[Snupes]

Ariel Pink - pom pom: Well, it’s not quite what I was expecting from being called “avant-garde”, but it was certainly an experience. In fact, I’d say it’s probably the best album I’ve heard in quite a while, I seriously loved it. It was bizarre in places, absurd in others, and rather pleasant at times, even. I wish it was all as experimental as parts of the opening track, “Plastic Raincoats in the Pig Parade”, or as bizarre as the middle of “Dinosaur Carebears”, but nonetheless I lurv. “Four Shadows” is grimdark shitlord stuff in the best way, abstract enough that I have no idea what he’s talking about but foreboding enough for it to still have an eerie atmosphere. “Not Enough Violence” was all over the place and pretty strange, but not nearly as straight-up ridiculous as “Nude Beach a G-Go”.

Then there’s ones that I for some reason find hilarious, namely “Jell-o” and “Sexual Athletics”. “Black Ballerina” had a lot of promise in its nonsense rhymes-for-the-sake-of-rhyming verses, and I wish he’d kept up an entire song of that. I actually love that he seems to often just write whatever’s on the top of his head, not always caring too much about what he’s singing about as long as it sounds good or interesting. Finally, it finishes with “Dayzed Inn Daydreams”, which is a redux of a song from an earlier release, but much better and surprisingly pretty. I can see why this album’s pretty divisive, though, and I was the only one of the ppl I listened with that actually enjoyed it. And enjoy it quite considerably I did. I think this is one of the rare times I wholeheartedly agree with a Pitchfork review; they even said he's "the stylistic next-of-kin to Frank Zappa: satirical, divisive, and more interested in terraforming genres than neatly deconstructing them", which is actually more or less something that came to my mind as I was listening. In particular, songs like "Negativ Ed" and "Nude Beach a G-Go" brought Zappa to the forefront of my mind, and they happen to be the same songs Pitchfork listed for the same comparison. I'm glad I wasn't alone in that thought. There were some pretty boring songs as well ("Goth Bomb", "Picture Me Gone"), but I loved the rest so much that I don’t even care. I think I’ll probably listen again soon.

[Crudblud]

Listen to Farrah Abraham's My Teenage Dream Ended, it's unintentionally hilarious and oddly fascinating in ways I think you'll appreciate.

[Snupes]

^ I shall try to tonight


Taylor Swift - 1989: Now this was *very* hit and miss. I bought it on a whim a couple weeks ago because I saw it and realized I’d never really heard much of Taylor Swift before, while hearing some good things about the album. Finally decided to listen, and at least I can say that—based on this album—she’s better than I expected. Though I also know that this album’s supposed to be a bit of a change for her, so. A lot of the tracks are standard pop, at least enjoyably so, but several are great deviations that are wonderful songs on their own. In particular, the Jack Antonoff-produced “Out of the Woods” is seriously really great. Not exactly new territory lyric-wise, but the production is great and so is Taylor’s singing. Actually, that’s one thing I took away from this; she is a really excellent singer. The next song is “This Love”, which is just…seriously beautiful. If she moved on completely to this style, I would buy all of her albums from that point onward. Her delivery on the word “dead” in the chorus alone gave me chills. Finally, the closing track “Clean”, produced by Imogen Heap, is the highlight of it all. This would go right with “This Love” in that new style. It’s a whole song basically comparing relationships to drug addiction and it’s so weirdly great, so downtempo and pretty for such a bleak subject. The only other honourable mention is “Wildest Dreams”, really. Most of what’s left is still pretty fun pop, so I didn’t mind sitting through it; there’s really only a handful of songs I didn’t enjoy at least a bit. The opening track is the worst, it’s all uphill from there.

[Ghost of V]

Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen.  Try to give it a listen. It was released as Two Wheels Good in the US for reasons. I'm interested in what you'd think of this album. I think it's brilliant. It's a jazzy pop album, and it has a very unique feel to it. I think you'd enjoy it.

[Snupes]

Farrah Abraham - My Teenage Dream Ended: What the hell. I don’t even know what to think. This was so bad, but it was really, really interesting. There seemed to be so little understanding of how music functions as a whole, just random meshes of standard sounds and failed attempts at electronic “drops” and crescendos, and because of that it was just infinitely more attention-grabbing than if this were actually made by decent producers. How bad is it that I actually enjoyed a good portion of the tracks for how bizarre they were? It’s like a Frankenstein’s monster of pop music. I can’t even say what I enjoyed or hated because I can’t tell where the “ironic” enjoyment ends and the genuinely-interested enjoyment begins. What a fucking album.

