Quick Hits, Vol. 298 (My Morning Jacket, Crown Lands, Key Glock, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats)

My Morning Jacket - My Morning Jacket.  Always odd when an established band releases an eponymous album.  I remember when Pearl Jam did that and I thought it was weird then too.  How do they not have a better name for the album?  Anyway, I was just telling someone that this album had been a disappointment to me.  I love me some MMJ - Z and It Still Moves are still go to albums in my collection - but this one doesn't inspire anything to me.  The radio track I've heard a number of times is the second track, and current stream champ with 1.4 million.  "Love Love Love."

Reminds me of the Foo Fighters for the insipid lyrics that still manage to worm their way into my brain.  "The more you give!  The more you get!"  "You gotta get up when you fall!  That's all!"  Yeah!  Love!  The tune is nice, but its just kinda boring.  I don't hate the whole disc, but it mostly just meanders by without any substance to me.  "Complex" gets loud for a bit, "In Color" goes jammy for a big chunk of its 7:20 runtime.  I guess if I think about it, part of the reason the whole disc seems so uninspired is that a lot of it just shambles along like a jam band noodling about on some ideas.  No good chorus to yell along to. No memorable groove. That being said, I have still never seen them live, and am bummed about that.  Need to rectify at the soonest possible opportunity.  [EDIT, JUST BOUGHT TICKETS AND I'M PUMPED!]

Crown Lands - Crown Lands.  Ooooh baby.  Another classic rock copycat band.  Dig it.  I think I found this one through Rolling Stone, they had a tiny blurb about them a few months back.  Tasty fuzzed out guitar riffs are a definite turn on.  I'm trying to think of what the vocalist sounds like.  It's not quite the Robert Plant/Geddy Lee thing from Greta Van Fleet, it reminds me of some other classic rock singer with a lesser light.  Foghat isn't right, neither is Foreigner or Bad Company.  Rick Derringer?  Dangit.  This is going to bother me and three days from now I'm going to sit up in bed and yell GREAT WHITE! and anger my wife.  Anyway, this is one of those bands with just two dudes banging around and making the rock (although you would be forgiven for thinking that the band photo is of one dude and one lady.  The album was produced by Dave Cobb, who I think is pretty great, and he does an awesome job of making the band sound like it is a pack of players and not just two.  The top track on here has been eclipsed by a new single ("White Buffalo") and so, despite it not even being on this album, I'm going to break protocol and give you that tune.  492k streams.

The guitarist's combo of hair and beard just looks like a SNL parody - freaking cracks me up.  That one is more like 80's hair metal mixed with Rush.  Not sure I like it as much.  The lyrics make me think of that band The WU from ACL last year, where the translation was some awesomely nonsensical messages about rising up to fight with your armies.  So, I'm going to give you one of the tracks from the album as well.  I can't live with myself otherwise.  This is "Leadfoot," with 397k streams.

The righteous bit there is the "oh, oh oh" combined with heavy riffage.  More of that, please.  Jenky ass Greta Van Fleet-ass nonsense lyrics that sound overly mystic in that one too.  I guess that is part of their deal.  But if you just want to rock out, and Lord knows I do, that dude can sing about the rings around a tree of light and white buffalo power all he wants.  Let's rock.

Key Glock - Yellow Tape 2.  No clue where I found this.  Never heard of this guy, never heard Yellow Tape 1, no clue.  But it's freaking fun.  Great beats, which is always required for me on rap.  If your beats are whack, then I'm not going to give the lyrics the work.  He's got a relentless flow, just feels like its spilling out of him as fast as the beat can take him, but he's not one of those annoying rappers who doesn't even rap on the beat.  He flows.  And some of his tracks have almost 100 million streams, so its not like he's unheard of, I'm just missing out.  "Something Bout Me" is a great opener, "Bill Gates" makes me grin, and "Juicemane" is just a happy-sounding track that I want to play while I swerve in my car.  But "Ambition for Cash," with 33.1 million streams, has the stream crown.

Big fan of the Asian-whistle thing sound.  And while the lyrics aren't special, his flow just bops along the beat.  That's how this whole project works for me - nothing stands out lyrically, but each time I restart the disc I like it.  I'll keep my eye on this dude.

Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats - The Future.  I wish I was still in to this, but the schtick has worn thin for me now.  The opening track sounds like a shambling Dylan tune, except Rateliff can sing (mostly, sometimes in this song he just hollers at the top of his lungs like he just got bit by a rat).  The second track, "Survivor" has the most streams at 4.1 million.  But nothing on here is memorable at all.  Not like the best stuff from that first album.

That trainer kind of looks like the lady who played Wonder Woman back in the day.  Not a bad song by any means, just kind of plodding during the verse and then a little too yell-y during the chorus.  This will sound dumb, but it feels like they're trying to hard.  Don't love it.  I'll definitely let this album go - it will be a relief to remove it from the queue, as every time it pops up I feel resigned about having to do it again.