on the pulse - 2024 - #3 - usher, quadeca, IDLES, chelsea wolfe, chromeo, tapir!, brittany howard, blackberry smoke

Blackberry Smoke - Be Right Here - I don’t think I’ve ever fallen out of love with Blackberry Smoke - the mid-2010s run is still pretty amazing - but as they entered the 2020s, the huge, hooky southern rock swagger met Dave Cobb’s live recording and production and it hasn’t quite clicked. But this was getting more acclaim than I expected… and I think I get why, because the tones are now closer to mid-90s roots rock and soul in the guitar tunings and organ than classic southern rock; same point of origin, built for middle-aged critic nostalgia, and the guitar interplay is top notch, but the tempos are slower, the vocal harmonies are thinner, and Cobb once again can’t give the basslines any muscle. That doesn’t make it bad, but when the lyrics focus on adamantly taking no political side while getting what’s yours and taking it easy, it just feels complacent playing to a diminishing formula. Certainly an easy listen… just not much more.

Brittany Howard - What Now - So I’ll freely admit I missed Brittany Howard’s solo debut apart from Alabama Shakes - 2019 was just that kind of year, folks, a surprising number of projects for me slipped through the gaps. Going back to Jaime now, it’s a pretty colourful listen bouncing around psychedelic soul, R&B, rap, and some weirder experiments, certainly showcasing a lot of potential for a solo debut even if I’d struggle to say it all clicks or works - the production in particular felt a bit limited and tinny across the album. But five long years later with a follow-up, what did we get? Well… full disclosure, I’ve struggled a lot with this review, it’s why it’s as late as it is, because while I think this is an improvement on Jaime in terms of production and an expansive, diversified mix… I really wish it stuck for me more than it does. Part of this is a concession to the genre - this album feels more grounded in psychedelic soul, and by extension song structure is there but it’s looser and more freeform, riding progressions rather than hooks. And that stands in sharp contrast to when we get those sharper lead guitars on the title track and ‘Power To Undo’ and they feel way more memorable and punchy, even if Shawn Everett’s assistance on production creates a slightly blown out, blocky, and generally inconsistent textural feel track to track, especially around the percussion. Some of this also falls on lyrics as well - it has the feel of being written in the early throes of the pandemic where there’s this lingering tinge of pent-up exasperation as Howard tries to find more internal stability amidst difficult relationships, either through holding them together or ending them. I would say there’s an undercurrent of depression, but emotional labor is the term that springs to mind, for small-scale scenes that feel immense, established early on ‘I Don’t’, reinforced with so much second-guessing across ‘Red Flags’, ‘Another Day’ and especially ‘Samson’, and then by the closing track it feels like a long exhausted exhale, where for all that she’s shared and gone through she feels spent even despite cuts like ‘To Be Still’ and ‘Patience’ where she tries to find peace - obvious metatext on translating these struggles into art, but also very believable even if it ends off the album on a surprisingly downbeat note, where the possibilities and introspection seem to wane from focus, it’s not exactly relief. That said, along that journey there are tangible high points: the jagged, percussive swagger of the title track and ‘Power To Undo’ with just terrific guitar and bass interplay, the palpable dread amidst the wild vocal runs and unstable groove on ‘Red Flags’, the soft focus moments of ‘To Be Still’ and ‘Samson’, especially with the trumpet solo on the latter, and the out-of-nowhere vibrant house track ‘Prove It To You’ that I really loved. And overall, this is a really good album where the more listens you give it, the more instrumental flourishes will catch your ear, but I would argue the strongest songs here are just in a different tier and it makes the structural questions feel more glaring. You’ve probably heard it by now - if you haven’t, absolutely worth a shot.

