Music Worth Checking Out: 2nd Quarter 2015

Ladies and gentlemen, school is officially over for your boy, and I'm finally catching up with things that fell by the wayside during the madness, like this blog. This is a month late, but I hope I can make up for it by having a boatload of content to keep your ears busy. So let's get this installment kicked off....after I include my standard disclaimer.

This blog is really not meant for public consumption, although I appreciate every random reader from across the globe. The intended audience for this, which informs the way I write and describe/compare the music, is composed of the friends I’ve accumulated in my life with whom I’ve shared mutual enjoyment of music in the past. My purpose here is to attempt to foster or rekindle that facet of those relationships. Still, thanks for reading, whoever and wherever you are. Also, it doesn't matter whether it came out in 1997 or 2015. If I found out about it recently and I like it, I'll include it here.

Paper Arms - Great Mistakes

You kids should know by now that this is my bread and butter. Gravelly, gritty yet melodic vocals and driving, tight rhythms comprising post-hardcore with punk flourishes. They've gotten a little better with each release, and this one features the best song they've ever written, "Fader". If you let them, they just might fill the hole in your iPod that Polar Bear Club left.

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After The Fall - Dedication

Here we have old men making refreshingly fast punk rock and keeping the melodic in the hardcore for every song this time around. As you might discern from the title, every song on this album is dedicated to a different person. You can bathe in the sincerity while banging your head to the beats. It's a pretty even listen quality wise.

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The Story So Far - The Story So Far

I can't even front. I would probably want to suplex the shit out of 95% of this band's fans, but their execution of mid-tempo modern day pop-punk boasts a nice balance of aggression and catchiness that continues to appeal to me. Honestly, I was completely ready to bail and had pretty low expectations for this. It just felt like the right timing for them to drop a completely ball-less clunker that would get played at all the teenage roller rink parties (if they still have those...do they still have those?). Instead they turned over some familiar soil and planted a few new plants to spruce up the garden they nearly perfected on What You Don't See. I think "Heavy Gloom" might be my favorite from this one. However, I still can't get down with Under Soil and Dirt anything before that, save maybe one or two songs. That's where the teenage testosterone meter goes into the red.

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Spraynard - Mable

These guys put out my #3 favorite LP of 2011, the inappropriately named Funtitled (they're not the goofy band that might imply), so I was glad to hear they were coming back from being broken up, albeit with only 2/3 of the original group. Any fans of their later pre-breakup material should be pleased with this. It's wonderfully earnest basement-style (as opposed to polished) mid-tempo pop-punk with a twist of midwestern emo. I love the way the dude addresses people in his lyrics. He seems like a real swell guy. I'm sure he wants you to like his music, and so do I. Please, do enjoy it.

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Pianos Become The Teeth - Close

Surprise! You guys thought I didn't like this band anymore, didn't you? Oh, you didn't know or care? How about I do this to you? Then you'll care. For the record, I much prefer their older, more abrasive stuff to their most recent full length Keep You, but I still enjoy a little over half that record (the rest is a snoozefest) and really gained a better appreciation for it live when I saw them with Gates. This 7" has only 2 songs, and I dig them both, with "Dancing" being the clear winner. If you're a fan of mopey midwestern emo and either wrote these guys off due to their lighter new style or never gave them a chance, now's the time and "Dancing" is the song.

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Sleep In. - Settling

This band features a member of (in my opinion) the best project Evan Weiss of Into It Over It was involved with, The Progress. Their full length Merit was mostly slept on when it came out in 2006 but ended up being pretty influential in the "emo revival" sound of recent years. This album bears marks of that sound, but more often treads into pop-punk-tinged rock territory. Honestly if you don't dig Third Eye Blind's self-titled record, you probably won't be able to get into most of this. The opener is a definite attempt at a "Semi-Charmed Life", but don't judge the whole record by that standard. It really picks up after that. The vocals took a while to grow on me, but the rhythm section is solid, and the guitars do a lot of that dual crunchy/meandering thing that sounds so good. There are a couple semi-clunkers, but otherwise it's a pretty solid listen.

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Red Pill - Look What This World Did To Us

It's only right to lead off with Detroit's best kept hip-hop secret of the last couple years. It's slightly unfortunate that he chose to kick the album off with "Meh" and its questionable chorus, because other tracks paint a far more interesting and well constructed picture of the struggle from the defeatist yet defiant perspective of Mr. Pill. He's brutally honest and unapologetic, and he obviously has an ear for solid boom-bap production. Give songs like "Kids", "Leonard Letdown", "Blus", and "Rum & Coke" a chance.

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Estee Nack & Purpose - 14 Forms: The Book of Estee Nack

This isn't the classic I was hoping for after lead single "T.I.M.E." (see video below) knocked my socks off, but it's still worth a long look. Purpose handles all the production and once again mostly comes through with above average to great beats. Estee Nack is at least above average as an MC, and he incorporates a healthy dose of social consciousness into his rhymes while maintaining an edge. That's always a winning formula in my book, and apparently Estee Nack's as well.

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Statik Selektah - Lucky 7

You should know what to expect from a Statik album by now, and he usually delivers. Even though I like 15 of the 19 songs here, I don't really have any favorites yet. "Sucker Free (ft. JFK)" and "Alone (ft. Joey Badass)" might be good candidates to check if you only have a few minutes.

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EdO. G. - Afterwords

Boston's own EdO, one of the most consistent and dependable veterans in the game today (well, except for the inexplicably sub-par A&E collaboration he's done with the also usually dependable Masta Ace...it's like if the mighty mechanical lions somehow formed an incontinent hobo instead of Voltron), is back to grace us with dopeness for 2015. This time he teamed up with French label Effiscienz, home to Camden's Fel Sweetenberg, whom I've highlighted on this blog before. I can't blame him considering how much more appreciative of true hip-hop western Europeans are than Americans. All songs here are produced by duo Street Wyze, who provided EdO with a very consistent boom-bap backdrop that has only a couple minor clunkers. Accordingly, I don't necessarily have any favorites here.

