The Daily Spin
November Rundown
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. 1 month to go! What???
As always, Eli’s with me for the monthly recap, as he’s been with me reviewing these albums the whole way. Additionally, Preston Pack of The Wild Pitch will have a recap up with their opinions, since they’ve been with us too.
And as always, here’s the playlist containing my favorite song from each of the albums I’ve reviewed so far - and this month, it’s even up to date! Each day, going forward, it’ll be updated with my favorite track from that day’s album until we’ve got a full portfolio of 365.
Fear not, your regularly scheduled album review will go live later today. I got you.
Making The Grade
In the process of listening to music and grading albums, nothing is perfect, and as such, we’ve all elected to make some adjustments to our grading.
D: With just one month of reviewing left, I’ve got a good enough idea of where I want my scores to settle as far as a distribution - now, it’s just a matter of getting there. No changes immediately for this past month, but you’ll see the full vision come end of December - I’ve got a few surprises up my sleeve yet.
E: I think I went back and raised Denzel Curry’s TA13OO from an 8 to a 9 like three seasons after the fact. That might have been last month though. Honestly, everything’s running together.
I’ll Give You The Best
D: Two albums were high 9s for me - Kaytranada’s 99.9% and Bon Iver’s i,i. The former is an encapsulation of what bass-forward RnB can be, an addictive blend of cultural influence rocking under stellar vocals from a whole assortment of A-list features, hypnotic and alluring, deeply fun and a little silly all at once. The second is experimental indie, Justin Vernon taking the concept behind 22, A Million and turning the dial up to 11 - and it is through the power of his own talent that a record which routinely veers into the absurd hits so well.
We’re starting to get into Dep Season, folks. This upcoming month is very me in my recommendations. Apologies to my co-writers. Please don’t hate me.
E: I have loved Torches for a long time. As I listened through it again for the purpose of a critical review, I spent most of the runtime thinking of reasons not to give it a perfect 10/10. I ended up deciding that I didn’t really buy any of them.
“Pumped Up Kicks” being overtly about school shootings is the obvious one, but frontman Mark Foster has said from the jump that the song is anti-gun violence and, in my opinion, the song has always played really well to that effect. More so now than ever.
Aside from that, even the songs I don’t love on this album are absurdly well produced, composed, and written. Every song here is inescapably catchy without being overtly vapid, which is why I and everyone else listened to indie pop when this record came out in 2011.
You gotta remember: back in Obama’s first term, almost all popular music was either about living a life of luxury or it was a direct response to there being so much music about living a life of luxury. If it didn’t fall into one of these two categories, it was the exception, not the rule. So hearing multiple songs from this completely dorktastic record get significant airplay…it was a breath of fresh air.
For this reason, “Don’t Stop (Color on the Walls)”—which peaked at #86 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is written from the perspective of a preschooler who rules the world—is my favorite song on the record and one of my favorite songs, period. And a lot of other songs here aren’t far behind it: “Houdini”, “Miss You”, “Call It What You Want”...hit after hit after hit. And “Warrant” is a perfect closer whose sound ended up serving as the foundation for the band’s sophomore record a couple years later.
Despite some questionable mixing that I’m fairly certain is intentional given Mark Foster’s proven production skills, I’d go as far as to call Torches the platonic ideal of a male-driven indie pop record.
How To Disappoint Completely
D: I gave two albums sub-7 scores. One was TWICE’s Taste of Love, a quick little EP, sugary girl pop that veers into the saccharine with disappointing frequency. I have generally never had much love for that sort of sound, and it is no different with this album. The other is Rolling Blackouts, by the Go! Team. To quote Eli’s interpretation of my review: ‘this is the worst album ever, this isn’t even music, I hate this,’ to which I point to his suggestion for Chipmunks. Formless sound and noise can be fine in installments, but an entire album derived from that gets grating real fast.
E: I’m not even sure what point David is trying to make by invoking the Chipmunks but at least I got a chuckle out of it.
Mura Masa’s self-titled was a frustrating listen. As with my fondness for Torches, I think my feelings here are mostly a consequence of the era in which the music was released. 2016 and 2017 were kinda dominated by this exact sound in the pop sphere: very standard, no-frills bubblegum in the verses, then the chorus comes in and leads to a blusteringly empty drop that removes all feeling from the equation.
I blame The Chainsmokers. Their hit single “Don’t Let Me Down”, featuring Daya, was the marquee example of this trend. And Mura Masa was almost entirely beholden to that exact formula. Listening to a type of song you don’t like a baker’s dozen times in a row gets really old really fast.
So why is it a 7/10? Well, the parts of the songs that aren’t these awful drops are usually very good pop. The features are pulling a lot of the weight here. Even aside from the obvious big names like Charli XCX and A$AP Rocky (and even Christine and the Queens before she really broke into indie darlingdom), I really liked how the lesser-known artists were used to fit their vibes. Bonzai’s voice is great.
Hearing “What If I Go?” was a weird trip that was unfortunately emblematic of the entire album. It came on and I thought, “I’ve definitely heard this before but I don’t know where…this isn’t half bad!”. Then the drop came and I remembered: “Oh yeah, it was in that horrendous YouTube Red ad campaign that I heard every five seconds for all of 2017”.
Shock Value
D: I had totally and completely forgotten about B.o.B - the last I had heard of him was sometime in the mid-2010s when he decided that actually, the Earth _was_ flat and that everyone and their mother also needed to be aware of this.
Strange Clouds, though, is a delightful little collection of music that transports me specifically to 2012/2013, a time no one should ever have to be brought back to without express and explicit consent. With one of the funnier feature lists I’ve ever seen (T.I., Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, MORGAN FREEMAN), it’s an album that is so specifically of its own time that I can’t help but love it. Utterly delightful to revisit.
E: I’m not really sure what David or Preston heard in Catfish and the Bottlemen’s The Ride that I’m missing. It sounds like the dictionary definition of bog standard indie rock to me. There’s not that much variety in sound, there aren’t that many hooks to grab you (if any at all), and the vocals just get lost in the mix too much for the emotion to shine through to the extent that I think it wants to.
Listening to this, I felt the same way I did when I watched Disney-Pixar’s Luca: another piece of media a lot of others love but I get nothing from consuming. I gave that movie a 5/10 because, while it was technically competent, I couldn’t think of a single thing that wowed me or made me want to come back for more. This album got a 6/10 from me because at least it didn’t have an Ercole Visconti.
I’d also like to add onto the Strange Clouds review by saying that I was surprised at how early B.o.B got into weird conspiracy crap. The philosophical thread from this album to flat Earth anthem “Flatline” was astoundingly easy to spot.
I’d also also never heard the bonus tracks on good kid, m.A.A.d city, and man, it was like hearing the album proper for the first time all over again. So good.
In A Word
Quick-hit recaps for each album.
Barchords (Bahamas)
D: Beachy music that tends to drift into the ceaseless tides after a while
E: At best, this reminds me of Babe Rainbow, an artist I think is okay; at worst, it reminds me of Jack Johnson, an artist I don’t like.
Taste of Love (TWICE)
D: It’s a very quick taste, which is good because I already feel a cavity coming on.
E: David’s a hater; this entire EP bops.
good kid, m.A.A.d city (Kendrick Lamar)
D: One of the best near his very best.
E: This album is basically Summertime ‘06 with better production, lyrics, and flows…which makes it impressive that it came out three years before Summertime ‘06.
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Phoenix)
D: So much beloved music directly spins out of this indie-pop-rock-tronica masterpiece.
E: One of the earliest and most influential albums in the “FIFA Music” canon
a touch of the beat gets you up on your feet gets you out and then into the sun (Aly & AJ)
D: The title is more memorable than the actual sound of it.
E: A super calming record that just makes me feel nice when it comes on
ZABA (Glass Animals)
D: Like a slasher film with no villain, needed an actual punch to close out.
E: I can hear how the band’s sound evolved from this record but I also think their later work is better and more interesting sonically and lyrically.
Indigo (RM)
D: Proof that sometimes, it’s better not to bring all the homies into the studio.
E: Kinda reminds me of Ed Sheeran’s No. 6 Collaborations Project but doesn’t have the range to pull the concept off.
SAWAYAMA (Rina Sawayama)
D: Feels a bit tired and repetitive, like rehashing an argument that’s gone on for years with the same talking points.
