#bryansmith

Jinkx Monsoon’s sophomore album ‘The Ginger Snapped’ is a bombastic celebration

Bryan Smith

“Feeling like pussy, feeling like cunt. Make way for the Queen”. When the curtains pull back and the lights dim at the start of ‘The Ginger Snapped’, you are instantly greeted with a sassy anthem highlighting extreme and silly aspects of the drag queen lifestyle. This album is absolutely dripping with style, satire and attitude, just like Jinkx Monsoon themself (self-identified as gender fluid, thus preferring the pronouns their, they, and them). Monsoon (a.k.a. Jerick Hoffer) embraces the extremes of drag culture while poking fun at them too.

There is a lot of musical variety here thanks to Monsoon’s musical partner Major Scales, with layers of piano, power chords, heavy bass, strings, and brass sprinkled throughout. The album plays a lot like a Broadway production where Monsoon is the main character that critiques and reflects on their experiences in society. Monsoon’s charming vocals cut through the noise every time in a satisfying way, and they help deliver a sonorous experience that never left me feeling bored or wanting more.  

The Shins flip folk rock music on its head with ‘The Worm’s Heart’

Bryan Smith

This January The Shins released a flipped version of last year’s album “Heartworms” in a new form called “The Worm’s Heart”. The term “flipped” refers to the reversed song order contrasting the latter album, as well as alterations to tempo, key, and instrumentals for each individual track.

It is exciting to have a tandem album experience that contains such a focused effort of musical discovery and critique. In an interview with NPR James Mercer (singer and song writer for The Shins) created “Heartworms” to reflect the changes in rock music and the changes in his own interpretation of what rock music was. “The Worm’s Heart” takes that thesis of exploration and folds it further in on itself to create something new.

“The Worm’s Heart” is probably not going to be a huge hit with loyal fans of “Heartworms”, since “Heartworms” runs a much closer parallel to the Shins’ classic sound. That doesn’t mean that “The Worm’s Heart” is a bad album. On its own, it still stands as a well-produced and engaging album. But it does take great liberties with the sound traditionally associated with The Shins, which is a bit of a let down at times. It manages to improve certain underwhelming songs with the changes made through flipped versions of certain tracks, but at the cost of reducing my enjoyment of previous favorite songs. Overall this album had a scarcity of tracks that jumped out as hits.

Extreme Adventure on the Edge with Bryan Smith

Biography of Bryan Smith

Join Bryan Smith, an award winning filmmaker,  adventurer, and conservationist for the National Geographic Channel, as he shares gripping moments from his assignments to document extreme feats and high adventure in the world’s most challenging environments.

  An experienced kayaker who paddled steep rivers in India, Peru, and Russia, Smith was inspired to take up video…