⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – 5/5 Stars!
After a three year hiatus, The Internet are back, more passionate than ever. Their organic sensuality and a smoothly blended-together set of songs reaffirms their status as R&B royalty, and signifies a long-awaited return of funk music.
In such an emotive genre as R&B, the mingling of songs greatly assists the overall feel of an album. Compared to pop music, where an album is usually hailed as dull and repetitive if the songs show even a hint of uniformity, continuity between songs in R&B is necessary for an album to stand out. In R&B, which has been about storytelling since its beginning, it’s very important for artists to convey an experience through their songs.
In the car one day, I was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR, and she was dissecting why 80s music was making a comeback in this era. Realizing that 80s music was usually reminiscent of parties and holidays, giving off a carefree feel, she related the resurgence of this genre to how people need an escape from life and all its stresses in the present-day. Other than being delighted with how analogous that was with the name of my site, I saw a lot of truth to that. Being surrounded by work, people, and and incompetent government doesn’t always sit well with people, and many are turning to music to provide them relief, only aided by streaming services increasing its accessibility. This phenomenon has led to the rise of many neo-soul and contemporary R&B acts such as Kelela, Jorja Smith, Leela James, Miguel, Frank Ocean, and most recently, The Internet. All of these artists are a modern-day offshoot of the groove and funk of the 80s, providing a 21st century spin on the palliative tunes of yore.
A colorful cast of individuals, The Internet, like many present-day bands, took a break from being a group in 2015 after their critically-acclaimed album Ego Death to focus on individual projects. That time ushered in a maturing of each of the band members’ own sounds, through releases like lead vocalist Syd tha Kyd’s 2017 release, Fin, that painted the picture of a confident woman undergoing an unapologetic catharsis through her music, and guitarist Steve Lacy’s Steve Lacy’s Demo, which showcased a mastery of his instrument following his executive production credit of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. The youngest of the crew, fresh out of high school, the prodigy that is Lacy has already contributed to a Grammy-winning album. However, the difference between most bands and The Internet (I’m looking at you, One Direction) is that this band actually came back together, and produced a truly exquisite album.
For an album in which most songs are 4-6 minutes long, Hive Mind never for a moment feels long-drawn or redundant. “Come Together,” the first song off the album, introduces itself with a bass hook, replaced by a guitar riff. This motif is oft-used throughout the album, and paired with the echoing voices of Syd tha Kyd and Matt Martians, the band’s two vocalists, creates a passionate combination. “Roll (Burbank Funk),” the lead single of the album, maintains a funk bass undertone throughout, with distorted synths and the reverberating vocals of both Syd and Martians. The next track, “Come Over,” commencing with whispers over a cell phone accomplishes the feel of a lazy evening, Syd asking a lover to come and spend the night at her place. Martians replaces her for a particularly conspicuous outro (which feels like it’s its own hidden track), contrasting the stress of a demanding relationship with the laid-back feel of Syd’s. Easter eggs like this outro only make this album more enjoyable to listen to. The upbeat “La Di Da” sees Steve Lacy contributing his vocals to a groovy song about companionship and dancing, returning to the picture of a party and forgetting about real life omnipresent in this genre. “Stay the Night” circles back to a similar theme as “Come Over,” but still maintains a distinctly separate identity from the latter. A low-key continuation of that song, Syd here is coaxing someone to stay the night, and even though “Maybe you should stay the night” is repeated at least 30 times throughout the song, the thick-as-honey music masks any perceived redundancy, turning the song into a serene lullaby. A loud and heavy drum beat sets the tone for “Bravo,” a metaphorical song that equates a disintegrating relationship to the conflict in a movie or play. Syd’s sarcasm in “Bravo, baby” during the chorus makes this song an extremely powerful contrast to earlier, more lovestruck songs. “Mood,” the halfway point of the album, taps into the romantic, but uneasy air of a date. The transition to “Next Time/Humble Pie” is so fluid, with a simple distortion signifying the start of the next song. On the “Next Time” portion, Syd goes back in time from “Mood” to when her partner was only a fleeting image, ironic because in “Mood” she refers to next time as her second date, singing “Next time I’ll buy you flowers.” On “Humble Pie,” the closest Hive Mind gets to being eerie, Syd is disappointed at how a dreamy woman is not interested in a relationship, and then she basically has enough of her fake crap in “But I don’t want a piece of your humble pie.” On “It Gets Better (With Time),” Syd soulfully takes the place of a consoling figure, comforting someone when they’re sad, speaking from experience, which we’ve seen glimpses of in earlier songs like “Bravo,” when she was dealing with a relationship gone awry. Big Rube, the uncredited rapper on this track, does an amazing job at preaching the message of the song and how we should always look to the future. The next song, “Look What U Started” shows the irony of the previous one, with Syd, immediately after offering advice, exposing her partner for ruining their relationship. The continuity of this album is flawless, and it almost feels as if Syd is getting a fateful phone call right then and there when she is consoling someone and is disappointingly ranting to herself. “Wanna Be” is a laid-back island tune about daydreaming, capturing the vibe of this album astonishingly well. Listening to this feels like a dream: that’s how all music should be. As if easing you back into real life, “Beat Goes On” has Steve Lacy and Matt Martians slowly opening our eyes to the craziness of the world after us being in a dreamlike state for this whole album. The repetition of “the beat goes on, the beat goes on” serves as a reminder of how the Earth keeps spinning no matter what happens. The outro feels like a high, with the ending a slow release into “Hold On,” the final track, an extremely chill beat with a slyly placed “feels almost like a dream” showing the attainment of exactly what The Internet wanted to achieve on Hive Mind.
My first introduction to funk, Hive Mind totally broadened my musical horizons. On the Palo Santo review, I talked about how people are losing touch with instruments, but I never realized the effect of that until I heard this album. A refreshing break from the synth cacophony, The Internet truly shows the power that a guitar, a bass guitar, a drum set, and a voice can have. The album, a nu-funk venture into R&B territory, proves itself as extremely cathartic and as a relaxing enclave amid the noisiness of pop. The immaculate uninterrupted flow between tracks sees all the songs coalesce into a large pool of passionate artistry, a testament to the skill of all five of the members in the group. The perfect album to unwind to, the profound, never-ending story of this album makes it one you want to put on repeat, since it’s almost impossible to get bored of the vibrant, intense, and heartfelt band that is The Internet.
