Here are my thoughts on the latest from The Secret Sisters, Sucré, Ariel Sharratt/Mathias Kom/Shotgun Jimmie, Vampire Weekend, Lo Moon, Dustin Kensrue, Lizzy McAlpine, Pearl Jam, Plumb, Pet Shop Boys, and Iron & Wine.
The Secret Sisters – Mind, Man, Medicine
I was really excited about The Secret Sisters when I discovered them 10 years ago. They hit just the right sweet spot between traditional country and slightly edgy folk/rock/Americana, with sweet sibling harmonies and some great cover choices (Brandi Carlile, PJ Harvey, The Everly Brothers) in addition to some solid songwriting of their own. Stylistically, they seem to have gotten more and more demure over the years, even when the songwriting’s still feeling the despair over broken relationships, or showing the strength to push back against abuse. It’s felt like they haven’t been living up to the potential of the songs they’ve been writing, and that tendency hits a nadir on album #5, which is not only a ballad-heavy snooze-fest for the most part, it also seems misguidedly determined to imitate some of the least interesting trends in modern folk and indie music. The murky production values and meek vocals on the opener “Space”, and to a lesser degree the ballad “If the World Was a House”, practically scream “We want to be as cool as boygenius!”, with the problem being that the Sisters are nowhere near as lyrically visceral, so you don’t get the stark contrast between the eerily quiet performance and the distressingly dark lyrics. That becomes less of a problem later in the record as the duo reverts back toward their usual low-key folk-pop style, though there’s not a whole lot in the instrumentation that would lead me to label it “country” beyond the occasional reminder of their Alabama accents. “Paperweight” is a notable exception here – it’s a refreshingly up-tempo track with some brilliant fiddle work, maybe one that falls more comfortably into folk/rock territory than pure country, and its analogy of a lover being a “paperweight” that holds a flightier spirit down could use some work, but it’s actually catchy, and I can’t really say that about most of the album. Ray LaMontagne shows up for a duet on “All the Ways”, a subdued, Southern soul-type ballad in which he’s largely wasted, thanks to a slow-burning approach that never really catches fire – both its lyrics and its chorus melody seem bull-headedly determined to be as dull as possible. “Never Walk Away” pulls of the slow burn a bit better, getting more out of its repetitive melody than I’d accept at the outset, as what seems to be an initial declaration of blind, undying love turns on its head and forcefully sets some boundaries with this person who clearly doesn’t deserve to be a friend any more. Alas, it’s barely over two minutes long, and it ends just when it seems to be getting good. Most of the back half of this album is nondescript – I guess I sort of like the breezy, sort-of-up-tempo “Bear with Me”, but it’s followed by the unbearably boring lead single “Same Water”, which has the nerve to throw the phrase “How is everybody doing out there?” into what has to be the least likely chorus to ever hype a crowd. It comes across as cloying and desperate. I hate to turn on a group that I once championed for their old-school-meets-cutting-edge alchemy, but it’s been several records now where that energy has largely been vacant. Even on the somewhat sleepy Saturn Return four years ago, the rollicking “Silver” and the perfectly-timed-for-pandemic-lockdown barn-burner “Cabin” made me feel something. Nothing here gets me even close to that already diminished level of excitement.
