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Björk DISCOG REVIEW Part 1

One of the most recognized avant-garde singers in the world, Björk Guðmundsdóttir is an Icelandic artist who has been releasing critically acclaimed albums since the early 90s, and an icon in the experimental music scene. I thought it’d be an exciting experience to dive into her discography to find out if her music resonates with me, and to understand what this revered singer is all about. I decided to start with her major studio albums first, then moving on to her early work with Icelandic band The Sugarcubes and whatever else she has out there.

 Debut

Björk’s properly titled debut is a wild amalgamation of sweet love songs, upbeat house music inspired by the UK’s early 90s scene, a hint of jazz, and of course, Björk’s enchanting voice. I won’t pretend to be a music university graduate or whatever, as I know close to nothing about what 90s music sounded like, what could have potentially influenced Björk on this album, nor will I try to give some sort of lecture about what is going on here; I’ll just cite what I enjoy and what I don’t, and why.

Debut feels authentic, it’s a finely crafted album, from its musical styles to its production to its songwriting. What spiked my interest immediately in it were the drums, and how fresh and varied they were; this is a very percussion-heavy album, the UK beats Björk implements are all about the infectious rhythms that enter your body and seem to control it, but even on tracks not so influenced by the nightclub life, the percussion is very good, in songs such as the opening Human Behaviour, with its fat bass drums, or the iconic, soothing Venus As a Boy, featuring tambourines, strong kicks, some rattle instrument, a prominent sampled echoing sound and a hint of bongos; these are all alongside various other rich instruments, violin passages that flow with the track perfectly, what sounds like xylophones peppering the track, all of this making this the best song in the album, in my opinion.

And when these instruments are not there, of course Björk herself makes up for it. Like Someone In Love is a beautiful ode to, well, love, comprised only of a harp, the singer’s eye-watering performance, and some ambient noise; it reminds me a bit too much of her cover of I Remember You, mostly because they’re both based on harps, but it is still very beautiful on its own. The Anchor Song is the emptiest on the record, closing the album up with some tension and overall introspection. It features only one verse from Björk sung two times, and like three saxophones? Definitely two at least, I’m not sure how they work, but it makes for a great, simplistic finisher (even if latter editions include Play Dead, a beautiful song, but not exactly fitting after the song before it).

Throughout the first handful of tracks, the pattern of “inward emotionally potent song sequenced by urban-life dance anthem, and back again” became apparent to me, but then broke after One Day did not transition into a dance track. Basically, my instant perception was that the record was this rollercoaster showcase of the hopeless romantic experience in a metropolitan, nocturnal city, and it may be, but if it is, it’s not as in-your-face as I initially thought. What catapulted these thoughts was the live version of There’s More To Life Than This, probably the most commercially-adept instrumental tune in the record, performed by Björk in a version purposefully awkward and weirdly personal, where she sings her second verse directly into a mic while the beat faintly plays in the background, fading further and further until the song flawlessly transitions to Like Someone In Love. It really makes you feel like your are at the Milk Bar, the night is packed, and Björk just pulls you into the bathroom and starts singing the rest of the song (for some reason); it reminded me of all those YouTube videos where the uploader takes a popular song, adds some background chatter, and soaks it all in reverb to give you the experience of listening to the song from the bathroom of a party. It is a distinct, creative way of spinning the original dance track around into something more, something that conveys this feeling of slight loneliness, even when surrounded by people, the central topic of the second song, Crying. The lyrics describe the big city, the huge crowds, but conversely the feeling of solitude and missing your loved one, or maybe even a place, it’s not explicitly told who or what Björk misses.

Romance is ever-present in Debut, through many incarnations. Big Time Sensuality, one of the most upbeat tracks here, is about a fresh romantic relationship, and the growing sensation of “something important (...) about to happen”, assumingly between Björk and whoever else. The house beat paints the scenario for this relationship as a club, by default. It brings you into this exciting nightlife, only for you to be pulled away immediately after by One Day, a track so cheerful it’s irresistible, and holding tight to the theme of romanticizing a loved one, then reaching Aeroplane in yet another beautiful transition. I have to admit this is the first song I don’t love in the album, I think it is good, and in the context of the album, definitely brings something new. What sets it apart is, this time around, the bongos are being used to their full extent, paired with birds chirping and a comfortable bass, incremented by occasional saxophone passages, this track ends up very tropical. After this, Come To Me is another passionate song, this time, Björk sings of comforting her partner and nurturing them, which naturally creates a super chill aura to the song. Accompanied by the violins and the lowkey guitars, it makes for a solid track, which in the context of the album I think eases the mood a bit too much, but is appreciated as a solid production, and closes out by bringing out the bongos once again, in a very nice outro (I should also note this is the first appearance of a real drum set on the album [I think]) (I should also also note the bassline sounds a little like early studio versions of True Love Waits by Radiohead, just some trivia).

Violently Happy right afterwards is the least interesting of the house tracks, with a mostly simple instrumental, and vocals Björk seeming to be compressed, or dowsed in some other effect. It’s not a standout in the tracklist to me, but the beauty of Debut is that the worst song is still solid as fuck. I think it’s a very consistent album, that delivers a unique and one-of-a-kind experience.

I didn’t expect this type of sound from Debut, but I was pleasantly surprised. It took me a while to like, but it definitely grew on me on with this 4 a.m. listening session I just had. I look forward to everything else I will listen to by Björk.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Venus As A Boy, Like Someone In Love, One Day, Big Time Sensuality, Human Behaviour

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Violently Happy

 8.7/10

“Lately I find myself gazing at stars, hearing guitars like someone in love.”

 Post

Going into Post, I was aware this would be quite different from Debut. I had listened to Army of Me and It’s Oh So Quiet before, seeing as they’re two of Björk’s biggest songs, and they obviously sound nothing like the acid house beats and soft, calming ballads in her debut, and that’s what is good about it, the sudden shift from a relatively safe musical environment to aggressive, chunky electronic production in Army of Me and Enjoy, and the absolute turnaround that is It’s Oh So Quiet.

The bold production decisions are what make this album exciting and surprising, in tracks such as I Miss You, mixing a synth-line with super loud bongos and some addictive synthesized drums, and trumpets at the end of the song, or the famous use of the Locrian mode in Army of Me, creating this menacing, dissonant melody, which perfectly fits the song and serves as an appropriate intro to the album that succeeds it. But they don’t always have to be out there to be notable and great: what I can tell from around the internet is that you can ask every single Björk fan ever what their favorite track by her is and it feels like at least a quarter will answer Hyper-ballad, and (even though I’m not nearly done with her discography) I can I say it’s with very good reason, as it is an amazingly composed song; same with Possibly Maybe, an enheartened slow jam which progresses from a cute love song about desiring to be with the one she’s flirting with, to disappointment in how they treat her, to the breakup, where she states she started wearing lipstick again, sucking her own tongue in remembrance of her once lover.

The album is very love-centered, specifically focused on the desire to be physically with someone, with how Björk mentions her love interest’s touch in plenty of tracks, such as I Miss You, a song about missing someone she apparently has never been with, where she literally asks her significant other “when will I get my cuddle?”. uwu.

(also what is this cover art lmao)

Also including this thirst for deeper contact are the songs Enjoy (“I wish I’d only look, and didn’t have to touch”, “How can I ignore? This is sex without touching?”) and Headphones (”They start off as cells that haven’t been touched before, these cells are virgins”), but the subject matter isn’t always literal and spelled out, as the tracks Isobel and Hyper-ballad seem to play with the idea of a hermit lifestyle, whether it’s at the top of a mountain or in the heart of a forest, with different meanings between the two, however. In Hyper-ballad, she’s isolated from the world alongside her lover, while in Isobel, she’s completely alone, married to herself, as she says. I enjoy the theme, but I think the vocals and instrumentation, while interesting, aren’t as good as many other examples from the album, same with the track previous to it, You’ve Been Flirting Again, which employs very faint and uniform violins under some soothing yet stagnant lyrics by Björk; it serves mostly as an interlude, I suppose, but it could go a little further, in my opinion.

To end the album, Cover Me and Headphones subdue the atmosphere by a lot. They’re very toned down, the first features some really nice windy background noise, and what I think is an oud. It’s an amazing section of the album, and from what I can gather, seems to be about her own experimentation with her music, describing a journey into what I think is this very album, a big departure from Debut for sure. It then transitions seamlessly into Headphones, which, on par with its title, is a much better experience if you are wearing headphones. The buzzing bass, Björk’s nearly ASMR vocals turning into gibberish at the end, and bubbly percussion are all super pleasing to the ears, and it continues the theme of her own musical creating process, singing how her headphones saved her life, and how nothing will ever be the same; it’s almost prophetical, and definitely one of my favorite songs here.

Post is much more colorful, daring and wild than Debut, but I don’t know if I like it better than its predecessor. I feel like Debut is obviously much more comfortable and pleasing than Post, and that even though Post has amazing tracks like Hyper-ballad, Enjoy and Possibly Maybe, as an album, I’m not really feeling it as much as the last one. The sense of cohesion in the last one, and how it used the UK beats to the best of their potentials, mixing them with much more soothing tracks and beautiful vocal performances is what attracts me to it so much. I really appreciate the direction Post took, as I don’t suppose many people were doing anything close to this in the 90s or before, and it certainly has its highlights, but I think Debut just got a tighter hold of me, and I just enjoyed it more, if looking at it from a purely superficial standpoint. The experimentation here is great, but I enjoy how fresh Debut sounds slightly more.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Hyper-ballad, I Miss You, Army of Me, Headphones, Possibly Maybe, Enjoy

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: You’ve Been Flirting Again

 8.5/10

“This is really dangerous, cover me. But worth all the effort, cover me.”

 Homogenic

Alright shit got real.

This is way better than the last two albums, and they were amazing to begin with. But this album is insane. It’s focused, but also so loose and free. It’s an amazing experience, and I think Björk in her most comfortable style yet. She doesn’t miss the mark in one track of this album, they’re all at the very least good.

It starts off with the delirious drum patterns and violins in Hunter, and I tell you, I haven’t seen a better streak of amazing songs in an album yet: from the intro to 5 Years, all the songs between it are fucking fantastic, and that is only broken by Immature, a track which I don’t think is supposed to be much more than an interlude anyway; then it’s right back with Alarm Call.

I really don’t think I have anything to complain about in this review apart from 5 Years and Immature. On the first listen, I thought Howie B’s version of All Is Full Of Love was inferior to the original, which I had heard and loved a while ago, but I can’t even say that, because this one is perfect as an outro. With the drums gone, the track feels like a goodbye from Björk as you slowly descent from heaven after listening to this album; plus, it comes right after Pluto, by far the most aggressive song in Homogenic, with the singer yelling over her glitchiest production yet. Then it suddenly gives way to that incredible outro. Other amazing transitions include Unravel to Bachelorette, decorated by the overlapping violins, and from 5 Years to Immature. The serene, gorgeous sound of Unravel against the energetic, cinematic Bachelorette orchestra is easily one of the best moments in the album as well.

I find that whenever I find an album really good, I have problems describing why, but I promise this time I’ll try harder than when I listened to MAGDALENE. To start, Björk’s singing and the instruments backing her have never been more in harmony with each other, mainly due to Björk’s and her producers’ focus on maintaining a homogenous sound throughout the record, as its title implies, and this style is the mix of strings and other orchestral instruments (including an accordion at some points) with the odd, sometimes glitchy (All Neon Like, 5 Years, Pluto) other times fleshed out and bulky (Hunter, Immature, Alarm Call) production of Mark Bell, Guy Sigsworth, Howie B, Markus Dravs and, of course, Björk herself. Jóga and Unravel are my favorite Björk songs so far, and the fact that they come back to back, right before Bachelorette, is still crazy to me.

Alarm Call is a beautiful song about how your music impacts the world, and just an anthem of euphoria basically, which might be a little out of place surrounded by the very specific sound the album goes for, with its bop qualities and dance rhythm, but I appreciate it a lot just for how easily Björk can pour her feelings onto a track and make it work out of seemingly nowhere. This song demands happiness from the listener, and it’s extremely difficult not to give in to its groove (“I’m no fucking Buddhist, but this is enlightenment”).

In my opinion, All Neon Like is the perfect embodiment of Homogenic’s atmosphere: it’s not as brilliantly and enormously produced as the songs before it, but it is frigid and ethereal, the lyrics are sung fairy tales, continuing the genius metaphors in Bachelorette.

It’s slightly futile for me to try and dissect Björk’s lyrics one by one, but they do stand out more than in her previous records as well, even though the focus on Homogenic is mainly in its aesthetic. 5 Years is the first song that features lyrics that point themselves against someone, a former love interest of Björk, accusing them of not being able to handle her, and while Immature’s lyrics don’t go anywhere due to them consisting of a verse repeated twice, they follow the theme of abandoning a lover, and this time, the questioning is to herself, wondering how she thought her significant other was a cure to all her personal issues. Hunter, an amazing intro to an amazing album, centers its lyrics around some of the same topics as the outro in Post (Cover Me and Headphones) which describes a voyage into the unknown that was Björk’s musical endeavors at the time, her will to go the distance to create something brand new and exciting. In this intro, she compares it to hunting and bringing the food to the table. It starts: “If travel is searching and home what’s been found, I’m not stopping”. It’s fucking brilliant man holy shit.

Now that I write this, I realize, from 5 Years onward, the songs cease to be about idolizing another person, with tracks such as Immature and Alarm Bell being introspective looks at Björk and her current feelings, and Pluto being about batshit self-change. Even All Is Full Of Love, with its first lyrics being “You’ll be given love, you’ll be taken care of”, seems to be addressing more of the ambient surrounding the person than the person themselves, as if they’re a placeholder for all the angelic ambience around the listener. Maybe the song is literally about placing the listener in this scenario, who knows.

Definitely best album I’ve heard yet, and what excites me is that people praise the next album so much, I’ve never seen someone talk much about Homogenic. I literally don’t know how Björk can top this, but I’ll see.

 WORST TO BEST: 5 Years, Immature – Mark Bell’s Version, Hunter, Pluto, Alarm Call, All Neon Like, Bachelorette, All Is Full Of Love – Howie’s Version, Jóga, Unravel

 Fuck it, 10/10

“I’m a path of cinders burning under your feet. You’re the one who walks me, I’m your one-way street.”

 Vespertine

I am pleased.

This is insane, man. I think I’ll be a huge Björk fan after I’m finished with this discography. Vespertine is meticulous, it’s enchanting, it’s all-around wonderful. You can tell Björk and her team put incredible effort into this album, for it to sound as effortlessly beautiful as possible; not one idea or song here sounds forced, out of its element, or simply put bad. They unite to create one of the most astounding listening experiences I think I’ll ever get in my life.

Vespertine is proud, but introverted. As a sequel to Homogenic, it serves as its lighter half: where Björk described Homogenic as “confrontational”, “active” and “warrior”, Vespertine flips that upside down, and brings microbeats, music boxes and harps to the table. This is a very effective alternative to songs such as Jóga and Bachelorette, where the instrumentals and the singer seemed to try and outdo each other, creating these grand, empowering songs; in this album, they merge together into living, breathing and deeply personal lullabies. One of the most impressive talents of Björk is that she seems to take the identity of her album to heart, and mixes her unique songwriting and singing talents and her otherworldly personality into the project’s own personality, becoming an artform much greater than the sum of its parts.

