Monthly Report: July 2024 Albums
1. Zach Bryan - The Great American Bar Scene
Bruce Springsteen has occasionally jumped on songs by younger artists he's influenced -- The Killers, The Gaslight Anthem, Bleachers, Dropkick Murphys -- and it usually feels an exciting moment just for the band even if the song itself is kind an anticlimactic shrug. I like Springsteen's appearance on "Sandpaper" on Zach Bryan's new album, though, it feels like Bryan knew exactly what to do and put together a song with heavy "I'm On Fire" vibes -- it also became The Boss's first Hot 100 entry since 2009. The Great American Bar Scene, like Zach Bryan's last album, opens with a spoken word poem instead of a song, but that's just about the only thing I don't like about it -- he's more or less released all his major label albums in summertime and it's really started to feel like part of the character of these records, this humid sunburned vibe permeating the songs.
2. Ben Seretan - Allora
I'd never heard of New York-based singer-songwriter Ben Seretan before skimming a review of Allora the other day and feeling curious to hear it, but I'm glad I checked it out on a whim. The 8-minute psych rock opener "New Air," which has some glorious shredding, had me hooked right away, that and "Jubilation Blues" are my immediate favorites. Seretan and his band recorded Allora in Italy a few years ago when a European tour fell apart and they instead spent three days recording in a Venice farm house, and you can just feel the in-the-moment spontaneity of the circumstances in the album.
3. Common and Pete Rock - The Auditorium Vol. 1
When I was putting together my Common deep cuts playlist a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that Karriem Riggins did some perfectly good work producing Common's last three albums, but he just had extremely big shoes to fill from Common's earlier albums with No ID, Dilla, and Kanye. So it feels like an overdue course correction for Common to hook up with someone of a really legendary stature like Pete Rock, and they both feel energized by the opportunity to make a late career masterpiece. The first couple tracks are my least favorite songs on The Auditorium, but it feels like once they get warmed up they're just in the zone, Common and C.L. Smooth are more alike than they are different so it just feels like a really natural pairing.
4. Megan Moroney - Am I Okay?
For me, country music and hip hop are the two genres that really let you appreciate the diversity of America's regional accents. Right now, Megan Moroney's Savannah, Georgia drawl is one of my favorite accents on country radio, her personality just comes through so effortlessly in her records. And there's this bittersweet ache in her voice that I just love, whether the song is sad like "28th of June" or exasperated like "No Caller ID" or cautiously hopeful like "This Time's the Charm." I feel like it's a missed opportunity that they haven't released "Mama I Lied" as a single, because it feels like a downtempo sequel to Moroney's breakthrough single "Tennessee Orange."
5. Enslow - Hello
The Baltimore singer-songwriter Enslow released most of the songs from her debut album as singles over the past four years. But the local radio station WTMD had an advance of the album, and in the weeks leading up to the release of Hello, they kept playing one of the few tracks not released in advance, "How You Do It." And it blew me away, just a really lovely indie pop track with a huge hook, I was waiting for the release date just to be able to play it whenever I wanted. The rest of the album is a little more acoustic but "Moonbeam" hits on a similar sound and is also great.
6. Mast Year - Point of View
Mast Year is one of a handful of Baltimore bands playing SubScape this week that I talked to for an upcoming Baltimore Banner piece about the festival. And their second album is awesome, just huge pummeling grooves, my favorite track is the 9-minute "Figure of Speech." Like 2023's Knife, there's a couple quieter instrumentals on Point of View, but the loud sludgy parts of the record are longer and more intense.
7. KMack Knokville and Jay Funk - UNK
Rapper KMack and producer Jay Funk are both legends of Baltimore hip hop who've been making music since the mid-'90s, KMack's old group Annexx Click still gets a lot of love from '90s underground rap collectors. So these guys linking up for a new project in 2024 is like the Baltimore equivalent of the Common/Pete Rock album, and I love hearing them still hungry, still digging in the crates for cool samples to chop and thinking of slick punchlines. You could say KMack sounds like Jadakiss, but he's actually been making records longer than Kiss.
8. Manners Manners - I Held Their Eyes, I Kissed Them All
Another band from Baltimore -- four albums from Baltimore in this post, great month for music from the city! Manners Manners are wonderful people and it's been cool to watch them grow over the years, they sound better with every release, and I always feel like I can tell that Jack Pinder grew up on a lot of the same bands that I did. "Yr Well" and "Cinemattachine" are my favorite songs from this record so far.
9. Brad Tursi - Parallel Love
Old Dominion is one of the few really conventional bands in modern Nashville that writes and plays most of their songs together, and they've amassed a nice run of hits over five albums. Last year, Old Dominion guitarist Brad Tursi wrote a great Teddy Robb single, "Question the Universe," and I was really disappointed that it didn't become a hit. But it turns out Tursi has a whole set of similarly contemplative singer-songwriter material that didn't fit in on the band's albums, and Old Dominion's label Sony quietly released Tursi's debut solo album, which includes his own version of "Question the Universe." It's a compact little record, 10 tracks in 26 minutes, but the songs are still strong enough to leave an impression.
10. JT - City Cinderella
There aren't a lot of groups in popular music these days, and when there is one, people are quick to pick favorites and push for them to go solo, and shame them if they don't take off like Justin or Beyonce. JT was always by far the better rapper in City Girls, but they had a winning brand as a duo, even if it had kind of run its course by their last album. City Cinderella isn't as strong as I hoped it would be, but "'90s Baby" and "Star of the Show" are bangers, she sounds surprisingly good with those kinds of sample-driven beats.
The Worst Album of the Month: Hardy - Quit!!
Lately the country charts have been inundated with artists from other genres, but Michael Wilson Hardy crossed over in the opposite direction. He established himself on country radio, where he's had four top 10 hits, and then made a move to hard rock radio, where he's had three top 10 hits. I think Hardy's country stuff is hit and miss -- in March he released Difftape, a pretty cool all-star tribute to Joe Diffie. But I really don't like his rock material. Hardy opens his third album with a story of somebody writing "quit!!" on a bar napkin and putting it in his tip jar during his early performing days, and how experiences with haters like that fueled his success. It's a nice anecdote, whether or not it's true, but he raps the entire song in a constipated Fred Durst flow (Durst himself shows up on the second half of the album). Nu-metal has retained a little bit of a resurgence in coolness lately, but Quit!! feels like all the worst cliches of the genre embraced by a Nashville opportunist.
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