Sucré – Starkisser
The surprise release of a second LP from an artist I’ve been yearning to hear a follow-up from for over a decade since their debut should be a joyous occasion. Instead, I feel a bit cheated here. I suppose I should explain. Sucré, which at the time was a collaborative side project between Eisley’s Stacy Dupree-King, MuteMath’s Darren King, and producer/string arranger Jeremy Larson, put out the absolutely sumptuous A Minor Bird in 2012, and the next several years saw the release of a couple short EPs and a broad array of stand-alone singles, reaching a fever pitch somewhere around 2019. I was sure a new record was imminent – they certain had more than enough material to support one. Yet nothing materialized, beyond a few more scattered singles, until apparently this new album, which contains absolutely none of the singles released during that long stretch, was quietly dumped to Bandcamp with (as far as I can tell) no real explanation of what their intent was or why it had taken so long to make. Thanks to their Facebook page having gone stale in 2020, and their official website being even less helpful than that, I had no clue of Starkisser‘s existence until it suddenly appeared on Spotify this month. And I mean… look, it’s still good music. Sucré has kind of been redefined as Stacy’s solo project, though as far as I can tell Darren is still handling production and drum programming, so it’s still very much in the “introverted electropop” vein of most of their singles, with the occasional touch of classical instrumentation that, if I’m being honest, doesn’t move my heart the way Larson’s arrangements used to. (Is he even still involved? I have no freaking clue because credits on this record are impossible to come by, beyond the fact that Stacy wrote the songs.) You’re definitely not gonna hear anything as hype as “Young and Free” or inside here – Stacy may be married to, and working with, one of my favorite drummers of all time, but aside from the borderline banger “Head Out the Window” and the occasional percussive climax on standouts like “Bloody” or the exotic “Bird of Paradise”, he hangs back for the most part, understanding that it’s his wife’s show and he’s just a supporting player. Most of her material is more keyboard-oriented, which is fine, though I don’t think her melodies are as strong as they used to be – or maybe it’s just the wispy production style that makes the dreamy after-effects more of a focus than the actual instrumentation most of the time. There are several songs like the title track, “Why Am I Like This”, and especially the meandering “Mid July” where I start to feel like most of this album is a huge buildup to nothing in particular. Occasionally Stacy will inject a bit more attitude into a song by way of R&B/hip-hop-type inflections in her vocal phasing, which I guess supports the more confrontational lyrics in a few places, but it still seems a bit half-hearted. I can’t help but feel that there was a huge amount of missed potential due to intriguing songs like the bouncy “Permission” or the beguilingly dark yet dreamy suite “Devil Land” not making the cut, now sitting on a stack of one-off releases that will seemingly never find a proper home. I hate to keep harping on the expectations vs. reality after such a long wait for this release when I know I should just be glad to have something new from them and be willing to analyze it on its own terms. But jeez, the Kings left two other huge bands with the apparent intent of making Sucré their main gig. And I respect that they probably have stuff going on in their personal lives that is none of my business and that may give them a very good reason to keep a low profile and only release new music sporadically… but this still seems like a textbook case of how not to roll out a new record, at least if an artist cares about their fans actually noticing that it exists.
Ariel Sharratt/Mathias Kom/Shotgun Jimmie – Hardly Working EP
Back in 2020, Mathias Kom and Ariel Sharratt, better known as the couple at the core of indie rock band The Burning Hell, put out a fun little side project called Never Work, that basically explored their gripes with capitalism. This EP, which brings fellow musician Shotgun Jimmie on board for a sort of roundtable-style set where each member contributes two songs apiece, serves as a follow-up, exploring the travails of young people stuck in soul-crushing minimum wage jobs. It’s almost the literal definition of slacker rock, since it’s quite clear that whether it’s in a retail store or an office, none of this stuff is fun for creative musical types who would happily be poor if it meant they could do what they truly loved for a living instead. “Polyester Polo” sets the tone nicely at the beginning, a muddy rocker in which Ariel laments the constant nagging to keep her uniform clean at some grunt job she worked back in the day. “Casual Friday” finds Mathias imagining, over simple, folksy guitar, whether the gods took a casual day during the creation of the earth and all of its living species, and follows up that thought with a hilariously chaotic description of what a true casual Friday at the office of his dreams would look like (hint: the building doesn’t make it to the end of the day intact). Later on, there’s even a bit of klezmer worked into the DIY programmed pop tune “Yes Chef”, in which Mathias tells an old kitchen boss (who sounds like Gordon Ramsey minus the style and charm) exactly where he can shove it. And of course I feel a bit of solidarity with “That Job”, a lament for obsolete occupations like working a video rental store, which was actually one of my old jobs during my college years. Sometimes the mix is a bit too muddy to fully get all the jokes, but the “we scrapped this together on a minimal budget in our home studios” ethos is a perfect fit for this sort of songwriting, and while there’s plenty of wit, humor, and strangeness in the Burning Hell’s primary catalogue, it’s nice to hear what the band’s primary members have on their minds outside the framework of that project as well.
