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flowerboycaleb · 3 months

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january is usually a pretty meh month when it comes to bunch of great records dropping, but this january might be an exception. plenty of amazing new albums here! especially that new glass beach record which i can already tell is going to be in my rotation for a long time to come. anyways, here are my thoughts on all the albums listed above! to check out my thoughts on some of the songs that dropped this month click here!!! also feel free to follow me on rate your music and twitter <3

plastic death - glass beach

🥇 ALBUM OF THE MONTH

◇ genres: indie rock, art rock, progressive rock I was very unfamiliar with glass beach. I was kinda aware of them, but never really got a chance to dive into the band's music. The hype both leading up to the album and from the first initial impressions of it when it dropped made me check this out. I'm so glad I did. Usually, I'm a bit weary of sprawling, genre-bending albums, but glass beach manages to execute it so perfectly. The band takes inspiration from tons of different places, most notably Radiohead with a lot of art rock instrumentation throughout as well as some of the vocal performances. These never come off as super derivative or anything, at least to my ears. The band manages to take these sounds and shape them into something uniquely theirs. Across the little over an hour runtime glass beach masterfully showcases their strong suits. Very rarely did this album ever lose my attention or ever feel disjointed. Each song had at least one "oh, I wasn't expecting that" moment too. Pretty much every sonic detour the band takes here is a welcome surprise. From the power pop stylings of "puppy" to the screamo-inspired vocals on “slip under the door", this album is full of so many surprises. Lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist J is a key reason why these shifts work so well. She's able to adapt her voice perfectly to everything. From the relatively smaller-scale catchy indie rock or the more grand proggy moments, they're matching it so well. The other members of the band also obviously deserve massive props for this as well. Pulling off an album this ambitious is a tall task, but even after multiple listens, I'm blown away at how cohesive it all sounds. plastic death is one of the finest rock (for lack of a better descriptor) albums in recent memory. I didn't even properly get into how great the lyricism is or just how good the band is at crafting memorable hooks. There is so much to love about this album. Hopefully I'm not speaking too soon, but I can see myself loving this more and more in future listens as the year rolls on. I'll probably also end up giving this a proper, in-depth write-up when it comes time to compile my favorite albums of the year list. I really wanna dive into the lyricism on the album because I think it’s really interesting, but I do need more time with it. Anyway, this album is great!

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Wall of Eyes - The Smile

◇ genres: art rock, post-rock

Not too long after The Smile's debut record, we're getting the follow-up. A lot of the things I loved about A Light for Attracting Attention also apply to Wall of Eyes. It sounds like Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood are having fun making music again. That's not to say the last Radiohead record was bad, I think it's a masterpiece actually, but there was grief and pain around every corner. It feels like they found the fun in making music again once they teamed up with former Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner and formed this band. The sounds featured on both The Smile records are a bit different than what you would hear from any of their previous work. As a MASSIVE Radiohead fan, this is so exciting. Hearing them dive into post-rock, math rock, krautrock, and many different other sounds is so cool. Are they the best representation of all these sounds? Not really, but there's just an air of excitement surrounding these songs. It feels like they're just following what feels right. The soft, bossa nova flavoring of the title track is a good example of that. Yorke's vocals just kinda bounce along in a very satisfying way. Lyrically the song doesn't exactly grab you, but it just feels so good. "Under Our Pillows" is one of my favorite tracks here and is one where you can hear the Krautrock influence. There are so many cool things the band explores here that it's hard to list all of my favorite moments. I love hearing them explore sounds that wouldn't be found on a Radiohead album. My favorite track here is "Bending Hectic" by a pretty wide margin. That's not a knock on the record at all, it's just a testament to how amazing this track is. When it first dropped last summer, I was obsessed with it, and hearing it in the context of this record makes it that much better. This was a really great album!

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ORQUÍDEAS - Kali Uchis

◇ genres: contemporary R&B, latin pop

Like a lot of people, my first introduction to Kali Uchis was through Tyler, the Creator's Flower Boy. Her amazing feature on "See You Again", the album's biggest track, was incredible and one of the most standout things about the entire album. From there I listened to Isolation and have been keeping up with her new releases ever since. She has been incredibly consistent both with her English language albums and her Spanish albums. This new record is one of the latter and it honestly might be my favorite album of hers to date. Everything about this album is just intoxicating. From the hazy opener, "¿Cómo así?, to the bolero stylings of "Te mata", this album just pulls everything off so well. We also have her signature dreamy vocal delivery throughout and it's so beautiful. Most notable on the second song "Me pongo loca." She enlists the help of some other big Latin musicians here and their presence is very welcome here. I was especially impressed by Peso Pluma's feature on the third track. Overall, ORQUÍDEAS might be Kali Uchis' best record to date. Incredibly consistent, excellently produced, and so much fun to listen to.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Obsidian Wreath - Infant Island

