On Young Fathers’ first album since their great 2018 record Cocoa Sugar, the Scottish indie group replaces their usual dissonant and tense hip-hop production with gospel, soul and world music elements that introduce so much warmth and life.
Even if some of the songs still take a darker, reflective tone lyrically, the music and performances on Heavy Heavy are packed with energy and joy — grand, triumphant chouses; heaven-sent falsettos; lively backing vocals and chatter; West African drums; Mediterranean strings; and clanging chains.
At only 32 minutes and 10 tracks, it’s easy to get lost in the celebration, to appreciate the simplicity of the overall package and to still feel the great emotional depth that exists throughout.
Subsections of hip-hop continue to inch closer to traditional rock and punk music — using elements like live guitars and drums, sung passages and screaming choruses. British rapper Slowthai’s 2023 album UGLY is essentially a rock record, with heavy doses of modern post punk and hints of late 2000s alternative and indie rock.
Vocally, Slowthai still leans on rapping, but his varying inflection usually matches the aggression of the music perfectly. Some spoken word or shouted sections on “Selfish,” “HAPPY” and “UGLY” fit in with the punk instrumentals that feature buzzing guitars, quick drum runs, building musical bridges and repetitive choruses. “UGLY” in particular, which is performed by Fontaines D.C., really has some raw, unhinged emotion that pairs seamlessly with the slow, droning guitars and blaring synths. He sounds carefree on “Sooner” and “Feel Good,” while his reflective delivery on “Never Again” matches the song’s jazzy, hip-hop drums and soft, repeating piano chords. And his sad, more intimate performance on “Falling” and others are reminiscent of a King Krule stoner blues track.
Unfortunately, two months after the record was released to high praise, Slowthai was charged with rape. A trial is set for 2024. UGLY a very good, interesting album, but while I could easily dig into the details of the songs and the messages more, I don’t really feel the need to at this point. Listen to it (and avoid it) at your own risk.
Central Texas-based band Horse Rider’s 38 minute debut album Real Melody provides emo-influenced lyrics and vocals with a grunge soundboard and slowcore energy.
The opening half of the album is really strong— with “Hollow” being a standout and “Ragdoll” probably being the heaviest track on the record. While most tracks have sad or bittersweet vocals, the band’s use of a classic soft-loud-soft structure is effective in adding color and some warmth. Simple, soft but catchy guitar riffs lead you through the verses to the big, heavy, emotional choruses featuring dense chords and raw vocals.
Even though all of the tracks are low-to-mid tempo, the layered guitar work in particular adds intrigue across the entire record, with a good range of energy, distortion and playing styles. There’s acoustic work that’s sometimes used for stripped down and intimate moments (more on the back-half of the record), and other times brings dark, reflective background layers. There’s also well-placed slide guitar sustains and harmonics, some standout lead solos and a lot of loud, fuzzy chords, especially when the songs climax.
Add in authentic vocals, well-placed harmonies and occasional background horns and electronics that mix in with the feedback, you come away with a textured record that all exists in a pretty refined, overall sound.
I mean this in the best way possible. Everything Harmony sounds like a collection of songs written as 1970 and 80s sitcom theme music, or written for cheeky, modern television commercials trying to somewhat ironically capture the nostalgic sounds of the past. It’s sentimental, theatrical, soft rock with baroque strings, big climaxing hooks, well-placed key changes and introspective, poetic lyrics.
It’s obvious that the album is derivative of titans of the past — drawing from The Beatles’ solo efforts, the Beach Boys (especially with the vocals), The Carpenters — but it somehow doesn’t sound dated or like a cheap knockoff. Time and time again, beautiful instrumentals are paired with great vocal performances. “Any Time of Day” is probably my favorite of the showy tracks, and while some of the softer moments like the title track do end up blending in and feeling a little repetitive, the record is a delight to listen through.
