Quick Hits, Vol. 159 (Grace VanderWaal, Wu-Tang Clan, Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile, Yamasuki Singers)

Grace VanderWaal - Just the Beginning.  After having listened to her a lot for ACL and then seeing her magical performance there, I'm predisposed to enjoy this album.  Prior to this, she just had a 5 song EP and some singles, and while this goes for a little more production and more beat-centric stuff at times, it still is very good.  The pre-release singles like "Moonlight," "Sick of Being Told," and "So Much More Than This" are great.  And the slightly mean "Just a Crush" is perfect for a 14 year old girl to be singing, sadly reminds me of my youth.  She doesn't want to tease, so she'll say it straight, you're just a crush so quit talking about the future.  oof.  The top song is still "Moonlight," with almost 23 million streams, but I'll give you "So Much More Than This" because the live version was great and this one should be the bigger hit if it finds the radio.

Fun song.  Has a touch of hip hop to it - in fact, on several of these songs she almost takes on a rap flavor - see "Talk Good," where an actual bass makes the bass notes and she sings the words in a tune, but the cadence of the track sounds kind of hip hop.  I'll say that I got some of the old man feels watching my kids love the hell out of this song as she sang it at ACL last month.  I'm definitely keeping the album around, for one because it brings back good memories, for two because I want to keep parsing the lyrics.

Wu-Tang Clan - The Saga Continues.  Now that is a weird juxtaposition.  14 year old girl known for jamming a ukulele, straight into kung-fu inspired, grimy rappers.  Classic Wu-Tang Clan is freaking awesome.  First, because they create and craft real beats - cool samples and soul strings and vocal blurbs over classic boombap thump - instead of depending on some generic Soundcloud beat of the week.  Second, because they make cool grimy stories for their lyrics, instead of just stringing together mumbled stream-of-consciousness garbage about rain drops and drop tops.  Third, because the weird little skits of old school kung fu movie clips are kind of a dope schtick.  The Clan is made up of a bunch of dudes, and I am most definitely partial to Ghostface as my favorite of the rappers, but the rest of the guys put in some good work on here as well.  The top track from the album is "People Say" with 4.4 million streams.

"Like Swayze at the Road House, ready for the bar fight."  Yeah, that is pretty good.  A couple fun lyrical bits and a great beat.  But "Fast and Furious" is a perfect example of what I love.

Slinky soul sample, ominous violins, and beat, and then check a portion of Raekwon's verse:

Doin' a buck on I-95, screamin', "I live for this,"
They just seen us comin', blew a flat
Pulled over to the shoulder
Pop the trunk to see if it's a spare in the back
A van pulled up, with Florida tags
Three men jumped out with guns drawn and they all wore masks
Snatched me up and handcuffed me
Hit me with the butt of the gun
I'm thinkin' to myself, "The war just begun"
Thirty minutes in the ride, the mask came off
The chickens dropped, the two in the back had Russian accents
Askin' who my connect is, where he rest shit
You better off squeezin' that tool bitch
He said, "Nah, you're worth more to us alive than dead."
He's flashed his badge and started laughin'
"Cocksucker, we the feds"

I mean, it ain't high brow poetry, but I love it.  You can see what he's rapping in your mind's eye and I'm ready to hear the rest of the story.  This is the good stuff.  Wu Tang forever.  Now, some of these tracks, heck, including the chorus of that "Fast and Furious" track, are not the greatest thing ever and some can get tiresome.  Having 80 different people rap is a little annoying, and I'd rather they just give us verses from the strongest guys, but as this exists, I still like it.  Not a classic Wu record, but still solid.

Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice. I'm so terribly disappointed in my life that I've never gotten to see Courtney Barnett live.  Her album from 2015 was the shizz, a clever lyrical injection in the midst of so much vapid garbage.  Kurt Vile is pretty cool, I listened to him a lot for ACL a year or two ago, and he likewise uses lyrics as his best weapon for his music.  Joined together, these two have made a super chill album of relaxed and kind of sleepy tunes.  Some go a little faster, but they are all still acoustic guitars and lax phrasing.  Like the gentle sadness of "Peepin' Tom" and Barnett's list of things she doesn't want to do anymore and how nothing seems to be working out as she tries to improve.  The top track is one that I hear on the radio here in Austin with some frequency, "Continental Breakfast," which boasts the nice couplet of "feeling inferior on the interior."

Like they are singing to each other (her from Australia and him from Philly) about their intercontinental friendship.  I feel like his drab voice makes hers sound even more appealing than normal.  Also feels like I would very much enjoy chilling at Kurt Vile's house with his two cutie girls.  This album is a moody one, feels like I'd need to be in the right mood to shut down and enjoy it.  If I'm being honest about it (which is kind of hard because I want to be cool and like this album), I probably won't listen to it anymore.

Yamasuki Singers - Le Monde Fabuleux des Yamasuki.  Want some batshit crazy stuff in your day?  You've come to the right place.  My buddy Joseph heard the first song on this album when he was travelling out in Marfa, on the Marfa NPR station.  His kids thought it was hilarious, so he brought me into the loop.  And it is hilariously weird.  Imagine if the Beatles had decided to add another layer to their sitar-based later music, and that other layer was made up entirely of Japanese school children singing pretty things while an angry Sumo wrestler screamed Japanese words over the top.  As Black Rob would have said, "Woah."

That video is amazing.  All the drugs.  According to the Internet, this is a French band who inexplicably decided to make trippy music that involves Japanese screaming.  And if you dig that, believe me, the rest of the album will NOT disappoint.  I'll never listen to this again, but I feel like from an archive perspective, I needed to mention it and you needed to witness.