The Music Dispatch: August 30th, 2022
Inside: The Boyz, The National, The 1975 with a DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ cowriting credit, and Thee Twice. Also, The Turkish Rug picks their top 5 Arctic Monkeys songs!
Welcome to The Music Dispatch! This is a weekly part of this Substack where I shortly review every new(-ish) release I listened to. Out every Tuesday. All mentioned songs are available on your streaming platform of choice unless stated otherwise. Is there an album you want to recommend me? @ me on Twitter or head on over to the Retrospring!
Whether it’s the benign non-music that plays in your local H&M, the radio station that a local restaurant has on for most of the day, the Youtube ads that the corner at the bazaar didn’t pay for, or just the shitty music that blasts through the headphones of the guy sitting next to you in the subway, music is everywhere around us. I would wager that even before playlists and streaming, it was nigh-impossible to just about know every artist on the planet right now; sometimes this is by design, other times, it’s just an unfortunate fact of life. So much music, so little time; every decision you make leads to a ever-tightening road of fewer and fewer choices that eventually lead you to death and you have to be okay with that, to paraphrase David Foster Wallace. It’s fine. What’s actively worse is when you enter a dead-silent bookstore where the only sound is the bell ringing and you face covers like Jesus Is Our Savior or whatever. Spookiest store experience I ever had. This is why Enjoy Your Silence is better in its single version, and not the album version that tacks on silence afterward. Some of us don’t enjoy wasting batteries to hear headphones cracking!
This week in The Music Dispatch is another week of catching up.
EPs and Albums
Danger Mouse & Black Thought — Cheat Codes
Well-produced and boasting a star-studded lineup, this is a cohesive, atmospheric hip hop release. The songs that are just Black Thought as vocalist alone are great as well. This album also features a posthumous verse from MF DOOM that makes the highlight of the record, Belize.
The Boyz — BE AWARE
Be Aware as a title already presupposes that the release will simply simmer in the back of your mind; the swagger of an Achtung Baby, title-wise, this does not have. Don’t let it fool you, though, because this is a very competent collection of songs that flow well. Best of these is Bump n Love, with its vague 90s hip hop vibe and its stuttering beat recalling a skip ahead on the street, but the rest of the record is no slouch either — The Start-era The Boyz pastiche in C.O.D.E that had me sorely miss rapper Eric at points, a potent, evocative Charlie Puth ballad in Sunwoo-penned Survive the Night, Infinite-esque summer fun with pre-release Timeless. As for the title Whisper, it feels like a retread to Thrill Ride, but a bit worse: the second verse spins around in circles, the verses won’t quite stick, the hook is almost too sticky. It’s likeable, to be certain, and repeat listens make you get used to the song as a whole, but it never gels as well as The Boyz at their best.
Demi Lovato — HOLY FVCK
Other pop stars go rock, for Demi Lovato, it’s going back to rock. As much as the songs are a natural fit for her excellent vocals, they range from anime opening/endings to acceptable, if not very interesting power pop. The lyrics often veer to pop stereotype (the rhymes) than rock diary in the middle stretch as well, with the notable exception of the heartbreaking 29. The final stretch was best with melodies and production. The record is spirited, but needed one final push to burst.
Stella Donnelly — Flood
Very homely and warm throughout, the sophomore record of Australian rocker Stella Donnelly is a cozy record for an afternoon walk or a reading session. The saxophone throughout is a wonderful touch as well. Almost every song is memorable in some way, but opener Lungs and closer Cold really leave an impression.
Julia Jacklin — PRE PLEASURE
After the first two songs, the rest of Australian rocker Julia Jacklin’s third album feel by-the-numbers indie rock, even the way a midtempo song will preceed a quieter one. Bolstered throughout is Jacklin’s good sense of choruses, chiefly noted on tracks Moviegoer, highlight Love, Try Not To Let Go with its seesaw effect of a quiet verse and a loud chorus, and Too In Love to Die.
