Wharton's Weekly Albums #4: Week of December 31, 2018

Wharton's Weekly Albums #4: Week of December 31, 2018

My weekly thoughts on the albums I listened to during last week's commute.

The Albums:

Coloring Book, Chance the Rapper
*Electric Warrior, T. Rex
Silent Shout, The Knife

*an asterisk indicates that this is my first listen to this album

The Thoughts:

Another short list for another short workweek.  I'm not a big fan of Chance's Coloring Book; I don't care for all the preachy Christian stuff, and it seems much more formulaic and controlled than his gleefully anarchic Acid Rap.  

Luckily both Electric Warrior and Silent Shout are superb, though for very different reasons.  Electric Warrior sounds like the distilled essence of sexy rock and roll: everything is midtempo, no ballads, barely any guitar solos, direct in its carnal intentions but hardly aggressive, syncopated to the nth degree, hips groovin' on hips, lyrics basically just words that sound sexy together.  It sounds ridiculous, but it totally works.

Silent Shout is in some ways the opposite.  Not a distilled essence, but more of an electronic cornucopia of skittering crustacean beats, icily eerie tones, and pitch-shifted vocals ranging from shrill to stentorian, used to deliver lyrics of detached and disturbed emotions.  There are creep-you-out Nordic nightmare tunes, sci-fi dance floor bangers, and bizarre Godfather references.  Again it sounds ridiculous, and again it totally works.