Might as well

[Space-Dementia]

Also, if you're reading this, give me suggestions!! In my signature there's a list of albums that I've been listening to lately, so if you know anything that's similar to any of those albums that you think I might like, please let me know, either in this thread or in a PM. I'm always looking for new stuff. Thanks!
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

November 8, 2018
You Won't Get What You Want by Daughters
I've known about Daughters since I saw them open for the Dillinger Escape Plan last December. It was hard to get a good grasp of what the music was like since it was so loud, but I loved the show: the lead singer was out of his mind, licking the microphone, touching his body, moaning, etc. It was weird, but I liked how different it was. I planned on checking out their music in the future, but it was pretty low on my list since Wikipedia described some of it as grindcore, and I'm not really into that type of music. But I saw that their reviews were pretty high, so they stayed in the back of my mind. Then I saw You Won't Get What You Want get a featured review on RateYourMusic that gave it a perfect score and an acclaimed review, so that put them right back on my radar, and a few days later I listened to it. I liked it but I knew that it needed at least 5 more listens before I would really get it. Then Fantano dropped the 10 and I immediately put it on constant rotation. And, while I don't think it's a 10 and it's not my album of the year, it's definitely top 10, if not top 5 material, and I like it more with every listen. It is a lot to take in, but I don't think it's quite as terrifying as a lot of the reviews and comments say it is. It's heavy, it's dark, and it's loud, but I think it's also a rewarding and, honestly, pleasant listen. Sure, some parts are more pleasant than others ("The Flammable Man" is... a lot), but it's one of those albums that feels shorter than it is, which is weird since it's pretty much a consistent mood and sound throughout the whole thing. But every time I get to the end I expect another song to start right after.
I also love the vocals on here. I honestly can't even describe how he sounds, it's just so interesting. And the stuff he's singing is crazy. It just sounds like he's in another world with the things he's describing. He's talking about the world opening up, the fear of being killed by the tide, a guy with a "face like he was sucking concrete through a straw", the empty abandoned city, and Paul, who gets out of his car, suddenly sees everything differently, starts hearing voices that tell him to run, gets told by his son to run, and starts running away "to find everything he can find" and "to know, to see for himself, if there is an ocean beyond the waves." "The Reason They Hate Me" is probably my favorite track on the album, even though it's the most straightforward song. It just keeps moving with its driving beat as he's singing, "Maybe the sun waits for you to be shown what to do". The album just has such an apocalyptic feel, and I'm definitely gonna be listening to it for a while.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

November 9, 2018
Die Lit by Playboi Carti
I feel like this is what Lil B was going for, in terms of sound. B's got a lot more going on lyrically, with the whole Based World concept and all his spiritual stuff and whatever, but musically this just reminds me of him because of how, like, ethereal it sounds. Some of these beats sound so futuristic, but never in a cheesy way. It's just the kind of stuff I could see being mainstream in like ten years or something, like the way bass-heavy trap is now. What's really cool, though, is how little the lyrics matter. I feel like he's just making cultural references and saying words that sound cool together over the beat. That's such a turnaround from that whole idea that rap's all about the lyrics and who's the best and stuff. Carti's just making beautiful sounds and having fun over them. And sometimes that's all you really need to do to make a great album.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

November 21, 2018
Alegranza by El Guincho
My skin sticks to the black leather seat of my car as I drive through suburbia on the way to deliver my final pizza of the day. It's 4:00 pm and 95 degrees out but I refuse to turn the AC on, choosing instead to open every window in the car and let the hot, humid wind do what it wants with my messy hair. Normally I'd still have 8 more hours of pizza-delivering to do but I took half the day off since it's Friday and I want to get drunk with my friends. That drive, to and from some stranger's house with my car smelling of basil and tomato sauce, was when I first listened to Alegranza and, needless to say, I loved it. It's like a neverending parade in the streets of Spain. El Guincho takes a short sample of some old 60s or 70s latin rock song and repeats it over and over, hypnotizing you for three to five minutes, and only interrupting to yell some words in Spanish in a nice and simple melody, then does the whole thing again eight more times.
It starts to get old pretty quickly though. If El Guincho took the best four or five songs from this album and released them as an EP, it would be terrific. And throwing on pretty much any one of these songs, especially one of the first four, makes for a pleasant few minutes. But trying to sit through the whole 45 minutes or so is a struggle. The hypnotic nature of the songs is nice and fun, but also headache-inducing once you've made it halfway through the album. Panda Bear and The Field are two artists who made similar sample-based, hypnotic albums, but both of those are much more successful than this one. Person Pitch works because of all the layers that Panda Bear builds up. There's so much new stuff to explore in each song that nobody really complains about a song like "Bros" being 12 minutes long. From Here We Go Sublime, on the other hand, works because of the satisfying "drop" in each song. Even if it's not some huge dubstep-style bass drop, each song builds for a few minutes and then reaches a climax and rides it out right until the song's about to get old. Guincho, though, just finds a groove that works in the atmosphere he's created, and lets it sit there for a couple minutes until he decides to end the song. Basically, Alegranza is definitely a notable release, but your enjoyment of it depends heavily on your mood and surroundings, and it's not really worth returning to more than once or twice.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

