Musiquarium Music Reviews 2023

Table Of Contents:

Animal Collective – Isn’t It Now?

Animal Collective releases another album, just 1 year after their last.

After 2016’s awful Painting With, AnCo took an extended hiatus, not releasing another traditional album until Time Skiffs in 2022. That album was fairly good, but lacked the magic that mid-to-late 2000s AnCo albums had possessed; it seemed like Animal Collective without the fire.

Isn’t It Now? is very similar to its predecessor. It foregoes a lot of experimentation of the band’s classic albums, but does feature the 22 minute-long Defeat. Soul Capturer is also a whimsical opener.

As for some of the lesser songs, Gem & I sounds like the Wii shop music and All The Clubs Are Broken sounds like a late 70s Beach Boys tune. King’s Walk doesn’t really do much as a closer.

While it features some nice instrumentation and nothing offensive (like on Painting With), Isn’t It Now? just isn’t nearly as captivating as their best works from the mid-to-late 2000s.

★★★

Beach House – Become

Beach House releases an EP.

Following their 2022 double album Once Twice Melody, the dream pop duo swiftly return with another collection of songs of what you’ve come to expect from them. No new ground is broken here, but it will give you some more of a taste of their recent LP.

★★★½

Black Country, New Road – Live At Bush Hall

BCNR releases a live album of all new material, after the departure of vocalist Isaac Wood.

Shortly before the release of Black Country, New Road’s universally acclaimed sophomore album Ants From Up There, lead vocalist and guitarist Isaac Wood announced his departure from the band, citing mental health issues.

Live At Bush Hall finds the other six members finding their footing without wood, with three members sharing vocal duties across the album’s nine tracks. A hole was left in the band without their previous vocalist’s unique, vibrato vocal style, but Lewis Evans sings on two tracks, sounding somewhat like Isaac Wood.

Unconventionally, every song here is new, with no material from their previous two studio albums. Because of this, and the rather excellent live production and performances, Live At Bush Hall nearly feels like a proper follow-up, rather than just some typical live album.

Unlike AFUT, the songs here feel less structured and more loose. However, due to the tight, expert musicianship of the band, the music never feels too much like noodling or wankery.

A step down from what came before, but it could have been much worse, considering the circumstances surrounding it.

★★★½

Blur – The Ballad Of Darren

Blur returns 8 years after their last album.

Coming 8 long years after 2015’s The Magic Whip, Blur is back, with help from producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets).

The Ballad Of Darren features some nice instrumentation and production, but Damon Albarn sounds a bit bored and tired here. I’ll be quick to admit that I’ve never been the biggest Blur (or Gorillaz) fan, but this is still a serviceable album.

★★★

Danny Brown – Quaranta

In which Danny Brown enters his forties.

Detroit native Danny Brown took off in the music industry relatively late for a rapper. By the time his breakthrough album XXX was released in 2011, he was already 30. Most rappers who make it big, skip the growing pains most of us face in our 20s: working shitty, often degrading jobs, struggling to pay rent, going into debt to further our education or in Danny Brown’s case, being a small time drug dealer.

Quaranta is Italian for forty and has Brown looking back on the past decade of his life; a decade where he had risen to the top and became one of the most acclaimed and experimental rappers of the 2010s. Did he think he’d still be a successful rapper by his age? Perhaps he feels too old to still be in the game? Regardless, between this and the same year’s JPEGMAFIA collab, SCARING THE HOES, it’s probably safe to say that Danny Brown isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Danny Brown also went on to say that this is his most personal record yet, exploring drug addiction-induced rock bottom, and coming back from all of that.

The Alchemist-produced lead single Tantor is an elephantine beast of a song and one of his best singles yet. Down Wit It shows a vulnerable side of Brown, and deals with a loss of love. Jenn’s Terrific Vacation is a jazzy affair and Ain’t My Concern recalls some of the darkness of his magnum opus, Atrocity Exhibition.

Along with the aforementioned collab album from earlier this year, 2023 was definitely a high point in the career of Danny Brown.

★★★★

Foo Fighters – But Here We Are

Foo Fighters mourn and honour Taylor Hawkins and Virginia Grohl and make their best album since the 90s.

Unfortunately, it took Dave Grohl tragedy to get his groove back. After a string of mediocre releases, including 2021’s extremely forgettable Medicine At Midnight, things were looking a bit bleak for the Foos. Sure, that album won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock Album (seriously?), but many people weren’t too keen on the direction the band had been heading towards for the past several years, where it felt like they were trying to appeal to a wider audience and neglecting the longterm fans in the process.

