You sent me photos from the hemisphere

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's 50 best albums of 2024.

#38 : For Your Consideration - Empress Of

After being dumped by a Hollywood director who began his Oscars “for your consideration” campaign the next day, Lorely Rodriguez played him at his own game and turned the breakup into a concept album about want and desire – one that doesn’t waste a second moping. Instead, with co-production from Rodriguez and artists including Nick Léon and Umru, For Your Consideration is a hot, sticky, direct dance-pop record that reflects her Latin roots and unknockable self-confidence: the joke of the title is that she doesn’t care for external approval at all. On the back cover she’s painted gold like an awards statuette. “I’m choosing myself,” she told Rolling Stone. “I know this record is good.”

Another artist I've never heard of, but from the description above, it sounds like something I might like - so fingers crossed!

Yeah - I liked this a lot. She's like a Latina Robyn (with Charli XCX and Dua Lipa also coming to mind in places) with strong beats and pointed lyrics - she was amusingly pissed off at her ex, whilst also questioning her own behaviour. I particularly liked "What Type Of Girl Am I?" but it was all pretty decent and sounded very good loud.

Wikipedia had more than I was expecting on the album, but remarkably little content - although I was pleased to see that MUNA and Rina Sawayama are involved in the album, so she's got decent friends! The critics were very nice about it and I think we can all agree with Clash that the album "is a bolder exploration of pop’s electronic soundscapes that shuffles turntablism and low-key escapism into chromatic highs". Unfortunately, that didn't mean that it charted anywhere though.

"Customers also listened to" Porij, Julia Holter, TRY and Shygirl & Club Shy - I've at least heard of Julia, but that's all I've got there. But I'd never heard of Empress Of before and I really liked this - it's well worth checking out if you like a strong dance beat involved and some decent lyrics.

#37 : No Name - Jack White

White’s latest had a punkish release strategy: unmarked vinyl copies were popped into customers’ shopping bags at his Third Man Records stores, then he encouraged the recipients to leak the album online. Those tactics matched the music, which is the absolute opposite to careful strategy – it’s a first-thought-best-thought ripper full of riffs that could kick a saloon door off its hinges, the production values of an amphetamine-charged 1960s teenage garage rock band and White doing a series of outrageously fun takes on the frontman: hellfire preacher, punk oik, classic rocker. If it had been his solo debut it would be canonised by now – hopefully it’ll still earn the classic status it wears so casually.

Mr White is someone I find interesting and admirable without generally particularly enjoying his music - it's just a bit too rough and ready for me and I don't overly like his voice. I'm always interested to hear what he's done though and The Guardian seems very keen on this!

Well - I still don't particularly like his voice, but there's a lot about this album that's really very good indeed. The songs are all well put-together and there's some cracking guitar work on it - there's a real Led Zep feel to a lot of it. It's not generally my kind of thing, but I really quite enjoyed it and I suspect if I listened to it again, I'd enjoy it some more. If you like this sort of thing and Jack's "punkish record strategy" passed you by then I strongly recommend you check it out. 

Wikipedia has way more than I expected on the album (121 milliPeppers) and, funnily enough, there's quite a bit on the release strategy. If you bought something in any of the Third Man stores (in Detroit, London or Nashville) on July 19th, then you got given a white vinyl album with No Name printed on it and no further details - which is certainly an interesting way of going about things. The critics were very nice about it, with many saying it harked back to his White Stripes days - Mojo put it at #1 on their year-end list. Commercially it did OK, getting to the top forty in quite a few European countries including #33 here and #7 in Switzerland, but only getting to #108 in the US. 

"Customers also listened to" The White Stripes (of course), The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather and The Smashing Pumpkinds - some decent US rawk there. Which, as I say, isn't usually my thing, but I thought this was a fine album - and if I think it's fine, then others will think it's fucking A, man!

#36 : #RICHAXXHAITIAN - Mach-Hommy

“Vagabond, nose in the bolognese, moi / Triceratops hoping I’ma stay calm …” From the opening lyrics onwards, the Haitian-American MC sets off on riveting stream-of-consciousness flows somewhere between Ghostface Killah or RZA’s delivery for Wu-Tang Clan, and fellow new-school sages such as Billy Woods and Earl Sweatshirt. The beats are full of old soul and library music samples warping in the sun alongside fresh input from jazzy outsiders such as Georgia Anne Muldrow and Sam Gendel. But rather than freestyle and meander, Mach-Hommy keeps the whole album tacking towards the mainstream, locking into keenly rhythmic verses and satisfying choruses.

Well - who knows what I'm going to get here from the description above? Whatever it is, I have a suspicion I'm not going to like it.

Well - I wouldn't say I like it, but I don't hate it either. It would be great if I could actually describe it to you so you decide if you think you'd like it - but all I've got is "really quite weird". It feels quite old school to me, but I'm not the man to really know whether that's true - it was an interesting listen, but only in a "huh, wtf is this?" kinda way.

For a change, Wikipedia tells me it's "an album" rather than putting a number on it - I checked out his discography to understand why and it suggests it might be his 30th, but I suspect there's probably some discussion about nomenclature - he released NINE in '17 alone! There's not a lot else on there other than the critics were nice about it - it didn't chart and I'm not saying it would have done, but he certainly didn't help matters by removing it from Spotify and YouTube, criticising their mismanagement of his statistics (which I bet made them love him even more!).

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - which does not surprise me in the slightest. I think this is worth listening to if you like hearing something different but I can't say I'll be rushing back to it, I'm afraid.

Sorry to Mach-Hommy, but there's absolutely no way he's taking this round! The other two are hard to differentiate between - Empress Of is much more my sort of thing and it's definitely the album I preferred, but Jack White's album was so much more enjoyable than I was expecting and I can see it would be the favourite for many others. So let's have our first honourable draw of the year - well done to Lorely (I'm not going to call her Empress) and Jack!

#41-39 - Three decent albums
#35-33 - Well, I liked one of them!