Monthly Archives for December 2013

Beyonce – “Beyonce”

(Photo Credit: thisisrnb)

Grade: A-

Key Tracks: “Mine” “Flawless”

Long live the queen. Beyonce caused an internet explosion the other night by nonchalantly dropping sixteen new songs (and videos) on iTunes, with no promotion or even any announcements. How no one knew it was going to happen is still astounding. Magazines and websites have taken down their year-end lists and re-tooled them accordingly. She is in no way the first to do it, Death Grips did the exact same just a few weeks back (also with video – and there’s was free), but this album is different. Its lack of a title and unannounced release back up the album’s theme of self-confidence and self-realization. At sixteen songs and a few minutes past an hour, it doesn’t always keep the listener interested, but it’s diverse sonically and consistent thematically.

This album is a little tough to classify. It’s pop, it’s R&B, it’s hip-hop. But unlike most genre-mixes like this, “Beyonce” has a mission statement, bringing lessons about mixing fun and family with a feminist touch. Beyonce has been married since ’08, and she sings a message about being independent within a marriage. There’s tracks about partying, tracks about a strong, independent composure and still, on “Drunk On Love,” lines about remedial marriage chores like doing the dishes. “Beyonce” is devoted to teaching feminism as an internal motivator, teaching that it is as much about self-confidence as it is equality. The album’s lyrics don’t always hold up, but when she is upfront (especially in the album’s latter half), they’re very strong.

There’s only five guest spots across sixteen songs on the album, cementing the album as a Beyonce effort – she’s front and center (as if we were unsure of it at all). Frank Ocean’s majestic talent is again wasted in a meaningless role, as it was on John Mayer’s recent album. But Drake shines in the very respectful song “Mine,” where he takes both a rhythmic background and a strong forefront in his verses. The other three guest spots hardly constitute as “guest spots” – Jay-Z gets a verse in “Drunk On Love,” as song about their marriage, Blue Ivy Carter’s voice is mysteriously droned in a finale song about Blue Ivy Carter, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gets sampled reading her poem, “We Should All Be Feminists” on “Flawless.”

So Beyonce establishes herself as the queen we already saw her is. The promotion works, the well-placed guest spots work, and her lyrical narrative is largely strong. Is the music actually good? Yes. Of course it is. Bey raps on “Drunk On Love,” and raps well. She boasts “I sneezed on a beat and the beat got sicker” on “Yonce.” She’s alternately sweet, on “Superpower,” booming on “Rocket,” pained on “No Angel,” and funky on the Pharrell-produced “Blow.” In other words, she’s human. She has a bunch of inconsistent and complementing emotions, that come through in a set of consistent beliefs. She believes in herself; she believes in all of us. “Beyonce” isn’t so much an album as it is a reflection of Beyonce as a person. Which is probably why the nameless album has been dubbed “Beyonce.” In a world filled with celebrity feuds, drama and boasts, Beyonce and Jay-Z have established themselves as the power couple – rich, powerful, respectfully boastful, and talented, while remaining focused on family and marriage. But Jay-Z’s 2013 contribution was a forgettable release, while “Beyonce” is not. It’s doubtful that they’re competing at all, but if they are, then Beyonce is winning.

-By Andrew McNally

Childish Gambino – “Because the Internet”

(Photo Credit: hiphopwired)

Grade: C-

Key Tracks: “I. the worst guys” “IV. sweatpants”

I’ll be upfront and say that I’ve never really gotten onboard with Childish Gambino. “You See Me” is one of my favorite hip-hop songs ever, but I find most of his other work a mix of tepid and unbelievable. Gambino is the alter ego of Donald Glover – Community’s Troy Barnes, founding member of Derrick Comedy and writer of 30 Rock’s classic “Funcooker” episode. Glover will always be Barnes to me – the endearingly naive manchild/football star. But Childish Gambino is more than a Wu Tang-generated name, it’s a whole persona. Gambino is moody and stubborn on this album, and it’s impossible to tell if it is sincerely reflecting Glover, or if it just fits into a crazy narrative.

