Edit: 80-->87

A really bittersweet Indie Rock experience that I know i'm going to have to listen again to fully immerse myself in

Edit: Hit so hard on subsequent listens. Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl is a great song, but it really is an isolated sound on the album. The more I listen, the more the other Indie Rock elements take more and more space in my mind

Impressively captures an era and vibe from a time in which the music wasn't made in. Did it even exist at all?

Traditional Pop and experimentation collide in the signature Charli XCX way. You always know who you're listening to when one of her songs come on

Normally, my arch-nemesis is slow and boring piano ballads. Luckily, I wasn't bogged down at all by Regina Spektor's "Soviet Kitsch" album. The writing is witty and charming enough to drive the listening experience on it's own.

Outside of a couple songs (such as the amazing "Us"), the instrumentals keep fairly strictly to mostly piano and basic percussion with some violin thrown in occasionally for good measure. Just describing this doesn't do the music ... read more

I'm not usually one for Live Albums, but 98.12.28 is definitely something really special.

It's honestly a little baffling how they managed to sound this good live. The song selection is really solid including LONG SEASON in it's entirety which somehow sounds even more magical than the studio recording. It's truly pretty easy to forget you're listening to a Live Album when the sound is so flawless

Deftones managed to do the impossible: get normal people to listen to Metal music

Saw a Tiktok ad promoting the song "ponytail" and based off of the small snippet in the ad, I was prepared for it to be kinda dookie. Turns out Cecile Believe makes some pretty good stuff and just has some of the WORST marketing. Without the context of the rest of the song, repeating a single phrase over and over again is generally not the biggest draw for potential new listeners

Getting past the first track and being greeted with "The First Train" feels like braving through a dark and twisted forest only to make it out into a pleasant and bright meadow; and then "I am Not Shinzo Abe" starts playing which drags you right back into the gates of hell.

I was ready to hate this thing. I think it's hard NOT to when it sounds like your headphones just unlocked a hidden 110% max volume; Really Gimmicky stuff doesn't always land, after all. I ... read more

It's a little interesting too see how, in some ways, punk is such a different sounding genre today as compared to near it's inception. The Clash sound so tame sonically compared to a lot of the really abrasive and lo-fi underground stuff coming out now. I simply cannot imagine an old lady clutching her pearls listening to... "Jimmy Jazz" or something.

The blending of genres was not something I expected going into my first "The Clash" record. I was somewhat ... read more

It's insane the amount of incredible music that, without access on streaming, could very well be doomed to falling into obscurity without proper word-of-mouth. This is why we still need physical media

Less substantial of a release compared to Discovery or Random Access Memories, but I'll be DAMNED if Robot Rock doesn't blow my DICK CLEAN OFF

Beneath all the (frankly valid) LCD Soundsytem comparisons, there's still a solid enough dance album with a lot of personality that ranges from some real highs and lows in terms of how much said personality worked for me

Very few artists can head a project produced by J Dilla, DJ Premier, and The Roots and not get overshadowed. Common managed to do that. The production is good; smooth and elegant in its relative simplicity.

Common absolutely steals the show with his rapping, though. The storytelling on some of the songs like "A Song For Assata" is insane, but through the entire album Common keeps up the quality rhyming

I think i'm in one of the two boats when it comes to this album. I think it's a pretty solid electronic dance album, but I've heard stuff I simply like better. There isn't a whole lot to draw me to this album that can't be found elsewhere

I knew it wasn't going to be as experimental or unique, and it definitely is a more mainstream approach. Comparing to other Janelle Monae albums, it is a bit disappointing.

Looking at it simply as a fun and summery R&B album, its okay enough. I think that if this was made by an artist I had never heard of, I'd say it still suffers from a lack of strong differentiation between songs. The sound is fun though, and the production is a bit more unique than a lot of other stuff out ... read more

My score maybe doesn't fully encapsulate my thoughts on Doechii's debut Mixtape. I REALLY like this Mixtape. I've been looking forward to the first full-length project from Doechii ever since the GIGA BANGER that is "Alter Ego" which released earlier this year.

I have some minor grievances that give me some slight hesitation rating the project higher. The tracklist could do with a bit of editing, and a very few select lines/ideas fell a little flat. On the whole ... read more

It can get really difficult as an artist to continually change and grow your sound. I don't expect an artist to have the exact same sound in every project, but I found "Daddy's Home" to be missing a lot of that signature noisy flair that makes St. Vincent such a compelling listen. The album is as lyrically explorative as any other of her works, I just unfortunately didn't feel quite as engrossed in Daddy's Home as her other albums

You like El-P more than Killer Mike because you're racist. I like El-P more because Killer Mike is a landlord. We are not the same.

I've loved basically everything that this duo has put out, and as much as I'd love more from them, this is such a great final album that'd I'd be happy with them retiring RTJ with a solid catalogue and just riding off into the sunset in their stolen Buick

Do I dare say? This MIGHT be better than Hounds of Love. Both are truly amazing and whimsical Pop achievements, but "The Dreaming" is just dripping with charm and theatrics and it's nothing like anything else at the time and honestly probably now

It was one thing that North West contributed not only her own verse to the project, but also ghost wrote all of Kanye's verses too.

I don't think it sounds q u i t e as unfinished as "JESUS IS KING," but it still sounds insanely rough and unfinished. The samples sound audibly mixed really badly, doing a super shitty job of blending into the beats. Many of the songs have long empty sections that feel like they should have been filled in with a verse, but weren't. ... read more