Wavves: V

In July, Nathan Williams became the latest musician to show you can take the boy out of indie but you can’t take the indie out of the boy: He got in a fight with his major label. Williams uploaded "Way Too Much", a single from his then-untitled new album, to SoundCloud, only to see Warner Bros. take it down. Without disclosing Warner’s motivation behind the takedown, he implied the label was threatening to sue him, and wrote, "Its so obnoxious to work tirelessly on something and then have a bunch of ppl who just see me as a money sign go and fuck it all up."

On this, Warner was right: V is definitely not a record that’s going to make them a lot of money. That would require Williams writing the pop-punk crossover LP of his career—a little more Paramore, a little less Psychedelic Horseshit. Instead, what we have is an angry collection of songs more indebted to his recent collaboration with Cloud Nothings and the brute-force approach of his earlier releases, where punk catharsis was achieved by saying the same lyric over and over. (Say "I’m so bored" five times fast and you, in fact, will feel bored.)

V was inspired by a breakup, as well as the band’s hellaciously bad habits: 100 beers and two bottles of Jameson a night for the four-piece group, a period of "just drinking, straight drinking,” as Williams says in the album’s press materials. Accordingly, V sounds like a hangover. Every song starts somewhere dismal, and ends up somewhere that’s only a little hopeful—a process akin to the recovery from a hangover, when by the end you're mostly happy not to be drooling and vomiting on yourself. Multiple tracks refer to headaches both physical and spiritual. Williams’ budget has outsized the lo-fi recordings he made his name with, but he hasn't deviated much from the core formula. Though there’s room for easy-breezy surf rock ("Heavy Metal Detox"), insistent riffage ("Flamezesz", "Pony"), and shuddering sounds ripped from a horror movie ("Redlead"), the predominant aesthetic is dirty and discordant backed by big harmonies—the sweet spot from which all memorable Wavves songs emerge.

It’s a faster record, too: V abandons Williams’ previous attempts at balladry, with all slow moments preceding the eventual assault. At times, the pace works to his advantage. Williams writes a killer hook, and it’s easy to hear crowds slamming along to the feel-bad vibes of "Heavy Metal Detox",  "All the Same", "Way Too Much", and "My Head Hurts". A line like "I lost my job today, but it’s all the same" ("All the Same") is delivered much more happily than "It gets better" ("Pony"), a reminder that he’s better reveling in angst than trying to convince us it doesn’t matter.

When he leans into his ennui, V achieves momentarily thrilling peaks. Williams is a child of singers like Billie Joe Armstrong and Tom DeLonge, pop-punk brats great at sounding snotty next to a massive chorus. The best songs remind you of his keen ability for penning sonically fractured, melodically appealing "woe-is-me" anthems that won’t bruise you too badly in the pit. (The best songs were written with the other members of the band, too, suggesting a necessary camaraderie.)

Still, V is a slight regression from the subtle growth he showed on 2013’s Afraid of Heights. Songs like "Demon to Lean On" and "Cop" weren’t just excellent songs—they showed the crystallization of the Wavves project into something mature, a word that’s rarely been used to describe Williams or his music. V will make you think he’s lapsed back to his #worstbehavior. Take a characteristic line like "Everything sucks if you don’t get your way" from "Tarantula"—it’s like he fell through a portal from 2009, and is back to playing the perpetual brat. V is a perfectly capable record, one that showcases what we’ve come to expect—and in many cases, enjoy—from Williams and his band. Even so, you wonder where else they might have gone.

Various Artists: Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast Recording

Hip hop is nothing if not rich in drama. Beyond even the competitive feuding, the best rap music chronicles its makers' highs and lows, detailing the gnarly realities of difficult lives lived triumphantly. Hip hop and theater, with their shared fondness for linear narrative, should make for more frequent bedfellows, but it took until this year for the two genres to combine to properly resounding effect. Debuting at the Public Theater to raves earlier this year and accumulating hype ever since, the rapped musical Hamilton tells the story of the United States founding father born and orphaned in the Caribbean, who used a prodigious writing talent to catapult himself off the island of St. Croix and leave as deep a thumbprint in United States history as has been made.

