Beck – Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime
Starting with Midnight Vultures, I started losing interest in Beck and the last of his albums that I bought and spent any time with was 2008’s Modern Guilt. So, although most of these songs have been released previously, they are (or at least Beck’s versions are) new to me. Some of them work pretty well (the title track, “I Only Have Eyes for You”) with Beck being both himself and paying homage to the past. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” raises questions about how well Beck knew or loved its more famous rendition. Some are natural fits (“Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “True Love Will Find You in the End”). Others are less expected, but still work (“Love”, “Michelangelo Antonioni”). As covers records go, you could do worse and the one original (“Ramona”) is pretty good.
Listen: Probably
Buy: My initial “No” is leaning toward “Maybe”
Joyce Manor – I Used to Go to This Bar
Is it just me or is my old friend the electric guitar making a comeback? This is a record full of huge guitars, drums, vocals, yet it remains intimate and personal, because it is still about songs and the songs are about dreams unfulfilled. There is stagnation, but not really hopelessness, a sense of wondering what went wrong and just not knowing how to get back on track. While musically this reminds me of the garage pop of the early 2000’s with hints of the Smiths sneaking in (or more then sneaking in the case of “After All You Put Me Through”), there is a kind if peace in failure that reminds me of the Replacements in the lyrics. I wish “Grey Guitar” didn’t tip its hat so much to mid-90’s alt-rock. It could have shared the airwaves with Better Than Ezra or Third Eye Blind.
Listen: Yes
Buy: Yes
Yumi Zouma – No Love Lost to Kindness
“Cross My Heart and Hope to Die” is just what I wanted to hear from the new Yumi Zouma record. There is a lot of Joy Division here, only without the deep sense of despair. I mean, this is not an upbeat record, but its sadness is more relatable than despair is for most of us. “Drag” is an interesting take on Christie Simpson’s sense of what she perhaps missed before getting diagnosed with and treated for ADHD as the music moves in a organized chaos of layers that reflect both moving forward and looking back. “Blister” dabbles a bit in 90s alt rock that doesn’t quite do it for me, but I think the same is just more subtle over most of the album. Overall, the album is still dream pop, but maybe with a bit more overt drive. I suspect if I made a list of my favorite tracks here, it would match the ones with the most reverb.
Listen: Yes
Buy: Yes
Dogpark – Corporate Pudding EP
Boy, do these guys love the Strokes or what? There are worse things and they do it well with energy and aplomb. And the Strokes’ intersection of garage rock and new wave was exciting. So, I’ve heard it before, but not so much as to be sick of it and “What’s My Line Again” and “September” have a bit more of an original twist that shows promise. If Geese is saving rock n roll, Dogpark is perhaps in the next line of assault.
Listen: Yes, after all, it’s pretty short
Buy: Maybe not, but maybe the next one with some growth
Labrinth – Cosmic Opera Act I
From the start, this is an ambitious album in a similar vein to Rosalia’s Lux. Unfortunately, its spoken word opening track seems to spell out what it is trying to do, depriving us of discovery. While this album does not quite reach the heights of Lux, it is still largely successful and lives up to much of its ambitions to be, as the album title suggests, very grand with strings and choir in tandem with modern electronica. Initially, I thought Cosmic Opera Act I didn’t aspire to something higher as Lux does, but it does grapple more and more with the worldly versus the spiritual and even the internal good versus evil. The intro to “I Keep My Promises” has a really seamless melding of classical instrumentation and electronica as horns transition into synths that is a great example of what Labrinth is able to achieve. Again, this album is not quite as musically or lyrically deep as Lux, but it lives up to its ambitions enough to be really worth hearing.
Listen: Yes
Buy: Probably
MEEK – Fabulous EP
“Fabulous” is a big, bold pop song with an obvious (and awesome) nod to Queen. It seems to both participate in superficiality and criticize it from the inside. “Brixton” and “I want love, but not that much” scale back the bombast, but remain just as catchy. For a three song EP, there is a lot of movement. There is a sense of embracing the vapid and ignoring anything deeper (her Instagram page claims to be “ur new religion” – no thanks), but I like these songs nonetheless because of their energy. I don’t believe in the nihilism/hedonism that pervades much of current pop music, but sometimes the music rises above that even if accidentally. I feel similarly about Charli XCX, so in a way this is in decent company.
Listen: Yes
Buy: Maybe if it gets released on a physical format
Leftover from the January 23rd releases, but not to be ignored:
IDK – e.t.d.s
I was first struck by how good the music itself is. This could be an instrumental record and still be pretty great. Then it started to occur to me that the vocal was at the same level. This is the best hip-hop record I have heard in a long time. Maybe since To Pimp a Butterfly.
Listen: Yes, repeatedly
Buy: Yes!