Quick Hits, Vol. 210 (Vince Staples, Earl Sweatshirt, Courteeners, Blossoms)

Vince Staples - FM!  For the first time in a while, a rap album that is just fun sounding.  Bouncy, joyful beats, with Staples' bobbing, smooth flow weaving through them - this album is very easy to just bop along to for the short 22 minute runtime.  Only two songs break the 3 minute mark, and several of the 11 tracks are actually just little skits.  "Don't Get Chipped" gets my head bobbing and shoulders dipping, and "Feels Like Summer" is also a tight banger, but "FUN!" has the most streams, so here you go:

Cool video, miming Google street view to show vignettes of life on a street.  Good song too.  I'm less impressed with the R&B-ish track "Tweakin'" or the "Brand New Tyga" interlude, but its mainly because I just don't much like that type of music.  Great little album.

Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs.  I listened to this a number of times for the year end albums lists, it was a top ten album for several publications.  Crazy stat - I saw this album was 15 songs and was like UUUGGGGHHHH, but then looked and the whole thing is 24 minutes.  Only three songs hit 2:00.  Interesting.  Especially in light of the Vince Staples album above and the Pusha T album from last year - rappers are finally getting off the 28 song, 2 hour beatdown albums and looking at shorter, better offerings.
These raps are fine, but the beats super simple, like just a single sample looped with little adornment but fuzzing or distortion added, and the tone of his raps is kind of boring, just plain and talkative.  I guess the lyrics must be great?  Not especially.  "Nowhere2go" has the most streams, and is a great example of this whack experimental beat stuff.  it's like someone ran an old ASAP Rocky beat backwards but removed the bass.

Nah, man.  I'm all for people trying to do something different and not just copy the exact same beats and trap styles as everyone else is currently up to, but this just isn't my thing.  Hard to even hear the lyrics over the racket of the "beat," I'm not keeping this stuff.

Courteeners - Mapping the Rendezvous.  Oooh, that is something fun for sure.  I found this band when reading an article about some other British rock band, can't recall who, but these folks (and the next band in this Quick Hit) were both mentioned as other in the same cannon of young band making noise in England right now.  These guys are from Manchester, so they're following in the large footsteps of other top pop rock bands like Oasis.  Their shit is very fun though, jangly, bouncy, danceable pop stuff (with the requisite serious slow song here and there) and I dig it.  Lots of 80's influence, but still a bunch of purely current rock moves.  "Lucifer's Dreams," "Kitchen," and "Tip Toes" are great for that sort of danceable rock stuff (and "De La Salle" is a good example of the serious slow song).  The top streamer is almost at the end of the album, "Modern Love," with 6.1 million streams.

Yeah, that one is good too.  Fun stuff that makes me want to bounce around the room.  We need this to show up for ACL - I need to pump my fist and sing "wooohooohooowoooowohooohooohoo!"  I'm in.

Blossoms - Cool Like You.  Not to be confused with the Gin Blossoms (who I just heard on the radio for the first time in eons, so it is super weird that I wrote this post two days ago before I heard them again), this is another band from around Manchester, that is part of a much hyped new wave of bands from the region.  This one is more pop leaning than the Courteeners album, and I think it is slightly worse because of that.  More The 1975 and less Two Door Cinema Club.  Their bio says that they are a "sweet spot between The Doors and Arctic Monkeys," which is not only horseshit but also super stupid.  The sound nothing like the Doors at all.  Like not even a little.

Kind of a little Phoenix in there as well.  A pretty solid song, and if I hadn't linked this band with the Courteeners, then I probably would have liked this one more, but since I'm comparing the two, I find this one to be less interesting and less powerful.  Sounds weird to call it plastic, but that is what I have in my head, like this is the thin, brittle plastic version of what the other band is doing.  Now, watch, this band will be the one to blow up and become famous...  Nah.