Photo of Mitski courtesy of the Dead Oceans website
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
Life in general and the tasks of my day job in particular kept me away from my happy place—a.k.a. sitting in one place with earbuds in, listening to music—for most of the last few weeks, but there were just too many interesting new releases to just skip those weeks entirely. So consider this column a bit of a catch-up. First up, a look at a few new releases from February 13; scroll a little further and you’ll find reviews of a few more from February 20 plus one from February 27, at which point I realized, hey, this thing is getting pretty long! So hopefully I can sneak another column in this week to get completely caught up, but for now, here’s what I checked out from Valentine’s Eve, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:
Charli XCX, Wuthering Heights (Atlantic): In which the pop star big enough to get an entire summer named after her last album tamps down expectations by making a movie soundtrack, and I imagine reactions to this album to be about as polarized as they are to Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel. Opening the big follow-up to your breakthrough album with an atonal drone duet with John Cale and his viola is certainly a CHOICE. Elsewhere on the album, Charli XCX explores more traditional pop song structures, but even then, she still scatters in more oddball elements; take “Dying for You,” whose opening verses kinda sound like “Video Killed the Radio Star” before the song shifts into sounds more appropriate for a circus funhouse. The best songs include that one and the symphonic swoon of “Always Everywhere” and “Out of Myself.” But scattered throughout are a few stinkers, including “Altars” (yes, one is indeed the loneliest number, but I think that’s an idea whose concept has been explored enough in song, thanks), “Eyes of the World” (a bland late-in-the-movie sort of ballad featuring Sky Ferreira), and “My Reminder” (just “meh”). Will I Listen Again?: Maybe.
The Sky Chiefs, self-titled (Chimney Bird Records): Thirty-plus years ago, Kevin Pittman (of new wave power poppers The Dads) and Stephen McCarthy (of alt-country quartet the Long Ryders, and later an auxiliary member of the Jayhawks) teamed up for an album’s worth of country-tinged tunes that was recorded, never released, and thought lost to the sands of time before a copy was recently discovered in a friend’s attic. The album finally saw release a couple weeks back under the new moniker the Sky Chiefs.
St. Louis has an excellent annual festival called Twangfest, and the Sky Chiefs are a platonic ideal Twangfest band, all peppy rhythms, twangy guitars, and sweet vocal harmonies, Pittman handling lead on most of the songs with a clean, pure singing voice akin to Michael Penn while McCarthy doubles right alongside him with McCartneyesque harmonies. The album isn’t exactly an attention-grabber at first listen, but it’s a pleasant listen if you’re into bands like the Jayhawks or the Bottle Rockets, and while there’s a few more trad-country songs about two-thirds of the way into the album that didn’t do a lot for me, the rest is so sonicly sunny that I can imagine it ingratiating itself more and more with future listens. Favorite songs: “Knocking Out the Daylights,” the gently rollickin’ ballad “My Last Goodbye,” “What Lonely Means,” “The New Sara Jane.” Also of note: the album serves as a teaser for McCarthy’s old gig in the reunited Long Ryders, who have an album called High Noon Hymns dropping on March 13 via Cherry Red Records. Will I Listen Again?: Probably.
Chet Faker, A Love for Strangers (BMG): Aussie singer-songwriter Nick Murphy returns to his not-particularly-great pseudonym Chet Faker for his first album in five years. Can’t say that I’m super familiar with his output prior to this, but I can see why he’d be popular, thanks to his earnest, soulful vocal style. By pairing that voice with piano ballads and skittering electronic beats, you can easily draw a line from Chet Faker back through Hozier, David Gray, Bruce Hornsby, and other sincere piano balladeers of years past.
Of the songs in that style, the best are “1000 Ways” and “Far Side of the Moon”; “Remember Me” isn’t my personal favorite but its radio-ready romanticism makes it feel like the one that should leap the highest on the charts. The ones that excite me the least are the more bare-bones ones, particularly piano slog “Can You Swim?” and the gently strummed acoustic guitar of “Inefficient Love,” though album closer “Just My Hallelujah” is in a similar vein yet more affecting. The best of the bunch, though, are the almost ambient electronic tunes that precede that finale: “The Thing About Nothing” (an icy duet with Guatemalan singer Sofía Insua, a.k.a. aLex vs. aLex), the fluttering sax of “OH NO OH NO,” and the spacious “A Level of Light.” I’d love a full album that sounded like those songs. Will I Listen Again?: Probably not front-to-back, but to the highlights, for sure.
