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Thursday, May 31, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

HOPELESS

Rap releases of
5/25 are varied

William Ryan Key talks
life after Yellowcard, EP

MUSIC REVIEW

Stepping out as a solo artist can be
daunting for a musician, especially
for one who has spent over a decade
being associated with a particular
band. Luckily, Ryan Key is up to the
task.
Key first gained a footing in the
musical scene in the late ‘90s, as a
member of rock and pop punk band
Yellowcard. He spent 17 years as the
band’s principal songwriter, lead
singer and rhythm guitarist, pen-
ning such hits as “Ocean Avenue”
and “Lights and Sounds.” The band
released its final album, Yellowcard,
in 2016, and now Key is branching
out on his own as a solo artist.
“After Yellowcard, I was going to
get into some songwriting and pro-
ducing of my own,” Key said in an
interview with The Daily. “But then
I had this opportunity arise to play
guitar with New Found Glory…When
they asked me if I’d play guitar, they
also asked if I’d open the tours, just as
myself.”
The need for songs to play on tour
was part of what led to Key’s debut
solo EP, released under his full name,
William Ryan Key. Thirteen, out May
25 from The Lone Tree Recordings,
is a surprising departure from the
rock Yellowcard fans may be familiar
with. Each of the five tracks is acous-
tic, gentle and beautifully introspec-
tive, from the clipped and poetic
“Vultures” — which may be the most
familiar bridge from Yellowcard
material into this new, folksy ter-
ritory — to the existential “Great
Unknown.”
“Over the last year or so, I’ve been
doing a lot of smaller acoustic shows

… I wasn’t sure if that was what I
wanted my own songs to sound like,”
Key said. “It took a long time to get
started, but once I started writing the
songs, it really started coming more
naturally.”
The new EP is full of folk influenc-
es, both in the melodic compositions
and lyrics of the songs. Key cited a
wide variety of artists as instrumen-
tal in helping to build his attraction to
singer-songwriter music, including
Ben Folds Five, Explosions in the Sky,
Ryan Adams, Jason Isbell, Death Cab
for Cutie and Bon Iver.
“I’m always looking to a lot of sing-
er-songwriters,” Key said. “When

I picked up my guitar and started
writing, that’s where that influence
inspired me.”
While a diverse array of influences
factored into Thirteen, it is still by
all means its own project. The new
EP is a unique and individual effort,
thanks also to the fact that it was pro-
duced by The Lone Tree Recordings,
Key’s own recording studio based in
Tennessee.
“I produced the EP myself with
my friend Arun Bali. He plays guitar
in the band Saves the Day. We co-
produced it together. He just has this
really cool, analog, indie rock vibe,”
Key said. “He’s an amazing guitarist
and really had a lot of influence on
the atmospheric songs you hear on
the record.”
The fact that the entire EP is self-

produced through The Lone Tree
gave Key a lot of freedom to work
with in developing his new sound.
“The nice thing about having your
own record studio is that you can
press ‘record’ whenever you want,”
said Key, adding that he knew from
the beginning that he would aim
to have about five songs on the EP.
“So once I had five ideas I was like,
well, I’m not even going to write any
more.”
This allowed more freedom for
making these songs sound polished
and complete. Working on his own
without Yellowcard to bounce ideas
off of, Key would often “let the music
direct [him] melodically and lyri-
cally.”
“So the process is different from
with Yellowcard, but there are a lot of
similarities as well,” he said.
Yellowcard often released acous-
tic versions of their own music,
including the albums When You’re
Through Thinking, Say Yes and Ocean
Avenue. Nevertheless, the tender feel
of Thirteen is new territory, and Key
admits to being apprehensive about
the adventurous delve into his own
direction.
“I was nervous because it’s so mel-
low. I mean, I don’t even use a guitar
pick on any of the songs,” he said.
Reception to the music so far has
been positive; the single “Vultures”
was released recently to widespread
popular approval. Key called the pub-
lic reaction to the new music “amaz-
ing,” adding his appreciation that “no
one’s standing out in the crowd, yell-
ing at me to play Yellowcard songs.”

LAURA DZUBAY
Daily Arts Writer

On Friday, May 25, the hip hop
world received two of the most
highly anticipated albums of 2018:
A$AP Rocky’s supposedly avant-
garde Testing and Pusha T’s entirely
Kanye-produced DAYTONA.
While these projects would never
be compared if it weren’t for their
shared release date, as Rocky’s New
York-swagging,
subwoofer-rum-
bling sound and Push’s tradition-
ally bent, soul-leaning sound reside
in completely different arenas of
rap, it’s natural for fans (myself
included) to have some analytical
fun with such a big day in popular
music. Personally, choosing just one
of these albums to formally review
would be a deviation from the natu-
ral thought processes of music fans
and an ignorance to the drama and
power of release dates, so I present
a brief breakdown of the hip-hop
happenings
of May 25.
The most
general
distinction
between
these two projects is their respec-
tive degrees of experimentation.
Pusha T, who rose to relevance
as half of the mid-2000s rap duo,
Clipse, largely remains in the vein of
standard hip hop on DAYTONA —
he drops bars about cocaine and dis-
ses Drake for ghostwriting through
classic rap flow and the bread-and-
butter format of a few verses and
choruses that both old and young
heads can enjoy. The content is safe,
and with crisp, undeniably Kanye
beats, the album gives fans a com-
fortable listen, especially with a
digestible runtime of twenty-one
minutes.
Conversely, as the name indi-

cates, Testing strays from the
traditional, and Rocky made this
artistic experimentation known
during the album’s rollout. Empha-
sizing his desire as an artist to push
sonic boundaries, Rocky claimed
his third studio album delivers
sounds he’s never heard and might
not be fully appreciated until three
or four years
post-release.
These state-
ments
scream
Yeezus,
but
Testing
is
surprisingly palatable today; Rocky
certainly plays with futuristic
weirdness. “Distorted Records”
opens the album with blaringly dig-
itized bass, and nearly every track
is filled with psychedelic glitches
and pitch-manipulation, but the
laid-back flow and pompous lyrics
characteristic of the Harlem rap-
per still manage to cut through the
noise. Listeners can even hear an
unprecedentedly auto-tuned Flacko
on “Fukk Sleep” and “Buck Shots.”
Essentially, DAYTONA vs. Test-
ing is a question of the role of art-
ists in general: Should musicians
deliver what’s expected for the sake
of immediate reception, or should
they strive to dodge expectations
and risk temporary discomfort to
slowly evolve their artistry and
the artistic field as a whole? Pusha
T might have delivered the more
technically sound project by hip-
hop standards, but Rocky deliv-
ered a true project. With that said,
as aforementioned, DAYTONA vs.
Testing is also ridiculous. If one of
these albums was released a month
later, this article wouldn’t exist —
it’s purely a coincidence of time. So
instead, let’s just revel in the fact
that on May 25, we just got to enjoy
some good hip-hop.

MIKE WATKINS
Daily Arts Writer

William Ryan
Key

June 1

Pontiac, Mi

MUSIC INTERVIEW

Read more at
MichiganDaily.com

Testing

RCA Records

A$AP Rocky

DAYTONA

GOOD Music

Pusha-T

RCA