Movie Diary

Thursday, October 31, 2019








a) Dolemite Is My Name
After a fairly inactive period (one movie, the flop drama Mr. Church, in the space of 7 years), Eddie Murphy signed with Netflix for a flood of upcoming projects, including multiple standup specials and Coming To America and Beverly Hills Cop sequels, and will soon host "SNL" for the first time in decades. Dolemite Is My Name is the first taste of Murphy's return to comedy, a biopic of blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore, and it's a pretty enjoyable celebration of an underdog's triumph and the cultural space that black comedy occupied a decade before Murphy became a crossover star. The scenes of them filming the (low budget) movie within the (high budget) movie were my favorite parts and at times reminded me of the last Murphy comedy I really enjoyed, Bowfinger. Murphy's performance was a little flat for me, though, I'm still kind of wondering if he lost a lot of his once innate ability to make people laugh -- Wesley Snipes was really the funniest person in the room whenever he was onscreen.

b) Happy Death Day 2U
Happy Death Day was a really enjoyable and well executed horror twist on Groundhog Day, so I was curious to see what they'd do with a sequel. One of the things I liked about the movie is that they left some of the mystery unresolved, so I was a little wary of the whole sci-fi twist of the premise to explain what happened. But they had a lot of fun with the concept, which veered into Back To The Future Part II territory but managed to stop short of total Hot Tub Time Machine 2 wackiness. Jessica Rothe's performance in this was arguably more impressive than the original, she just had to do more and pull off more full-on comedy, they really found the perfect star for these movies.

c) Boo!
I was amused by a horror movie simply being called Boo! but this really turned out to be pretty good for a low profile movie that didn't get a wide release. The final scene was one of those really unhappy endings that I always kind of admire horror movies for sticking the landing on.

d) Halloween
As far as the big '70s/'80s horror franchises go I've never really followed the Halloween movies closely. But I still thought it was pretty cool that they brought Jamie Lee Curtis back and brought the story full circle, it was really excellent and had a cast full of people I love including Judy Greer and Toby Huss. I also loved the whole bit with the 2 people making a true crime podcast about Michael Myers and what happened to them. I didn't realize until after I watched it that David Gordon Green directed it and Danny McBride co-wrote the screenplay, I think this worked a lot better as horror with a little comic relief than a lot of the stuff they've done that stuffs a bunch of action and violence into a comedy.

e) Gotti
It's simply amazing to me that Kevin Connolly starred in "Entourage" and then directed a crime biopic that is every bit as ridiculous and ridiculed as Vinny Chase's Medellin. I found it more boring than entertainingly bad, though. 

f) Breaking In
Pretty good tense movie, I love a good home invasion thriller, particularly one where the heroine rises to the occasion and fights back like a badass.

g) A Turtle's Tale: Sammy's Adventures
My younger son always manages to find these random C-list computer animated movies on Amazon that I've never heard of, this one was pretty cute, kind of traded heavily on the appeal of the sea turtles in Finding Nemo.

h) The Haunted Mansion
Another random movie that my son picked out to watch while he was really into Halloween movies, from Eddie Murphy's family-friendly comedy era. Pretty inoffensively bland, but I was amazed that he watched the whole thing, or at least half-watched it while he was building legos.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 156: Gang Starr

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

















Gang Starr's 7th album One Of The Best Yet will be out this Friday, so I wanted to look at their career up to this point. Guru died in 2010, and he spent the last few years of his life on the outs with DJ Premier and seemingly under the control of his late period collaborator Solar, a sad ending to one of hip hop's greatest duos. So I never really thought we'd get a posthumous album of unheard Guru verses over new Premo beats, and I'm excited to hear it, could be a nice final chapter to the group's complicated ending.

Gang Starr deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Now You're Mine
2. Work
3. Name Tag (Premier & The Guru)
4. Soliloquy Of Chaos
5. Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
6. Tonz 'O' Gunz
7. No More Mr. Nice Guy
8. Daily Operation
9. Moment Of Truth
10. The Ownerz
11. Speak Ya Clout featuring Lil Dap and Jeru The Damaja
12. All For Tha Ca$h
13. What You Want This Time?
14. B.Y.S.
15. Above The Clouds featuring Inspectah Deck
16. Mostly Tha Voice
17. Gotch U
18. The Place We Dwell
19. Battle
20. Robbin Hood Theory
21. Who Got Gunz featuring M.O.P. and Fat Joe
22. Blowin' Up The Spot
23. Conspiracy
24. Betrayal featuring Scarface
25. DJ Premier In Deep Concentration
26. The Meaning Of The Name

Tracks 7, 17 and 25 from No More Mr. Nice Guy (1989)
Tracks 3, 5, 13 and 26  from Step In The Arena (1991)
Tracks 4, 8, 14, 18 and 23 from Daily Operation (1992)
Tracks 1, 6, 11, 16 and 22 from Hard To Earn (1994)
Tracks 2, 9, 15, 20 and 24 from Moment Of Truth (1998)
Track 12 from the Full Clip: A Decade Of Gang Starr (1999)
Track 19 from 8 Mile: Music From And Inspired By The Motion Picure (2002)
Tracks 10 and 21 from The Ownerz (2003)

It's funny, sometimes I will think of Gang Starr as having perfected the sound of New York hip hop, and then I'll remember that Premier was from Houston and Guru was from Boston. Gang Starr had a pretty great run, progressively making bigger and arguably better albums for a decade until they finally broke through with their first gold album, Moment of Truth, and went gold again a year later with their 2-disc compilation Full Clip, which I listened to a lot when my brother bought a copy. Gang Starr were always kind of underdogs, as evidenced by the fact that it was a big deal when they finally went gold a couple times in an era when their contemporaries, many of whom used DJ Premier beats, were going multi-platinum.

As I've said in this column before, sometimes a group having a great best-of comp can kind of tide you over to the point that you don't appreciate their proper albums enough, especially in the CD era when it felt redundant to buy both. Getting a 120-minute primer in a catalog that at that point had 5 proper albums meant that Full Clip was the first place I heard a lot of Gang Starr album tracks, and 8 tracks on this playlist were also on that comp, including one of the new songs made for that release, "All For Tha Ca$h," which I always loved. Full Clip also covered a number of their soundtrack contributions, so I wanted to include just their most notable soundtrack song that came later, from the quadruple platinum 8 Mile soundtrack.

A while back I got to interview DJ Premier and it was just such a thrill to talk on the phone for a few minutes with a guy who was a big part of my falling in love with hip hop and still one of my favorite producers, and hear him make sound effects with his mouth to describe different kinds of DJ scratches. The way he chops samples is just incredible to me, often taking these shards of 2 or 3 different records and fitting them together like jigsaw puzzles into catchy little riffs. And going back through Gang Starr's albums, I was reminded how varied the drums could be on his tracks, not just the straightforward boom bap he's associated with.

