Quick Hits, Vol. 184 (The Vaccines, Czarface, Shannon and the Clams, MGMT)

The Vaccines - Combat Sports.  Not sure how these guys came across my radar, I have no recollection of their old albums or how I got this album into the Q, but its actually very fun music.  Brit indie rock like a less hard version of the Hives or a less dance-centric version of Franz Ferdinand, which in the end is just very tuneful and fun to jam out.  I mentioned "Surfing in the Sky" the other day because it was an early single that is super good times, but that isn't the top single these days on Spotify, that honor belongs to "I Can't Quit."

Prime singalong stuff right there - jangly guitar and woohooooooo wooohhooooo!-type chorus material is prime for good times.  Nothing on this is going to solve world hunger or our President's stupidity, but it'll sure make it more enjoyable to wallow in that misery.  Dig it.

Czarface - Every Hero Needs a Villain.  Found this group the other day and reviewed their most recent album, a full collaboration with MF Doom.  This album features one track with a Doom guest verse, but it is more concentrated on Inspectah Deck and the two underground rapper guys (7L and Esoteric).  It kind of rules.  Grimy, sample-laden tracks like old Wu Tang, along with odd weirdness and asides, also like old Wu.  I can't get over how much one of the dudes sounds like Jay Z.  According to the Internet, which agrees with me about him sounding like a Blueprint-era Jay, that is Esoteric.  I dig that shit.  And they get a guest verse from GZA on "When Gods Go Mad," that track is super cool - crazy cool beat and good flow from each of the guys.  But the top track on the album, by a pretty wide margin, is the one featuring Method Man.  "Nightcrawler" with 1.7 million streams.

Fuck yes.  That beat, those vocal samples, and the bass/snare/organs - this is prime Wu Tang sounding stuff.  Smooth.  "Escape from Czarkham Asylum" is too long, at 8:19, but its almost like 4 different songs among all the different beat changes and shifts.  But the Esoteric vocals over an ominous organ sample and boom bap beat is freaking sweet, and the later change at about 6:15 is also cool.  This definitely sounds like an underground rap project - nothing on here is shiny enough for radio or popular music - but it sounds good to me.

Shannon and the Clams - Onion.  Remember the other day when I said I need to just listen to everything that Dan Auerbach produces and I'd probably be pretty satisfied by the world?  This is some odd 60's steeped rock/pop stuff from a group of Californians hell-bent on an old school sound.  Auerbach does his usual studio magic and makes the songs sound both timeless and fresh, so that you end up with groovy, kinda funky, very soulful pop rock - kind of like a less great Alabama Shakes.  The top song is "The Boy," with 351k streams.

Wait, that is a dude singing that song?  I knew both the guy and girl joined up for the chorus, but I didn't expect that the guy was singing the verses.  PLOT TWIST!  Rolling Stone talked about these guys, and how they were bummed about their stupid sounding band name.  Always cracks me up, a band who comes up with a name they don't even like, but then get stuck with once they take off.  I was thinking about this the other day after reading a bad Blink 182 joke on Twitter - how did those dudes get that name?  According to Wikipedia: "Blink-182 was initially known as Blink until an Irish band of the same name threatened legal action; in response, the band appended the meaningless number "-182"."  I refuse to believe that "182" is totally meaningless.  I know I'm going down a rabbit trail here, but another website says: "Some fans believe the band choose it because it's the number of times Al Pacino says "fuck" in Scarface, while others claim it was Hoppus's locker number in high school. The band have always joked about the number, suggesting that it's an insignificant and random choice."  DAMMIT.  Whatever. 
Anyway, this band, which is not Blink 182, is pretty fun, however, I'll probably let the album go.  It's fun in spurts and then a little draggy ("Did You Love Me," among others) at other times.

MGMT - Little Dark Age.  Based on the album opener, I might think that this one is pretty good.  "She Works Out Too Much," which is actually about that exact subject, is pretty funny.  And on top of the funny lyrics, the semi-jenky keyboard chords and bass and freakout sax are kind of clever/charming as well.  But, the album never really rises above that - kind of clever/funny, pretty weird instrumentally - and so I can't recommend it.  By the way, their big hits have nine freaking figures of streams - "Kids" at 216M, "Electric Feel" at 183M, and "Time to Pretend" at 124M.  Damn.  The top track is the album title track, "Little Dark Age," a synth nerd's dream with unhappy lyrics.

Holy Cure hair.  I had figured that the oddly Asian-sounding "When You Die" would be the top track from the album, as that is the one I've heard on the radio a few times, but it is only in 2nd place at 7.7 million streams.  It definitely contains my favorite couple lines on the album, sung in a happy sing-song: "Go fuck yourself, you heard me right, don't call me nice, again!  Don't you have somewhere to be, at 7:30?"  The lyrics are "sung" in a monotone that bugs.  But despite the cleverness that pops up here and there, this album doesn't do it for me.