The Review - New Music week of June 29 from Apple Music/Beats 1, Neil Young, Refused & Vince Sta
New Music week of June 29 from Apple Music/Beats 1, Neil Young, Refused & Vince Staples
Tough to talk about new music this week and not mention Apple’s latest offering: Apple Music & Beats 1. I’m all in on Apple. I own a lot of their products, look forward to their conferences announcing new products and generally subscribe to ‘their stuff just works’… plus it looks really good doing it. I’ve been looking forward to Apple getting into the streaming game for a long time. In fact I put trying out other services in anticipation that it was coming soon. This was a couple years ago and after getting rid of my expansive CD collection I got into music streaming and haven’t looked back.
I spent a couple years with Rdio to start. I was happy with the product, everything worked well including mobile apps and syncing content offline worked really nicely. The interface was clean and easy to navigate. What always frustrated me with Rdio was the delay in new releases. Before Spotify was in Canada you could see artists putting their albums up on Spotify a week before release, or drop surprise albums (see Kendrick Lamar, Drake and D’Angelo). These albums would take awhile to show up in Rdio and in this “I want to hear it NOW” world, it was frustrating having to wait.
Once Spotify launched in Canada, I quickly jumped from Rdio to them. Spotify has been good, mostly due to the larger song catalogue compared to Rdio. I don’t like the interface as much as Rdio and the mobile isn’t good at all.
To me the landscape was set for Apple to come in and make a splash. And they have!
Was Tuesday’s launch perfect for Apple? Absolutely not and I encourage you to read Bob Lefsetz’s three blog posts this week chronicling his experience with Apple (it’s been far from positive but he seems to remain optimistic). Zane Lowe was the big draw for me to press play on Beats 1. Years ago I fluked out and found him on TuneIn Radio and I’ve been impressed ever since. I have discovered countless new music courtesy of his BBC 1 radio show. He seamlessly could weave new Slipknot into a Disclosure track and it worked. It worked, because this was how I listened to music. I didn’t stop at one genre or a handful of bands… I wanted to consume all of it, hear it all and experience it all. Bringing us to this week. With my Spotify premium account cancelled in anticipation of the 3 month free trial for Apple Music I was ready to give their streaming a full proper go. Little did I know how much I needed a station like Beats 1 and how much I would spend this week listening to it. I’ve heard new songs from Zane Lowe, caught Ellie Goulding’s hour show and found out that President Obama is listening to Outkast & The Black Keys this week courtesy of Ebro Darden. Beats 1 has completely over-shadowed Apple Music week 1 and I love it.
New music still came out this week and that includes one of my favourites, Neil Young. ‘The Monsanto Years’ came out this week, making it his fourth since 2012. I enjoyed ‘Psychedelic Pill’ but found some of it to be tough listening with songs hitting the rambling 20-minute mark. ‘A Letter Home’ & ‘Storytone’ were disappointments although I understand the quirkiness of an album like ‘A Letter Home’, the quality just makes it a slog to get through. ‘The Monsanto Years’ is Neil partnering up with Willie Nelson’s boys, Lukas and Micah. It’s a protest album but it’s once again left me wanting more from Neil. I like that Neil puts himself out there. Has an opinion, cares about our Earth and uses his voice to get the word across. To me that’s what’s important about this album. It’s less about songs that’ll make up another Neil Young Greatest Hits package and more about someone with that large of a spotlight upon him, willing to say these things. As Young sings in the albums opener: “It’s a bad day to do nothin’’… and I couldn’t agree more.
Refused released their first album in 17 years, ‘Freedom’, this week and they’ve picked up where ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ left off. ‘Freedom’ is just as heavy and has much swagger, as you would expect from Refused. The opener ‘Elektra’ sets the album up with a thudding drum beat and the band don’t let up for the next 45 minutes.
Refused is another band I came into VERY late but spending time with ‘The Shape…’ over the past couple years had me curious to see them live and wondering if new music would ever happen. We got the answer this week and damn is it good to have new music from Refused. Stand out tracks our Elektra, Dawkins Christ, Francafrique and 366.
I also checked out Vince Staples this week after finding it impossible to avoid the hype. Still not sure what I think but early indications of feeling underwhelmed. I’m planning to give it another listen, especially in the car, where I find you can give albums the right setting and volume!
Next week I will take look at more of Beats 1, including Dr Dre’s show (where I predict he will debut a new Dre track and maybe even an update on his elusive next album) and Four Tet.