Radio Rant: Kent Jones – “Don’t Mind”

Posted on July 20, 2016 by bgibs122

Hello, and welcome to Radio Rants, where we’re going international today.

Based on recent charts, our options right now are dancehall, EDM, or Rihanna. And while I like those 3, there’s only so many times I can say “EDM go boom, dancehall nice, yay ‘Needed Me’.” It just gets redundant, and this most recent crop flattens even the most discernible features. I know we’re smack dab in the middle of pop’s “sunshine and bangers” season, but these songs run together: even “Work From Home” and twenty one pilots’ newest crossover don’t veer too far from “EDM” or “dancehall” tendencies (or Rihanna, in Fifth Harmony’s case). The only outliers are JT’s warmed over Michael Jackson knock-off/The 20/20 Experience apology letter and “Don’t Mind” by newcomer Kent Jones. Who is Mike Kent Jones?

Let me answer that question with another question: do you remember back in December when DJ Khaled realized he had honest to God clout on Snapchat, and used said clout to promote a guy by playing the same damn song in each of his Snaps for like, a month?  I don’t either, because I don’t follow him, but apparently this happened. Kent Jones was That Guy; “Don’t Mind” was That Song. Jones got signed by Khaled last year, and he released a little-hyped mixtape last summer, so don’t feel out of the loop if “Don’t Mind” is your first time hearing him. Jones is billed as a producer, songwriter, and rapper, but he hasn’t appeared on anything outside his tape (which scans as SremmLife if SremmLife didn’t know how to throw a party, which yikes), so we’ll see where he goes.

Relentless Snapchat hounding or not, I get why “Don’t Mind” caught on, albeit not for good reason. You could tell me “Don’t Mind” came out any time in the last 8 or 9 years, and I’d believe you–not because it has a “timeless” quality to it, but because it has no quality to it. “Don’t Mind” is radio filler in its most pedestrian, most mindless form. It’s not necessarily a bad song, but good luck calling it a good one, either; this is track 37 or 38 that makes the top 40 because it sounds fine and spaces out the Rihanna singles. The same umbrella that houses quasi-tolerable, completely forgotten mediocrity like “Replay” and “Drank In My Cup” has a spot all picked out for “Don’t Mind.” There’s something to be said about succeeding on broad appeal alone, but there’s so little here to make this success look like anything but a fluke.

The one interesting musical idea to “Don’t Mind” is that dreamy piano that floats over the chorus and sounds appropriately cutesy. The rest of the production’s elements–that “Hip-Hop Beat 2” preset snare and the squelching, “Fancy”-biting synth–sound entirely like they were made in 5 minutes with the trial version of a beat-maker. The song’s beat has so much in common with chintzy dance tracks like “Crank That” or “Watch Me” that I wondered if “Don’t Mind” had a dance gimmick of its own. Answer: sort of! I looked it up, and there’s the “Don’t Mind Challenge”, which is (was?) a big thing on an app called musical.ly, which is the new cool teen app, which I hadn’t heard about until I went to research why “dont mind challenge” was on YouTube’s autocomplete, which made me feel really old once I found out where this all went. Maybe I’m thinking too hard.

We know Kent Jones wasn’t. Jones has gone on record saying that “Don’t Mind” is “pretty much all freestyle”, and looking at these lyrics, that seems less like a boast and more like deniability. The thrust of the song is that Jones is game to have sex with any woman, regardless of what language she speaks, and–huh, that sounds desperate out loud. Actually, lots of these lyrics fall apart on paper, like “She gives me desktop ’til I overload”, “I gave her the can in Kansas”, or “OKC, I forgot we met in Oklahoma” (fill in your own Kevin Durant joke here). The writing can’t cover the flimsyass and tired premise, especially when there are so many aggressively heterosexual odes to women of varying ethnicities and languages already. To wit:

Jay-Z – “Girls, Girls, Girls” (2001): Best super-dated part: Jay-Z asking a girl to write her number down for him. Worst super-dated part: Jay-Z asking his “Indian squaw” if she’s red dot or feather. I feel like this one’s hard to find online because Jay wants it buried in a post-Lemonade world. Still better than “Don’t Mind.”

