Album Reviews Thread

i listened to prince the rain was purple it was good

Yeah it's funny All My Friends wasn't one that stuck out to me on first listen for some reason but at some point I just had it on repeat because it's just that good of a song. It really feels like the focal point of the album that it doesn't reach again, because how can you follow up a song that's that good?

Someone Great is fantastic but All My Friends is on another level personally

Is this the thread where I say my favorite LCD song is Home

But this is a solid thread idea, I have a few I'm already thinking it'd be fun to write about

ill do one. gimmie a minute

same! It's so fucking good

Caspian - On Circles (post-rock) (2020)

Probably my favorite post-rock album from this year that I've listened to, it's not incredible but a solid collection of tracks. If you like Explosions in the Sky I'd imagine you'd like this.

8/10

lol ok I heard some awful song the other day and I was just like yyeesh is this the new Fitz or something, so that makes sense

Not when you're 35 with kids. Shiz gets real.

I had never even seen a shooting star before. 25 years of rotations, passes through comets' paths, and travel, and to my memory I had never witnessed burning debris scratch across the night sky. 100 gecs were hunched over their instruments. Laura Les slowly beat on a grand piano, singing, eyes closed, into his microphone like he was trying to kiss around a big nose. Dylan Brady tapped patiently on a double bass, waiting for his cue. White pearls of arena light swam over their faces. A lazy disco light spilled artificial constellations inside the aluminum cove of the makeshift stage. The metal skeleton of the stage ate one end of Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, on the steps of the Santa Croce Cathedral. Michelangelo's bones and cobblestone laid beneath. I stared entranced, soaking in 100 gecs' new material, chiseling each sound into the best functioning parts of my brain which would be the only sound system for the material for months.

The butterscotch lamps along the walls of the tight city square bled upward into the cobalt sky, which seemed as strikingly artificial and perfect as a wizard's cap. The staccato piano chords ascended repeatedly. "Black eyed angels swam at me," Brady sang like his dying words. "There was nothing to fear, nothing to hide." The trained critical part of me marked the similarity to Coltrane's "Ole." The human part of me wept in awe.

The Italians surrounding me held their breath in communion (save for the drunken few shouting "Criep!"). Suddenly, a rise of whistles and orgasmic cries swept unfittingly through the crowd. The song, "I Need Help Immediately," was certainly momentous, but wasn't the response more apt for, well, "Creep?" I looked up. I thought it was fireworks. A teardrop of fire shot from space and disappeared behind the church where the syrupy River Arno crawled. 100 gecs had the heavens on their side.

For further testament, Chip Chanko and I both suffered auto-debilitating accidents in the same week, in different parts of the country, while blasting "money machine" in our respective Japanese imports. For months, I feared playing the song about car crashes in my car, just as I'd feared passing 18- wheelers after nearly being crushed by one in 1990. With good reason, I suspect 100 gecs to possess incomprehensible powers. The evidence is only compounded with 1000 gecs-- the rubber match in the band's legacy-- an album which completely obliterates how albums, and 100 gecs themselves, will be considered.

Even the heralded 100 gecs has been nudged down one spot in Valhalla. 1000 gecs makes rock and roll childish. Considerations on its merits as "rock" (i.e. its radio fodder potential, its guitar riffs, and its hooks) are pointless. Comparing this to other albums is like comparing an aquarium to blue construction paper. And not because it's jazz or fusion or ambient or electronic. Classifications don't come to mind once deep inside this expansive, hypnotic world. Ransom, the philologist hero of C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet who is kidnapped and taken to another planet, initially finds his scholarship useless in his new surroundings, and just tries to survive the beautiful new world.

This is an emotional, psychological experience. 1000 gecs sounds like a clouded brain trying to recall an alien abduction. It's the sound of a band, and its leader, losing faith in themselves, destroying themselves, and subsequently rebuilding a perfect entity. In other words, 100 gecs hated being 100 gecs, but ended up with the most ideal, natural 100 gecs record yet.

"money machine" opens like Close Encounters spaceships communicating with pipe organs. As your ears decide whether the tones are coming or going, Dylan Brady's Cuisinarted voice struggles for its tongue. "you talk a big game for someone with such a small truck," Yorke belts in uplifting sighs. The first-person mantra of "feels so clean like a money machine" is repeated until the line between Les' mind and the listener's mind is erased.

Skittering toy boxes open the album's title song, which, like the track "xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx," shows a heavy Warp Records influence. The vocoder lullaby lulls you deceivingly before the riotous "800db cloud." Mean, fuzzy bass shapes the spine as unnerving theremin choirs limn. Brash brass bursts from above like Terry Gilliam's animated foot. The horns swarm as Les screams, begs, "Stupid horse!" It's the album's shrill peak, but just one of the incessant goosebumps raisers.

After the rockets exhaust, 100 gecs float in their lone orbit. "gecgecgec" boils down "hand crushed by a mallet" and "ringtone" to their spectral essence. The string-laden ballad comes closest to bridging Yorke's lyrical sentiment to the instrumental effect. "I float down the Liffey/ I'm not here/ This isn't happening," he sings in his trademark falsetto. The strings melt and weep as the album shifts into its underwater mode. "gec 2 Ü," an ambient soundscape similar in sound and intent to Side B of Bowie and Eno's Low, calms after the record's emotionally strenuous first half.

The primal, brooding guitar attack of "745 sticky" stomps like mating Tyrannosaurs. The lyrics seemingly taunt, "Goddamn what the fuck/let's go lets ride," before revealing the more resigned sentiment, "If you only gotta car, no problem." For an album reportedly "lacking" in traditional 100 gecs moments, this is the best summation of their former strengths. The track erodes into a light jam before morphing into "800db cloud." "I got a bag on the way," Brady cries over clean, uneasy arpeggios. The ending flares with tractor beams as Les is vacuumed into nothingness. The aforementioned "money machine" clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the "band." For all the noise to this point, it's uncertain entirely who or what has created the music. There are rarely traditional arrangements in the ambiguous origin. This is part of the unique thrill of experiencing 1000 gecs.

Pulsing organs and a stuttering snare delicately propel "stupid horse." Les' breath can be heard frosting over the rainy, gray jam. Words accumulate and stick in his mouth like eye crust. "I just fell out of the Porsche," he mumbles while Dylan Brady squirts whale-chant feedback from his guitar. The closing "gec 2 Ü" brings to mind The White Album, as it somehow combines the sentiment of Lennon's LP1 closer-- the ode to his dead mother, "Julia"-- with Ringo and Paul's maudlin, yet sincere LP2 finale, "Goodnight." Pump organ and harp flutter as Brady condones with affection, "I think you're crazy." To further emphasize your feeling at that moment and the album's overall theme, Brady bows out with "I need love, can you get to me now?." If you're not already there with him.

The experience and emotions tied to listening to 1000 gecs are like witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax. It's an album of sparking paradox. It's cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike, infinite yet 48 minutes. It will cleanse your brain of those little crustaceans of worries and inferior albums clinging inside the fold of your gray matter. The harrowing sounds hit from unseen angles and emanate with inhuman genesis. When the headphones peel off, and it occurs that six men (Nigel Godrich included) 2 geniues created this, it's clear that 100 gecs must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who. Breathing people made this record! And you can't wait to dive back in and try to prove that wrong over and over.

I finally wrote 5000 words on Fitz and the Tantrums.