Tapir! - The Pilgrim, Their God, and the King of My Decrepit Mountain - It wouldn’t be a year in the 2020s without a strange, UK-based experimental act coming from out of nowhere and getting a ton of critical acclaim, and Tapir! fits in that niche, but also a bit outside of it. In comparison with the grand theatricality and post-punk of many of these acts, this band leans more on progressive indie folk - more sedate and midtempo, calling to mind as much of the late 90s prog scene with the occasional smoulder or splash of programmed percussion in its cycling melodies as the other high-concept experimental acts; of course that will spawn the obvious Radiohead comparison, but I’m not sure it’s fully apt: this feels more pastoral, pulling from older eras of folk that’s allowed to be a little warmer, not quite as twee as Joanna Newsom or Sufjan Stevens or conversely as wild as Richard Dawson, but somewhere in the middle that almost remind me of mid-60s psychedelia. Now this debut reminds me a little of North Georgia Rounder by Pony Bradshaw in that chunks of this album were captured on EPs from the last two years, but now compiled together we’re getting a full picture, and… well, if you walk away feeling generally pleased but not exactly clear what’s going on amidst a thematic arc that seems to leave more questions than answers, the intended experience may have been reached. It can almost feel more like a theater piece with the poetry conveying a broad scope of emotion rather than a direct narrative throughline, even if each four song act seems to set one up: the ‘pilgrim’ setting out to venture on land, on sea, and into space up the mountain. And from there you can piece together some consistent iconography and themes - the first act is the beginning of a journey into the unknown with hints of self-discovery, the second venturing into a storm-tossed extent, where if there is a lost heaven found it’s one rife with decay, and the third act climbing that mountain and finding… well, not much of anything, where the language abruptly begins referencing modern things that have filled in a place of God, or whether that murky shade has been in you the whole time. It is intentionally misty and eludes analysis, but you get the impression that’s part of the point, not just from how folklore runs on the qualitative, dream logic and veiled meaning rather than a straight answer, but also a modern parallel to life and nostalgia, which is full of tempestuous unknowns and is way less prescriptive of purpose than we’d want it to be. And it’s interesting how Tapir! frames all of this through otherwise very earnest folk music and why the mid-60s parallel feels intentional, not just in a cute self-referential way in how so much of these pastoral questions of purpose and identity feel reminiscent of that era, but also for how much nostalgia one might have of that time, they didn’t find much in the way of answers either - it’s one reason I don’t want to call this a deconstruction, because while there is metatext about a band’s journey and how so much old folk music never found those answers, that meandering search for higher purpose and self-discovery in this framing has always had tangible power. And I chalk a lot of that up to the album’s sound as well - the shuffling brittle patter of the drum machines, warm twangy acoustics and strings rolling over misty synths and wispy touches of horns, the occasional jagged smolder of electric distortion in the second act, subtle choral vocals around the winsome lead, where the hooks of songs like ‘On A Grassy Knoll’, ‘Broken Arc’, ‘Eidolon’ are low-key but deceptively strong… or hell, maybe it’s just the songs like ‘My God’ and ‘Swallow’ that I can imagine slipping into the weirder side of 2000s adult-alternative, or the ramshackle crescendo on the excellent closer ‘Mountain Song’. But to pull it together, I’m a little stunned by how much this really resonated with me - maybe it’s nostalgia for sounds I’ve liked for years pushed through a metamodern framing that can prod at the edges while still finding an emotional core, maybe it’s the gorgeous, shaggy production, maybe it’s the feel of experimentation that’s so fully formed that a long gestating debut can stick the landing. Whatever it is, this is an excellent album - you’ve probably missed it, you might not get it, but please give it a proper shot!

Chromeo - Adult Contemporary - …it sure is a Chromeo album? The unfortunate reality with this duo is that once you’ve heard one album of their throwback 80s funk/disco fusion, which is pleasantly chintzy, slightly silly and more political than they can sell, you’re not getting much variation. And given how indie funk, nu-disco, Thundercat, and especially Silk Sonic play a similar template with way more charisma, Chromeo’s lower ceiling is hard to ignore. That said, this is a return to form compared to Head Over Heels - the synth patches are fuller, the bass grooves are sharper, there’s more guitar, vocal overdubs, and saxophone, and even if it’s longer, cleaner, and more uniform, the hooks are better. Lyrically it careens from wry cleverness to oddly clunky jokes and “tasteful” earnestness stealing a sleazy wink at the camera - getting older in this sound is never easy - but it’s not surprising; if you like Chromeo, you’ll probably dig this, maybe even more than you expect.

