Peaches – The Black Keys
A gritty return to the garage blues of yesteryear. Black Keys have fished out the ‘70s blues rock poise, with multiple hints of Delta, that fit them like a glove in their earlier days, and the result is one of their muckiest, most enjoyable, most fantastically listenable albums in fifteen years. The sound of Peaches is, essentially, what 2024’s Ohio Players touched on – you know, nostalgia – and what last year’s No Rain, No Flowers discarded. It’s pretty bad to make an album full of songs that sound like they were made for commercials for NFL video games – the kind of shit that Royal Blood – but Peaches is rectification: the album! You like your rock music dirty? Go ahead, dirty yourself up with Keys, then move to the country, eat a lot of peaches.
Rating – 7 out of 10
FENIAN – Kneecap
I won’t throw anybody under the bus – and I’ll commend anyone for believing in a good cause – but I appreciate Kneecap for never settling for the bare minimum, for going above and beyond standing onstage at an awards show and saying “free Palestine”, not that they get invited to many award shows. However, I don’t think FENIAN really represents their fight. As the group descends – or I guess, ascends – into maximalist production, the meaning of their music occasionally shifts. There is plenty of cruciality on the album – there is a song called Palestine that directly goes into detail on the practice of foreign colonisers, and subsequent resistance – and plenty of great instrumentals – see Liars Tales’ splendid electro beat that sounds like the distorted synth version of T. Rex’s 20th Century Boy, not to mention Headcase’s jungle beat. But the problem I have is that a few too many of these songs seem to be about Kneecap themselves rather than their cause, congratulating their own successes over police run-ins on Smugglers & Scholars, interpolating Mo Chara’s terrorism charge on Carnival, going into detail on their branding on Big Bad Mo. They should know this better than anyone: this is not the time for ego. At least Cold at the Top seems to satirise this. Don’t get me wrong; just because an artist is deeply anarchistic, it doesn’t mean all of their lyrics have to be, but FENIAN’s tendency to go in the opposite direction, focussing on self, did trip me up.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Lykke Li – The Afterparty
Lykke Li dramatically jumps from the darker singer-songwriter-isms of a reclusive Lana Del Rey to indulgent commercial cravings. She did so whilst going from I Never Learn to So Sad So Sexy, and has now followed the excellently gloomy rebirth of Eyeye with a cowardly successor called The Afterparty. There are some sprinklings of former magic – the combination of gloom and bright lights on So Happy I Could Die, for example – but the album mostly reads as a desperate quest for broader appeal, finding ill-fitting, dime-a-dozen Euro-Disco with no sonic flare on Lucky Again (god, its main riff is lazy), contrivedly-placed breakbeats on Happy Now, and a St. Vincent rip-off on Knife in the Heart. I don’t think the album is as desperate as So Sad So Sexy, but it follows its now-established tradition of succeeding a passionately smart, passionately teary album with baby food.
Rating – 3 out of 10
MUSICK – Laibach
If you’re going to make a Eurovision album, just make a Eurovision album. Laibach attempting to mesh a gimmicked, commercial sound with their own gravelly edginess is not only an off-putting clash, but the former always manages to overwhelm the latter; it’s cool that the edge is there – especially when coinciding with activism – but the overproduction towers over it. I do wonder if that’s the point, if MUSICK is supposed to sound corny, is supposed to make fun of music as saccharine, but if your way of sticking it to something you think is shit is superimposing that shit, you’re just presenting even more shit to people. It’s still badly produced, still painful.
The lowlight is Singularity, which interpolates the famous melody from Mozart’s A Little Night Music, atop a a silly dance beat and cheesy goodtime vocal harmonies. Extremely gimmicky rubbish that I thought Laibach were above.
Rating – 2 out of 10
Fidelity – Yaya Bey
Fidelity is a particularly smart album where tackling grief is concerned. Questioning where Blackness fits in with grief, only to then consider her recovery the apex of her race, Yaya Bey takes vulnerability itself to never-before-seen destinations on her latest album. Her vulnerability is boosted by quality vocals, proving chops whilst supplying imperfect harmonies on Me and Mine and Dream Girl, going ‘how low can you go’ soulful on Slot Machines, remaining intimate in a clubby terrain on The Towns (Bella Noche Pt. 2) and The Great Migration – hell, jazz clubby on the latter. Yaya’s voice is somehow both assured and ponderous in its wisping vibrato on Forty Days; a good fit for psychedelic soul.
