Album Reviewing 1
Date: 6/15/24	Mood: Nauseated
Listening To: After Midnight by Chappell Roan

So one of the weirder things about kind of having opinions about all sorts of media is that people (including myself) expect you to have opinions about ALL kinds of media. And that includes music. The problem is, I've never been especially well-listened with music. I grew up in a household where my mother always had it on the oldies station (60s and 70s only, back then) and I didn't really Buy Albums ever. When the napster years hit, I was a huge weeb and mostly just got really into jpop and video game soundtracks. So there's a good 20 years of my life where I just wasn't especially interested in music the way people are often really into bands and stuff when they're teens. Not everyone, but a lot of my friends are big music people. It's just always been a little weird.

I got a personal music player last year as a treat for myself, because I missed the old ipod days and don't really like to use spotify or similar services more than I have to. But I kind of stagnated getting a new music library set up because I wanted to expand my tastes a little bit, and just wasn't sure where I wanted to expand my tastes to.

So I crowdsourced it.

More specifically, I asked my friends to send me some album recs, and downloaded everything and have slowly been working my way through them when I have some free time to listen to music. Originally I was doing alt-twitter, single tweet capsule reviews, but I figure with this website starting to come together I'd want to move them over here where more people can see them and they can be a little more permanent. A medium term goal is to create an actual static page specifically for album reviews, I even have ideas about what it would look like, but for now I figured I'd just get my backlog of already written reviews collected so I don't have to go digging in my old tweets in a year when I actually get around to making a real page for them.

ANYWAY, I'm just going to do them as paragraphs with the album, who recommended it, a rating, and some thoughts. Probably not very deep thoughts, I'm not a music critic and don't even know that much about music. But I'm trying to develop some taste around the whole thing, and learn to find my voice talking about music more thoughtfully. We'll see. I was originally 'ranking' these albums with a KEEP or DELETE, but I'm going to probably try to transition to a five star rating, because one of hte albums is one where I want to keep it but I'm not sure how I feel really yet and wanna relisten.

The final thing! I can't promise I'll listen to everything but if you want to recommend albums feel free to email me using the email on the main page. You'll have to do the work of finding that yourself. Also please only recommend ONE album. If I get to yours, then feel free to shoot off another. But I don't want like 30 album lists that's a great way for me to ignore your email. Also, don't worry about predicting my taste or not. Shoot your shot. Pitch me if you need to (be brief) but I'm trying to expand my horizons so it's fine if its relatively obscure or something. I like pretty much all genres, though I'm a lot cooler on most genres of rock than anything else.

Anyway, onto the albums!

Charlie by Melt-Banana
Recommended by: Niamh


This isn't music to be reading to, which is how I first listened to it, but I appreciate the cacophony. I looked up the lyrics to two sounds because I couldn't make out the words and it turns it it truly doesn't matter. That's fine by me, it's all a vibe. Makes me wanna dance.


Rating: ****/*****

Blueberry Boat by The Fiery Furnaces
Recommended by: Wes


Remember the clapcast (FatT's patreon show) episode about the least desirable song? This is a whole album of those, but doesn't even have the kitsch of the advertainment aesthetic of the least desirable song to fall back on. I felt insane in new ways with every new track and every new genre popping up like a demented jack in the box of every track. Madness.

Rating: */*****

XTREME by USAO
Recommended by: Madiha


Every song is a top difficulty stepmania chart, they're all punchy and clean and get the blood pumping. As a full album I'm actively listening to it can be overwhelming but this is music to achieve peak human performance to. Could outdance the devil, kill god, and finish my homework all to any of the tracks.

Rating: ****/*****

Adrian Younge presents The Delfonics by The Delfonics
Recommended by: nobody, just a fav of mine I slipped in


This is one of my absolute favorites, been getting regular play for a decade. When I have new headphones, this is one of the albums that gets played first. A real rain or shine work for me. Also, it's one of the greatest lion in winter albums ever made. This hazy, half-remembered dream of 70s R&B really is just the stuff. William Hart was an icon.

Rating: *****/*****

Scott 4 by Scott Walker
Recommended by: Destiny


There's something about these sorts of 60s/70s rich vocalist albums that makes me think they are the soundtrack to an end of the world that could have happened, a kinda-pop, kinda-spaghetti western apocalypse we just missed landing in. A place that's kind of sci-fi, but everything's dirty, and not in a star wars way. This album absolutely fucks.

Rating: *****/*****

Soul Mining by The The
Recommended by: Dia


This sort of synth-pop isn't always my thing, I like my music a little more up tempo than this. Also, I can't think of a single album I really love that has nearly as much clapping as this album. That said, I found myself taken with the lyrics, which just seem to be moodier and more considered than I was expecting. This is one I want to relisten to a few times before I render final judgement, one to chew on.

Rating: ***?/*****