Vampire Weekend – Only God Was Above Us
The gaps between Vampire Weekend albums may be a bit long – 6 years preceding Father of the Bride and now 5 years from there to Only God Was Above Us, but they continue to make their albums worth the wait, and confoundingly different from one another in the best possible ways. On first listen, this new one reminded me a bit of Modern Vampires of the City, just scuzzier – kind of a steep learning curve before I got the hang of its mostly mid-tempo vibe, but the bursts of energy and distortion were certainly a blast when they showed up, and the elegance of the slower tracks pretty soon became evident. Ezra Koenig has truly outdone himself here with catchy yet still very classical-leaning piano and guitar parts serving as the framework for most songs, while crunchy drum loops, jazzy instrumental outbursts, and startling bits of studio manipulation all work together to ensure that this isn’t exactly “easy” listening, but it’s worth paying attention to the depth of the arrangement. The rhythm section of Chris Tomson and Chris Baio is back on board after sitting out the recording of Father of the Bride, while co-producer Ariel Rechtshaid throws in his fair share of flourishes on numerous instruments, making this as difficult of a record to classify as just about anything VW has put out since their 2008 debut. The lyrics, as always, are knotty, full of historical flotsam and jetsam and hints of religious and cultural angst, all of these songs seemingly struggling to figure out where they belong in a world at war with itself. Early favorites of mine include the crude-meets-classy clutter of “Classical”, which is about trying to figure out exactly when cultural trends looked down upon by the snobbish eventually become classical works in their own right, the speedy piano interludes of “Connect”, and the distorted electric guitar that jolts the listener awake in “Gen-X Cops”. But even on the more mid-tempo tracks that take some time to unfold, like the early single “Capricorn” and the chorally enhanced “Mary Boone”, I can see throughlines to the experimentation with West African rhythms and baroque string sections that has been a hallmark of their sound since the beginning. Honestly, the toughest track to wrap my head around is the opener “Ice Cream Piano”, which earns the album’s Parental Advisory sticker with its very first word and proves to be a bit of a rickety ride, kind of setting the tone for a more conflicted and uneasy listening experience than the fairly laid-back Father of the Bride. But I might give this record the edge over that one as a whole just because it’s a more compact, focused listening experience despite all the ground it ambitiously tries to cover. Time will tell if this one makes it into my personal top tier of VW albums currently occupied by Contra and Modern Vampires of the City, but it’s got a really decent shot at it.
Lo Moon – I Wish You Way More Than Luck
This L.A. band was long on 80s throwback, sophisti-pop vibe and short on instrumental substance when they debuted in the late 2010s, but I thought they took admirable strides on their second album A Modern Life in 2022, and I think they’ve finally reached a maturation point on this album where they’re able to keep that smooth, nostalgic, and evocative mood while allowing the instruments to be more assertive. Just listen to that thick drum loop that grinds its way through the stunning opener “Borrowed Hills”, or the simple but effective piano line and the meaty bass in “Waiting a Lifetime” – these two songs are strongly reminiscent of “Shout” by Tears for Fears and “New Year’s Day” by U2, respectively – not that I’d dare suggest they hold a candle to those classics, but for an attempt to merge their fondest memories of that era with modern indie pop sensibilities, it works like a charm. Lead single “Water” feels like a joyous dance in comparison to a lot of the band’s more ponderous older material, with its resounding piano riff in an odd time signature only serving to enhance the song’s pop appeal, and even something more down-tempo and airy like “Mary in the Woods” comes through with a pleasant, Dream Academy-esque vibe. “Evidence” might just feature the band’s best attempt so far at moving from a murky, languid intro to an up-tempo, emotionally intense climax – it’s not quite as unconventional as “Raincoats” in that department, but it’s got a euphoric payoff nonetheless. Matt Lowell, who once seemed to lack personality as a frontman, has come through as a more compelling songwriter, with several of these songs hinting at troubled youth and struggles with religious belief. It just feels like a more personal meaningful, and fully realized version of the band – they’re not quite in masterpiece territory, but their trajectory thus far suggests that they could be headed there within a couple more albums.