Hamilton could not have been an easy show to write, even for a theater savant like Lin-Manuel Miranda, the 35 year-old Grammy-winning author of In The Heights and recent MacAuthur "Genius Grant" recipient. The play is composed of 46 individual songs, here split between two discs (Acts I and II) that make up the album. Adopted by Miranda from Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton, the songs are vehicles for Hamilton’s life experiences, and great pains have been taken to maintain the accuracy of an already-fascinating story amidst the likewise-necessary shimmer of theatrical performance. Pairing early US history with one of the country’s youngest musical art forms, one born of the underprivileged especially, could have been as painful as listening to one of your history teachers "bust a rhyme," but Miranda’s command of both golden era hip hop and showtunes allows him to turn the pomp and circumstance of even congressional proceedings on its head.

Though ostensibly a rap record, from the show opener, "Alexander Hamilton", it’s immediately apparent that we are still essentially in musical-theater territory. Theatrical dialogue must be clear and audible to reach its audience—even when presented in song—which denies the cast the freedom to indulge in grand tonal flourishes or vocal tics. Miranda and his cast’s delivery is steadfast and well-enunciated, the flows delivered with a watchmaker’s precision. It helps that the song itself is a bracingly economical synopsis of Hamilton’s early years: The treacherous hurricane that destroyed St. Croix, the letter he wrote  to his absentee father that published by a local paper and caused such a fervor on the island that a group of businessmen took up a collection to send the then 17 year-old Hamilton to New York for college. 

Disc one is the more jovial of the pair, chronicling Hamilton’s rise to prominence, and flexing a number of smile-inducing touchtones. Over beatboxing and a drum breakdown replicating hands banging on a lunch table, we get introduced to eventual Hamilton murderer, Aaron Burr. "My Shot" is Miranda spouting couplets in a manner a little too close to slam poetry for anyone’s good, but a number introducing "The Schuyler Sisters", (one of whom Hamilton would marry and another of whom he’d keep a suspiciously affectionate pen pal correspondence with) sounds like it could have been a last-second album exclusion for one hit wonder and infamous Wyclef protégés, City High. "Wait For It" moves with a dancehall lilt and "The Ten Duel Commandments" pays homage to the Notorious B.I.G.’s "10 Crack Commandments".

Disc two is Hamilton’s unraveling, covering, among other things, his affair with one Maria Reynolds and the very public fallout that followed and the death of his 19-year old son in a duel defending his father’s honor. Musically, there are direct allusions to LL Cool J and Mobb Deep ("I’m only 19 but my mind is older," Phillip Hamilton spouts on "Blow Us All Away", a near-quote of "Shook Ones Pt. II") and an a capella verse from Miranda on the second-to-last track "The World Was Wide Enough" is thoroughly reminiscent of the prayers that used to close out DMX albums.

The Hamilton cast recording was executive produced by Black Thought and ?uestlove of the Roots, who know maybe better than anyone the intricacies of presenting hip hop over live instrumentation successfully. These are, however, still very much showtunes. An audience for musical theater comes to hear a story first and foremost (they bury the backing musicians in a pit, for goodness sakes) and the songs of Hamilton work to that end with every bar, even when seamlessly formatted for storyline, as in the case of the show’s freestyle battles by way of cabinet debates.

As an educational tool, Hamilton is a new standard, a piece that will very likely do more to cement Hamilton’s legacy into the consciousness of the general public than any history class ever could. Kaplan would be wise to commission volumes of these kinds of hip hop-driven biographies from Miranda and force him into some kind of lifetime contract. As an album, however, the audio removed from visual context, it’s a lot to digest. It’s 46 songs of verbose, intricately delivered raps, spun from a story with enough character to have already made it a New York Times best-seller. There’s a lot of ground to cover regardless of medium.

The closest thing to it in popular rap in recent memory would be Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. Just like Hamilton, GKMC is an album that requires time and attention, and rewards that investment handsomely. Hamilton, though, is an album for a very specific audience. It’s for theater lovers, sure, but more generally for people who probably wish they were watching a production of Hamilton. There’s an argument to be made that GKMC’s songs, too, work best within the context of the entire album, as a holistic production to be devoured whole hog. But many of those songs are able to live on their own as great radio singles in a way Miranda’s songs never could. For Hamilton there is no such debate. You need the whole of it, from curtain rise to call.

Battles: La Di Da Di

Battles’ third album, La Di Da Di, feels like a return to something elemental and specific in the band’s history. It is satisfyingly clean, echoing the bright, shiny flatness of the current digital landscape. It’s as basic as these guys can get, which all said, isn't especially basic: The music feels like a highly-saturated, highly-composed Takashi Murakami print, or a website that needed a lot of programming to make it look as basic and usable as possible (not for nothing are there songs here called "Dot Com" and "Dot Net").

