With All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone Explosions In The Sky stay in their now perfected formula. While the record may not bring anything new for the group aside the piano that pops up in some of the tracks, the band doesn't really need to introduce much innovation: if it ain't broke don't fix it I guess. The thing is, while The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place nailed pretty much everything that the band offered, this album doesn't do so as well, as it tends to be quite inconsistent.
The mellow, ... read more

The Avalanches are back in 2020 with their third studio album, We Will Always Love You. Upon looking at the general information about this record, I have to say that I got very excited: the feature list on this thing is massive, not only in number, but also name-wise, as there's legendary musicians all over the tracklist. And, as far as these features go, there's really not much to complain about, as they're all placed pretty much perfectly on each instrumental. Where this album feels ... read more

Man on the Moon III: The Chosen is Cudi's return to his record series Man on the Moon and is also his return to form. Not only is this a quality record in terms of production, it's also got some fantastic standouts in its tracklist.
I have to admit that, to me at least, the record doesn't start on the strongest of notes, as I find the first third of this LP to have its weakest cuts. There's also really solid tunes in here too though, such as Tequila Shots, with its fantastic hook and eerie ... read more

With The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, Explosions in the Sky almost seems to grant my wish. This LP brings back the great foundation the band had on their debut and it mixes it with the more intricate expression of their second album. And with the aspects of their first record coming back, it's also obvious how the Ok Computer influences are back aswell, as tracks like Let Down or Subterranean Homesick Alien immediatly come to mind when hearing the guitars on this LP. And this is actually ... read more

Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres is not just a fantastic musical experience, it's also a fantastic story with a fantastic arrangment.
Not only does this record balance incredibly well its narrative and its musical parts, it also makes it really clear how important both are: with more listens, it becomes more and more evident what's meant to work as a transition and what's meant to work as a really emotionally impactful moment. This is something I really struggled to find in ... read more

Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever is the follow-up to the band's debut album and as such, it kind of satisfies and disappoints at the same time. While I really like the general direction that the group takes with this LP, there's a lot that needs to be refined and polished.
For one, I love how the textures are more articulate and elaborate than they were on How Strange, Innocence: it really feels like the band has tried their best to evolve in sound ... read more

The Chicago Project is an interesting but very scattered record. There's lots of cool ideas and great performances and executions on here, but there's also plenty of obnoxious or unfitting elements. An example of this is the very first track, Exchange, which has some fantastic guitar work and a really fast-paced, eccentric structure; both these things keep the track really engaging until it breaks into a really unfitting part towards the half of the cut, which brings it down and stops it from ... read more

Explosions in the Sky's debut record is a really well crafted piece of post-rock that takes a very soft approach.
The first track is a really rich instrumental when it comes to textures, as we get a very gentle and smooth part which leads into much rougher sounds thanks to a really slick transition. It's a really solid track and I don't think it does much wrong.
Snow and Lights is generally really nice, however it does feel like it drags on a bit in its delicacy as it often feels hesitant to ... read more

Carly Rae Jepsen's Dedicated Side B is a much more interesting yet at the same time more scattered album than Dedicated. I find this to have some of the best Carly Rae Jepsen songs but it also has a good amount of weak tracks in there. Stylistically, this is pretty diverse, as we get some pretty eccentric bangers, aswell as some slower ballads and some intriguing songs too.
I am not a fan of the first quarter of this LP, as I believe it holds the worst tracks by far. This Love Isn't Crazy and ... read more

I gotta say I spent much more time than I thought I would have with this record, but after like 9 listens I think I've made up my mind. Shore easily takes the spot as my 2nd favorite Fleet Foxes LP. The approach on this album is much different from anything Fleet Foxes has released up until this point: there's no ambitious structures, there's no sublteness, instead we get a really full and much more easy-going record; the real change stands in the drums and in the bass, as these two elements ... read more