Songs like Hidden Place, It’s Not Up To You and Pagan Poetry are Björk to the bone, with their more elaborate and ear-catching production, their humongous vocals, and would be comfortable if they were to be pulled from this album into another; however, deeper cuts such as Aurora, Cocoon, Undo and An Echo A Stain are the embodiment of this album’s aesthetic, its frigid atmosphere and tiny, fragile surroundings. They are like symmetrical, unique snowflakes when softer, or huge, arctic blue glistering caves when grander. They’re precise; stable, but at the same time would not work if they weren’t organized exactly how they are.

It’s easy to get too comfortable listening to Vespertine. The tracks are almost spiritual in a way, they convey an unparalleled bliss to the listener, and getting lost in the album is almost part of the experience. Especially in the second half of Vespertine, where things get real lowkey. Songs merge into each other, starting with the wonderful music box interlude Frosti into Aurora, which features one of Björk’s strongest vocal performances, proceeding to An Echo A Stain, a standout for its weird, suspenseful and eerie instrumental, evoking a dark vibe, it sounds like a deep underwater exploration into the darkest abysses of the ocean or some shit. The lyrics are also uniquely confrontational, they don’t portray the undying passion of songs before it, instead proclaiming “Don’t say no to me. You can’t say no to me. I won’t see you, denied.”. With all the vague and spacey lyrics, and the uneventful instrumental, it’s impressive this song progresses so well, mainly due to its weird, unsettling tone that sets itself apart from the rest of the songs. In a way, these odd and abstract lyrics mixed with the ethereal and bittersweet instrumentation remind me of some Radiohead songs, such as The National Anthem, How To Disappear Completely and Ful Stop, and I’m realizing this is a style of music I’m prone to liking.

Sun In My Mouth is not much of a standout topically or sonically to me, as it doesn’t do much to expand upon the sexuality of the album, with lyrics once again referring to inserting fingers into wherever, and closing with “Will I complete the mystery of my flesh?”, the themes seem to have nowhere to go. Heirloom depicts a reoccurring dream about Björk losing her voice, and having her mother and son pour a glowing oil into her mouth, which is a cute and artsy way of saying they’re her fuel for continuing with her craft, I guess. The lyrics don’t go anywhere with themselves after this though, but the instrumental is very creative and memorable, it creates a neat little bubble of involving, resonating synths.

Employing some heavy strings for Harm Of Will, Björk doubles down on the romance of the album, in a rather stripped-down song, with a few vocal highlights from her. It finds its place in the tracklist, I guess, although the oral sex line comes off a bit too strong for the smooth sentiment of the song.

To close Vespertine off, Unison, the longest song in the album, lays back on an ambient sample by Oval, and features one of Björk’s most unique vocal harmonies on its chorus; overall a nice, upbeat outro for a wonderful album.

I will say I felt more excited listening to Homogenic, as I think Vespertine’s romantic, sexual aura doesn’t expand into much after some of the many heavily sensual verses, while Homogenic wasn’t as tight and claustrophobic for me. Vespertine, however, was freer and left a bigger impact on me, It’s Not Up To You succeeded in making me cry. At the same time, none of the songs here felt like they didn’t belong, like they took away from the experience; every sound and line collaborates to make something bigger, something I don’t think I’ll get from many other albums in my lifetime.

 BEST TO WORST: It’s Not Up To You, Pagan Poetry, Undo, Hidden Place, An Echo A Stain, Unison, Aurora, Heirloom, Cocoon, Harm Of Will, Frosti, Sun In My Mouth

 It is a 10

“I can decide what I give, but it’s not up to me what I get given. Unthinkable surprises about to happen, but what they are, it’s not up to you.”

 Medúlla

Björk’s 2004 Medúlla is, surprise surprise, an acapella album. And to further surprise, I liked it.

After Homogenic and Vespertine, I guess there was nowhere to go but towards the more experimental. You can’t really outdo those two albums in their own game, so you gotta branch out, try different things; and trying different things is exactly what Björk excels at, apparently. With Medúlla, all that wild, bombastic or serene instrumentation her previous albums were peppered with is gone, giving way to backing vocals ranging from super deep male bass to angelic choirs, beatboxing, and occasionally an isolated instrument. The album is rooted on the most primary form of music: barely any instruments, almost no effects or audio manipulations, just many voices uniting to become one; lyrics about childbirth, the human body, oceans and, of course, love.

Listening to Medúlla is interesting because it is very familiar, while also being a completely different experience from Björk’s previous albums. Songs like Who Is It and Mouth’s Cradle are unmistakably her, while at the same time being coated with an extra layer of experimentation, and with this new direction, Björk and her team are able to channel an energy that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of her best production. Where Is The Line? and Oceania are intricate and complex, showing just how much can be done with only the human voice. The low male vocals and beatboxing structure the songs, the choirs in the background give them depth, all the sounds link with themselves to amount to some incredible songs.

On the flipside, however, few songs fail to achieve that, in my opinion. Desired Constellation is notably bare and empty, with few aspects to its composition. The mystical lyrics that characterize Medúlla are still here, describing Björk playing routinely with stars to form whatever she desires, but apart from that, there isn’t much to experience. Mouth’s Cradle and its successor Miðvikudags are also not of much significance to the rest of the album, as they drift from its acapella compositions by employing some pleasant, but unnecessary synths as the basis of the songs. The simpler, shorter interludes that are peppered through the album are pretty much the standard sound for this record, fleshing it out with small little vocal passages and, of course, gibberish. Show Me Forgiveness, from my interpretation, is Björk apologizing to either herself or her daughter (as implied by the last line, “The girl might live”), for letting her interior voice be drowned out by the exterior; Öll Birtan is a simple buildup to the aforementioned Who Is It, but the best of the bunch are Sonnets/Unrealities XI, the poem it may not always be so; and i say by e. e. cummings over some of the best backing vocals in the album, Vökuró, where Björk sings a traditional Icelandic song in a very intimate and gorgeous moment in the album, and Ancestors, which features some passionate, odd and intriguing growls all throughout it.

It’s remarkable what Björk came up with in this album, the mystical aura surrounding it and forming its lyrics, in particular the verses in Oceania where she takes the role of the Ocean, exploring its perspective of Earth, time and the continents, Pleasure Is All Mine, which describes motherhood and childbirth for a sublime intro, and Submarine, featuring Robert Wyatt, evoking a sense of rebelliousness and urgency. Great album.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Oceania, Sonnets/Unrealities XI, Where Is The Line? Pleasure Is All Mine, Vökuró

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Mouth’s Cradle

 8.8/10

“When in doubt: give”

Outro

I postponed ths review for like 2 months or something, I don’t even know. Basically, from Debut to Vespertine was probably a one-month span of time, while it took me about double that time to actually write about Medúlla, because of what I think was a depressive episode. In the meantime, I started just reviewing shit on RateYourMusic (my username is fantaguarana, if anyone cares). I thought of stopping, I had this feeling that the whole “writing about everything I listen” thing was really forced and starting to become a chore, but now that I actually got to it, I think I notice how much it helps me organize my thoughts on music, compared to just listening to an album and never really reflecting on what it really means.

I’ll probably stop writing about everything I listen to, and leave this blog for the albums that really change me as a person. Have a good day yall.

[interesting-blog-name]

SLIGHTLY NEW ALBUMS I LIKED (Little Simz - GREY Area; Monsune - Tradition; Backxwash - God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It)

More loose reviews that I write and instantly want to get out of my Word document and into Tumblr without much of an overlaying theme between the albums or any planning as to which ones I’ll be releasing at which point, but it is what it is. This time I’ll be compiling some recent-ish albums I’ve enjoyed, two of which I’ve come to know from TheNeedleDrop (I try not to watch reviews before writing down my opinion btw), and one EP from an artist I like. Here it is.

Little Simz – GREY Area

Little Simz, the 26-year-old British rapper, is an artist I’ve loved the first time I heard her, when I listened to Selfish for the first time and saw her cover of Feel Good Inc. in triple-j’s Like A Version. Today, May 30th, I was planning on listening to White Chalk by PJ Harvey, but from what I read, it’s a pretty depressing album, and I’m not in the mood for that right now, so I picked GREY Area from my future listening list.

It’s really nice to hear a rap album like this once in a while. The instrumentation is organic and well thought out, her flow is amazing, and her lyrics have so much substance and personality to them, ranging from the happier, more reminiscent tone in 101 FM to the much more aggressive tracks Offence, Boss, Venom and Pressure, she’s always giving her take on life, telling the experience of what it’s like being a black person with big dreams in England, seeing friends die while she tries to go somewhere in life through music.

The main tone she picks for her self-narrative is an unapologetic view of the world around her; she tells the listener: “’til now I ain’t ever been the selfish type, ‘till now I ain’t ever told nobody no, don’t get it twisted. This shit ain’t happen overnight” in the biggest song off here, Selfish, featuring the most calming and lavish pianos and violins in this album, and an amazing feature by Cleo Sol on the hook. Pressure features an amazing batch of verses all about. Same thing with the intro, Offence, with its bold, empowering chorus; although the track comes off more playful with its cartoonish sound effects nearing the end than the raw message of the track mentioned previously. A great, high-spirited track to start off the album.

What isn’t as high-spirited is the next track, Boss, or, to be fair, almost all the other tracks in the album. Boss is a big fuck you to anyone you might dedicate the song to: the hook has Simz’s most aggressive delivery in the whole record, and the entire message is about getting over those who hurt you and coming up.  The second verse is something else.

Wounds, featuring Jamaican singer Chronixx, deals mostly with the gun/crime problem ever-so-present in marginalized communities all around the world, and she tells the story from the perspective of both herself and as a companion of the “gun man”, repeatedly mentioned in the song (“When a gun man only knows self-hate, them bullets show no love”). I’m not super crazy for Chronixx’s hook, or the much slower tempo of the track, but it fits well with the groovy instrumental. Venom, on the other hand, is a super exciting, menacing song. She goes all out over the violins playing in the background, but unfortunately, the track burns twice as bright to last half as long.

To lighten the mood a bit, 101 FM brings the most electronic instrumental, with cheerful, banging 808s and synths, and lyrics about her come up as a rapper, probably the verses where her British accent and slang dominate the most, giving them a more personal feel somewhat. Pressure doesn’t feature the most compelling instrumental or hooks in here – the Little Dragon refrain is mixed very poorly and the vocalist just doesn’t do a great job -, but the verses compensate for that, especially the first one, probably one of the most heartfelt and important ones in this album. Therapy talks about Simz’s struggles with finding comfort in therapy. The instrumental is average for the project, but still slaps, so that’s nice.

Sherbet Sunset is an ode to a broken relationship, and a theme that could be handled so poorly by other artists is handled masterfully by Little Simz. In three verses, she displays so many sides to what I assume is one relationship, so many emotions and thoughts that she shares, it really feels like she’s transcribing something of a focused, bright mind rush over the track, and it amazes me how she can reveal her feelings so well on a track like this, progressing from the regret of not seeing how it’d go wrong, to the anxiety that comes from spending all that time for seemingly nothing, to coming to terms with it in the last verse (although not quite). It’s a stunning song now that I listen to it again.

To close it all off, we have Flowers, mainly a tribute to various artists from the 27 club, with mentions of Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse in the verses, trying to relate to their struggles with drug addiction and quick fame. It’s incredibly powerful and a great finisher.

I don’t dislike one track in GREY Area. It’s well conceived, a great statement, it really feels like she gives her all to make every track memorable, and even though her delivery is mostly monotone throughout the whole album, that also works to her favor, as she has a very unique and recognizable voice. So the lyrics are extremely well written, and the only reason I don’t give more examples of that is because I got a whole lot of school shit to do, the instrumental work is clean and precise, and I don’t have a whole lot to complain about. Check this shit out if you haven’t.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: 101 FM, Venom, Selfish, Offence, Boss, Pressure

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: lol nah

 8.7/10

“Why you wanna all dress lies as truth? Have you ever seen what silence do? I don’t wanna see no violent troops putting out fires that haven’t been started”

 Monsune – Tradition

Damn I did not expect to like this as much as I did.

Monsune is a Chinese-Canadian singer who has recently been gaining some popularity from his amazing song OUTTA MY MIND, which features a funky bassline and high-pitched guitar playing that some have compared to Childish Gambino, specifically his album “Awaken, My Love!”. I decided to check out this short EP by him to see if he had anything more to offer, and it’s safe to say, he does.

The first track off Tradition already shows what this guy can do with his production. It starts off with the same vibe off of his previously mentioned biggest track, but on steroids: a prominent bassline, pitch-altered backing vocals, sunny guitars, and drowned out drums. His voice is also reaching higher notes in this song than in OUTTA MY MIND, but then in the middle of the song it all slows down for a very welcome beat change that shifts the song from this summer anthem to a very chill R&B tune. It’s amazing stuff, although I don’t understand why he chose to put some very noticeable autotune in this part.

CLOUD is my least favorite from the EP, but it’s still a very solid song, it’s just not amazing. The bass is still very strong, and the bridge later on in the song is addictive as shit. After that track comes OUTTA MY MIND, and then his style completely switches in MOUNTAIN, which starts off with some solo guitar and his low, beautiful singing. It’s actually really moving for some reason lol. It then picks up in the hook, the drums kick in along with what I assume is a keyboard, and his voice reaches the top of his range for the backing vocals, it’s a very well-made song.

JADE finishes Tradition off extremely beautifully, with a smooth acoustic guitar intro over a nice-ass bass, some ethereal, trippy scenes of Monsune floating over the ocean and appearing out of thin air in front of you (probably not you, the listener). And then all of a sudden this madman screams off the top of his lungs in the middle of the track and I fucking love it.

The flaws this EP has are mostly related to the mixing, which I think can be a little too harsh in some sections such as the big breakdowns in JADE and MOUNTAIN. Plus, I know lyrics aren’t a focus on a project like this, but it would be nice to get something more than love songs in the future perhaps. Still, loving this EP, so glad I checked Monsune out. You should too.

 WORST TO BEST: CLOUDS, 1998, JADE, OUTTA MY MIND, MOUNTAIN

 8/10

“Don’t you wanna come down? Cause I’m so bored of walking on the same old sky”

 Backxwash – God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It

God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It is an album by American rapper Backxwash, who received a new wave of attention after Anthony Fantano reviewed this album in his channel and gave it a decent 8. I haven’t watched the review yet, but I was interested in checking it out because of the high score, and especially since when I looked it up on Spotify, the songs only had around 8000 views.

Dark subject themes and the whole dark trap aesthetic are the core of this album. I, personally, have always been a fan of aggressive, heavy rap music, from more underground names like gizmo and Fukkit, to the more mainstream variant of these sounds, like XXXTENTACION. This album, however, operates in somewhat of a separate lane.

Many of the dark, edgy rap I used to listen to religiously back in the day was borderline mindless. Shit about ripping someone open, hollow flexing, except separated from mainstream rap only because the rapper in question is screaming their brains out when talking about designer clothes, instead of mumbling like your average Lil Baby, and, of course, personal problems, depression, being mad about whatever it was. Unlike its other contemporaries, however, it seems Backxwash has much more thought and elaboration into what she wants to yell about. Instead of hiding behind bass-boosted rather formulaic instrumentals, she takes the more scenic route, with still very dark, but more intricate gothic beats, sampling various religious speeches and implementing them into songs about black magic and overall unhappiness. The Black Sabbath sample that opens up this album should be enough for any listener to immediately understand what they’re about to get into, as the title track brings heavy percussion and some of the most graphic lyrics in the album, which it already doesn’t lack. Lines about downing pills and vodka, contemplating suicide, and blank vocalizations of anger (“I want war with these bitches, I want corpses and weapons”).

