thread of miguel

i've only heard the first third so far, so reserving judgment

not much new to add: I don't love this yet ("Coffee" aside) but I may well get there eventually.

When he sings/says "Santa Monica Boulevard" at the end of "Hollywood Dreams" I always think of Sheryl Crow.

Yeah I think the first three tracks taken together are fairly deal isn't bad but the arrangement feels flimsy, whereas the others feel simultaneously sluggish and weedy.

Really takes off from Coffee onwards, mind.

this tweet may be the key to unlocking for fence sitters https://twitter.com/ietyler/status/616298059350151168

Tyler Adams ‏@ietyler 7h7 hours ago

I shouldn't be reading music reviews anyway but people frame "All I Want Is You" as a "lukewarm" or inconsistent album and that's incorrect.

^^ otm

IAWIY is probably still the best R&B album of the decade imho unless i'm forgetting something obvious. DDM you could call R&B i guess.

yeah it's a masterpiece

hard to imagine growing to love any of the first three tracks... here's hoping

i purposely avoided gorging myself on "coffee" when it came out so i could preserve my appreciation for the album context. what a song. "old souls have found a new religion"

haha waves is awesome

yeah i kind of don't get this revisionist history about all i want is you being a commercial sop of some sort. is it because of j. cole?

tbh i think that narrative is 1/2 people who slept on "Sure Thing" etc and 1/2 Miguel himself downplaying the debut when promoting Kaleidoscope Dream

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

I like the new album and the last one a lot but the fact remains that several years ago miguel sang a lto of off-key hooks on terrible songs

"Lotus Flower Bomb" is the only bad one and even that is mainly bad because of Wale

quickie is bad too, even sure thing isn't great

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/39/f6/6f/39f66f7fc4f3f83f716b782e350f160d.jpg

hard to imagine growing to love any of the first three tracks... here's hoping

pffffft

also "sure thing" is incredible obv

you can bet that

yeah i kind of don't get this revisionist history about all i want is you being a commercial sop of some sort. is it because of j. cole?

the first time i remember really noticing miguel was bc of the chord progression in "girls like you" which is really weird and awesome imo... and i feel like the next two records build off of that weirdness and awesomeness

anyway i'm also here to say "a beautiful exit" is gorgeous

i think the opening tracks set a real mood, "beautiful exit" being this kind of blurry nebula, "deal" being a kind of funky "let's work"-y exercise that also shapeshifts a lot, and "the valley" being the filthiest thing on earth, you kind of go through the extremes of the record before you hit the rest of the record

I like "The Valley" but rhyming "valley"with "valley" doesn't help (pronunciation of the first "valley" in that couplet is a hook though)

"The Valley" has a bit of a Trent Reznor vibe for me.

Yah

I like "The Valley" but rhyming "valley"with "valley" doesn't help

Everybody rapping like it's a commercial / Acting like life is a big commercial

opening three are brilliant imo, they really set the tone for the album's sordid glamour. i think of "deal" and "the valley" like roleplay, the push-pull between sex and politics and money and entertainment and the way these seedy archetypes are romanticised. and the closing stretch acts like its obverse, out of the roleplay into something completely bare and pure

"leaves" is the best song he has ever done y/y

(i've never heard a smashing pumpkins song so don't @ me)

Get ready for people who Don't Listen to R&B But Like Miguel to be louder this time

Okay, that's pretty much me right there, tbh. But this is much less appealing than Kaleidoscope Dream (a rare 2012 release I actually spent proper money on) after several listens. Plenty of these reflexive "Wait, couldn't this be more conspicuously R&B-ish please?" reactions.

"Coffee" is the rare moment on an album suffused with dread. Even "chase the sun" makes love sound terrifying (which it is).

chase = face obv

yes. There are a lot of references to death, dying, the end, etc

apparently the epigraph for the first video tie-in is 'find what you love and let it kill you,' which is the opening line of his chemical brothers collab

also vh1 soul is showing a miguel soul story that includes 'lotus flower bomb' and 'primetime' but leaves out '#beautiful'

Only now noticing that the hashtag is actually part of the song name. #observant

lex otm. also the "1979" connection enhances "leaves" imo lol

quickie is bad too, even sure thing isn't great

― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine), Thursday, July 2, 2015 1:22 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

man "quickie" is so fucking good. he closed the npr show out with it and it sounded so nice.

as an ex maniac fan of smashing pumpkins, weirdly i appreciate this connection.

same obv

Yes to "Quickie" and "Sure thing"; and "1979" is one of the few Smashing Pumpkins songs I like

"Sure Thing" was so simple and brief that it blew me in 2011. I put it in my top ten. I can hear -- but not accept -- how it might sound underfed now.

blew me = I wish. Blew me away.

listening to this album imaging miguel under the influence of 90's alt rock is wigging me out

is it migging you out

god "...goingtohell" is the best

The songwriting on All I Want Is You is pretty underrated compared to KD but I feel like he just took this big jump forward as a singer (both his voice and his phrasing) between the first and second albums. I listened to Sure Thing again today and it's amazing, but when he sings "just put your pretty little hand in mine" he still has that pinched, slightly nasal thing you hear with lesser R&B singers. Fast forward to Adorn and he really SINGS those high notes, like his throat is wide open, his technique is way better.

Listened to the new one again and I think my main problem is just that A Beautiful Exit is a really disappointing opener compared to his first two albums. It's actually a good song but the production and arrangement choices kill it for me, virtually anything would accompany it better than that lumpen guitar hook. Also, I was all ready to laugh at the NIN comparison but actually the way he sings "I want to fuck like we're filming in the valley" is pure Reznor (a way sweeter Reznor, but there's something there definitely).

Kaleidoscope Dream really felt like Miggy exploring the space between Marvin and Stevie and late 60s/early 70s psych and modernising it in the process. The rock influences here are different, both feel like California albums, but it's like he's exploring the West Coast music of a decade or two later. Prince is ever-present in the background, but it's a different Prince (and Miguel very rarely actually sounds like Prince).

This album is closer to Neil Young and Mamas and Papas imo

Listened to the new one again and I think my main problem is just that A Beautiful Exit is a really disappointing opener compared to his first two albums. It's actually a good song but the production and arrangement choices kill it for me, virtually anything would accompany it better than that lumpen guitar hook.

yea this is very much how i feel about the opener

Yeah I'm not saying it's saturated in 90s rock references by any means (and they could be entirely unintentional) but it feels like a more expansive record than KD - a lot of these songs feel like *driving music* in a way that the last album didn't really.

I think we'd be disappointed in any opener not "Adorn."