(just pretend that I wrote this in 2012, ok?)
Kendrick Lamar comes back, just one year after his first LP Section.80, to release a new full lenght album. Seeing the big potential Kendrick had with his first record, this new album was really promising not only because the minor issues that were on Section.80 are easy to overcome but also because the singles Kendrick had dropped prior to this project were really great. So, with all of this in mind, the only question left would be if the album is ... read more

The essential Time Out is an incredibly soothing listen that finds power in simplicty. Its innovation and risks taken when it comes to jazz standards were really big at the time and not long after everyone realized that those new takes really payed off: not only is this now considered an important classic record, it also contains the biggest selling jazz single ever, Take Five, so it's really easy to see how the innovation really helped the album. And starting off with its big single, it's ... read more

It seems that Carly has got the formula down with her 4th studio album Dedicated. It's not as colorful and rich as her previous effort, but it struggles to do much wrong unlike he first LPs. It also seems like she has abandoned the cute and innocent girl type that was also on her first albums and is instead going for a much more naughty type: she's pretty fucking horny on this record.
It starts off with one of my favorite Carly Rae Jepsen songs, Julien. I love how it gets really loud at times, ... read more

Redux Review #2

With their 2008 debut record, MGMT put themselves on the map with some incredibly catchy singles. And while those are definitely the most memorable part about this album, they're also not all there is to it. In fact, I would say this whole album is quite memorable, with each track having something that makes it stand out from the rest - whether that's a good or a bad thing.
Starting off with the intro track Time to Pretend, I'm gonna say right away that I'm not the biggest fan ... read more

Fleet Foxes' third studio LP is a much more meditative approach than their previous albums. While I find myself enjoying the project quite a lot, there some sometimes obvious faults and some other nitpicks that stop it from being great. One thing I found in some of the tracks on the record is the fact that they're lacking cohesion; the album itself is actually very well constructed, but the songs individually often find messy, disconnected lyrics (I Should See Memphis, Crack-Up) or struggle to ... read more

yes. yes! YEEEESSS!!!
With their return anticipated months ago with the release of the first singles from this record, Gorillaz put out one of their best albums with Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. This time, it seems like we got an album that is truly a Gorillaz album. In fact, the group returns to their typical formula on this record, which consists of incredibly catchy and memorable tracks that have a super polished and rich production yet hide a message underneath. This is what ... read more

Wow. This thing is gorgeous.
Such a beatiful and powerful record. The writing is absolutely insane and the production feels so rich and well-fitting pretty much every single second of the record. While it may start a bit slow, it has some absolutely fucking incredible highlights on its second half - especially its last quarter.
Helplessness Blues is one of the most beatiful things I've ever read. It's so potent, it hits with such a deep deep feeling that is really hard to describe with words. ... read more

Nectar is the second album from the new Alternative R&B sensation Joji. I was really hoping to see some improvement from his last (or should I say first?) LP and I definitely was not disappointed on that. And yet, there's still some key problems that I wish Joji would separate from; this review is pretty much gonna be a list of such things, as I believe those are the points that stop the album from being better and not the tracks themselves; I'm still gonna mention tracks that stick out and ... read more

Lightning Bolt's Ride the Skies sees the duo moving forward from their 1999 live album, while still maintaining some of the characteristics that made it unenjoyable to begin with. Such attributes include not distinguishing messy from noisy, having poor structures or just sounding very unpolished. That being said, there's some really great tracks on here that kinda make up for the less enjoyable cuts. Not only that, but there's some cool ideas that stand out, like the track The Faire Folk, and ... read more

Ballads 1 is a really promising and at the same time disappointing record. While I don't believe there's much bad about this LP, there's lots of lackluster moments; it's almost as if, for every good track on the record, there was a lame one to counterpart it.
Starting off with the good, a bunch of stuff on here is really auspicious. The intro track has one of my favorite vocal performances on the record (although I do wish the unnecessary loud and overcompressed bass would stay out of the song) ... read more