While The Lemon Twigs Electrify, Future and Lil Uzi Vert Bore

It’s another music roundup, featuring takes on the glam indie pop of The Lemon Twigs and the latest collab from Future and Lil Uzi Vert!

The Lemon Twigs – SONGS FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC

Genre: Psychedelic Revival

Favorite Tracks: “Somebody Loving You,” “Ashamed,” “Moon,” “Hell on Wheels”

With their project The Lemon Twigs, The D’Addario brothers have always had a flair for the dramatic. Building on their early experience performing on Broadway and onscreen, the glam-pop pair out of Long Island has carved a role for themselves paying homage to ‘70s rock icons with their glittery outfits and theatrical ballads. On their third studio album, SONGS FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC, the duo continues to delight with their precise and crafty songwriting. Channeling everyone from Meatloaf to Mott the Hoople with their operatic power-pop to, at times, even the Beach Boys with their luscious harmonies, the Lemon Twigs are simply having a really great fucking time. “Hell on Wheels” is an epic opener featuring strings fighting against a clanging piano that sets the stage for the operatic adventure to come. While not everything works—sometimes it feels like the brothers go a little too “big” or pull from influences that don’t feel as natural for them—SONGS FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC feels like a breath of fresh air. Perhaps the greatest moment on the album comes with its closer. The most scaled-down song on the album, “Ashamed” is also its strangest, telling the somehow charming tale of an insestuous brother and sister. It’s a perfect display of the duo’s seemingly effortless songwriting ability. SONGS FOR THE GENERAL PUBLIC is an electrifying return from the Lemon Twigs and an album that deserves to be performed live. [Becca Lengel]

Future and Lil Uzi Vert – PLUTO X BABY PLUTO

Genre: Trap, Rap

Best Tracks: “That’s It” (appropriate, no?)

This new project from rap superstars Lil Uzi Vert and Future is a brand new Louis Vuitton x Supreme duffle bag. It’s expensive, luxurious, and ultimately empty, amounting to little more than the creators slapping their unchanged logos on the front and calling it a day. It’s paint-by-numbers trap, checking every box on its way to being a boring, indistinct drag.

Musically, the clearest point of comparison is Quavo and Travis Scott’s eagerly anticipated but underwhelming HUNCHO JACK, JACK HUNCHO tape. It too was described as “inevitable” and came out sounding phoned-in and low-stakes, such that it felt completely inessential despite its supposed inevitability. HUNCHO at least featured some textured spacey production and cool cover art, while PLUTO X BABY PLUTO is the same skittering hi-hats, repetitive hooks, and narrow subject matter you’ve heard done better elsewhere, sometimes by these same artists. 

In fact, inevitability is really the only reason I can conjure for why this album exists, a sentiment seemingly shared by Pluto and Baby Pluto, hence, uh… PLUTO X BABY PLUTO. Little about the 16 tracks (and 24 on the deluxe version!) is evidence that this album needed to happen, more that it was always going to happen at some point, so why not now? Even the cover art is just a stock photo of two astronauts, minus a soccer ball and jazzed up with a technicolor filter and spin effect that suggests the guy responsible for the cover was on board with everyone else putting in the bare minimum effort. That this sort of thing is a Future calling card does little to excuse the laziness, especially when Uzi has a number of stylish covers in his catalog. This makes no musical difference, but when aesthetics is such an integral part of the curb appeal, it does little to sell me on the concept. 

Future and Uzi have chemistry on this album the way that two toddlers have chemistry; they make similar noises, get up to the same shenanigans, and seem to have fun together while being, at times, tough to understand. Shallow lyrics are nothing new to either artist, but depth isn’t what makes either’s best work appealing, and alone aren’t nearly enough to sour the album. It’s the lack of variety and the lack of creativity that sinks PLUTO X BABY PLUTO. It’s a blurry morass of spaced-out beats and nasally sing-rapping, rarely shaking up the tempo or bothering to distinguish individual songs. Tracks 10 and 11 are actually solo efforts, but it took a second listen to register because there is so little demarcating each track as Uzi and Future swap bars and hooks. Too bad, because Uzi delivers some introspection on “Lullaby,” but over the previous 30 minutes the generic trap talk conditioned me to not pay close attention. 

PLUTO X BABY PLUTO is disappointing because it could be so much more. Uzi in particular is immensely talented and his best work is a delirious joy ride. His finest qualities appear for seconds at a time here, but nothing is in the same orbit as the elastic, formless tour-de-force “New Patek” or the genius subversion of momentum on Playboi Carti’s “Shoota.” These tracks and Uzi’s other highs bend traditional rapping, song structure, and sounds into delightfully fun new shapes. Here, though, his wildest impulses are muted and he settles into the lane Future has spent the years since his DS2 highpoint digging into a rut. [Corey Guen]