Quick Hits, Vol. 173 (King Krule, Moon Taxi, Kid Rock, The Lacs)

The new Jay Rock, featuring Kendrick Lamar, is salty business.

The beat isn't all that complex, but it is tight and tough.  Jay Rock's rap style is apparently to just say the same thing over and over.  Real deep shit (NOT).  Future's auto-tune trash is more of his usual.  But then the beat changes and Kendrick goes on a We-Didn't-Start-the-Fire-style rapid spit of shit.  Between the tough initial beat and then the ending, pretty solid.  If you saw the start of the Grammys the other night, this was the piece Kendrick used with all of the guys in red getting shot one by one, which looked amazing.

King Krule - The OOZ.  Really?  Really?  This is the #17 album from last year (per Mitchum's combined top albums of 2017 spreadsheet)?  WTF is this?  it sounds like Chris Martin from Coldplay took all the drugs, ate 3/4 of them, gave 1/4 to a drummer to help him, and then locked the two of them in a padded room with a guitar, microphone, and 48 effects pedals and they started boning their instruments while the tape ran.  If alternative rock was meant to be bad avant-garde jazz, then this one knocks it out of the park.  See "Czech One," the first single from the album.  Reminds me sometimes off Thundercat or the background sax music from Kendrick Lamar.  Every once in a while, one of the tunes peeks through the ooze of his drug addled schmear, like "Emergency Blimp," which actually has a beat and rhythm to it.  "Dum Surfer" is the top track, with just over 4 million streams.

Sure, I guess this is like the cutting edge of rock and roll right now or something, but this track can't save the rest of the sludge of the album.  And by the way, I'm super alone here on this island, because Pitchfork says is is a 9.0 and is timeless.  Consequence of Sound gives it a B+ and calls him a Wunderkind before saying "Plenty of transcendent albums were born of dissatisfaction, but rarely has that frustration sounded so appealing."  Not for me!

 Moon Taxi - Let the Record Play.  Saw these guys for the third time in the fall of 2017 and very much enjoyed the show.  Very young crowd - at one point a dude with a grey beard and I locked eyes and gave each other the wassup nod to confirm that, yes, we were the oldest two dudes there in a sea of college-aged idiocy.  One of my favorite parts of that show was when they cranked up a tune from this new album, which was not out at the time, and it was heavy.  Like, way outside of their normal spacy, jammy, happy rock sound, but like they had been listening to Zeppelin and wanted to give that a shot.  So I was pumped when I saw this had been released - gimme that hard and heavy Taxi, bra!  Annnnd, nope.  The song I was remembering is slightly heavier than the rest of the album, but only in the "heavy" way that I usually wait to weigh myself in the mornings until after I have dropped a deuce.  That tune is "Moving to the City."  Peep the ridiculously metal heaviness here.

SO METAL!  Obviously just kidding.  Pretty good tune, but funny how the live sound did not translate to the studio one.  I can hear the same heavier guitar/bass combo fuzz that sounded larger live, but this doesn't bring the same power.  And then their top hit, which has over 72 million streams and is therefore a legit hit, is "Two High."

That Instagram-worthy video makes me split harshly between a desire to: (1) punch all people younger than me in their perfect faces immediately; or (2) go live their lives and do a sweet kick flip off of a raft while hammering tide pods in the river.  Or whatever the kids do these days.  I'm old.  But before the concert, I had figured that this song was about smoking ganja, but instead it is apparently about the peace sign.  Which is so precious it kind of makes me want to vomit.  I sound like a cranky old man in this review, but honestly I like this album.  Breezy light alternative rock and roll.

Kid Rock - Sweet Southern Sugar.  I will readily admit to having jammed some old Kid Rock back in the day.  "American Badass," for all of its cheesiness, still made me feel pretty tough.  This takes all of that, rolls it up inside of a used confederate flag g-string, douses it in corporate-made moonshine, folds it into the shape of Trump's hairpiece, and then sells it on HSN at 2 a.m.  The album opens with a welcome to the "GREATEST FUCKIN' SHOW ON EARTH!!!" and then goes right into "Po-Dunk," a song Big and Rich probably rejected for being too obvious - "holler if you is, shut up if you ain't, poh, poh, poh, poh, poh, poh, PO DUNK!"  I mean, he's full on going for it.  Every lyric was formed in a right-wing think tank based in a Kentucky double-wide where the window shades have started to grow stalactites of meth crystals.  Singing appreciatively about preachers who pack guns, angel women, the "proud red white and blue," and whiskey. But singing derisively about California, "bitch-ass broke mafuckers," selfies, and "Taylor Swift's dick," which he uses to fuck you in the ass if you call him white trash to his face.  For real, he said that.  He also, for some terrible reason, approaches some sort of 80's disco-fied rock garbage, complete with backup singers saying "shoop, sha-dooooodo," on "I Wonder."  This album really has tragic things for everyone.  Oooh, including a rockin' remake of fucking "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" that will absolutely make you wish for the sweet abyss of nuclear armageddon.  Oh, sweet Jesus.  Please, God.  No...  <death>

Welcome to hell, folks. 

The LACS - American Rebelution.  I figured I would go ahead and add this one right behind Kid Rock, since they aim for the same demographic.  Rolling Stone just recently did a piece on Country Rap, which highlighted the Lacs as one of the current top acts in the genre, which rose out from its father Bubba Sparxxx, he of the late 90's hit "Ugly."  Well, this is exactly what you would expect from such a thing, very basic, rock-centric beats, carefully-enunciated lyrics about drinking, rednecks, guns, and girl's gettin' wild.  And mentioning "Hillary's E-mails."  You also get more Nashville-esque country that switches back and forth from garbage Florida Georgia Line dreck and bad rap lines, like "Jack in my Coke (Feat. Montgomery Gentry)." And shit like "The good die young, so you know I'm gonna be all good."  Their most listened to is that one with Montgomery Gentry, so you get to suffer through that as well.  Good luck.

I mean, if you played this for your lady friend, closely looking into her eyes as you told her that she is the kind of lady to put chicken livers on the line to catch a catfish and then fry 'em up, is that a winning play? Or do you end up in trouble?  I thought I knew some rednecks, but this is next level shit.  Also, every time I hear something like this, I think how I really should stop writing these blogs and start writing country song lyrics to make crazy huge bank.  "My baby's hotter'n fresh blacktop in Juuuullaaaaaayyyyy, my kinfolk make fresh moonshine make you crrraaaaaaaayyyyyy."  I just wrote that off the top of my head.  I could be a billionaire by next week on this stuff.  Oh, the album, you do not want to hear this album.