Quick Hits, Vol. 24 (SpaceghostPurrp, Kid Ink, Ol' Dirty Bastard, One Direction, Sleater-Kinney)

Ol' Dirty Bastard - N***A Please.  Wow.  I don't like this album at all.  I generally like the Wu, and definitely have enjoyed some of the solo stuff from members, but this is a crazy, barking mess over some less-than-classic-Wu beats.  And, by the way, Kanye is ripping off ODB's Grammy style.

Wu Tang is for the children.  Poor Shawn Colvin, her moment in the sun ruined by crazy.

Spaceghostpurrp - NASA Gang.  Dang.  Two clunkers in a row.  Spaceghostpurrp shows up on a few A$AP Rocky tracks, so I had high hopes for his own stuff, but this is weak.  Uninteresting, boring lyrics are sort of saved by the trippy, fuzzed-out beats.  I also don't understand how Hanna Barbera hasn't gone after this dude.  Whatever.

Kid Ink - Full Speed.  Yikes.  Maybe I need to stop listening to rap for a bit, because this one sounds like crap too. The hit has Usher on it ("Body Language"), and the commensurate 20 million listens, but it is entirely generic words over a blah tune.

I need something to save me from my rap malaise!

One Direction - Four.  And there it is.  A heavy duty dose of turbo-charged-pop is all I needed to get right.  I have to give respect to whoever the people are behind this group who craft this stuff.  I mean, this music is so formulaic but perfectly crafted, I can't help but grudgingly acknowledge that it is good.  I don't want to hear it anymore, but it exactly walks the line between rock (with driving drums, generic guitar licks), bubblegum (five boys making harmony about love and fun with dance-able beats), and schmaltz ("nobody loves you, baby, the waaaaaay I do!").  And its almost all huge - you feel like the music videos for most of the songs will have them singing on a cloud in loose, open shirts that show their abs and chains, raising their arms to the horizon and clenching their open palms to show the depth of their love for you.  Also, for some reason, I got a whiff of the Eagles in the middle of my third or fourth listen to the album.  "Change Your Ticket" is the one that I think I like the most:

Dance-able thump, simple/generic guitar riff, some tambourine, and the boys imploring you to just stay with them a little bit longer.  No one can resist.  No one.

Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love.  I heard one of these tracks the other day on KUTX, and liked it.  However, an entire album of this lead singer yelping is more than I can handle.  Individually, the songs are good, but each time I have listened to this album I feel fatigued within a couple songs.  In case you are not living in the ultra-hip world that I inhabit, maybe you don't know that this band features Carrie Brownstein, the gal half of the duo who makes Portlandia.  I think the band gets some extra buzz because of that tie-in, but they were large (and critically acclaimed) before Portlandia ever existed.  For me, the music underneath is great - powerful, driving punkish rock - but the strained singing is not for me.