post an album and i'll listen to it and supply some brief but hopefully insightful feedback
no ratings or anything like that; you don't need to me to measure your worth. you can do that yourself because you are in fact the only one who can and should
this release makes me irrationally angry. from start to finish it plays like an aimless jaunt; it's very clear that BANKS as an artist has no clue what she's trying to accomplish with her craft. lyrically, she attempts to venture into "empowered dangerous woman" territory already dominated by the likes of fiona apple, rihanna, etc. is she a spiteful ex? is she a survivor? who the hell is BANKS? but more importantly, who the fuck cares? all i got from this is a sense of hopelessly anodyne "bad girl" shtick from an emerging artist with zero self-awareness. you're not scaring anyone BANKS. you're not making waves. you're attempting to surf in someone else's, falling off your board repeatedly and almost drowning in the process. take a back seat on music and figure out who you are. don't even get me started on the vocal treatment overcompensation. i think i hate this album.
your standard-fare beat tape. the vinyl static and detuned samples are a nice touch and help to add emotive flair but i quite honestly would rather listen to tomppabeats. there's not a whole lot going on here rhythmically that amazes me. there are also some questionable percussive choices here and there (the chimes on "cold seas" and "night hike" felt lazily placed and didn't do much to draw me in), but the mandolin bits scattered throughout are pretty sexy ("growth"). this seems like an album i would disingenuously show an attractive millennial asian girl if i was trying to impress her. maybe we could listen to it on a discord date as we lane together in league of legends and blog about techwear. after my first listen, this record makes me want to do something cutting-edge and new, like get an anime avatar without watching any anime. it's good though.
this is a flawless album. definitely my go-to for channeling my inner recluse. very few albums can elicit feelings of isolation as successfully as this one. it's especially the bitter contempt for the outside world in stuart murdoch's lyrics and it's a feeling i can often relate to. the characters he comes up with are people you either will encounter or might have already encountered, which is a fantastic juxtaposition against the backdrop of hermetically sealed mania.
favorite tracks: the fox in the snow, get me away from here i'm dying, judy and the dream of horses
i wish this album didn't try to split itself thematically between dante and orpheus. the fact that it leaned more towards a love story made those power metal-esque riffs and breakdowns that much more unsatisfying. the vocals come dangerously close to sounding like avenged sevenfold most of the time, and lyrically i fail to see a coherent narrative being told over the course of my first listen. where it failed me lyrically, it didn't hold up instrumentally either (the choral bits aside). the melodies and time signatures did not communicate the sense of dread and despair i desired. instead, it felt more like a weirdly optimistic sprint through what should otherwise be a gloomy and hopeless trek of a scenario. however, "without you" was a welcome break with the acoustic guitar and classic rock callbacks, giving the entire experience a little more emotional complexity.
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