Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

for what it's worth I would like this all right if it were some random singer trying to be dolores o'riordan, which it could be

there's no way the wonderwall nod isn't intentional

the mixing on this record is a little wonky but i kind of love that, there's a really out-of-body dissociated feeling she maintains through the length of the album and i think it sounds great, especially on "so heavy." though the electric guitars do still sound like left-on vacuum cleaners

easily her best record for me

"idoru" is just... where did that come from

Idoru is one of the best ones in here I agree

the instrumental of "darkseid" confirms she's been listening to as much skinny puppy lately as i have

excited to pick this up Friday

Halfway through this, and 4æm is the first song I won't delete forever. Even if it does sound like the kind of d'n'b interlude bands like Oasis would use to fill out the runtime of a CD back in the late nineties. Other than that, this is really boring.

i'm a bit surprised it hasn't gotten widely panned. it's not thaat bad but it's still a real disappointment and factoring in her heel turn made a huge backlash seem pretty likely to me

it's not even fun to dislike it unfortunately

It's perhaps slightly better than feared? Ok final track. But mostly it reminds me how much great and thoughtful pop is happening at the moment.

even the stronger tracks like "idoru" are let down by the strangely amateurish mix and sound design

The album reminded me of the time a friend of mine said that Miley Cyrus was more artistically daring than Beyoncé, because she worked with the Flaming Lips

i like the melody of "you'll miss me when i'm not around" a lot but it feels a bit slight overall. there's some interesting stuff happening in the background but it never quite commits to any of it

This is good and everyone except Brad is wrong.

Another thing that struck me is this whole idea of celebrating climate change, isn't that what California did already?

it was a shame the completely bonkers concept she talked about in interviews basically didn't end up coming through at all

That seems good actually

Pitchfork Best New Music? And Brad likes it?
Sigh... I guess I have to give this album a fair chance now. (and here i thought "delete forever" was the final straw....)

warning i now think "delete forever" is the best grimes song

xp: With all love and respect to one of my favorite posters, please name something Brad doesn't like.

heh, the pitchfork review is the rare BNW that is also a burn

The disjunction between the disembodiment and the explicit riffage is enticing so far.

This is pretty good, it's the kind of album a Visions fan may have imagined her making with a bigger budget. If you prefer the turn she took with Art Angels towards massive energetic hooks, this may be a bit too much reverb-soaked meandering.

This might end up being a grower for me but at the moment I find the sound design and mixing in general very offputting.

i've spent months with it and it hasn't grown on me at all

First listen made me want to listen to Visions.

it's closer to Visions than it is to ArtAngels, a more slick and metallic version of the former. Really good at first pass (i never heard the leak). There's a deluxe version out there w/We Appreciate Power and several other tracks, which i don't think is seeing a CD/vinyl release unfortunately.

Ugh hearing IDORU and I’m getting annoyed by the lack of mid sounds. It sounds so hollow, like a really long intro. I’m waiting for the sound to have some muscle and it never does. I’ll assume it’s a conscious aesthetic choice but it’s perplexing to me why you’d like your songs to sound so skeletal.

I love Art Angels and Visions and the tracks in between but I'm just really not feeling this one aside from 2 or 3 tracks that I kind of like.

perhaps this will be the death knell of the hipster obsession with cold corporate visual and sound design. mids are what the human ear hears best so it makes sense she got rid of em for more impeccably “post human” vibe but that shit is increasingly played out, the whole accelerationist obsession with mutability is feeling like missing the point

sounds really good on airpods. #masteredforairpods ?

i just got my first pair of knockoff airbuds (their true name) in the mail yesterday! i will give this a listen on their intended format

perhaps this will be the death knell of the hipster obsession with cold corporate visual and sound design

yes, a few critical posts on ilx and it's all over

but will we use our power for good or evil?

I get the sense that this is meant to be listened to on large speakers as loud as possible

Ok I'm listening to this now despite all my resolutions not to and it's not terrible sounding at all? Sounds like grimes. I'm about halfway through and really wish there were stronger hooks, but production-wise its Grimes doing what she does best. Five years on from Art Angels though, I think it confirms that I'm just not that into her anymore. Like, my interest in her style has definitely passed.

starting to think that while ol’ grimey has a skill for tunes and visual aesthetics she might not be the brightest bulb

hm pic.twitter.com/QxbAOUJmZc

— large sarah the size of a small sarah (@SarahNEmerson) February 21, 2020

She did a Q&A on twitch today as Ocarina_of_Grimes, it was pretty rough going.

This is almost impressively forgettable. Everything about it feels uninspired. Be cool if there were some hooks, not a lot to hold onto here besides some flimsy sounding production work that seems well below her talents. And I don’t really care if it’s an intentional Bold Aesthetic Decision if the result is this boring.

I’ve always dug We Appreciate Power but I guess that’s not even on the album proper.

People are complaining about the guitars but honestly so many people have been recoding guitars so badly for so long now that I dunno why you'd single Grimes out here?

That organ sound at the beginning of UDORU though fucking hell.

This does sound good in general on big speakers though. A lot of it sounds like it was made from reclaimed sounds from 1999 bargain bins though, made explicit when it lurches into drum and bass midway through, plus all those moody beats and processed guitars. I kinda like that about it though, and she's bringing enough new to the table that it's not just big Sneaker Pimps energy.

it's really just "delete forever" where the guitars stick out horribly, it's not just that they're badly recorded but they don't sonically fit with everything else which is worse than if everything is badly recorded but in a way that's at least cohesive. i tend to dislike her vocals and some of the drum and synth sounds more on other tracks, but there's also tracks that hold together well like "so heavy i felt through the earth".

the rest of the guitar sounds aren't that bad but aren't particularly good either (except "so heavy i fell through the earth" where they do their job). i think i'd like it more if the guitar sounds committed more to rocking i guess, like "we appreciate power" worked a lot better than most of these tracks while "my name is dark" and "you'll miss me when i'm not just around" just kinda plod along

Might start telling people that's Elon Musk playing the Wonderwall guitar on Delete Forever.

Odds of that are maybe 50/50. What drugs do you think they’re ripping? I think this is a drug album but I’m not sure which drug.

'Violence' and 'Idoru' are highlights, 'My Name Is Dark' as well maybe. The rest just kind of lazily drones on and doesn't leave much of an impression.

I thought "Flesh Without Blood" and "Kill V. Maim" were supreme jams, but nothing else I've heard from her has made any impression. Should I bother with the new one?

it’s a nootropics album

Lol brad touché what I meant was an ultimate stylistic dead end for the sort of highlighted artificiality aesthetic

it’s also interesting to think about some of the discourse here as a case study for how poptimism can force an artificial equivalency between corporate marketing and artistic intent

it’s a nootropics album

what does that mean, exactly? music for people who take nootropics?