Playing Catch-Up #1: Squid, BH, St. Vincent,

Benji
Jun 10, 2021
10 min read

Hello Party people! Excuse me, but I've been a busy boy this last month so I'm playing catch-up by covering four albums for the four weekends of weekly reviews I missed.

Squid -- Bright Green Field

[Warp Records]

Squid’s long-awaited debut Bright Green Field released on May 7th to Warp Records, fitting in with a hot streak of colorful post-punk releases coming out of Britain throughout 2021. First Viagra Boys’s Welfare Jazz and shame’s Drunk Tank Pink in January, BCNR’s For the first time in February, Dry Cleaning’s New Long Leg in April, and now Squid’s contribution. These bands share a similar origin and attitude but grouping fails to recognize the unique ideas and fusions that each group uses to expand on the changing state of post-punk. Especially Squid, whose blend of dance punk tendencies and IDM style electronics make them stand out as one of the grooviest bands in this wave.

Out of all the groundbreaking post-punk artists in this wave, only Squid is signed to Warp Records, and the decision is fitting. Warp Records, while not a label limiting itself to one genre, mostly signs artists that incorporate electronic instruments heavily into their music. That doesn’t just mean inherently electronic artists; it also includes genre-fusing artists like Danny Brown, Yves Tumor, and Battles who adopt a creatively automated aesthetic, transcending genre and sound. And it's a nice fit for Squid, a band who processes it’s groovy post-punk rhythms through rigid electronics and brittle atmospheres, especially on Bright Green Field, which is essentially a thesis statement that previews everything the band offers.

Bright Green Field starts with “G.S.K.,” an off-kilter opener named after the headquarters of the international pharmaceutical company of the same name based in London, England. If it’s your first time hearing Squid, two main aspects of the band jump out at you: the eerie ambient instrumentation surrounding the groove and singer/drummer Ollie Judge’s hardcore sreaming-singing. This combination, or rather the clashing of these two elements is what makes Squid’s sound truly unique.

The first of these two aspects--the eerie ambience--is present in every song here. Squid’s haunting soundscapes linger throughout the instrumentals in the tracklist like on the kaleidoscopic “Documentary Filmmaker” which infuses warm horns, eerie strings, and jittery percussion to make a holistically unique vibe. Conversely, the synth-laden ambience that tails the second half of the lengthy “Boy Racers” is all-encompassing, and sounds like an ancient ritual processed through a supercomputer. These unique sounds leave the biggest impact on the listener than any other part of their music, and makes even the weakest moments of Bright Green Field memorable.

Speaking of weak moments, Bright Green Field is not safe from the pitfalls that can bog down an artist’s freshman release. Squid isn’t missing in the texture department as I said earlier, but falls in how it constructs and presents these experiences--i.e. songwriting. Some songs suffer from poor pacing like on “Peel St.” where the band presents one of its most-thrilling grooves in the first half and drops it halfway through. “2010” similarly staggers in songwriting where by the end of the song, you don’t remember where the song was and where it went.

But these issues only hold back a few songs in the latter half. For the most part, Bright Green Field is a thrilling experience through and through. The second single “Paddling” is a grilling krautrock-y banger that features cacophonous explosions and charismatic chants from Judge. “Global Groove” is a trudging dirge that views the cycles of injustice around the world as a groove we all dance to. “Pamphlets” is the album’s extended closer drives with an amazing groove led by Judge’s assertive drumming that guides the listener through a tense crescendo that explodes beautifully as the end of the album.

The one song on Bright Green Field that encompasses all of the band’s best features is on its longest song and lead single “Narrator,” featuring guest vocals from singer Martha Skye Murphy.

This hulking eight-minute behemoth travels through winding synth passages and spontaneous combustions guided by a brilliant rhythm section and a waterfall of interlocking guitar parts. Despite it’s experimental tendencies, the song features my favorite groove on the album that is all parts catchy and funky. Judge sings lead vocals of being the leading man in a film, shaping it to his liking while Murphy’s progressively trapped vocals represent the sockpuppet female character stuck in this man’s fantasy. Their battling screeches build over the second half of the song into and climax into a wall of screeching cacophony that is both terrifying and satisfying. “Narrator” just checked all the right boxes for me, and stands as one of my favorite tracks of the year so far.

Squid’s Bright Green Field features some absolutely groovy and creative dance-punk grooves, and though it suffers from a few pitfalls of freshman tendencies, it generally delivers on the most exciting experiences of the year so far.

7.6/10.