November 27, 2018
Future Days by Can
Although they sound nothing alike, I draw a lot of parallels between Can and Black Sabbath. Each member of the band has a role and, at least to my ears, it doesn't seem like any one member is more important than another. And when they have long instrumental parts, there isn't one member who's soloing, but rather each member is seeing where the music takes them. But it's all organized too. Although it may sound like they just decide to jam for a couple minutes, they're all aware of what role they're playing, what role everyone else is playing, and how much time they have before they have to move on to the next section. Watching videos of both bands performing live is a great way to experience the music, because you can see the members interacting with each other, and how lost they get in the music. I think that's really what separates good bands from great ones. Great bands can write great songs, but they also have great musicians who really feel the music and play it like their lives depend on it. You can tell how much the music means to them, and it's honestly inspirational and beautiful to watch.
It's hard to pick the best Can album. Tago Mago is their most well-known, and the first half is exceptional, but in the second half they get a little too experimental for my liking. It's not so bad that I can't get through the whole album, and actually I'm impressed that it doesn't sound nearly as long as it is, but it's harder to appreciate it in small bits. Meanwhile Ege Bamyasi is pretty much the opposite. Sure, there's a few songs that just sound like random noises, but it's more of a collection of songs than an album in my opinion. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, because the songs are great. But Future Days kinda has everything, in only four songs. The opener and title track is a great mood-setter, with Damo's beautiful vocals taking you through this kinda relaxed but dark atmosphere. Then "Spray" is the obligatory experimental ambient track, but again, it's not bad, just hard to appreciate as a standalone song. "Moonshake" is probably their most straightforward song that I've heard. It sounds like something you might hear on a 70s radio station. It's funky, relaxed, and fucking terrific. I think it might be my favorite song of theirs. And then "Bel Air" is like the culmination of everything they had been doing for the past three years. It goes on for twenty minutes, with a few false endings, but it never gets old, and it's such a different song than "Halleluwah", their other 20-minute anthem. That one, while fantastic as well, is centered around its repetition. The bassline and drums pretty much don't change for the entire song, but it's such a tight groove that you never want it to end. But this one explores so many different areas. You hear the first 5 minutes and you think "this is terrific I could totally jam with this for another ten minutes or so, but then they turn around and do something completely different, and they keep changing the song, always keeping the same mood and atmosphere, but stretching it as wide as it can go. It's a great song, and a perfect way to end their brilliant run of three influential and terrific albums.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

December 14, 2018
Negative by Low
I love albums like this, that create an entire world in about 45 minutes. I wish I had listened to Low's earlier albums before checking out this one, since apparently it's a completely new genre for them, but even without the context, I'm really impressed. A lot of the songs sound similar to each other, but when they flow into each other and keep my attention this well, that's not a complaint at all. It's not a depressing album, it just has a really dark sound that kind of envelops over you, starting right at the top of the album. "Quorum" has intense production with a lot of compression that kind of sucks you in and pierces your ears but also fills them with warm sounds. It transitions into the next song, "Dancing and Blood" really well, and that one sounds like pretty much nothing I've ever heard. It's so dark that it almost recalls dark atmospheric metal, but this is clearly a glitch pop/ambient pop album. When the guitars do show up, notably on "Dancing and Fire", they kind of tingle in your ears, meshing well with the electronic production. It gets a little slow in the middle (not that the rest of the songs aren't slow, but tracks 5-7 almost put me to sleep). It picks up again at the end, though, and "Disarray" is a perfect closing song. What I especially love about the album is the repetitive sound collages that close some of the songs, like "Dancing and Blood", that closes with what sounds like a Clams Casino beat transitioning into a slowed-down version of "Unsolved Mysteries" by Animal Collective. I can draw a lot of parallels to Bon Iver's 22, A Million, another guitar-based artist's array into electronic music, but Low have definitely created their own sound with this record. I'll be sure to check out their earlier albums, but I'll be listening to this album a lot over the next few weeks. In a way it seems like a companion to Daughters' brilliant album You Won't Get What You Want because of the dark, almost apocalyptic atmosphere they both create, but obviously in very different ways. There's just so many layers to these songs that they still haven't lost their charm after about five listens.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