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She - The weird thing about Chelsea Wolfe albums is that I often appreciate the textural experience of the album, but increasingly am left wondering if a stronger core is missing. Yes, I think the haunted dread of Apokalypsis probably still has it as her best for me, and the one-two punch of Abyss and especially Hiss Spun can feel viscerally effective if you dig out the horrors within as the mixes got heavier and crushingly bleak, but 2019’s Birth of Violence lost me hard, as without the atmosphere the weaknesses in writing, composition, and performance start feeling more obvious. But it’s been five years since a proper solo album - she’s done some collaborations and soundtrack work in the meantime - so signing to a new label at Loma Vista, getting Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to produce, and reportedly dabble more in trip hop and industrial music as well as get sober… well, it certainly sounded intriguing. And… look, if you go back to Hiss Spun, it’s not as if Wolfe didn’t touch on more industrial grooves before, but there’s definitely been a textural shift: the walls of buzzing distortion, crushing bass, shuddering vocal samples - where there are even a few palpable riffs and more developed percussion grooves - and especially the closer, clearer vocal placement is built to be much more immediate, and it’s hard not to feel like that’s a misstep. On records like Abyss and Hiss Spun there was crushing immensity, but also dimensionality and layers within the nightmare that rewarded a careful listen for the subtler details, whereas here there is bricked out compression and lack of greater dynamic range that’s more reminiscent of the darkest mainstream-adjacent alt-metal that could even cross over; if Hiss Spun was Wolfe’s The Downward Spiral, this is her The Fragile. Now on the one hand, if you were going into trip hop, I’m not sure how it’s a good idea to get clunkier and less subtle… but on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be a misstep - potentially giving the hooks and groove more direct punch might help them stand out more, or amplify a really strong performance from Wolfe… and honestly, I’m not hearing much of either. The vocals in particular - I went back to those earlier albums, even amidst the despairing, nightmarish production where she struggled to be heard there was a tangible struggle that drew emotional investment - her vocals here are more composed and prim, where you can clearly tell she’s reached the other side, where there’s just not that same intensity or fervor. She still has a really pretty ethereal tone, mind you, but when the more immediate mix will reward firepower, I’m not as compelled by her choice of delivery here. Now in due fairness, this makes sense when you look at the lyrics and themes, where notably she’s exploring the hard process of getting sober and away from a bad relationship, leading to arguably some of her most optimistic songs to date - intensely tempted to slip back into that miasma, self-aware of how it has been commodified in broad daylight, and maybe leaving the implication that a return might just be inevitable, but for now, there is progress forward, and I genuinely like how she places this in the context of her old work composed under the influence, not to invalidate it but to show the path of where it leads, past and future. So necessarily the poetry may feel a bit less gut-churning and descriptive… and thus I’m left with a similar sinking feeling after Birth of Violence where it just doesn’t feel as unique or distinctive. And thus to put it together… it’s frustrating because it’s obvious that this album is transitional: new label, new producer, better state of mind so it makes sense that her writing feels less impressionistic to fit the less atmospheric production. But when you do this and the hooks and vocals don’t pop as strongly to compensate, it feels like a misstep and a front-loaded album really starts running together, good ideas literally blunted in execution. And I thought some of this might be due to me hearing more abrasive, experimental material over the past five years… but I went back to both Abyss and Hiss Spun, and if anything I like them more than I did years ago! So for this… it’s decent, honestly may be a good jump-on point for folks who find her other work too bleak or difficult, but I really wanted to like it more.

