ILM’s Top 77 Albums of 2021

^Weirdly, I ended up seeing them open for Metz (w Preoccupations) next door at the one gig I've seen in two year during this brief window between lockdowns in December. They were p good.

I don't think anyone else posted an Apple Music playlist. Here is one, a bit late but perhaps still useful to some:

https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/ilm-top-77-albums-2021/pl.u-WabZZqafvvXWxV

back from a lovely holiday and time to resolve some cognitive dissonance that's arisen due to my listening choices on the way home - ah, reality, etc

so this CHVRCHES album then

i have given it the most open-hearted listen i possibly can. i have read the breathless praise by numerous ilxors whom i respect and who clearly listen to plenty of music. i really want to like it. but it's a magic-eye thing and i haven't got the knack. to me, this is track after track of midtempo minor-key 'drama pop' with each melody as predictable as the last, every vocal delivered in exactly the same affectless manner, and every production choice geared towards a sort of shiny synth-rock soup that, over the course of forty minutes, diminishes markedly in impact.

what's wrong with me? what am i missing? should i not have preceded it with the new Black Dresses and thus given it an impossible level of pop intensity to live up to? is ILM a deep cell of CHVRCHES superfans? is there a recipe for pop that CHVRCHES have perfected, but a recipe that only a certain sort of pop gourmand would truly understand? idk help me here, because we're gonna keep running into this wall

You could always just not listen to it

lol DJP otm, see also

Can You Force Yourself To Like A Record Through Blunt-Force Repetition?

it's my fault for calling imago out i guess, i regret it

i will add

that 'nightmares' has a good coda

it's not something i would have really expected you to love, it's just impeccably made pop-rock but not something that's going to seem interesting or exciting to someone who isn't already sympathetic to what they're going for

it occupies fairly similar territory to the 1975 really, just more focused & more goth. there's even the blue nile tribute track i've been wanting the 1975 to make forever

I salute your trying, imago. Sometimes it’s just impossible to get there.

(I don’t think I’ve ever heard the band in question. Eventually.)

but the 1975 at their best gain power from being stylistically all over the place, and making these big sprawling unpredictable albums that work pop-rock angles in hypermodern, unusual ways

are CHVRCHES doing...that too? just in a way that's subtler?

as I say I am massively sympathetic to some of their ingredients (the cure and aereogramme being associated acts, and garbage, whose first album is absolutely my shit!) and How Not To Drown is indeed really good, but I can't bring the rest into focus...yet

not really, which is why i wouldn't have expected you to love it

If anything about this debate was useful for me it was when Brad highlighted their emo influences so matter-of-factly—a connection I'd never made myself—which explains why I like almost nothing about them. Not that I needed a reason, but it bothered me not to have one.

the CHVRCHES album is more mining one vein to superb effect imo - I also would not guess imago would like it based on what I usually see you champion

(added the apple playlist to the OP)

incoming: more of number 41:

PLAY WITH THE CHANGES REMIXED

ARRIVES SEPTEMBER 16TH

CLICK THE LINK TO PRE-ORDER NOW🦋 https://t.co/MLsvZnHKx4 pic.twitter.com/jSBoCtoKBO

— R O J O (@Rochelle_Jordan) July 26, 2022