Cool Records From August 2024.

Killer Mike — Michael & the Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs For Sinners & Saints

Last year’s MICHAEL hit me late. It wasn’t that I was throwing Killer Mike’s masterpiece to the wayside on purpose. The record simply hadn’t found its way into my orbit until well into the year. Once it did, I was asking aggressively if my hip-hop friends had heard it, and it turned out many of them had been in the same “casually missed it” boat. A Grammy Award later, it’s an all-time rap record that lands with deeper and hits with more indelible impacts upon each listen I treat myself to. This year’s record feels like a companion piece to MICHAEL in a lot of ways, like DLC with an expanded roster. These songs feel like exactly what rap and hip-hop has needed for a decade or more with Mike’s trademark clean and discernible flow, concentrated and fundamental beats, gospel soul influence and sharp sampling that act as highlights and accents to the core of a traditional rap record. What’s more, this doesn’t stray into ‘grown folk’ territory that feels out of date or like nostalgic posturing. This is a beautiful representation of a genre’s strongest elements. It stands head and shoulders above a culture that’s been stretched a bit too thin, torn far from what makes it a powerful platform and has morphed into a more disposable and superficial variety. ‘Songs For Sinners and Saints’ doesn’t beg for your attention or compromise its vision with flashy lights and a promise of fun or delight. This is a mature rap record penned and orchestrated by a master of the category.

Check Out: NOBODY KNOWS

¥$ — Vultures 2

Okay, yeah, I get it. I have made a lot of excuses for Kanye West. As a Ye apologist, I have to mention out of the gate that a lot of my observations on this record might ultimately be at the very least a stretch. All that being said: How rad is this cover? I try to step back a little bit and objectively think of Kanye as a wandering tragedy, a nomad of culture. The way he treats his wife (she’s his wife now, right?) is deplorable. His sense of taste is questionable if not intrinsically bad. He’s nearing the semicentennial mark of his life and he still seems to worship The Night Life (addicted to it, in fact, according to this record’s opening track) when I honestly think his talents could be best utilized in mentoring modern young visionaries and producing their records while granting some of his own insight and knowledge to those trying to craft new art. But I mean, I guess the catalog continues to grow. We are witnessing a mad king in power with absolutely no one who has the ability to stop him. He has just as much claim to streaming internet music as any young dude making stripped down bedroom pop records in their parents’ house. The amount of ears this dude reaches simply out of spite will always outweigh many of the most interesting artists who deserve our genuine attention.

I think a lot about Kanye’s raw ideas and how he’s doing things free from outside influence. I imagine West listening to nothing but his own material, spiraling deep into the oasis of his own creative genius and incestually utilizing so many of his own ideas as inspiration for the next mutation of what he plans to create. I think his innovation is genuine, pure in a way that the industry needs. But the other side of isolationist creation is that there is no filter, no quality control. So for someone like myself who is rooting heavily for The Material that Kanye creates, I am truly trying to dig deeper beneath a lot of the superficial moss and slop that exists on the surface and find the seeds and roots of ideas that might have made incredible finished products if they were placed in the hands of an architect with a clear vision and an editor. Instead it feels like a homunculized Nina Tucker, a broken alchemy that serves as proof of a broken miracle.

I love the hard vocal beat of FRIED, the strangely produced high-pitched vocal hook of FIELD TRIP. SLIDE feels like some of the highlights from 808s and Graduation but seen through a hazy film, maybe resurrected from the cutting room floor. Imagine recycling and refiltering some of your greatest ideas from your most creative prime, running it through a recycler, a 3d printer across the span of almost two decades without the insight of any consultants, any modern sense of taste. What will that have wrought other than Vultures 2?

The rawest, most primal form of Kanye’s creative process is left on display on ‘530’. One of the most transparent expressions of the artistic construction starts about halfway through the track, as West’s words begun to unravel into either indiscernible mumbling and gibberish as if he’s drafting a structure for future words he plans to plug in OR (less likely) leaving abstract concepts that leave his mouth in the shape of rhythmic patterns to represent the erratic brain patterns he simply cannot express as he melts down over the woman (likely Kardashian) that he’s “texting” courtesy of a night drinking Patron. LISTEN, MAN. I just think it’s so cool that THIS very intimate portion of the writing process is left on the “official” version of the track. I understand I’m on the bottom level of the minority. But again, as an apologist, I know what it sounds like. I just miss one of my favorite artists.

Check Out: Field Trip

Sabrina Carpenter — Short n’ Sweet

I mentioned it on my instagram, but I think there’s something so special about Sabrina Carpenter releasing a major pop record, a huge release after two massive viral singles (‘Espresso’ and ‘Please Please Please’) that lists at just under 37 minutes. She easily could have pumped out a record that went ten, twenty minutes longer with hits that weren’t quite fully baked, that weren’t quite ready to be put on an album. She could have acted with a sense of urgency and immediacy, striking while the spotlight was hot and trying to infuse her album with as many songs as she could muster. Instead, I think a 12 track, 36 minute record shows a ton of confidence in her ability to create a record with no skips, understanding that each track is going to be listened to in full allowing it to speak as a full album release should, instead of simply acting as a collection of singles and potential filler. And what’s more, I think it respects the listener in a way that doesn’t beg them to sit through the songs that feel more like passion projects or ideas that might pad the complete work. There is a distinct sense of self-editing and a knowledge of what is working for her as an artist that may be best kept in the studio for the next release.

