Album Review: Grimes – Art Angels

Posted on November 17, 2015 by bgibs122

I just wanted Claire “Grimes” Boucher to be happy.

That’s odd for an album, but given that every artistic choice or news item about Grimes between 2012’s critically acclaimed Visions and now came with its own controversy, it seems like the only thing left. She released a pop single meant for Rihanna, and her fans hated her for it. She scrapped an entire album of material. She put out a demo song, and everyone loved it. She said the “Go” wasn’t meant for the album, anyway. Pitchfork called Visions single “Oblivion” the best song of the decade so far; Grimes says she hates it, and cringes when people hear her old albums because the new stuff is so much better. She sounds irritated with the whole process, which is totally understandable: Grimes is a self-conscious perfectionist, and working under intense scrutiny, pressure, and stakes that weren’t there last go around had to be agonizing (see also: Ocean, Frank. I don’t care if I never hear Boys Don’t Cry; I just want Frank to be at peace).

The time was worth it, though; Art Angels is fantastic on almost every level. The woozy, bedroom indie pop sounds from her previous work are still present throughout, but it’s like watching a YouTube clip from 2007 versus Blu Ray. You put “Genesis” from Visions against something like “Easily” or “World Princess, Pt. II”, and “Genesis” can’t help but sound a little chintzy next to Art Angels‘ clearer mixing and powerful bottom end. Grimes’ production style here uses tons of sounds in ever-changing arrangements that are both dramatic and subtle. On one hand, you’ve got moments like the chorus on “Kill V. Maim” where the guitar tracks, vocals, and pounding drums rip the song wide open, but slick moves like “Easily” at the same time, where there’s maybe a grounding element or two, like the beat and piano hook, but all sorts of elements fade in and out like a DJ set, and these are both enjoyable listens.

Actually, screw “enjoyable.” I’ll say it out right: “Kill V. Maim” is on the short list of my favorite songs of the year. Shit’s wild (it’s the much pull-quoted “gender switching, time-traveling vampire!Al Pacino” song). The song’s built on a dry, “Since U Been Gone” style guitar riff and a skittering drum beat that left turns into a mocking cheerleader chant and then pivots into a T.Rex of a chorus with snarling guitars and massive, stomping drums, giving that cheerleader all the force of a linebacker. And Grimes sounds absolutely batshit, jumping between her natural singing voice, the hyper-feminine cheerleader chant, throat destroying screams, and sped-up wailing while tossing off lyrics that are equally badass (“You gave up being good WHEN YOU DECLARED A STATE OF WAAAR”) and taunting (“Cuz I’m only a maaaan/And I do what I can”–sidenote, this feels like the perfect backhand to “Cuz I’m a maaaaaan woman”). It’s a bonkers, subversive, “I am on my shit” banger that distills everything great about Art Angels in four minutes. I love it so.

“Kill V. Maim” is the album’s undisputed highlight, but honestly, there’s a lot of grade A material here. Third track “Scream” best embodies the album’s “I do what I want” ethos: Taiwanese rapper Aristophanes spits two surreal verses in Mandarin over guitar reminiscent of Metallica’s “Fuel”, and the chorus is just screams and baby growls. What a time. “California” and “Flesh without Blood” sound like top 40 country and pop singles beamed from the same alternate robot dimension that spits out Missy Elliot singles. But the album’s backhalf has gems, too, like big-bassed “Venus Fly” with Janelle Monae that’s a middle finger to beauty standards doubling as a club banger, or interlude “Life in the Vivid Dream” that dabbles in acoustic trip-hop.

Other favorite, the incredibly pretty New Wave track “Pin”, spins that prettiness by matching it with lyrics about cutting fingernails and the blood on your knees. That sort of dissonance is common with Grimes, but used to its greatest effect on Art Angels. She wraps these grim sentiments and diss track lyrics in brightly colored, highly concussive packages: check out “Belly of the Beast” that uses “Everybody dies, we anoint their eyes, and we dance like angels do”, or “When you get bored of me I’ll be back on the shelf” from “California”. Or hell, all of “Flesh without Blood” and “Venus Fly.” A kiss with a fist, indeed.

