Album of the Year 2020

 It's been a while :)

Tough one, but its Tough Love, closely followed by Knuckle Puck's 20/20

Proper Dose

Hey folks,

It's been a while, but Proper Dose has inspired me to write another album review.

I love this CD. It’s almost everything I could have wanted out of The Story So Far. I love everything about it. The production, the mixing, the tone on his voice, his angsty stoner lyrics, the guitar riffs, the drum fills, the sick bass lines. I relate to so many things on this CD, and I know that lots of people out there will too. The CD doesn’t do anything particularly innovative or novel. It’s a pretty boiler plate pop punk/ emo CD. It’s got interesting guitar riffs and fills. They do this cool thing where they will even shift the guitar line from chorus to chorus to keep it interesting. But its more like it’s a great distillation of pop punk with an emo influence. Petulant, sad, confident, resigned, defiant and still hopeful. Everything just fits so well together. The instruments don’t ever stand out a ton, but they are all so talented when focused in on. The drum fills, the guitar lines and licks, the bass lines. It’s the beauty of simplicity.

Song by Song

Proper Dose: the guitar tone transition on the chorus is so good. “barely focused anymore” is so relatable. The drums during the second verse does this cool back and forth thing that I really like.  How the drums match up hitting with “going through the motions”.

Keep This Up: the way he sings “I haven’t talked to my brother in over a year, I hope that hes still proud”. The guitar “solo”/bridge is so quick and fun. “My pessimistic views, stem from all the drugs I use” is so catchy and relatable as well. Parker can really sing too. “nodding off now!” at the end of the song is a tough note to hit.

Out of It: the backing vocal in Out of It is so good. Its kinda tinny, but it makes it really easy to sing along to. “and leave me alone!” is sung so well, man can he sing. “My appropriate opiate, has me out of it, out of it” is so catchy, I’m surprised no one thought of it before.

Take Me as You Please: a little change of pace, but still so TSSF. Love the down tempo. Parker’s voice is so unique and strong. Its impossible to try and sound like him. Some of the lyrics are kinda cheesy (don’t turn on the light, youll burn out the bulb, then ill have to buy another), but its all a metaphor for his relationship with this person. Its his simplicity in lyrics but also with deeper, unspoken meaning that makes him so good.

Let It Go: Another down tempo song, but still upbeat with the whole band in it. I love this song cause I’m not even sure what it’s about. I love that he writes songs that have so much emotion, but he doesn’t come out and say exactly what he’s feeling. He’s so good at painting the emotional picture of how he feels.

Upside Down: Another song about life on the road. I’m not in a band, but the song is more than just being in a band on the road. It’s about having to do something that you are burned out on. He loved it at first but now is even worth it?

When I Fall: Maybe one of my favorite pop punk songs since “Serpents” from Neck Deep’s “Life’s Not Out to Get You” or “Eastbound and Down” from WSTR’s “Red, Green or In Between”. The whole song is just so upbeat and good. The chorus just makes me want to sing along. The way drums pick up at 1:00 in the second verse, combining with the guitars is so good. Then the second chorus, they switch up the drums, and its perfect. Then the really short guitar solo is really fun, because they don’t do many of them. It’s simple, but it doesn’t need to be anything crazy. Then the way they end it with the outro and the fading “hold me down, help me drown” vocals. I’m such a sucker, and I love it. Mimi said “it makes me feel younger again” and I can’t help but agree.

Need to Know: also an amazing song just from the jump. Love the idea of putting the acoustic guitar strums in the chorus. The drums drive this song so well. Love the choppy guitar lines too, and then the break into the open strums in the chorus. Really makes the song feel like it goes fast and then open up and relaxes. Then the outro part where it breaks down and just does the easy outro of “save my soul”.  

Line: I’m a sucker for call backs, so the call back to the line “I feel your hand inside of mine, no I don’t never mind” is something I’m into. And then just the subtle add of “Oooo” at the end. I also like the different drums they used on this song.

Growing On You: the essential slow song of the CD. Probably my least favorite, but its still good. Parker actually tries to sing “nice” here too. I think it’s going to be one of those songs that grows on me  (lol). I think it also perfectly sets up the last song to really go out on a high note.