Listen To: “Narrator (feat. Martha Skye Murphy)”, “Paddling”, “Pamphlets”

RIYL: Black Country, New Road, Black Midi, shame

Brockhampton -- ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE

[RCA]

The topic of Ameer Vann’s departure is a dead horse that needs no further discussion, but has undeniably changed BROCKHAMPTON’s music since then. The first album after kicking Vann from the group, iridescence, was a vastly sadder album than their earlier work. And sadly, the overall music quality dropped off a bit too as the group indulged and stripped away the strong pop sensibilities that made the SATURATION Series so infectious. However things trended back upward with Ginger, which saw them bringing out those negative emotions even more, but expertly weaved it into their boyband aesthetic making what I believe to be their best album so far. Following Ginger was a two year hiatus, which was filled only with DIY single drops, cancellations of nearly all of the band members (which are wholly valid and a story for another time), and hints towards a break-up of the band on Twitter and in a feature with GQ.

So it came as no surprise to fans when Kevin Abstract announced the two albums being released in 2021 would be the last for the band. The first of the two was released April 9, 2021 (sorry for the late review) to RCA and Question Everything, titled ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE. After the two year hiatus, few fans knew what to expect, and when the teasers came out, few could’ve expected the new direction the group was taking. The first single “Buzzcut” featured Danny Brown, displaying not only a whole new level of production, but also an air of youthful ferocity that had been missing since the 2017 Saturation series. The explosive production, gritty performances, a wild feature from Danny Brown, and an eccentric music video piqued fans’ interest like nothing they’d done in a while.

ROADRUNNER shows BROCKHAMPTON at a peak in refinement and energy. Each song of the album feels like the band fully sending on every good idea they have. Some songs expand on these beautiful melodic ideas while others center around a great hook or make ample spaces for raw rap verses from features or, of course, Dom McClennon. “Chain On” follows open “Buzzcut” and shows BROCKHAMPTON at their most reserved, making space for Dom and guest rapper JPEGMafia to spit two of the grittiest verses on any BH track. The minimal kick and clap beat plays perfectly around Dom and Peggy’s hilarious and badass lines referencing Vine, Street Fighter, and Marvin Gaye.

“Count On Me” is the album’s compulsory boyband banger, featuring contributions from heavy-hitter industry leaders like A$AP Rocky and Shawn Mendes. It’s clean pop instrumentation complement rap verses from Rocky, Matt Champion, and feature rapper SoGoneSoFlexy as well as an earworm chorus sung by Joba, Ryan Beatty, Jabari, and Shawn Mendes. This song and later tracks like “Old News” and “I’ll Take You On” aren’t afraid to spotlight the fantastic features to make a boyband track that has that signature BH twang while sounding so much grander than anything they’d done before.

“Bankroll” is a bar-heavy banger that hits with a gritty and hilarious opening verse from A$AP Ferg as well as my favorite verses ever from both Jabari and Merlin. Putting a new-age rap star like Ferg with the BH boys feels jarring at first but ultimately fits unusually well, not only because they’re on the track together, but also because the BH boys have grown so much as rappers. Merlin shakes his boyish tone and delivers a verse here that is coldhearted but still brings his classic humor that made us love him in the first place. And Jabari, who hasn’t gotten enough spotlight until this album, has an unbelievably slick and futuristic closing verse that feels like if Busta Rhymes had the voice of the Weeknd.

It’s this deliberate embrace of eclecticism that makes this dodecahedron of an album an absolute blast. “When I Ball” is a warm soulful B-side that features reflective verses from Dom, Matt, and Joba looking back on their past. The beat combines old school drums with heartwarming strings and comforting pianos, sounding like something from Kanye’s College years or a beat from the iridescence era realized to its full potential. Conversely, “Don’t Shoot Up The Party” is the band’s claustrophobic in-house anthem about talking down someone from shooting up a party. The beat is a circus of explosive G-Funk sounds with talking head verses from Matt, Joba, Kevin, and Bearface to make a song that sounds classic to the BH sound while sounding leaps ahead of anything they did in their earlier years.

My favorite B-side is “What’s The Occasion” which fuses pop opera cliches and west coast hip hop beats into a beautiful, cataclysmic banger. Beside one verse from Matt Champion, this song is the brainchild of Joba who dominates the performances for the intro, hook, second verse, and outro. The song builds over moody guitars, isolated pop pianos, and a myriad of layered Joba tracks into an explosive, gilded outro that sees all the instrumentation come back in full force. It’s cheesy, cliched, and one of my favorite BH tracks ever, wholly embracing their uniqueness and wearing it like a badge.