The track that resembles an average edgy Soundcloud rap song the most is Black Magic right after, with its own interpretation of the “ay” flow, shouted with a tone reminiscent of someone like Craig Xen. The big difference comes with the much grander production, especially the growling guitars that get introduced halfway, reminding the listener of Backxwash’s skill as a producer. From what I could tell, she was responsible for the production of the tracks in here, and considering there are no vocal guests except for Malldate’s quick appearance in Into The Void, I’m assuming the features listed in the tracklist are all producer credits as well, the feature in this track being Ada Rook, providing the amazing guitar work for this song.

Spells is mixed for me. I don’t enjoy the attempted singing in the chorus, and it falls completely flat to my ears; the beat is hard as ever, but the lyrics feel slightly disconnected with each other. At one point, she’s talking about going to Hell to her mom, at the other she mentions doors opening and closing in an office and how there’s no one in some corridor, and it doesn’t go anywhere from that, with lines such as “heart is so dead with tissue” not exactly evoking any sort of emotion or imagery.

Black Sheep is the most effective song out of the first four; it seems to filter all the positive aspects of the other tracks and package them into one quick serving. The beat is chaotic and in a constant state of unrest, the lyrics are centered and aimed at various of Backxwash’s problems in life, such as her father, people who want to bring her down and put her “in line on the X and O’s”, and overall venting. After that comes a brief interlude, the first of two that don’t have much use in the album except as pallet cleansers. It’s followed by Into The Void, a track that mentions her paranoia of being harassed and possibly killed when walking around in the streets and the deli. It’s haunting, and definitely the best song in here; it is laser-focused in the exact way I wished the previous tracks would be. Her vocal delivery is extremely expressive, and she tells the story in a way that gives the listener a brief, but at the same time immense glimpse of the reality that trans people face and have to go through, in a morbid fashion.

Adolescence is very short and eases the pace a bit after the intense emotions of the last. It’s a message to her younger brother that quickly descents into a confession of her inner struggle, mentioning possible overdoses and being too old for the 27 Club and fearing going to therapy. What’s great about this song is the fact that, even in such a short amount of time and with a less explosive instrumental, Backxwash manages to evoke her emotions so well; this is definitely what she does best in this record, and it overcomes the times where her delivery is flawed and her words are slurred and hard to understand. After this comes Amen, and holy fuck is this an angry song. Criticizing the hell out of the church, Backxwash comes at greedy pastors and their irresponsible spending when the churchgoers who support him are in need. My big problem with this song is the fact that the hook, as impassionate as it is, doesn’t do much for the subject, and the verse is way too short to have any impact with its theme. Lines like “these politicians politicking” don’t help much either.

The very distorted second interlude, Heaven’s Interlude, takes us to the last track, Redemption, the least intense song in here, which is appropriate as a sendoff. She expresses her frustrations towards her dad’s frustrations towards her being trans, and while the entire sentiment of the song is great and well formulated, I can’t find a way around the lines “Fuck these fucking boomers, fuck these fucking losers. Fuck theses motherfucking fuckers in their fucking two truck. Fuck these fuck(sic)abusers, and fuck these fucking rumors.”, they just emanate Limp Bizkit energy.

God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It is a very passionate, real, well produced and well-conceived album; it bears themes that are immensely important to be brought to the music scene, and by mixing that message with its explosive and polished production, it amplifies it a ton. However, as powerful as her deliveries are, I believe Backxwash can go much further with her songwriting and song structuring in the future, as well as her intonation, because that was really all that was keeping this album from being legendary. If she can do more of this in songs that are longer and super focused around whichever topic she decides, she can make something legendary. And thank God she got reviewed by Fantano, I hope she can take this opportunity and make something huge out of this.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Into The Void, Black Sheep, God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It, Adolescence, Black Magic

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Spells

 7.7/10

“Chosen one, sad bitch, lowest scum. Coldest, huh, black sheep talk to ‘em. If the situation changed I would have said the same shit, exactly the same.”

[interesting-blog-name]

LOOSE REVIEWS (It Looks Sad., Pablo’s Paintings, Vancouver Sleep Clinic, Steve Lacy)

Just a bunch of very quick, very throwaway reviews that I put together while I’m writing the Björk discography post (I’m currently at Vespertine, so this shit is gonna take a while). Mostly slightly underground bands, all very short projects and one of them don’t even have a project, but you should check them out. Anyway.

It Looks Sad. – Songs For Quarantine

Not much to say about this. It is a 9-minute EP, obviously not meant to be taken as a serious, ambitious release, but it’s from a band I wanted to check out: It Looks Sad.. They’re categorized as emo, but their style reminds the listener a lot more of shoegaze and dream pop, at least from what I’ve heard by them (right now, this and Drool, which fits cozily in my Summer playlist).

If you want some moody music for the quarantine (if it’s still going on by the time I post this) and you don’t care if the songs sound like they were recorded in an underwater cave, then go ahead and listen to this I guess. It’s average as fuck but whatever, that’s the point.

 WORST TO BEST: Eyes, Love, Waves, Bug

 bedroom music/10

“*insert shoegaze mumbling here*”

 It Looks Sad. - Kaiju

2015 EP. Two tracks, one sucks and the other is tolerable. Like I really don’t know what the fuck the singer was trying to do with Creature, he’s hollering all over the place, and the delivery would be more at home in maybe some poorly-recorded punk song, but the instrumental is nothing like that, as it’s pretty much indie-rock 101; not to mention the lyrics, which are the blandest broken-hearted songwriting I’ve heard yet, probably. I now understand how truly emo they were.

For Nagoya, I can at least say the hook is pretty cool, but that’s it really. I guess I’m grateful they changed their style.

 2.45/10

“Best friend this is terrible. You know it’s inevitable. I hope you come back, I hope he comes back.”

 Pablo’s Paintings

Just wanted to give a shoutout to the underground Leeds, Yorkshire band Pablo’s Paintings. I had listened to Lizard a long while ago, and loved it, so I decided to check out the rest of their stuff today (May 25th), and it’s very solid. The track You’ve Got A Long Way To Go draws heavily from a psychedelic influence, while Paint’s Gone Dry and So Long (All Your Friends) sound like something The Beatles would maybe write.

I guess you could call them formulaic, but their mixing and distinct sound are all pretty good for a band that hasn’t gotten a song with over 2000 streams on Spotify. Their songs can be a little to bubblegum-ish, such as So Long (All Your Friends) which doesn’t really stand out as many others, but for the most part, they deliver. Can I Draw You Something? has a slight edge to it, in comparison, but still sporting cute lyrics about just drawing for someone, and Ghost In The Machine has a great progression to it, and a very cool cover art to accompany it. It’s clear the band has a taste for visual arts, from the lyrics to the band’s name.

In short, they do have a long way to go, and I hope they release an album soon, considering all but two of their Spotify singles were from last year; I’d be the first to listen to it.

 WORST TO BEST: So Long (All Your Friends), Paint’s Gone Dry, You’ve Got A Long Way To Go, Can I Draw You Something?, Lizard, Ghost In The Machine

 good band check them out/10

“I draw these lines and take them for a walk. I find that I say things better when I don’t need to talk”

 Vancouver Sleep Clinic – Winter

Contrary to the name, the band Vancouver Sleep Clinic is from Australia. Led by ambient singer (a term I didn’t know existed until today) Tim Bettinson, from my understanding, the band have partly built their audience by reeling people into the music by putting having the songs feature in TV shows and movies and whatnot, since there’s a hefty list of times their songs have appeared in this type of media on their Wikipedia page. I decided to listen to Winter because I discovered Stakes from the fact that the $uicideboy$ sampled it on the song Sold My Soul To Satan Waiting In Line At The Mall, and liked it a lot. The EP as a whole, however, not nearly as much.

To start off with the main problem I have with Winter, the tracks are all the same. Seriously, I cannot distinguish one from the other; all the songs are soaked in reverb and mainly center around simple acoustic guitar chords and generic pianos, mixed with Tim’s head voice and sometimes the dumb decision to include a synthesized drumming track, like in Vapour, where the fast-paced hi-hats sound so out of place and clip so badly in your ears, it sounds like your earphones are having a mini seizure, but not in a cool way. Meanwhile in Flaws, there’s this unnecessary, wack finger-snapping that makes it sound like I’m listening to some techno song with around 3000 views on YouTube (I do like his backing vocals in the track though).

At its best, tracks like the opener, Collapse, offer an actually powerful passage, in that song’s case, the hook breakdown, where the 808 drum patterns are actually very welcome, and the synths under it are very beautiful and harmonize really well. The final track, Rebirth, also attempts a grand breakdown of sorts, but falls flat because the song is so unnecessarily stretched out and weirdly segmented, and it’s so unexpected: the song is a slow piano/guitar ballad as usual, and then, around 3 minutes in, after the song fades out almost entirely and tricks you into thinking it ended, the drum kicks start rising and all of a sudden there’s... something? I don’t even know what instruments are playing apart from the  superimposed drums and what I think is an electric guitar, because it sounds like god knows what, an overheating computer mixed with some shrieking sound, which I assume is the guitar, way off in the background. And then Tim sings a last verse and the song suddenly ceases to exist. Same thing happens with the shortest track here, (Aftermath), consisting of 4 lines, your average piano and strings, and of course, the reverb. It builds up an epic instrumental, and after the brief singing section, just ends. No further instrumental work, just woosh. It’s gone.

I will give credit to Tim’s verses. Even though they’re always delivered with the same intonation, his lyrics are alright, and at least in Stakes, he employs some backing vocals that really make the track, and the hook is magnificent. They tend to blend into one another, with constant themes being metaphors for words he should have or regrets saying, the cold (obviously, given the EP title), sometimes drowning/large bodies of water, and of course, all tracks are about melancholy and heartbreak. But in some parts of the EP, his verses really do feel like some alright poetry, such as the awkward last verse in Rebirth (“I’m starting again, tearing my flesh, stripped to the bone, the all that I’ve grown. Leaving behind, breathe like a child. It’s taken the winter to find who I am”) or the already mentioned beautiful hook in Stakes. In most of the songs, however, I find his themes to be too repetitive and, I wouldn’t say uninspired, but run-of-the-mill.

So overall, the EP doesn’t amount to much. All the tracks attempt to go this emotional route, but they’re very repetitive, and that numbs them and robs them of their emotion a lot. Listen to it if you want to relax, or maybe even sleep to it if you want to take their name literally.

 WORST TO BEST: Vapour, Flaws, (Aftermath), Rebirth, Collapse, Stakes

 4/10

“I sunk in oceans blue, now they’re all frozen over. I should have took your hand, we should have crossed the border.”

 Steve Lacy – Steve Lacy’s Demo

Member of The Internet, singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, drummer and producer Steve Lacy is an artist I’ve wanted to check out for a while. I have at some point in my life heard his song Looks, off this demo, but thankfully I forgot how it went so I can check it out again. It’s gonna be a quick listen and review, but I’m curious (and while looking him up I found out he won a Grammy with Kendrick’s DAMN., for producing, backing vocals and songwriting, so that’s cool, congrats Steve).

Right away, I’ll just mention this project is very lo-fi. As in, the drums and his voice are poorly mixed. I’ll give it a little bit of a pass because this man played all the instruments in here and I appreciate the fuck out of that, but anyway. You can tell right at the first track that singing isn’t Steve’s forte, at least in this album, at this time. The hook in that song is just bad, the good part are the instruments, the guitar riffs and the very dynamic bassline, plus the fun little bongos. However, just like all songs here except Dark Red, this is waaaaaaaay too short. It has two short hooks, the verse, and that’s it. The songwriting, I feel, is one of Steve’s more substantial talents; this song I just mentioned is mainly about how a relationship can’t progress because the two involved don’t like much about each other apart from their looks, and Ryd is all about taking a girl to your backseat, but even though these themes are very simplistic, Steve fleshes them out into something more interesting and melodically rich. In Ryd, his smooth vocals surf over the sunny riffs, but what takes away from it are the weirdly mixed drums, as they sound like they’re playing way louder than they should be. The track is groovy though.

The most focused song here, Dark Red, tells the story of a man who’s worried his girl might leave him soon. The instrumentals are nothing special, very basic, and same with the vocals, even though they’re more rooted and solid in this song. The next song, Thangs, emphasizes its bass way more than other songs, but once again, Steve’s voice is not pleasing to listen to, specifically his high-pitched backing vocals, they’re awful. The lyrics are the most basic here, and this song just goes by without leaving any impact after ending pretty abruptly.

Haterlovin is weird. The vocals are way too low, but I like how they differentiate themselves by not going the melodic route, instead Steve chooses to rap them, and his flow in the verse is impressive, but at the same time the hook is way too repetitive for the song to work, and even though it’s nice he switched up and focused the track on the drums, it still leaves it pretty bare.

To close it up, Some brings some promise, with a pretty funky bassline and hook, but then ends out of nowhere and starts a hidden track, Snaily, which I admit has nice falsetto vocals from Steve, but I don’t know why I couldn’t be a separate track. Overall, the album isn’t great, but I appreciate how organic and talented Steve is. Throughout the songs, his creativity is pretty noticeable, so I can’t hate his efforts, but unfortunately his ideas don’t find the right light to shine here.

 WORST TO BEST: Thangs, Haterlovin, Looks, Some, Dark Red, Ryd

 4.5/10

“Next thing I know she was feeling on me, and I was in the M double-O D when she said park my car down the backstreet”

[interesting-blog-name]

FKA twigs MEGAREVIEW (LP1/M3LL155X/MAGDALENE

FKA twigs is a British R&B and art pop singer who came up as a backup dancer for various artists’ music videos, and decided to start her music career, releasing her first official EP, EP1, in 2012. I am not familiar with anything she’s done except for her feature in A$AP Rocky’s Fukk Sleep, so I don’t know what to expect, even though I’ve heard good things. I’ll be listening to her two studio albums and an EP she released between the two, chronologically.

 LP1

I love it.

Although twigs isn’t fond of being categorized as an R&B artist, specifically alternative R&B, as she has stated in an interview with The Guardian, there really isn’t much else to be used to describe her music, and the term is pretty convenient to embody most of the sounds in LP1, so I’ll most likely be using it. The album is a mixture of strong, dark electronic production and twigs’ beautiful falsetto singing, taking form as either the sexually charged, euphoric vocals you hear in the chorus of Two Weeks, or the hymnic elements her voice has in Closer and the intro Preface. These two key elements constantly clash and form something way more impactful than what they’d be individually, and give the whole LP a soothing and simultaneously dark and dizzying atmosphere.

The highpoints in the album are when the two combine into grand moments such as the ending of Lights On, where the production amounts into a huge chunk of pure bliss, sounding like there are tens of different sounds all in sync with one another, or the processed, multi-layered chorus in the next track, Two Weeks. Another great quality to the production style in the album is that it gets to be adventurous when it wants, how it wants, whether by pulling back completely and minimalizing its role to let FKA twigs’ voice shine on Hours, or on my favorite track Pendulum, where the whole song is built around this unstable knocking and simple yet effective manipulated keyboards, completely fading out at times leaving the high-pitched vocals to themselves.

The lyrical themes are all built around love and passion, with varying levels of aggression to romanticism (Lights On, Two Weeks vs. Hours, Give Up) or regret, such as in Numbers, which showcases how far into the electronic side the production can go, with erratic drums and beeping at the start, progressing into some gorgeous synths under some of twigs’ most heartfelt singing in the project. The exception is Video Girl, the most personal track here, where she sings about her time as a backup dancer and the struggles that came with her intent on achieving fame. The lyrics hit hard and it serves as a really nice intimate moment in the album.

For the tracks I don’t like as much I have the two closers: Kicks and One Time, the latter being only available in the deluxe version, which is not on streaming platforms. Kicks, from what I could tell, is all about being enough for yourself, specifically sexually. Without the grand ambitious production from the rest of the album, this outro is left with okay vocals and an odd theme that doesn’t go anywhere, backed by some slightly annoying production decisions, and a nice chorus which is definitely the best part of the song. One Time, on the other hand, is just really bland compared to the craziness of the rest of the album, as it is the most stagnant and uneventful of the tracks.

The sound of LP1 is definitely intriguing, and I consider it a nice introduction to an artist I have high expectations for.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Pendulum, Video Girl, Two Days, Lights On

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Kicks

  8.25/10

“You’re younger than I am broken. I dance feelings like they’re spoken, so my conversation’s not enough.”

 M3LL155X

Read as “Mellissa”, this EP was released in August of 2015, and features 18 minutes of music spanned into 5 tracks, and I love to say there’s not one track here I don’t like

What surprised me about M3LL155X is how “explosive” twigs seems to be compared to LP1, where most of her tracks were sung in a comfortable, soothing falsetto tone, in here she isn’t afraid to let her voice carry out a lot more, which brings some much appreciated strong emotions and power to the songs here, great examples being her fast delivery on the hook of In Time, and her enchanting finish to Mothercreep.

The EP starts with Figure 8, which places the listener dead center in the chaotic instrumentals the project has to offer, with a banging bass right at the beginning. The track slowly progresses from its slightly angelic cadence into the weird, choppy vocal effects in the latter half, giving the track a nice finish. What I find a little underwhelming are the lyrics, sometimes they come off slightly meaningless, at least at first glance, but I feel they could have been used better, maybe to convey meaning other than love and relationships, which is done in the last two tracks, but not in such an effective way in my opinion, specifically on Mothercreep, a track supposed to be a mature hindsight to twigs’ mom’s decisions to her daughter’s life, which doesn’t come off as super personal in a way it could have. Like I said, however, the ending to this song is gorgeous, and I love how the song waits to bring in that climax, it really ends the EP on a huge high note.

To me the best the EP has to offer is In Time and Glass & Patron, the first being this infectious, addictive, ever-evolving fat banger, I just cannot get enough of it at all; and the latter being the weirdest, most electronic-influenced song here (I mention the umbrella electronic genre very carefully because I know fuck-all about it), with the oddest but most interesting progression here. That isn’t to undermine twigs’ vocals, as they are as good as ever, I just wish in tracks like this and I’m Your Doll, where she reaches some great vocal inflections, she’d make more use of them, but to me they feel like the vocals are somewhat teasing themselves to the listener, when they could’ve been used to a much greater extent.

I love this EP, I love its aggressiveness and how it surprised me, but I know, even as good as it is, that all the potential here could have been used a bit better.

 RANKED TRACKS: In Time, Glass & Patron, Mothercreep, Figure 8, I’m Your Doll

 8.15/10

“Paper cut it, I feel the slightest rip is a river that’s overflowing me”

 MAGDALENE

Bruh.

I don’t even know what to say honestly, I’m completely blown away. This is heaven.

From the start, I thought this album was gonna be alright, but immediately after home with you I knew this shit was something else. This is by far her most cohesive, beautiful, emotional, greatest album overall. I seriously don’t even know what to say, I’m writing this immediately after my second listen, and I love almost every aspect of it.

I guess I’ll start by the things I liked the least, which were probably the tracks sad day and holy terrain, even though these tracks are at least great. The melodies in sad day are so unique and entrancing, really the only thing I didn’t like as much was the production, which felt like it could have gone a bit further. For holy terrain, I have mixed feelings towards it. While a part of me feels like it was a little weird, a bigger part is amazed at how well these two worlds merged with each other to form a track as beautiful as this; again, it doesn’t stand out as much as some others, and I think twigs sounds a bit like Ariana Grande at the beginning of the hook, but fuck me some moments in this song are insane.

I was a little indifferent towards thousand eyes at first, but I’ve come to appreciate a slow, ascending intro to this mindfuck of an album, and the track right after that, home with you, is pretty much perfect, I have nothing bad to say about it. I love the alternating between processed and raw vocals, and it just ends so beautifully, it’s seriously otherworldly.

“Otherworldly” is actually a great word to describe almost anything here. mary magdalene is a gorgeous look into the ethereal feminine theme this album is solidified over, and sounds like something you’d hear as you ascended into heaven after dying; fallen alien is aggressive like something out of M3LL155X, but even more polished and fits perfect into the context of the album, and after it starts a nearly flawless outro of three tracks: mirrored heart, daybed and cellophane. This is pure emotion, I cannot describe what I felt while listening to these three. The first is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, or at least that’s what I feel right now. I have to be extremely careful not to listen to this too much, so it doesn’t lose its magic on me.

daybed is much simpler instrumentally, with an ambient undertone to the track that just really fits my personal tastes. The lyrics in this track are raw feels, in fact the lyrics in MAGDALENE in general sound much more mature and fleshed out, and I absolutely love it, it’s heartbreak, bittersweet beauty in every direction, all connected by this weird theme of something greater than humanity; if twigs’ intent was to make herself look extraterrestrial with her art, but at the same time undeniably human, then I think she succeeds, because, to me, it feels like she is the music, it feels like she pulls these songs straight from her soul, and that’s why it’s so alien, because it is incredibly human.

For the closer, cellophane absolutely wrecks your heart with a gorgeous piano ballad, and I’m very happy I never heard this song, considering it is the lead single to the album, because it just added so much emotion to the outro of one of the best albums I’ve heard. I seriously cannot get enough of it, and I think I’ll go sleep for a while now just to clear my mind a little bit. I’m sorry if these three “reviews” haven’t gone super in depth with the albums, but I feel like if I talk about them any longer they’ll lose some of their beauty to me, plus I’m not doing this to be perfectly objective, just to share my super biased, super inexperienced thoughts on what I listen to. So I guess just listen to them. They’re awesome. Peace.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: home with you, mirrored heart, cellophane, daybed, mary magdalene

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: none

 9.45/10

“Aching is my laughter, busy is my pastime, telling is my silence, blurring my horizon, smothered is my distance, careful are my footsteps, possessive is my daybed.”

[interesting-blog-name]

“Indie Rock” MEGAREVIEW (Hippo Campus - Bashful Creatures/Bad Suns - Language & Perspective/COIN - How Will You Know If You Never Try)

“Indie rock” is a term I never understood. It obviously should be used to describe rock by independent bands, but what counts as independent anymore? Bands like Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse are categorized as “indie”, much like Mac DeMarco, and they have reached a point in their careers of worldwide fame, but they’re still considered “indie”, not because they record their music at home with a $15 mic, but because of their sound. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a light brand of rock that has undistorted guitars, pop structures, and something of a Summer vibe to them. I really don’t know how to technically describe indie rock as a genre, but I have yet to listen to an indie rock album, so I got three short albums from bands that my some of my friends listen to, all under the “indie” umbrella (according to Wikipedia), to see if I actually like the style.

 Hippo Campus – Bashful Creatures

It’s a solid EP. Not much more to say.

I really don’t know what to comment on in this, because I feel like the biggest problem with the “indie” “genre” is that the bands all sound the same, and for a 6-track EP, how much variety can you really ask for? Also considering this is their debut EP. The instrumentation is fine, especially the guitars, which I think really embody the whole summertime feel of the genre, and standout in almost all tracks here, and the singer’s voice is memorable enough, and doesn’t leave anything to be desired at any point. He’s also super hot The songwriting is that youthful, lovey dovey shit you’d hear in a teen romance movie (“Art school girl with ignorant bliss. Peace, weed, cocaine, and mushrooms and shit”) but it’s tolerable (except in Souls, that song’s chorus is a little too generic for me, I think; even though I like how the song starts kind of toned down and suddenly blows up). The closest the EP gets to having even the slightest bit of edge is on the title track, an anthem about not caring about what others think and being yourself, and Suicide Saturday, the biggest song in here, which talks about social suicide and college parties and all that. Unfortunately, they’re also the most forgettable songs.

Sophie So has a really catchy hook, and showcases Jake’s higher pitched vocals very well, it is easily my favorite song. On Little Grace, the biggest change-up is the dub rhythm that sneaks up in the middle of the song, but it doesn’t stand out, and the chorus is the most annoying in the EP. Opportunistic has a fast cadence to it that sets it apart a little bit, plus the guitar fingering is notable, but the track isn’t anything superb or whatever.

It is executed well, doesn’t bring anything new, but I’d listen to it in the car.

 FAVORITE TRACK: Sophie So

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Bashful Creatures

 Like a 6/10

“You came back, you wanted to see through my two-colored eyes. You left me at home with a handful of downtrodden sighs.”

 Bad Suns – Language & Perspective

I had known Cardiac Arrest for almost three years now, an upbeat song I’d enjoyed a little, so I chose Bad Suns for the second album, and I was disappointed.

After the first three tracks, I had the feeling Language & Perspective had nothing interesting to offer, and I was mostly right. Nearly all songs here could be described as something like “indie-pop”, but with a huge emphasis on the “pop” aspect. The tracks are all so goddamn formulaic and predictable, songs like Take My Love and Run, Learn to Trust and We Move Like the Ocean sound like they literally copy-paste themselves halfway into them until they end, and Sleep Paralysis swaps what could be an actual verse with like 20 seconds of onomatopoeia. The song topics are generic and bland as well, most of them being about “[coming] to you on my hands and knees” and dreaming about an ex late at night and stuff like that, or general teenage anxiety and overthinking, and that would be tolerable if the band at least said it with some kind of variation, but they don’t, it’s just surface-level love and regret songs back to back.

An exception to the bland songwriting in the album is the song Salt, where lead singer Christo sings from the perspective of his transgender friend. I’m not trans, so I can’t relate nor understand if the lyrics are accurate, but the thing is he isn’t either. From the Genius annotations, it seems the friend was pleased though, and said the feelings expressed in the song were things she actually felt, but was never able to describe, so I guess that’s cool of him to dedicate a whole song to her experience. Still, unfortunately the track isn’t such a standout instrumentally or vocally, but one thing I liked was how the hook finishes at the end of the song, when “these memories are nothing to me, just salt” becomes “salt to the wound”, so yeah that was cool.

Language & Perspective is at its best when the hooks are catchy and you just don’t give a fuck. Songs like Cardiac Arrest, We Move Like the Ocean and Pretend are super easy to sing along to, and sound perfect for when you’re in a car driving against the sun (I know I said the exact same thing for the last album leave me alone), especially because of Bowman’s impressive singing, but without that thin veil of sugary pop, what does this album have that stands out? Matthew James, Take My Love and Run, Transpose (which sounds like it could be on a really corny Nike commercial) and Learn to Love just aren’t as memorable and fun, and so they end up coming off as generic, bland and at times annoying, just because they don’t hold up to the melodic fun little hooks on the other songs.

I can’t hate on Dancing on Quicksand and Rearview however, as even though the first’s lyrics aren’t standouts, I can’t help but love how groovy the song is, and the latter, while the melodies aren’t the most memorable here, the lyrics, to me, sound like they have a little more life and personality to them, even if they remain somewhat vague. I have to admit Sleep Paralysis is a mixed highlight for me, despite the lyrics being especially repetitive, just because of how grand the ending sounds and how the eerier chord progression brings at least something new to the album.

Also, really quick before I wrap it up, why the fuck is 20 Years not in the album? It’s in an EP they released the same year which features Cardiac Arrest, Transpose and Salt and it would easily be my favorite track if it was in the tracklist, maybe because it’s just really relatable to me how your teen years pass without you noticing, but it’s also so mellow and would bring such a refreshing little moment in the record.

My difficulties with this album is that I do like and see myself in the future bumping a lot of these songs individually, if I shut down a few parts of my brain and disregard half the lyrics, but when they’re all crumbled together into a project, their single qualities fade and their flaws unite to form a pretty unsatisfying listen; nearly all songs feel static, formulaic, and don’t progress or amount to much – which is pretty noticeable if you realize all songs span from 3:03 to 3:53 minutes - and the instrumentation brings almost nothing to the overall experience, it’s pretty much a backdrop for Bowman to sing his heart over, without much personality of its own. So while it’s not awful, it’s not good either.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Dancing on Quicksand, Rearview

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Learn to Trust, Take My Love and Run

 4.7/10

“You let your hair down, your face is made up, you know this town so well”

 COIN – How Will You Know If You Never Try

COIN is the least familiar band of the three here, as I’ve only heard Growing Pains from them and I don’t remember anything from the track, but as a quick intro, the band is from Nashville, Tennessee and consisted of 4 members: Chase Lawrence on vocals and synthesizer, Ryan Winnen on drums, Joe Memmel on guitar and backing vocals, and Zach Dyke on bass until he left two years ago.

After listening to the first three tracks of the album, my expectations were pretty high, but after finishing, I feel like this album is reminiscent of a poorly-heated microwave meal: the first three tracks are decreasingly good, the middle of the album is raw, and the last three go back to being increasingly good, with the only exception being the bright spot that is track 7, Heart Eyes, a romantic, entrancing little jam that I can’t help but love.

My big grip with HWYKIYNT is that, for 11 tracks, COIN doesn’t let go of the ear-destroying instrumental breakdowns (it’s not like it’s heavy metal or anything, but the mixing makes it sound like the guitars blow up at some points), tuned up guitars and formulaic song structures, and that leads to many tracks becoming rather forgettable amongst the others. There are, of course, exceptions, but they’re few and I’d say not well-located within the album: Don’t Cry, 2020 is the big standout in the album for me, and I fell in love with it first listen (the context of today being 2020 also helps, I guess), Boyfriend’s defining synth-line and bubblegum qualities make for a lot of enjoyment, especially paired with the light-hearted passive-aggressiveness and rejection on the lyrics, and Talk Too Much, their biggest song, has some cute little lyrics, and an ultra-pop hook that centers the whole song around it and is impossible not so sing along to; but immediately after, the album starts to slow down its hype with I Don’t Wanna Dance, which has an appealing vocal performance by Chase, and starts promisingly with the synths, but is too simple to go anywhere.

Hannah is probably the most forgettable song here, and brings absolutely nothing to the album, and Are We Alone?’s lyrics are cute and focused but really simplistic; in this song specifically, I think the breakdown the band employs right after the hook is really unnecessary, and the song would do better without it. After that is Heart Eyes, which I’ve mentioned before as one of my favorites, mostly because it tones it down a bit, something that really needed to happen at some point this deep into the record.

