Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

Ok, maybe the Kelly Clarkson is a bit of an overstatement. I correct myself:

At times it sounds like Charli XCX and Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado

laughing and not being normal is such a great song title

this will be amazing

The title track and Easily sound like something off of Impossible Princess.

track 14 on fever was also called butterfly iirc

Excited to hear this. I haven't really kept up with Grimes lately, but I read this thread the other night, and now I've been playing both "Realiti" and "Flesh Without Blood" on repeat.

listening to this in proper quality, it's mostly great. a bit surprised by how summery most of it is after her talk of 90s alt influences & guitar etc. but that's not bad at all. highlights are probably Flesh Without Blood, Kill v Maim, Artangels, and Butterfly?

the start of the album is a bit messy - Scream feels very out of place sequenced where it is & Belly of the Beat feels a bit half-formed?

the new version of Realiti doesn't match the demo's swirl but I like the new synth line in the outro, it's fine, though the demo is still probably the best thing she's done.

really love Butterfly

Oh shit! I forgot this came out today and didn't download it to my ipod. shit shit shit.

demo realiti is the best song of maybe several years? otoh the rest of this didn't really grab me and poss i don't really 'like' grimes otherwise cuz visions never did anything for me either

"kill v. maim" revealing itself as the best song ever

this is going to be a really polarizing album, but on balance i'm sure it will bring her many, many new fans. i guess i'm on the "it's not for me" side of things. i dunno. Visions was next on the playlist after I listened this morning, and it's just so much better to my ears. something like Vowels=Space+Time feels like a different (better) universe than artangels. it's not like she got bad at making music or anything, she just seems to have moved into an area of pop that i don't care about

^ pretty much where i'm at with this thing too

i have irrational sadness because i want to be on the same page as grimes.

i guess i'll always have the flaming sword
http://38.media.tumblr.com/da1f00c8ddd6af544fbe21cc36e888b3/tumblr_mxgcjaGKLc1s5gs1ho1_250.gif

same here.
I loved Visions but nothing grabs me in the new album. Although I didn't really like anything she released since Visions, I still had hope that there would be some great stuff to come...
I only listened to it once, though. Maybe it will grow...

i think there's something to how the one song she originally said definitely wouldn't be on the album is the best thing song she's ever done. as much as visions sounded occasionally unfinished, parts of this sound both overcooked and underwritten. i generally like it, but the standouts ("kill v. maim," "flesh without blood," "pin," "butterfly") tower over the rest of the record.

tbh it'll probably grow on me

i mean essentially it's a grimes record: not all of it works but it's fun to live in

if nothing else, flesh w/out blood + realiti will be on my playlists for a long time, so i shouldn't whine too much

Something about this record smells of ghost writing and production assistance to me, in spite of the deliberate "GRIMES/GRIMES/GRIMES" credit shot that was posted -- it just feels like too much of a departure from her past stuff, and feels so much more "pro," mostly in a way I don't like so far.

ofl it's a bit thn

i have no reason to believe she got production assistance (and that would be shitty given her stance on such things), i do have a strong suspicion she got really wrapped up in making this sound super profesh and lost the plot.

the new realiti is not the departure i was expecting but it contains about a dozen production choices that never needed to be made.

I know it's a tired thing to complain about in 2015, but a lot of the vocals are over-autotuned and over-reverbed, and it kills some of the flavor of her voice.

it just feels like too much of a departure from her past stuff, and feels so much more "pro," mostly in a way I don't like so far.

probably just a result of learning how to engineer better, taking the time to do it, and having the resources for better gear instead of 1 keyboard + GarageBand? also it's probably impossible not to write & produce differently after playing giant festivals for a few years.

xp

(i'm not really feeling it either so far, but want to give it some time)

The realiti thing is so weird to me, I thought her production on the "demo" version was genius, and I can't stand the album version.

Seems really really "ILX totally in character" to be hating on a really fun album because it's not the same as the last one?

(With a nasty side order of "I liked her so much better when she couldn't really play" no matter how ill-founded.)

cool

For the most part, I'm really enjoying the album, but while I always liked "Genesis" and "Oblivion," I've never really felt ~invested~ in Grimes, and I don't think I'd heard the "Realiti" demo until a few days ago. So, y'know.

tbf, I literally hate fun

Something about this record smells of ghost writing and production assistance to me, in spite of the deliberate "GRIMES/GRIMES/GRIMES" credit shot that was posted

this belongs in the comment section of youtube, not on ilx

uh I think it's weird that a critique of this record could be "she got better at engineering." this record sounds great and I'm really into that. (I think the title track is a great example—it sounds both crisp and dreamy)

of course I also think the degree of the "departure" here is being overstated. i recognize the songcraft of visions 100 percent here. there's just a lot more guitar

yeah i mean... if someone goes 3 and a half years between records and talks up learning new skills and acquiring new equipment and then you instantly attribute any leap in fidelity to ghostwriting that's pretty shitty

Yeah I guess. Mostly I just don't like the aesthetic choices on this one so far, but I'll give it more time.

Well, for me, the main (only ?) problem is that I don't find any great melodies and hooks on the new album while there were plenty on Visions.

Not saying "no way she could have gotten this much 'better'" -- I don't think it's better! I just think it sounds a lot closer to a lot of modern radio pop that IS largely produced/written/shaped by the same handful of people. If she wanted something closer to that sound, she achieved it. I don't like the sound.

Could just be my mood, but the perkiness of this is cutting right through me.

Visions conveyed that same sense of joy, but muted it, and that record's character came from how her enthusiasm fought its way to the surface of these sort of sad songs. It was like the songs had to fight their way out of their shell, and when they did it felt really satisfying and earned. But when her songs start at full-blast, level 10 giddiness, they lose that sense of accomplishment.

Obviously some great stand-out songs here, though. Just dunno how much I'll be able to take this in as an album

"this album sounds like pop music so it MUST have been written by a bunch of other people" is an incredible bit of logic

"I liked it better when she didn't quite know what she was doing" isn't a gendered observation afaic.

Some friends of mine are moving into self-production, and my comments on their mixes were always "quit trying to prove to me that you know what you're doing"

I think this record is OK on first couple listens and will vastly improve when there's video. There were def no ghost-writers or ghost-producers on this

i think that's a really good observation evan. this record does feel less dynamic than visions

the demo version of "realiti" is much much better than the album version and is just generally one of her best songs tho yeah

oh i'm also really bad at hearing autotune but i hear zero autotune on this record

"Kill V. Maim" reminds me of Gwen Stefani's "Bubble Pop Electric," haha.

I read in an earlier interview the she sampled a few obscure Japanese songs for some of the tracks on here. I'd be curious as to what they were.

I assume the beginning of Butterfly is one of the samples.

kill v maim (!!). I like the vox on this, quite a few of these songs will be great live

I'm only as far as Belly of the Beast but this album has hooks coming out of its arse wtf.

this feels like saturdays felt like when I was a kid

i think the highs on visions are a bit above the highest ones here, but this one seems more cohesive/of a piece

holy shit @ 'kill v. maim'