Brad Pot
Brad Pot
Slovenly
2017
Rating: 7 cherry candies out of 10
It feels like all of the punk bands that have come out of Australia over the past decade or so have been custom formulated just so that I would love them - and Brad Pot continues that proud tradition. Eleven songs in twenty four minutes, this is straight-forward buzzsaw punk with heavily distorted vocals and a little bit of synth here and there. I think I might compare every punk band to something Jay Reatard was a part of, and in this case I'd go with his first outfit the Reatards. You could probably throw some Spits references in there too if you wanted. This whole album is so aggressive and immediate, it feels like Brad Pot are racing themselves to get it over with as fast as possible. No duds at all, with "100 Bills" getting my nod for top track.
Run The Jewels
RTJ3
Self-Released
2016
Rating: 9 dizzy eardrums out of 10
Hey look, another middle aged white dude who loves Run The Jewels! That's definitely a unique thing that warrants further investigation! Seriously, no one needs to hear another dipshit like me expound on the awesomeness that is El-P and Killer Mike. They manage to feel both old school and modern at the same time, which is probably exactly why RTJ appeals to people like me. There's about a million well written reviews already out there if you care to read such things, but here's the deal - if you're on the fence about Run The Jewels, they make it easy for you: go to the link above and you can download their album for free and decide for yourself if this is the best hip hop group of the last decade (hint: it is).
Side note: this came out so late in 2016 I'm probably putting it on my best of 2017 list because fuck it why not. It's probably going to be better than almost anything released in 2017 anyways.
Jeff Rosenstock
Worry.
SideOneDummy
2016
Rating: 7 ice cold cold sores out of 10
Occasionally I listen to the podcast "Who Charted?" - they almost always talk about music, usually of the top 40 variety, and I almost never like what they're talking about (but I listen anyways because Howard and Kulap are funny). A comedian by the name of Matt Besser was a guest on the show a few weeks ago talking about his favorite songs of 2016, and one of his selections was by Jeff Rosenstock - I was immediately hooked. Apparently the dude came up playing in ska-punk and pop-punk bands that were somewhat popular, but I'd never heard of him because that's definitely not my scene. This album is probably best described as (mostly) grown-up pop punk...a little less agro, a little more acoustic guitar. You can definitely hear how his old scene influenced what Rosenstock is doing now though, particularly with his reliance on sing-a-long choruses - but many of the songs are so damn catchy you don't even get mad about this overused device. I think Besser's song pick was "Wave Goodnight to Me," and I'd have to concur that it's the best track here -it was stuck in my head after only one listen. Most of the album is quite strong, but occasionally he resorts to his ska-punk past - the track "Rainbow" is particularly, um, not good, but nobody's perfect. There's enough here to make this more than worth checking out.
