Monthly Report: July 2021 Albums
1. Upper Wilds - Venus
Parts & Labor was a great band, and I can't say I mind that one of the members of the band, Dan Friel, is still making some similarly melodic noise rock power trio records almost a decade after P&L's breakup. When I saw that every song on Venus has a generic numbered song titled -- "Love Song #1" through "Love Song #10" -- I worried that it might sound like an arch concept album or be poking fun at the idea of writing love songs, but there's a lot of heart driving this big wailing anthems. I love the little breaks between the main riff in "Love #7," such a fun arrangement. Here's my 2021 albums Spotify playlist that contains pretty much every new record I've listened to this year.
2. Isaiah Rashad - The House Is Burning
Like pretty much every other TDE rapper, Isaiah Rashad has a passionate fanbase that thinks he's one of the best rappers in the world, but his music never totally clicked with me. It feels like he's reemerged from a wilderness period recharged and better than ever on The House Is Burning, though, and found the right balance between the TDE in-house sound and his southern roots. Really well sequenced album, love how "HB2U" feels like the perfect song to end it on.
3. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
I respected When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? more than I liked it. It was exciting to see someone so young make a blockbuster debut album that so thoroughly lived in its own handmade bedroom pop world and forced pop music to accept it on its own terms, but I enjoyed individual songs more than the album as a whole. But I think Happier Than Ever is a richer, more consistent album, even if it's got the impossible task of a follow-up album that needs to make lightning strike twice. There are some cool surprising production flourishes like the "I Didn't Change My Number" outro and the way the title track kind of blooms into a full band rock sound she's never done before, and even the familiar singles feel at home within the album -- "NDA" running straight into "Therefore I Am" sounds better than either song by itself. Only one track out of 16, the spoken word "Not My Responsibility," feels like unfinished filler where she didn't get around to working what she had to say into a proper song.
4. Vince Staples - Vince Staples
It's kind of funny to me how some Vince Staples albums have people arguing over them like it's Yeezus or To Pimp A Butterfly even when the difference between this stuff and his early work is a little more subtle and incremental and the commercial stakes are much lower. The last time we heard from Staples, he released the 22-minute FM! but talked about releasing multiple albums in 2019. Instead, he laid low for a couple years, and then came back with another 22-minute project, but Vince Staples manages to feel more like an album and more deliberate and thought out one, if maybe less immediate. The pretty, minimal Kenny Beats productions leave lots of open space for Vince's voice, which is even more matter-of-fact conversational than it was before, and he keeps dropping these poignant and sometimes bleak little slice-of-life asides in a way that feels like he just really wants to make sure you don't miss the content of the songs this time around.
5. Mariah The Scientist - Ry Ry World
It must be tough coming into the industry with a name that people already associate with an iconic artist in your field, but Mariah The Scientist manages to shrug that off with style (whereas A$AP Rocky just doesn't go by Rakim or even try to rap particularly well). Definitely one of my favorite records out of the whole 'alt R&B' field lately, feels like she's doing something with a little more personality than these Sade wannabes.
6. Willow - Lately I Feel Everything
It's funny how Willow Smith seemed like she was gonna be a world-conquering pop star at the age of 10, but she took a step back after "Whip My Hair," and kind of pursued a more idiosyncratic cult artist path, or at least as much as one can when you're signed to Roc Nation and your parents are mega-celebrities. And now, at 20, she has a charting single and album, but even with the ubiquitous mastermind of the pop punk revival, Travis Barker, on a few tracks, it feels like she arrived at this sound organically and there's a nice variety to the album, "Come Home" and "Don't Save Me" stand out as awesome songs that don't sound at all like the single, "Transparent Soul."
7. La' Matic - Santana's World
Probably one of the best rap releases out of Baltimore this year, kind of a descendant of the strain of AutoTune street rap that's really never gone away for the past 12 or 13 years. But "Before I Go" towards the end of the album is a really strong personal piece of writing, and is followed by an excellent posthumous Dee Dave collaboration.
8. Jam & Lewis - Jam & Lewis, Volume One
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have one of the most incredible catalogs of any production/songwriting team in pop history, and the guest list on their first album of their own is fittingly impressive (Usher, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Babyface, among others). There's one funky uptempo jam at the end of the album with a couple of their bandmates from The Time, and I would've loved a little more of that flavor, but the ballad-heavy vibe of the album works, and the Heather Headley song is as good as the ones with superstars.
9. IDK - U See 4 Yourself
IDK (formerly Jay IDK) is from Bowie, Maryland, pretty close to where I live, so it's been cool to watch his career steadily rise over the last few years. IDK is probably one of the most Kanye-influenced rappers I've ever heard -- that might sound silly since Kanye has influenced so much in the last couple decades, but he's one of the few MCs who I think really sounds like he learned to flow and write punchlines from listening Kanye. He's a clever writer who puts his albums together well, though, I enjoy the stretch of the second half of U See 4 Yourself where SiR, T-Pain, and Slick Rick put in appearances.
10. John Mayer - Sob Rock
A few weeks ago I wrote about how much I liked "Last Train Home" and was intrigued by John Mayer's attempt to reconcile the earnest dad rock he makes with the trolling snark of his public persona with an album that leans into a campy pastiche of '80s AOR. And I would say that for 90% of Sob Rock, he pulls off that strange balance well and made the album I hoped it would be. But "Why You No Love Me," where he sings the title and other phrases in the same goofy broken English over and over, is so awful that it kind of drags the album down in my esteem quite a bit. You could delete the song from existence and add a whole star rating to the record, but I can't unhear it now.
The Worst Album of the Month: jxdn - Tell Me About Tomorrow
If you were to custom build an album for me to hate in 2021, a good start would be a TikTok celebrity named Jaden who spells his name with dropped vowels and an 'x' in lowercase and makes emo rap. Last year I wrote about the burgeoning pop trend of punk and hip hop colliding, and if Willow's album is the best record to emerge from this wave, then jxdn and The Kid Laroi's new albums are the worst. A lot of the usual suspects are on here (Travis Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, Iann Dior, Blackbear), and it's just incredibly bland and familiar, with the most annoying nasal frontman possible.
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