The Daily Spin
October Rundown
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. Just two months left, and we passed the 300-album mark late in October. Home stretch!
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: Three hundred and four albums in, and I think I’m finally reaching some sort of equilibrium state with my grading. I know that I’ll need to go back and adjust scores doled out early in the year, especially, as those tended to be a little deflated - and similarly, I’ll probably have to bring down the end of the year somewhat. We’re trending towards a stretch of music that is very much in my wheelhouse, evidenced by this being our collective highest month ever, and I need to make sure I don’t let that carry me away.
E: I actually gave a numerical rating to every album this month. I deserve a cookie.
I’ll Give You The Best
D: Discounting Friday albums, which are my own favorites as suggestions (and therefore a little silly for me to talk about loving, because duh), there are a couple clear standouts - Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, the xx’s xx, and Stromae’s Racine carree, all of which are fantastic albums that I have loved deeply.
This was my highest month on record, tied with last month - so very much a situation of continued greatness. We’ve got a lot of good music dialed up, particularly to close out the year and finish strong, so I’m looking forward to that.
E: Roosevelt’s only got about 1.5M monthly listeners on Spotify. If you’re not one of ‘em, you should be. For the past decade, he’s been making some of the most consistently dance-worthy synthpop in perhaps the entire world, and his fourth studio album Embrace is no different.
A lot of the rest of this month was a tour down memory lane (which will continue into November), with several longtime favorites sprinkled throughout October. Asked to pick a favorite, I’d have to go with Tourist History.
How To Disappoint Completely
D: Fiona Apple, man. I’d heard so many things about this album, most all of them universally positive, and then I put Fetch The Bolt Cutters on and was treated to one of the least pleasant listening experiences I’ve had this year. It’s not the Chipmunks, but it’s not good, and it truly baffles me that Pitchfork gave this album an outright ten, when I was barely able to force myself through listening to the entire album down pat.
I’m gonna say it, too - Laufey. I’d seen this album heralded hugely, like it was the next big thing in jazz, and I was prepared for that to be backed up - she’s certainly earned the plaudits through Everything I Know About Love, an album we reviewed earlier in the year that I enjoyed quite a bit, but as I sat down and gave Bewitched my full attention, I just didn’t feel that same gravity. It’s undeniably a good album, but for the talk about it, I was expecting a truly fantastic experience, and there’s no denying that is not what I got.
E: Fetch The Bolt Cutters sure sounded a hell of a lot better in 2020, that’s for sure.
Shock Value
D: There weren’t really any surprises for me this month, to be honest. I try to avoid coming in with strong preconceptions, but even those aside, nothing about this month’s rotation of music besides maybe the aforementioned Fiona Apple album were records that blew me away in either direction. Just a lot of really solid music and a few albums that trended towards not being my thing.
E: Purity Ring’s WOMB was another album that got me through the early lockdown phase back in 2020. I thought I’d be lower on it today, either because it reminds me of a worse time or simply because it’s not as meaningful to me anymore, but the opposite actually happened. In fact, I think I’d now call WOMB Purity Ring’s best work. There’s a certain cloudy ethereality that Purity Ring gets right better than any artist I’ve ever heard. That’s been true for their whole career, but their earliest stuff is a lot more upbeat and doesn’t 100% fit the vibe. The smoothness of this record just takes their sound to a whole new level.
In A Word
Quick-hit recaps for each album.
Possession (Joywave)
D: Good, solid indie pop that was lost in the pandemic shuffle.
E: The first album I overplayed in early lockdown; still good almost four years later.
For That Beautiful Feeling (The Chemical Brothers)
D: A delightful collection of electronic music that would be even better with a truncated stopping point.
E: Too jumbled to stick with me and yet too interwoven for many specific parts to have stuck in my brain.
Power Play (Nicolo Bardoni & Stephen Warr)
D: Needs a little something more to really have a lasting impact.
E: Some mix of “local public television bumper” and “airport lounge”.
Future Nostalgia (Dua Lipa)
D: Now THIS is pop music.
E: If there’s any artist who’s done a better job of keeping the disco alive, I don’t know them because they do not exist.
Inheritance (The Last Bison)
D: Brittle, yet beautiful in the right light.
E: The general vibe isn’t really in my wheelhouse but the harmonies are beautiful.
Wiped Out! (The Neighbourhood)
D: The ultimate in lazy Californian surf rock, from our friends across the pond.
E: I listen to these pages of lyrics about having a rough childhood and I just wanna say, “wow, that’s horrible; I’m sorry that happened to you,” and move on to a different conversation.
WOMB (Purity Ring)
D: An astonishing collection of heavy electronic rock from an unexpected source.
E: Purity Ring’s best.
Jurassic Park OST (John Williams)
D: When he’s on his game, there’s not a person alive that can score like this man.
E: Almost overuses the popular “Jurassic Park riff”, which…is fine, because it’s a good piece of music.
Embrace (Roosevelt)
D: One of indie dance’s kings moves further into the spotlight.
