Frank Ocean - Channel Orange (2012)

Cavils aside, Thinkin' Bout You >>>>>>>>>>>>>> There Will Be Tears

yeah that's probably true. Tears was the one i wasn't so sure about putting in there. though you could probably convince me Thinkin' is better than a couple others on my list. hey, i was on a roll...

Tbh, I wasn't really that hot on Nostalgia, Ultra and Channel Orange really took me by surprise. I liked a few songs alright ("Lovecrimes" was the best imo, "Novacane", "Songs For Women", and I eventually came around to "Swim Good"), but I didn't really spend much time or care strongly about the album and the rewrites of "Electric Feel" and "Hotel California" just felt ridiculously unnecessary and kind of put me off the whole project.

Even "Thinking About You" didn't really click with me until I heard it on the album. "Pyramids" was the first Frank Ocean song I heard that I immediately loved. So while I was hoping it would be a good album (especially after the letter and watching him perform "Bad Religion" on Fallon) my expectations coming in weren't really that high.

tbh I kind of feel like Pyramids is the best song of the year so far. I probably should get around to checking the whole album out sooner or later

probably!

yeah "pyramids" is like my favorite song of the year, that and "running" by jessie ware

it's pretty perfect. the casual feel of the rest of the album was a bit of a surprise, but rev is otm about the phrasing being really striking, I get fragments stuck in my head all the time, in a way which is oddly very charming.

his phrasing when he says "top floor motel suite, twisting my cigars/ floor model TV with the VCR" is amazing... in this like singing with rap phrasing way. fantastic.

i really don't understand how that's not something tons of r&b singers have done before. like is that the thing that wows you.

"Pyramids" is like the anti-"Adorn" (which I know is song of the year for lots of people here, but #2 for me)--even to the point where Adorn added an extra minute, whereas Pyramids excised its first half when played on SNL (& possibly other TV performances...?)--but p much everything about it works for me: the fraught drama of the first part, the Mulholland Dr. type schism, the lethargic hypnosis of the "Working at the Pyramid" repetition, John Mayer's Robin Trower impersonation...absolutely the phrasing is terrific...

Listening to the album now, somewhat feeling Rev's and Alex's comparisons to Mama's Gun, it has that sort of laidback intimacy going on, though it doesn't quite attain that atmosphere, doesn't ooze that smokiness, that M'sG does, but that album is top 5 of the decade.

"adorn" is like the worst track on the miguel album. one of the worst tracks.

lol I wasnt talking bout you lex

waht

i'm not sure lex has ever been more in the minority of an argument than he is about "adorn"

even, like, his railing against the beatles has more sympathizers

oh was that waht for Lex's Adorn opinion, Alfred...?

Yes, which sounds even more laughable now that I've heard "Do You" and have decided that it would sound best as a b-side to "Adorn."

"do you..." is prob my favourite track on the album <3

i literally just don't get what's special or memorable about "adorn', i keep listening to it to try and see and it's just a nothing song

my feelings about "Do You" exactly

lex what is your opinion of "sexual healing"

"adorn" is like the worst track on the miguel album. one of the worst tracks.

― lex pretend, Sunday, September 30, 2012 7:02 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow

I don't think I have an opinion on "sexual healing", it's one of those songs that may as well be a jingle it's so overplayed

Adorn isn't even the best song on its art dealer chic ep

Also no one likes the beatles ffs

When did you officially decide to be wrong about everything?

adorn is lovely fwiw

hating on sexual healing is so, i can't even

I don't think he's hating on "sexual healing," he's saying that it's so commercialized and overexposed that for him it has no bite which I can co-sign; that's happened to a LOT of songs.

there is that real bad handsome-guy-playing-bob-marley-songs-in-the-student-dorm jam on the miguel record, pussy is mine. do you & adorn both kill, obviously.

his phrasing when he says "top floor motel suite, twisting my cigars/ floor model TV with the VCR" is amazing... in this like singing with rap phrasing way. fantastic.

― heiswagger (rennavate), Sunday, 30 September 2012 19:41 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk that heiswagger was making any claims for the innovation of this, it is really & earcatchingly dope on the record though

"Adorn" is all about the vibe, lex; that unintelligible sample murmuring throughout the song in the background, tying things together, the way the harmonies in the chorus fill up the song like helium in a balloon, making a two minute song sound epic, and of course, Miguel paying one of the most convincing Marvin homages ever...

"paying" was probably the wrong verb in that last clause; d'oh

For me "Sexual Healing" kinda transcends (one of the few times I will use this verb) its commercialisation because its vibe feels so one-of-a-kind, so "how did he do this", a kind of vibe that could only have been arrived at by deliriously happy accident. "Adorn" cannot be considered unprecedented in that way but it's got that same feel of being a tune you couldn't just set out to make, it was a tune that had to allow itself to be found.

yah, totally agree, whereas Pyramids is all about spiralling dizzying ambitions being realized

I just watched the "Pyramid" video, whoa

(it was also the first time I'd heard the song. "Thinking of You" is the only one FO song I was previously familiar with)

"Pyramids" video is really stupid imo and they shouldn't have messed with the song like that.

haven't seen the video but the song always felt to me like the treatment for a really stupid video

Also no one likes the beatles ffs

hm yes interesting

the "Pyramids" video is truly, truly horrendous though, yeah, it's just the kind of overblown mess the song could have easily tipped into (but didn't!)

adorn does have a rarefied air (kind of unusual for a song w/a fairly fast tempo?) even if it's not as sugary satisfying as gravity, but i'm not going to canonise it or w/e. the shift in the middle of pyramids feels epic; it evaporates into a ghost of itself, so gentle in its heaviness & those horns are perfect, it's as good as anything i've heard this year

why are these songs even being compared

mulholland drive, keep up!

blame it on the drugs (xpost)

lol, I said they were antitheses of each other

he means "why was that song brought up itt at all"

yeah well my response works that way too

it's a stupid diversion of a conversation but that never stopped anyone on ilx before, so continue on

tbh I kind of feel like Pyramids is the best song of the year so far. I probably should get around to checking the whole album out sooner or later
Big co-sign on this. Will get on it at some point today.

Feel like spending some time on ILX has reawakened my more 'generalist' impulses, which is great but the only drawback is that it can be quite a slog to keep up with everything.

There's all these little parts of this album that just bury themselves in my brain. Right now it's the "sky up above" part with the birds in pilot jones (kills me) and the bridge btwn andre's to parts in pink matter.

Sweet Life is the one that keeps me coming back.

listened to this last night and i'm still pretty indifferent to it but "pink matter" sounded really nice, pretty cool groove on that one, it really suits lying down, being on the verge of sleep

definitely feel everyone who champions this record based on its albumness, its groove, its stream-of-conscious feel, but i just kind of think that the songs aren't there. maybe it's tone-deaf to bring up voodoo again but that's a record that's not even about its songcraft—it can be, but it's totally oriented toward groove. whereas with channel orange, as much as i know it's equally about feel and atmosphere, i feel like my attention is oriented wholly toward the quality of the songs. maybe it's the way it's produced, or maybe it's just in how i approach it

think i said upthread that the record lives or dies on its hooks and i stand by that.