Joey Bada$$ drops most of the nineties nostalgia for a cohesive piece of 2017 hip hop gold

Perfectly exemplified years ago, it’s funny how much trap beats continue to be everywhere. There’s nary a crowded train or bus that doesn’t have that familiar high pitched rattle-snare tone playing off someone’s phone in a nearby seat. Even Joey Bada$$, usually and rightfully hailed as New Era’s king of 90s throwback, is using it. He’s at a crossroads this year. Does one embrace the boom bap classics that tickles ones fan base so thoroughly, or does one press forward into more topical themes?

With the release of All Amerikkkan Bada$$, it doesn’t seem as if Joey felt he had much of a choice in the matter. Gone are many of the New York City tones that warmed the world up to New Era on 2012’s 1999. Gone is the immense tracklist on the superfluous, yet rewarding B4.DA.$$. Despite bearing a similar title to another gangster rap classic, All Amerikkkan Bada$$ is decidedly more modern, digestible, poppy, and hooky than Joey’s usual output. Whether or not it’s a better or worse release is beside the point.

A good take on Kendrick’s “Alright” beat is “Y U Don’t Love Me?” Though it could fit in with the greater narrative of the record, it’s also its own song with Joey spitting about New York City betraying him over spacious bass tones and spastic cool jazz horns. Schoolboy Q brings the album’s first feature on seventh track “Rockabye Baby.” The stellar verse serves as a reminder that you’ve been hearing just Joey up until this point; as if Schoolboy is in the face of the listener, asking “You’ve been paying attention, right?”
This diversity in delivery is the savior of the first half of the record which pales slightly to the second.

Tracks 7 through 12 are a heavier nod to Joey’s past, complete with the gangster rap of “Ring the Alarm” and the classic boom bap of “Super Predator,” which directly quotes Illmatic along with the album’s closer. The only issue is that Joey’s choice to adopt more modern beats on the first half is fully transparent. The feel-good “Devastated,” though a great single, is a knockoff of “Hotline Bling.” However, it’s missing a stylistic tick apart from its familiar and uncomfortable trap tropes.

Joey otherwise manages to keep things pretty close to the record’s central theme: the state of black people in America in 2017. He takes shots at Fox News, the cops, and the need for consistent voices to discuss it. It’s true that “Ring the Alarm” distracts from the theme, but it’s nice to lighten the mood of All Amerikkkan Badass. It’s also nice to hear that Joey’s still playing with a lot of the 90s themes we came to know and love him by, even though it’s clear he’s being called to do more for his people and hip hop at large. Is he making any statements we can’t find elsewhere? Not really. But, the need for many voices to discuss our country’s inequities are in high demand, and Badass is happy to take up the cause. By the time you reach the end of the album, it’s hard to think of anyone doing it better.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard buzz with microtonal creativity on first of five 2017 LPs

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard fandom goes like this:

• Pride – listener feels as if they’ve heard this music already from bands like Thee Oh Sees and Roky Erikson, and shrugs them off.
• Respect – as they start to realize how frequently they have a record in the new release pile, listener begins to appreciate how much material the band puts out.
• Breaking Point – listener has an experience, either at a KG&TLW concert or shuffling their seemingly endless catalogue at a party, where they realize that there are few songs that aren’t a blast to listen to.

After that, it’s easy to consider the septet as one of the coolest bands in the psychedelic sphere alongside other Aussie mainstays like Tame Impala, The Drones, and even Nick Cave. Flying Microtonal Banana is the first of five records the band plans to put out in 2017. But, it’s useful to try and ignore these items when listening to the record. There’s a lot of nuance in these songs that, no matter how hard it may be, deserves to be considered as more than a cog in the King Gizzard factory.

At first glance, FMB is a conservative release – shorter length, plenty of the krautrock propulsion the band are known for, lots of nods to sixties and seventies psych and metal. Follow the voice that repeats the chorus of “Rattlesnake”, and you’ll find yourself back at track one. This and “Open Water” go on longer than necessary, but it’s clear that this was intentional. Instead, think of the devil face that sings along in the “Rattlesnake” video. Think of the feeling drummers Eric Moore and Michael Cavanagh get while jamming at such lengths. Think of King Gizzard as the positive homage they are, not as the quantity-over-quality rip-offs they aren’t.