"Work," originally made for the 1998 movie Caught Up and then included on Moment Of Truth a few months later, has long been one of my favorite Gang Starr tracks, it wasn't a single but I remember it appearing on the free CD compilation that came with the CMJ issue when the album came out, and I was just blown away by it. So I've been happy to see "Work" become a sleeper hit over the years, their most frequent song featured in TV shows and their 2nd-most streamed song on Spotify ahead of most of their radio singles.

Some of the 13 Gang Starr songs that provided the episode titles for season 1 of "Luke Cage" included the deep cuts "Soliloquy Of Chaos," "Blowin' Up The Spot," "Now You're Mine," and "Moment Of Truth." No More Mr. Nice Guy's title track featured the first flip of Myra Barnes's "Message From The Soul Sisters" that was later imitated on the Geto Boys' "City Under Seige," LL Cool J's "God Bless" and most famously the Lil Kim hit "No Time." And "Gotch U"'s chop of James Brown's "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" became the basis of Kanye West and Jay-Z's "That's My Bitch." A couple years after Gang Starr released the album track "Robin Hood Theory," their friends M.O.P. referenced it in the title of their biggest hit, "Ante Up (Robbin Hoodz Theory)," which wasn't produced by DJ Premier but does appear between two Premier-produced tracks on Warriorz.

When I took my CD of Hard To Earn out to the car to listen to last week, I was struck by the back cover stating "produced by DJ Premier and Guru" and remembered how much Guru helped guide the sound of these records and . DJ Premier produced tracks every album that Biggie, Jay-Z and Nas released in the '90s, so there's no shortage of great MCs on Premo beats, but he had undeniable chemistry with Guru and stretched out and did some of his most interesting work in Gang Starr. Guru, the self-proclaimed "king of monotone," doesn't get brought up in conversations about all-time great MCs as much as he used to, but he's a great subtle writer who should be remembered more for his clever turns of phrase than his occasional awkward "lemonade was a popular drink" lines. I think "Tonz 'O' Gunz" is one of his best performances, the song sounds tough as hell but you don't miss that it's a lament about gun violence that considers a lot of different perspectives. At a time when the walls were starting to come up between 'hardcore' rap and 'conscious' rap, Gang Starr bridged the gap.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

























Miranda Lambert's 7th album Wildcard will be out this Friday, so I wanted to look at her career up to this point. I've done relatively few playlists for country artists in this series, so I'm always looking to do more (previously: Brad PaisleyGeorge JonesDwight YoakamShania TwainTaylor Swift, and Eric Church). and Lambert is probably the defining female country star of her time -- more acclaimed than Carrie Underwood and more commercially successful than Kacey Musgraves, she's right in that sweet spot of sales and respect. And even though she's receded a little bit from the mainstream in recent years (ironically, 2014's Platinum was her first album that didn't sell a million copies), a new Lambert album is pretty big news.

Miranda Lambert deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Down
2. Me And Your Cigarettes
3. Tomboy
4. Fine Tune
5. What About Georgia?
6. Getting Ready
7. Priscilla
8. Maintain The Pain
9. Pink Sunglasses
10. Girls
11. I Wanna Die
12. Dry Town
13. Highway Vagabond
14. Look At Miss Ohio
15. Old Sh!t
16. Guilty In Here
17. Dear Diamond
18. Love Song
19. Bad Boy
20. Greyhound Bound For Nowhere
21. Better In The Long Run (with Blake Shelton)
22. That's The Way The World Goes 'Round

Tracks 5, 11 and 20 from Kerosene (2005)
Tracks 1, 6, 12 and 16 from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2007)
Tracks 2, 8, 18 and 22  from Revolution (2009)
Tracks 4, 14, 17 and 21 from Four The Record (2011)
Tracks 7, 10, and 15 and from Platinum (2014)
Tracks 3, 9, 13 and 19 from The Weight Of These Wings (2016)

I have to admit I kind of missed the boat on Miranda Lambert for a long time. I remember CMT playing her first video, "Me And Charlie Talking," around the clock, even though it didn't do much damage on the charts, and playing up that she'd finished 3rd place on the "American Idol" country knockoff "Nashville Star." I didn't like that song, so I kind of dismissed her as a reality TV star that was getting pushed hard by TV networks as a . I didn't really have a clue that she was becoming a major star and a critical favorite until a couple of years later when I saw Crazy Ex-Girlfriend on a ton of year-end lists. And even after that, it took me a while to warm up to her as a singles artists and eventually check out the albums and kind of get what the fuss was about.

There's some great stuff here, I particularly like the dense texture of instruments in the verses on "Getting Ready." And I'm amused that Miranda Lambert released a song called "Old Sh!t" just a few months after Future had a hit with "Sh!t." The cover of John Prine's 1978 song "That's The Way That The World Goes Round" that appeared on Revolution is the most played non-single in Lambert's live repertoire, followed by "Maintain The Pain" from the same album (her shortest and arguably best song), and "Highway Vagabond" from The Weight Of These Wings, which has some cool 7/8 measures in the verses.

The Weight Of These Wings was a double album, a big ambitious 94-minute record she released after her divorce from Blake Shelton, and it's hard to imagine almost any of her contemporaries even attempting a record like that (especially Shelton). That said, it has a weird almost muddy sound to it, not stripped down or simple but just kind of ramshackle, and sometimes it works but it often doesn't. I do enjoy weird playful moments like "Pink Sunglasses" or the false start in the vocal track on "Bad Boy." But I think her best song about Shelton was Platinum's "Priscilla," an ode to Priscilla Presley that empathizes with their shared plight of being "married to a man who's married to attention."

Monday, October 28, 2019























Paul Barrere of Little Feat passed away on Saturday at the age of 71. Was especially sad to hear the news since over the summer I marked the 40th anniversary of Little Feat founder Lowell George's death. Paul Barrere was around when Little Feat got started in the late '60s -- he went to high school with George and auditioned to be their bass player -- but wasn't in the original quartet lineup that recorded the first 2 albums. He came on board as their second guitarist when the band expanded to a sextet in 1972 and recorded their most enduring album, 1973's Dixie Chicken. Barrere had an increasingly large hand in the band's songwriting over the course of the '70s, and was, along with founding keyboardist Bill Payne, the driving force of the band after it reunited in the late '80s.

I made an 70-minute best of Paul Barrere playlist of his highlights as a singer and songwriter, from Dixie Chicken up through their only studio album of the past decade, 2012's Rooster Rag. He sang lead on some classic tracks like "Skin It Back" and "Time Loves A Hero." Barrere was only 28 when he wrote "Old Folks Boogie," playfully envisioning the band rocking out with wheelchairs and pacemakers someday, but even that song had oddly poignant turns of phrase like "when your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill." 

