29/12/2023 update 85 -> 65

I think I was riding the hype wave a little too much when this came out. While some of the singles are still bangers like Destory Me and Doe Eyed as well as Look At You being a sweet heartfelt ballad. I feel like Rebecca Black's debut kind of takes a bit too hard of a dip after the big anthems of the first half, falling into the trap of stripping things back when she wants to get more ... read more

Edit 08/06/2023
65 -> 80

This album has grown on my a lot with exposure to it. I still don't think the slower moments all hit, Liar is still the weakest track for me, but C'est Comme Ça has grown on me a bit, I love what's being expressed on Figure 8, Crave has grown a lot, Thick Skull is a good closer. I think Big Man Little Dignity has shrunk a little though. The intro three are such a great series if bangers, but You First is still the best track on this thing it's so petty I ... read more

I really think at this point shoegaze isn't for me. I've tried MBV, I've tried parannoul, I've tried parannoul's collab EPs and it's just not clicking. I can see the appeal of the album, I can see how good it is and I'm not gonna come out here pretending it's bad because I don't get it, but I think me trying to enjoy shoegaze albums is a losing battle at this point unfortunately.

This has no right to go as hard as it does what the hell

This album is a really good instrumental album with some great ideas at play, fully embracing its Japanese instrumentation without letting itself feel limited. For an 8 track instrumental album there's definitely great stuff on here, but nothing overly standing out to push it any higher for me. Also an 8 track instrumental album having a song that is as much of a low point as Yuzu Doll which feels like an American stereotype of Japanese music down to those YYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH noises really ... read more

I don't think there is someone as unique as Vylet Pony at the moment, its music is an absolutely bonkers combination of so many different influences that are tastefully woven together from Porter Robinson-esque electrosynth to industrial/metal to electro swing to some more rocky sounding trip hop. I've not dived into a full album before now, but Antonymph is a great track and I've seen its music show up in a lot of best of the year lists before. Carousel as an album feels like a complete ... read more

I feel like my biggest issue with this album is that it looks too closely at replicating older sounds without cutting out the parts that no longer work about older styles. I remember hearing someone talk about nostalgia as being that thing that removes the parts if older music, games, movies that didn't work and just remembers the best parts, so when someone goes back and tries to make a 1 to 1 copy of it rather than building off what people remember as just the good, it can sometimes make the ... read more

Full review sometime later in the week after another listen through but right now all I can think is it's the Alt-J record I've been waiting 10 years for mixed with the The Black Keys record I've been waiting 10 years for.

This album just oozes passion, and as an introduction to Lil Yachty, I am definitely interested in seeing the rest of his work outside of this new sound. While Psych Rock may not be his usual lane, this album shows that he not only has a passion for the genre, but also cares enough to work with others to make an album actually representative of the genre as well, something that many people who try to transition genres so intensely often fail at. And what I especially love about this, despite ... read more

I can't help but feel while the actual messages Ziggy Ramo conveys on this album, they fall into a trap that I get from their music over and over again, and that is that the actual music behind it isn't that interesting half the time. Even looking iutside of American hip hop artists like JID, Kendrick, Denzel, we have people here in Australia like Genesis Owusu, Sampa the Great and Kobie Dee who manage to walk that line between stuff that has an important message while making sure the music is ... read more

I went into this really wanting to like it because of all the praise I'd heard of Lincoln's EP prior to this, but I came away with a disappointing mix between PUP instrumentals and San Cisco vocals that didn't manage to capture the highs of either. There's still good on here but it just feels like it could have been better

I appreciate what Sam Smith does being a publically out nonbinary pop singer, but I can't help but feel like they're sanding down the messy edges of being queer on this project. On an album that feels like it should be them embracing their queerness, it sounds like their hiding parts of it to make it more palateable.

The biggest lead single from this album, Unholy, is the biggest example of this I feel. It's trying to be raunchy but relies too much on implication and suggestion to actually ... read more

I write this review without having a translation of the Korean lyrics, only going off of Byul's vocals and the instrumentals, which I personally feel more than carry this record.

This album is primarily comprised of piano ballads whose instrumentation slowly crescendos within the songs and across the album itself, but is beautifully carried by Byul's stellar vocals.

The album starts off with a fully stripped back piano ballad, Moon. It sets the beautiful tone that carries throughout the rest ... read more

I love this album, but I also don't think I can in good conscious give this album an 80 or higher. For the good, there is a great mix between a more introspective and sketetal hip hop on tracks like The Start of Something and Hard to Tell with more funk and disco infused tracks like Try again and Many Hats that feel so good to get lost in. Pretty much all his solo tracks are stellar, my only complaint usually being them sometimes ending off a bit weak.

Where this album really kind of ... read more

Techless compares a third album to Death Cab for Cutie in two weeks .doc

There's something on this album that on first listen I'm just absolutely enamored by. There's just something about the sound of this album, like a distorted, more technical Death Cab for Cutie album, that I'm just enamored by. Crying and the title track both feel like the absolute high points of this album, being sprawling tracks that feel just off-kilter enough to never quite feel like I can simply just relax with the ... read more

I'm not one who listens much to classical music, so I don't quite know how to rate it. What I do know is that this album made me cry at least twice, and there was an eerie quality to the things outside the pianos that were in the recordings such as his breathing and the slow groans of the pedal. It definitely feels like a statement about continuing on despite how difficult it can be. It just feels like there's something more that's left missing to really push this album over the edge for me.

I don't know, it's an okay mixtape, but there's just nothing here that makes me see the hype behind Biig Piig. I've been hearing her name on Indie radio for years now, and while songs like Kerosene do have some build up behind her, she's never had that sound that's really made me want to see what she does next. I don't know if the sheer amount of "indie drum and bass" that's floating around in the indie scene has made me grow tired of the sound, but I feel like there is less and less ... read more

I didn't follow anything leading up to this album, so going in without the knowledge of it being an instrumental album was certainly quite the surprise for me. However, I feel like my entire experience with this record was waiting for the melody to kick in. I don't think any of the instrumental songs here were bad or anything, but I feel like it was difficult to actually latch on to anything. The only song I felt like actually caught my attention was Portland 2, and that's because I thought the ... read more

While this is honestly a pretty solid metal track, I feel like it's stylistically clashing with itself a lot of the time. It really comes into its own during the verses, but the cleans in the chorus feel forced for some reason, like he's trying to imitate a metal vocaloid song rather than an actual metal singer. Would probably compare this to Bring Me The Horizon covering a Vocaloid track.

It's a solid second record having just stumbled across these guys. I'd say every song on here is just pretty solid, save for Synecdoche which stands out as a more ambitious 5 minute track right at the end of the record. I can't comment on the originality of this project in terms of the indie rock scene in the Philippines, but I feel like ONE CLICK STRAIGHT's biggest issue is an overall lack of identity. While I'm pretty sure it's Tagalog they sing in over the course of the record, which is ... read more