Landing somewhere sonically between the observations of American Utopia and the orchestral power of Love This Giant, David Byrne has firmly returned to making unique sounding pop with a social commentary focus that only he could do. While still quirky as ever, Byrne isn’t going off the deep end with some of his sonic choices quite as hard, and in fact seems to be taking these dark times to use his music to comment and then try to unite people in how similar but different we all are. Byrne sees humanity as raw and lonely in “My Apartment Is My Friend” as he tries to come to terms with how our indoors became our world in the pandemic, and he tries to bring us all back together in the euphoric glee of “Everybody Laughs” as he sings to the heavens that we should all just enjoy each other, and heck, even dance together to this chipper jam. Though “I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party” explodes into more fun than its title might suggest, Byrne really cuts loose with some of his old Latin flavours on “What Is the Reason For it” with such pointed and well-arranged pop focus that you’re already sucked into his whirlpool before Hayley Williams (more on her in a moment) even starts singing.
Though it’s fair to see why Hayley Williams dripped out her latest album as a series of disconnected tracks at first, the collection has that compilation feel that bands often on their debuts that is fun to see an artist pull off so deep into their career. United by jagged mix of pop and grime, Williams is trying a bit of everything here, and it’s wild to see how flexible her writing is. While “Glum” turns a mellow ballad into a more dynamic release of pressure, Williams hits a rainbow of pained emotions on the explosive “Parachute,” letting loose all the colours of her punk and pop sounds. She hits a soft R&B tone on “Good Ol’ Days” in a way that works better than it should, despite being a little out of place on a full record, but it’s hard to deny the fun indie swagger of “Kill Me” that brings out the blade in its diving choruses to have you dancing around with Willams. And if you need proof of the waves that Williams can bring out of a production, there’s something relentless to the highs of “True Believer” that will knock you right out.
If Wet Leg’s first album broke them out, this follow-up record proved not only that it wasn’t a fluke or that they could avoid the sophomore slump, but that they were indeed certified superstars ready to take over the world. What the album perhaps diminishes in the individuality between their songs, it more than makes up for with a powerful unified demented-rock-pop sound that is always on the edge of going ballistic and slashing. Even more infectious, the group finds a way to push their own limits, keep things honest and personal lyrically and create a record that is uniquely theirs. There’s such a constant “F you” energy to songs like “Mangetout” and “Catch These Fists” that it’s easy to miss so many of their great distinct hooks and small genius production choices, making for tracks that are kicking while also saying “YOU BETTER BE CHANTING ALONG WITH US.” There’s a fun slow-drive energy in how wacky and deranged the vocals can get on “CPR” that elevate the song above its tempo, and make its balance of love and destruction a fun time to hear manifest sonically. And while their cheeky lyrical pushes on the likes of “Jennifer’s Body” and “Pillow Talk” are certainly fun, it’s the soft and utterly unique point of “Davina McCall” on the record that crafts one of its most singular moments, especially as it uses the sharper edges of the album to show just how deep the emotions of the connection go.
About a decade from their gothic EP, Casper Skulls have evolved a few times over musically and lyrically as well, with years of toughing it out on the road, and no doubt, starting a family, clearly giving a sense of perspective on time that could take years otherwise. One might not have expected the more rustic charms that appear in “Spindletop” to creep into their music, but they slip into it like they’ve been doing it for years, though it fits like a glove as the background overall tone to the glowing guitars of “Dying in Eight Verses.” Though their more nuanced blend of folk and dark indie influences make tracks like “Petty at a Funeral” and “Sweet Spots” grind and explode with a little more fury. And for those looking to tap into their more feral side, the sunbaked fire of “Roddy Piper” is growling as ever, but with more maturity in how they flesh out their cataclysmic choruses.
Whether you lean more pop or into the jazz or into the soul aspects of Olivia Dean’s sound, it all works, and her writing offers so many ecstatic celebrations of sound and life that it doesn’t really matter where you’re starting from by the time you finish this record. With horns creating sunny rays, Dean’s vocals wrapping your ears like a warm blanket, and a mix of miraculous harmonies and divine instrumentals filling out the rest, you can’t go wrong anywhere on this record. There’s of course the famous power of “Man I Need” that feels like sleeping in the sun, with so much loving energy that it calms the heart. The groove that turns into vocal dancing on “Lady Lady” quickly, while “Nice to Each Other” feels like a benevolent sea of sand quickly becoming a tidal wave of hopeful energy. And Dean’s pop prowess is bouncing off the walls with “So Easy (To Fall in Love),” with the horns complimenting the flickering vocal lines to make an endless cascade of fun and sassy hooks to get stuck in your mind forever.
