Yesterday I ran down the books that I read for pleasure during the month of August. Today I went to look at four albums that I listened to this month. Now, I listened to a lot of music this month besides these four albums, but it is my practice of longstanding not to discuss individual tracks on this blog. To make it onto this list, therefore, I have to have listened to every track on the album--which really trims down the amount of music I write about (by design). So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on the following four albums:
Compton: a Soundtrack by Dr. Dre
There has been a lot of discussion about Dre's treatment of women in the aftermath of Straight Outta Compton, Much of that is deserved, though I call into question the assertion that the film had a responsibility to address the issue. Wherever you come down on that question, however, it is absolutely undeniable that Dr. Dre is the single most influential American musician of the second half of the twentieth century. You might note that the appellation there, musician, is intentionally distinct from "rapper." So it is, and Compton illustrates the reason why. The music on this album is phenomenal. Dre weaves a complex web of sounds that is, at its root, so joyful and contagious that you sometimes wish you could keep listening to it forever. That hi-hat on "Darkside/Gone" is legit, and it is only one of any number of musical flourishes that make the album so sumptuous. The only real issue is that when it is time for Dre to rap, that part of the enterprise is somehow simultaneously flabby and anemic. Dre, even at his best, was never a great rapper, and he has not really improved that element of his game with age. But as a composer he is a epochal talent.
Emotion by Carly Rae Jepsen
This is one of my favorite pop albums of the year, and positions Jepsen as the rival sound to Taylor Swift. Emotion checks all of my pop album boxes. It opens with "Run Away With Me" a song whose beat is so beautifully constructed that it has the quality of really good improvisational jazz where all you want to do is add a supplemental beat with your fingers or hands. The song doesn't demand that you sing along with it, it demands that you jam. Songs like "Making the Most of the Night," "Your Type," and "L.A. Hallucinations" are truer odes to 1989 (and the ascendancy of Tiffany and Debbie Gibson) than anything on Swifts 1989.
One of my favorite things in the world is to drive at night listening to music that reminds me of being twenty years old and feeling like the power of my feels was enough to stop the world's spinning on a dime. I'm not twenty anymore, and in my day to day life I have what some have called an excessive amount of perspective on my emotional connection to world, but that consuming feeling of emotional power is the heat of youth and sometimes it is nice to be reminded. Usually this happens in single songs, individual tracks. But Emotion (so aptly titled) brings this feeling to every single track so that listening to it in a single sitting is almost too much to handle without dancing.
If anything, this album is fighting against the image of Jepsen that comes along with having recorded a hit on the magnitude of "Call Me Maybe," which is that we might group Jepsen in with the Rebecca Black's of the world (her agreeing to feature on that Owl City song "Good Time" probably didn't help on this front). But the bigger point here is that if you are ignoring Emotion you are missing out on an intensely rewarding pop experience.
Beauty Behind the Madness by The Weeknd
This album is pathetic.
That's really all that needs to be said. But just for the sake of having a few extra sentences let me say that it is also offensive ("Often" is the worst offender on this front), bland (the Weeknd is like Tab Cola to DeAngelo's Coke), and derivative (what kind of human being derives big chunks of their sound from Chris Brown? an asshole). Let me close, therefore, by paraphrasing Roger Ebert's lambasting of North, "I hated this album. Hated hated hated hated hated this album. Hated it."
Yours, Dreamily by The Arcs
If you like The Vogues you'll probably like this new debut album from Black Keys guitarist and lead singer Dan Auerbach's side gig The Arcs. It is respectable, easy to listen to rock music. Nothing to write home about, but also not something to immediately turn off. I can imagine listening to this album in a Barnes and Noble, or hearing them on the fifth stage of a music festival and being like "yeah, okay, I dig it." Which isn't too bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment