The Daily Spin
March 2023 Rundown
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. We’re three months, and 90 albums, into the journey.
I’ll be joined by Eli on this one, 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. 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, even if it is April Fools’.
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: Honestly, no adjustments this month from me. I think I’ve found a much better grasp of what my grading scale looks like, and frankly, I think I’d rather look forward to our final adjustments at the end of the year to make further changes.
E: Nothing for me either. I considered a few changes but didn’t feel strongly enough about any of them to open a new tab and call up the spreadsheet, which…isn’t even that much work, so I couldn’t have been that upset with my original ratings.
I’ll Give You The Best
D: Obviously, I have to talk about Currents here, which slid in right at the end of the month to depose In Rainbows as our collective top album - and it absolutely merits that title in my eyes. Though it remains second of what we’ve reviewed so far to 22, A Million (4th overall) on my personal list, it’s undeniably a near-perfect album, and so I felt no qualms about giving it the 10 it rightfully deserved. It’s the first album to receive a 30 from us collectively, and I’m so very glad that it was the one to earn that mantle.
All said, this was really a phenomenal month for us - six of our top 10 albums in aggregate came from March, and outside of Bright Green Field, none of the albums landed in our bottom 10 overall. It makes sense - Emotion (3rd) is a pop phenom at her absolute best, I would argue. Fantasy (5th) is a longtime favorite, a stalwart in so many ways, coming back and proving he’s still got it and goddamn, does he have it good. My First Car (6th) and Communion (7th) are outstanding debuts from artists that I still don’t think get enough love in the mainstream scene, and Cannot Be, Whatsoever (8th) is a simply gorgeous endeavor, one that absolutely merits every piece of praise lauded upon it.
I’d also be remiss to not mention The Fame Monster, which took me back to middle school in the best way, nor should I go without speaking to No Rome, who landed two albums solidly in the eights and did so with ease. Great month for us.
E: We revisited two of my favorite albums of all time this month, and if loving Emotion and Currents is basic, then boy, my pH level is 14.
David went into most of my other favorites, but I’d like to expand on The Fame Monster because I was somewhat higher than consensus on it and I think even then I might have underrated it. This is an uber dynamic performance from Lady Gaga, a record on which you can clearly hear notes of all the threads her career would follow in the future.
You’ve got the big, bombastic hits (“Bad Romance”, “Just Dance”, “Poker Face”, “Telephone”, “Paparazzi”, “Alejandro”, “LoveGame”) that put her on the international stage, a run she would continue with Born This Way. Then, songs about the pressures of fame (“Paparazzi”, “The Fame”) and songs overtly about sex (“LoveGame”, “I Like It Rough”) were essentially the entire thesis of Artpop. You can see her get her singer-songwriter on in “Speechless”, a song that harkens more to her collaborations with Tony Bennett than almost anything else in her catalog, though it does also remind me of Joanne. And then there’s a random, but incredibly underrated, Gwen Stefani-esque ditty called “Summerboy”, which might secretly be the best song on the entire album.
This, not Born This Way, is Lady Gaga’s best album. It’s effortless and classic, and it’s pretty much all her; she’s listed as a songwriter on every track on the album and a lead songwriter on most of them (and the only songwriter on “Speechless”). The studio obviously paired her with good producers and notched her a couple key features, but to me that came across as the studio doing everything they could to promote their star artist, not just doing all the work for her and “planting” her, so to speak.
Let’s see which tracks I liked the most this month:
You ever just get two versions of the same song stuck in your head for two weeks straight? Anyway. Disregarding that, the three-four punch of “Why” and “Rhinestone” on Flume’s latest record really stuck with me, as did the closer on Medoed.’s Sport and the opener on The Arcadian Wild’s Finch in the Pantry. The bottom three songs were just so catchy as to be endlessly replayable.
How To Disappoint Completely
D: Honestly, I don’t have much to talk about here. I expected Squid to miss the mark a bit with Bright Green Field - that album was never going to be entirely within my enjoyment.