The album is split into five parts, although the first two don’t really have any strong narrative structure. Each song is prefaced by Roman numerals, restarting at each section, which gets confusing. The first section is just two seemingly unrelated songs, “crawl” and “WORLDSTAR.” The former is dull, and the latter features some incredibly lazy rapping. The second section also seems to have no arc, although features some of the better songs (including my two key tracks, the first of which features Chance the Rapper). The third bit is a concise and slightly disturbing look at regretting throwing a party and wanting everyone to leave. It’s a cold and alienating bit, in both good and bad ways. Finally, the last two bits are much longer and more experimental, dishing out on the ironic alienation of the internet. It’s the most concise and interesting part, although it does feature a lot of clunky internet lingo like “GPOY” pretty frequently. Still, the tone of the last few songs is hauntingly engaging.

Gambino is a product of the internet age. He released the album online and promoted it online, as many others are doing. Wikipedia’s entry for the album even has the cover as a .gif instead of a .jpg. The messages about how the internet is becoming our universal language are all true and convincing, especially coming from someone of the right age. Without the original online Derrick Comedy sketches, he would’ve never been noticed by 30 Rock in the first place. The album just feels inconsistent. At points, Gambino’s rapping is urgent and frustrated, at other points it’s sluggish and too apathetic. The ideas and the experimentation are largely successful, and this ranks as one of the more original releases of the year. It just feels forced coming from the man who uttered the phrase “It touched my butt’s mouth” in the Community season 5 trailer that came out one week later. “Because the Internet” is a zeitgeist for my generation, about the headlong dive into the technological era. But it’s less experimental than Kanye’s “Yeezus,” less moody than Earl Sweatshirt’s “Doris,” and less online based than Death Grips’ “Government Plates.” Had those albums not come out within the last few months, “Because the Internet” might be a more important release. Surely, though, Glover will be back before we know it. I’ll be glued to my TV when Community comes back on.

If you like this, try: Earl Sweatshirt’s “Doris.” Though not one of the most memorable rap releases of the year, it’s one of the most consistent, and a deep look into a disturbed man.

-By Andrew McNally

Boston – “Life, Love & Hope”

(Photo Credit: bravewords)

Grade: C+

Key Tracks: “Heaven On Earth” “Sail Away”

Bands continuing on after the death a key member is no strange thing. Queen stumbled when they added Paul Rodgers, while Alice In Chains is continuing with a surprising successful replacement singer. These things happen, and whether you want to give the band the benefit of the doubt or not is dependent on the situation. Sublime should’ve stopped, while AC/DC only got bigger. But this feels different. “Life, Love & Hope” isn’t Boston moving on, it’s them remembering the life of Brad Delp. Delp was almost unmatched in rock – his voice was meteoric, screamingly loud and high while always gorgeous. And his style worked alongside Marc Bolan is ushering in rock’s glam phase. When Delp was found dead in his car in 2007, it was a crushing blow to a band that was already fading into the limelights. This album, through all it’s faults, serves as a parting piece for those of us that loved Delp. And Boston fans will want to give it the benefit of the doubt.

So let’s focus on the negatives first. There’s eleven songs on this album – eight if you don’t count reworked versions of “Someone” “Didn’t Mean To Fall in Love” and “You Gave Up On Love.” Of those eight, three have ‘love’ in the title ( that’s 5/11). There’s a lot of downtime on the album. Ballads galore, with plenty of acoustic and piano bits. Lyrically, it’s corny, it’s really corny. It’s called “Life, Love & Hope,” and my AP style insides are screaming. The glam scene that Boston had an early cog in was a largely corny genre altogether, so it’s expected, but it’s still a little over the top. And most of the album isn’t very memorable. While it isn’t bad, it’s best suited as background music and little else.

That said, Boston had one of the most definitively unique sounds ever, and this is Boston. The opening to the first song, “Heaven On Earth,” is a quick guitar slide that promises the listener that Tom Scholz has never turned his pedals off. It doesn’t have the energy of earlier releases, and there’s few (if any) solos on the album, but they still sound the same. Vocally, the album is all over the place, but it’s alright. Delp’s voice shows up on three songs, although two are previous recordings from reworks of songs on “Corporate America.” The other singers on the album, of which there’s five, simply aren’t as strong. The clever track listing lets Delp jump in at the right moments. But the addition of other singers, which include current lead singer Tommy DeCarlo, feels like a tribute instead of a fault. The album’s rough assemblage of new and old songs acts as a strong tribute to the fallen singer.

