keeping the hordes at bay while the 3rd Arctic Monkeys album was in development, and simultaneously giving Turner an alternative songwriting outlet. It was good as a snapshot, but now it seems that The Last Shadow Puppets are very much A Proper Band, and we may have many future instances of a new Arctic Monkeys album being pushed back for a year to make room for this project.

It's like a Tarantino film. Great fun the first few watches, and it looks cool and all the characters are saying cool things and doing cool things and wearing cool clothes but then you wearily realise it's the same aesthetic every time. Art for art's sake.


PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project - B

Soft Rock/Acoustic/Alternative Rock

I really wanted to love this one. When you're a critically acclaimed artist, when 2 of your albums have won the Mercury Prize and when you're known as a shape-shifting experimenter, there is a weight of expectation that comes with each release. Sometimes you meet that expectation, other times you don't.

The Hope... is a bold enough statement as it is; far too little music in this day and age is politically or socially aware. Harvey attempts commentary on most of this album but it's rather laboured and doesn't come out saying much at all. The musical content is dreary and often when a song finished I found myself saying "what was the point in that one?"

One good tune on this is Chain Of Keys, a classic slice of Harvey's gothic/country/effortlessly cool vibe, with minimal instrumentation and percussion that manages to bring a lot to the table. I think that this was the feel Harvey was gunning for on the entirety of The Hope... but it didn't work out. Let England Shake still hangs over this record; 5 years older and a much more accomplished effort.  


Royce Da 5'9" - Layers - C

Hip-hop


The Best:


01: Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye - A

Experimental Pop

There's a wonderful scene right now for several bands that defy categorisation through their creativity and experimentation with multiple genres. A few months ago I lumped praise on The 1975's latest release for being innovative and eclectic. Yeasayer's Amen & Goodbye is more of the same.

Amen & Goodbye is a thoroughly delightful journey through many different sounds and eras. There is syncopated percussion, a Baroque-era harpsichord interlude and floor filler basslines throughout the whole scope of the record, pulling you up and down without getting lost in the clouds or jamming out sections for too long. The whole thing is concise and snappy.

Yeasayer have big anthems in them, making regular waypoints throughout Amen & Goodbye - Silly Me, I Am Chemistry, Dead Sea Scrolls and Cold Night all gleam with the quirky catchiness the band are famed for. Amen & Goodbye is mature, intellectual and just a little bit emotionally vulnerable. Yeasayer have been going for a decade now, and show no signs of dropping their quality levels. What a great little record this is.

02: Melt Yourself Down - Last Evenings On Earth - A

Jazz/World

This came straight out of leftfield, I listened to Last Evenings On Earth mainly because one of the band members of Melt Yourself Down happens to release his solo material through the label I work for. It was well worth the punt. This is blissful Jazzy madness.

Last Evenings... plays effortlessly between several different Jazz themes, the band thrashing through sections of tribal drum thumping and whacked-out screaming, maintaining a bizarre and wonderful intensity throughout the whole album. The energy levels hit the ceiling instantly and don't come down until the final note, pulsing and irradiating like a pagan festival echoing through the countryside on a bright summer's day.

What pushes it over the top for me though is the sheer catchiness of it all. The band pour melodies and signature vocal lines into every composition, and this lifts Last Evenings... above the quality of "Just another Jazz album." For a scene that is saturated, that has been hashed and re-hashed, this is refreshing and brings a new element to the fore. It enables the songs to run around your head for days. Melt Yourself Down are having a blinding party, and it's going on all night.

03: Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid - A

Alternative Hip-hop

Aesop Rock has cultivated his style to perfection over the years, drilling out intelligent lines over precise beats, proving his verbosity and spinning off 6 syllable word rhymes to infinity. Some critics say that Aesop does this merely to show off, but what comes across in his music is a real sense of self-introspection. The Impossible Kid is the latest record to bear his signature sound.

Good Hip-hop can be homespun and accessible, it doesn't have to be opulent to be worthy. Aesop talks through heavy subject matter, but is just as suited to lighter songs about ordering ice cream, ("Cherry? No. Whip? Yes") and loveable quirky nerdiness ("My first name is a random set of numbers and letters and other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever") that fills out the experience without cheapening the serious side.

Tunes like Rings, Lotta Years and Blood Sandwich are grand and eloquent, they are well written dynamic songs that push The Impossible Kid up a notch. The beats are self-produced, not an issue as such, but it does have a samey feel towards the back of the album. Some of the tracks are superfluous; Aesop kinda runs out of ideas after the 9 or 10 best tracks on this record. Nevertheless, The Impossible Kid is a solid, vital, cerebral Hip-hop album, and shows the gold you get when you scratch even the tiniest bit below the surface of the genre.

04: Mogwai - Atomic - B

Post-Rock/Ambient

05: Deftones - Gore - B

Post-Metal/Hard Rock

I'm happy with the albums from April. There's tons of variety in my top 5. I have a feeling they'll still be around the upper tier when I compile my year-end best of. May's albums are already giving me plenty of food for thought. I'm looking forward to writing about the Radiohead album, for sure. See you in a month!