Jeff Rosenstock - 100 Gecs - The Weeknd - Kendrick Lamar - Janelle Monae - IDLES - Carly Rae Jepsen: Lilliputian Album Review #5

This is gonna my last multi-album review mix for a while! It's been a lot of fun and I might come back to it, but it's hard to cover this many albums to my satisfaction. I think single or double album reviews would be more efficient and fun. I also want to focus on reviewing singles rather than albums for a while and going in depth with that. Still, this was a fun project and I learned a lot about writing and music critique in just a short while! Music will still be a big part of this blog moving forward. So let's finish with the biggest mix yet!

(The formatting is really weird on this one. I don't know what happened. Sorry x_x)

No Dream - Jeff Rosenstock (2020)

Punk Rock

8/10

Jeff Rosenstock is here punkier than ever. He returns with the angst, but now feels even angrier and more indignant both sonically and narratively. Rosenstock interjects classic punk chords and distortions into his battles against his friends and enemies (usually one in the same), the sociopolitical machinations of the wider world, and as always, his own demons. Some of the beginning tracks had me worried that this album was going to be harsh enough to lose its own directions, but the middle and end contain a boisterous fury that, if not joyful, is at at least aggressively cathartic. Despite its pessimistic political fatalism, this album is a lot of damn fun.

Fave Tracks: N O D R E A M, State Line, Old Crap, ***BNB, Honeymoon Ashtray, Ohio Tpke

1000 Gecs and the Tree of Clues - 100 Gecs (2020)

Minecraft

8.5/10 

Light up the festive Juul, Gecmas came early this year! Tree of Clues is not a sequel but a remix album based on the Gecs' debut album, 1000 Gecs. It might feel premature to allow the Gecers a remix album just a year after their debut dropped, but 1000 Gecs is one of my favorite albums of all time and any more content from that source is gonna be hot. And it is! For the most part. The amount of collaborators on this project come everyone from the Gecs' native Hyperpop, to Underground Hip-Hop and Emo. Some of the tracks are awkward and only work as interesting experiments on the original works. But some of them stand on there on as equals or arguably improvements on the original songs.

At a glance, some of the collaborating artists on this project are: Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito, A.G. Cook, Danny L Harle, Girlfriend of the Year, Count Baldor, Hannah Diamond, and Dorian Electra. Also, somehow, mf'ing Fall Out Boy?!

I love some of these remixes to death, but my favorite part of the album has to be the last quarter which features some brand new Gecs songs and live recordings their performance on Adult Swim's Fishcenter. All their new/live stuff goes stupid as a horse. 

Fave Tracks: Ringtone Remix (Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito), Gec 2 U Remix (Danny L Harle), Stupid Horse Remix (Girlfriend of the Year & Count Baldor), xXXi_wud_nvrstop_UXXx Remix (Tommy Cash & Hannah Diamond), Gec 2 U Remix (Dorian Electra), Came to My Show, Toothless, Small Pipe (Live), 800db Cloud (Live)

After Hours - The Weeknd (2020)

Synthwave / R&B

8/10

You're one of the most consistent and celebrated male voices from last decade's R&B scene. You have your radio smashes and your complex deep cuts, your party songs and your sad songs. Actually, your party songs and sad songs are the same thing. So, almost 10 years into your career, what do you do?

You transition into 80's Synthwave. 

And you fuckin kill it.

Fave Tracks: Hardest to Love, Scared to Live, Heartless, Blinding Lights, In Your Eyes, Save Your Tears, Until I Bleed Out

To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar (2015)

Conscious Gangsta Rap / Jazz Rap

10/10

"The most predictable 10/10 ever. These Wretched Games is seriously starting to lose touch with a modern, digital audience." - Randall Monroe

Fave Tracks: Platinum Saga Banger!

Dirty Computer - Janelle Monae (2018)

Alt-R&B 

9/10

I keep making this joke that this album is just an improved version of Radiohead's OK Computer. Both are about how the increasing digitization of the world is making everything confusing. Both toy with genre conventions and boundaries. Both are about the Computer. 

But the funniest part of the joke is that I'm right. 

Imagine femininity. Imagine blackness. Imagine queerness. Imagine the intersection of all of those. Imagine how those identities, individually and collectively, interact with the dominant culture and material reality of the Internet. Imagine not only celebrating sex but using weaponizing it against political institutions. Imagine collaborating with Elon's babymama, creating a song ("Pynk") so soft and cute that it causes Ben Shapiro to offend himself to death. Imagine being Prince of Gen-Z.

No stop imagining all those things cause you can just listen to this bomb ass record instead.

Fave Tracks: Take a Byte, Screwed (feat. Zoe Kravitz), Django Jane, Pynk (feat. Grimes), Make Me Feel, I Got the Juice (feat. Pharrell Williams), I Like That, So Afraid, Americans

Joy as an Act of Resistance. - IDLES (2018)

Punk Rock

9.5/10 

Hey y'all, Punk is really fuckin good. Punk can do this really cool thing where it strips all complexities, both in composition and sound, into a basic pure rage. What makes IDLES so dope is that this rage is channeled against bigotry, toxic masculinity, xenophobia, beauty standards and insecurities. And if you're thinking, "Well that sounds hella preachy", it's not for a moment because these songs are so damn fun and catchy. They make you wanna dance. This album has this beautiful overarching lesson, that political engagement shouldn't be avoided because it's uncomfortable or volatile. It should be volatile! And moreso, political rage and indignation can be super lit! Go destroy Fascism and have a party at the same time! WOO WOO WOO

Fave Tracks: Never Fight a Man With a Perm, Danny Nedelko, Love Song, June, Samaritans, Television, Great, Rottweiler

Emotion - Carly Rae Jepsen (2015) 

Pop / Carly Rae Jepsen

9.5/10

After this album's 2015 release, Carly Rae Jepsen was diagnosed with a herniated disc and had to spend the next 2 months in the hospital. It turns out the injury was due to the fact that CRJ had been carrying the entire medium of music on her back for years. 

Fave Tracks: Run Away With Me, Emotion, I Really Like You, Gimmie Love, All That, Boy Problems, Making the Most of the Night, Let's Get Lost, LA Hallucinations, When I Needed You, Black Heart, I Didn't Just Come Here to Dance, Favourite Colour