Quick Hits, Vol. 97 (Santa Marta Golden, The Dirty Nil, Intelligent Hoodlum, Sam Lewis)

KUTX does these great daily music packs called Ocho Loco, where they grab a theme for the day and then play tunes that match the theme.  Like it'll be a rainy week so they'll play songs about rain. The other day, after the Cub's big World Series win, they had an eight pack of songs that (for the part that I heard) were so freaking perfectly curated and awesome.  Of the ones I heard, Sinatra's "Chicago" came before Queen's "We Are the Champions," followed by someone's funny song about a Cubs fan's dying wish.

Gave me goosebumps and grins and made me happy for music to just plain exist in the world.

Santa Marta Golden - Resilience.  Yikes.  Other than the fact that you can see boobs on the cover, this one in not doing it for me.  If you like that kind of pummeling metal that absolutely crushes you and makes you worry you might never be happy again, then this is the album for you.  They have no bio on Spotify, but from what I can tell, they scream/moan in French on this, and so maybe they are from France?  But their most popular city if Granada, so maybe they are Spanish?  I dunno, but I literally fired up a headache about 1.75 songs into this thing, so if you think this doom metal action might be your thing, I'll leave you to it.

Where the hell did I even find this album?  Only one track, the opener, even has more than a thousand streams.  Weird.  I do not recommend this one.

The Dirty Nil - Higher Power.  Holy hell, this is some noisy, grimy, pounding stuff.  After the first minute or so, I was about to just move along and brand this as too much, but then "Zombie Eyed" caught me up with a little bit of tunefulness, "Wrestle Yu to Husker Du" made me grin, and then "Lowlives" reminded me of old Smashing Pumpkins (like "Silverfuck" performed by the Refused), and instead I'm hooked and listened to this album on repeat all weekend.  For sweet Canadians, they sure do seem to be ready to pummel your face in with some power chord anger.  The key track of those three listed above is this one, "Zombie Eyed."

Pretty rare these days for a video to make me laugh out loud - this one is absurd and funny, as our heroine gains the power to make portions of people explode after an auto accident. She takes particular relish in her new power, using it on seemingly anyone and everyone in finger-pointing range.  The blood squirts and pile-o-bones drop scenes are just funny. Anyway, this is the most accessible of their tunes, a crunchy, 120-Minutes-era rager that should be used to soundtrack a rad skate video game or video.  Not surprisingly, this is their most popular track as well, at 216k streams.

My initial read on the disc is still valid - this music gets too screamy at some points and strains the ears - but I still enjoy the majority of this quite a bit.  If you are easily turned off by raw, hoarse, hard punk type music, then go elsewhere, but if that kind of un-hinged action might tickle your fancy, then this is the good stuff.

Kamaiyah - A Good Night in the Ghetto.  No reason to discuss this album more than during my ACL review, but I just had to note how weird it is that this album is so great, and yet her live performance was so terrible.  I mean, just absolutely mailed in and bored and lame.  Sucks.  But if you want to hear some good time rap action, go listen to "How Does It Feel" or "Out the Bottle" right now.

Intelligent Hoodlum - Intelligent Hoodlum.  Holy crap, this guy is freaking excellent.  This is an old rap album (1990), and I have no clue how it came across my plate, but it combines fantastic beats full of good samples with clever rhymes.  I may have found him through the Rap Yearbook, because it sounds like he was an OG rap guy who influenced Nas, and I just read that he worked on the Juice Crew with Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap.  He later changed his name to Tragedy Khadafi (also haven't heard of that) but it is this album that is awesome, not the later stuff.  The most popular track on here is probably accidental - I bet the alt-right people are searching for songs they can use to back their YouTube lynching re-enactments, and then find "Arrest the President."  This one sounds more like a Paris track, inciting the world to act.  But I can't find a video for that track, so we're going with "Black and Proud."

Solid beat and sample usage right there.  If you don't want to dance to that stuff, then you need to go back to school and learn about soul.  And a solid message and flow as well. This is legit stuff. Later, you've got a Soul II Soul sampling track that sounds like some classic LL Cool J ("Back to Reality"), another track that sounds like Paris ("Trag Invasion"), a James Brown-sampling Ice T-sounding track ("Game Type," I swear T used that same sample). The feel of these tracks is classic (as I guess it should be, since it came out in a classic time for rap), but since I am only discovering it now it seems new and awesome.  I am not much for the b-boy swing of "Keep Striving" (reminds me of "Illegal Search" from LL), but overall this album is good stuff.  Going to keep bumping this.

Sam Lewis - Waiting on You.  Nice soulful lite rock/Americana.  This guy has a lovely voice and a nice touch to his lyrics.  You can read his fart-sniffing bio here.  Choice quote: "His music is native to the infinite expanse that is exposed when human attention is full, and focused inward – harvested solely by the nuanced rhythm of love."  Hurrrkk.  Hurrrrrkkkk. Sorry, just ... I, huurrrrkkkk.  Just about full-on puked right there.  Aside from that bio, this is really nice chilling music, very relaxing and smooth.  His most popular is "I'm Coming Home."

Hot damn, that is pretty stuff.  Heck yeah.  Tastes like "To Live is to Fly" to me.  I was going to call this album forgettable after a few initial listens, but then it started to get to me.  If you like a mellow singer/songwriter kind of vibe, then go with this one.