The song Lately II contains the hidden track Nothing Matters and deals with Chase losing his newborn nephew, a sequel to Lately off the band’s debut album. On the outside, it sounds like just another cheerful song, but the lyrics taken into context I’m sure are very meaningful to Chase and his family; besides that I enjoy the heavier drums in this track and the loose vocal melodies right after the chorus, plus the closing instrumentals are also a nice addition, but I don’t really understand the need to include a hidden track into it; I understand the themes are intertwined, but it could have very well been a separate track, and the way it is slightly harms the song when isolated from the album into, for example, a playlist or a one-time listen, but whatever.

I don’t have much to say about Feeling, it’s your average hype indie-rock track, something you’d maybe hear in a FIFA video game soundtrack, but to its credit, it doesn’t go overboard in itself, the vocals and guitar performances feel very grounded and safe, in a good way. And to finish this off, Miranda Beach brings some solid guitars to the table, they feel very textured and pierce through every other sound; the song is definitely one of the most infectious and ear-catching on here. Closing it all up, Malibu 1992 is the slow jam the album was in need of for 11 tracks. Very stripped back and patient compared to the rest of the song, which makes it stand out naturally, but that doesn’t mean the song is superb or anything, it’s just a refreshing taste.

Throughout a lot of the tracks here I was waiting for something more, a slightly different approach to a song, more introspective lyrics, but it never really came in a way that stood out, and because of that, the start of the album ends up more solid than the rest of it, in my opinion. It isn’t a bad album, but it isn’t amazing either. I feel it’s very derivative, the lyrics are not a standout, and while some songs may be bops, I don’t feel it is strong as a whole project.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Don’t Cry, 2020; Miranda Beach; Talk Too Much; Heart Eyes

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Hannah

 I’m feeling a strong 5 to a light 6 on this one. 

“You’re so concerned about your future, yeah, but tomorrow’s just another day.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Gorillaz - Demon Days Review

The concept of a band like Gorillaz was always, to me, a bit odd. A virtual band with fictional members and plot seemed a bit unnecessary to me, but I now realize it’s a nice way to set them apart from any other group. As they are not real, tailoring the story behind the band is a free canvas for Damon and whoever else works in the creative process. To insert myself into the world of this band, I chose to start with Demon Days.

The first listen I gave to this album was terrible, as I was super tired and listening to it felt like a chore. This, combined with the fact that on the second listen I enjoyed the record considerably more, has left me wondering: how much of my opinions on records are products of immediate emotions and how I feel when listening to an album, regardless of whether or not I actually like it? Can I dislike an album just because I’m angry at something else, or the other way around? Looking back at reviews I wrote just months ago, I already feel differently towards them, and this left me thinking about why I review in the first place. How do I know if I like something for myself, or because of what other people think? I honestly don’t know, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I should judge an album by what it tries to be, how well and clearly it does it, how it impacts me, and how good it sounds; keeping in mind that this is not my job, nor is it something I’m an expert on, at all, only something I do for fun.

Something else that sets the band apart is their lack of a central genre. According to Spotify’s algorithm, Gorillaz are an alternative hip hop and art pop band, and to Wikipedia, the album is alternative rock, dark pop, alternative hip hop and trip hop. While these labels somewhat fit, the band feels more like a working ground for their real-life musician counterparts, Damon, the featured rappers and singers, and the producers behind their music. Due to this, the album is somewhat hard to describe objectively, as some of the songs merge elements of whichever genre they feel like to create something new.

The title of the record describes it very well; Demon Days is an ode to the present ails the world and its inhabitants are going through, from climate change to war to personal hurt. A few detours do take place, mainly the tracks that contain features, as they tend to distance themselves from the central theme to provide fitting and surgical rapped verses. The exception to this is the fantastic verse by Booty Brown of The Pharcyde, who paints a vivid, heavy and well-crafted picture of a soldier’s day-by-day in the track Dirty Harry (“I change your whole location to a pine box six under. Impulsive, don't ask why or wonder. Orders given to me is strike and I'm thunder. With lightning-fast reflexes on constant alert from the constant hurt that seems limitless with no drop in pressure.”). On the flipside, the tracks November Has Come, with the masterful wordplay in the two verses by MF DOOM, All Alone featuring Roots Manuva’s fast but hard to understand flow, and the hit Feel Good Inc., don’t have a heavy focus on their messaging, but are still very well put-together, with the band’s instrumentation featuring the rappers perfectly, and nice vocal melodies by Damon in Feel Good Inc.’s verse and the tracks’ choruses (except for the way too rudimentary and awkwardly-delivered “all alones” on the track of the same name). The instrumental in the band’s biggest hit is very indicative of why it became a hit in the first place, you simply can never forget that bassline and everything else going on in the song.

The instrumentation goes from classic rock to synth-heavy pop, to a mixture of the two, seemingly at random. Kids with Guns, O Green World and Every Planet We Reach Is Dead seem to do this best, with the former’s natural blend of acoustic instruments and light electronic sounds, the latter’s catchy riffs, mixed with the computerized white noise underneath, an O Green World’s weird, raven-like noise and grimy guitars sections separated from the synth section, which sounds like the theme for a side-scroller. That, coupled with Damon’s lo-fi singing and the vocal harmonies on top of it, make for a great track. For the more one-sided instrumentals, Dirty Harry definitely takes the cake, getting groovier and groovier to culminate at Brown’s verse, when the strings come in over the rapping, and the bass stands out amongst it all, to create this very epic and grand moment; the only problem I have with the track is that the verse seems to be mixed a little too low.

On the opposite side of the more synthetic instrumentations, there are tracks like Last Living Souls and DARE. The former, the first song you hear in the album, is not nearly a favorite. The vocal melodies are off-putting and weirdly sequenced, they never seem to hit quite the right note, and the instrumentation is a bit too idle for comfort, as the whole track feels like it lacks solid ground; maybe the bassline isn’t as powerful as some other cuts. Apart from that, I don’t like how the song progresses into its outro, as to my ears it sounds like the band just pull out any instrument they want and clam it when the track is ending just for the hell of it, something I feel repeats, albeit more lightly, in Every Planet We Reach Is Dead’s unnecessarily long outro. Out of a sudden there’s a piano, violins, 2D is screaming in the background, it’s just not it. As for DARE, along with Feel Good Inc., I knew the song long before I decided to listen to the album, and I always considered it a fine track, one that you just can’t keep from dancing to, but in the context of the album, I can’t understand why it’s there (no pun intended). The track doesn’t really go anywhere with itself nor the album, and Shaun’s contribution is really only notable because of his infamous live performances of the song. It is a black sheep in how dark it isn’t, and I’d say it doesn’t belong.

Unfortunately, the album feels as if it loses its composure after the track All Alone, and lets go of a streak of impressively built tracks. Immediately after comes the track White Light, easily the worst in the album, with fictional bassist Murdoc whispering “White light, alcohol” over and over again, over some grunge-like distorted guitars, and a sudden heavenly intermission in the song. It isn’t something I want to hear, in short. After that is the already-mentioned DARE, and then the outro of the album commences with Fire Coming out of the Monkey’s Head, a parable narrated by actor Dennis Hopper over a hip hop influenced instrumental, at times interrupted by Damon and an acoustic guitar, delivering something of a bluegrass tone to the track. Next is the thematic sequel Don’t Get Lost in Heaven, a song I find unnecessary to the progression of the album, as the messaging is somewhat ambiguous and repeated, and the choir and angelic instrumentation isn’t impactful, or at least not as impactful as in the outro, Demon Days, where the guitars incorporate a dub sound under a much better sounding choir, delivering a positive message on how the eponymous demon days are temporary, and to look on the bright side of life, send off the album in a nice, light tone. What kills this song for me is what I think is the worst vocal performance in the album apart from Murdoc in White Light, and that is Damon’s weird, high-pitched squeals at the start of the song that are impossible to understand; if it wasn’t for them, the outro would have been almost perfect, as I think the violins work much better here than anywhere else in the album.

As far as concepts go here, the lyrics are solid. I like how personal the songwriting gets to the problems the Earth faces, on songs such as O Green World and El Mañana (“Summer don’t know me no more, he got mad, that’s all”), but it isn’t anything crazy or eye-catching. Songs like Last Living Souls don’t make a lot of sense upfront, and many times the vocals are also hard to understand; I don’t think I need to touch on White Light and DARE again. And speaking a little on the parable, I personally really like the idea of having a narrated story to close up the project, but it unfortunately gets dragged down a bit from the following tracks, and the ending of the album ends up a little bloated and uneventful.

I feel this album has a good concept backing it – even if it doesn’t stick to it as best as it could – superb guests, nice but sometimes clustered production, enjoyable vocals and song topics, but unfortunately, it gets really past its prime on the last 6 tracks, and falls hard from a streak of very enjoyable songs. I will certainly check out more of their music in the future.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Dirty Harry, O Green World, Feel Good Inc., November Has Come, Kids with Guns

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: White Light, Last Living Souls, Don’t Get Lost in Heaven

 6.45/10

 “O green world, don’t desert me now. Made of you and you of me, but where are we?”

[interesting-blog-name]

Denzel Curry MEGAREVIEW (ZUU/13LOOD IN + 13LOOD OUT MIXX/ UNLOCKED [w/ Kenny Beats])

Denzel Curry is a rapper I’ve known about since I started listening to the genre back in 2017, and one I’ve always enjoyed for the consistent energy he brought to every song he made. TABOO was one of the first records I listened to in its entirety (I wasn’t the type to go out of my way to listen to an album), and looking back at it, it was very ambitious, energetic, well-assembled, but did have its flaws and weaker moments. The production and Denzel’s voice were definitely highlights, but the lyrics and subject matter were sometimes lost in the midst of all the focused chaos of the album, even if more conceptual and deep tracks were to be found, such as the introductory title track, BLACK BALLOONS immediately after, one of my favorites, and THE BLACKEST BALLOON.

My younger ears were very fond of the grimy, bass-heavy music scene Denzel was closely related to as well, Florida rap’s punk-influenced, aggressive Soundcloud wave, which brought artists like XXXTENTACION, Lil Pump and the subject of this review to the spotlight. I was extremely drawn to the raw violence in the sound, and part of me still really enjoys it, a style very present in Denzel’s short but blunt and potent EP, 13. This familiarity and appreciation I had with his music were what brought me to listen to these three very short projects that I’d been holding back for quite a while.

 ZUU

Starting up with Denzel’s ode to his land, ZUU is definitely a change of pace to TABOO; the Florida native mixes his unmatched essence, flows and deliveries, masterful production and the traditional song topics and sometimes structures and samples from his homeland, into a tight, creative and, above all, fun project. Anyone can represent where they’re from in a rap song, but few could do it as creatively and interestingly as Denzel.

The production in this album is definitely a highlight: mostly handled by Australian duo FnZ, famous for working with A$AP Rocky in many occasions, Finatik and Zac, alongside familiar names such as Ronny J, Charlie Heat and Tay Keith, add a fresh, dynamic beat for every song they produce in ZUU, while still possessing an unmistakable texture and style to their production. The album is most definitely focused in its intended sound, ranging from the boiling title track, BIRDZ, or P.A.T. (probably one of Denzel’s most aggressive tracks ever), to the blissful WISH, or the less bombastic, but insanely catchy gospel-like SPEEDBOAT.

The only problem I have with the beats is they sometimes seem to be mixed weirdly; the higher decibels feel like they are mixed too loud on CARLOMART and SHAKE 88, which leads to some ear-piercing moments. Nothing that can’t be tolerated though.

The lyrics, again, are not a highpoint in the project. With the production and delivery present, they’d barely even have space to be so amazing or cutting edge. While Denzel deals with loss, overcoming his broke days, and even pays a very nice homage to his family in RICKY, the punchlines are not exactly groundbreaking, and they’ll let out a chuckle from the listener at best, and at worst, form a track like SHAKE 88, dwelling into the complex subject matter of twerking. I understand the why for a track like this, but it’s not like it’s executed well, as the beat is easily the most forgettable in here, and Denzel’s lyrics are way too oversimplified. But when Denzel has to deliver catchy and banging hooks and witty one-liners, he mostly delivers, and that’s what matters.

Still, you can tell Denzel’s song topics come from the heart when rapping about his upbringing and the environment he grew up in, such as in the second verse of AUTOMATIC. The features he brings are all from his state, from the legendary Rick Ross to upcomers PlayThatBoiZay and Kiddo Marv, and the features are some of the strongest parts of the album, as Denzel has such a nice chemistry with all of them that adds a lot to the songs, from Ice Billion Berg’s banging chorus (although it does become a little annoying when his vocals are pitched up) to PlayThatBoiZay’s raging verse, to even Rick Ross’ surprisingly fitting rapping, adding a smooth veteran touch to the very young, wild and free BIRDZ.

A very nice surprise in this album was Denzel’s singing and his hooks, as both has blatantly improved over time. While he’s no stranger to delivering a few chorus melodies in tracks such as Sick & Tired off of Imperial, the vocals don’t come close to those in the title track and WISH, and the hooks in both of the mentioned tracks, BIRDZ and SPEEDBOAT are phenomenal.

ZUU is a nice, clean and raw portrait of Florida, and that is exactly what it aims to be. While the album does get weaker at its second half, with skits that take up just a little too much time on a very short project and weaker tracks when compared to the insanity that was the first half, it is still very enjoyable for what it is: an explosive tape filled with bangers.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: ZUU, BIRDZ, RICKY, WISH, P.A.T.

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: SHAKE 88  

 7.9/10

“That was back in Carol City, yeah, when I was just a jit, with the all-black faded Dickie with the raider fit. That was it, we was lit, y’all wasn’t even shit yet. We was Three 6, Wu-Tang mixed with Dipset.”

 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT MIXX

Between these three, this was actually the first tape I listened to, and it is definitely the most aggressive Denzel’s been in a while. The mix is made in such a way to merge every song together into one big collection, so there’s not much of an option to listen to tracks by themselves, unless you don’t mind the abrupt beginnings and endings in every track.

Overall, this is obviously much more of a simple compilation, meant to showcase previously unreleased material, than an actual tape, as CHARLIE SHEEN, for example, was recorded back in 2018. Thus, the project isn’t meant to be taken as seriously, and isn’t even on Spotify, but I’ll still review it.

The most glaring problem I have with 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT is the fact that every single track is lo-fi, and it isn’t pleasing to me. I don’t know why the people behind the project would make the decision to tone every aspect of the production down and have it sound like the music is coming from an old phone’s speaker, but if you ask me, it surely takes away more than it offers.

The problem with toning the sound down is that the tracks could have been SO much harder if only the volume and mixing was normal. CHARLIE SHEEN’s chorus is seriously insane, Ghostemane’s feature doesn’t disappoint, EVIL TWIN has a very nice dark vibe to it and ZillaKami unsurprisingly fits the track perfectly, and WELCOME TO THE FUTURE has some of Denzel’s nicest singing ever, with what seems to be two different-pitch vocals stacked on top of one another, creating this very eerie but mellow melody; however, all of these tracks suffer from being mixed too low, especially EVIL TWIN: the track sounds like an Instagram snippet.

The other tracks in the project aren’t as memorable due to the fact that, without spicy features, Denzel’s solo work aren’t much more than appetizers, snippets that happened to find their way into here. NO PEN NO PAD has a very nice, unique beat, but that’s about it for the three tracks where Denzel raps alone. GOGETA is a track that wouldn’t be out of place in Act 3 of TABOO, the AK feature is nice, but Denzel isn’t super crazy on this one.