Cardinals, Masquerade (So Young Records): As a lifelong resident of the St. Louis area, I’m naturally predisposed to give a band named “Cardinals” the benefit of the doubt, even if they hail from Cork, Ireland, instead of the Gateway City. Oh, wait…my family is also Irish, so I have to give them the benefit of the doubt for that, too! Sadly, despite all that inherent good will, I found the band’s debut full-length merely okay. Their sound is mid-tempo indie rock that occasionally has a cathartic build-and-release where the band members all clang-clang-clang-clang in unison, topped with an accordion that gives the songs the lilt of Irish folk. The sounds are pleasant enough, but the songs aren’t hooky enough to be memorable, even after two runs through the LP. Then again, the band is a favorite on Sirius XMU and Stereogum named them a Band to Watch, so maybe it’s a me problem? The best tracks are the peppier ones: the title track, “I Like You,” “Anhedonia,” and “Barbed Wire.” Least favorite: the plodding “Over at Last.” Will I Listen Again?: Probably not.
Moving on to releases from February 20, I generally don’t cover singles in this column but I would be remiss if I skipped “When the President Shits His Pants,” a fun little ditty from lo-fi musician, comic book artist, and inaugural Cartoonist Laureate for the state of Vermont James Kochalka, performing under his nom de rock James Kochalka Superstar. Kochalka was nice enough to debut his Halloween jam “The Mummy’s on the Loose” right here on The Arts STL a few years back, but dare I say this song is even more brilliant, so please, take 48 seconds out of your day and enjoy this bit of hilarity:
And now on to more traditional First Thought Fridays territory…
Eric Hilton, A Sky So Close (Montserrat House): Eric Hilton helped define trip-hop in the 1990s as half of the electronica duo Thievery Corporation. If you’re not familiar with Hilton’s work, he specializes in downtempo, an electronica subgenre that splits the difference between trip-hop and ambient—the synths and other instrumentation (and Hilton uses a lot of live instrumentation, as well as samples of same) are lush and spacy like ambient, but the beats are more assertive. It’s music that’s dancier than mere background music and not quite dancy enough for the dancefloor, but perfectly suited for a really hip house party or art gallery.
I hadn’t checked in on Thievery Corporation in a couple decades, but after listening to this, the latest album in Hilton’s prolific solo career, back-to-back with TC’s 2003 release The Richest Man in Babylon, I can say that if you’re a fan of TC, the sonic similarities between it and this new album far outnumber the differences. The main differences I grokked were that the more far-reaching world music vibe of TC (reggae, bossa nova) are narrowed to a more generally Middle Eastern vibe, and the vocals are less centerpoints for the songs than just another melodic element blended into the music. (A pair of songs feature frequent TC collaborator Natalia Clavier on vocals, and both are highlights of the album as a whole). The press release for A Sky So Close describes it as “elegantly erotic,” which feels like an apt description: rather than the hip house party/art gallery vibe, this one feels more like the soundtrack to a ‘90s-style erotic thriller. Will I Listen Again?: This seems like a weird rubric to judge this album against as this kind of music is rarely something I actively seek out so the honest answer is “probably not,” but if I had a night where I was going for this type of vibe, I would absolutely throw on some Hilton or Thievery Corporation, this album included.
Bella Litsa, Drasticism (Records Man, Records): On her debut full-length, singer-songwriter Bella Litsa crafts 11 songs that play like Lana Del Rey with her gothic grandeur traded for symphonic sweep. Litsa’s lilting soprano and ornate compositions attest to the classical training in her bio, but songs like “Passion Plug” and its pumping synths also offer up a Florence + the Machine feel, even if Litsa’s voice never aims for Florence Welch’s gale-force winds. Best songs: the swooning “Never Ending Movie” (which sounds a bit like ELO to these ears), the jazzy drums and cathartic crash of “Inside a Seashell,” the stomping, synth-y “My Blue Eyes,” and “Tied Together by a Silver Thread,” whose epic shape-shifting makes it play like her “November Rain.” Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
And as I mentioned above, I realized I was already closing in on 2,000 words after just one entry for this week’s new releases, but I do hope to slip in a second column this week. The new Gorillaz, in particular, bears further discussion, so stay tuned for that!
Mitski, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me (Dead Oceans): Mitski entered the studio intending to make a rock record with a basic backing band and ended up with…very much not that! Nothing’s About to Happen to Me instead is mostly slow and sad songs backed by expertly deployed symphonic touches. What really impresses is Mitski’s staggering growth as a singer; just listen to that aching, subtle vibrato on “Cats.” In general, it’s kind of a sleepy album, with lead single “Where’s My Phone?” and the slow-build “That White Cat” being the only tunes rollicking enough to recall earlier hits like “Nobody” or “The Only Heartbreaker.” Instead, this seems more aimed at the legions of fans who found “My Love Mine All Mine” on TikTok—not in a calculated way, just Mitski further exploring that side of her sound, the orchestral flourishes giving the songs an almost countrypolitan flavor. Will I Listen Again?: Yes. | Jason Green
