February 2022, Avril Lavigne, Leanna Firestone, Zeal & Ardor and Double Gainer
Avril Lavigne - Love Sux (Elektra)
In the past two years we’ve gotten a lot of these “pop punk” records by rich Tik Tok stars, already celebrities and people who failed at other genres where they pay Travis Barker to come up with as many blink-182 b-sides as he possibly can to form a record. While this is within that universe and has features from a lot of those players, it's far from the low quality of those other albums. Avril Lavigne is the original player of this game and on Love Sux that really shows. These songs are a great time and a lot of them will probably serve as really fun revisits as the year progresses. It’s not a perfect record by any stretch, the lyrics still feel very manufactured, the features from Machine Gun Kelly and blackbear sound so lazy on their behalves, would it kill MGK to sound like he wants to be on a track? I digress. Lavigne’s come a long way from her past, very single driven records and the movie soundtrack based career that she had somewhere in between, this is a good record.
Leanna Firestone - Forward/Slash (frtyfve)
Was very much looking forward to this record based on the strength of it’s fun, pop rock single “Gambling Addiction,” which was a bit too on the nose and silly lyrically but ultimately I found myself wanting more of. That and the concept of the record itself with each track being a full song then a shorter interlude or epilogue of the track at hand sounded like a very interesting listen to me. Unfortunately what I found was a record whose sound was nothing like the one song I arrived for, which isn’t really the bad thing, the bad part is the lyrics are even lazier and the sound overall is a bit too derivative of other artists in this lane at the moment. That and usually when a single has its strength it's usually just as good if not better in the context of the record but by the time I even hear it in its place on the track listing I’m honestly less sold than before.
Zeal and Ardor - Zeal and Ardor (Redacted)
If you aren’t familiar with Zeal and Ardor you definitely should be. They are a Swiss metal band led by Manuel Gagneux but metal doesn’t even really begin to cover it. There’s traces of that here, yes, but there’s also many elements of African-American spiritual music that makes for a really interesting combination. Singles to this date back to last year and while this record isn’t their strongest showing it’s still a project you should check out. I’ve heard FFOs from black metal bands to even comparisons like Imagine Dragons and while I don’t have much notes on criticism it’s still a record I enjoyed last month and would really feel I’d be remiss not to at least mention here.
Double Gainer - B-sides & Rarities (Refresh)
Was pretty into this EP and yet found that while these songs are good, it felt like something was missing, like they weren’t quite hitting the mark for me. The title is literally B-sides & Rarities but I could find no prior material so I took it as a debut. Turns out I was right, this is a debut, but it's also a b-sides collection. Double Gainer is a new Refresh signing that has already prepped their debut record and have released the leftovers in advance, which is a bizarre strategy but one that definitely leaves me remembering this project when the time to hear the main course comes.
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