IDLES - TANGK - The last time I reviewed IDLES for Crawler in 2021, I was left with the lingering feeling that the wheels might be coming off the train, that IDLES might be a more limited act than their early potential suggested. Granted, I thought Crawler was a misplaced overcorrection to some of the bad faith critique of Ultra Mono - the issue was never that they shouldn’t be funny or memetic, it was that the grooves were getting stiffer and there was a sour arrogance that was making their broad sloganeering less appealing. So I appreciated Crawler for at least trying to find more pathos, but they did so at the expense of their unique energy for by-the-numbers dour UK post-punk, where it’s a bad sign that for the album trying to be more melodic, I can barely remember it. So, going into this album, another pair of corrections: a thematic refocus on love, and the recruiting of Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich to coproduce alongside Kenny Beats, which was reportedly done to further expand IDLES’ sound with more analog tape loops and further focus on melody. So did it work? Well… somewhat? The frustrating thing about TANGK is that the more listens I’ve given it, the more I’ve found details and flair that are going underappreciated - like with Crawler and Ultra Mono, I think there is more emotional substance and nuance than IDLES will normally get credit, but it’s also easy to see why it’ll get missed because the band’s performance, formula, and flaws feel more immediately obvious. Part of this is that IDLES are continuing the genre experimentation but with a lighter touch - more programmed beats, hollowed pianos, a bit of strings and saxophone, more dance rhythms that include a collaboration with LCD Soundsystem, even drawing on jungle for a song… well, called ‘Jungle’ that I’d consider a highlight. But one of IDLES’ greatest strengths was their wild immensity that Space gave them on the first two albums that made their grooves so lively and powerful, and while it’s less clunky than Crawler, a very slow opening stretch and muted ending makes the project feel lacking in firepower, and while Talbot is trying to sing more and show tenderness on an album about love, the argument that you had to gut your muscle to do it feels misplaced. And I don’t think Nigel Godrich does IDLES any favours contributing to an wildly slapdash production job - the fidelity can feel painfully inconsistent track to track when not swallowed in claustrophobic compression or greyscale feedback - there’s no excuse for ‘Dancer’ to sound that bricked - the percussion is brittle and underpowered, and there’s a weird airless sterility to the mix, especially to how the vocals sound pasted on top. I’d say it doesn’t work for any sense of atmosphere, but that’s not quite true: Godrich’s slightly rounded ethereal touch around distortion and loops is absolutely noticeable, and there are ballads here where Joe Talbot’s singing can make sense in that space, but reportedly it was an awkward recording experience with Talbot improvising lyrics on the fly and that absolutely comes through in the execution. Speaking of lyrics, a lot has been made about how Talbot’s poetry feels broad and slapdash, where the passionate earnestness can’t fully absolve some underthought choices, which I think is half-true: Talbot is the sort of writer and performer that sucks up all the oxygen in a room, often on sheer blunt volume, and writing about love in that way will alienate some audiences who don’t want to match that intensity, and that style of writing can be an odd fit for the slower songs. Where I think the mistake comes is the conflation of sincerity with simplicity, and where Godrich’s offkilter choices can make sense in highlighting just how that sort of love can be smothering or at the very least a handful, of which Talbot seems somewhat aware. It does not always work - ‘Roy’ is melodramatic to a concerning extent, where the montage of breakups on ‘A Gospel’ is handled a lot better, and I can see how the performance on a song like ‘Hall & Oates’ might be taken more literally as a weird misstep when love for friends is conflated with a famously dysfunctional duo. But again, I think IDLES are mostly aware of the pitfalls of this sort of over-the-top passion can have, because another aspect of ‘love’ they comment on is nationalism and British monarchy, highlighting a juxtaposition between a purer love for his child to the exploitative reverence cultivated for the royal family - there’s a deeply felt optimism in recognizing how much that love of any stripe can mean, but where and how it’s placed matters just as much; it makes a lot of sense that the album cover is an explosion. But as a whole… again, I see a lot of the underlying logic behind some of these choices and why the album has been so polarizing, and I think there’s more to like here than Crawler in terms of pure hooks and grooves. But it’s nowhere close to their best because not only are IDLES working away from a proven formula, there’s a pervasive half-studied but also thrown together awkwardness where the experimentation has just as many misfires, a focus on doing a lot rather than doing it well. Attempts were made and I can respect that - enough work to call this a good album, especially by the back half - but I’m sorry, I can’t love this.