◇ genres: screamo, post-metal I always feel the need to make a disclaimer that I feel out of my depth when discussing metal or most other subgenres of it. No matter how much I explore this sound I always feel like I'm on the outside looking in. Anyway, the point is, I don't think I'm the right person to go to for metal opinions. However, I really enjoyed this new Infant Island record. The band shifts from thundering instrumentation with growled vocals to lush, almost atmospheric instrumentation at a moment's notice. I find myself being a big fan of the albums in this genre that offer a decent amount of variety in the instrumentation. It gives the album so much more depth and texture. The musicianship on here is really impressive, but I have to give a special shoutout to the band's drummer. He's doing some crazy things on this album and it made all of these tracks that much more compelling. The lyricism here is what you would expect, but they're delivered in such a way that hits hard. The moments where the band shift into a more blackgaze sound are particularly arresting. I thought this was really good and I enjoy it more every time I revisit it.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Bicycle - Patricia Taxxon

◇ genre: IDM I'm not super familiar with Patricia Taxxon's music overall. I enjoyed Agnes & Hilda a decent amount, but besides that, I'm kinda clueless. From what I can gather, she's a pretty prolific artist with a ton of different projects to her name. After hearing Bicycle, I might be so inclined as to dive into some of those projects! There are some really cool and unique production choices here. Like the metallic clicks on the opener interwoven with some nice synths. That dynamic appears all over the album come to think of it. Thin-sounding snaps and crackles acting as the anchor of the track while something wild happens above it. "Frat Claws" is a great example of this. They also work well on the excellent closer "I Do." It's very lush and ties the album up in such a nice way. My only issues are that sometimes that sound would wear thin for me and the non-instrumental tracks didn't interest me all that much. I do appreciate the direction Taxxon was trying to take them in though. Check this one out if you like cool electronic music or if you're a furry (i may be both or neither, i'll never tell!!!)

listen here: Apple Music (not available) Spotify (not available) Bandcamp SoundCloud (not available) YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Keep It Goin Xav - Xaviersobased

genres: jerk rap, cloud rap, plugg

I found out about this mixtape from the really interesting Pitchfork review of the project by Alphonse Pierre. The way Pierre wrote about it had me interested even though I'm not really familiar with the jerk rap or the plugg scenes of hip hop. Fortunately, I found a lot to enjoy with this mixtape. The production choices were really interesting and created a cool dynamic with Xavier's often lackadaisical delivery. Sometimes that kind of style would wear thin for me, but I can see that being a me thing. This could be the perfect "vibe" album for some.

It's hard to single out a specific track for that reason. Everything kinda flows together in both good and bad ways. The just under 30-minute runtime works in the project's favor because of that. Xavier is really good at making earworms though. The hook on "Ascend" was stuck in my head for days after listening. Not every track has one of those super memorable hooks, which is disappointing, but plenty do. Overall, I didn't adore it as much as Pierre did in his review, but this is one to check out. I feel like Xavier has a ton of potential and is definitely someone to keep an eye on in the future.

listen here: Apple Music (not available) Spotify (not available) Bandcamp (not available) SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Little Rope - Sleater-Kinney

◇ genre: indie rock To preface this, I adore Sleater-Kinney. Their run of albums from Dig Me Out through The Woods is some of the finest indie rock of all time. The band went on hiatus following that record and then returned in 2014 for the run they're on currently. I've heard very mixed things about these post-hiatus albums overall, but I hadn't heard any of them until Little Rope. I enjoyed some of the singles leading up to this record, like "Hell" and "Say It Like You Mean It", but the rest of the album fails to keep that energy going. It isn't a BAD album by any means, it's just ... fine. Occasionally good, but mostly fine and nothing more. You will get some glimpses of their former glory, but they just never take these songs in any new directions. Even the tracks I mentioned earlier don't really live up to the standards set by their best work. They still get super fuzzy and noisy, but they lack the immediacy and the tension of like "The Fox" for example. It feels like they're going through the motions, which sounds fine if you don't think about it too much. A bit disappointed by this one, but with its brief runtime it's worth a shot.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It's Sorted - Cheekface

◇ genres: geek rock, indie rock, new wave

I feel very conflicted about this album, to be honest. Everything on this album is painfully witty. Everything is a joke in some way which gets so exhausting. Most of the songs here are charming and well-performed, but you have to be very, very funny to pull off a full album of this stuff and I don’t think Cheekface pulled it off here. I understand that’s a very subjective thing and if you dig this late-millennial style of humor you’ll probably get a kick out of this!