Dustin Kensrue – Desert Dreamers
Thrice’s frontman has gone full-on country for his latest solo project, an evocative collection of unashamedly twangy songs about the American southwest, many of which seem to have been inspired by poring through old photographs and memoirs left behind by family members whose choices found them moving ever westward in pursuit of a better life, laying the groundwork for his eventual upbringing in Southern California. For me, the most charming tunes on this record are its two openers. The romantic duet “Death Valley Honeymoon” with Cat Clyde imagines an ancestor, upon getting hitched for the third time, embarking with his new wife on a desert honeymoon that seemed inadvisable to the nay-sayers in their families who probably saw it as a bad omen for their marriage. And the up-tempo, slide guitar-heavy “High Scalres” imagines the dangerous balancing act under perilous working conditions that conscripted laborers had to perform in order to blast their way through the mountain and canyons in order to enable the construction of roads and train tracks out to the West Coast. Most of the album from there on in is a little more laid-back, though at times it has a hazy “desert noir” sort of chime not unlike a Calexico record, and there are moments when I could be fooled into thinking I was picking up a much older transmission from an AM radio station somewhere out in the boonies of Texas or New Mexico. This one’ll probably be a head-scratcher for most Thrice fans, who are used to a heavier rock style and more gruff vocals from Dustin, and even fans of his previous solo work (which was typically more folk/rock and had more straightforwardly religious content) might be caught off-guard here. But for someone like me whose favorite disc on The Alchemy Index was the mostly acoustic, folksy “Earth” disc, this seems like a perfect fit, and I’m actually surprised it took him so long to get around to chasing this particular muse.
Lizzy McAlpine – Older
McAlpine’s third album is actually her major label debut – a fact I hadn’t realized until reading up on it, since it sure sounds to me like a sonic retreat after the already somewhat spare Five Seconds Flat, which turned me onto her music last year. She’s an acoustic singer/songwriter who puts the lyrics first, I get that – and when done right, she can captivate with the most bare-bones of arrangements. A lot of this album isn’t having that effect on me – I find it very easy to let my attention wander despite telling myself, “OK, I’m really gonna listen for the details this time”, and before I know it, three or four songs have drifted by and I’ve only been peripherally aware of their existence. The presence of several short and/or quiet songs early in the track listing doesn’t help matters – I definitely notice the change when she gets to the boisterous “All Falls Down”, easily an album highlight, and occasionally there’ll be a baroque pop-leaning crescendo like on the single “I Guess”, or a lyric whose bluntness startles me into paying attention, like on the one-two punch of “Drunk-Running” and “Broken Glass”, which finds a relationship in such a deteriorated state that both intentional and unintentional forms of self-harm come into play. Still, I have trouble sticking with this record through all of its fourteen tracks, despite the bittersweet climax of “Vortex” being a nice way to wrap things up at the end. Thinking back to Five Seconds Flat, it’s not like I was on board with every single song there, either – but I loved the counterpoint that male duet vocals offered on “Hate to Be Lame” and “Reckless Driver”, I thought the folk/rock anthem “Orange Show Speedway” was a refreshingly upbeat way to end things, and overall it just felt like there was more variety in tone, instrumentation, and production values throughout. Here, she apparently scrapped some of the recordings in favor of redoing them with Ryan Beatty’s live band after being captivated with their live sound, leading to most of the tracks being recorded all in a room together with few overdubs. That should make a record feel more alive, but the arrangements on most of these songs feel rather plodding, almost like the presence of the same core musicians playing the same instruments throughout didn’t leave room for much sonic variety. I don’t know – it could be that there are a lot of delightful details beneath the surface and I’ve just been too ADHD over the last several weeks to notice. But dangit, I feel like I keep genuinely trying and failing to get into this one.
Pearl Jam – Dark Matter
It’s hard for me to know what to expect from pearl Jam at this stage in their career. They have relatively few albums that have truly blown me away, but they’re generally a solid, dependable band that has long outlived the musical trends that got them started. As long as an album of theirs isn’t loaded down with too many clunkers, I typically enjoy their new material. Gigaton, unfortunately, landed in the “clunker” category more often than not, so my expectations were guarded going into “Dark Matter”, despite thinking that the title track was pretty awesome going in. Eddie Vedder is downright pissed in that song about how “everybody else pays for someone else’s mistakes”, and he’s got a fire in his belly that only comes to the surface in latter-day Pearl Jam once or twice per album. There are some other rockers here that I’d consider agreeable, enjoyable even, but not quite at that level where I truly get excited about them – “Scared of Fear” and “React, Respond” make for a strong opening salvo, especially with the delicious guitar solo near the end of the former, and “Got to Give” is a much-needed shot of energy near the end of the album. “Running” has an almost punk-like energy to it that might exceed the level of anger heard in the title track, though that one seems so raw and scrappy as to feel slightly out of place on the surrounding album (kind of like how the electronically enhanced “Dance of the Clairvoyants”, as much as I loved that song, did on Gigaton). Most of the rest of the album settles into the sort of predictable pattern that Pearl Jam does when they go more mid-tempo and melodic – I’ve got no huge complaints, but it does start to feel rather perfunctory after a while. “Upper Hand” and “Setting Sun”, which bring the front and back halves of the album to a close, respectively, are decent slow-burners working their way toward strong climaxes; I could see these being potential future favorites once I dig deeper into the record. Will I ultimately want to go back to this one more often than Gigaton? Sure. More than Lightning Bolt? Time will tell, but probably not.