They could’ve easily gone in a different direction. After a series of early EPs, Battles had their breakout with their 2007 debut LP, Mirrored, a collection bolstered by the single, "Atlas", a propulsive track featuring the sped-up, processed vocals of Tyondai Braxton: part man, part machine, part Saturday morning cartoon. It was bouncy, energetic, instantly memorable, and had an appropriately shiny, cathartic video that found the group performing the song in a glossy, glassy cube. It also meant they had a de facto "frontman."

But Braxton left while Battles were recording the followup, 2011’s Gloss Drop. As a result, the remaining members invited a few guest vocalists to contribute: Gary Numan, Kazu Makino, the Boredoms' Yamantaka Eye. The biggest song was the sunny, poppy "Ice Cream", which featured vocals from Chilean producer Matias Aguayo. It didn’t necessarily sound like Battles, but like "Atlas", it had a great, sexy video and got a lot of traction. Expanding the number of knob turners, Gloss Drop was followed by a remix collection, Dross Glop, that included reworkings by Kode9, Shabazz Palaces, Gang Gang Dance, the Field, Hudson Mohawke, and others.

That’s a lot of cooks, for sure, and when your core group features players like heavy-hitting drummer John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk), virtuosic guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm & Stress), and bassist/guitarist Dave Konopka, vocals and additional hands aren’t necessary. These are expressive, inventive players who know how to compose and execute in interesting, affecting ways. They can basically "talk" through their instruments, and it was a good move to strip things back on La Di Da Di, a vocal-free collection heavy on repetition. You might think of Trans Am, Factory Floor, or Zombi, but it’s squarely Battles. The various vocalists on Gloss Drop gave that collection a kind of chaotic or "various artists" feel—here there’s a solidity and feeling of forward motion.

It’s at its best early, especially on the almost-7-minute opener, "Yabba", which starts with a wash of colorful feedback before moving into a tight pulse of keyboards that sound like guitars, guitars that sound like keyboards, and rumbling drums and bells. (This is echoed in the final song of the collection, "Luu Le", which feels like a deconstruction of what came before it.) La Di Da Di succeeds when you’re on the edge of your seat. It’s less successful, mostly in the middle and toward the end, when things start to come off a bit like playful incidental ambient bits or post-rock circus music.

The best songs bring to mind super specific images (here were a few of mine: a landscape of yellow parakeets, an HTML version of the Who, a Magic Rock sculpture, "attack of the Sea Monkeys", the recent Earth catalogue sped-up and painted neon, a mime dressed in a rainbow-colored unitard), and that’s part of what makes Battles interesting. Things drag here and there, mostly when they move away from hyper speed to mid-tempo, and when Stanier’s drums take a bit of a backseat to the instruments piling up in front and around them. During those moments, Battles sound like too many instrumental acts with chops, and lose what makes them special. At 50 minutes, it's maybe a bit too long: when you're working with coiled energy, you can't afford to lose momentum. That said, when they're in the zone, there's not much like it.

Run the Jewels: Meow The Jewels

Cats are the Internet's favorite pets for many reasons, not least of which is their endless mystery. By some estimates, felines were first domesticated around 12,000 years ago—and yet, even now, we humans don't fully understand something as simple as their purr. There are theories. A purr can translate to contentment, sure, but it could also indicate hunger, or fright. Most intriguingly, those low rumbles may double as a healing mechanism for cats and people alike: purrs vibrate at frequencies between 20 and 140 hertz, which happens to be ideal for mending bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. If purrs do indeed have such powers, Run the Jewels' new cat-sampling remix album could very well be the most physically restorative record ever made—there are a lot of fucking purring sounds on this thing.

Before it became an IRL curio featuring the production talents of everyone from Prince Paul and Dan the Automator, to members of Portishead and Massive Attack, to hip-hop heavies Just Blaze and the Alchemist, Meow the Jewels was merely another LOLcat goof. In the runup to last year's Run the Jewels 2, El-P and Killer Mike decided to have a bit of fun with online feline culture as well as fan-gouging pre-order-package culture by offering to “re-record RTJ2 using nothing but cat sounds for music” for $40,000. Soon enough, modern crowdfunding mentality kicked in and a Kickstarter raised $66,000 to get the idea off the ground. The way in which this project lines up with the duo's paradoxical ethos, where they're able to spit the most cartoonish puff-chest bars alongside deadly serious tales of death and strife, can be observed in a recent El-P tweet: “did we make the silliest, occasionally most grating possible remix album? of course. and we did it for you, mike brown and eric garner.” (All profits made by the album will go to charity.)

