Crafting an Introspective Sugar Rush: 'how i’m feeling now' Album Review

By Owen Tait

Charli XCX is no stranger to the experimental. Her 2017 project Pop 2 boasted numerous tracks that ventured into glitchy, noisy territory, and last year’s Charli certainly had its weird side, with cuts such as “Click” and “Thoughts” providing plenty of crushed drums and overblown climaxes for fans to chew on. When Charli announced an upcoming record made entirely in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was expecting pretty much just more of the same (which, keep in mind, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing). However, as Charli began to release singles through a collaborative process that kept her fans involved, I was blown away by what I was hearing. 

While her music still definitely falls under the pop umbrella, Charli delivered singles pitched through a lens of noise, distortion, and electronic music. “Forever” and “claws” featured lyrics about both the melancholy and blissful moments within romantic relationships, while “i finally understand” focused on Charli’s battle with her own mental health and self-doubts. Very quickly, I felt as if I was getting a good picture of what the album was going to be about and sound like, and for the most part, Charli delivered as expected—all while exceeding my every expectation. Perhaps her most intimate and close-quarters project yet, how i’m feeling now is an air-tight sugar rush consisting of songs about love, isolation, and the desire to live one’s best life.

Considering that Charli wrote the majority of this album while quarantined with her long-time boyfriend, it’s no surprise that many of the tracks here revolve around their relationship, and some even comment on the way social distancing has impacted their understanding of each other. For example, the song “7 years” looks at how far Charli and her boyfriend have come and the emotional progress they’ve made with each other. Lyrics such as “I used to live inside a lie with you / And now we’re honest and it feels so good” demonstrate Charli’s honesty with herself about how her relationship has evolved, and it’s a refreshing moment that made me genuinely happy for her. Meanwhile, the songs “detonate” and “enemy,” analyze Charli’s struggle with her emotional and physical proximity to her significant other with the latter serving as a definitive high point on the tracklist.

“enemy,” a track led by a nostalgic synth bass and an arsenal of soaring, fleeting synths, plays on the saying “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” Lyrically, Charli realizes that her emotional vulnerability with her boyfriend could become her downfall should their relationship ever turn hostile, implying that he’s so close to her that he could do serious damage to her heart. She spends the rest of the song exorcising these anxieties, and the closing lyric “Can you reach me?” beautifully sums up her dilemma; on one hand, she wants someone close enough to count on and love, but on the other, she worries they might get too close and break down the emotional barrier she’s put up. 

It’s introspective moments such as these that make the album so emotionally captivating, but that doesn’t mean the project is without its bangers. The intro track “pink diamond” is a hard-as-nails, nocturnal cut that pulls no punches and reflects the nightlife that people enjoyed prior to the pandemic. Screaming synth chords and lasers fill the back half of the instrumental, and a crushed-to-hell drum breakdown closes it out in style. “c2.0,” a wonky reimagining of 2019’s “Click,” sees head producer A.G. Cook chopping singer Kim Petras’ contribution to the original track into a cute, dreamy set of background vocals. Meanwhile, Charli laments about missing her friends and the memories they have together—a sentiment that plays into how most people are feeling right about now. 

As yet another track containing elements of noise and EDM, “anthems” easily lives up to its name, sounding like something out of a college party movie or a promotional video for a music festival. Charli once again reminisces about the way life used to be, comparing it to the mundane nature of quarantine and how it has affected her personal drive. She also shares hope that her friendships will benefit from the time apart, arguing that “when it’s over / we might be even closer.” It’s a reassuring thought, and the high-stakes nature of the track left me in a state of euphoria (which was only heightened by the surreal trip presented by “visions,” the following and final track).

To be honest, there aren’t any major problems I have with this album. In my opinion, there is one minor dud in the tracklist that never quite reaches a satisfying climax (I’ll let you figure out which track I’m referring to, considering it’s the only one I haven’t mentioned so far). Regardless, the project as a whole is super tight and flows really well, the lyrics are catchy and carried by earworm melodies, and the production fully embraces the strange, pushing Charli’s pop songwriting towards pure innovation. It’s a truly inventive, one-of-a-kind project, written from physical isolation yet engineered digitally by a powerhouse team. The emotional moments hit, the bangers certainly don’t miss either, and Charli seems to be as vulnerable as ever, making how i’m feeling now my current frontrunner for album of the year. I can only hope that the future of pop music is this imaginative, forward-thinking, and downright fun.