E: Prime Lady Gaga if she was a leftist
shrines (Purity Ring)
D: A spectacular debut by a group still searching for a tiny bit of polish.
E: You can only build your career on the lyrics “cut open my sternum and pull my little ribs around you” if you really sell it, and they really sell it.
The Forever Story (JID)
D: JID wants to be everything, and in doing so, puts himself in danger of winding up with nothing.
E: I liked JID’s flow but everything else was a jumbled mess.
Blackout (Britney Spears)
D: Only Britney could make something so beautiful of falling apart so totally.
E: When it’s good, it’s really good, but it could stand to be a bit more diverse.
My Love Is Cool (Wolf Alice)
D: A bit of commitment to one sort of identity goes a long way.
E: The last four songs on this album are one of my favorite closing runs of all time.
Strange Clouds (B.o.B)
D: Man, I don’t miss much about 2012, but rap like this sure is up there.
E: I’ll say one thing: B.o.B never sounds fake.
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (The 1975)
D: It’s a bit idiosyncratic for the 1975 to play soft, but it’s undeniable how well they do it.
E: The best album from a band I don’t like
i,i (Bon Iver)
D: Though it’s imperfect, Justin Vernon pushes the boundaries of what music can become and does so with the deft touch of someone who knows how to call beauty from anywhere.
E: The best album from an artist I like but whose style usually isn’t for me
Out of the Blue (Electric Light Orchestra)
D: It’s not hard to see how this group got huge with a work like this.
E: The best ‘80s band of the ‘70s, for better or worse
The Last Goodbye (ODESZA)
D: If this was them closing out their time with us, I’d’ve been happy with it.
E: B-Tier pop and B-Tier electronica instead of being S-Tier one or the other
Lost In New York (Penguin Prison)
D: Didn’t realize that the top six or seven of these tracks are all pretty much on my saved list.
E: The first six songs on this album are one of my favorite opening runs of all time.
99.9% (KAYTRANADA)
D: To pull from so many influences and still make a sound so cohesive is a massive display of talent.
E: A 40-minute album that runs for 59, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it sounds this good
Wasteland, Baby! (Hozier)
D: It’s clear that Hozier struggles a bit to move forward from the music that made him so massive.
E: Some of the production sounds like a mix between The Black Keys and The Oh Hellos.
Mura Masa (Mura Masa)
D: This dude was twenty years old and crafting massive club bangers hailing from all walks of the world.
E: Sounds like Trump-era iPhone ads
wildheart (Miguel)
D: The album for a hookup so good that you stick around for breakfast the next day.
E: MNEK if he tried to play himself completely straight…I can’t take a song that repeats “lips, tits, clit, sit” seriously, but it sounds like I’m supposed to.
The Ride (Catfish and the Bottlemen)
D: Though it could use some refinement, these guys are so good at powering through emotion with their music.
E: I feel nothing.
Torches (Foster the People)
D: I get the little like ad-libs from Houdini stuck in my head roughly every three business days. Staying power!
E: A perfect indie pop album.
Rolling Blackouts (The Go! Team)
D: Just because you can make noise doesn’t mean you should.
E: Please keep making noise forever, The Go! Team.
SEPT 5TH (dvsn)
D: Faceless music that hits the common denominator but sacrifices in order to remain anonymous.
E: Every other R&B album we’ve listened to, through a “lo-fi beats to study to” filter.
Dreamland (Glass Animals)
D: The fusion of their first two works leans a bit too much into the pop for me to truly love it, but it’s still damn good.
E: Has exactly one trick up its sleeve, but it’s a pretty good trick when you’re in the right mood.
Time (Electric Light Orchestra)
D: Experimental, but still enjoyable.
E: Reminded me of Styx’s ridiculous Kilroy Was Here if you removed all the nonsense.
The Loneliest Time (Carly Rae Jepsen)
D: If Carly had committed full-bore to a new, more serious identity, this would have had some serious teeth.
E: Conveys the wide range of emotions you whip between, seemingly on a whim, when you’re feeling lonely; the lack of cohesion is the point.
Fuzzybrain (Dayglow)
D: Puts a smile on my face but doesn’t stick around much beyond that.
E: If Torches is Mike Trout, this record is, like, David Fletcher.
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And there you have it!
December 1st’s review will be along later today. Thanks, as always, for tuning in.