Noah 1. Ego-Rag n Bone Man 2. Hook, Line & Sinker- Royal Blood 3. Believer- Imagine Dragons 4. Walk On Water- 30 Seconds To Mars 5. The Man- The Killers 6. Died In My Sleep- Demon Hunter 7. Blame- Bastille 8. Feet Don't Fail Me- Queens of The Stone Age 9. Story of OJ- Jay-Z 10. Blood In The Cut- K.Flay
Justin 1. What Are We Fighting For- The Federal Empire 2. Come Together- Gary Clark Jr. 3. Legendary- Welshy Arms 4. Freak Like Me- NoMBe 5. High- Sir Sly 6. No Roots- Alice Merton 7. Feel It Still- Portugal. The Man 8. Fire Escape- Andrew McMahon in The Wilderness 9. River- Bishop Briggs 10. Love is Mystical- Cold War Kids --honorable mention-- Champion- Barns Courtney note-Jay- Z is not on Spotify so Story of OJ is replaced by Mask Off(remix) on the Spotify playlist. Find us on ITunes
Beach Boys by Weezer is a track with an interesting concept behind it. The main idea seems to be Rivers Cuomo pining for the sweet and timeless music of one of his favorite bands to break through the dark and aggressive world of modern music. While this Alt rock critique of modern pop and rock isn’t necessarily wrong, the issue is they make this statement on a boring and melancholy sounding track. While this song has more of the nostalgic ache that you would expect from Weezer rather than the empty and dark atmosphere of someone like Missio, the track still falls flat.
The lyrics are actually well composed and convey the story perfectly; but the delivery and music behind the lyrics rob this song of any power. Rather than something remotely close to the fun and slightly off kilter rock sound Weezer have been known for, we get a very low key and melancholy track. The ultimate irony, that may be purposeful, is that Cuomo sings about the need for gorgeous four part harmonies and singing from the heart on a track where he sounds half asleep.
Along with the drowsy vocals, Rivers’ guitar playing is boring, uninspired and sparse. While the intent is to leave room for the bass guitars riffing, the bass isn’t high enough in the mix to put the funky power that it’s trying to convey. If they wanted to do this right they would have done like Charlie Puth’s Attention and cranked the hell out of the bassline to make the emptiness of the rest of the arrangement work better. But because of how limited the guitar playing is and how low the bass is the song just sounds like an empty digital void.
Honestly at this point I prefer EDM Weezer with Feels Like Summer to this boring track; at least that track felt like Weezer. While they have always mixed sunny and depressing to get their sound, Weezer just feel so boring and drowsy that I literally almost fell asleep listening to the song on repeat while writing this. And the worst part is that the lyrics and message of the song are really good, it’s the arrangement, mix and music that ruins the song. I think this song can be summed up by the one review it has on Amazon as of writing this, "Filler".
So my first introduction to Missio was their terrible hit Middle Fingers, a pompous and boring track about being a self important hipster. Essentially the message of the song, without a hint of self awareness or irony is that he’s a cool outsider because his taste in everything is whatever the mainstream is not. Literally the only way he qualifies his tastes is that it’s not what other people like. This message is transmitted via a song that sounds almost exactly like the typical minimalistic electronic track that is popular right now. Given my disdain for this track, I wasn’t expecting much from their full album, and I was not disappointed.
I’ll admit the first two tracks caught my attention for a brief moment, with Animal actually not being too bad. The second track lost me when it’s fairly up tempo intro faded into another slow and plodding track the moment the vocals came in. This is kind of like the modern equivalent of Darkwave, being the dark and dreary alternative to the type of minimalist electronic music played on pop stations. I Do What I Want isn’t terrible, with some cool synth effects and a pretty good vocal delivery on the verses, but it get’s boring fast.
As Middle Fingers comes around I realize that the reason this album sounds so boring is because, aside from being simple and empty sounding, every song sounds painfully similar. The vocal and drum production is so identical on every track that they all kind of flow into each other, which is not helped by the lead singer's devotion to sounding as half asleep as possible.
