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User
Reviews 17
Approval 96%
Soundoffs 16
News Articles 2
Band Edits + Tags 5
Album Edits 3
Album Ratings 1
Last Active 12-30-21 6:41 pm
Joined 11-22-05
Review Comments 2,167
| Listening to the entire 2024 Staff List - Part 2
Now with formatting | | 20 |  | Brittany Howard
What Now
MiloRuggles’ blurb for this is so spot on that I can’t really think of anything to say here except to reiterate it: this album is just one long, blissed out bop with absolutely zero filler to speak of, because Howard only cares about writing the parts of songs that will stick with you after they end. This is an artist who exudes confidence and competence in their songwriting. And that’s not to say that Howard forgets to include the fun party mood either. Just an all around great pop album.
First impression score: A-
Desire to re-listen: high | | 19 |  | Lupe Fiasco
Samurai
There’s a lot of hip hop on this list, and while I actually enjoyed all of it to some degree, this is the album that went down the smoothest for me, and that I’m most inclined to put on again when the mood strikes me. That doesn’t mean I think it’s the best; it’s probably middle of the pack in that regard. But the fun atmosphere and pop trappings are a stimulant to my smooth brain who notices lyrics dead last in the hierarchy of musical elements, and it’s easy to bob along with the vibes here.
First impression score: B+
Desire to re-listen: moderate/high | | 18 |  | Job For A Cowboy
Moon Healer
I did not enjoy this. To me, this will always be another snotty little trend-chasing -core band that your greasy-haired neighbor insists is peak art. Maybe if they weren’t carrying all that cultural baggage for me I’d be able to be more objective, but I’m not so sure: this is a corny-ass caricature of “technical” music, and I kind of hate it.
First impression score: C+
Desire to re-listen: low | | 17 |  | Vampire Weekend
Only God Was Above Us
This album joins the auspicious ranks of last year’s Blue October album, which was the first time in 6-7 years of doing this project that I’ve actually turned an album off halfway through. Aggressively irritating, profoundly un-imaginative, and inarguably cringe, this is the bottom of the barrel of crunchy culture made manifest. Just awful.
First impression score: F
Desire to re-listen: kill me | | 16 |  | Leprous
Melodies Of Atonement
My brain is telling me I should like this, but I just kind of don’t. It insists upon itself. Somewhere along the line when I donated my full sets of Porcupine Tree and Katatonia pajamas, I lost my taste for music that obviously considers itself soaringly epic. Everything here is completely competent, and there’s a decent chance that on a different day, it would hit much different. But for now, I feel basically indifferent.
First impression score: B-
Desire to re-listen: low, moderate if I’m ever feeling moody in a specifically Scandinavian way | | 15 |  | Billie Eilish
Hit Me Hard and Soft
Surprisingly great. Maybe the best thing I could say about this is that at some point I will voluntarily re-listen to a Billie Eilish album, which is a surprise even to myself. Eilish seems to have found her footing here between her brand of zoomer goth pop dirges and sugary dance numbers, and it just works exceptionally well. I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes next with this sound.
First impression score: B+
Desire to re-listen: high | | 14 |  | Ceres
Magic Mountain (1996—2022)
It’s complicated. This album exists in a space where I can choose to put on my “music critic” hat and point out how un-original this all is. But take it off and I can easily let myself get swept up in these virtually identical pop hooks, immerse myself in the immaculate pacing present here, and really enjoy this. It’s a little too long for its own good (see Diamond Jubilee) and saves all of its best moments for the final 15 or so minutes, but those highs are practically celestial if you allow yourself to go to that sad millennial headspace.
First impression score: A-
Desire to re-listen: moderate because of the length, but probably high overall | | 13 |  | The Story So Far
I Want to Disappear
The experience of this album was negatively impacted by the 90 minutes of Magic Mountain right before it, because it wants to evoke the same feelings. I’m pretty sure this is just competent pop punk done better by others. The staff list usually serves up this sort of thing once or twice a year, and while I always enjoy it, none of it ever sticks with me with a few notable exceptions. This won’t be one of them, I think.
First impression score: B
Desire to re-listen: low | | 12 |  | Adrianne Lenker
Bright Future
I vaguely remember enjoying “songs”. That makes me feel a little schizophrenic, because this is just awful. Lenker has a unique talent on this album to concoct just the right amalgamation of repetitive melody, lazy vocal delivery, and aggressively dull instrumentation to be a completely tepid level of grating. It was a real effort to make it to the end of this one.
First impression score: D-
Desire to re-listen: low | | 11 |  | Uboa
Impossible Light
The Origin of My Depression was cool, but to me it always felt like more of an academic exercise than a truly enjoyable experience. This album solves some (not all) of that issue while leaving those disorientingly noisy elements in place, and it’s pretty great. It goes without saying that the closer is one of the standout tracks of the year, but there’s plenty more to love on this harrowing journey to make me want to take it again.
First impression score: A-
Desire to re-listen: moderate/high | | 10 |  | Frail Body
Artificial Bouquet
This is really my wheelhouse here: big, emotive, song-structure driven labyrinths with some cool guitar counterpoint and that dry, classic skramz production quality that brings old favorites like Kidcrash and Off Minor to mind, infused with an extra helping of fuzz. The big question here is whether it will stand the test of time but otherwise it’s just really great to hear this kind of music being created again.
First impression score: A
Desire to re-listen: high | | 9 |  | Alcest
Les Chants de L'Aurore
I am a sucker for what Alcest does, so this album always had a leg up over similar entries, and it did not disappoint in that regard. Niege re-affirms that weeb Niege is best Niege, and although I don’t think this levels with “…Lune” or Kodama, it feels like it deserves to rest alongside those classics. If you have any propensity for Alcest’s whole immaculate blackgaze sound, this is essential.
First impression score: A
Desire to re-listen: high | | 8 |  | Kendrick Lamar
GNX
This is, embarrassingly, my first Kendrick album, and the meta elements dripping from every orifice of this thing didn’t work out in its favor for me. However, if I try to imagine myself coming into GNX blind with no idea of the context behind the man or his cultural presence, this would probably strike me as a technical and creative standout, and it would be strange if something this slick and exciting weren’t an institution on some level. Very cool even with all the eye rolls it induced.
First impression score: B
Desire to re-listen: moderate | | 7 |  | Mach-Hommy
#RichAxxHaitian
Hands down the best hip hop of the year, from my exhaustive sample size of “the hip hop albums on this list”. I feel like I’d hand this album to myself 6 or 7 years ago to help my past self “understand” what the genre does best. The weave of political themes with irreverent observations about daily life made for a lyrical experience that I found easy to latch on to, and the production is entertaining without resorting to outright wackiness to hold my attention.
First impression score: A-
Desire to re-listen: moderate/high | | 6 |  | SUMAC
The Healer
This isn’t my first rodeo with Sumac; I was an early promoter of Love in Shadow among irl friends and as an ISIS devotee it was always obligatory to follow along with this insane project. But kind of like Uboa, listening to a lot of Sumac’s music felt like doing homework in its sterile obtuseness. I’m pleased to report that while first impressions of a single play of a Sumac album are practically guaranteed to be meaningless, this album has the life and noisy sense of meandering storytelling I’ve always wanted from Turner and co that it seemed he was consciously trying to shed post-Isis. I’m looking forward to my next round of tinnitus with this thing.
First impression score: A-
Desire to re-listen: high | | 5 |  | Ornatorpet
Fordomdags
I like dungeon synth but this threw me for a little bit of a loop. There’s a certain aesthetic I’m expecting the genre to embody and this diverged from that in a way that I found confusing and disorienting. All that really means is that I need to listen to it again, and kind of like my Gyrofield take, I have a deep enough love for the genre fundamentally that I’m expecting to like it in the end. I probably just wanted another Malfet album and that’s not what I got.