Besides, there are plenty of tracks with a more digestible length. “Nuclear Fusion” is the shit, playing staccato guitar grooves off lyrics that connect the human race via quantum mechanics. “Sleep Drifting” is the romantic counterpart to many of the apocalyptic themes: “I can feel you touch me/and I can hear you breathing/please no one wake me/when I’m sleep drifting.” Like this, many of the lyrics are mostly about rhythm and style than the words themselves. On “Doom City”, the chorus is bolstered by an erratic Turkish horn, blaring microtones all over Stu Mackenzie’s tale about the city air ripping him apart from the inside. A guitar the band fashioned to mimic these same tones piles more middle-eastern imagery on top of more than half of the tracks.

Like last year’s Nonagon Infinity, King Gizzard’s performances are muscular and relentless. Though the songs still fade into one another, FMB is far more compact. Even after a few listens, it’s very difficult not to reconsider just how much the band have out, and how much they have yet to this year alone. Is this the best snapshot of a band with so much to give? You’ll be battling these demons as you listen. That said, almost every idea sticks on Flying Microtonal Banana. Their homemade studio occasionally shows its flaws, but this is simultaneously heartening. King Gizzard are easy to forgive and fun to like, showing that it’s more than a record about reliving psychedelic music’s prototypes.

Animal Collective recapture the hearts of fans with new EP The Painters

The announcement of The Painters EP held a lot of promise. From the freak folk warbling of Prospect Hummer to the bassline pop on Fall Be Kind’s ‘What Would I Want? Sky’, Animal Collective’s EP history is spotless. What sets The Painters apart is its concision, clocking in at just 13 minutes. Usually, Avey, Panda, (Deak,) and Geo are unafraid to let their songs extend into infinity. Here, hooks are paramount.

The band have been covering Martha Reeves & the Vandellas’ ‘Jimmy Mack’ on tour, and have included a recorded version as the final track here. Originally a 2 and a half minute pop song, AnCo turn it into a 4-minute synth-bass dance piece. Dave Portner howls harder than he’s done since Strawberry Jam (or the overlooked Water Curses EP). Half humorous joyride, half doo-wop homage, this cover showcases a vocally unhinged Portner, proving that a seminal band is always capable of new tricks.

Though the previous three songs don’t contain nearly as much pomp, they’re still worthy of the AnCo EP crown. ‘Kinda Bonkers’ is a blast, playing with more hushed vocal ideas than the direct lyricism of last year’s Painting With. The opening line is “life is so French toast to me/ if you wait too long/ it gets black and weak,” which dangerously approaches banality. Then, you remember some of the oddball lyricism of the Feels era. If you could find yourself nodding your head to lyrics like “someone in my dictionary’s up to no good,” then you could certainly follow the French toast metaphor a little further down the rabbit hole.

And here’s an important element in listening to Animal Collective eight years after Merriweather Post Pavilion. Though most of us didn’t enjoy Painting With, there aren’t any signifiers suggesting the band have stopped challenging themselves. They’re merely in a new stage of their career. Don’t consider what they were thinking when they wrote stinkers like ‘Bagels in Kiev’. Think about what could have brought them to the conclusion of recording that kind of song. It was likely a string of events just as inspired as the freaked out AnCo we fell for years ago.

Anyway, ‘Peacemaker’ sounds more like Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. Underneath the whirling dervish vocals is an equally disorienting synth that sounds like Sung Tongs¬ put through a lens of the higher-fi sounds that AnCo have utilized on the last couple of records. ‘Goalkeeper’, though obnoxious at first, is a fine snapshot of Animal Collective’s current idiom. It’s capped at a generous 2:48, leaving subsequent listens a shade brighter with knowledge that the band are equally capable of writing epics as they are short bursts of energy. After you turn down the volume a bit and focus on its details, you realize it’s not as bad as its first few loud bars.

’Jimmy Mack’ and ‘Kinda Bonkers’ are so damn good, it’s got yours truly twirling in anticipation for another release (for about the fifth time since becoming a listener). The most recent interim took four years of waiting, and had a payoff that was puzzling to say the least. Though Animal Collective EPs are usually an expansion on previous records, here’s hoping that The Painters is more of a positive portent of a band about to hit its fourth quality stride.

Sleater-Kinney release a live album that doesn't quite capture their legendary performances

I’m such a lucky guy. Just after 2005’s The Woods, when my teenage self was starting to pay real attention to rock criticism, Sleater-Kinney came to a stop. I saw the record on some year-end lists, but foolishly overlooked it. When Portlandia and Wild Flag happened, I knew there was something I was supposed to know about these artists, but it still felt like an era that I had missed. By the time the band reunited in late 2014, I felt like a shipwreck rescue. I dug fast into their discography and bought a reissue of The Woods. Luckily and at the last minute, I secured a ticket for their show on the following Valentine’s Day; and haven’t stopped listening since.

