Six Records

Went back to The Best Of N.E.R.D. this week, which is never a good sign. Pharrell and the crew had this thing figured out—looked untouchable, surrounded by beautiful women, more fun than seemed legal. Listening now it’s just competent. Nothing wrong with it, nothing that makes you feel alive. That’s the worst thing an album can be.

JJ from Sweden shouldn’t work. The production is deliberately rough, the synths are thin, nothing polished. But there’s this urgency underneath that makes you listen. Sometimes the cheapest thing is the most honest thing.

Gorillaz made an album on an iPad and you can hear it—thin, hollow, like they were goofing around. Clint Eastwood was genuinely great. This isn’t. At least it’s free so you’re only losing time.

Chromeo is pure sex on a beat, which is their entire job and they execute it perfectly. The problem is everything else suffers. Around song five it all starts sounding the same. It’s fine for an hour at a club, but then the emptiness catches up with you.

King Night by Salem is the strange one. Those vocals are aggressive without trying to be cool, the synths deliberately ugly. The whole thing feels hostile in a way that feels earned, not affected. I played it three times and felt worse each time, which meant something was working.

Then there’s Peach Kelli Pop—a twenty-two-year-old making lo-fi bedroom pop where the imperfection is the whole point. It’s the record I’d least recommend to anyone, but it’s the one I keep coming back to for reasons I don’t fully understand.