Quadeca - SCRAPYARD - I’ll freely admit that when I reviewed I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You in late 2022, I didn’t expect the scale of the backlash, although in retrospect it is rather revealing of the audience. And I’d like to spend some time dismantling bad arguments made in that album’s defense - just because it’s ambitious and experimental doesn’t mean it works, especially compared to the washed out glitch and industrial and art pop from which he was drawing influence - he’s not Trent Reznor or Justin Vernon or any number of indie Bandcamp acts who have mining this sound for decades and who can be just as hit-and-miss for me, especially the reality that if you make experimental art you build in a higher variance of it not working for every audience and expecting critical consensus is asinine, and most especially going back to it now, the problems I brought up are still here! Because I wanted to be fair, I went back to it before this review, and for as grandiose as the soundscapes try to be, it’s still a weirdly offkey and haphazardly mixed slog with a fidgety claustrophobia that doesn’t flatter its theme or dynamics, blown out percussion and a shallow, petulant lyrical arc, all delivered through Quadeca’s drippy, overprocessed warbling and limited rapping - and of course that’s the intended atmosphere, I get what it’s trying to do and why to certain younger audiences there’s an emotional resonance, and hell, at the time I didn’t even call it bad so much as an experiment that didn’t work for me, where I was probably most negative on the content and I didn’t see nearly as many defenses of that. I think that might have been missed by the audience, to be polite, but once I started seeing the critical acclaim coming in for this mixtape, a compilation of three EPs from last year plus new songs - there was originally going to be five EPs and the last two were, well, scrapped for this - heralded as a return to something less conceptual and intentionally more ragged, I figured I’d give Quadeca another proper shot. And to his credit, it’s probably the most I’ve liked a Quadeca album - on a looser mixtape he’s not beholden to a grand concept he can’t really pull off, where the messy emotionality has space to breathe alongside his production experiments, venturing more towards burbling hyperpop and the glitchy side of modern hip-hop reminiscent of the last Injury Reserve album or maybe even BROCKHAMPTON, it makes sense that both brakence and Kevin Abstract show up, the latter who delivers some really nice vocal interplay for a great closer. Granted, it also explicitly calls back to previous Quadeca albums as some of these songs were leftovers or were previously linked to them - which creates an interesting bit of metatext in the heap of criss-crossing pieces thrown alongside each other, fitting the theme of trying and not exactly succeeding to stitch all of it together in life and awkward relationships, less a culmination and more a mosaic where disparate pieces make a degree of sense at a distance. And I say that because if you start drilling into the fine details and looking closer, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Quadeca as a rapper and singer is still the weakest link in his own work, which creates a weird hollowness to this project. At his best, his emo side in struggles with relationships and self-image are probably his most compelling on songs like ‘PRETTY PRIVILEGE’, ‘UNDER MY SKIN’, and the achingly psychedelic ‘WHAT’S IT TO HIM’ as his singing has gotten better, and I like in the callbacks to I Didn’t Mean To Haunt You he seems a bit more mature - that open communication and growth is why ‘TEXAS BLUE’ is such a great closer - but it’s juxtaposed with so much awkward petulance, ambiguous ideas that rely on detail that’s not there or a performance that feels underpowered, and returns to braggadocious bars that have never impressed me; I know some of it is intended as ironic self-aware commentary, but he can’t really sell either as a presence on the mic, especially when he drowns himself midway back in the mix with vocal effects. And it’s not like the other issues with Quadeca’s production have gone away - it’s still claustrophobic in its jagged, awkward mastering where the bass openly clips the mix, it’s not especially tuneful even despite the plethora of arranged patches that try to evoke some orchestral swell, the mix dynamics never seem to flatter them the way they should, the majority of melodic hooks relying on Quadeca’s vocal line which again can be hit-and-miss, and with no sense of momentum in the track sequencing with whiplash transitions the album still finds ways to drag despite being shorter with a decent few abbreviated cuts. I will say that Quadeca moves more out of the shadow of his influences - his sound feels like more of his own - but again, his choice of clashing tones can be a real mixed bag, often grainy and unflattering as many times as it can be evocative. It’s frustrating because I do hear glimpses and improvement, I understand some of the acclaim, and I think at a distance this can work… but if I go even a bit deeper, the pileup of production issues paired with the lyricism and performance that feels thin, where the initial experiment results are promising, but further testing might be needed, I’m not mesmerized just yet. If you’re curious, this is the definition of a project that works best in pieces, you’re certainly not going to hear much like it and it might just really resonate… I just don’t think I’m fully there, it happens.