But then longterm drummer Taylor Hawkins overdosed and died in 2022. Not only that, but Dave Grohl’s mother (whom he was very close with) also died later that year. Dave Grohl had lost whom were probably the two most important people in his life (outside of his wife and kids), and had already experienced mourning with the loss of Kurt Cobain in 1994. That death had resulted in him proving himself as a songwriter on Foo Fighters’ debut a year later, so would he overcome tragedy a second time?

It seemed like it could have been the end of the Foos, but only one year later, out comes But Here We Are: the tightest, most well-written thing the band has put out since the 90s (it’s even better than Wasting Light).

Rescued starts the album off with optimism; the band sounding revitalized after the loss they endured. Under You is another upbeat rocker. Hearing Voices is one of the best tracks here and ends with piano (an instrument not often associated with Foo Fighters). The title track is powerful and inspirational. Show Me How features Dave Grohl’s daughter Violet.

The final two tracks, the 10 minute-long The Teacher and the heartfelt Rest, are hands down the best closing tracks on any Foo Fighters album. The overall track sequencing is brilliant too, compared to many Foo Fighters albums that start with all the best songs and taper out near the middle and end.

We may have lost Taylor Hawkins, but we gained an album dedicated to his memory that would have made him proud.

★★★★½

JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown – SCARING THE HOES

Two of modern hip hop’s most experimental rappers join forces.

Both JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown are acquired tastes, between the former’s extreme and chaotic production style and the latter’s distinctive and bizarre voice; suffice to say, they are not for everyone. So naturally, having the two together would make for a challenging, but ultimately rewarding listen.

Thus, we arrive at SCARING THE HOES, an album that’s likely going to scare off most listeners (especially women).

The two rappers compliment each other incredibly well and Peggy’s production is his best yet. Every song is memorable, the experimentation lands and his songs feel more structured than ever before.

SCARING THE HOES is a fascinating project and despite the abrasive, distorted and sometimes ear-piercingly loud production, the songs themselves are instant classics.

★★★★★

The Killers – Rebel Diamonds

The Killers release their second career retrospective.

After releasing their first career best of in 2013 with Direct Hits, The Killers release an updated collection that captures songs from their 2004 debut Hot Fuss, right up until 2021’s Pressure Machine, as well as a couple of non-album singles and one new track.

Compared to Direct Hits, this collection swaps out Smile Like You Mean It for Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine (though both should be here) and omits the Sam’s Town single, For Reasons Unknown. Somebody Told Me, Mr. Brightside, All These Things That I’ve Done, When You Were Young and Read My Mind are all obviously here.

Day & Age is still represented by Human, A Dustland Fairytale and Spaceman, which is I could take or leave, as that was one of my least favourite eras of the band. Be Still is another track I could do without, as Battle Born was a pretty weak album, but Runaways‘ inclusion is fair.

The Man is the only cut from Wonderful Wonderful. although Run For Cover could have been included as well. There are three tracks from 2020’s Imploding The Mirage, all of which are fairly good, but only two songs from Pressure Machine (Quiet Town, Pressure Machine), which was easily the band’s best work since 2006’s Sam’s Town.

At the end of the album, there is the 2022 non-album single boy and the 2023 Pet Shop Boys-esque, Your Side Of Town. The album also boasts one original song, Spirit, which is actually quite excellent. These three tracks are some of the best songs the band has put out, and demonstrates a renaissance the Killers have had in the 2020s.

A much better compilation than Direct Hits (which only had four albums to pull from) and a nice, varied selection of songs from nearly 20 years of the Las Vegas group.

★★★★

Mac DeMarco – Five Easy Hot Dogs

Mac DeMarco releases a fully instrumental album.

After 4 years of waiting since the polarizing Here Comes The Cowboy (the longest gap between albums yet), Mac DeMarco releases an album full of instrumentals, meant to chronicle touring across Canada and the USA. Every track is named after a city where the song was written, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Chicago and Portland.

Fans were quite disappointed by this release, especially since his last album was poorly received, but Five Easy Hot Dogs is a pleasant enough album, despite being vocal-less.

★★★½

Mac DeMarco – One Wayne G

Mac DeMarco releases a 9 hour long compilation, containing 199 songs.