It's easy, and not wholly inaccurate, to dismiss Meow the Jewels as a well-meaning wisecrack that went several steps too far. Even El-P himself told Deadspin, “I would never even insult the world by saying [the album is] 'good,' but it's certainly the high-water mark for cat-sound records, I think.” So while the way these remixers warp meows, hisses, scratches, yelps, and purrs into passable rap beats is impressive, only a few songs rise above the level of novelty. Part of this has to do with the fact that, you know, this is 42 minutes of rapping over cat sounds, but it's also hard to compete with El-P's original Earth-scorching production, perhaps his finest beatmaking in a career that has spanned two decades.

While some tracks unwisely try to replicate the source material's dystopian energy, the best moments come when remixers go blissfully off-script. Portishead's Geoff Barrow empties out the beat of “Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck)”, replacing it with a disorienting, subwoofer-shaking purr, a tiny cat-collar bell, and some stray yowling for good measure—it sounds like what “Grindin'”-era Neptunes may have done with this odd opportunity if given the chance. But best-in-show honors goes to frequent Grimes collaborator Blood Diamonds, whose featherlight beat for “All Due Respect” injects some appropriate, non-corny levity into the proceedings, which can otherwise feel weirdly dark. 

But Meow the Jewels isn't really about music at all; instead, it's a major milestone in cats' slow-but-inevitable climb to the status of Hip-Hop's Favorite Animal. In the '90s, I grew up with Snoop Doggy Dogg (whose grace and ease in life and on record always seemed more cat-like anyway) and DMX espousing canine superiority. It was a particularly masculine—and perhaps, um, overcompensating—pose during an era of unparalleled hip-hop machismo. There was a sociological element to this: The use of snarling pitbulls as a way for underprivileged men to exhibit control while caught in an unjust system of power. But, for DMX at least, the obsession could also get strange and ugly—the rapper has been charged with dozens of counts of animal cruelty since his heyday. 

This century, as hip-hop continues to grow up and expand its borders, the genre's once-strong walls—between mainstream and underground, masculine and feminine—continue to crumble into dust. Run the Jewels itself is a sterling example of this, a duo that could bury any given meathead rapper with outlandish tough talk while also out-smarting any indie-rap dork with vitriolic politics and heart. Meow the Jewels is the result of what happens when cats are afforded more respect and notoriety (largely thanks to umpteen YouTube videos) as hip-hop's subversive streak is allowed to flourish (largely thanks to umpteen YouTube videos). Paving the way to this moment were fellow rap rebels Lil B—the form's most committed rule-breaker—and his adopted tabby cat KeKe, who released a wild, purr-sampling track three years ago; Danny Brown and his beloved bengal Siren; and Tyler, the Creator's tendency to put cat heads on every shirt he can sell. Cats are fascinating in part because of their autonomy: They will most certainly lie down, but not on your command. This is the same independent spirit we desire in our artists. The European philosopher Albert Schweitzer once said, “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” It's high time hip-hop figured this out, too. 

Big Grams: Big Grams

As a solo rapper, Big Boi has been pushing steadily against the old preconception that he was the less-daring half of Outkast. On all three of his solo albums—Speakerboxxx counts— he happily explored his quirks, establishing himself as someone more than just Andre 3000's more stolid counterpart. With Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty,  he pulled off an incredible, boisterously funky reintroduction. Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors paired him with Wavves, Little Dragon and Phantogram among others, and if the results were mixed, it was further evidence of Antwan Patton's voracious ear.

Vicious Lies paved the way for this full Phantogram collaboration. The indie-pop duo featured on three of the songs on Vicious, but on Big Grams they hit a bit more of a stride. This isn't a Big Boi-on-Phantogram beats project, and Phantogram's Sarah Barthel is nearly as central as the OutKast rapper as a lead vocalist. The two trade spots as lead vocalists playfully and Barthel's hooks are integral throughout. Barthel tries some rapping, and the results aren't actively embarrassing. 

"Run for Your Life", the lead track, is sparse and spacey, and the synth sounds lifted from Stevie Wonder's Moog on "Boogie On Reggae Woman". Big Boi's raps aren't deep on Big Grams, but they are captivating: His strategically fluttering drawl, doled out in pitter-patter bursts, is a trademark as recognizable as it is versatile. On "Fell in the Sun" he punches quickly with a staccato: "I whip the yellow Cadillac, I like my seats way back / I bust the sunroof open, beams hit the Braves cap."  This track, the lead single, is the obvious standout, and it's here that the collaboration clicks fully. Phantogram's Josh Carter builds up a throbbing wall of synths atop a snappy drum loop, and like elsewhere, horn stabs punctuates: proof, perhaps, that everything Big Boi does deserves a little funk.

