Jams of the Week(end): 10/27/19
I listen to a lot of music over the course of any given year. That’s not (intentional) bragging, because a lot of it ends up being mediocre or just plain boring. It made sense to start writing about some of the stuff I listen to here and there, so we’re gonna try this out: albums generally release on Fridays, and I’ll talk about three of them on Sundays.
I’ve been toying with the idea of a write-up like this for most of the year, if only so I can more easily call back on albums that stood out to me for end-of-the-year listicle nonsense. If nothing else, it’s an attempt to put stuff up here more regularly, and to get better with regards to actually writing about music in a descriptive way beyond, “hey, this album’s good!”
Clicking on the album art will take you to the Spotify page for that album, just in case a blurb gets you interested in it.
Okay, enough preamble, let’s just get to it.
Tessa Violet - Bad Ideas
Bad Ideas is Tessa Violet’s second full-length release, and one of my more anticipated 2019 release after “Crush” showed up on a Spotify Discover playlist earlier this year. It’s right up my alley in terms of indie pop, brimming with catchy, vibrant songs about love, heartbreak, and the perils of being an emotive human. From the jump, Violet manages to cement the core idea of, “Hey, caring about people can be super dangerous at times, but you’ve gotta roll with it, because the benefits can be worth that risk!” The title track exemplifies this, and as the album goes on, she peels back more layers to show a more vulnerable side: dealing with a manipulative partner in “Games,” or being willing to admit that you’re just not okay in “Honest.” There’s an air of relatability to the whole album, from the highs of finding a new person to the lows of being without them.
Bad Ideas has some of my favorite songs from all of 2019, with the absolutely killer bass-heavy “I Like (the idea of) You” and the building bravado of “Games” both erupting out of the middle of the album.
Recommended Tracks: “I Like (the idea of) You” // “Games” // “Bored”
Battles - Juice B Crypts
Albums from math/experimental rock trio-turned-duo Battles seem to follow a pretty familiar “one on, one off” pattern for me at this point. I adore their debut album Mirrored for its tight, bizarre rhythms and frenetic pacing. Their follow-up, Gloss Drop, is…well, it’s good, but it didn’t linger in my mind the same way. A few years later, they returned to form with the entirely instrumental La Di Da Di, a wholly enjoyable album that sounds like three people who were thrilled to just be goofing around making music together.
You get where I’m going with this. Their newest release, Juice B Crypts, is just not quite what I was hoping for. It starts really strong, with the shifting, slightly unnerving rhythm of “Ambulance,” but Juice quickly starts to feel like an album designed to be busy just for the sake of being busy. It lacked a sense of cohesion for me, some binding thread to cut through the madness of the synthesizers and reverb. There are some stand-out tracks: I like the title track, and the album’s two-part closer collaboration with tUnE-yArDs makes perfect sense, as their styles feel very appropriately meshed.
Here’s hoping whatever they put out next keeps with my personal pattern of enjoyment, because Juice B Crypts just didn’t hit the mark for me.
Recommended Tracks: “Ambulance” // “Juice B Crypts” // “Last Supper on Shasta, Pts. 1/2”
Magic Sword - Awakening
We’ve had a couple singles from Awakening since last year, with both “Colossus” and “Reborn” making waves in my personal playlists, and the second release from the Idaho electronic trio Magic Sword doesn’t fail to live up to the expectations they set. Magic Sword will always feel like “music to do crimes to,” with “In The Face of Evil” and “The Way Home” featured in Hotline Miami 2’s soundtrack, but Awakening makes a solid effort at establishing its own much grander, more space-opera-esque feel. Opening with a grim, brooding narration about the creation of the fictional Magic Sword, the title track hooks and engages with ease, letting the bright synthesizer warble and Chic riffs wash over you.
Awakening is a fairly broody album in the synthwave space, never really pushing for the freneticism you might find in a Carpenter Brut or Perturbator release. It leans into the late night highway drive, all headlights and gas stations in the distance. It sounds like there is weight to whatever world the Magic Sword exists in. When the opening pulses of “Reborn” kick in, there’s an air of import, this feeling of going off to do battle with some hellish horror. At the same time, there’s a comfort to the familiarity of this sound: at this point, Magic Sword’s music feels like a quintessential example of synthwave, a building block in the modern interpretation of the genre, and Awakening is another piece of their mythos.
Recommended Tracks: “Awakening” // “Lady of Light” // “Colossus”
We’re getting close to the end of the year, which means I’ve gotta start looking at everything that I’ve liked and listened to in 2019. My “everything I listened to in 2019” playlist is already over sixty hours, which usually means we’ve had a pretty good year for album releases.
Next week doesn’t have any big releases I’m very interested in, but I’m sure we’ll find something to jam out to.
Until then, enjoy the start of your week, and find a song that speaks to you!
