This week I have new releases from tUnE-yArDs, Stortregn, and Noga Erez! Indie throwback pop with some infused soul! “Diverse” extreme metal! Middle-Eastern hip-hop! Eclectic! Exciting! I’m bored now.

tUnE-yArDs – sketchy.
(March 26, 2021)

Oh man, remember tUnE-yArDs, you guys? Merrill Garbus’ project was one of the biggest names in indie music circa 2010, and then everything about it dropped out of the zeitgeist as if it were a snuffed-out candle flame. Was it the annoying AOL-era alternating-caps band name? Although that probably didn’t help, it’s because indie music changed and Merrill Garbus didn’t whatsoever. This music hearkens back heavily to the weirdo-pop aesthetics that the indie scene was known for during its ’00s heyday. This stuff is passé now. tUnE-yArDs was one of the last ones in on it, and one of the first ones phased out.

I was surprised to find out that sketchy. is the FIFTH studio album! The band fell off my radar, just like everyone else’s, after w h o k i l l topped all the charts in 2011. And, yeah, after throwing this on for a spin, my immediate reaction was that Garbus was still stuck in the past. But after getting over that notion, this album is pretty fucking phenomenal. Varied instrumentation is layered over the goofy electronic chirping and blurping sound effects to create some very lyrically heavy R&B and blue-eyed soul. Garbus has a great voice, and her political messages are sincere and poignant. I especially enjoy “silence pt. 1 (when we say ‘we’)” where she laments the slowness and perceived futility of single-handedly making a difference in this stupid, fucked-up world through lines like “Not in my lifetime/I know, I know/Not in my lifetime/I know, I know, I know” and “She said ‘change yourself to change the world’ and I’m gonna try“. This is followed by “silence pt. 2 (who is ‘we’?)”, which is just that: one minute of silence. Sometimes something uncomfortable happens and you have to sit with it. Then you move on.

Here’s a funny anecdote: I have a friend who’s having his first baby this week, and I praised this album to him highly. He probably shouldn’t listen to “hold yourself.” though, because the song is about why parents fuck up their children even if they have good intentions. As a parent myself who agrees with the sentiment, it’s not the best message to get into your head when your life suddenly changes after the birth of that first kid. If you’re reading this, and you know who you are, sorry about that!

There’s a lot that’s incredible about this record. I have no hesitations with giving this the big ol’ fat grinning face. Gonna catch up with tUnE-yArDs. Maybe. Some day.

Early Verdict:

Stortregn – Impermanence
(March 12, 2021)

“Stortregn” is a Swedish word that means “downpour”, so with heavy metal band Stortregn’s fifth album Impermanence I was expecting just that. I wouldn’t describe their music as a downpour, per se; this sounds like rain I’d like to play in. La la-la la-la…

Beats me why a band from Switzerland would name themselves after a Swedish word, but they did, and here we are. At the beginning of this album, with its gentle acoustic lead-in to a neoclassical flurry of melodic speed metal guitar and hoarse, raspy vocals, all I could think about was Children of Bodom. I was about to write Impermanence off as another cookie-cutter melodic death metal record, but I kept picking up on little surprises as I made my way through. Some technical death metal riffs here, some gothic metal vocals there. Some passages were thrashy, some passages had blackened blast beats. Sometimes the shrieky vocal delivery was easy enough to understand, sometimes the guttural utterings were so distorted it sounded like some good old-fashioned barnyard pig-fuckin’ was going on! I even picked up on a quick, crunchy guitar solo I’d expect from Cynic or Voivod that I wish lasted a bit longer. And all the while I was impressed by the pacing and sequencing. And, of course, at 44 minutes it’s a great length too. Color me smiley.

If you’re the kind of person who is able to pick apart the nuances that separate all the heavy metal sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subgenres, then Impermanence defies easy classification. A lot of the mood is a little same-y, but the replayability factor here is high due to their diverse, yet seamless, take on extreme metal.

Early Verdict:

Noga Erez – KIDS
(March 26, 2021)

Noga Erez is an Israeli-born and -based hip-hop, pop, and electronic musician, citing influences such as Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar, and Björk. Pretty cool, right? Based on that list, plus the overwhelming critical acclaim, I expected more than what I got.

First of all, the very first song (after the 11-second intro track) rips off its melody from The Roots’ “Criminal”, which I noticed right away and it kind of tainted my perception as I made my way through the record. Am I the only one who noticed that? Maybe because it’s a deep cut on a subpar Roots record anyway? But it’s there. I can’t help but hear little bits here and there on KIDS that sound too similar to what I’ve heard before. Like she chopped up and pasted pieces of her influences together instead of making something of her own from it.

I feel a little harsh, though, because this record does have its moments. Erez has good, smooth flow for sure, likely drawing from Kendrick, and there’s non-stop energy even when she’s projecting a slurred, lazy persona. I also appreciate a lot of hooks, especially the chorus of “NO news on tv”, which I’ve been humming for a while now. If you want female-fronted Israeli hip-hop, well my friend, look no further. I’m hoping some more of her own personality comes out in the future, though, because a lot of this just feels like she’s playing a character that hasn’t been fleshed out fully yet.