Ludacris – “Pimpin’ All Over the World” (2005): Ludacris is probably one of the only rappers who can sell this shit straight, and oh my God does it work here. He compliments his girl on her outfit coordination. He honestly gets thrilled to take her places. He sounds like his life was legit changed for the better when he discovered that Canada has “Some beautiful hoes.” This might be the most mid-2000s song ever–a Ludacris single called “Pimpin’ All Over the World” that includes a minute and a half long Katt Williams skit–and it is way better than “Don’t Mind” (“Area Codes” could fit here for the intra-national category).

Young Money – “Every Girl (in the World)” (2009): A song called “Every Girl (in the World)” should be a lock here, but “Every Girl (in the World)” doesn’t mention one little country or internationality during its runtime. It fails its own premise. Young Money’s other D-grade single “Bed Rock” has avowed Canadian Drake mention sushi and wassabi in one line, and Shake & Bake and a Will Ferrell character in the next, which together is basically globalization in action. “Bed Rock” is about as good a song as “Don’t Mind.”

But “BedRock” is head and shoulders above “Don’t Mind” in terms of “rap crew hangs at a house” music videos. “Don’t Mind” has two slightly awkward moments around the same uncoordinated woman. Meanwhile, have you seen the video for “BedRock” lately? It’s a regular rap video on the surface, but there’s so much randomass, nonsensical shit happening in the background that I kind of love it! The Young Money affiliates who scamp about like unruly children. The way the pool deck scenes cut from day to night without rhyme or reason. Millz spending most of the video in a British telephone booth that just chills in the living room. Drake in that robe and carrying around a newspaper and coffee cup like he’s in Young Money’s Leave It to Beaver. A random watergun fight. Drake and Nicki’s “Hey! Stop taking so long in there!” bit with the bathroom. The love affair between Tyga and that damn camera. This has to have been the pilot for a Young Money sitcom that never happened. But I digress.

Jason DeRulo feat. 2 Chainz – “Talk Dirty” (2013): Jason DeRulo’s the lead artist here, so this should already be halfway to a failure, but then 2 Chaniz comes in with the save. Rhyming “genius” with “penis” and “Her pussy so good I bought her a pet” won’t get you points for being enlightened, but in the category where your former peer caught a W with “My pimping’s in 3D” it’ll get you far enough.

Look, the future’s always in motion. Kent Jones could turn things around and be the next Pharrell for all we know, but “Don’t Mind” doesn’t hint at that possibility. Unlike other recent pop-rap gatecrashers, he lacks Fetty Wap’s sense of self, and Desiigner’s gusto: the latter at least had the good sense to imitate someone hot at the top of their game. Meanwhile, Kent Jones has me out here thinking of novelties half his age and older. I guess I don’t mind it, and while that’s part of the intent, it’s also part of the problem.

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New Music: Gone Is Gone – Gone Is Gone (EP)

Posted on July 8, 2016 by bgibs122

GoneIsGoneThe brief behind Gone Is Gone is a feint, but a fun one. The elevator pitch for the band has been “featuring members of Queens of the Stone Age and Mastodon…plus the drummer of At the Drive-In, and a multi-instrumentalist” while the truth is, that description runs backwards to inception of Gone Is Gone. The two guys behind that ellipse, drummer Tony Hajjar and Mike Zarin, started the band, recruited Queens-man Troy Van Leeuwen, and then came Mastodon bassist/vocalist Troy Sanders to complete the set; the catalyst for the hard rock group was big riffs, not big names.