There is one new song on the album that Delp recorded after 2002’s “Corporate America.” It’s called “Sail Away,” and it’s in response to the government’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. It’s easily the best song on the album. Concise and a little more intuitive than earlier songs, “Sail Away” is a great example of how a band can still be on top of things years later.

It’s hard to believe that this is only Boston’s sixth album in thirty-seven years. I was co-runner of an embarrassing Facebook page in high school called “Boston should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” (that has since been removed). My music tastes have grown and are completely removed from what they used to be, but I continue to love Boston. Maybe because they’re named after my home city, but something always draws me back to them. And while “Life, Love & Hope” has many faults, it serves as a fitting tribute to the late Brad Delp, and as a positive notch in the history of a very interesting band.

-By Andrew McNally

Black Flag – “What The…”

(Photo Credit: Pitchfork)

Grade: D+

Key tracks: “My Heart’s Pumping” “The Chase”

Do you remember Metallica’s “St. Anger” album? Of course you do, it’s unforgettable. If their career was a cup of fine Italian coffee, “St. Anger” was the small bit of unfiltered grounds at the bottom that you accidentally swallowed. And for a while, it’s what you remembered about that otherwise great cup. “What The…” is the “St. Anger” of 2013 – a long-awaited album that has all the elements of the original band, but is just remarkably bad and with a cover so grotesquely stupid that it actually drives down the quality. People waited six years for “St. Anger,” and it sounded like it was recorded inside a trashcan. While the production is better on “What The…,” people that have been waiting for twenty-eight years deserve something better than this.

Much like those in “Some Kind of Monster,” the documentary that accompanied “St. Anger,” public troubles with the band have hurt their image recently. Guitarist Greg Ginn is the only original member left. Two of the other original members are currently touring as FLAG, also playing Black Flag’s music (having lost a court battle to use the name). It’s a mess. Famous skateboarder and early 2000’s video-game star Mike Vallely is currently in the band, and singer Ron Reyes, who sings lead in every song on this album, is no longer a member despite this album just coming out yesterday. It’s really a mess.

It’s got all the components of a Black Flag album – the only two songs over three minutes are the second and last songs. Every song is fast and heavy; urgent as always. It’s really coincidental that I always pick two key tracks, though, because there’s only two stand-outs: opener “My Heart is Pounding” and “The Chase,” which sits exactly in the middle. These two songs are the only two that really capture the band’s original hardcore sound. “The Chase” really captures the power chord brutality that made early Black Flag so great. Otherwise, I’d skip the other twenty songs. They’re all practically identical, and they’re okay at best.

Not to be mean or anything, but it’s probably not a bad thing that Vallely replaced Reyes, because Reyes voice just isn’t that good. Obviously, hardcore punk isn’t demanding a sultry, smooth lounge voice, but Reyes’ vocals just aren’t very powerful, and eventually it kind of drowns into the music. And the music itself is a weird tempo – it isn’t hardcore, but it’s faster than what I’d describe as “mid-tempo.” It’s almost like they’re restraining themselves, or are attempting to do an imitation of what they used to be. Although it sounds much more like the former, some of the song titles suggest the latter: “Get Out Of My Way” and “Go Away,” “This Is Hell” and “To Hell And Back,” “Slow Your Ass Down,” “It’s Not My Time To Go-go,” “Wallow in Despair” and the painful “Give Me All Your Dough.”

And then there’s the cover. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ album “Mosquito” was going to get two year-end awards: Most Disappointing Album, and Worst Cover. But man, we should’ve seen this coming. It looks like a school assignment that was made in ten minutes by some 14 year-old who paused his Call of Duty game when he remembered he had to do it. (That said: it’s still an undecided competition). With a cover like that, you really expect the album to be atrocious. It’s not atrocious, it’s just not very good. There’s plenty of worse albums, and plenty of more boring and unoriginal hardcore punk releases. This just shouldn’t be labeled as Black Flag, both thematically and factually.

If you like this, try: Any other Black Flag album. This is already the asterisk on their career.

-By Andrew McNally

(GIMME GIMME GIMME / I NEED SOME MORE / GIMME GIMME GIMME / DON’T ASK WHAT FOR 1 2 3 4)

Britney Spears – “Britney Jean”

(Photo Credit: Rolling Stone)

Grade: B

Key Tracks: “Alien” “Passenger”

Britney’s eighth album has been heralded by her as her most personal album yet, and a conceptual one about “the loneliness of pop life.” She’s not exactly uninformed on the subject – we all witnessed her meltdown a few years ago and her surprising comeback. But Britney is now staring down a new issue – this is her first album in her ’30′s, and she has to fight to stay relevant. Pop music can be a lonely world, and Britney knows it best.

