Exeter is the most sonically consistent world bladee has built on a project and I think it's only real shortcoming is built into that. While I love the ethereal world built by the production, I feel like some of these tracks blend together for me in a way I wish they wouldn't but I can see future listens helping me pull it apart and I'll end up loving it more than I already do.

No official track list rating so I'm gonna do the mini review under each track like I did once or twice before.
rec by @SugoiSoul

1. Why - 82
Love the spooky synths, the lofi recording, and the contrast of a very bright optimistic instrumental over dour lyrics. What stops me from loving this is the lyrics however, they're serviceable but not great.

2. Wont - 88
I have a similar gripe to the first track where I think the lyrics feel a bit stale but for this track I think the focus is pulled ... read more

Surprisingly not the worst stuff I've heard from AJR but there is a lot of lowlights here. I think this album is more in the boring bad category than the fun bad but there's a good taste of both. Woody Allen and Thirsty are genuinely embarrassing but then there is radio filler music that is just boring and inoffensive. This album lacks a lot of AJR's trademark "woe is me" self loathing and preaching about social media which is a welcome change but this shit is hot garbage.

There are a couple of moments of really groovy instrumentation that sounds great. That is about where my positives end. Bellion comes off as preachy and so self-assured that it is impossible to find him likable through this project. There are many corny lyrics and then other mind bogglingly strange ones that completely pull me out of the song. I mentioned in a review a long time ago how the line "You're the reason I'm alone and masturbate." is absurdly strange and gross in the context ... read more

Super atmospheric and beautiful but sometimes lacks variety. While I say that, there were some points where I was shocked by the direction of certain songs and their overall vibe but I think that eventually some songs started to blend together for me. Still really great.

I was at least hoping for this to be so obnoxiously bad that I get some value out of it comedically but it's too boring and frustrating for that. It's pathetic that two artists as big as mgk and trippie can release something this boring and phoned in. Genuinely so awful it's not worth a listen.

Super fun and full of personality. My friends know me as a Sem hater (I heard one song and felt no kind of way towards it) but I think I've redeemed myself. I love a lot of the production on this album and I never felt it getting too stale which was my concern for Sem's style. I love the variety of instrumentation and moods that this album goes for and I liked this a lot more than I anticipated.

Kinda disappointing after hearing the Kendrick verse everywhere for the past day or 2. While I love that track and a couple others, notably the ones with Rick Ross and Travis, when Future is the only one on the track it drags even on shorter songs. There's also a healthy dose of annoying hooks like on type shit and claustrophobic and there's nothing really exciting here. For an album that is so self righteous as this one, they really didn't try hard to back up what the whole theme of the album ... read more

A fun extra couple tracks that I mostly love but I can see why they were left off of the original release. While I didn't love Obsessed I think it was on brand and probably the closest to fitting in the album but it felt like it was cut for a reason. As for the other tracks, Olivia dug deep into her country twang bag and I loved it. I feel like it could hit some people the wrong way but I really liked it. The last thing I want to talk about is so american because it's my favorite of the new ... read more

This is a bit of an outlier in my review catalog cuz I don't find myself listening to a ton of metal regularly. It isn't that I dislike metal but I find myself wanting to listen to other stuff more often, but this is right up my alley. Pure aggression, groove, and anger that cuts straight to the point. I love the sound of this album. The guitar groove change ups thrown into every track are great and the drums pound straight through the entire track. The vocals are also incredible and I love the ... read more

Edit 7/6/24: 91 >> 82
While I love a few of these songs, the majority have fallen out of my rotation. The ones I come back to are incredible but the others fail to match those peaks and it drags the whole project down a bit

A very consistent record from lean and bladee and something that came out of left field for me personally. After listening to a handful of bladee's albums, I knew that I couldn't really expect him to lock himself into a genre for too long, and I am not very ... read more

I knew a few tracks from Trash Island but I'm happy with the rest that I heard for the most part. I love bladee Ecco and thaiboy working together and I think that the vibe they built on this album was great and fairly consistent for the most part. The few times where I didn't feel like much was happening were over before they became too much of an annoyance and in that way I think the brevity of this project helps it. This isn't an all around positive though because my favorite track, one of ... read more

Fairly catchy and inoffensive. I think it is the best thing I've heard from them but I really dislike everything else they've released. The bridge is annoying but it's over fast enough for me to not care that much. It's ok

I don't review projects like this a lot because I find it hard to gauge my enjoyment of tracks in relation to others. I don't find myself listening to a lot of purely instrumental music in my free time so it is difficult for me to level the playing field and find what I perceive to be really good music when I wouldn't listen to it on a regular basis. That put aside, I really enjoyed this ep. While there is a ton going on in these tracks and they're incredibly dynamic, the vast majority of it is ... read more

I listened to the Scrapyard 3 EP fairly recently and while I enjoyed it, I didn't love it. That makes the surprise of me loving this album even better. The production is fantastic, and the range of song styles on this project are fantastic. Dipping his toes in waters close to a rage sound with GUESS WHO and slowing down for a softer, intimate, cut on one of my favorite tracks GUIDE DOG. I'm glad I didn't put this one off, and I can see it growing on me more as I listen throughout the year. So ... read more

While I like the atmosphere this little project creates, no one thing sticks enough for me to truly enjoy any track individually. There are bits and pieces of songs that I enjoy and I like the glitchy approach but the final product is not fully formed enough for me to love any single track.

Never got around to listening to this..... sorry.

It's a perfect album. Instrumentally, conceptually, lyrically, everything works together so well that I can't imagine the effort put into it. I hate saying this in my reviews of classics that everyone loves, but I'll do it anyways. Everything to be said about this has been said and I agree its an unbelievable album and I won't ever experience anything even close to it ever again. Even though I expected an incredible album, what I got was so ... read more

I do not intend on reviewing this at all but Thank God & Jimmy Buffett is so amazing I can't put it into words. It's God awful but if my death led to songs like this being created, I would be so unfathomably happy.

Not beating the washed allegations.

I may be tainted from all the dick riders on twitter going crazy about this album but it really is a let down even coming from Donda which I didn't find much to come back to consistently on. There are so many questionable bars, some made me laugh, some made me roll my eyes, but almost none of it is listenable. It is really easy for me to give this a bad score because of how Kanye has been acting for the past months or years or however long he's been on this ... read more

Listenable but not enough happens for me to want to hear it again