The 2023 Music Thread

[METALMAN]

On 12/05/2023 at 15:44, Brandon Cutler Fan Account said:

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.

I heard a couple of songs from this - surprisingly good!

[DFF]

King Gizzard have gone full heavy metal. 

[RPS]

I'm right now on my obsessive phase of Carolina Polachek's Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. It takes a lot of interesting elements of electronic and experimental music and translates through the lens of pop music. The vocal/auto tune manipulation, mixed with her outstanding singing voice, is so interesting. It creates layers in her voice and creating effects in her voice that add so much depth. It works as art pop but also as pop - it is both of my daughters favorite album. 

[RPS]

Chris Korda's EP Not My Problem, I'll Be Dead is delightfully absurd. It's the horny dance soundtrack for the end of the world.

[DFF]

On 09/06/2023 at 18:44, RPS said:

Chris Korda's EP Not My Problem, I'll Be Dead is delightfully absurd. It's the horny dance soundtrack for the end of the world.

I'll give that a spin. Always looking for things a but more outside my usual wheelhouse. In return, I'll recommend 'Wait Til I Get Over' by Durand Jones. Mixture of Soul and Roots Rock, and a very easy listen. 

[RPS]

5 hours ago, DFF said:

I'll give that a spin. Always looking for things a but more outside my usual wheelhouse. In return, I'll recommend 'Wait Til I Get Over' by Durand Jones. Mixture of Soul and Roots Rock, and a very easy listen. 

That was really enjoyable. It was a little too tender for me, but I would put that record on a Sunday morning with a fresh coffee. 

[RPS]

Janelle Monae's The Age of Pleasure is so fun and breezy. Not my favorite album of the year, but a great album for being tipsy by the pool side. Water Slide is a banger. 

[METALMAN]

Her first three albums are right up there among my favourites of the 2010s so I was a bit disappointed that this one was merely “good”. I’ll give it another go.

[RPS]

3 hours ago, METALMAN said:

Her first three albums are right up there among my favourites of the 2010s so I was a bit disappointed that this one was merely “good”. I’ll give it another go.

With all her acting gigs, it felt like Janelle ending her record deal. I actually don't love her second album and felt this cut from the same cloth, but half the length. 

[GoGo Yubari]

By second album do you mean ArchAndroid or Electric Lady? Because I think this sounds more like the former than either Electric Lady or Dirty Computer did, a lot more orchestration than she's done in a while. "Black Sugar Beach" in particular sounds like it's straight out of 2010 in a good way.

Overall I think it's a good album but in a way that I suspect isn't going to stick with me. It's neat the way the whole album flows and blends together but it maybe comes at the expense of having a lot of standout tracks, and while I think it was probably the right move to ditch it I miss some of the artifice/Cindy Mayweather stuff from her pre-Dirty Computer work. We'll see, though, I've only listened to it 1.5 times now, lot of time for it to grow on me.

[RPS]

6 hours ago, GoGo Yubari said:

By second album do you mean ArchAndroid or Electric Lady? Because I think this sounds more like the former than either Electric Lady or Dirty Computer did, a lot more orchestration than she's done in a while. 

I meant more like ArchAndroid and Dirty Computer felt eclectic, expansive in its themes and purposefully diverse and the Electric Lady and the Age of Pleasure felt more interested in a specific pallette and felt way more grounded. 

[Hobo]

On 11/05/2023 at 11:21, Skummy said:

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.

I keep forgetting there's a new John Cale album! Even though I have listened to some of the songs off it.

[Fitzy]

Fall Out Boy's cover of We Didn't Start the Fire is truly something.

 

World Trade / Second plane / What else do I have to say? Greatest lyric of all time. 😂

[The Buscher]

Somehow, a song meant to feature the biggest stories from 1989 to 2023 failed to outright mention COVID.

You can argue that things like Tiger King imply COVID but like.  How are the words "COVID" or "pandemic" not anywhere in there?  It's only a once in a century event that impacted everyones' lives, no big deal I guess.

[Colly]

It's really bad.

 

[RPS]

I mean, it's Fall Out Boy in 2023, is that not a given? 

[Hobo]

That We Didn't Start the Fire cover is awful.

They completely whiffed the central idea of the entire song. The original is a list of world events that occurred during the first 40 years of Billy Joel's life in chronological order.

The Fall Out Boy cover is just a mash-up of events that jump around in time and they really mess with the structure of the original. The 9/11 line it's calling back to "JFK/Blown Away/What else do I have to say?" is the end of the second last verse in the original (as opposed to the final in this version).

It's a big moment in the song and goes right back into the refrain followed by the final verse covering 1964-89 that ends with an exasperated cry of "I can't take it anymore" followed by a final chorus acknowledging that "the fire" (the passing of time I guess?) just keeps going and going. That all these events, even though they might seem huge at the moment, breeze by one after another until they're just another item on a never-ending list of things that happened in the world. It's also Joel acknowledging that in 1989, as a 40-year-old man, he's witnessed a good chunk of the 20th century but also that time doesn't stop moving for anyone.

I have weirdly strong feelings about We Didn't Start the Fire apparently.

[LittleDaniel]

My current obsessions are two very different synth bands: Paper Bee's album "Thaw, Freeze, Thaw" and Nana Benz du Togo's "AGO" -- one of them is a rock band singing sad songs about a bad relationship, while the other is "ceremonial electro-voodoo-soul." Wonder which could be which??

 

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

21 hours ago, RPS said:

I mean, it's Fall Out Boy in 2023, is that not a given? 

They're newest album is actually great, but yeah this cover is really not.

[GhostMachine]

On 30/06/2023 at 08:08, Hobo said:

That We Didn't Start the Fire cover is awful.

They completely whiffed the central idea of the entire song. The original is a list of world events that occurred during the first 40 years of Billy Joel's life in chronological order.

The Fall Out Boy cover is just a mash-up of events that jump around in time and they really mess with the structure of the original. The 9/11 line it's calling back to "JFK/Blown Away/What else do I have to say?" is the end of the second last verse in the original (as opposed to the final in this version).

It's a big moment in the song and goes right back into the refrain followed by the final verse covering 1964-89 that ends with an exasperated cry of "I can't take it anymore" followed by a final chorus acknowledging that "the fire" (the passing of time I guess?) just keeps going and going. That all these events, even though they might seem huge at the moment, breeze by one after another until they're just another item on a never-ending list of things that happened in the world. It's also Joel acknowledging that in 1989, as a 40-year-old man, he's witnessed a good chunk of the 20th century but also that time doesn't stop moving for anyone.

I have weirdly strong feelings about We Didn't Start the Fire apparently.

The original is a classic, while Fall Out Boy's continuation not only leaves out certain events (I may be wrong, because I've only listened to it once, but I don't recall it mentioning Obama being elected President, the Red Sox breaking `The Curse', or COVID), but doesn't even have the events it does mention in order.

I like *some* of Fall Out Boy's songs, but I'd add this to the list of `meh', along with Centuries and Uma Thurman (Tom's Diner and The Munsters theme? Really?). On the other hand, I wish they'd record their cover of Under Pressure they did for the Queen sing a long special that aired on tv.

I am a Billy Joel fan, so I was somewhat happy about Fall Out Boy doing this.....until I actually heard it.

*edited to add* Some of the comments on Youtube are defending it not being in order, saying they like it because it represents the chaos of these times. Nope. WRONG. It represents the band being too lazy to work it out in order.

Edited July 1, 2023 by GhostMachine