Travi$ Scott - Rodeo. Dude. "Antidote" is a jam. I'd never heard of this cat until he tried to incite a riot at Lolla (or something, still not sure what he had going on there), but taste this and see what I'm talking about.
The intro to that video is not part of the original song, which, if that was the sound of the song, would not have received my stamp of approval. But that beat - woozy, dark, ominous, snake-skin-smooth, sounds like you are trapped in a metal 50 gallon drum waiting for your final sentence from evil robots. Hard not to enjoy. And I get that the vast majority of the song is the Auto-Tuned hook - he only does a real verse after about 3 and a half minutes - but its a sweet hook anyway. Sticks in my head, even though I've recently said tunes like this from Future or similar guys are weak. Don't let the man's weed smoke out of the window, yo. I won't say that anything else on the album approaches that level - too much Auto-Tune and basic lyrics for me. He goes all Kanye-808's-and-Heartbreak on "90210," before hitting a solid verse on the second half of the song. So, a half-good song. Later, he actually shares a track with Kanye himself, where Scott mimics Kanye pretty well, on "Piss on Your Grave." I'm just saving "Antidote" and letting the rest of this go. Noah Gundersen - Carry the Ghost. Never heard of this guy before, and his name sounds like a neighbor from Fargo. But a friend asked me if I was excited about his new album and so I had to check it out. Gorgeous stuff in the quiet vein of Ryan Adams - even has a song called "Heartbreaker," although that song gets loud when the emotions start running. The prime track from the album is "Jealous Love," it just jumps out as the superior sound, tucked right in the middle of the rest of the songs.
Great, tender melodies, as well as solid lyrics. "Empty from the Start" is another winner of a track. I like this album a lot - quiet but solidly nice to listen to. Kelsea Ballerini - The First Time. There are other, even worse moments on this album (see "XO," which works SO HARD to turn those two letters into something about an ex), but here is a taste of what we are talking about. "Yeah boy want to take a little ride with you, yeah boy want to spend a little time with you, yeah boy want to sip a little wine with you." From the song with the cryptic title "Yeah Boy." And the background music is banjo-fied pop basic blah. This is terrible. Like Jessica Simpson in Rocky Mountains and trying real hard. I want to say Rolling Stone pimped her to me as a second coming of Taylor Swift, but this couldn't hold Taylor Swift's jock. Refused - Freedom. If you've never heard Swedish band Refused, then you likely would not want anything to do with this. I am extremely certain that my wife would hate every single second of listening to this album. However, I loved some of the tracks from their 1998 album, The Shape of Punk to Come. "New Noise" (crushing, swirling, angry thing that builds from quiet to eleven in a heartbeat) and "The Shape of Punk to Come" (which I irrationally love more than I should) are way more scream-y than I normally like, but they are fist-pumping jams of the first order that still have a tight sound that I don't usually hear in straight up screaming music. Anyway, this album is kind of like that old album, in that some songs are just merciless screaming anger, while others have that driving, building tension that makes for a hell of an intensely fun song. Check out "Dawkins Christ"
If you don't want to ball your hands into fists and mash something, then you need to try again. "Francafrique" is also great, although a little more dance-y and playful, until the building tension breaks and the singer screams "KILL KILL KILL! Exterminate the brutes! Exterminate all the brutes!" Which is not entirely playful, I suppose, unless you are a Game of Thrones character or something. "War on the Palaces" has some Stones horns, "Destroy the Man" has some Rush ("YYZ") and Rage Against the Machine sounds, and "366" goes back to the well that we drank from on "The Shape of Punk to Come" to good results. This is hardcore stuff, not for the faint of heart, but I still like it. I'm going to save a few songs to a playlist.
No comments:
Post a Comment