That's My Dad.

Young Magic - Melt

You remember that moment. The headphones are in, expectations are unknown. Then it begins. It’s the instance you meet your new favorite band. A single moment in time that deserves to be romanticized. Sonic gems can invoke some of the most satisfying sensations.

There’s something about Young Magic: a dreamy experimental electronic gone heavily psychedelic group from Brooklyn. Think if a hipper, more tropical Animal Collective, Yeasayer and a more straight-forward Flying Lotus joined forces. Their debut release, Melt, serves as a quality entrée to what Young Magic’s audio vision sounds like: a smart, boogie-worthy cultural chill-wave party where you’re always the guest of honor.

Young Magic’s Melt is one of those albums in the endless score of experimental music that deserves to be mused over. It has the potential to be your new best friend, if you’re all about that psychedelic lifestyle, and quite possibly, your new favorite band.

This album was my dad. (8/10)

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Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror 

I was never one to deeply analyze Sleigh Bells. They built themselves to be irresistible for the indie scene, and they were. Their debut release “Treats” came out of nowhere and took the indie pop scene by storm in 2009. It’s murderous loudness and juicy pop hooks created polarizing opinions, most in favor of the band. One might construct a deeper meaning in the intentions of this group, but some things are best left enjoyed on face value.

In case you didn’t know, Sleigh Bells is duo Alexis Krauss, former teen pop singer, and Derek Miller, former hardcore guitarist. On their sophomore LP, Reign of Terror, the duo is most notebly out for a new style and, believe it or not, an itch to sound louder than Treats. Sure enough, it was made possible. Just when you thought Sleigh Bells was loud enough to shatter your eardrums, they kick it up another notch.

This is where the pros and cons of this album come from. It’s commendable to see Sleigh Bells go beyond their comfort zone, go for a different artistic and recording style and accomplish their goals in doing so. Specifically, Reign of Terror’s hi-fi recording and arena-sized guitar-based songs are what make this LP feel so fresh. But in all these new changes, what was the opportunity cost? Simple. Where Sleigh Bells became louder, they became less interesting; far less interesting, less entertaining, less immediate, less poppy, less exciting. Listening to a track on Treats gives the same joy as striking a match does: the friction of two forces dying to get set ablaze into something powerful. With Reign of Terror, I feel like I’ve been given a bite stick made of pure metal and am forced to sit through 36 minutes of an album. 

It’s a shame to see an exciting group do the right thing as artists but fall short in their results. Reign of Terror is not worth anyone’s time, but Sleigh Bells will be around. Here’s hoping for them to us with album No. 3. 

This album was my drunk and racist grandmother. (4/10)

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Top 25 Albums of 2011 (1-10)

1. The Weeknd - House of Balloons

2. St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

3. Battles - Gloss Drop

4. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

5. Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra 

6. The Head and the Heart - The Head and the Heart

7. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

8. James Blake - James Blake

9. Bon Iver - Bon Iver

10. Florence and the Machine - Ceremonials

Sometimes we should remind ourselves of the romance found in misery.

Drake’s sophomore LP Take Care is a definitive album of love and sadness. If we start from the top, Take Care is near perfect. It’s an atmospheric, admirably honest and sexy album filled with songs that rank up as some of the year’s best. Take Care opens incredibly strong with tracks like Over My Dead Body, Shot for Me, Headlines and more sprinkled throughout the album (check out “Lord Knows”). It doesn’t take long, however, to find the album’s faults, of which there are quite a few.

I cannot call Take Care a filler album because, unlike Lil Wayne with his recent Tha Carter IV, Drake isn’t lazy or focused on making music for profits. Take Care is made with a consistent effort and a strict ethic of musicianship and it shows. Regardless of the end product’s quality, that is a factor that should never get neglected. Tracks like Make Me Proud and Buried Alive (Interlude) may get your your eyes rolling, but the atmosphere and attitude comes off just as strong. On a whole, Take Care could lose some weight. The LP spans 18 songs and near the length of a feature film. That’s the only true complaint this album deserves, but then again, Drake is used to taking his time and then releasing a big album.

Take Care has the caliber of standing the test of time, given that Drake can jump out of the realm of a contemporary artiste. It may come with some easily avoidable blemishes, but theres still much to enjoy.