To me, it serves as a nice darker, more compact project by Denzel, with strong production and deliveries all around, not much in lyrical content - although I’ll say he has more freedom than in ZUU for wilder, meaner punchlines, as this project doesn’t focus as much on hooks and repetitions -and the features tie up the mix in a very nice way, but after the last project, what we’re left with is not as purely explosive and exciting, even if not lacking in creativity and vision.

The project’s highlights are the first three proper tracks, and after that, the listener just glides through a few impressive, but very barebones tracks until coming to a close with a relatively hard track, but unfortunately, as complained before, the mixing is not on 13LOOD 1N + 13LOOD OUT’s side.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: CHARLIE SHEEN, WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: PXSH6XD SHXT

 6.66/10

“All you niggas green, I don’t make a scene. Boy you half a man, I should’ve called you Charlie Sheen.”

 UNLOCKED (w/ Kenny Beats)

Kenny Beats has had a very successful run as a producer in rap for the past 2 or 3 years, rising to popularity working alongside artists like Rico Nasty, JPEGMAFIA, Vince Staples, and many other bubbling names. His style of production is glitchy, often aggressive, but also versatile and catchy, so a collab album with Denzel was bound to be something to look forward to.

UNLOCKED was released along with a 20-minute long music video that obviously isn’t the main focus of this review, but I’ll talk about it anyway. It portrays a very light-hearted, simple but colorful narrative of the duo voyaging into Kenny’s laptop to recover the leaked songs from the album, going through a different landscape for each track, with different art-styles and themes along the way. I will say the sequence for ‘Cosmic’.m4a is easily the most intense and is very well animated, but I also liked the clips for Track 01, Take_it_Back_v2, and Pyro (leak 2019). It’s a bunch of nice little visuals to accompany and give somewhat of a background and concept for the tape.

The tape and tracks themselves, in my opinion, are enjoyable, but nothing crazy. Kenny Beats’ production is solid throughout, but it is very fortunate this album is only 18 minutes, because it ends up sounding too one-dimensional when paired with Denzel’s verses. Don’t get me wrong, they are all great performances and I fully respect the decision to go purely with a more lyrical-focused, boom bap direction, but to me, it isn’t a style that can hold up for long without any experimentation or change in tone/beat.

Every track here has Denzel nonstop rapping throughout the whole tracks, without one melodic detour like became common in his last two studio albums; the hooks are still a strong central point in all songs except for Pyro, with the most notable ones in the tracks Lay_Up.m4a, DIET_ and So.Incredible.pkg. On the other songs, the chorus sounds just like the rest of the bars Denzel spits in his verses, except repeated like two times. On one hand it is a very focused and to-the-face project, while on the other, just a little bit of variety would have been more than welcome, especially since it’s a Denzel album, and I know he isn’t a stranger to it. The black sheep of the beats in the album is definitely its biggest song, DIET_, with its bongo, jungle percussion that is reflected in its music video. The headliner to this track, though, is Denzel’s DMX-inspired inflictions in the chorus, as he utilizes his recognizable raspy, growling voice, which isn’t used nearly enough in this album, him opting for a cleaner, more precise delivery.

The instrumentals in the project are very glitchy and creative with their use of sampling vocal clips, which bring a sense of cohesion and a boom bap, MF DOOM aura to the songs, but unlike many modern trap hits, they cannot carry the rapper, as unique and wild as they are; they need to work with the artist and unite to form a memorable, hard track. Luckily, Curry just so happens to be one of the best new-school rappers for the task that is bringing life to Kenny’s beats.

Truly, the main focus of UNLOCKED is Denzel’s bars and lyricism. The first few listens, I failed to grasp the fact that this was the main attraction to the album, and almost discarded the lyrics: “It isn’t anything conceptual, it doesn’t feel like Curry is trying to say anything of value in the songs, and the beats and infliction aren’t overly hard to compensate like in ZUU, so why bother?”, I thought, not in these exact words obviously. Listening again, watching Denzel and Kenny explain the creative process in Genius, and paying way more attention to the lyrics, I realized that I’m kinda dumb. Because yes, Curry might be rapping about the same things every rapper raps about: murder, money, threats, where he comes from, whatever, but it’s the way he says it that is captivating. Not every rapstar can mention Bubba Sparxxx, Rosa Parks and the second-best Indiana Jones movie in a chorus and make it sound as good as Denzel does, nor drop pop culture references quite like he does (“Turn your crib into a game of Fallout”). I failed to notice how colorful and lively Denzel’s bars were, as opposed to the sterile, empty threats and tired “Balling like [insert basketball player here]”, “Fast car, Nascar”, “Chase the money, don’t chase bitches” lines many other rappers employ in their rhymes, or even the lyrical miracle spiritual individual wack similes that conscious rappers try and fail to drop in their songs. And even when Denzel says something you can easily picture another rapper saying, the decisiveness and bravado with which he says so is intoxicating (“I don’t write rhymes nigga, I write checks”).

The aggressiveness is almost omnipresent, but when it isn’t, it is pretty noticeable. So.Incredible.pkg is the least interesting track by far, as the rhymes don’t stand out much, and the beat is definitely the deadest of the album. Meanwhile, tracks like the aforementioned DIET_, ‘Cosmic’.m4a and to some extent Take_it_Back_v2 are ruthless, with beat and lyricism teaming up to create the best this project has to offer.

The tempo of the tracks is fast and entertaining, the wordplay is mostly at Denzel’s best, and it seems Kenny can work with any artist’s specific style and improve it a ton, a little more subtly in Curry’s case. While it isn’t as flexible and full of surprises as some other Denzel projects, it makes up for it in how raw and centered it is. The album took a while to grow on me, but now that it has, I can see how unique in its influences it is. A very nice, bright creative effort by the duo.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: DIET_, Lay_Up.m4a, Take_it_Back_v2, ‘Cosmic’.m4a

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: So.Incredible.pkg

 7.35/10

“It’s the man of the hour. Super confident and the clothes yell it louder, and if it don’t compute then I gots to reroute ya. Dressed in all black like a motherfucking bouncer.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool Review

Here I am once again listening to Radiohead’s discography. Following a beginner’s chart I found on Reddit, I saw A Moon Shaped Pool was the one to go with after Kid A if I wanted a “more orchestral”-sounding album, and pre-assuming from the many “Radiohead albums represented by *blank*” videos I saw, this one seemed to be about Thom’s divorce, and just really sad. I had high hopes, and am happy to say, came out of this fulfilled.

The most obvious characteristic to this album is how well composed it is. The band takes a deep dive into the orchestral elements in some of their most notable past tracks, with nearly every song in A Moon Shaped Pool boasting a gorgeous violin composition, backing pianos, and in a few welcome instances, chilling cellos. It sometimes feels as if the Jonny decided to make another film score, but this time the film is the band’s latest years, if that makes any sense.

The album is beautiful and extremely well layered, the songs seem to pull the listener’s arm and take them through beautiful landscapes of sound, and every one of them is unique; the vast white nothingness that comes to mind in Daydreaming, the sunny morning in a beach that forms around you as you listen to Desert Island Disk, or the gloomy, dystopian city Thom evokes in Glass Eyes, they never cease to amaze.

While the album does center around its orchestral instrumentation, it isn’t 100% a chamber pop album, as Radiohead’s more experimental, art-rock side comes to light in tracks such as the bossa nova inspired and personal favorite of mine, Present Tense, the heavy, droning but rhythmic Ful Stop, featuring some of the band’s most impressive instrumental works in the record, with its dynamic guitars and special focus on Phil’s masterful drumming to tie the song together. The more rock-oriented songs Identikit ­– transcending into this nice little passage of gentle synths over Thom’s distant falsetto vocals (“Broken hearts make it rain”) - and the later half of Decks Dark are as effective as ever, even if more toned down and spaced-out than the usual.

A Moon Shaped Pool is beautiful, atmospheric, at times tense, but above all, it is introspective, because describing a Radiohead album as “depressing” may sound redundant, and a handful of songs throughout are actually very hopeful and uplifting. But this record’s vibe swallows itself in its self-reflection. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t wild, it lays back into comfortable acoustic beauty and occasional electronic-ambient flavoring. At its most folk-inspired and cheerful, the band sings of climate change in The Numbers, with its pretty, albeit simplistic lyrics and composition; Buddhist values and perhaps mindfulness in Present Tense, coated by some of Thom’s greatest vocals in the record; and finding a light at the end of the tunnel in Desert Island Disk. On the other end of the spectrum, Daydreaming, Decks Dark and Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief are ambient-inspired hopeless anthems, with lyrics such as “Dreamers, they never learn, (...) beyond the point of no return. (...) Then it’s too late, the damage is done.”, followed by a verse which seems to describe Radiohead’s creative process from a white room with a window, in real barebones style. Then come the reversed vocals hinting at Thom’s separation (“Half of my life”); and I don’t think I would be able to mention the dread that surrounds Decks Dark and do it justice, with how in-your-face the sadness in this track is.

The previously mentioned Tinker Tailor song features odd, nature-inspired lyrics that I myself can’t quite understand the meaning of. “The one you light your fires to keep away” is not explicitly revealed in the song: could it be depression? A formless menace? Aging? I personally don’t know, and maybe it’s best I don’t. It leaves the song open for interpretation.

I can’t help but feel Burn the Witch feels a little out of place in the tracklist, even though it serves as a considerably good intro. It’s a weird feeling I have with it, as it feels a bit too upbeat and boisterous for the album, but at the same time, setting it apart from the other tracks also works in its favor. In any way, it isn’t amongst my favorites, but I can appreciate it, with its intense violins, unforgettable lyrics and terrifying ending.

It wouldn’t be right to talk about this album without mentioning True Love Waits, a legendary Radiohead song, unreleased for years until now; the song is older than me, and since I’m just becoming a fan, I unfortunately don’t have an emotional attachment to this song like countless others. However, it is very nice that the band decided to insert this song into this album and I can see how much that might mean to others, not only for its history and how much the band progressed, but also for the raw beauty of the song, being dubbed the “saddest Radiohead song” by the Sporify API, fitting perfectly within A Moon Shaped Pool, especially as the closer to such an emotionally charged album.

Overall, I feel the album has a good concept and an amazing execution, sacrificing experimentation and the bold, alien directions some Radiohead projects would take, for a mellow experience that sits comfortably within the band’s talents and lyrical themes. The listener leaves the album in a much more introspective state than when they entered, and none of the tracks seem to derail the scenic, brilliantly put-together trajectory. I’m not as passionate about this album as I am with Kid A, or Souvlaki, which I’ve covered here, but I find comfort in this album, and I’ll never forget it.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Daydreaming, Desert Island Disk, Ful Stop, Glass Eyes, Present Tense, True Love Waits

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: Identikit, if you put a gun to my head and asked for one.

 8.6/10

“As my world comes crashing down, I’ll be dancing, freaking out, deaf, dumb and blind.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Frank Ocean - Blonde Review

All my time listening to rap, whenever Frank Ocean was featured on a track, everyone commenting on the song would praise him extremely highly, and honestly, I never saw the hype. The verses he’d write weren’t that good, in my eyes, but he’d have this mythical aura whenever someone talked about him, like he was the perfect singer, God’s musical gift to Earth. I never looked into his music that much, because I was too busy getting my ears blown out at age 15 from bass-boosted angry rap to look into what I assumed was an average R&B singer, a genre I didn’t have much knowledge on. So, as an introduction, I picked up Blonde.

I’m going to have somewhat of a hard time reviewing this one, and I feel like it’s because, to me, this album doesn’t really need to be written about. For Blonde to work, you have to let yourself be submerged by it, by the wonderful production mixed with Frank’s always-on-point singing; let yourself be carried by how the tracks progress, let the emotions drown you. My mistake in my first listen was that I pulled up Genius to read the lyrics while listening, and only in my second listen did I realize that’s not how it works. As Shawn Cee said when listening to Frank’s Moon River cover: “You don’t listen to Frank Ocean lyrics, you feel them.”.

Way before I thought about playing this album, I downloaded Nights and Pink + White in my phone, and - like any other song I get even a little bit attached to - played the shit out of those two tracks. This was a big mistake of my part, as when I listened to them in the context of the album, I was way too familiar to them. This is something I’ll try to overcome, this instant attachment and overplaying of tracks, where I play the same 10 songs for weeks, and then grow tired of them; I’ll try to substitute this habit with just trying to open myself up to new music, and letting the albums I’ve already listen to have a bigger effect on me when I replay them, due to me not growing tired of them from listening to them over and over. Anyway, I’m rambling.

Blonde is great at what it does, and that’s all that really matters: it is the definition of an emotional rollercoaster. The progression in the tracks is marvelous, whether it’s the beautiful closing verse over the violins in Self Control, the classic beat switch in Nights, the subtle change from synth-heaven to acoustic guitar in White Ferrari, or the voyage that is Seigfried (by the way, why is the song misspelled, couldn’t someone have looked the guy’s name up? Just a pet-peeve of mine). Frank’s vocals are so controlled and precise, they seem to just hit the perfect spot in the brain, and he and his team had this in mind; the tracks are built around his voice, the instrumentals are simplistic and at the same time beautiful, toned down, but crucial and memorable. The organ played by James Blake in Solo and Godspeed (easily the most gospel-influenced and gentle track here), the guitars in Ivy, the piano in Good Guy, they are all finely crafted in an intentionally lowkey fashion. That’s not to mention the instances where Frank’s voice becomes an instrument itself, being dowsed in effects in tracks like the just-mentioned Good Guy, the weird, distorted closing to Ivy, the high-pitched first leg of Nikes, and most notably and well-executed in my opinion, the gorgeously melancholic shorter track Close To You, where Frank sounds like he’s shapeshifted into a depressed microwave, and I mean it in the best way possible.

The impassioned scenes Frank recalls are very powerful, graced by his invested singing and simple, relatable style of songwriting. He seems to convey his feelings and memories in such an effortless, but amazing manner, that when he’s speaking of loves and summers that won’t come back, you can’t help but feel an urge to cry (or maybe I’m just too emotional). Ivy’s and Skyline To’s nostalgic tone (“That’s a pretty fucking fast year flew by, that’s a pretty long third gear in this car”), Solo’s and Nights’ wonderful, memorable choruses (“There’s a bull and a matador dueling in the sky. Inhale, in Hell, there’s Heaven.”), the rejection of the American dream in Seigfried (“Maybe I should move, settle down, two kids and a swimming pool. I’m not brave! I’d rather live outside”), stick to the listener the very first listen, and make this album more than just gorgeous melodies and strong-ass vocals.

There really isn’t much for me to say about Nights that hasn’t been said. Working brilliantly as the divisor between the two parts of the album, “Blond” and “Blonde”, the morning and the evening of the album; this song deserves all the praise it has gotten along the years, and the worst thing I can say about it is it is so addictive I almost got sick of it. The beat switch is legendary, the difference between the two parts makes the song memorable, and Frank’s vocals and flow are, of course, on point.

