The 2023 Music Thread

[LittleDaniel]

I keep forgetting to post it in here, but the new UltraMantis Black EP fucking rips.

[RPS]

100 Gecs new album 10,000 Gecs is the most audacious album I have listened too since their last album. To describe it would be a disservice. It is an experience ostensibly designed to ask - what if you were 15 years old again? It is simultaneously amazing album and also a reminder that I'm old. 

[LittleDaniel]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back and give their last album more of a chance because this one fucking rules.

 

[RPS]

22 minutes ago, LittleDaniel said:

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back and give their last album more of a chance because this one fucking rules.

 

You'll need help. Immediately. 

[LittleDaniel]

17 minutes ago, RPS said:

You'll need help. Immediately. 

please do something

[Benji]

Just discovered King Princess and this song in particular is amazing.

https://spotify.link/2zaW25dAAyb

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

You Me At Six, All Time Low, and Fall Out Boy have released my favourite albums of the year so far, 2008 is great you guys.

[RPS]

Wednesday's album Rat Saw God is really tremendous stuff. Songs straddles between alt country and grunge. Bull Believer will certainly be up there in song of the year (possibly even decade). Super intense experience. The album has a tendency to be unexpected in really compelling ways. You can often finish melodies in your head on the first listen to a song but this album takes lots of interesting turns. 

Yaeji new album With a Hammer is also fantastic. Her first album was way more electronic leaning, whereas this is more pop leaning. Really interesting stuff. 

[RPS]

On 17/03/2023 at 07:46, RPS said:

To describe it would be a disservice.

Okay here is my review of 100 Gecs and 10,000 Gecs.

The band is 100 Gecs. Their first release (an EP) was 100 Gecs. Their second album was 1000 Gecs. That's 900 more gecs. Their new album is 10,000 Gecs. You don't need to know math to know that is substantially better than their previous albums. 

I say that describing 100 Gecs is a disservice because inevitably it makes the music sound reductive. "It's an electronic autome ballad but midway through it becomes a ska song about getting a tooth removed and the chorus has an auto tuned voice screaming about having a tooth removed". Describing the chaos of 100 Gecs is not as fun as listening to the sheer audacity. I don't believe I have ever used the word iconoclast. 100 Gecs are iconoclast.  Not beholden to the expectations of prior generations. They want to smash together metal, rap, rock, punk, ska, emo and electronic music in a product that simultaneously can sound like pop music but also that is challenging and experimental. 100 Gecs is one of my sons favorite bands alongside Ed Sheeran and Imagine Dragons. I played it for my niece, who is 21, and she described it as awful. I think this is because 100 Gecs knows how to make pop music that is entertaining, but to ever so slightly tweak things in ways to make it unconventional and "different".

On their new album, 100 Gecs again could care less about their expectations and conventions. Hollywood Baby has an insane riff and out of this world production on the drums. One Million Dollars is an absolutely bonkers trip. The Most Wanted Person in the United States has so many goofy sound effects used throughout and coupled with the lazy rock rap 90s vibe. There is no one else making music that sounds like this. 

100 Gecs works because it's primal and immediately understandable but also ripe for critical analysis. Is this parody? Is the joke on me? Is this music celebratory of the inane and silly? When you have a whole song about a rotten tooth that you are mourning, is it sincere? I think what makes 100 Gecs the most interesting musical act of this early decade is that they clearly have zero interest in engaging with that topic of discussion while also confounding their audiences. While I ask is this parody, they just want to punch a jockey in the face and have lots of money. 

 

[apsham]

Man, usually I bitch at the Spotify algorithm for just giving me the same thing over and over - either songs that it already knows that I listen to or the same attempts at recommendations over and over again, but it gave me Sincere Engineer a few weeks back and I really, really dig Deanna Belos' voice.

 

[LittleDaniel]

@apsham Do you like Retirement Party? I always get them and Sincere Engineer confused -- two punk bands from Chicago that come up around the same time and I always found the singers sounded similar. Both rip!

 

[apsham]

1 hour ago, LittleDaniel said:

@apsham Do you like Retirement Party? I always get them and Sincere Engineer confused -- two punk bands from Chicago that come up around the same time and I always found the singers sounded similar. Both rip!

 

...oh dang. hadn't heard of them until now. Excellent. Thank you!

[LittleDaniel]

First new Gaslight Anthem in a decade or so. Pretty good! Always felt their stuff come off sounding kinda samey and this is no deviation from that, but eh the formula works.

[METALMAN]

They’re called the Gaslight Anthem because they gaslight you into thinking their new album might sound different 

[DFF]

Jessie Ware's new album is great.  Catchy as fuck. 

[Skummy]

struggling with new albums this year.

In the last few years, I've had a spreadsheet I use to track new releases, and make a quick knee-jerk reaction on them. Anything I think is quite good or deserves another couple of listens gets highlighted in yellow, anything I think is going to make my personal "best of the year" list gets highlighted in green.

By this time last year, I already was well into double-digits for albums that I found good enough to be worth a green highlight, and more yellow.

So far this year, my only "green" albums are by The Go! Team, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, and Belle & Sebastian. 

There's a few in "yellow" that I might go back to up and upgrade; Depeche Mode, Laibach, Fever Ray and John Cale have all done good stuff.

 

Still a few to listen to - The National, Beach House, Mars Volta, Pet Shop Boys, and Kim Gordon's new thing to name but a few - but I feel like it's been a fallow year so far. Anything important I might have missed?

[Kyle]

So The View are the best of friends, I see.

[Benji]

QOTSA dropped a new track and announced a new album for June 16th, two days after my birthday. Also Tenacious D dropped a new single which is fun.

[DFF]

21 hours ago, Skummy said:

struggling with new albums this year.

In the last few years, I've had a spreadsheet I use to track new releases, and make a quick knee-jerk reaction on them. Anything I think is quite good or deserves another couple of listens gets highlighted in yellow, anything I think is going to make my personal "best of the year" list gets highlighted in green.

By this time last year, I already was well into double-digits for albums that I found good enough to be worth a green highlight, and more yellow.

So far this year, my only "green" albums are by The Go! Team, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, and Belle & Sebastian. 

There's a few in "yellow" that I might go back to up and upgrade; Depeche Mode, Laibach, Fever Ray and John Cale have all done good stuff.

 

Still a few to listen to - The National, Beach House, Mars Volta, Pet Shop Boys, and Kim Gordon's new thing to name but a few - but I feel like it's been a fallow year so far. Anything important I might have missed?

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Haldamir319/2023-ranked-albums/

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/Haldamir319/2023-ranked-eps-and-mini-albums/

There's links to my ongoing lists, with genre descriptors for each entry. I've done 301 albums so far this year, and am just on my 43rd EP / Short Album as I type this ('Strong Heart' by Wytch Hazel). 

-

I would also broadly recommend using Rate Your Music for keeping track of these sorts of things. It has an upcoming releases box that is curated to you, based on artists you give 3.5/5 or better scores to. I use it in tandem with https://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_genre.cgi, which tracks everything uploaded to Spotify each week. You can filter via which country's Spotify you have, as well as a few other elements. 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

I'm surprised how much I like The Damned's new album Darkadelic. Absolutely wasn't expecting good that to land in my top 10 for the year so far but it does feel like it's been a slow one. I'm only up to 51 releases though so probably missing plenty of good stuff.