Big Boi & Sleepy Brown
Can’t Sleep
Smoove. And I use the term advisedly, because this sounds like Trevor Nelson’s record of the week from 2003. A simpler time, when all you needed was a vintage soul sample, 17 layers of female harmonies and a kick drum tuned lower than Satan’s ballsack. While André Benjamin has morphed into rap’s JD Salinger, Big Boi has never got enough respect for spending the past decade churning out brilliantly competent potboilers. Call him the Stephen King of rap.
Bring Me the Horizon
Parasite Eve
On paper, metal is a good perch from which to approach coronavirus. The zombie apocalypse is certainly within BMTH’s sonic mandate, and Oli Sykes gives it a good bit of teenage philosophising: what does it all mean? It’s almost like the real plague is in our minds, man … But really, it’s just a bit late in the day, isn’t it?
The Chicks
March March
Remember when Dixie Chicks caused a huge Nashville scandal by opposing George W Bush? Turns out that hasn’t stopped the other side from taking their D***e. They’re clinging to the “Chicks” by a thread, and Matt Johnson has already nabbed the “The”, so God knows what this robust little twanger will be titled by the time this review is published. Subs: please adjust.
Kanye West ft Travis Scott
Wash Us in the Blood
I know we’re all feeling a bit testy, but has anyone checked in with Kanye lately? He seems to be writing an awful lot of dark, frenetic tracks that sound like someone pouring a baby into the bear enclosure. Of course, great artists have every right to go off-piste, but this has all the commercial potential of a Metal Machine Music B-sides compilation.
The Flaming Lips
My Religion Is You
“When you get the message, hang up,” was how Timothy Leary described ending his own LSD days. Well, Wayne Coyne has been dialling divinity since the 80s, yet here – on what might loosely be termed “the Flaming Lips’s Free Bird” – he has just reached the part of the trip where a deeper humanism replaces airy-fairy spiritual meanderings. Wake me up when we get to enlightenment?
