honestly same

A good note for the edgy persona to go out on, and his best album in a decade. Still could've been better.

I feel like a lot of people have misunderstood the main point of this album; this is a story about an artist coming to terms with the fact that a big part of the brand he built was predicated on punching down, personifying those tendencies and then getting rid of them. The first part of the album consists of {Renaissance} up to {Guilty Conscience 2}, and deals with the fast and ... read more

'Bino Binge (7/?) - Starting Again

When I completed my Childish Gambino reviews last year, I specifically asked for a studio recording of {Human Sacrifice} in the special commentary. Thank you Donald, very cool.

[Atavista] is, to put it bluntly, the polished and grand effort that [3.15.20] simply wasn't. The man's hitmaking capabilities haven't dwindled at all, and aside from some lower moments that err on the side of passable this album is everything the original release shouldn't been. I'm ... read more

the disintegration of drake's choices and character in six minutes and thirty two seconds

It's marvelous, no?

Well, this should come as no big surprise when viewed in the context of my music taste profile but I do love me some Vampire Weekend - even found [Father of the Bride] to be a perfectly good showing from the NYC rich kids turned grownups, really, despite all the flak that album's gotten. And while I'll never get tired with hits like {This Life} and {Harmony Hall}, I will say that [Only God Was Above Us] is not one, but two steps above it and comes close to or even at ... read more

Occasionally I'll come across an album that left me so little an impression that it's really hard to rate it. [eternal sunshine] by Ariana Grande is, sadly, one of those - which is particularly heartbreaking after how fresh the lead single for this album, {yes, and?} felt when I first listened to it back in January. The production is so subdued that it barely feels like it's there, and it severely lets down songs like the title track and {we can't be friends}, which feel almost incomplete when ... read more

I don't think there was ever any doubt that MGMT would deliver this time around. [Loss of Life] is a great project in which the band seems to slightly move away from their commitment to synths - I dare say that this is the most "rock" Andrew and Ben have ever been - as was evident from the singles. {Mother Nature} and {Bubblegum Dog} were songs that I somehow wasn't big on when I first listened to them, but they grew on me over time. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that ... read more

Yeah, that'll do for the first review of the year. (hey guys!)

My limited experience with glass beach absolutely did not lead me to believe that their second project would be this staggeringly different from the first one. Sure, [the first glass beach album] had its charm but some of the highlights were buried under a bunch of songs that while fun felt ultimately aimless and not conducive to the experience the band was trying to provide. [plastic death] is a tight ship, packed with memorable ... read more

It might be sacrilegious to say this in a year that gave us projects like [UTOPIA], [Maps], [SCARING THE HOES] and [Scrapyard III] but up until this point I've really been waiting for a hip hop album that'd really blow me out of the water in terms of its lyricism and poignancy. [Quaranta], which is Detroit born-and-raised Danny Brown's most recent foray into the world of conscious hip hop, is a reflection on his life now that he has - as seen through the title - reached his 40s in a dangerous ... read more

Review-Mini #9

As someone who's a genuine fan of the duo's music up to this point... what a letdown. Lack of inspiration doesn't translate well to a down-tempo album as many a creatively bankrupt rock band seem to think, but this feels like there was barely any fire put into it. It's the standard Royal Blood sound, but watered down - and if that's what they'll give me, it's [Back to the Water Below] with them.

Favorite Songs: Pull Me Through // WAVES
Least Favorite Songs: the rest
Special ... read more

Review-Mini #8

Sufjan Stevens is an artist that I will forever trust to write and tell a beautiful story. After a long while of experimentation, we get his first attempt at returning to his roots that's also a solo project - it's indie folk that suits him best, after all - since 2015's [Carrie & Lowell], an absolute heartbreaker of an album that explores the depth of familial relations and how beautiful yet grim they can be. [Javelin] is also beautiful, in a way, but with no better way to ... read more

what

I'm sorry, this is just such a whole load of absolutely nothing. Extremely uninspiring flows on songs that somehow feel more phoned in than the stuff Doja described as "cash-grabs", rhyming schemes that would make the corniest of Logic verses look like God wrote them in comparison, lyrics that swing between uncertain boasting and denigration, I don't think there's much to salvage here. [Scarlet] has, in my opinion, been nothing but a resounding failure in terms of her attempt to ... read more

Standing out in a scene as saturated as indie rock/pop is truly a tough endeavor - it takes a lot of sifting through the oysters to find little pearls of potential, as most bands set out to impress with attention-drawing singles and fall flat when it comes to depth. Midnight Session delivers an indisputably positive project with passion oozing through every song on [Empty Homes in Blue Light], showing a commitment to their art that is both genuine and should draw the attention of anyone who ... read more

... I choose to assume the newest album by The National is called [Laugh Track] because [First Two Pages Of Frankenstein] feels like a sitcom gag in comparison. With that record sitting at a positive if uninspiring 5.5/10 for what my personal enjoyment is worth, I was ready to write these guys off for at least a bunch of years. Turns out the haymaker comes after the jab, because [The Boxer] has returned.

Unlike the previous album, which did present some well executed pieces and ideas in the ... read more

I've spent the last hour listening to track after track slack-jawed and with some degree of disbelief. Having been exposed to only {Bug Like An Angel} from the singles on this album, I did not expect Mitski to stray this far from her last two projects, pleasant and jam packed with short and sweet tunes you're meant to vibe with in the vein of {The Only Heartbreaker} or {Nobody}. On her newest album, she seems almost intent on letting her music flow on its own with little regard for the ... read more

Our Slowest Dive (5/5) - Pretty, Passionate, Predictable

Sometimes, as a great artist, you have to take a step back and remind yourself of what it is that's made your past work into universally beloved masterpieces of unimpeachable quality. For Slowdive, what made [Souvlaki] and [Pygmalion] special isn't their mastery of dream pop and how they incorporate its aspects into the more traditional shoegaze sound, but their creative liberties on tracks like {Souvlaki Space Station} and {Crazy For ... read more

~ Intermission (thank you for 100 followers!)

When I initially started writing reviews on AOTY last year and visiting the site frequently, I thought it would simply end up being a short-lived habit that would eventually taper off. I decided to take the pieces I'd be writing seriously, because I figured it'd do me some good to maintain the quality of my written English (since I'm not a native speaker) while talking about a subject I deeply love, music. After months and months of continuing to ... read more

Our Slowest Dive (4/5) - Return, reintroduction, ...regression?

After [Pygmalion] came out, there wasn't really anywhere for the shoegaze legends to go other than far away from what they were used to; setting off to do their own thing, each band member experienced varying degrees of success with their own projects and even a shared endeavor as the Mojave 3. It would've been perfectly fine for Slowdive to end in 1995, but after reforming they gave us their first single in 22 years back in 2017 ... read more

Depravity as Artistic Expression (1/2) - The Reason We Don't Care

I don't like writing negative reviews. Perhaps this is a bit of a silly thing to say as I'm about to put into words my enduring disdain for a modern darling of the music critique community, but it's true. It's no secret that Alexis Marshall is a bad person, but I'm on my soapbox today to make a different declaration: [You Won't Get What You Want] is bad art. It's uninspiring at worst and middling at best in tangible musical ... read more