Usher - COMING HOME - The odd thing I’ve noticed about Usher’s career renaissance the past year or so has been less a change in what he’s doing and more recognition that the culture hadn’t been giving him enough attention for whatever reason. Yes, he’s very much riding on his legacy - that’s how you get a Vegas residency and perform at the Super Bowl to persistent acclaim - and sure, the classic albums were decades behind him, but I’m willing to bet that most folks outside of R&B or his diehard fans weren’t familiar enough with his albums to really articulate why he slipped out of mind. And… well, the truth is that even including his classics, Usher albums are nearly always too long, singles-heavy, and wildly uneven, and while I might appreciate his charisma and goofier side and occasional ridiculous vocal showcase, you often have to wade through a lot to get to the best moments, especially as Usher’s record with more contemporary production can be very hit-and-miss; that 2018 collab with Zaytoven was the most glaring example, and I definitely overrated Hard 2 Love back in 2016. But hey, he seemed ready to meet the moment with this album… and I’ll give Usher this, he sounds more tangibly engaged and more comfortable on this album than he has in a long time, and that immediately makes this easy for me to like, but that does not get away from the usual Usher album issues. For starters, like with Hard 2 Love there are songs that feel like they’ve been added to pad a runtime that didn’t need it - ‘Risk It All’ with H.E.R. from The Colour Purple is one example I might have liked if the vocal mixing was remotely consistent, as is that ‘Standing Next To You’ Jungkook remix - and at least from a content standpoint it’s hard not to think that there are a few redundant cuts here that could have been trimmed; I don’t know why anyone thought ‘Margiela’ was a good idea beyond just being a commercial, I’m fine with Usher sticking to his wildly detailed melodrama than modern brand name porn. And that’s before we get to the cuts with sloppier mixing, overprocessed vocals, and rapping that remind me more than they should of Chris Brown on songs like ‘Stone Kold Freak’ and ‘Luckiest Man’ - it doesn’t surprise me, Usher’s trying to stay current, but it’s hard to escape the feeling he’s chasing a sound that doesn’t flatter him rather than forging more of his own, and by the time you’re in your mid-40s with a cemented legacy and dignity, you don’t have to do this. The most obvious example is probably ‘A-Town Girl’ - yes, with the Billy Joel sample, it’s as ridiculous as you can imagine, I unironically really liked the over-the-top silly vibe and how much Usher committed to it until Latto’s verse killed the energy - but a song like ‘BIG’ is worse with the other side of the Vegas cornball energy with that wonky horn section balanced with that synth bass and some truly embarrassing lyrics, we didn’t need ‘Carry Out’ Part 2! On the other hand, I think both of Usher’s collabs with Afrobeat artists like the title track with Burna Boy and ‘Ruin’ with Pheelz are really good in giving him more supple, organic groove, and when he gets cowrites from Lucky Daye on ‘Please U’ or from D’Mile on ‘One of Them Ones’ and ‘I Love U’, it taps into a more mature modern side of R&B that I wish Usher could make more alongside the solid Jermaine Dupri cuts. Then there’s the pop songs with sharper, synthpop-inflected beats - I grew up with Usher in the club boom era, this is an easy sell for me, probably more than ‘Cold Blooded’ with The-Dream that sounds like a 2012 retread from The Weeknd - and if all of this is coming across like Usher trying to prove that he can do everything… well, for the most part on talent alone he can, but as an album experience it’s more of a scattered collection than a cohesive whole. And that makes sense - that’s been the Usher experience for nearly twenty years, and to his credit as a old-school consummate showman who can just wow you on pure talent, this is a more colourful and engaged version of Usher playing the game like he always has, and it’s hard to deny that in this vein of pop and R&B, he can do what everyone else does as well if not better. I think my frustration is that I know he has the talent to push his formula to more ambitious heights, maybe get a bit more unique or conceptual - Confessions proved that in spades - so that the mainstream comes to him, not the other way around… but you also have to judge the album you get, not the one you want. As it is, it’s tough to put his albums on a scale because 8701 and Confessions are just in a different tier compared to everything else, but accepting the usual Usher album issues, and how I’m not sure there’s a jawdropping standout like ‘Climax’ or ‘Good Kisser’, I would call it one of his stronger releases. Fans will adore it, non fans will probably find something to like, and while I have my long-running hang-ups, I can’t deny that Usher effectively succeeded in what he was trying to do; generally enjoyable listen, good stuff.