#albumsof2015

Kaskade - Automatic

By day, Ryan Raddon tackles the position of A&R director for OM Records.  But by night, he steps into the role of Kaskade, a DJ fresh from Chicago.  At the beginning of his career, he started off in small clubs in New York and Salt Lake City.

During the tail-end of his stay in Salt Lake City, his first attempt at producing tracks were released on Mechanized Records.  Since then, Kaskade has grown to reach an audience of 2 million monthly listeners, on Spotify alone.  Kaskade has played at events like Ulta Music Festival, reaching an audience of almost 200,000 attendees. He has attained seats on DJ Magazine’s annual Top 100 DJ Poll for several years, his highest being No. 30 in 2011.With having produced almost 10 successful albums, Kaskade has proven his understanding of the ever-changing electronic music scene.  He identifies with house music as the subgenre he loved the most.   

Throughout his music career thus far, he has collaborated with artists like Tiesto, Skrillex, and Galantis, all of which have helped shape him into the DJ he has become.On Automatic, Kaskade has produced songs like Disarm You, Never Sleep Alone, and Whatever, all sounding like a more traditional Top 40s sort of vibe.  Yet along with these more modern sounding songs, he has managed to give off a funky, progressive house feel, staying true to his electronic roots.  Personally, I’ve found this album to be his most successful yet. 

Some of the album’s highlights are the impressive vocalists like Estelle, featured in Day Trippin.  Overall, I feel the album will find success not only in the house scene, but also on the radio as well.

The Dead Weather - Crash & Burn           

 I’m sure you’ve heard of Jack White at this point. He’s everywhere within the music world, and he’s proud of it. Since the fall of the White Stripes, one of my personal favorite bands, White has focused on Third Man Records, which really just puts out gimmicky, weird records for those people who really need a vinyl copy of “Sixteen Saltines” with water in it. In recent months, however, White has quieted down a bit, or at least tried to, and has been stepping out of the spotlight as much as possible. Let’s just forget about that whole Patrick Carney fighting incident and pretend that never happened. In that same mindset, then, Jack White has teamed back up with his old Dead Weather friends, Allison Mosshart, Dean Fertita, and Jack Lawrence, where he takes a back seat to Mosshart on vocals while he plays drums. This has always been my favorite Jack White side project, even when the White Stripes were still sort of a thing, mostly because it shows a different side of one of the most famous musicians of our time. For a guy who usually loves to be in the spotlight, it’s awesome to see him behind the drums where Mosshart and the others are his equals, instead of the duo hierarchy of the White Stripes. Not to mention that I also love them because they have a killer sound. Their long awaited third album, “Dodge and Burn,” came out last month, to my excitement, and to my surprise. After five long years this thing kind of came out of nowhere, I had honestly assumed White was moving on to focus on his solo career. But to my great pleasure, I was wrong, and here we are.

           The album starts out with the one song I had heard as a single, “I Feel Love (Every Million Miles).” It is your quintessential Dead Weather song. It’s hard hitting and heavy musically, with Mosshart’s vocals to kind of keep you on edge but also get you pumped up at the same time. I’ve said it before, but it’s the kind of music you need to listen to while wearing a leather jacket and aviators to. So basically, just look like Allison Mosshart herself and you’re set. The Dead Weather have a formula they seem to stick to for their music, but to their credit, it works really well. It’s not over the top, crazy stuff, it’s simple, easy guitar work with some hard, overly abrasive drums and those intense vocals from Mosshart on basically every song. They don’t change it up much, and they don’t have to. And honestly, when they do change it up, like they try to on this album a bit, it doesn’t really sound right. This song is nothing new, but I like it that way.

           “Buzzkill(er)” comes after “I Feel Love,” and once again it’s exactly what you’d expect. Everything is so intense and angry, the basic Dead Weather sound, and it comes off the last song well. It has a slightly different guitar effect though, I think it might be a bit more phasered out. Other than that though, “Buzzkill(er)” isn’t anything new, but I’ve already come to terms with that.

