today i'm here to talk a little about three (3) albums i recently listened to that i thought were awesome and resonated with me. (three seems like a good number for a post like this...?) i'll try to be brief, just wanna highlight what i like! for a few years now i've kept a biiiig spreadsheet where i list every album i listen to with a short comment and a personal rating. i love my album spreadsheet a lot and i've put a lot of work into it, but every now and then i feel compelled to talk about something a little more than one line can achieve. and i am not going to start posting on rate your music dot com (sorry)
Kevin Devine - Bubblegum (2013)
bandcamp | youtube
it is probably not extraordinarily evident from my own musical output that i dig as much indie rock/folk, emo, and pop punk type music as i do, having never written a pop song in my life probably, but it has been a large part of my musical diet for at least like 13-14 years now. that said, i've heard enough of it that it takes me a little something special to be really be floored and impressed when i hear a new artist... but sheesh if Kevin Devine didn't do exactly that!
this is a well paced pop-aligned indie rock album that truly doesn't falter, doesn't lose its core energy, never missteps once even though there's some killer slower songs too ("Redbird", nearly twice as long as any other song on the album, is a 6.5 minute multi-section grungy slow jam). every song is memorable and catchy, and Devine reveals a wonderfully wide range of vocal styles. this is really impeccable songwriting. the kind of music that makes me feel younger; the kind of music i'd love to just lose it to at a concert.
frankly i am shocked that none of my friends have ever recommended me this guy! musically i'm reminded a lot of luminaries like Jeff Rosenstock and Chris Farren, who i consider serious champions of writing catchy, heartfelt, cathartic pop punk music. in fact the first thing i thought about was their collaborative band Antarctigo Vespucci, whose album Love in the Time of E-Mail is a real 10/10 for me. Kevin Devine's voice sounds a lot like Chris Farren too but a little grittier, and everything's a bit Nirvana grungier.
fav songs: "Bubblegum", "Nobel Prize", "Private First Class"
Shohei Amimori - PataMusic (2018)
bandcamp | youtube
on my personal album spreadsheet, my comment for this album was just: "What the fuck". and i still feel that way about this album!!! this is exactly the kind of glitch music i am constantly looking for more of. there's an underlying pop sensibility to this album despite how fiercely glitchy, textural, and progressive it is. (i like that! it's cool to ground something texturally experimental and busy with catchy or emotional hooks.) every sound has been carefully placed here and there for one of the most aurally engaging experiences i could imagine... all while growing and evolving and introducing more and more cute and catchy sounds that feel "post-Shibuya-kei" in what they evoke to me. Shohei Amimori's vision is crystal clear, and it's inspiring.
the run of the first 5 tracks is unbeatable; openers "Climb Downhill 1" and "Decadent Utopia" are like entire worlds unto themselves that we are blessed to spend many minutes within. my only complaint is with "Climb Downhill 2", which is filled to the brim with really painful high frequencies and i had to turn the music down for the whole thing. the texture (and this is basically a five minute mono-textural playing around with sound) would be a lot more interesting if that wasn't so intense. i think i will skip that one every single time. it hurts my ears.
i don't remember who recommended Shohei Amimori to me in the first place (it might've been jamie, who also recommended me Hakushi Hasegawa, an artist i'd pretty quickly compare to this album)... but when i was pulling up the info for PataMusic, i found out it was released on noble records!!! noble was my very first introduction to glitchy ambient/post-rock-ish/generally ethereal-feeling experimental electronic music, like 15 years ago, when i first heard kashiwa daisuke's program music i. i'd never heard anything like that before and i absolutely fell in love with it - still my favorite album 15 years later, and very closely defines the kind of music i like to make, too. anyway, it makes total sense that this album is on noble, and even makes me understand why it resonated so strongly out the gate. noble records is peak dami-core. clearly i should keep up with them better than i have done the last few years!
fav songs: "ajabollamente", "Decadent Utopia", "Climb Downhill 1"
Slugabed - we have the window open at night (2021)
bandcamp | youtube
i've been a fan of Slugabed's music since 2012's Time Team which i love. the hazy, wonky beat aesthetic isn't always my thing but Slugabed sometimes infuses just enough melody and harmony along with it that it really clicks for me. for a while i wasn't really on board with what he was releasing, but his last couple albums have had a sort of fairy dreamlike quality to them, aided by very colorful and evocative titles and themes, and i'm super on board with it.
each of these songs contains multitudes - some thick beats, some ambient textural stuff, big slimy basses, and a whole lot of haze. the sound is carefully crafted, eschewing convention in favor of being irreverently weird. there's a certain confidence to the way these songs are written, either knowing it's going to come across in a unique and cool way, or simply not caring and finding delight in making art. Slugabed loves making crazy, weird sounds and then grounding them with beats and basses carefully peppered throughout. it's very special i think.
there's a certain childlike wonder to this music in spite of how seasoned of a music maker Slugabed is - i love that! he seems to be filling a niche of surrealism in musical form. (magical realism, one might say.) his previous album, which i also really enjoyed but was maybe a little less focused than this one, was named, and i quote, "any attempt to control the environment or the self by means that are either untested or untestable, such as charms or spells". i feel like that says it all. these are fairy beats.
fav songs: "pale, arrogant moon", "sweet delirium", "my wife, who comforts me"