Favorite Tracks:

forever

enemy

anthems

Rating: 9

Listen to how i’m feeling now here:

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Was Tame Impala’s New Album "The Slow Rush" Worth The Wait?

By Carter Fife

On Valentine’s Day, music’s psychedelic pop-rock authority Tame Impala released their fourth studio record The Slow Rush after a lengthy five-year wait. During this wait, Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker has occupied himself working in collaborations involving Miguel, Travis Scott, SZA, ZHU, and even with Harlem’s own A$AP Rocky. After Parker’s third record Currents (2015), the combination of almost universal critical acclaim and personal success has put the singer and multi-instrumentalist in a strange and almost paradoxical situation. How does an introvert - experienced in self-reflection and carrying a sincerity beyond his years - grapple with the trials of being a commercial artist? How do you stay true to yourself when so much is expected of and for you? How do you keep your composure when there is so much on the line? What is there left to do after becoming a respected household name? The answer may be unknown and the question convoluted - but Parker seems close to honing his response on this hour-long record.

The Slow Rush is a meditation on aging, time, and our own limited mortality. Some tracks branch into reflections on his relationships with people like lovers or Parker’s own father, but they all maintain a cohesive thematic register of sobering introspection on what it means to exist in one space while remembering another. When my sister, who is far more well versed in Tame Impala facts and interviews than I could ever hope to be, told me that Parker didn’t start working on the album until a little over a year ago, I was both surprised and not surprised at all. Part of this stemmed from the album’s aural profile being so similar to that of 2015’s Currents. Despite there being a five-year gap in between the two projects - both are dominated by the modern Tame Impala SoundFont. Parker’s mythological toolbox seems to be composed of a few powerful tools: dreamlike falsetto vocals that sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a well, punchy and rhythmic percussive arrangements, and piano/bass melodies that are so catchy they remain playing in your head for hours after the music stops. This is what makes the album’s short history so surprising, because for better or for worse - The Slow Rush could have been the unused D-Sides for Currents that didn’t make the final cut (or the shorter B-sides EP that was released later). 

This is not to say that there isn’t anything new on The Slow Rush, as the album has dozens of highlights that are resonant and enjoyable - though unfortunately those that rival Currents are few and far between. One track that initially stood out as especially compelling was “Borderline”, one of the singles that dropped in the spring of last year. It had an ABBA-Esque danciness to it that when paired with its intense bass melody made for a track that stayed in my rotation throughout the year. Unfortunately, the track was revised for the record’s release, and now fans are left with a tinny shell of what once was one of my favorite tracks of 2019. Though the change was not that dramatic (the new mix altered the visibility of the drum and vocal tracks to make the bassline more prominent), unfortunately when juxtaposed against what once was, it is hard not to look back at the past without a slight bit of jealousy. Coincidentally this manner of self-reflection is exactly what the record is about. Could this change be intentional? Probably not but it sure is fun to think about.

Another track released last spring, “Patience”, was unfortunately left off the album entirely. Two of the record’s other singles, “Lost in Yesterday” and “It Might Be Time” are both significantly more forgettable despite how insanely repetitive these tracks are. The final single “Posthumous Forgiveness” is perhaps the highest point on the record, as the beefy 6-minute long record is divided into two distinct segments. The first is a tragically elegant and steady composition where Parkers sings to his deceased and estranged father “... while you still had time, you had a chance, but you decided to take all your sorrys to the grave. Did you think I'd never know? Never wise up as I grow?”. The second is a rare moment of optimism, a dancy and synth-laden moment where Parker forgives his father, singing “Wanna tell you 'bout my life, wanna play you all my songs, hear your voice sing along”. The track is beautiful, and the payoff at the end is worth every second. Part of this track’s tragic elements stems from the fact that the other songs on this project fail to be as dynamic, or carry the range that this track does.