The talking point around Art Angels is that it represents Grimes’ sellout or radio move, which just isn’t true. She’s still making off-kilter, gonzo pop, just without a layer of synth grime to make it weird. Instead, this album’s weird derives from its overloaded sound, like the clattering sound effects and, er, laser sounds that sprinkle “California”, or the constantly shifting beat of the title track and “Flesh without Blood.”, not to mention Grimes’ frequently sped or pitched up vocals. Art Angels is a pop music record, but it’s not pop the same sense that, say Delirium is (besides, can you imagine this cover art sharing shelf space with 25?).

There’s a slight dip in the middle of the album with “Easily” and “Artangels” back to back, but even that’s negligible because the songs are interesting enough. Art Angels is a masterclass album that establishes Grimes not just as a solid performer with a distinct vision, but as a potential big name producer down the road. She produced this entire album herself, can you imagine her doing a Nicki or Rihanna track, or a Gorillaz collaboration? It’s exciting. I’m honestly surprised at how much I like this album, especially because I couldn’t stand Visions (hating Visions feels like a minority opinion, so let me explain: I respected that, Grimes doing important work, but the songs didn’t grab me and the whole project felt it skated by on aesthetic at times. Couple that with the “post-internet bb” status Grimes had at the time, and just listening to the album made me feel like an asshole for liking indie music). Art Angels is, in a lot of ways, about the frustration in making Art Angels, and that could have turned toxic. But, it’s telling that the album’s last lyric, “If you’re looking for a dream girl/I’ll never be your dream girl” is a gleeful declaration. This is a record that kicks back at a world that harries you, but it doesn’t do so out of meanness or spite. It does so to declare the best thing a record can say in 2015: Here I am, and I love myself.

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Album Review: Ellie Goulding – Delirium

Posted on November 9, 2015 by bgibs122

Ellie Goulding named her third album “Delirium” because she felt like it summed up her life, but the term describes her confusing, ungrounded place in pop music, as well. “Lights” broke out in 2012, and follow-up Halcyon/Halcyon Days kept her on the map, but Goulding has always had a sense of remove from pop’s center. She makes music that, even at its brightest, has an “outsider” affiliation, if only you can feel the distance between her profile and that of, say Bruno Mars or Taylor Swift. At the same time, she doesn’t have a cushy indie critic reputation like fellow 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack collaborator The Weeknd, nor is she especially beholden to the EDM scene, despite joint efforts with big names like Skrillex and Calvin Harris. All of this together makes for a career that pulls in every direction, but feels incoherent.

Goulding seems aware of this, and has billed Delirium as her attempt “to make a big pop album.” The move makes sense: Goulding for the last few years now has been consistent if not essential chart performer, she’s built a solid presence, and she has forward momentum from her ubiquitous 50 Shades of Grey soundtrack single “Love Me Like You Do.” In declaring Delirium her pop move and a “desire to be on another level”, she’s setting the album up to be The One: the album where the gains and exposure she’s achieved in the last few years are cashed in for a place within the pop elite. Goulding wants Delirium to be her 1989, or at least her Beauty Behind the Madness.

Calling Delirium “a big pop album” also makes sense because it’s the shortest, straightest line from question to answer in describing what the album is. There are no bids for genre radio stations, no guest verses, or no plays for hipster cred; just an onslaught of three and a half to four minute bangers-deliberately-written-as-“bangers” with the broadest appeal possible. The record stays firmly in mid-tempo electropop, where the hooks are in explosive choruses that follow quiet bridges. There’s nary a surprise to be found, but that doesn’t make Delirium any less catchy. It’s as down the middle a pop album as you’re going to hear.

