|
| |
|
|
|
Erika's second record and first on the legendary 4AD is placed perfectly in the timeline of this season. It's almost summer, and it sounds like a perfected 70 degrees. She makes pop and r&b reticent of decades past, and she certainly wears her influence on her sleeves unabashedly.
We have in this era a simultaneous revitalization and fetishism of y2k sounds and subsequent reappraisal of the music proper of that oft (unfairly) maligned era. It seems to me that nostalgia
toward the "2000s scene" (though that sound certainly bleeds into the 90s) is informed and juxtaposed to the nostalgia of the past millennium, divorced of its own merits. And indeed, for many young fans with an eye to the past were much more inundated with the artists Erika likes to use for influences, they had the pleasure to discover the last century, whose canonical artists (i.e. what was deemed to be good) were already selected for them. But this is really nothing new. Maybe it's a fun homage, but I think it's something more genuine (Magdelena Bay also comes to mind here), though perhaps I'm placing too much emphasis on the fact that the non-mainstream rendition of a popular sound or genre seems necessarily more personal than it's financially successful sibling. Ultimately though, here all of the smaltz is filtered through sincerity. We can juxtapose this approach to that of a group like 100 gecs, whose accolades and popularity seem to support the idea that influence without reverence, limp dadaism without critique, and ironic distancing are all admirable, interesting or, above all, musical. Before I commit to a diatribe I'll talk more about the album itself.
One important distinction is that she has none of the pretensions of glamour or "lifestyle" exalted by some of the more commercial cognates. This can be gleaned from her own lyrics and a music video like "Do My Thing". Though the song is from her previous album, she brings the same presence of unpretentiousness as she gets ready for a night out, singing to the camera with a joyous smile, riding around uptown on a bike with helmet on, basket attached. The end of the video is her just vibing with some friends.
These are entirely fresh melodies ridin on compositions and production informed by those artist like Aliyah, Destiny’s Child, Toni Braxton et al., with the occasional explicit nod like 2pac's "Ambiztions of a Rider" in "Polite". The production is pleasantly dry with some minimal sounding processing, plucky strings guitar and harpsichord, poppy percussions that lays back perfectly in the mix, and the whole album, like it's predecessor, has a consistently airy and light timbre. If something like Britney or Kylie Minogue (who is wonderful) is the sound of a vaulted and cacophonous megamall going up and down the hedonistic escalator, this is the soundtrack of the late 20s socialite at the outdoor mall Sunday at noon, then window shopping antique row after late lunch. At its worst its presence is inoffensive, to some perhaps insipid,
but it is always sweet and warm (and a little bit cool too). In a word: pleasant.
| other reviews of this album |
|
Album Rating: 3.5
Yelp I fucked up the album submission, have no idea how that happened lol.
| | |
post Here and ask for fix
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Thanks, on it, just in case I saved the review
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Oooooh! Will read this tomorrow but I love you for reviewing this!
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Great review man! After a couple listens i'm diggin the production here even more than on Essentials. There's more going on, there's more ambition regarding structure and how the sounds are layered. This is definitely a step forward for her, i just fear that there's nothing as immediately catchy as stuff like "do my thing" or "little bit", you know... some single that's just catchy and hooky enough to get her some exposure. But for what i can tell she's already getting a very dedicated and passionate following, so i'm still glad for her.
ALSO fuck 100 gecs.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
^I absolutely agree on those points, those songs are crazy earworms, they have a little more bounce than stuff on here, but yeah the production is improving.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
^appreciate all the feedback  . yes i did mean reminiscent. Feel like I haven't written in a while I had so many spelling errors on the first draft too haha. I get it about the wordiness, I moved the structure around a bit. I could have truncated some of the sentences or separated some of the clauses better. I may just hit up your shoutbox sometime, I want to do reviews semi-regularly. Oh you're all good, that's why I posted this review with feedback in mind, I usually just write a whole bunch and relegate it too some archived folder, but I'm tired of being a perfectionist. Cheers!
| | |
good lad, good attitude
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
"We can juxtapose this approach to that of a group like 100 gecs, whose accolades and popularity seem to support the idea that influence without reverence, limp dadaism without critique, and ironic distancing are all admirable, interesting or, above all, musical. Before I commit to a diatribe I'll talk more about the album itself."
please commit the diatribe, wanna see what're your thoughts on this topic.
| | |
"We can juxtapose this approach to that of a group like 100 gecs, whose accolades and popularity seem to support the idea that influence without reverence, limp dadaism without critique, and ironic distancing are all admirable, interesting or, above all, musical. Before I commit to a diatribe I'll talk more about the album itself."
dumb statement and ruins the review
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
Haha honestly I left that as more of a tease, but I think ElectricWizard's review of the album on rym is similar to my sentiments on it, and I thought back to it when writing this review. Here's an excerpt:
"Nostalgia sucks. One of the things that made Floral Shoppe such a cool album was not that was it reminiscing about how cool the 80s were. It was a complete deconstruction and DESTRUCTION of the 80s. It pulled back the curtain and said "all this shit you thought was cool? now you can see how fucking stupid it was". It was anti-nostalgia, and that was why vaporwave in it's original form was such a cool genre.
Fast forward 8 years later and the scene basically now comes down to "synth funk worship, also did you know sailor moon was super duper cool?". The mockery has become light jabbing at best, and most of irony and criticism of the hyper commercial culture ushered in by the economic boom/bubble in Japan and the Reagan administration in the US has been lost. It's just another aesthetic now.
Aesthetics suck. They take away the substance and context behind a scene and/or time and place, and reduces it to a a general box of images that you can incorporate into your own image of a person, and maybe even commodity on a small or large level. I can't see what's everyone who likes this album is thinking, but I would imagine on some level the enjoyment comes from resonating with the aesthetic. That's fine to an extent. I admit there's media that I enjoy because of that reason. It can be fine."
My thoughts on cultural malaise are HEAVILY informed by Mark Fisher, but I don't think I have the requisites to deliver as biting of a critique as someone like him or the above review
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
shut up sint, your weeb ways lead only to deceit and delusion.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
"My thoughts on cultural malaise are HEAVILY informed by Mark Fisher"
good read, actually.
| | |
even discussing 100 gecs in a review about an r&b album is dumb as it is, but then to try and justify it with some spiel about vaporwave? like these are so fundamentally different conversations to each other that have little to no convergent dialogue
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
a conversation about nostalgia in music isn't bound by genre, i think. 100 gecs is only used as an example.
| | | Album Rating: 3.5
I think the throughline is that they both can be analyzed by their application of past sounds or references (though their selection process is different), but they way the choose to integrate it into their ideas and songs is divergent yeah. I guess I just think re appropriation of sounds and musical tropes in songs can be deconstructed in ways that are thought provoking or enjoyable in a purely musical sense (amnesia scanner isn't always 'pleasent' but always interesting) and for me Gecs tics neither of the boxes.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Essentials is solid, will listen soon
| | | Album Rating: 4.0 | Sound Off
this deserved a review nice m/
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
someone to chill with is the new do my thing
| | | |
|
| |