Barrere and Payne also wrote a number of tracks that Lowell George sang lead on, although I dug up the demos of "All That You Dream" and "Hi Roller" with Barrere on vocals for the playlist. And even though Little Feat hired a new singer, Pure Prairie League's Craig Fuller, who had a similar tone to Lowell George, to fill out their sound on their reunion albums, Barrere and Payne continued singing a good share of songs, with Barrere taking the lead on singles like "Let It Roll" and "Texas Twister." Much as Lowell George was first the overshadowed second guitarist in Frank Zappa's band and then stepped into the spotlight with Little Feat, Barrere came into his own in Little Feat's later years, showing he could execute the sound that George originated and put his own spin on it. The band continued after the death of founding drummer Richie Hayward in 2010, and played shows celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with and without Barrere. I don't know if Bill Payne will continue to lead Little Feat in any form, but a major chapter has definitely ended.

TV Diary

Wednesday, October 23, 2019






















a) "Living With Yourself"
It's a credit to Paul Rudd as an actor that he can turn off his seemingly irrepressible charm enough to play a much more miserable version of himself in "Living With Yourself," as well as the more upbeat clone version of himself. At its best, this show reminds me of "Santa Clarita Diet" in that it takes some realistic and relatable characters and then throws them into a crazy situation and has them react pretty much as anybody would -- not quite as funny or as consistently entertaining, but I was still impressed by how dark the show could get and then bounce back with something like an insane fight scene or a choreographed dance routine set to a Rick James song. Aisling Bea, who was hilarious just recently in her series "This Way Up," doesn't really get as much of a chance to be funny in her role here, but she really pulls off a difficult role well and helps make the show work almost as much as Rudd.

b) "Watchmen"
I was skeptical about the idea of a series with new stories within the Watchmen universe, partly because it's been a decade since I read the graphic novel once and saw the movie maybe twice. But Damon Lindelof did interesting things with the last 2 seasons of "The Leftovers" after running through the novel and continuing on from there, and this has a bit of the same texture of that while seeming immediately far more ambitious. I like little things like the squid rain to denote that it was a sequel to the book and not the Zack Snyder movie. I liked the movie well enough, but something like this certainly highlights where it could've grappled with the source material's themes a little more, to say nothing of the ending. It kinda makes me hope that after the HBO series does a few seasons of this 2019 timeline they go back and do a season adapting the original 1985 story.

c) "Modern Love"
I've never read the NYT column "Modern Love" and was skeptical about some romantic first person essays being adapted into an anthology series. But man, the first episode of this show totally got me, I even shed a little tear at the poignant little tale (it also features Cristin Milioti getting pregnant by a guy named Ted, which seems like a weird unintentional callback to "How I Met Your Mother"). The next couple episodes were also pretty entertaining.

d) "Raising Dion"
As much as comic books have explored the idea of a child developing superpowers at a young age, stuff like "X-Men" usually delays that moment until around puberty, which resonates on a level but also just makes things a little less complicated. And then you have something like Jack Jack in the Incredibles movies, which gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the terrifying idea of an impulsive little baby having dangerous powers. Dion from "Raising Dion" is 7, so you get a little of both ends of that spectrum, where he's still an immature little kid and things go out of control really easily when he starts teleporting and floating and moving things with his mind. And since the show is mostly from his mother's perspective, you get all the emotional intensity of parenthood with this added heightened reality. That said, the execution of the idea is a little iffy to me in the first couple episodes, and at a point even as a very patient father I feel like the show is making me dislike the kid and get mad at him for making a mess of things all the time, like they make the kid oddly unsympathetic and one-dimensional, even for a 2nd grader.

e) "Emergence"
This is another show about a kid with superpowers, but it's more of a mystery with a weird conspiracy. And it's pretty decent, but I just can't bring myself to care that much about the big overarching story. The more human-scale character stuff is more interesting, though, Allison Tolman is such a compelling screen presence.

f) "Looking For Alaska"
I watched an episode of this and rolled my eyes so hard that I was not at all surprised to see that it's based on a book by The Fault In Our Stars author John Green. And I can appreciate that some YA books are good and I'm glad it gets kids interested in novels, I just don't like his cheesy precious dialogue. They did a good job of evoking 2005, though, at one point someone prints out MapQuest directions while listening to a song from Hot Fuss.

g) "Perfect Harmony"
This show is a comedy about a ragtag community choir, stars Anna Camp from the Pitch Perfect movies, and has the word 'perfect' in the title, so it's pretty clear what they're going for, it might as well have been a spinoff. What's surprising is that my wife, who loves those movies, doesn't seem to be that into it. I find it charming, though, Bradley Whitford being cantankerous is pretty good television.

h) "Sunnyside"
I was sad to hear that this was the first cancellation of the new fall season ("Bluff City Law" is the second, which I don't feel as bad about). It wasn't especially funny, but it had potential, Kal Penn is such an ideal sitcom lead and I enjoyed the kind of downfall and redemption arc of his character. Real sign of the times to have multiple sitcoms (this and "Superstore") having major plotlines about ICE detention.

i) "Bless The Harts"
"SNL" writer Emily Spivey based "Bless The Harts" on growing up in North Carolina, but nobody in the core voice cast is from the south, so I find something really irksome about listening to Kristen Wiig and Ike Barinholtz speak with a broad sketch comedy twang. But even taken at face value as a knowing and affectionate animated series about the blue collar south, it ain't exactly "King of the Hill." And it's already been renewed for a second season, shit.

j) "Almost Family"
Now here's a show that I hope gets cancelled as soon as possible. It just doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody that a show about a fertility doctor secretly using his own sperm to father his patients' children shouldn't be a quirky, upbeat show about a group of women who just discovered that they're half-sisters. It's just tonally all wrong when the subject is medical rape.

k) "Batwoman"
Between "Gotham," "Pennyworth," Joker and "Batwoman," the idea of doing Batman stories without Batman is basically a cottage industry unto itself now (kind of like the 'Garfield Minus Garfield' comic strips but edgy and dark). Batwoman seems like a good idea for a series on paper, but I don't know if Ruby Rose can really carry a series. In classic Batman tradition, the villain, Alice (and the Wonderland Gang) played by Rachel Skarsten, is more interesting than the hero.

l) "All Rise"
It sounds like a parody of network TV that there's a frothy CBS legal drama about a sexy judge called "All Rise." But it's possible I'm just reading the title that way because Simone Missick is, like, mind-bogglingly hot. It's a nice show, but it kind of reminds me of "Ally McBeal," and I don't know if that show has aged well.