 "Put It On Her" is one of two tracks on the outing not produced by Carter, and it's certainly the better and more natural of them. (That soulful pump fake of an intro turns out to be a subtle 9th Wonder calling card.) The Skrillex-featuring "Drum Machine", however, sticks out like a sore thumb and bogs down the end of the album. For a record that's so smoothly collaborative elsewhere, "Drum Machine" sounds contrived and clunky. Luckily it is tacked on the end, making it entirely skippable.

The Run the Jewels feature on "Born to Shine" fares better, and not just because of Big Boi's pivotal role in Killer Mike's career. Mike's verse steals the show—"Ric Flair'in' / Long fur coat wearin' / Rolex rockin' / Silk shirt wearin'"—while Big Boi happily takes a backseat. This may be a hallmark of Patton's career:  He's continually building up evidence that he doesn't care so much about being the lead as he is interested in being in the middle of something new and different. Given Atlanta's persistent vitality as a hotbed for innovative hip-hop, it's nice to know that one of the city's elder statesmen is off doing his own thing, carving out another little path for himself long after he helped pave the main road.

Moscow Club: Outfit Of The Day

There was a moment a few years ago when Japan’s independent music scene seemed poised to break out internationally. Between 2011 and mid-2013, artists from all over the nation were making inroads abroad -- shadowy project Jesse Ruins signed to Captured Tracks, while outfits such as Sapphire Slows and Hotel Mexico were regulars on MP3 blogs such as Gorilla Vs. Bear, with many more rising up beneath them. It was during this period that Tokyo’s Moscow Club started sharing their music online, earning attention for their genre-hopping releases. The quartet also saw the potential in front of Japan’s indie community, prompting them to spearhead a compilation in 2012 highlighting unsigned artists. “It is so exciting that there are still so many undiscovered amazing talents creating their own sound somewhere on this little island,” they wrote at the time.

Moscow Club’s second full-length album, Outfit Of The Day, arrives long after the community they championed left the international spotlight. No moment can last forever, and many of the bands from that fruitful span have broken up, changed drastically or simply stopped doing anything (Moscow Club themselves vanished for two years, returning this summer). Outfit features collaborations with many of the artists from that period, and lends the album a feeling of a tribute for a time that slipped away, but also serves as a reminder of the talent that still exists.

Above all else, Moscow Club -- and the artists in the same orbit -- stood out because they knew how to write a solid, catchy song. Outfit starts with “Band Of Outsiders,” a fleet-footed indie-pop song packing every hooky idea it can into just over two minutes. This is the lane where Moscow Club excels, and Outfit features plenty of guitar-anchored tracks skipping towards sticky choruses. They especially shine when glossing up their jangle with synthesizers. The extra twinkle adds an emotional pining central to numbers such as “Carven” and “Celine” (owing to a band-wide interest in fashion, the album boasts a fashion theme, down to the Instagram-born title). The latter -- written by lead singer Kazuro Matsubara after hearing a Tokyo train station melody and featuring backing vocals from Amanda Åkerman of Swedish group Alpaca Sports -- showcases Moscow Club at their best, capable of a chugging number that progressively ups the drama.

Although hazy, melancholic indie-pop is their strength, part of Moscow Club’s appeal has always been their eagerness to branch out, resulting in glistening dance numbers or straight chillwave. Their ambition remains, as one of Outfit’s finest comes on the slow-burning “Tour De Moskow.” The title gives away one key point of inspiration -- though, if you forget, the breathing samples throughout serve as a reminder - but its shuffled beat also pays homage to Frankie Knuckles’ “The Whistle Song” and nods to electro group Telex. It’s a lot to juggle, but Moscow Club balance it all just right. More of a curveball, though, is “Carven (Orchestral),” a four-minute orchestra version of the more straightforward “Carven.” It’s an interesting interlude, albeit one that could have shaved a minute off. 

