Score: 3

Let’s get this one out of the way: new Paramore album is real bad. I’ve never been Paramore super-fan, but up until this point, I feel as though they’d consistently matured. Self-titled was a bit bloated and long-winded for what it was but at turns went into some cool places, and I genuinely really enjoyed After Laughter.

I am a slut for new wave, but if that album were merely pastiche, I’d have been more annoyed than anything. No, they did a great job of modernizing the sound and making it their own, and the juxtaposition between the bright tones and depressive lyrics scratched my brain in just the right way. These lyrics were usually centered around personal stress without much connecting them to specific experiences. This could be seen as a cop-out, but I wish they copped out harder here.

This Is Why is a COVID-era album through and through, positively littered with all the canned phrases, empty platitudes, and self-centered reflections all of your most annoying friends who complain about how all of the suffering that orbits but never touches them makes them feel. This album is every bit as immature as “Misery Business”: it simply cuts a different angle. Wow, the news is so sad: I will make turning off the news into a rallying cry. Damn, I’m experiencing so much ennui as the world crumbles around me: I should go see my chiropractor. I’ve heard “this is why I don’t leave the house” emerge from so many irksome faces these past few years that I’m tempted to carve my ears off and throw them in a furnace. Paramore provides no thoughtful examination on the hellscape in which so many toil: they simply echo and bank on the public’s willingness to relate to the sentiments that have been stolen wholesale from them. And when art uses relatability as crutch instead of a tool, that art sucks.

Technically, most of the songwriting is fine, barring the hook on “C’est Comme Ça,” which is an earworm for all the worst reasons. However, unlike After Laughter, This Is Why‘s composition is pastiche and Paramore more or less lose their identity between all the Bloc Party bits, the Radiohead bits, the Dry Cleaning bits. Even when calling upon the energy of bands such as Talking Heads or the B-52’s, After Laughter was still their own spirit bomb. This is more a ratty, quickly stitched quilt of UK bands past and present: functional but deeply un-cozy.

Was looking forward to this, was massively let down.

Score: 4

I wrestle with a severe case of mental disconnect when it comes to Runnner. This is a group that pops up in discussion from time to time, enough so that it’s difficult not to be aware of their existence, at least in this little sphere. They’re now signed to Run for Cover, which isn’t the smallest indie label around. But little about the discussion around Runnner could prepare me for the fact these guys net 900k+ monthly listeners on Spotify.

Those are big boy numbers: well more than three times what Wednesday pulls. I compare them both as indie alt-country acts, despite how wildly different their approaches are, simply because it’s interesting to consider how much more discussion Wednesday seems to generate while “losing” the numbers game. This likely boils down to two things: Runnner is very easy to listen to, and very difficult to have a compelling discussion about.

You know when, at the end of an episode of Scrubs, Zach Braff’s doing his narration over a montage of all the plot thread resolutions and there’s usually some tepid little singer-songwriter tune that limps along underneath? Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out is an album of those tunes: soft, mushy things. This is Scrubs-ass, Garden State-ass, Zach Braff-ass music. If both this album and Damien Rice’s O were high schoolers, O would be shoving this album into lockers.

Hardly anything sticks here, instead opting to pleasantly and inoffensively drift by. A good bit of the lyrical material falls under the category of “vulnerable about not being vulnerable”: among the most unfulfilling of subject matters. The melody on “I Only Sing About Food” draws more attention than most here but the track is ultimately marred by the conscious declaration of how pathologically closed off it is. Runnner acknowledges feelings but doesn’t wanna get into the weeds of emotion: that’s too spooky. There are some pretty arrangements and nifty quirks that’ll pop enthusiasts of intimate recording, but there’s just not much meat on the bones when it comes to the songs themselves.

Score: 5

Not a great album, but a much better one than what could be reasonably expected of post-Mania Fall Out Boy. It’s completely impossible for Stump, Wentz & co. to not be ceaselessly corny at this juncture (or maybe any juncture, if we’re being entirely honest with ourselves), but listening to these middle-aged lads turn back the dial but then press forward in a new direction is endearing. Even as the theater kid bombast threatens to be overbearing, the sheer enthusiasm is infectious. These guys are trying and I appreciate it.

This starts strong with the opening trio of “Love From the Other Side,” “Heartbreak Feels So Good,” and “Hold Me Like a Grudge,” suffers a pretty brutal vibe kill with “Fake Out” and never fully recovers. Despite this, the occasional remnant odor from Mania, and the ridiculous interludes (one of which samples a Reality Bites monologue like what the fuck lol), So Much (For) Stardust is worth giving a shot if you’ve got an appreciation for camp. If not, sprint the other fucking way fast as your legs will carry you. A return to form? Yeah, kinda, sure, why not?