First impression score: B
Desire to re-listen: high | | 4 |  | Poppy
Negative Spaces
I find this album hilarious. It’s so easy to sneer at it and how it does absolutely nothing we haven’t already heard before from the cute/heavy shock-value groups of the past decade. But I googled where I could buy concert tickets halfway through my first listen of this album because the showmanship on display in this braindead music is just so entertaining. Add another simp to your listener numbers Poppy, because I’m all in. Best worst music of the year, and if you don’t like this it’s probably because you hate fun.
First impression score: A
Desire to re-listen: I’ve listened to this 3 times in the last 24 hours | | 3 |  | A Place For Owls
how we dig in the earth
Look, if this band opened for American Football on a college campus in 2001, this would be… I don’t know… decent? This is just so excruciatingly generic it kind of pisses me off a little bit. Like.. how are you going to center a song around the phrase “find your friends and hold them close”, pair it with the same chord progression you’ve been doing for the past 20 minutes, and call it a day? It’s so bland and trite it feels insulting. I try and be the guy who tries to figure out what the music wants to do and meet it on its own terms, whether I like where it’s going or not, and this music wants to tell me to “be sad man” while doing fuck all to make me feel a single thing. You think I haven’t heard a clean guitar do arpeggiation before? Come on.
First impression score: D
Desire to re-listen: I’ve already heard this album dozens of times performed by different bands so I’m good. | | 2 |  | Knocked Loose
You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
This is truly brain dead stuff. Like we needed another reason for the general public to write off metal/hardcore as mere noise, this band comes in does rhythmic exercises on the downtuned bottom string of their respective guitars and calls it a wrap. At least the vocals are especially bad, as opposed to the generally bad quality of the instrumentals, which sets them apart from the crowd!
First impression score: D
Desire to re-listen: low | | 1 |  | Blood Incantation
Absolute Elsewhere
Ignoring the gatekeeper-led backlash, this is a good prog metal specimen. I’m not sure it ever could have been great given how tired that space has become, but Blood Incantation are competent craftsmen and deftly handle the triteness that comes with ripping off Pink Floyd in 2024, turning what could have been a self-important snorefest into an immediate and entertaining experience. This isn’t a watershed album or anything, but it is a goalpost that, in my opinion vaguely indicates the high water mark of what you can achieve with relatively uninspired prog metal.
First impression score: N/A (been listening since release)
Desire to re-listen: moderate | |
JohnnyoftheWell
02.01.25 | Vampire Weekend and Place for Owls are both well-deserved headshots, this was definitely the rockiest stretch of the list
Good to see Sumac and Uboa getting their due, 100% takes on Lupe, Billie, Knocked Loose, Mach-Hommy and probably Poppy too
There were definitely moments on Adrianne Lenker that warrant your reaction, but it's a surprise to see it as a unilateral take ngl | GiaNXGX
02.01.25 | certain user above me can’t decide which pokémon i am, so im putting it out there:
Unown | GiaNXGX
02.01.25 | y is it so difficult, stop flexing jp gf, i almost met aika honmono, maudlin of t well | swallowtales
02.03.25 | I was privileged to listen to that Job for a Cowboy record without having ever engaged with their music before - I think it's great but can imagine how you could struggle to get the taste of their other stuff out of your mouth. | NOTINTHEFACE
02.03.25 | @Johnny shoot me a few moments and I will give them another gander, but I'm not too optimistic. That kind of music just generally doesn't vibe with me in the first place.
@swallowtales: I'm not sure that would have made much of a difference tbh. But there's certainly no shortage of techy metal/core in the world so it's sort of a relief to succumb to my expectations in this case. | swallowtales
02.04.25 | Fair enough - I can somewhat see what you mean, particularly in the vocals I get that snotty feeling you mean. I've been going through a mad techy death metal phase so it probably hit me at a sweet spot. | JohnnyoftheWell
02.04.25 | I'd hit Sadness as Gift again without having to traipse through the opener, but if that's not hitting, odds are nothing will. Album has a brutal second half fallout anyhow, and agreed that Songs is far preferable | DaveyMonsoon
02.07.25 | Based and correct JFAC take. |
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