Never Enough by Daniel Caesar
due to “having heard good things,” i’ve been meaning to check out this guy’s stuff for a while, so allow me to say: pretty good! i can see the appeal! this is just what i needed to hear on the morning of friday, june 16, 2023 – low-to-midtempo R&B ballads sung in a soothing falsetto, with head-bopping basslines and a soupçon of pitch-shifted vocal samples. the production on this thing is immaculate. lyrically, there isn’t much going on –it’s all love songs, which can feel repetitive after a while, but there are worse problems to have. a few of the lyrics are a bit suspect. one that stuck out to me occurred towards the end of “Do You Like Me?” when Caesar sings “will you have my kids? you better.” i’m sorry? “you better“? i know you like the girl, but c’mon man. chill out. were those really the only three syllables you could think of to fill out the line?
there were three or four songs toward the end where i was like, “ok, that’s a good note to go out on, let’s wrap this thing up” & then was slightly dismayed to hear the opening notes of an entirely new song. but there wasn’t a bad one in the bunch. even “Homiesexual” (ugh) wasn’t outright terrible.
highlights: “Ocho Rios,” “Always,” “Shot My Baby” (i mean, hell, after what i just said above about that other song, i’m gonna look like a hypocrite for putting this song about murdering a cheating lover in the highlights section, but the beat is just undeniable!).
3.75 stars out of 5.
Better Luck in the Next Life by Chiiild
a darker, more abstract form of R&B than Daniel Caesar’s offering. i found some of the vocal effects a bit grating, but i got over it eventually. the album really drags toward the end, or maybe i just get bored of R&B more quickly than other genres on average. who’s to say.
highlights: “Better Luck in the Next Life,” “Hell and High Water.”
3.25 stars out of 5.
Multitudes by Feist
Feist is back, baby, and she’s still got it. as an aside, i never really cared for “1234,” and don’t get why that one, of all her singles discography, was the one that took off & got her international fame, iPod commercials, a Sesame Street appearance (ok, well, that one makes sense, at least) – you know, “the works.” but that came out like 15 years ago at this point and has nothing to do with the album at hand. strong undercurrent of existentialism in her exploration of themes associated with the death of her father during the COVID-19 pandemic, which resonates hard with me, since i looooove thinking about death. (i mean, why else would i do it constantly, right?) most of the songs aren’t as memorable as the ones on Metals, my favourite of Feist’s albums, but i’m not going to get mad that she didn’t make another album as good as that one. it was incredible! i’ve never even made one album as good as Metals.
highlights:
- “In Lightning”: it’s got a really fun, Tune-Yards-adjacent (not doing the obnoxious capitalization thing, sorry) wordless vocal hook going on, minus Merrill Garbus’ hacky “white lady trying desperately to sound ‘black'” schtick. in other words, Tune-Yards, but not insanely try-hard and annoying, would be what i’d have to say about it.
- “Become the Earth”: takes a while to pick up pace, but the second half of the song is breathtaking – literally just put the words “ashes to ashes” and/or “dust to dust” in a song & i’m hooked. that general sentiment is my fucking jam.
- “Borrow Trouble”: despite the precedent established by the prior songs listed, i don’t have anything to say about it. (“thumbs-up emoji.”)
3.75 stars out of 5.
Good Luck by Debby Friday
listened to Debby Friday’s album on a Tuesday. there’s a joke in there somewhere. perhaps the joke is just “lazily stating ‘there’s a joke in there somewhere,’ and acting as if that’s sufficient in and of itself, while leaving it up to the reader to do the work of piecing together what a real joke with that premise might look like.” and now that you’re done chuckling politely at the hysterical joke you just imagined in place of the one above, i can begin the review in earnest.
i already used the adjective “dark” to describe the Chiiild album, but i’m gonna have to re-deploy it here for this sequence of electronic dance tunes. you’ve got your echo-laden vocals, blown-out bass, aggressive drum loops, synths played in alternately low and high octaves, sometimes accompanied by guitars that sound vaguely “industrial rock” (à la Nine Inch Nails, the one example of an industrial rock group that i can think of at the present moment). lot of different abrasive sound types on this record. catchy stuff.
highlights: “SO HARD TO TELL,” “PLUTO BABY,” “WAKE UP.”
3.75 stars out of 5.