Bottom Of The Deep Blue Sea is probably my favorite track, just because the use of the piano and dark atmosphere work for the lyrics of this track. Plus the title is actually a pretty interesting lyric, and the underwater sounding synths harmonizing and playing around the vocals is actually pretty cool. It’s still a chilled out and mildly boring track, but it’s the kind of spacey and chilled out music I can get behind. The same cannot be said of the next track Kamikazee.
With a name like Kamikazee I would expect something energetic or bombastic, or at least interesting. Nope, this is a boring brag rap song done by a half asleep indie singer. How the hell a song called Kamikazee has a refrain about money, power and champagne is beyond me. But this track at least makes more sense that KDV.
KDV, which stands for Killing Darth Vader is just a weird song. The hook of “Killing Darth Vader with my M****er F***ing Kick Drum” was apparently inspired by someone uttering that phrase after knocking over a Vader bobble head when hitting the kick drum. After each utterance we also get a distorted sample of The Imperial March, which I guess is supposed to add to the joke. The issue is if that is supposed to be a funny lyrics why doesn’t anything about it sound like a joke? The lyric is delivered like this deadly serious line that’s supposed to somehow tie to the existential crisis of the rest of the song. Maybe these guys are so hipster that their irony is actually not ironic, making it even more ironic; isn’t that ironic, don’t ya think? But this fails as a joke song for the same reason most of their songs fail as regular songs, it’s too boring!
Twisted is a knock off Weeknd song, and not a very good one and the closer DWI is the same boring as the rest of this album. Everybody Gets High and I Don’t Give A… are actually not bad, with Everybody Gets High being a dark mix of Dubstep and Trap that work pretty well and actually sounds interesting. I Don’t Give A… is similar but features guest rapper Zeale who actually gives a Missio song a pulse for the first and only time on this album.
I can’t say I hate this album, it’s hard to muster up those strong emotions for something this boring, but I definitely don’t like it. It’s a boring and dull electronic album that is dark for the sake of sounding dark without any reasoning or justification for it. With few exceptions the songs are dull and plodding with the sheen of hypocritical Indie arrogance plastered all over this thing. Plus they abused Darth Vader and this is inexcusable.
An Album A Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
Imagine Dragons are an interesting band to me, like I said when I reviewed X Ambassadors, they get a lot of undue criticism in my opinion. A lot of people trash Imagine Dragons for being a radio rock band, but I’ll take a half decent radio rock band over the garbage EDM and minimalist pop that dominates the radio these days. When I’ve listened to Imagine Dragons before I found that like most pop leaning rock artists I didn’t care for most of their deeper cuts, especially with Imagine Dragons’ tendency to fill their album with boring soft rock.
I expected their new album Evolve to be much the same; I’d like the lead single, find the second single to be okay and maybe like another 1 or 2 songs off the album. Surprisingly I actually like more songs from Evolve than I dislike. The first couple of songs on this album add some hip hop and r&b elements that I didn’t realize were missing from Imagine Dragons’ sound.
The first track, I Don’t Know Why is basically a Weeknd or Drake song with some 80’s synths and occasional guitar stabs added. The second track, Whatever It Takes is kind of like Imagine Dragons doing a Twenty One Pilots song in the way that it blends rapping on the verses with an alternative rock chorus. The third track and lead single Believer is the perfect blending of these hip hop elements with Imagine Dragons’ typical heavy rhythms and soaring vocals into what is probably the most cohesive track on the album.
If Believer is the Radioactive of this album than Walking The Wire really wants to be the Demons. To me Walking The Wire is one of the worst tracks on the album as it just sounds like a boring contemporary Christian song, even more so than Demons. The better choice for the lower tempo inspirational single would have been the next song on the record, Rise Up. While Rise Up isn’t anywhere near the best song on the album, it has the calm soft rock sound that Imagine Dragon’s second single usually has, and unlike the previous track Dan Reynolds actually sounds invested.
The third soft rock track is up next and it’s possibly worse than Walking The Wire, after this we get the strangest track on the album, Yesterday. This song is really hard to describe, but it’s a strange track that calls to mind The Beatles and Panic! At The Disco. Reynolds also sings in a lower register that reminds me of Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, but despite the weirdness it is a good track.
