slothsound

"Cracker Island" is the most disappointing Gorillaz album so far...

...and this comes from someone who didn't particularly like "Humanz" on release. While I still think that album is pretty messy and has a little too many inconsistencies, it grew on me a lot and is definitely more entertaining and bold than "Cracker Island". "Cracker Island" to me doesn't seem to have much growing potential since most of the Gorillaz solo songs are forgettable and ... read more

On her longly held-back debut album, RAYE covers a lot of ground stylistically whilst tackling nearly every big societal theme of current generations. So, both from a musical and lyrical standpoint, she makes her 21st century blues. Although RAYE tries to puzzle it all together in a cohesive way by framing the album with a dedicated intro and outro track, the album ultimately ends up feeling disjointed and all over the place. Many of the songs do not impress from a songwriting standpoint and ... read more

Kelela's sophomore record "Raven" clocks in at over an hour of runtime. From the start, it was my fear that this would be the record's biggest problem, especially since some of the singles already had some minor pacing issues. It is natural to a project of this style - atmospheric, downtempo alternative R&B - that great care needs to be taken for it to not get boring or just background noise. So, now that I've alluded to it, does "Raven" manage the tightrope walk? The ... read more

The first song from Peter Gabriel‘s upcoming album "I/O", which has been 20 years in the making and was one of the biggest mysteries of Gabriel‘s career as a musician, is about a real-life project by the name "Panopticom" his human-rights organisation WITNESS is co-developing. This real-life context kind of demystifies the lyrics for me and makes them seem like some kind of advertisement. However, I can see the vision Gabriel has for the "Panopticom" ... read more