I’d much rather talk about the albums for which I had higher expectations and that let me down here, because we’ve already done the rating. First to come to mind is Lana del Rey, whose Did you know… was such a profound disappointment in terms of pacing and style - it’s classic Lana noir, but it drags in ways you can’t possibly overcome. No need for that album to be that long, especially when it’s the same package with swapped colors.
I wanted more from Funeral Suits with Lily of the Valley - so much of what I had seen was lauding the album as a testament to the genre, and then when I listened, it just felt… flat. Tired, old, and bored.
I also felt rather let down by Kygo’s Cloud Nine - and part of that is the devastating process of getting older, but part of that is realizing that the clean drops and bouncing drums of days gone were a little too clean, a little too inauthentic to really be enjoyed.
E: The stats say I was significantly lower on this month’s albums than David and Preston were, which feels correct. As I’ve now listened to 90 albums in 90 days, I’ve grown weary of records that I feel waste my time by being overlong, repetitive, or just plain boring.
Ignoring the albums David’s already mentioned, the biggest offender in this regard was Totorro’s Home Alone, which felt like it was an hour long despite only being a shade under 33 minutes. Every track has basically one riff that it drives into the ground for four, five, even six minutes, and the songs themselves aren’t really that different from each other. The musical ideas presented are fine…I just wish there were more of them.
Shock Value
D: I love Flume, so maybe this isn’t the best spot for it, but Things Don’t Always Go The Way You Plan was an absolutely phenomenal effort from him. When he allows his production to be a little messier and rougher, his music shines all the more for it. It’s one of my favorite releases we’ve had in a very long time - and though the score may not entirely reflect that, trust that I was absolutely baffled at how much I enjoyed this one.
E: The March album I was the most surprised to enjoy was easily The Arcadian Wild’s Finch in the Pantry. I’d heard bits and pieces of the band’s self-titled before listening to this record and was mostly just whelmed aside from a couple good tracks, but Finch in the Pantry is a masterpiece of composition, lyricism, and performance from start to finish.
Conversely, the March album I was the most surprised to dislike was probably Jane Remover’s Frailty, which several reviews have lauded for “creating its own genre”. In reality, it just sounds to me like the artist wanted to make hyperpop but didn’t really…know how to do that? (Sorry.) The best hyperpop, to me anyway, uses the genre’s more abrasive elements to capture the sheer intensity of a moment, a feeling. Frailty mostly just inserts these bombs of glitchy noise seemingly at random. It sounds disjointed and removes me from the experience.
In A Word
Starting this month, we’ll both leave a miniature, one-sentence review of each of the month’s albums in these monthly recaps.
The Last Dance (Dance à la Plage)
D: It’s easy to get lost listening to this one, which is about as high a compliment as I can pay.
E: Well-produced and upbeat indie rock with endless replayability.
Lily of the Valley (Funeral Suits)
D: Not enough variety to build on a solid base.
E: One-note tracks that the band doesn’t seem especially interested in performing.
Cloud Nine (Kygo)
D: More like Cloud Fine.
E: Over-polished yet catchy house music.
Cannot Be, Whatsoever (Novo Amor)
D: The exact sort of folk music that speaks to the soul.
E: Good, soothing indie folk that would have fared much better if it wasn’t released in November 2020.
Sport (Medoed.)
D: Why didn’t you make every song like the last?
E: Seven tracks of repetitive and horrendously mixed emo, chased by a beautiful instrumental closer.
Morningside (Faded Paper Figures)
D: Feels a little bit like the band just woke up.
E: Good lyricism and production, underwhelming vocal performance.
The Fame Monster (Lady Gaga)
D: MIDDLE SCHOOL DANCES BABY!!!
E: An undeniable classic; the album that makes us associate this style of music with the late aughts.
When the World Stopped Moving: The Live EP (Lizzy McAlpine)
D: It’s not great at doing exactly what it wants to be best at.
E: A lyric-driven record in which the audio levels allow the lyrics to shine, which made me realize that the lyrics themselves are a mixed bag.
The Living End (Sarah and the Sundays)
D: Brainwormy as hell, this one stuck around well after I expected it to.
E: Lights up my brain’s jangle pop receptors and shoegaze receptors simultaneously.