I’m a little disappointed in the lack of reggae influence on this album. It’s something that Yaya had never been super loud about, but previous albums would either provide a helping of dub or rocksteady, or at least bang out one really good reggae-adjacent cut. Higher is inspired by dub, and Egyptian Musk opts for reggae with a bit of wah, but these songs are far from the album’s best offerings. Still, her stylistic choices are generally good fits for her singing, as mentioned above; usually neo-soul – Cup of Water has those D’Angelo grooves – and whatever additions might go with. The production is excellent, the best example being Simp Daddy Line Dance’s extrovert beat, stray violin interjections, minimalist basslines and vinyl crackle.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Honora – Flea
I think this is, kinda, what I expected Flea’s jazz album to sound like. If he were to try to concoct some sort of spiritual, out of body experience, he’d be quite dignified about it, despite the humour he has fuelled himself on for over four decades with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I expected this of him because I expected him to view Honora as an opportunity to show that he isn’t a one trick pony, and that his virtuosity contains multitudes. And it’s not just about the seriousness of the themes (including healing in the face of division on A Plea), or about his seriousness as a musician; it’s about just how far he’s willing to take it all. I expected lots of trumpet playing as well as bass – he also plays the flumpet on Wichita Lineman – and I expected him to fill these instrumentals with the extent of his talent, without being zany like his bass-playing with the Red Hots.
That said, I didn’t expect his take on jazz fusion to go as deep as it does, moulding some very original-sounding covers, which I know is oxymoronic. The aforementioned Wichita Lineman stages a particularly soulful guest vocal from Nick Cave with bold double bass, sinister piano keys and a daydreaming trumpet, taking a country pop song on a jazz album as far away from those two genres as they’ll possibly go. And his take on Maggot Brain is particularly startling; those famous guitar arpeggios exchanged for vibraphone; Eddie Hazel’s greatest guitar solo replicated by woodwinds and a trumpet take from Flea that reimagines it as the soaring symbol of rock n roll that the electric guitar is supposed to be. He even does Frank Ocean’s Thinkin Bout You.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Ambiguous Desires – Arlo Parks
Soul-searching introspection is something you will have to uncover a little more on Ambiguous Desires, compared to previous Arlo Parks albums. You’ll have to root through the dance pop vibes to find deeper meaning, whereas the emotional strengths of Collapsed in Sunbeams were right there in the songwriting. And that’s fine; Ambiguous Desires is a smart album in that regard; it doesn’t spoon-feed, and does a much better job at serving deeper meaning through dance vibes than most albums that attempt similar things. There’s also a noticeable amount of palpability; you can get lost in the numb nocturnality (Senses, supplied partially by Sampha’s breathy vocal, and Heaven), cry a little to some pretty decent, wailing choruses (Get Go), and sometimes, both in one go (Jetta).
The album isn’t as cutting as Collapsed in Sunbeams, but that’s maybe because Collapsed in Sunbeams was so eager to be cutting, synchronising the emotional displays that usually come with singer-songwriter music, and Arlo’s unique version of alternative R&B.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Sexistential – Robyn
Eh, you know, it sounds like how I’d expect sex-confident dance pop to sound, and that’s a good thing, because it’s a vibe Robyn has always gotten on well with. I don’t think the melodies are as strong as those of Body Talk, but Robyn compensates by opting for a slightly more ambitious style of presentation that includes glitches, blown-out synths, and a few outlandish hip hop interpolations.
I’m wondering if the album was influenced at all by Fever Ray? Not to foolishly compare a Swede to a Swede, and Robyn does embargo the extent of her freakiness unlike Fever Ray, but the whole ‘pulling vitality from sexuality/sexual hedonism’ thing, through a European synthpop lens, suggests as much.
Rating – 6.5 out of 10
An Undying Love for a Burning World – Neurosis
It’s been ten nail-biting years since Neurosis released Fires Within Fires. As good as Fires was, An Undying Love for a Burning World blows it out the water. New vocalist Aaron Turner (of Isis and Sumac) shouts “the dissonance is deafening” and then he and Steve Von Till come out with some of the best dissonant metal riffs, like ever, not to mention some of the most philosophical-sounding atmospheres produced solely by guitars. Like landmark Neurosis releases (Souls at Zero / Through Silver in Blood), the album is also progressive and mightily-structured, giving it a particular feeling of suspense akin to the classics. It is ridiculously mournful, entrenched in suffering; its sense of argh is cathartic.
