The Daily Spin
December Rundown
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Well. This is it (almost). Just the year-end recap to go.
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.
Here’s the playlist containing my favorite song from each album I looked at. It’s complete - enjoy!
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: I’ve listened to music for a collective 40,000 plays this year. It’s hard to keep it all straight, and even more challenging to grade it all equally fairly. I’ve done my best. I hope you feel it’s reasonable.
E: I listened to music and graded it on a 10-point scale. I did this 364 times, ignoring one movie soundtrack for which I hadn’t seen the film and felt it disallowed me from accurately reviewing the content.
I’ll Give You The Best
D: I said it last month - but this was kinda my farewell tour, in a sense. I stacked the back half of this month, particularly, with a lot of albums that were very much up my alley that we either hadn’t had a chance to listen to yet or that I liked and wanted the chance to highlight. Nothing here was really that much of a surprise - I think the closest that I got was two back-to-back albums earlier in the month, Still Woozy’s If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is and Bleacher’s Strange Desire. The former had a line of absolutely fantastic singles, but had somewhat fallen out of my rotation by the arrival of this album, so to revisit it was really pleasant - and surprising. I’d forgotten how enjoyable his sound is. The latter is an old favorite, with ‘I Wanna Get Better’ an anthemic tune I’ve loved forever - but again, I was blown away by the strength of the rest of the album. The last two songs, particularly, resonated much more strongly this time around, and I found myself effectively playing this album on loop.
E: This month was not for me, relatively speaking, but there were a few bright spots.
Random Access Memories dominated summer 2013 for me and it still hits more than a decade later. What has always grabbed me here is just how many styles Daft Punk are able to pull off convincingly. The features surely help in this regard, but the record has everything from Daft Punk’s normal electronica to more disco-inspired jams, ballads, and even a Fleetwood Mac-esque ditty near the end. None of it sounds contrived or like they’ve left their lane, which is truly an accomplishment.
Miami Horror’s Illumination and St. Lucia’s Utopia are two indietronica acts at their best, and I guess we can throw The Knocks’ 55 in there too if we’re willing to expand the genre definition a bit. Crash is the pure pop side of Charli XCX at her most refined. Mercurial World is near-perfect pop for the modern age. And it’s hard to go wrong with the Vince Guaraldi Trio on Christmas.
How To Disappoint Completely
D: I don’t know that anything really qualifies here? I think the closest that I get, personally, are the old favorites that don’t really hold up.
Actually, no, there’s one - Shock Value. I think it’s the strength of the Timbaland-Timberlake connection that - admittedly - got me into music in the first place, with Justified and FutureSex/LoveSounds in 2002 and 2006 - but I’m realizing that outside of a few incredibly strong tracks, most of Shock Value is below replacement-level, and production can’t outweigh a bloated and unfortunately misused feature list. Yeesh.
E: I gave Passion Pit’s Gossamer a 6, which is the lowest rating any of us gave any album the whole month. It’s honestly kinda hard to explain why. It sounds quite a bit like their previous record Manners, which I quite like. It’s just…lesser. The tunes aren’t as catchy, the compositions aren’t as full, and everything just makes the more abrasive parts of Passion Pit come through a lot more clearly. I got tired of the falsetto about halfway through my spin and it never got any less false.
Shock Value
D: It didn’t blow anything out of the water ratingswise, but I’m quite impressed with 55, the Knocks’ sophomore album - despite not really getting a huge amount of radio play or love, I find myself grooving way the hell out to basically every song on this record - and more importantly, I think this is one of the best examples of a well-applied feature list that we looked at. Just good danceable music, something the world can always use more of.
E: Aside from Gossamer being so much of a letdown to me, I can’t think of any ratings I gave that I did not expect to give. When you listen to so much music over the course of a year, you end up kind of knowing what you’re getting into.
In A Word
Quick-hit recaps for each album.
Polydans (Roosevelt)
D: More like Polybangs, amirite?
E: You could call this Roosevelt’s most forgettable LP, but his most forgettable is still outstanding.
Illumination (Miami Horror)
D: The best of 2013ish soft synth.
E: Great synth compositions that should lean more on feature vocals.
Goldrushed (The Royal Concept)
D: FIFA music that’s also NASCAR music that’s also kinda goofy electronic rock.
E: I swear the bridge to “World on Fire” used to be about cigarettes and coffeeshops.
Utopia (St. Lucia)
D: Criminally slept on, but it’s also kinda easy to tell why it’s never been massive.
E: Impossibly catchy.
Manic (Halsey)
D: When it hits, it’s good, but the misses are pretty rough blotches.
E: I didn’t jive with this when it came out and I still mostly don’t.
Heard It In A Past Life (Maggie Rogers)
D: I see what Pharrell noticed - but it’s buried under the work of a bunch of other people.
E: The production does Maggie’s voice a disservice.
Built On Glass (Chet Faker)
D: There are two Chets - one makes really excellent downtempo electronica, and one explores and bends genres as a reminder why most people don’t do that.
