Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

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

The songs here are much more consistent than on BLACKsummersnight. I really don't get peoples' complaints about the tunes being weak, only one I feel that way about is "Pilot Jones".

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

― Know how Roo feel (LocalGarda), Thursday, July 19, 2012 10:30 AM Bookmark

This is insanity. Most moving song all year.

i shouldn't have said that the songs aren't as strong as those on N,U. they measure up, i think, but seem a lot less immediate and instantaneously hooky.

My favorites are the same as Alfred's, I think.

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

otm

a friend who is the ultimate indie rock dude, just never listens to r&b, texted me last night with 'hey, this frank ocean stuff is pretty great!'

makes sense, it seems to straddle those genres

a friend who is the ultimate indie rock dude, just never listens to r&b, texted me last night with 'hey, this frank ocean stuff is pretty great!'

how many seconds before you erased his contact info?

man if any other R&B singer in the world released "forrest gump" that shit would be getting the 'lol wtf worst song of the year' treatment everywhere

I think the male-male thing would've kept it notable. Especially if it was Ne-Yo or something.

I think my keeper from this album is "Thinkin' Bout You", that's the only one I've gone back to

Only a not fully gay man would use such lame metaphors.

xpost

oh actually "Sweet Life" too

i guess i mean in some imaginary scenario where the male-male thing was somehow not a factor (although obv changing the pronouns or the singer would alter things significantly, i'm handwaving that)

xpost

Only a not fully gay man would use such lame metaphors.

Demerit for him!

I was talking about you

j/k

Zing but true.

frank ocean: a not fully gay man

to the tune of "not a girl, not yet a woman"

how many seconds before you erased his contact info?

nah he is a notorious whiney-level hater, when he likes something i feel like i should encourage and nurture it

frank ocean: a not fully gay man

Still probably had and enjoyed more gay sex than I ever will.

the frank thread has never been more gay, but the gay thread has definitely been this frank

Can't wait until there's a breakaway TMI thread dedicated for those who wish to post that they actually kinda sorta you know don't completely totally hate this album.

I kinda sorta you know totally love this album.

I am on the Frank Ocean train but I am like that indie friend that Jordan mentioned upthread that doesn't really f/w R&B so mabye that means I'm flag posted idk

the gay thread is more like an ocean now tbh

Full of many deep secrets.

frankly, that ocean is so motherfucking good.

deep, too

deep ocean frank sea

forrest box chocolate ocean

and salty

interludes make me think of graham lambkin's amateur doubles.

stray thoughts after listening to this a couple more times this weekend:

dislike "sierra leone" and its placement on the album. it's thematically appropriate and helps develop the vibe, but it's musically boring and does nothing "sweet life" doesn't do a hundred times better. they even share the same dissolve to light instrumental jamming at the end. album would feel a lot more tight, immediate and varied out the gate without it. maybe that's missing the point.

channel orange is much more nostalgic than nostalgia, ultra. the musical mood is hazy and contemplative, and the narrator almost always seems to be looking backwards and outwards, at the people and events of his past life. even when he's addressing his own perspective, he seems removed from it: this is how things felt then. the album is unified by a sense of distance and dislocation. ironically, nostalgia, ultra was much more concerned with the here and now.

related to nostalgia and dislocation, channel orange pays a lot of attention to geography without generating much sense of place. that's not a fault. it's consistent with the reminiscent perspective. lot of talk of travel, too, the quick jumping from place to place (southern california, arizona, idaho, denver, sierra leone, ladera heights, arkansas, vegas, florida, the international travel litany in "lost").

what other pop music is so honest about indolence and wealth not earned but taken for granted? the idle good life as some shit that just got handed to you, attendant angsty narcissism ("i'm searching for a real love")

structure of the album seems to move from an idle youth with early romantic connections to a place of dissolution and loss, with bad decisions coming to bad ends, then back around to a sort of stock-taking middle distance. there isn't any resolution end, the narrator still seems caught up in nostalgic memory and lost love.

I've had to force myself to replay this thing.

yeah basically I enjoyed this while I was playing it but have had zero desire to play it again

huh. i figure i've got to listen to an album at least 5-10 times to get a real sense of it.

don't do that with everything, of course, but the albums i like best are those that i feel inclined to spend some time with

spent a lot of time with it last weekend

don't do that with everything, of course, but the albums i like best are those that i feel inclined to spend some time with

right

so, logically speaking, if I don't feel any compelling desire to spend time with this album...