Plumb – Candycoatedwaterdrops Reimagined
For every “reimagined” album that truly offers a fresh take on old material reaching a notable anniversary, it seems like there are another 9 or 10 that just go with the lazy “strip it down to piano/acoustic guitar and strings” approach. Plumb, once the frontwoman of a genuinely interesting band that merged electronic rock, trip-hop, and more radio-friendly CCM pop sensibilities, has been downright slavish in her devotion to the most predictable adult contemporary trends in recent years, and I was hoping that revisiting old material might get her creative juices flowing again – but nope, this is slow-mo final scene of a prestige TV drama bait, through and through. Songs like “Late Great Planet Earth”, which once had an industrial crunch appropriate to the sense of dread it communicated about the world ending, “Solace”, with its loud-and-proud alt-rock temper tantrum, and “Phobic”, with its gentle drum loop and DJ effects, have had their edges sanded down to the basic chords and melodies, sometimes even sidestepping the moodier, minor turns in a few of the melodies (most notably in “Damaged”, which she’s already redone a few times, but which sounds distressingly bright in this context). Breezier pop songs like “Stranded” and “Here with Me” fall flat due to having no rhythm section and thus no real momentum to speak of. All of the haunting production effects that helped to keep the delicate balance of light and darkness in place on the original record are gone, and even something like “Drugstore jesus” that was more orchestral in its initial version pales in comparison – you’d expect the chamber pop approach here to be right up that song’s alley! This definitely isn’t the form in which I wanted to revisit one of my favorite albums of the late 90s. The only two positive surprises here are: One, she’s swapped out “God-Shaped Hole” (a poppy, tailor-made for Christian radio co-write with Wayne Kirkpatrick that it seems she got talked into including on the original version, and that predictably was one of its better-known singles) for “Strange Way”, a lost track from the original sessions that fits much better between “Phobic” and “Solace” in terms of how it really drives the final nail into the coffin of a one-sided (and possibly abusive) romantic relationship. I can only imagine what the long-lost original version of this might have sounded like, but given the support of the solid rhythm section Plumb had back in the day, and it could have been both hard-hitting and catchy at the same time, I think. Two, she’s tacked on a cover of Michelle Branch’s “Everywhere” at the end – a bit of a strange move since that song came out in 2001, a full two years after the original version of this album, but given how this stripped-down version sheds light on the uncannily similar melody and chord progression between Branch’s song and “Stranded”, maybe it’s a subtle nod to a young artist she might have influenced? (In that case, I’d have preferred an Evanescence cover, since Amy Lee has specifically cited Plumb as early influence, but I guess this isn’t bad.) It’s too bad that there couldn’t have been more imagination in this so-called “reimagining”, but best case scenario, maybe it’ll get some new listeners interested in a classic Christian rock record from the tail end of an era when quirky and stylistically prolific CCM artists could still hope to have a reasonable amount of major label support – a trend that more or less died out in the early 2000s.