Light Year: great ending song. Goes out on a song that makes you want to restart the CD. “how did I get here? It feels like a light year” is a standout line to me. I feel that in my soul, mostly about my life. The first few notes he sings are pitch perfect too. The guitars are so good on this song, their tone is perfect to match the tone of the song. “Stepping outside now, leave it behind now, come down, let it all out” is so good. Love the line “I should have no fear, yet my hands are slick” is a perfect embodiment of him shaping the mood by not talking about stuff directly. Huge sucker for guitar arpeggios and they do it so well here. And then they just let it fade out. You end up feeling like he let it all out.  

blackbear

blackbear album "digital druglord" is fire

that is all

That's The Spirit

As a huge CYB, SS, TIAH and Sempiternal fan, I wasn't excited going into this album. But I don't know, something really caught me about this album. There is a lot of emotion that went into it. There are still heavy guitar tones in there, they are just spaced out by more mid paced, slower intricate guitar. Oli still screams a little, yells a good deal, but he does mostly sing. It's certainly different. I didn't really even think I'd like it, but I don't know, something really clicked with me. I keep thinking back to how Oli says that "screaming couldn't capture what emotions he was trying to convey" and I keep thinking that is more true with every listen. When he does scream a bit, it makes it so much more impactful.

It's worth noting that every song is around the 3:30-4 minute mark. On Suicide Season, the songs were all longer. I kinda think the longer songs allowed for more complex songs and structures, but each second of this album feels like it has more going on. Each second is more thought over, and honed, and perfected.

I wouldn't even say I loved any song on first listen either. But they grew on me. I started realizing how much I was singing Throne to myself, or the stupid catchy "true friends stab you in the front".

Suicide Season and There is a Hell will always hold a special place in my heart. They are phenomenal albums that radically altered the metalcore scene. But now that BMTH is done with that genre, we just have to look to other, younger bands to do so. People grow up, people mature, they mellow out. The party-ers of "Diamonds are Forever" are gone, as they should be. You can't stay young forever. I think SS came out of a youthful energy that they just don't have anymore. That makes me sad, but letting yourself wallow in the past diminishes the present. I just tell myself to more forward as well.

Favorite Songs: Doomed, Throne, Avalanche, Drown, Blashpemy

The Story So Far

The boys have done it again. Top notch.

2015 is Insane So Far

Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Action Bronson - Mr Wonderful
Dance Gavin Dance - Instant Gratification
Earl Sweatshirt- I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside
Tyler the Creator- Cherry Bomb

Chief Keef; In a New Light

Chief Keef - Nobody

Found on Rap Genius:

"Following up on the proto-Nietzschian approach first propagated in Hold My Liquor, Nobody finds Keef building on the feelings of emptiness and materialism. The auto-tuned vocals remove the sense of emotion from Keef’s singing, while at the same time adding a layer of vulnerability that speaks to the nihilistic undercurrent that informs Keef’s lyrics. West’s auto-tuned backing vocals only serve to embellish this paradoxical dichotomy, at once glorifying the accumulation of wealth, while at the same time bemoaning a lack of moral direction.

Nobody represents Keef in an existential crisis, torn between two worlds. From a post-modernist perspective, Keefs lyrics and singing exemplify a young man stripped of his values, a de-structured world without meaning and guidance. Nobody understands keef, just as nobody knew the real him in Hold my Liquor. Keef is at once emotionally defenseless, compensating with visceral, tangible shows of force. Covered in a facade of brutality, Nobody really represents a stripped down version of keef, a hollow core masked only by a thin, malleable shell. Nobody isn’t a song, that’s why people are confused; it’s simply an extremely pleasurable audio experience, vibrating at the same frequency of peace & happiness while juxtaposing the ideas of loneliness & depression, ‘nobody’. 

The hum is a basic instinct of expression and desire that any human can do, and at the core level is the basis of music made from within. The autotune represents the reverse of that while still maintaining the similarity of making something sound pleasant, it is a futuristic practice opposed to the hum that began from early human development. the combination of all these factors and more are not unlike the cells which make the organs forming an organism. Nobody is a powerful few minutes of bliss, & often those who are angry by themselves reflect back on positiveness with a negative light." Source

Songs DJ Mustard Totally Gets Right

1. Don't Tell Em - Jeremiah
2. Numb - August Alisna
3. Paranoid
4. Rack City (Remix)
5. My Ni**a (original and remix) - YG
6. Who do You Love - YG
7. Burn Rubber
8. You and Your Friends - Wiz Kahlifa
9. Show Me - Kid Ink

Really Solid Pop Punk

"there's nothing wrong with Ohio...except the snow and the rain"

Let The Ocean Take Me

Ahren's vocals are just too good. Such a cool cadence and tone.

