365 – New Music Daily

A new post type! Can you believe it? Yeah yeah, I know I’m behind, but to be transparent there are a bunch of reviews coming up that are basically X was good, Y was OK, Z was bad, so here’s your entertainment value for a bit. I have had a few people ask me “don’t you need time to let an album grow on you? How can you do that when you’re listening to so many albums?”. The answer to the former is: Yes, mostly, but sometimes when you know you know. The latter: I have a lot of time to listen to music.

While I do think that my first impression of a lot of these albums encompasses how I eventually feel about them over time, I wanted to highlight a few instances where I underrated/overrated an album that I’ve listened to this year.

1. Radiohead – OK Computer

I mean, come on. This one was a shoe-in. I don’t really need to say more – read my redux review if you want to know exactly what happened.

2. Lianne La Havas – Self-Titled

This one received high marks when I initially reviewed it, but landed in the “pretty damn good” tier for May. Over time, listening to individual songs from this and then eventually going back and pulling out even more, this album does not really have weak points.

The different sub-genres of R&B and Soul throughout this, the fantastic Radiohead cover, and the amazing guitar work and vocals from Lianne make this one of the best R&B records of the past 5 years. I genuinely love pretty much every song on this album and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this genre of music – it is phenomenal.

3. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets – High Visceral Pt. 1

Another album that didn’t necessarily receive a negative review initially, High Visceral Pt. 1 has incredible ingenuity, songwriting and instrumentation throughout this entire record. Their lead singer is great, and while yes, their songs are a bit strange, Found God in a Tomato is seriously one of my favorite songs that I’ve heard this year, and it’s one of many great songs on this under the radar modern psych record.

4. The Doors – The Doors

There are a few of you out there who will not be thrilled to hear that this one was overrated. While I respect Jim Morrison’s songwriting, his vocals waned on me over time, and some of their songs actually started to annoy me greatly. Perhaps there is some blame to be put on Spotify for seemingly prioritizing their songs in Rabies over everyone else, but this album did not grow on me over time and would be knocked down a bit on a re-tier.

5. The Strokes – Is This It

This album hasn’t actually been tiered yet (it’ll go in July and yeah… that’ll be up soon. It is September after all), but I feel the need to emphasize a few things. This is, without question, my favorite album that I’ve listened to this year and has rekindled my love for fun, upbeat alternative rock. I think it’s a fucking flawless album and it’s hard to believe that I’ve only been listening to it for a couple months because I already feel like I know damn near every beat. The songwriting is amazing, Julian Casablancas’ vocal style is infectious, and the rhythm and lead guitars always mesh well, and overall it’s one of the best records that I have been playing and will continue to play over and over and over again.

Be on the lookout for some other new post types amongst the reviews!