Listed below are the best albums of the 2020s (so far) as calculated from their overall rankings in over 58,000 greatest album charts. (Chart last updated: 4 hours ago).
"Tasty mixture of Latin rhythms. I think there is a search for conceptual unity but that is overcome by the high points of the album, which surprise by their symmetry: Intro and Outro and mid (Vaya con Dios; Qué te Pedi; Quiero Sentirme Bien; Telepatía)."Reply
"There is an auteur spirit to “The Gods We Can Touch”. Aurora frames the album with explorations of femininity and tributes to pagan deities. Her fae voice compliments the vision quite well giving a bit of magic to every line. The concept's limitation is its volume. The project never leaves a midd...""There is an auteur spirit to “The Gods We Can Touch”. Aurora frames the album with explorations of femininity and tributes to pagan deities. Her fae voice compliments the vision quite well giving a bit of magic to every line. The concept's limitation is its volume. The project never leaves a middle volume and that hinders. If it were quieter, it could develop a real sense of intimacy and if it was louder, it could be a ground proclamation. In the middle, it’s not as potent as it could be."[+]Reply
"I may need to give this more time, but right now, it's a bit underwhelming. And look, following up Psychic--an album whose greatness has only become clearer with time--was always going to be a daunting, if not insurmountable task. But setting aside how it stacks up to its predecessor, Spiral is a...""I may need to give this more time, but right now, it's a bit underwhelming. And look, following up Psychic--an album whose greatness has only become clearer with time--was always going to be a daunting, if not insurmountable task. But setting aside how it stacks up to its predecessor, Spiral is an album lacking an ethos. It's stylistically in line with Darkside's previous work, with the same virtuosity and musical imagination that one might expect from the duo. Yet, it often feels directionless and uninterested in its own existence. Hopefully, I'll come around, because I very much want to like this record."[+]Reply
"So my copy of Peasant on vinyl arrived the other day, it's pretty cool – I really like Dawson and it's nice to have a slice of him in my collection. This one ain't getting in though, it's his weakest project in a while. The whole trilogy idea was always a pretty stale threadbare linking of his pr...""So my copy of Peasant on vinyl arrived the other day, it's pretty cool – I really like Dawson and it's nice to have a slice of him in my collection. This one ain't getting in though, it's his weakest project in a while. The whole trilogy idea was always a pretty stale threadbare linking of his projects, but it would be justified if The Ruby Cord – as the first two in their own respects accomplish admirably – offered a meaningful commentary about humanity's prospects and what that means for us now. Oddly, despite Dawson's characteristically shrewd and perspicacious social observations, it doesn't whatsoever. Or, if it does I have not been able to extract it with the same didactic ease with which Peasant and 2020 provide; this album loses itself in abstraction. It seems that Dawson didn't have anything trenchant to say about the 26th century after-all.
The essential quality of 2017's Peasant is that the "community" is insular, founded on xenophobia, and resistant to the encroachment of the stranger. The hypothetical bard is thus traversing through this social landscape "in search of the Holy Grail of human decency." In 2020, people share the same spaces (they are all still British; they are neighbours), but there is no more "community." Dawson talks about class stratification, manufactured consent, and the lingering shadows of empire, but it is a guttural experience of alienation that plagues the album: "I know I must be paranoid / But I feel the atmosphere / 'Round here is growing nastier / People don't care anymore."
As 500 years from now will prove – in Dawson's mind – there will never come a techno-utopia for humanity. Instead, if I am to force it into some narrative continuity with these two prior projects – as Dawson wants us to do – the slow death of community will reach a natural conclusion and those who still linger will be rendered truly and literally alone: Hermits in a dying land approaching extinction. It's an almost Fisher King-esque tale, but calling it that would only imply that there is a better album about a 26th century Fisher King dystopia where our wounded spirituality, atrophied community and racist demons manifest a literal T. S. Elliot wasteland, this time of a distant post-post-modernity.
Despite spots of intriguing musicality, nice production and an otherwise not unpleasant listening experience, this is conceptually bankrupt.
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"As of me writing this (February 1, 2022), this is my favorite album released in 2022. All but three songs ("The Man You Love to Hate," "The Death of Magic Thinking," and "Trick Out the Truth") are great, and it's on its way to becoming a classic (to me, at least)."Reply
"79/100 Daugther is shaped little by little, deviating from their main flaw that has always followed them: being on the edge of the generic. Their best album to date Key songs : Be On Your Way / Party / Swim Back / Neptune Other ratings: - If You Leave (2013) 75 - Not To Disappear (2016) 66""79/100
Daugther is shaped little by little, deviating from their main flaw that has always followed them: being on the edge of the generic. Their best album to date
Key songs : Be On Your Way / Party / Swim Back / Neptune
Other ratings:
- If You Leave (2013) 75
- Not To Disappear (2016) 66"[+]Reply