Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

this all makes him sound like the r&b joni mitchell

I would not define Joni Mitchell as stoic though.

He could do worse.

oh he does do worse

lol

i don't think he's reintroduced any particular role to r&b - dispassionate character studies are plentiful surely? and from what i recall lots of channel orange involved ocean getting caught up in feelings so...

before she started to suck Ciara mastered a kind of detachment.

oh there's definitely more third person narrative on this album than any recent r&b album i can think of

or second person too, i guess, non-first person

CIARA HAS NOT STARTED TO SUCK >:(

I'll need some examples of those other recent detached R&B personas, I think. And he's certainly caught up in feelings, but always addressing them from a certain distance, I think. This is the guy who chooses to reveal his love for another man through a Forrest Gump metaphor, after all. It doesn't soften the impact, but the slightly ludicrous comparison keeps the overwhelming emotions at bay.

I mean, Basic Instinct was Ciara's most consistent album but lacked any ASTOUNDING highs - Ride and Gimme Dat were good but not top-tier singles. 'Sweat' is greater cause for concern. We'll see how this next album pans out.

"ride" and "gimmie dat" and "wants for dinner" and "i run it" and "heavy rotation" = astounding highs, not to mention "deuces" and "blauw" and "shut em up"

"sweat" is in my top 10 singles of 2012 easily, way better than eg anything on channel orange. can't help it if i like my music to contain actual energy

i wasn't saying it in comparison to FO. just in her own career as much as those are highs for the album they don't feel like highs for a career that has 'goodies' and 'oh' and '1 2 step' and 'like a boy' and 'promise' and hell even 'echo' and 'i'm on' and 'high price' and the o.g. missy-less 'work'

I'm definitely not lumping him in with the Weeknd. Weeknd is the anti-Terius, always shameful about his involvement in debauchery, but caught up in desire nonetheless. Frank knows desire and loss intimately enough to describe it from a distance. He strikes me as wiser than the both of them. Perhaps even a bit too intelligent for his own good.

― (professor) (longneck), Friday, 17 August 2012 17:04 (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

sorry, and you are right, i was just poking fun at lex's nascent effort to create a grand diabolical theory of stuff he doesnt like

I'll need some examples of those other recent detached R&B personas, I think. And he's certainly caught up in feelings, but always addressing them from a certain distance, I think. This is the guy who chooses to reveal his love for another man through a Forrest Gump metaphor, after all.

otm. distance is key to frank's persona at this point. he distances himself by means of observation, reminiscence, irony, regret, understatement, disengagement, etc. relative to his debut, channel orange is focused much more on what happened, and especially what happened to other people, than on the narrator's state of mind in the moment. he often seems to be watching his own life as a clip show on tv. it's only towards the back of the album (esp. on "bad religion") that he catches up with his own feelings in the here and now.

can't say how common such strategies are in modern R&B, but the result is compelling to me independent of context.

There's something to your interpretation; it explains why musically (e.g. sad organ) "Bad Religion" does sound like the finale and really couldn't go anywhere in the sequence. Unfortunately at least a third of the album is for me innocuous.

Yeah. And Bad Religion is the song where he addresses his "disguises" - interestingly enough.

I'd say Ciara is an interesting case btw. Totally agree that she has a semi-detached persona. I think that persona is what has at least partially kept her from blowing up like Rihanna (who totally gives in to her roles and fills them like no other), and that this may be why the Terius/Ciara collaboration of Basic Instinct didn't quite work out commercially even though I love that album to death. Terius is a bit too in your face for Ciara to carry his lyrics over convincingly. She hasn't really found the right way to sell that detachment yet, at least not post-crunk&b. Frank obviously has.

rihanna has to give into her role and fill them entirely because she's just a cipher with no interiority herself

haha I'd question Rihanna's acting abilities, period.

Hardly. Her instincts are impeccable. She picked Umbrella and made it her own, in a way that Terius couldn't have foreseen. It pretty much sums up the essence of her relationship with CB since the song came out.

yeah to be honest i have no use for saadiq after instant vintage, which is brilliant. channel orange > saadiq since instant vintage

I just want to point out that As Ray Ray is a very dope and very underrated album.