Songs like “On Track”, “Is It True” and “Breathe Deeper” are fun, while repetitive, but they are so one-sided it is hard to feel fully satisfied after listening to them. Following up a record as polished as Currents certainly set Parker up with some high expectations to jump over, and unfortunately, Parker misses the mark more often then he hits it on The Slow Rush. With that being said, when Parker succeeds - he succeeds - and though I walked away from this record unsatisfied I can’t help but root for Parker, and I’ve noticed that other publications are likely in the same boat as I am. Scores for this record generally circle around the high 70’s - low 80’s, a range comically attributed to certain news sites that have negative opinions on projects that come from artists they like. I’m happy that Parker told WUBR the wait for his next project won’t be as long, but I hope the next time he enters the spotlight he delivers a more thought out project than this one.

Favorite Track

Posthumous Forgiveness

Borderline

Breathe Deeper

Rating: 5

Listen to The Slow Rush here:

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What Did Grimes Just Do?: “Miss Anthropocene” Album Review

By Carter Fife

It has been quite a busy time for Grimes since her 2015 record Art Angels. Since then Grimes, née Boucher, has experienced a slew of record label troubles, began dating Elon Musk, and is now apparently with child, all while holding off fans ravenous for new music. When her relationship with the Tesla mogul began, many distraught fans joked that Grimes’ new record would be about the evils of unionizing and robots. At the time, who would have guessed that they were half right? Miss Anthropocene is a record about the deification of climate change, with the record’s dreamlike pop/nu-metal tracks focusing on various modern evils, like AI. I know.

The question begs to be asked: Why? I’m not sure, perhaps this is simply a response to the reception to Grimes’ last record Art Angels - a record that she described as “crap” and as a “stain on [her] life”. This negative response, however, was partly described by her to be the result of critics misinterpreting the album’s songs and almost ironic optimistic art-pop feel. As a big fan of the record, I believe that it is one of the definitive art-pop records that should be held somewhere in a museum for obscure genres that only pretentious people know the name of. Whether or not Miss Anthropocene’s dejected and dreary tone is a result of her past criticism - it is worth noting that it is all over the fucking place.

Grimes seems like the aloof and cryptic friend that does things nobody ever understands, but who somehow always comes through or says something funny. She seems like the type to make you a meal made out of all the random sauces colonizing your fridge, and despite knowing you shouldn’t like it, you enjoy it though you can’t help but speculate as to what her motivation could have possibly been. Grimes seems like the fleshy avatar being manipulated by a higher being of pure randomness, chaos, and intention. She is the “heat death of the universe” personified, and Miss Anthropocene embodies this perfectly. 

The album begins with “So Heavy I Fell Through I Fell Through the Earth”, a track full of breathy and ethereal harmonizing over a spacy and ambient instrumental. The lyrics are almost impossible to parse, but it doesn’t matter. Somehow this song takes you to another world, and if you assumed this song had something to do with being pregnant, then you would be correct. A meditation on the consideration of a future life in the present, this song is a six-minute introduction into the current life of Grimes. It is beautiful, it is magical, it sounds like Enya. It is also succeeded by “Darkseid” featuring 潘PAN, a track that struggles with defining the impact that one’s suicide has on the people in their life. Originally intended for Lil Uzi Vert, the track is dark, bass-heavy, and mechanical goth banger that has almost nothing in common with the previous track. This is a common theme on Miss Anthropocene. 

