Quick Hits, Vol. 287 (Lorde, Bleachers, Various Artists, The War on Drugs)

Lorde - Solar Power.  I'm going to fully admit that I have stared for an unacceptably long time at the cover of this album, trying to discern if I find this acceptable, too much, shocking, titillating, or any other number of thoughts.  I don't think Judge Breyer would call it porn, but he might.  But I keep looking.  As for the music itself, I hate this album with the power of the sun itself.  I really liked "Royals," that is still a freaking brilliant song.  But nothing on here is even good.  I find it interesting that Jack Antonoff was so involved in it, because his super power is to popify everything to a grand sheen that doesn't even look shiny despite being near perfect.  Instead, these sound both boring and thrown together.  Entirely uninteresting.  The title song tries to fire up a touch of dopamine, but its like she just copied someone else's happy music without actually putting her own back in to it.  That is the top streamer, but I'm going to give you a different one that has the third most streams but more fully reflects the rest of this album with semi-nonexistent accompaniment.  This is "Mood Ring."  27.7 million streams.

"Don't you think the early 2000's sound so far away?  ayy ayyya yyayyyayayyyyyayy"  Ugh.  Sounds like a bad Brittney Spears song that never made it onto one of her albums.  "Lets fly somewhere eastern, they'll have what I need" (while she looks knowingly at the camera) is just yucky.  Nope.  Hate it.

Bleachers - Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night.  How about the real Jack Antonoff instead?  The new album is agonizingly called Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, and the cover of it makes me think of Jeff Buckley's Grace.  Springsteen comes out to holler some gravelly lines about finding tomorrow with a girl like you on "Chinatown."  "How Dare You Want More" has saxophone as though it is a Bruce song.  "45" starts out sounding like an acoustic Foo Fighters song, but then old Jack starts doing his semi-yelp singing pattern again and you can tell its Bleachers.  The album kind of ends with a whimper - I definitely prefer the fun 80's bouncing tunes to the sad sack introspective stuff.  Like, "How Dare You Want More" is a fun, snappy little tune, and the "Stop Making This Hurt" track is the winning spot on the album.  10.7 million streams.

Its that bouncy piano riff backed up by the little horn squonks that make it seem like you just need to dance to this tune.  Heavy dose of 80's joy right there (even as the lyrics point at a darker moment behind that joyful sound).  I don't love the whole album, but there are some bright spots like that one in here.

The Metallica Blacklist.  This is a fun idea, but one that leaves me wondering what they were doing with the execution of it.  53 songs, clocking in around four hours, with a super-amazingly-wide list of artists covering tunes from Metallica's Black Album.  Which all sounds rad, right?  Obvious rockers like Weezer or Royal Blood or White Reaper, but then also left field candidates like Jason Isbell, Moses Sumney, Phoebe Bridgers, or The Neptunes.  Chris Stapleton!  My Morning Jacket!  Cool!  But then they organize the damn thing with all the songs grouped together by song.  So when you try to listen to the album, you get six versions of "Enter Sandman" right away, before you get seven "Sad But True" versions, etc.  Twelve people chose "Nothing Else Matters."  Which is a rad song!  But hearing it back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back is annoying.  Gets very tiresome in a way that I don't think it would have if they would have tried to curate the songs into an order that wasn't so repetitive.  Or, even better, force the contributing bands into doing certain songs, so that they could have made 6 complete cover albums.  As it is, we have twelve of one song, and yet only one each of "The Struggle Within" and "Of Wolf and Man."  Just tell the people what to do and you'd have a much better album.

The stream champ is the weirdo party of Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Yo-Yo Ma, something called WATT, the bassist from Metallica, and the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  17.5 million streams.  Nothing else is even close.  J. Balvin has just under 5 million for second place.

That video is terrible.  The cover is mediocre.  Too close to the original, with some lame classical music flourishes in there.

Some of the tracks just re-use the original vocals and do something else underneath.  I find those annoying.  Like, whatever SebastiAn is, they just kind of play some funky music and replay the Hetfield vocals over the top.  Not good.  Same with the Neptunes track and the Mexican Institute of Sound, among others.  I was hopeful at the start of Jon Pardi's "Wherever I May Roam."  Musically, a good jam with some little country fiddle flourishes that make it kind of fun, but his voice sounds so country-dork I can't take it seriously after the intro.  Alessia Cara is the same, the music under piques my interest, but then she just sounds like every pop star doing the pop star voice thing.  And some are too close to the original, the Weezer one, the Royal Blood one, the White Reaper one, or the Corey Taylor version of "Holier Than Thou."  The Ghost version of "Enter Sandman" starts as though it will be original and interesting, but then mainly turns into a normal recitation of the song, with a touch more harmony.  Not interesting to just rip it the exact same way as the originals.  They're not bad songs in general, but just too plain.  Same with the "Holier Than Thou" covers, even between them they sound too alike.  Tiresome.

But the skuzzy psychobilly of Mac DeMarco's "Enter Sandman" is great (and the Juanes version is better than the rest of that tune), the driving Americana of Jason Isbell's "Sad But True," Cage the Elephant and Moses Sumney's lovely and haunting (but separate) covers of "The Unforgiven," Flatbush Zombies turn that song into just a sample/hook and then add whole new rap verses around that to good effect.  Probably the best song on here overall is the 12 song string of "Nothing Else Matters," with great versions by Phoebe Bridgers (so depressing and on brand), Dave Gahan, Dermot Kennedy (love the Irish lilt), Igor Levit (just piano, sounds lovely), Chris Stapleton (sounds so Chris Stapleton-ey its hard to believe) and even the goofy little version from My Morning Jacket.  The Hootie one is pretty lame and overwrought.

Anyway, this review, like the album, went overly long.  There is some good stuff here, but it feels like I could curate a disc with 12 songs on it that is great, versus what they gave us.  The best ones are where you get to see some other facet of the music that wasn't so obvious in the original, a deeper look into the lyrics, a different feel.

The War on Drugs - I Don't Live Here Anymore.  As I listened to one of the songs on here - "I Don't Wanna Wait" - a great comp dawned on me.  For some people, this will sound like the kiss of death, but as a lover of Bryan Adams from back in the day, I think saying that this sounds like classic Bryan Adams is actually a fine compliment.  That dude could write a great turn of phrase, play the guitar, and craft up a pop rock nugget or three that still sound great today.  And then the rest of the songs sound like Dylan got a backing band who only wants to do songs that would be good to drive to.  Which also might sound like an insult, but I don't mean it as one.  I love driving songs.  "Harmonia's Dream" makes me think of Springsteen and the Killers and some never-created 80's band who were never featured on a soundtrack for E.T.  Lots of synth riffage.  I'd really like to see this band live - between this album and that last one I find them to be a great version of rock.  The opener has the most streams, but I'm going to give you #2 that features nice vocals from Lucius.  "I Don't Live Here Anymore" has 3.8 million streams.

Between that guitar solo at the start and the synths, you get that immediate 80's feel.  And seeing the singer, it makes me realize that I sometimes mix up this band with Strand of Oaks, and yet they are definitely different bands.  A lot of these songs are sad, or at least feature sadness as part of the lyrics.  That one up above, and even more so, "Victim," makes me sad.  Maybe my mind is trained to remember that 80's sound and think of the things I'm missing from that era, or maybe these songs just really do have some melancholy.  Not sure which, but I'm enjoying the sound.