The Daily Spin, November 18
Penguin Prison | Lost In New York
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite songs from each album right here.
Album: Lost In New York (2015)
Artist: Penguin Prison
Link:
Here’s the thing about an album like this - it’s not exactly revolutionary music. I’ve heard this playing in Sephora, H&M, Forever 21, and a thousand other stores in the eight years since it released. None of the beats are exactly game-changing - this is indie rock with electronic influences, possibly the base standard for the genre.
You can see a ton of influences both through the inputs and the outputs to this album, hints of Phoenix, Miami Horror, and the Knocks in the way the guitars feel a little scrubbed out while maintaining such tight bodies - there’s rarely a note misplaced here, the same way the keyboard and synths dance so elegantly across the stanzas. There’s RAC and Panama Wedding in the production, the sort of indietronic rock that relies really heavily on bouncing melodies to keep you engaged throughout, and it’s the sort of sound that feels like it ties a direct line to St. Lucia’s work in the back half of the 2010s.
The only issue I really have with the album is that there’s a real lack of sonic diversity. There are eleven tracks on this record, and with the exception of ‘Don’t Tell Me How It Ends’ and ‘In The Woods’, I have a generally tough time discerning where I am in the album. It’s a good sound, but the sameness is a detractor in the end - it’s a little too easy to get lost.
Rating: 8.6/10
Best Tracks: Calling Out; Try To Lose; Show Me The Way
Worst Tracks: In The Woods