Listen to This
- Kaleb A. Brown
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Hello and welcome back to the Brown Variety Hour! Making good on this blog’s name, I’m going to be doing something I haven’t done before: writing about music. I might not have the metal knowledge necessary to land a job at Loudwire, but I can at least highlight some of my favorite acts that are under the radar. As to why I’m deciding to write about this now, it honestly beats me. Call it a sudden burst of inspiration, call it me being in the manic, throwing-everything-at-the-wall-and-hoping-it-sticks phase of my writing journey write now; whatever the reason, I’m committed to being a bit more active with my blog.
With that out of the way, I apologize for any vagueness in the post. I haven’t written about music before and it shows in that I’m not quite sure how. Just bear with me, here.
Since we're talking music, if you're the same kind of stats freak as me and want to check out what I'm listening to, follow me on Last.fm.
Without further ado, here’s the music.
If She Looks Like Heaven... — Mind's Eye
Mind's Eye is definitively among the more obscure artists that I listen to and it's a damn shame because the L.A.-based indie rock band definitely have the chops to be a big name in the scene. Take their 2023 album, Long Nights and Wasted Affairs for example. Described by Tuned Up contributor Phil Hawkins as "what a John Hughes film would sound like if it were an album and not a film", Long Nights and Wasted Affairs delivers musical missives on love lost and found written with bedroom poppy, shoegazey timbre. With beautiful reverb, melancholic vocals, and shimmering guitar riffs galore, I was hooked with one listen and it quickly became one of my albums of the summer. Long Nights and Wasted affairs is such a vibe to listen to on a long night drive.
Discovering that Mind's Eye latest EP, If She Looks Like Heaven… released right under my nose was a surprise to be sure, but a welcomed one. I wasted no time in adding it to my library and giving it a listen. After an intro that tries and ultimately fails to recapture the comedic gold of the last album's introduction, the EP comes in swinging with the bombastic "Andy and I." If the hokey skit that opens the album threatens to put you to sleep, the roaring, sudden riff of the first proper song is there to jolt you awake. Beyond the narrative framing of it all, I imagine "Andy and I" is placed as the very first song of the EP because it lets fans of the band know that If She Looks Like Heaven… is a decidedly different beast than Long Nights and Wasted Affairs. If the former is dream-like in its hazy, often soft production, the latter is committed to giving you a jolt of reality through its more hard-hitting guitars and passionate vocal performance by Vince Lopez. I'd describe If She Looks Like Heaven… as the more in-your-face record; not to the point where it's abrasive, but enough that you stand at attention instead of getting lost in the Vibes™ of it all.
The second song in the tracklist "Don't Talk To Me" is a standout for me. The lyrics paint a portrait of the singer frustrated by a failing relationship. The anger, frustration, and exhaustion crescendo into the chorus "Don't want to talk right now / because things will never be the same / so get the fuck up out my face". Again, it's a departure from the Mind's Eye of yesteryear — they've certainly rocked out before but this is the first time I'm hearing them so raw. To some, the delivery might come across as strained — you can hear just how hard he's enunciating "fuck" — but I find the anger believable and deliciously infectious. Combined with the punk-inspired instrumental, I can't help but bang my head while listening.
Skipping to the second half of the album, after another skit that is pretty damn funny — hearing Vince Lopez say "She just has a really sick IG feed, the aesthetics are just off the chart" will live rent free in my head for at least a week — we get "Georgia" which is a perfect blend of old and new. The verses feature hazy dream pop instrumentals that would feel right at home in Wasted Affairs before giving way to a loud and crunchy chorus. The closer, “Misery Christine,” is also a highlight.
My biggest issue with Long Nights and Wasted Affairs was that, while the album was strong as a whole, many individual songs struggled to stand out and blended into one another. Meanwhile, thanks to strong melodies and riffs, each track in If She Looks Like Heaven… stands on its own.
It's also a very focused project. With the other 2025 follow-up album to one of my favorites suffering from notable bloat, I'm happy to say this album knows what it's setting out to do and executes it without much fluff. At 22-minutes long, it's short enough that it's not much of a commitment to give the project a listen if it sounds like your jam.
