While you were away...
It was, as it very often is, a turbulent summer for music. In this, the first edition of the new academic year, our music editors take you through some of their personal highlights (and lowlights) of the past few months’ releases.
Family of Aliens
The third full-length effort by this indie pop quartet packs all the wholesome family-friendly goodness that fans have come to expect, but not without a wicked sense of humour and a quirky, sci-fi inflected glaze. A new crisply produced electronic vibe replaces their traditionally guitar-led sound, but their eminently off-kilter style is still recognisable behind the spiralling synths. The record serves tenacity and tenderness in equal measure, making for an all round sublime experience. They’ll be coming to London’s Oval Space in early October, which is sure to get some feet stomping and hearts racing.
-4.5 stars
- AL
Egypt Station
If you’re looking for some stellar music from the most undeniably harmless Beatle, stop reading now. Much of this album plays like an advert for a waterproof camera. A pretty young blonde leads you through a crowded room as someone backflips off the roof, backed by the cheers and red cup raises of all those at the pool party. You know the thing. Twee sing-alongs are interspersed with overproduced, bassy, dance tracks and, very occasionally, glimpses of brilliance. Age is just a number – an arbitrary metric perhaps, but one that Paul McCartney happens to be excelling in. Despite this, he earnestly tries to sound young and relatable which, for the most part, is endearing but sadly all too often comes off as vacuous. At its worst it’s plain creepy (“I just wanna fuh you”). The overall tone, however, is one of positivity. But I guess optimism isn’t really the millennial way. The last few tracks bang tho.
-2.5 stars
- AL
iridescence
BROCKHAMPTON’s explosion of fame off the back of last year’s Saturation trilogy coupled with the understandable trauma of the whole Ameer situation has clearly weighed on them. This communal stress lends a certain cohesion to the themes explored on this new effort (it gets deep(er)) as well as a certain meticulous and often spectacular daringness in sound derived from a fuck-giving-fatigue (‘TAPE’, ‘WEIGHT’ and the outro on ‘DISTRICT’ are particularly beautiful). Nevertheless, the theme of fame-induced depression teeters on repetitive at times, and a handful of songs or moments sound turbulent to the point of jarring or disorientating. Take ‘HONEY’ for example. The yo-yoing bass spliced with sound effects and weird, low pitched “uhuh-uhuh” vocals is fine, but the switch up, though pretty at first, ends up feeling frustratingly suspended mid-metamorphasis. Joba goes ham throughout the album though.
-3.5 stars
- AR
Negro Swan
On his last album, Freetown Sound, Blood Orange founded a formula to his sound that he clearly has a natural inclination towards. Accordingly, he uses the same style on Negro Swan, now focusing in on black depression and isolation. The style is hard to describe: it’s a unique, delicate, instrumentation-guided montage of sounds, samples, refrains and references that seeks to collate vibes, leaving the listener with a narrative experience as nuanced, honest and deliberate as a long diary entry. Which is ironic because, especially on this album, we don’t get many direct, divulging verses. Yet you never find yourself lost.
-4 stars
- AR
Year of the Snitch
Death Grips returned in late June. True to form, the album was teased with a picture of Shrek director Andrew Adamson in the studio. And true to form, the entire feature is “I’m in the studio working with Death Grips on their new album.” The album, sporting track titles like ‘Linda’s in Custody’ and ‘Shitshow’, is exactly what you’d expect. It’s a slightly poppier move for Death Grips (if DG is ever ‘poppy’), but otherwise, it’s par for the course; a paranoid-schizophrenic landscape populated by MC Ride’s frenetic screaming and Zach Hill’s manic drum-spam. New territory is DJ Swamp’s scratching and Justin Chancellor (of Tool fame) playing bass. Overall, the album felt somewhat unmotivated; along with 2016’s Bottomless Pit, this gets stacked on the DG ‘meh’ pile. If you like Death Grips, you’ll like this album. Otherwise, eh, go check out Exmilitary.
-3.5 stars
- HE
Consolation
Everything Protomartyr touches turns to gold. Singer Joe Casey has zeroed in on a unique brand of image-rich lyricism and half-singing, half-shouting baritone delivery that is at once entirely individual and yet evocative of bygone punk rock eras. Combined with the clashing dissonance of the rest of the band, the reified post-punk sound has been revived and reshaped into a mood more suitable for the Rust Belt dystopia that is modern-day Detroit. The band first broke into the big-time with 2015’s fantastic Agent Intellect (my very first Felix review), and carried their momentum with the critically-acclaimed Relatives in Descent, which made many a top-of-the-year list last January. Protomartyr sound fresh and original as ever here, arguably soaring to new highs on the especially-fantastic ‘Wheel of Fortune’. Don’t miss this fantastic album.
-4.5 stars
- HE
