List season is upon us and I thought I’d kick off with something a bit different. I was in two minds about doing this one as the main point of the blog is to highlight the music I like…and there’ll still be all that positive stuff to come. But as the critical consensus rolls in over the coming weeks, I wanted to provide a bit of an antidote to that.
This is for anyone else who has read a glowing review or heard the hype, and then been left underwhelmed by the actual music. Also, I just like to be a dick occasionally and write something a bit snide and tongue-in-cheek.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t the worst albums of the year, I even kind of like some of these. It’s the albums that didn’t justify the level of praise heaped on them. And I’m not talking the likes of your pop superstars here; I’m a 35-year old bloke doing a primarily indie-focused blog so my sense of what’s highly-rated is based on your Pitchforks, what’s left of the legacy music press, and the corners of social media in which I lurk.
I’m nice really though so I have tried to highlight something I liked about them as well. My first five selections are below, have a look and feel free to let me know if you had similar thoughts about any of these. Or even if you wanna tell me how I’m wrong and that my tastes just aren’t sophisticated enough or whatever … I’m definitely right though.
boygenius – the record
Do you ever think your life could be some sort of Truman Show scenario where everyone is conspiring behind your back? Well I’m about 75% convinced that millions of people are pretending to like boygenius just to fuck with me.
I can generally understand why an artist is popular, whether I personally like them or not. But the popularity of boygenius is just baffling. I’ve seen references to the harmonising, but the harmonies are shit; none of them have particularly strong or interesting voices. The tunes are mostly dreary, and the songwriting is often actively bad; there’s just long rambling verses where a chorus should be. And it’s not even like the songs don’t have choruses; they do, they’re just in the wrong place.
I’ve kept trying to understand it and make it click, but they’re really not good. You don’t have to pretend to like them, Phoebe Bridgers isn’t gonna go out with you.
Redeeming Feature: Anti-Curse
Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
I have to acknowledge that this is far from a bad album and is probably my favourite on this list, but it also screams style over substance. The critical praise was all talk of experimentation and genre-fusion, but it kinda just sounds like late-90’s alt-rock with some random dashes of electro and R&B thrown over it.
People have been convinced that Yves’ fairly conventional music is really interesting because they dress in funny clothes.
Redeeming Feature: Lovely Sewer
Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman…
Every review of this seemed to include copy & paste, press release talking points about it being their heaviest and most emotionally revealing album in years. Well, it’s about as heavy as any other QOTSA record, they’ve just ditched the hints of genre-experimentation from their last album. In terms of emotional depth, that feels like a big reach. Just because you know about the health issues, divorce, etc, it doesn’t mean it actually comes across in the music.
It’s a band 25 years in, with a perfectly average album which is a lesser version of their best work. Whatever has happened in Josh Homme’s personal life doesn’t change that.
Redeeming Feature: None of it is very memorable, which is the problem. It’s all just fine.
Lil Yachty – Let’s Start Here
The hype here was of Lil Yachty re-inventing himself as a ‘serious artist’ – a rapper experimenting in psychedelic and progressive rock. Except the hip-hop influence is largely absent, and, while there’s plenty of nods to rock classics, it’s actually much more indebted to funk, soul, and R&B slow jams. And that’s the root of the problem; this is pretty much just an exercise in genre tourism with stuff that’s been done plenty of times before. It seems like the only reason to frame it as innovative, is that ostensibly it’s a rapper performing it.
The album is enjoyable enough about 50% of the time, but Yachty makes the mistake of thinking long = epic, and it’s a slog to get through. Also, Yachty himself is often the worst thing about it; his auto tune-assisted vocals ranging from mildly interesting to terrible.
Who is this really for? Unless you’re a young kid who’s never heard of Dark Side of The Moon, I can’t imagine you thinking there’s anything particularly ‘new’ here. I’m left with the impression that Yachty has dismissed hip-hop as ‘unserious’ music so he can make a pitch for artistic credibility to old dudes who would never actually listen to him if he wasn’t ripping off classic rock records.
Redeeming Feature: the BLACK seminole. & IVE OFFICIALLY LOST ViSiON!!!!
Wednesday – Rat Saw God
Dull, plodding, tuneless; slacker rock shit that should have been left in the 90’s. To be fair, part of the charm here is supposed to be in the storytelling; snapshots of youth and young adulthood in the American South, which maybe just isn’t gonna resonate with someone from Northern England. But also, I’m never gonna find out how good your stories are if I’ve got to listen to your shitty shoegaze country band to hear them. Write a book or something instead.
Redeeming Feature: Chosen to Deserve
Check out Part 2 to see who rounds out the top 10.
No Frills Reviews 
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