This album could make for a cool sibling. (7/10)

What makes the past so appealing that we can never help ourselves to bring it back and relish the imitation? 

Greet yourself to Craft Spells; something of a sweet lo-fi mix between M83 and Freelance Whales. Craft Spells are certainly a group of quiet and polite folks in love with the concept of meshing the sounds of the past to the nightlife they see around themselves. The art in living in the yesteryear, sonically, and creating a stylish reinterpretation is harder than initially perceived; however that’s where Craft Spells falls under.

Idle Labor is a night out on the town. It’s going to your friend’s house party on a Saturday night and walking the streets on downtown at 4am, everything’s bright and no one’s on the roads. There’s that intimate quality paired with an enormous beauty designated to please the masses. That’s what Craft Spells aim for and you can sense it too; you will love Craft Spells for this. 

Unfortunately where these guys fall flat on is how they execute their dreams for our ears. The overall finished product results in a major and continuous muck of sound, with layers that interfere with one another messily instead of the desired effect of melodies being lost in the daze of things. It all comes off unappealing, uneven and occasionally dull. The synth side to this record works as the foundation, yet isn’t fleshed out or as vibrant as it should be to combat the low-fi quality; a challenge that Craft Spells put upon themselves without really approaching. Idle Labor drags due to the lack of ambition found in an otherwise creative concept. 

Not all things function poorly in the world created in Idle Labor, many qualities stood out and took their respective space to breathe. Certainly the lyricism found on this record supplies the ample sweetness and kind sincerity that makes Idle Labor’s lovable personality. Its stand-out track After the Moment is a blissful highlight of this record; a song where it feels like Craft Spells got their thoughts together, straightened their postures and let all the sonic layers flow seamlessly down a long and magnificent road filled with a stunning nightlife, exuding a bouncy, down to earth experience that takes you to a more enjoyable place in your head.  

Through a poorly produced album, Craft Spells will really need to smarten themselves up and bring an edgier element to their jam for a more polished and stronger product. Their good intentions will stay may stay in your hearts, but their lazy sound won’t stay in mine.

This album wasn’t my dad, just another hipster at the party with not much to say.

Justin Vernon has left his cabin and is setting out on the road leading to someplace bigger, away from isolation that desperately clings on him.

Facing a daunting challenge to follow up an album that was deemed one of the greatest independent albums of all time will certainly have to play with everyone’s expectations. Many moves could have been taken: a follow up in the same style, a complete retirement from future releases in order to supply more importance to For Emma, Forever Ago (Bon Iver’s first release) or a complete change in musical style and direction. Vernon chooses the latter as he continues to hone in on his exuberant and blissfully intimate inspiration that gives this van Gogh of a musician his soul.

There is a world that Justin Vernon lives in, a world found in the corners of many of our own heads, but this is where Vernon lives. It’s consumed in weather, horrifying yet beautiful and you’re alone. This is the quickest summary of Bon Iver’s work. He lets the world dance on his shoulders and then he closes his eyes. He breathes. He opens his eyes and he sings. 

The biggest aspect of Bon Iver’s music that distinguished itself was its daunting minimalism. The minimalist approach to the compositions, lyricism, and productions gave them a gratifying weight too heavy to shake off. With this sophomore release, Vernon continues to reveal himself within his work but he’s a different man now. He’s off to achieve a bigger sound and sounder life. 

This is a prominent fault seen in many artists that successfully achieve something through a minimal sound and then immediately trying to take off for something bigger and better. After For Emma released, an EP was released featuring B-sides from that album; the tracks were much more experimental, auto-tune was being treated as an instrument and the tracks broke the atmosphere set in For Emma, all revealing Vernon’s flaws as a producer. With this new album, those flaws come out more and weigh the album down as Vernon uses an unusually vast number of instruments to broaden the horizon his music lives for. You certainly feel the inspiration, but many of the tracks come at fault due to poor execution. The guitar is now a haunting, faded electric that comes off more irritating than atmospheric due to the lack of thought that went in the compositions. The usage of a variety of instruments ranging from saxophones to synthesizers come off as horribly forced, only focused on the agenda to create a larger atmosphere while neglecting complimenting the song properly. One of the memorable tracks, Michicant, is a rare case that actually succeeds with this approach that feels like an improvement on what For Emma was all about. Many other tracks including Perth, Hinnom, TX, and the infamous Beth/Rest come off as heavily distasteful in the process.

