This feature aims to draw some attention to notable album releases over the past month that you may have missed, covering a variety of genres and artists.
Phoenix – Alpha Zulu (4th November)
Genres – Indie Pop
French indie pop stalwarts Phoenix have shown that they may not have much left in the tank with this disappointingly forgettable release. Having come up with insanely catchy, effortlessly cool, and yet widely appealing tracks like ‘Lisztomania’ and ‘If I Ever Feel Better/, it’s a shame that on Alpha Zulu Thomas Mars and co. fail to hit the same notes, with the band sounding like they are being somewhat left behind. However, the album is not without good moments. The first two tracks are very solid. The title track, which kicks off the album, has a solid melody, and the single ‘Tonight’ featuring Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig is a catchy indie pop tune that, in decades past, may have been a floor-filler. However, the rest of the album passes by in a relative haze of mediocrity with no catchy hook or impressive vocal performance to punch through it. The production is particularly stale, leading to a lack of personality and warmth on an album that could do with some personality and warmth. Like the recent Hot Chip release, a band who were perfect for their moment (It’s Never Been Like That and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix are still very good albums) seem to be reaching for something that is no longer there. This is not an awful album by any means, but this band can do better.
R.A.P. Ferreira – 5 to the Eye with Stars (4th November)
Genres – Conscious Hip-hop
R.A.P. Ferreira’s new bite-sized project (only 23 minutes long) re-establishes him as one of the most technically gifted and creative MCs around. The jazzy yet distorted production matches his free-form verses to create an immersive and truly great-sounding album. The lyrics are reflective and heavily referential and, beyond the pretty soundscapes, overarching themes of self-improvement and the reclamation of narratives become apparent. ‘mythysizer instinct’, featuring Hemlock Ernst, is probably the album’s finest moment. The mellow production, as well as Ernst’s distinctive singing voice, compliment Ferreira’s powerful lyrics about the trivialisation of death in hip hop resulting from the shocking regularity with which cultural figures are killed. The opening line is one of the most profound on the album: ‘No one ever really dies, well no one ever really cared either // They nod as if incredulity made them wiser.’ The problem is not merely death, but the masculine impulse to act as if it does not exist. This is just one example of great lyricism in an album which is consistently thoughtful and nuanced. This is one of the strongest and most understated hip-hop albums of the year.
Run the Jewels – RTJ CU4TRO (11th November)
Genres – Hip-hop
After the Toy Selectah salsa remix of ‘JU$T’, Run the Jewels collaborated with a range of Latin American artists to remix the entirety of their brilliant 2020 release RTJ4. Killer Mike and El-P’s verses take on a new lease of life over fresh production with the addition of Spanish language verses from the likes of Santa Fe Klan and Baco Exo do Blues. What it amounts to is a very fun listen with a few excellent takes on already excellent tracks. The Mexican Institute of Sound’s version of ‘Ooh La La’ maybe even better than the original and the same can be said of ‘Fuera de vista’, the new version of ‘outta sight, which is one of the most adrenaline-fuelled hip-hop tracks I’ve heard this year. While the second half of this collection falls slightly flat, it's hard not to smile at the love that has gone into this and, if nothing else, it’s a great reminder of just how good RTJ4 is.
SAULT – 11 (11th November)
Genres – Neo-soul
November has been a good month for fans of mysterious soul collective SAULT who dropped five albums on the same day. While they are all worth checking out, 11 is the most album-y of the bunch and exhibits some of their best work. The bass lick and groove on the opening track, ‘Glory’, with Cleo Sol’s exceptional vocals indicate where the album is going. It is a euphoric collection of tracks which draw on the soul, gospel, and funk to great effect. The interweaving of these different sounds is shown on ‘Morning Sun’, one of the album’s best tracks. It opens with a beautifully uplifting gospel choir section, before the driving bass and percussion kick in, leading into the funk-flavoured remainder of the track. The Steely Dan-like synth line on ‘Higher’ shows the group successfully exploring yet another retro sound. ‘Fight For Love’ is another highlight, complete with a catchy chorus, another great bassline and beautifully gentle piano. Throughout the album, SAULT show off their uncanny ability to pen songs which sound so right that you’ll struggle to believe you haven’t heard them before. The other albums in the collection, especially Untitled (God), are also of very high quality.
$ilkMoney – I Don’t Give a Fuck About This Rap Shit, Imma Just Drop Until I Don’t Feel Like It Anymore (15th November)
Genres – Abstract Hip-hop
As you might guess from the album title, cover art and track names, this album is larger than life and bombastic, but the rapping of $ilkmoney is no joke. Sitting somewhere between JPEGMAFIA, Busta Rhymes and early Tyler, the Creator, this is raw and intense without ever taking itself too seriously. The first track after the intro, ‘I Ate 14gs of Mushrooms and Bwoy Oh Bwoy,’ is as frantic as it sounds, followed by a slower track in ‘S.F.C.S.S.S.$ (P.a.a.M.F)’ which opens with the refrain ‘I hold the record for kicking the most bitches out of my crib.’ The album passes in a flurry of referential, profane lyrics and palpable anger, carried off by $ilkmoney’s impressive flow and creativity as well as tight production courtesy of Kahlil Blu. The drugged-up quality of $ilkmoney’s performance is both encouraged and kept in check by a collection of often psychedelic beats which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Lil Ugly Mane project. ‘Cuummoney Ameliani’ is one of the strongest tracks on the album, combining Aesop Rock-level flows with chaotic lyrics, covering topics ranging from the Alec Baldwin incident to the appropriation of the Black Lives Matter movement by non-blacks. I Don’t Give a Fuck About This Rap Shit, Imma Just Drop Until I Don’t Feel Like It Anymore is a compelling listening experience from a relatively new voice in the hip-hop landscape who will be worth watching for future releases.