[Shane]

The Room of music?

[Shane]

What an album, Mark

[Snupes]

Walk the Moon - Talking Is Hard: With this album, I think Walk the Moon establishes themselves as one of my favourite bands. They are amazing. They manage to balance rock, pop, interesting music and lyrics while actually making good music, rather than failing at juggling them all near-flawlessly. Overall this is way better than their debut, Walk the Moon, but I just can’t help but be disappointed that they didn’t have anything as amazing as “Iscariot”. That’s a high bar to set for me, because I love the literal shit out of that song, but oh well. It’s still a really grat album. To be honest, there probably were songs that were just as good, but today has been major shit from start and even more so to finish, and I think that tainted my listening, so I may revise this another day when I relisten. So for now, my favourites are “Up 2 U” and “Spend Your $$$”, vaguely-ironically the two with the shittiest titles. They’re not a huge leap over the other songs, all of which are almost just as amazing (save for the last two), but noticeably enough.

so yea gud muzik pls moar

[Roundy]

Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother: This was…interesting, to say the least. In a good way, but not a particularly amazing way in my opinion. “Atom Heart Mother” and “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” were interesting to listen to, but aren’t really tracks I feel any desire to listen to again. That’s not to say they were a bad experience—they were quite good—but mostly as a sort of curiosity. “If” was really pleasant and “Summer ‘68” was very nice as well (not as much so lyrically, but who cares), and surprisingly I preferred those two to the two big tracks. I definitely preferred The Piper at the Gates of Dawn to this album, though, and probably A Saucerful of Secrets as well. So yeah.

I know I'm late to comment on this but oh well.  I happen to really like the title work but not to the degree I do a lot of other Pink Floyd stuff.  "Summer '68" on the other hand is one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs and their most underrated imo.  I like "If" too but "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" is just a bit too out there for my tastes.

[Snupes]

Porter Robinson - Worlds: This was much more amazing than I expected from what I heard about it. I expected fun electro-dance songs, not…this. Not a heavy dream pop (sort-of-)concept album. A gorgeous tale of a world (or multiple worlds?) that has overcome and succumb to many tragedies, that has eventually become deserted and lifeless, inhabited by a single machine, conscious all alone on its planet. I felt like I had a glimpse to a far-away part of the universe, as if this world was real and I was actually witnessing the final moments of any sort of consciousness inhabiting it. It was happy. It was sad. It was a bittersweet adventure.

Now, obviously, I just have a way overactive imagination and I’m not sure the album’s affected anyone else as much as it affected me. In reality, I’m probably having an emotional high, an overzealous respite from the harshness of real life, over a mediocre album, but man. This inspired all sorts of feelings inside of me that I haven’t felt in a long time. An actual creative burst, a desire to create and explore, and to feel. The emotions it’s roused probably won’t last past sleep-time, after which I’ll descend back into numb depression, but I feel incredibly moved by this work just feeling these again. Dream pop used to always be my safe haven—I’d retreat into Owl City, The Sound of Arrows, Frou Frou, Azure Ray…—and this made me remember what it was like to get away from reality for an hour and think I’m happy and safe again.

Sorry for the therapy session, I didn’t intend for this when I started writing this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the bizarre way this album has briefly made me feel like I’m alive again. It’s just a gorgeous album; mostly gone are the harsh “complextro” sounds that Porter Robinson is known for. Instead they give way to dreamy melodies and veils of hazy storytelling that says so much while saying so little. I don’t want to belittle any songs, all but “Polygon Dust” are fantastic (and even that one is still good), but my favourites are “Sad Machine” (with vocals by Avanna), “Fellow Feeling” and the gorgeous closer “Goodbye to a World” that actually made me cry for the end of a journey I didn’t actually have.

I bought this album off of Amazon two days ago on a random impulse brought on by the album cover and despite the overall consensus I’d briefly glimpsed, and I’m glad I did. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to relive this experience as fully as I just did, but if I can then I’m overjoyed to have my safe haven again. If not, well, I’m more than grateful for the brief return I got. I forgot what it was like to really feel.