<I>She hasn't really found the right way to sell that detachment yet, at least not post-crunk&b. Frank obviously has.</i>

Women are supposed to be emotional and change themselves to fit the moment, men are supposed to be rational and hold themselves together, says the says the record-buying public?

Rihanna does give her everything into every role, it's just that due to the timbre of her voice this means that every role becomes a honking goose; this tends to work much better on her dance numbers and mid-tempo stompers than her ballads

but she doesn't even play a honking goose very well

she absolutely can

I mean, that goose really did not want the DJ to stop the music, I believe that

i really believed that was the only goose in the world

yeah to be honest i have no use for saadiq after instant vintage, which is brilliant. channel orange > saadiq since instant vintage

I just want to point out that As Ray Ray is a very dope and very underrated album.

― Vagelis (The Reverend), Friday, August 17, 2012 12:02 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno i have no use for retro fetishism, which is why i have no use for cee-lo's last record. but if you recommend, rev, i'll give it another shot

Women are supposed to be emotional and change themselves to fit the moment, men are supposed to be rational and hold themselves together, says the says the record-buying public?

Not at all. There's "detachment" even in Beyoncé's steely control, but it is of another order. Ciara's detachment has fairly little to do with control I believe, outside of her pretty impressive control of technique of course.

And I think Rihanna's flair for melodrama really sets her apart - partly because it transcends melodrama. There's virtuosity even in her lack of control, emotionally. She rescinds the retreat to self-assured dignity that every major female pop/r&b vocalists has in some way clung to. There's no safety net with her, she's a mess but not afraid to show it, and thus she also comes across as having a certain integrity, even emotionally.

Sorry if that was a bit jumbled. Thinking while typing here.

rennavate, try Saadiq's last album (Stone Rollin'). He does fascinating things with the retro tropes without giving them the cryogenic treatment.

otm

i dunno i have no use for retro fetishism, which is why i have no use for cee-lo's last record. but if you recommend, rev, i'll give it another shot

― heiswagger (rennavate), Friday, August 17, 2012 11:24 AM Bookmark

It's not nearly as retro-fetishistic as the cover would lead you to believe. It was pretty much him doing the same thing he'd ever been doing, albeit with more focus on the funk. If "Let's Get Down" is your favorite Tonyies song, you'll love it.

I didn't see him at the VMA's, but he was great on SNL. I thought the falsetto on "Thinkin Bout You" would be tricky to replicate, but dayum.

That was my takeaway on those two performances, too, Johnny ... how strong and in command he was on even the highest parts of the falsetto. Dayum, indeed.

Yeah, he was great. That falsetto might even have been worthy of an elusive DJP Golden Larynx award.

yeah he completely killed that

also cemented "Thinkin 'Bout You" as my favorite song on the album

john mayer is such a massive doofus, holy shit

what this time

caught tweeting his makeout session with Ocean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeo86iOS0QU

do you not think of guitar players? cause i been thinkin bout john mayer, ooh

"sierra leone" on repeat

i like how "thinkin bout you" works really well as a standalone single and even tho it doesn't sound a whole lot of what else is on the album, that sorta muffled, shuffling percussion ties it to some of the sounds he uses later on

yeah 'thinkin bout you' also has a really great wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinkin_Bout_You

had no idea it was so high (39) on billboard!

A buddy who loves this album played a chunk in the car this weekend as we drove through Michigan. "Thinkin' About You" and "Pilot Jones" sounded best -- and this is without my knowing about the SNL and VMA performances. I still have no interest in revisiting the album. Having revealed (some of) his mysteries, he offers little else besides half-realized ambitions and R&B crooning, at which he's not great -- yet.

the entire channel orange wikipedia is insane

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/beyonce%20cried_zps33fef04a.png

beyonce otm

]he offers little else besides half-realized ambitions and R&B crooning, at which he's not great -- yet.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 8:39 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

one thing i really love about this album is that i think the album is pretty ambitious in a lot of ways... it's structure, subject matter, even the visual aesthetic of his performances and whatever. but there's also a looseness to the album, it's feels almost stream of consciousness in some points. there's something very laid back california about it, in that sense.

oh yeah def -- that's why the Eagles have been aural forebears. To my ears he hasn't learned yet how to write fully realized examples of this laidback aesthetic. But, again, this is his first album!