Album Rating: 3.5

my top 3 are the same as Doof's



what kind of biazzaro-world is this?

Album Rating: 4.0

Beautiful, fragile, at times a bit too autopilot, but overall a serene experience worth revisiting.

Album Rating: 4.5

Tie me to the final wooden stake

Burn my body, celebrate the afterglow...

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

Those lyrics are singalong classic Boney, that song is still my favourite here

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Opener is amazing

One of the best songs is Genuflecting Ghost, on repeated listens

Album Rating: 4.5

Genuflecting Ghost is one of my favorites as well. That & My Red Little Fox are the two contenders for best song with Shit Talk.

Album Rating: 3.5

nice to see a fair amount of love for My Red Little Fox



I think this will be getting a generous 'excellent' from Demon, one of only 3 released this year (been slacking on new releases though, admittedly)

Album Rating: 4.0

What are the other two?

Album Rating: 3.5

Kostnatění and Horrendous, it'll be nice to add a non-metal release to that group



many 3.5s are on the 'lighter side', maybe a few potential bumps in there (Andrea, Weval, Stimming, Craven Faults, Fever Ray, Eluvium, Blonde Redhead, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kinoteki etc.)



although Chepang, Jeromes Dream, Oxbow, Ostraca, Canyon Observer and Sprain are all great too



Lots of good shit, very little that's blown me away I guess - been pretty stingy with ratings lately

Album Rating: 4.5 | Sound Off

The Horrendous was good, only revisited it once so need to change that...it's nearly end of year revisit season anyway

Album Rating: 4.0

My favorites are My Red Little Fox and Shit Talk, with the title track trailing ever so slightly behind those

He's a wonderful artist but I just can't handle this sad bastard music.

Album Rating: 4.5

“Sad bastard” is pretty reductive. I mean I love sad bastard music but I feel like this is so artfully arranged and constructed, and also has a stream of life-affirming optimism running through it despite the sadness.

Album Rating: 3.5

I mean the dude is called ‘Christbait’ - what did you expect? Yes my username is terrible but I can’t change it



Reductive critique, guess I’m a sad bastard also

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Sad music best music

this is too much of a sappy siesta experience to be properly sad

That's why I credited him as a wonderful artist before stating my opinion...
Also, Sufjan's optimism at times rings the same as anything on a Bright Eyes album. Except I genuinely like Sufjan.

No idea what my username has to do with my post lol.

"Sufjan's optimism at times rings the same as anything on a Bright Eyes album"
can you unpack this a little? reads as a pretty scathing backhand from where i'm sitting, but unsure how it was intended

I can try but I'm not a music reviewer but I'm also not trying to be a shitposter here.

What I mean, is that Sufjan's sense of optimism is typically communicated through the arrangements of his music. It's like the through line to a lot of his songs. The lyrical content is where I get stuck because so much of it has to do with self-loathing, isolation, feelings of being undesirable or, even worse, inadequate in every aspect of life. So although his arrangements typically reach a turning point where it shifts into a brighter direction (vocal harmonies, instrumental harmonies, etc.) it doesn't necessarily elevate the lyrical content from being much more than "sad bastard."

Bright Eyes does something similar although I'd point more to his later albums (Digital Ash, Cassadaga, etc.) as being more "optimistic" in sound while still being generally sad bastard in his lyrics. I don't know what the consensus is on Oberst and BE, but I had to listen to so much of his stuff because of friends in college (it was either that or Michigan/Illinoise) that I came to really dislike his stuff because I had sad bastard friends who wouldn't stop playing their sad bastard music.

such a lovely review foggy, that last para in particular hit the heart

aoty maybe - and my fav sufjan since c&l (and probably my second favourite sufjan altogether tbqh)