Not having experienced the depth of Sleater-Kinney’s cultural significance in its prime, I clung to the pure talent of the band: Janet Weiss’ drum fills on [Live in Paris’ opener] ‘Price Tag’, the forcefulness of Carrie Brownstein’s screams on One Beat staple ‘Oh’, or the canvas of percussion laid around the back of ‘A New Wave.’ That said, I’m continually most floored by Corin Tucker, who always sings as if the world is ending, most notably on the live version of ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’. The composition is amazing here, revealing a third verse after a messy bridge that has no preoccupations with melody, volume control, or anything not resembling ecstasy.

None of this information is new. Anyone who’s seen and heard the band knows the power of Sleater-Kinney’s moving parts and melodies. Although the performances on Live in Paris are spot on, they don’t fulfil the promise of the concert. It can’t convey the feeling of the floor moving during the chorus of ‘Bury Our Friends’. It lacks the visual component of Tucker and Brownstein kicking and howling while playing the serpentine licks of ‘One Beat’. When I saw them play I felt the power of the show from the back of the club, not once wanting to push through to the front. When listening to Live in Paris, I have the opposite experience. I turn it up louder and louder, reaching toward something that’s not translatable.

Still, this record puts the hunger in the listener like the studio albums. The more you pull it apart, the more you want to see the songs live. It’s lovely to hear the crowd response to older songs like ‘I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone’ and ‘Dig Me Out’, though this pales in comparison to exchanging glances with fellow fans at the concert. ‘Modern Girl’ is the final track on Live in Paris. My spine tingles as I think of how it felt to wait for the drums to come in. I get the feeling on record, too, but it remains impossible to compare any album, live or otherwise, to a live experience that’s as perfect as a Sleater-Kinney one.

I don’t think Live in Paris will be the main way for me to connect with the memory of that concert on Valentine’s Day. I’ll continue to talk to friends who were there with me, with colleagues who get a glow in their eyes when Sleater-Kinney is mentioned, and I’ll turn the records up as high as my ears can stand. But, Live in Paris will be pretty far down the ladder in these instances. There is no finer rock and roll show in the last twenty years, and I’m just happy to have been along for the ride. Take Live in Paris as a hint, not an excuse to miss another Sleater-Kinney tour.

Priests bite off one too many genres on punky debut LP Nothing Feels Natural

Many of the songs on Priests’ full-length debut deal with the individual experiences that are so bad, you end up losing faith in humanity as a whole: “If I walk a hundred days/doesn’t mean I get to say/you can’t talk to me that way,” Katie Alice Greer bemoans of the world. Even her own sense of accomplishment is on the chopping block. But, there’s more to this record than a jaded worldview. Failed relationships have also given Greer confidence, freedom, and a perspective on people that proves a fine narrative accompaniment to the punk rock on Nothing Feels Natural.

Priests balance doom metal and multiple tempos on opener “Appropriate” where Greer speaks of tasting maggots and buying things you can’t afford – coolly subverting the idea of building credit and reminding herself how most of us are actually using credit cards. Although the track has a primal core, it’s ornately produced with squelching saxophones, overdubs, and backburning fuzz from guitarist GL Jaguar.

Sadly, the drumming doesn’t share the chameleonic values of the rest of the arrangement. They’re transparently placed at the center of these songs, and “Nicki” suffers for it with screeching hi-hat opens and dual crash sounds that fight the melody. They’re redeemed on the following “Lelia 20” with a consistency that fits perfectly over the top of other guitar crunches and vocal acrobatics. The track then transitions into a prayer at Greer’s bedside, pleading for more tangible human interaction.

Where Nothing Feels Natural suffers is in the R&D department. Many of the ideas only make a couple of appearances. From surf to shoegaze to punk and back, the album ends with a fadeout on “Suck,” which isn’t just overlong, but showcases Greer’s ugliest songwriting. She can scream, hold long notes, play vulnerable, and play aggressive, so talking about how someone “just sucks” doesn’t hold a candle to the rest of the narrative.

Still, there’s quite a lot to like here, and it’s mostly due to Greer – the speak-sing existentialism of “No Big Bang,” the Everything Goes Wrong-era Vivian Girls homage on “Nothing Feels Natural,” the ragged heartbeat of “Appropriate”… If Priests expand on some of the genres they’re playing with, the tunes could take on a more consistent quality. This is a D.C. band, and that must certainly come with a deeper perspective than the ones at play. Asking Priests to tackle more subjects might be shooting the argument in the foot. But chewing out the fat is always important in constructing a record, leaving a blanker canvass with which to paint a real bounty of emotional responses.