Hajjar and Zarin discovered Gone Is Gone’s sound while composing music for film trailers (you didn’t think that stuff wrote itself, did you?), and you can hear aspects to cinema scoring in the band’s sound. Even though this is a prog-ish hard rock EP, there’s nothing indulgent or out-of-place on the longer songs like closer “This Chapter” and “Starlight,” whose extended intros and codas feel earned. Everything has a point. The more head-on rockers are similarly economic, cycling through distorted riffs often enough to keep thing fresh while pivoting from loud to soft to loud again. I’m thinking of “Stolen From Me” in particular with that description: it opens with an alternating grinding and screeching riff, gets quiet, features some absolutely furious drumming and a bass-lead instrumental breakdown, and then still makes it back around the bend for a final chorus. And this is all inside three minutes! EP opener “Violescent” goes for the throat, too, with its crashing snare/guitar attack start, laser buzzsaw guitar solo, and Big Rock Finish ending. You can see how Zarin’s made a living in the scoring game: he knows how to make something that sounds exciting.

Gone Is Gone isn’t just brawny hard rock, though. While the aggro stuff has quieter moments, the composition chops really come out on mostly-keyboard interludes “Character” and “Recede and Enter.” “Character” begins peacefully enough with textured synths and clean guitar under dissociated spoken word before ratcheting the tension back up with bottom-heavy, fuzzed out guitar that interrupts the mood like a gloriously bad acid trip. “Recede and Enter” is less structured and less effective, but at least works as an exhale from “Praying From the Danger,” the EP’s most relentless stomper.

For me, Gone Is Gone is its outright best when it balances the heavy and the gorgeous the way it does on “Starlight.” While “the heavy and the gorgeous” has been attached to metal/hard rock a bunch in recent years–hello Deftones, hello Deafhaven–“Starlight” differs from, like an Incubus single because of the interplay between Sanders’ rough vocals on the chorus and the wailing, reverb-heavy melodies. It might just be the record’s best top to bottom composition, too: everything about “Starlight” from the spacey synths to Hajjar’s mood-setting drumming to Sanders alternating soft and harsh vocals to that emotive solo to the shoegaze-y ending brings its own reward in time. And, true to Gone Is Gone’s origins, it would look great with film. “Starlight” is the song I saw most dinged on YouTube for “not being like Mastodon” but with something this good, who fucking cares?

Gone Is Gone is supposed to be a prelude to a full longplayer later this year, so it’s natural to wonder what sounds will make it to the album and what won’t. When Gone is Gone plays with texture and hard rock like on “Starlight,” “Stolen From Me,” or “This Chapter” it works really well. Even a blip like “Character” wins for its inventiveness. Or, so long as they make immediate rock songs in the vein of “Violescent” they’ll still get listeners. The only time they sound like they’re coasting is on the grunting “Praying From the Danger,” a mid-tempo number in constant search of an idea.

Not to sound like everyone else for a second, but after listening to Gone Is Gone, you can see where Queens of the Stone Age and Mastodon come in as comparisons, and not just because of shared members. Queens and Mastodon represent a 21st century version of hard rock/metal: one that scratches the itch for aggressive rock music without falling down the metal subgenre rabbit hole on one side or devolving to knuckle-dragger radio rock like Five Finger Death Punch on the other. The thinking man’s headbangers, if you will. Gone Is Gone trades in that same version of hard rock, and this EP isn’t just a fit for the summer, it’s a blockbuster.

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Radio Rant: Drake ft. Wizkid and Kyla – “One Dance”

Posted on July 2, 2016 by bgibs122

Hello Radio Runts! It’s time to get moving today!

drakeonedanceIn the lead-up to VIEWS, I said the album was shaping up to be Drake’s Age of Ultron: a potentially underwhelming project victim to its own hype, but said hype wouldn’t hurt it up front. This wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t super accurate, either. Instead, VIEWS is Drake’s Jurassic World: brushed off by critics, but devouring the competition whole. In addition to going double platinum in virtually a month and breaking Beyonce’s streaming record set a week before, VIEWS has also managed to stay at number 1 since release, dethroning Queen Bey and stiff-arming pop competition like Ariana Grande, Meghan Trainor, and Nick Jonas. Hell, this Radio Rant is going up weeks after it was supposed to, and it’s still number one.