Rating – 8 out of 10
To Whom This May Concern – Jill Scott
Jill Scott could’ve coasted at this point in her career. She could’ve put out a conventional R&B record just to put something out, but doing that after an eleven-year gap would’ve been imprudent, especially when you consider that 2015’s Woman was one of her more conventional albums by Jill standards. If To Whom This May Concern is conventional in any way, it’d be due to some of its earlier cuts ditching the “neo” in “neo-soul” in favour of smooth ‘70s-style arrangements, but when you consider how well those arrangements resemble those of, say, Marvin Gaye, their traditionalism feels less-so, especially in this day and age. The album is otherwise packed with modernistic neo-soul, but even so, my favourite way that Jill detaches herself from any norms is with her vocal performances alone. She sings, with unembarrassed confidence, some of her wildest falsetto snaps (Be Great), tongue-in-cheek yet congruently faithful jazz (Pay U on Tuesday), slickly crazy harmonies (BPOTY), affectionate exchanges with oddly mystical chords (The Math), some of the best ‘soul vocals over a house instrumental’ since the ‘90s (Right Here Right Now), and some of the best ‘I can’t be fucked with showing any restraint’, heartbroken vocals since forever (Ase).
Rating – 8 out of 10
‘Strictly 4 the Scythe’ by The Scythe / Denzel Curry
I wasn’t expecting Strictly 4 the Scythe to be so casual or shoestring. Once you consider how well Denzel Curry grooved with these same collaborators on King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2 (sick, aggressive hardcore rap mixtape), it’s easy to feel shortchanged by The Scythe’s very entry-level, uncommitted approach. The sound, in general, is fine (the sort of evil, torturedly loud southern hip hop Denzel can drum up in his sleep at this point), but the flows sound unmotivated – just ‘this is my style, this is what I bring to the table’, outline raps – and none of the hooks stand out. The first hook that actually comes to mind is the first hook; the contrivedly hot-headed “TRYNA FUCK WITH THE SCYTHE, YOU GET SLICED, HO” warcry motto of The Scythe, like let’s see how cornily we can introduce ourselves. The only verse with much personality is A$AP Ferg’s on Phony. These are all great rappers with far more personality than what is displayed here.
Rating – 5 out of 10
‘My Days of 58’ by Bill Callahan
Mr. Smog, ol’ Billy Boy, is back, and My Days of 58 is one of one of his prettiest albums. I’ll take as much pretty as I can get from Bill Callahan, because I don’t always enjoy his intimate vocal style, which sounds a little too self-satisfied for my enjoyment. The worst of his vocal style does crop up on My Days of 58, stopping to talk to the listener like he’s Jiminy Cricket, but I won’t let that ruin what is an undeniably enlightening record that captures the value of life amid aging remarkably well. Just listen to Stepping Out for Air; really lovely harmonies of precious chords played on a crinkling acoustic guitar, inviting the majesty of its horns. It’s like its being played into the air of night whilst acknowledging just how beautiful and important said night is once you’re in your late fifties.
Rating – 7 out of 10
‘Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.’ by Harry Styles
I’ve started watching Crazy Ex Girlfriend. In the second episode, there is a joke in which the main character assumes that Vampire Weekend is “a weekend away with vampires”, which leads to a funny pre-credits scene. I imagine that up until very recently Harry Styles thought the same thing, only to eventually discover the band and have them take over his life. Basically, his new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally (stupid fucking name), has an overriding Ezra Koenig influence. That’s the bit that Harry actually does fairly well; the Gotham hipster looking for the nearest falafel vendor vibe, mildly sexy and melodic when it needs to be, despite its softness and warmth.
But if you’re going to borrow so heavily from indie music (and this isn’t to say Vampire Weekend are some obscure underground darlings), you may as well borrow more of the bits that make the source material alluring in the first place. Vampire Weekend, typically, have colourful instrumentals – the baroque stuff, the organ stuff, the Graceland stuff – but Harry, despite his surname, refuses to branch out and reserves himself to mild-mannered alt-pop, which is a shame, as he generally tries. Despite Vampire Weekend having their own stereotypes, you never really know where they’re going with their songs/albums, whereas Harry only has one direction. I’m so proud of myself.
Funnily enough, the album was actually inspired by a different New York outfit, that being LCD Soundsystem. As implied by its stupid fucking name, it is, first and foremost, a dance-oriented album, but the dance vibes are chilled and underwritten, seldom propulsive, but that slant at least results in a pretty nice, cuddly tune in the form of Taste Back, and the album’s LCK/VW mix-up finds a home in the African rhythms and outgoing bass loops of Are You Listening Yet?