E: Roosevelt good.
color theory (Soccer Mommy)
D: Came in expecting shades and walked away with a wide world of hues.
E: A polished work that still somehow feels like a coffeeshop record (complimentary).
Dedicated (Carly Rae Jepsen)
D: It’s not Emotion, but nothing could be - this pop goddess curates her reputation far beyond the negative association to ‘Call Me Maybe’ with ease.
E: I’d just like to say that I suggested Dedicated Side B and David misinterpreted it, so we listened to Carly’s fourth best album instead of her second.
Untrue (Burial)
D: Dark, grimy, and haunting, yet leaves an undeniable legacy in shaping many of my favorite artists.
E: You can hear a pretty clear line from this to Jamie xx’s best works.
Tourist History (Two Door Cinema Club)
D: *slams drumsticks together* One, two, three, let’s make some soccer music!
E: A classic of its era with outstanding guitar work and unshakeable melodies.
DROWN THE TRAITOR WITHIN (Lorn)
D: Cold and stark, gritty and full of a little bit of despair, just the way I like it.
E: Aggressively titled glitchcore that sounds like lo-fi beats to study to.
Fetch The Bolt Cutters (Fiona Apple)
D: There’s value in knowing when noise is just noise.
E: I always thought the perfect 10 Pitchfork gave this was ridiculous but I forgot how many songs here just took any musical ideas and made them so needlessly noisy that they became impossible to ingest.
xx (The xx)
D: Timeless soft rock nearabouts the peak of its form.
E: I think The xx would go on to do much better than this, but it seems like most fans disagree.
Endless Fantasy (Anamanaguchi)
D: Feel like I should be hopped up on enough energy drinks to kill a blue whale and running like Sonic.
E: I would go as far as to call this chiptune.
Scaled and Icy (Twenty One Pilots)
D: A return closer to the form I used to enjoy so much - proof in the pudding that this duo still has it.
E: Parses to me as a more polished analog to Vessel, retaining the refined sound of Blurryface while returning to more poetic lyricism (I love the second verse of “Redecorate” with all my heart).
Plural (Electric Guest)
D: Unique vocals and pleasantly expressive beats wander without too much dragging them down here.
E: Really good indie pop, even if the instrumentation is a little sparse.
Melodrama (Lorde)
D: The universal experience of heartache, distilled into a powerful little package.
E: Fun, varied instrumentation with great, intriguing lyricism, but even at her most energetic, Lorde only rarely rises above a mezzo piano.
Give Up (The Postal Service)
D: This effectively one-off collaboration gave me some of my favorite songs even now, so you’ve gotta give them credit.
E: Great songwriting and good production but there are only so many bleepity bloop synth riffs and glitchy snare fills I can take before it all starts sounding like mush.
Star Wars: A New Hope OST (John Williams)
D: Williams is crazy talented, but this is a score that does show that he’s flawed, with an inability to marry the quiet and loud.
E: It surprised me how little I was impressed by some of these movements given how widely beloved this score is, but the overall product is still good.
Bewitched (Laufey)
D: Like a poorly-orchestrated spell, I’m left a little dazed and confused.
E: How many different ways do I have to write “good songwriting with boring composition”?
Stories from the Sky (Sid Acharya)
D: Makes the childhood desire to be an astronaut come violently rushing back into my skull.
E: A beautiful work that sounds like it should be soundtracking something.
Language (MNEK)
D: Fun, bubbly pop that regrettably spends a lot of time going absolutely nowhere.
E: Originally found this album in June 2020 while seeking out more music from Black pop artists; maybe I should do that more often.
Racine caree (Stromae)
D: My first venture into non-English music remains one of my favorites.
E: Cet album baise.
Summertime ‘06 (Vince Staples)
D: A beautifully told experience of being Black in America, paired with the common experience of a California that isn’t all beaches, sun, and blond bombshells.
E: It’s not hard to see why Vince has the cult following that he does, but it’s also not hard to see how this album could have been tighter.
Passive Me, Aggressive You (The Naked and Famous)
D: Aggressively punk electronica that blends a lot of influences well - they’re just a little late to the party.
E: There are a whole lot of different vibes here if you scratch below the sugary synth surface.
Zeroes (Declan McKenna)
D: Bit of a performance that doesn’t always land, but there’s a good solid base under it.
E: I’ve been spinning “Rapture” on repeat since I relistened to this album.
1989 [Taylor’s Version] (Taylor Swift)
D: It’s not even about the popularity - the music is just uninspiring.
E: The original 1989 is my favorite Taylor Swift album by a wide margin and boy is this one not.
Punisher (Phoebe Bridgers)
D: This is one of my go-to ‘I need to feel things’ albums and I cannot emphasize how highly a regard that should give this record.
E: By taking the songwriting process both completely seriously and not seriously at all, Phoebe Bridgers put out some of the most authentic and nearly universally relatable indie that’s ever been written.
And there you have it!
November 1st’s review will be along later today. Thanks, as always, for tuning in.