Quick Hits Vol. 178 (SOB x RBE, Diet Cig, Hovvdy, Vance Joy)

My daughter rolled into my room this morning singing this song.

I am sooooooo going to need help in figuring out how to direct my children to legitimate music.  I am failing in myriad ways here, if she thinks this song is good in any way.  (other than being catchy and kind of hilarious to hear your nine year old singing as she brushes her hair).

SOB x RBE - GANGIN.  These dudes had a track on the Black Panther soundtrack ("Paramedic!") that was actually pretty good.  Which led me to trying out this whole new album.  My first trip through the disc was disappointing, sounds like R&B garbage sprinkled with a few good tracks.  But over time, this one grew on me, starting with the big hit.  "Carpoolin'," the first song on the album, has the most streams at 455k.

OK.  That one is out on a limb - like some booty bounce speed beat with high energy brag rhymes.  Kind of good.  More tunes on here are actually pretty good - they combine a fast pace of beat along with a fast flow of rap - nothing new or all that different, but the kind of stuff that's pretty fun to bounce along to.  But a lot of the tracks are weak.  The beats are pretty plain, and its just bragging, no good stories.  And some are garbage R&B stuff, like "Lifestyle."  Or "Back to Back," also lame.  I want to like it more than I do, but it is mostly forgettable.  After about 5 listens, I've come back to edit this review a week later and can't recall a single thing I heard from the album.  I think the best songs are the hype ones, "Carpoolin'" and "Paid in Full," where the tempo jumps up and the rhymes fire by in rapid flow.  I'm OK without this one.

Diet Cig - Swear I'm Good at This.  This band played in Austin recently and my Instagram feed was chock full of love for them, so I thought I'd give it a try.  Interesting how there is a recent trend of power punk/pop/almost grunge bands with female lead singers that have cropped up recently.  Between Charlie Bliss, INHEAVEN, and these guys, sort of Sheer Mag, and of course Paramore and Wolf Alice, it feels like I have heard a lot of that recently.  Anyway, this is a highly fun album of energetic tunes over fuzzy, crunchy rock riffs.  The last track on the album is the top streamer, which is an odd thing.  Pretty rare to see a save-the-best-for-last move like that.  Here is "Tummy Ache," which just barely tops a million streams.

(1) too bad the band isn't really a bunch of woke 12 year old girls; (2) good song; (3) remember writing shit on your converse?  Is that still a thing these days with the kids?  I don't remember writing on the top of the toe, but I definitely wrote around the edges on the wide white rubber rings.  Good times.  But I wasn't especially cool in high school, so maybe y'all didn't get into that stuff.
Ooooh, Tiny Desk.  Shit yes.

Enshrine the lyrics to that opening song (also the opener from this album) into the Smithsonian:
"When I was sixteen, I dated a boy, With my own name, It was weird, In the back of his truck, Moaning my name, While trying to fuck, And I didn't think you had to, Go to town, And tell everybody's mom, That I'm, Sleeping around."  And then she goes on to tell him to bugger off with his shitty friends.  Great tune - high energy - wish I had seen them live.  I have no clue how she can jump around and kick and then sing without sounding all winded and old.  Hope they come back to Austin.

Hovvdy - cranberry.  I had a friend suggest these guys to me the other day, telling me that he was friends with the band (two dudes in Austin) and that they had chosen their band name because they were the only result to come up on Google if you searched for that slightly annoying misspelling of Howdy.  The music is very relaxed, almost sad-sounding, indie - gentle strums and chord-change-squeaks, lovely harmonies, basic drums, and intermittent synths that flit along under the lyrics.  It all feels melancholy, like Pavement or Real Estate of Alex G if they were trying to make you nostalgic about some bummer in your history.  Quite nice really.  Several of the songs have a good number of listens, but then a lot of the album is locked in together around 20k streams.  Which is interesting, like people enjoy the first half of the album (except for "Thru") and then just bag the rest.  The top streamed track is the second one, "In the Sun," with 253k streams.  But it doesn't have a cool video that I can find, so here is "Petal" with just over 166k streams.

"I had a feeling, of who we used to be," repeated repeatedly.  For the most part, the lyrics are covered over by the tunes, rendered nondescript and fuzzy under the soft guitar and light synths.  I like the feel of the album.  Nothing on here really stands out, no chorus is all that memorable, but the whole thing just puts me in a somber, relaxed mood.  Feels like I should go back and painstakingly recall details about old regrets and then quietly cry even though I don't actually care anymore.  "Truck" is kind of interesting too, in that it adds some pedal steel to the mix.  This whole thing feels like songs auditioning to be part of Garden State 2 soundtrack.  I think I'll keep it around, even if its kind of a bummer of a feeling.

Vance Joy - Nation of Two.  Vance Joy is a perfectly pleasant musical thing.  I've reviewed him fully twice already, in 2015 and 2017, because he came to ACL.  I thought for sure he would have released new music before ACL last year, being that he otherwise still just had that one old tune with the Michelle Pfieffer-loving "Riptide" song on it.  But nope.  Just came on through in 2017 with the same stuff going on.  So now, a few months into 2018, he released the new album, which is more of the same - pleasantly-OK, guitar-based, entirely forgettable indie rock tunes.  That "Riptide" track has 573 million streams - pretty legit for a guy that isn't EDM or Drake.  His new single from this album, "Lay It On Me," isn't nearly that massive, but has 47.3 million streams in just a few weeks.

In news that will shock no one, it has a soaring "wooooahhahhhhh ohh oh!!!" type chorus background for people to yell at festival concerts, and a repetitive chorus ("lay it all on me now!" x100) otherwise that will be "memorable" for people who don't actually know the music but will walk up to the festival set and go "oh yeah, this is that lay it all on me now guy!" and then proceed to sing along as though they are big fans.  I sound bitter right now, but I promise you I'm not, this stuff is just fine.  No offense given and none taken.  But I don't want to hear it anymore...