Quick Hits, Vol. 243 (Justin Townes Earle, Purple Mountains, Wild Powwers, Missy Elliott)

By the way, random aside, I got a new keyboard and half of the capitalized words I type now have both the first two letters capitalized, and I'm about to throw my whole desk out of a 12th story window.  Just FYI.

Justin Townes Earle - The Saint of Lost Causes.  This dude's dad is a stud.  I had many good days in college and post-college, jamming Steve Earle and imagining myself even a quarter as badass as that dude sounded when he growled out his lines.  Justin sounds a little like his old man - the voice isn't why you're here - but he writes a damn fine lyric like both his dad and his middle name namesake.  This is an enjoyable album - Americana bordering into real country - and lyrically entertaining.  None of the songs have just a ton of streams, but the title song has over 600k, so that is pretty solid.

Lyrics on point, and the tune is kind of a gentle, broken-down shuffle in line with something from Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt himself, or Father John Misty.  Lovely sound.  The whole disc has grown on me with every listen.  I'll probably save it, forget about it entirely, and delete it in a year, but whatever, this one is good.

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains.  Great disc.  Has some Decemberists vibes, in the storytelling and weird imagery department (drinking margaritas at the mall, from "Margaritas at the Mall" is very evocative).  Also smells like Wilco or The National at times.  The music goes from semi-country to quiet acoustic strummers.  I just went to look up the band to see some background, and a line from the top section of Wikipedia was pretty jarring: "The project was presumably dissolved upon Berman's death on August 7, 2019."  Shit!  Wow.  Berman is David Berman, who is apparently the entirety of the band, and was previously in something called the Silver Jews.  The final line of the Wikipedia article takes it even further, noting that Berman died of suicide.  Criminy!  That sucks ass!  Of course, the most streamed song is called "All My Happiness is Gone."  Neat.

Its a good song - "Nights that Won't Happen" is too, as is "I Loved Being My Mother's Son" and "Darkness and Cold," but now that I look at these song titles, I'm depressed as shit.

Wild Powwers - Skin.  This ought to be up my alley, kind of grungy rock and roll, with a tough sounding bird of a lady singer over the top, but for some reason I don't much care for it.  Reminds me a little of Hole, which was also a band I could never get behind.  Not sure why.  Check out "Well, Shit," which is the one that sounds most purely like Hole to me.  I have no clue where I found this album, because now that I look at play counts, none of them crack 10k streams.  What am I doing here?  "May I Have This Dance" is the top one at 5k.

I've been wanting to get his out of my queue for a while, and now I officially can.  We good.

Missy Elliott - Iconography.  Just four songs on a short little EP, but when I see Missy involved in something, I'm gonna pull it up.  The first track, "Throw It Back," isn't bad, but the lyrics dive into the usual dumb tropes of how much bling and whatnot she has, which is too bad.  It goes odd at bits, which is what I want to hear, but then she's talking about how many cool shoes and purses she has, or how her jewelry drips, and yawwwnnnn.  The second track is "Cool Off," and its more of the same, just this time she's bragging about how great she is.  And the beat is mediocre.  Then we go into some R&B.  Not great.  I hope that she'll have a new album coming out soon that is a little stronger.

As usual, a cool video with lots of weird bits and costumes.  But nothing too special on this EP.