Coming off their work with Jungle, Lydia Kitto and J Lloyd had a lot to live up to, and a lot to not simply repeat on a smaller scale with their spin-off. Loaded Honey however decides to however land as a perfect complementary project to their work with Jungle, as it feels like an evolution of the artists that inspire that band, but strips away DJ-styled and producer-heavy drive of that other project, and instead offer songs that take the retro roots of their sound and create a new soul canon that feels like it could have been a forgotten gem from the 70s. Nothing exemplifies this mission better than “Don’t Speak” that weaves every crooner string section with a lot of Jackson 5-tinged vocal hooks. Here, the insane production knowhow featured in their other band are done in more subtle ways, tweaking a harmony or vocal here, and modulating sounds elsewhere to give a little flavour that the era never had. Needless to say, that means every sound is sweet and divine, like the vocal tones all over “Lessons,” or the drums of “Cisco Bay.” And while something like “Bullet” is so velvety in its sound that it feels like a track that you’d heard sampled on a modern hip hop track, the pair do their own clever remix aesthetics on the infectious “Tokyo Rain,” to make a sound that feels like two different tracks perfectly remixed together at atypical speeds, with Lydia Kitto singing over the whole thing with her heaven-sent vocal delivery. It wouldn’t even be that weird to find out that’s how that track came together.
Stripping away more of the modern production than ever before, and rather playing like a record that remixes Bad Bunny’s many influences through the lens of who he is now, this latest record straddles his sounds perfectly. The whole album’s strengths are perfectly summed up in the opener “NUEVAYoL,” where we’re brought through a sweep of different sounds, like changing the channels on a radio but all the sounds get slowly added up together, and the sports commentary feels like a perfect time to swap paces. Elsewhere on the record, you can hear the future and past collide on the sublimely recorded “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” where the vocals and piano lines dance, and the nors explode. The more modern feel kicks out on “VeLDA” and “EL CLuB,” but it’s best when used in contrast with the heaviness of something like “BOKeTE.” Overall, it’s this marriage of eras and the focus to really get those instrumentals recorded as crisply and beautifully as possible that sets this album apart, as a record that sounds delicious but is also a ridiculous amount of fun.
Upping the depth and wonder in his production for this new record, JayWood creates a heady and transcendent sound on Leo Negro. Producing a sonic collage that matches the album cover, it constantly feels like you’re seeing a different side of his creativity and tastes, (sometimes a few at once), and it’s this interplay of sounds that keeps the record ahead of getting pigeonholed into any one genre. With the guitars baking and drums cutting, “Pistachios” is constant sway of shifting rhythms and approaches, while “Big Tings” pulls in Tune-Yards for a track that somehow makes the idea of “Rugrats theme, but on sun-drenched acid” a ridiculously catchy song. And yet those two songs still meet on fun, warped acoustic dives that JayWood does, taking you sonically down a wormhole made up of the whole song’s sound and exploding it back out at you. Meanwhile there’s a Latin-tinged anxiety on the dark and deadly “Assumptions,” smooth, guitar-driven producer pop in “Ask 4 Help” that gets deeply personal, and triumphant grooving to the open and loving “Untitled (Swirl)” that stays psychedelic while pushing for self-growth and understanding.
If you’re going to retire your band on your own terms, your last album better come out swinging, and Tennis did just that with their swan song record. Rich in deep emotion, colourful musical textures, sharp melodies and all their signature tones, this album closes their career by showing how far they’ve come, and what they still have to say. Despite pausing the band on this record due to reaching a creative limit, they nonetheless layer this record with the finesse and great writing that you’d expect of a band with decades left in the engine. And with the range of feeling between “At the Apartment” and “I Can Only Describe You,” or the powerfully dense pop power of tracks like “Weight of Desire,” “Sister” and “At the Wedding,” or the full life reflection that will crumble you to tears on “12 Blown Tires,” Tennis truly packed their last album with some of their best work in years.
Fusing punk and country, and enough emotional indie to mesh it all together, Wednesday truly made one of the year’s most utterly unique and impactful records. Using the tonal contrast between genres as their dynamic switch to keep things constantly punchy without simply being a matter of loud vs. quiet. It’s soothing, rocking and often just gutturally satisfying in a way that few records manage, let alone doing all three of these feelings at once. There’s a touch of Bowie’s “Heroes” in the chug of “Candy Breath,” folk classic beauty to “Elderberry Wine” that one would swear is a lost classic, and even a deeply personal range of tones on “Pick Up That Knife” that swerves in all the right ways. And if you need some trippy country, “Phish Pepsi” does the trick bizarrely well before the walloping masterpiece of “Townies” gives the record its statement piece.
Honourable mentions: Lambrini Girls, Erika de Casier, Rachel Bobbitt, Laufey, Marina, Wolf Alice
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