Rating – 5 out of 10
Converge – Love Is Not Enough
Nothing particularly unexpected from Converge at this point, or inventive unless you consider these combos of metalcore and sludge inventive, but Love Is Not Enough is good, hellish fun. Jacob Bannon’s screams are death-defying, and the album hardly runs its course in its nutty, unrelenting, action-packed half-hour. Sometimes, that’s all ya need, baby.
So that this isn’t the most pointless thing I’ve ever written, I will recommend a few tracks, including untiring mid-album tracks Amon Amok and Force Meets Presence, then the final two: the barbarically hardcore Make Me Forget You and the intensely-structured We Were Never the Same, which feels much longer it is, in a good, epic way.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Willow – Petal Rock Black
Willow is genuinely very good at making grounded songs out of her urge to constantly be at least a little experimental or theatrical. She’s a good, emotive songwriter, which, pardon the pedantry, is impressive for a nepo baby. She capitalised on her potential on 2024’s Empathogen, containing such great feats as “I HAVE SUCH BIG FEELINGSSSS”. Petal Rock Black isn’t Empathogen; it is, in its best moments, a window into making selectively melodic pop out of idiosyncrasies, respect for jazz, and tips one may have picked up from working with St. Vincent – see the sophisticated vibrato and subtle ambience of Not a Fantasy. It is, largely, a scatterbrained album full of non-songs, released on a fairly major record label because of Willow’s existing star power, presented in such a fragmented, ‘whatever idea pops into your head’ kind of way because nobody’s going to tell Willow otherwise. It’s far more ambitious than her emo crossovers, but she at least had the application to pull that off. Petal Rock Black just sounds like she’s visited a hippie retreat where everything is encouraged as long as it’s in the name of art.
Should’ve got her dad to spit some bars on it. That was a joke.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Danny L Harle – Cerulean
Cerulean disputes Danny L Harle’s reputation as an ideas man, which admittedly, is probably a reputation that exists mostly only in my head. I loved hearing the guy fuse bubblegum bass with nostalgic ‘90s house on 2015’s Broken Flowers EP (still his best work), and while he may have dedicated much of debut LP Harlecore to butchering the project (see any track with MC Boing involved), you could chalk that up to Danny going out on a limb. Cerulean is just drab trance music with ordinary-sounding beats and synthesisers, sans personality. There are no original ideas, which Danny himself emphasises by using very similar arpeggios on multiple tracks – it sounds a bit like Clocks by Coldplay, or that David Guetta song that sounds a bit like Clocks by Coldplay. He also has a tough time accommodating his impressive list of features, from PinkPantheress to Caroline Polachek to Dua Lipa.
Rating – 4 out of 10
Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights
Credit where it’s due: Charli XCX took her assignment seriously. If she has become synonymous with any of her albums, it would be Brat; her wonderfully shameless party album that took the world by storm back in the summer of 2024. Obviously, nobody really expected her soundtrack for a film adaptation of an Emily Bronte novel to be anything like Brat, but it’s easy to underestimate Charli’s ability to make music so dignified and emotionally towering whilst remaining as striking as she did on the album that is now her quintessence, especially when said album was so happy to not be thought-provoking outside of a couple of reflections (see So I). When you think about it, Wuthering Heights probably is what we should’ve expected from a Charli XCX soundtrack album; mind-bending production that fuses cinematic music with unique genres, all to match the complexity the human condition. There is hardly a moment where a disharmony of violins isn’t clawing its way through your ears, introduced on terrifying opening track House; a darkwave-adjacent buildup of noise that features John Cale, seething from his exclusion from Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat.
She already captured the ambience of the bustling nightclub in which people pressure one another to take so many drugs that they wake up in hospital (or worse yet, the bed of somebody who didn’t go to college), so who’s to say she can’t capture the ambience of nineteenth-century, northern English moorlands? Hell, the album is downright stately at times, what with its use of chamber orchestration, though its embellishments are mainly those of synthy power balladry, one-upped by the boldness of Charli’s voice. As these motifs mix like a bowl of party peanuts, the album produces a number of heart-stopping moments; the sudden synth-string pound on the hook of Out of Myself; the “one is not the loneliest number” tearjerker of Altars which confirms Charli’s ability to dedicate a project to sadness and dead-eyed romanticism. Wuthering Heights presents a sort of Russian doll of artistry; more dignified than Brat, but despite Brat being so deliberately unchallenging, its bombast could be deemed more challenging than Wuthering Heights, but this is more challenging for those that loved Brat so much. I’ll just say something “clever” and call it lamb dressed as mutton and move on.