E: Bon Iver Jr. in the first half; basically just Alt-J in the second half.
If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is (Still Woozy)
D: Still Woozy knows what makes something ‘nice’.
E: A pleasant mix of Glass Animals and the chillwave artists I love to play on repeat.
Strange Desire (Bleachers)
D: One of those albums where I wish I would have looked past the uber-popular song a loooong time ago - but better late than never.
E: Terrible Thrills, Vol. 2 (this same album with each track being covered by a different artist) clears.
Mercurial World (Magdalena Bay)
D: I guess I’m just not hip with it, but this didn’t really do much for me.
E: A tinge of nostalgia for the era in which they grew up, but not bludgeoned over the head as with Glass Animals.
Volcano (Jungle)
D: The musical equivalent of Pierce Brosnan, Brad Pitt, and Logan Lerman doing a runway show next to a bunch of average dudes.
E: Similar to chill dance pop I usually like but I never quite got what it was trying to do.
Before The Night (HOME)
D: I have this weird hankering to watch a two-hour video on speedrunning a game I’ve never heard of.
E: One note.
The Balance (Catfish and the Bottlemen)
D: Needs a bit more balance, but this band will always hit for me when I need them.
E: Slightly better than The Ride.
MAYBE (Valley)
D: One outstanding song surrounded by every stereotypical LA indie track released since 2016.
E: Gives me more The 1975 vibes than Penguin Prison vibes, for the worse.
Pure Heroine (Lorde)
D: Lorde splashed onto the scene in fantastic form, but I think this needed a little fine-tuning in retrospective.
E: At least two too many songs about not being luxurious, but the pared-down production sets the tone well.
For Emma, Forever Ago (Bon Iver)
D: It’s wild to look at where Justin Vernon is now and compare it to then, but the roots are there - and if the base isn’t strong, the ceiling isn’t either. Vernon made his house of steel.
E: A direct translation of Vernon’s mind into musical notation.
Bloom (Beach House)
D: Beach House make music for the slow pan into the realization that you’re in love or falling out of love in a movie.
E: Beach House have always known when to let the instrumentation carry them and when to let the melodies rise to the top.
55 (The Knocks)
D: Eclectic collection of dance tracks, criminally underrated.
E: The lyrics to “I Wish (My Taylor Swift)” are completely delusional and I can’t tell if that makes the song wack or weirdly endearing.
How Will You Know If You Never Try (COIN)
D: One outstanding song surrounded by every stereotypical LA rock track released since 2016.
E: Basslines subdued to the point of nonexistence, which is a bad thing considering that’s usually my favorite part of a good pop song.
CRASH (Charli XCX)
D: Charli is such a unique voice in the world of music, and it’s a shame that it feels covered up on this record by the influences of others.
E: Just because it’s not hyperpop doesn’t mean it’s not true Charli.
18 Months (Calvin Harris)
D: Hey, wanna remember 2013? Me neither.
E: This sound, without a hint of irony, defined a generation, but it feels so soulless.
Shock Value (Timbaland)
D: Three of the great pop songs of the 2000s next to a bunch of really mediocre fuckery.
E: “The Way I Are” is a classic. Why didn’t they just put that song on here 17 times?
Gossamer (Passion Pit)
D: It’s a Walmart-brand Manners, but Manners was great.
E: Passion Pit was good for exactly one album and this wasn’t it.
Random Access Memories (Daft Punk)
D: Daft Punk make music that touches on a million inputs and yet unifies into one brilliant shine.
E: “Giorgio by Moroder” has been an inner-circle favorite for 10 years.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Vince Guaraldi Trio)
D: This album is Christmas, whether white or brown, happy or melancholy.
E: This would be a perfect Christmas album if Arrested Development didn’t ruin “Christmas Time Is Here” forever.
Soundtrack to a Death (Mura Masa)
D: Sometimes I crave a little instrumental electronica, and this hits that spot.
E: Listening to this album makes it easy to see why Mura Masa got all those features on his self-titled.
Palaces (Flume)
D: When Flume can restrain himself, he makes beautiful music.
E: There’s a good producer in here somewhere, but half the time it sounds like even Flume doesn’t want me to hear it.
A Rush of Blood to the Head (Coldplay)
D: It’s a little dorky, but no one did it like Coldplay did in the early 2000s.
E: It’s kind of astounding how edgeless Coldplay’s compositions were early in their career.
A Moment Apart (ODESZA)
D: ODESZA takes you to another realm, ethereal and beautiful.
E: This is what it sounds like when ODESZA actually commits to a genre.
Strangers (RAC)
D: Longtime remixer finally steps up to put out a full record of his own work, and it’s more stellar than I could have ever hoped.
E: I can give RAC credit for not letting his features take over his sound, but that’s about all I can do.
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (M83)
D: An album about the inconsequential joys.
E: “Outro” was a perfect send-off for this series.
And there you have it!
There’ll be one last post to wrap up the entire project and look back on our year-long journey. Thank you for reading, for listening, and for supporting.