Some of these songs are pretty amusing though. I really like “I Am Continuing to Do My Thing” which features a jerky, new-wave rhythm to it which I had fun with. I also enjoyed "Popular 2" which has a bit of a power pop thing going on. Most of these songs are structured decently well, but it's just the lyrics that make me roll my eyes. A good bit of this album meditates on fame and success which does provide a sense of cohesion, but I just find it hard for me to really connect with these songs. I realized a few songs in that I'm probably not the target audience for this. I'm sure if I was like 30 or so I would have a ball with this album, but as it stands now I would much rather listen to a They Might Be Giants album if I wanted to scratch the itch this record is attempting to.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud (not available) YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

New Last Name - Courting

◇ genres: post-punk revival, indie rock

This is such a big step down from their last album. I only heard the single "Flex" going into New Last Name and it's easily the best track here. The rest of the album features the big choruses reminiscent of 90s alt-rock hits that were present on both the band's previous album Guitar Music and the aforementioned "Flex", but unlike those most of the songs on the whole are just one big mess. The verses usually sound bad, both because of the off-putting production and the weak writing. One of the worst offenders here is "We Look Good Together (Big Words)" which sounds like they're doing a parody of The 1975 and I really don't like The 1975!!! That track features one of the few forays into indietronica territory and it never sounds very good. Even if the song structure and almost everything else is lacking, the band can still pull off a really good chorus here and there. The problem is they aren't worth sitting through the rest of the tracks to get through. Besides "Flex", I did find some enjoyment in "Emily G" and the last two tracks. Mostly because they reminded me of their last album. I'm all for bands evolving and trying different things, but New Last Name just feels misguided. Hoping they can come together for a better follow-up.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Saviors - Green Day

◇ genres: alternative rock, pop punk

Green Day has been in a very rough spot for quite a while now. They've been seemingly unable to recapture that "magic" that was present in their earlier work. They've been failing at diving into new sounds, failing to rehash the old ones in an interesting way, and failing to make a single great cohesive album ever since like 2009. Coming on the heels of perhaps their worst record to date, Father of All, the expectations for this album were in the mud and that's putting it nicely. Fortunately, this isn't the band at their worst, but it might be the band at their most boring. The instrumentation is a return to form compared to their last record, but that comes at the cost of rehashing old ideas. There are some decently clever songwriting moments here and a lot of the big choruses are enjoyable enough to at least remind me why middle school Caleb loved this band so much, but even that works against the album's favor. Why would I listen to this if I was in a Green Day mood and not Dookie or American Idiot or Insomniac? I will say there is some really good stuff here. "Dilemma", "Look Ma, No Brains!", and the title track are highlights and some of the best stuff they've done in years.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Letter to Self - Sprints

◇ genres: garage punk, post-punk Let me preface this by saying that I think Sprints has a ton of potential. Unfortunately their debut, for the most part, doesn't capitalize on that potential. This is for a variety of reasons. For starters, the production of this record really doesn't do them any favors. The songs that SHOULD have a punch don't have any whatsoever. The noisy guitars lack the bite that they should have and mostly just kinda whimper along. The vocals are mixed decently, but they still sound far too clean for what I think the band was going for. Another big issue is the actual songs themselves. They're either complete non-starters, or they abruptly end as they're picking up steam, or they drive a hook straight into the ground. The second track "Heavy" is a key example of a song being cut off way too abruptly. It's one of the standout tracks on the record, but it definitely still had some legs. "Adore Adore Adore" is pretty easily the biggest highlight here. It's groovy, the vocals are good, and the chorus is satisfying ... more of this, please!!! I wanted to love this album, but it has way too many flaws. Still, I have high hopes for the Dublin rockers. Saddle them up with a better producer for the next one and see how it goes!!!

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

INSANO - Kid Cudi

◇ genres: pop rap, trap

I really want the best for Kid Cudi. Man on the Moon: The End of Day is legitimately one of the most influential hip hop records of the 2000s. You can hear its influence throughout the 2010s, especially in the emo-rap scene. Unfortunately, pretty much every record he's released since then has been a massive step down from that record (besides the relatively big bright spot in KIDS SEE GHOSTS). INSANO continues that trend, but to an almost embarrassing degree. He enlists DJ Drama to try and hype these tracks up, but even he can't save this thing. The production and beats on this album are the exact opposite of what the album title suggests. They're so painfully boring and Cudi's writing here is, as I said earlier, embarrassing. Cudi proudly raps on the opener "Why they love these raps, haha, to most of these lames I'm Papa." which is just so fucking embarrassing. That's the one word I can use to describe this record. I hope the next one will be good, but judging by this album and his track record overall, that doesn't seem likely.

listen here: Apple Music Spotify Bandcamp SoundCloud YouTube ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ thank u for reading :3

#month in review #music #2024 #rateyourmusic #glass beach #the smile #kali uchis #infant island #patricia taxxon #xaviersobased #sleater kinney #cheekface #courting #green day #sprints #kid cudi

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