Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

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!

I just wish the rest of the album appealed to me as much as "Thinkin Bout You" (and "Novacane")

this album left me pretty cold on the first couple playthroughs and i just haven't gone back to it. it didn't help that i picked it up the same day as the jessie ware.

"Pilot Jones" is the only song on the album that hasn't opened itself up to me. I'm pretty much completely enamored of all the rest, interludes and John Mayer instrumentals aside.

the interludes are some of my favorite things on the album. "fertilizer," "the end," even the mayer thing is a nice little golden slumber. nice on their own and really hold the album together.

i actually realized today that as someone who bought the early itunes download of this that i still haven't heard the secret song at the end w/ tyler

it's not that great. I don't have it and don't really think of it as part of the album tho. bonus track for a reason.

but yeah, I leave "Fertilizer" and the Mayer thing in my running order

pilot jones is gorgeous

"too many bottles of this wine we can't pronounce"
this song rules

Also "Thinking Bout You" is from about a year ago.. I'm surprised more people here hadn't heard it before. But yeah, it also rules.. as does "Sweet Life." As a whole, the album sounds great after becoming familiar with the songs. The first couple listens didn't do all that much for me.

Yeah, Channel Orange sounds really good on the surface and it's easy to like immediately, but then you dig deeper and it becomes this whole other thing.

Agreed - it gets better on repeated listens. "Super Rich Kids" is the first one that really caught my ear. The whole thing gives me a classic-period Stevie Wonder vibe - though more for the moody deep cuts than the uptempo hits.

Thought he was very good...then the SNL performance took it to whole nother level...absolutely transcendent...don't know why but 'Thinking Bout You' reminded me of Jeff Buckley...prolly the big reverbed guitars...

I don't hear much Stevie Wonder on the record tbh but I do hear Jeff Buckley.

Sweet Life is the most Wonderish song imo.

I have dreams that Jeff Buckley would of gone onto do a soul album ala Lewis Taylor/Southern soul vibe...

i hear a lot of Omarion and Ryan Leslie in his voice, Wonder and Buckley are too far out of his league to even mention

dude is a very good singer with a very reedy instrument; he could be a lot less nasal but he would probably lose his non-falsetto high range

I dunno...maybe not a record but I thought the SNL performance was revelatory...

The falsetto was stunning...

His voice doesn't remind me of Wonder's - I'm thinking more of his music on more understated tracks like "Creepin" or "Too Shy To Say" or "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away" off of FFF.

yes, FFF is def the Stevie record this reminds me most of

so this is really rev & jordan's aoty, huh? finally got around to listening to it this week and so far it hasn't hit me. i don't think he's a bad singer at all and what i liked best about it was actually the lyrics, think he's clearly a pretty fantastic writer. but, the production and songwriting never pulled me in. kept waiting for a song to really knock me out but each one just sort of passed by. also, i wouldn't be surprised to find out a lot of it had passed thru the smeezingtons' hands at some point? i like bruno mars but fsr expected this to be more n/l soundwise, like compared to take care, which i loved in spite of lyrics/voice, just through sheer force of production... anyways i'm going to keep listening, i'm at least intrigued, had a lot of thoughts and feelings about my adolescence while listening to this album

if you have enough thoughts and feelings about adolescence things "sort of passing by" become romanticised i guess

I think a lot of people are bringing misplaced conceptions of what the album is supposed to sound like. "Pyramids" aside, he isn't trying to dazzle with next level sonics, but rather create something more cozy, lived-in, maybe even a little bit trad, even beyond the obvious nods to Stevie, Elton, and Bootsy. It all sounds great, but innovative, no. Really, the album is more about the lyrics, tunes, and especially his vocal nuances. His phrasing is fucking incredible and adds so much depth to the songs.

Btw, there isn't any Smeezingtons involvement with the record, most of it was co-produced by Ocean and Malay, who did work on Trunk Muzik and other stuff. Pharrell and Om'mas Keith of Sa-Ra did some work on it, too.

And I won't lie, a lot of my love for this record simply stems from how easily I identify with Frank. Like Brainwasher said upthread, just hearing a male singer sing "boy" or "him" in a love song after half-identifying with male r&b singers or misidentifying with female r&b singers for so long is so fucking edifying it's ridiculous. Also, his navigation of sexual ambiguity speaks much more to my experience as a queer man than all the super gay homo stuff out there (although obv I love that stuff too). Any "thoughts and feelings" I have about this album are much more connected to who I am now than who I was as an adolescent.

It's really more of a neo-soul album than anything.

cosign that post

yeah... it's not supposed to be a terius album or something. not that it aspires to be anything less than great, but its reaches those heights by being working within the context of music that is more traditionalist, more comfort food.

tbh I've been "queering" texts -- musical or otherwise -- for so many years that I can longer distinguish between male and female personal pronouns.

and damn I was ready to love Ocean singing to a "him" but I can't quite make the leap with this particular record.

it's about atmosphere and feel too, and that's one of the things i love about it. sometimes i'll just open the blinds a bit and lay on my bed and listen to this. i understand how that sort of classification means much of the album will pass some people by but, there are stretches on the album (super rich kids -> pilot jones -> crack rock or lost -> white -> monks) where the songs sort of bleed into each other and fade into a soft glow. i think it really works, and well, the songs are actually there too imo

One thing I've noticed about this record: generally when he sings about sex it's with a woman and when he sings about love it's with a man.

YES

great point

yeah, at least explicitly. i think there are some oblique reference to sex in the songs that are (or that i read to be) about men. i.e. "you were my first time / a new feel" in "thinking about you"

and vice versa ("but your love ain't free no more"). the separation isn't absolute, but it's definitely noticable.

yeah i agree

I just had a mildly horrifying thought re: phrasing - Can you imagine how much less affecting these songs would be if instead of FO, it was my stronger-voiced mans Trey going all vibrato-monster on them?

or Terius going high-pitched vibrato-femme on'em