Quick Hits, Vol. 114 (Shawn Mendes, LVL UP, M.I.A., Wilco)

This article is pretty rad.  They take venue size for shows in NYC as a measure of success over time, to figure out who "makes it" and who fizzles out.  I have no clue if that is a good representation of making it, seems to me that playing a venue for 3,000 in a city of 800 billion people who don't sleep might not be that big a sign of making it.  But what do I know.  One thing I do know?  How freaking amazing would it have been to have been in the 300 person City Winery in 2011 when Sam Smith showed up.  I bet people died right there on the spot, being that close to that voice for more than 20 seconds.  It'd be like nuclear exposure where you just decompose right there on the spot.  I also have to say that the City Winery is apparently the greatest venue in the history of man at booking dope music before it blows up.  They had Smith and Sturgill Simpson before they blew up, and then in the bottom section they boast shows from 10,000 Maniacs, Bob Mould, Bob Schneider, Hayes Carll, James McMurtry, Leo Kottke, Lucius, Macy Gray, Marcia Ball, Matthew Sweet, Mavis Staples, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Rhett Miller, Sara Watkins, and a bunch of other good stuff.  Vernon Reid!  I must live next door to that venue immediately (well, no, I refuse to live in NYC, but move it here immediately and put it in the defunct oil change place by my house).

Shawn Mendes - Illuminate.  Nah.  This is the guy who did that annoying radio hit earworm about how he'd be needing stitches.  My kids love that song.  This is kind of like that song, but more like this guy took the most recent John Mayer album, listened to it 3,000 times, wrote new lyrics, wrote significantly lesser guitar parts, and tried to replicate it from memory. Literally, the first song ("Ruin") cribs the guitar start from a Mayer song ("Gravity?" feels like that is where I have heard this) with no shame at all.  I do not find this appealing to listen to, despite its bland pretty-ness.  The hit is huge, with 511 million streams, so I'm apparently missing out on the greatest new artist on the planet.  Try out "Treat You Better."

646 million YouTube views.  This song is apparently massive.  Doesn't mean I like it, but just another tidbit of information for you to enjoy.  And another video showing some tame domestic violence so that the singer can show how much better he is than that a-hole.  The last one I recall that was like this was Sam Hunt (Hurt?  Hunt.  Maybe?  The country guy who used to play footbawww).  I will not keep any of this around.

LVL UP - Return to Love.  Ah man, this is so very up my alley.  Crunchy, grungy old school homage to the feedback soaked rock of my youth.  I think I could listen to "Closing Door" all day.

Those guitars are the crunchiest crunch since a fresh Nature Valley granola bar opened in the backseat of my car by a 3 year old with no dexterity.  Give me all the crunchy crumbs. Let them become lodged into my molars in a crevice no toothpick can ever reach.  Sub Pop is the label of my daydreams.  These dudes are from New York, and had another album or two before this, but I'd never heard anything else from them.  "Spirit Was" is also a gem like "Closing Door."  This stuff is so very good and I want more.

M.I.A. - AIM.  This gal has always been weird, but I have good memories of jamming Kala repeatedly back at my first house here in Austin, and digging on that weirdness as part of a funky groove.  This one does the same, with head-bobbing grooves that are sometimes pretty normal in their funk ("Borders"), and others that are just odd ("Jump In").  Some of that can get annoying (the grating sampled voice on "Ali r u ok?") but most of this still grooves in a fun way.  Nothing on here will last the way that "Paper Planes" did, but the first four or five songs are all solidly enjoyable bounce.  There are two remixes of one song ("Bird Song") but no original of the song, which is odd, but any song in which you can: (1) make it sound like nerd kids with kazoos are bombing a track; (2) use at least 40 bird puns; and (3) sing that you be "rich like an ostrich" is a killer track that must be remixed twice. Spotify is still acting dumb with the play counts, so I'm going to give you the album opener, which I think is the most fun one.  This is "Borders."

Funny coming from her, because if I recall correctly, she was a refugee originally when she came to England, and has been kept out of the US and maybe other places, so borders have some history with her.  She likes to push boundaries on stuff, so I'm sure being a refuge herself led to her wanting to tweak people on the new refugee crisis.  But whatever, bro, that beat is dope, right?  That is the strength of these tracks, the beats, which are all kind of offbeat and original, but still conformist enough that they sound good and not just shit noise for the sake of being weird.  This album is cool, but if I'm being honest, I'd say that I enjoyed listening to it a number of times but will probably just let it go away now.

Wilco - Schmilco.  My recollection is that I dogged on their last album.  Well, sort of.  But I can say for certain that I have not gone back and listened to Star Wars again since I wrote that review.  This is another one that confounds me in a similar way.  The music is all really quite lovely.  Mostly very chilled acoustic-centric tracks, kind of sepia-hued Americana tunes with soft drumming.  And its nice.  But the album literally keeps ending (and this weird, violent sounding rap begins with the next album in my new music playlist) before I even really remember that I'm trying to listen to this thing.  So, its good background music to ignore?  That sounds like a mean review, but I don't mean it that way, its more that this would be good background music to fire up when you have some cool wine enthusiasts come over to sip pino grige while you chat about how mean that Trump guy seems.  I think that one might sound mean too.  I'll just leave it with this album is fine.  Spotify still refuses to give play counts, so we'll go with the one I think has the only video available, and actually uses an electric guitar for a sec, "Someone to Lose."

Video is all sort of trippy.  But then again, if you go into the cake after your clothespin bride who wanted to make out with the vomit worm, then you're likely going to get killed by the eagle cat or the waterfall, one of the two.  Pretty good song.  Like the rest of the album, pretty good.  But Wilco Schmilco anyway.