This is actually less a good thing in practice than you’d think in concept. While there isn’t an outright bad song on Delirium, and I’d even hesitate to call something like “Holding On For Life” (standard big budget electropop augmented with a raved up choir backing the chorus and disco piano chords) filler, other songs hit the same pleasure centers, like the horn-assisted hook and big drums of “We Can’t Move to This.” Albums where every song wants to be The Single have this problem; even good material can feel stale without a sense of pacing or any attention to variety. On one hand, “Around U”, “Codes”, and “Don’t Panic” are all super enjoyable pop songs, but together they’re a tedious sum of ruthlessly catchy parts. I like the loosely acoustic, vulnerable ballad “Army” because, well, because it’s one of the best songs here, but I’d be all for it, if only since it’s the one time the album stops to take a breath.

I get why Goulding and company made an album where any song could be a single: Goulding has a weird (read: poor) history at predicting her hits. Her biggest songs have been last chance hits or tracks written for year-later rereleases, not fire-on-arrival lead singles. It is, in a weird way, logical for her to hurl an album of potential chart busters at the public, and let the free (streaming) market decide a single for her.

That’s not a knock on robo-bouncy lead single “On My Mind” or second, groovy offering “Something in the Way You Move”, all I’m saying is nothing stick until, like “Devotion” with its guitar loop and Daft Punk-ized vocals takes off in March. And, if it doesn’t, I’m sure whatever leads from the High Delirium reissue will do the trick. Meanwhile, fans can pull from tuneful jams like “Keep on Dancin'”, “Lost and Found”, or “Around U” for playlists. For me, the downright effervescent “Don’t Panic”, which sounds like a slightly polished outtake from Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION is a keeper, and opener “Aftertaste” and the aforementioned “On My Mind” are great, too. But, for me, “Don’t Need Nobody”, a full-bodied banger that sounds like DJ Mustard gone Top 40, is Delirium‘s best chance at pop supremacy.

It speaks to how much I like “Don’t Need Nobody” that, at ten songs in, it got me reenergized for Delirium. Like I said, I get why the album’s structured the way it is, but holy shit is it overloaded. Not only does every song playing out to the back row at Coachella, but the standard edition tallies 16 tracks in a whopping 56 minutes (the deluxe edition pushes this to 78 minutes, the longest an album can go before it defaults to double album status). This might be understandable if the record had any discernible peaks or valleys or a narrative, but that kind of length is grueling for what amounts to a collection of songs. And while they’re good songs by an indefatigable performer, I suspect Goulding will be waiting awhile longer for that next level to arrive. A long pop career is the result of a focused effort, not something attainable in fit of Delirium.

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Radio Rant: Adele – Hello

Posted on October 25, 2015 by bgibs122

Hel–oh sorry, hello to you, too, Adele.

She’s back, y’all. Rumor’s had it for a while that Adele was eyeing a November release date for the follow-up to her global smash 21, but we finally have the details on (wait for it) 25. She’s forgoing the usual album preroll for a lightning fast campaign: the album’s out November 20th, and just about everything about it only came out this week, including the lead single. I’m not sure how the blitz will pan out for her in the long run, but at least in the short-term, its accomplished the goal of making Adele the biggest news in a week that’s seen Drake release a video tailor-made for memes, and the latest waft of cologne in Justin Bieber’s tepidly tasteful comeback.

I’ll admit, it’s surprising to see Adele everywhere with barely any notice, but you have to remember that 21 was an album that was fucking everywhere. It spawned three number one hits, spent 24 weeks on top of the charts, won every award possible, and sold ten million copies in a little under two years. Taylor Swift’s 1989 might keep that pace, but Adele did it before Billboard updated their rules to include streams; that ten million was done in pure albums sold. One well-received Bond theme and three years of nothing later, here we are with “Hello” and 25, and I feel a little conflicted.