Then we get Mouth Of The River, which is a well written and powerful rock track followed by Thunder, which is a minimalistic hip hop track. Thunder actually works way better than most trap songs that try to make this same rhythm and beat work. The album closes out with two mediocre tracks that don’t really stand out much, although Dancing In The Dark is kind of trippy with it’s glitchy electronic vibe.
This album has more tracks on it that I like than any other Imagine Dragons’ album I’ve listened to before and some of them are legitimately great songs. Imagine Dragons have greatly reduced the number of terrible soft rock songs on this album and replaced them with more experimental tracks. I also commend them on how they mix in more and more disparate genres and make them work without losing their own sound; that is really what this band does best. I hope they continue to experiment with mixing in the Tron inspired synths and hip hop elements of this album or even some of the string sections from Smoke + Mirrors in the future and drop the crappy soft rock songs entirely. Album on Google Play Album on ITunes Album on Amazon
An Album A Day is published 5 days a week Monday-Friday
Much like Elle King, the artist we are looking at today, Rag’n’Bone Man, brings a different take to the blues and soul genres. Rory Graham (stage name Rag’n’Bone Man) has such a powerful gospel delivery to his singing that it makes his music jump out and grab you, especially when played on a pop station amid soulless auto tuned pop singers. Over the course of his debut album Human, Graham showcases a blending of soul, blues and gospel singing with modern hip hop and indie beats.
Interestingly Graham actually started out as an Emcee with a drum and bass crew, going by his original handle of Rag’N’Bonez. Some of Graham’s rap influence can be heard throughout Human, with the pounding 808 drum beats underneath just about every track as well as a rap verse on Ego. The minimalistic beats also sit underneath the music in the way that calls all of the attention to the vocals, highlighting the vocal performance and lyrics in a similar way to rap music.
Along with the largely synth based backing music, certain tracks feature elements that call back to soul, funk, blues and gospel music. Choirs and pianos are common elements throughout the album along with tracks like Innocent Man that make heavy use of funk inspired bass guitar and saxophone. The album has a consistent sound throughout, with the differences in tracks coming from the way the various genres are presented. For example, Love You Any Less is a powerful piano ballad, while Be The Man is a straightforward soul track driven by acoustic drums and strings.
Literally every song on this album is strong, and even though they all have a similar style the songs are different enough that it doesn’t get old or tired. Deciding which tracks are the best from this album will have to come down to current mood and personal opinion; as of writing this I’d say the best tracks on this album are Innocent Man, Skin, Ego and Die Easy.
Innocent Man is a good track that mixes in more of the funk and soul inspired elements into the music instead of relegating them to only Graham’s vocals. Skin is a dark minimalist track about the inability to let go of a past relationship that features some supremely powerful vocals on the chorus while having a restrained and emotional performance on the verses. Skin truly stands out in the version of the song used in the music video where there is a 40 second long acapella segment at the beginning that showcases Graham’s vocals.
Ego stands out as one of the angriest tracks on the album, featuring lyrics that seem aimed at prideful liars and hypocrites. This track also stands out because of the third verse where Graham drops back into his Rag’N’Bonez rap persona, calling out egotistical rich people who claim to have all the answers while being detached from the common man; essentially modern Marie Antoinettes.
The strongest moment on the album is the closing track Die Easy, an entirely acapella spiritual. It is a testament to the power and emotion in Graham’s delivery that he can hold down the best track on the album entirely unaccompanied. The lyrics and themes sound heavily inspired by old folk and gospel tracks, with the imagery and thematic elements being similar to O’ Death by Ralph Stanley. It closes the album out with a funeral dirge as the album ends with nothing but Graham singing about his death.
Overall this is one of the best albums I have heard in awhile and certainly one of the best to come out this year. I cannot wait to see what else Rag’n’Bone Man puts out, as everything I have heard from him has been brilliant. Along with this album, Graham has put out various EPs including Bluestown, a contemporary blues album that includes a rendition of my favorite blues standard, St James Infirmary Blues. As long as Graham continues singing without auto tune any direction he chooses to go in will be amazing.
