Quick Hits, Vol. 247 (Debt Neglector, FKA Twigs, Rivals Sons, Miranda Lambert)

Debt Neglector - Atomicland.  Very Sum 41 vibes going on in this, with a catchy, tuneful punk thing here.  Some Red Fang-esque moments in "Extended Checkout" as well.  "Phantom Limbs" is a jam.  I like all of this - its raw and kind of stupid, but I dig the pure anger in each morsel.  None of these tracks have very many streams, and the album is from 2017, so its not lighting the world on fire or anything, but whatever.  I likes what I likes.  the title track has the most streams at just over 13k.

Yeah, buddy.  Poppy, catchy, and pure.  Give me all of that I can fit into my pouch.

FKA twigs - Magdalene.  Just the cover alone of this one makes me a little uncomfortable.  IN high school, a kid I knew made a gigantic pimp statute sort of thing out of paper mache, complete with a cape and these extremely tall boots.  They had an art sale and I knew the pimp had to be mine.  I have no recollection of what became of the pimp, all I know is that the dudes face was terrifyingly ill proportioned and out of whack.  The face on the cover of this album is similarly freaky.  And then you listen to the music, and its very, uh, challenging.  It's like Kate Bush whispering things over left-over Bjork free-form tracks.  Almost hymn-like at times.  "holy terrain," with Future, has a little more of a traditional rap/song sound, but she still does a lot of whisper singing.  The praise I will give to this album is that it is short, at only 38 minutes.  The final song on the album has the stream crown, with 15.7 million streams, this is "cellophane."

Beautiful video (and highly freaky), and really a beautiful song too.  Not really something that I would seek out to hear all the time, but I can get behind the beauty of her voice and the spare arrangement that keeps her floating over the top.  I won't keep this album.

Rival Sons - Feral Roots.  I know you've never heard of this one.  No one has heard of this stupid album.  And yet somehow, the goofball grandads at the Grammys nominated this for Best Rock album, over a bunch of legitimately good rock albums.  In fact, look at the list of nominees!  Cage the Elephant is the only slightly deserving band (and they won) versus the dead ass Cranberries, Bring Me The Horizon, and something called I Prevail.  What the actual hell.  The only thing I can figure is that one of the members of this band must be the grandson of someone influential in the Academy, and his Pop pulled some strings to get his band in the running.  Like a bluesy classic rock album made by a bunch of IT guys who met on the job and figured they would give making music a stab on the side, and then they won a local battle of the bands against 2 other entrants, so they took their shot.  Very much the type of album that I call out frequently, where the first song has 16.8 million streams, and then it falls off a cliff, as everyone who was curious about this unheard of band tried them out for all of one song before running for it.  This is that track, full of plodding chorus and the reason that people run away.  "Do Your Worst."

I make fun of it, but it honestly ought to be right up my alley - like Mr. Big trying to cover Zeppelin and Queen at the same time.  "Sugar on the Bone" is like a Queens of the Stone Age cover band who needs to hire a new singer.  "Look Away" starts like a Zeppelin song, and then kicks in more like Bad Company.  But after a few attempts through the album, I'm with everyone else and prepared to run away.

Miranda Lambert - Wildcard.  I talked about this album because it was in someone's top ten albums for 2019, and I surprisingly didn't hate it.  In fact, I kind of like it.  Angles more rock than country, except the lyrics are that kind of schlocky comedic shit that you get in country music some times, like an allegory of collecting all your problems and sticking them in the washing machine like they are stained clothes.  Or a song in which the protagonist declares herself too pretty for prison, despite her actions.  it's clever enough to make me grin.  And "Bluebird" and "How Dare You Love" are legitimately pretty.  The weirdest piece to me are the 80's synths and guitar on "Track Record," like she joined up with a Flock of Seagulls to make a country track.  "It All Comes Out in the Wash" wins the stream count for now at 15.6 million.

I mean, that is highly cheesy, full of tropes.  But its damn catchy!  I honestly don't know if I had ever listened to a Miranda Lambert song before now - I just had a general negative impression because she sings country and is a modern artist.  But I don't hate this.  I'm not about to toss out Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves in my pantheon of country lady songwriters or anything, but this has goodness in it.