Quick Hits, Vol. 204 (Christine and the Queens, The 1975, Muse, Mumford & Sons)

Christine & the Queens - Chris.  Oh, hey, didn't see that HAIM was right back over there performing under another name.  Huh.  I don't say that as an insult in the slightest, I dig HAIM, and this has that same 80's pop feel with a kick ass set of vocals jumping into the grooves.
However, this comes off as a little odd/pretentious because the album includes 11 songs in English, and then the exact same 11 songs in French.  Which is fine and good for the Franco-files in the world, but I don't wanna hear all that throat clearing BS.  Just give them to me the way they were intended, IN AMERICAN!!!  Just kidding, but honestly some of the time the English versions of the songs also sound like they are in a foreign tongue.

Although, when it comes to the tunes, these are good.  I just got caught up in "the walker," bobbing my head along, and before the sane part of my brain could intervene against allowing the whole "you're talking to yourself again" thing to happen, I just said "oooh, this is fucking good."  So, there's that.  Like Florence with the drum machine used on INXS's "Need You Tonight" or something.  Yummy.  The top streamer is "Girlfriend," with something called Dam-Funk also playing some role in the song.  5.8 million streams, but I don't like it's Babyface vibe as much.  The second-most streamer is the one that is super HAIM flavored ("Doesn't matter") and requires grooving.  Like, holds your hips with an iron grip and requires motion.  4.3 million streams.

How am I so attracted to this album - its honestly weird - because usually I wouldn't be so in to a French lady singing over 80's pop tracks.  Well, unless that lady was french Madonna.  Whatever, this one is fun to listen to and I'll keep it.

The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships.  I started this review originally ready to bag on these dudes for being as pretentious as that album title.  But then I heard "Be My Mistake" and I kinda got thrown back from being a prick.  Its quite a nice little acoustical tune.  One other track has been getting a lot of radio play (or something, because I've heard it a number of times already) recently, so it seems familiar - "Love It If We Made It," with 33.6 million streams.  The horrible "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" - an autotuned mess of world musical influences - has more streams at 35.5 million, but it sucks as a song.  Here is the former.

Criminy, hold on.  A superficial listen to that song would lead me to believe that this a sunny little 80's throwback love song that would be at home on the radio in Grand Theft Auto Vice City.  Instead, its a pretty brutal takedown of the ways that modern society has failed and he is saying he would love it if humanity could actually make it.  Watch the video.  Huh.  That one song just made me change my initial approach to the album - I don't like the auto-tuning, and some of this sounds a little schmaltzy, but now I'm sucked in and want to take this thing apart.  God help me, I might actually like a 1975 album.

[EDIT] went back to it for a handful more listens, and while there are some good songs on here, overall it is not that great.  There are a number of bad to mediocre songs on it that make it hard to enjoy as a cohesive piece.

Muse - Simulation Theory.  I can't think of another band that brings out such a swing in opinion from me.  Some of their tunes are freaking awesome - bombastic rock and roll and sweeping declarations of revolution or love.  Some of them are treacly horrors - bombastic rock and roll and sweeping declarations of revolution or love.  So this one is more of the same, with loads of robot synths and beat machines backing up an otherwise pretty rocking groove.  "The Dark Side" sounds like the 80's never died and Duran Duran just kept on keeping on with a new lead singer.  I don't hate it, but I appreciate their early albums much more.  "Break it to me" delivers some Rage-esque guitar fireworks among an otherwise kind of annoying guitar loop.  "Propaganda" is a dumb robot-sounding beat down.  But then some songs are more better - "Pressure" has more of a guitar-forward rock sound - maybe more Bangles and less Duran Duran.  "Something Human" is more of a prime, old Muse tune.  The two early singles have the most streams, with "Dig Down" wining the contest at 30.9 million, but I'd rather give you the less chant-ish "Thought Contagion" with 30.2 million.

That soaring guitar, patched over the clap-trap-track and some bass, and then the WOAAAAHHHH-able chorus?  This one was minted solely to be a big festival jam track.  That part is great.  But the lyrics?  Uh, "you've been bitten byyyyyy, someone's false beliefs" is brutal.  I mean, I'm all on board with how shitty it is for the country's politics to have devolved to the point of complete chaos, but that cheese-ball take on the matter doesn't fix a thing.  "Dig Down" mentions that a "clown" has taken the "throne" and "they" are trying to divide us.  So you can tell the spirit of the album - which I don't disagree with! - but the delivery of it feels a little ham-handed with all of these 80's throwback sounds and falsetto squeals.  I won't save this album, but when these guys show up as a top 9 artists for ACL this fall, I won't be shocked (and will actually plan to go see them do it live).

Also, just in case you were curious, the name of the album nods to a Matrix-style conspiracy theory that we are all just living in a computer-simulated reality.  Which is totally true.  I don't actually exist and you aren't actually reading this.

Mumford & Sons - Delta.  Speaking of uneven track records for bands!  This album is bad.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to try to say that these guys have somehow resurrected from their career suicide of the last album.  But there are a few gleams of something on here that I don't totally hate (the kinda banjo-ey "Beloved," the stripped-down "Wild Heart"), but then something like "Picture You" comes on, and its all snaps and trite lyrics and an almost island vibe, and I wish the album would die in a volcanic eruption.  And then the next "song" is like they wanted to make something super meaningful and deep, as though they are Radiohead making robot-voiced interludes, when they are obviously not, and so you have to suffer through "Darkness Visible."  
The thing is that I don't know what I really want from them.  Would I even listen to a new album of purely folky banjo jams?  Feels like that moment has passed on by.  But then these exceedingly earnest arena rock tunes, which are very right-now, also leave me uninspired.  The hit from the album is "Guiding Light," which gives an acoustic guitar shuffle over to a slight nod at electronic stuff, but stays pretty true to piano and guitar and the soaring vocals.

I like it well enough.  Definitely better than the tunes from Wilder Mind, but nonetheless I don't listen to it and immediately need to dance or pump my fist.  Sorry, Mumford, maybe its me and not you, but I don't need this album.