Chorus.fm Members EOTY Lists 2016 • Page 28

Yeah guys wtf David Bazan - Blanco is a gorgeous record and certainly his best writing since Control. I think the verses are way less forced and better arranged instrumentally than his other solo stuff

 

both his solo records and achilles heel are better. id argue it's his worst record, at the least since early PtL stuff

 

I don't think his voice works well over beats like that. I feel like headphones worked better bc it wasn't like a (by his standards) bright pop album

 

Man i am just coming to opposite conclusions. I think his voice works better over synths than guitars. That was one of many surprises about the record.

 

I've loved almost everything Bazan has done but I have to agree this album did almost nothing for me. One of the most dissapointing albums of the year for me.

 

I guess that's the beauty of art.

 

Glad im at least not the only one who loved Bazan's new direction. His guitar ideas were getting pretty stale tbh. Blanco felt like a fresh wave of inspiration from him. I hear influence from Kid A and from various Boards of Canada. He already showed me he can be creative with simple bleeps and bloops on that Headphones record... Blanco felt like a fully realized version of the synth driven sound hed sometimes dabbled in. He was always hinting that this kind of record was going to happen and it finally did.

 

This for real? Freedom is like the epitome of what the record embodies.

 

???? ???? ????

It feels like a pretty strong pivot to me.

 

Well, the album is about being a POC as well as the relationship stuff and I think that it captures the former the most strongly of any track on the album, other than maybe Formation. That's just my reading though.

 

To me Freedom and Formation make more sense on a separate record together, like why is Freedom given placement as the penultimate song while Formation seems like not even a real part of the album after such an obvious closer. She crafts a very specific viewpoint so any deviation really stands out to me, tho Six Inch fits in less and isn't as good if you ask me, but I guess it tangentially relates as an general empowerment song? Its really how wide a net you personally want to cast for which songs are on the theme and which ones are close but not really.

 

These aren't necessarily my overall favourites from the year, but they're the albums that either left the biggest impression on me, or have the most memories attached to them for me.


1. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
2. Conor Oberst - Ruminations
3. American Football - American Football (LP2)
4. Pity Sex - White Hot Moon
5. Daughter - Not To Disappear
6. The 1975 - I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it
7. Modern Baseball - Holy Ghost
8. Owen - The King Of Whys
9. Basement - Promise Everything
10. Kevin Devine - Instigator

 

This is mine!

 

As usual, the truth on Lemonade is somewhere between the two poles of hyperbole. It's a very good record but not a paradigm-shifting masterpiece that should unanimously top every single critic list.

 

In what world is formation a bonus track or incongruent with the records thematic statement? At the close of the arc she has reaffirmed her marriage and that song very clearly expresses her love for him as well as the lingering effects of his affair.

 

I don't think that song even hints at an affair, which is why they could release it early without anyone alluding to an affair, and the main theme of the album being a total surprise based on it being the only song released early.

 

I agree the song fits the thematic arc of the record. I also agree it's one of the album's weakest songs

 

I didn't say it explicitly mentions the affair. It's a coda. In the context of the rest of the album it reads as totally different

 

Unless I am mistaken, the person that started the Lemonade conversation was not referring to it not being on publication end of the year lists (so I'm not sure why that is being brought up here), but to it not being on a lot of member end of the year lists (which this thread is about). I agree that that is a shame because it is unquestionably a great album (and I waited months to listen to it, never watched the movie and couldn't care less about the nonsense most music critics write all day). I know the reason why she isn't on a lot of the lists though: Beyonce does not make creatively bankrupt indie rock.

 

Yeah I just don't see it, it feels like a remnant of a different album concept.

 

The reason it's not on a lot of the lists here is because this site is a site where a blink-182 thread has by far the most posts of any band thread. For the average user on the site, pop music is garbage.

 

Wait but Blink actually makes garbage pop music

 

These are my top eps, probably

1. Vince Staples - Prima Donna
2. Save Ends - Hug Your Friends
3. The Starting Line - Anyways
4. Hurry - Casual Feelings
5. Sorority Noise - It Kindly Stopped for Me

 

These EP lists need more love for Gone is Gone.

 

Let's not get into the "what is Pop" debate again, I can't do it anymore