Sunday, June 17, 2018

#2948 Tierra Whack - Whack World

Leave the visual component out of it - a few cool shots aside it mostly feels too-literal and lazily whimsical, like the worst Gondry. Plus the whole-album-video and super-short-song-album gimmicks kinda cancel eachother out.

On its own though, the super-short-song thing feels less like a gimmick. Underground excursions like the Punch Line and Bee Thousand were exercises in no-fat hookcrafting, but the commitment to one minute onthedot inspires some unique songwriting and sets up a hypnotic rhythm (with 100x the actual listenability of The Commercial Album).

Every song feels unrushed, and Whack still finds time for intros, bridges, choruses, repetition // change -- everything you expect from pop songs. There's demarcation between tracks, but flow across the album too;  mundane, soft-focus vignettes with magic in the corners, with the loose positivity that evokes Chicago more than Philadelphia. A curious, unique little record, as this wave of hip hop drifts, like rock before it, further into arty experimentation 4/5

No comments:

Post a Comment