Just some short takes on music that I heard this year. Not always actually
from this year.
Probably doing more, since this is a very easy format. Being lazy, I like easy things.
Artist: Horrendous
Album: Idol
Year: 2018
Thoughts: Kind of a load of death metal easy listening. The drums and guitars lack bite and the songs are a bunch of comfort food riffs and leads that fail to challenge in any way. Very well played, but stale production and bland songwriting makes it hard for me to care much.
The first half especially feels rather lacking in variety, but the second half of the album doesn't get significantly more interesting, even if some more kinds of musical ideas start seeping through the cracks at this point.
It basically sounds like the Death album Chuck would have eventually made, had he not died young, but instead lived long enough to run out of ideas.
Artist: Vanja Sky
Album: Bad Penny
Year: 2018
Thoughts: This debut album from a young blues artist is flawed but fun. I don't feel like she's very confident in the studio, with vocals often coming off as hesitant or forced. But still, there's a certain energy here that makes the songs - all well written - fly by in what feels like a short amount of time. It also helps that the album sounds pretty good, with a well balanced mix of guitar tones and bass tones that give it some forcefulness and body.
I hope to see some more albums from her in the future, as she could grow into a real contender. As it is, this album is nothing too mind blowing, but it has a way of being likeable and welcoming. At least one song had a pretty cool riff idea going for it, so that's something too. All in all a decent starting point for a new artist on the scene. I think she's got the voice, the songs (mostly) and the guitar chops. She just has to work on her vocal delivery.
Artist: Widespread Panic
Album: Don't Tell the Band
Year: 2001
Thoughts: The 7th studio release by these Georgia blues rockers. Probably not the best place to start with this band, but hey, I got it real cheap! There's some interestingly unusual songwriting ideas here and there, but there's also a feeling of a sort of blanket having been lowered over the proceedings, keeping volumes and energy levels in check a little too much. Basically, I feel like I'm listening to dad-music. Like late-era Marillion albums from around the same time or something.
Closer listening tells me that the worst culprit is the vocalist. He's trying to put me to sleep! I feel like I gotta move on before he succeeds. The weird thing is that I kinda like the album a bit anyway. I guess that some of the tracks actually do pretty well with a sort of sleepy feeling, not least "This Part of Town". But I'm honestly not sure I'm keeping this one...
Artist: Gwen Stefani
Album: Love. Angel. Music. Baby.
Year: 2004
Thoughts: No other songs turned out to be as good as the one I knew in advance ("What You Waiting For?"), although a couple other tracks have a similar energetic rock-infused-pop feeling. Mostly, this album suffers from too many cooks syndrome. It's exceedingly obvious that there's a trillion different producers involved here so there's no coherent sound to the album at all. Or much of a coherent style, for that matter. It also does not help that the songs tend to be either decent but predictable, or a bit more creatively daring but the usually with sketchy results. Not a bad pop album, but it's too scattershot for me to care much about it.