I have felt and still very much feel a responsibility toward our Record Club alumni, that I devote at least the minimum amount of space on the blog to briefly fill you in on their new work (see the Supplemental Archives, and scroll down). Record Club is a lifelong commitment to the artist. We examine one piece of their legacy over a seven-day period, but then re-examine it whenever a new piece drops. This will only end when I and/or every single RC alumnus is dead (since there is only one of me and a potential infinite number of RC alumni, I'm going to bet the former will happen first).
However, I also made a commitment in 2024 to not spend so much time investing in new music, and instead spend as much time as I can with older albums that seem more worthy of my efforts. We'll see how that whole thing goes as the year moves along, but that commitment is affecting how many RC alumni I'm giving space to. I don't want to forget about them though! You can see the predicament.
Out of the ten albums released by RC alumni in the past three months, I already downloaded two of them (Harm's Way and I Got Heaven). So I'm familiar with those, and they'll be included below. But I'll also write very briefly about another six that I've listened to in full at least once, if even just for the purposes of this blog post. Who knows, maybe I'll discover that one of these albums was worth my time after all.
As always, I'll make sure you know which album from RC we're following up on, and I'll also give a grade for the new album and compare it to the grade I gave the RC album. I'm just saying to maybe give most of these new grades a heap of skepticism, since they are more often than not based on only one full (but full of concentration) listen.
Released: January 12, 2024
Follow-up to: Any Human Friend, Week 30
I'd be lying if I said that I've listened to a single second of Marika Hackman's Any Human Friend since I wrote that absolutely torturous review in the summer of 2019. It will be interesting to revisit it once it's five-year RC anniversary hits this summer. I can't say there was anything that made me excited for a follow-up, though. I seem to recall a lot of quirky "#weirdgirl" sex songs on the last one. None of that here. One thing I can say for sure is that this is a lot slower, but, consequentially, a bit bigger and heavier. I like it but I don't love it. It earns my respect for mixing it up and trying something new, but it's not really my speed still. "Hanging" goes big, and "Slime" goes bigger. Those are the hits. I was also intrigued when she goes all Sufjan on us at the end with the "Show me the bones that we buried outside" chorus on "The Yellow Mile." I don't need to listen to this again, but I was expecting worse. If this had been the album during Week 30, I don't think my existential crisis would have looked as dire.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from previous review)
Released: January 19, 2024
Follow-up to: Dookie, Week 226
There are plenty of people who love early Green Day and haven't had the stomach to follow 'em past Warning. I get that. I'm a mid-period Green Day apologist. It's taken a while for my peers to age into music critic roles, but we're here, and I don't think "American Idiot is fucking GREAT" is the hot take that it once was. But late-period Green Day? Even I have my limits.
The funny part is that Green Day made a big deal about 'SAVIORS' (yes, it really is stylized like that) being the thematic link between it and Dookie and American Idiot, which is a great hook when you're hawking a new album, but leaves a lot to be desired when you're actually listening to the thing. Not a good sign when you're listening to it on YouTube and you have to keep switching back to that tab to make sure it's not a T-Mobile commercial.
The lyrics are pretty cringe all around, but maybe that was always a concern with Green Day, and we just never noticed it when we were young dumb impressionable teens. Or maybe the trump era aged them prematurely, like it did all of us. Not that the crankiness toward America as an institution is undeserved, but there are less clunky ways of expressing it.
"1981" feels like the winner here, and not just by default. It is the only one that could slip comfortably into American Idiot though, in my opinion. "Father to a Son" is good too, and maybe accidentally proves that, at this point, Green Day is way better at the highfalutin string-laden power ballads than the snotty two-minute punk photocopies.
Overall, this was fine, but I think even at "fine" I'd still be embarrassed to listen to it in public.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5 (-2.0 from previous review)
Released: January 22, 2024
Follow-up to: Emphatically No., Week 104
Mad respect for having a shtick and then tripling down on that shtick. It's not Cheekface's fault that I just straight-up fucking hate that shtick, still, after now three albums of this shit. I hate Cake. Cheekface doesn't know this, and they don't really care, and I don't blame them. When they make the Cake thing explicit on "Grad School," they aren't doing it to piss me off. They're just doing it because they think it sounds good. It does not. It's annoying try-hard bullshit. People who aren't clever but who think that they are clever because they make references to shit they read on the internet are the same types of people whom I want to punch in the fucking face.
