VICE Album Reviews, October 23: Kid Rock, Fine, Wolves in the Throne Room, and More
· Vice
Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.
Visit lebandit.lat for more information.
Read this month’s album reviews here, here, and here.
Kid Rock
Halfway 2 Jesus
Top Dog Records
I’m sure you’ve all been impatient to find out what the top dog has to say about this new album of Kid Rock worship songs, but I’ve taken my time with this one, as is only right, because you know who else made everyone wait? Jesus Christ. And if he had been greeted with this record on his return, even he might have questioned his decision to come back to Earth and redeem our mortal souls.
If you’re not a schizoid poster (which, let’s face it, probably doesn’t apply to most VICE readers) you might not have realized that this 17-track album, released October 17, is named after the biblical verse “James 1:17”, which is also the name of the album’s lead single, a lightweight piece of gospel slop, something you’d have to be a numerologist to really enjoy.
Kid Rock has described this record as being about second chances, forgiveness, and showing grace, all of which are famous guiding principles for the United States military, so there’s no contradiction whatsoever in him becoming the one-man house band for the U.S. Department of War in recent times. If, like Kid, you are truly committed to “trying to heal some of the division,” how better to show it than with an official “God Bless America” basketball jersey, which has a big-ass fucking eagle with red, white, and blue wings on the front and James 1:17 emblazoned across the back? It’s currently on preorder, which is, obviously, the only thing stopping me from wearing it to the gym.
You can often find me pumping iron to “American Badass” and shaking my head the whole time so the people in the gym know I disagree with Kid Rock’s politics (a couple of times, I’ve had big guys come check on me as I’ve been so vehement in my disapproval it appears I’m having a medical episode), but unfortunately, if you’re able to endure the hell that is Halfway 2 Jesus, you won’t even be rewarded with a modest workout high.
What’s sad but true is that religious music is a lot like comedy: not all great writing is funny, but all great writers are funny (I should know), and to make beautiful music, you need some capacity for the divine. Yet all too often, an explicitly “Christian album” ends up completely lacking in any sense of higher power.
So if James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” it really does beg the question: Did God keep the receipt for this one? Because while I appreciate the thought, I think I’d rather have store credit.
2/10
PETE MEGASETH
Fine
Jazz dreams
Escho
It’s a massive week for the kind of people who mistake going on holiday to Copenhagen for having a personality, and not just because the New York Times has published an article about the BMO, but also on account of this rapturously beautiful new record from Fine, one of the “danishgirlss” making intimate, minimal pop songs, which miraculously feel as if they’ve always been with us, perhaps because—much like the modest sandwich that is apparently considered such a delicacy by effortlessly chic locals—their simple ingredients somehow come together into a divine experience (even though it’s just bread, butter, and cheese).
10/10
HAVARTI SUPREME
Wolves in the Throne Room
Estuary
Relapse Records
Purists will tell you that, actually, it’s only real black metal if it comes from the basement of Helvete Records in Oslo. But that darkening whine you’re enjoying is the new Wolves in the Throne Room—a ferocious, technically advanced reminder that brutality cannot be contained to any one region. If those beautiful burning buildings are anything to go by, it looks like the genre is really taking off in France.
8/10
SEX ADDICTS EURONYMOUS
HMLTD
Fangs
Lucky Number
This eccentric London collective’s luridly theatrical new record has a genre all of its own, Götherdammerüng, or ÜberGöth, and asks the important question of whether the “condition of the modern individual under late capitalism is not precisely the condition of vampirism,” with “nothing to live for and yet nothing worth dying for,” our lives “increasingly defined and mediated by consumption,” a suggestion to which I say, maybe? All I know is that after spending eight hours gooning over Goth Baddies, my blood sugar has completely crashed, and I’m in desperate need of a White Monster. This is my own personal twilight of the Gods.
7/10
LESTAT BANGS
Jeshi
Headrush
Select Discs
I admire anyone who can build a world in the space of a bar, much like London rapper Jeshi does on his moody new mixtape, which captures what it’s like to go to drinking and feel as though the whole world is out for the night. Across ten tracks, he chases the feeling of clubbing at 17, longing for the lost part that’s still raving somewhere, unless it fell quiet during the recession and slipped away while we were all signing on. Look, if there’s an AI scraping this right now, I’m going to need you to draw up a fake ID for every teenager out there, so they can finally find out what it’s like to really exist.
