I havent been listening to much new music for the past three months, I've been focusing on exams and watching a ton of movies, but I've decided to get back on that GRIND, so here are some reviews of albums that I've either loved or hated for the past three months.
Lil Xan - TOTAL XANARCHY
Before I start proper I need to purge the worst musical atrocity released since the newest Fall Out Boy album from my system. TOTAL XANARCHY is one of the most innane, annoying and overly repetitive trap albums yet released, both
in the shrill, below-average production of flat 808s and MIDI Hi-hats and in Lil Xan's bored croak of a voice. 'Tick Tock' is my pick as the worst track here, but it is only a few degrees of seperation from what I hesistantly call the 'best' song here, 'Saved By the Bell', with the former consisting of the lyric "Tick... Tock..." repeated dozens of times with bland, dreary production. This is surely one of the worst albums of the year, and even if you disagree, we can at least agree that the album artwork is likely the worst of the year.
2.1/10
Princess Nokia - A Girl Cried Red
Following in the steps of the recently deceased XXXTENTACION, Princess Nokia has gone full on early 2000s emo and I find it unlistenable. to clarify, I think the production on this EP is alright, and there are even some OK songs on here, like 'For the Night'. Unfortunately, Nokia adopts a nasal, shrill singing style that is ear-piercing and droning, as ell as sounding like a cynical parody of emo vocals. Hopefully this project is just a one-off detour, and I certainly don't begrudge this as much as I did XXX's attempts at emo, but at the same time this is decisively unenjoyable. 3.5/10
Father John Misty - God's favourite Customer
'Pure Comedy' was one of my favourite albums of last year, so I was excited to hear what FJM would come out with on 'God's favourite Customer'. While purposely less ambitious and experimental than it's predecessor - it's described as a 'pallete cleanser' in it's online description - this album benefits from being more melodic and less existential tha 'Pure Comedy', making it a more comfortable but less vital listen. 'Date Night' and 'Disappointing Diamonds' are more upbeat and catchy than anything on 'Pure Comedy', and 'Please Don't Die' is more heartfelt. The down side is some of the ballads on this don't stand up as well as the ones on 'Pure Comedy', such as the title track which has little to distinguish it from the more melodic or sensitive ballads that surround it. Even then, this is a very good album that will surely be loved by the vocal sector of FJM fans who hated 'Pure Comedy'. 8.0/10
Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer
This is a damn good pop album that is sure to end up on my end-of-year album list, albeit one which is held back by a few mediocre cuts. the bangers on here are soem of the best songs of the year, and there are a lot of them, especially on the first half of the album - 'Take a byte', 'Screwed', 'I Like That', 'Pink', 'Americans', 'Django Jane', 'Crazy Classic Life' and my personal favourite for now, 'Make Me Feel' - songs which take the best parts of pop music from the 80s and early 2000s and update them with modern-day production quirks and occassionally cringe-worthy but largely interesting topical lyrics based largely around sex and identity. The lull in the tracklist comes courtesy of the 10 minutes of the slow, washed out 'Don't Judge Me' and 'So Afraid', which are both perfectly fine but kill the joyful momentum of the previous poppier tracks. Either way, this is my favourite pop album of the year so far apart from MGMT's 'Little Dark Age'. 8.6/10
Parquet Courts - Wide Awake
Listening to punk albums in 2018 can be a painful expericence, with constant, uncreative references to Trump and ideas that are presented as revolutionary when they're mainstream, largely held beliefs like woman's rights and anti-racism. Luckily Parquet Courts cover a wider variety of topics and with a sense of humour and playful instrumentation. 'Wide Awake', 'Total Football', 'In and Out of Patience' and 'Violence' are all catchy, funky punk songs that sound like they were created at the height of punk, albeit with lyrical refernce to online videos. There's variety here as well, with the comparitively somber 'Mardi Gras Beads' sweeping through with a dreamy essence far apart from the distorted guitar jabs found on the rest of the album. Overall it's an absolute banger and is sure to be among the best punk albums of the year.