m) "Limetown"
Like "Homecoming," this is a TV show based on a podcast and a fictional mystery story about a government conspiracy. It's probably not fair to me to compare it too much, since the "Limetown" podcast actually predates the "Homecoming" podcast, but tonally it does feel similar to me, and I adored "Homecoming" so that's a high bar. I'm not sure what to think so far, though, it's got a very tense and creepy atmosphere but I don't feel like I've totally made sense of the story. One of the minor characters only seen in flashbacks is played by Stanley Tucci, though, so I'm curious what's going on with that guy.

n) "The Birch"
A horror show on Facebook Watch with bite-sized little 13-17 minute episodes, about some kind of sinister tree spirit that kills bullies and bad people. The special effects are decent but the storytelling and the acting just kind of fall flat.

o) "Sorry For Your Loss"
"Limetown" is promising but "Sorry For Your Loss" is still by far my favorite Facebook Watch show, although I feel weird watching any of this stuff at a time when I just seem to hate Mark Zuckerberg more every day. Elizabeth Olsen is so good in this, I've already resigned myself to the idea that there probably won't be a 3rd season of it because she's also doing a series about her boring MCU character. I'm a little uncomfortable with the big story arc of "Sorry For Your Loss" being a widow falling in love with her husband's brother, it's just weird and bad and shouldn't be romantic, but the characters are all really vividly rendered and sympathetic.

p) "Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal"
People seem to really like this Adult Swim show that's like a violent serious story about cavemen living at the same time as dinosaurs, but I dunno, it just kind of feels a little pompous and ridiculous to me. "Castlevania" did the bloody adult cartoon thing more to my liking because it had more of a sense of humor about itself.

q) "Cake"
I like the idea of "Cake," FXX's 'short-form comedy block,' essentially a bunch of live action and animated sketches from different creators. But I've only seen a couple of really amusing things on this show so far, and a lot of eye-rolling stuff like sub-Lonely Island 'white girl rapping about white girl things rap video' concepts. And I particularly don't like the 'Oh Jerome, No' bits in every episode that feel like excerpts from a really bad sitcom.

r) "Rhythm + Flow"
Hip hop and "American Idol"-style talent search reality shows have always been strange bedfellows. "Rhythm + Flow" does a lot of things right that they could've gotten wrong, including getting a good lineup of hosts/mentors that are fun to watch (T.I., Cardi B and Chance The Rapper), and doing whole episodes in cities that are full of future rap stars. But even as entertaining as the show can be to watch, it still feels like an exercise in futility with a foregone conclusion that if anybody in this show becomes a successful rapper someday, it won't be because of this show.

s) "Untold Stories of Hip-Hop"
There are so many radio shows and podcasts dedicated to interviewing rappers now and I can't stand most of them. But Angie Martinez is undoubtedly one of hip hop's best interviewers and it was a great idea to base a show around her getting stories that rappers haven't told in public before. There have been some great ones, particularly Snoop's story about Biggie in the first episode.

t) "In Search Of..."
It's kind of sweet for Zachary Quinto to host the reboot of the show Leonard Nimoy used to host. But I never saw the original, so it kinda reminds me of the show William Shatner hosted recently, "The UnXplained." There's just so much non-fiction TV these days about all the big classic mysteries like the Loch Ness monster, but the "In Search Of" episode about Nessie was really interesting and it felt like they dug deeper than I've seen other shows go.

u) "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?"
Nickelodeon's been rebooting a lot of their old '90s hits lately, including a new "All That" and this new miniseries of "Are You Afraid Of The Dark?" My 10-year-old has been watching it with interest, cracking jokes about how stupid the kids were for going to something called 'the carnival of doom,' but then that night the show gave him nightmares, so maybe it is a little too scary for his age.

v) "Kids Say The Darndest Things"
One thing you'd think nobody would be in a rush to reboot anytime soon is a show that was last hosted by Bill Cosby. But Tiffany Haddish is a pretty ideal host and obviously the appeal of the format is evergreen.

w) "Lego Jurassic World: Legend of Isla Nublar"
In 2016, there was a "Lego Jurassic World" miniseries on Nickelodeon that I was amused to notice had voices from almost every main actor from the Jurassic World live action movie except for Chris Pratt (which seemed ironic since he was at the start of this whole phenomenon as the star of The Lego Movie). But the other movie stars like Bryce Dallas Howard and BD Wong didn't return for this newer miniseries, so it's just a bunch of voice actors who do other cartoons. Still pretty cute and amusing though.

x) "Mao Mao: Heroes Of Pure Heart"
I already wrote about this a bit in my Complex piece about summer TV, but this is really one of my favorite shows on Cartoon Network that my kids watch these days, I love Adorabat.

y) "The Deuce"
It sucks that this show stars James Franco, who is probably more exploitative of young actresses in real life than the pornographers the show is about, but as always he's just a small part of a big ensemble so I try to just ignore him. I supposed the fast forward between seasons is essentially to kind of telling the story of the changing culture and business, but it kinda doesn't feel like the characters who were in 1971 when the show debuted two years ago are in 1984 now, even the season 3 theme song is from the '70s (although I adore "Dreaming" by Blondie).

z) "American Horror Story: 1984"
Another show that is now in 1984 that wasn't before (plus that Wonder Woman sequel coming up, 1984 is really having a moment). I always watching "American Horror Story" kind of waiting to see how they screw it up, but so far I like this season. Old school summer camp slasher movies are one horror subgenre they haven't really touched so far and the twists they've put on the conventions haven't been too obnoxious and meta yet.

Saturday, October 19, 2019

















I appeared on this week's episode of the podcast Music Vibes with DC Hendrix to discuss the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominations and my recent Spin articles about the Hall.

Friday, October 18, 2019




























Woodfir's next Baltimore show is at The Crown on November 1st, it's GingerWitch's album release party and Dreambush is also on the bill. We're really excited to play Halloween weekend and are working up some special material for this show and also debuting some newly written stuff.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 154: Pavement

Thursday, October 17, 2019





























It was announced a while back that Pavement would be playing a couple shows in 2020, which will be their first performances since their 2010 tour, which were their first performances since their breakup in 2000. When a band reunites like clockwork once a decade, I have to imagine they don't really love getting together that much, but those big festival paydays help everybody live comfortably without being in their old famous band most of the time. Or maybe they look forward to it, I dunno. But I've always had a love/hate relationship with this band, probably more than any other who I bought every album by, and I kind of wanted to revisit their catalog and try to cherry pick the stuff I still like in a context that appeals to me.