Best tracks – House – Out of Myself – Altars.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Lord Jay-Monte Ogbon – As of Now
Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon is one of those ‘committed to the studio’ rappers who seem to be constantly releasing new music – think Boldy James or Blu. That said, he has been absent since 2023, during which he released three albums. As of Now proves just how essential either taking a break or putting a bit more time into an album can be. The album is almost an hour long, and is by far the Charlotte emcee’s most grounded effort, despite being as eclectic as what one may have come to expect from the guy. There is not a beat Ogbon won’t rap over, from the earthy flutes of I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up (probably the best track) to the nocturnal jazz of Drunk Nights in Edgewood (IMYSM). His charisma is a constant, displayed beautifully on the regrets-heavy So You Really Don’t Miss Me, which sounds like a freestyle during a lonely night at a bar. Ogbon is tipsy and multi-minded, like somebody whose best ideas – and performances – come after taking something or drinking something. He will, just as easily, go a few tracks without a deadly hook, without displaying his eagerness or taking a risk, and if you only heard these tracks (for instance, I’m Getting Too Famous (This Time Last Year)), you might consider Ogbon the diluted form of a slightly more bonkers rapper. But overall, As of Now is a pretty crazy album. It may or may not hold your attention for its entire duration, but its presentation of Lord Jay-Monte Ogbon, in his most complete form, is at the very least commendable.
Best tracks – I’m Signed to Lex Now I’m Up – So You Really Don’t Miss Me.
Rating – 7 out of 10
Ratboys – Singin’ to an Empty Chair
I’m always going to think the name “Ratboys” feels like a contradiction. The band’s bright, shiny, good-natured brand of acoustic indie pop – a slide guitar often added for some Americana warmth – feels at odds with the mucky, diseased idea of a “rat boy”. I’m not going to give up on a band for this reason, but Singin’ to an Empty Chair pushes cuteness to the front to the point of exhaustion; fifty minutes of clean production and the same overly-romantic guitar-picking patterns, with the only alleviation supplied by its modest country undertakings, the fact that Ratboys are good enough at writing fairly conventional love songs, and the towering Just Want You to Know the Truth; an eight-minute stallion that shows a lot more grit and guts than most – love its climactic use of distortion. Following Just Want You to Know the Truth up with What’s Right was a good idea too; a fast-paced frolic that fills the pitfalls of the album’s samey, clean disposition with, you know, something not that. Otherwise, Ratboys keep their wits about them; they’re not doing anything wrong on a fundamental level, but they are sounding the safest they ever have. I’d say the album sounds like ‘Hayley Williams does Adrianne Lenker’, but that’d be too big a compliment.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Quadeca – i.ii.iii
For all of us plebians who aren’t quite so clued up on the ins and outs of ambient music practicality – ya know, the what goes into it, the academiaaaaa – without making basic assumptions, it feels nice and contented to just ask yourself how this music would feel if used in a video game; a Zelda dungeon; a Donkey Kong Country water level. There are certain dynamics to the textures Quadeca uses, some ascensions in volume that might feel like crescendos, but i.ii.iii is quite stationary, for the most part. To go back to the whole video game thingy, the EP might serve a tranquil or icy environment, so it is perfectly atmospheric, and Quadeca likely put more planning into it than holding down chords on a keyboard, but if you want more than that from your selected ambient works, look for someone with more experience such as Tim Hecker or Grouper.
Rating – 6 out of 10
Mydreamfever – 4. Mountain Still Breathing
A ‘rock goes ambient’ project isn’t always going to end up as imaginative as it looks on paper. I suppose the same goes for any crossover project – we’re living in an era in which Andre 3000 simply owning a piano constitutes high art, apparently – but Mydreamfever has enough practicality alongside his ambition to not just point a microphone towards the local nature reserve. 4. Mountain Still Breathing isn’t a stellar ambience-oriented album simply because Mydreamfever – who otherwise makes shoegaze music under the name Parannoul – does more than the bare minimum; it’s a genuinely picturesque series of recordings that captures the agriculture of rural Korea; undisturbed mountains, small villages that share space with nature. Recorded as one piece split into fourteen, the album feels like an uninterrupted journey. And then there’s the most important aspect; this is still an organised recording, hardly conventionally rocky or poppy, but full of crisp, folksy guitars, delicate musical atmospheres commissioned by woodwinds or simply things that sound like woodwinds, and voyaging, post-rock builds. The bare minimum would irk Mydreamfever; the fourth instalment in his ‘Music to Relax’ is devoted and plentiful.