Love You Anymore — Mario Judah
No, my relationship isn't on the rocks, I'm just listening to the Mario Judah's single, "Love You Anymore."
When I first heard his "ay, man, where the fuck is Mario Judah" producer tag in 2021, I thought "more like who the fuck is Mario Judah." Now, over four years later I increasingly find myself thinking "man, where the fuck is Mario Judah?”
Judah broke into the scene in 2020 with the single "Die Very Rough" which quickly gained memetic status thanks to his bombastic, operatic vocals. Whatever you think of him, you cannot deny that the way he sings "nigga" does sound like he’s performing a villain song in a Disney movie.
Since his debut, Mario Judah has largely been treated as a joke for reasons that are both unfair (I've seen some say he could have never been taken seriously in the aesthetic-heavy rage rap scene because he was overweight) and reasons that are totally reasonable (he pretended to beat a non-existent girlfriend. for clout???)
For the past few years, I've returned to Mario Judah's biggest single, his version of Playboi Carti and Trippie Redd's "Miss The Rage," again and again. Some of this is because it's nostalgia-inducing. I know it's weird to miss 2020/2021, but I do and the song's release date combined with its lyrics detailing missing a turbulent, yet comforting time make it resonate with me.
There's also the fact that it's really good.
For a song that's 80% chorus and just shy of three minutes long, it's surprisingly layered and effective. From the synth that invokes the sound of a wailing electric guitar, to the thumbing bass, to the stuttering snare, "Miss the Rage" is addictively melodic without sacrificing edge. But that's just the instrumental; what makes Miss the Rage such a musical tour de force is Mario Judah himself. There's the guttural yelling of "I miss the things we had / I remember it all," the way he calls out between "Miss the Rage" like his soul's trying to escape his body, and then, of course, there's his distinct vibrato. Call it corny, call it cringey, call it whatever you like, but if nothing else, it's distinct and it's genuine.
Even if Mario Judah strikes you as silly at first blush, his voice is the special sauce that makes "Miss the Rage" work as a song in your gym playlist and in AMVs.
As much as he was laughed at, Judah's chops were undeniable and he was primed to take the rage rap scene by storm if he managed to flood the zone.
Instead, he disappeared off the face of the Earth.
The most accepted culprit for Mario Judah's catastrophic fall off is a predatory label contract. Regardless of why it happened, it was undeniable that Mario Judah's moment was over right as it got started. In 2022, he released "Afraid of Love," a more dreamy take on rage rap that played well to his strengths. In 2024, he released an EP titled Endure which was a bit too little, too late in terms of recapturing the flame he had originally kindled. Not helping matters was the fact that he didn't really play into his melodic strengths. He rapped, he raged, but he seldom sang.
Then, last month, we got "Love You Anymore."
It's cut from the same cloth as "Afraid of Love." While the bass and hi-hats threaten to smother the lowkey and vibey tone of the song, the ethereal synth and Judah's vocals reign the more bombastic elements of the instrumental in. Judah is full-on singing, replacing his rage with unadulterated melancholy. It's a bit of a departure, but it's the logical evolution from "Afraid of Love" and it works well. While the poetic diction borders on strained, ("Though I wish I could restore / what we had in the day before / now it's gone forevermore. / Your smile once lit my world so bright / now it's, if say, a fading little light) to me, it makes the track feel like a fairy tale. And as always, Mario Judah performs so confidently that, even if you question it at first, you'll bob your head by the end and listen to him sing again and again.
In a genre that moves as fast as hiphop, it may already be far too late for Mario Judah to establish himself as a big name. Futile as it may be, I'll keep on rooting for him because his sound's too unique to leave in the dust.
I just wish he would stop using AI for his cover art. As an artist who's been screwed over by execs, he should realize that using AI as a tool is a slippery slope that ends with creatives like him devalued and, ultimately, replaced. But more on how much I hate AI in a later review.