Evening, folks. I thought I would jump on here and share my thoughts with you.
Following from my album review yesterday about The Vaccines’ recent bout of retro cities with Back In Love City, I’ve played it non stop.
Not only have I invested my time into these indie favourites, but I’ve actually invested time in their past albums which I’ve managed to missed or not invested a lot of time into. Trawling through an artists’ past work all the while going back to their recent work is a fantastic way of seeing the artists’ journey through song writing but it also allows the artist to stay relevant and in our minds – all the while benefiting from the influx of listeners, tribes of music purchases and avid watchers of their next leg of tour.
It really shows the power of staying relevant and fresh by creating new music. Especially if that new music is fantastically inventive and ultimately reinvents the artist wheel of their music. It keeps you around for longer!
I’d love for anyone to put me in my place with snarky comments like, “oh well this is why they do it..” and “it’s common knowledge about new music..” but I’d just thought I would share my recent thoughts with you!
Thanks folks.
By the way, The Vaccines are touring in the spring next year across the UK (in case you wondering)!!
Off the back off the glossy indie bands’ return to stardom from 2013’s Comedown Machine, The Strokes are back with a bold, brash and thought-provoking approach to their songwriting work.
You can have a listen to “The Adults Are Talking” below. You can catch the single in u their eclectic album release from last year, aptly named, The New Abnormal.
After many a speculation and many a postponement, Kanye West has returned in notable fashion with DONDA.
His tenth studio album after 2019’s JESUS IS KING, DONDA comes with controversy, speculation and ample amounts of doubt whether or not it would actually be released at all.
But it dropped this Friday just gone. Whether or not Kanye agreed to the release or not – as it was later confirmed he had no hand in it after the label Universal themselves released the 27-part exploration – certainly puts a big question mark on Kanye’s mindset, creativity and mental state as he ventures into this album.
With no pre-released singles amping up the album itself, the arrival of the esteemed album was hyped up as it is, especially as Kanye reportedly lived inside Atlanta Stadium to finish off DONDA with many avid, life-long producers abandoning West mid-production as he had become simply unbearable to be around.
The uncontrollable mess of affairs that led up to this album, is certainly prevalent when first listening to this one. Truth to be told, it’s an album that is okay. With a fairly similar trope of skipping through songs at the end, DONDA have a few stand-out songs that brings out back the Yeezus Kanye of our time. A particularly dark and ambient feel throughout, DONDA features the eutrophic choral anthems that we heard a lot through JESUS IS KING in 2019.
Marked as a gospel album or not, there are some songs that spark a flair of the brilliant from West and certainly a worthy tribute to his late mother, which the album is named after.
Jail, Hurricane and Jonah become first favourites for me, as Kanye looks to God more and more as his personal life seemingly crumbles around him. But, Kanye isn’t just a music artist. He is a critically lauded artist who creates movements. Movements in every aspect of music, culture and entertainment. Whether or not it discourages you from listening to Kayne again, it’s certainly worth the listen. Maybe even starting to understand Kanye again after his most recent divorce with Kim. Since he professed his love to her in Yeezus, it has clearly shook him up good.
This elusive work – although features many more trap beats than Kayne would normally allow past first – is a marvellous gorge into Kayne’s creativity-process. Get to know every chapter so far. All 27 of them.
DONDA RELEASED BY UNIVERSAL WITHOUT MY SAY, ARTIST CLAIMS.
An epic album watermarked and etched forever in the cornerstones of my music fanciful tastes when I was merely a boy.
After scooping this album in its CD form simply for the love of its delightfully intriguing album cover, I had no idea I would even play it once – never mind fall in love with its whole entirety.
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Created in the summer of 2011 – when phones were not eclipsed to the surface of our skin, and there was certainly less pressure in society for kids – Twin Atlantic‘s glossy supremacy of Free was the game changer for me and I instantly loved the band, the euphoria and the music.
With the Scottish angst chard, the vital chords struck home and it is, to this day, my favourite album of all time. Whether that be the nostalgic memories tainting my thoughts and values on the quality of the music, but it is a perfect album throughout.
Apart from knowing every minor fragment of the songs, all lyrical moments and drum parts, the album just has absolute monstrous bangers included.
Time For You Stand Up, Make a Beast of Myself, Eight Days just to name a few that can rip your arms right out of their sockets. The momentum of the album is waded brilliantly too with moments of beauty – Crash Land and Wonder Sleeps Here. Not to mention Serious Underground Dance Vibes which may very well have been my morning alarm for years, come to think of it.
The utter obsession of course worked, and made me unequivocally purchase the next album in 2015, Great Divide, which happened to be just as compelling, just as cut-throat and beautiful all in the same breath.
The invention and soon-to-be discovery of Spotify from myself, led me into a rabbit hole of everything Scottish rock, and of course, I had to listen to the predecessor of Free, which was Vivarium in 2009.
Old-school Twin Atlantic (when long hair was cool)
A buoyant and boyish album all about making music for fun, classics like Lightspeed and You’re Turning into John Wayne, certainly catapulted their fanatics and ultimately led them on to create Free a mere two years later.
Although the recent album works of GLA (2016) and POWER (2020) have certainly not had the same impact (possibly down to life getting in the way, and with these albums not being released in my adolescent years, too, for that matter) their catalogue is still highly commendable and certainly paves a way on how to achieve commercial success in Scottish rock.
For me, it really was the stepping stones (or one of them at least) that made me rethink my music taste, my musical journey, habits and hobbies in life and most importantly, made me tune in less to those fanciful chart radio stations and tune into to some actual stations. Thanks boys.
Sombre, enchanting but entirely beautiful, Leftwich takes us down a bewildering path of human nature as an alcoholic addict tells us his tales of sobriety.
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“It’s an observation on what it’s like to be a sober alcoholic addict a couple of years in. A whale is heavy to carry.
It’s gonna hurt you to carry it. But it’s also beautiful, and it’s a miracle to be able to carry all that at all.”
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Beautiful harmonics of Cherry in Tacoma, Slipping Through My Fingers and Full Full Colour bring this fantastically calm and serene album to a disclosure of triumph and struggle – and is certainly worth the entire trawl through the 10-track listing.