Brockhampton – The Family (17th November)
Genres – Hip-hop
The Family is an odd farewell album from a group whose leap from energetic, rough-edged chancers to polished chart fixtures has seen them lose a lot of the charm that made them so appealing in the first place. 2017’s Saturation Trilogy was a breath of fresh air in the music landscape. While the individual members had their shortcomings, their chemistry and energy over varied production were infectious and these albums have stood the test of time. While the self-styled ‘boy band’ has had great moments since 2017, they have struggled to put together a great album. For example, on GINGER, great tracks which adhere to their alternative hip-hop roots (such as ‘IF YOU PRAY RIGHT’) sit uncomfortably next to the intensely boring yet hugely successful ‘SUGAR’. As well as certain members being under and over-utilised, this inconsistency has marred the band’s post-Saturation output, the band struggling over whether to stick or twist in light of their commercial success. The Family is an oddity, effectively a Kevin Abstract album released under the group’s name. The chipmunk soul production is uninspiring and doesn’t suit Abstract’s talents, and the tracklist is largely forgettable. However, it is the lyrics which will be of interest to fans, as Abstract addresses the end of a turbulent journey, from the group meeting on an online forum to superstardom. The final track, ‘Brockhampton’, is a touching elegy to a group who, in a short space of time, came to mean a good deal to a lot of people. It’s just a shame that the return to form hinted at in patches on 2021’s Roadrunner never came to anything. Hopefully out of the wreckage, some of the members will go on to create something which captures some of the magic of Saturation.
Richard Dawson – The Ruby Cord (18th November)
Genres – Progressive Folk
Geordie singer-songwriter Richard Dawson is one of the most authentically weird artists in folk music at the moment. His 2017 album Peasant drew a great deal of attention, each track written from the point of view of someone of a different profession in the middle ages. It is as wild as it sounds, and it is brilliant almost to the point of mad genius. The Ruby Cord is Dawson’s post-apocalyptic-styled vision of the future. Clocking in at 80 minutes (half of that being taken up by the first track) this album may test some attention spans. If you can forego this, the project is beautiful, haunting and bewildering. The soft, steady drum beat which opens ‘The Hermit’ is joined by ornate strings, off-key instrumentation and haunting, droney guitars. It is all atmosphere, combining minimalist post-rock with classical flourishes before Dawson’s vocals and dense lyrics arrive. His description of a world returned to the pastoral is as beautiful as it is unsettling with threatening silences, broken-sounding instruments, and acapella sections disturbing the luscious instrumentation. The following track, ‘Thicker Than Water’, has more narrative focus, as the narrator traverses a barren wasteland in search of the building where his parents are locked into a matrix-like virtual reality machine. ‘The Fool’ then brings futuristic instrumentation and more standard pop song structure to the age-old story of the end of an affair. Dawson’s vision of the future shows itself to be deeply rooted in his obsessions with the past. ‘Museum’ is a beautifully rendered image of a museum exhibiting humanity twelve centuries after its demise. On balance, this is one of the most impressive and unique projects to come out this year, and the lyrics are truly worth studying. If you are in the mood for something cerebral, or a fan of all things post-apocalyptic (the album is particularly reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland), this is worth a listen. However, approach with caution. His vision of the future is a truly lonely one.
Weyes Blood – And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow (18th November)
Genres – Art-pop, Baroque pop
Any potential that Natalie Mering, aka Weyes Blood, showed on Front Row Seat to Earth in 2016 was truly realised on 2019’s Titanic Rising, one of the best singer-songwriter albums of that decade. The new album has been hotly anticipated and, rather than a reinvention, And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow constitutes an assured, high-quality continuation of the rich sounds and beautiful lyricism of its predecessor. The opening track ‘It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody’ is a brilliant, Carpenters-Esque meditation on loneliness as a sensation both entirely personal and seemingly shared with everyone in today’s world (especially prescient in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic). ‘Children of the Empire’ is a more upbeat track, similar in tempo to Titanic Rising’s ‘Everyday’. A lot of this album re-treads similar territory to what came before (and this album could easily be a collection of tracks from the Titanic Rising Sessions), but when the sound is so distinctive, and the music of such a high quality, it’s hard to complain. There is something almost mystical in Mering’s commanding vocals which is in evidence throughout the album and hard to describe. The winning combination of her voice and the stellar instrumentation is especially prevalent on ‘Grapevine’. Mering’s vocals are gentle at the start, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, but become more and more impassioned as the orchestral instrumental begins to swell, creating one of the most arresting tracks on the album. ‘God Turn Me Into A Flower’ is another moment of sheer majesty. The vocal melody set against sparse organ and strings is reminiscent of Julee Cruise and contains some of the album's most heart-wrenching vocal turns. This is followed by ‘Hearts Aglow’, another utterly beautiful track which leads into the solid back end of the album which is rounded off by the piano ballad ‘A Given Thing’. Overall, this album lives up to expectations and Mering’s treatment of loss, fear and hope is both heartbreaking and joyous. One of the strongest releases of the year.
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