Tess Faces the Music

the first release of the year introduced me to a cool power noise artist called park zero, and i love what she’s doing so far! the combination of overpowering, noisy production with groovy compositions on this album create such a unique space for the listener that i will absolutely be coming back to later.

the weeknd’s new album caused a lot of annoying discourse at release, and upon first listen, it was difficult for me to see why. this is a very unextraordinary synthwave venture that builds lightly upon the sound of After Hours with a weak concept and passable tunes. overall a very middling album that will stick in my mind the least out of anyone.

the leadup to muse’s new album, Will of the People, has been… mixed. “won’t stand down” perked my ears up on first listen due to their newfound interest in metalcore-ish chugging riffs, and while repeat listens offered less to me in terms of a cohesive, enjoyable listen, i still thought it was a decent lead single that offered more than a fair amount of their most recent output.

i was introduced to a wonderful screamo/skramz band this year called foxtails, and wow does their music go hard, at least from what i can make out in this album. those powerful, poetic screams, the luscious violin mixed with a traditional emo rock band… everything works together in such raw, unadulterated glory. it’s hard for me to choose highlights, but tracks like “ataque de nervios” and “space orphan” do showcase some of the stronger ideas here.

underoath’s 2018 comeback saw a bit of a meandering albeit net positive change in sound, going for a more alt rock/industrial thing that i think panned out relatively well but saw divisive opinions otherwise. with this new album, they seem to have both progressed and regressed a bit, taking notes from Disambiguation while still building upon Erase Me. it’s better than the singles led me to believe, but i still can’t help but feel something’s missing. i don’t need another Define the Great Line or They’re Only Chasing Safety—i just want this sound to pan out to its fullest. so far, i’m still waiting.

i started exploring plunderphonics music ever since i heard neil cicierega’s amusing mashup albums, but after finding how the genre could actually be an intricate, beautiful hiphop-based art form in albums like Endtroducing… and Since I Left You, i knew i needed more. lo and behold, there is a band called death’s dynamic shroud.wmv, a collective of musicians creating vaporwave music. i was never fully aware of what this genre was (i haven’t even heard Floral Shoppe by macintosh plus yet), but i think listening to this band set a bit of a high standard for me. Faith in Persona and I’ll Try Living Like This are both immaculate records that take this vaporwave style of distorting samples and create incredible soundscapes with them, and that artfulness is just as present in this new single.

the song features these booming, catchy arrangements that revolve around this “oh, oh, oh” sample, and it’s one of the most exciting and pleasant songs i’ve heard all year so far. some people aren’t huge on the compression here, but whatever’s happening in the mix is so sweet to my ears in such a unique, vapory way. i love the initial explosion as well as the more ambient passage that leads back into that upbeat chorus. i’m really excited for the album this lands on in the future—i expect to hear a lot more of this creative production done in a catchy, otherwordly way.

people seemed to be talking about this album a lot, and as someone who listens to 99% english-speaking music, i figured i might as well dive into a genre i’m hardly acquainted with. i was pleasantly surprised by a minimal yet comforting set of chamber folk songs led by a beautiful, talented singer. while a simple listen, it’s also easy and pleasing to the ears. i’d recommend this to anyone who wants to feel like they’re swimming or floating.

youtuber music has this stigma of being terrible and devoid of good qualities even as creators’ budgets have increased over the years. that’s why this diamond in the rough surprised me on first listen—here we have a fresh face who rose to fame through attaining sudden meme status. he decided to add music to his repertoire, which in any other circumstance could be seen as a simple, vapid move for clout. however, he took a beat from the jersey club collective TwerkNation28 to make a song with high energy and a genuinely creative, enticing beat. while the lyrics are nothing special, it’s still cool to see a personality like this having this aesthetic to their music. i hope to see this guy explore this more underground, crazy style more often.

now for as many bright, promising new artists as i am introduced to on a regular basis, there are a few that are brought up to me as the complete opposite, the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst. this quarter, it’s demondice. i checked out a reaction stream to all her music and found that while she showed the willpower to be an interesting and fresh artist, she fell flat in her ignorant and insensitive songwriting carried by run-of-the-mill production and just misguided motivation altogether. this new EP actually does have a bit more meat on the production side and hopes to get perhaps introspective lyrically, but the way she goes about it is awkwardly arranged and reeks of insecurity and conceit. her most egregious qualities persist, especially on “take the bait,” a song about… internet haters. i don’t want to invalidate people’s problems, especially when they put them into art, but there’s something to be said about the privilege she has to complain about the topics she does.