The first track, “Alien,” works the best for the concept – a very literal song about being alone, with a feeling of reluctant acceptance about it. “Work Bitch,” the leadoff single, sees Britney giving very simple advice to younger singers who are trying to make their way (although ironic, given Britney’s instant fame). Songs later on down the album help to bolster the concept of loneliness, like “Don’t Cry” and “Passenger,” a great track about not really being in control of your life, having everything dictated. “Chillin’ With You,” a duet, would totally break the concept if it wasn’t for the duet being with family – her own sister Jamie-Lynn (remember her??).

Unfortunately, where the concept works at the album’s bookends, it almost totally disappears in the middle. will.i.am and T.I. show up for guest spots that feel out of place on a somewhat bummer record. Songs like “Body Ache” and “Tik Tik Boom,” which is not a Hives cover like I had hoped, are really just generic pop songs. The album’s midpoint sags lyrically, as Britney gives way to musical progressions that are foreign to her, instead of following through with the concept.

Musically, there is a lot on the album. The more basic nature of the opening songs gives way to moments that flirt with EDM, until the will.i.am collaboration “It Should Be Easy” dives right into it, in a dubstep rhythm that would make Skrillex proud. Spears definitely experiments around with the music of today. There are moments of heavy electro freakouts and booming dance beats, as well as her more familiar sound.

Britney still sounds as good as ever. Her voice is still strong, and still has that slight touch of snarky ego. Even on a moody album, she sounds like she’s having fun. And ultimately, that’s what makes the album succeed. Britney is doing a slight transformation, necessary with the times. Although it’s a little awkward and alienating, she knows exactly what she’s doing. The concept doesn’t always hold and the songs are somewhat inconsistent, but you want her to succeed. You spend the album rooting for her, because few stars ever have such a comeback. Give “Britney Jean” the benefit of the doubt, because it’s Britney, bitch.

The Raspberry Heaven – “Nascent Meadows”

(Photo Credit: bandcamp)

Grade: B+

Key Tracks: “Substance” “Meadow & Her Missing Wolf”

I don’t know of anyone, myself included, that’s been clamoring for a hybrid of pop melodies and emo sympathies, but that’s what makes the Raspberry Heaven sound so engaging – it’s something you didn’t know you wanted to hear until it starts playing. The band, independent and based out of Ontario, is self-described as “sad pop,” a misnomer that describes their music pretty accurately. It’s the soft subtleties of traditional pop, with the sadness and occasional lack of restraint of emo.

While some current emo-leaning bands are pushing up the volume, “Nascent Meadows” never gets much above a speaking level. Uninformed listeners could mistake “Nascent Meadows” as some sort of a lo-fi project, but it’s simply a reserved album. This is where the pop element comes in – nearly every song is kicked off by piano or acoustic guitar, creating a warm sound. The music is engaging, which strengthens the lyrics.

And that’s where some of the album’s more emo qualities come in. The lyrics are honest and personal, poetic and original. The album deals with rough topics, and it feels reflective of the people on the other side. Musically, the album treads into some different territories. “Substance” has a bit of a guitar wall at the beginning, and saves room for some gang vocals (as do a few other moments on the album). The album feels reminiscent of some of today’s lighter emo bands, if they decided to take a semi-departure from the genre.

What makes so many great albums work is hearing the musicians behind it feel invested in what they’re doing. The Raspberry Heaven – made up of Michael Hansford on Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Piano and Percussion, Jamie Chute on Vocals, Guitar and Keyboards, Rian Gravelle on Vocals, Darcy Robichaud on Guitar and Vocals, and Phillip Child on Percussion – are passionate about the music they’re creating. “Nascent Meadows” is very real and honest, and it’s evident that the band put a lot of effort into the making of the album. It’s soft and personal, and it only expands when it feels the need to. It’s a very interesting release – it seems to exist in a genre that feels foreign to listeners but natural to them. It’s got a haunting foundation-less deja vu because of it. “Nascent Meadows” will make you feel right at home, in a place you’ve never been.

The album can be streamed on their bandcamp page.

-By Andrew McNally