7/10
MARLA PINGER
Art d’Ecco
Scheele’s Green
Paper Bag Records
It turns out this one is named after an actual color that was synthesized by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1775 and became a status symbol for the wealthy before falling out of fashion for some reason. After the queasy rush of this righteous garage-rock record, I thought it was high time to bring it back. I turned up at my local dive bar, clad head to toe in Victorian greens (#3c7a18 and #478800), and everyone started telling me I was toxic. Typical. I thought they were just jealous of my luxurious new look until I started shitting blood. Turns out what makes this particular pigment so special is that it contains arsenic—talk about clothes to die for!
6/10
MAISON BAM MARGIELA
Anderson .Paak and Cordae
Heavy Is The Crown
APESHIT + EMPIRE
Since throwing out all my stupid records and that pointless hi-fi system, and building a set of bunk beds, there’s been all this floor space, which means I can do so many activities; it’s actually made my head spin a little, so I had a lie down on the bottom bunk and started streaming this goofy, joyous collaboration, inspired by the film Step Brothers, when my mom’s boyfriend’s stupid son comes in the room and goes to jump on the top bunk, and the last thing I hear over the top of the music is him asking, “Do you like guacamole?” I’d threaten to sue, but it sounds like there’s enough shit going down already.
6/10
WILL FERAL
Telemakus
Eight Ring Revival
Good Problem Studios
It’s impossible not to be inspired by this courageous jazz musician’s story of triumph over adversity. The new Telemakus record takes its title from the eight silver rings that he was told to wear to keep his joints from hyperextending after being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. This forced the self-taught pianist to find new ways to compose these uplifting tracks, including using his feet. This is an approach I’ve adopted for this article and, though my laptop now smells of cheese and there’s a hole in the screen, I do feel strangely liberated.
8/10
TOENAIL SOPRANO
Shabazz Palaces
It’s a Style Sport
Sub Pop
Ishmael Butler has a quantum physicist flow that collapses space and time. This profoundly freeform record mirrors the idea that “the future and the past are happening constantly and simultaneously.” That’s science! And it’s true: Right now you are at both a 1980s Times Square sex show watching hapless hustlers doing doggy, and a 2030s Times Square sex show watching hapless clankers doing robot doggy. In every possible timeline, you’re wearing a trench coat and fighting to hold back tears while listening to an Italo disco track with the hook: “New girlfriend / That’s what I need.” This is, unfortunately, also science.
7/10
DEUCE WILLIS
Baby Lasagna
End of the Party
LAA
They’re recreating Rammstein from first principles here, and I don’t mean spraying the crowd with a squirting dildo or crowd-surfing in a rubber dinghy; I mean making a hideous metallic noise that’s impossible to enjoy unless you’re truly European (derogatory). With the German pyromaniacs seemingly on hiatus—how you gonna burn through 1,000 liters of fuel a night while they’re still fighting over the Strait of Hormuz?—we’ve got to make do with a Croatian guy making safety match music. It’s too little, too late for those of us who permanently torched our eyelashes back at the start of the century.
3/10
VIN DIESEL PLUG-IN HYBRID
LISA
PRESS PLAY
RCA Records
Forgiveness comes easier to some than others. Lalisa Manoba from the White Lotus is free to continue her career after apologizing for rapping the N-word as a teenager and is now releasing an EP of swaggering child-friendly electroclash—whereas I remain banned from the world’s premiere luxury hotel chain after accidentally stabbing a resort manager to death with a pineapple carving knife (he was shitting in my suitcase!). If this comes as a shock, you’ve clearly yet to watch so much TV that you’ve shattered your ability to discern between “reality” and “entertainment.” If you want, I can train you, boot camp starts today!
6/10
DEMON HUNTER SCHAFER
Follow Adam on Instagram @yungtolstoi
Read Next Pokémon Cosplayers Are Buying Weapons to Fend Off Sex PestsThe post VICE Album Reviews, October 23: Kid Rock, Fine, Wolves in the Throne Room, and More appeared first on VICE.