The Daily Spin, August 22
Youngblood Brass Band | Live. Places.
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Live. Places. (2005)
Artist: Youngblood Brass Band
Link:
This one’s rough.
The bombastic sections where the instruments are allowed to roam a little more freely stand out, that I’ll concede, but these are unfortunately tempered by little sections of pop cut-ins and… spoken word?
Lyricism isn’t the end-all be-all of music, and that’s definitely a good thing, but the lyrics here are pitiful efforts, the sort of stuff that actively removed me from my enjoyment of the music at hand and leaves me flabbergasted - the choice to move in and out of speech and song seemingly with no true rhythm or rhyme is baffling in the worst sense, because I’m unable to focus on the jazz and instead am stuck listening to someone I imagine is the personification of the Brooklyn hipster blather on about social commentaries.
There are brief moments where I love the instrumentation and then they pull out a cover of a hip-hop track that should not be done the way it’s done on this album and I’m left with an urgent sense of “I want this album to be done please”.
Rating: 5.2/10
Best Tracks: Avalanche
Worst Tracks: Pastime Paradise; To Come Together and Leave Alone