Dude. The poster for Float Fest, held in San Marcos in July, is pretty freaking awesome. For a small time festival, I'd like to see more than half of the bands on the poster. Tame Impala? Hell yes! Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Run the Jewels, and Bun B? Holy shit! Toadies and White Denim and Modest Mouse? Really solid lineup.
That one is called "Composite," and is the current most popular one on Spotify. 154k streams. Something about it grates my nerves. The day after I wrote the above discussion, I came back in to my office and just hit play again with this album - and just literally said, out loud, to no one but my computer screen: "dammit, I can't take this shit!" Not my favorite album.
The Breeders - All Nerve. Remember the Breeders? "Cannonball" was a good piece of the 90's alt rock landscape. Always dug that track, especially the Submarine-Diving-Warning-Horn-Sung-By-Several-Women-in-Unison at the start. From looking at their Spotify offerings, it looks like they have still been putting out albums (albeit sporadically) with 2002 and 2008 discs popping up after the 1993 hit album Last Splash. A few days ago, this album came up after listening to some other stuff, and I remember being pleasantly surprised by it sounding really good. After a few more intense listens, not so sure this is that great. It has a good chugging classic alt rock sound, but nothing on her really stands out as vital new music. "Wait in the Car" is the hit so far, with 814k streams.
You know, that kind of jams. But I think when taken as a whole, the album isn't that interesting. They definitely recapture the old sound - when you hear this album, it feels like you could be listening to something written 10 minutes after Last Splash finished. "MetaGoth" and "Spacewoman" sound cool in their own way, but nothing on here is so instantly poppy and memorable that you'll still be humming it an hour later.
Caitlyn Smith - Starfire. Holy hannah, her voice crushes it. Amazingly, her bio says that she is one of Nashville's most celebrated songwriters (with hits recorded by folks like Meghan Trainor, Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Lady Antebellum, James Bay), but with a voice like this, I find it hard to believe that she should have been relegated to the songwriting cubes on Music Row. The songs are heavy on the "Let's add strings here to show the depth of the emotion" style, but they're pretty solid nonetheless. Sometimes I hear Jewel ("Don't Give Up on My Love," for example) and other times I hear Sheryl Crow, and on her best song, she evokes Allison Krauss ("This Town is Killing Me"). That song is soft, but she's at her best when she is just cranking it out. The two tunes named after towns are also pretty solid ("St. Paul" and "Tacoma") and the writing on "Scenes from a Corner Booth at Closing Time on a Tuesday" is very fine. Speaking of Sheryl Crow, this is reminiscent of "All I Wanna Do." "lipstick is guilty red" is a good one. But the top song for streams is the title track, where she belts it out for us. "Starfire" has like 8.3 million streams (taking the streams from two combined versions on Spotify).
Not a real big fan of the sexy-style looks she is throwing off there in the video, would rather she just sing the song than look off to the side and toss her hair around as she jams. But whatever, her voice is the excitement in an otherwise pretty generic rock tune. The better tune is definitely "This Town is Killing Me," an ode to the pains of survival in the Nashville music factory, sung with a sweet tone and loving vocal caress. This album is good.
Cardi B - Invasion of Privacy. To be perfectly honest, I thought this album was going to suck. "Bodak Yellow," her first single and included on this album, was a pretty solid hit, but felt like a one hit wonder type of thing after hearing her do guest verses on some other albums since then. Also, she is engaged to one of the Migos, which makes me think that she probably also has no clue how to write a rhyme. Instead, this is littered with solid beats and a couple good turns of phrase that catch the imagination. Of course, she has a track with the stupid Migos, but it actually works out pretty well when their role is just to interject dumb words and then (OF COURSE) contribute a bad verse that says "THOT THOT." Such crappy rappers. I hate them so much. But she does better with collaborations from Chance the Rapper or 21 Savage.
But "Bodak Yellow" is the obvious hit on here, with over 310 million streams.
That ominous, dark, spacey beat. Those stout brags and good references. Terrible video though. And sometimes her rap style turns grating to me - she stops flowing and starts barking, like the way Meek Mill sounds at all times, and it bugs. But that is rare enough to not be a big deal. Some tracks on here are kind of clever for the references she digs down to find, like "Bickenhead," which bites pretty heavily from Project Pat's "Chickenhead," which is a classic. Or the classic "I Like it Like That" song, all Cuban swagger and party time, used to good effect in "I Like It." I'm fully surprised to enjoy this album so much, but it is legitimately enjoyable. I could do without the now ubiquitous half rap/half R&B tracks like "Ring (feat, Kehlani)" but the real rap tracks are surprisingly good.
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