Average Rating: 3.80 Rating Variance: 0.65 Objectivity Score: 67% (Fairly Balanced)
Sort by: Rating | Release Date | Rating Date | Name5.0 classicA Winged Victory for the Sullen A Winged Victory for the SullenA Winged Victory for the Sullen is one of the most emotionally impactful pieces of instrumental music I've heard in my entire life. It breaks my heart to hear the beautiful, softly played piano interplay with the strings. It's softness is both soothing and also awe inspiring. This album is healing for me and, in a lot of ways, listening to it is a spiritual experience. I would recommend this to anyone. You'll get something out of it, even if it's just a nice nap.Brian Eno Ambient 1: Music For AirportsAmbient 1 is among my favorite Brian Eno projects. It always manages to bring me to a meditative, calm space when I need it. Every note played feels both immaculately placed and also like it was an accident, and it gives the whole album a dreamy vibe. I always feel like I'm lying in a field, looking up at the clouds, and slowly falling asleep.Cassie CassieWhen I first heard Cassie's debut album, I was incredibly surprised at how forward thinking it is. Cassie's producers were making instrumentals that informed some of my favorite r&b artists of the 10's. I hear so much of Cassie's influence on artists like Tinashe and Jeremih. It is incredible how ahead of its time this album is. I think it might be my favorite r&b album ever made. It's a beautiful, sexy album that is full of soft vocals and lush, dreamy instrumentals.Clint Mansell, Kronos Quartet and Mogwai The FountainI am not sure if I will ever see The Fountain. I am not sure if it could ever hope to live up to it's beautiful, awe-inspiring score. Clint Mansell has crafted a piece that brings you through so many emotional states. It expresses grief and sadness and fear and hope and love. I love the thematic motifs reprised throughout to show progression in the piece. I love the moments of anticipatory quiet before the crashing in of the mountainous storm. I love every bit of this work. I cannot imagine any other score ever coming close to its brilliance.Justin Timberlake FutureSex/LoveSoundsFutureSex/LoveSounds is one of my favorite pop albums of all time. Justin has a great voice and the lyrics are fun and confident, but what really makes his albums masterful are Timbaland's exceptional production. The beats all feel both firmly placed in the mid 00's and also somehow way ahead of their time. This album is a close to perfect pop record in my opinion.Kitty Rose GoldI love everything Kitty does, but Rose Gold might be her opus. This album feels like it was made specifically to soothe and I use it as a form of self care. It puts my brain at ease when I'm hurting and it makes me feel beautiful and feminine when I am dysphoric. The ethereal vocals over the super dancey beats just makes me feel like I'm floating above all my problems for a bit and I can just relax and breathe.Lucy Dacus HistorianHistorian has quickly become one of my favorite albums. I was shocked at how emotionally impactful and musically interesting every song on it is. Lucy beautifully weaves together relatively complex singer/songwriter songs with beautiful melodies and lyrical concepts that are so interesting and, at least for me personally, very relatable. I am so happy to have found this album and will be following Lucy for years to come.4.0 excellentAuthor and Punisher BeastlandBeastland is a heavy industrial album with plenty of drone metal and noise influences. It sounds cold and distant at times, and at other in your face and fucking evil. It sounds like if Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Mason ever dabbled in power electronics. The synths are blown all to hell and the vocals are are distorted and often wretched. I thoroughly enjoyed this album; it plays with some of my favorite kinds of heavy music.Crying Beyond The Fleeting GalesOn Beyond the Fleeting Gales, Crying combines sounds that are typically associated with AOR with modern emo and power pop song structures. The combination makes something that feels fun and upbeat, while still holding some of the melancholy of emo stuff. I really enjoy this album's weird little eccentricities and I can't wait to see what Crying puts out next.Godflesh Post SelfPost Self is a killer of an industrial metal album. Godflesh don't seem to have lost any of their talent in the many years they've been around. I love how heavy and powerful this whole thing sounds. There's a slight dip in the middle where the songs aren't quite as crushing as the opening and closing, but it's minimal. I love how pissed off the album begins and how martial it sounds towards the end. Godflesh never disappoint.Greet Death New HellNew Hell is a monstrously heavy album, in spite of its slow, quiet beauty. It's an album about death and sadness and loneliness, and it conveys it with powerful guitar passages and beautifully sung, almost spiritual vocals. This is like if slowcore pulled more influence from sludge or doom metal than it did shoegaze. I feel absolutely crushed under the weight of its melodies. Greet Death is definitely a new favorite.Kesha RainbowRainbow is an album that is incredibly important to me, even though I only enjoy about half of the songs. I remember crying my eyes out to Bastards when I saw Kesha perform it on the Rainbow tour, and that was the first time I started to question my gender and sexual identity. This album is an apologetically hopeful experience, and sometimes I desperately