@@@ Dry Cleaning: Driver’s Story (4AD, 2022) Two listens today off this week’s All Music notable release email. Uh oh, 4AD!! 4AD can often be art school business. The video below is the fourth track on the record and it opens with a greasy bassline then some janky angular guitar and it’s fine then the singer comes in sorta spoken word and all of a sudden I’m getting that art school rock feel. Oh art school. I like the guitar player a bunch but I want more from the singer, it’s just too blah blah blah. I’m listening to the 5th track and they go for the same vibe but funkier and I feel the same. LIke the band especially the guitarist and the singer needs a Red Bull.
@@@ Taylor Swift: Snow on the Beach (Taylor Swift, 2022) Not a huge fan but I do check her shit out because she’s an important cultural symbol in our society. My dislike is that her music is intensely overwrought and dramatical and usually revolves around her own feelings. The video below is the fourth track on the record and it opens plinky and pastoral. Oh yeah, I just remembered how breathy she sings and I straight up hate that. Her difficult emotional life is like snow on the beach, meh, not a very strong vocal hook. I like the bass here, I don’t like the tambourine, I don’t hate the arrangement but it’s not particularly fresh and it’s too lyrically complex to enjoy as a pop song. Now right at 3 minutes she hits the line are we falling like snow on the beach and that’s the first connection between the lyrics and the hook. Then it works better from there as she does this it’s coming down, it’s coming down, it’s coming down section. I think she’s trying to turn into The National and we don’t need another one of those.