Pavement deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Grounded
2. In The Mouth A Desert
3. Unfair
4. Frontwards
5. Date w/ IKEA
6. Black Out
7. Folk Jam
8. Harness Your Hopes
9. Loretta's Scars
10. We Dance
11. Elevate Me Later
12. Heckler Spray
13. Two States
14. Grave Architecture
15. Silence Kid
16. Greenlander
17. Perfume-V
18. Transport Is Arranged
19. Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence
20. Kennel District
21. Here
22. Texas Never Whispers
23. 5-4=Unity
24. Blue Hawaiian
25. The Hexx

Track 12 from Perfect Sound Forever EP (1991)
Tracks 2, 9, 13, 17 and 21 from Slanted And Enchanted (1992)
Tracks 4 and 22 from Watery, Domestic EP (1992)
Track 19 from No Alternative (1993)
Track 16 from Born To Choose (1993)
Tracks 3, 11, 15 and 23 from the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
Tracks 1, 6, 10, 14 and 20 from Wowee Zowee (1995)
Track 5, 18 and 24 from Brighten The Corners (1997)
Tracks 7 an 25 from Terror Twilight (1999)
Track 8 from the "Spit On A Stranger" single (1999)

Pavement were at one point kind of the standard bearer of '90s indie rock -- they probably still are, and really it's rare for a band's output to be so perfectly contained almost entirely within a particular decade. They were a gateway band for a lot of kids that invited them into an obsession with unpolished lo-fi recordings and a sprawling discography of EPs and other obscurities beyond the albums. But for me Sonic Youth was the band that I worshiped like that, and even after I started listening to Pavement, I kind of looked down on them as kind of a minor band that had been elevated too much by critics. I felt like a proudly casual fan who enjoyed "Cut Your Hair" during the band's fleeting summer of real radio airplay, then was hooked by "Stereo" enough to start buying their albums. After all is said and done, I would be comfortable calling those 2 songs my favorite Pavement tracks, and though I like plenty of their other songs, I often feel like I'm chasing the silly catchy sugar high of those songs.

There are some pretty well-loved Pavement songs that I just found annoying and didn't include. Still, I do have some memories tied to these songs. I remember the first time I went into a hipster college bar and heard "In The Mouth A Desert" and got a handle on this stuff as fun social drinking music and not just as something for headphones at home. "Transport Is Arranged" was the first of 3 songs where Malkmus shouted out Baltimore. Most Pavement songs and all of their singles were sung and primarily written by Stephen Malkmus, but Spiral Stairs maintained something of a cult following within the band's cult following for his one or two songs per album. So I definitely wanted to spotlight the most memorable of those, "Date w/ IKEA," "Two States," and "Kennel District."

I thought about just drawing this playlist from their 5 proper albums, since I'm not one of those obsessive superfans who collected the non-album stuff in the '90s or even listened to the expanded reissues of the albums that were released from 2002 to 2008. But given the way that some of those non-album tracks have become a major part of their legacy, it seems right to include them. Pavement's #1 most streamed song on Spotify is "Harness Your Hopes," a Brighten The Corners outtake released as a B-side in 1999 and then as a bonus track on the album's 2008 reissue. Their Spotify top 10 also includes the early EP track "Frontwards" and a compilation cover of Echo & The Bunnymen. But I always really liked "Greenlander," one of the only memorable songs from the classic '90s mediocre-compilation-for-a-good-cause Born To Choose, so I had to throw that in too.

I remember for years I'd see people quote "Harness" ("show me a word that rhymes with pavement and I won't kill your parents"), "Frontwards" ("I've got style, miles and miles"), and the extended riff on R.E.M.'s discography on "Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence" and be kind of confused like, I have all their albums and I don't know these songs, what the hell? It feels a little silly to make a deep cuts playlist that has about 8 tracks in common with their only best-of compilation, 2010's Quarantine The Past, but they were kind of playing to the fans anyway with a comp that had "Frontwards" but not either of the great Wowee Zowee singles.

Speaking of Wowee Zowee, it might seem counter to my assertion that I'm a casual singles-oriented fan of the band, but my favorite Pavement album is the big long 18-track one that's full of short inscrutable tangents that's most loved by a certain strain of diehard fans. But it really just has the most songs I like, and even the lesser songs strike me as more fun than the abrasive filler on early albums or the sleepier stuff on later albums. I also just love the relaxed sound of Wowee Zowee, which was recorded at Easley Recording Studio in Memphis. There was a point in the mid-'90s when every other big indie band was going to Memphis to make an album with Doug Easley, including Sonic Youth, Guided By Voices, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
























The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its nominations for 2020 inductions today, and I wrote a piece for Spin analyzing the nods and the snubs, and whether they went with any of my suggestions in my other recent piece about inducting more women.

Monthly Report: October 2019 Singles

Sunday, October 13, 2019

























1. Harry Styles - "Lights Up"
I enjoyed the period of 2017 when the first wave of One Direction solo singles was everywhere, so I'm happy that, whether there was any coordination between them or not, there appears to be another cycle starting up -- 4 members of 1D have released new singles in September or October (the only exception is Zayn, who released his last album at the end of last year). And the only one that I don't like is Liam's Ed Sheeran-penned single that just sounds like a Sheeran song. But the biggest surprise is that Harry Styles, who gambled big on a debut album that was good but didn't have any radio-friendly singles, putting a nice little programmed beat under his new single and really sounding like he's in it to win it on album #2 without completely overhauling his sound or coming off desperate for a hit. Here's the 2019 favorite singles playlist I update every month.

2. Niall Horan - "Nice To Meet Ya"
"Slow Hands" is still my #1 One Direction solo single and this is a good kickoff for his next record. It kind of has a Robbie Williams vibe to me, though, which makes me wonder if it's destined to not do as well in the U.S. as his previous singles. 

3. Mustard f/ Roddy Ricch - "Ballin'"
I kinda roll my eyes at Mustard droppig the DJ, just as I used to roll my eyes at his ambitious label name 10 Summers. But he's almost definitely going to back up that name now -- he's been all over the radio for 8 summers in a row now, and although "Pure Water" featuring Migos was his biggest hit to date as an artist, "Ballin'" seems to have the momentum right now to become even bigger. Roddy Ricch really has a way with a hook and this is kind of faster and lighter than his other stuff in a way that really pops. 

4. Normani - "Motivation" 
It's depressing to watch Camila Cabello's bland new singles outperform Normani on the charts, but I'm glad that Normani finally rolled out a full-on solo track and it's doing decently. The video's homage to mid-2000s "106 & Park" hits kind of underlines how the cultural space Normani's solo career should be occupying, of a black girl doing pop crossover R&B, no longer exists. Instead, the only R&B-ish music on Top 40 radio is white artists like Ariana Grande, who co-wrote "Motivation," which makes this song and its video, whether intended or not, kind of a canny commentary on the situation. 