I can’t help but love what Frank does in Blonde, but it does have a few setbacks. Pretty Sweet is a chaotic definitive transition into the second leg of the album (separated by the beat switch in Nights) that I think could have been executed much better, as Frank’s vocal inflections in this song are probably the worst of the album, and the beginning distortion in the song is not a very welcome change of pace, and just ends up feeling out of place. The track Skyline To is not so special either, and I’m afraid I’ve grown out of Pink + White, as it doesn’t bring me the same feelings it once did when I first listened to it; that’s obviously my fault, but still, I don’t feel the song, as beautiful as Beyoncé backing vocals are, and as uplifting and nice it is on its own, shines so bright within the context of the entire album; not only that, but it also ends very abruptly, which is unfortunate.

My biggest problem with the record has to be Futura Free, however. I have very mixed feelings towards it, because in one hand, I enjoy the fresh beat drop and how the album offers it right at the last track, bringing some very standout excitement to the song, but I just can’t understand why Frank would put a 4-minute long interview with his friends, separated from the song by 32 seconds of pure silence. I appreciate all the interludes’ sense of nostalgia, the small little glimpses into Frank’s more personal life (especially with the very nice Buddy Ross sample present in all of them), but surely this interview could have been shortened and separated from the song it’s attached to. I know the album being exactly one hour long is a big deal to it, and it’s probably very difficult to round up that time perfectly without stretching some songs somehow, but surely there was space for at least a two-minute song to replace two minutes of the interview, which is mainly comprised of background noise between the chatter anyway.

Despite that, the album has way more highs than lows. The Andre 3000 verse has to be the best in the album, switching up the meanings in Solo, and even in its less memorable moments, Blonde displays an admirable elegance that will keep me coming back to it, an elegance that is displayed upfront in tracks such as Godspeed, where Frank sings a breakup song of unconditional support appreciation for his ex, for a very nice change of pace.

Overall, the production is meticulously calculated, Frank gives his best performance, it is personal, powerful, touching, and you have to be in the mood for it to work. Sit back and enjoy the experience.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Self Control, Nights, Solo (Reprise), Close To You, White Ferrari, Seigfried, Godspeed

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Pretty Sweet

 8.1/10

“In the wake of a hurricane. Dark skin of a summer shade. Nosedive into flood lines. Tall tower of milk crates.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Radiohead - Amnesiac Review

Immediately after finishing writing about Kid A, I decided to give its chronological and thematic sequel, Amnesiac, a try. It’s very safe to say this album is not quite as easy of an experience to listen through, so after listening to it once while almost falling asleep at 4 a.m., I  decided it would be best to try and make sense of this record with a clearer, less irritated mind.

After experiencing it again the day after, the first good thing I can say about Amnesiac is that Radiohead outdid the last album in the experimental factor, changing the structural emphasis once again from synths to guitar-based compositions, and creating a whole different “world” for this new album; if there’s anything bad anyone can say about Amnesiac, “living in Kid A’s shadow” is not it, despite being remembered less fondly than the classic it came after. The weird, grim sounds the band implements throughout the project are something to admire, such as the almost psychedelic, extremely metaphorical imagery in Pyramid Song, or the freakish, gory Knives Out.

Where Kid A is sterile, cold and pleasingly depressing, Amnesiac is lukewarm, organic, but at the same time unnatural, tense and always on edge. Almost all songs, including Dollars & Cents, Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, and Life In a Glasshouse to name a few, emanate this unnerving energy, with the most positive point in the whole record being the slightly grimy I Might Be Wrong.

I let it marinate in my mind for a few days before listening to it again. My feelings on the album are nowhere as strong as for Kid A, but I do enjoy the feel of it. Whether it’s the weirder, skeletal instrumentals in Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box or Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, the piano ballads like the epic Pyramid Song, or the alternate, very fitting and chilling version of Morning Bell, or the more rock-oriented songs like the amazing You And Whose Army? and I Might Be Wrong: the album employs all these styles pretty well, making them all an interesting and worthwhile listen while also diversifying the sound of the album.

The track Like Spinning Plates shows the genius behind Radiohead’s ability to construct their songs in unique and challenging ways, while still keeping their sound pleasing. The reversed vocals by Thom hit perfectly and have an ethereal sound to them, and the whole song sounds like you’re ascending into space. On the other end of the spectrum, you have You And Whose Army?, a track that gets the listener immediately involved with its depressed start, and eventual ascension into something you’d hear in a post-apocalyptic blockbuster.

The contents of the songs, in comparison to the previous album, are much more cryptic and require more speculation and background to understand. Tracks like Pyramid Song and Life In a Glasshouse are metaphorical, their interpretations by fans are vital to their structure and appreciation, and their compositions, as said before, are way more experimental than before. I’ve seen plenty of “Radiohead albums represented by The Office”-type videos that just seem to discard Amnesiac as jazz, just because of the last track, when it is obviously much more than that.

There are certain things I dislike about it though, such as tracks like Knives Out having such a standard and lifeless instrumental, which is a shame since the lyrics and Thom’s vocals are certainly standouts in the album. And while I’ve been praising the album on its grim themes throughout the entire review, I do have to say it sometimes becomes too much. Casual listening is not something I think Radiohead had as a main focus in this album, and it shows, as it is built to be disturbing, however, when comparing Kid A to Amnesiac, I can’t help but miss Kid A’s memorable choruses, entrancing IDM instrumentals and overall easiness it had to it. With Amnesiac, you have something far more bitter and tough to swallow, and because of that, it can’t be as iconic. It trades accessibility and catchiness for experimentation and a darker, much more doomist atmosphere. I can obviously appreciate that, but it doesn’t beat Kid A’s magic, in my opinion.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Pyramid Song, You And Whose Army?, Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Dollars & Cents, Like Spinning Plates, Life In a Glasshouse

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Knives Out

 8.2/10

“I’m a reasonable man, get off my case, get off my case, get off my case.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Radiohead - Kid A Review

Even before listening to this album in full, it already meant quite a bit to me. I discovered How To Disappear Completely and Motion Picture Soundtrack from a doomer playlist (I know), and I overplayed the living SHIT out of those two songs, because they were so incredible to me. I had never really heard anything like it, I suppose, so I picked Kid A as my starting point to listening to Radiohead’s discography (I listened to Pablo Honey in 2018 with the intent to do it chronologically but I didn’t feel it so let’s pretend it never happened).

This is definitely the most “layered” album I’ve covered in this blog so far, the closest one being because the internet (which didn’t really deserve a 9/10 but whatever I really liked it first time I listened to it) due to it being meant to be consumed along with a play, but this album has much more context behind it to grasp before I just give my thoughts on it, before I can fully understand the songs and themes and artistic decisions enough to form an opinion on the whole thing; what I’m mainly referring to is the band’s whole style and approach shifting hard with this album, from what I’ve gathered of the discussions around the internet. On hindsight, maaaybe it wasn’t the best album to start off with, but fuck it.

The first thing I’d like to note is how sterile and solitary almost all songs sound, which I’m assuming is the general charm of Radiohead. But even though I’m just starting this gloomy journey, I’m willing to bet the band’s other records can’t be as beautifully monochrome and introspective as this one, as I’ve heard some say it is a standout in how sad it is. The surrealism in How To Disappear Completely, the way it inserts you into Thom Yorke’s weird, dreamy disassociation, is something that will probably stick with me forever. I appreciate this atmosphere very much, both on the surface level of track-by-track analysis, and on the more contextual level, with the so far limited amount of background info I have.

The experimentation with synthesized sounds in a majority of the tracks cooperates very well with the more instrumentally present tracks, in a way that I believe avoids a certain stagnancy the record could have had if Yorke & Co. decided to go full sadboy electronica. What happens instead is a much-welcomed change of gears on the tracks The National Anthem and Optimistic, where the energy is at a high-point and the lyrics have room to collaborate with the more lively backing instruments once again, which sets something of a familiar ground in this big, cold landscape of an album (I’m coming off all fake-deep here but I’m going through some kind of writing brainstorm at 1:31 a.m. so excuse me. Also the cover art is fantastic and reflects the sound of the project very well, so props to Donwood).

A good portion of this album deals with political themes amongst all the depressing undertones layered in self-reflection, as seen simplified and stripped down, but still central, in the title track and The National Anthem, and under surgical focus in Idioteque and Optimistic. The analogies and statements aren’t blatantly amazing in any of those tracks, but the simplicity and open room for the imagery of the listener to flow is what gives these lines a stronger meaning. Yes, referencing Animal Farm and the Pied Piper isn’t ground-breaking, but when paired with the ambiguity of the bare-bones verses throughout all songs here, it changes the perspective of the listener to a wider scope. The album excels at being the least specific possible to attain this sense of observing a whole world of melancholic thoughts and scenes, while at the same time carrying with every track a decisive, unique theme, and building said theme upon this broad canvas. Whether this is genius or just your average good songwriting that I’m completely overreacting to, I don’t know, all I know is I appreciate it.

The mixing and structuring of the songs is impeccable; the way Thom’s voice brings chill every single time I listened to it in Everything In Its Right Place, the gorgeous decision to vocode his voice in the title track, the insane compositions in How To Disappear Completely and Motion Picture Soundtrack, the sterile, heavy snares and whaling synthesizers that seem to dance with Yorke’s melodies in Idioteque, it is all so meticulously put together, it feels like I’m transported into this cold, futuristic early-2000s abandoned metropolis; it is passionate and beautiful in almost every corner. The looping, eternal guitar notes in In Limbo, suddenly lost in the warping spiral of the trapdoors mentioned previously in the track, the ambient instrumental of the title track, the Treefingers interlude after the climax of the song before it, all these elements emanate loneliness in such a satisfyingly catchy and memorable way, that will definitely have me coming back multiple times.

Overall, I’m starting to grow very passionate about this album. Maybe it’s because I’m writing about it, and trying to find good things to say, maybe it is actually that good and it won’t immediately get old to me, like what happened with Hyperspace, which made me feel very enthusiastic about it while reviewing it, only for me to notice how forced this euphoria was. I’d like to believe this is a masterpiece, however.

FAVORITE TRACKS: Kid A, How To Disappear Completely, Optimistic, In Limbo, Idioteque, Motion Picture Soundtrack

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Morning Bell (I guess?)

 9/10

“That there, that’s not me. I go where I please. I walk through walls, I float down the Liffey.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Slowdive - Souvlaki Review

This is my shit.

I discovered my love for shoegaze last month, an appropriate time, considering the social isolation taking place, and it was an incredible feeling. Finding a genre that I identify with so much is something I loved; it made me wonder how the hell did I live so long without knowing this was a thing.

Slowdive is a band whose existence I’ve been aware of for some time, but I didn’t really know what they were about until I found out what the genre itself was about. Looking into the genre, I watched a video on the 5 albums to get into shoegaze, by an amazing channel called deep cuts, and Souvlaki was obviously one of the picks. Since Loveless by MBV isn’t on Spotify and I wasn’t familiar with the other three albums, I picked it as my introduction to the genre.

This was the most connected I’ve been with an album in a while. It gripped me from start to finish, and I believe I will be listening to it for many years to come. It’s not really about this album being superior in terms of the artists’ playing skills, superior in terms of lyrical content, or really anything other than my personal affection for the sound and the atmosphere it has. It’s just super enjoyable for me, and I can’t explain it so well.

Like I said, I knew about Slowdive prior to listening to Souvlaki, and even listened to Souvlaki Space Station some months ago, but it didn’t stick with me for whatever reason. Then, last month, I picked Machine Gun and Allison out of a few lists of sad song recommendations and enjoyed both, actually got somewhat addicted to Machine Gun, so going into the album, I already had an idea of what to expect, but it still surprised me to see the diversity of sounds present in pretty much every track; what I mean by this is all of the songs have a different aspect to them that makes them worth coming back to in the future, while at the same time, they’re all neatly packaged and branded with the distinct style that sets the album’s sound apart, and makes it timeless and fresh 27 years later.

You have tracks such as Allison, Souvlaki Space Station and When the Sun Hits that are the epitome, the peak of shoegaze’s distinct reverberated guitar works and wailing, ethereal vocals, but in the same ambient are the Brian Eno-assisted Sing, with the ambient pioneer’s synthetic tones set to rhythm by Simon’s drums and Nick’s bass, while Rachel sings over the entrancing mix (although I admit her vocals in this track are not as exciting as those in most other songs, but I guess you can’t expect her to sing her heart out over such a groovy track) and the guitars, very toned down, kick in only later in the song. You also have much more introspective, stripped-back tracks such as the acoustic guitar closer Dagger, the brief Here She Comes, and the slowcore-sounding Altogether, and Melon Yellow, 40 Days and Machine Gun as in-betweens: shoegaze tracks executed creatively and carrying each a specific emotion as their soul, whether it be the enchanting melancholy of the latter, the depressive saudade of 40 Days, where Neil sings of how he misses his partner while in an introspective self-isolation, or the psychedelic, gentle sense of bliss in Melon Yellow.

What truly brings the album together, in my opinion, are the harmonious vocals of Rachel and Neil. Having both a male and female singer is a huge advantage of this album, as the variety of pitches is what brings a lot of the beauty to many of the tracks, especially the three first tracks and When the Sun Hits. That’s obviously not saying the instrumentals aren’t fantastic, as the mellow tracks in the album showcase some really nice composition, that emphasizes the “pop” in “dream-pop” quite a bit, such as the soothing guitars in Melon Yellow, or the vibe that is the bassline in When the Sun Hits.

The lyrical content, much like in the last album I reviewed, doesn’t have to be incredibly fleshed-out, as the objective here is to entrance the listener and give them a calmer, more relaxed experience. Because of this, the subject matters of drugs, missing someone, feeling down and lonely, mixed with the dreamy, sometimes bittersweet lyrics, are perfect for the overall structure of the songs, and there’s not one moment where I’d complain about these lyrics.

In reality, there’s not much for me to complain at all with this album. All I can say is I don’t care as much for Sing and Here She Comes as the other tracks, and that Souvlaki Space Station is a little too spaced-out and reverb-coated for me to fully enjoy (you can barely hear the drums throughout the track). But as I said, the sound is so appealing to me, so addicting, that I think it may have even set some higher expectations for shoegaze in my subconscious than would be healthy, and I have a feeling no album will bring me more personal enjoyment than this one. Still, I’ll explore the genre with a lot of enthusiasm, and am thankful this album exists in my life at this moment.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Allison, Machine Gun, 40 Days, When the Sun Hits, Melon Yellow, Dagger

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Sing

8.8/10

“The sunshine girl is sleeping; she falls and dreams alone. And me, I am her dagger, too numb to feel her pain.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Japanese Breakfast - Psychopomp Review

Along with the recommendation to listen to Third Eye Blind, was a mention of Japanese Breakfast, a name I was certainly more familiar with. I had listened to Diving Woman and Essentially, and obviously that wasn’t enough for me to get the full picture of what the Michelle Zauner solo project had to offer, so I decided to give it a shot with Psychopomp.

The album is definitely more my style than the previous one I covered. I notice that, even though I’m not at all very familiar with rock music and its many variations and styles, I find myself enjoying modern, more “alternative” rock more than something like a TEB or maybe Guns n’ Roses or whichever older, more classical band I may come across. I don’t know why, it feels lighter, more pleasant to me.

This album is mostly constructed around the death of Michelle’s mother 2 years prior to the release of the album, the title referring to a mythological creature who guides the dead to the afterlife. I can’t judge her choices on what to put on something I perceive as a product of grief, a homage album in a way, but it does seem weird to me that, in what would seem is such a conceptual record, songs such as Jane Cum, or songs about relationships in general, would end up making appearances.