i have been exploring animal collective’s discography for a little bit, and found them to be a bit of a conflicting listen for me. on the one hand, the textures and moving parts throughout Spirit They’re Gone Spirit They’ve Vanished and Merriweather Post Pavilion feel well-crafted and wondrous. on the other, some of their ideas feel like they run themselves thin and sometimes overshoot or undershoot. i’ve had a generally positive experience so far, but i just feel like i want a lot more from them. this new album hasn’t helped in that department, offering probably the least interesting ideas of the three albums i heard. yes, there is competent songwriting and production on here, but it amounts to something i don’t have the strongest urge to return to. it just feels like something that will drown in the middle of a list, offering neither amazing artistry nor objectionable quality.

i have a lot to say about this album that i will save for a longer review. for now, i just want you to know that so far, “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” and “Basketball Shoes” are two of the few pieces of music this year that have successfully made me sob. and that’s a fucking achievement.

bastille will never leave that special place in my heart for being my gateway into music in the first place. same with linkin park, y’know? that being said, this new album is pretty disappointing but also not too unexpected considering their current trajectory. they bring nothing to the table on this pseudo-conceptual cyberpunk album that uses tired ideas with differing success. even the best songs on this album are just generic synthwave shlock, but at least the worst aren’t too objectionable, just below average synthpop… things. i think i’m starting to see the limits of this band clear as day, and it’s a little sad to see from a band that i wouldn’t be writing about music without.

it hurts to say, but circa survive is starting to lose their magic for me. i got swept up in all this post-hardcore-adjacent hype in the late 2010s, but as this band is starting to make lesser impactful experiments with faded shadows of their past sound, it did hit me how two-dimensional a lot of this scene is in retrospect. circa survive struck gold for a while, and i think they still have an appealing sound to people who revel in this genre more, but in the wider space of music, this and the last EP especially just completely slip out of my mind the moment they end. oh well.

here’s another record from someone with a defined sound doing something a bit more synthpop-leaning. i think this is a good album, especially with how her songwriting shifted to fit this more new wave, pop aesthetic. it is sad that the singles are the strongest tracks here, but the rest doesn’t fall too short otherwise. “love me more” still gets stuck in my head from time to time even if it feels similar to “she’s a maniac.”

this album was my personal introduction to yeule, and can i just say, this year has had a weird knack for giving me albums i think are just absolutely beautiful. yeule delivers such naked, desperate emotion on here through these broken-sounding vocals and moody, minimal instrumentals (produced by danny l. harle of all people, who i only knew for his hard dance stuff) and it immediately resonated with me. such a unique, futuristic, profound beauty throughout this album. i will say i managed to listen to the entirety of that 5 hour ambient track at the end and it… doesn’t add that much due to how noticeable the copypasting is. however, the rest of the album still features fresh, wondrous glitch pop that everyone should take notice of and appreciate.

so i need to give this a couple more listens (not that i haven’t heard it a few times already), but this album is showing me something i never thought the genre of folk could show me. see, i’m not really well versed in indie folk, and i did a quick sweep over all of big thief’s studio albums before here. it all blurred together a bit, and admittedly could get boring at times. for the most part, none of those problems carry into this brand new record, which i think is one of the prettiest and nicest things i’m going to hear all year!

this is the last album in this post i got around to listening to, but it was a fairly rewarding listen! admittedly, ‘atmospheric sludge metal’ is not a genre i’m very familiar with, but this felt like a good pick from it. every major song felt like a crescendo, some more rewarding than others, but still feeling like a consistent listen. the colin stetson features had me expecting some more interesting ideas, but i can’t complain when the title track, “blood upon stone,” and “an offering to the wild” were wonderful journeys of songs. it does feel like the length of each song reflects the amount of passion in it, and i was worried the album was gonna already lull by track 2, but it managed to keep me engaged from then onwards. just a really good metal album!

as someone who has been optimistic about this band’s output for a while now, this first part of whatever project they’re doing right now was fairly disappointing. decently competent songwriting and production that shows fading interest in ambition or uniqueness. i don’t think even their dances could save this one.

black dresses has been greeting us with surprise releases ever since forever in your heart, and this might be the most rewarding one so far! blatant, distorted to all fuck, and brutally honest, every second of this album, albeit on the shorter side, makes use of itself to deliver another crushed, sickening collection of blows, all thanks to this legendary couple. it is understandably not the most accessible listen, but either way, it provides a lot to analyze in terms of unfiltered, messy emotion.

silk sonic’s debut record from last year was such a fun and exciting listen despite being a pure 70s throwback project. anderson .paak and bruno mars play so well off of each other, and the instrumentation is just done so well and tastefully. their bright neo-soul ideas are still present on this single, though it immediately reads as a b-side to the rest of the album. it’s not bad in the slightest—it just isn’t keeping my attention as much as the rest.

