Quick Hits, Vol. 272 (Phoebe Bridgers, Taylor Swift, The Avalanches, Chris Cornell)

I randomly thought of the Wallflowers earlier today, and it dawned on me how much I liked that one album.  Without looking it up, I honestly couldn't recall if they ever made anything else, and if they did I don't recall loving it, but that initial disc was really great.  "One Headlight" was the big hit, but the whole disc has a warm sound and great songwriting that I recall settling into my brain at the time with a comforting feeling.  Makes me remember fondly a girl who I was dating then, and a particular season in my life.  Good stuff.

Pheobe Bridgers - If We Make It Through December, which is super freaking depressing.  Stranger thing was that, the other day, I had a Pandora playlist doing country-adjacent music and it played the original of the title song, by freaking Merle Haggard!  So, this bummer tune, released at the end of the mega-bummer year, right as the pandemic is surging and people are alone and the thought of making it through December is actually an open question, THIS WAS A COVER?!?!  What did fucking Hag know about sadness and stuff in 1973?  You were probably snorting coke and high fiving the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders while you wrote this.  2020 knows the true meaning of "Now I don't mean to hate December, It's meant to be the happy time of year, And my little girl don't understand, Why daddy can't afford no Christmas gift."  Anyway, hell of a good cover.  "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is pretty straight-forward.  "Christmas Song" is almost even more depressing than the Hag's song.  

Here's the opening stanza:  "Coming back from the country, For the good food and lousy beer, This winter's so dry and the dirt road so dusty, At the lightest fall of rain, the bacteria bloom."  Lousy beer and bacteria!?!?!  What the hell is this song about?  Then the chorus just kicks your teeth on in with Santa's big black boot: "You don't have to be alone to be lonesome, It's easy to forget, The sadness comes crashing like a brick through the window, And it's Christmas so no one can fix it."  Faaaaaaacccckkkk!!!  Hope an elf put some razor blades in my stocking this year!  Someone draw a warm bath!  Apparently, this song is actually by a Nebraska band named McCarthy Trenching.  So there you go!  If you need depressing Christmas music at the end of this year (God, I hope not, I hope we'll all swimming in communal pools of Champagne and listening to nothing but new R.E.M. songs by the end of the year) then this is your stash.

Taylor Swift - evermore.  Feeling a little bit of TayTay fatigue right about now.  I liked that first secret woodsy disc quite a bit, but now this one drops and its more of the same.  I don't think I'd call this the b-sides, these are still lyrically great and very pretty.  But I will say that none of these sound like a hit, the way that "Cardigan" did on first listen.   Also, the title of this one bugs me because it makes me think of the Led Zeppelin song, which invariably makes me think of the cover of that song that was on the Singles soundtrack that made me distinctly dislike that song.  Which also makes me think of the "beach" for Cabin 3 at the summer camp I attended, which was named Evermore as a distinct move to try to make it more cool than the Cabin 4 beach up-river that was named Astral.  Those 70's music aficionados still holding on to the cachet of cool in the 90's!  SO cool!  Anyway, the lyrics here are still very strong, the tunes are still quiet and lovely.  The opener is the top streamer (80 freaking million!), but I don't think that is because it is the best song, I think that is just lookie-loos checking it out, realizing it is another disc of quiet forest sprite meditations, and moving on.  The next most-streamed is the second song.  Then, the sixth song jumps up to claim the third spot, so I'll give you that one, a kind of odd one (makes me think of Carrie Underwood or something) with HAIM on the track.  "no body, no crime."

Not as good as "Earl" or anything, but still a fun trip into the murder of a cheatin' husband.  I especially like the denouement reveal of  "Good thing my daddy made me get a boating license when I was fifteen, And I've cleaned enough houses to know how to cover up a scene."  I also like "ivy" and "tis the damn season."  Another good disc - I'll hold on to these songs.

The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You.  Huh.  I wrote this one, and then re-did it entirely.  Didn't like it at first.  But as I dug into trying to write about it and what was wrong with it, I ended up shifting the narrative in my mind.  Weird.  Usually the initial opinion is the final one as well.

I liked some of the old stuff from The Avalanches.  Kind of cutting edge electronic weirdo music.  "Since I Left You" or "Frontier Psychiatrist" had odd samples and kitschy sounds, but they also threw down an undeniable groove.  That second one was my jam in about 2000.  This album is not that first disc.  It's not as weird, it isn't as dense/layered and doesn't mash samples together as much, and rarely has the same deep groove.  There are quiet bits in here that I don't recall from the first album.  Which isn't necessary bad - "The Divine Chord" is cool sounding and fun, and "Interstellar Love" is the best song on here courtesy of a cool sample from "Eye in the Sky," a Leon Bridges cameo, and a driving beat.  The Leon Bridges-sampling "Born to Lose" is funky.  "Oh The Sunn!" has a tight groove to it as well.  And there are definitely loud, joyous things, like "Music Makes Me High."  But the album overall doesn't feel very vital to me the way those old explorations did.  Just a nice album of danceable alternative electronic.  The top streamer features Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, and is called "Running Red Lights."  Just over eight million streams.

That dude is twice my size but can move his body is ways I don't think I could even dream of.  Good on you big man.  Cuomo is just one of many guests on this thing - Perry Farrell, Blood Orange, Tricky, Neneh Cherry, Mick Jones, MGMT, Kurt Vile, Denzel Curry, Karen O, etc. etc. etc.  It's also long as hell - 25 tracks and an hour and 11 minutes long.  I entered the listening experience really wanting to like this album, but it feels disjointed and overly long.  Would have been cool to cut back, and I think it could be done in a really great way.  Turn it into two albums, or a double disc, where one is the fun and groovy stuff, and one is the quieter stuff.  And drop some of the fluff.  Because it is hard to keep my attention on it - which is maybe a me problem - and yet there are some really great tunes on here.  The last song sucks - I read that it is some sort of real space transmission, but it doesn't mean I want to hear those beeps and boops shoved into my ears.  I may just save a few tracks here.

Chris Cornell - No One Sings Like You Anymore.  People were really digging his cover of Guns N' Roses' "Patience" a few months ago, and its pretty good.  The biggest issue with this album to me is that Cornell's voice is kind of grating when it isn't accompanied by the power rock of Soundgarden or Audioslave.  "Jump Into the Fire" is a great example of that here - his voice is way too powerful to go over the milquetoast accompaniment.  Some tunes are fun, just because they are unexpected - "Sad Sad City," or "Nothing Compares 2 U," or "Watching the Wheels," all three of those are well-known tracks that seem odd to be on here, but it kinda works.  It's entirely covers.  Feels a little depressing to me, releasing an album of covers after he is already dead.  Definitely feels more like a money grab, rather than some album that he had personally written and planned to release before he unexpectedly passed.

It's pretty good, but I also don't much care for the weird electro flourishes at the start.  Just let the acoustic speak on there.  I'm glad I tried this one, but I won't hold on to it.