The few moments that deviate from that sound provide the perfect amount of variation, introducing more jangle pop and indie folk influences. “Ghost Run Free” is a fabulously catchy and warm track that feels straight out of the late 1980 or early 90s, a la The La’s, The Sundays, Gin Blossoms, what have you. “In My Head” has nice, upbeat acoustic work, bright synths and harmonies, and “What You Were Doing” brings a little more indie rock edge.
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd
Lana Del Rey
★★★½
72
Pop
Singer-songwriter
Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd is probably my favorite Lana Del Rey album.
I’m not usually a fan of Lana’s albums, and some of the things that typically irk me about her work — intentionally nonchalant vocals, pretentiously arty and low-energy instrumentation, overly sexual and edgy lyrics that feel manufactured, and unnecessary ad libs — are still present here. But in recent years I think she’s done a good job at tempering those things down a little, while mixing vocal styles a bit, writing lyrics that are more reflective, self aware (in a good way) and sometimes self-deprecating, and using more detailed, lush musical elements that are indeed elevated.
The majority of the tracks on her ninth album include intimate vocal performances and repetitive, satisfying hooks over simple piano work and pretty backing string sections. They build in nice, dramatic ways and give Lana a chance to show off her vocals from time to time. The title track is a strong effort near the top of the album, while “Grandfather Please Stand on the Shoulders of My Father While He’s Deep-Sea Fishing” is a really tender, beautiful movement closer to the end that’s both musically and lyrically dense. The most intimate passages throughout the album are pretty interesting. A lot of it blends together, but the songs are all pretty solid.
Naturally though, the tracks that stood out to me are those with featured artists or small changes to the presentation. Lana uses various singing styles and harmonies on “A&W,” which has an interesting instrumental switch at the end that is pretty cool. “Paris, Texas” uses a 6/8 time signature instead of 4/4 which gives the pianos and strings a little more energy and bounce.
“Candy Necklace” features piano work by Jon Batiste that is more lively and vibrant. The drums and group singing on “Margaret” — which features a verse from one of the album’s co-writers, Jack Antonoff — also provide some needed dynamics to the project. And while I’m not typically a fan of Father John Misty for many of the same reasons I don’t love Lana’s work, for some reason bringing the two indie artists together is a great pairing; the acoustic guitars, backing keys and strings, and the subtle guest vocals on “Let the Light In” make it a standout moment.
The biggest issue I have with the record is how long it is. At nearly 78 minutes, it’s a LOT to get through and sort out. The last three songs on the album also kind of go off in different directions that feel out of place and unnecessary when compared to the rest of the record. The “Judah Smith Interlude” is also just weird, and at four and a half minutes it’s hardly just something that you can tune out and ignore. There’s a message in there somewhere, but it’s not a good time. And I kind of cringed at the studio-take aspect of the opening minute of the record, which made me almost shut the record off before it began, but the song settles in and ends up being pretty good.
Outside of those though, I can’t say any of the songs are bad. I may not return to the entire record too often, but it’s hard to deny how nice the music sounds.
At this point, Carly Rae Jepsen is a dependable, seasoned pop professional. She has yet to have another song explode the way “Call Me Maybe” did in 2012, and none of her albums have topped 2015’s Emotion in terms of quality, but she consistently makes good pop music.
On The Loveliest Time, she delivers 13 single-quality pop tracks with danceable beats, lively synths, catchy hooks and her signature flair. Its companion album — 2022’s The Loneliest Times — may have been more emotional and thematic when it comes to lyrics and its association with Covid-19, but 2023’s record is more vibrant musically and fun overall. Horns, saxophones and strings are sprinkled here and there with the synths, while the songs have a good variety of tempo and energy.
“Put it to Rest” is the most dramatic and interesting track here, with building drums, strings and piano melodies and a moody vocal performance. “Kamikaze” is a Weeknd-styled dance track, while “Psychedelic Switch” has cool, pounding house elements. “Shadow” and “After Last Night” have some lighter production touches courtesy Rostam Batmanglij, while “Shy Boy” and “So Right” have a little indie pop and rock to them thanks to the production of Cole M.G.N. (who has worked with Ariel Pink, Christine and the Queens) and James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Depeche Mode, Geese, the Gorillaz). The booming, generic “Stadium Love” and lower-energy “Aeroplan” I think are a bit lame in comparison to the rest, but lead to a well-rounded record overall.
