Photo of Madison Beer by Morgan Maher
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.
Apologies: much like the week before, I spent much of the last week away from my desk and my earbuds, then when I went to get this posted Sunday night, my internet went out. Argh! The benefit of being even later than usual is I got to take an extra work day (at my desk! Huzzah!) and include a few more entries. It’s an interesting week too: I don’t know that I would have sought out any of these releases other than Courtney Marie Andrews were it not for this column, and while most of the albums have their share of misses, there’s also a lot of hits I would have entirely missed if I hadn’t specifically been seeking out whatever new music came out this week. Tl;dr: music exploration, it’s worth your time!
Without further ado, here’s what I listened to this week, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:
They Might Be Giants, Eyeball EP (Idlewild Recordings): The longer this column goes, the more entries you’ll find in the “band I love but haven’t checked out new material from in a long time” category. Case in point: I love They Might Be Giants. We have dance parties at my family dinner table to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Birdhouse in Your Soul” and “Dr. Worm.” But I’m not sure when the last time was that I checked in with new material from the band. Maybe 2001’s Mink Car? That’s an unforgivably long time!
Anyway, this new four-track EP is a lot of fun. It opens and closes with versions of the title track, the opener being a bouncy power pop number you might expect to hear on an Aughts-era Guster album, the closer the “Elegant Too remix” that adds a persistent dancy beat and some fat, spacy synths; the chorus for that one (“Look me in the eyeball!”) is sure to get stuck in your head in a way you won’t regret. In between are two tracks that dial the tempo down and give tons of love to the band’s horn section. “The Glamour of Rock” is a 90-second trifle with a sort of dark mariachi vibe about musicians basically being dancing monkeys for a job. The band says third track “Peggy Guggenheim” “could complement most movie chase scenes,” which is spot on—to me, it sounds like Henry Mancini crossed with Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly soundtrack.
The EP is just a taster for the band’s “all banger LP” (their words, not mine—I haven’t heard it yet!) due this Spring. But if the rest of the LP is as strong and as richly varied as these songs—and the rest of the TMBG catalog makes clear that’s a distinct possibility—then it’s time to go ahead and get excited now. Will I l Listen Again?: Yes!
Greywind, Severed Heart City (FLG): Now this is an album meant to listen to loud. Greywind are a brother-sister duo from Ireland who got chewed up and spit out of the major label machine with their 2017 debut Afterthoughts, but they stuck with it, picked up new fans on TikTok during the pandemic, and have come roaring back with a powerful sophomore effort.
Greywind advertise their sound as emo with Jimmy Eat World, Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance as their primary influences, and while you can certainly hear some of those bands’ sonics in the Greywind sound, Paul O’Sullivan’s massive, soaring guitars are more of a modern active rock sound—sort of the aural average of MCR and Evanescence. That said, singer Steph O’Sullivan does lean heavy on the lyrical heartbreak, with a powerful-yet-clean vocal style akin to Avril Lavigne with all the brattiness stripped away. The album is at its best in the early going when Paul keeps the guitars as huge as Steph’s emotions; the couple of softer ballads (“Moon” and “The Scarecrow” in particular) are merely okay, with the latter sounding more like the yearning heroine song in a Disney movie than a rock tune. But then “Cope in the Coma” comes along to wrap the album up with one of its strongest tracks. This is the kind of record that 105.7 The Point should be all over. Will I Listen Again?: Yes.
Madison Beer, Locket (Epic): Madison Beer’s 2023 sophomore LP Silence Between Songs leaned heavily into introspective singer-songwriter territory. Its follow-up, Locket, finds Beer in full-on popstar mode. Working primarily with longtime collaborator Leroy Clampitt (the New Zealand-based writer/producer who has worked with Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, and half the tracks on Lily Allen’s most recent record West End Girl), Beer’s ballads this time out lean into a formula of breathy vocals for the main lyrics topped with more theatrical vocal runs, and as a result, they tend to be pretty blah, with songs like “Angel Wings,” “Bad Enough,” and “Healthy Habit” sounding like Beyonce and Sabrina Carpenter’s castoffs.