5. Kygo & Whitney Houston - "Higher Love"
Whitney Houston was, of course, for a long time the standard bearer for how black women cross over from R&B to pop, though at the time the R&B scene was probably inclined to not really look at her as part of it. But it's kind of fun lately to hear her biggest posthumous hit in the form of a 1990 Steve Winwood cover remixed by a modern dance producer, her voice is really perfect for that chorus and the shiny modern EDM sheen suits the vocal pretty well. 

6. Twenty One Pilots - "The Hype"
Even if Trench wasn't the crossover phenomenon that Blurryface was, Twenty One Pilots have kind of solidified their grip on rock radio -- only the second band to ever have 9 consecutive top 10 hits, just off of those two albums and a soundtrack single. And I kinda feel like they earned it since they could actually hold off "The Hype," to my ears probably the catchiest song on the album, for the 4th single. 

7. Incubus - "Into The Summer"
I remember before I even knew that Incubus had a new song out, my brother told me that it sounded exactly like David Bowie's "Let's Dance." So I don't know if that would've struck me immediately if he hadn't pointed it out ahead of time, but I definitely can't unhear it now. But I like it, I enjoy when Incubus let their '80s pop side out, like when they covered "Let's Go Crazy" on their best-of comp a decade ago. 2019 was definitely the summer of everyone releasing their summer-themed singles too late to maximize the impact, though, from "Hot Girl Summer" to this, which came out in late August.

8. Jeezy f/ Meek Mill - "MLK BLVD"
Jeezy's supposed final album TM104 kinda came and went already, and I feel bad, because it was a decent album and he can still turn out these big loud anthems that are a ton of fun to hear in the car, I hope this song continues to pick up steam and maybe end his career on a high note. It never gets old to hear a couple shouts of "FUCK TRUMP" in the middle of the song, more rap singles could use that thrown in.

9.  Ellie Goulding & Juice WRLD - "Hate Me"
I think I kind of rolled my eyes at this song when it first came out and didn't really give it a chance, just the combination of artists seemed kind of forced. But the chorus is great and the Juice WRLD verse fits in there pretty well.

10. Illenium & Jon Bellion - "Good Things Fall Apart"
Jon Bellion had a single do well about 3 years ago that I found irksome, but this one has really grown on me, kind of combines EDM with a rock power ballad sound in a way that's a little more subtle and melodic than the popular Imagine Dragons version of that formula. I kind of mentally associate this song (with the chorus lyric "tell me what you hate about me") with the Ellie Goulding one (with the chorus lyric "tell me how you hate me").

The Worst Single of the Month: Lana Del Rey - "Doin' Time"
I think that Norman Fucking Rockwell is a good album and I respect that a lot of people think it's a genuinely great album, but I really have no idea how many of those people actually like the Sublime cover and think it's an enjoyable part of the album or if they're kind of ignoring or tolerating it or kind of acting like they're 'in on the joke' of this one very weird outpost of Del Rey's very unique sense of retro camp. But man, it's not good, and it being a huge #1 hit on alt-rock radio is just so aggravating.

Movie Diary

Saturday, October 12, 2019

























a) El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
For me, "Breaking Bad" was just a pretty good show, not a high watermark in the entire history of television. And it always felt to me like a fairly self-contained story that isn't served by an entire spinoff series and feature film about supporting characters. So I wasn't really looking forward to this movie that picks up where the series left off with Aaron Paul's character, but I was still kind of curious to see where it went. Ultimately, it kinda felt like they were just kind of spinning wheels and throwing a few curveballs into what was basically what you'd imagine the character's fate being anyway, but there were a few entertaining scenes in the second half of the movie that weren't pure fanservice. And I tend to make fun of Paul's 3-time Emmy-winning performance of saying "yo" and "bitch" all the time, but at this point in Jesse Pinkman's character arc he's kind of a broken person and he played that really well.

b) Shaft
Samuel L. Jackson's first Shaft movie in 2000 was one of the more forgettable movies I ever saw in the theater, but my vague memory is that it at least tried to feel like a Shaft movie. But this one felt like they just let Kenya Barris stitch together a bunch of "Black-ish" scenes full of urbane observational humor about generation gaps and culture clashes and it pretty much made the Shaft stuff feel like an afterthought.

c) Drunk Parents
'90s "SNL" writer Fred Wolf has had a pretty middling career directing features where The House Bunny qualifies as his masterpiece, and he now seems to be putting his own stamp on the "bad [noun]" comedy trend with Mad Families and Drunk Parents. But I was tempted to watch this because it stars Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek, who had great comedic chemistry as my favorite couple on "30 Rock" (and, at 8 years' difference, were actually a relatively age appropriate pairing). It was actually pretty good, nothing special but a solid cast and some very funny scenes.

d) Welcome To Marwen
Steve Carell is only 6 years younger than Tom Hanks so I can't really say he's the new Hanks, nor is that really fair to either of them, but he's certainly stepped into a similar space in pop culture, and unfortunately that includes weird uncanny valley Robert Zemeckis projects. I feel like I should probably see the documentary that inspired this, Marwencol, because the story is pretty interesting, but I just don't like the weird sheen this movie puts on it to kind of make the most family-friendly version of a story that's not really that family-friendly.

e) The Happytime Murders
Obviously the whole point of this movie is contrasting the style of puppetry people associate with "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show" with a dark crime drama, and it was pretty successful at wringing comedy out of that while still being a pretty coherent mystery story. I didn't love it, but it was good enough, and Melissa McCarthy was definitely the right human lead for it. When the movie ended, I flipped on Comedy Central and saw the new rebooted "Crank Yankers" and remembered how much worse the whole 'adult puppet show' thing can go.

f) The Predator
I like Shane Black's quippy breezy action movies more than I care about any Predator movies so I was pleased that this had a pretty charming cast and a good amount of character-driven stuff apart from the action scenes. This franchise probably wasn't the best fit for him, though, Iron Man 3 is about as far as I really want him to go in the high concept effects-driven direction.

g) Mission: Impossible - Fallout
I'm not as in awe of these movies as an action tour de force as some people are, but they're generally pretty exciting and well done. I think my favorite thing about it was finding out that the famous gif of Henry Cavill looking super tough is directly before and after Cavill totally gets his ass handed to him by Lian Yang in a fantastic fight scene.

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 153: Cream

Friday, October 11, 2019






















Ginger Baker passed away over the weekend, so I thought it'd be fun to delve into the catalog of his most famous band, Cream with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. I remember being steeped in '60s rock when I started to follow new music avidly in the early '90s -- at one point in school we did art projects making sculptures out of sugarcubes, and I actually recreated the wall with the 'Clapton is God' graffiti, which is such an embarrassingly dad rock thing for a kid who was maybe 11 years old to do. But I quickly came to vastly prefer the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Cream and kind of feel some partisanship between these two short-lived blues-based power trios that both took London by storm in late 1966. But I always thought "White Room" kicked ass, so I always suspected there was more Cream stuff I'd dig. Smokey, my friend, you are entering a world of pain!