It’s impossible to listen to grouptherapy. — a young, alternative hip-hop collective that uses internet-aged DIY production to blend rap, pop and R&B while discussing Gen Z themes — without thinking about BROCKHAMPTON and the impact they had on internet hip hop music in the mid 2010s. In a way, i was mature for my age, but i was still a child is a passing of the torch moment one year after BROCKHAMPTON officially broke up to keep that youthful, creative style going.
BROCKHAMPTON — which probably took that mantle from Odd Future before them — started as a pretty chaotic group of high schoolers, with fun music that jumped all over the place, in-your-face lyrics, an overwhelming amount of different voices and contributors with different backgrounds, and loud, scatterbrained production. They evolved overtime to more of a boy-band presentation, with smoother, more emotional beats and more mature vocal performances and themes. It lost much of its youthful edge, but resulted in more thoughtful and artistic albums and songs as the group aged.
Made up of former child actors who are now in their mid 20s, grouptherapy.’s music has similar DIY vibes, the same emotional highs and mood swings, and some of the in-your-face aggression of BROCKHAMPTON. But grouptherapy. starts their run almost where BROCKHAMPTON left it, with a smooth presentation and a more experienced approach to songwriting and production, creating a surprising and fun journey through different musical influences and genres.
“American Psycho” is a pop rock inspired track with some distorted guitar and spoken-word passages. “smiles :)” has jazz drums and piano. “how i’m feeling” and “thatsmycheck” are upbeat, summer pop rap songs that follow modern production trends that make it feel like it could be on the radio without being too generic. “Nasty “ reminds me of early 2000s tracks by The Neptunes or NERD. “HOT!” introduces breakbeat drum loops . “TrunkPoppers.com” is a serious sounding, reflective hip-hop track about violence that sounds like it could be from an early Chance The Rapper or Kendrick Lamar project.
“club song :(“ is a lovely acoustic guitar-driven indie folk ballad and is followed by another softer moment, “Peak.” Probably my favorite song on the record, “Peak” features a bit of hyperpop production with pitched up vocal samples, airy and glittering synths, a danceable, pulsing rhythm and intimate R&B vocals. “FUNKFEST” also has hyperpop energy but with some punk guitar and bass lines and rapped verses.
The performances by the three artists here — Jadagrace, TJOnline, and SWIM — are pretty impressive (especially Jadagraces’s singing). Just like the beats themselves, the trio is able to morph vocal styles not only song to song, but sometimes verse to verse. They show off their skills as rappers by mixing and matching different flows and aggressions, and move back and forth from powerful lead vocals to effective background harmonies and sections of group singing.
The lyrics throughout the album aren’t anything groundbreakingly poetic, but touch on common modern themes like mental health struggles, living up to lofty expectations, race and gender identity, as well as age-appropriate references to partying, having a good time and frustrations found in their world. There are some serious moments here, but for the most part, it sounds like the group is having fun, goofing off and just going for it.
As is the case with a lot of the hyperactive, glitchy, DIY records that come out today, it’s hard to decide if what grouptherapy.’s doing is in fact the cooled things in hip-hop, or if it actually feels artificial, lame and kind of annoying. “American Psycho” and “Help 2” in particular I don’t think work as well as they should and are kind of cringy. But there’s a fine line between great and terrible when it comes to art sometimes, and i was mature for my age, but i was still a child much more often than not falls on the “great” category.
Jessie Ware continues to get better and better with each release, and her 2023 album, similarly, gets better and better as it goes.