But when she throws curveballs—and she throws a lot of curveballs on this record—the results are great: case in point, “Yes Baby” is a dancefloor-filling techno banger, “For the Night” is a slinky, jazzy number with Beer’s vocals in coy mode, “Bittersweet” pairs fluttering synths with a pumping, insistent, and very ‘80s melody, and “Make You Mine” is a hypnotic chillout groove. Of the ballad-y songs, the best of the bunch are the gentle “You’re Still Everything” (which is more akin to Beer’s Silence Between Songs material) and “Complexity” (which rides a jittery electronic beat on the verses but goes full Rihanna on the chorus). Will I Listen Again?: I only like about half of this record, but the half I like, I really like. So that half is an absolute yes. The rest isn’t bad, just not really for me.
Courtney Marie Andrews, Valentine (Loose Future/Thirty Tigers): I first discovered Courtney Marie Andrews in 2017 when she opened for Hamilton Leithauser at Delmar Hall; it was the kind of opening set that sends you scrambling to the merch table afterwards to buy the album. Andrews plays folk/Americana with purposefully simple instrumentation to leave the spotlight on her lilting soprano voice. It’s a traditional sound but it doesn’t sound old-fashioned or stale; it’s equal parts Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, and Jenny Lewis. Like the other albums in Andrews’ discography that I’ve heard, it’s not necessarily an attention-grabbing set of songs, but if you sit with it you’ll feel like you’re getting wrapped in a warm hug. There’s nary a weak track to be found here, but my favorites: “Pendulum Swing,” “Magic Touch,” the Neil Young-y “Everyone Wants to Feel Like You Do,” and “Hangman.” Will I Listen Again?: Definitely. It may have dropped in winter but this is a summertime album if I’ve ever heard one.
A$AP Rocky, Don’t Be Dumb (RCA): When looking over the new album release calendar, A$AP Rocky jumped out at me as a “hey, I’ve heard of him, I should probably check him out.” Little did I realize he hadn’t dropped an album in eight years, and this is one of the most anticipated hip hop album’s of the still-young new year.
I’m sure I’ve heard A$AP Rocky at some point but only in passing, so I was able to approach Don’t Be Dumb with completely fresh ears. And I have to say, for the first half of the album? Not really a fan! Musically, there was a lot of interesting things going on in the melodies and beats, but A$AP Rocky’s rapping cadence really only has two speeds (a short and percussive da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM and a longer, sing-songy version that twists every line up at the end like a question), and the relentless repetition really wore on me, with only the slow jam “Stay Here 4 Life” jumping out at me out of the first seven songs. “Stop Snitching” slides in on track 8 with a more menacing attitude that was worth an extra listen, but that’s just the teaser: from there on out, Rocky takes the songs to some really out there places: the weirdly aggro punk of “STFU,” the groovy, melodic indie rock of “Punk Rocky,” the shapeshifting “Air Force (Black Demarco),” the at times Gorillaz-ish “Whiskey (Release Me),” the jazz piano and deeply muttered come-ons of “Robbery,” and then wraps it all up with the sing-songy nursery rhyme “The End.” The back half of the album is as stimulating and awe-inspiring as the first half was underwhelming. I mean, wow, the first half of this album did not prepare me for how good the second half would be. Will I Listen Again?: To side B? Hell yeah.
Xiu Xiu, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu Vol. 1 (Polyvinyl): Back in 2020, avant garde trio Xiu Xiu started a Bandcamp subscription service to give fans access to demos, rarities, and covers. Six years later, they turned to their subscribers to vote for their favorites for the tracklist of this first of potentially many compilations.
As one would expect from the band who put an uncensored photo of a naked male sex worker on the cover of an early LP, the results are often abrasive and purposely off-putting, with distorted vocals and brittle, spiky synths that sound like something Ministry or Butthole Surfers would have concocted had they covered these songs 30 years ago. It all sounds weird, but it’s a compelling sort of weird. Favorite tracks: Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” a careening take on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,” a surprisingly faithful Nick Cave-ish cover of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” a Lords of Acid-ish version of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf,” a Peter Murphy-meets-’90s-Bowie version of This Year’s “SPQR,” a dark twist on GloRilla’s dirty talkin’ “Lick or Sum,” a surprisingly tender take on Daniel Johnston’s “Some Things Last a Long Time,” and a punchy run through the Runaways’ “Cherry Bomb” to close out the album. Least favorite: a claustrophobic run through Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady” and a kind of blah slowed-down rendering of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.” Will I Listen Again?: Some songs yes, but not the whole thing. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for volumes 2 and up, though. | Jason Green