TWICE — BETWEEN 1&2
The eleventh (!) mini album is not Alcohol Free-levels of all killer, no filler, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a very strong and diverse collection of songs. Queen of Hearts features this stomping chorus that recalls 00s pop rock, while Gone is all drama and high-stakes, carried beautifully by leader and main vocalist Jihyo. Lead single Talk that Talk is a very, very charming title that feels, for the lack of a better word, just as color pop as debut Like Ooh Ahh has been introduced as seven years ago. Also, major shoutout to the title of the mini — between 1 (once) and 2 (twice) is a very, very sweet nod to the (mostly) good rapport between the fandom and the artist.
Singles
Iceage — All The Junk On The Outskirts
The Danish group’s compilation record Shake The Feeling: Outtakes & Rarities 2015-2021 begins its rollout with this rolling, grungy single that has an alarm clock running in its postchorus. I get a strong In Utero-era vibe Nirvana out of this, and frontman Elias Bender Rønnenfelt’s bluesy vocals are just as magnetic on it.
The 1975 — Happiness
Willow — hover like a GODDESS
The lead single to <COPINGMECHANISM> is quite Beach Bunny-esque, very pop rock and singalong, which is welcome considering Beach Bunny’s last offering. I do hope she has something harder and faster up her sleeve however.
Duckwrth & Syd — Ce Soir
This disco-tinged offering from indie rnb’s two darlings gels well, with an interesting ending that flowed almost too well to Calvin Harris’ single New to You that I had queued right after this one.
PinkPantheress & Sam Gellaitry — Picture In My Mind
Pinkpantheress, retro futurist of our time, goes to the club. You’ve likely heard songs like these before; this summer is full of alike songs that makes it difficult to differentiate them. PinkPantheress’s nimble vocals do make quite the nice match with the beats though.
Iceage — Shake The Feeling
While All The Junk On The Outskirts felt grungy, this one is faster paced and leans harder into the rock n roll element. That being said, though, even here there’s a grunge element swirling at the back. Though the band members are (mostly) thirty years old, the song has an older, more mature feel to it that is very enjoyable.
Jaehyun (NCT) — Forever Only
For the most part boistered by Jaehyun’s stable, warm vocals, this song adds a propulsive beat to its uninteresting guitar and steel drums to its second verse, even a final key change at the end. It’s almost like they want you to repeat this over and over. This is news to the coffee shop genre at large!
IVE — After LIKE
After Like uses a very recognizable sample that at first seems ridiculously tacked on, but later you won’t even notice exists. Absolutely robust single and yet another addition to a slim but stellar discography. My Satisfaction is the obligatory bside that is enjoyable, but no ROYAL, maybe closer to a Take It. It sounds a little like a Eurovision Song Contest entry an Eastern European country would submit in the late 2000s, I’m thinking Greece or Ukraine.
Blackpink — Pink Venom
Sometime 2018, Blackpink managed to sneak in metal into K-Pop in a way not even Block B’s subunit Bastarz have managed to the same degree and popularity/notoriety — songs like Kill This Love and How You Like That suddenly reveal their true nature when paired with proper guitars, but are essentially metal songs. Pink Venom, however, is pop. Pink Venom, to be precise, is a compilation of snippets. The second verse with its very cringeworthy lyrics consists of an oldschool hip hop breakbeat and is meant for you to tweet about Jennie and Lisa. The unbelievably horrendous, yet catchy chorus this that pink venom is meant to be embedded on a TikTok video everywhere. Jisoo and Rosé have their own sets so you can say how amazing they are without even looking at the other members, because this is how Blackpink is meant to be consumed. Everything is high-gloss when it comes to the song production — the traditional instruments and the percussion are so crisp they might as well be played next to you, even in that chorus. It’s unbelievably cool just how much swirls in the song. It’s just when people say “this is classic Blackpink” about this song, they do Blackpink a major disservice. This is easily the worst blackpink song (including campfire snooze STAY, way back in 2017), and you only tuned in because they’re the biggest girlgroup of our time. As did I, but it has to be stated.
