Monthly Report: July 2022 Albums
1. Beyonce - Renaissance
If I was going to compare Renaissance to any other Beyonce albums, I'd say it's like attitude of B'Day fed through the aesthetics of the self-titled album. And those are my top two records by her, so that vibe works for me. The murmurs that this is the first of a trio of albums makes me wonder what the other two are going to sound like, but in any event I'm glad she led with a more danceable record. I don't love the first 3 songs, but it gets going from there, so far the standouts for me are "Cuff It" and "Church Girl" and "Plastic Off The Sofa" and "Virgo's Groove" and "Thique" and "All Up In Your Mind." Here's the 2022 albums Spotify playlist I add all these records to as I check them out.
2. Maggie Rogers - Surrender
One thing I like about Maggie Rogers is that her first viral hit "Alaska" established her whole unique aesthetic, sort of an acoustic indie folk thing filtered through hi-tech pop/hip hop production, and she's managed to stay true to that in different forms through her two major label albums and a number of different co-producers. Surrender was primarily co-written and co-produced by Kid Harpoon, who is Harry Styles's primary collaborator, but it mostly just sounds like a Maggie Rogers record, albeit one that feels a little bigger and more bombastic than Heard It In A Past Life. She's also really developing as a singer and pushed her voice into a different space on "Shatter" and gives this Patti Smith-like performance that's really impressive.
3. King Princess - Hold On Baby
Maggie Rogers and King Princess released two of my favorite debut albums of 2019, so it was kind of cool to get 2nd albums from both on the same day last week. "Crowbar" is by far my favorite track so far, but it was also a really cool surprise to hear Taylor Hawkins on drums on the great closing track "Let Us Die."
4. Beabadoobee - Beatopia
I loved Beabadoobee's 2020 debut full-length Fake It Flowers without really delving much into her earlier, more lo-fi and downtempo EPs. But it appears that her fans prefer the EPs, because over the past two years a lot of her most streamed songs have been non-album tracks. Her second album Beatopia perhaps wisely feels like a combination of the slick, crunchy '90s alt rock of Fake It Flowers and the more homespun EP material.
5. Flo Milli - You Still Here, Ho?
I'm forever amused by major label rap's semantic struggles to arbitrarily some projects as albums and some as mixtapes. You Still Here, Ho? is Flo Milli's "debut album," but it's pretty much of the same quality as 2020's Ho, Why Is You Here? which was 10 minutes shorter and is now retconned as a "mixtape." Regardless, Flo Milli is 2 for 2 on these projects, "Bed Time" and "Do It Better" are my favorites so far.
6. India Shawn - Before We Go (Deeper)
I didn't hear India Shawn's Before We Go EP last year, but she expanded it into a full-length album and I'm really enjoying it, her voice is so velvety and soothing on "Exchange" and "Caught In The Middle." D'Mile is really on an incredible hot streak of producing projects by Lucky Daye, Joyce Wrice, Silk Sonic, Victoria Monet, and now this, he doesn't have any one signature sound but really knows how to make lush R&B music that fuses old and new sounds.
7. Jack White - Entering Heaven Alive
Back in April I was asked to review Jack White's first album of 2022, Fear of the Dawn, for Consequence, and a couple weeks ago that led to a pretty cool opportunity to talk about White's other new album, Entering Heaven Alive, on All Things Considered. I definitely prefer White's louder material and think Fear of the Dawn is some of his best stuff ever, but I enjoyed Entering Heaven Alive more than I expected to, there's an interesting range of sounds on here. I think my favorite track that wasn't featured in the NPR segment is "A Tree On Fire From Within," which has a really great piano sound and bass guitar sort of operating as a lead instrument.
8. Brent Faiyaz - Wasteland
Like many people, I've loved Brent Faiyaz's voice since the first time I heard GoldLink's "Crew." And while I had a hunch that Faiyaz would launch a successful career after that song, I'm surprised it took 5 years. But I'm also impressed that he remained independent while getting to #2 on the Billboard 200, that's a real accomplishment. I like Faiyaz's voice more than his songwriting, and his Weeknd-style cinematically tortured toxic debauched lyrics make me roll my eyes sometimes (like, the song title "Ghetto Gatsby," gimme a break). And there are literally 11 minutes of skits on this album that have zero replay value. But the production and the singing on Wasteland are top shelf and the big name guests kind of feel like they're on his turf and are integrated organically, and I like the stretch towards the end with "Role Model," "Jackie Brown" and "Bad Luck."
9. DJ Premier - Hip Hop 50: Vol. 1 EP
I posted my top 100 rap singles of the '90s this week, and in that piece I said "DJ Premier is still probably my top hip hop producer of all time." So I was pretty excited that Premier has started rolling out a series of all-star EPs to celebrate the approaching 50th anniversary of Kool Herc's first Bronx block party in 1973. Even if Premo's beats don't snap quite the same as they used to, I love hearing him do his thing and there are some inspired artist combos on here, including Slick Rick/Lil Wayne and Remy Ra/Rapsody.
10. James Bay - Leap
In 2014, James Bay debuted as a long-haired acoustic singer-songwriter with a big goofy hat, and became a huge star in the UK and had some moderate success in America with one pop hit and three Grammy nominations. In 2018, he cut his hair, took off the hat, and completely overhauled his sound with more sleek, modern Electric Light. And it was a total flop, but I loved it, one of my favorite albums of the 2010s, I think it's great in similar ways to the last couple Harry Styles albums. And Leap feels like Bay's label told him to grow his hair back out and put on the hat and write some ballads, which is doubly disheartening because it doesn't seem to have resulted in a significant commercial comeback. But I still really like his voice and his writing, and there's some livelier songs on here like "Love Don't Hate Me" that feel like he didn't completely abandon the experiments of Electric Light.
The Worst Album of the Month: Journey - Freedom
I will say, Journey's classic rock staples have aged really well (and not just "Don't Stop Believin'," there are a half dozen that I think are just as good). And the band finding a talented new frontman who can pull off the Steve Perry era songs, Filipino singer Arnel Pineda, is a great story. But it still surprises me a little bit just how successful Journey's current lineup is -- they headlined Lollapalooza last year and still play arenas, and their first album with Pineda went platinum. It makes sense to me that Queen and Dead & Company can still sell a lot of tickets basically paying tribute to their frontmen who have passed away, but Steve Perry is still alive and, judging from his last record, can still sing pretty well, which maybe shouldn't matter but to me it does. Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain co-wrote most of the band's hits, so I can understand them wanting to make new records, especially now that one of the biggest pop hitmakers of the 1980s, Narada Michael Walden, is playing drums for Journey and writing songs with them. But Freedom really doesn't have any of the old magic, it sounds like any other washed up old band trying to recapture past glories, and when Pineda isn't singing the hits he doesn't really remind me of Perry much (aside from maybe "After Glow" or "Don't Go"). The single "Don't Give Up On Us" sounding like a knockoff of "Separate Ways" just increases the whole weird uncanny valley vibe of the whole enterprise.
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