i also want to dedicate an entire review to this album, because for all the flaws of vylet’s previous album and even the few in this one, i still found myself completely enamored by a sound i didn’t think this scene of music was capable of. i hope you’re ready to see me gush over someone who has lit a fire inside me i didn’t see coming until last year.

i’m still on the frax and gupi hype train even if they’re not putting out the most enticing stuff as of late. this EP isn’t a masterpiece by any means, but it’s at least a well-executed, unique expression of melancholy from an otherwise edgy, loud personality. i do wonder if frax, gupi, or food house will make anything more exciting in the future.

i saw that all the “drainers” were hyping up this release, so i decided to check it out. bladee’s music has wavered between interesting and not for me, but i think this leans more toward the former, especially thanks to the iconic duo he makes with ecco2k. it was nice seeing “girls just wanna have fun” appear on here after hearing it a couple years ago (one of the first bladee songs i ever heard, actually). this was a really nice listen, but from what i’ve heard of bladee’s other albums, i’m not sure how much it stands out in the grander scheme of things. i still appreciate the unique, watery textures and quaint production. i may check out bladee’s other albums in the future.

continuing the promo for their new album, “compliance” is one of the worst muse songs i have ever heard. a stale, badly produced dance pop track with the most uninspired vaguely anti-establishment lyrics i’ve heard from them to date. the melodies and performances are awkward, the songwriting has fallen to a new low… i’m surprised they were able to make a song this bad. this really dashed a lot of my hopes for the new record already.

these are two artists i have a surface level understanding of, moreso asian glow since i’ve only heard their contributions to Downfall of the Neon Youth. despite that, i found myself immediately appreciating them, while weatherday took me another listen or two to get. now with this now EP, i’m seeing the both of them combining their musical powers to deliver six songs that fire on all cylinders, showcasing only the strengths of both artists in a beautiful tango of emo, shoegaze, and lo-fi rock.

charli is an artist i haven’t explored much till recently. right now i’m only really familiar with her hyperpop-leaning sound, which has ranged from okay to great, so hearing her go in a more accessible mainstream pop direction was interesting for me. i think it pays off enough, not impressing me but still serving an array of decent songs i take little issue with.

this is weird. i should, by all accounts, not like this song. it’s a novelty meme song whose whole appeal is a bunch of hamfisted nerdcore references arranged to seem like proper lyrics. and yet, the song is so stupidly catchy and entertaining that i have listened through it multiple times. abdul’s feature could’ve been more creative, but there’s something so appealing about how stupid yet earworm-y it is.

have you ever experienced something you felt was both great and a little disappointing at the same time? here’s my version of that. maybe the expectation set by “Walkin’” was too high, but suffice to say this has about the same consistency as his album TA13OO, two outstanding altogether projects with slightly underdelivered ideas here and there. there’s not a song on here i can really say i dislike (i even managed to understand “X-Wing”), but when you hear those first two songs, you can’t help but feel this album isn’t delivering its fullest potential. i don’t mean to undercut how good it still is though—denzel is a top tier artist, and his highs are very strong highs.

speaking of full, HOLY SHIT THIS IS ONE OF THE LOUDEST ALBUMS THAT HAS MADE IT INTO MY REGULAR ROTATION. it’s easy for me to love this just for the amusing use of samples, but i think this transition for the band into a full on power noise project with catchy rhythms under a completely abrasive aesthetic works amazingly. it’s easy to write off the edgy nature of the kinda home intrusion theme throughout the record, but i think it’s super interesting to frame all this loud noise that way. it aids in making an otherwise mindless cacophony sound both eerie and exciting.

funny how this and the 1 800 PAIN album came out on the same day, because they carry similar energy despite being completely different sounds. the energy on this hiphop-infused punk rager of an album is off the charts! i love the lack of restraint both sonically and in the lyrics, which involve a lot of biting political criticism and attitude. the vocals are admittedly not the easiest to listen to, but i think that falls in line with the punk ethos and overall adds to the music. i will definitely be checking this band out more in the future.

you may already be familiar with my thoughts on this album by now, but if not, let me just say i’m someone who stood up for mgk’s previous record, Tickets to my Downfall. it wasn’t the most original or amazingly made pop punk album, but it had some infectious melodies and competent songwriting that kept it afloat for me. unfortunately, the few qualities i could acknowledge there have disappeared in favor of a much more whiny, stale sound with over-entitled songwriting that detracts from his debut rather than building on it. i can safely say this is one of the worst albums of the year. for all its poppy style and loud rage, it goes down with a whimper rather than a bang.