Like Home

Combined with "Gone Home", this is a very interesting piece of art about houses and our relationship with spaces that we claim for our own. Emotionally powerful.

Finally Get It

Trying to get my thoughts together about why I think this album is so genius. 

It's different. Very different. In the very beginning of the cd he says "the isn't for the radio. But they play it anyway, that's just the way it goes".  He took that to heart. There aren't many radio bangers on this cd. Started from the bottom is a really sparse and chill beat to be the lead song. Most of the songs on the cd are very grating upon first listen. "Worst behavior", "305 to my city" and "connect" were awful at first. After several listens, they have so much character that they are among my favorites. 

Lots of trap influence on this cd. The symbols on "started from the bottom" have this really cool crash pattern where they don't quite resolve during the chorus and it ends up sounding string out. 

This cd seems to have drug influences on it. On one song he even says "im peaking im peaking". But the whole thing sounds like its for ears that have a couple to drink  and took a couple blunts to the done. It's that scattered and tweaks feeling that shows itself a lot on the cd, including all the high hat symbol hits, and the fake ones. 

He is more drake than other CDs. He's croony and audacious at the same. But this is the juxtaposition we have in life. Good isn't good unless there's bad to compare it to. "Worst behavior" is sandwiched by the most tender songs on the cd, maybe that he's ever done. 

"The boy" is drake, but it may be more accurately how he wishes he could be. Nothing was the same is referring to how he can't be that person anymore. That there's stuff that's happened that he can't change. "Nothing was the same" the title has several different meanings in this light. Knowing drake, it's simultaneously good and bad. It's great he's famous. He loves it. But it comes a price. This album is his mostly positive reflections on fame but how he can't stop what he's set in motion. 

Maybe the nothing that is the same is his music. Maybe he's telling us he's done being the same. And I commend that. This cd is different than his others and this is an indication it'll keep changing. 

He had the good idea to make this cd another deep cut. Part of my favorite aspect of take care was the length. It allowed us to meet drake and reall yet to know him, even of it took a while. That's because he's not simple. 

The album art is part of why has stick with me about the cd. It appears as of its a reference to biggie's"ready to die" cd. A baby on the cd has a lot of implications because of other CDs that have had babies on it: biggie, illmatic and more recently, Kendrick. The look skyward, looking at what's coming, not paying attention to everyone watching him, only his goals(what he's looking up to). He was face on in his first cd, slightly askewed on take care and now he's a portrait. He's had a transformation. He's not the same. But we already knew that. 

Really Good

Didn't expect to like it that much.Thought I was over them, but not. God damn can Jeremy McKinnon write a pop punk song.

I think it helps that it felt like a real genuine album. Not Produced, but right from the heart. I think ADTR has always been about that, but it really shines through on this album.

Why I Love Mac Miller

All in 2013:

Didn't think I'd like this that much

Really mature, introspective, and thoughtful. The music is spacey, sparse and airy, but still very refined. It's got a hazy, drug induced mental fog feeling to it, but one that has lead to inspiration, clarity and an epiphany.

My favorite line is still "and my experience with touching my epiphany in color form"

Favorite songs: Star Room, I'm Not Real, Bird Call, I Am Who Am, Objects in the Mirror, Red Dot Music, Watching Movies, Suplexes Inside of Complexes and Duplexes, Aquarium, Youforia, Goozebumpz and O.K.

If I had to chose one song to die to, "Youforia" ranks up there as a contender.

Album of the Year for 2012

It took a while (mostly cause I'm lazy lol) but I've finally picked a winner for the album of the year award, from this list of candidates.

Kendrick Lamar's "Good Kid. Maad City".

I don't think I have to talk to much about why this CD is so good. I have written my thoughts down here, which I will continue to update as I think of more stuff.

Runner Up

idk. There are a lot of CDs I like, but I think this technically the "best" one that I know a lot of. Channel Orange was good, but it didn't stick with me that much. Granted, I don't listen to this much anymore, and I listen to Cruel Summer still a lot, I think this is a better CD. Simliar thing with the Parallax. I'm sure its better than this one, but I know this CD almost back to front because its so good.

