Reviews by dohej

Dark brooding electronica that’s full of gritty grimey textures, slow burning beats, heavy bass, and ominous atmospheres. Spooky!

Extremely try-hard theatre kid melodramatic music that swells and reaches for epicness from the first note and flails around trying to get there for 40 minutes. Dual vocals, strummy guitars, rich string arrangements, operatic ambitions, a through-narrative. Then a few tracks without the strings and just a more sparse singer songwriter folksy thing, but with the same cringey lyrics (“I’m going to show my cat some memes”) and musical theatre melodic phrasing. A for effort, but D for not including anything I want to listen to.

Cool combination of lo-fi bedroom power pop, shaggy fuzzy slacker psych, jokey hip hop, lush loungey jazz, and stickily horny neo-soul jams. Sometimes in sequence, sometimes all at once. Tons of ideas, not all of them stick - an album of brainstorming.

Springsteen meets pop punk - it's fast paced and dirty heartland rock with organs and keys, very tight compressed mid-pushed guitars, and a hoarse vocal singing in the exact Bruce cadence. A band that missed the 90s alt rock radio party by a decade.

Another Beach Boys album that impresses but doesn't connect - lush harmonies, clever arrangements, sophisticated production, pure pop brightness with a lingering melancholy subtending it. Big Beatles influence and lots that has kernels of stuff that would be realized in other genres, a pleasant listen but nothing that stands out to demand attention or make me care at all.

Upbeat tempo and bright timber give this a very poppy power-pop feeling. The main sounds are a jangly guitar with a tightly compressed overdriven tone combined with active basslines and synth accents. The vocal is very dominant, quick delivery, nasal sound and really pretty grating sometimes. Some psychedelic Syd-era pink Floyd elements.

The genius of this band was taking the slow burning cathartic post-rock formula, shedding most of the apocalyptic feel and miserableness (clue: the title explicitly rejecting doomerism) to create something affirming, inspirational, almost poppy. Could be one of the best guitar albums of the decade. There's a strong emphasis on the bright clean lead guitar lines - nothing pyrotechnic, but a beautiful crystalline tone and simple articulate phrasing - 2 interlocking voices articulating melodies/countermelodies that echo through the mix, picking up the ambience and carrying the songs to their peaks as the rest of band reaches a crescendo. It's a hackneyed, corny, and cheap formula - start slow to build the mood, step on the gas, let it off, step on it some more, martial snares to build up the pressure, ease it off, then bring it home - but it really does get close to being a shortcut to transcendence. You can't blame them for the thousands of God-awful church bands that have been abusing their reverb pedals and ripping this off in the name of Jesus ever since Friday Night Lights.

Slow, sparse, spacious singer songwriter stuff with a hushed whispery voice in the lead, backed up mostly by an acoustic guitar and/or a piano, with the odd track/part with a more fleshed out band or orchestral arrangement. It’s pretty, introspective, well put together, but one of a million cafe-core albums.

Washed out 5th gen indie like the National but with a bigger more overwrought cathartic approach, Bon Iver style vocals (reverb = emotion) and the sole ambition to play over a HEARTBREAKING GUT-WRENCHING scene in some melodrama like This Is Us.

Woozy mellow neo-soul beats with loads of warbly modulation for a trippy stoned hazy dazy feel to it - warm, lo-fi, peaceful. Guitar parts played with a hand on the whammy bar, shifting and sliding around the key. Jazzy RnB horns and keys, nostalgic synths, gospel harmonies, with tight electro drumming. The verses are wordy, playful, reflexive, thoughtful; they come in a kind of mumbly introverted delivery, like it's being recorded in a bedroom and they don't want to bother anyone next door. They slide between rapping, speaking and singing in a breathy unhurried playful stream of conversation. Mellow and lush but a bit samey and dull even at just 33 minutes. Gentle background music for a bougie cafe.

Tense, anxious, ambient. Strings pulsate nervously, with lines that emerge from the frozen foggy sound gradually and crystallize as melodies - the pulse quickens and a wider range of instruments come in filling it out, but remaining looping, iterative, ominous.

One day there'll be a scientific explanation of why France - a country synonymous with refined taste and avant garde work in visual art, literature, fashion, cuisine, aesthetic theory, philosophy… - has never really figured out music. Until then were left to ponder the wompy rubbery bass, corny keyboards, whispered vocals, angsty moods and tacky saccharine sentiments of this synth pop offering. The slow songs are dire. But the harder hitting upbeat Blondie/Tom Tom Club sounding ‘je t’aime melancholie’ is a good disco-y new wave track with hilarious quasi rap verses and the lush dreamy pop of ‘pas de doute’ is a good ethereal vibe. Solid at times, but always closer to funny than fun.

Fun mix of uptempo beats and styles from old school boom bap hip hop with dj scratching to dub/reggae/dancehall thump with toasted verses, to hard hitting break beats and rock adjacent electronica ala chemical brothers or prodigy. Overlong but an good hang - party music for driving, movie montages, or getting chores done.

Greta Van Fleet for Rush. Derivative but less annoying than the original because of a more light hearted arena glam and glitter sound and embrace of wild synths - big laser light night a the planetarium energy.

Alternates between infectiously joyous poppy rocksteady/ska & darker heavier roots reggae. Warm organic arrangements, gorgeous vocals harmonies with a gentle churchy sound and a motown soul feel, classic hooks, and magnetic charisma. Somewhere between a Jimmy Cliff album and a compilation - the variety keeps it exciting as the only knock is that it gets a bit saccharine at times, but there's usually a minor twist from Dekker, Scotty, the Melodians, or the Maytalls around the corner to bring it back to earth. Banger after banger.

Delightfully corny new wave synth pop, a full on day-glo bath of cheesy keyboard patches, rubbery funk bass, upbeat grooves and sultry plastic moods. Abandoning the strictures of guitar rock gave this generation freedom to go fully neon, embrace disco’s ephemerality and aesthetic superficiality, and pair light hearted fun with a latent minor key darkness. Some of the singing really sucks though, yikes.

Most of the worst tendencies of what you'd hear on 90s mainstream rock radio all rolled into one. Bricked all mid guitars playing mid tempo heavy butt rock riffs, emo whinging, anthemic late britpop aspirations, nu metal rapping and dj squiggling. Tepid, grey vague angst. Sounds like if Papa Roach did Verve covers.

Insane gap between the can and the should on this one

Genre defining & apocalypse conjuring. Slow, patient, and ominous - a frenzy gathers force and explodes, collapsing the boundary between inner turmoil and a world on fire.

Dark synthy and moody. Implied neon reflecting in back alley puddle. Pure darkwave aesthetics. Slow, calm, moody. The best parts are like the slow vampy bits on Wish You Were Here and Animals - spacey, patient, textural, emotive. A few distracting bits of dialogue and exegetic music bits interrupt the flow.