Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

wish I wasn’t serious. he advocates for “freedom” in the context of what he claims was a peaceful assembly but won’t acknowledge the freedom Lana has always fought for through her art to express herself the way she chooses. it’s a shame but at his age he’s unlikely to change

Jokes aside, I’ll probably 3.5 (at least) this once i get around to actually listening to it. I haven’t heard much from her since NFR, but I’ve loved all her albums before, and including, NFR. I’m not hard to please with what she brings to the table

certified MoM-core ♡

Really is! Lana brings the 😌

yeah i dig a lot of her stuff too, mainly btd and nfr, she kinda lost me with the one before this it sounds really beautiful and everything but i just can never sit through the whole thing, so i'm curious how i feel about this one. prob wont check it for a little while

also lmao ryus "this isn't pool"

Album Rating: 3.5

light 9 btw

"Not a Lana fan but serious question: why are you doing this with Lana each single time?"
heya, good question. short answer = i'm not. i've put myself down to cover her twice and for quite different reasons.
for Chemtrails, it was indeed that i passionately disliked NFR (for reasons that largely align with the excellent, comparatively phlegmatic, flagged review) and considered the good faith and hyperbole most critics had put in her work misplaced. that album smacked of privilege and tedium and i had absolutely no issue in taking a stance of extreme scepticism for its successor. this might have turned out ugly, but i believe that record's various aspects of wash-up will vindicate me here
for this, i didn't feel in advance that i had an axe to grind. i really enjoyed a large part of Blue Bannisters and actually passed on writing on that one post-release (no-one on staff claimed it in advance afaicr) because it had already received a positive review and i didn't feel like i could earnestly praise it as much as i wished. "A&W" was as good as it gets for Lana and i was crossing my fingers that i'd end up able to write something earnestly positive for her, as i (still, in 2023!) almost regretted not doing for Blue Bannisters. obviously, it did not turn out that way and i don't feel passionately at all about this record either way - there's no way in hell i'd have put my name down for this if i'd known in advance it would bore me so much, but a dib is a dib and here we are. won't make any firm statements re. future coverage, but writing another negative LDR review would feel like a chore at this point
"this is her most complex and experimental album with inherent artistsic value, it comes off as very arbitrary to rate said album that low and not recognize that value at all"
i don't disagree that this is her most complex or experimental album, but i don't think it quite follows that those qualities hold inherent artistic value for any artist? if anything, it suggests how arbitrary they are to her work. you're right that i might have flagged them up a little more openly, but i think the times they feel specifically meaningful with LDR are when they're risky or audacious, which i tried to zero in on re. "A&W"

Album Rating: 2.5

johnny haters in shambles

Album Rating: 3.5

Respect Johnny, respect.

U still wrong tho

"reviews are a problematic outlet for him because he writes in service of himself and not the music he reviews"
this fundamentally misunderstands what criticism and reviews, uh, are. if we're gonna split ends into half-truths and reductions, i would say it's more accurate to describe a ton of reviewers on this site, including Sowing (and occasionally me), as writing in service to their own personal experience - when you read them, are you really reading about music, or about their love of music and often cogent superimposition of it over specific parts of their lives? this isn't any more or less problematic to me than writing in service to your own observations or opinions -- or rather, any approach is equally problematic in principle because writing purely about and/or in service to music is a myth and it's the critic's responsibility to set out how whatever filters their experience/thoughts/feels have imposed on it are relevant to the source material.
any critic with vague self-awareness should therefore be writing 'in service' to both themselves and the music at any given point; any critic worth reading will vary considerably from review to review re. which of the two they put more good faith in. the majority of my reviews are positive pieces about records i believe are worth hearing and i kinda resent the correlation you draw between the minority of artists i hold in content and my attitude to criticism as a whole. i mostly agree with the op that feeling passionate (in any sense!) would ideally be a given here, but spinning that into the idea that reviews should purely come from a place of love and support and good faith is dangerous and innocuous and one of the reasons that criticism exists to begin with and quite conveniently, a literal Hitler take
"I also do know that staff writers claim dibs on reviewing new albums so that no other staff member covers them."
is really this about LDR or something you think routinely happens (and in practice very much does not) on staff dibs, or is this you struggling to cope about something very specific and unrelated hmm
"it is also worth noting that there are several pieces of evidence linking him to the january 6th insurrection at the capitol building in Washington for which he has not once provided an alibi"
this was almost funny the first time you blurted it (well over a year ago iirc), and now i'm just wondering if i really wanna be forced to start deleting comments i'd otherwise be tempted to engage with for idiotic slander

Album Rating: 2.0 | Sound Off

johnny turner overdrive mode

*turns every fan within a 10m radius on and leaps into shower, screaming:* bless the BOFF!

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

i don’t think they’re turned on but interesting strategy

completely bungled that bonus track cover of “aqua gorilla” imo

Paris,Texas is gorgeous

Album Rating: 3.5

Off topic but your username^ just brought me such joy lmao

Edit: Johnny :’]

Thanks, It was awkard cause i think theirs a user named Jester on this site so he was like What the fuck lol

Album Rating: 3.5

Hey man, it’s your money, it’s your game. Dae it

Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off

Johnny I think you should stop writing negative reviews and start writing Sput fan fiction