December 16, 2018
Swimming by Mac Miller
I was never really a Mac Miller fan, but I did enjoy some of his songs, and I gave GO:OD AM a listen when it came out, although I don't really remember what any of the songs sounded like. But I always liked him as a person and I saw his NPR Tiny Desk performance, which was really fun to watch and made me consider listening to Swimming. Then, when I found out he died, even though I didn't know more than like four or five of his songs, I was still immediately struck. It was a similar feeling of just plain sadness that I felt when those accusations against Louis C.K. came out and I found out he was actually kind of a revolting person, except this time there wasn't any grief against him, just sadness that he wasn't able to make it through a difficult time in his life, and we'd never see him grow up to be a wiser, experienced former rapper. So after putting it off for months, I finally got around to checking this album out, and I'm glad I did, because this is a really enjoyable record. He clearly had a lot on his mind, specifically about his breakup with Ariana Grande, but also about mental health, drug use, and the future, and I personally like the lyrics on here a lot. They're straightforward and heartbreaking but also kind of optimistic at times. And it's interesting to hear him singing on here. He's still rapping on most songs, but the singing brings out more emotion, in my opinion, even though he doesn't really have a great voice.
The production is what makes this a great album, though. It's dreamy, funky, and all-around beautiful. And I really like how much empty space there is. For example, on "Wings", in the little periods between sentences the song sounds so bare and empty, that it puts Mac right in the middle of your focus. And the cool mix of actual strings and pianos with these cheesy little synth parts is really nice. I think it kinda represents the way you sometimes think all these problems are so huge, but other times you realize how minuscule they are and how you'll get through them. And that's what makes this such a sad record. It sounds like he really believed he could make it through this, with lyrics like "Guess there was a time when my mind was consumed but the sun's coming out now, clouds start to move" on "Small Worlds", but unfortunately he gave in to the temptations and died before he could make it out. While this might not be a huge innovative release, I'm glad this is the album Mac will be remembered by.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

December 17, 2018
A Laughing Dream in Meatspace by Tropical Fuck Storm
A good mix of the dark experimental post punk of Nick Cave and the angsty indie "progressive" punk of bands like Protomartyr and Pile. I really love how each song goes through its own journey with quiet points and peaks of noise, and how they don't just stick to one sound. They could have easily made a whole album of songs like the opener "You Let My Tyres Down", which happens to the best song on the album, with a final chorus that'll shred your ears and melt your brain, but instead they decided to only get darker and more experimental from there, introducing the listener to nine vastly different worlds that all form one dark, psychedelic, raw, and political universe. While no song is as immediately memorable and mind-blowing as the terrific opener, which is pretty much everything I would want a 2018 rock song to sound like, the rest of the songs are slow burners that only get better with each repeated listen. I'm really liking how a lot of rock bands are becoming open and friendly towards experimentation. We're at the point where nothing is out of bounds for anyone, and I'm curious to see where that takes rock in the next decade.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

December 19, 2018
Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers
The good news is I have no idea what genre to put this album under. The bad news is it all sounds exactly the same. The band comes up with some interesting ambient synth or piano line, adds a quick drum beat, and then adds a simple bass line that moves between the I, IV, V, and vi chords, sometimes introducing some interesting progressions and melodies, but for the most part staying inside very narrow lines. The sound is interesting, bordering somewhere between alternative hip hop, synth pop, and neo-soul, I guess. It kinda sounds like if TV On The Radio was more focused and less rock-oriented. Which is an interesting sound, but it's overdone, even in its short half-hour runtime. I think if they were able to mix up their sound a little, maybe bring in some more drastic dynamics, they would be able to create a much more enjoyable album, because after about four listens through this thing, I'm not planning on returning to it anytime soon, besides maybe "Wow", the best song on the album.
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These are my favorite albums right now.

[Space-Dementia]

December 26, 2018
Jericho Sirens by Hot Snakes
It has such a 90s hardcore vibe, but the production makes it sound very modern, which is perfect. It definitely reminds me of Fugazi and Snapcase, along with some elements of the Strokes and the Pixies. It's cool how they mix a high energy, blastbeat-speed punk attitude with artsy sounding guitars and classic rock structure. For some reason when it comes to punk albums, there's not much I can think to say about the music. This is just a great album that I'm glad I discovered before the end of the year. The thing I love about the post-hardcore genre is that so many bands follow a similar formula, but the actual composition of the songs is different for each band, so I never get tired of the genre, unlike traditional punk like the Ramones, where every song has only three chords, or just plain indie rock, where every band's just trying to be the Pixies. It's insane to me that Slint, the Dismemberment Plan, and Hot Snakes are all part of the same sub-genre, and for that reason any time I see an album described as post-hardcore, I make sure to check it out as soon as possible.

Microshift by Hookworms
It's reminiscent of Phoenix and LCD Soundsystem, but with a more driving krautrock-inspired sound. And it's a good sound that they're playing with, but it gets a bit too repetitive. I like the way each song ends with a short ambient segment that fades perfectly into the next track and some of the grooves are really catchy, but I'm not a fan of the singer's voice, and most of the songs would be better if they were a few minutes shorter. I'm interested to hear what they sounded like before this album, because apparently they used to be more stoner rock, and I honestly can't see them as a stoner rock band, but I'm really curious.
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These are my favorite albums right now.