The Greatest Generation

The sadness of the greatest generation:

They were the greatest. They fought Hitler. They defeated the Axis.
They lead us against the Soviets
and now they are dead and old like everyone else

Man Wonder Years just fucking kill it. Every CD is a classic

WOLF

Tyler the Creator's newest album WOLF is a superb album. It's also a concept album. In the previous albums, Goblin and Bastard Tyler has had been in therapy with Dr TC, who is revealed to be Tyler's imagination at the end of Goblin. In Wolf, it starts out by introducing the listener to Sam, who is aggressive and violent. Sam is introduced to Wolf, who is shy, artistic and introverted, by Dr TC. All of these characters are at Camp Flog Gnaw. However, I believe that Camp Flog Gnaw is actually all in Tyler's head.

One of the best lines comes at the end of the album WOLF when Tyler (who is probably Sam in this song) says, "If you think I'm fucking koo-koo, Try talking to my shrink then" (which is a reference to the albums Goblin and Bastard) and then Dr TC goes "hey", like saying "what's up? why did you say that?" to which Sam responds, "Bitch" and Dr TC says, "I'm right here" (reminding Tyler that Dr TC is at Camp Flog Gnaw) and then Wolf asks, "Yo who's that?" (which is a very clever turn, because we dont know if Wolf is talking about Dr TC or Salem. We're not really sure that any of these people are real, so this may be Tyler's egos finding out about each other), but Sam responds, "Thats Salem, That's my girlfriend, You stay the fuck away from her alright?". But We're not sure that Salem is real either. Iff Camp Flog is Tyler's imagination, a world entirely in his head, then the characters in it are all himself as well. That would mean Salem would be based off of someone, but its entirely his own construction. This would mean he's making up this girl, and he's basically worshipping someone who doesn't exist.

He's conflicted about these parts of his life knowing about each other and interacting. They're all different sides of Tyler's personality, they all embody him in some way. That's why every song is from a character's point of view, but has Tyler's own personal life intertwined with it.

Favorite songs are either Rusty, Slater or Bimmer. But Jamba, Cowboy, Domo23, Pigs, Tamale, and even Trashwang are really good as well. Just a winner of a CD,

Good

How active is Kendrick in the gang banging aspect of his homies? How much does he suggest, how much does he go along with it? Does he object to what his friends do? How much does this change how we think of him?

Specifics play a big part in the aesthetic of the album. His mom says "you won't pass on to the next grade" but then takes a point to stop and go back and say, "the 11th grade.". How does that change our perception of the album? It creates a concreteness to the album. We know the kid in the 11th grade. A kid "in the next grade" isn't as real to us. His dad asks for "Dominos", not pizza. When they hop out of the car at the end of "drank", you can hear the door ajar noise in the background as K-Dot and the other kids shoot at others, and its a stark moment of contrast. It draws a direct juxtaposition of the normal door ajar sound with the abnormal gunshots. "Me an my niggas, four deep in a white toyota. quarter tank of gas, a pistol and orange soda". He creates an image in your head with that description. He nonchalantly refers to a pistol, in between the mundane "quarter tank of gas" and "orange soda". It's an image that in conjured in your head, but it neither portrays it positively or negatively. It just is. That's one of the strong points of the album: the ambiguity of it. He doesn't say he's awesome for having a pistol, nor does he say he's foolish. Its just what is happening. Lamar allows us to decide for ourselves, and without authorial guidance, that decision isn't easy to make.

What effect do the lapses in continuity affect the album? Are the skits foreshadowing, or are the songs the emotional preludes?

His parents' voices are a constant grounding effect on him. They call and he remembers that he's not just him and the homies in the world.

Good art doesn't have to be aware of the context it exists it. It is often a product of a larger socioeconomic cultural trend and a well developed piece of art can be an embodiment of certain aspects of that culture. This CD lives in a time after gangster rap. A time after NWA. It's ghosts haunt this CD, as little homages creep up here and there to remind us that a false golden city had been constructed by Edgar Wright and O'Shea Jackson. They made it up. Not that life wasn't hard, but the way of life they glorified didn't exist. But it became a cultural idol, promoted by white people to sell records that fetishized violence. Now, that violence has been internalized into the poor community, uneducated enough to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Trap Makes Great Rap Beats