Thankfully not a story that I can associate with, but damn, man. Thorny lyrics. "Middle of the Morning" sounds like "Into the Mystic" at the start. The lyrics to "Cast Iron Skillet will crush you if you read through them - pieces of fatherly advice interspersed with details of a stabbing of an old friend and a dad who disowned his daughter for falling in love with a black guy. "When We Were Close" is also a jam, and it makes me wonder what the story is behind it - is this something about his time in the Drive By Truckers? Or is it all fictional? Let's find out? Oh damn, this is about his relationship with Justin Townes Earle, Steve Earle's son, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2020. When you hear it that way, it is a completely different song. Also, this line is good Goddamn damn: “I saw a picture of you laughing with your child and I hope she will remember how you smiled. But she probably wasn't old enough the night somebody sold you stuff that left you on the bathroom tiles…” Fuuuuuuuck. Wild song, because it is looking at Earle with sincere tenderness and sadness, while the tune behind it is pretty rockin'. Absolutely going to keep listening to this disc. Great stuff.
The Revivalists - Pour It Out Into The Night. I've been on a tear with these dudes - seen them three times in the last month - and this album has become a real-deal love. Several songs on it are absolute jams. The first single was "Kid," which is great. "Down in the Dirt," is also really good - reminds me of Ryan Bingham with a gospel choir, although that guitar solo makes me think of Mark Knopfler. "The Long Con" has a stone-cold groove in there - a pile of heft behind the breakdown. The chorus bops along over the top of a light little drum and guitar bit, but then the band kicks in for the "one step forward, two steps back" part and you need to be prepared to mosh. "Don't Look Back" makes me want to run through a wall - that driving guitar riff at the start that erupts into the imminently danceable chorus - "six feet deep in the fire now!" is a great line to yell along with. That is for sure my favorite tune - I was annoying my buddy at the Red Rocks show with how much I was repeatedly singing it. "How We Move" is another than is going to make me dance my ass off at the show. "Kid" is the top streamer - even though I saw today that "Good Old Days" just made it to #1 on the AAA charts for them. Pretty tight. But here is "Kid" with 5.7 million streams.
It helps that I just got to see this song performed live, and really well, three times, but I just really like the groove and the message. This album will definitely go into the keepers pile.
Killer Mike - MICHAEL. It is interesting to consider whether Killer Mike is cool or if he is an ass. I love Run the Jewels, and so my normal response to that question would aim for the cool side of the equation, but then I hear him rap something like "N****s talk to me about that woke-ass shit (Yeah) /
Fall Out Boy - So Much (For) Stardust. I keep coming back when these guys release a new disc, chasing the pure pleasure I found with From Under the Cork Tree. And this still has some of those flashes - overly bombastic singing, cheesy double-entendre in the lyrics, pounding rock and roll with the catchiest, poppiest progressions around. And so sometimes I catch myself enjoying it and bopping along to the soaring chorus backed by a killer drumbeat and an imminently sing-a-long-able bit. This feels tailor made for an arena. Except it definitely wears me out after a while - when the voice is always at its highest level, its most pleading, plaintive, max-emote spot, it just gets exhausting. The streams for the album tell my same story for me, in that the streams go down as the album goes on - 34 million streams, 24, 21, 10, 8, etc.
Same n****s walkin' on some broke-ass shit / You see, your words ain't worth no money, I ain't spoke back, bitch / All of you n****s hang together on some Brokeback shit." I'm not saying that being annoyed with people talking about "woke" issues is off limits, he can complain about people being woke all they want. But to call people who espouse woke ideals to be both broke and gay is just really weird. Like, some Junior High level joke crap. Just catches me off guard as gross when so much of his RTJ stuff mixes killer bars with smart ideas ready to fight the power. Which is too bad, because that track - "TALK'N THAT SHIT!" is otherwise a cool beat and sound.
That isn't to say that this doesn't sound rad - brawny beats and his excellent flow drawl along together and make this album mostly feel like a tough guy vibe that you can bump in your car. Lyrically, it is uneven for me and not nearly as interesting as the RTJ stuff - and actually I think that is part of the problem as well. Mike is definitely the better rapper in RTJ, but it helps to break up his sound with El P's rap tradeoffs in those tracks so that you get a better whole. He has a bunch of collaborators on here, even one with El P, but overall it just feels like a lesser product than the RTJ albums. The top two tracks are the El P one - "Don't Tell the Devil" with 3.4 million - and "Scientists and Engineers," which features Andre 3000 and Future. 8.4 million streams.
I love me some Andre 3k, but there's not much on that verse. And Future bugs with all of that AutoTune. Beat is pretty milquetoast as well - it sort of kicks in by the time Mike takes over, but even then there isn't much there that will be memorable five minutes from now. I still dig his flow, but he just doesn't do much with it there.
I hadn't considered before how much Pete Wentz looks like one of the dudes from It's Always Sunny. Catchy tune, I heard it again on the radio over the weekend and can respect the craft, but those lyrics just seem like nonsense. And also, those lyrics sometimes bug - "hold me like a grudge!" is a clever little idea, but when you hear it sung 38 times in one song it becomes exhausting. Like a kid who keeps pushing the same fart joke from the back of the car, begging for someone to finally laugh. And then there are pretentious little asides, like a spoken word track from Ethan Hawke. I won't deny their pop mastery - its like Maroon 5 and Adam Levine in that way - but it doesn't make me love it.
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