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Skyzoo - Music For My Friends

Has there ever been a more appropriate album title for my blog? I think not. This is definitely one of Skyzoo's most consistent efforts and continues the good streak from his Barrel Brothers collaboration with Torae. I really like the way the sample from ATCQ's "8 Million Stories" was re-flipped with an even better drum beat on "Luxury", but I think this dude Westside Gunn who does the supremely annoying & ignorant chorus needs to go get his GED and stop bullshitting about being rich. I'd like to see his real estate and investment portfolios to back up his claim. Still, that's a relatively minor pockmark on an otherwise really good album highlighted by "Everything's For Sale" and "Women Who Can Cook".

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Pete Rock - Petestrumentals 2

Instrumental hip-hop isn't for everybody, but if you're going to listen to some, it might as well be made by one of the most respected producers in boom-bap history. "BBJones", "Heaven & Earth", PR 4 Prez", "Beat Goes On", and "Dilla Bounce (R.I.P.)" are good enough to jam to even without vocals.

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Kaimbr as Wu Kaim - Bronze Horse

This is a very cool project where this Low Budget Crew & Mello Music Group collective member re-flipped many samples previously used on Wu-Tang Clan members' songs and made them into new songs. It's the perfect mix of familiar and refreshing, and it comes off much better than one might expect from something that could mistakenly be viewed as a simple re-hashing. Check "Welcome Home" for the best representation of why this is an excellent poject.

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Large Professor - Re:Living

Here we have yet another elder statesmen with a new album worthy of your attention. Extra P has generally gotten consistently better as a producer during his career, and in contrast he hasn't done a single thing to improve the quality of his rhymes since he left his early 90's group Main Source. However, when songs as good as "Re:Living" and "Opulence" are the result of his work, it doesn't matter that much. That said, his vocals are not featured on easily the best track on this, and one of the best hip-hop songs of this decade, "Industry Remix 2 (ft. Inspectah Deck, Cormega, Roc Marciano, Sadat X, & Lord Jamar)", which continues the theme of the "Industry" track from last year's excellent collaborative album with Cormega (Mega Philosophy) and includes one of Deck's best verses ever (which is really saying something, as I think GZA is the only Wu member more lyrically gifted). His takedown of fraudulence in the current hip-hop industry is absolutely masterful. Check it: "Nowadays everybody trying to get on/They don't wanna put in work, they just ridin' along/Pretty hoes in the video, thighs & a thong/A few views on YouTube, but who's buyin' the song?/WorldStar don't give a fuck how you bodied the verse/They'll desecrate your mixtape so Connie can twerk/With your 360 deal, boy, you're probably a jerk/On molly while they profit off your body of work/Public Enemy told me "don't believe the hype"/I strive to be the type to fight, to lead them right/From the brainwash, same songs daily that they playin'/And if you disagree with the masses, then you hatin'/When did conscious rap become corny?/Why should I let the corporates define me?/Radio....suckas never play me/But that's the hot 5 at 9? That shit is crazy."

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Clear Soul Forces - Fab 5ive

Once again, Detroit is proving itself to be a better producer of quality boom-bap albums than the city that created it. These guys craft "combination backpack & subwoofer" hip-hop and continue to improve on this, their third full-length. Check tracks "Cheese In The Sky" and "Remain Raw" for evidence.

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Professor P & DJ Akilles

Here's another example of the better understanding, appreciation, and reverence for true-school boom-bap in Europe. These two cats from Sweden flew under my radar for way too long, and both of the above releases are loaded with solid jams. There are even a couple nice feature verses from AG and Blu. They've put out more EPs since the above, which I have yet to check out, and so far I've found that I can't really go wrong with any of their songs, so choose away comfortably from their catalog.

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Beyond that, here's a quick rundown of other stuff I checked out. Two emo bands laden with potential, Have Mercy and Souvenirs, both whiffed big time with their most recent LPs. Masta Ace's eMC group continues to suffer from oddly chintzy-sounding production (and enough pointless skits to choke a mule). Raekwon put out the absolute pile of substance-lacking dog shit (like if you fed your dog nothing but Ol' Roy brand from Wal-Mart) known as Fly International Luxurious Art. Seriously, if you ate a dog's shit, it would bring more to your life than that album, especially with its fucking Rick Ross and ASAP Rocky guest spots. However, Rae definitely added something to Ghostface & Adrian Younge's Twelve Reasons To Die II. Still, his & Ghost's superior storytelling couldn't cancel out the snore-inducing production that comprised damn near half the album. I was eager to see what Bishop Nehru could do with his solo debut, but I only found one song worth keeping. I still think he could do something great in the future though. Bronze Nazareth produced a lot of great beats (as usual) for his joint project with Canibus, but the songs I like are in spite of Canibus' cornball performance. Seriously, listen to the chorus of "Give Me Not Control" and you'll see what a song-ruining tool he sounds like. That said, when Bronze, Craig G & Raekwon cut into his mic time on "The Kings Sent For Me", the result is pretty sweet. It turns out the Doppelgangaz are continuing to go in the douchey direction they hinted at with some of the garbage on Peace Kehd, so they're pretty much dead to me now. Such a shame because everything before that ruled. And finally, in a similar fashion, I could only find  two songs on the new Red City Radio I liked, thanks to their move toward a more Americana rock-n-roll sound. I still champion the fuck out of their first EP and LP though.

Well, that's officially it for this installment, kids. I'll be back in a couple months to talk about new stuff from Knuckle Puck and Kool Keith, among others. Thanks for reading.