The record’s thematic register bounces between love, death, and every evil and virtue in-between. There are intense moments that are emotionally and politically charged like “Violence” featuring an instrumental made by DJ and mau5trap affiliate i_o. Grimes’ perfectly polished vocals pair amazingly with the steady synths while she sings from the perspective of Earth. There are saccharine and touching moments like the busy “IDORU” that arrives at the album’s final act. One of the most moving instances on this record is the track “Delete Forever”, written and composed by Grimes herself. Her pained lyrics turn elegiac as she dwells on her lost friends due to substance abuse and overdoses, singing “Funny how they think us naive when we're on the brink, innocence was fleeting like a season, cannot comprehend, lost so many men, lately, all their ghosts turn into reasons and excuses”. I was touched when she likened her state of almost perpetual mourning and emotional isolation to having been in a war, because the dissonance between one’s interior and exterior in moments of tragedy mirror the tension that remains far after the dust settles. The lyrics hit hard, and resonate with anyone who has lost someone close to them because of addiction, mental illness, or the tragic combination of the two. The guitar sample elicits a bluegrass-adjacent innocence that strives to make the starkly different tone of the lyrics stand out. “Delete Forever” is perhaps one of the most moving tracks I’ve heard in the past few years, as the self-reflection it forces on the listener makes me wish more of my friends were around to hear it. The unfairness of losing people you love to an epidemic and culture that glorifies their passing is just as terrifyingly dismal as any apocalypse that climate change could cause.

Musically the album may be all over the place, but thematically the album stays consistent with its somber subject matter and experimental style. Even though Grimes covers so much ground in only 11 songs, she does so with nuance and expertise that many fans may have missed from Art Angels. Very rarely is an album like this worth the wait after so long, and I am pleased to say that I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of Grimes’ muddled vocal harmonies, synth arrangements, and percussion. This is especially true on the track “4ÆM”, which evolves from an elegant and seductive track with east-Asian percussion and melodies to a high-octane banger that can only be heard to believe. While listening for the first time, I enjoyed “4ÆM” but I wondered “Where could this possibly be going?”, and before I knew it Grimes gracefully allowed the song to descend back into its previous ambient harmonies like a pilot would land a prized aircraft. This time around Grimes is not letting anyone down, as she has finally found the perfect synthesis between her older experimental styles and her newer pop-oriented ones. 

Part of me is unsure how or when to conclude a review of Miss Anthropocene so I will attempt to put it as plainly as possible: while this record is strange beyond belief, it has a little bit of something for everyone. Whether or not you’re a Grimes fan doesn’t matter, as Boucher has been sure to masterfully arrange and manicure this album into one of the strongest projects of her career. Though it is likely that we won’t get another album from her for a while, I will be sure to await her inevitable return eagerly as if she had never left. Speaking from past experience, it would be unwise to bet against Grimes.

FAVORITE TRACKS:

Delete Forever

Violence

4ÆM

Rating: 9

Listen to Miss Anthropocene here:

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The Double-Edged Sword of Kaytranada: "BUBBA" Album Review

By Carter Fife

The year is 2016. It is June, and you and your friends are spending the summer days going to new places, eating at new restaurants, and making the most of the warm weather. You go out at night and misbehave without a care in the world. Life is simple, and the music is good, but what’s on rotation? If you were in my circle - it would certainly be a cornucopia of both commercial and strange music. On some days, we would play Travis Scott’s Rodeo, Kanye’s The Life of Pablo, Drake’s Views, and maybe even Chance’s Coloring Book if we were feeling like it. On others we would play Blank Banshee’s Blank Banshee 0, The Avalanches’ Wildflower, Anderson .Paak’s Malibu, and Toro Y Moi’s Samantha. No album, however, got as much airtime as Kaytranada’s first studio album, 99.9%.

I cannot even describe how much this album meant to me back then. I had just graduated high school, and I was in one of the best eras of my life. When people make memes about Summer ‘16 being the last time they felt happy, I understand exactly what they mean, even though I don’t think that it was all downhill from there (like Frank Ocean would say at the end of the summer on 2016’s Blonde). Kaytranada’s unique synthesis of electronic, dance, hip-hop, and funk music made for an album packed with simultaneously chill and hyped-up tracks like ‘GOT IT GOOD’ with Craig David, or the mega-hit ‘GLOWED UP’ with Anderson .Paak, who at that point was still relatively unknown. I hate to be cliché, but this was the soundtrack to my summer, and things never really went back to normal once I started college that fall. 