need that. I have always loved Kesha and this has become her definitive album to me.Lantlos Melting SunLantlos has been a name I have seen a lot when I've dug into blackgaze, but I had never listened to one of their albums until now. Melting Sun is a beautiful, ethereal piece that makes me feel like I'm standing in the rain on a warm day. It has a brightness I always love in records like this, but never loses the hints of black metal heaviness. I really enjoyed this record, and I'm excited to dig into Lantlos's whole catalog.LSD and the Search for God LSD and the Search for GodLSD and the Search for God is such a dreamy ep. It makes me feel stoned even when I'm sober. There's a constant feeling of haziness and beauty throughout everything LSD and the Search for God put out. I love the warmth of the guitar tones and the way they play off of the colder sound of the vocals. I don't tend to love shoegaze, but this ep has always had a place in my heart.Mannequin Pussy RomanticRomantic is one of my favorite discoveries of this year. It's an aggressive, feminist garage punk album that has me singing along to every song. The lyrics are biting, deeply personal looks at loneliness and relationships told from a female perspective. I only wish there was more of it. I have such a fun time with ever second of this album that at the end of its 17 minutes I just want more.Max Richter SleepSleep is a wonderful ambient album that is, unfortunately, 8 hours long. There is no way to listen to this the way it was meant to be listened to and process it, so I listened to it in parts over about a week. This album is good, but From Sleep, the normal length album of alternate cuts from this album, is a better experience. This is a great thing to listen to the way it's meant to be heard, while slowly falling asleep to soundtrack your dreams.Mitski Puberty 2Puberty 2 was my first Mitski album and is still my favorite. It's such a good blend of her later more lo-fi work and the more produced stuff she's putting out now. I love Mitski best at her softest, and there are plenty of soft, sad songs on Puberty 2 for me to get emotional and nostalgic with. It can be a little emotionally intense to sit alone with, but it's worth it.Nails You Will Never Be One of UsYou Will Never Be One of Us is such a blistering, punch-in-the-face grind album. Nails is always on point and, while I feel this is the weakest of their albums, You Will Never Be One of Us continues that trend. I love the hardcore breakdowns and the pissed off, nearly unintelligible screams. The place I feel this album deviates from earlier Nails albums is the soloing. I don't love the death metal style solos on here. Fortunately, there are rare, and the rest of the album is pure grind.Plumtree Mass Teen FaintingMass Teen Fainting sounds exactly like you'd imagine a trendy, hipster indie rock album from the 90's to sound. Plumtree plays really satisfying melodies that occasionally verges into ska territory. The vocals are disaffected with sometimes snarky, sometimes sincere lyrics and give the album a bit of edge to balance out the sweeter guitars. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's just another one of those 90's indie rock albums, but it's a pretty good one.Single Mothers Single MothersSingle Mothers is such a messy ep, both in terms of music and lyrical content. There is so much about doing drugs or getting drunk and having meaningless sex, all shouted through a shitty, blown-out microphone over crunchy, just as blown-out guitars. This ep is one of my favorite eps in hardcore. It makes you feel like shit in the best way. It drips with hedonism and regret.Slayyyter SlayyyterI love Slayyter so much, especially the early singles she released. I always think of her best work when I think of this mixtape, but upon revisit I realized how front-loaded it is. There are quite a few songs on the back half that are just grating and poorly produced. I have thought this is one of my favorite pop records, but I've realized that I only truly love the first half. However, that first half is full of some of the best hedonistic hoe anthems you'll ever hear.Sophie Oil of Every Pearl's Un-InsidesWhen I first listened to Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides when it came out, I found myself disappointed that it didn't have more of the edge from SOPHIE's earlier work. I no longer think I was correct on that. This album is not just as bizarre and dreamlike as her previous work, it is also has much more variety. Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is a fantastic album that tears modern EDM apart and puts its back together in the twisted way only SOPHIE has mastered.State Faults ClairvoyantClairvoyant is such a passionate, bittersweet record. I love the vocals and the constant shifts from fast, heavy breakdowns to slower segments that bring up feelings of longing. It hits the emotional beats a lot of my favorite screamo records do. I feel like I've found a band I will be returning to for some time, and I hope I can go wild at their show one day.The Black Queen Infinite GamesInfinite Games is an album that brings out my sensual side. Its dark, lusty synths paired with the often sultry vocals and deep bass create a really dreamlike feeling. It's such a sexy album, and that's what I always come back to. There is such a perfect mix of synthpop and darkwave that makes it perfect for the dance floor or the bedroom.3.0 goodAriana Grande SweetenerIn retrospect, I think Sweetener is my favorite Ariana Grande album. She's