2010s Music Diary

[NJ]

A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead - I'm gonna give this a solid 8. I don't know what took me so long to listen to this, considering I went through a major Radiohead phase a few months back, but I skipped this one for whatever reason. It's probably my third favorite of their albums. Honestly, I have very similar feelings about this one as In Rainbows, but there are more positives to this. With both, I found the music often kind of bland, and it all meshed together a bit for me. But there were multiple moments in this album where the music genuinely sent shivers down my spine, whereas the only song on In Rainbows that didn't feel like complete background noise was Wierd Fishes. I see why peeople like In Rainbows, it's very soft and nice, but to me this album was like a less flawed, more interesting version of that.

[NJ]

I've been messing a bit with the format. I'm bolding the album names and their current score. Any score I list next to an album that isn't bolded does not reflect my current opinion, and I plan on mentioning the change the next time I review an album.

In general, I feel like I've been rating albums differently the past few days than I have in the past. So I'm changing the following scores to be more consistent with my older opinions, as well as having listened to a few albums over again.
Leomonade: 10 --> 9-
The Suburbs: 9- --> 8+


Flower Boy by Tyler, The Creator. I'm feeling a high 8, almost 9 on this (8+). Very excellent record. Right off the bat, I love the cover art. The songs were all good, though none really stood out to me as complete masterpieces, which is why this album is being held back a bit. Genuinely solid all the way through, I loved the production and lyrics.

[NJ]

Igor by Tyler, The Creator - This album made me sad I don't even know what to rate it. I had some objective flaws with it, most notably its choruses tended to be repetitive, so I guess, like, a 9? Subjectively I think it's my favorite album of the decade now, though I could never say it's a better one than TPAB, musically or lyrically. Although Igor's lyrics did resonate with me more on a personal level, which is probably why I feel so emotionally invested in it. I wasn't sure how it'd compare to Flower Boy, but I loved it.

[NJ]

Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown - I'm gonna go with a high 7 (7+). I respect its uniqueness, and there were a lot of standout moments for sure, but it wasn't exactly my type of music. I really liked maybe a fourth of the songs, though I didn't actively dislike any. I was pretty neutral on a lot of it, though, and it even annoyed me at times. But I respect its artistry. Also, I finally got around to listening to a reccommended album! I promise, Lachapelle, I didn't forget you. I'll get to The Roots' album eventually.

On a more serious note, I've been having a hard time writing these "reviews." See, I'm trained in review-writing, and publish reviews monthly, and these are... Well, they're not good. They're different, though - When I review stuff, I like to give it some time to let my thoughts flow, and I try to experience it twice before writing a review, once for an overall impression and once with heavy note-taking. These are just my initial reactions, but as a writing major, the lack of quality writing does hurt me sometimes. I feel like y explanations are lacking, which is why I include the score, but I actually hate scoring systems like this. I'd rather my words spoke for themselves, but I'm not writing well enough to do so.

The other problem is that I write film reviews, not music reviews. They're very different fields. And, I sometimes am just in moods where I don't want to listen to music. I don't think I touched my headphones throughout almost all of December. But I'm working on it, I'm glad I've had the patience to sit through so many albums lately, and I hope that continues. As I amass more music knowledge, maybe I'll eventually start writing more professional reviews and drop the scoring system, but I feel that I have a ways to go before I'm ready for that.

[NJ]

Cuz I Love You by Lizzo - Like, a high five, maybe a low six. I'm gonna go with a 5+, though. The first and last song were solid, but the middle was pretty boring. She's a really good singer, but she didn't use her talents enough, and a lot of the album simply felt standard and lacked depth. But nothing was bad, and it could be really nice music to listen to. A decent R&B album. I listened to the deluxe version, and if I were to include the extra three songs from that, it'd propel it to a solid 6.

I'm gonna be listening to albums in preparation for the upcoming Grammy's, so it'll be a bit 2019-specific for a while. And I cannot explain how pissed off I was when I found out Igor wasn't nominated for AOTY. F*cking imbeciles.