This is all according to plan, I’m sure. Assuming we take him at face value, Drake’s whole career has been a conquest from the bottom to here. You look at his beginnings, and sure he’s got a hit with “Best I Ever Had” but he’s still treated as a pop novelty, written off by critics, and seen as Lil Wayne’s version of “fetch” in rap circles. For him, nothing illustrates “the bottom” like being ignored. From there, So Far Gone and Thank Me Later established presence, Take Care shored up artistic merit and critical clout, Nothing Was the Same proved he could refine (or, less charitably, reheat) his process, and the SoundCloud tracks and mixtapes of 2014 and 2015 aimed to certify his rap credentials. Piece by piece, song by song, he started building his sad-man empire.

But he never went number one on the pop charts. And it bothered him.

This might at first look surprising. Drake has, technically, gotten to number one before (twice!) as a featured artist with Rihanna, and he has enough chart accolades to qualify for his own category at your local trivia night. Why sweat an accomplishment so trite we’ve given it to Maroon 5 a bunch of times? But he can’t sweat it, not at the level he aspires to. To Drake, a number one song would show his across the board, indisputable, Greatness; that he proved himself on the biggest stage possible in front of the greatest number of people. It’s like LeBron winning a title in Cleveland: to a(n annoyingly vocal) contingent of NBA fans, it wouldn’t have mattered if LeBron dominated in stats for both teams and sprouted wings for a half court dunk, if Golden State still won the Finals, the argument against his greatness begins and ends with “No ring” So it was with Drake: for all the Hot 100 entries and Rap Song chart records he had, there was still no number one song.

All of this is prelude to the acceptably tepid “One Dance,” Drake’s first chart topper as lead artist. After SoundCloud freebie “Hotline Bling” failed to top the charts for the most Drake-as-Charlie-Brown reason possible, and VIEWS advance single “Summer Sixteen” tanked, he returned with a designer hit to dethrone, er, Desiigner. “One Dance” is a tolerable grab bag of a bunch of trends: lots of dancehall/tropical electronica, a no-name sample big enough to merit a feature credit, loose construction, and a lack of presence by a singer leaning hard on this beat doing all the work. It’s obviously succeeded, as “One Dance” is in its 7th week atop the charts as of writing this, but as a song, it barely registers.

Any enjoyment you’re going to get out of “One Dance” has to come from that beat. Afrobeat artist Wizkid, Sarz, and OVO’s very own 40 and Nineteen85 made a track whose entrancing qualities come from the interplay between two or three different drums and somewhat 90’s synths/electronic keys with occasional synth guitar over it. It’s not a massive banger, but sneakily tempts you to dance the way “Hotline Bling” (also by Nineteen85) did, by putting space between its various sounds and inviting you to fill in the gaps with your own little tilts and sways. Honestly, getting lost between that constant thump, the reedy drums, house keyboards, and sampled Kyla is the ideal version of “One Dance.”

The most troubling thing about the song is how negligible Drake is. That’s a rarity: even early on, he was the main attraction in his music. He was present on sing-y cuts like “Hold On, We’re Going Home” or rap-offs like “0 to 100/the Catch Up”–hell, he holds the line on most of VIEWS. But here, he’s lost at sea in affected patois, strangulated melodies, and forgettable lyrics, completely dependent on the beat’s heady momentum. There’s nothing for him to latch onto, and you can see him fumble about when he does the song live. Instead of sounding sensual or mysterious, he just sounds lost out there on the dancefloor.

In fact, he sounds so adrift that the lyrics of “One Dance” come and go without an impression. The crux of things is that Drake, as is his wont, is facing problems with [issue unspecified], and trying to achieve [unspecified], and that’s why he’s drunk, and needs one more dance with you. Oh, and you need to text him back as soon as he texts you because he doesn’t want to use y’all’s limited time together fighting, and Drake totally seems like the type of guy who’d use “You didn’t text me earlier” to pick a fight (sidenote: I feel like Drake is a super-fast text responder with really wordy texts and generous emoji use. He’s probably even a frequent double-texter). But it’s hard to call any of this to mind unless you’ve got the “One Dance” lyric sheet in front of you. Think of it as Drake’s version of “Shut Up and Dance.”