GRADE: 1 puke out of 5 (-2.0 from first review)
Released: February 9, 2024
Follow-up to: Get Bleak EP, Week 47
This is one of the two albums today that I had already downloaded because I knew it was going to be good and thus I am pretty familiar with, so the review is from a stronger place of opinion, but will probably be shorter. Shorter because there's not much to say that hasn't already been said. Harm's Way is a clear leveling-up for Ducks Ltd., but I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I'm just saying that because other people think that way. I doubt everyone heard the EP back in 2019. I can hear the difference but it might be negligible. Maybe I don't know jack shit and I just repeat what others say. I don't see what's wrong in this case with just turning the critical mind off and letter some tasty jangle pop take the wheel.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5 (+1.5 from first review)
Released: February 23, 2024
Follow-up to: Essentials, Week 37
Erika de Casier is still out here doing her thing. I once referred to it as "spa music," and it is absolutely not that anymore. But it's icy and strange and sounds at once familiar and alien. There's a lot going on here, like she's doing a lot with a little—sounds like from an SNES and big strings and nighttime accordions and all kinds of shit all over the place, thrown in to see if it sticks. Most of it does. Erika is in the eye of the storm sounding as bored and/or as cool as usual. I'm actually hearing some hyperpop influence here, like on "me walking on the beach." Was this here all along? Was I just too stupid to hear it? I noted last time that this is close to PinkPantheress; I'm committed now to the idea that this is what PinkPantheress would sound like if she was ten years old. Here's how I see this music now: the sounds of '90s and '00s R&B are here, but they broken apart and reassembled in interesting ways. So that's cool. I dig it. Like Marika above, it's not really my thing, but I can see from a certain angle that this is good.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (+1.0 from first review)
Released: February 23, 2024
Follow-up to: The Main Thing, Week 66
While the grade on the original RC review for this band was recklessly underrated, I do think the overall point stands—some bands don't benefit from critical scrutiny. Some bands, like Real Estate, are nice to just relax to. Don't think about it too much. Nothing's ever gonna change. Although, I don't know, are they a little more languid on Daniel? Feels like it sometimes, until a nice crisp backbeat like the one on "Freeze Brain" drops in. Should I download this album just to have? I don't know. I'm not going to get anything out of it, nothing more than I already have from The Main Thing or Days. Might just be taking up space. I understand that this sounds like a criticism, the "taking up space" thing. And maybe it is! But I do mean it in the best way. I understand Real Estate now. I understand bands of their ilk. Some bands, you just gotta let 'em be, instead of getting inside of them. If I tried to get inside this one, I'd find more disappointment. This morning, though, on a once-through, I'm jamming.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5 (+1.0 from previous review)
There's no "Drunk II" on here, and I think that's a good thing. Such a song just takes up so much of the fucking oxygen in the room. My emotional sensibilities are a bit more fragile these days as well, and I don't want to experience a Mannequin Pussy album dreading a song that is definitely going to make me cry. All this to say: I Got Heaven is fucking great. It's tougher than Patience, and maybe a little leaner too. Marisa Dabice is a fucking god. Such range. I like that there are softer pieces that XPN can play ("I Don’t Know You") and hard shit that rips and almost touches on hardcore ("Ok? Ok! Ok? Ok!"). I would've picked this one up even if they had nothing to do with Record Club, but I like it better this way. The growth witnessed feels immense.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5 (+1.0 from previous review)
Released: March 15, 2024
Follow-up to: Pop?, Week 151
If I'm supposed to say whether this album is better than the EP we covered in Record Club, then the answer is yes, but pretty much by default. Pop? was a three-song taster, and WORLD WIDE WHACK is a full artistic statement. If I'm supposed to say whether this album is better than Whack's debut album Whack World, which I only got into after one of her songs was used last summer in the Song Challenge, then the answer is yes as well, but maybe by default again, since she allows the songs to breath here, and I appreciated it (as much as I love Whack World too). If I'm supposed to say whether this listen gets me to download the album, then I think the answer is yes.
On first glance, it's marginally less exciting than the other work of hers I'm familiar with. But I also think that there's a weirdness about it that intrigues me. This doesn't sound completely different than a lot of pop-rap that's going on these days, but different enough that I think we can confirm that this point that Tierra Whack is a singular voice. I think what convinced me, though, was the videos for a couple songs. The car wash video ("CHANEL PIT") and especially the Center City Philadelphia video ("TWO NIGHT") were absolutely mesmerizing. Okay, fine, I'll give this one a few more go-arounds. Even if it seemed a little on the slower side the first time. I have faith, based on prior experiences, that it's going to flower into something wonderful.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5 (+0.5 from previous review)
There are two other albums released in Q1 from RC alumni. The first is COWBOY CARTER (or however the fuck we're stylizing that title), which was of course just released yesterday. Even if I feel compelled to listen to it before the end of June (75% chance), it'll probably still end up in the Q2 roundup. The second is Dostrotime by Squarepusher, which was released on March 1st but only through physical means, and not through streaming. Could I find a bootleg copy of the album? Sure. But I didn't feel like going through all those steps for what would no doubt end up being a perplexing hour of music. When it shows up on Bandcamp, I'll drop a review on the blog.
As always, I'm down for other people to get in on this. If, say, you want to be the one to write the official PoYB RC follow-up review for the Beyoncé album, then I'd be totally down to let you do it so I don't have to. Let me know!
1 comment:
It's been like two days since I wrote this and I have already changed my mind on the new Tierra Whack. It's fucking great.
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