Early Verdict:

This week I have new releases from Laura Mvula, Fear Factory, and Ciccada! One’s good, one’s bad, and one’s the same is it ever was and always will be. Oh man, the suspense!

Laura Mvula – Pink Noise
(July 2, 2021)

I don’t know anything about Laura Mvula’s previous output, but everything I’ve read suggests that Pink Noise is a radical departure. The British R&B/soul artist’s third album is awash in the kind of glossy ’80s disco synths, funky beats, and synthetic handclaps that bring to mind the likes of Prince and Michael Jackson with elements of James Brown and Whitney Houston and even that Phil Collins motherfucker. Pink Noise could have been a long-lost artifact recorded in 1985 that was just discovered this summer. Hell, even the lyrical themes are sickeningly fantastical and replete with doe-eyed, naïve wonderment (“Don’t let go of the magic/This is everything worth fighting for/More than you ever could imagine/I can see you through that open door“). The track “What Matters” is ESPECIALLY cheesily romantic. The male vocal contrast from featured guest Simon Neil (from Biffy Clyro) makes the song thick with an impenetrable layer of syrupy retro goodness. My preferred tracks are the final two of the album: “Got Me” is where Mvula channels her inner non-molesting version of Michael Jackson to a T, and “Before the Dawn” is just an ultra-shiny danceclub cooldown before she drives her Pontiac Firebird into the sunset.

A few good spins of Pink Noise reveals the undeniable tightness of the songwriting, even to the biggest ’80s pop skeptic (me). An album like this transcends the cookie-cutter mass marketed synthwave genre because of the goddamn soul. There’s soul in this album, and that’s the biggest thing going for Mvula by taking the chance on the ’80s pop throwback angle.

It sounds like Mvula had been dropped by Sony in 2017 and her path to Atlantic Records had been fraught with uncertainty. I hope she finds new comfort going forward, because she’s very talented. Everyone went gaga for Jessie Ware’s 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure?, but I find Pink Noise to be exactly what I wish Ware’s album was.

Early Verdict:

Fear Factory – Aggression Continuum
(June 18, 2021)

Ah, good old reliable Fear Factory. After their longest break ever between releases, the band finally dropped their tenth studio album Aggression Continuum after a few years of tension among its members and unclear financial legal issues. Even though lead vocalist Burton C. Bell had left the band in late 2020 due to interpersonal band politics, his vocals were recorded in 2017 and, therefore, used on this album. This makes it the identical line-up from their 2015 album Genexus, and the music is almost identical in every conceivable way as well.

Kudos to Fear Factory, that’s how you get the high ratings from all those online metal publications! Stick to a formula forever and you’ll never ever dip below 8/10, proving time and time again that the metal community is one big circlejerk retreat in the circlejerk woods. Aggression Continuum is a perfectly fine album in a vacuum, but I personally get bored when aging musicians put no effort into expanding their sound past the confines of the thimble-sized boundaries they created for themselves decades ago. There’s ten tracks here and I think every single one of them has the exact same chorus melody? It’s 2021, what’s the point of albums like these anymore?

This is a fantastic entry-level record for your rebellious 12-year-old nephew who wants to break into inoffensive industrial groove metal without scouring the old stuff first. This is also a fantastic record for people who have been with Fear Factory since the ’90s are just happy that a band they love is still making the same records over and over again. For me, and anyone else, it’s a hard pass.

Early Verdict:

Ciccada – Harvest
(April 23, 2021)

Yeah, no thanks. Ciccada makes exactly the kind of modern patchwork progressive rock that borrows elements from ’70s prog rock bands without adding anything new to the table whatsoever. The fluttering flute work of Jethro Tull, the tense synthetic organ of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, the male/female vocal interplay of Renaissance, the folky decadence of Gryphon, the eclectic song arrangements of Gentle Giant. It’s all thrown together into a giant pot on the stove without the burners on, and the only thing Ciccada does is mix it with a spoon for 48 minutes. They add nothing to the recipe to make it their own signature concoction. Why would they? They have a fraction of the talent in the first place. They leave me completely underwhelmed and cynical.

I wouldn’t have a major problem with an album like Harvest if the music also didn’t feel like a fresh product off the prog rock assembly line. Production is immaculate, the singing is pristine, the instruments are all in perfect tune, the arrangements are all spick-and-span, there’s not a wrinkle, a speck of dust, a defect to be found anywhere. Sterile as sterile can be. Nothing outstanding, nothing innovative, nothing truly mentally stimulating. No point. Even if there was a shred of unpolished rawness or some truly dissonant dissonance (and not just a couple seconds here and there of fake, innocuous dissonance), it would have some character to it. But it doesn’t. I hate it.

I don’t know what mood I’d have to be in to ever appreciate this kind of prefab progressive rock, but it would be nice if I could get an appreciation for it. There’s enough of these albums out there to fill a Montana-sized landfill, I’d be set for life.

Early Verdict: