| 100 Gecs 1000 gecs | 4.0 |
| I feel like the novelty/irony angle has been kind of overplayed in how people talk about this. Sure, this is obviously a record made by people who are Extremely Online, but we also live in a world where "Old Town Road" is about to become maybe the most popular single of all time- this is just the culture now. And I don't see these songs as genre bending for the sake of genre bending. As an American in my mid-20's, I can draw the lines fairly easily. It's not like, say, Skrillex and Late 2000s Warped Tour Fare, or PC Music and Soundclown, which are all referenced here, are that far apart. To me, some of the best electronic music has a super-visceral quality, where you'd almost be embarrassed to play it out loud. These songs hit that sweet spot as well as anything I've heard in a long time. |
| 2nd Grade Hit to Hit | 2.5 |
| Adjy The Idyll Opus (I-VI) | 3.0 |
| Alex G Beach Music | 3.5 |
| Alex G Rocket | 4.0 |
Alex G "Rocket" review checklist
Bandcamp/extensive back catalog
Country music
Frank Ocean
"Brick" sounds like Death Grips |
| Alex G House Of Sugar | 3.5 |
| His hypothetical greatest hits album might be the strongest of any artist this decade, but, as I tend to find with his albums, whether I like or love it depends on how much I dig the experiments. Not so much here- save for "cow" and "sugarhouse" I'll probably end up skipping most of Side B when I revisit this in the future. But the highs are so damn high. |
| Alex G God Save The Animals | 3.0 |
| My review of every Alex G record other than Rocket is "I like the songs where he sings pretty and/or screams and I don't like the ones where he pitch shifts his voice and talks about drug addiction" |
| alt-J Relaxer | 1.5 |
| Alt-J are my least favorite indie band working today. Also the frontman does the "put it in my butt" cadence from that "how to write an alt j song" youtube video on "in cold blood". |
| Alvvays Antisocialites | 2.5 |
I miss the old alvvays
Straight from the go alvvays
Not girl group-y alvvays
Married archie, alvvays ("In Undertow", "Lollipop") |
| Animal Collective Painting With | 3.0 |
| my feet can't cross the parking lot, the parking lot is way too hot |
| ANOHNI HOPELESSNESS | 3.0 |
| Arcade Fire Neon Bible | 5.0 |
Maybe the most underrated record of the 2000s, and my favorite one by Arcade Fire. It was unfairly
criticized at the time for being too overwrought, and even if it is- it's not neccessarily to it's detriment.
But Neon Bible is just as earnest as "Funeral", too and more intimate. I think the "and it's even more
prescient today!" routine is kind of overdone, too, but shit, the first song on the record is called "Black
Mirror". #WinKnew |
| Ariana Grande Thank U, Next | 2.5 |
| AG has said that she'd like to put out music the way rappers do, and that makes sense to me. This feels like a decent datpiff era rap mixtape- 70% filler, 30% really inspired. The production is pretty limp and forgettable across the board, and I find the more hip-hop leaning songs, although she's obviously having fun making them, tend to play against her strengths. ("NASA") |
| ASAP Rocky TESTING | 2.0 |
| Bad "blonde" dye job. It's been a while, but he has another good record in him, I think. He just has to learn to like rapping again. |
| Beach House 7 | 4.5 |
It's really interesting to me that some people here find this to be a "boring" beach house album,
because I'm quite the opposite- I think "teen dream" is really great and the rest of the records are
good to okay with a few songs I really like. But "7", for me, is engaging and immediate in a very new
and exciting way. There's a depth and dynamism in the production that wasn't on the last three
albums, but there's still that entrancing quality that makes the best beach house stuff tick. |
| Beach Slang The Things We Do to Find People Who Feel | 2.5 |
| I remember reading Adam Downer's review of "Cheap Thrills On A Dead End Street" and being so mad at how wrong he was. After listening to Beach Slang's weak, thin, repetitive first full length, I don't necessarily agree with his larger points about punk music, but I see where he was coming from. You can only be told how "alive" "kids like us" feel so many times before it starts to ring a little hollow. |
| Beach Slang A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings | 2.0 |
| A loud bash(ing you over the head with) teenage feelings. God, and their first 2 EPs were legitimately great, too |
| Big Red Machine Big Red Machine | 3.0 |
| Justin Vernon kinda reminds me of Future on "Gratitude" |
| Big Thief U.F.O.F. | 4.0 |
*Trying to make small talk on a first date* Are you more of a Jenni or a Betsy? I'm definitely a
Betsy. Actually, you seem kind of like a Caroline. |
| Black Country, New Road For the first time | 2.5 |
| Bo Burnham Inside (The Songs) | 2.5 |
| Bon Iver 22, A Million | 4.5 |
| To paraphrase a terrible politician, let's dispel with this fiction that Justin Vernon doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. The Bon Iver project has had an air of pretension since it began- which is worse, song titles with goofy symbols in them or song titles that are made up places? I mean, this is the guy that locked himself in a cabin for three months, wrote a cult classic breakup album, and then, on his next EP, opened an auto-tuned song with the lyric "I'm up in the woods". Despite it's messy presentation, I think this record is actually the clearest distillation of the BI project to date...it's definitely my favorite by far; and lost in the swell of the indie-hype music cycle, I think, is that this is maybe the best record about anxiety to come out in this decade. |
| Bon Iver i,i | 4.0 |
| I FALL OFF A BASS BOAT |
| Boygenius boygenius | 2.5 |
| Boygenius the record | 2.5 |
| Brand New Science Fiction | 3.0 |
| More like brand old, amirite ("Can't Get It Out") |
| Brockhampton SATURATION | 2.5 |
Yo, fuck (KanyeToThe) and fuck (r/hiphopheads) And any other fuck-nigga-ass blog that
(immediately fawns over) an 18 year old nigga Making his own fucking beats, covers, videos and all
that shit
Fuck you post-(Frank Ocean)-ass cliche-jerking, LA-slauson rapping
Fuck-nigga-ass Hypebeast niggas, now back to the album |
| Brockhampton SATURATION II | 3.0 |
Def better than the first one, but they still just don't do it for me. I recognize that the rapping is good,
and they seem to be having fun as they ape the "Oldie" model to varying degrees of success. But
none of it really ever latches on. Glad this current gen of 16 y/o kids who like to pore over supreme
lookbooks and just discovered "freaks and geeks" last week have someone to look up to, though.
("Queer") |
| Brockhampton Iridescence | 3.0 |
| I still can't shake the feeling that there's nothing particularly novel about Brockhampton, even at their absolute best. At the end of the day, they're a bunch of kids raised on P4K and music forums with a lot of influences they're trying to imitate. But credit is due now that they've done that really really well. |
| Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A. | 5.0 |
| Built to Spill Keep It Like a Secret | 4.5 |
You were right when you said "the plan means nothing stays the same"
You were right when you said "your needs consume you/forever" |
| Camp Cope How to Socialise and Make Friends | 3.5 |
| I sat down to listen to this record for the first time, got 3/4ths of the way through the first track, and immediately thought "wow, I am so glad to have this in my life". Think the last time that's happened with a rock album is "Home, Like NoPlace is There". |
| Car Seat Headrest Teens of Style | 3.0 |
| Car Seat Headrest Teens of Denial | 3.0 |
| Car Seat Headrest Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) | 2.0 |
| As someone who basically grew up finding music on the internet, and also someone who was a college radio DJ in Maryland where a lot of people knew will and like, bragged about seeing him at house shows with 2 people when they were 16 (wow, cool!)- it's a weird full circle seeing a rerecording of twin fantasy getting best new music on pitchfork and stuff. I've always hated this record and the cult around it. Oh well |
| Chance the Rapper Coloring Book | 2.5 |
| Charli XCX Charli | 3.0 |
| If anything, "Pop 2" was the future, and moreover, it was unabashedly itself. This is, at least 50% of the time, a halfhearted hedge back toward the center. It's still pretty good. But it's not a revolution. |
| Childish Gambino "Awaken, My Love!" | 2.5 |
| CHVRCHES Love Is Dead | 1.5 |
| Chvrches are one of my favorite bands of this decade, and listening to this, which is as terrible as the singles and cover suggest, I had a thought. They're currently in the middle of a throwback to the 2000s beloved indie band career arc. 1st album: effortless, influential classic. 2nd album: sticks to the script of the 1st album with a few tweaks, not a classic but very good. the big fan's "best chvrches" album pick. 3rd album: bring in outside producers, stuck in a rut, sucks. |
| Cloud Nothings Last Building Burning | 3.0 |
| "I wish I could believe in your dream" |
| Cloud Nothings The Shadow I Remember | 3.5 |
| Cymbals Eat Guitars Pretty Years | 3.5 |
| I'm torn on this...I like the singles a lot, but I haven't wanted to come back to the album as a whole too much. I think especially compared to LOSE (one of my 20 or so records of the decade), it feels less important, even if it's still a pleasant listen. |
| DaBaby Baby On Baby | 3.5 |
| im (da)baby |
| Deafheaven New Bermuda | 2.5 |
| Death Grips Bottomless Pit | 4.0 |
| Death Grips Steroids (Crouching Tiger Hidden Gabber Megamix) | 3.0 |
| Deerhunter Fading Frontier | 3.0 |
| Deftones Gore | 2.5 |
| Dirty Projectors Dirty Projectors | 3.0 |
| The singles are good, especially "Little Bubble". If only the rest of the record were as contemplative and thoughtful as that one. Btw comparing this to the Bon Iver record from last year is about as lazy of a comparison as you can manage, a lot of artists play around with their voices and Dave Longstreth has been doing goofy shit since 2005 |
| DJ Sprinkles Midtown 120 Blues | 5.0 |
| "...but suffering is in here, with us. If you can get in, that is." |
| Dogleg Melee | 4.0 |
| So, this is totally emo "Celebration Rock", right? |
| Dry Cleaning New Long Leg | 2.5 |
| Dua Lipa Future Nostalgia | 2.0 |
| Everyone Everywhere Everyone Everywhere | 4.5 |
| fiction, science fiction. biographies, autobiographies. music work, paper work. all kinds of movies. |
| Explosions in the Sky The Wilderness | 3.0 |
| FKA Twigs Magdalene | 2.0 |
| Flume Hi This is Flume | 4.0 |
| A worthy capper to the 2010's in indie-leaning electronic. Part rustie/hudmo, part pc music, part RA adjacent idm, and with a whiff of the sounds that made Flume a broadly recognizable figure in mainstream dance music...it's like a tasty appetizer sampler platter of the decade's best trends. |
| Foxing Dealer | 2.5 |
| Frankie Cosmos Close It Quietly | 2.5 |
| Listen, an artist doesn't need to evolve dramatically from album to album to be really good (call it "The Beach House Principle"), but if you're going to settle into a groove where every song, while pleasant, sounds essentially the same, the least you could do is vary up the lyrics. I'm not even talking about thematic material, I mean literal words and phrases. Do we really need two songs comparing people to trees? Do we really need some variation of "the diamond in your throat" to pop up 4 different times? I still consider myself a fan, but I'd rather have her roll with the "Zentropy" model of a 20 minute album that leaves me wanting than a 40 minute record that starts to feel redundant when it's halfway through. |
| Frog Whatever We Probably Already Had It | 4.0 |
| By turns funny, rousing, and touching- occasionally, ("Journey to the Restroom") all three at once. |
| Frog Count Bateman | 3.5 |
| Girlpool Powerplant | 2.5 |
| Girlpool Before the World Was Big | 4.0 |
| Girlpool What Chaos Is Imaginary | 3.5 |
| Maybe it's slightly passé at this point to say that my favorite iteration of Girlpool is "Before the World Was Big"- that record felt novel and bursting with energy, while the two albums that have come afterward have, at various points and to varying degrees, felt slightly lethargic, perhaps weighed down by the duo's increased proclivity for murky dream-pop. But their songwriting skills are undeniable, and the more noticeable stylistic differences between the Tividad and Tucker songs keep things relatively interesting. ("Hire", "Pretty", "Lucky Joke") |
| Glass Beach The First Glass Beach Album | 2.5 |
| Grimes Art Angels | 4.0 |
| Grimes Miss Anthropocene | 4.0 |
| Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly Soak | 4.0 |
| Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam I Had a Dream That You Were Mine | 3.0 |
| Home Is Where I Became Birds | 4.5 |
| Hop Along Bark Your Head Off, Dog | 4.0 |
| There is a shift in sound here- a friend of mine called it "cleaner", but what strikes me about "Bark" compared to it's predecessor is it's density, both in lyricism and instrumentation. It's definitely an album that rewards multiple listens. Frances Quinlan doesn't quite stretch her voice as far as she used to, either, but I think how hooky and interesting she sounds on every song despite barely going to the yell-well solidifies her as my favorite rock vocalist of this decade. |
| I Love Your Lifestyle The Movie | 3.0 |
| Slightly up and down, and I hate to be ethnocentric in my emo consumption- but there's an uncanniness to non-American bands writing and singing emo lyrics that takes me out sometimes. The first four songs are pretty unimpeachable, though. |
| J Dilla Donuts | 5.0 |
| "Young man went out and made a name for himself-" |
| James Blake The Colour in Anything | 3.5 |
| James Blake Assume Form | 4.0 |
His self-titled is one of my favorites of the decade, but I felt like the last two were lacking. Here,
he strikes a tremendous balance between his pop-leaning and experimental impulses, and there's
a real emotional heft in the record's most powerful moments. ("Barefoot In The Park", "Can't
Believe The Way We Flow", "Lullaby For My Insomniac) |
| Jane Remover Frailty | 4.5 |
| Japandroids Near To The Wild Heart Of Life | 4.0 |
Of all the Japandroids albums, this one might be the Japandroids-iest. That doesn't mean this is a
Celebration Rock rehash, in fact, the differences in sound on this one puts the band in a somewhat
unfortunate position. People who don't approve of the band's MO aren't going to find much to like
here, and some diehards are going to be irked by the cleaner production and the lack of the
more high energy anthems of the last two records. But those who dig in for a couple listens might be
pleasantly surprised by a song like "True Love and a Free Life of Free Will", which stays true to the
band's themes, but presents them in a more grown-up way. |
| Japandroids Massey Fucking Hall | 3.0 |
| Japanese Breakfast Soft Sounds From Another Planet | 3.0 |
| When she's at her best, Michelle Zauner is one of the great songwriters of this decade. Unfortunately, that's only sometimes ("Boyish", "12 Steps") |
| Jlin Black Origami | 3.0 |
| Joyce Manor Cody | 3.0 |
| This is Joyce Manor's longest album, by far. That's weird to think about. The album is pretty good, too. Unfortunately, for maybe first time in the band's career, it's also a bit thin. Maybe i'm unfairly holding this one up against "Never Hungover Again", which I think was one of the best records of 2014, but I listened to those songs for an entire summer- I don't think this one will last me more than a week or two. |
| JPEGMAFIA All My Heroes Are Cornballs | 2.5 |
| Because the internet |
| Justin Bieber Purpose | 2.0 |
| It's a shame that this record can't capitalize on the strength of it's singles. "Where Are U Now?" is one of the enduring pop songs of this year, a kind of whispered lament backed by great production, including an awesome #flutedrop chorus from Skrillex and Diplo. The other two singles achieved less lofty but still enjoybale success by repeating the same formula, but unfortunately, "Purpose" mostly splits it's time between flaccid trap-pop du jour ("Company" "No Sense") and straight overwrought nonsense ("Mark My Words", "Children"). By the time you're done listening, you'll be longing so much for some attitude, any attitude, that you'll almost wish the Biebz was back to street racing ferraris and peeing in mop buckets. |
| Kacey Musgraves Golden Hour | 4.0 |
| KM has been your fave indie site's country music sweetheart for a while, and I'll admit to buying into the hype of her last record, even if it was kinda uneven in hindsight. But Golden Hour is where she goes from "good" to "great"- a winsome and sonically rich record. Perfect for the beginning of spring. ("Oh, What a World", "High Horse") |
| Kanye West ye | 2.5 |
| I hate that kanye west is my favorite artist. It's awesome |
| Kanye West Yeezus | 5.0 |
| The anti "ye", and the living proof that Kanye West is capable of making incredible music that's incredibly self absorbed. |
| Katy Perry Witness | 2.0 |
| No shots, but I don't really trust sputnikmusic to tell me whether a pop album is good or not. Y'all gave Taylor Swift's "Red" a 2.7, for pete's sake. "Witness" is almost stunningly bad, though. It's actually kind of insane how hitless it is, especially given the fact that Max Martin is credited on almost half of the tracks. There are a couple interesting moments though- Nicki Minaj's verse on "Swish Swish", the two Purity Ring produced tracks, "Chained to the Rhythm", which I think history will absolve. Perry called this record the start of a "new era" and backed that idea up with her seemingly never-ending promo tour. This "era" might be ending way sooner than she thinks. |
| Kendrick Lamar DAMN. | 4.5 |
DAMN. is the best Kendrick Lamar record because it's streamlined, not simple. He's done away with
the heavy handed metaphors and left us to figure out what's going on... there's more going on than
you'd think when passively listening. He's also interfacing with hip-hop culture and tradition in a way
he hasn't before, from the Kid Capri tags to the hip-hop radio grabs of HUMBLE, LOYALTY, and
LOVE. Still, he's just as conflicted as ever, pondering the emptiness of fame, sex, the daily routine. He
ponders the fragility of life and is bothered by the idea that lives are saved and ruined every day by
"strangers" in "random predicaments". We're lucky to have him. |
| Kendrick Lamar untitled unmastered. | 3.0 |
| If you thought "To Pimp a Butterfly" was dense and difficult, wait til you hear these demos! Even if it's from the genre's current #1, coming off one of the release of one of the great hip hop records of the decade last year, "Untitled. Unmastered" is a collection of b-sides, and it plays like it. The great moments are great, but most of it is just ok, which is fine. A fine, if ultimately inessential companion piece to TPAB. |
| Kids See Ghosts Kids See Ghosts | 3.5 |
I think there are a lot of people trying to will this to instant classic status. I don't see the point.
Obviously, there are a lot of emotional subjects tied up in these songs, but it's not trying to be so
grand in it's scope. It's certainly a nice sigh of relief as a counterpoint to "ye" though, proof that he
hasn't lost the plot completely. Maybe we don't need to expect so much anymore. This is enough.
Imaginative, thoughtful with moments of euphoria. Bringing out in the best in his collaborators.
Human. |
| King Krule The OOZ | 2.5 |
| I was listening to Jai Paul's "BTSTU" today, and there's that moment where he goes "oi" right before the last hook...that's better than anything on this record |
| Lana Del Rey Lust For Life | 2.5 |
| Beautiful people, beautiful pablum ("Coachella- Woodstock In My Mind") |
| Lana Del Rey Norman Fucking Rockwell! | 3.0 |
| I've always liked-not-loved her stuff and I can't help feeling like the critical embrace of this as her masterpiece is borderline projection. Take the "goddman manchild" line that opens the record, which every review is latching onto and most are using to place the record in some political context. Sure, there's some criticism of this guy inherent in the song- but at the end of the day she's singing about a man she can't stop fucking despite him being an asshole, and that's territory she's covered a million times over. "The Greatest" truly is a masterwork, but to me the vast majority of the record is pretty much business as usual. And if we truly are just collectively belatedly realizing that she's amazing- that's fine, but I'm worried that twisting her style to match our feelings about The Current Moment as well as deifying her as a Kanye Level Generational Genius is going to backfire on us sooner that we think. |
| LCD Soundsystem American Dream | 4.0 |
| Tell em, James ("oh baby", "how do you sleep?", "american dream") |
| Lightning Bolt Sonic Citadel | 2.0 |
| Lomelda Hannah | 4.0 |
| Lorde Melodrama | 3.0 |
I was a huge Pure Heroine stan, but I can't help but feeling like i'm listening to a different album
than everyone else. From a macro standpoint, it behaves like and hits all the checkpoints that a
masterful pop album should, but when you listen closely, the songs just aren't there. There's
especially something about the lyrics that bother me- they sound like they're written by a famous
person's idea of teenagers is as opposed to an actual 19 year old. The highs are still extremely
high though, I really love "Perfect Places" especially. |
| Lorde Solar Power | 3.5 |
| M.I.A. AIM | 2.5 |
| M.I.A is one of my favorite artists of this millennium. Even as her lyrical content and the relative strength of the ideology that informs her music shown some cracks on her past couple records, she, to me, always manages to be uniquely compelling. Unfortunately, the problem with AIM is that a lot of it is bland and frankly, boring, which illuminates these other faults even more. Luckily, her charisma and beat selection saves the record from being a complete disaster. |
| Mac Miller The Divine Feminine | 2.5 |
| Mac Miller has had an interesting career, huh? It's interesting to see him spin off in a new direction; he's been steadily gaining critical respect since 2013 and the projects have been pretty good, but definitely reached a plateau with his last full length. The problem with this one is that even though it sounds different than anything he's done before, it's kind of boring, and feels derivative of the recent Kendrick/Chance jazz-rap wave in spurts. |
| Mac Miller Faces | 4.0 |
I feel especially shitty because I hated Mac Miller's early stuff so much. I was 15-17 when the first
tape and "blue slide park" came out and it just symbolized everything I felt I was on the outside of at
that time in my life. Maybe it did represent that, or maybe I had some false teenaged sense of
superiority. It probably just wasn't meant for me. I never became a huge fan, but the path his career
took was heartening- it felt good to be wrong. It was like finally hanging out with the jock outside
some shitty party and learning he was actually a thoughtful, cool guy. Not your projection of him. And
he has his own pain, too. I hope I would be more objective now if he came along again. I wish he was
still here to keep proving me wrong. |
| Mura Masa Mura Masa | 3.0 |
| "In Colour" for kids who listen to music on Soundcloud a lot |
| Nas NASIR | 2.0 |
| ..............................................................nah, sir |
| Neon Indian Vega Intl. Night School | 4.0 |
| No Age Goons Be Gone | 3.5 |
| Like literally every one of their albums, the first single is awesome and then the album is good-to-great. Truly remarkable consistency. |
| Noname Room 25 | 3.0 |
| Oneohtrix Point Never Garden of Delete | 3.0 |
| Oneohtrix Point Never Age Of | 3.5 |
| "Age Of" is OPN's most accessible work like "Twin Peaks" is David Lynch's most accessible work. Which is to say- not THAT accessible, but for them, sure. ("Toys 2") |
| Origami Angel Somewhere City | 4.0 |
After pretty much a whole decade of loving Ian Cohen-core emo, I finally started to lose touch
with it over the past year...something about the combination of extremely online aesthetics and
the overly cutesy, borderline musical-theatre vocal delivery of a band like Glass Beach just doesn't
work for me. This record is the exception that proves the rule though- the riffs and hooks are
strong enough that I could stomach the saccharine lyrics as they gradually wormed their way into
my brain. |
| Origami Angel Gami Gang | 4.0 |
| Oso Oso The Yunahon Mixtape | 4.0 |
| Oh. No. Big. Wave. |
| Ought Room Inside The World | 2.5 |
| My favorite Ought songs were always the ones where Tim Darcy got to shine- yelling, barking, rambling. Here, he basically tries to sing like Morrissey the whole time. I like the fact that they've tried to move beyond the post-punk sound, but it doesn't quite click for me. ("Desire", "Take Everything") |
| Paramore After Laughter | 3.5 |
| Parquet Courts Human Performance | 4.0 |
| A great return to form after "Sunbathing Animal", which got bogged down in it's attempts (successful, mind you) to win over the hearts and minds of indie critics, and "Content Nausea"/"Monastic Living", which got bogged down in it's attempts (successful, mind you) to put those critics back on their heels. Here, they go back to the sparse, acerbic punk and intimate balladry that put got those dumb NYC writers to pay attention to them in the first place, where it turns out, no frills are necessary. |
| Parquet Courts Wide Awake | 2.5 |
It doesn't really fit with the rest of my musical taste, but I tend to like this band a lot more when they
just do the dry post punk thing as opposed to the more accessible, varied indie stuff. Light up gold-
dry post punk. Sunbathing animal- indie. Human performance- dry post punk. This one- indie.
Looking forward to LP5, I'm sure I'll like it! |
| Paul Simon Graceland | 5.0 |
| Staccato signals of constant information/a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires |
| Phoebe Bridgers Punisher | 2.5 |
| ah, So u treat Phoebe Bridgers like indie royalty even though she's completely mediocre? Do tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it |
| Phoenix (FRA) Ti Amo | 3.5 |
| Eating gelato and strolling through the piazza on a summer day as the buildings crumble around you |
| Pinegrove Cardinal | 4.0 |
| PinkPantheress To Hell With It | 4.0 |
| Playboi Carti Playboi Carti | 4.0 |
| This reminds me of A$AP Rocky's debut tape in that it's way too wavy for the purists and prob more impressive for the beat selection than what's actually being spit. But I was surprised by how much of this I loved. Carti's flow feels like he's hit a nexus in this new wave of rappers- a grey area where verses, hooks, and ad-libs blend together into amorphous, vibey blobs. But it's mostly very pleasant and fun, and the moments where it all comes together (specifically the first 3 or 4 tracks) will inspire a horde of acolytes. |
| Playboi Carti Die Lit | 2.5 |
| I was a pretty big fan of the first record but find this one to be kinda boring. If I had to guess why it'd be the production, it felt kinda novel the first time around but now it feels like p'ierre bourne is cycling through presets. Think carti would be served by taking a little more time between this project and the next one and finding some new producers that fit his sound |
| Playboi Carti Whole Lotta Red | 4.0 |
| Porter Robinson Nurture | 2.5 |
| Post Malone beerbongs and bentleys | 2.0 |
| For an album called "beerbongs and bentleys", this sure is fucking tedious. |
| Prince Daddy and The Hyena Cosmic Thrill Seekers | 2.5 |
| Protomartyr Relatives in Descent | 3.0 |
Never been a huge fan of these guys, but I think hewing mostly to the standard post-punk playbook
allows Joe Casey to really shine, and the highs are very very high ("My Children", "The Chuckler") |
| PUP The Dream Is Over | 4.0 |
Or: "Bros Do Cry",
Or: "Desolation Rock" |
| Pusha T DAYTONA | 4.0 |
| Who's to say if the rest of Yeezy's "Wyoming" records will be this good, but he has already hit on one thing: a lot of rappers would benefit from keeping their records to 25 minutes or less |
| Rae Sremmurd SR3MM | 2.0 |
| This site is wrong about the other two records, which are two of the most fun and party-ready rap albums of the decade, but right about this one. They kinda seem like they're running out of steam, and no offense to slim jxmmi, who is a perfectly capable rapper, but it's a bad sign that his solo stuff makes for by far the most interesting offerings here. |
| Really From Verse | 4.0 |
| The first emo record i've really liked in a while, although they call themselves indie jazz ("variations on an aria", "hackensack hospital") |
| Restorations LP5000 | 4.0 |
| "You glance at your phone, and you mumble 'I hope he dies'/Yeah, I hope he dies too". |
| Run the Jewels Run the Jewels 3 | 3.0 |
| The revolution will be..........................slightly boring |
| Rustie Essential Mix | 5.0 |
| Silk Sonic An Evening with Silk Sonic | 2.0 |
| Sleigh Bells Treats | 4.5 |
| I think it's such a shame that this record has fallen from view as the decade has gone on, because for all the "noise-pop" ballyhooing that it got when it was released, the ascent of bands like Death Grips and the Yeezus style of electronic music actually show that this style of music was part of a larger trend as opposed to a one-off curio. Still, these songs are so damn catchy to me (especially when they slow it down on "Rill Rill"), and I think the masculine/feminine and "teen violence" dynamics at play here are really fascinating. |
| Slow Mass On Watch | 3.0 |
| "Suburban Yellow" has one of my favorite choruses of the year. "There's nothing like getting up before dawn/to start wasting your life." |
| Snail Mail Lush | 3.0 |
| Solange When I Get Home | 2.5 |
| I get that she's going for "vibey" here. But shit, so much of this record just floats by aimlessly. Solo's vocals are constantly sat in the back of the mix, and it feels like she's almost working out her melodies out on the fly. That style can work, see this record's collaborator Playboi Carti for an example. But here there's just nothing to really grab onto. |
| Somos Prison On A Hill | 3.5 |
| "Is this the most you can hope for now/managing a slow decline?" |
| Sophie Product | 4.0 |
| Fine repackaging of a few great singles with some weaker B-side material. "Just Like We Never Said Goodbye" might be the best song from this project yet, I think it'll hold up better than almost anything PC Music has ever done in a few years |
| Stay Inside Viewing | 2.0 |
| Steely Dan Aja | 5.0 |
| One of the formative moments of my recent musical history was my mother giving me her copy of this record. I was a newly minted college radio DJ who thought I knew what was cool and assumed Steely Dan was insipid lounge music for dad rockers. I was wrong as shit. ("Deacon Blues", "Peg", "Josie") |
| Sun Kil Moon Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood | 2.5 |
| On which Mark Kozelek's White-Guy-On-Twitter-As-Stream-Of-Conciousness-Lyricism schtick finally becomes unbearable. It's not as if this couldn't have kept working, either. Remember "Ben's My Friend"? That song still rules. But it's good because it actually makes an effort to be engaging, and has a distinct point of view. On this record, everything just turns into a diaristic mishmash and nothing, except maybe the more cringeworthy parts, really sticks out. |
| System of a Down Toxicity | 4.5 |
"You, what do you, own the world?"
Hadn't listened to this before last week and finally decided to check it out, was really blown away.
The political messages still hit hard, but it's also funny and gloriously unsubtle and weird in all the
right ways. And hooks/songwriting any pop singer would envy. It was the number 1 album in the
US, after all. September 13, 2001. |
| Tame Impala The Slow Rush | 2.5 |
| Taylor Swift Reputation | 3.0 |
| We overrated 1989 and are underrating this. I think if she had just attacked the promo cycle from the "this is kind of my sex album" angle than the "this is my reactionary" album angle the critical community would've been more likely to see the record for what it is...basically the Max Martin songs are generally good and the Jack Antonoff ones are bad. r("Delicate") |
| Taylor Swift Lover | 3.0 |
| I do wonder if there's a world she puts out a better first single for "reputation", it gets a fairer shake, and she puts out something more interesting than this. This is a hard reset back to something in the neighborhood of poppier "red"/"1989"-land. The problem is that outside of a few inspired production choices (the vocoder on "cruel summer", the cheerleaders on "miss americana"), it doesn't feel like she steps out of her comfort zone all that much. I think a lot of that has to do with the choice in producers here- Antonoff tends to bring out a lot of her worst impulses, and Little's nondescript style does her no favors. She's such a masterful writer at this point that I don't think she could put out a truly "bad" album though, there will always be at least 3-5 great songs to carry things. |
| Teen Suicide It's the Big Joyous Celebration.. | 2.0 |
Your college radio station's favorite record of the year. Congrats everyone, we've reached peak
bandcamp-core dead eyed better looking than me white guys making deliberately "difficult", sorta lo-
fi music about depression, drugs, small town minutae, etc, but in an ironic way. But this one is the
masterpiece because it's over an hour long@!! |
| Teen Suicide a whole fucking lifetime of this | 2.0 |
| The 1975 I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It | 4.5 |
| The 1975 A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships | 4.0 |
| "I'm scared of dying/it's fine"rI think this record is a little more uneven than the last, but this one is getting the critical embrace because it's the "millennial classic we need for these times" or whatever. They're still the most interesting and daring act in this sphere by far, however, and when the songs hit (see: the singles, "I like America..., "I always wanna die...") they really fucking hit. |
| The 1975 Notes on a Conditional Form | 4.0 |
| The Anniversary Designing For a Nervous Breakdown | 4.5 |
| Side A is basically perfect. Deserves a much bigger place in the emo canon, imo |
| The Hotelier Goodness | 4.5 |
| Thank taoist, anarchist god for the hotelier, the world's best working band. |
| The National Sleep Well Beast | 4.5 |
| I'm just finishing up my first month of law school, and this is probably going to be of my 3 or so favorite albums to be released this year. I'm well on my way to being a miserable middle aged white guy! ("Nobody Else Will Be There", literally the whole run of "I'll Still Destroy You" through the end) |
| The Promise Ring Nothing Feels Good | 5.0 |
| One listen to "Red and Blue Jeans" should shatter anyone's expectations of what "emo" is or can be. One of my favorite records of all time |
| The Range Potential | 3.0 |
| The Shins Chutes Too Narrow | 5.0 |
| The Streets The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living | 3.5 |
| Unable to feel anything much/ which was the reason why I bought my first suit |
| The Verve A Storm in Heaven | 2.5 |
| The World Is a Beautiful Place... Always Foreign | 4.0 |
The World Is... Is Maybe The Best Band Of The 2010's And Always Foreign Might Be Their Best
Album Yet ("I'll Make Everything", "Gram", "For Robin") |
| The xx I See You | 2.5 |
So much has been made of this record's relationship to Jamie xx's work, and for good reason- there
are songs here that are obviously more poppy, sample driven, and that seem to have analogues to
tracks from the (really great) record IN COLOUR. But the narrative is that I think has gotten lost is,
what happened to the band we heard on their first record? There's mopey, minimal, relationship-
driven music here, but it sounds more in line with the yawn-inducing sounds of COEXIST than the
songs on XX, which drew from a wide range of influences, had interesting lyrics and melodies. The
poppy stuff is better, but never reaches the transcendent highs of Jamie's solo work. If this is a
forward looking album, maybe they need to reflect a bit before they start on the next one. |
| Tigers Jaw spin | 3.0 |
| "June" is one of my favorite songs of the year, can't wait for the inevitable speakerboxx/love below album where there are like 7 Brianna Collins songs |
| Titus Andronicus The Monitor | 5.0 |
| It's cliche, I know- but I was a 15 year old in New Jersey the first time I heard it. This is my "Born to Run". |
| Titus Andronicus The Airing of Grievances | 5.0 |
| If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with "Patrick Stickles' Disease", you may be entitled to financial compensation |
| TNGHT II | 2.5 |
| Toro Y Moi Outer Peace | 2.5 |
| "James Murphy is spinning at my house, I met him at Coachella" |
| Travis Scott Astroworld | 2.5 |
| Wild how Travis Scott has managed to convince not only the mainstream, but now critics, that he?s this good/important artist through sheer force of branding. He's basically been making the same album with 2015, but with larger pools of collaborators. And the idea that he's this great orchestrator of talent is so maddening, because he doesn't utilize them to further his POV (of which there is basically none) at all- he just runs them through the TS machine and turns everything to vaguely psych-trappy mush |
| Tyler, the Creator Flower Boy | 2.5 |
The good news: Tyler's rapping sounds as inspired as it's ever been, when he decides to actually try
and rap. "I ain't got time" is the first song of his I immediately wanted to hit repeat on since I've been
in high school. But the bad: I just can't stand most of the songs that revolve around singing. Not that
Tyler himself is such a bad singer, but all of these tracks sound the same. Fluttery, pastel drenched
chord progressions, some girl with a gravely voice I hate harmonizing with some dude who plays
guitar, and lines that sound like they were pulled from the old diary you're now too embarrassed to
read. Are any songs on here half as good as your least favorite song on "Blonde"? Not to me, and
he's too talented to be graded on a curve just because his subject matter has evolved. |
| Tyler, the Creator IGOR | 2.5 |
| Tyler has "evolved" and "matured" into one of the most boring rap artists working today. The Neptunes worship has always been there, but he's trended towards the worst parts more and more as his career has gone on, culminating here. It would be cool to see him try something radically different on his next one- like maybe rapping? |
| Vampire Weekend Father Of The Bride | 4.0 |
| uh, to an extent, yeah |
| Vince Staples Big Fish Theory | 4.0 |
| I'm not sure what my pick would be, but it's pretty crazy to think that tpab/damn vs summertime 06/BFT is a legit argument, especially given that Vince is only 23. Here's hoping his sound continues to evolve, just as Kendrick's has. |
| Vince Staples FM! | 4.0 |
| He's on a run since "summertime '06" that rivals anyone, and what really sets him apart is his ability to clearly articulate some sort of defining artistic vision from project to project. Here, it's just "this is my California record", but in just 22 minutes he's able to get that across in so many different ways. |
| Waxahatchee Out in the Storm | 3.0 |
| Every album a Crutchfield related project puts out always has one or two songs that I think are incredible... but I never really can hang with the whole thing. On this one, the song I love is "8 Ball". |
| Weezer The White Album | 3.5 |
| Wild Pink Yolk in the Fur | 4.5 |
| "You've got a heart like a star/you give away your best." |
| Young Thug BEAUTIFUL THUGGER GIRLS | 4.0 |
| Easy, breezy, beautiful |
| Young Thug Slime Season 3 | 4.0 |
| Yves Tumor Heaven To A Tortured Mind | 2.5 |
| Yves Tumor Safe in the Hands of Love | 3.0 |
