Quick Hits, Vol. 139 (Snoop Dogg, Swet Shop Boys, Alt-J, Fleet Foxes)

Snoop Dogg - Neva Left.  Hot damn.  The beat on the opening track, which is also the title track, is enough for me to forgive Snoop for all of the dumb Snoop Lion crap (see "I'm Still Here," on this album) and the prior dips into garbage pop rap.  Just give this a taste.

Oh yeah.  That Wu Tang beat from CREAM is the good shit, and this new take on it still works wonders as far as I'm concerned.  Apparently this sample is from a song by the Charmels called "Long as I've Got You."  Hell yeah.  A lot of these tracks are kind of cheesy, just trying to prove how much weed Snoop smokes or otherwise repping his bonafides, and I hate Wiz Khalifa, but one of those semi-cheesy tracks is pretty cool - "Mount Kushmore," featuring Snoop, B-Real, Method Man, and Redman.  They all turn in verses that will make you grin.  And that track, like most of these, does the awesome West Coast G-Funk beat thing with the P-Funk sound that is so classic.  So good.  The overall album isn't great, but its good enough to keep around and keep bumping.

Swet Shop Boys - Sufi La.  I talked about these guys once before, they are a very interesting duo of rappers.  You've got an American-Indian rapper and an English-Pakistani MC (who was also in Star Wars: Rogue One, among other movie roles), using traditional sounds from their countries' south Asian musical heritage to make beats.  It sounds weird, but its actually damn entertaining.  I'll say that one of the tracks on here comes off more like a Lonely Island track, the "Birding," where they just say "bird song" over and over and then drop a million bird names in the rhymes.  Kind of funny for a sec, and then it is very old after that.  None of the tracks on this older EP are as popular as the tracks from their full-length that I previously reviewed, but the currently most popular is the title track, "Sufi La."

Pretty entertaining for a listen or two, but nothing really good enough to keep around on here.

Alt-J - Relaxer.  I've never really fully gotten behind the Alt-J movement.  I like them well enough, and I'll end up grooving to their tunes when they come on the radio or something, but I just haven't been excited to listen to this album.  The top hit from this album is another in the vein of their hits, groovy, bouncy, and very weird.  This is "In Cold Blood," which fires up 18.7 streams.

That video is amazing.  You think you're just going to see a story of mouse survival, and then you get dumped into a scene from a later episode of Breaking Bad or something. Good song, again its just weird though.  From what I can tell, its about killing someone in cold blood in your pool, but that may be the wrong read.  Have no clue what all the zeros and ones are about, unless it is a robotic pool killer.  Which it could be.  I use a robot in my pool, and my dog hates it with the fury of a million suns, so maybe he knows the robot is a murderer. The rest of the album is pretty forgettable.  I won't be keeping it around.

Fleet Foxes - Crack Up.  Another great album from these guys.  If you've never tried them out, then I suggest that you go back and start with the eponymous first album, which is a thing of beauty.  If you aren't into harmonies and lovely things, then this will not be your bag, but if you enjoy beauty, then come for a while and enjoy.  I just saw them come through on their tour, when they played two nights at the Moody here in Austin.  While the sound was problematic at the show, it still hit the spot. This album doesn't change much from the earlier albums, still the same sound, but from what I've read Robin Pecknold (the singer, golden voice) used a lot more literary references and made his lyrics befit his new Columbia education.  I don't know that I can tell the difference, but maybe you can. The current top track from the album is "If You Need To, Keep Time on Me," with 5.1 million streams.

Good stuff.  I honestly wish I could go see them play live again right now.  Keeping this album around for sure.