Outfit, as mentioned, isn’t just a Moscow Club creation, but a collaborative effort featuring names central to the Japanese independent scene. Some of them appear on the songs proper -- Eri Nakajima of Osaka indie-poppers Wallflower sings on “Margaret,” while Ryota Komori plays saxophone on “Saint Laurent,” bringing the chaotic edge of his main band Miila and the Geeks to Moscow Club’s world. Two members of Kyoto’s now-defunct Hotel Mexico pop up too, although only lead singer Ryuyu Ishigami appears on track, as former bassist Kai Ito provided words for two songs. Yet the names behind the scenes are just as important, helping to write the lyrics gracing Moscow Club’s music.

It adds up to a very solid collection, and one bringing to mind a time that feels long gone. Western media tends to cover Japanese acts veering to an extreme side, whether that be harsh Japanoise or, in more recent years, cuter and weirder fare rarely taken seriously as music. The embrace of art confirming existing images of the country -- as strange, as colorful, as different -- is a disservice to bands such as Moscow Club, who sing in English and don’t play up being Japanese for just that reason. Outfit Of The Day is a solid collection of indie-pop with some detours, and a reminder of how good the often overlooked indie community in the country can be. 

Childbirth: Women’s Rights

Julia Shapiro (Chastity Belt), Bree McKenna (Tacocat), and Stacy Peck (Pony Time) open their album screaming "Childbirth!" and "Women's rights!". Peck pounds her drum kit while Shapiro draws out each phrase, McKenna joining in on the latter. It's a puzzling forty seconds, and at first the track feels either unnecessary or like a joke. But if it is a joke, it feels both vital and too close to home when you consider that 241 representatives of the GOP recently voted to defund Planned Parenthood.  It's just as well the punk trio keeps shouting on repeat as if the subject had no meaning.

Ultimately Women's Rights plays like an album created to deflect hopelessness with crude humor, and Childbirth are indiscriminate in their choice of topics, as long as they're ripe for comedy. They'll tackle anything from online dating to Seattle's influx of tech culture, brought to you by Amazon (All band members reside in the PNW). Shapiro opens "Tech Bro" with a cheerful guitar riff only to begrudgingly admit, "I'll let you explain feminism to me/ Tech bro, tech bro/ If I can use your HDTV," proving that you can be disgusted by gentrification, but intrigued with its trappings at the same time. During "Siri, Open Tinder", McKenna's backing vocals are reduced to the simple instructions "Swipe left!" or "Swipe right!" only to exclaim, "Which one are you?!" upon encountering a group photo. All over the album, repeated lyrics are interrupted with one liners to highlight peak ridiculousness.

However, it's not just dudes under attack here. Tracks like "Let's Be Bad" and "Breast Coast (Hangin' Out)" – where lyrics like "Hanging out/ Doing stuff/ With my boyfriend" and "I love him cause he's hot", read like a dig against Bethany Cosentino – are perfect for all the times when perfectly curated Pinterest boards, UGG boots, and pictures of pumpkin spice lattes on Instagram make you want to scream. In order to level the playing field, we're gifted the single "Nasty Grrls" – a laundry list of disgusting habits that "nice young ladies" shouldn't indulge in, like wiping away boogers and never washing bras, amongst others transgressions of hygiene. (Hate to break it to you, but we do dip everything in ranch.)

Then, of course, there's the matter of the band's namesake. They're quick to point out that once you've reached spawning age, women's conversations are downgraded to a competitive arena. Take "More Fertile Than You" where Shapiro outright brags, "I've got eggs by the dozen and you got none". But by far, the highlight of the whole album is the hilarious and dark "Baby Bump".  The line, "I'm that horrifying person from your past/ I'm a party creep/ Why are we still friends?" delivered by a snide friend to an expectant mom, rings painfully true. Those of us who choose to abstain from motherhood often feel we become nothing more than grubby, little deviants who snort coke off a key in your bathroom. When will we settle down?

With all of these cultural touch points, it's clear that Childbirth are not concerned with maintaining relevance over the next ten years. Women's Rights is an album created entirely for the moment, which keeps the spirit lighthearted even when they're dealing with heavy-handed subject matter. You know exactly what they're referencing, and they're quick to make you laugh. The problem is, it's easy to feel clobbered by the album's bluntness and their variety of topics don't differ much from the first record. Shapiro and McKenna's back-and-forth calls get tedious and the feeling become less "Well, that's funny!" and more "Okay, we get it". But there's a point somewhere in there, too. Women are subjected to such a barrage of expectations and judgements that it's fucking exhausting even when it's funny, and sometimes you have to mock everything because you feel powerless to change it. It makes you so angry that you have to keep repeating yourself.