Let’s get this out of the way: “Hello” is a perfectly great Adele song. It’s stately, it’s sweeping, it sounds like a million bucks. It sufficiently tugs at the heartstrings, particularly at the final chorus around three and a half minutes in. Adele gave a sky-high vocal performance on the record, and I’m sure she will be just as great on that soaring chorus when she plays late shows and award ceremonies live with a piano to her right, and a choir behind her. The song eases back somewhat on Adele’s overt classicist production by using softer drum sounds and keeping the strings tucked in the farthest reaches of the background, and I swear there’s some textured synth sounds in the chorus somewhere. In short, “Hello” is everything you like about Adele polished toward perfection.

But, right now, I can’t say I’ve fallen for “Hello.” I can recognize that it’s a brilliant move technically, artistically, and (probab–oh, let’s not kid ourselves) commercially, but my heart’s not in it yet. A lot of it has to do with the nature of Adele’s music; historically, her songs click with prolonged exposure over months instead of within the first week or two of listening. Her brand of universal-but-specific songwriting, and detailed if unflashy arrangements sound best after you’ve gotten familiar with them, otherwise she sounds great, but boring (it’s worth noting that “Rolling in the Deep” went to number 1 in May 2011, some six months after its November 2010 debut). Come back to me later, and I’m sure I’ll be wrapped up in it, but right now I’m still looking from the outside in. Let’s see some lyrics.

“Hello, it’s me, I was wondering/If after all these years you’d like to meet to go over everything” I don’t know if this is a continuation from 21, but I don’t know that it isn’t, either. Solid introduction to bring back the Queen of Aching.

“Hello, can you hear me?/I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be” This might be the most somber song to ever use “California dreaming”.

“Hello from the otherside/I must’ve called a thousand times/To tell you I’m sorry, for everything that I’ve done/But when I call you never seem to be home” 25 is Adele’s designated “make up album”, but no one said making up was easy.

“Hello from the outside/At least I can say that I’ve tried/To tell you I’m sorry for breaking your heart/But it don’t matter, it clearly doesn’t tear you apart anymore” That’s a hell of a one-two from “You never seem to be home” to “It clearly doesn’t tear you apart anymore”. It’s a tragic progression from 21: you can miss someone on your own, but closure is a team effort.

I certainly respect and even like “Hello”, even if I feel like I’m missing something from it right now. It updates Adele’s sound and perspective just enough to feel different from 21, and it works well as a reintroduction, but it’s hardly a departure. If you’re on the Adele hype train already, this is your everything; if not, “Hello” falls into the same category of being overpowering but kind of dull, a criticism of her work that probably isn’t going away soon. On a related note, I don’t know if this sort of flash delirium album rollout will work for her. Adele’s music is a lot of things, but I wouldn’t say “urgent” is among them, and you kind of need that for these proto-surprise releases. Then again, for an artist who commands attention like she does, I’m not sure it matters. That’s why I’m okay giving “Hello” time to sink in: I know it’s not going away soon.

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Album Review: Allison Weiss – New Love

Posted on October 19, 2015 by bgibs122

You follow someone long enough on Twitter, you get an inside(ish) perspective on what they do with their time. In the case of musicians, it’s also a peek into their headspace while making an album. That can mean they’re drinking more coffee, living a healthier lifestyle, listening to something different, or even having a mental breakdown. Doing a longtime follow for indie singer-songwriter Allison Weiss means I’ve noticed that she is driving like, all the time. Granted, most artists at Weiss’ level are going to spend a healthy portion of a year crisscrossing states, regions, and time zones in the van, but she’s always at work somehow, somewhere. Be it a quick jaunt of supporting dates, an extended tour, or relocating from New York to Los Angeles following 2013’s excellent Say What You Mean, you feel every mile alongside her. She even has her own Spotify On the Road playlist.