Score: 8 ^{Pollenate Me!}

This absolute gem cropped up about a month ago on Wisconsin tape label Kitschy Spirit, and while it took a little bit before the hype to truly build among Thee Online Circle of Very Smart and Talented Writers and Musicians, the hype is now here and well-earned. Found out about this one when a tweet from Keegan Bradford (Camp Trash) popped up in the feed. I played it out of curiosity as I often do when he likes something, and then I played it again, and then I played it again, and then I… you get the picture.

Then Eli Enis wrote this piece digging into just what makes bands like Liquid Mike so precious, namedropping numerous beloved power pop acts for reference (Superdrag, Fountains of Wayne, Joyce Manor, etc.). I 100% subscribe to the idea that one of the best ways to get somebody to try out a relative unknown is to compare them to just a bunch of baller shit, so I am directing you to that write-up. Personally, I’m just gonna make one comparison: Liquid Mike’s Self-Titled is kinda like Sugar ripping through a 100% speedrun.

Liquid Mike comes to you from Michigan and these are explicitly Midwestern jams: you listen to enough of this stuff and “Born 4 Nothing Good” kicks in and you know that is not a fucking California riff (all due respect to the west coast: you got your own thing going on, it’s just not the same as this). Mike Maple even kinda sounds like Bob Mould at the peak of his anthemic power, from the tone to the way he soars his phrasing.

And I say “100% speedrun” because this chunky, buzzing baby whirs by in just about 18 minutes while still managing “completion.” Brevity in power pop has become a trend and, in theory, it sounds pretty good to write pop music with an economical mindset. But nearly everyone, from Tony Molina to our beloved Guided by Voices, can often fall into the trap of undercooking their stuff. And Liquid Mike doesn’t really have this issue. Each of the nine songs that crack a single full minute is deeply satisfying and “Silverado” works beautifully as something of a sketched acoustic epilogue.

One of the best albums of the year so far. It rips, it rocks, it shreds, it fucks, hell yeah. I missed the tape, so Kitschy: if you’re reading this, dupe more you cowards.

Score: 4

Boygenius’ The Record is, indeed, a record. Beyond this, it is rather non-descript. But we cannot accuse it of false advertising and this is at least something.

Now, what we can wag our fingers at is how major music press has approached the topic of Boygenius: with a level of mythologization where it’s now seen as foolish to back down and even more so to double down. The Record, like any piece of art ever made by anyone ever, had the potential to be absolutely incredible or painfully awful or any of the many possibilities in-between. With that said, I’ll admit that just like everyone else, I have my own preconceptions going into many of these socially canonized releases.

I went into The Record with the loose baseline expectation that it was going to be alright, but that I would be unlikely to fall in love with it. This is how I feel about most of the material from Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers’ respective solo careers (though I have slightly more affinity for Dacus as a lyricist, Baker as a personality, and Bridgers as a musician), and this is how I feel about the supergroup’s 2018 EP. Unfortunately, The Record does not meet this expectation.

The value of The Record has been insisted upon due in large part to the mutual appreciation shared between three prominent LGBTQ+ singer-songwriters. And while I certainly do agree that there is value to the existence of Boygenius, to the members personally—evident by their very charming Over/Under documentary—and culturally, when removed from this context, The Record shows itself to be thinly conceived.

Context is valuable when it is reflected in the art itself, but little about this album truly reflects the bond that has been presented at the forefront of the recent press cycle. Rather, this collection of generally meandering tunes seem less the product of three talented people coming together to enforce each other’s strengths, and more an assortment of solo material from each woman that would’ve otherwise been left on the cutting room floor.

The moments where the three come together in a meaningful way—notably “Not Strong Enough” and “Satanist”—are enough to spark ideas of where Boygenius could go as a project, and these ideas are kinda exciting. But right after “Not Strong Enough,” you get “Revolution O” and “Leonard Cohen,” which play into the worst impulses of Bridgers and Dacus.

I will not explain why “Leonard Cohen once said / “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” / And I am not an old man having an existential crisis / At a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry / But I agree” is a clunky verse that reeks of smug self-satisfaction. But I will point out, as others have, that the Cohen song Dacus (Dacus, the one I think is best at words!) quotes here was released in 1992, years prior to Cohen’s monastery stay. What is cringe is subjective and will always vary from person to person, but like, your timeline is out of wack? We got dates and stuff?

When people were criticizing these lyrics, the fan response from some was along the lines of “well, why aren’t queer women allowed to be funny and clever?” They are! I’m begging for this to be funny! You ever heard of CMAT? She released one of the best albums of last year and she’s hysterical. Why didn’t Rolling Stone talk about CMAT last year? Perhaps this isn’t really about queer representation. Maybe it’s more about anointing connected, marketable faces as benefactors of specific demographics. Maybe a perfect score for Phoebe Bridgers’ supergroup is an early Pride Month Instagram sticker.

I’m starting to go off the rails so I’m calling it here. Power to you if you dig this but I dunno, maybe demand better. On the off-chance you haven’t already, check out this Constantly Hating write-up: far and away the most interesting thing anyone has written on The Record.