Each half of ROADRUNNER ends with two parts of a song called “The Light,” both of which feature heart-wrenching verses from Joba and Kevin Abstract. Kevin’s verses tackle his normal topics of detachment, family issues, and growing up which, no matter how cryptic and prickly his personality gets, never fail to connect us with him. Joba’s verses show him confronting the traumatic childhood experience of losing his father to suicide at a young age, first exposing the trauma in the first part and contemplating moving on in the second half. Both parts feature beats that are lowkey yet nuanced, making space for Joba and Kevin while adding a layer of complexity to the already intense song topics.

ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE shows that Brockhampton’s two-year hiatus was much-needed and paid off in an album that proves the final form of the band is their best form.

8.5/10.

Listen To: “BUZZCUT (feat. Danny Brown)”, “BANKROLL (feat. Asap Ferg)”, “WHAT’S THE OCCASION?”

RIYL: A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, JPEGMafia

St. Vincent -- Daddy’s Home

[Loma Vista Recordings]

The release of St. Vincent’s sixth solo album Daddy’s Home correlates with the release of the artist’s father’s decade-long stay in prison, and naturally touches on many themes relating to abandonment, role models, and living. Along with the new cohesive tone in this album, St. Vincent has adopted a completely new aesthetic, clad in a bright blonde bob, a fur coat, and a sleeveless silk dress just on the album cover, looking like a Warhol superstar. On top of all that, the album was produced during COVID, which would definitely change the eclectic contribution style of past St. Vincent albums. Daddy’s Home was ramping up to be an ambitious project, off the beaten path for leader Annie Clark’s past work.

Like St. Vincent’s last album, Daddy’s Home is primarily made of songs written and performed by Clark and Jack Antonoff, former guitarist of indie pop group Fun. and frequent collaborator with such acts as Lana Del Ray, Kevin Abstract, and Taylor Swift. Unlike Antonoff’s other glossy high-production projects, Daddy’s Home is a starkly different beast, and indulges in vintage soul and R&B tones that both Clark and Antonoff seem to nail. And like the soul influences Clark draws from, the album’s topics are diverse and draw from all kinds of bluesy experiences from her life.

The album starts with lead single “Pay Your Way In Pain” which highlights Clark’s feelings of being down and out during quarantine with lyrics about questioning reality and seeing the world around you deny you. While the song is melancholic, the tone is anything but, riding over this synth-funk jaunt that cynically asks that the listener pays a toll in pain. Another single “Down” also uses funk wound together with sitars and synths to make one of the grooviest tracks here.

But I think the best tracks of Daddy’s Home are on it’s slowed-down and meditative cuts like on the title track, which uses a minimal soul anthem to discuss the dynamic between Clark and her father when he was last in jail. Another great track is “Down and Out Downtown” a lowkey groove about hopelessly wandering around in a state of sadness. “Somebody Like Me” is a track about Clark questioning someone’s love towards her and why they would even consider loving someone like her.

I think it’s precisely in these meditative tracks where Clark delivers some of her most raw and profound lyricism. One of my favorites is the slow pop ballad “My Baby Wants a Baby” which confronts Clark’s conflicted emotions about her partner wanting to raise a child and not feeling ready for it. Clark fears that once she becomes a parent that she has to drop much of her care-free lifestyle and much of her identity will be taken up by her child. “...At The Holiday Party” talks about Clark seeing a friend hiding sadness in a place of celebration, and empathizing with them.

“The Laughing Man” is a deeply personal song dedicated to a friend Clark lost when they were young. The lyrics and the tone of the song come from a place of deep depression, trying to find meaning during grief when all seems lost. “Live In The Dream” is one of the longest St. Vincent tracks yet, and is a hazy Pink Floyd-inspired cut with psychedelic background vocals. The long song intentionally lingers in haze and meanders slowly like a cloud of weed smoke that won’t leave the room.

My favorite track is “The Melting of the Sun,” a sunny psychedelic banger that is dedicated to famous powerful women in show business from Jaynes Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe to Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone. The song embellishes the greatest sonic elements made in the combo between Antonoff and Clark’s performances.

St Vincent’s Daddy’s Home is a successful dive into psychedelic soul and proves Clark’s versatility as an artist as well as delivering some of her most mature tracks ever.

8.9/10.

Listen To: “Pay Your Way In Pain”, “The Melting Of The Sun”, “Down”

RIYL: