Hi, everyone. Nathanie WELTANO here, the internet's busiest music nerd.

It's time for a review of the new Joanna Wang record, Hotel La Rut.

This is the 12th full-length album from singer, songwriter, composer, conceptualizer, Ms. Joanna Wang. She was born in Taiwan, raised in America, and I'm just now finding out about her music, believe it or not, despite the fact that she's been actively at this art form for two decades now.

However, I think now is as good a time as ever to start appreciating Joanna's work, especially since as I went back into the early days of her catalog, I wasn't necessarily crazy about a lot of what I was hearing, which is funny because I could imagine people who may have been fans of a lot of those early records, not so much taking to many of the experimental and oddball turns her music would take down the road.

If you go back to Joanna's albums that were her defining records in the late 2000s, you're going to hear a lot of adult, contemporary balladry, jazz pop, sophisty pop, very cut and dry, esthetically, conservative, nothing too crazy. But clearly out of the gate, Joanna was working with a lot of talent, especially on the vocal front, which should be no surprise given that her father, Bing Wang, was a successful composer, producer, and arranger.

So yeah, that knack for music didn't skip a generation or anything.

Joanna's trajectory in the world of music is not one of some undeserving nepo baby or talentless hack. I mean, while some of her records have had a respectable amount of success in China and Southeast Asia, and Joanna still a relatively underappreciated creative force over here stateside, despite having a very radical and impressive artistic evolution across her catalog.

While Joanna's early work isn't exactly mind-blowing, it wouldn't take long for a lot of this jazz pop stuff to take a darker turn and yes, the instrumental palettes are very close to that of previous projects. But the lyrics go into some interesting and unlikely places. We have some songs here about paranoia, depression, hating how mundane, generally, adulthood is. Also a snarky portrayal of love with a tax dodging businessman who has taken interest in Joanna despite their age gap, putting her at the same age as his daughter.

Joanna would go on to experiment further and up the ante on subsequent albums like the schmaltzy, futuristic novelty synth jazz all over the record Galaxy Crisis, which is pretty fun.

We also have Joanna singing over very ornate, pretty, and very expensive sounding arrangements all over the Midnight Cinema record, which may be too heavily orchestrated for me personally, but I can't deny there are some breathtaking moments on that LP. There's also Bob Music, which at its core sees Joanna writing, again, a lot of a very eccentric jazz pop and vocal pop, but the instrumentals pretty much all sound like old-school video game music, which throws things for a loop. There's also her House of Bullies record, which dishes out quite mercilessly, really wacky, eccentric, loud, harsh jazz rock with crunchy guitar wrists flying at you from every direction. Fans of The Cardiacs, as well as Mr. Bungle, should take notice of this one. I'm not even going to get into the story behind the record, but know that Joanna is definitely one for a good narrative, especially considering how the narrative is even more central to the appeal of her 2018 album Modern Tragedy, which at a cursory glance is a record that could really give any artist's bitter breakup album a run for its money. Then following that, we had 2019's Love Is Calling Me, which saw Joanna getting conceptual more on the musical side as this album contains a series of covers, renditions of songs that dropped from the '60s '60s to the '80s, featuring artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan.

In the process of redoing these tracks, Joanna may take different vocal approaches, switch to different languages, and also, most importantly, present them with a more, I'll say, earnest and organic and straightforward instrumental palate. Some of her singing on this record is actually surprisingly whispery, considering her jazz background and just how eccentric and loud and a lot of her vocals tend to be on her previous records. Which brings us to her latest studio album here, which is really its own beast.

Now, like a true artist, no two records from Joanna are the same, and I would say that is especially true. For this new album. I will say some of the quieter, prettier, more humble instrumental presentations from her last record, as well as the more hushed vocal deliveries, they carry over onto this album. But I would say the similarities start and end there, because outside of that, there are three key things to know about this record. One, that at least from my knowledge, this is Joanna's most lofi and rough around the edges effort to date or just in a long time, which I honestly think is not that bad of a thing because it prevents Joanna and her collaborators from maybe going overboard instrumentally, layering or piling too much on.

I think going about things in this lofi fashion leads to a lot of performance performances on this record being very messy and exuberant in a youthful, fun, and electrifying way. The second thing to know about this record is that all of the songs are like their own little self-contained vignettes. There's definitely common threads running throughout all of them in terms of things seeming surreal and seedy and odd, like if you were to drop LSD and then go on to read a throwback mystery novel. There are also a fair bit of tracks on this record that have no lyrics whatsoever. They're just instrumental cuts whose compositions, I guess, are just meant to provide a musical mood for whatever wackiness is going on in the title. For example, "You Lost Me at the Spanking Machine." The third thing to know about this record is that it's very funny, very eccentric, very tongue-in-cheek, and old-school comedy heads will most definitely appreciate its key source of inspiration.

Some of you may be aware of the old-school Canadian cult, Comedy, sketch show known as The Kids in the Hall, a show that I remember watching quite frequently because when I would get Home from School on Comedy Central, they'd pretty much play it maybe a half an hour to an hour after I got home. Pretty much every day I was seeing an episode or two of the Kids in the Hall, and I loved it. I loved the hell out of that show. I'm your head. Well, anyway, the title of this record actually takes its title from a Kids in the Hall sketch, literally, one that I had to refamiliarize myself with for this video. But the point of the whole sketch, which stretches out across an entire episode of the show. The idea is to satirize a drama piece that depicts the goings on in this weird French flop house. Joanna even opens the album up with lines from one of them, a woman who is just driving herself crazy, wondering about this guy named Tony. 'Where could he be? Who is he with? What is he thinking? Is he thinking of me? Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony.'

Now, this sketch never gives us a full and complete picture of the lives of any of these characters. We don't even really get a full conclusion of anything happening with them at the time they're being depicted in these sketches. But this ends up being the basis for this album's whole concept.

I mean, imagine this same hotel, but with a wider array of characters and happenings and goings on. We're just popping in, doing a little bit of a peak on all of them for one track after the next. Some of which feature songs that are fully complete, structured out tales or narratives or stories either told by a narrator or from a first-person perspective. Others are short little motifs and vignettes. As far as the longer and more narratively dense tracks go, we have one about a woman who's captivated by a criminal she saw on the TV. She can't believe whatever he did or what he's accused of doing couldn't possibly be true. I love this guy. There's also a story of a man who is pissed off about the pigeons on his balcony, so he prepares to spray them with bleach out of a water gun. The whole thing is presented this jazzy, weird musical inner monolog.

There's also a track about somebody maybe coming to the conclusion that there could be a gas leak going on that is putting their life in danger. That one ends on a random cliffhanger. There's also a track about a woman dreaming about a celebrity having a crush on her. Another that is literally about a frigging haunted house with an intro sketch of two kids entering the haunted house. There's another track about a person who's like a band fan girl, and she likes to hang around backstage after school with the music groups and take pictures with them.

Joanna, of course, being no stranger to metaphor and symbolism, also dives into that quite a bit on one of the final tracks to the record, "The Detective," which does help bring the record a big finish, not just instrumentally, but conceptually, as this track is very much about fear of the unknown. It's a story of destiny as well. But yeah, the narratives and perspectives and stories across these tracks are really versatile and wild and out there and surprising. You never really know what turn the record is going to take next. And believe it or not, the stylistic bases covered across this record are just as far reaching as the stories themselves. I'm not going to tell you which is which because I feel like you guys should listen to this record for yourselves and have all of these random genres hit you and just be surprised in the moment.

There are tracks on this thing that read like sci-fi television theme music, Frenchy baroque pop music soundbeds, indie rock, new wave, jazz pop and piano pop, very lush, arranged psychpop as well. Ska, yes, Ska. There is at least one Ska track on this album. There are some synthy progressive rock bits, country cuts, all executed with an eccentric, colorful, creative flair, much in the same way that you would get on a Ween record or a They Might Be Giants record or the Fiery Furnaces. But I would say in Joanna's case, you're getting even more flashy and sharp performances given her very skilled musical background.

With all that being said, there are a lot of tracks on this record, a lot of things, a lot of ideas just flying by at a million miles an hour. And of course, in the midst of all this chaos, all this haze, there are some cuts that breeze by or don't leave much of an impression. But the vast, vast, vast majority of them most certainly do. And if I have any other major criticism from here, it's that I wish narratively and conceptually the entire thing wove together in a stronger fashion toward the finish.

Given just how concept-conscious Joanna is, I'm sure in her own mind it does that on some level. But from my perspective, it most definitely could have been, I think, a bit more clear about it and how it accomplished that goal. As by the end of this record, it does feel like we're left with more questions than we are answers.

Overall, though, entertaining album, fantastic record, super creative, and I think one of the most fun experiences any of you are going to have with a project coming out of what I guess you could say is nominally the singer-songwriter community. I'm feeling a decent to strong 8 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Joanna Wang, Forever.