           “Let Me Through” is the third track on “Dodge and Burn,” and so far it’s the only one wasn’t really sure about. I like it, but I think the only thing wrong with it is the guitar part. The guitar gets really repetitive and almost kind of annoying. That’s actually a common theme in The Dead Weather. The guitar never really gets too crazy, it more just plays a steady, solid background for Mosshart to yell over. And that’s usually fine, the guitar is fun and simple, but here it gets to me. I’ll admit, there’s a pretty decent semi-solo part at the end, but it’s just too similar throughout. A lot of the times though the guitar is really gritty and dark and adds a lot to the song, but not in this case.

           If you didn’t like the last song, then just skip this next one, because it’s even worse. It’s the first song with White’s vocals in the forefront on “Dodge and Burn,” and that might be why it’s so bad. He tries to have this almost rap like flow, and yells and squeaks at parts, and it just kills me. The song is actually really cool when Mosshart comes in during the middle breakdown part, and the bass part is pretty interesting too, but I can’t accept it because of the dumb verses. Seriously, at one point Jack White puts on his best Eminem impression and says “I got three young kids and a bad ass wife.” I mean why? Just why?

           “Lose the Right” starts off pretty well with those awesome Dead Weather patented rim shots that come straight out of Jamaica and keeps that flow going with some great vocals. It’s definitely one of the more usual Dead Weather type songs on the album so far. There’s a really quick guitar solo that sounds like it came off “Icky Thump,” one of my favorite White Stripes album. I liked that little nostalgia trip, so this song got extra points there.

           “Rough Detective” begins with this jazzy drumbeat and then continues with a really bluesy guitar intro until we hit the usual Dead Weather sweet spot. This is the first track where White and Mosshart call back and forth with the vocals like they used to do pretty often. I like that little conversation they have sometimes, like on “Die By The Drop,” a song that’s not on this album but that you should check out anyway.

           “Open Up (That’s Enough)” is a cool song because it’s pretty chilled out and then just explodes in the middle. It’s one of the quicker paced tracks on the album and really gets going. It’s a pretty “White Stripes” sounding song, like something from “White Blood Cells.” It reminds me that these guys can down and dirty, but they’re still a rock band that can jam out at points. Everything on the album so far feels somewhat subdued and held back, which is something you don’t expect from these guys. I enjoyed that little burst of energy there. And it’s not that this album doesn’t have energy, it has a lot of it, especially from Mosshart, but it doesn’t feel like the completely raw energy they used to have.

           The next three songs, “Be Still, “Mile Markers,” and “Cop and Go” are all pretty similar so I’ll just lump them together quick. “Be Still” has a slow intro but a pretty cool ending, “Mile Markers” has a good drum beat but it still has that dumb rap flow like “Three Dollar Hat” had, and “Cop and Go” has a cool intro and gets pretty high energy like “Open Up.” Bam, I just wrecked this review thing, I should do that more often.

           “It’s Just Too Bad” is the penultimate song and it sums up the album nicely. It’s fun and high energy and gritty, but it’s somewhat forgettable. It’s not a bad song, but it’s not sticking to me like other Dead Weather songs/albums. It very well could be that I need to listen to it more to appreciate it, but after listening to it twice through I can only remember “I Feel Love” and that “Three Dollar Hat” song, but that’s only because I hated it. I’ll give it more time though.

           “Impossible Winner” is a really strange song. I can’t think of any other Dead Weather song that is like a rock ballad, but this one definitely is. It’s basically just Mosshart accompanied by piano. It’s really strange, because it’s pretty good, but it feels too forced and over produced. It feels out of place too, like it was thrown in to have a bit of complexity or to try something different. It’s a good song though, and Mosshart’s vocals make anything sound amazing, so it’s hard to say exactly how this song makes me feel. It feels like a knock off James Bond song or something, like it’s for some action movie. It left me with mixed feelings, let’s just say.

           This album is one of those that makes you want to go back and listen to the band’s other works. It’s good, and I enjoyed listening to it, but nothing can beat “Horehound” and “Sea of Cowards,” and maybe that’s why I don’t like it as much as I should. I mean, if this album came from an unknown band without expectations to live up to, I would be thoroughly impressed, but maybe I was expecting too much. I don’t know what I was anticipating though, after listening to “Lazaretto,” it became apparent that Jack White had somewhat lost that authentic touch. What I loved about the White Stripes, especially off albums like “De Stijl” is that the sound was so authentic and intimate, and it had that early punk rawness to it. Now everything he does just feels overdone and staged. Like fighting Patrick Carney in a New York bar…

85/100