It’s hard to tell where “One Dance” lands. That beat is a trend-chasing lowest common denominator, but it’s also pretty effective at its job, and the song has a broad appeal. At the same time, it sounds incredibly minor because of that broad appeal: even for pop music, “One Dance” is a mile wide and an inch deep. It’s too slight to properly hate on, but also too slight to lay on too much praise. Drake finally got his lead artist number one, and he did it with a song that’s not as good as “Hotline Bling,” “Jumpman,” “Best I Ever Had,” “Hold On, We’re Going Home,” “Headlines,” “Know Yourself,” “Forever,” “Find Your Love,” “Take Care,” “Too Much,” or damn near most of his singles (it is, at least, better than “The Motto”). I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking it. It’s just a pop song.

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You Should See Them Live: Modern Baseball, Joyce Manor, Thin Lips at Bogart’s in Cincinnati

Posted on June 27, 2016 by bgibs122

One of Stereogum’s weekly columns is the Tuesday special Album of the Week. No, Modern Baseball didn’t get it for their week (it went to Kvelertak instead), but in writing about Diarrhea Planet for their week, editor Tom Breihan led with how important it is that DP’s great live, because sometimes live shows aren’t the best. That part struck a chord with me because I had just opted to not see Diarrhea Planet live at Bunbury on a festival day that reminded me that maybe live music isn’t all that some times. Watching Dead-Mow-Five from a distance can change a person.

But then I was reminded that live shows can be kind of the best.

Everything just seemed to go right on the way to Bogart’s. To wit, I’m normally an anxious ball of GoogleMaps and watch-checking nerves between leaving my place and getting to the venue, but everything worked perfectly that night. I got to the area on time, didn’t have any will-call problems, the pizza joint across from Bogart’s made a great pie, the bartender was wearing a Hamilton shirt, and he knocked one of my drinks off because we talked about how he got to see the show. It was the smoothest pre-show you or I will ever have.

And then I got inside just as openers Thin Lips were starting their first song. My lucky streak continued with Thin Lips: they were the only band on the bill I’ve never heard of before, but their flavor of Philly indie pop-punk is so in my lane that I was a little hacked off I hadn’t come across them sooner. They looked genuinely happy to be there playing songs off last year’s Divorce Year and Riff Hard that came out in May: songs that were wiry and frantic, but had room for big choruses with big hearts. Sadly, they didn’t have any CDs at their merch table, but pointed me to their online store, and mentioned they’re on SRB Productions’ stacked comp for Orlando. Give’em a try, I left as a fan.

I came to Bogart’s as a Joyce Manor fan, and the next half hour or so only confirmed it. At least I think it was half an hour? Forty minutes? I honestly lost track of time; Joyce Manor’s stock and trade is in songs that maybe average two minutes, so they buck the usual song-to-time ratio. Okay, that and after everyone around me started going nuts during opening number “Heart Tattoo” (they opened with one of my favorites–it’s like they knew), I dropped any pretense of record keeping, and joined one of the most adorably overeager but disorganized mosh pits I’ve ever been part of.

IMG_3398It might have meant a lot of jumping kids and getting covered in the last of my beer, but the high energy mimicked the band’s performance: Joyce Manor are, to put it simply, a lot of fun live. The genius of their short songs is that they’re fully realized constructs with peaks and valleys and tension and payoff, only they’re stripped down to the essentials; all killer, no filler. And the band’s been playing them long enough that they know how to build a setlist that never blurs together and always keeps the momentum going forward. Their set drew heavily from 2014’s Never Hungover Again, but plenty of deep cuts and fan favorites (including “Constant Headache,” which at 3 minutes long is Joyce Manor’s own “Only In Dreams”) made it out, too. Their live show didn’t have stage thrills, but it didn’t need them either because they had the songs. And lots of them.