All this is to say that of course Weiss made, well, first of all a great album, but also one of the year’s best driving albums. This is by design: lead single “Golden Coast” is about going out west to clear your head and get away from a negative space, and “Motorbike” is literally the sound of someone relieving tension by driving around. But more than touchstones, New Love is a killer road album because the whole record has a sense of forward motion; even a slower, middle cut like “Out of This Alive” cruises on clean guitar arpeggios, nimble bass, and light drumming with the inherent momentum that only comes after you’ve logged an hour into this highway trip already. It’s even possible to see the album’s arc as a drive: “The Sound” is a slow, ever building number that mirrors the rising anticipation in starting a long trip and leaving your familiar streets, while the rollicking “Who We Are” contains the excitement of hitting the open road. From there, it’s all systems go in the first half through “Good Way”, a brief, mid-drive “there’s nothing out here” zone out on “Out of This Alive” and “Over You”, followed by the closing-in rally of “Motorbike” and the title track, and the tired-eyed revelation and comfort of arriving on “The Same”.

And despite a saying about a long drive with nothing to think about, Weiss is doing plenty of thinking and reflecting during New Love. Like Say What You Mean and last year’s Remember When, the album is in the wake of a break-up, but frames the whole experience in the rear view; it’s something you only think about alone and late at night instead of being all-consuming. You can sketch an outline for the album’s thoughts on the break-up, too: after realizing she can’t stop thinking about hurt on “The Sound”, Weiss plays through an optimistic reunion for “Who We Are” before spending the album’s first half convincing herself to walk away for real (this section includes the aforementioned “Golden Coast” and “Back To Me”, an awesome song rendered heartbreaking in context), finally culminating in the crash of “Good Way”. New Love‘s back half finds her having to live with the decision, including falling to pieces over seeing an ex on social media, and trying desperately to move on from them. Weiss sums it up best in the chorus from the title track: “There’s no love like new love/You’re moving on and all I want is you, love”.

Whereas Say What You Mean‘s closer “I’ll Be Okay” hinted at some nebulous Resolution someday, New Love‘s final song “The Same” leads with “Is anybody never really over anyone?” and concludes that “we’ve all got feelings that we can’t explain/we’re all a little bit the same”. It’s the complicated emotion of moving on in some way, but maybe not in the big way you were expecting, and that’s okay.

But, New Love isn’t all high-minded ideas on four wheels and hearts in motion, it’s also a blast to listen to. The big story here is that Weiss has traded a scrappy, borderline pop-punk guitar rock for polished synth pop (there’s a really easy 1989 comparison I’m not going to make here), but the move is less dramatic than you’d think. Weiss has more prominent (and impressive) synths here, and the guitar is de-emphasized, but Heartthrob it ain’t. Even after opening with a wave of synths, “Golden Coast” still utilizes guitars in the same, single picked line way she used them previously, and “Back to Me” features reverb guitar riffs straight out of The War on Drugs playbook and a great synthed up bridge to boot. The album uses plenty of keyboards, but they get used in the context of a pop rock writer; anyone whose listened to Weiss so far won’t be surprised by these songs.

I’ve written this about Weiss enough that I’m running out of ways to say it, but she’s still one of the most underrated songwriters working today. The songcraft is still fantastic, and this album finds her adding new details, like the vocal outlines on the title’s song second verse, and coloring outside the lines somewhat. For example, the dynamics on “Good Way”–going from acoustic strumming to thick, fuzzed out guitars a mile wide–are more dramatic than she’s tried previously. And her knack for hooks and melody remains untarnished despite fairly rapid output. I called Remember When a workshop, and it pays off in Weiss sounding utterly confident when she goes big here.

If you wanted to hold something against New Love, it’s that it doesn’t have as many quick thrills as Say What You Mean, but again, that’s likely by design. SWYM was made to fire on all cylinders; NL is a sleeker, and possibly more fulfilling product, it just takes a few more spins to appreciate. The album’s outlined in great songs between “Who We Are” and “New Love”, and the rising section between “Golden Coast” through “Good Way” is top-notch. It compares to, and in my opinion, outdoes 1989 as a concept driven pop record that breaks down a relationship. The album ends without a resolution, leaving the road before us open. Good thing Weiss gave us something great to listen to on the way.

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