Monthly Report: May 2020 Albums
I liked Paramore just fine as Paramore, in every incarnation the band has taken over the years, and kind of assumed Hayley Williams would continue to just pilot that ship in interesting ways. The band already broke the Warped Tour mold of their early years pretty impressively already on the self-titled album, and I didn't think Williams would go even further beyond that to necessitate reinventing as a solo artist, much less something so handmade and unpredictable that it feel like she's moving into Joni Mitchell/Kate Bush territory of idiosyncratic genius and radical vulnerability. But Petals For Armor feels like a big creative step forward for her, even with the other members of Paramore tagging along thoughout the record, the synthy new wave stuff has a different feel from After Laughter. "Cinnamon" and "Pure Love" and the way those two songs are tied together is probably my favorite part. But there's so many good songs, "Leave It Alone" is incredible. Here's my 2020 albums playlist on Spotify that I fill with every new record I listen to.
2. The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form
I was excited when The 1975 announced, with typical pretentious panache, that they were going to release two back-to-back albums as part of the same 'era.' But I also wondered if the second album would invariably be a shorter and less essential collection of leftovers, like Amnesiac after Kid A. But there were enough delays that Notes On A Conditional Form now arrives 18 months after A Brief Inquiry, and it's the band's longest album to date, a big varied and unwieldy record that feels more like it's own whole than half of anything. As usual, a lot of the big moments on the album already trickled out as singles, but a lot of them didn't really feel like singles and make more sense in the context of the album (particularly "People" and "Jesus Christ"), with George Daniel's increasingly ambitious soundscape pieces forming the connective tissue that ties it all together. "Guys" hits me hard as the closer because playing in a band really is a special kind of friendship that few bands have ever really expressed well in a song, and obviously "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)" is one of their best songs ever. But of the new songs, "Then Because She Goes" and "I Think There's Something You Should Know" are the ones that are really grabbing me.
3. Beauty Pill - Please Advise EP
This is a short release, but Beauty Pill have always had a knack for making an EP feel like a meal in and of itself, dating back to The Cigarette Girl From The Future. I've already written about this record a couple times for Spin, although ironically the only song I didn't mention in either piece is "The Damnedest Thing," which I think is the real gem that makes me excited for their next full-length. And when I did my interview with Chad and Erin, we probably talked for 10-15 minutes just about the Pretenders cover that I should probably publish somewhere at some point, "Tattooed Love Boys" is one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite albums and Chad put a lot of thought into doing it justice.
4. Ro James - Mantic
I love the way Miguel kind of melds Prince influences with modern post-hip hop R&B influences. And Ro James, who's the nephew of Prince protege Rosie Gaines and got a foot in the industry co-writing Miguel's "Use Me," is continuing in a similar vein, especially on his second album, which features Miguel on "Too Much." I think my favorite song so far is "Be Mine," but the whole thing has a great moody atmosphere.
5. Future - High Off Life
At this point, I'm comfortable saying that Future's prime (the pretty incredibly fruitful 5 years from Pluto to HNDRXX) is over, but we're still getting a long tail of pretty good records from him as he kind of coasts along. I've heard a lot more grumbling about High Off Life than I did about The WIZRD, but I think they're pretty close in quality and at the moment I prefer the new one. It's his longest album to date, but the 5 previously released tracks are all bunched together at the end, and the stuff before that flows together pretty nicely. People who are invested in Future being an avatar of toxic masculinity don't like the earnest lyrics about his current girlfriend, "Accepting My Flaws," but it's a great song, not another saccharine "I Won" type thing. "Up The River" is another good introspective one. And I feel like Future was kind of trying to awkwardly chase the "Sicko Mode" beat switch trend on "Life Is Good" but I really like the beat switch on "Ridin Strikers."
6. The Soft Pink Truth - Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?
This album is really beautiful, I particularly like the parts where a little rhythm pattern gets going like on "We" and "Grace," but the whole thing is lovely and soothing to take in. As with some other Soft Pink Truth releases, Drew Daniel of Matmos brought in a whole supporting cast of Baltimore musicians, including Jana Hunter and Andrew Bernstein. And I was pretty happy to see that my friend Koye Berry played on Shall We Go On Sinning, which was released just a few days before my album that Koye also appears on.