This was technically my third time seeing Modern Baseball live, and each go-around so far has acted as a snapshot of where they’re at in their career. The first time…I’ll be honest, I barely remember them playing. They were touring with Candy Hearts (one of my favorite bands) and a pair of other bands, so two of friends of mine and I went to a bar on the west side of Cincy just to see Candy Hearts play; anything else was decoration. This was 2013, so Sports would have been out for awhile, and if I strain hard enough, I can remember hearing parts of “Hours Outside in the Snow” and “The Weekend.” But at the time, they were just a band not called Candy Hearts. Time number 2 was sizeable rock shed Bogart’s, but they were opening for The Wonder Years. It was 2014, so TWY weren’t touring behind a record, but MoBo were on the upside from releasing You’re Gonna Miss It All a few months back. They still sounded like a young group, but one that was sturdier and had more confident material. It was material I didn’t know that well, but the minor breakthrough that was YGMIA–an album of neurotic but free-wheeling pop-punk–led to a big fan reception. I bought the album that night, and it ended up as one of my favorites of the year.

IMG_3404It’s hard to talk about the difference between Modern Baseball then and now without talking about their most recent album Holy Ghost and the circumstances around it. Sports and You’re Gonna Miss It All were emotional crush records, to be sure, but their worldviews came through smirks or bashful smiles: primarily, they were concerned with being awkward at parties, chatting up girls, or shit-talking condescending jerks. Holy Ghost, meanwhile, deals in self-doubt, a death in a co-frontman Jake Ewald’s family, and co-frontman Brendan “Bren” Lukens’ very public mental health troubles with anxiety and bipolar disorder last year. The band had to process a lot in the second half of 2015 before recording Holy Ghost, and you can hear it all over the album–not just in lyrics like “Pretending we feel safe right here gets harder every day” and “Planning our future without you, without me at times”–but in how resilient yet battered the album’s instruments sound, especially on Lukens’ frantic back half.

All of this just made people fucking thankful there was a Modern Baseball to headline 1,000+ capacity venues in 2016. Even though the house music was still playing and the lights were up, Lukens got a major cheer just when he walked on stage to adjust his gear. I cheered too, because the difference between Lukens now and when I’d seen him previously was striking. Gone was the nervous looking kid with a buzzcut and ball cap, and in his place was a longhair who still looked a bit withdrawn (tour’s gotta get sapping after a while), but nevertheless moved with an open confidence. Once Ewald and the other members came out–all sporting long hair and/or facial hair themselves–they stood tall, as well, as Holy Ghost‘s title track played over the PA so they could rip right into “Wedding Singer.”

IMG_3405It was back into the pit for me, but things moved with a better sense of pacing during MoBo’s set. And they played damn near everything over the next hour or so: all but two songs from Holy Ghost appeared, as did a majority of You’re Gonna Miss It All, and even a few homers from Sports like “Re-Done” and “The Weekend” showed up. The new stuff sounded great, and the older songs carried more weight juxtaposed with Holy Ghost than they ever did without it: “Apartment””s earnestness or the yearning of “Re-Done” felt more significant and almost pure standing next to heavy tunes like “Everyday” or tears-in-your-eyes closer “Just Another Face.” The band was in rare form, too, with Ewald sounding more natural and easy going as a frontman, and bassist Ian Farmer settling further into the “Backing Vox and Rock Out” bassist role.

The emo revival’s been written about so much that handwaving the excess of thinkpieces on it is the new cliche; instead, we should look think about the future of these bands. I think MoBo’s track record indicates that the future looks good, and not just because all their fuckin’ problems are based around the past. They’re now three consistent albums in, the line-up has solidified, and they’re beloved in a few different scenes because underneath it all, their music is approachable. Within the emo boomlet right now, maybe The World Is a Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid to Die or The Hotelier are bigger, but Modern Baseball seems more sustainable. As much as I love both of them, The World Is… builds their songs almost exclusively on constantly escalating, cinematic “holy shit” moments, and The Hotelier are so intensely personal that listening to them can be like staring into the sun of your emotions. Their potential for burnout is too high. Modern Baseball has that potential, too–even with treatment and support, a mental illness will never go away–but the approachability of their live show and Holy Ghost imply this band has more to offer. It all comes down to the last lyric on Holy Ghost and one of the night’s biggest singalongs: “We’re so proud of what’s to come from you.”

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