mindtrain

it's "hotter than July" for him, but you're not wrong to consider most of the album under-cooked. it's not to discount the polished production, but the energy doesn't take you far; too relentlessly happy for your own good, thus too eager to fly that it never takes off. though, this album works if building a simple good mood's what you're after.

"Lately" is the album's true stand-out - the only song capable of stirring thought.

am i wrong for thinking Blur's first two albums are so, so dry and boring? all of the songs sound mawkish; Albarn's vocals prolongedly bored to instrumentalism that blares noisily without reprieve and drones on and on -- in that manner, it's relentless tunnelling. "chant-chant-chant" to whichever tangent is flying around their heads.

la-la-la...! mutter, mutter, mutter... oh, some cliché political commentary. i'm sorry that Thatcher was so hard on you.

well-meaning, sun-kissed breathiness is, certainly, an intention to aspire towards in this tech-age of Gen Z detachment (thus, multitudes smarter than her previous albums).

yet, "Solar Power" loses as much in Lorde's hallmark silly writing (hidden by her previous albums' gloom-and-doom) and the faux-down-to-earth production -- her made-for-market, Antonoff-propped tunes would never know true warmth.

homework for you all: Joni Mitchell's "Hejira".

it's truly one-of-a-kind: an alarming cacophony of post-punk, Descloux crosses two important scenes of the Carter-Reagan era -- releasing under the mutant disco-no wave eclecticism that was ZE Records in NYC (Was (Not Was), Kid Creole, Material) and recording at Jamaica's Compass Point Studios of art-rock slickness (Sly & Robbie, Grace Jones, Talking Heads).

Caribbean-tinged worldbeat to Western no wave? "Mambo Nassau" has the hallmarks of a progressive dance record.