Earlier in the year, Mac DeMarco returned from a 4 year hiatus with an instrumental album, Five Easy Hot Dogs. It was good, but it didn’t have the same impact as his previous albums, mainly due to the lack of his emotive vocals, which really hurt any potential it had with many of his fans. It failed to win back those who were let down by 2019’s (underrated) Here Comes The Cowboy, but Mac was undeterred. A few months later, Mac released One Wayne G, a compilation of recordings made between 2018 and 2023. Oh yeah, and there’s nearly two hundred songs on here.

Most of the 199 songs here are instrumentals, with about 18 songs containing vocals and various others with scat singing. The songs here include the typical Mac DeMarco guitar exercises you’ve come to expect, but also include funk, synthpop and ambient.

One Wayne G captures 5 years of Mac DeMarco recordings, showcasing the diverse influences that reflect in his music, as well as the prolificness and musical restlessness he exhibits, much like a Canadian Prince.

Great to put on as background music while you study or relax.

Trivia: One Wayne G translates to 199 (Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretzky’s jersey with the Edmonton Oilers was #99), the same as the number of tracks on the album.

★★★½

The Mars Volta – Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón

The Mars Volta remakes their 2022 self-titled album with acoustic instrumentation.

If you didn’t like The Mars Volta’s 2022 eponymous, pop-leaning reinvention, then you probably won’t like this album, as it’s the exact same, but with acoustic instrumentation. It’s a bit less grating than what was found on that album, but is still very much just Latin pop and won’t bring to mind memories of De-Loused In The Comatorium or Frances The Mute. It’s not bad, but it just kind of exists.

★★½

Metallica – 72 Seasons

Metallica are back with another thrash revival album that will make you yearn for their 80s works.

7 years after Hardwired… To Self Destruct, which was a refinement of the modern thrash formula with much better production than what was found on 2008’s Death Magnetic, Metallica are back with 72 Seasons (a.k.a. 18 years). The album is very much like its predecessor and while it doesn’t do anything offensive, it also doesn’t do anything bold or exciting. The production is fine and the performances are good enough, but it’s just boring. At least St. Anger and Lulu were different. This is just inferior thrash metal to what they did in the 1980s. And that artwork is just awful.

★★★

PJ Harvey – I Inside The Old Year Dying

PJ Harvey evokes the English woods.

I Inside The Old Year Dying is a musically peaceful and serene album. It’s somewhat comparable to Let England Shake, as it gives off that earthy, “deep in the English woods”, folklore vibe, but this album is a bit darker in sound than that album was and somewhat more mystical.

PJ Harvey is one of those rare artists from the 90’s who can put out a great album 30 years removed from her debut, while still sounding the same vocally, and without finding herself artistically complacent.

A gorgeous, ethereal neo-folk album.

★★★★

Queens Of The Stone Age – In Times New Roman…

Josh Homme beats death a second time.

After a 6 year gap between this and Villains, Josh Homme had dealt with cancer, a messy public divorce and child custody battle, and the loss of close friends, like the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins and frequent collaborator and friend, Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees.

Josh Homme had been through some shit. And this album reflects that in its raw and messy production (somewhat similarly to Era Vulgaris 16 years earlier), which is a nice contrast to the Mark Ronson-produced Villains, which many fans thought was too clean and sterile.

Paper Machete is reminiscent of Little Sister, but different enough that it doesn’t feel quite like a retread. Negative Space displays some tight bass playing. Carnavoyeur whirls the listener in with its carnival-esque synths, Time & Place glides along a strange rhythm. What The Peephole say sounds like a Villains holdover. Sicily is dark, menacing and string-laden. Straight Jacket Fitting is a blues epic that ends with an acoustic guitar coda of opener Obscenery, bringing the album full circle.

The one weak spot on the album is Made To Parade, which is a rather goofy track, but even then, it’s nothing bad.

The band’s entire output is of high quality and even Villains, which many fans felt was misstep, was one of the best albums of that year in my books. However, I feel like this was still a step up from that album, and harkens back more to the band’s dirty, fuzzy, desert-tinged sound.

I saw the band on this tour and Josh gave it his all. The entire show was high energy, Josh was charming and funny, seeming grateful to be there performing for fans again. Not long after, several shows on the tour were cancelled due to undisclosed health-related issues, but it seems like the band is back at it again since. Josh Homme has gone on record saying that he hasn’t missed many shows in his life, so you know it could be bad when he does miss.

This album feels like Josh had escaped death a second time (after having briefly died on the operating table during a surgery in 2010), and resulted in another album born from dancing with death. It might be a little too reliant on blues (compared to their earlier albums) and isn’t as good as anything else in their discography (other than Villains), but this is still a competent and charismatic record.