[NJ]

Vulnicura by Bjork - I'm a pretty big Bjork fan (Vespertine is my favorite album of the 2000s), though I've only heard her albums from Debut through Vespertine. was a little disappointed by this, not gonna lie. It had a lot of solid moments, but overall it just kind of dragged on until the end. I'm going to give it a low 7 (7-), it's probably my least favorite of her albums thus far (noting that it's only the fifth of hers I've listened to). I'll probably relisten to it eventually, and maybe I'll lighten up a bit, but for now the overall impression was positively lukewarm.

[NJ]

A Crow Looked At Me by Mount Eerie - I was very close to not crying. There were certainly plenty moments that hit me hard, but I thought I'd make it through. But no, I broke down after Toothbrush. I had to pause the album for a few minutes. If it hadn't been done well, I could see the very unsubtle lyrics annoying me - typically I prefer more metaphorical poetry. Obviously, that was not the case for this album. It's extremely rough and to-the-point lyrics are what make it so heartbreaking. Every time Phil simply directly said his wife was dead, with no flowery or overly symbolic language to mask it, it really hit hard. It was extremely honest. She was dead, that's all there was too it, and it was heartbreaking. The songs were sometimes too long, I think, and it was simply less interesting and tragic in the middle section from My Chasm through Emptiness pt. 2, in my opinion. It almost started to drag then, though it seems ridiculous to criticize someone who's writing down such revealing thoughts with seemingly no censorship. It's certainly not a very relistenable album - it's very hard-hitting, but because of the repetitive nature, I can imagine it dragging a lot if the listener doesn't fully succumb to its tragedy. I think the latter situation is far more likely, though.

[NJ]

You Won't Get What You Want by Daughters - Very interesting album, but it was not what I expected. For some reason, I had heard it was a rock album (which I guess it technically is), but I didn't know it'd be industrial and noise rock. I think I prefer it this way, though - modern regular rock tends to be bland, and I enjoy noise rock a lot. Anyays, the music on this album could be really beautiful at times, which is a weird way to describe something so violently noisy, but it often was. I wasn't enjoying it for about I think the three songs after Satan in the Wait, but it really picked up again at the end. The lyrics were really dark, but interesting (especially on Ocean Song, I was so immersed in that story). Overall, I'd say this album is fantastic, it's simply solid in every regard.

[NJ]

Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) by Car Seat Headrest - Another great album, I think this one's even greater than the last. I don't know, but the lyrics resonated with me a lot, and I loved the different styles of indie music. The longer tracks didn't bother me at all since I was so absorbed in the storytelling, emotion, and music. I do think the first 2/3rds were better than the last third, but not by that much. The sound wasn't too unique - there were clearly a lot of early 2000s indie influences - but this album is also a rerecording of another nearly a decade old (which I might listen to soon, I'm interested to know the difference). It was heartbreaking and just really pleasant to listen to.

[NJ]

Twin Fantasy (Mirror to Mirror) by Car Seat Headrest - Yeah, I couldn't resist. I honestly don't know which one I like more. I guess the first thing I'll mention is the vocals; I really like the singing on both albums, but sometimes they both suffer from different problems; Face to Face's vocals can sometimes be a little too harsh, almost grating, whereas these vocals are sometimes too faded and smeared in reverb. In general, I think I like Face to Face more musically (the instrumentation is simply crisper and more interesting), but I greatly prefer the content of Mirror to Mirror. By that, I mean I prefer Famous Prophets being 10 minutes long, and I prefer all the lyrics in Mirror to Mirror. The different perspectives are interesting, but Mirror to Mirror feels more personal. Face to Face was a reflection, Mirror to Mirror was him caught in it, and more uncertain. I think I liked this original version a bit more, but both versions are great. I think the rougher instrumentation doesn't matter as much to me as the lyrics and pacing.