Published today: Bless review on Chart

I owe the good people at Chart a fair amount of backlog at the moment, and I’m doing my best to work through it. One of two pieces I sent them this weekend was this review of The Night Before, an EP by a Montreal rapper named Bless.

I wanted to like this record more than I did. It’s clear that Bless is shooting for a new sound and trying to break some new ground. But the tracks themselves end up feeling forced here, sloppy there, and a little too generic overall.

It’s not a bad record, and despite a few pretty lame moments, I didn’t hate it. I just don’t think it ever quite gets where it’s trying to go. Hopefully, that opinion comes across in the review.

If nothing else, I’ve got to admit that it does make me want to check out some of the guy’s earlier material, if only to get a better sense of what he’s done and where he’s coming from. Maybe I’ll try to do that sooner rather than later.

Posted in Published Today