Trivia: This is the band’s third cover in a row designed by graphic artist Boneface and forms the third in a trilogy of albums.

★★★★½

Royal Blood – Back To The Water Below

The British rock duo release a tedious collection of songs.

After Typhoons saw Royal Blood add dance rock elements to their sound, Back To The Water Below sees a regression to their earlier sound, albeit with some really pedestrian piano added to the mix.

Mountains At Midnight sounds like your typical Royal Blood rocker, but isn’t nearly as interesting as a song like Out Of The Black. Tell Me When It’s Too Late recalls some of the dance influence of Typhoons, which otherwise has been completely abandoned here. There is a moment in Pull Me Through that sounds just like the chorus to Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

A lot of these songs have these falsetto vocal passages that sound copy and pasted from one to the other. And instead of enhancing the songs, the piano here ruins them.

I will admit that Typhoons was a somewhat underrated record, but his album just felt milquetoast and uninspired.

★★½

The Smashing Pumpkins – ATUM

Billy Corgan tortures listeners with a triple album.

There are 33 songs on here. Over two hours of music.Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness was a long album, but it had the strong songwriting to justify its length. That album was an experience. Cyr was pushing it with an hour+ of Corgan-made synthpop. ATUM is an absolute chore. No — it’s aural torture.

Most of these songs use synths that sound like they would’ve been dated back in the 1980s. Then, there are the few vintage Pumpkins-aspiring, guitar-led songs, which are completely ruined by Billy Corgan’s vocals.

Billy Corgan wasn’t a great singer in the band’s heyday, but even then, he was emotive, unique and it fit the music. He cannot hit those same notes he once could and has failed to adapt his style to avoid it. You almost feel bad for him here.

There’s a lot of competition for worst song, but Hooray might just be it. It’s actually tragic to think that this is the same man who made songs like Today, Disarm, 1979 and Tonight, Tonight once upon a time.

There really isn’t any point talking about other songs here; they all blur together. None of these songs are memorable. They do all share something in common though: they are all bad.

Simply put, ATUM is a failure, but at least it’s an ambitious failure.

★½

Steven Wilson – The Harmony Codex

Steven Wilson bounces back from THE FUTURE BITES.

A major improvement over 2021’s THE FUTURE BITES, which tried too hard to walk the line of being both commercially-viable and artistically satirical (much like Arcade Fire’s maligned 2017 album Everything Now), but just ended up being an unlikeable album. The Harmony Codex is Steven Wilson getting closer to his usual benchmark of quality, while also dabbling in electronics.

Despite the electronic aspect of The Harmony Codex, Wilson still uses plenty of tricks from his prog arsenal. The album is bookended with two epics, Inclination and Staircase, as well as the jazz fusion epic Impossible Tightrope. And then there’s frequent collaborator Ninet Tayeb, who makes a return, on the self-penned Rock Bottom. Economy Of Scale and What Life Brings were released as singles and are both highlights.

Despite what was done right compared to THE FUTURE BITES, there are still a few questionable decisions, like that weird vocal effect on Time Is Running Out, or the deep rapping voice on Actual Brutal Facts. The album is also lacking some excitement, and tends to feel a bit robotic at times. However, those are small complaints to what amounts to an otherwise good Steven Wilson album and a major improvement over its predecessor. That cover art is great too.

★★★½

Travis Scott – UTOPIA

Travis Scott releases his first album since the fatal 2021 Astroworld incident.

In 2021, 10 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured in a crowd rush at Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival. Debate followed as to whether Travis Scott or Live Nation were responsible, but some may say that both parties were culpable.

Travis Scott was never indicted with any criminal charges, and much of this album seems to ignore the tragedy that preceded it, but that does not prevent this from being one of his best projects yet.

HYAENA begins the album with a twisting acapella, followed by a beat backed by what sound like sleighbells, and ending with a sample from Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain. MODERN JAM reminded me of Prince’s 1987 jam, Housequake, featuring a simple, but addictive beat. CIRCUS MAXIMUS samples Kanye West’s 2013 hit, Black Skinhead, and while it’s not nearly as incredible as that song was, it’s still a highlight here, particularly in its beat and appearance from The Weeknd.

UTOPIA sees Travis Scott in good form, inching closer to the type of artist he’s always tried to be, following in Kanye West’s footsteps. Some may criticize the album for sounding somewhat derivative of the works of Ye, and it may not do much to address the Astroworld incident, but overall, it’s a strong project.

★★★★½

FIN

Britain Chambers

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