7. Dee Dave - Good Vibes EP
East Baltimore rapper Dee Dave was murdered in January, really sad situation, I didn't know him but I had been familiar with his music since he did a song with Al Rogers Jr. last year, seemed like a good dude. I'm happy that 20 minutes of unreleased music was just put out as this posthumous release, and that it's really high quality stuff to help him leave behind a musical legacy when his career was just getting started, "We Are" is my favorite track so far, the guy really had a great ear for rhymes and had this plainspoken, openhearted way of writing. It's sad to hear him talking about losing friends on songs like "Not In My League" knowing that he's gone now too.
8. DDm - The Ballad Of Omar
DDm has been one of my favorite rappers in Baltimore for like 15 years, and when he said last year that Beautiful Gowns was gonna be his last album, I hoped it wasn't true. And I'm happy to say it wasn't, and it's cool to hear him do a 180 from the last project and show his range, getting back with Headphones from Mania Music Group to make some harder-edged stuff with. The last time I interviewed DDm in 2014, we talked about how he'd shelved a similarly themed project called The Omar Tape back in 2012, I don't know if this has any of the same music but I can tell from some of the recent references in the lyrics that at least some of it is totally new, so maybe he figured out a better way to pull of the concept than what he had in mind before. "Boys Don't Cry" is a great song and Miss Kam's verse on "Rachacha" is awesome.
9. Charli XCX - How I'm Feeling Now
In the 5 years since Charli XCX briefly grazed serious pop stardom in America, she's put out a lot of music and moved in an increasingly niche direction, and I've enjoyed some of it, but I kinda wish she'd become a big star here, I liked when she was swinging for the fences on Sucker more than the recent glitchy bedroom pop stuff. I like How I'm Feeling Now the most out of her last few projects, though, there's a bit more melody and emotion pinning down songs like "Forever" and "Detonate." Charli was kind of the first high profile artist to announce they were making an album at home in coronavirus quarantine and put this thing together in about a month and put it out right away, which is a great publicity hook, but it doesn't sound rushed or lo-fi or anything compared to her other stuff, I wouldn't have really known if she hadn't said that's how it was made.
10. Superchunk - Clambakes Vol. 10: Only In My Dreams - Live In Tokyo 2009
I recently posted my Superchunk deep album cuts playlist, for no particular reason other than that I'm always listening to Superchunk. And about a week later they released the latest live album in their archival series, with several of my favorite deep cuts on there. I like that they're always trying to cover different eras and places and songs with the shows they pick for Clambakes, and this show is distinct for a cover of Telekensis's "Tokyo" that they learned for the occasion of playing in Tokyo. The best Superchunk show I've ever seen was in D.C. less than a year after this with some of the same setlist, so listening to this brings back great memories. Superchunk ripping into "Detroit Has A Skyline" and "For Tension" on a good night, it doesn't get much better than that for me.
The Worst Album of the Month: Butch Walker - American Love Story
Usually in this space I end up taking easy shots at artists I'm not really a fan of, but it pains me to pan this record, because I really enjoy most of Butch Walker's albums, one of them was pretty high on my best of the 2010s list. And I want to respect the good intentions of what Walker tried to do on this album, criticizing right wing white supremacy and making an unabashedly political record. But so much of the album is devoted to a "conversation" between both sides, including a lot of skits and weird dramatized interstitial pieces that feature, like, slurs and hate speech, it kind of feels like Joyner Lucas's "I'm Not Racist" as a rock album. I think he really swung for the fences and missed on this one. Even the songs that have catchy melodies have a lyric that makes me cringe or a heavy-handed title like "Torn In The USA" or "Divided States of America."
Usually in this space I end up taking easy shots at artists I'm not really a fan of, but it pains me to pan this record, because I really enjoy most of Butch Walker's albums, one of them was pretty high on my best of the 2010s list. And I want to respect the good intentions of what Walker tried to do on this album, criticizing right wing white supremacy and making an unabashedly political record. But so much of the album is devoted to a "conversation" between both sides, including a lot of skits and weird dramatized interstitial pieces that feature, like, slurs and hate speech, it kind of feels like Joyner Lucas's "I'm Not Racist" as a rock album. I think he really swung for the fences and missed on this one. Even the songs that have catchy melodies have a lyric that makes me cringe or a heavy-handed title like "Torn In The USA" or "Divided States of America."
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