Conclusively, Bon Iver (the album) results as a mismatch of tracks that range from blissful to annoying. Vernon, as a poet, as an artist, as a human being, remains pitch perfect and gives the strong core the album functions on; only sonically does the album devolve on. 

This album wasn’t my dad, but a kind-hearted and mysterious lumberjack who looked after me when no one else cared. 

An old personal favorite. Review prescribed by request. 

Mayer Hawthorne’s debut album is wholly essential. A Strange Arrangement sets out to re-live the classic essences of old-school R&B and Soul that lives within the heart of Detroit. His talent beams through many fields: his sharp and atmospherically conscious production skills and as a musician, Hawthorne blissfully impresses his audience with nearly every instrument he touches and lets that modestly show itself off on his compositions. A Strange Arrangement is a wholesome collection of pitch-perfect sonic snapshots of the flavorful R&B culture and the crisp idealization of love that comes with it. 

As an artist, Hawthorne has two strong qualities going for him that drives his work all the way home: inspiration and his lovely retro sense of class. His music is derived from this very simplistic and kind blend; it’s terrifically accessible and equally pleasant. I call this album essential for its straight-forward approach in recreating the core elements of R&B. The fuzzy and constant beats and heavily retro accented chord progressions will take you to a place any hipster with the right heart would delightfully fetishize over endlessly. 

My only issue with A Strange Arrangement is the approach to its songwriting. The lyricism ranges as being one-dimensionally simplistic to unnecessarily serious to surprisingly artistic. Hawthorne is a bit too young to take himself so seriously, a fact which conclusively brings uneven results. When he keeps things plain, it manages to compliment his signature style of compositions. However, the standout track here is Green Eyed Love, which shows a much deeper, mature and successfully dynamic and developed side of Hawthorne. Hopefully a promising foreshadow to new directions desired to be taken. Who knows.

If you crave a classy, retro-loving R&B jam, what in God’s name are you waiting for? Get yourself acquainted to this guy.

This album is certainly my dad.

The intelligence of chillwave came and went as quickly as the tide lasted on the beach it lives on. 

Washed Out is a one-man project of Ernest Greene that proved conducive to the upcoming and recent sub-genre of chillwave, a genre that sounds like a minimalist take on dream pop that lives inside the head of a drugged-out surfer constantly on the beach. With it’s acclaimed results on Washed Out’s earlier work, Life of Leisure, Greene has now released his full-fledged first album, Within and Without. 

The soul of Washed Out’s genre comes from a very few ingredients: beats, song structure and mixing. This all ultimately produces the final product desired from chillwave: atmosphere. The slightest faltering in any of those ingredients significantly diminishes the work and while this tends to be true with many other genres of music, I especially point it out due to how much dependency the genre lends itself to within these elements.

There has certainly been an upgrade in Greene’s productions, the production value of the album feels bigger and the album feels a lot bolder, in a technical aspect. Ashamedly, it inadvertently counter-acts that bold quality by an array of very plastic-feeling and often meaningless beats and effects. This is perhaps the biggest letdown on the album as it tends to drag down the quality of atmosphere. Within and Without truly goes to show when artists successfully produce something out of a minimal array of tools at first and move on to bigger, expensive tools, their faults as an artist shine bigger as well. The sincere attempts to develop the sound into something more progressive should be appreciated, but the results leave an aftertaste that goes to show how minimal artists should continue their work through a comfortable creative environment where results come out successfully. From that success, progressive development will come internally and future works will come out thoroughly refined and not rushed.  

Certainly, the entire album doesn’t fall in the shade of its faults; there are few tracks (You and I, Far Away, Before) that function individually and manage to create a textured, multi-layered atmosphere that holds many of chillwave’s high qualities. Other elements like the experimental vocal stylizing and song structure succeed in context of its very “lite” aura. This goes hand-in-hand with its sound mixing, which comes off as subtle in execution and rewarding in the end. 

Within and Without functions blandly in comparison to previous efforts and other chillwave artists. It’s a tough statement since the release of this album is marked as a high point within the chillwave hub as a significant release from one of its more beloved artists.

It’s weak sauce for the folks already so lost in their own swoons for chillwave that nothing really matters anymore, only the mild-mannered trance. 

This album was like being forced to drink only diet soda.