Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

'climax' all the way doggs

i always sing "climax" as "just show me the carfax"

ursh is the absolute king of the artform it has to be said

lookin 4 myself nothing short of singalonga tour de force, fuck the haters

'climax' does also get some shower falsetto action chez tpp

i saw some dude slay "climax" at karaoke recently. falsetto game on point.

wtg ship

thanks guys

also played drums

has it been emphasized enough re: that whiney tweet that r kelly and usher are THE r&b of choice, almost tiresomely so, for hipsters

yes

k just wanted to make sure

i gave my best
it wasn't enough

eh hipsters don't listen to black people unless they're Prince or in TV on the Radio

haha waht

so the dud bits of this really do sound like bad ryan leslie... i like a few tracks but actually found myself switching to r-les as this realisation dawned towards the end.

gonna go see this guy live next week, will report back

forkscnn

you hear it.... FIRST

this is so good, easily my favorite album of the year so far. i didn't really get "pyramids" when i first heard it, but in the context of the album, it makes perfect sense. i had to settle into the mood first, and that often takes me a while, slow learner.

love "thinkin bout you" right out the gate, no reservations about the falsetto, just gorgeous. inclined to think of "sierra leone" and "sweet life" as treading water, but they set the vibe so that when "super rich kids" breaks the surface (a little), it really stands out, another favorite, earl as mvp. everything from there through "lost" is flawless, and "sweet life" is creeping on me. fucking "pilot jones", damn. gets a little rough towards the end with "monks" and "forrest gump", but "bad religion" and "pink matter" make it worth hanging in.

"pilot jones" and "crack rock" remind me of sly stone circa riot, same kind of blurry, detached sadness and beauty, like it's too painful to lift a finger, but the memory of happier times keeps bleeding through. not a sound/vibe i encounter much in contemporary music. kills me.

if only

yeah, i admit that that's more the target than what's actually achieved (no sin), but i was feeling a bit wounded yesterday, and they suited the mood quite well.

feel like i'm taking crazy pills with this album. finding it very hard to keep going after the one where the Greatest Rapper Of His Generation Earl Sweatshirt mumbles some garbage over a "Real Love"/"Bennie & The Jets" mashup.

you caught that "Bennie" thing too, eh

"Super Rich Kids" I would rather listen to "Benny and the Jets"

― I see you, Pineapple Teef (DJP), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 10:52 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man you really want me to reread this thread

i wasn't claiming an original insight w/ the "Benny" comparison btw, i'd read it on other sites too before even hearing the album

haha touche, Alfred

I didn't mean to be accusatory, I was OTMing with a heavy helping of preening

haha

you caught that "Bennie" thing too, eh

oh shit yeah, the bennie throws me every time the song starts. do love earl on it though. not cuz he's rapping so well (he isn't), but just cuz i like his voice and presence, he anchors the song in a way that appeals to me. could do without the dumb "lucky charms" line.

"Super Rich Kids" might be my favorite song on the album

it's actually closer to DJP's beloved Mary J song that interpolates "Bennie."

"Super Rich Kids" might be my favorite song on the album

― chain the color of am0n (The Reverend), Thursday, July 19, 2012

it's great, but with such strong competition from "pyramids", "lost", "bad religion", etc.

"Pyramids" is a glacier for me.

i like his voice and presence, he anchors the song in a way that appeals to me.

^^ yeah he's all lumbering, his slur just fits with the slow clomp of the song

I love a glacier.

i'll take the glacier over a lot of the album's ice cubes

Super Rich Kids is my favorite too.

It (really) vaguely reminds me of something else that involved being on the roof, parents being away etc. It's really bugging me that I can't think of it.

home alone?

My favorites:

Thinkin' 'Bout You
Super Rich Kids
Sweet Life
Bad Religion
Lost

OK:

Pilot Jones
Monks

Don't care for the rest

not either part of "pyramids" when you figure it's two songs even? cuz i like the first a lot more than the second.

The opposite.

They're both great and it's kind of great how it changes up like that

bad religion is truly horrendous imo. sounds like something out of glee.

O_O

took me a while to understand people's references to the second half of pyramids - had inattentively just thought of the dream-y kinda part where it slows down - but the verse after that, with the line about the vcr, kills, is as good as anything on the record, reminds me a lot of him on novacane.

since you mention "novacane", i did want to mention that, on first listen, channel orange was, to my ears, nowhere near as off-the-bat beguiling as nostalgia, ultra. it's much more low-key and monochromatic, and the hooks are a good deal less immediate. especially in response to "pyramids" as a standalone single, i couldn't help but be disappointed. i expected something that expanded on, rather than retreated from, the mixtape's arrestingly scattered pop omnivorousness. instead, he gives us a bunch of these tentative, washed-out bedroom grooves.

though the songs don't seem as strong individually, i think channel orange works extremely well as an album. once i sink into the vibe, the hazy abstraction makes sense, doesn't seem at all like a cop-out, and there are only a couple songs i could do without. can't say i don't miss the brightness and variety of the debut, though.

I can't follow an album's vibe if I don't like enough of its songs. Maxwell's last album offered both.

what is up with the phrase "candles in the sun" appearing on the last tracks of both Channel Orange and Art Dealer Chic? i'd never even heard the phrase before in any other context