Rating – 7 out of 10
The Molotovs – Wasted on Youth
I was most of the way through Nothing Keeps Her Away and said, out loud, “okay, can I turn this off?”. I was the only person in the room; the contrived Paul Weller singing was so bad it caused me to not only start talking to myself, but ask myself for permission to stop listening to music. I suppose I can imagine somebody dieting and asking themselves for permission to eat a biscuit or something, so maybe this is my equivalent, though in this case the action was the healthy option. If we’re trying to form a food-based analogy or comparison from The Molotovs, it’d be, well, to make the obvious joke, something with jam in it. If you like The Jam so much that the only other music you like is stuff that tries to emulate them, this might be your bag, alongside The Futureheads and any other band whose lead singer’s voice sounds like lager.
Their Doc Martens are probably knockoffs.
Rating – 2 out of 10
Zach Bryan – With Heaven on Top
With Heaven on Top revisits the uncontroversial, safe-sounding side of Zach Bryan that prevented me from getting into the Oklahoma singer-songwriter’s 2023 self-titled album. While the occasional experience is a little more animated (big horns on Appetite, big growls and choir vocals on Always Willin’), it certainly feels as though most of the emotions that went into the album come out passive-aggressively, which would be bad enough if it wasn’t eighty-minutes-long – warning, the album is eighty-minutes-long. 2024’s The Great American Bar Scene was a bit rowdier, albeit inconsistently, which is an approach I feel benefits Zach’s music far more than writing and singing the same ol’ country song – in this case for eighty minutes. So many songs have similar melodies, differentiated only by the varying sadness of Zach’s lyrics. I admire the grit of anti-ICE tune Bad News, definitely one of his least filtered performances; singing about agony requires agony in the voice, and he succeeds. I also feel as though Zach keeps the more emotive performances going – to some extent – on the back-end of the album (see All Good Things Past), but it all comes just a little too late.
Best tracks – Appetite – Bad News – All Good Things Past.
Rating – 5 out of 10
Poppy – Empty Hands
Poppy has no fixed address, but on albums such as I Disagree and Negative Spaces, she has displayed a preference for emulating wayback alternative metal, and occasionally metalcore. Thanks to her ability to bundle her preferences with her eccentricities and some decent songwriting chops (I Disagree, in particular, is full of earworms), those albums were pretty darn good. On Empty Hands – a natural new edition of metal Poppy – she has become boring, which she rarely has been in the past. Poppy has turned into her own manufactured revival of metal styles that were popular in the 2000s and early 2010s, completely style over substance in a way that evokes the era whilst shunning original songwriting. Some songs are a little more out-there than that – Public Domain is; a Harley Quinn vocal; a weird industrial motif that evokes Kanye West’s Black Skinhead – but much of the album is underwritten. The titles of Guardian and Unravel seemed to come before the music and lyrics, as if a few RNG buttons were mashed and these are the songs that came out, albeit slightly industrially on the latter. The best moments are simply those that Poppy hits with undeniable commitment and efficiency; the sheer hardcore/screamo of the title track, for example. Otherwise, we’re in for oblivious alt-metal, and oblivious metalcore – credit for the pig squeals though.
Best track – Empty Hands
Rating – 5 out of 10
Ari Lennox – Vacancy
Ari Lennox, alongside her many producers and musicians, is able to maintain a number of musical relationships on Vacancy, primarily those that apply to contemporary R&B. Her instrumentals focus on melding R&B with jazz; she sings with incredible flexibility, as early as opening track Mobbin in DC, whilst saxophones, trumpets, splashy organs and low-key guitar reverb achieve that perfect jazz/neo-soul sound. Her not-so-subtle lyrics and presence maintain her genre’s relationship with erotica – one could easily praise Vacancy by using the word “sensual” over and over again. This is about as interesting as the album gets; the compositions don’t stand out like they did on Age/Sex/Location’s mix of nonlinear adventuring and sheer catchiness, but Under the Moon and Twin Flame should at least stick with you.
Best tracks – Mobbin in DC – Under the Moon – Twin Flame.
Rating – 6.5 out of 10