Cream deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. World Of Pain
2. Deserted Cities Of The Heart
3. SWLABR
4. Cat's Squirrel
5. Politician
6. What A Bringdown
7. Tales Of Brave Ulysses
8. Sleepy Time Time
9. As You Said
10. Blue Condition
11. Doing That Scrapyard Thing
12. Sweet Wine
13. Dance The Night Away
14. Pressed Rat And Warthog
15. N.S.U.
16. Mother's Lament
17. Toad (live)
18. I'm So Glad (live)

Tracks 4, 8, 12 and 15 from Fresh Cream (1966)
Tracks 1, 3, 7, 10, 13 and 16 from Disraeli Gears (1967)
Tracks 2, 5, 9, 14 and 17 from Wheels of Fire (1968)
Tracks 6, 11 and 18 from Goodbye (1969)

I thought about including some stuff from the various Cream live records and BBC sessions that have come out over the years, or even the partial reunions in groups like Blind Faith and Bruce-Baker-Moore. But ultimately it felt right to just draw on the 4 studio albums (2 of them half live tracks) that the band made in their brief time together. In the '60s, there weren't any real expectations yet of longevity for a rock band -- nobody had a clue that the Rolling Stones and The Who would still be touring 50 years later. But Cream's career was remarkably short for as big as they were. Only 2 years and 7 months passed between the first Cream concert and the release of Goodbye, which came out after their farewell gigs. I'd say only Nirvana made a similar impact in as short a period of time (from the release of Nevermind to Cobain's death).

I would say Eric Clapton is one of the rock artists whose stock has dropped the most sharply in my lifetime. When VH1 first did their '100 Greatest Artists of All Time' program in 1998, he placed at #15, and when they polled people again and aired a new list in 2010, he wasn't on it at all, the biggest drop off the list (followed closely by The Eagles). But Cream's records have definitely aged better than most of the other stuff he's done, Clapton as a singer and songwriter has never quite lived up to his reputation, but with a great rhythm section challenging him and Jack Bruce handling a lot of the writing and vocals, Eric Clapton is freed up to just do some incredible, groundbreaking stuff with wah-wah pedals (which Clapton used for the first time on "Tales of Brave Ulysses") and Leslie speakers. "Deserted Cities Of The Heart" in particular is just awesome.

What struck me most about listening to Cream's albums is that Felix Pappalardi, who produced every album except Fresh Cream, is practically the band's 4th member. Pappalardi, who went on to play bass in Mountain, plays viola, keyboards, percussion, horns all over those 3 albums, co-writing "Strange Brew" and contributing memorable textures to songs like "White Room" and "Badge."

Since half of Wheels of Fire and half of Goodbye are live tracks, I decided to end the mix with 25 minutes of a couple of long ones that outshine the studio versions on Fresh Cream. The original "Toad" was one of rock's first extended drum solos, and Ginger Baker just goes nuts on the 16-minute version on Wheels. And the live version of their Skip James cover "I'm So Glad" on Goodbye might be my favorite sounding track in the Cream catalog, the bass sound is just killer.

I was amused to hear silly little novelty songs like "Mother's Lament" and "Pressed Rat and Warthog" on Cream's albums -- The Who and the Beatles albums at the time were full of tracks like that but I didn't expect Cream to have any. But I think my favorite discovery from listening to these albums is "As You Said," a Clapton-free track that seems to invent the sound of Led Zeppelin III with Jack Bruce on acoustic guitar and cello and Ginger Baker playing only a hi-hat cymbal.

One of the reasons I've always really loved "White Room" was that 5/4 intro, which was apparently Ginger Baker's idea, so I was happy to hear another even more 5/4 in the Baker-penned closing track on the band's final album, "What A Bringdown." For my money that's the best Cream song writtern by Baker, although I also included the instrumental "Toad," and "Blue Condition," which he sings, and "Pressed Rat And Warthog," where he performs some spoken word vocals. I remember 10 or 20 years ago seeing a widely forwarded list of jokes about drummers, most of them the usual gags about how drummers are stupid or aren't real musicians, which I try to take with a grain of salt, but there were multiple jokes were the gist was that Ginger Baker sucks and couldn't keep a steady beat, which always left an impression on me that I now realize was pretty unfair, I wouldn't put him at the top of my favorite '60s drummers (Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon) but he definitely deserves respect.

Thursday, October 10, 2019


















I expanded my Heart deep album cuts playlist for City Pages.

Monthly Report: September 2019 Albums

Monday, October 07, 2019

























1. Tove Lo - Sunshine Kitty
Tove Lo's last record, Blue Lips, was my #1 album of 2017, so I've been really looking forward to this one, and it's not as great front to back, but still really enjoyable. I'm not going to fall into a Charli XCX spiral of insisting that she should be a gigantic pop star just because I personally really like her kind of niche adult-skewing take on dance pop, but if I could I would totally put "Stay Over" all over US radio. And the Kylie Minogue duet "Really Don't Like U" is fantastic and everything I hoped it would be. You can hear all this and all the other albums I've been listening to this year in my 2019 albums Spotify playlist.

2. DaBaby - Kirk
DaBaby's big breakthrough album Baby On Baby was barely 6 months old with its singles still all over radio when he announced a follow-up album, and as with many other prolific rappers I think Kirk has encountered maybe more skepticism than it deserves simply because he didn't take a one year grace period. It's true that Jetsonmade and the rest of DaBaby's stable of producers have mostly stuck to the sound that made him a star and not everybody needs 2 albums' worth of this stuff in one year (although I will maintain that two 35-minute albums is always preferable to one 70-minute album). I've been comparing both albums trying to figure out which one will be higher on my year-end list -- that's right, I'm going A/B on Baby -- and I can't quite call it, although the earlier album is definitely the one to beat. "Bop" and "Vibez" add enough new textures to that Jetsonmade sound to still be a lot of fun, and "Intro" is an incredible song that changes up his sound and shows him in a different, more thoughtful light that's genuinely exciting to hear, and even the middle section of the album full of big name guest stars works really well. I don't think this run he's on is over anytime soon.

