I assume we are just days away from the ACL lineup. It usually hits right at the start of May. Fingers crossed that it is R.E.M., Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix with Notorious B.I.G for the big three headliners.
Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. Quite a title. This disc has been difficult for me to figure out. I read some superlatives about it when it first came out and was expecting greatness. The first few listens left me underwhelmed - it felt overly long and undeveloped, like this was a huge collection of b-sides that they still planned to work up. But the more I've allowed it to marinate in my brain, the more I've found real pleasure in some of these songs. The elastic funk of "Simulation Swarm." The fiddled country folk of "Red Moon." The found-items-sounding banging (or maybe plucking?) on "Time Escaping." That song bops by the way. The weird conceit of "Spud Infinity" (which also is countrified, including one of those jaw harp things, in a heavy-handed way). The urgent yelling in "Love Love Love." The low-key electronica sounds of "Heavy Bend." It's freaking twenty damn songs! Eighty minutes! There's just so much smashed into it. And yet, it doesn't sound like a mistake. The shifts between country folk and electronica all feel like they make good sense. Not sure how that happens, but it does. "Certainty" wins the streaming crown for now, with 6.5 million streams.
This track sounds more like what I recall of this band - some flowing instrumentation and harmonies that sounds like it could be a Wilco or Dylan tune. "I love you, still don't know," is a great line just before that chorus. Second-to-last track "The Only Place" is a lovely little meditation that ties all of this up with some nice finger-picked guitar. Usually, I can't be turned around about an overly long album, but this one feels like it needs all of these weird detours to be the correct album. Definitely keeping it now.
EARTHGANG - GHETTO GODS. If you know, you know. I've been liking these guys for years, and although this album isn't as cool as their last one, it still has some good stuff. "BLACK PEARLS," "WATERBOYZ," and "BILLI" are all solid with good beats (although in that last one, Future just takes all of the action out of it with his terrible verse. That guy can really be a dud. Literally, the beat dies, he starts AutoTuning boring things, just a let down.). As usual though, my preference for real rap and less singing makes me less excited about the total package. I don't want to hear your R&B stuff! Like, "AMERICAN HORROR STORY" has some good stuff, but then too much singing. And I like the message of "STRONG FRIENDS," about checking in on your friends to make sure they are okay, but again, too much singing. "POWER" is cool, in part because I never knew that Nick Cannon could rap, and also CeeLo sounds dope while he drops knowledge. "WATERBOYZ," which features JID and J. Cole, is the top streamer for now with 3.4 million spins. It's great!
That bouncy, slippery, squirrely beat is great, and its deeply fun to chant along with something like "whats up main, whats up gang" Also, J.I.D. goes freaking hard, I really like that dude. I'm working on liking J. Cole overall, but he sounds great on here. The highs are good enough on this album that I'll keep it, despite all the singing.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Unlimited Love. Man, I want to love this album. I love this band. I'm unapologetic about loving the Chilis. I know they have some unfortunate songs on their catalog (although I have to say that when "Party on Your P***y" came out I was like 11 and that shit was deeply funny to me) but overall their aesthetic of funk and groove and rock and goofiness ties deeply into what I want all of my music to be. And also, they got their best guitarist back! So I was pumped about this release. And while the bass is funky and slappy, and the guitar solos are meandering and jagged (in all the right ways), and the drumming is as tight as ever, the lyrics are sooooooooo dumb. Like, a song called "Aquatic Mouth Dance" is just not what I needed to try to defend this thing (but that bass solo in there is tight). The lead single, "Black Summer," sounds great, but it makes zero sense (and that is even while setting aside the weird accent that Anthony uses). The second track - "Here Ever After" - is one of those that seems like it is just free thought association. "I don't know 'cause I got big temper,
Stick close to my rainbow side, Candy corn and that dancing leopard, That’s all, folks, that's all" or "I don't know, but it’s finally just one more mile, Peaches are sold and all givin' up on that Humpty style." Mmmmmkay. Maybe that means something to Anthony, but it just sounds like he's scatting random words over the otherwise good bump and tumble tune. Other random lines pop up all throughout - "superstars don't do the dishes!" or "I just want to lick your face!" or "the smile of a knife is seldom befriending" or "platypus are a few."
BUT - I honestly don't care. I like a lot of music where the lyrics are dumb as crap. I've written before about Greta Van Fleet having dumb lyrics, or the Foo Fighters just shoving a bunch of trite sayings together and calling it good. In the end, I love Flea's bass and I like Anthony's weird sing-rap meandering and I like Frusciante's spacy slashing and I even like Will Ferrell's no-nonsense drumming. I'm here for the groove, man. And you definitely get that groove in "Black Summer" or "The Great Apes" or "She's a Lover" or loads of other tunes on here. It could have used a trim for sure - 17 songs for 73 minutes is pretty damn long - but I'm still digging the groove.
"Black Summer" is the top streamer for sure, but you've probably already heard that one. Let's go with second-place - "Poster Child" is the 5th track on the album and has 7.2 million streams.
Totally sounds like something that could have been on Blood Sugar. The bass is funky and the guitar has that slinky, freaky, pedal-tweaked sound that makes this sound like I need to listen to it in a convertible while cruising a strip. "The Heavy Wing" for sure sounds like a Chilis song that I had heard before this album came out. Y'all know me. I'm in.
Anais Mitchell - Anais Mitchell. From the first words ("over Brooklyn Bridge, in a taxi") that are sang/whispered out, it feels like I'm listening to a long lost Nanci Griffith tune. It's lovely and warm, with a gentle piano and her slightly cutesy vocal tone and whispery sentence endings. Makes me want to be riding in the back of a taxi (but not a 2022 one with greasy seats and fifty pounds of plastic blocking the view, more like a Big Yellow Taxi from a Joni Mitchell song) next to my wife as the sun glints through the skyscrapers. The whole album works like this, it feels tender and like it memorializing something of mine, even though I've never lived any of these lives she's singing about. Like the tenderness of "Real World" and all of the nice little experiences that she longs to find pleasure in. But those are my two comps - Griffith and Mitchell (no relation). "Bright Star" is the top at 2.6 million streams.
See how nice that is? Just tender poetry over the top of a simple tune. She wrote an album called Hadestown a while back, that she then developed into a musical that ended up on Broadway, cleaning up with eight Tony Awards (including Best Musical in 2019). So her ability to craft good songs and imagery is not something new on this particular album. This one is truly pretty. Part of me wishes she didn't whisper quite so much, but that is a minor quibble with an otherwise really nice thing to have in my ears.
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