Sound & Color (Alabama Shakes)
D: This is synesthesia personified (sonified?).
E: Dynamic indie soul with transcendent vocals.
Crying in the Prettiest Places (No Rome)
D: Quick little jabs, just enough to scratch an itch without leaving a mark.
E: Well-composed and well-executed tracks that don’t overstay their welcome, individually or as a collective.
Frailty (Jane Remover)
D: A weapon misaimed, an impact undersold.
E: A hodgepodge of hyperpop that doesn’t seem to understand how to use the genre for greatest effect.
Things Don’t Always Go the Way You Plan (Flume)
D: Authentic in a way he rarely lets himself be - to phenomenal effect.
E: Flume’s music sounds realer in these rough-around-the-edges demos than it does on his completed records.
Finch in the Pantry (The Arcadian Wild)
D: Beautifully free, wonderfully close.
E: Tight vocal harmonies and orchestral instrumentals so well performed that the strings sound like they’re singing in lieu of a human voice.
Home Alone (Totorro)
D: It all feels just a touch slapdash.
E: Every song sounds like the musical equivalent of my high school self repeating the same thing over and over again in my essays so I could hit the required word count.
Blood Rushing Like Current Through A Powerline (acloudyske)
D: Blood ambling back to bed, like me after a beer too many.
E: Replacement level indie electronica.
Communion (Years & Years)
D: The Church could take notes from these guys.
E: A full hour of classic melodic synthpop.
RIP Indo Hisashi (No Rome)
D: Crisply designed, imitative without being replicant.
E: No Rome knows exactly how he wants his music to sound, and the music is better for it.
The Fall (Moxie)
D: Unsteady on its own two feet.
E: Good on the surface but flawed at its core, strained vocals hiding behind reverb and over-instrumentation.
Fantasy (M83)
D: He quite literally cannot miss.
E: Masterfully crafted work by a veteran musician.
Jupiter (Maximum Love)
D: Good luck telling this one apart from [gestures at literally any synthwave or vaporwave album from the last fifteen years or so].
E: A collection of 12 synthwave songs perfect for soundtracking an arcade racing game at the local Chuck E. Cheese.
Woman Titles (Hot Dad)
D: Better than it should have been in the music, worse than it should have been in the lyrics.
E: Well composed comedy music that isn’t funny.
My First Car (Vulfpeck)
D: I don’t dance, but I danced to this one.
E: Incredible grooves, perfect for writing articles until the wee hours of the morning.
Spreading Rumours (GROUPLOVE)
D: Authentic, at times almost to a fault, but happily so.
E: If the music one produces is a reflection of oneself, GROUPLOVE are dorks, and the world is better for it.
Emotion (Carly Rae Jepsen)
D: It’s everything I want from pop music, and it’s so much of what we so rarely get.
E: A flawless pop record that combines timeless production with lyricism that sounds simultaneously universal and deeply personal.
No Dogs Allowed (Sidney Gish)
D: Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: 20-year old university student decides to strike out on their own, creates enjoyably easy album.
E: Solid indie/bedroom pop that sounds like a lot of other solid indie/bedroom pop.
Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (Lana Del Rey)
D: I would have pulled an Irish Goodbye about halfway through this one.
E: Well written and well conceived, but so sonically boring as to spend most of the runtime sounding like a soliloquy given by the hero in a Shakespearean tragedy just before they die.
Bright Green Field (Squid)
D: There’s hints of what it wants to be under a whole lot of Definitely Not That.
E: If music is a pie, this one has an overly thick crust and no fillings or spices.
Better Oblivion Community Center (Better Oblivion Community Center)
D: It’s easy to see why the components here have floated to the top - I only wish it felt more like it was greater than the sum of its parts.
E: Good lyricism and decent genre mixing from two good artists who clearly have chemistry.
The Beauty Between (RVIVR)
D: This one’s got some additions to my workout playlist.
E: Decent punk album that mostly ran together.
Currents (Tame Impala)
D: Music, at its best, looks like this.
E: A perfect indie record on which every song is not just a musical story, but a story told through music.
And there you have it!
April 1st’s review will be along later today. Thanks, as always, for tuning in.