3. Height Keech - Raw Routes
Dan Keech has been making rap records out of Baltimore for almost 20 years as Height, Height With Friends, or more recently Height Keech. I've interviewed him several times and he always sends me everything he puts out, and I don't write about all of it, because there's just so much and some connects with me more than others, but I'm always just in awe of his work ethic and how much he performs and records -- about a year ago he played his 1000th show, and put out a best-of compilation of songs from 20 different records (I also ended up on the same song as Height last year, kind of by accident). And I'm happy to say that after all this time he's still hitting new peaks, I'd put Raw Routes up there with Winterize The Game, Bed of Seeds and Versus Dynamic Sounds as one of his best albums. Songs like "That's a Wrap for Radio Shack" really just sum up his joy of making beats and rhymes well, he's got this very '80s-indebted approach to hip hop that feels very organic and unforced, which I think is rare. And "I Can't Believe There's a Meme Shooter" is this earnest, stunned reaction to mass shootings committed by internet trolls that only Height could write.

4. JPEGMAFIA - All My Heroes Are Cornballs
Even thought JPEGMAFIA is from a different generation and different part of the Baltimore scene, I see him and Height as part of a whole continuum of uncommercial and idiosyncratic Baltimore hip hop, something that's flourished here long before 'lo-fi hip hop' was a buzzword, a whole lineage of smart strange rap that ranges from Labtekwon to The Unstoppable Nuklehidz to Rapdragons. The thing that's different about JPEGMAFIA is that he touched a nerve and is now, like, nationally famous, getting written about it in every publication and playing festivals and has kind of entered the larger conversation of avant rap. There are some tracks like "PRONE!" where he really shows how well he can rap in a traditional sense, but obviously the fractured production and arch sense of humor and the surprisingly pretty little bursts of melody in his delivery are what really tie the record together.

5. Jon Pardi - Heartache Medication
In a brief career of only 3 albums to date, Jon Pardi has released 2 singles with "boots" in the title, 2 singles with "night" in the title, and 2 singles with "heartache" in the title. That's emblematic of how faithfully he sticks to the reliable old ingredients of a good country song, but I don't mind, especially since he's practically the only guy left on country radio these days who makes room for prominent fiddle parts in the mix. There's some really nice guitar work on this album too, particularly on the opening track "Old Hat," and "Me And Jack" and "Tied One On" have really loose, playful tempo shifts that feel a lot more spontaneous and lively than what you usually get on a Nashville record these days. I also enjoy that "Me and Jack," a song where he blames all his problems on whiskey, is directly followed by the song "Don't Blame It On Whiskey" (I can't even be sure if it's deliberate, since I haven't heard a new country album in years that didn't have at least two songs about whiskey). Miranda Lambert and Eric Church co-wrote "Don't Blame It On Whiskey" and Pardi wanted her to sing on it but instead they had to get Lauren Alaina, kind of a shame, Lambert should've done it. There's actually 6 songs in a row about alcohol in the middle of Heartache Medication, plus the title track earlier in the record, a streak that rivals the recent Justin Moore album.

6. Iggy Pop - Free
I like some of the Stooges and Iggy Pop songs that everybody likes, but he's never been really important to me personally, so I don't check out every new record, although sometimes I do depending on how much time I have when they come out. So I never heard Iggy's last album, 2016's Post Pop Depression, but apparently he came home from touring for that album feeling exhausted, and kind of unwound by making Free, a very relaxed and downtempo record largely written by trumpeter Leron Thomas. And it's really a lovely and unexpected album, not what I expected from Iggy Pop and a cool late period experiment.

7. Kevin Gates - I'm Him
Islah was one of those great breakout albums where everything lined up to turn a regional star into a big mainstream platinum rapper. But it kinda felt like he lost a lot of momentum in the 3 and a half years since then, between the year in jail over some dumb shit and a couple of stopgap projects that felt like they were just filling space between proper albums. So I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm Him is really strong, and feels really focused and streamlined -- the average song length is about a minute shorter than Islah, so it feels like he just trimmed the fat and kind of keep up with the brevity trend of Soundcloud rap to great effect.

8. Hobo Johnson - The Fall of Hobo Johnson
I never thought I'd find myself as something of a Hobo Johnson apologist after I recoiled at the performance clips of his songs "Peach Scone" and "Creve Coeur 1" that went viral last year. But there's something genuinely exhilarating to me about hearing him reach for this major label brass ring with a big fast catchy single like "Typical Story" that squeezes all his spoken word tics into as concise a package as he can manage. And while nothing else on this album quite rises to that level, I found myself enjoying it more than cringing. The only thing I really dislike is that there's one song produced by Ryan Lewis and "Subaru Crosstrek XV" is the same kind of smirky broke guy parody of a materialistic rap song as "Thrift Shop" and you'd think he'd be embarrassed to so openly court following in Macklemore's footsteps.

9. The Highwomen - The Highwomen
I don't think of Maren Morris or Brandi Carlile as especially formalist or beholden to tracing the footsteps of old country music legends, even if they're definitely knowledgeable of that stuff. But The Highwomen aren't just playfully doing a gender-reversed answer to the classic country supergroup, it kinda sounds like they're trying to turn the clock back to 1985 and make a perfect answer record to the first album by The Highwaymen. And that's fine but it kinda feels like one big stylistic exercise to me, not necessarily as interesting as the participants' solo records, and not as ambitious as another quartet of female folk musicians who released an album as Our Native Daughters earlier this year. Some pretty nice tunes, though, "Old Soul" is great.

10. Boosie Badazz & Zaytoven - Bad Azz Zay
Zaytoven is really one of the greatest producers of the past decade, definitely one of the most talented guys to ever come out of the whole trap scene, and one of the reasons I think that is that he's done whole projects for a few rappers and always has enough variations on his sound for it to really work (obviously Future first and foremost, but also really excellent projects with Shy Glizzy, Gucci Mane and Young Dro -- I never heard the Lecrae project but that was probably good too). Boosie has been quietly cranking out quality albums with virtually no big name producers for the last few years, so I didn't see this one coming, but they have more chemistry than I expected, Zaytoven definitely delved into the darker end of his sound for it.

The Worst Album of the Month: Zac Brown Band - The Owl
Zac Brown Band have gotten to have their cake and eat it too for the last decade, being a Grammy-friendly traditionalist country band that also makes lots of slick radio-friendly singles. Their 2015 double album Jekyll + Hyde that hopped all over into different genres was much more successful than 2017's back-to-basics album Welcome Home, so I can see why they probably thought it was a fine idea to make an album collaborating with Skrillex, Max Martin, and Ryan Tedder, among others. But The Owl has been really terribly received, and "God Given" in particular sounds like something that Florida Georgia Line might have been embarrassed to put out. Zac Brown released a surprise solo album called The Controversy a week after The Owl that goes even further in that direction without with his band at least kind of rooting the songs in some live instrumentation, and even in the era of "Old Town Road" and constant crossovers between country and other genres, it seems like this album is turning into a real career-derailing fiasco.