always been an artist who I think makes a few great songs on okay albums, and this is no exception, but even the okay parts of the album are better than those on her other albums. She's got a good, if uninteresting, voice, and I think the writers and producers she worked with on Sweetener helped elevate the album. The standouts (Sweetener, No Tears Left to Cry) are some of the best pop songs of the decade, so that helps lift the rest of the album's mediocrity.Ceremony (USA-CA) Rohnert ParkRohnert Park is very hit or miss for me. When Ceremony writes an anthemic phrase or a driving melody, it's so energetic and fun and gives me all of the good pissed off feelings my favorite hardcore records do. Unfortunately, the songwriting is not always that great, and it sometimes devolves into a cacophonous mess that I just can't connect with on any meaningful level. There are a few classics on here for sure though.Chelsea Wolfe ApokalypsisApokalypsis is an album I don't feel like I understand very well. It's so ethereal and slow that it is hard for me to maintain focus on it throughout its runtime. I think the alienation is partially the point, but it left me feeling disconnected emotionally from anything Chelsea was doing. I didn't dislike it, I just thought I should be getting more out of it than I did.Cursive DomesticaDomestica is a perfect example of a 90s emo breakup album. It has great angsty, depressive vocals and melodic, bittersweet guitars. Unfortunately, Cursive exemplifies a lot of my issues with this era of emo. As mush as I enjoy their sound, the songwriting just gets repetitive after a while. There is very little variety, outside of some very basic electronics added in here and there. That said, this is not a bad album by any means and I picked up some songs I really love from it.Gilla Band The TalkiesI feel like Girl Band gets further and further away from what initially drew me to them with every release. On The Talkies, they've completely abandoned the post-hardcore and dance-punk influences of their earlier work and have only progressed further into experimental noise rock territory. There's nothing wrong with that, except they do it much worse than many of their peers. The Talkies isn't bad, Girl Band just isn't making music for me anymore. I guess I'll just have to keep The Early Years on repeat.Jets to Brazil Orange Rhyming DictionaryI feel like Orange Rhyming Dictionary is so close to being great. It's got so much emotion in the playing and songwriting, but the vocals just feel so restrained and quiet. I like a lot of what Jets to Brazil do here, but I want the vocals to cut loose and match the guitars more often. As is, it is a serviceable 90s indie rock album, if a little bit samey.Microwave Death is a Warm BlanketDeath Is a Warm Blanket is an interesting record to me. Microwave reminds me of the era of post-hardcore I grew up in, with bands like Underoath and Emery, but if they took more from Deftones's sound. The songs range quite a bit from hazy, alt metal feeling passages to louder hardcore screams over shredding guitar. Microwave's lyrical content about existing in the music industry and trying to make it work appeals to me quite a bit, and I like their louder songs quite a bit, but ultimately this album ends up being rather hit or miss for me.Oneohtrix Point Never Love in the Time of LexaproLove in the Time of Lexapro is probably my least favorite of OPN's work that I've heard. It has some of the progressive synth stuff I have come to love from him, but it rarely takes it to as chaotic a place as I would like. That being said, the relaxing, atmospheric tone is still pleasant. I can see a few of these songs being quite lovely to fall asleep to.Sleigh Bells Kid KruschevI had been meaning to listen to Sleigh Bells for quite some time now. Everything I've heard them sounds like a noisier The Naked and Famous to me, who I love, and I thought I'd get a lot out of their stuff. Kid Kruschev was a bit disappointing in that respect. It incorporates some ideas that just don't work at all, and I ended up only liking about half of it. I think there is something here for me though; I just need to dig in more. Also I love Alexis's voice.Sloppy Jane WillowWillow is a very experimental, weird art punk album. I enjoy it in fits and starts. Some of it's weirdness hits a perfect aggressive sweet spot for me, whereas other parts just feel messy and overwritten. That being said, I always appreciate punk rock that isn't afraid to be abrasive in its experimentation, and Sloppy Jane certainly doesn't sacrifice any of their weirdness for a more palatable sound.2.0 poorCulture Abuse Bay DreamBay Dream was a huge disappointment for me after Peach. This album is so overproduced and lacks all of the noisy punch of the first album. Culture Abuse have always had catchy, fun melodies, but I really wish they were still making them feel like garage punk and not this kinda generic sounding alt rock stuff. Still, it sometimes works pretty well, I just long for what could have been.Shilpa Ray Door GirlI really wanted to like Door Girl, but it ended up being overly restrained, corny, and aggressively New York. Every single song has to mention some kind of NY cultural signifier. The songs where Shilpa lets loose and yells are pretty great, but the rest of the album is just bland. I really wish she just let loose and did more punk songs. There's so much stuff made for a shitty bar band and she is clearly more talented than that.
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