A$AP Rocky - Long Live A$AP

It has been nearly two years since A$AP Rocky stomped out of Harlem with the Live Love A$AP debut mixtape.  The critically acclaimed collection of songs got Rocky a three million dollar record contract with Sony and RCA Music, and when you listen to it, you can hear why.  Rocky has a wide range of appeal, and although the topic matter is not always there to back up his focused and well crafted image, his confidence will keep you entertained as long as you don't pay too close attention to what he is actually saying.

Live Love A$AP had Rocky constantly rapping about what he was wearing, drinking, smoking, and little else.  This makes him quite similar to other top forty artists, but where A$AP Rocky stands apart is in his expertly crafted, smoked out aesthetic, and his lurching, swaggering, self assured delivery.  Basically, he raps the same way Captain Jack Sparrow stumbles around in Pirates of the Caribbean.

On Long Live A$AP, Rocky keeps up this style fairly well.  Frankly, the beats are impeccable.  They are consistently dark and hazy, but each one is unique enough to keep the album engaging.  He also ventures into some new sonic territory with the uplifting "Hell(feat. Santigold)," and the epic finisher "Like i'm Apart(feat. Florence Welch)."  Rocky's flow works quite well with these two fabulous singers, and he actually talks about some personal, emotional material when rapping with Florence Welch, which is a nice change.  The only song that felt seriously out of place was Skrillex's addition "Wild For the Night."  Rocky and Skrillex, just shouldn't do any work together, period.  You can't possibly tone down Skrillex's frantic, dial up modem style, electronics enough to match Rocky's drunken flow.

On this same topic, the only real problem I have with Rocky's flow is his tendency to abuse the pitch shifted vocals, especially on the songs "Lvl" and "Pain."  If he didn't constantly remind his audience that he is a pretty nigga with french braids and gold teeth, I would assume he looked like a thugged out Frankenstein.

UNNNNGH...BASS...UNNNGH...BASS.

I also found myself much more engaged when Rocky strayed away from talking about his appearance.  The songs "Phoenix" and "Suddenly" are great examples that Rocky can carry a song with material about his poverty and his youth, even when the beat is understated and calm.  The sad thing is that there just isn't enough of this interesting topic material for me to stay seriously engaged with this album.  Rocky has always been more about style and appearance, than he is about depth and substance, which seems to work for him commercially, but for me that will only keep me engaged for so long.

Other than the singles and the additional songs I mentioned, the beats are so good on this album, that Rocky doesn't really add much by rapping over them.  I find this particularly true for the song "Fashion Killa" which has these dreamy vocal samples, bouncing off the lively percussion, and the song "Ghetto Symphony" that takes an Imogen Heap sample, and switches it back and forth into this airy, threatening swarm of strings.  These beats are so lush and dynamic, they don't really need anyone rapping over them.  Rocky's excellent taste in beats usually does a great job in showcasing his style, but when his rhymes fall flat, they outshine him by miles, and expose his weaknesses clearly, making him seem like a superfluous and unnecessary presence.
 

My Bloody Valentine - MBV

As an Avalanches fan, I understand what it is like to wait a ridiculous amount of time for an album.  Its a terrible process of checking the band's website, praying, listening to nothing in your headphones trying to imagine what it might sound like, and always...always dealing with the crippling doubt that it might not even be worth listening to after such a long wait.  How could one deal with that disappointment after such a patient vigil.   Hypothetically of course...waiting like that would be ridiculous...

seriously, I feel like a victim of emotional abuse.

It has only been about 12 years since Since I Left You, but I still feel like I can sympathize with My Bloody Valentine fans whose last album came out a whopping 21 years ago.  As another side note, it's very strange to think that I have basically lived my entire life in between these two My Bloody Valentine Albums.

And what a time it has been! other bands have flared up and died out like distant stars, and all the while people still listened to, and loved My Bloody Valentine.  What kind of band could inspire such a sustained reverence?

Well, My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless is often considered the pinnacle of shoegaze music, a subgenre typified by the heavy use of effect pedals which drown the music in oceans of fuzz and distorted noise.  The effect is hypnotizing, sexual, and surprisingly relaxing.  My bloody Valentine is especially talented at creating this torrential ocean of noise, and while listening to their music, it often feels as if you could just dissolve yourself in it.  To top it off, Belinda Butcher's voice fits in with the wailing, distorted guitars so snugly, and smoothly there is not one gap in this infernal shower.

Now, on this new album, My Bloody Valentine tries to shoot for the same sound, but falls quite short for  several reasons.

The first track, "She Found Now" is quite slow and methodical.  It is mostly a wall of fuzz that starts to pick up with some barely noticeable strumming towards the end of the song.  Like a lot of the songs on MBV this song does not develop or do anything interesting at all for its entire five minutes.  I like some of the distorted soloing on the next track "Only Tomorrow," but it's so understated, its barely noticeable.  In fact I found that the waves of fuzzy sustained guitar in this entire album were consistently dull.  Rather than thick and murky like an ocean, they are light and airy like a fog, and equally as captivating.

My Bloody Valentine has always been more about the textures of the distortion than the actual song writing, which is fine, but on this album, I found that none of the textures were that finely crafted or well put together.    This leaves nothing engaging in the music at all.  On the tracks "Who Sees You" and "Wonder 2" for instance, I thought that the textures of the vocals did not compliment the sound of the guitars even slightly.

The album really picks up in energy towards the end.  The drums are much more noticeable from "The New You" onward  but even in these songs, they just don't develop enough for them to really be interesting to me.  "Nothing Is" has an incredibly hypnotic repetitiveness to it, but the way it ends is just so abrupt that it makes me think they literally had no other ideas.

To me, this whole album just feels rushed.  They really tried to get it out suddenly without paying enough attention to the pacing, and the blending of the various elements.  It's consistently dull, and none of the songs develop or change in an interesting way.  Even the cover art smacks of intense laziness!  Its bland blue boxes and poorly rendered, 90's style letters represent the disinterested lack of attention with which I feel this whole album was composed.  In the 21 years My Bloody Valentine has been apart, it doesn't sound like they have grown as musicians in any tangible way.  They have been left behind in the 90's, as all of these songs sound like they could have been on Loveless but were cut from it because they had better material.  It really is a shame, because these songs are just so close to being listenable, and if they had taken more time to prepare them, it wouldn't have ended up being the dull grey parade of distorted lethargy that it is.