Pet Shop Boys – Nonetheless
I’m tempted to shout “The Pet Shop Boys have done it again!!!” in my loudest voice possible, because the first five tracks of this album are absolute stunners. The Boys may not have reinvented their wheel, but they sure know what lane they belong in and they own it like bosses, continuing to deliver club-friendly dancefloor bangers for emotionally sensitive people, starting with the stellar trumpet fanfare and thumping beats of the lead single “Loneliness”, which won me over effortlessly months ago. “Feel” and “Why Am I Dancing?” are very much in the same vein, with the latter being especially interesting, finding Neil Tennant moving into a new house at the height of the pandemic and being utterly alone and yet utterly free all at the same time. “New London Boy” is a street-smart, spoken-word heavy of what it was like to be out and proud at a time when this was not at all welcomed in the London neighborhoods Tennant used to frequent, while “Dancing Star” kicks the tempo back up to tell the curious tale of a Russian celebrity who fled from an oppressive government. Then we get to the back half, and… not gonna lie, my hopes start to dissipate a bit during the rather mediocre trifecta of “A New Bohemia”, “The Schlager Hit Parade”, and “The Secret of Happiness”. Not that there’s anything overtly terrible about these songs; they just seem rather sluggish and less insightful than the standard I’m used to from these guys. “Bullet for Narcissus” certainly wins me back, though, finding the Boys at their most politically edgy as they describe life from the point of view of a Secret Service agent whose job, if necessary, is to sacrifice his life for a self-absorbed leader whose name I don’t think I have to say out loud for the point to be obvious. And then the record closes out with style and grace on the mellow, ominous, and yet decadently arranged “Love Is the Law”. It’s funny – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe recognized their tendency toward maximalism and had the stated goal of stripping it back on this album, but then pretty much every track has a lush string arrangement that pushes it right back into more sophisticated territory. I’m not complaining – ornate arrangements are a big part of the duo’s appeal, and I think they’ve managed to come up with one of their best latter-day efforts, that in some ways hearkens back to the ridiculously consistent delights of their 80s and early 90s material.
Iron & Wine – Light Verse
It surprises me a bit that Sam Beam has taken nearly seven years to follow up his last full-length album, 2017’s Beast Epic – but then I guess he’s been fairly prolific during that time, putting out a handful of live albums (one of which was a full-fledged concert film), a few EPs, and a second collaboration with Calexico. Beast Epic was such a stark retreat from the experimental and cinematic build-up that characterized the late 2000s/early 2010s era of Iron & Wine that I didn’t really know what to do with it; consequently, it’s been over a decade since an Iron & Wine release truly excited me. Still, the lead single for this record, “You Never Know”, with its wistful vocal melody and its mildly psychedelic buildup toward a beautiful finish, gave me reason to hold out hope for this one being more of a production than its predecessor. I guess I was kind of right? There’s more percussion here, more dry wit, and several tracks are string arrangement-heavy, so while I might miss the clattering, throw-in-every-instrument-he-can-think-of arrangements of The Shepherd’s Dog or Ghost on Ghost, or the very anti-folk electronic experimentation of Kiss Each Other Clean, there’s at least some drama here in between the more hushed, sparse performances that tend to be his bread and butter. Still, nothing else on this new record quite excites me as much as its lead single. I’m slowly getting pulled in by the percussive (yet weirdly muted) “Anyone’s Game”, the breezy up-tempo melody of “Sweet Talk”, and the woozy, meandering arrangement of the epic-length “Tears that Don’t Matter”. The piano-driven duet with Fiona Apple, “All in Good Time”, sounds more like an Andrew Bird or Iron & Wine arrangement to my ears (I might be thinking of the former because Bird has performed with both Beam and Apple in the past), its stark, bluesy sway giving them ample room to pivot off of each other as they sift through the ashes of a relationship gone wrong. “Angels Go Home” is a sweet, string-assisted meditation of an ending, subtle but beautiful in the same way some of the first iron & Wine tracks off of Our Endless Numbered Days that first got me into Beam’s music 20 years ago were. But I don’t know, taken as a whole, Light Verse seems a bit sluggish. The acoustic guitar, which theoretically is the core instrument of most of these songs, feels like it hits with a dull thump in a lot of places where it should be allowed to let its chords and fingerpicked notes ring out. A lot of these tracks would seem incredibly “dry”, sonically speaking, if not for the strings. people who liked the more reserved Iron & Wine and thought that more adventurous period I referred to earlier was overproduced will probably have a bone to pick with this, so your mileage may vary depending on what kind of Iron & Wine fan you are, obviously. But at least I can say this holds my interest a little more than Beast Epic, and unlike that record, at least Light Verse has a title that helps to manage expectations.
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