After 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? saw her fully embrace disco music, That! Feels Good! is somehow smoother, more groovy and more fun. There’s a sense of elegance in the presentation, from the glistening instrumentals to Ware’s fantastic sensual and showy vocals. It’s simplified disco music, yes — with a lot of the drawn-out grooves of the 70s and 80s condensed into tight, 4 minute presentations — but the energy and soul and funk is there.
At the top of the album, “That! Feels Good,” “Free Yourself ” and “Pearls” are all about letting loose and having a good time. “Hello Love” and “Begin Again” bring soul-influenced vocals. “Shake the Bottle” and “Beautiful People” have new-wave funk vibes, with the latter featuring these Bowie “Let’s Dance” kind of synth horns. “Freak Me Now” has a French house groove, and “Lightning” brings more of a modern R&B twist to the album, similar to the indie pop Ware put out in the early 2010s.
The record is intentionally (I think) campy at times, with some stereotypical dance lyrical themes (“Shake The Bottle “ is particularly cringy) and overdone production, but it’s all in good fun.
I thought Olivia Rodrigo’s first album was good, but a little basic from start to finish. However, GUTS, her sophomore record, is really an improvement at every level — confidence in the vocal performance, maturity in the songwriting, more varied and full instrumentals. It’s banger after banger after banger.
Yes, like its predecessor, GUTS is still predictable and formulaic, bouncing back and forth between power pop, pop rock and theatrical singer/songwriter piano ballads that gradually build to a big, showy climax. But, where I felt the tracks on her debut were much closer to generic pop, GUTS leans into an alternative, more aggressive guitar style on the upbeat tracks that really adds energy without jeopardizing her fun, sing-along hooks.
The lyrics are a good mix of personal stories, emotional passage and fun, somewhat self-deprecating lines about fame, status and failed relationships. The coming-of-age themes are basic and high-school drama-y for sure, but they feel like they come naturally, and are easy to connect with and understand.
I do think the ballads are still too same-y for me at times, even if they are well done and have a bit more variety in terms of instrumentation this time around. I like “Vampires” and “Lacy,” but by the time we get to “The Grudge” it’s kind of like, “Here we go again.” They’re good songs on their own, but in the context of a 12-track album, having six of the songs hitting those same high points takes some of the drama away.
But what Rodrigo does best is appeal to today’s teenaged youth while making those of us who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s feel young again. She’s obviously drawn influences from today’s top pop stars like Taylor Swift and Lorde, while also tapping into the energy of Weezer, the rawness of Hole (and maybe more appropriately Paramore), the peppy hooks of Avril Lavigne, and some of the drama of Evanescence and even the Cure.
I know 808s & Heartbreak — Kanye West’s first venture into the R&B world — isn’t for everyone. But — when looking back at where hip-hop went in the 10-15 years after 2008 and how prominent R&B production, auto-tuned vocals and deep, dark synths have been — it’s probably one of the most influential hip-hop records of its time.
808s & Heartbreak sparked Drake’s emotional R&B tracks, which gave him the range to become a megastar one year later. The use of auto-tune inspired all the sad-robot vocalists who popped up from 2010-2012, like Future, and the drill rappers like Chief Keef, who used it more as a sound effect than for pitch correction. The style and sounds paved the way for Travis Scott’s dark, booming production, as well as the emotional and unhinged performances by emo rapperslike XXXTentacion, Lil Uzi Vert and Juice Wrld.
Of course, Kanye West wasn’t the first person to use auto-tune to manipulate his voice. Ignoring its previous use in indie pop and electronic music, T-Pain was really the pioneer of the technique in the hip-hop world, which he used to create standout choruses on chart-topping singles from 2005-2010. Earlier in 2008, Kid Cudi laid the foundation of what would be 808s and Heartbreak with “Day and Nite” (Kanye signed Cudi to GOOD Music later that year), while Lil Wayne used auto-tune to change his sound on his single “Lollipop,” which in part inspired Kanye to use autotune on Jeezy’s single “Put On” that summer, as well as a “Lollipop” remix.