I hear a lot of other artists in this record, from Ariana Grande, to Kacey Musgraves to The 1975, to the ubiquitous Taylor Swift, but I think the sound comes together with enough of Carpenter’s unique delivery and turn-of-phrase that injects a signature style to the songs enough to make them her own. This is an easy listen, a barbed poltergeist that will enter into your brain stem to curl up for hours at a time. This is the safest bet of the year, an album that even got a contrarian like myself to subscribe. I wish she leaned further into her strengths, got a little bit more outside the safety of a neatly paved path, but I think this record will firmly establish hers as a name to keep in mind for her next album where hopefully she will make huge strides in production, writing and volume. The most explicit example I have is in ‘Sharpest Tool’ where the chorus crescendos to the point of bursting but the hook dissolves instead of effervesces. There’s a next level that I just don’t think she’s reaching and some of it feels so explicitly like she can do more but she has a safety valve she refuses to release, and I wonder if it’s because producers feel she might be making too much of a commitment to a different sound. With someone boundless and fearless like Chappell Roan as the most glaring example of ‘What’s Next’ in the pop world and Charli XCX’s Brat absolutely dominating right now, there’s a clear and conscious shift to artists who are willing and daring to take risks and own a very specific persona, and I’m not sure that a follow-up to this record with this same middle-ground sound will elevate her to where she could be. But! This record is fun as hell, man. I am very happy I checked it out.

Check Out: Bed Chem

Horse Jumper of Love — Disaster Trick

I saw Horse Jumper about a month ago and they played songs from this record and I knew then that this album was going to rule. There is something about the heft, the weight, the fuzz, the volume, the crush of this band in the live format that transformed my perception of them into something monumental and enormous. Opening the record with the emotional drone of ‘Snow Angel’ sets the table so perfectly. This is the closest I’ve heard a band come to ‘traditional emo’ in a really long time. I’m talking about Aloha and Karate and all of those old Jade Tree bands that spotlighted vulnerability with sparse and complex guitars and emotive vocals that lurch on the outer wastes of composure. This is a record that feels dark and dreary, face held in your hands, your brain radio a mix of hiss and foul static. It’s cathartic and weary in a way that conveys the visceral mileage that inspired the songs. There are moments in this record (like in the song ‘Word’) that feel like you can meditate deeply enough, closely enough, lucid enough, to find yourself with your feet planted directly beside singer Dmitri Giannopoulos as he evicts his soul into the ether. Heavy albums often imply down-tuned guitars and chugging and metal-adjacencies… but this album is just as captivating, just as compelling, just as jarring as anything from the aggressive side of the knife. Its half hour runtime feels like a time machine, slowing down the pace of my heart, my brainwaves to a crawl, stretching time out into a sallow and ceaseless dimension. Ugly and honest and grotesque and organic… god, I love this record.

Check Out: Snow Angel

Thrown — Excessive Guilt

Unsure how else to concisely illustrate this record other than nu-metal is back, baby. This album is like a Wes Borland dream of guitar work. There is a mix of screaming and rapping and I can only imagine the mosh pit at this band’s live shows being a bunch of dudes in black tank tops and backwards Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees hats jumping into each other shoulder first. It feels like a distinct vision of late 90s aggressive music, and I am here for it. This sounds like the kind of music that I “grew up with”, the kind of music that crafted the outline for the heavy music that I eventually ended up cherishing. The highlight of this record is the utter murk of the guitars and the way that they’re used in much the same way as a turntable would be used to establish a wave of symphonic, secondary percussion. Jesus, this album is just such a blast to listen to, especially as someone who started trying to discover underground in the music in the 90s and knowing that bands like Reveille were trying to do this exact thing about a decade and a half ago. This sound makes me so happy. Is it dumb? Oh hell yeah. Let me get a refill. And make it a double.

Check Out: On the Verge

Bleached Cross & True Faith — Columns of Impenetrable Light

This is one of the more complex records to write about as it’s a split between two bands, one half of which I really loved and the other I am still trying to get into. The first half of this split features Bleached Cross (what a band name) and sounds squarely planted in a new-wave goth revival sound, throwing back to bands like Sisters of Mercy in the modern vein of Cold Cave. All of the melodramatic vocals are in tact with enormous, glamor synths edging wall to wall in pitch black and chrome industrial design. Aggressive screaming elements are thrown into the background of the mix, never truly taking center stage but also not being swept under the rug, adding a bit of a bite to the sound. Their sound is ambitious, reaching for a sound from a different era and doing a wildly convincing job of it. This is a sound that I believe would make Trent Reznor proud. I can hear the flood lights, I can hear the fog machine, the mystique, the glam. The second half of this record is occupied by True Faith, a band who leans a little bit more into the realm of The Cure, a bit less reliant on mood and leaning a bit more into the dance and post-disco sound of 80s culture. If Bleached Cross is leather and black, The True Faith is the angular cyberpunk hair and neon eye makeup. The stripped down, barebones bass guitar sound is such a throwback to a different age. I almost can’t believe that this back half of the record isn’t from an old cassette tape. They have really done a major job reviving an iconic sound. [There are two songs to check out below, one from each band.]

Check Out: Bleached Cross — Rain of Tears ; True Faith — Life Awaits Us