> feat. Phoebe Bridgers

feat. Phoebe Bridgers

feat. Phoebe Bridgers

cannot escape feat. Phoebe Bridgers

What is the secret to enjoying this? It sure as hell isn't getting older because I check that box already.

That title sounds so rankled lol

yeah the Phoebe Bridgers mania needs to end

This is shaping up to be a crap album. Eucalyptus in particular was a horrible song

the exhaustion in this article title made me chuckle

For some reason I can’t get into this band anymore, not sure if it’s the odd way he sings sounds and the overall tone just lost its luster. It feels bland and tired at this point. So many other artists in this category of music have been producing better results for some time now.

hahaha you guys are something

this neek comment brought to you in part by feat. Phoebe Bridgers

this is some phoned-in comatose shit

Tropic Morning News was pretty good but i'm scared to check the other singles now

oh hey Eucalyptus bar those i dont wannits is an acceptable TWFM b-side maybe there is hope (edit: maybe not, already sick of that chorus by the end of the song)

production is holding these songs back, they’re all decent though

im just pissed im missing soccer mommy play with them in chicago

who goes to fucking burnaby but not toronto

"this is some phoned-in comatose shit"

band were always that, they were just riding out this strange stretch of western optimism, but as things look bleaker and bleaker, it becomes more and more clear that they make music squarely for middle class kids who are traumatized by lack of trauma.

"For some reason I can’t get into this band anymore, not sure if it’s the odd way he sings sounds and the overall tone just lost its luster."

agreed

who unironically types shit like what borracho just typed

Great song, embarrassing music video. New album is shaping up to be 3.5-4 territory, more or less IAEtF quality.

"band were always that, they were just riding out this strange stretch of western optimism"

disagreed

the pretentious band returns!

I kinda liked sleep well beast though, not much else

if there's one thing these new songs aren't it's pretentious. this is clearly just them doing what comes natural to them

Colton - you’re fine, trust me. Forgive yourself, forgive your parents, forgive the national

Why settle for 1 phoeb when ya can have 2?!

"it becomes more and more clear that they make music squarely for middle class kids who are traumatized by lack of trauma."

don't think i can disagree with this tbh, but there's a distinct shift between the time when their songs were pushing back (with however much defeatism) against the fabric of ye olde middle class institutions (white collar paychecks, domestic tedium, the early commitment pangs of a suspiciously auspicious marriage, bank balances etc.) and the diminishing returns they've had over the last 5ish years of revisiting the echoes of those factors from a position of ever-calcifying middle aged ennui. there was something vitalised and urgent about those initial engagements that, if usually muted in delivery, gave their understated approach a real sense of substance and damn boi, i just don't hear it now

Fair enough, though how much you can push back from a customized studio in upstate New York is probably dodgy

"X makes music for Y who Z" is always a meaningless, and ironically pretentious comment formula that belongs on RYM only

it is probably the lowest effort critique possible outside of "this is good" or "this is bad"

It’s funny cause you said always

bc considerations of target audience were created by the internet and have absolutely nothing to do with decades of standard practice for any successful industry including the music biz and the majority of its various commercial acts

the internet popularized if not spawned the version of it that abstracts an artist's sound to an arbitrary hyper-specific concept of who the music is made for, almost always disregarding the artist's actual intent and sound because those hyper-specific reductions present the illusion of insightfulness without having to actually put in any effort, and wrapped it up in the specific format for it that you see so commonly now

that doesn't sound like self-forgiveness to me. you should check Tindersticks for Clinton-era National comfort.

“there was something vitalised and urgent about those initial engagements that, if usually muted in delivery, gave their understated approach a real sense of substance and damn boi, i just don't hear it now”

My feelings exactly. They gone soft on us

lol colton hope that high horse has good enough juice in its legs to speed you back through the majority of human history, where you can helpfully point out to generations of caricature artists and satirists that their zero-effort craft is a disrespectful footnote in the wake of specific internet formulation

"almost always disregarding the artist's actual intent because those hyper-specific reductions present the illusion of insightfulness without having to actually put in any effort"

and how is this any different to literally any soundoff you have ever published on this site

Hang on, i'm on a youtube cooking channel so i can learn what reduction actually is before answering

New album shaping up to be a nice sleep aid.

i am my own horse and my legs are huge don't worry. but there are also very different contexts in which "caricature artists and satirists" and RYM commenters present their ideas, if we go by their intention anyway (because the lines are blurred otherwise let's be real)

"and how is this any different to literally any soundoff you have ever published on this site"

quote one

Sputnik Chemistry Exam 2023

Q: what's the internet's answer to the redox reaction?

A: colton hyperventilating while reducing albums to irrelevant production minutiae

that doesn't look like one of my soundoffs

and production is literally always relevant to an album

You souped up the always with a literally. I like it

>this site would be on this so hard if they weren't worried about being made fun of for
liking a Logic album
>abandons prog rock traits, and Sowing and Rowan don't like it much? I'm in
>rIf you love jazz rap album with neo soul or you love conscious hip hop vibe this for you, and if you not love the album is ok this album to hard to listen your choes on your hand my friend. I recommended to listen ya i recommended but this very politic and very jazz. My score is S+ is my favorite album of the year no this my album of the year. It's jazz, politic and have a good lyrics this album never get you bord.
>"I'll be releasing my entire brand new album of songs I've poured all of my whims, dreams, rfears and musings into." rGet ready guys, we're getting ALL her whims on this one. The previous albums only had some rof her whims poured into them.
>Lift Your Skinny Fists isn't good anymore because of this title
>ryus said this is pretty much guaranteed to be awful so it?s a 1 until she proves him wrong
>-0.5 for tec's soundoff redit: one more and it?s a 1.5
>sputnik user snake described this on discord as: "it's like if chelsea wolfe, emma ruth rundle, and julien baker were sisters from a broken home and chino moreno was their AA sponsor" so I had to drop my rating to a 2.5
>pretty good album. melodies are a tad underwhelming at points and it doesn't have any of the characteristics that make FJM unique, but it's still undeniably well made and arranged, and vastly better than any metalcore or metal album.
> pretty much a carbon copy of Kintsugi, extremely grating vocals, offkey and abrasive at all times just for the sake of it,
>about as good as you can expect a concept album about Ruston Kelly to be
>slex is too soft to appreciate real metalcore when he hears it, sad
>this is the closest thing we?re gonna get to another Vespertine

Borracho if you could add a thick pod of relativist vanilla to that reduction i would be much obliged

ok you just copy and pasted several of my soundoffs. now churn out some words to describe how I in any way am being hypocritical based on what I said about the RYM critique formula, word boy

I have a nephew like you. His parents are trying to get him medicated, but I just think he should read a wrinkle in time

if you srsly need meet to colour code which of these are zero-effort, which are hyperspecific reductions, which are irrelevant ad homs, which are faux-insightful, and which take the artist's intentions in bad faith, then your reading comp is even more torched than we had (ample) cause to believe

funny thing is that i have zero issue with any of these things individually (other than feigning insight), i just think it's hilarious that you're conceited enough to rail against them in another guise

which of these soundoffs reduces the album to an arbitrary concept of its target audience? also if you can't distinguish a throwaway meme soundoff from a genuine criticism idk what to tell ya maybe you need a second degree

"the internet popularized if not spawned the version of it that abstracts an artist's sound to an arbitrary hyper-specific concept of who the music is made for, almost always disregarding the artist's actual intent and sound because those hyper-specific reductions present the illusion of insightfulness without having to actually put in any effort, and wrapped it up in the specific format for it that you see so commonly now"

ngl sounds a lot like the kinda thing someone who can't distinguish throwaway putdowns from """genuine criticism""" would say

feigning insight is a pretty good description of this site, to be fair.

you misunderstand how seriously internet critiquers of art take themselves. but my whole point is that if you're gonna shit on an album or artist you should at least do so in the basis of their sound and not some bullshit about a super specific group of people you think it's intended for. even if they're all throwaway putdowns those are the worst kinds of throwaway putdowns and none of the soundoffs you quoted even attempt to do that

your soundoffs have exactly the same qualities of banality and laziness as those posts ("almost always disregarding the artist's actual intent because those hyper-specific reductions present the illusion of insightfulness without having to actually put in any effort") and i am greatly enjoying the haste with which you're whipping out the strawman with one hand while waving the "only memeing" card with the other

I have a work meeting now, but before I go, Colton I want to tell you that you’re “literally always” welcome in any thread I’m in. This has been a blast, keep that fluoxetine grinding

those soundoffs are so devoid of any actual attempt at substantive description that there's no way to interpret them as trying to be insightful without being obtuse or intentionally disingenuous. it's different than the leagues of RYM-ers who will genuinely frame their entire dislike of an artist through this notion of who the music is "for" which has become a genuinely overused format for criticism that they mean to be taken seriously

and you should not be offended by this argument because it wasn't even directed at you, but if it was, it would be because I think you're capable of more

"without being obtuse or intentionally disingenuous"

oh honey don't do this do yourself

I hope that's not really a diss on fluoxetine because that would be pretty fucked up.

Someone summarise…

is this band still continuing down the decidedly mediocre track of the previous album? All I see is Colton and I’m not reading it all

lol I just googled what that is. referring to it by its actual chemical name and not prozac is a huge self report

“ who goes to fucking burnaby but not toronto”

Burnaby is attached to Vancouver. you can take the same train there in like 10 mins from like the furthest point in van. This is essentially a Vancouver show but they booked a venue that happens to be over the line that divides van and Burnaby

"is this band still continuing down the decidedly mediocre track of the previous album"

yes it is not good

who goes to fucking vancouver but not toronto

True

but also "they booked a venue that happens to be over the line that divides van and Burnaby" aren't they different cities though? like you're literally just describing the concept of a border lol

>you can take the same train there in like 10 mins from like the furthest point in van.

Thought this was a reprise of 'Slow Show' lyrics for a second.

“X makes music for Y who Z" is always a meaningless, and ironically pretentious comment formula that belongs on RYM only”

It’s just a shitpost template, I’ve never once seen it done as a serious critique

“ but also "they booked a venue that happens to be over the line that divides van and Burnaby" aren't they different cities though? like you're literally just describing the concept of a border lol”

What I meant by that is that it’s meant for Vancouverites to attend, where the difference between cities that actually have any amount of space between them and no interconnected transit likely wouldn’t

"this is some phoned-in comatose shit"

band's been this way after high violet

sometimes it's meant as nothing more than a shitpost but I think it's reflective of an increasingly reductive manner of criticism that stems from overconsumption and saturation

or maybe just a general cynicism toward certain artists that people refuse to articulate in a way that actually makes sense in the context of what they're criticizing

"For some reason I can’t get into this band anymore, not sure if it’s the odd way he sings sounds and the overall tone just lost its luster."

agreed [2], although I kinda enjoyed this one

Could be, but I don’t always want to look at music critically. It gets tiring and makes it less fun to constantly be a critic. Sometimes it really is as simple as “this good, big fun”

What’s fun is deciding something sounds good (or doesn’t) and then making up bullshit critically-focused reasons why you have ascended taste that others may not. Never do it the other way around.

I think it’s a little naive to think that any artist doesn’t have a target audience, and it’s a whitewash, a quite prominent one on this site, to think we’re all in the same boat. When a band has bland arrangements as The national are prone to, and a lyricist who posits himself as someone who can string two words together, the lyrics come to the forefront. So yes, saying group Y listens to this is saying this isn’t really made for someone of my gender, race or general id. This isn’t yo say some music doesn’t have visceral, or fun, or nostalgic, or fantasy-like inducing qualities, but if it’s doesn’t speak to you as a socioeconomic or racial being, then yes, this is sad sack college prof middle class indie dogshit

see johnny this is the guy you thought was just memeing and making a throwaway joke observation. you gotta learn to read people better. and this is exactly what happens when they move away from the crutch of faux-insightful comment templates and try to actually unpack their thoughts, it ain’t pretty

"Fair enough, though how much you can push back from a customized studio in upstate New York is probably dodgy"

Middle class people are also allowed to make art about their lives. The National used to do it well, they don't anymore, doesn't make their old stuff bad.

anyone else feel like The National doesn’t speak to you as a racial being? it’s profoundly sad

Ugh. Hahahaha

"this is exactly what happens when they move away from the crutch of faux-insightful comment templates and try to actually unpack their thoughts, it ain’t pretty"

parse harder bitch

Yeah, I’m from a ‘working class background’ (do we still say this?) but The National’s social status doesn’t affect my enjoyment of their music, even if a few of their lines do go straight over me noggin because I lack the education to understand them (probably… I mean, unless everyone makes up their own meanings for their obscure metaphors? 🤔)

I also flat-out detest certain high-profile ‘working class’ bands simply because I think their music is utter rubbish. No amount of ‘oh, I understand their strife’ will change that.

Yeah this is the shocking opinion of good music is good music.

I do enjoy the Gilmore Girls though

Song is alright. New album is shaping up to be better than I Am Easy To Find but nowhere near their old work.

I like this band but they haven’t wowed me in like 10 years

It's... fine
Genuinely curious about the Sufjan featured song

This thread is the new Metallica thread, here ye, hear ye

Soundtrack to my midlife crisis while I teach myself to paint watercolor

I think of this as a certified background tune for Amnesty, or ads that usually promote things like diapers, or force you to have observations on your urethral stricture. Shit even goes with a lil sarcasm. https://youtu.be/OUbNF3IcNfA

Looks like sput doesn't like The National anymore.

I was ahead of the curve tbf

I've been taking shots since high violet y'all are late

Though I could never fully relate to the certain "Portrait of Middle Class Ennui" themes in The National's music, for a long time they had a gorgeous sound. And I don't see why someone can't enjoy/escape through/visit themes in music the same as in film. The National always felt like I was a fly on the wall in a life that wasn't my own. Like, I'm not gonna say I couldn't relate to anything in A Marriage Story or The Meyerowitz Stories because the characters have money and I don't.

It's not about their themes aging poorly with the times as much as it is them leaning into the least exciting parts of their sound. It would be smart to update their content, sure, but I don't think that part is as necessary as rediscovering energy. Like, I miss albums like Alligator, Boxer, and High Violet. Those were rockers that actually had some energy to them. This is gives like "boring singer songwriter with a full band" vibes. Seems like they're resigning themselves to this course, unfortunately.

I cant relate to A Marriage Story or The Meyerowitz Stories because im not jewish

The International

Lmao as a child of divorce with parent issues, both movies had plenty to say to me. I can't say that Jewishness was my "in" for enjoying the films or had anything to do with it really. Surely all people can find something to relate to about other people even if they're not religiously or ethnically the same, though.

On the flip I actually like A Serious Man

The National are and always have been sleepy but accessible indie rock. Enjoyable, but more for a specific time and mood.

Eh, there are levels. They haven't written a song like Mistaken for Strangers in over a decade. Which that song is damn near heavy compared to this.

did bryan devendorf die or what

this band makes some of the music

Why's everyone hate Phoebe?

Also I am stoked for the Taylor feature. Coney Island is one of my favorite songs.

I like Phoebe. However, i feel like her usually limited vocal approach and samey songwriting style either adds to a song well or doesn’t add much of anything worth noting, and it tends to be the latter for me. It’s also because of this that, with her being everywhere lately, i find more disappointments than enjoyment 🤷

I like her, but i also think she needs some songwriting expansion that’ll likely come naturally anyway. It’s just too much exposure right now

Trouble will find me was their last good album. Also their best album.

TWFM was the template for the end, admittedly it was a bit better than what followed. HV was their last great album

This was fine. Sad that the band who did Alligator through Trouble Will Find Me finally reached their treading water era, but it happens even to the best of them.

I’m waiting for the album of Turtlenecks

It’s inevitable

I haven't enjoyed any of the songs from their new album. This record probably isn't going to be for me. I'll likely pass on it. Hopefully other fans enjoy it.

listened to 17 seconds of this. really good shit

how very 2023 of you

giggle

tbh this band is on my list of respected, mature rock bands which I will never take seriously or spend any time on, just the least crucial type of music possible

only took people until now to say what ive been saying since high violet

hiveminding with watchitexplode over here

Phoebe Bridgers is terrible. Y'all got played.

"Why's everyone hate Phoebe?"

Its not even her music, its her obnoxious persona and personality.

Doom Metal (17%)

shaming doom metal = sizeable self-own

was merely pointing out the the hypocrisy of sporting such a sizeable slice of it and not supporting the creator of its peak

oh let me guess, you've moved the goalposts again and I Know The End isn't doom metal now

shaming doom metal = sizeable self-own [2]

i was gonna rank every metal subgenre and put doom metal at the bottom but then i realized i don't know what any of them are

doom metal is one of the few valid metals what are you doing

The National are doom metal

Slow Show is one of the best doom metal tracks ever made

I've missed you for 29 years, m/m/m/

Doom is definitely one of the very few even remotely redeemable metal subgenres

Like if I HAD to have a metal sub genre in my pie chart that is one of the least embarrassing it could be

ohhhhh so this is the atmospheric metal ive been hearing so much about

>Doom is definitely one of the very few even remotely redeemable metal subgenres

what makes you say that

All in all this song has much more to offer than the Colton-Borracho-Johnny exchange and I guess that's alright

This album is already a train wreck

You should take it
I'm only gonna break it

It sounds kind of clumsy, right? Is it just me?

2023 - a strong chance I’ll rate the new Metallica higher than the new National

Something wonderful about that

HelloJoe the song or the lyric Fog wrote?

In any case the singles so far didn't sound as inspired or lush as their prime material, which is a bit of a downer, save for Eucalyptus which feels like a classic National circa High Violet - Trouble era song

I wasn't sure about the chorus in Eucalyptus

i liked it

then they played it again and i liked it less

then they played it again aaaaaaand x_x

when the function is equipped with eucalyptus :000000000000000

Me neither, but it grew on me after like 3 listens

I liked the delivery, especially when it comes around the second time in the song, think that's as honest and passionate as they've sounded on the past two records

I mean they did repetitive lyrics before too, so if their earlier stuff gets a pass from you for doing the same thing, this should too imo

"It sounds kind of clumsy, right? Is it just me?"

I actually kind of dig it... it seems to me that it genuinely hovers between quite ballsy and annoying. But for me, the former wins out. I like what they were going for.

Didn't click with me the same way but I see where you're coming from. It's an idea that does stand out, even though it didn't resonate with me.

@StormChaser Yeah, that's what I meant. It's not the repetition, either. More so the delivery kind of topples after itself the way I hear it.