[Snupes]

KONGOS - Lunatic: Half of this album is very strong, the other half is fairly weak. It’s interesting hearing what weird indie rock is like in South Africa (the album’s genre is listed as “Kwaito”, hell if I know if that’s accurate or not), and it’s pretty damn intense in a great way sometimes. Namely “Come with Me Now”, which is my favourite. They can do pretty as well, though, as “As We Are” proves. Good stuff.

Lights - Little Machines: Doesn’t quite reach the high bar that Siberia set for me, but it’s nice to hear Lights back at her synthpop form. Her foray into heavier electronic stuff was far better than I expected, but even if I am slightly let down at how safe this album is, it’s still really nice to have seeing as Owl City is deciding not to be good anymore. Synthy Lights can sort of fill that void, especially in songs like “Portal”. My favourite here is “Muscle Memory”, which is really sad but lovely. Tied for second are “Portal”, “How We Do It” and the purely lovely “Don’t Go Home Without Me”, which gave me a flutter in my heart I haven’t felt in a long time, not since first hearing Fun.’s “The Gambler”

Angels & Airwaves: I haven’t listened to Love, Part One and Love, Part Two in their entirety in quite a while, so I’m not sure how to compare this to them, but it feels like an anomaly from what I know of AVA. What I know of them is grand, overdramatic space rock chock-full of epic themes and way over-aggrandized tales of love, spirituality and being kind of nervous and stuff. It was great. This album, however, is far more grounded. It’s still a bit out-there, but it feels less inspired in parts. The Love series made me feel like Tom DeLonge genuinely believed his music was some incredible message that had to be sung to the world. This seems more like a typical album with more typical singing.

That said, there is some real good here. “Tunnels” and its one-tone pounding drum throughout the song was a pretty great reimagining of their music, and “Kiss with a Spell” marks the first time I can think of that I’ve really liked a chorus more than a song itself. The real highlight for me, though, is the closing track, “Anomaly”. It’s got a small hint of the space rock/electronic vibe they have, but it’s way more stripped down and bare. Not about vast themes, just a simple written story about being nervous about falling in love. I like it a lot.

Imagine Dragons - Smoke + Mirrors: At the start I was worried, but damn this was a solid album. Not quite as musically varied as Night Visions, where basically every song was an experiment, but really, really good nonetheless. It’s a little more consistent, but definitely has its weird moments (the slow, deepness of “Gold” and the heaviness of “I’m So Sorry”). I don’t understand why this band gets such bad reviews, I was sorta shocked when I saw the scores they got on Metacritic. I don’t particularly care, it just baffles me. Oh well. I’ll keep on enjoying them. My favourites were “Gold”, “I’m So Sorry”, “Hopeless Opus” and the magnificent closing track “The Fall”. They seem to be really good at closing albums. The bonus tracks weren’t amazing. The only ones really worth the listen are “Second Chances” and “Warriors”. While the latter is a bit tainted for me by being written for and about a League of Legends championship, taken on its own it’s a pretty damn good song.

[Snupes]

Lorde - Pure Heroine: Three songs in and I already knew this album was what I’d worried it would be, given what I’d heard of Lorde and heard from her: pretentious, not as “forward” or “progressive” as it thinks it is, and lyrically immature. Then “Buzzcut Season” onward happened and wow, this is a fantastic album. Lorde and her attitude and pretension still annoy me, but I can put that aside to appreciate a really good record. It grates a bit when she thinks she’s making profound statements with a bit of sass (“I’m kinda over getting told to throw my hands up in the air…so there”), but the music is wonderful, really pretty and her vocals are marvelous. Plus a lot of the lyrics are good (I'm particularly fond of "We live in cities you'll never see on the screen/Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things"), it's just the undercurrent of "I'm so above everyone" that bothers me. She can use harmonies gorgeously, but she’s also got a voice that can be used very forebodingly (see: the opening of “Team”). Everything from “Buzzcut Season” onward is great, but my two top favourites are “Team” and “A World Alone”. My main disappointment with this album is that, despite actually being very musically interesting and showing how tired Lorde is with pop conventions…it’s still a pop album, just a little less conventional than normal. The choruses are still intact and it never strays too far from being radio-friendly. It’s weird in a way that people can still get stuck in there heads and not be too weirded-out by. So there.

[Snupes]

Childish Gambino - Because the Internet: Better than I expected it to be, but mainly for the wonderful beats and less so for Gambino’s generally predictable flow. There’s really fantastic stuff, like “I. The Party”, “II. No Exit”, “II. Zealots of Stockholm” and “IV. Sweatpants”, but generally it’s not anything amazingly special. It also marks, with its closing song, the first time I think an edit made to be a “ha ha” at pirates’ expense has actually improved a work.

Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar: Not as good as I’d hoped. Mechanical Animals was much better, this seemed a bit too try-hard in terms of edginess. Still really good musically, but not very varied and was great in bursts. Favourites = “The Beautiful People”, “Cryptorchid”, “Little Horn”, “Man That You Fear” and “Empty Sounds of Hate” (also known as “Track 99” because it’s the 99th track on the album).

[Snupes]

Nintendo - Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U | A Smashing Soundtrack: Got a pleasant surprise when this showed up, I forgot they were coming for anyone who bought Smash for both consoles! Needless to say, I loved it, so I won't go into too much more detail than that. Great opening music. Rio Hamamoto does a damn fine job of remixing one of my all-time favourite pieces of music, “Gerudo Valley”, which I was worried about anyone touching. Koji Kondo’s “Super Mario Bros. Medley” is glorious. Masafumi Takada’s arrangement of the ending theme to Yoshi’s story is wonderfully cheerful and full of “Yoshi!”s. And Manabu Namiki’s medley of Duck Hunt music was a hugely pleasant surprise as well, as is Yuzo Koshiro’s delightfully bleepy and chimey rendition of the Pac-Man theme. Good stuff.

Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs: Man, I really don't feel like writing shit anymore for some reason. This is really good, but I have to admit that it was kind of disappointing. I was hoping for more really out-there stuff like his work with Floyd. Ah well. My favourites were “Love You”, “Here I Go”, “Feel”, “If It’s In You” and “Late Night”.

[Snupes]

Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep: Much like their other albums, half good and half “AGHWRAAAH POLITICS POLITICS YOU MOTHEHFUCKIN’ SCUUUUM HEALTHCARE HEALCARE weeeeee are alllllll one peoples~ SO FUCK YOU IN YOUR FUCKIN’ POLITICIAN FACE” while everyone throws their instruments at a wall until Rou Reynolds stops screaming. Needless to say, those aren’t my favourite parts. The other half of the time, however, when Enter Shikari are actually imaginative and original with their music, is a wondrous thing to behold. It just sucks that they can’t keep it going in a single song without resorting to coked-up Parkinson’s electronic metal. My favourites here are half of “Anaesthetist”, most of “Never Let Go of the Microscope”, and all of “Torn Apart” and “Interlude” together. If ever there was a case against Metacritic, this album's current 89/100 score would be it for me.

[beardo]

Getting to anything good soon?

[Snupes]

Getting to anything good soon?

Nope


Björk - Vulnicura: It’s been a while since I’ve heard a new Björk album (Biophilia was my last, I think), and it feels damn good. The first half is really good, as expected, but I think the second half is where it really shines. The intense bit in the first third of “Black Lake” made my heart tighten like a song hasn’t done in a long time, “Notget” and “Atom Dance”, which features Antony, were a wonderful combination and the comparatively-complex finale that is “Quicksand” finished the album off in a great way. Dunno if it’s as great as her prior work, but it’s definitely one of my favourite things from her.

[beardo]

Getting to anything good soon?

Nope

[Snupes]

Getting to anything good soon?

Nope

;]


Björk - Medúlla: Holy fuck. I decided to listen to this on a whim when I saw that it’s almost completely a cappella (with a few exceptions, obviously: the synth on “Who Is It”, the piano on “Ancestors” and a gong on “Pleasure is All Mine”). I thought it’d just be really neat, but I will say right now that this is my favourite Björk album. It’s absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous, and the only song I wasn’t completely entranced by was “Show Me Forgiveness”. The vocals are sometimes processed and/or sampled, but the effect remains the same; it’s a weird, bizarre, absolutely-Björk album, just founded almost completely on the human voice. The effect is staggering, and I often found myself just completely stopping whatever I was doing so I could focus completely on the music. It’s difficult to pick favourites on a work like this, but I can say with some certainty that I enjoyed “Triumph of a Heart” the most, but some other amazing ones were “Ancestors”, which made me feel claustrophobic, “Oceania”, “Mouth’s Cradle” and “Desired Constellation”. Would recommend.

[Ghost of V]

Are you ever going to take recommendations from other people?

If so, please give Prefab Sprout's Steve McQueen a listen. It's an album that I'd consider 10/10. I'd love to hear your take on it.