One thing I like a lot about the album is how consistent and precise it is in what sound it wants to achieve, which is enhanced by the very short time span of 25 minutes. The heavy, omnipresent reverb is paired with the bubbly and lively the tone and Japanese Breakfast’s vocals in a mix that soothes the ears. Speaking of her vocals, they are definitely under the spotlight in the record, as she shows off her impressive range in pretty much every track, while the instrumental meshes into a big sea of background noise. This, however, isn’t always for good, as can be seen in the chorus to Jane Cum, where the echoing ends up overwhelming Michelle’s vocals and makes the hook anticlimactic.  Rugged Country is also massively subdued by this, as her lines are almost inaudible in the first part of the song.

As the tracks are mostly rather short and focus on creating a warm, cozy atmosphere around them, the lyrics aren’t necessarily meant to be analyzed super-seriously, but it still brings some memorable moments, such as the worried chorus on Heft, or the second verse of In Heaven. Overall, you could maybe consider the album “underwritten” though, since the lack of many impactful lyrics is noticeable in a few tracks that rely mostly on the melodies to thrive and involve the listener.

Besides this, there really isn’t much to dislike about the album. It is short, catchy, very pleasant to listen to, Triple 7 is absolutely amazing, but not much more than that in my opinion. I’ll definitely check out more of her music in the future.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: In Heaven, The Woman That Loves You, Triple 7

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Rugged Country

 “I came here for the long haul. Now I leave here as an empty fucking hole.”

7.1/10

[interesting-blog-name]

Third Eye Blind - Third Eye Blind Review

It was a shitty day when I took myself to Reddit to ask for sad music recommendations, in fact it was more of a shitty month. My birthday had been a week before, and my plans to drink irresponsibly with friends and a girl I was talking to were completely cancelled because of the pandemic. I was lacking motivation for anything and everything, listening to shoegaze tracks to try and maybe “romanticize” what I was feeling (sometimes you just like being sad for a while). In short, life has been a big fat L lately. But at least I got some albums to listen to.

One of the recommendations was the self-titled album by 90s band Third Eye Blind. Took me a while, but I eventually listened to it in its entirety, and I have to say, it’s not really for me; as in, I feel like I’m not meant to get it. I wasn’t alive in the 90s, I’ve never done hard drugs, I’ve never had a tough breakup, so I feel the “magic” of the record doesn’t hit me as strong as it does for others, and I guess that’s ok. I’ll try to “review” it for what it is, but at the same time try to express how I feel about it without coming off harsh.

It starts off with the very angsty and at the same time catchy Losing a Whole Year, which showcases Stephan’s energetic vocals and some of Kevin’s most memorable guitar performances in the record. I’m not going to lie, the vocals in most of these songs do put me off a bit; Stephan is not a bad singer per se, but I don’t enjoy the way he kind of slurs some of his lines. They’re not unintelligible, but it doesn’t work for me that much; because of this, tracks where he either tones down his voice a lot (like God of Wine and Motorcycle Drive By) or goes full out screaming (like Graduate and Losing a Whole Year) are more pleasant for my ears than tracks such as Jumper, Semi-Charmed Life and the especially the ending to How’s It Going to Be.

When it comes to the structuring of the songs, I honestly found some of the tracks to be pretty obnoxiously repetitive or predictable and formulaic, especially those midway in the tracklist, such as Thanks a Lot (which has a pretty mind-numbing chorus as well), Burning Man and Good for You – but the grungy vibes the latter gives are nice – and these three are sequential, which really drags down the listening for me.

Similarly, a string of three similar songs is found at the end if the album, with the closers Thw Background, Motorcycle Drive By and God of Wine; these three do a great job at bringing the energy all the way down in his bluntly sad they are, compared to the somewhat dark, but upbeat-sounding lyrics in the rest of the album. Out of the three, I definitely think Motorcycle Drive By hits the hardest, I think the second verse is very beautiful and paints a very nice picture, but I enjoy all three in their own way.

So overall, I’m not super crazy about the album like many people who connect to it, but it has a few moments here and there that I think will stay with me forever. While I may not car for a good amount of songs here, the ones I enjoyed have a lot of substance to them, I think.

 FAVORITE TRACKS: Losing a Whole Year, Good for You, The Background, Motorcycle Drive By, God of Wine

LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Thanks a Lot

 5.9/10

“You want to know how deeply my soul goes? Deeper than bones.”

[interesting-blog-name]

BONES - Powder Review

After choosing Offline to be the first Bones album I’d listen to, I took to the TeamSESH subreddit to get a feeling as to where I should go next on this listening journey, and decided to move on to one of the skinny white pimp’s fan-favorites, Powder. So here I am once again, giving my thoughts on a Bones project, this time getting a taste of the older, “classic” Bones as opposed to the modern, more experienced rapper I listened to a month ago.

On a first impression, it’s easy to see this album has a more concrete theme built around its style than a few other Bones projects that come to mind, even if a few more experimental and “rogue” songs find themselves across the tracklist. The lyrical themes revolve around this mystical, sometimes eerie sometimes comforting nature Bones finds himself in, whether as some sort of higher being (as implied in TreeOfLife), perhaps as just another organic lifeform amongst the plants, such as in HeySorry,IWasInTheShower, or maybe just the regular guy he’s always been, talking about life from the outside looking in, as in Chlorella and IThoughtYouLookedFamiliar. That isn’t to say he sticks to these themes for dear life, as they work more as an aesthetic icing on this vegan cake and an occasional song topic for Bones to cover with the braggadocious lyrics he can make sound so effortlessly cool.

The topics are as introspective as a Bones album can get, talking mostly about Bones’ lifestyle being so different than those of the people around him, sometimes trying to spark up a little social commentary, but not going beyond a few non-conformist observations. This is where Bones is comfortable, rapping on what life is and isn’t about for him, not spitting out super-lyrical verses about contemporary politics, because he’s just not a lyrical rapper; Powder is mostly about the atmosphere it tries to build, and it succeeds because it is authentic in conveying said atmosphere.

That authenticity doesn’t always save the album from how the themes are delivered. Often in the album, Bones does seem to have some filler verses and just nonsense lines, a blatant example being Kale, how his verse seemingly just deteriorates at the end, but some other instances being Neoprene, the second verse of ThisPartyReallyDied, and IThoughtYouLookedFamiliar.

These flaws keep the album from being a truly consistent listen, especially nearing the end of it, because it also suffers from the 57 minutes of runtime being spread out into these 28 short tracks. This really is something of a double-edged sword for Bones, because as he once explained in an article I read, the short-track format is great for leaving fans wanting more, and I assume it leaves more room for experimentation and is a way to touch many topics, but when you have almost an hour of music, I think it becomes something much less consistent if it’s heavily spread out like this, which is why the concepts seem fresh and exciting at the start, but nearing the end of the album, the tracks become less interesting.

And for my biggest problem with the album, the tracks that, in my opinion, just shouldn’t be here at all. Tracks like JazzDads,TakeOne and  ComeListenToThisShit,IFoundMyUnclesOldWalkMan, which are “different” just for the sake of it and end up sounding bad, for the first example, or just have no reason to exist other than as a weird, bland interlude, for the latter. Others, such as TheAnnexationOfPuertoRico, ItsTheLittleThings and TakeItFromMe, are so short, even for Bones songs, they don’t leave any impact on the listener, which is a shame since I find the guitar in the latter to be very good. For ModestGoals, it is pretty much ItAllComesTogetherInTheFinalAct repeated, and as for ICanSeeMyHouseFromHere, I appreciate what Bones tried to do, especially since his vocals are pretty well-delivered, but it just comes off as out of place and even cringy.

Even with these setbacks, the album is pretty solid in my opinion. The production, mostly handled by the TeamSESH crew, is amazing at best, at worst maybe a little forgettable, with great examples being Chlorella’s entrancing reverb and insane hi-hat pattern produced by Curtis Heron, the extremely slowed-down hums by HNRK in HimalayanSalt, the ethereal atmosphere of TreeOfLife by Fifty Grand, the absolute banger that is HereGoesNothing, by Russian producer stereoRYZE, and the lovely Biophony instrumental by Cat Soup.

Bones is also on top of his game when it comes to his delivery, as seen in songs such as JustAnotherDayInTheOffice, where his voice goes even deeper than usual to match the darkness of this verse, laid over the most lowkey guitar imaginable; but in my opinion his singing is very appealing in this project. While I may not enjoy it as much over acoustic instrumentals, which is pretty much all surrenderdorothy and tracks like TillTheVulturesCome are about, his hooks are very catchy and work well with the structuring of his songs, which was a pleasant surprise for me. Great examples include the simple but impactful chorus on TheHealingFields, and the memorable hooks in HeySorry,IWasInTheShower, Kale, and TryToStayInTheFrameNextTime.

To me, the ideal Powder would have been much shorter, and much more focused on what the 7 first tracks brought to the table: a wise, almost spectral outsider take on subjects such as veganism, nature, and anything else Elmo is passionate about (see: TreeOfLife, TheHealingFields, ThatStuffWillKillYa, HimalayanSalt), with very few hyped-up tracks such as HereGoesNothing, to keep the atmosphere intended but with a few high-energy spots. The real problem are the non-essentials: the skippable tracks, lackluster feature verses from Chris Travis, Eddy Baker and Rozz Dyliams (god why, the song was so good without him!), and what seems to be an occasional lack of focus from Bones bring the listening down from a potential amazing experience to an alright one, but the genuine essence this album still hangs on to me tightly, making me unable to truly dislike it.

FAVORITE TRACKS: TreeOfLife, HereGoesNothing, TheHealingFields, HelloFriend/ThatStuffWillKillYa, Chlorella, TryToStayInTheFrameThisTime

LEAST FAVORITE TRACKS: JazzDads,TakeOne, ComeListenToThisShit,IFoundMyUnclesOldWalkMan

 6.95/10

“I can walk, I can talk, I can move like a human. Filaments running through my limbs, like the stems of a tulip.”

[interesting-blog-name]

Xavier Wulf & BONES - BRACE Review

back again with a seshollowaterboyz album, this time a collab between previously covered Bones and Hollow Squad member Xavier Wulf. between all four of them, i always had the opinion Bones was the big standout in the group, and i assume this sentiment is shared between many other fans, but if i had to pick second place, Xavier would be up there easily. the way he effortlessly makes endless bangers is something very remarkable and makes him a useful addition to the team. so it's safe to say i was excited to listen to it. it opens up with the mood setter 1WayTicket, a track that narrates Xavier going into a space exploration trip, most likely to never come back, which kind of reflects the theme of this album being a space-adventure-ish tape. it works well as an intro, and bones gives a good performance, with probably his best singing in the album, even if brief. it moves on to Suffer, a big bass-bumping banger with The Virus And Antidote producing it, Bones yelling in your ear, and Xavier delivering a rather lackluster verse in comparison. this is what I feared going into BRACE, that Bones would overshadow Xavier in the banger cuts, but really i did not have this issue, because this is the only hyped-up track in the album. honestly, it would not be a problem if the other tracks were mellow, but still cool to listen to and versatile, but from this point on, it's all lowkey wavy singing rap (except SpeedOfLight and BackAndForth) that all blends into a rather uneventful listen, much like Beck's Hyperspace (which looking back, didn't deserve the score I gave it). seriously, this is the only track where Xavier slightly raises his tone. if they were to at least do rapping segments in the middle of these tracks, similar to Bones's verse on the intro, instead of singing every verse, it would be much more enjoyable. neither of the two are very good singers, especially the less melody-experienced Xavier (considering Bones sings much more often from what I've heard) , so i don't really know why they'd want to have a nearly 20 minute long singoff. i guess I'm not the one to judge what they want to make though, but before listening to a SHWB track, i personally always expect something innovative, or at least varied. and i know this is supposed to be representing the space voyage to Krater's Atlas but it still sort of disappoints 😔 there really isn't much to this project imo. i feel like if they were to take the 80s synthpop direction SpeedOfLight set up and extended it into all the remaining tracks it would even be more fun than the direction they decided with. shoutout eddy baker too i never heard him sing like that and it was awesome lol.

FAVORITE TRACKS: 1WayTicket, Suffer, BackAndForth LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: ItsAThoughPillToSwallow

5.05/10 "I don't give a fuck, I knuckle up and close your eyelids."

[interesting-blog-name]

BONES - OFFLINE Review

I've been listening to Bones's and SHWB's music for a while now, maybe since around june of last year, but i have never picked up one of his projects to listen to it in one sitting. i was a little hesitant to listen to OFFLINE, i wont lie; i had this feeling that bones had had sort of a falling off after around CARCASS, at least that's what everyone said, talking about how UnderTheWillowTree, KickingTheBucket and IFeelLikeDirt were kind of lackluster, and i didn't know if it was a good idea to start off with his most recent sound, but at the same time I was eager to jump into it. when it comes to analyzing offline, i have the huge disadvantage of not knowing what a bones project is truly supposed to sound like, but anyone who has ever heard like 2 bones songs would probably notice that this album is not your average elmo. he's gotten extremely better when it comes to the structuring of his songs, his flows are 10 times smoother, his enunciation and delivery seem fresh and new, and he seems to have taken the old-school style he employed in many tracks off of FAILURE up a notch, while also keeping the melodies scattered throughout the tracks very appealing. this is what makes this album a very nice listen in my opinion, the effortlessly cool blend between melody and 90s style rapping. the variety and experimentation with melodies in tracks like Vertigo, 240p and Kerosene are a breath of fresh air if you're already familiar with the monotone delivery bones has been practicing since the start of last decade. this album brings more life to his sound, but not shying away from one of uncle Ricky's most aggressive moment yet, with the standout track StateOfEmergency. that shit is crazy. OFFLINE is also keen on showcasing bones' acoustic side, fleshed out in his side project surrenderdorothy and in tracks like SadlyThatsJustTheWayThingsAre and WhiteTrashMidwesternTown quite often, as seen in IWasYourTomb, Numb, YouWantTheGoodNewsOrBadNews and GlassHalfFull. i wouldn't say the last 2 were necessary, in my opinion they were three most filler tracks in the album, especially since I'm very familiar with surrenderdorothy. but tracks like Numb are perfect to exemplify the rise in production quality that came with this album. again, i can't say for the other more recent albums, but it feels. like a different era and aura for elmo. he's past trying to prove himself as a rising ambitious artist, and he's past being at the frontline of underground rap; right now, bones doesn't attract as much attention as he did back when he was at his peak, going as far as having a music video with over 20 million views, but he has such a cult following that anything he drops will not go unnoticed or forgotten because of his fans, and he obviously is aware of that. it's a reoccurring theme in this record for the seshman to look down on the rap game as a veteran, condemning the drug use, the copycats and just threatening to murder someone on like 90% of the tracks. ChampagneInTheGraveyard paints a grim picture if an overdose that really hits hard over the cello instrumental, making for one of the most powerful moments on the record. i really enjoyed listening to OFFLINE, and i guess that's all that matters. bones has been doing his thing since 2013, he knows what he's doing and he has perfected it to a level that just makes me happg to experience. if there's one thing i love, is seeing artists evolve with time, and this is the prime example of that. FAVORITE TRACKS: Vertigo, Numb, ChampagneInTheGraveyard, StateOfEmergency, Molotov LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: GlassHalfFull 7.8/10 "5k for the scope, we don't even gotta meet."