Quick Hits, Vol. 217 (FIDLAR, FUTURE, Beach House, SwuM)

FIDLAR - Almost Free.  I've enjoyed their tunes in the past, kind of a sneering punky Sum 41 thing, mixed with an almost Brit rock strut in other bits.  They open the album with this super tightly bound Kid Rock tribute song called "Get Off My Rock" that sounds very much like a song that Rock would have actually put out into the world.  Barking dogs, altered vocals, weird little effects stolen from rap songs, southern harmonica soul licks, and a yelled chorus.  Classic.  Also very annoying.  The most streamed tune is called "Can't You See" and its more of the Brit rock sound - not bad actually.

Much better groove than the rest of the album - most of the rest of the album is way more plain and boringly hard.  This one slinks and struts a little, gets your shoulder rolling.  But that song isn't enough to salvage the rest of the disc, I'll let it go.

FUTURE - Future Hendrxx Presents: The WIZRD.  WTF is up with that album title, man?  Just call the damn thing The Wizard.  Shit is annoying.  Anyway, this album also happens to be bad.  Not that you should be shocked, I've tried no less than 5 Future albums, and always come away curious about what in the hell people see in the dude.  All Auto-Tune all the time.  Mediocre lyrics.  Hard beats but exceedingly similar over the course of the album.  He does this every time.  At least some of the other albums had a good track or two, this one just falls flat totally.  "Crushed Up" is the top streamer, and one that Rolling Stone specifically called out as being good or whatever, but even with 47.3 million streams, I give it a big fat thumbs down.

If you want to hear the guy slur the words "diamonds crushed up in the face I can see it" 384 times, then by all means, make that song your jam.  Otherwise, I think you can just let it go.  Same with the rest of the disc, which is heavy on R&B tracks and lighter on the straight rap bangers.  Nope.

Beach House - 7.  This is one of those bands that gets super hyped all the time on Twitter or in magazines or whatever - I feel like I'm always seeing people getting pumped up about Beach House shows or albums or whatever.  I don't get it.  It's quite nice - "Pay No Mind" is a sleepy, dreamy nap of a song that feels like smoking a fat bowl and then being suffocated under a billion napping sloths.  Which is actually a compliment, I like the vibe of it a lot.  But the album overall is just more and more of that same sleepy stuff - gets very boring after a while.  The top streamer, with 12.5 million listens, is "Lemon Glow," which adds a grating background boing to the somnolent track.  I don't care for it.

This album has, quite frankly, just been in my queue for way too long.  It keeps coming back up and playing through, but I just don't care to hear it any more.  Its not bad, its just not good either.

SwuM - Swimming.  A friend played me a track from this guy the other day, and it seemed kind of cool, so I thought I'd try out a whole album.  If you're into the kind of music that they are probably playing right now at Abercrombie & Fitch, to the extent that place still even exists, then this is your jam.  Beat maestro stuff, full of loopy sounds and sampled nuggets and a chilled out vibe.  The coolest ones are where he takes a rap and remixes it over these horn-sampling, screwed up beats, like "Trees."  This is one of the more streamed tunes, "Rhodes," to let you in on the flavor.

It was kind of cool to check this out, but not my bag, baby.