Photo of grandson by Philip Shum
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, offering 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.
Wow, only my second week doing this and already I’m running into pleasant surprises. The list below includes an artist I previously had no interest in listening to, a band I’ve actively avoided for years, and a band I haven’t check in on in years. And all of them ended up being great. All that and an album I liked so much that I wrote too much consider it a “quick hit”…you can read that one here. Here are my thoughts on a few other albums from this week, in the order in which I listened to them:
grandson, Inertia (XX Records): In my younger days, I used to be a huge rap/nü-metal guy—in the nine months that I dated my first girlfriend, I saw Papa Roach live four times. But as I went to more and more shows, I realized pretty quickly that the number of rap metal bands dwarfed the number of actual good rap metal bands and mostly moved on to bigger and better things.
But hot damn, why did no one tell me about grandson? (Oh wait, Erica Vining did.) I’m not familiar with anything he’s done before this, but on Inertia, his third album, rapper Jordan Benjamin absolutely nails that Rage Against the Machine sweet spot, spitting left-of-lefty rhymes about all the ways our country and its politicians fail us over truly massive guitars. Those guitars—mostly performed by Leo Varella and Stephen Sesso—are what first grabbed me, from the urgent, siren-like riff that kicks off album opener “Bury You” (its intro a spiritual sequel to Refused’s “New Noise”) to the Korn-style guitars that ripple then crunch on “Self Immolation” to the huge, stomping Tom Morello-style riffs throughout. The guitars hit hard but are carefully doled out to give the songs a rise and fall that draws you in instead of just punching you in the face with loudness for all of the album’s 29 minutes. That energy is matched by the simmering anger in grandson’s pinched, Eminem-ish lyrical delivery. Listen to the resentment as he spits “I was born in a country that only thought I mattered/ When I was an embryonic sack beside my mother’s bladder” (“You Made Me This”), or his frustration as he watches the world fall apart— “Watch it all through your new smartphone/ With a battery mined by a child in a war zone” (“Brainrot”). This album speaks more to the realities of life in the year 2025 than anything else I’ve heard this year, but with guitars that kick so much ass that they’re like the spoonful of sugar that helps the bitter medicine of reality go down. Will I listen again?: I’ve already spun it twice.
Big Thief, Double Infinity (4AD): I wanted to make sure that this column isn’t nothing but glowing reviews, so I picked Big Thief almost as a dare. What I mean is that, in all honesty, Big Thief is a nut I historically have just not been able to crack—their songs come on the radio and I try to listen to them because they’re so well-regarded by people with excellent musical taste, but I just physically cannot make it to the end of even a single Big Thief song. They were just beyond my comprehension. So imagine my shock when I threw on their new album today and it was…kind of amazing? I think part of it is that I tend to be a music-and-melody-first listener and Big Thief is very much a lyric-forward band. And sure, several songs on this album find singer Adrianne Lenker’s lyric sheet so packed that you wonder if she’s just reading you a novella. But then there’s songs like “Happy With You,” which contains only 13 words hypnotically repeated like a mantra. But it’s the music that’s really captivating; there’s a complexity to it that reminds me of my favorite Beth Orton songs. This album also rocks in a more traditional sense than anything else I’ve heard from Big Thief, the instruments always bubbling and roiling. A captivating listen, one that’s got me wondering if the rest of the band’s discography needs a reevaluation. Will I listen again?: Definitely.
The London Suede, Antidepressants (BMG): Suede is the major Britpop band that I’m the least familiar with (though I do have a CD copy of their debut old enough to not have the words “The London” on the cover). Going into today, I was wholly unfamiliar with what they’ve been up to, and I was thrilled by what I found when I gave them another shot. This is Suede’s tenth album overall and fifth since returning from a 7-year hiatus and 11-year break from the studio for 2013’s Bloodsports, and what an album it is, all driving rhythms and muscular guitars and epic scale. Many of the songs reminded me of Midnight Oil in a way, only to take a massive left turn on the final two songs: the Bowie-esque penultimate track “June Rain” plays like a Ziggy Stardust B-side (right down to the alien imagery), while album closer “Life Is Endless, Life Is a Moment” has languorous guitars straight out of the Cure’s Songs of a Lost World under a vocal performance from Brett Anderson that channels the passion Bono used to have circa The Unforgettable Fire. The latter is one of the best new songs I’ve heard all year. Will I listen again?: Absolutely. And since Stephen Thomas Erlewine (whose Substack you really should subscribe to) says this is just the latest in a series of strong albums since their reformation, I think I may just have to dig into the four albums before this one, too.
David Byrne with the Ghost Train Orchestra, Who Is the Sky? (Matador): Following six years after his album/tour/Broadway show/movie opus American Utopia, Who Is the Sky? is smaller in scale but still a traditional David Byrne solo album through and through. “Everybody Laughs” opens the album strong, conjuring up a bit of that old Talking Heads magic (“And She Was” specifically leapt to mind) with jauntily strummed acoustic guitars and ebullient symphonic touches from the Ghost Train Orchestra. From there, unfortunately, it’s diminishing returns. I kind of like the snaky psychedelia of “When We Are Singing” and the dark mariachi vibes of “What Is the Reason For It?”, featuring an ominous guest spot by Paramore’s Hayley Williams. But the rest of the album falls into the “just okay” category—the tempos are peppy, and Byrne certainly put effort into the songwriting and arrangements, but a lot of the songs just didn’t make much of an impression. I wouldn’t fault anyone for liking this album as I can see its charms, but as a whole it didn’t do much for me. Will I listen again?: A few of the songs sure, but probably not the whole album front-to-back. | Jason Green
