The purpose built next generation interstellar Dawn Richard thread

It's finally starting to open up to me after about five or six listens, but it's taken that long for the individual songs to separate themselves.

For me the album actually got less interesting the more I listened to it. It was around listen five that I realized lots of the potential I heard in my early listens wasn't going to be realized; probably around listen six that I realized, ok, I'm done

There are obviously a few standout tracks that I'll return to, and a few more that I hope grow on me or reveal themselves to me over time. But this is a seriously padded album

Aside from "Ode to you" I love every track on this album and I think the only thing I don't have in common with a lot of naysayers here is that I didn't love "Armor On", I mean, it's great! but I only listened a couple times and don't think it's a major work. Considering how highly "Armor On" placed on that poll last week maybe some other listeners are a little oversaturated with Dawn? I'm hoping so and that public opinion rallies somewhat

well, it's very different from armor on, which was very concise and relatively immediate - this one def took 5-6 listens before i could even start finding a way into it and is the opposite of concise. really, it was only when other people started raving about "break of dawn" and "ode to you" that i fully came round to the second half.

I have noticed that my favorite song on this is whatever the last song I happened to listen to was; I am not yet sure if that means that I love every song on here or if I don't actually care about any of the songs.

I think the "it's too samey" complaint is both correct and unfair. The sameyness actually works really well IMO except that the album is so long that the appearance of lesser tracks gives the whole album the vibe of being a slog (although again this almost feels intentional - swap "slog" for "marathon").

I like that the vocal treatment stays the same, it sounds like she's personally taking your hand and leading the listener through a changing environment, to my ears anyway

― dry rub come save beef (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, February 7, 2013 10:28 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a very good way of putting it imo

Yeah, with Armor On, I was immediately like OH HOLY FUCK THIS IS AMAZEBALLS right off the bat.

Yeah this album would get more love if people couldn't remember what it was like to listen to Armor On the first time.

i liked Armor On right away but it still took its time really getting under my skin. i'm glad i had like 9-10 months til the end of the year to sort out my feelings for it, and i'm glad i have 11 months for this one, i'm in no rush.

Listening to and thinking about the Mano Le Tough album unexpectedly shed light on some of how I feel about Goldenheart. I had already noticed that there was a big difference in how I felt about the songs when I actively engaged with them vs when I just let them wash over me. In both cases, if I try to listen while doing anything else, the music quickly recedes to the background of my consciousness.

What both share is this sense of very intricate, internally restless but consistent-in-tone arrangements whose sense of balance and proportion can actually work against them catching your attention if you're not already giving it - i.e. it's very easy to just take for granted how successfully each sound leads into the next and let it become a pleasant blur.

One thing that was very different about Armor On was the way that each song created its own soundworld and felt very unified within that but also distinct from its neighbours you definitely notice the transitions from track to track.

otm. The transitions on that album were incredible; it was a thrill when one track gave way to another. This one feels like one continuous 76-minute track by comparison

you have the Mano album Tim? Jealous

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BClfw9nCEAAN5VE.jpg

the where

oh that place

eek

ok i was 100% right about this being better on headphones; there's a pulse to this thing, a thread running through it i couldn't discern in my car's speakers

"frequency" !!!

Yeah tune is the bomb.

dunno what to tell you if you do most of your listening in a car

i drive a lot :(

there's like whole segments of rap and r&b that are primarily meant to be heard while driving! (obv goldenheart is not in this category)

cars are like THE ideal place to experience a ton of music, way more defensible to do most of your listening in a car than on earbuds or whatever

srsly. fuck earbuds forever.

obv the car is the best place to listen to the radio but it's loud and your speakers are shitty please uninstall that cd changer now

please c/p the post where I repped for earbuds? I agree that people should take their apple earbuds and deposit them straight into the trashcan

otoh if you've never listened to your favorite song on a nice IEM then idk if you're really into music http://i.imgur.com/ap8ek8v.jpg

like, do you listen to music or do you just skim through it

The car is the only place where I listen to radio for more than three minutes but, yeah, I loathe my portable CD player and its tape adapter.

"frequency" might be dawn's best song

thank u ilx for turning me on to this album btw
it is awesome.

i pretty much got into rap music through driving. 100% the best environment to listen to it.

dunno how soundproof cars generally are but any situation where there's background noise competing with the music (and drowning out bits of it) is suboptimal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKlDBi0cyIA

xp

i pretty much got into rap music through driving. 100% the best environment to listen to it.

especially on tape. I still own a Wu solo comp a friend made in the late nineties.

I'm much more likely to click with an album if I listen to it while driving. I usually make a point of listening to any album I review in the car at some point (esp. if it's rap) since it gives me better perspective.

That's part of the reason streaming promo copies are such a bummer; I can't subject the album to the car test.

haha i do the same but for headphones listening (either while walking or on quiet public transport)

i think i know maybe two people who can drive

"northern lights" -> "frequency" -> "warfaire" -> "in your eyes" -> "goldenheart"

my commute to the hospital typically takes exactly this long

Totally forgot about this album, and for as much as I listened to it in January, I don't remember much about it at all. But I think that might be a good thing. I'm excited to re-listen to it again in a few months with completely fresh ears and see if it sticks the second time around

k3vin otm. I listened to that exact sequence on my commute the other day. In general I think this is best heard in smaller chunks.

back end, excepting the title track, feels weak to me

She put up two new songs on her Soundcloud page a couple of days ago:

https://soundcloud.com/dawn_richard

Weird how everyone takes home different things from this album, because I still think the back end is by far the strongest section.

Kevin's selection is great though (although I love Break of Dawn and 86 as well). Sequencing on this album is kind of bad though, I like Frequency and Warfaire but you really don't need Tug of War AND Ode To You after them, I can barely remember what the latter two sound like within minutes of having listened to them, so the overall effect is just of a glut of the same type of song.

I wish they had a better editor though, listening to this as a whole I'm reminded of rock bands on their third or fourth album who are so keen to appear 'epic' or 'important' they lose some of the spark that made them great in the first place.

This is another album where everyone disagrees on which are the great tracks, which are middling and which should be culled (except perhaps for "Frequency" which seems to have consensus support). Clearly the problems are more structural than song-specific.

I might be the only person who prefers Warfaire to Frequency, I was kind of bemused as to why people were so down on the former a few weeks ago. The problem that structure won't solve is the heavy-handedness of some of the bangers.

(NB the main question that's been running through my head throughout this thread is 'would Lex like Game of Thrones?')

Haha now I also will obsess over this question.

I feel at least Lex would be sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of Daenerys.

What is Game of Thrones? If it's TV, I don't watch TV

not sure thrones' t&a level would get past lex's rap internet chauvinism policing

You mean it wouldn't be high enough?

I'd hesitate to say this album wouldn't exist were it not for Game of Thrones, because Dawn's nerding out spectrum is far far broader than that, but maybe not in quite the same form.

Dawn needs some baby dragons.