Speaking of production, it’s funny Rosé holds a guitar in the music video and says rock and roll in the bridge when there is no guitar to be heard. Always hilarious to witness that sort of dissonance.
Phantom — Rina Sawayama
Single number 4… we have not stopped with the torch songs… we have not stopped with the inner child healing process… However, to be clear, this is the best single. This obviously comes from a very personal place; the vocal performance has so much emotion in it its hard not to get swept up from it. Its grandeur makes it the obvious climax to the upcoming record Hold the Girl.
As I listened to the other singles after Phantom, I realized yeehaw-to-hell lead This Hell now sounds totally out of line with the rest, as Catch me in the Air to Phantom paint a very consistent picture (Hold This Girl is laughable). This is no SAWAYAMA — quality-wise, mind. But i do get the feeling the full record will make the singles sound good, and that the singles will show the album’s true nature as festival therapy romp. So many torch songs…
MorMor — Seasons Change
Originally, this impression here read “2:25 of vibes”. The day after listening to this, though, I heard Turkish band Madrigal’s Seni Dert Etmeler on radio, a synthpop song with drenched out vocals that has appeared so often on dizis as insert song that I find the song ridiculous and not well done. Seasons Change reminds me a bit of that: a blend of dreampop and synthpop music that is obviously evocative but not emotional enough to really take it to the highest level.
The National feat Bon Iver — Weird Goodbyes
When Björk talked about how you can’t blame the PC for the songs not having a soul, The National nodded along sagely. The lead single, perhaps, features the kind of fluttering electronic beat and sad piano that The National had on I Am Easy To Find, as well as Taylor Swift’s last record evermore. It doesn’t ever feel like five minutes, to this song’s major credit, and despite its streaming-bait pop foundations, the lyrics and Matt Berninger’s grave vocal performance lend this song its much-needed gravitas.
Congratulations to Arctic Monkeys for also releasing their seventh album this year, the first non-Beyoncés of note to do so. In honor of The Car being announced, here’s my five favorite Arctic Monkeys songs:
R U Mine? AM boasts a singles run so iconic that the Sheffielders didn’t even bother with singles rolling out prior to follow-up Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, but R U Mine stands above the rest — the strong bass, the insane drumming, the verses that borrow from hip hop, and, who could forget, that insane guitar solo at the bridge. This is not just Arctic Monkeys’ best single, it’s one of the best rock singles to come out in the last decade, period.
Science Fiction This bside off Arctic Monkeys’ latest really leans into the slick vocals of frontman Alex Turner. As Turner admits that maybe he’s just writing songs that are too clever for his own good, it feels as though you’re watching Orson Welles appear from the shadows as a light casts upon him in The Third Man. If this is science fiction, it’s of the sharply sardonic, ennui-dripping Cowboy Bebop kind.
My Propeller Queen of the Stone Ages frontman Josh Homme brought some of the Californian desert to third record Humbug, and the drums immediately make it clear this does not have the manic energy of either Favorite Worst Nightmare or the debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Nowhere else do you hear this better on a song that doesn’t even hide its sex drive.
When The Sun Goes Down Speaking of manic energy, …Goes Down hides it for exactly forty-eight seconds before it’s there in all its glory. You try not to tap your feet at that sick riff and be swept up in this quick tale of a scummy man and the hooker that has to see him. Even back then, teenage Turner is quite the strong vocalist, carrying both emotion and fervor throughout.
Do Me A Favour The deep cut of sophomore record Favorite Worst Nightmare brings some haughtiness and drama into the mix — the protagonist has done something wrong, and the favor in question is breaking his nose, and leave him, and also stop asking questions. Throughout, the electric melody urges you to listen on, as if it’s the juiciest gossip in town.
Honorable mentions: Do I Wanna Know? (of course), Black Treacle b-side You And I with Richard Hawley, 505, Perhaps Vampires Might Be A Bit Too Strong But.., and My Propeller b-side Joining The Dots. I personally cannot wait for The Car. If the album’s good, it’s the car Charli XCX, um… crashed in. If it’s bad, she crashed into it either way. Win-win.