Mascarade by Gayance
not-unpleasant, jazzy pop that unfortunately didn’t do much for me. the vocals were a bit too low in the mix, the synth parts weren’t especially attention-grabbing, and the drum loops had a thin, reedy quality to them. the songs were separated by a handful of non-musical interludes that probably held some sort of emotional significance to the artist but weren’t sonically interesting to me. it’s music that sounds like how eating a bowl of slightly-too-cold pea soup tastes. or a mealy apple. whichever food simile you prefer.
highlight: “Nunca Mais (Extended Version)” (kind of had a David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes”-style synth line that i could get behind).
3 stars out of 5.
Multidimensional Culture by Ghostkeeper
a versatile series of chill, rollicking songs that could be classified under the banner of “folk rock,” but which take influence from a wide array of genres. opener “Doo Wop” has kind of an Abbey Road-era Beatles-y feel with its guitar tone and harmonies, “Grassy Plains” sounds almost post-punk at times, “Ghost on a Rope” starts out with a weird electronic noise before transforming into a power-pop rocker, and i picked up elements of flamenco, country, and psychedelia in the other songs. amazingly, Ghostkeeper manages to blend these disparate sounds together while maintaining a striking tonal consistency. none of these tracks feel out-of-place in the slightest.
highlights: see above. figured i’d switch things up by writing about the “highlights” in the body of my review this time. when your readers are expecting you to zig, that’s precisely when you zag. keeps people on their toes.
3.75 stars out of 5.
Games of Power by Home Front
to me, this sort of sounds like the midway point between Shame and late-period U2, if that’s something that even makes sense to say. and if not, well, that’s all i got because i found this album kinda boring. too much compression on this thing & the lead singer’s presumably affected (?) English accent certainly doesn’t help. i think we as a society maybe need to have a long think about how much more post-punk we need right now. i love the stuff – when it’s good, it’s really good – but most of the recent releases i’ve heard in the genre have been kind of a slog.
2.75 stars out of 5.
Slingshot by JayWood
really excited to see this guy, who was once affiliated with an old friend’s short-lived indie label, pick up his first Polaris nomination! if i squint a little, it’s almost like i got a Polaris nomination! sure, i don’t know JayWood personally, never met the guy in fact, but i am a mere degree of musical separation removed from him, since i was in an informal experimental music collective called 2003X with, among others, the person who ran the record label. and isn’t that so cool for me? that’s the main takeaway here: that it is i, who is cool.
it’s only beginning to dawn on me how many more albums i have left to go in this year’s iteration of the project, and moreover, how many more years i have remaining in my actuarially-expected lifespan. good grief. how many more times can i get away with saying some bullshit like, “wow, this album? kinda sounds like one thing, but also two or three other things” & have poeple keep reading along as if i’d just said anything insightful? with that said, JayWood’s sophomore album is a satisfying collection of rock, R&B, synth pop, and hip hop tunes – although maybe that’s what the phrase “funk rock” was invented to denote. who cares. you get the point by now. (jesus christ – only 22 more of these shits to go!) anyway, great work, JayWood! this was a cool album and maybe, once the Polaris committee works its way through the more worthy artists in the Birthday Tapes orbit, my own true bug. stuff will pick up a nomination by accident in 2027. here’s hoping!
highlights: “God Is a Reptile,” “Just Sayin’,” “Shine,” “Thank You.”
4 stars out of 5.
Release Spirit by Khotin
light, ambient synth pop / sound collage somewhat reminiscent of those mid-’90s Eyewitness science documentaries that your third grade teacher would show to the class on the last day of school before summer break. (sorry if this is not a point of reference that makes sense to you. nothing i can do about it.) you can almost hear the crackling and warping of the VHS tape in places. this shit makes me want to take a nap at my desk.
highlights: “Lovely,” “Home World 303,” “Sound Gathering Trip.”
3.75 stars out of 5.
Sprint! by Thierry Larose
i was planning on doing this bit where i copy-and-paste my review of Cantalou (Larose’s previous album, longlisted in 2021) and pretend that i’d just come up with it now, to save myself the time of having to write another review. except it also mentioned the thing about how i don’t speak French anymore & i already did that last week. i seem to say the exact same shit every year without even meaning to! oops. why does anyone read these, again?
uh oh, and with that, it looks like i’ve run out of time to talk about the new Thierry Larose album. what a shame. and i had so much to say about it too!!
highlights: “Si tu comprends pas maintenant (tu comprendras peut-être jamais,” “Des nœuds dans les doigts,” “Comme dans mes souvenirs.”
3.5 stars out of 5.
ruminations of a sad oaf. 