On Common as Light and Love are Red Valleys of Blood, he spends two hours and ten minutes saying whatever the fuck he wants, and he covers just about everything.
At this point, it feels like the anticipation for a Sun Kil Moon album is "What will he say this time?" not "What does it sound like?". He's been bringing that attitude to his post- Benji albums too (2015's Universal Themes and his 2016 collaborative LP with Jesu). and it also put his say-whatever-the-fuck-i-want attitude in the spotlight, which hasn't always gone over well. Benji put him more in the spotlight than he'd ever been. To put it simply, "Where Trophy Scars was jamming Hendrix, Floyd, Waits, and Clapton - Super Snake was jamming Sabbath, Butthole Surfers, Swans, and Slowdive," Jerry told us.Īfter about 20 years in music, Mark Kozelek adopted a type of wordy, stream-of-consciousness folk music on 2012's Among the Leaves and he perfected it on 2014's Benji. Leap of Love doubles down on the prog/psych of latter-day Trophy Scars and take it into heavier, doomier directions. They went on hiatus last year, and Jerry Jones is now focusing entirely on Super Snake, who formed back in 2012 but just finally released their debut album. Singer Jerry Jones adopted a Tom Waits-ian growl, and the band got increasingly into '60s/'70s psych, prog, and blues rock. After that album, they went in a wholly different direction. It's sort of the middle ground between mewithoutYou and Circles Takes the Square, but even that comparison doesn't do it justice. they had perfected a unique, arty take on the genre that still has few peers. They started out as a relatively straightforward post-hardcore band, and by 2006's Alphabet. Morristown, NJ's Trophy Scars are one of the more underrated rock bands of the past 15 years or so. She sounds increasingly like no one else out there, and it's as thrilling to hear her sing about romance as it is to hear her rap about being on her grind. The best part about it is hearing how DeJ Loaf continues to progress as a vocalist. Jacquees told The FADER that they intended this to be feel good music, and it's a total success in that regard. DeJ and Jacquees range from romantic to hot and steamy on Fuck A Friend Zone, and that's just about the only ground they cover here. (To paraphrase Nicki Minaj, DeJ Loaf is real rap but she does sing.) It's probably no coincidence that this came out shortly before Valentine's Day. All Jokes Aside had DeJ in hard-ass rapping mode, but Fuck A Friend Zone has her fully embracing her R&B side. She's been talking about it for a while, and just about everything she's put out in the lead-up to it has been gold: 2015's And See That's The Thing EP, last year's All Jokes Aside mixtape, and now this collaborative mixtape with Cash Money R&B newcomer Jacquees. He's got Afrobeat rhythms on a handful of songs (notably "Bambi" and "Little Bit More"), and some vocals in pidgin.ĭeJ Loaf needs to drop the album. Fully re-immersing himself in the culture surely had an impact on his music. He was raised in Nigeria for a few years as a child, and he recently traveled to perform there during the making of The Chief. On one hand, Jidenna's Nigerian identity comes through loud and clear on this album. "Classic Man" went viral after the then-unknown Jidenna recorded it for a 2015 compilation by Janelle Monae's Wondaland Records, and like Janelle, Jidenna has a sound that can not be pigeonholed. I'm not sure if Jidenna has fully escaped "The 'Classic Man' Guy" just yet, but going by the strength of his debut album The Chief, I'd say he's bound to. (the virality of "Cha Cha" feels like a footnote in his career at this point) there's a Baauer (who you might still know better as "The 'Harlem Shake' Guy"). It can be kind of a tricky thing for an artist if their song becomes a meme or goes viral.