Since then I have tracked Kaytranada’s career like a borderline psychopath. In doing so I have inadvertently developed an eerily accurate ear for his production style, so when listening to a new album I can identify whether or not kaytranada worked on the record or not. My enthusiasm for the Montreal-DJ has made me into a bit of a know-it-all, but I don’t care. I could talk for hours about his unreleased tracks and where he played them, his infamous Boiler Room set and the various characters that weave in and out of the frame, and even the artists that were rumored to have been in the studio with him. For over three long years, I waited for a new record, devouring the handful of singles we were treated to as they were released. Eventually, in November of 2019, a new record was announced and shortly thereafter released. Finally Kaytranada’s sophomore album Bubba was here, and my expectations were sky-high. 

The Question: Could it live up to the hype, and reignite a youthful exuberance that had been waning since that fateful romantic summer of 2016?

The Answer: Kind of? Allow me to explain.

Bubba sees the return of Kaytranada doing what he does best - synthesizing electronic and funk together into fun bouncy club bangers. This time around, he has brought out many more friends than he did in 2016. This record features contributions from artists like Tinashe, Pharrell Williams, Mick Jenkins, Estelle, Vanjess, Masego, Kali Uchis, SiR, Goldlink, and Ari PenSmith. Clearly the budget for this record is enormous, but does this translate into good music? For the most part - yes it does. 

‘2 The Music’ is a classic intense Kaytranada dance track with an unconventional chord structure, a mix that sounds better than sex and more low frequencies than my Apple AirPods can handle. Mick Jenkins and Kali Uchis both do their thing on their respective tracks, lending their sing-rapping over Kaytranada’s production brilliance, and for the most part the album does not disappoint. For some reason, however, this album has me craving more. This is not so much due to my ravenous nature as a Kaytranada fan, but I feel that Bubba, while impressive and enjoyable, sees Kaytranada integrating more elements from R&B, dancehall and afrobeat styles of music than funk and hip-hop. This is not a bad thing by itself, but on a 17-track record like Bubba the repetition can negatively impact how ‘replayable’ some of the tracks become as they age. 

Take for example ‘Midsection’ featuring the GOAT Pharrell Williams. This song in a vacuum is enjoyable, as there is nothing wrong with it sonically and if I heard it at a party I would surely be excited. The structure of the song however features little variance despite the track being almost five minutes in length - an eternity for a dance track. The low-fidelity vocal melodies are fun but I have slowly noticed myself skipping this song more and more as it has come up when shuffling my music. The merits of the track, at least for me, quickly become circumstantial, and I am left looking at my individual track ratings that I allotted to the album last December (mostly 4 and 5 stars) with more and more confusion. I wish I could go back to when the album was new to me - a sentiment that I now hold for both of Kaytranada’s albums. 

It must be said that Kaytranada’s work on Bubba in perfecting his craft is apparent, as ‘The Worst In Me’ with Tinashe showcases just how much of an apex R&B powerhouse Kaytranada has become. There are other tracks just like this, though despite them exemplifying production expertise, they are far too similar to the sounds heard 3 years ago to make much of a lasting impact. Then there are other tracks that venture into new musical sounds, but are too repetitive to justify listening to for the song’s whole duration. ‘Puff Lah’ is a 2 minute track that continuously loops an eight second dance loop. It is enjoyable while it is on, but after a while the song changes and you can barely remember what the song sounded like despite its repetitiveness. 

Bubba is a great record, whose greatest flaw lies in that its innovations do not resonate with someone with my music tastes. There are certainly many enjoyable tracks that may not age as gracefully this time around, as compared to 2016’s 99.9%, but that is not to say the record was not worth the wait. Maybe it did not revive my youthful vigor, but instead it helped put things into perspective. To be 22, and to write about myself at 18 like I am 60 years old is frankly ridiculous. Kaytranada and I both have changed since the simple comforting summer days years ago, and to expect that this record would take us both back while mirroring 99% is both unfair and unrealistic. In many ways this album is a meditation on aging and the progression of an artist, as it both innovates from and recedes into previous musical styles already perfected by Kaytranada. I hope that this album ages well and enters my weekly rotation over the next three years, and I know that the next time Kaytranada releases music I will be eager to listen.

Favorite Tracks

2 The Music (Feat. Iman Omari)

Grey Area (Feat. Mick Jenkins)

The Worst in Me (Feat. Tinashe)

Rating: 7

Listen to BUBBA here:

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