I found this album in October and it sent me down a 2 month spiral of exploring many different music genres from Africa. This album has really incredible Everything - I love the call & response style vocals (which I've found are very common across African genres), the bass lines are super catchy, and the percussion is incredibly groovy. I really love listening to high-energy music while the weather is getting colder. I also find it really fun to learn to sing to a song in another language.
This is by no means a new album to me, but it really resonated with me pretty much this whole year. Everything is bouncy, but I especially love the basslines. This is just a very joyous album. It feels very complete feelings-wise. Like it feels nostalgic, both in its lyrics and just how it sounds. But it covers both the possibilities of the future and the events already in the past. You can tell there is some sadness in the reminiscing, but it still feels really hopeful, and that's exactly how I think about my life so I just love it
I had known Natural Disasters for a long time and finally got around to listening to this whole album and it's just so fucking good. I love a bunch of weird noises, I love multiple vocalists (and then voice effects on top of them!), I like strange song structures. I don't know if a musician would listen to this and go "these are weird structures", but while learning the songs I will realize "wait this is not just verse-choruse-verse-chorus", but its like subtle enough I never noticed before actually learning the songs.
This entry also could've been Elephant Eyelash by Why?, I listened to them the same amount. I just got super into this super rhythm-focused style of lyrics. I feel like I would often call an instrumental very rhythmic, but the way Yoni Wolf forms words is just so fascinating to me. I know he also raps so it makes sense to also have that base in your other music, but I've just never heard anything like it outside of rap. There are some very thoughtful lyrics, and some very silly ones. I particularly like the song Rubber Traits.
My brother urged me to listen to this album after he found it and I'm glad he did.. This is one of my favourite full albums in a while, like the type of thing where you Have to liste to the whole thing after you hear one song from it. Its so catchy and has a bunch of incredible features. I like how grand and life-or-death everything being sung about felt like. I looped one song from it, Run Run Run Pt II, for dayssss, I could not get enough of McKinley Dixon's flow..
This album is just a really joyous, bouncy time. All the songs are surrounding new loves and crushes, and I just found it the perfect soundtrack for my developing relationship early in the year. I really like songs with multiple vocalists, especially in a back & forth style like is common on this album. I also think there's a lot of fun sounds on here, it doesn't sound like all the other indie artists in its genre, there's just something very special here.
This was the type of album I knew from the very first second I was going to love it. I love the dense soundscape, I love the parts sung in Korean, I love the tone of voice and the different singing styles. All these songs just make me feel so emotional and like, stuck with myself. They make me ponder what my own future has in store for me. Some parts also feel so incredibly shiny or like, bright to me, I'm not sure how to explain. This audio experience feels very visual to me when I listen to it!
I listened to this when I was getting more into rap and it really really stuck with me. I had a general idea of what 90s rap sounded like, and this album simultaneously showed me the familiar ideas I had and also expanded what my idea of what rap could do. I really loved how sampling was used throughout. I liked how it could go from being pretty silly to dead serious. I had also never heard much from Snoop Dogg and was delighted to find how fucking good he is as a rapper.
I am really truly surprised this album/band isn't bigger with people my age, I think it'd fit perfectly into the types of songs popular on tiktok lol. This album isn't super cohesive sound-wise and I loooove that. So many fun sounds and lyrical-rhythms, I specifically adore the song Brown Boxes for its weird synth line.. The lyrics overall are deeply unserious, whenever I pay attention to what's being said I'm amused. It's pretty short too, if that helps convince you to check something out..
I had known about this album for a few years, but this was the year it really Clicked with. It suddenly sounded like the most beautiful thing in the world. I quickly learned the lyrics to every song, and god, I just love Chad Matheny's lyricism so much. I love his references to random shit, especially since a lot of it is history/geography based. I love the way he layers instrumentals and vocals. It seems like he has so much control on how full or sparse any given song sounds. Everyone should listen to this album.