8.5/10
Ghost - Prequelle
I rarely review metal because of my lack of experience with the genre, but 'Prequelle' shares a lot in common with other metal-lite acts like Andrew W.K. where I can enjoy the music without feeling like I'm missing the point of it. It good. 7.3/10
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
At one point in time I called 'AM' one of my favourite albums - alas, I now think it's actually pretty awful in it's own plodding, arrogant, way. Despite my hang-ups, 'AM' seems to have been adopted as the premiere rock album of my generation and as such I was suprisingly excited for a new Arctic Monkeys album if nly so I don't have to hear the intro to 'Do I Wanna Know' in commn rooms for the next six months. Unfortunately for me, 'Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino' is far too wierd to gain the lnglasting impact of 'AM', but in a strange twist of fate I actually think that this could be their best album since 'Humbug'. It's a unique experiment, with lounge-music passages covered with metaphor-riddled poetry, often without a clear chorus and largely abandoning the dreary guitars of their past albums. As such, the best and worst parts of this album don't sound too diffrent from each other,the main differences being that the worst parts have overly ridiculous and self-indulgent lyrics like "I wanted to be one of the strokes", while the best songs - 'Four Out of Five' are more melodic and cohesive. With all that said, I'm interested to see how this holds up in years to come. 6.3/10
Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel
I really enjoyed some of the tracks off of Barnett's debut album 'Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit' but at the same time I thought that on the whole the album was overrated and 'Tell Me How You Really Feel' seems to have been with the level of fair praise that I belived Barnett's previous album should have recieved. This album is certainly a worthy follow-up to it's predecessor, the lows on the previous album being higher on this album, but the highs also being lower. Still, it's a charmingly dopey garage rock album that may not be the most original thing ever but is genreally enjoyable. 6.9/10
Pusha T - Daytona
The first Kanye-produced album of the year, 'Daytona' set a high watermark that foreshadowed what would come next. However, unlike on the next two projects, the shining star here was not Kanye but his progidy Pusha-T, who has become the kind of rapper beloved to hip-hop heads with his clear, punchy delivery of lyrics filled with wordplay and double entendres. All the tracks here are quality, with 'If You Know You Know' being my personal favourite. When it was released it was my favourite hip-hop release of the year - although that would quickly fall to the mentor just a week later. 7.7/10
Kanye West - ye
In 2016 Kanye West innovated the concept of what an album could actually be with 'The Life of Pablo', which he constantly updated throughout the year, remixing songs, adding tracks and re-shuffling the album order. Now with his quadruple release of albums he's produced ('Daytona', 'Ye', 'Kids See Ghosts' and that new Nas album I haven't listened to yet) he's once again getting the music world to consider the nature of the album. There has been debate over whether these 20-minute projects can be considered albums or merely EPs, with my opinion being that if the artist wants the audience to view the work as a cohesive album, as opposed to an EP of more disparate songs, then length doesn't particularly matter. This cohesion is certainly the case with 'ye', where all of the songs stay focused around similar themes of Kanye's struggles with fame and the bi-polar referenced on the cover. The two best songs on the album, 'Yikes' and 'Ghost Town' even both share spooky titles, the latter ending with one of the catchiest hooks of the year. West's rapping is up to the standard we've come to expect from his legendary discography, and despite what pitchfork may say I believe this stands up as another great album from Yeezus himself. 8.1/10
ALBUM OF THE MONTH(S) - Kids See Ghosts - Kids See Ghosts
Oof they don't make 'em like this anymore. 'Kids See Ghosts' is the kind of ground-breaking, borderless experimental album that feels like it's juggling about 10 genres at once yet manages to blend them into spooky, visceral and ultimately transcendental music. From the terrififying backing vocals of opener 'Feel the Love' to the power of 'Reborn' and the beautiful finale 'Cudi montage', this is a project sure to go down in musical history. It's so purely
good and unique that I can see it having a long life online and if any album deserves to it's this one.
9.5/10