But 808s and Heartbreak was the first full project to fully embrace the emotion and topics of R&B while blending it with the flair of popular hip-hop. It wasn’t Wayne just using it as a texture on a handful of tracks, or T-Pain adding a show stopping chorus to a mega hit, or a single soft moment on an otherwise conventional hip-hop album. It was a fully formed R&B record, mixed with the flourishes of Kanye’s creative and lush production.
That’s on full display on the album’s opener, “Say You Will,” a dark ballad with a sad string section, backing chants from a live choir, and a repeated drum rhythm and beep that represents a heartbeat and heartbeat monitor. Kanye emotionally sings about craving to reconnect with someone, even if it means that relationship has entirely devolved into desperate hookups and excuses to talk. As is expected with any Kanye song, some of the lyrics are a little questionable or miss the mark, but they’re catchy, and the emotion on this track and others feels authentic and raw and more vulnerable than he’d ever been before.
That could be said about the majority of the album. Lyrics on “Welcome to Heartbreak” — juxtaposing the loneliness he feels through his rich lifestyle and fame with his friends who have more basic, but thriving family lives — are effective, even if lines like “My friend showed me pictures of his kids, and all I could show him was pictures of my cribs. He said his daughter got a brand new report card, and all I got was a brand new sports car,” are pretty basic. The song works though musically, and with featured vocals by Kid Cudi it’s an emotional highlight for the album.
My favorite track on the record is “Street Lights,” a cold piano ballad with a soft, building pulse of feedback that’s simple musically compared to the more grand productions elsewhere on the record and lyrically repetitive. But the repeated chorus — “Seems like street lights, glowing, happen to be, Just like moments, passing, in front of me, So I hopped in the cab and I paid my fare, See, I know my destination, but I’m just not there” — is so perfectly basic and reflective that it captures those lonely, aimless feelings flawlessly. Kanye’s heavily distorted vocals here also represent how buried in thought or memories he is, while soulful, pure backing vocals by Esthero and Tony Williams fade in and out with clarity.
The four singles on the record also do a good job at showing off the different styles on the album. “Paranoid” is one of the more upbeat tracks and features some bright pop synths and an 80s drum loop. “Heartless” is the more emotional but catchy single with cute electronic instruments and a bouncy bass line. The tribal drumming and backing effects in “Love Lockdown” make for a raw, dark, dancy club hit. And the swagger on “Amazing” mixed with Jeezy’s feature gives the album one moment that’s closer to traditional hip-hop while still fitting in with cold, 808 production.
Outside of “Street Lights” though, the second half of the album does trail off a bit in quality.
“Bad News” is kind of cool and has a nice instrumental bridge, but hits a lot of the same musical tones as “Street Lights” without the emotional impact. “See You In My Nightmare” similarly reiterates some of the hip-hop feelings on “Amazing,” and while it’s nice to hear Wayne and Kanye on tracks together the verses are a bit overdone and the beat is pretty heavy handed compared to the rest of the album.
“RoboCop” is obnoxiously corny, with these frolicking synths that feel like an over-the-top Christmas-song at a department store and cringy lyrics calling a girl a RoboCop because of how she interrogates his actions and how “I ain’t used to being told, “Stop,” so I could never be your robot.” It’s rough.
I’ve also always felt “Coldest Winter” would be a fine and fitting end to the album, but for some reason Kanye adds a live recording of “Pinocchio Story” to close things out. It’s a ballad so I get thematically it fits into the record, but the low quality concert recording is irksome on what’s otherwise a pretty pristine sounding record. I may have been more open to the track had it been a studio take, even if some of the rawness of his original freestyle performance was missing.
Overall, the album showed Kanye’s ability to once again break into a space where people said he wouldn’t be able to have success. They said he couldn’t be a producer, then they said he couldn’t rap, then they said he couldn’t design clothes and then they said he couldn’t sing. Even if he’s getting some assistance from autotune, he was about to produce genuinely artistic R&B backing tracks, convey deeply emotional performances and write sing-along melodies that have inspired other artists in the years since.
Fresh Out The Deli 